Yikes! Coming soon to your neighborhood: a dust bowl

Climate Progress � Blog Archive � Energy and Global Warming News for June 27th: Dust-Bowl-ification spreads to southern Italy; Clean energy by Nobel Prize-wining Grameen Bank; DC Metro crash symptom of crumbling infrastructure

Dust-Bowlification is predicted to happen all over the world — see NOAA stunner: humanity faces permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe. But it’s happening some places now:

Deserts crossing Mediterranean

The Sahara Desert is crossing the Mediterranean, according to Italian environmental protection group Legambiente which warns that the livelihoods of 6.5 million people living along its shores could be at risk.

”Desertification isn’t limited to Africa,” said Legambiente Vice President Sebastiano Venneri.

”Without a serious change of direction in economic and environmental policies, the risk will become concrete and irreversible.” A recent report by Legambiente estimated that 74 million acres of fertile land along the Mediterranean were turning to desert as the result of overexploited land and water resources.

Legambiente said that southern Italy was at severe risk in addition to the islands of Sicily and Sardinia where 11% of all arable land showed signs of drying up. ”Semi-arid coastal regions like southern Italy are prone to the effects of desertification due to farmers’ dependence on water from underground aquifers instead of rainfall,” said Legambiente spokesman Giorgio Zampetti. According to Zampetti, pumping too much fresh water out of these underground deposits can result in seawater leaking in to replace it, effectively poisoning the groundwater.

As an example of the long-term consequences, Legambiente pointed to Egypt where it said brackish groundwater had compromised half the country’s farmland.

“The south of Italy isn’t the only part of the country at risk,” added Zampetti. ”Aquifers around the Po Delta in northern Italy have also begun showing signs of saltwater contamination.” Experts said that the Po River, which is Italy’s longest waterway and nearly dries up in parts when industrial consumption peaks, is one of the most visible examples of desertifying climate change in Italy. Italy is not the only country in Europe losing fertile land.

Legambiente estimated that desertification affects more than a fifth of the Iberian Peninsula with early indicators also present along the French Riviera.

Across the Mediterranean, Legambiente said that countries like Libya, Tunisia and Morocco were losing 1,000 square kilometers of fertile land every year.

Legambiente experts predict that between 1997 and 2020, desertification will have forced over 60 million people in sub-Saharan Africa to leave their homes, many of whom will head north to Europe.

These are the people who are going to fix our healthcare system?

Many in Congress Hold Stakes in Health Industry - NYTimes.com

June 14, 2009

Many in Congress Hold Stakes in Health Industry

By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — As President Obama and Congress intensify the push to overhaul health care in the coming week, the political and economic force of that industry is well represented in the financial holdings of many lawmakers and others with a say on the legislation, according to new disclosure forms.

The personal financial reports, due late last week from members of Congress, show that many lawmakers hold investments in insurance, pharmaceutical and prescription-benefit companies and in hospital interests, all of which would be affected by the administration’s overhaul of health care.

Read the rest.

Why I hate Memorial Day

Memorial Day honors the tragedy of those who died for their country. All over the nation, ceremonies take place at cemeteries of the fallen. Volunteers place flags on graves; taps is played; flags are furled; and stern-faced members of veterans' organizations attend in solemn rows in their caps and insignia.

It's not a time for cynicism. And yet, that's just what I feel. As a nation, our feelings are manipulated on what should be a day of sorrow and regret.

Let me be clear--we should justly honor the sacrifice of those who died in war. But the way we do it glorifies war to yet another generation. It deludes our youth into believing it's their duty to enlist in the next crusade to benefit politicians and the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. The martial music and stirring speeches perpetuate the lie that the fallen "died for our freedom." They did not.

Did our soldiers die heroically? Often they did. But for the most part, they died uselessly.

War is a failure of diplomacy. Instead of flags and martial music, we should offer apologies to the dead that once again, we failed to avert the catastrophe of war. Our vow to the dead should be to redouble our efforts to find peaceful ways of settling disputes. On this day we should mourn not just those who perished in war, but our repeated failure to move beyond the barbaric practice of officially killing strangers just because someone in power who stands to gain from war convinced us that it's in our best interest to do so.

The message of Memorial Day should be "Never again! We will not send yet another generation of youth to the killing fields."

***

Eisenhower on war:

"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war." (Press conference: 1953)

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity. War settles nothing." (Speech: Ottawa, Canada, January 10, 1946)

Dwight D. Eisenhower
34th President of the United States
(1953-1961)

(Courtesy of West Point Graduates Against the War)

Don't eat processed foods!

May 15, 2009

Food Companies Are Placing the Onus for Safety on Consumers

by MICHAEL MOSS

The frozen pot pies that sickened an estimated 15,000 people with salmonella in 2007 left federal inspectors mystified. At first they suspected the turkey. Then they considered the peas, carrots and potatoes.

The pie maker, ConAgra Foods, began spot-checking the vegetables for pathogens, but could not find the culprit. It also tried cooking the vegetables at high temperatures, a strategy the industry calls a “kill step,” to wipe out any lingering microbes. But the vegetables turned to mush in the process.

So ConAgra — which sold more than 100 million pot pies last year under its popular Banquet label — decided to make the consumer responsible for the kill step. The “food safety” instructions and four-step diagram on the 69-cent pies offer this guidance: “Internal temperature needs to reach 165° F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.”

Increasingly, the corporations that supply Americans with processed foods are unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients. In this case, ConAgra could not pinpoint which of the more than 25 ingredients in its pies was carrying salmonella. Other companies do not even know who is supplying their ingredients, let alone if those suppliers are screening the items for microbes and other potential dangers, interviews and documents show.

Yet the supply chain for ingredients in processed foods — from flavorings to flour to fruits and vegetables — is becoming more complex and global as the drive to keep food costs down intensifies. As a result, almost every element, not just red meat and poultry, is now a potential carrier of pathogens, government and industry officials concede.

In addition to ConAgra, other food giants like Nestlé and the Blackstone Group, a New York firm that acquired the Swanson and Hungry-Man brands two years ago, concede that they cannot ensure the safety of items — from frozen vegetables to pizzas — and that they are shifting the burden to the consumer. General Mills, which recalled about five million frozen pizzas in 2007 after an E. coli outbreak, now advises consumers to avoid microwaves and cook only with conventional ovens. ConAgra has also added food safety instructions to its other frozen meals, including the Healthy Choice brand.

Peanuts were considered unlikely culprits for pathogens until earlier this year when a processing plant in Georgia was blamed for salmonella poisoning that is estimated to have killed nine people and sickened 27,000. Now, white pepper is being blamed for dozens of salmonella illnesses on the West Coast, where a widening recall includes other spices and six tons of frozen egg rolls.

The problem is particularly acute with frozen foods, in which unwitting consumers who buy these products for their convenience mistakenly think that their cooking is a matter of taste and not safety.

Federal regulators have pushed companies to beef up their cooking instructions with the detailed “food safety” guides. But the response has been varied, as a review of packaging showed. Some manufacturers fail to list explicit instructions; others include abbreviated guidelines on the side of their boxes in tiny print. A Hungry-Man pot pie asks consumers to ensure that the pie reaches a temperature that is 11 degrees short of the government-established threshold for killing pathogens. Questioned about the discrepancy, Blackstone acknowledged it was using an older industry standard that it would rectify when it printed new cartons.

Government food safety officials also point to efforts by the Partnership for Food Safety Education, a nonprofit group founded by the Clinton administration. But the partnership consists of a two-person staff and an annual budget of $300,000. Its director, Shelley Feist, said she has wanted to start a campaign to advise consumers about frozen foods, but lacks the money.

Estimating the risk to consumers is difficult. The industry says that it is acting with an abundance of caution, and that big outbreaks of food-borne illness are rare. At the same time, a vast majority of the estimated 76 million cases of food-borne illness every year go unreported or are not traced to the source.

Home Cooking

Some food safety experts say they do not think the solution should rest with the consumer. Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said companies like ConAgra were asking too much. “I do not believe that it is fair to put this responsibility on the back of the consumer, when there is substantial confusion about what it means to prepare that product,” Dr. Osterholm said.

And the ingredient chain for frozen and other processed foods is poised to get more convoluted, industry insiders say. While the global market for ingredients is projected to reach $34 billion next year, the pressure to keep food prices down in a recession is forcing food companies to look for ways to cut costs.

Ensuring the safety of ingredients has been further complicated as food companies subcontract processing work to save money: smaller companies prepare flavor mixes and dough that a big manufacturer then assembles. “There is talk of having passports for ingredients,” said Jamie Rice, the marketing director of RTS Resource, a research firm based in England. “At each stage they are signed off on for quality and safety. That would help companies, if there is a scare, in tracing back.”

But government efforts to impose tougher trace-back requirements for ingredients have met with resistance from food industry groups including the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which complained to the Food and Drug Administration: “This information is not reasonably needed and it is often not practical or possible to provide it.”

Now, in the wake of polls that show food poisoning incidents are shaking shopper confidence, the group is re-evaluating its position. A new industry guide produced by the group urges companies to test for salmonella and cites recent outbreaks from cereal, children’s snacks and other dry foods that companies have mistakenly considered immune to pathogens.

Research on raw ingredients, the guide notes, has found salmonella in 0.14 percent to 1.3 percent of the wheat flour sampled, and up to 8 percent of the raw spices tested.

ConAgra’s pot pie outbreak began on Feb. 20, 2007, and by the time it trailed off nine months later 401 cases of salmonella infection had been identified in 41 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which estimates that for every reported case, an additional 38 are not detected or reported.

It took until June 2007 for health officials to discover the illnesses were connected, and in October they traced the salmonella to Banquet pot pies made at ConAgra’s plant in Marshall, Mo.

While investigators who went to the plant were never able to pinpoint the salmonella source, inspectors for the United States Department of Agriculture focused on the vegetables, a federal inspection document shows.

ConAgra had not been requiring its suppliers to test the vegetables for pathogens, even though some were being shipped from Latin America. Nor was ConAgra conducting its own pathogen tests.

The company says the outbreak and management changes prompted it to undertake a broad range of safety initiatives, including testing for microbes in all of the pie ingredients. ConAgra said it was also trying to apply the kill step to as many ingredients as possible, but had not yet found a way to accomplish it without making the pies “unpalatable.”

Its Banquet pies now have some of the most graphic food safety instructions, complete with a depiction of a thermometer piercing the crust.

Pressed to say whether the meals are safe to eat if consumers disregard the instructions or make an error, Stephanie Childs, a company spokeswoman, said, “Our goal is to provide the consumer with as safe a product as possible, and we are doing everything within our ability to provide a safe product to them.”

“We are always improving food safety,” Ms. Childs said. “This is a long ongoing process.”

The U.S.D.A. said it required companies to show that their cooking instructions, when properly followed, would kill any pathogens. ConAgra says it has done such testing to validate its instructions.

Getting to ‘Kill Step’

But attempts by The New York Times to follow the directions on several brands of frozen meals, including ConAgra’s Banquet pot pies, failed to achieve the required 165-degree temperature. Some spots in the pies heated to only 140 degrees even as parts of the crust were burnt.

A ConAgra consumer hotline operator said the claims by microwave-oven manufacturers about their wattage power could not be trusted, and that any pies not heated enough should not be eaten. “We definitely want it to reach that 165-degree temperature,” she said. “It’s a safety issue.”

In 2007, the U.S.D.A.’s inspection of the ConAgra plant in Missouri found records that showed some of ConAgra’s own testing of its directions failed to achieve “an adequate lethality” in several products, including its Chicken Fried Beef Steak dinner. Even 18 minutes in a large conventional oven brought the pudding in a Kid Cuisine Chicken Breast Nuggets meal to only 142 degrees, the federal agency found.

Besides improving its own cooking directions, ConAgra says it has alerted other frozen food manufacturers to the food safety issues.

But in the absence of meaningful federal rules, other frozen-dinner makers that face the same problem with ingredients are taking varied steps, some less rigorous. Jim Seiple, a food safety official with the Blackstone unit that makes Swanson and Hungry-Man pot pies, said the company tested for pathogens, but only after preliminary tests for bacteria that were considered indicators of pathogens — a method that ConAgra abandoned after its salmonella outbreak.

The pot pie instructions have built-in margins of error, Mr. Seiple said, and the risk to consumers depended on “how badly they followed our directions.”

Some frozen food companies are taking different approaches to pathogens. Amy’s Kitchen, a California company that specializes in natural frozen foods, says it precooks its ingredients to kill any potential pathogens before its pot pies and other products leave the factory.

Using a bacteriological testing laboratory, The Times checked several pot pies made by Amy’s and the three leading brands, and while none contained salmonella or E. coli, one pie each of two brands — Banquet, and the Stouffer’s brand made by Nestlé — had significant levels of T. coliform.

These bacteria are common in many foods and are not considered harmful. But their presence in these products include raw ingredients and leave open “a potential for contamination,” said Harvey Klein, the director of Garden State Laboratories in New Jersey.

A Nestlé spokeswoman said the company enhanced its food safety instructions in the wake of ConAgra’s salmonella outbreak.

Danger in the Fridge

ConAgra’s episode has raised its visibility among victims like Ryan Warren, a 25-year-old law school student in Washington. A Seattle lawyer, Bill Marler, brought suit against ConAgra on behalf of Mr. Warren’s daughter Zoë, who had just turned 1 year old when she was fed a pot pie that he says put her in the hospital for a terrifying weekend of high fever and racing pulse.

“You don’t assume these dangers to be right in your freezer,” said Mr. Warren, who settled with ConAgra. He does not own a food thermometer and was not certain his microwave oven met the minimum 1,100-wattage requirement in the new pot pie instructions. “I do think that consumers bear responsibility to reasonably look out for their well-being, but the entire reason for this product to exist is for its convenience.”

Public health officials who interviewed the Warrens and other victims of the pot-pie contamination found that fewer than one in three knew the wattage of their microwave ovens, according to the C.D.C. report on the outbreak. The report notes, however, that nearly one in four of the victims reported cooking their pies in conventional ovens.

For more than a decade, the U.S.D.A. has also sought to encourage consumers to use food thermometers. But the agency’s statistics on how many Americans do so are discouraging. According to its Web site, not quite half the population has one, and only 3 percent use it when cooking high-risk foods like hamburgers. No data was available on how many people use thermometers on pot pies.

Andrew Martin contributed reporting.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Marcus Aurelius on the afterlife

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” —Marcus Aurelius

How we can all become energy suppliers

One reason solar energy is such a small part of our energy mix is that energy companies won't pay for any excess power you generate from your rooftop solar panels beyond what you use yourself. Ending that restriction could do more for our economy and the outlook for global climate than all the technology of the next ten years.

Green Growth: Are Feed-in Tariffs the Answer? | The New America Foundation

President Barack Obama has touted a robust green energy sector as our best chance of jumpstarting the economy, putting Americans back to work, and securing our nation's standing in a post-carbon world. Yet the renewable energy industry has been among the hardest hit by the current downturn.

How can America revive this vital sector, transforming it into an engine of economic growth? The Washington Monthly has found a promising answer in an unlikely place: Gainesville, Florida, which is in the midst of a solar-power boom, thanks to a bold incentive known as a feed-in tariff. Under this policy, the local power company is required to buy renewable energy from all producers, no matter how small, at above-market rates. This means anyone with a cluster of solar cells on their roof can sell the power they produce at a profit.

While Gainesville is the first to take the leap, other U.S. cities and at least eleven U.S. states are moving toward adopting the policy. There is also a bill for a nationwide feed-in tariff before Congress. The surge of interest stems from the dramatic results the policy has delivered in other countries, most notably Germany, where it has given rise to the world’s most vibrant green energy sector. In America, however, an aging electrical grid and fractured utility market could make feed-in tariffs problematic.

Afghanistan is the new Iraq

Informed Comment: Top Ten Ways the US is Turning Afghanistan into Iraq

A fascinating new take on transportation by car

Daimler to Bring Car-Sharing to Texas - Wheels Blog - NYTimes.com

Daimler to Bring Car-Sharing to Texas

By Azadeh Ensha

Daimler’s Car2go program, to be started in Austin, Tex., will allow members to share Smart Fortwos.

When it comes to creating a successful car-sharing service, Daimler is hoping that what works in Europe will also work in America.

After introducing its Car2go program in Ulm, Germany, last week, the automaker is looking to begin a similar service in Austin, Tex.

“The car-sharing services that exist now require you to pick up and deliver the car, and you can’t drive per minute,” said Han Tjan, a spokesman for Daimler North America, about what separates Car2go from the other car-sharing services, like Zipcar, already on the market. “With this one, if you have to go 10 blocks in Manhattan and it starts raining, you can look for a car and take it.”

Specifically, the Austin service will offer drivers shared access to 200 Smart Fortwos 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To confirm a car’s availability, customers hold a member card over a card reader on the car’s windshield. If the car is available, the door will unlock. The driver can then access the keys from the glove compartment using a PIN. If the car is not available, the customer will be directed to the nearest available Car2go. The service also lets you prebook your vehicle and locate a car by phone or the Web.

When you’re done using Car2go, you can park at any legal parking spot or at Car2go-only parking spaces throughout the city. Cars are locked by holding up the Car2go member card to the reader. Daimler’s goal is to have a Car2go car available within a three-minute walk.

Though prices in the United States have not be announced, the Ulm Car2go program costs 0.19 euros (about 25 cents) a minute. Drivers are charged 9.90 euros ($13.25) an hour after the first hour of use. Flat day rates of 49 euros ($65.60) are also available. These prices include fuel costs. (A service team helps ensure that cars are properly fueled and maintained.) Membership is free.

Daimler’s Car2go Austin service will first be tested by city employees this fall before eventually becoming available to the public.

Electric Cars for All! (No, Really This Time)---and by 2011

From the Desk of David Pogue - Electric Cars for All! (No, Really This Time) - NYTimes.com

We started from the infrastructure. We came up with an electric car that would have two features that nobody had before. 1) The battery is removable. So if you wanted to go a long distance, you could switch your battery instead of waiting for it to charge for a very long time.

And 2) It was cheaper than gasoline car, not more expensive. Because you didn't buy the battery. You paid just for the miles and for the car.

DP: So what will you guys make? What will you do?

SA: We sell miles, the way that AT&T sells you minutes. They buy bandwidth and they translate into minutes. We buy batteries and clean electrons--we only buy electrons that come from renewable sources--and we translate that into miles.

DP: What are we talking about here? What's the infrastructure you're building?

SA: We have two pieces of infrastructure. 1) Charge spots. And they will be everywhere, like parking meters, only instead of taking money from you when you park, they give you electrons. And they will be at home, they'll be at work, they'll be at downtown and retail centers. As if you have a magic contract with Chevron or Exxon that every time you stop your car and go away, they fill it up.

Now, that gives us the ability to drive most of our drives, sort of a 100-mile radius. And that's most of the drives we do. But we also take care of the exceptional drive. You want to go from Boston to New York. And so on the way, we have what we call switch stations: lanes inside gas stations. You go into the switch station, your depleted battery comes out, a full battery comes in, and you keep driving. It takes you about two, three minutes--less than filling with gasoline--and you can keep on going.

Read the whole amazing story...

Watch the David Pogue video:

In the dark...

In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover. —Wendell Berry

Earmarks

Op-Ed Columnist - Miracles Take Time - NYTimes.com: "Freaking out over earmarks is like watching a neighborhood that is being consumed by flames and complaining that there is crabgrass on some of the lawns."

Still more on Canada's financial wisdom

Op-Ed Contributor - The Great Solvent North - NYTimes.com
by Theresa Tedesco
February 27, 2009

HAS the world turned upside down? America, the capital of capitalism, is pondering nationalizing a handful of banks. Meanwhile, Canada, whose banking system had long been notorious for its stodgy practices and government coddling, is now being celebrated for those very qualities.

The Canadian banking system, which proved resilient in the global economic crisis, is finally getting its day in the sun. A recent World Economic Forum report ranked it the soundest in the world, mostly as the result of its conservative practices. (The United States ranked 40th).

Read the rest...

The Gulf War--the true story

Why the Dark Secrets of the First Gulf War Are Still Haunting Us

By Nora Eisenberg, AlterNet.
February 27, 2009

Barack Obama, an early and ardent enemy of the Iraq War, quickly declared his affinity for a war in Afghanistan and/or Pakistan. And like so many Democratic leaders, he has commended Bush 41's Gulf War over Bush 43's, for its justifiable cause, clear goals, quick execution and admirable leadership.

It's difficult to determine the proportion of expedience to ignorance that allows politicians and pundits to advance the theory of the good and trouble-free Gulf War. What's clear, though, is that for close to 20 years, the 42-day war, in which we dropped more bombs than were dropped in all wars combined in the history of the world, maintains a special place in American hearts.

But as John R. MacArthur amply demonstrates in The Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, the real 1991 war was kept from the American public. This week, as we commemorate the 18th anniversary of the Gulf War's end, and opportunities for new hostilities beckon, Americans, and our leaders, would do well to take a hard look at the war that we continue to love only because we never got to see it.

Despite our inability to detect it at the time, U.S. prosecution of the 1991 war with Iraq relied on all the now-familiar and discredited strategies used to promote the present war -- with equally disastrous and far-reaching results. More...

More on Canada. Obama, are you listening?

In Canada, Obama gets warm welcome--and tips on managing an economy

The country has seen no major banks fail. Debt levels are low and foreclosures pale in comparison with those of the US.

By Susan Bourette | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the February 21, 2009 edition

TORONTO - For his first foreign visit as president, Barack Obama chose a country where no major banks have failed, home foreclosures pale by comparison with those in the United States, corporate and consumer debt is low, and citizens enjoy universal health care.

Canada often gets short shrift from its southern neighbor, despite its stature as the largest trading partner of the US and a staunch ally. But now, amid global economic turmoil, the financial moderation practiced by this nation of some 33 million people is being celebrated.

"These days, boring is beautiful. Prudency is a big hit," says Stephen Foerster, finance professor at the Ivy School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London. "You might say Canada has suddenly become sexy, even if it's in an unsexy way."

President Obama acknowledged his affection for Canada during a six-hour visit Thursday to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The trip offered balm to a relationship rocked in recent years by differences over the Iraq war and, more recently, worries over protectionism. "I love this country," he said during a press conference after euphoric Canadians greeted his arrival in the capital, Ottawa, by singing Bob Marley's reggae classic "One Love" and chanting "Yes We Can."

Two days earlier, Mr. Obama hinted at the reason for his admiration. "One of the things that I think has been striking about Canada is that in the midst of this enormous economic crisis.... [It's] shown itself to be a pretty good manager of the financial system in the economy in ways that we haven't always been here in the United States."

Among industrialized countries, Canada is the only one not to have seen a major bank fail. The World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system as the healthiest in the world in 2008, while the US took the 40th spot. And while Canada's largest five banks reaped profits of $8.2 billion, the top five US banks lost a combined total of $8.3 billion last year.

Stronger federal regulations and lower leverage ratios borne by Canadian banks have allowed them to weather the global banking storm. Canadian financial institutions didn't engage in the subprime mortgage lending that sideswiped the US banking industry and forced millions of American homeowners into foreclosure.

"The difference with Canadian banks is that they never succumbed to the temptation of huge profits. It also allowed them to avoid the downside of more aggressive behavior," says David Haglund, a professor of international politics at Queen's University in Kingston. "It speaks to the more conservative nature of Canadian society in general. Canadians are simply more risk averse."

Canada has not escaped the global economic crisis. Its economy tipped into recession in the last quarter of 2008. In January alone, 129,000 jobs disappeared – the biggest one-month increase in years – pushing the unemployment rate to 7.2 percent. And this week brought more bad news: Alberta, Canada's cash cow, which has led the national economy over the past several years, is also in recession, hit by a slowdown in oil prices and sales. To combat the downturn, Prime Minister Harper's Conservative government introduced a $39 billion (about $31 billion US) stimulus package, to be rolled out over two years.

But analysts believe Canada's strong balance sheet will position it better than other embattled countries to weather this recessionary storm. For 12 consecutive years, Canada has posted budgetary surpluses, compared with the $1 trillion US federal deficit – a figure that doesn't include the $787 billion stimulus package signed into law this week.

To hear the analysts tell the story, Canada appears to have been getting a number of other things right. For example, even the most ardent proponents of big business are fans of the universal healthcare system. As Professor Haglund points out, the Big Three automakers have been able to produce cars more cheaply in their Canadian plants because the government absorbs the cost of healthcare.

And healthcare costs are lower in Canada, accounting for 9.7 percent of the GDP, compared with 15.2 percent in the US.

Higher taxes or regulation and a vibrant economy aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, Haglund says. "If Barack Obama can take away any lesson from the Canadian experience, it's that things can be changed while preserving what's best in North American life."

Regulation works. Single-payer healthcare works

Canada and the Recession: Angles of Deflection - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com

As Fareed Zakaria points out in a recent Newsweek article, Canada is weathering the financial crisis better than we are. Canadian banks are more old-fashioned (that is, centrally regulated) than our own. Stricter leverage requirements have been enforced. Subprime mortgages have not been encouraged. Prohibitions against foreign bank takeovers have protected Canadian institutions from competition from the United States, but also buffered them against financial contagion.

Mr. Zakaria overstates the case when he claims that no government bailout has taken place there. The Canadian government has provided substantial assistance to the financial sector. But its efforts to increase available credit remain far less costly than our trillion-dollar subsidies. A more serious concern for Canadians is the likelihood that the sinking American and global economy will pull them down.

If unemployment continues to rise over the next few months in the United States, as predicted, many families will lose their health insurance coverage or struggle to pay premiums they can ill afford. By contrast, increased unemployment won’t reduce Canadian access to health care.

As the economist (and fellow Economix blogger) Uwe Reinhardt explains, the single-payer Canadian health care system delivers very good results for about half the per-person cost of ours — with huge savings from reduced paperwork. Economic disparities in access to health care are significantly lower there. More...

Ah, how the times have changed

In support of the "nuclear option." Note the date. Harry Reid, are you listening?

The Filibuster:

by Ronald D. Rotunda, Cato Institute
July 7, 2003

"The filibuster has a long history, but its pedigree should not make us proud. It prevented civil rights legislation from being adopted for nearly a century. Now a minority of senators is using it to prevent the Senate from voting on judicial nominees even though a majority of the senators from both parties would vote to confirm if they only could vote.

The modern filibuster is much more powerful than its historical predecessor because it is invisible: The Senate rules do not require any senator to actually hold the floor to filibuster. Instead, a minority of 41 senators simply notifies the Senate leadership of its intent to filibuster. Other Senate business goes on, but a vote on a particular issue -- a nomination -- cannot be brought to a vote. The present Senate rules that create the filibuster also do not allow the Senate to change the filibuster rules unless 67 senators agree. However, these rules should not bind the present Senate any more than a statute that says that it cannot be repealed until 67 percent of the Senate votes to repeal the statute. An earlier Senate cannot bind a present Senate on this issue." (the rest...)

Friday baby blogging

Test drives can be so tiring!

















Claire the pilot.

That French fruit fly research earmark--the back story

This story is of particular interest to me because for the last few years we haven't been able to produce our wonderful home-cured olives, because Steve's olive crop has been a total loss, thanks to the olive fruit fly invasion.

Read it here: Sarah Palin Science | Salon

This is one earmark that will directly benefit California agriculture, so we don't have to import olive oil from foreign countries.

Image from Cornell University.

What kind of stimulus actually helps the economy?

Surprise! The top three most beneficial economic stimulus provisions are food stamps, extending unemployment benefits and spending on the infrastructure--rebuilding our decrepit roads, bridges, and so forth.

Three of the four worst ones just happen to be the ones McCain is pushing.

Click on the image to the right to enlarge it.

Read the accompanying story from the Economic Policy Institute:

A meaningful stimulus for Main Street

$13 million! Purged voters

While the Republican Acorn hoax is distracting the country, millions of real people are being purged from the rolls.

From the Independent (UK):
Open House: The Vote Grab: Voter purge could swing result to McCain
From the Brennan Center for Justice: Voter Suppression Incidents 2008
From U.S. Politics Today: Making sure every vote ISN'T counted

It's hard to find good news these days, but. . . Rwanda??

Who would have imagined that the most war-torn country in Africa would be the site of the world's first women-majority parliament?

Women Run the Show In a Recovering Rwanda

KIGALI, Rwanda -- On a continent that has been dominated by the rule of men, this tiny East African nation is trying something new.

Here, women are not only driving the economy -- working on construction sites, in factories and as truck and taxi drivers -- they are also filling the ranks of government.

Women hold a third of all cabinet positions, including foreign minister, education minister, Supreme Court chief and police commissioner general. And Rwanda's parliament last month became the first in the world where women claim the majority -- 56 percent, including the speaker's chair.

One result is that Rwanda has banished archaic patriarchal laws that are still enforced in many African societies, such as those that prevent women from inheriting land. The legislature has passed bills aimed at ending domestic violence and child abuse, while a committee is now combing through the legal code to purge it of discriminatory laws.

. . . .

Though profound tensions and scars from the genocide still exist here, so does a strong sense of national purpose tinged with unapologetic political correctness.

It is taboo to speak of Hutus or Tutsis these days; everyone is Rwandan. The last Saturday of every month is community work day, when neighbors gather for six hours to help with a collective project -- clearing brush, or repairing a less-fortunate neighbor's house.

"We are doing this for ourselves -- not because it's a law," said Beatrice Namyonga, who was clearing weeds with her neighbors.

When it comes to the role of women, a similar attitude prevails.

In general, men here seem to have accepted and even embraced the policy of promoting women in government, even if their endorsement at times carries a dutiful tone.

"It was the government's aim to promote women, and the biggest proportion of Rwandans are women," said Jean Muhikira, 49, a driver who said he notices many more women in his line of work these days. "Women can contribute a lot in ideas."

In some quarters of Rwandan society -- particularly among older men and Hutu men who harbor some mistrust of Kagame's government -- the policy is viewed with faint suspicion.

"Maybe now that women have more than 50 percent in parliament, it could be a big problem," said Thomas Habumuisha, 29, who was out shopping with a friend on Saturday. "Maybe women could take advantage and oppress men."

His friend, Muhire Bitorwa, whose wife, a teacher, is helping pay his way through Kigali University, nodded politely, but disagreed.

"In my view, women are more reasonable, more merciful and less corrupt than men," he offered. "And culturally, women have not been recognized."

Read the whole thing.

Granddaughter of the year

An old friend once remarked that when you kiss a baby, your lips buzz. That is, in fact, true.

I never envisioned my curmudgeon of a son kissing a baby. I am so impressed with Ben and Christine. They have the good fortune to both be available to Claire during her first three months, and they share all the care right down the middle. Christine gets up for the before-midnight feeding shifts, and Ben gets up for the early morning ones. This is possible because Christine pumps her milk. Ah, the blessings of technology.

The cooking and cleaning are also a mutual effort.

I have talked to other men who have been able to participate in their children's infancy, and they consider themselves to be among the truly blessed.

My mother and I had a lovely and relaxed four days with Ben, Christine and Claire--my first grandchild and my mother's first great grandchild. May you all be so lucky.

Here's Claire with her great grandmother, my mother:















Okay, only family will be interested in this; here are a few more pictures of Claire, the wonder baby.

Visualizing $1 trillion

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 09/26/2008 | Economists say House GOP plan would be ineffective, costly

...it wouldn't reduce the crush of homes in or near foreclosure, said Simon Johnson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That's a problem that will surely grow worse if the U.S. economy enters recession, leading to greater job losses, which feed a vicious downward spiral of even more foreclosures and defaults on car loans and credit-card debt.

Americans are spooked by talk that financial Armageddon awaits.

The global financial system nearly melted down last week when investors pulled out en masse from money market funds and the short-term debt markets that help corporate America fund its day-to-day needs.

These traditionally have been viewed as safe investments for ordinary Americans, so the flight from them struck fear in the hearts of policymakers.

Few economists, including Galbraith, are willing to discount completely the chance of a financial collapse, given the turmoil in credit markets and banking.

"My sense is it will delay a disaster, given that you only have three months left in this administration. But it will not cure the problem in the (financial) industry or prevent the shakeout and downsizing of the industry," Galbraith said.

Many lawmakers also expressed skepticism.

Coming out of the White House on Thursday, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, Alabama's Richard Shelby, held up what he said was a five-page list of economists opposing the rescue plan.

"This is not me. This is economists at Harvard, Yale, MIT, University of Chicago, our leading universities," an exasperated Shelby told reporters. He called the administration plan "flawed from the beginning."

Read it all from good old McClatchy, the best mainstream news service left standing. Click on the graphic for a bigger version.

Graphic: (c) 2008 MCT; source: Dallas Morning News Research; Troy Oxford, the Dallas Morning News

There's a lot of lies going around in the presidential campaigns

Here are two resources for sorting out the truth. They scold both candidates for lies and distortions.

FactCheck.org
Politifact.com

By the way, FactCheck.org has disavowed claims made by the McCain campaign about FactCheck's findings.

Bailout is a scam

More treasonous legislation by unelected officials. Will the public care?

Text of Draft Proposal for Bailout Plan - Text - NYTimes.com

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Walk this way

It turns out that walking is not so simple. If you change any aspect of the way you walk, everything gets messed up.

After my accident, I spent some time scooting around the house in my office chair. Then I got hold of a cane, and was able to walk by not putting weight on my injured side. Walking got gradually easier to do, and my right leg was hurting less and less. A few weeks into the cane, though, my LEFT leg began hurting. And it got worse. Soon, even though my right leg wasn't bothering me anymore, I could barely walk at all.

Enter the physical therapist. "Stop using the cane," he ordered, "and walk normally."

That meant no limping, no shuffling, no walking slowly. He gave me some exercises to help the process along. It turns out, with walking, that if you favor the injured side, you'll injure the other side and end up having to go to a physical therapist.

The first few days were pretty painful. On my LEFT side. But it got gradually easier. Two weeks later I returned to the therapist walking smoothly without limping--if I concentrated. There's a tendency to limp if I'm not paying attention, and as he pointed out, if you keep limping, it will become a habit.

I wonder how many people you see limping from old injuries really wouldn't have to limp if they practiced walking normally?

Pathetic...

So Kevin Drum is saying Sarah Palin can reveal utter ignorance about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and still gain support because it sounds so good.

Further, that Democrats don't dare point out her mistake because we'll be derided as picking on her.

Why are we such cowards? The Republicans warn people about what we're going to do, so we're afraid to do it, even if it's the right thing to do.

I say, come out fighting. As it is, we're doing exactly what the right wing wants.

Kevin Drum - Mother Jones Blog: Gaffe Watch

GAFFE WATCH....Sarah Palin, peeking out from a thicket of pre-scripted talking points in Colorado Springs, goes off message briefly and explains what went wrong in the home mortgage market:

The fact is, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they've gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.

A gaffe! But how does it measure up? On a technical basis, I'd say it's impressive. Until now, Fannie and Freddie haven't cost the taxpayers a dime and their current problems aren't really related to their size either. This leaves only a few conjunctions and proper names as sensible parts of this sentence.

On artistic merit, however, the judges have to score this one for Palin. Nobody cares about the minutiae of how GSEs work, after all, and liberal attacks on this score are almost certain to backfire because (a) we're obviously harrassing her unfairly over trivia because she's a small town mom and (b) we're just trying to show off how smart we are. Besides, as Palin said, John McCain is in favor of "reforming things," so he's obviously the right guy to tackle whatever problem it is that Fannie and Freddie suffer from. For liberal critics, then, there's no there there.

Actually, what's really impressive about this is that even though Palin obviously didn't know what she was talking about, she managed to dig smoothly into the standard movement conservative playbook to say something pleasing to the base anyway. Got a problem? It must be government's fault! Something somewhere got too big and too expensive and conservatives need to rein it in. Nice work.

Let's hope the price of gas doesn't drop too much

Americans try to see the bright side of high gas prices

"I found that a permanent one-dollar rise in gas prices is associated with a seven percent drop in overweight and a nine percent drop in obesity," he said.

In poundage terms, a one-dollar rise in gas prices was associated with about four to five pounds (1.8 to 2.3 kilograms) in lost weight across the population, his research showed. More...

Wow! There's more...

High gas prices have also raised a call for car-makers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles, and that would create tens of thousands of jobs, enhance US energy security, and boost local economies, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said.

"Achieving just the minimum 35 miles-per-gallon fleet-wide average by 2020 ... would cut oil use by 1.1 million barrels a day," UCS senior engineer Jim Kliesch said in a statement.

Using less oil would translate into "cutting the cost of gasoline at today's prices by more than a dollar per gallon," he said.

And that would mean that, rather than pumping their disposable income into the oil industry when they fill up their cars, Americans would probably spend the money saved locally, thus boosting local economies, he said.

"Further... achieving a 35-mpg fleet-wide average would create 149,000 new jobs nationwide in 2020," added Kliesch.

And say! Isn't it great not to have your gas-sipping compact surrounded by skyscrapers on wheels that completely block your view of the road?

Of course, I am still recovering from my bicycle accident. If my collarbone would just finish putting itself back together, I could get back on my bike.

If you're rich and you want to get richer, vote Republican

Economic View - Is History Siding With Obama’s Economic Plan? - NYTimes.com

My synopsis:

Under Democratic presidents, the economy has grown faster and income inequality--the difference between earnings for the rich and the poor is slightly lower, that is, more favorable for the poor.

Under Republican presidents, the economy has grown more slowly, but income inequality has massively favored the rich.

So the question is, if you're not rich, why on earth would you vote Republican????

I'm a grandmother!

She arrived a week or so ahead of schedule on August 23, leaving her parents unprepared with a name. So for now she's Baby Girl Palmer. Of course, her daddy was Bay Boy Palmer for a couple of weeks, so it's a family tradition.















And here are the proud and very photogenic parents.

Today's fresh catch

I went out to the garden to get a tomato for a tomato and cheese sandwich. Came back with a mini-harvest of
4 tomatoes
3 potatoes
1 pepper
38 tomatillos
3 onions
5 beets
41 green beans

The 38 tomatillos mean there will be some salsa verde in the near future.

My kitchen is fragrant with another bumper crop of white nectarines. One of the small blessings of global-warming-induced spring drought.

If you have a garden, be sure to get out there once a day and get your hands dirty. Pull some weeds, search for potatoes, or just sift through the soil. Soil microbes have been shown to stimulate production of serotonin, the body's natural anti-depressant. All you have to do is get them on your skin, and they do the rest.

Why can't we be a little more like Denmark?

I don't usually agree with Thomas "Flat Earth" Friedman, but he's right on with this description of how Denmark used energy taxes to create wealth and energy independence.

Denmark, by the way, is one of the most economically successful states in the world.

Op-Ed Columnist - Flush With Energy - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn’t happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was simply more offshore drilling.)

What was the trick? To be sure, Denmark is much smaller than us and was lucky to discover some oil in the North Sea. But despite that, Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and-appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy — while barely growing their energy consumption — and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today. Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent.

And did Danes suffer from their government shaping the market with energy taxes to stimulate innovations in clean power? In one word, said Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s minister of climate and energy: “No.” It just forced them to innovate more — like the way Danes recycle waste heat from their coal-fired power plants and use it for home heating and hot water, or the way they incinerate their trash in central stations to provide home heating. (There are virtually no landfills here.)

There is little whining here about Denmark having $10-a-gallon gasoline because of high energy taxes. The shaping of the market with high energy standards and taxes on fossil fuels by the Danish government has actually had “a positive impact on job creation,” added Hedegaard. “For example, the wind industry — it was nothing in the 1970s. Today, one-third of all terrestrial wind turbines in the world come from Denmark.” In the last 10 years, Denmark’s exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. Energy technology exports rose 8 percent in 2007 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006, compared with a 2 percent rise in 2007 for Danish exports as a whole.

“It is one of our fastest-growing export areas,” said Hedegaard. It is one reason that unemployment in Denmark today is 1.6 percent. In 1973, said Hedegaard, “we got 99 percent of our energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero.”

Frankly, when you compare how America has responded to the 1973 oil shock and how Denmark has responded, we look pathetic.

“I have observed that in all other countries, including in America, people are complaining about how prices of [gasoline] are going up,” Denmark’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told me. “The cure is not to reduce the price, but, on the contrary, to raise it even higher to break our addiction to oil. We are going to introduce a new tax reform in the direction of even higher taxation on energy and the revenue generated on that will be used to cut taxes on personal income — so we will improve incentives to work and improve incentives to save energy and develop renewable energy.”

Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.

Why should you care?

“We’ve had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months,” said Engel, “and not one out of the U.S.”

Of issues and arugula

From Andrew Sullivan, that notorious former conservative:

Here you have the current message of the McCain campaign from no less an authority than Rick Davis:

"Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand ‘MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew—Black Forest Berry Honest Tea’ and worry about the price of arugula."

They really played the arugula card? For all McCain's personal qualities, we're learning that the machine behind the GOP simply re-makes the campaign in its own Coulterite image. Instead of actually fighting on the core questions - how do we get out of Iraq with the least damage? how do we get past carbon-based energy? how do we tackle al Qaeda's new base in Pakistan and within the nuclear-armed Pakistani government? how will we reduce the massive debt bequeathed us by the Bush-Rove GOP? how do we restore the Geneva Conventions? - we are debating people's cultural insecurities and food choices.

The slow collapse of conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy is not unrelated to this. If you never want to fight campaigns on policy, why bother crafting any?

I'm walking again

The salient characteristic of all canes: they fall on the floor. Repeatedly.

Steve can tell where I am in the house at any given time by the clatter of the cane, falling yet again. Fortunately, my injuries are such that I have no trouble bending down and picking up the cane.

The cane belongs to my mother, who has several. It is decorated with exotic symbols such as a compass rose, Mayan calendar and various flags and banners. I've seen it in my mother's hands many times, and I feel a special bond with my mother when I'm using it.

My mother sent me flowers, with the note, "I know you are trying to save the atmosphere by riding a bike, but first take care of my little girl till she is well. Can I help? Love, Mama."

(Said "little girl" being 61 years old.)

Yes, Mama, you can lend me one of your canes.

For the first few days after the accident, I could walk okay. Then it got harder and harder. Since my last post about it, I've had more X-rays and found that I have a broken collarbone and a small fracture in my pelvis. I suspect a couple more cracks in areas that were not X-rayed: my upper left arm and right thigh.

Five days after the accident, I could not walk at all. That's when I started getting around the house on my office chair, propelled--backwards--by my one good limb. Here I am, getting a cup of coffee. Fortunately, I could stand up with no trouble, because reaching above mid-chest height with either hand was a chore I could not manage.

But I'm getting better. I've gradually added skills: getting in and out of bed without excruciating pain, taking a shower by myself and then drying myself off, cleaning out the cat box, doing laundry, washing dishes, watering the garden. All these chores had devolved to my dear Steve, with some help from my daughter.

A week ago I started driving again.

Yesterday I overdid it. We went to some garage sales and the farmers market and picked up various heavy things, with which I put more strain than I should have on my collarbone. I did too much walking. Today I will pay the price. Thank goodness that ibuprofen now covers the pain, so I'm out from under the befuddling narcotics.

I'll need to get lots of rest today, because tomorrow I'm off to Sacramento to lobby for publicly funded elections, to get the special interest money out of California politics. A long shot, since most politicians are not sure they want to get that money out of politics even if it means they can work for the voters instead of the banking industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the prison industry, the oil industry, big unions, and on and on. Name your pet special interest.

It will involve a lot of walking down crowded corridors, not to mention from a distant parking garage. Wish me luck.

Too skinny, lack of experience

No, not Barack Obama. Abraham Lincoln.

At 6'4", Lincoln weighed 160 to 180 pounds when he was elected president. He lost weight while in office.

Lincoln's political background consisted of four terms in the Illinois state legislature, one term in the U.S. House, and a failed run for the Senate. He had not served in office for 12 years when he was elected president.

Oh, and he was a lawyer.

Photo from the Wikimedia Commons.