Scott Brown...What Happened?

So, what happened? Thats clearly the question thats on everyone's mind today as they go over the last year in their mind and try to piece together what last night's election loss for Martha Coakley means, and how things are different one year on from innauguration day 2009.

One year ago Wednesday I was working at a grocery store, bagging groceries and stocking shelves. I had just gotten the job and was already hoping that my career search would pan out, as I wasn't looking forward to making $10 an hour for an extended period of time. Due to the circumstances of my employment, i hadn't ever been qualified for unemployment, so I didn't get to be FUNemployed like a couple of my friends. Instead I was trying to dig myself out of a mess I had created with a combination of bad luck and poor judgement. I'm proud to say that, in that time I've managed to completely turn things around. I walked to work (where I'm interviewing for a higher position next week) this morning knowing that I have everything I need taken care of right now, including health insurance, rent, food, everything really. I've made great stides in reducing my personal impact on the planet, although there's far more left to do than I'm capable of. So, if I've personally managed to right the ship, why am I feeling like I just got hit in the chest with a sack of dimes? Well its because a relatively unknown guy from Massachussets will be taking a seat in the Republican Caucus some time in then next few weeks (depending on how long it takes to recieve absentee ballots and certify the election). Now, I'm not really much of a Democrat, I've never been that fond of the party (from a young age I distrusted anybody who talked like a populist while supporting big business) and frankly, am back to square one when it comes with dealing with them.

All across America you are seeing people in large groups chanting about how the liberals have gone too far, how America needs to be taken back, yatta yatta yatta, the fact is, all of that is bullshit. The political views of this small minority are so far from the American mainstream that they have literally no chance of being instituted. Even if these die hards manage to get some people elected to office, they will be unpleasantly surprised to find that Washington isn't a place where ideals matter. Think I'm going to far here? Just look at what our president has encountered in the very tumultuous year he's spent in office.

First, we had to deal with what can only be called an onslaught of Republican filibusters against legislation. Suddenly, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was a hot button issue. Card Check became a cause to rally around for conservatibves and a few unfaithful democrats, and it should have been immediately clear that what we were dealing with was a unified group that weren't going to break ranks for no reason. The Stimulus package was the first opportunity to test the waters for bipartisan agreement, as everyone who looked at the economy saw a need for the government to step in and do as much as possible, since there wouldn't be a chance of growth in the economy for some time. The reason for this should be pretty obvious: in the preceeding 6 months ASTRONOMICAL amounts of money was lost, often on an overnight basis. The government had stepped in to fix the liquidity issue by providing loans in the form of the TARP program, which in turn basically propped up the largest institutions, the ones who had taken the most profits from the subprime industry (Bank of America gets a bad rap for being involved here, they were actually relatively safe from sub prime debt, but they bought Leman after the crash and wound up on the hook for all of their debt). This legislation, passed while bush was in office and only done as a response to an epic crisis, is really the genesis of what happened last night, it all starts with TARP.

We should ask, as an aside (wow, I've already strayed pretty far, this might be quite a long post after all), why TARP is so pivotal in all of this. TARP was, without a doubt, absolutely necessary. I hate saying it in such stark terms, because it seems to preclude the notion that something else couldn't have been done, which is certainly not the case. The point I am making is that, after the stock market crash, after the credit crisis started, we were suddenly at risk of every bank losing access to basic money trading that kept them able to hand out money. Many businesses would have found themselves unable to write checks, many individuals would have found getting a loan a practical impossibility, and all of this would have happened fairly quickly. What this demonstrated, subtly, was the way in which the financial industry had manipulated itself to be part of every segment of American life. Business which weren't in risk of going out of business couldn't pay their employees because of a clog in the system, not because they didnt have any money, but because they depend on the financial industry to float them, because they have their money tied up elsewhere. Everyone uses the financial industry in some way or another, which they had been seeking to increase near constantly. What should be a relatively simple concept, working for a business and recieving wages, now involves so many accounts and parties that you'd think we were crazy for letting the situation get so bogged down, all for the sake of minor convenience. But thats the reality of it, the banking industry controls everything in one form or another, and it wants everyone to owe money in one way or another. Had we let things collapse, it would have led to widespread problems that would have threatened the very stability of our country. While I'm all for a little revolution (or a lot of it, if its appropriate), the people who run the country can't let a think like that happen, because it hurts their creditbility, legacy, and the overall economy. So they let the former Goldman Sachs CEO and all around piece of shit (Objectively confirmed through tissue analysis mind you) Hank Paulson write a bill that basically gave him the power to do whatever he needed to with 700 billion dollars. Now this was a lot of money, but it had to be to accomplish the task of unfreezing the credit markets. Unfortunately they format that assistance took didn't amount to much that would help normal people, instead the money went straight into bank balance sheets and firmed up their situation, allowing them to get back to what made them money: taking risks and harming people. That 700 billion, considering the fiscal deficit the US wound up in around 2008 (Bush's last year had a massive deficit, over a trillion dollars) meant that there wasn't much latitude a few months later for introducing a massive stimulous bill.

So, the government barely blinks at dedicating 700 billion dollars to a plan that will essentially prop up the financial system and allow them to get back to the reckless behavior that got us here, yet the plans for a stimulous package were winced at when they approached a trillion dollars in spending. Obama wanted his stimulus to be effective, but he thought it was more important to accomplish something than to get a bill that would be a paradigm shift in how we dealt with the crisis. So, as the stimulous bill was written, suddenly it started attracting all sorts of provisions that reduced the benefits of the legislation, bogging it down to the point that it had nearly a third of its value tied up in tax cuts, none of which make for particularly effective stimulus. The legislation included a number of useful commitments to spend money on renewable energy and a smart grid, as well as high speed rail. Unfortunately, the government didn't make commitments that are equivalent to even what China's government is willing to spend on these issues, so despite the opportunity to spend tens of billions of dollars on real economically viable industries, we opted to spend as much of the money as possible filling in funding for shovel ready projects states suddenly couldn't afford. We had the opportunity to build infrastructure that would pay us back hansomly, and we spent the billions filling pot holes. Now, obviously we were never going to get a perfect bill, but after the free money and strippers plan that was TARP, the notion that Americans would be getting mild tax cuts and state projects paid for didn't seem like the progressive game change that Obama had engendered everyone with the hope for. So despite the suggestion of economists, we went small on the stimulous package, and while it did help to stabalize things, it certainly did nothing to spur economic growth.

Another tangent (this post is the first in a long time, and is understandably long due to pent up feelings): The biggest problem we've had thus far in getting the economy going again was that the stimulous and the tarp failed to generate productive jobs, jobs with value added to the economy. When someone is paid to fix a pot hole or improve an intersection (a large number of shovel ready programs fit in this category) they recieve their paycheck and their work is done. The only economic benefit of this is that its less likely this road will damange someone's car. what the government should have done was pour the funding into a series of programs that would have generated revenue, or at a bare minimum that would have facilitated someone else generating revenue. The government has tools and power that are generaly not used, because they are of an extreme nature, and I'm suggesting that through emanant domain and the power of the purse, our government could have overnight created an army of solar panel manufaturers, or wind turbine builders, or hundreds of miles of high speed rail, all of which would have created work and simultaneously driven new innovation. Unfortunately, much of this spending would have taken months or years to organize, so what was needed was a multi-part stimulous package, one that included immediate funds for keeping state employees on payroll, as well as the long term funding to get some real work done. This approach wasn't even considered, unfortunately, but thats what one should expect from Washington, a lack of creativity and a reliance on conventional wisdom. It may very well be what I've described wouldn't have done enough to get us closer to normalcy, but thats neither here nor there, the fact is, the Democrats went with what they had.

So, while Obama's stimulous pacakge paid out most of its money, the Democrats set about addressing an issue that is extremely important when dealing with the economy: Health care. Nothing poses a greater threat to the US government's economic stability than health care costs. It was an obvious and important move on Obama's part to try to do something to bring down health care costs, but his first mistake was attempting to take an insider's approach, submitting goals to the house and senate without firm guidelines, and meeting with all the lobbyists from the industry, attempting to get them into the process. By allowing them to help shape the legislation, while simultaneously letting a deeply corrupted legislative body work on the bill itself, Obama handed his health care plan over to the inside the beltway industry. Just like the stimulous package was reworked into a fairly useless bill due to compromise, the Democrats took a compromise bill on health care and started with it, a surefire way to have your already watered down approach watered down further. Simultaneously, suddenly the narative shifted and the august recess led to a long drawn out process, through which Republicans, and to a lesser extent a few democrats, decided to take an unreasonably hard line on a number of issues, which is what led to the health care bill not passing the senate before Christmas Eve.

So, what really happened in the last year? Obama went to Washington, and he found himself in the middle of a clusterfuck so deep he had neither the time nor the power to unwind it. Rather, he tried to coopt as much of the system as possible to support his agenda. This didn't have the desired affect. Instead, he got an ineffectual stimulus package, a couple of token pieces of legsilation (sorry Lilly Leadbetter, but that bill didn't have a remarkable affect on the life of the average american) and a health care bill thats, at its core, a giveaway to the insurance industry. Obama allowed himself to play by the rules and in response, he's just been hit in the chest. If this moment is a lesson in politics, I don't know what is. What did George W. Bush do while attempting to paint himself as a middle of the road guy? He kept his base fondly fawning over him. Now, that's harder to do with Democrats, but that is only because we want results, rather than just condescension. I mean, look at what Bush accomplished for conservatives: not a whole lot. Sure, he had the office of faith based intiatives, but thats such a small issue that I'd call it negligibly important. He didn't end abortion (or even, realistically, put in a supreme court that will end abortion), he didn't stop gays from marrying, he didn't fix deficits, he basically funded abstinence only education and talked a lot about other things he got nowhere on. For a Republican, thats all you have to do to keep the base happy. For a Democrat, you have to DO something, its a higher standard thats harder to get to, but that's life, get used to it.

The lesson is: don't claim you're the one who's going to change things, then show up and realize you can't fix anything because of the structural impediments. Its time for Obama to man up, figure out how to deal with these issues (he could pressure the senate to end the filibuster, for one, although some people think thats a bad idea. He could use budget reconciliation to pass more bills, but thats a procedural headache. Still, I think it will be something they have to use more now. Other than that, Obama doesn't have any power to fix the fundamental problems of how Washington does business. Arrogant, self important people run that city, wealthy scumbags tell them what to do, and a sort of eunuch class of aids keeps everything going, no matter who's in office. No one in the whole city is clean, and that fundamental problem is why I'm losing hope (admittedly, i was pretty pessimistic a year ago as well). Obama's window to do something real extends another year for me, before I truely abandon him,and his party, and get back to my more revolutionary roots, which would basically mean forming a party or joining the green party. Now that I'm not just a college student, I can actually excercise a little influence when it comes to working within a party. The lesson, friends, is never go into a situation acting like you're special. Nobody is special, and nobody can magically repair our problems. Its going to take work, and possibly a constitutional convention or a revolution. Just know this: The people with guns win the revolution. Thats right, its time for liberals to start buying guns.

To TP or not to TP

Recently I've heard a number of people discussing the issue of toilet paper in both serious and commedic ways, and I thought I would weigh in on the issue. Toilet paper is an interesting topic because it is something that goes right to the core of what we mean by sustainability. As an aside, when I studied abroad in Beijing, I got to experience something I'd never seen before: a sewage system that couldn't handle toilet paper. While this may seem strange to Americans, in much of the rest of the world sewage systems are older and narrower, meaning the pipes clog easily. Everyone simply has a waste basket next to the toilet. When you've finished, you drop the paper into the waste basket (it has a lid) and go on your merry way. If you're like the average American, you are cringing in horror right now, but them's the breaks for most of the rest of the world. We should be thinking about what it means that we flush paper on a daily basis, and if being green means doing the french thing and installing bidet style toilet seats (These things are actually kind of nifty, although I still don't know if I'm comfortable with the idea), then frog me up, its time to change behavior.

That said, because we live in America, we have a sewage system that is built around handling large quantities of paper being flushed. If we want to continue using toilet paper, we need to be taking into consideration where our toilet paper comes from. The most popular brands of toilet paper sell extremely fluffy, soft paper for the bathroom. As it turns out, to get this consistency you generally have to use large, old trees to create your paper pulp, because the fibers in young trees are too short to get enough fluffiness. That means that most toilet paper comes from old trees, often specifically from old growth Canandian forrests which are being clear cut at an alarming rate. Our bottoms' sensitivity, it turns out, has a serious carbon impact. These forrests aren't being replenished, and what we are essentially doing is taking a large carbon storage system (a tree) and turning it into other materials (paper, wood products, firewood, etc). Because the tree is gone, it has ceased absorbing carbon. Because the trees that are clearcut aren't replenished, all that carbon is gradually making its way back into the environment as the products created out of the tree decompose or are burned. Toilet paper (and magazines and calogues and numerous other products people use on a daily basis) is really a product of severely underregulated deforrestation in Canada.

As a result of this problem it is importan to find toilet papers that use sustainable resources to produce their paper. One of the most reliable ways to ensure your toilet paper (which you are about to throw away moments after using) is less harmful is to purchase a toilet paper made of recycled paper. Recycled paper is often less bouncy and soft than the clear cut old growth tree brands, but I find a few moments of comfort aren't worth the toll being placed on our environment by the other option. Greenpeace did a wonderful job of collecting information on the sourcing for a large number of toilet paper companies and managed to compile a list of papers that are best for the environment.

This does bring one issue up that I'd like to address: the impact of recycling. Recycling products is often a messy process, and in the case of paper recycling, there are carbon emissions, water pollution, air pollution, and in the end, a lower quality product. People often point to this problem, then reference the fact that the United States largely requires all logging operations to be self sustaining, and indicate that paper recycling has no place in the current system. This couldnt be further from the truth. While ideally a system where all paper was produced sustainably through responsible forestry would work well, we are stuck in an environment where a substantial quantity of our paper products are imported from places with no such policing of forrests. Because of this, we should be recycling as much of our domestic paper supply as possible while simultaneously importing as little paper as possible. Paper that can't be recycled (or even some of the paper that can, depending on demand) should be composted to avoid filling up pointless landfills.

All of this is important, because even little thigns can have a major impact on the world around you, and it may be that pampering yourself is doing irreperable harm to the world and to the Canadian boreal forrests as a whole.

Apple Computers, Sustainability, and the Road Ahead

New Apple computers out today. They look marvelous, as usual, but I once again find myself in the uncanny valley of the young, hip, cagey environmentalist, the emotional spot between longing and disgust. Apple has been working their asses off to improve the environmental impact of their products. They offer arsenic free glass, all alluminum computers (except the ones that aren't, theyre polycarbonate now), theyve eliminated a lot of PCB's, etc. But I still have trouble justifying new purchases within the context of my current lifestyle. I work my damnedest to get things used, second hand, make them myself, etc. But unfortunately, some things don't really work that way. I am within a few weeks of purchasing a new EEE PC Netbook, something I know will increase my impact on the planet. It is, however, something I need for practical reasons. Once I have the computer I will own 2 laptops (my first gen Macbook is my dearest love, it will soon be my media center. It is being retired from road life because its a bit heavy) and a desktop (my Hackintosh baby witha 24" monitor, I'm working on transitioning it over from EFIX to one of the community sourced Hackintosh projects). Add in the iPhone, the Kindle, the Xbox 360, the iPod Touch, the nintendo DS, and the computer I use at work, and you realize I'm in a tech saturated environment. I love my technology, but it clashes with my beliefs about sustainability.

Now, Apple is pretty forward thinking, they're doing their best to please Greenpeace, even providing environmental impact assesments that include the entire life of their products (I'm assuming its guesswork, since they can't know how often individual users will use their products). That said, they still buy most of their parts from China, and then assemble them in the USA. Flying things from China to California and then shipping them out to Maryland adds up to a lot of carbon. I suppose I'll worry about that next year when I'm looking at my next big computer purchase. I wonder how easiy it is to purchase carbon offsets, and whether there are any legitimate purveyors in the area (I'd prefer to plant local trees, after all!).

The problem this presents to me is applicable to the larger global economy. How can sustainably minded people stay on top of the technology out there without hurting the planet? At the moment, there isn't an option. Just as those of us who rent are out of luck when it comes to taking advantage of solar power resources. That said, the fact that these companies are responding so quickly to pressure from Greenpeace (probably due to their attempts to win marketshare with the 20-something market, a notably fickle group or consumers) means that they are attempting to make their operations as environmentally friendly as possible. Unfortunately, certain substances in computers are simply and unavoidably volatile, which is where recycling comes in, I suppose. Still, if I'm purchasing a new computer, there's a good chance a number of products inside of it came from poorly regulated mines in 3rd world countries, and its hard to know how to get around that issue. The fact is, I believe sustainability is about more than just carbon emissions. We have to look at the overall impact of our purchases on other people, waterways, soil, etc. Some industries are inherently tied to resources which are difficult to acquire. Even solar cell manufacturers run into supply issues (one of the best reasons for concentrated solar power generation), so how do we resolve this problem with computers and cellphones?

It appears its something we have to engineer our way out of. If pressure from Greenpeace can get apple to pick up after itself and make marginal improvements, I believe it would be possible to start pressuring companies into engineering products to use as few caustic ingredients as possible, rely on recycled materials when possible, and find replacements for the substances that are most environmentally detrimental. Only then will I be able to take that simple joy in buying a computer again.

Cooking, Cooking, Cooking!

I've been cooking a lot the last couple of days, and I actually need to cool it for a bit in order to catch up and eat some of the food I have left in my fridge. My cooking projects have all been pushing more into the DIY aspect of my cooking hobby, I'm trying new things and thus far have been kicking ass.

Over the weekend I made some delicious miso using a container of miso paste I picked up at Whole Foods. I also made a miso-tahini sauce which I ate with mochi I also picked up at Whole Foods. Unfortunately the Mochi wasn't very compelling, but the miso turned out great. It was really easy too, I just sliced up some tofu, thinly sliced an onion, and chopped some seaweed. I boiled water and added the miso paste to the hot water, creating the broth. Finally, I added some gomasio (roasted sesame seeds). I threw in the rest of the ingredients and it produced quite the delicious combination, salty and savory. The soup was great, next time I plan to include leeks in it.

Monday was grill night, so I cooked up some corn (most of which was blighted by damned cornworms, thankfully I just cut the tops off and grilled it) and a Portabella Mushroom. It turned out well, but it was boilerplate stuff I cook all the time. Tuesday night, however, was a much more exciting food experiment. I decided to make my own pizza dough for the first time. I used bread flour I had in the cabinet, kneaded it up myself, and while it was rising, I started a batch of from scratch pizza sauce. The sauce is simple, I just took onions and garlic and fried them up in a saucepan with some oil and spices and balsamic vinegar. I then added finely diced tomatoes and cooked over low heat for about an hour and a half. I fried up some onions and peppers and mushrooms in my cast iron pan, and steamed broccoli on the side. I used a fake cheese (if you can even call it that, its more of a nut pate) that I had made two days before, essentially it is cashews soaked for several hours, blended in a food processor with onion and garlic and vinegar and a few other spices. When the dough was ready, I decided to make it into two pizzas, and assembled the first one. Unfortuantely I didnt realize how sticky the dough was, and waited too long to transfer it from the pizza peel to my pizza stone in the oven. The stickiness of the dough resulted in a bit of an ugly mess. Fortunately I had another pizza in me, so once the travesty came out of the oven (it was still delicious after all) I threw the second one it and it turned out amazingly.

Wednesday night I decided to make some guacamole, something I make a lot, but I also opted to fry up some of my own corn chips, a process I've been working on, but which I still haven't really mastered. I like the chips a lot, but they're a bit too oily. I may try baking them next. Still, the combination of home made guac with home made chips was excellent, and was my lunch on Thursday.

Last night I decided to try my hand at baking bread using my pizza stone. I found a baguette recipe that involved 4 cups of flour, a teaspoon of yeast, a teaspoon of sugar and 2.5 teaspons of salt. This is cheap compared to what bread costs in the store, and it turned out amazingly. Now that I have embarked on the path of bread baking, I am ready for winter, as I can handle eating all the stews and soups with bread of my own making. I need to stock up on carrots, potatoes, and onions for my winter soup production. I need to look into more of the seasonal foods available in the area. I'm excited for cooking seasonal this winter, because it forces me to think differently about food!

Purpose and Sustainability

I think a lot about what I'm doing with my life. Purpose is something that has the power to make everything you do feel powerful, directed, successful. A lack of purpose plunges you into existential doubt, a fear of death, and questions about self worth and all the other things that come with doubting whether or not you exist and, supposing you do, whether that is such a good thing after all. Certainly the bulk of the human race either feels their lives have purpose or doesn't think about the question deeply enough to have existential angst over it. For many people, purpose is simple, they accept a religion that tells them why they are here (some obscure reference to God's will) and they have their faith reassured on a regular basis by going to church or looking at things that go on around them and attributing them to an unseen plan that directs everything. This view of the world is very comforting, but its also simplistic, easy to manipulate, and for people such as myself, far too incomprehensible to be literal. The universe is, after all, mostly empty space filled with dust and rocks, and when you penetrate further into molecules, you find even more space and gravity, along with tiny bits of matter.

No, I can't view the world as some predetermined play being pushed on by an unseen creator who both knows how everything will end and leaves things up to us (mutually exclusive concepts when the subject is omnipotent), so I think about purpose a lot. Purpose is needed for life to be fulfilling, and people who live a purposeless existence wind up miserable. Part of my problem is that I've always been far too obsessed with the big picture. I want to be a mover, a shaker, someone who can change the world, rather than their neighborhood, and it leads to me getting my priorities mixed up. At the moment, I feel disconnected to a point of discomfort simply because I am watching from the sidelines as the important people make decisions that affect my life. The insane health care debate that is currently going on is a perfect example, but its not limited to that. Everywhere around me I see people obsessed with little, petty things in life. People chasing toys that they will tire of within weeks, people craving stimulation that will leave them wanging within hours, people satiating hungers that will return as soon as their fork touches the table. No one puts the thought into their lives to consider the very real impact their actions have on the world around them. I can be guilty of this same problem, who doesn't occasionally lose sight of the big picture? But the difference is I feel guilty every time I do. Hell, I feel guilty every time I buy something new at a store. I fear and regret the non-renewable things we encounter every day. It worries me that I don't do enough to offset the damage I do simply by living in human civilization.

What I'm getting at is that, while all this green movement stuff has been a nice boost to awareness of specific issues, people haven't had a fundamental shift in their concept of consumption, and until they do we won't fix our biggest problems. Of course, as with anything in life, forming a sustainble social system has its downsides. Imagine what would happen to agribusiness if large sections of existing roof in every major city were turned into greenroofs with edible food being grown on them? Imagine the effect on the jewelry industries if people stopped buying earings and necklaces made with unstainable materials for each other? Our entire social fabric is shaped around the idea of consuming products, not reusing them. The problem with consumerism is inherent, it is the consumption part. Replacing your computer every year places a very intense toll on the planet, even if you recycle the old one. Apply this logic to every element of human civilization and you see our whole economy is built around the very destruction I'm concerned about.

So, it seems, I have identified what our most pressing problem is, ourselves. And it is only through changing people's opinions that I can have a real impact. I have to start addressing the very real issues we face as a civilization at their root, rather than treating the symptoms. But this is the rub, I know what I need to do, I just can't seem to figure out how to make people change. I've been trying my damnedest to reduce my own impact, but if I can barely comply with my own ideals, how can I convince people to go along with my scheme? This is what I'm trying to work out at the moment. I'm also working on a roadmap to sustainability, a few dozen policy changes that could help on a macro level to change how our country uses resources. I'll be writing and posting these over the next several weeks.

Government Milk Bailouts

In the last few weeks I have heard numerous news reports about how dairy farmers are having trouble staying in business, how demand for milk and milk products has dropped, how the industry is losing money, etc. Every time I hear it mentioned it is in the context of a federal program to bail out dairy farmers for the loses they are taking, and all I can do is ask myself why? Demand is low for dairy, this brings the price down. The low price puts some of the dairy farmers out of business, and supply goes down so the price equalizes. Of course, this isn't even calculating the fact that milk is already a heavily government subsidized industry, with government price suports and loss protection schemes all over the country. Milk farmers already receive large amounts of federal subsidization, and if they can't survive that environment, it sounds like we have too many dairy farmers.

Lets not forget, the vast majority of milk cows in this country aren't the pristine cow in a pasteur you see on the side of your milk container. The animals are actually generally kept in a large indoor building, ranging in size from a few dozen to hundreds of cows living in potentially multi-level buildings. These are Confinement Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFO's for short. These colossal “farms” apply industrial principles to livestock. The animals are fed the cheapest possible diet, consisting largely of corn based feed laced with antibiotics and growth hormones and numerous other supplemental materials. This causes 2 things, 1. cows that grow unnaturally fast considering they are barely able to move, and 2. cows that produce a substantial amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is emitted by the animal at far higher rates due to its inappropriate diet. This is a major problem because animal emissions will apparently not be affected by the cap and trade bill, so we have to rely on changing consumer habits to reduce everyone's carbon footprint. This is confounded if the government overrides the environmentally friendly decision to drink less milk, ensuring the farmers continue producing in the same quantities even when demand is low.

(This video is intense, don't watch it if you have a weak stomach. Yes, it is narrated by Alec Baldwin, in case you were asking yourself that when listening.)


In reality this system is part of a larger problem in which federal agriculture policy is slowly poisoning us and hurting our health. To see this in action all you have to do is go to your neighborhood budget grocery store, whether its a Walmart or a Weis, and look around at what everything is made of and how much things cost. Predominantly soybean, corn, beef, and a few other products seem to be omnipresent and simultaneously extremely cheap. This is due to a federal subsidization regime that has been completely hijacked by corporate interests. Farm subsidies by and large go to the biggest companies, because they are often on a per acre or per head basis. This means that by having as much land as possible farmed in as cheap a way as possible large farms manage to soak up tons of federal money originally intended to help farms survive the great depression and further economic hardships since. The funny thing is, due to lobbying, these now useless subsidies are lining the pockets of major agricultural businesses and can't seem to be eliminated from the federal budget.

Of course, not only is this a massive example of corporate welfare, its actually bad for the environment as well. Corn and soybean are intensive crops to grow, and they are often genetically modified organisms to make growing them as cheap as possible. They are planted in massive quantities, producing a dangerous monoculture, and are very resource intensive to produce. Corn is especially bad, soaking up a lot of water and soil nutrients to produce a vegetable which our bodies can barely process in its raw form. The corn is then rendered into oil or sugar, or even ethanol. Pulling nutrients out of the soil and using up water supplies means corn's dominance has a very real affect on everyone. For example, since corn is so nutrient hungry, large quantities of fertilizer are used to grow the plants. This in turn is washed into the streams and other bodies of water, causing eutrophication in our waterways.

But even beyond the fact that corn is bad for the soil and the water, its also not healthy for large scale human consumption, as it is generally rendered into sugar products which are delivered to most Americans on a daily basis. People drink water with corn syrup in it. They eat sugary candy that's mostly made of corn. Corn manages to make its way into a substantial number of products, and those that don't contain corn often contain partially hydrogenated soybean oil. These two products, sugary syrup and chemically altered oil are a large portion of the unhealthy direction the American diet has been going in for a long time. Because these products are heavily federally subsidized, it turns out that the government is inadvertently (or intentionally if you consider they were lobbied into this by the industry) driving the unhealthy habits Americans have been developing for a long time.

The truly embarrassing thing about this government program is that, even if we wanted to change our ways, these harmful practices would still go on, because the industry is completely propped up. As you can see with the dairy example, whenever one of these industries gets in trouble, the government steps in to make up the difference, undermining the very real choices being made by the American people. If we are expressly saying we do not want to consume a food product which isn't good for us or the planet, there isn't any reason to continue production at unsustainable levels. Even worse, I haven't even gotten into the fact that CAFO's manage to skirt many regulations about their overall impact, often gathering massive quantities of unprocessed cow feces in one place, spraying it on surrounding grasslands to the point where the grass becomes toxic for animals to eat, and sometimes just letting the feces leak into groundwater and streams. All if this is done despite the fact that if the waste was human, it would require dozens of processing plants for each large CAFO. What this really means is the farms have incentive to grow to unsustainable and unhealthy sizes without having to make up for their increasing impact. If you were to add the cost of the damage caused by these farms, they wouldn't actually be able to compete on price, and Americans would have a better idea of the real cost of their food.

In the end, all we can do is try to counteract the force of the lobbyists. If enough environmentalists make a point of lobbying on this issue, eventually it will start to gain traction and media attention. While vegetarianism and veganism are still considered fringe movements, we are growing and as we interact with the environmental lobbies on our side we need to focus on issues like this, which affect everyone on a massive scale and cause very real harm to the world around us. It is time for the movement to turn its eyes to agriculture and sustainability, because if we don't make changes now, we may not be able to later.

H1N1 Vaccine Isn't Vegan Friendly

Sigh. Yet again the callous, shallow world has decided to mock those of us who are compassionate. I am a vegan, I'm pretty strict about it when it comes to primary consumption (meaning me purchasing something). I do consider myself to be a freegan, because I will eat things that are going to be thrown away or otherwise wasted. By not purchasing the product, I have removed myself from the transaction that resulted in the Animal's suffering, and if I let it go bad, I am increasing the impact of humanity on the planet. So, when I find out that every single flu vaccine out at the moment has egg protein (or in the case of the nasal spray, pork gelatin) in it, I get pretty angry.

I generally do not recieve vaccinations for flu, I can't recall getting the flu in my adult life, so I don't really worry about protecting against it. That said, I would probably consider getting an H1N1 vaccination of the disease truely becomes dangerous this fall. Unfortunately, that now isn't possible because I find out that the vaccines are made of animal parts. This is disgusting, I refuse to be forced into making a morally ambiguous choice, so I wind up at risk and put others at risk should the H1N1 outbreak get serious.

Sometimes, being vegan makes me really frustrated, not because of my choices, but because people have no sense of the impact of their own actions on the world around them. Imagine how many chickens suffered in factory farms to make the egg protein for the 250 million swine flu vaccines ordered by the US government...

This is what their lives look like:



Ok, rant over, back to real life...

Obama Vs. McChrystal?

This week, the Financial Times of London published an article about Barack Obama being livid over the recent speeches and public statements made by General Stanley McChrystal in favor of his method of fighting the war in Afghanistan. Now, I am skeptical of this report. Oliver Willis says it best when he points out the fact that there aren't any cited sources in the article, so it could be an entirely trumped up affair. Still, there is now the perception for those who caught the article that there is infighting in the White House over this issue, and that Obama is fighting with the general he selected to lead the Afghanistan effort.

What I want to say is not a defense of either position, its not even a comment on it, I merely want to bring up a different situation, one in which a sitting president encountered a General who had a different oppinion on a military effort, who spoke to congress honestly about his opinions and who lost his job because of it. My intention here is to provide context for those knee-jerk critics who will jump on Obama for anything and do so with extreme hyperbole. You see, the president and the general in this story are George W. Bush and General Eric Shinseki. Bush was attempting to make the case for an invasion of Iraq, and while he was promising a small, fast invasion that would get us out in a matter of months and pay for itself multiple times over, Erick Shinseki was speaking honestly about what a real occupation of Iraq would involve. Shiseki's numbers were, in fact, far more realistic, as Bush's game changing (ish) surge demonstrated.

I don't want to seem like I am comparing these two situations, they aren't identical by any stretch of the imagination. The fact is, the last president, one republicans praised while he was in office, completely contradicted and dismissed one of his military advisors, and as a result pushed him out of the armed forces. This isn't how things will likely go with Obama, so I want everyone to think about this before they mouth off and act like Obama is doing something new and unprecedented if he does choose to ignore his military commanders. Politics isn't war and civillians run our government for a reason. Unfortunately, in the case of Iraq, Bush ignored the advice of his general without changing strategies, but he was commander in chief, it was his call.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Shinseki

MTA Unveils "CharmCard"

The Maryland Transit Administration is finally introducing an RFID equipped card for use with the Metro system in Baltimore. They have introduced a pilot program that will be testing the cards. Unfortunately, during the course of this program the cards only work in the Baltimore Metro, which is a woefully useless test program, because I have never needed to take the Metro, and probably never will. I can bike the span of the metro easily, and its free, so why would I want to use the one line rinky dink excuse for public transportation?

http://www.mtacharmcard.com/what.html

Now, the card will be extremely useful when they finally finish the pilot program. You will finally be able to swipe the same card at a bus, lightrail, or Metro stop and not have to carry around change to pay for tickets. This has a side benefit, as it makes it easier and more likely for more people to ride the system. Increased ridership makes the buses less scary, and increases the cash in the hands of the MTA. All of this could be very good for Baltimore, especially with the expansions being planned currently. As the city develops a more effective system for getting around without a car, economic activity will increase. I can say for certain that if there was a convenient public transit option for getting to and from Canton from my house, I would be much more likely to travel to that part of the city. If I could easily hop on a lightrail, swipe a card, and go to hampden, I'd be a happy man.

Going forward, Baltimore needs to think long and hard about how the city develops, because the uproar over lightrail poses a threat to the growth of the city in ways the NIMBY crowd haven't considered. People in my age bracket are looking for cities with large, effective, inexpensive public transportation options. Because of my bike, I don't mind as much that Baltimore is lacking in this field, but in the long run, Washington DC is likely to be the city I settle into, because you can completely function without a car there. The lack of an effective subway in Baltimore is a major problem, the crime and other problems associated with the buses are a deterent for anyone with other options. It drives people toward using cars, and that hurts all of us in the long run. If Baltimore wants to compete with other cities for the 20somethings who will drive its growth in the future, the city needs to be agressive and smart about public transportation

Arguing for a new stimulus package

The economy is recovering. I keep hearing how the recession is over, how the world will settle down and we can all go back to being mindless automatons who consume and produce endlessly. Unfortunately, our current employment issues are not going anywhere, and the country as a whole is without a direction. While I won't call it a failure (as it is currently creating a whole mess of jobs) the president's first stimulus package has failed to provide us with the road to true recovery. Because of this, I believe it is time to go back to the drawing table and come up with a new stimulus package, one that truely offers transformative steps for our economy.

Now, the first stimulus package did provide a number of incentives and projects to help with our infrastructure, but what I'm talking about is something on a scale we've never seen before. We need to have a team of economists, climate scientists, engineers, etc. sit down and come up with a roadmap to turn the United States into the world's primary manufacturer of renewable energy infrastructure.

Developing a new stimulus package might not be politically wise, according to the prevailing wisdom in the mainstream media, but we need a number of things right now that could easily be incorporated into a bill that would be a boon to American employment, American exports, and America's energy infrastructure. The first step would be to invest more, enough to cover the entire nation, in a national low loss energy grid. This alone would boost jobs and have long term benefits, because our existing energy infrastructure is decaying. The first stimulus package contained funding for a lot of this infrastructure, but frankly I think we should fund a complete national grid. Not only would this add jobs, but the energy savings would pay the cost off in the long run.

Another good idea would be creating a large fund for financing the purchase of existing manufacturing space and turning it into a factory to produce renewable energy infrastructure. Imagine the thousands of unused spaces around the country being remodeled and developed into production facilities for windmill parts, solar panels, solar thermal systems, and geothermal energy production. We could also provide tax credits to have every vehicle in America converted to be a flex fuel vehicle, allowing anyone to run their vehicle on ethanol, which, while an imperfect replacement fuel, shouldn't be abandoned simply because corn ethanol has become a debacle. All of these steps would make jobs and would have a remarkably positive effect on the longterm prosperity of the country. All of these investments would pay off beyond their initial cost, and most importantly it would demonstrate that the government is still willing to make the right call rather than the popular one on economic issues.

Best of all, if we were to have a truely environmentally/sustainably focused stimulus package, one that jump started these industries, we would be showing the world that the USA is willing to put our money where our mouth is when it comes to intervening to stop global climate change. The only downside is added debt, something which I am certain would be justifiable if you consider the value added by these investments. Each factory would be contributing economic activyt and the energy saved from the energy grid would be spent elsewhere. We have to make these investments some time, it may as well be now.