The Public's Calling

Um, Take a Message

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It's 1984

Has Been For Years

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 ~ Lost in all the breathless coverage of the NSA eavesdropping brouhaha is that it isn't news.

While a small number of us worry about that our civil liberties are being steadily eroded, most of the American public actually trusts their government to snoop secretly into every communication they fancy. We traded liberty for security long ago, so what's the current fuss really all about?

Blended Standards

Is E15 Gasoline Safe?

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 ~ The American Petroleum Institute (API) is fighting the EPA over how much ethanol should be blended into gasoline. Is 15% ethanol content, E-15, safe for modern cars?

The [EPA] and the biofuels industry say the blend — which contains 15 percent ethanol, rather than the standard 10 percent — is safe for those vehicles.

But the oil and gas industry has produced studies finding that the mix would damage vehicle engines, and some automakers have said they would not honor warranties in cases where E15 was used.

“E15 could leave millions of consumers with broken down cars and high repair bills,” said Bob Greco, API group downstream director. “It could also put motorists in harm’s way when vehicles break down in the middle of a busy highway. We are asking the Supreme Court to step in and protect consumers by striking down EPA’s dangerous E15 mandate before it’s too late.”

Well, of course it "could". But will it? The API's studies have been called "scientifically weak" and there are, naturally, many other studies that show no harm. Could it be that the science is not settled?

Reminds me of another contentious argument of interest to the API...

Translation...

...Into a Foreign Language

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 ~ "A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

Leave alone those that bandy 'bout a megaphone...

What Big Oil Can Learn from the Gun Manufacturers

Astroturfing Savvy

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 ~ Big Oil could learn a lot about faking broad public support from the gun lobby.

Carbon Intoxication

Scientists are Not Immune

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 ~ I've been formally trained as a computer scientist, and at one time made a very good living from it at a top institution. However, just because I am a "scientist" it does not mean that I am qualified to discourse on scientific subjects at large.

This does not, however, much deter some scientists from fulminating well outside their areas of expertise or qualification. Or spouting their personal beliefs from ideologically aligned platforms. Today we have been treated to another tired retread of an article in the Wall Street Journal by climate change simpleton William Happer. Along with astronaut Harrison Schmidt, he claims, again, that more atmospheric carbon is good for us because we need plants, and plants need carbon dioxide.

Much of the article can be dismissed on factual grounds with reference to what actual climate science and climate scientists can tell us. (I'm no expert—being a computer scientist does not make me a general scientific expert—and I happily defer to those who are.) Happer and Schmidt focus on the tired and discredited trope that carbon concentrations have been higher in geological time (true) but ignore the recent, and utterly unprecedented rate of change in those concentrations. Sure, life flourished, but not human life, and species that cannot adapt to a changing environment not infrequently suffer or become extinct. Evolution does not work well in short time periods of rapid environmental shift.

More Regulatory Evils

Gun Control Stands Alone

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 ~ Where else do we choose to have our civilization out of control?

Even though we regulate all of these things, we neither ban them, nor confiscate them from those owning and using them responsibly.

Control is not confiscation. Regulation is not a ban.

Guns and Arms

Unanswered Questions

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 ~ Could we as a nation, at long last, really be taking a hard look at our gun laws? It's long overdue.

Perhaps at some later point I'll write at greater length on the subject, but for now I have just three questions.

First, here is the text of the Second Amendment, as ratified by the states:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Questions, only partly rhetorical:

1. Why do gun advocates frequently only mention the part after the comma, and ignore the first part of the sentence?
2. The amendment itself states that regulating well is necessary, so why is there such an hysterical response to the common-sense notion of regulating guns?
3. Anti-aircraft missiles, tanks and nuclear weapons are all "arms" yet no one squawks about restrictions on their ownership. Why then the apoplexy about regulating assault weapons or such things as high-capacity magazines?

Debt Favors

The Method of Impoverishment

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 ~ We will soon suffer the endless Kabuki of sham fiscal cliff politics. It will be frustrating and feckless in appearance to most of us, but the wealthy and powerful will be well-served. We are in the midst of an economic struggle for survival which Warren Buffet famously characterized so:

There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.

And how are they doing that?

Load economies (governments, companies and families) with debt, siphon off their income as debt service and then foreclose when debtors lack the means to pay. Indebting government gives creditors a lever to pry away land, public infrastructure and other property in the public domain... The aim of financial warfare is not merely to acquire land, natural resources and key infrastructure rents as in military warfare; it is to centralize creditor control over society.

Crisis

Bipartisan Cooperation

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 ~ Is there a will to solve problems, or only endlessly to defer them?

It's hard to raise campaign cash from lobbyists when there are no big policy matters at stake.

12 Predictions for 2013

Clarity Moving Beyond the Past

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 ~ The best part of 2013 is that there won't be a federal election. Consequently, some useful things will get done. There will still be way too much partisan malarkey for my tastes, but the electorate expects action on a host of things and the political dynamic will allow more progress than last year's gridlocked, posturing debacle.

This year's predictions:

My 2012 Predictions Revisited

About 3/4 Accurate

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 ~ So how good was my prognostication of the past year? Not bad, although I did make some creampuff predictions that boosted the grade. Using a scale of 1 (utterly wrong) to 10 (perfectly prescient):

Like Night and Day

Not Alike

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 ~ Do you think the two parties are the same shade of gray? That they're just about the same? Can you imagine the GOP responding like this:

Actually, we don't need to imagine, because they don't. Instead, they act like this.

Imagine

A Less Fracked World

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Divestiture

Money Talks

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 ~ Protest and divestment work.

Seattle is the first US city to announce formal divestiture of investments in the fossil fuel industry. Mayor Mike McGinn made the announcement yesterday, making good on a promise made November 7 during 350.org's Do The Math tour. Said McGinn:

Climate change is one of the most important challenges we currently face as a city and as a society. I believe that Seattle ought to discourage these companies from extracting that fossil fuel, and divesting the pension fund from these companies is one way we can do that.

The Purpose of Art

To Provoke

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 ~ The manufactured and fictitious crisis of the so-called fiscal cliff has provoked a lot of people. Time to provoke a broader audience about the real crisis, and to replace the bogus framing of the problem.

We're not broke—we're being looted.

More from Artstrike, including this evocative poem:

Proverbs 22:16
by Elizabeth Conall

what do they care
if we can’t pay
the bills run up
to keep us alive?
to save our kids?
why bother with
expensive care
we don’t deserve?
plenty more
where we came from

Plenty more serfs out there. Read the whole thing.

Neoliberalism and Plutocracy

They're the Same Thing

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 ~ The always stimulating George Monbiot's recent blog post examines the need to fight plutocracy in order to address climate change.

Humankind’s greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address. By the late 1980s, when it became clear that manmade climate change endangered the living planet and its people, the world was in the grip of an extreme political doctrine, whose tenets forbid the kind of intervention required to arrest it.

Neoliberalism, also known as market fundamentalism or laissez-faire economics, purports to liberate the market from political interference. The state, it asserts, should do little but defend the realm, protect private property and remove barriers to business. In practice it looks nothing like this. What neoliberal theorists call shrinking the state looks more like shrinking democracy: reducing the means by which citizens can restrain the power of the elite. What they call “the market” looks more like the interests of corporations and the ultra-rich. Neoliberalism appears to be little more than a justification for plutocracy.

Illusory Problems

The Politics of Distraction

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 ~ Misdirection, a key technique for those creating illusions.

Demand More Demand

What's Wrong With the Economy?

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 ~ The short answer:

A slightly longer answer, but more informative and at least as entertaining:

Economically, the solution is both simple and obvious. Politically, the solution is absurdly complicated and the target of endless obfuscation.

Climate Change Attitude Echoes

Here We Go Again

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