Wassup This Week

Political Reality Checks--Whose News Do You Trust?

2012-02-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

Dear Rob:

I read your recent e-mail about a neighbor of yours who had some negative comments about George Soros and MoveOn.org. In it, you bemoan the fact that you “can’t believe anyone any more [because] they seem to twist everything to fit their agenda.” I sympathize with the constraints to engaging in social and political discussions with ones neighbors in today’s heated climate.

Given your rather idyllic, rural existence, you also may feel a greater need to treat neighbors more gently than someone living in a more highly populated environment. This particularly may apply to a neighbor who holds strong opinions divergent from yours: the greater your disagreement, the more you must weigh the value of either engaging him in some form of intellectual discourse, and risk being branded un-neighborly, or simply remaining a silent, and thus supportive, listener.

When I lived in central Pennsylvania, a fairly conservative part of that state, and especially when I drove up to Manheim to play tennis at my club there, I had to decide, daily, whether to talk politics and be the lone voice of progressive and liberal ideas or just play tennis! Usually, I did the latter; but as the 2008 elections neared, I took a certain delight in wearing my Obama cap when I played, for which I took a lot of flak. This kept me on my toes on the doubles court, a bit like Lewis Carroll’s “Father William.” To wit:

"You are old," said the youth, "And your jaws are too weak

For anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—

Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,

And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,

Has lasted the rest of my life."

All I can say is that you and your lovely wife have great educations and a breadth of experience that ought to buttress you somewhat from what appears to be a strain of vehement and radical conservatism in this particular neighbor. All you can do is to believe in yourself. But then, you also have access to the internet; reliable sources there will provide you with a reality-check on almost any issue.

For example, your neighbor calls George Soros a "dangerous and frightening man." Outside of the fact that Soros supports progressive and liberal causes, which your neighbor seems to hate, what does he know of the man? Does he know that Soros gave away over $8 billion to the causes of human rights, public health, and education? Can your neighbor really be against the promotion of such worthwhile causes?

Does he know that Soros played an instrumental role in helping Hungary, the country of his birth, to transition from communism to capitalism? Certainly, your neighbor should applaud anyone who helped overturn a communist country (which I am sure ranks near the top of his list of hated things), and then double his applause for one who led Hungary towards capitalism (which must rank at the top of things he reveres).

George Soros is also the creator and chairman of the Open Society Institute, which, beginning in 1993, was dedicated to promoting democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal and social reform to Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; its operations have also spread to other parts of the world, such as Africa. I can imagine some die-hard communist calling Soros a “dangerous and frightening man,” but hardly any thoughtful and patriotic American citizen!

I’m not sure what your friend’s sources of information are. A likely source is FoxNews--really more of a right-wing propaganda outfit than a real news source--and, as I see it, America’s equivalent for the sort of biased news reporting that Tass once fed to the citizens of communist Russia. Another possible source could be statements made by some of our politicians who are stumping the country right now on the electoral road, saying whatever is expedient for the audience before them at any particular moment.

For example, I can imagine someone making generalized, negative remarks about George Soros in the way that Newt Gingrich has lately been tossing out derogatory references to Saul Alinsky, as if he were the devil incarnate. Gingrich is smart enough to not say too much, but he regularly has been equating Obama with “the radicalism of Saul Alinsky.” That’s all that his conservative base needs to hear--some guy with a funny name, Alinsky, is clearly a terrible threat to everything American. Yet Alinsky, a community organizer and writer, has been compared to Thomas Paine as “one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left,” and the methods he developed have been embraced and applied by many people, including Newt Gingrich. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you while also misinforming the public!

Then, again, your neighbor may be reading the work of such conservative bloggers as Selwyn Duke, who has called Soros “the Most Evil Man in America,” or the highly conservative newspaper, Human Events, which published an article in April of 2011 titled “Top 10 Reasons George Soros Is Dangerous.” Neither are reputable news sources.

Then there is MoveOn.org. Your neighbor writes that he “has a lot against,” this organization which “is largely funded by George Soros.” Right-wing pundits and bloggers constantly link MoveOn and Soros as if they were Siamese twins, but here is the reality. MoveOn was started in 1998 by two entrepreneurs, Joan Blades and Wes Boyd. It took its name from its original petition asking Congress to stop wasting valuable time and money, “censure President Clinton and move on.” Now, during the 2004 election cycle, George Soros backed the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, a Democratic 527 organization. However, MoveOn.org stopped receiving any donations to its 527 organization after the 2004 election, and its primary funding has been from its members, whose average donation is ca. $50.00. George Soros does not fund MoveOn.org. That is the reality, no matter how often FoxNews and right-wing pundits say otherwise.

Finally, your neighbor also sent you an article by Matthew Continetti on “Combat Journalism: Taking the Fight to the Left” and suggests that it offers a view of journalism today that he feels rings true. Since I have been planning to write a blog post at some future date on what we could call the 4th Estate, I won’t respond to this article in any detail.

However, be aware that Continetti repeats a favorite conservative trope which holds that most journalists today are promoters of left-wing and progressive ideology, because today’s journalists must have college degrees and come out of graduate journalism programs. What “hogwash!” This falls into the same category as Rick Santorum’s call to all Christians to stop contributing to America’s institutions of higher learning because they brainwash and indoctrinate our children in liberal ideology.

Continetti then hails the rise of conservative journalism since the 1980s with The New York Post, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News, calling them a counter to the “biased news” of the New York Times, Washington Post, and (pre-Murdoch) Wall Street Journal. He then concludes his piece by touting his own paper, the Washington Free Beacon, which ostensibly will reveal the real issues behind the news, or, as he writes, “the half that the elite media have taken such pains to ignore.”

Here is his conclusion: “At the Beacon, all friends of freedom will find an alternative to the hackneyed spin, routine misstatements, paranoid hyperbole, and insipid folderol of Democratic officials and the liberal gasbags on MSNBC and talk radio. At the Beacon, we follow only one commandment: Do unto them.”

It would seem to me that the most egregious examples of “hackneyed spin, routine misstatements, [and] paranoid hyperbole,” are to be found on FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, The New York Post and the Washington Times. Simply put, the entire notion of a dominating liberal media is nonsense. It is a phrase that has been repeated ad nauseam and daily for so many decades that people just assume it must be true. It's not. Select your news sources judiciously.

Stay well, my friend, and hold on to your solid, reasonable convictions; stay silent, if you must, in respect to your neighbors. I always look forward to hearing from you.

Yours truly, Tyko

Clint Eastwood, Chrysler, and the Super Bowl Ad

2012-02-09T23:04:00.000-08:00

As a group, automobile advertisements on TV may certainly be nowhere near as bad as the bulk of sophomoric ads for the more popular American beers. Nevertheless, they rarely manage to generate any sort of appeal, at least for me. Too many of them focus on the testosterone of fast driving, four-wheel drifts, and even four wheels off the ground, jumping some abyss, as if Evel Knevel were back in action.

For the most part, TV ads adhere to a fairly narrow set of themes, depending upon what sort of product is being featured. Cars reveal their sleekness and power, beers their loyal, hard-partying twenty-somethings, detergents their comparative excellence in stain removal.

For me, the constant in all of these ads is how ineffective they are in appealing to my interest in purchasing the product. I may marvel at the amounts of money spent to produce them. I may admire the sophisticated visual production of many of them (even as I fail to recall the featured product). Yet, I confess to an enormous difficulty in understanding why any thoughtful person would ever succumb to their transparent promotions.

But then I saw It's Halftime In America, David Gordon Greene’s ad for Chrysler cars, narrated by Clint Eastwood, which appeared during halftime at the televising of the Super Bowl. I was captivated. I was blown away. In fact, it gave me goosebumps; and, when I watched it again on You Tube in order to transcribe the exact wording, I actually teared up at its message.

Certainly, this must be the effect that advertisers seek, but hardly ever get. This ad grabbed something so visceral in me that, had I not retired three years ago, moved to New York City, and thus sold both our cars, I would be visiting some dealership this week, trading in my Prius or Audi and selecting my new (and first ever) Chrysler. Never in my life have I responded like this to an advertisement. In fact, if I had any response at all to an ad in the past, it was one of disdain or possibly disgust. This ad, however, It’s Halftime in America, ranks as the best advertisement that I have ever seen in my entire life of seven decades!

Just as the message of the ad touts the importance of teamwork, so the unequalled quality of the ad itself is the product of the highest level of teamwork--Clint Eastwood as narrator, David Gordon Greene as director, Matthew Dickman and Smith Henderson as writers, the advertising firm of Weiden & Kennedy, and I’m-not-sure-who for the music.

All is spot-on: Eastwood’s gorgeous, gravelly voice; the writers' moving words that conjure up our patriotic faith in this country;
the subtle and subdued musical orchestration, dominated by low register brass to create a serious, yet resolute, mood; the visual images of people, places and events around America, some evoking another challenging period, the Great Depression, as captured by Dorothea Lange.

Subtlety is the hallmark of the entire two-minute presentation of It's Halftime In America: Eastwood is merely a dark silhouette at first--his voice is his presence--and only at the end do we see his iconic face. So, too, the product is withheld: we briefly see a front fender of the Jeep, and then a brief, distant shot of an assembly line--no hood shots with logos, no stunt driving, no attempts to show the car in all its sexiness. Only at the end, as the images give way to the text, “Imported from Detroit,” do the product names emerge below: Ram,   Dodge,   Jeep,   Chrysler.

Even if you have seen this ad before, please watch it again and, if you wish, follow its text which I provide here below.

Here is the ad, It’s Halftime In America, and its text:
It’s half time. Both teams are in their locker rooms discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half.

It’s half time for America, too. People are out of work and they’re hurting, and they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback; and we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game.

The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything.   But we all pulled together. Now Motor City is fighting again.

I’ve seen a lot of tough service; a lot of downturns in my life; times when we didn’t understand each other; it seems that we’ve lost our heart at times.

The fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.

But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right and acted as one....because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times and if we can’t find a way, we make one.

All that matters now it’s what’s ahead, how do we come from behind; how do we come together; and how do we win?

Detroit’s showing us it can be done, and what’s true about them is true about all of us. This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We’d get right back up again, and when we do the world’s hearing the roar of our engines.

Yeah!

It’s half time in America, and our second half is about to begin.

Imported from Detroit

Now that you have watched the ad, I invite you to read the text again, but with a few, added interpretive annotations [in blue]. I annotate it because, like any great work of art--which it is--it embraces metaphor, expands beyond its ostensible purpose, and lends itself to interpretation. Yet, I will hold these annotations to a bare minimum because they pale against the expressive power of the ad itself.

"It’s half time. Both teams are in their locker rooms discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half."

[The ad is part of the Super Bowl show, not a separate entity; in contrast to this, most ads are non sequiturs that can appear with any program and have no kinship to the program]

"It’s half time for America, too. People are out of work and they’re hurting, and they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback; and we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game."

[The ad expands from the immediate event to our shared life and experiences as Americans in 2012. It also emphasizes that our situation is more important than even this most important of football games]

"The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together. Now Motor City is fighting again."

[The ad gives focus to America’s general crisis and to that of a particularly hard-hit city and the home of the product, Chrysler. The “we all” who pulled together to rescue Detroit and Chrysler can be interpreted as both the Bush Administration in its last year and the Obama Administration with their stimulus package, even though some present (Republican) members of America's “team” have chosen not to play ball because they are so determined to undermine President Obama, and thus our country as well]

"I’ve seen a lot of tough service; a lot of downturns in my life; times when we didn’t understand each other; it seems that we’ve lost our heart at times."
[The ad makes the narrator, Eastwood, not merely a disembodied voice, but an individual who is also affected by our malaise. We may infer that he represents some hard-bitten member of Detroit’s working-class]

"The fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead."
[The ad offers a covert admission to the partisan, political divisions that mire our progress; the implication is that, before the second half begins, we (America) need to get our entire team--Republicans and Democrats--on the same page]

"But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right and acted as one....because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, we make one."
[The ad stresses the importance of teamwork, which enables us to do what we like to think Americans do--find a way to overcome adversity. How can any American find fault with this sentiment?]

"All that matters now it’s what’s ahead, how do we come from behind; how do we come together; and how do we win?"
[These are actually the big question marks, and, with a leap, they could be interpreted as the essential questions before Congress in the coming months]

"Detroit’s showing us it can be done, and what’s true about them is true about all of us. This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We’d get right back up again, and when we do the world’s hearing the roar of our engines."
[Again, with that leap, we can read this as saying that Detroit has revived with the help and cooperation of two administrations; America needs to stay the course set by that example, and, if it succeeds in so doing, it can still be a world leader]

"Yeah!"

"It’s half time in America, and our second half is about to begin."

“Imported from Detroit”
[The American automobile industry began to rebound by the summer of 2010, and this trend has continued to the point where they are now announcing profits, and so there are several intriguing meanings to the use of the word, "imported"]

Daniel Henninger, Obama's Speech, and the Wall Street Journal

2012-02-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

Dear Jim:

Thank you for sending me Daniel Henninger’s Wall Street Journal article, “Obama’s Maddening, Winning Speech” (Feb. 2, 2012). I read it with interest, but also with some astonishment at what I perceived as a questionable display of bias, right at its very beginning. In my opinion, this was hardly appropriate for a journal of such high reputation.

These are Henninger’s opening words: “His poorly received State of the Union speech deserves a second look.” My response to this is, “Wow! poorly received...by whom, exactly?” I, for one, thought that SOTU was a pretty darn good speech. But then, Henninger loses no time to imply that I must be in the minority--or let’s be accurate, I ought to infer this because of his second sentence, where Henninger suggests that those who contribute to “conventional wisdom [have] pronounced the SOTU a relatively weak Obama effort.”

So much for what I thought I heard Obama say. Or maybe, I should start to worry about the quality of my mind! I must say that I consider Henninger’s entire first paragraph (4 sentences worth) an affront to his readers and a mode of writing more appropriate to propaganda than to intelligent, reasoned discourse. Maybe he’s simply concerned that, were he to begin in a more neutral way, his readers may arrive at opinions different from his own. Still, his beginning is demeaning.

Let’s dispense with his introductory remarks and get to the meat of his article, which seems to be the economy. Henninger writes that Obama is “going to take ownership of the American economy. Not the real one, but the one he’s just made up.” Once more, my response is one of incredulity: Did he just accuse President Obama of fabricating reality, of creating a fictional economy?

What a classic piece of Republican projection: of Republicans accusing the Democrat of doing that which they regularly seem to do themselves. Just who is it who has been making up stuff and creating a fictional reality over the past several years, if not Republicans? After all, our economic crisis is a child of their policies, of their indefensible tax cuts, and of a steady stream of their deregulation policies.

Let us not forget that Henninger wrote this piece just two days ago, at a time when we have had new information about our economic status. Has he consciously ignored the “inconvenient” facts that in December our economy had created 203,000 new, non-farm jobs and in January added another 243,000? Is he unaware that our unemployment rate dropped in January from 8.5% to 8.3%? Exactly who is making up what here?

A bit further on in his article, Henninger decides to bring the weight of truth to bear on Obama’s speech, and so he cites “Washington’s policy sophisticates” as if this referred to some generally understood and specific body of infallible, ultimate judges. He indicates that he is worried about the fact that “a speech that flopped among Washington's policy sophisticates is soaring out in the country.” Who are these “sophisticates?” Since he never says (transparency, anyone?), I will suggest that they may constitute a small coterie of members of the Heritage Foundation, or they may not even exist.

What I find particularly delicious about this reference to “policy sophisticates” is that the entire Republican field of presidential candidates has been tripping over itself to separate from “Washington insiders” and, at the same time, using the word “elite” as if it were the most heinous of adjectives in existence. Yet, here is Henninger, an arch conservative and Fox News contributor (besides being Deputy Editorial Page Director for the Wall Street Journal) embracing the expertise of some unmentioned group of elitist Washington insiders.

That’s wonderful. But there’s even more about Henninger’s manipulative way of writing, of coercing his reader. When he wants to insure that his readers know where to position themselves on a topic (and jump on his bandwagon like high schoolers at a pre-game pep-rally), he uses clauses like “any half-awake citizen will notice...,” or he begins a paragraph condescendingly: “Mr. Obama may not know much about the private economy, but...” I would hope that such wording immediately would raise warning flags in the minds of most readers.

However, the most amazing thing in Henninger’s essay is his penultimate paragraph. Here it is, in its entirety: “The GOP is appealing, as its candidates so often do, to the American brain. Barack Obama is happy to be left by himself, going for their hearts. If he wins, the Republican will wail at the unfairness, irrationality and illogic of what beat them.”

Who is he trying to kid? Did he really say that the GOP candidates, those brave knights of the Right, are appealing to the “American brain?” Is he seriously implying that it is the Democrats who have been acting and speaking illogically and irrationally?

Let’s take a quick look at those GOP candidates, Henninger’s saints of truth, intellect and logic. If Romney were appealing to the “American brain,” he wouldn’t tell blatant lies, like he recently did when he said that our safety-net programs have “massive overhead” when, in fact the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that between 90-99% of dollars allocated to safety-net programs reach the beneficiaries. This is just the latest of a litany of nearly daily lies that Romney states as he tries to win over one constituency or another.

Is Gingrich really appealing to the “American brain” when he argues that he did not lobby for Freddie Mac? Are we to believe that Freddie Mac paid him over $1.6 million for his good looks and his questionable cred as a historian? Or, even more mind-boggling, are we to believe that the “American brain” can take seriously Gingrich’s promise to create an American colony on the Moon within less than a decade?

If Henninger’s “American brain” is a powerful and well-trained brain, can it possibly embrace Santorum’s argument that America’s colleges and universities are merely centers for the indoctrination of left-wing ideology? This is what Santorum told his audience-of-the-day last week (members of the Naples, FL First Baptist Church) and he urged them to stop giving any money to America’s institutions of higher education! The crux of Santorum’s argument was that, by giving money to American universities and colleges, we “are undermining the very principles of our country every single day.”

I don’t believe that Henninger can agree with this (and I’m certain that the “American brain” would not).

Then there is--or in some cases, was--the rest of the Republican candidate pool. Rick Perry was named one of the worst governors in the nation by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics and has been plagued by unethical campaign financing, lack of transparency, putting partisanship above his Texas citizens, and personal use of campaign funds. There’s a no-brainer for you.

Michelle Bachmann probably tells a lie/day when given the opportunity of a public forum, and PolitiFact has probably burned up half of her large wardrobe in assigning her statements its “Pants on Fire” rating. Her lies are like salted peanuts: were I to cite one example, I wouldn’t be able to stop, and I’m sure that you all have your favorites already.

Then we arrive at the absolute insanity of Herman Cain’s 9% flat tax, or what he calls his 999 economic plan. Is there a thinking brain that can embrace it? His is a regressive tax which would hurt the poor much more than the wealthy (as do all the various Republican plans being floated, by the way) and it would cut the Federal revenue in half. This is hardly a way to fix a struggling economy.

Given the fact that Ron Paul has made many outrageous anti-semitic comments in his past, has endorsed the doctrine of “nullification” which gives states the right to reject Federal laws, and apparently remains opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is hard for the thoughtful “American brain” to even dig down below this smog to some of Paul’s foundational positions that, some may argue, merit discussion: his isolationist stance and his ideas about the Federal Reserve and the gold standard.

Then, of course, there is Donald Trump. But he has cleverly taken himself out of the race, and for good reason. He has an associate who is an unindicted co-conspirator in a massive 2000 stock swindle, two other associates who served prison time on cocaine charges, and a partner who was prosecuted for trafficking underage girls off the Turkish coast. For these reasons, no clear-thinking “American brain” would even get as far as questioning the logic of Trump taking up the cause of the Birthers.

Unless I missed a candidate (I spared us Sarah Palin, because she never officially threw her name in the ring), we are left with Jon Huntsman. Unfortunately, Republican voters have been too influenced by their conservative wing and the Tea Party to give much consideration to the sole candidate who really could appeal to a thinking person. When he only received 4% of the Republican vote in South Carolina, Huntsman, the one true intellectual among the lot, was forced to withdraw.

Now, in conclusion, let me return to the Henninger article and its source, the Wall Street Journal. As I recall, Jim, you and I were discussing great newspapers over Thanksgiving dinner, and you cited the Wall Street Journal to counter my vote for the New York Times as among the best papers in the world. My response was that, ever since it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch, the WSJ could no longer hold a candle to the NYT. I then encouraged you to send me a WSJ article sometime that you considered evidence of its continued greatness.

It may be that you sent me the Henninger article for some reason other than as evidence of journalistic prowess. Even so, I am a bit at a loss to understand what it was that you saw in this article that made you think that Henninger--or this particular piece by him--might persuade me that the Journal still can compete with the Times. If this is the best you can find, I sadly refer you to Joe Nocera’s less-than-flattering op-ed piece from July of 2011, the title of which is “The Journal Becomes Fox-ified.” For the time being, I rest my case and happily return to reading the Times, still the best paper in the world.

As ever,

Tyko

PS: This is a different friend named Jim, for those who recall my blog post of May 22, 2001: "Letter to Jim: Helprin's Hillsdale Commencement Address."

Some Observations on American Exceptionalism

2011-12-20T22:14:00.000-08:00

Quite a few months ago, I wrote two posts dealing with the topic of being American, or actually, what it was that certain contemporaries in the news considered “un-American.” [“Un-American Accusations, Part 1: Big Oil,” May 15, 2011; “Un-American Accusations, Part 2: Pols and Pundits,” June 10, 2011]

Today, I take up a corollary of this concept, the idea of American exceptionalism. Many of us, I am sure, have seen the Chris Matthews MSNBC ad which builds on Barack Obama’s autobiography and the idea that only in America would we likely see an African American elevated to the office of President. In Matthews words, paraphrasing Obama, “only in this country is my story possible.” The video is no longer accessible, but this reference from a Chris Matthews broadcast will suffice as a substitute.

When I first saw the actual Matthews ad, which ends with him sitting, White House behind him, and saying (almost as an aside), “American exceptionalism,” I realized that he was challenging the Republican right-wing’s decades-long embrace of American exceptionalism as exclusively theirs.

Now, Alexis de Tocqueville first applied the adjective, “exceptional” to America in 1840, noting that “the position of the Americans is...quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no other democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.” Tocqueville was referring to America as a new nation emerging from a revolution and developing an ideology based on the principles of liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-faire.

Unfortunately, by the beginning of this century, the ideals of American exceptionalism had been perverted into justifications to disregard international law, to act unilaterally to invade and occupy foreign countries which might harbor terrorists hostile to America, and to even fabricate reasons to invade a country as the Bush-Cheney White House did in March, 2003.

Such actions could even be construed as a slap in the face to the hero of these neo-Con Republicans--Ronald Reagan: he who revived the Puritan image of the city upon a hill as a metaphor for America and American exceptionalism; he who spoke to the UN, saying that Americans “have never been aggressors....[and that] we have no territorial ambitions. We occupy no countries.”

And so, a loose, distorted, and uncritical acceptance of what American exceptionalism means has carried into the present, particularly among conservative Republicans. For example, in a Fox News interview of 2009, Dick Cheney said this to Sean Hannity in reference to President Obama: "this guy (who) doesn't fully understand or share that view of American exceptionalism that I think most of us believe in," and because the Obama Administration was then pushing to try accused terrorists in our federal courts, Cheney followed this ridiculous statement with an even more absurd one, that Obama would give “aid and comfort to the enemy.” In this instance, it’s not international law that he is disregarding, it’s our Constitution, due process, and habeas corpus.

Were this a singular example, we could write it off as Cheney being Cheney. However, we find almost every Republican embracing some aspect of American exceptionalism as if it were a name tag that identified them as a true Americans and separated them from Democrats. Ann Coulter, in her new book, Demonic...) warns us that America, once an “exceptional nation...endowed by their [sic] Creator with certain inalienable Rights,” has been transformed and demeaned by “secular socialist” liberals.

Coulter takes her religious phrasing from Gingrich who, of course, takes it from our Declaration of Independence, both of them totally ignoring its context and skewing its meaning; but then, nothing new in this.

Mike Huckabee also promotes a God-chosen American exceptionalism, not only in his public appearances, but also in his new company that makes educational cartoons, such as this video on the Reagan Revolution which also features the metaphorical “City on the Hill.”

Newt Gingrich, of course, has even written a book titled A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionaliism Matters. And, not so long ago, he appeared at Jim DeMint’s Palmetto Freedom Forum where he told the audience that American exceptionalism is somehow “endowed by our creator” and that “power comes directly from God to each one of you” and “now the founding fathers wrote this because they said we hold these truths to be self evident....and that these rights are inalienable.” I listened to this several times. It strings together familiar phrases and clauses, but it makes no sense. It’s all gobbledygook, implying that our founding fathers said that God gave American citizens “certain truths” that were not given to the citizens of any other country in this world: American exceptionalism, indeed!

A slightly different Republican take on the concept can be found in Paul Ryan’s April 5, 2011 presentation on the House floor as he unveiled his plan for the largest cutback of government spending in our history. He invoked American exceptionalism no less than three times, saying “It is now up to all of us to keep America exceptional” by accepting his deficit plan which “affirms our cherished ideals of individual liberty, equal opportunity, entrepreneurship and self-reliance. These are the ideals that have cultivated the exceptional American character.”

At least God and religion were absent, having been trumped in Ryan’s speech by the Republican cathechism: less government, no regulations, and no interference in markets.

But exactly how, we may ask, has this trinity of Paul Ryan’s made America exceptional? By enabling American corporate CEOs to enjoy salary scales over 450 times those of workers. By enabling our richest 0.1% to receive nearly 8% of the country’s total income. By creating the highest health costs as a percentage of GDP of any industrialized country. By having the highest infant mortality deaths per 1000 live births of any industrialized country. By having the highest number of children living in poverty of any industrialized country. And by having, by far, the lowest percentage of social spending for families of any industrialized country (see charts at end of article).

This is hardly the way that any American, Republican or Democrat, should want us to be seen as exceptional. And, in fact, there are even Republicans who reject this attitude. For example, former Republican speechwriter, Ted Frier, complained about today’s conservatives who believe every cent they earn is theirs, who give nothing back to the more needy of our country, who forget that community and cooperation were what made America; in their embrace of the “myth of the rugged individualist,” they forget about “the community barn-raising....[and] this omission is a measure of the ingratitude you’d expect from people who think ‘American Exceptionalism’ means them.”

But let’s return to where we began, to President Obama and a version of American exceptionalism that accommodates democrats as well as republicans.

At a news conference in Strasbourg, France on April 4, 2009, President Obama was asked this question by a reporter: “Could I ask you whether you subscribe, as many of your predecessors have, to the school of American exceptionalism that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead the world, or do you have a slightly different philosophy?

This was Obama’s answer: “ I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world....And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional....And so I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent [upon], depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone.”

Now, this is a response that Tocqueville would understand. Obama’s answer was clear, reasonable, diplomatic--precisely what a country’s leader ought to say. But our hopeful Republican candidates were quick to take umbrage. Mitt Romney disparaged him in this way: “We have a president right now who thinks America’s just another nation. America is an exceptional nation. We have a president who thinks that the way to conduct foreign policy is through his personal effects on other people. I believe the way to conduct foreign policy is with American strength.” Rick Perry made similar criticisms, saying “those in the White House today” do not believe in American exceptionalism and would rather emulate Europe. “The answer to our troubles lies in a positive, optimistic vision, with policies rooted in American exceptionalism. See, American exceptionalism is the product of unlimited freedom. And there is nothing troubling our nation today that cannot be solved by the rebirth of freedom — nothing.”

Clearly, in their eyes, Obama is not sufficiently jingoistic about America’s greatness. But I suspect that our “founding fathers” would be more comfortable with Obama’s sense of American exceptionalism than that of Romney, Perry, Gingrich and the others. Thomas Jefferson, for example, would agree wholeheartedy with President Obama’s reference to “Greek exceptionalism.” After all, not only did the Greeks give the world the idea of democracy, but Jefferson even acknowledged this gift in 1785 when he designed and built the Virginia State Capitol in the form of a Greek temple.

Virginia State Capitol, 1785, designed by Thomas Jefferson

One could argue that the Virginia State Capitol was meant as a symbol of American exceptionalism. We take its form from others, in this case the ancient Greeks, and we remold it into a new and powerful emblem of democracy--a mode of “creating partnerships” in Obama’s words.

We might consider another symbolic monument, the Statue of Liberty, again a product of international partnership--the political cooperation between France and the United States. The statue is designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, its base by American architect Richard Morris Hunt. The tablet she holds represents our Declaration of Independence and she has taken on many meanings, all of which coalesce into a symbol of the political and social values that make America great.

Liberty Enlightening the World (orig.), 1886, Bartholdi & Eiffel

It may be that a more modest and nuanced understanding of the meaning of American exceptionalism, like that expressed by President Obama in Strasbourg, has begun to replace the jingoistic attitude of today’s conservative Republican, particularly its presidential candidates. A recent Pew research poll asked Americans if they agreed with the statement: “our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others.” Only 49% agreed this year, compared to 60% who were in agreement in 2002. Even more telling is the fact that, among young Americans (ages 18-29), the percentage who believed that its culture was superior was lower than it was for young Germans, Britons, and Spaniards.

Charles Blow, reporting this data in the New York Times (“The Decline of American Exceptionalism”), worries about this “national pessimism.” But instead of denigrating it or shooting the messenger, he offers Americans some very good advice. “Stop snuggling up to nostalgia....and set a course to restitution,” he writes. “And,” he continues, “that means that we must invest in our future. We must invest in our crumbling infrastructure. We must invest in the industries of the future. We must invest in a generation of foundering and forgotten children. We must invest in education. Cut-and-grow is ruinous mythology.”

His final sentence on “cut-and-grow” is a reference to the ideology espoused by today’s Congressional Republicans. So, tragically, the investment in infrastructure, industry, children and education are all programs that these Republicans have refused to support. In their blind rage to insure that Obama becomes a one-term president, they have been methodically ruining our country and destroying that which makes America exceptional. How ironic! To the extent that many of them have wrapped themselves in the cloak of American exceptionalism, their garment has become nearly invisible. Like Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes, many American Republicans are walking the streets naked. Let us hope that the American public keeps its eyes open and sees their folly.

The Emperor's New Clothes, illus. by Thordrinn Leifsson,

Obama on 60-Minutes: Reflections on Being Presidential

2011-12-11T23:46:00.000-08:00

How refreshing to listen to a leader who is able to handle challenging questions, many of which attempted to point an accusatory finger at him, stay absolutely calm and on topic, constantly give thoughtful, intelligent answers, have total control of all the issues, and reveal the mental dexterity so as to remain ahead of his interviewer (Steve Kroft) and thus effortlessly catch Kroft up on his own contradictions. I am, of course, referring to Barack Obama as seen on CBS’s 60 Minutes tonight.

After being subjected to the plethora of Republican “debates” over the past several months in which candidate after candidate stumbled on the most basic of issues, whether these related to foreign policy or to our own Constitution, I am astounded that anyone can consider voting for someone other than Barack Obama for president.

Any Republican who dared to reveal an intellect, a grasp of the issues of our time and their complexity, and a temperament to lead us well--a John Huntsman, for example--has been eliminated from consideration by the circus that is this year’s Republican nominating process.

I invite you to watch, or re-watch, this full interview with President Obama on 60 Minutes. His observations can be eloquent and heart-felt: “America by definition is an innovation society; we constantly remake ourselves,” he remarks optimistically, as he makes note of the need for adjustments to today’s unusual economic challenges. He sympathizes with our social challenges and admits that the “rules are rigged against middle class families and those who aspire to get into the middle class.” He even continues to treat the opposition party with a respect that none of them have given him, so that even when referring to what we all know as the recalcitrance of the “Party of No,” he merely says “we haven’t got the sort of engagement from them that I would have liked,” or, in reference to the necessary compromises that Democrats have made in order to keep our country and government afloat, Obama simply remarks that “we haven’t seen the equivalent willingness on the other side.”

My God, how fortunate we are to have a real adult in the White House. The traits that Barack Obama has displayed are those of a true leader, something completely lacking in nearly all of the various Republican contenders: Gingrich, Romney, Perry, Paul, Bachmann, Santorum, (or Cain).

This brings to mind a conversation I had with my wife back in September of 2008 in regard to the qualities that she (and I) would want in a president. We were driving on the New Jersey Turnpike; as she was at the wheel, I scratched out some notes, and, later, she expanded them into the following draft.

“I’m a 63 year old, white woman. I have run a successful small business for 25 years. I’m a wife, a mother, a grandmother and a congenital moderate.

“Recently, I’ve been thinking about the qualities I want in the person who will be president. I don’t want to be swayed by the fear mongering that permeates electoral politics or foolish misstatements by one candidate or another, the confusion about what’s true and what’s not. Rather, I want to base my decision on a clear headed appraisal of the qualities that will be important for the next president if he is to lead this country responsibly. Here’s the list I’ve come up with.

“I’m looking for someone who is well educated—not just about our country, but also about the world.

“I’m looking for someone who thoroughly understands the Constitution, the foundation of our democratic system.

“I’m looking for someone who can listen to all sides of an issue and find the narrow path of common ground that we can all move along together.

“I’m looking for someone young enough to be operating at full capacity. I’m all too aware of the signs of age that affect all of us over 60.

“I’m looking for someone who understands and relies on the Internet and new technologies in their many astonishing applications. The web has been with us for a mere 5,000+ days. The changes in the next 5,000 will be no less significant.

“I’m looking for someone who is not afraid of people who are “different.” We live in a country in which people of many colors are soon to be a majority. Only when we have leadership that embraces citizens of all hues will we truly harness the energy and human resources of this great country.

“I’m looking for someone who angers slowly and takes time to consider the many sides of an issue before responding. In these times of proliferating nuclear weapons, I come down solidly on the side of caution and considered decision making rather than rash acts.

“I’m looking for someone who knows how to build trust by charting a steady course within the rapidly changing realities of the world. This person must be able to find just the right place between consistency and flexibility, so that the decision making is clear and principled but the short-term decisions can flex as needed.

“I’m looking for someone who is so smart that he can chart a course based on rigorous, clear thinking and can then articulate that thinking process so we can all understand it--someone who can use the position of President to convince and sway both the citizens of this country and people around the world with his oratorical skill.

“I’m looking for someone who can articulate complex ideas simply and in a way that inspires us to our better selves.

“I’m looking for someone who has traveled widely to many continents and has an appreciation for the astonishing array of cultural diversity on this shrinking globe of ours.

“I’m looking for someone who understands that global resources are finite, and that if we don’t unite to be responsible about our use of these resources, we will undermine the future for our children and grandchildren.

“Finally, I’m looking for someone who represents the future and who will have the courage and ability to lead us through the upcoming years of challenge with new ideas and a willingness to find ways in which this country of ours can once again be a respected leader in the world.”

This person appeared tonight with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes. We owe him, our country and this world a second term.

OWS: Zuccotti in Tents + March to Brooklyn Bridge

2011-11-23T09:16:00.000-08:00

The following photographs were taken on November 8 at Zuccotti Park and on November 17 at Foley Square. The Zuccotti Park images record the days before the tents were removed by the police on the orders of Mayor Bloomberg. They offer insights as to how the park was transformed once it was filled with tents. The Foley Square images document about three-and-a-half hours, beginning ca. 4:00 pm, as people began to gather for what eventually would be a march across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Zuccotti Park, Nov. 8:

Zuccotti Park: Edwin

Zuccotti Park: Debora

Zuccotti Park: Faith

Zuccotti Park: Restaurant Chefs

Zuccotti Park: The Goddess

Zuccotti Park: Michael Cardacino (on left)

One can never predict who will be volunteering time at Zuccotti Park on any day or hour. Among those participating around 2:00 pm on November 8 were Edwin, an expert on Chinese herbal medicines and gardens and who teaches about Chinese herbs as well as on fragrance at the NY Botanical Garden; Debora, from Queens, holding a thesis board, almost as tall as she, that clearly lays out some basic reasons for these protests; Faith, a Lutheran minister who volunteers several times a week and has watched the growth and organic change of the OWS movement first-hand; two restaurant chefs with whom I did not talk but clearly are contributing their interest in organic and non-genetically modified foods to the OWS stew.

Then, someone painted and hung a large banner titled The Goddess, which appears to be inspired by certain early Renaissance images of the Virgin Mary--in particular aspects of the Maesta and the Madonna of Mercy. Another artist, Michael Cardacino displays a wonderful piece that visually and powerfully portrays the greed of the 1%. Creativity and commitment dominate in every corner of this tiny plot off Broadway. Zuccotti Park has truly become an uplifting place, and, over my visits, I see more and more tourists who now consider it a must place to visit.

For anyone curious about how this Zuccotti Park community operates, watch this 24-minute InFocus video by Danny Schechter.

Zuccotti Park: Joseph

Joseph, a Cree from Brooklyn, has occupied Zuccotti Park to represent the American Indian Nation, and brings his own agenda to the movement. Material on display calls for a "decolonization of Wall Street," and he apparently is asking for the return of these (and other) lands to our native Indians. However, Joseph, among all the OWS people I have met in my five visits, was unique in my experience in being the only person disinterested in engaging in a discussion of ideas. I would have been interested, for example, how or whether he considers himself among the 99%.

Zuccotti Park: Tents

The tents certainly changed the character of Zuccotti Park, in my estimation. They closed it off from the public and made it more difficult to walk through and thus engage with the 24-hour occupiers. Although tents and other structures have always been forbidden in Zuccotti Park, the authorities showed some leniency in allowing them to stay when the first few were pitched, the first being a sukkah tent erected for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

The tents were removed in the early hours of Tuesday, November 15, after which Zuccotti Park was cleared. Once tents, tarps, the library and everything else were carted away, the park was cleaned and the occupiers were allowed to return.

Zuccotti Park: Sustainability Sector

This final photograph from Zuccotti Park shows the sustainability sector containing composting, water filtration, and stationary bicycles which were used for the generation of electricity. The Fire Department had confiscated the OWS gasoline generators, claiming they were a fire hazard, but the onset of cold weather and snow spurred the protesters to seek an alternative way to power their cel phones, laptops, lighting and even some electric heating. They claim that six hours of pedaling will charge the batteries of their generator for close to 100 hours.

Foley Square, Nov. 17:

Foley Square: View south on Lafayette St. ca. 4:00 pm

Foley Square: You Cannot Evict an Idea

Having arrived early, before the OWS protesters had made their way from Union Square and other venues further north, I found Foley Square quite empty. The police were already massing and the barriers were in place to keep the roads clear and the protesters and other pedestrians in the park and on the sidewalks. This was "the calm before the storm," and one could sense a tremor of anticipation hovering in the air.

The park in the lower photograph, with trees and the lone individual carrying a sign, is actually called Thomas Paine Park. Foley Square can be seen in the distance, but the two are contiguous and essentially merge into one.

Foley Square: Triumph of the Human Spirit

To the left, one can see three TV trucks parked on Centre Street, I counted at least twelve TV trucks and vans, each with a newscaster holding a microphone and making their introductory comments before the masses arrived.

Rising in the distance, and the apex of Foley Square, is an abstract sculpture of granite, seventy feet high by Lorenzo Pace titled Triumph of the Human Spirit. Two interpretations intertwine to give meaning to its form. One of them evokes the ships that brought African slaves (as well as other settlers) to America. The other suggests that aspects of its form are inspired by certain Mali headdresses. The colonnade across the street and to the left, by the way, is the base of the Thurgood Marshall US Courthouse, completed in 1936 and designed by Cass Gilbert.

Foley Square: Parade Marshalls Gathering

Foley square: Parade Marshalls, SEIU members

Just below and to the north of the Pace sculpture, the parade marshalls were gathering. They are members of several different unions, and in the bottom photograph, we see a group from the powerful SEIU. In the background is the pedimented NY County Supreme Court building, completed in 1927, designed by Guy Lowell with sculptures by Frederick Warren Allen; among those sculptures are personifications of Law, Equity and Truth--certainly appropriate figures to stand guard, as well as stand up for, the unspoken aims of the OWS protesters who soon will gather below them.

SEIU President, Mary Kay Henry, was arrested as she stepped onto the Brooklyn Bridge in what I have heard was part of a symbolic, prearranged agreement to arrest the first 99 people to enter onto the bridge. She has said that “this is about our members being united in the belief that things are broken in this country, and we need to come together in numbers to help fix it. That means joining forces with students, neighbors, the unemployed, and working people in the encampments. This is an act of solidarity with the 99% movement.”

Foley Square: Poetry Assembly

As people begin to assemble from all directions, the mood becomes more lively and the participants more diverse. Who knew that OWS had a Poetry Assembly? Yet, here are several of its representatives. They meet regularly, even nightly. They share poems, write poems as a group, and accept poems that relate to the OWS movement sent on-line from outside contributors. They even have compiled a large and growing volume, the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology.

Foley square: Sandra

Just as one is assessing the role of poets in the gathering demonstration, along comes Sandra playing her ribaphone, a junk percussion assemblage of cans, cymbals, washboard and other devices. A message painted on one can reads "divest...fossil fuels." The latter certainly an appropriate topic for New Yorkers, who enjoy some of the best tap water in the world--at least as long as they can hold off the oil and gas industry from fracking operations in the Marcellus shale. [See my post, "Our Water & Fracking," February 6, 2011]

Foley Square: Jacqueline

Foley Square: Matthew

Foley Square: Gwen

Foley Square: Adrienne

The diversity of participants are evident in these several photographs, taken while there still is space to isolate individuals from the growing crowd. Jacqueline, who lives in Manhattan and teaches in Queens, makes a wonderfully ironic plea for the topic of her Friday class, the First Amendment. Matthew, from Brooklyn, reminds the 1% of what they would rather not believe of the 99%: they will multiply, not die. Gwen, from the Queens, carries a sign with a similar sentiment that this movement is not going to disappear and which also stresses the need for jobs. Adrienne provides an elegant statement as part of this, our, 99%.

Foley Square: This Is So Not Over

If there is a common attitude shared by the varied OWS participants, it is that they have no intention of going away or fading out. This movement, vague and ill-defined as some conservative critics gleefully point out, is not likely to disappear.

Take that one sign above that calls for taxing the rich: when I came home from this march, I turned on MSNBC only to see several of America's wealthiest citizens asking Congress to reinstate the marginal tax rate of 39.6% that they had under President Clinton. Some 200 of our millionaires have been discussing the need to raise their taxes for several years, but clearly the national Occupy movement influenced them to come forward publicly now. And while we have known about Warren Buffett, one of the smartest businessmen in the world, independently criticizing his low tax rate, now we also have this group, Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, asking for higher taxes on the rich.

As the other signs exhibited by this group in the bottom photograph read, "This is SO not over."

Foley Square: Gil & Devon

Foley Square: Pierre & Elise

Foley Square: Casey & Bill

The OWS movement continues to embrace the diversity of issues so evident when it first began [for examples of this diversity, see my post, "Wall Street, September 17: Notes & Observations," dated September 21, 2011]. Gil and his friend Devon (who came down from Boston) carry a free Mumia banner. Mumia Abu Jamal, an activist and radio journalist, was accused of the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer and is among the world's best known death-row inmates. The glass façade in the background is the United States Court of International Trade, by the way.

Pierre & Elise remind us of the insanity of our Supreme Court decision, giving corporations the same rights as people, while also reminding us of an event that recently occurred at the APEC world leaders meeting in Honolulu in the sign that reads, "Occupy with Aloha." This is a reference to the musical entertainer who performed at the APEC formal dinner, Hawaiian slack guitarist Makana. He very innocently sang subversive songs before our world leaders, including a new one with lyrics such as these: "You enforce your monopolies with guns/ While sacrificing our daughters and sons/ But certain things belong to everyone/ Your thievery has left the people none." He then opened his suit jacket to display a tee shirt that read, "Occupy with Aloha."

Makana dedicated his performance to those who would speak truth to power but were not allowed the opportunity. He clearly is part of the 99% and is contributing to nudging our country and the world to a better direction.

Casey & Bill make a plea to save our middle class, which is disappearing with the increasing disparity in the distribution of wealth in our country. They also point out the fact that corruption has not only permeated the operations of Wall Street bankers, but also our Congress. Of course, these two issues are related. The income of middle class families has dropped by 21% while, as a CBO study released in October reveals, the top 1% of earners enjoyed an income growth of 275% between 1979 and 2007. In the meantime, the 1% and their corporate lobbyists have insured that most laws are written in their favor, and they often help members of Congress by writing the laws themselves.

Foley Square: Christian

I just love this sign being displayed by Christian, who lives in Queens. Our children represent the future of this country. If only everyone, the 1% included, modified their actions and behavior in relationship to the world that they were leaving for the next generations, our country would certainly be a much better place.

Foley Square: Lisa

Foley Square: Musician Solidarity Council

I encountered a large group of musicians from local 802, the first of which was Lisa, a pianist from Manhattan. Her sign, "Musicians will not be Silent," conveys the obvious fact that music is about sound and auditory experience. But when extended into the political sphere, the issue of silence reminds us of the dangers of complacency and remaining silent. This is one of the major tenets of holocaust teaching. It also is a constant among the major figures of social justice, whether Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King or Elie Wiesel, who stated, "to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all."

The blue sign in the lower photograph is taken from a speech Barack Obama gave on August 2, 2008: "When special interests put their thumb on the scale, and distort the free market, the people who compete by the rules come in last." The Musicians Solidarity Council has participated in order to support the goals of OWS as well as "to defend the rights and livelihoods of all."

Foley Square: Quoting Martin Luther King

As 6:00 pm approaches, Foley Square has filled up. There were around 32,500 people according to police estimates.

The white sign visible in the center of the lower photograph quotes Martin Luther King in a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam," which he gave at the Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967. The quotation reads, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Ignoring the wisdom of MLK, Congressional Republicans have been attempting to cut social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Now that their latest ploy, the "supercommittee," failed to come up with ways to pare $1.2 trillion in budget cuts, as they were charged, automatic spending cuts will kick in; these cuts are to be evenly divided between domestic (social) programs and defense. Of course, now Republicans like John McCain (R, AZ), Lindsey Graham (R, SC) and Buck McKeon (R, CA) are talking of reneging on any cuts to defense spending. No surprise here: most reasonable and clear-minded people are painfully aware that conservative Republicans began suffering a spiritual death more than a decade ago.

Foley Square: 3 sections of a line of silent protesters sponsored by South Asia Solidarity and War Resisters

On the topic of war spending, the most powerful statement came from a line-up of over twenty people. Standing in silence, mouths sealed by either an American flag sticker or a Chase bank sticker, they commanded attention while creating separation from the milling crowd. Each held a sign indicating the place and date of a different deployment of US armed troops around the world. A shocking statistic in support of their statement is that, since 9/11, the United States has spent at least $4.4 trillion on military operations abroad.

The War Resisters League has been active since 1923 and today is among the leading voices of the global anti-war movement. It allied with the South Asia Solidarity Initiative in mid-October of this year to participate in OWS actions. They call on the people of the world to resist empire, rebuild our world and recreate solidarity.

Foley Square: United Auto Workers Union representatives

Foley Square: Schools Not Wars

Foley Square: CUNY representatives

Foley Square: Let's Be Realists

UAW, School teachers, CUNY faculty and staff, and Verizon workers were among other groups that had gathered for the march into Brooklyn.

Foley Square: Crowd Massing in Preparation of Marching to the Bridge

Foley Square: Crowd Begins Moving South Towards the Bridge

These two photographs give a sense of the density of people. It took me an hour to walk from the south end of Foley Square to City Hall Park, usually a two-minute walk. As much as I would have liked to document the crossing of the Brooklyn Bridge, cold, wind, hunger and the fact that I already had been there for four hours lured me to take the subway home to the Bronx.

Foley Square: Death as Retirement Plan

Several people climbed onto the parapets and ledges of buildings to watch the procession, much as this young fellow has done. His sign reads: "Thanks to Wall Street the only retirement plan left is DEATH!!!"

Foley Square: Police Barrier & Mounted Police Reserves

As we approach City Hall Park and near the Bridge entrance, we can see mounted police on the side street and in the background. But they were restrained, and many of the police at the barriers were willing to engage in conversation and answer questions, which has not always been the case in NYC street demonstrations. And this is as it ought to be. After all, New York's finest are part of the 99%.

Foley Square: Proud to be an American

Foley Square: Vox Clamantis In Tenebris

Foley Square: Make This Nation One Again

I offer three final photographs of the day: A man wrapping himself in the flag--it's just a wonderful photo; a cry from the darkness that all progressives and liberals hope will happen--will the candidate they supported three years ago finally pay attention to them and their needs?; and the hope of so many--that we can become a single, unified nation once more--that we become the 100%, not merely the 99%.

To quote Cornel West's article in the November, 2011 issue of The Occupied Wall Street Journal, "Our movement--leaderless and leaderful--is a soulful expression of a moral outrage at the ugly corporate greed that pushes our society and world to the brink of catastrophe....we intend to sustain our momentum...in order to create a better world through a deep democratic revolution."

David Brooks and Fracking: Marketplace Trumps Environment

2011-11-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

On November 3, 2011, David Brooks wrote an op-ed in the New York Times entitled “Shale Gas Revolution.” Brooks begins this argument for large-scale fracking by championing George P. Mitchell, who “fought through waves of skepticism and opposition to extract natural gas from shale.” Having softened his readers by appealing to their pride in American individualism and ingenuity with this reference to one of the inventors of the process of hydraulic fracturing, Brooks boldly claims that “the fracking innovation is game-changing. It transforms the energy marketplace.”

However, since Brooks is not among those many Republicans who are in denial about global warming, he must take pains to assure us that natural gas “is the cleanest of the fossil fuels” and that enabling more fracking operations will provide “hundreds of thousands of new jobs.” In other words, he views fracking as a panacea for much of America’s present difficulties, and Brooks’ leaves no doubt about the importance of extracting natural gas from our shale deposits: “It would be a crime if we squandered this blessing,” he writes in his concluding sentence.

But, I get ahead of myself and of Brooks’ argument. Before this conclusion, he is compelled to acknowledge today’s acrimonious political climate. In his words, “the U.S. is polarized between ‘drill, baby, drill’ conservatives, who seem suspicious of most regulation, and some environmentalists, who seem to regard fossil fuels as morally corrupt and imagine we can switch to wind and solar overnight.” Although this statement appears to offer a balanced assessment of the two sides, I suggest that a closer reading reveals a subtly biased skewing.

Brooks’ Republican Heart [read my post, “David Brooks and Dr. Strangelove,” July 26, 2011], through careful word choice, makes the conservatives seem more reasonable and the (liberal) environmentalists more radical. In truth, however, those “‘drill, baby, drill’ conservatives” are hardly so accommodating as to be “suspicious of most regulation;” they reflexively rail against any and all regulation. Meanwhile, nobody is saying that fossil fuels are “morally corrupt.” They are saying that the continued reliance on fossil fuels for energy is endangering our world and contributing enormously to global warming, and we need to find other solutions before we pass the tipping point.

The proponents for oil and gas drilling may be greedy and complacent, but not “morally corrupt.” This term is normally bandied about by members of the religious right, not the progressive left or, in Brooks’ words “some environmentalists.” If the progressive left were to use the term “moral corruption,” their most likely target would be the 1% that our various Occupy Wall Street groups are bringing to the forefront of our nation’s awareness. Interestingly, even a more conservative commentator like Jim Cramer of CNBC admitted enormous corruption among those in control of our financial system (in an August 21, 2008 video that is no longer viewable). Another target might be Alan Greenspan, and after reading Chapter 2 of Matt Taibbi’s book, Griftopia, I can hardly see Greenspan as anything other than “morally corrupt.” Then, of course, among the biggest targets are Bush and Cheney, who got us into a deadly war through deception and lies--the height of moral corruption.

But, again, I diverge from the topic of hydraulic fracturing. Fracking has poisoned water supplies, killed livestock where its toxic chemicals have percolated to the surface, destabilized the landscape, created more greenhouse emissions than burning coal, and undermined investment in renewable technologies. As a concession to its recorded dangers (think of those surreal videos of flaming tap water), Brooks seems to blame a few bad apples. He bemoans the fact that “rogue companies have screwed up and there have been instances of contamination,” and that “a few sloppy companies could discredit the whole sector.”

Igniting Kitchen Tap Water Contaminated with Fracking Fluids

Haven’t we heard this argument before? “A few sloppy companies” is the corporate equivalent of “a few bad apples,” the words used to isolate the lowly soldiers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq from the larger military system. Today we remember the privates and specialists who were sentenced, Lynndie England and Charles Graner, but forget the colonels and generals, their military superiors who remained insulated.

But when it comes to oil drilling, there are no “rogue companies,” as Brooks would have us believe, unless maybe all the drilling companies are “rogue!” After all, who were the “rogue companies,” the “few sloppy companies” responsible for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? British Petroleum, which is the fourth largest corporation of any sort in the world today? Transocean Ltd., owner of the world’s largest fleet of offshore deepwater drilling rigs? Halliburton, the world’s second largest oilfield services corporation? You can’t get any bigger that this.

These are the “generals” of the oil production system, and clearly not even they can be trusted to do their job properly. Maybe the entire oil extraction industry is “rogue.” It is very possible that they all are “sloppy companies” who cut corners in order to save money. In the case of the Deepwater Horizon spill, the report issued by the White House oil spill commission stated that "the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur." It concluded that BP, Transocean and Halliburton all were responsible, albeit in different ways.

Since the presence of major corporations such as BP and Halliburton is hardly a guarantee of safe practices, David Brooks’ implication that a very few “rogue companies” are to blame for past fracking accidents should not assuage the public’s distrust of the companies or of the fracking process and its environmental hazards. To put it as simply as possible, a region that loses its safe water supply has lost its viability.

There are so many environmental and health hazards to fracking, and David Brooks doesn’t so much as allude to any of them. Besides the toxic mix of chemicals injected into the earth along with the water [see my post, “Our Water and Fracking,” Sunday, February 6, 2011], shale deposits are rich in radium, so the fracking fluids will also absorb and leak uranium; they also will leak radon that is present in the shale; then, too, carbon dioxide and methane emissions for natural gas is claimed to be at least as dangerous as that for coal (the dirtiest of the fossil fuels). In fact, because carbon dioxide emissions from the production of shale oil and shale gas are so high, the European Union is warning against any oil shale development.

And finally, there is the water itself. Fracking uses enormous quantities of fresh water, usually taken from nearby streams, ponds and rivers. With every well fracked, 4 to 9 million gallons of water are injected into the ground (along with a toxic mix of chemicals). Since a single well can be fracked up to 12 separate times, it could consume 100 million gallons of fresh water in its lifetime. An average person drinks ca. 79,000 gallons of water in a lifetime. Therefore, the 100 million gallons of freshwater that a single well could consume over its operational life would supply a lifetime of water to 5,050 people. Multiply this by the 400,000 new fracking wells that are planned in the next decade, and we could supply a lifetime of water to over 2.02 billion people.

Which, I ask, is the better use of our diminishing supply of this crucial resource? Do we continue to waste precious resources on non-renewable forms of energy, or do we work towards a renewable energy future?

As an antidote to David Brooks’ flawed examination of fracking as a way to mine natural gas from our shale deposits, watch the very brief video trailer from Gasland, the movie by Josh Fox. Also, watch the video titled “Fracking Hell: The Untold Story,” a report on our Marcellus shale produced by Earth Focus, a British ecology group. Only then should you make up your mind about which direction would be the wisest to embrace.

Appendix:

This brief appendix summarizes a random sampling of the hundreds of accidents that have occurred as a result of fracking in America. These examples came from the study by Craig Michaels, "Fractured Communities: Case Studies of the Environmental Impacts of Industrial Gas Drilling," Riverkeeper, September 2010, which one can download as a pdf document.

1). On June 3, 2010, improper well control procedures led to a gas well blowout in Clearfield County, PA, leading to the release of nearly a million gallons of toxic wastewater that polluted two high quality waters, the Alex Branch and the Little Laurel Run . The company, EOG Resources, from Midland, TX, has been on Fortune’s list of 100 best companies to work for for five consecutive years.

2). On April 1, 2010, a tank and an open pit containing fracking fluid caught fire in Hopewell Township, PA, shooting flames at least 100 feet high. For days earlier, residents complained of foul odors and a 480-acre farm suffered soil and water contamination. The company, Atlas Energy, has since become Chevron-Atlas Energy, Inc. with a merger in February, 2011.

3). On December 15, 2007, fracking in the Clinton sandstone formation caused natural gas to migrate through fractures and into a private house in Bainbridge, OH, causing a major explosion inside the house. The drilling also led to extensive water contamination in the region. The company, Ohio Valley Energy Systems, is part of Hoovers (a D&B Company)

Another Example of Polluted Water Igniting

4). In January, 2009, methane gas was migrating to the surface in Dimock, PA. One water well exploded, and at least nine other wells reported elevated levels of methane, four of these with a threat of explosion. Elsewhere, the same company was cited for spills that polluted a wetland and caused a fish kill in Stevens Creek. The same company also trucked 44,000 barrels of wastewater to a facility in the suburbs of Philadlphia, and this water was discharged into a creek that provided drinking water to 17 municipalities serving over 300,000 residents. The company, Cabot Oil & Gas, is based in Houston, TX. On Dimock, see also this revealing video at the bottom of the 4th page of the Vanity Fair article, "A Colossal Fracking Mess."

5). In 2010, in Louisiana, seventeen head of cattle died a painful death, bellowing, bleeding and foaming at the mouth after drinking water that had flowed from a natural gas well. The company, Chesapeake Energy, based in Oklahoma City OK, is the second largest producer of natural gas in the United States. Chesapeake Energy also caused this fracking fluid spill in Bradford County, PA.

6). Between June and July, 2009, the city of Cleburne, TX suffered at least seven earthquakes; it had not registered an earthquake ever before in its 142-year history. The cause has been linked to the injection of wastewater from fracking operations. The company, again, was Chesapeake Energy.

Containers of Fracking Fluid

Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park: A Record from Tuesday, October 11

2011-10-17T00:09:00.000-07:00

I took the following twenty-eight photographs on Tuesday, October 11 in Zuccotti Park in preparation for my third blog post on the Occupy Wall Street movement [OWS] although this was my first visit to the protesters' actual encampment. Zuccotti Park sits a few blocks north of Wall Street and one block north of New York's National Historic Landmark Trinity Church, a Gothic Revival building designed by architect Richard Upjohn and completed in 1846.

Zucotti Park is a block long rectangle bordered on its east by Broadway, west by Trinity Place, north by Liberty Street, and south by Cedar Street. Being located just a few blocks east of the World Trade Center Towers, the park--then named Liberty Plaza Park--was in need of repairs after 9/11. The fact that at this moment it serves as the camp site for the OWS protesters is fitting, in that it also served as the staging area for the emergency operations following the 9/11 disaster.

The park had been a private park ever since 1968, when it was built by the US Steel Corp., whose building flanks its north edge. When it was redesigned and reopened in June, 2006, it was named after John Zuccotti, the chairman of Brookfield Properties, as they were the new owners of what had been the US Steel building.

We all can thank Mr. Zuccotti for generously allowing the OWS protesters to use this private park. He has been an important public servant for decades and has been quoted as saying "my heart is in this city." Appropriately, given the Park's present function as a place of refuge for people, many who are here from other parts of the country and the world, at its rededication ceremony of 2006 then-Governor Pataki spoke these words: "The park has been re-imagined as an urban oasis, and just like the new Lower Manhattan, it too will be vibrant day and night with 500 twinkling lights making the park a welcoming space for workers, residents, and visitors." Little did he realize how bright those lights would twinkle and how special they would be!

I present twenty-eight photographs taken in Zuccotti Park, organized roughly in terms of three broad subject areas: one being the Broadway edge of the park, its most public side, and some other interactions with the city beyond its perimeter; another being the individual people who are camping there as protesters; and a third being some examples of the activities and organization within the campsite itself. However, my comments that appear below each photograph won't expand so much on these three subject areas. Instead, they will interpret a specific aspect found within the photographs--each a specific document of this day, Tuesday, May 11, 2011--as a way to connect them to the broader condition of our country. I encourage you to read these entries piecemeal, image by image; they needn't be read as a single document, in one sitting.

Zuccotti Park: Keith, Get used to it

Keith came to New York six days earlier from North Dakota. He left his job selling cars to join New York protests. His inspiration were social news websites like Reddit.com; after spending the good part of two days on them, he packed up and left home (but he says that he will be allowed to return to his job). For an example of the sort of commentary that he may have been watching on those two days, see this post from reddit politics.

Keith's sign is priceless, an acknowledgement of a major criticism of OWS, and yet, one of its strengths. What do these protesters want? What are they after? The answer seems at once everything and nothing. They want decent jobs, living wages, safe homes, clean air and water, good schools, affordable public transportation, you name it. Theirs is a call for simple human dignity.

In the words of Van Jones of the American Dream movement, they may lack "message clarity," but they have an abundance of "moral clarity." Watch this wonderful ad, less than thirty seconds, which offers an overview of what OWS wants.

But then, maybe now the time has come to present some specific demands, as Matt Taibbi writes in the most recent Rolling Stone, and he proposes five short, powerful ones. I encourage you to read his article.

Zuccotti Park: Justin at the Info Desk on Broadway

Anyone walking north on Broadway will first encounter this OWS information desk. Justin, in the red cap, is talking to pedestrians and offering literature, including issues of the newspaper, The Occupied Wall Street Journal. He came from Michigan to participate in this event and is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

Hovering above him is a mock-up of a predator drone with a paper sign naming it Unmanned Assassination Vehicle. It was put up by anti-war activists, although I was unable to find out who, in particular, did this, except for locating a group named AttaX which has a (musical?) piece with this name and a possible connection to an internet personality and early podcaster named Adam Curry.

The use of the word "assassination" in the name clearly contradicts official US policy in regard to the drones, in that the Administration has argued that drone strikes agains Al Qaeda and its allies are lawful military actions and fall under the general principle self-defense. Therefore, their targeted killings are not "assassinations." But then, in contradiction to this argument, in April the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, stated that drones could be used to "assassinate" Colonel Gadaffi. So much for cooperative allies!

Zuccotti Park, Broadway Line-up: Mark, Ryan and Scott

Pedestrians walking up-and-down Broadway will encounter quite a few protesters standing with signs, fairly quietly but always ready to engage in a discussion. Mark (to the left, looking down) is from Riverside, CA and holds a sign saying "Tax Wall St. Transactions." He has a PhD in Philosophy and had taught at a charter school until he was let go for lack of any union protections and with no warning. Ryan (in the center) is from Asheville, NC, and his sign reads "End the wars--End the Fed (two simple ways to fix the economy)." He is a student at the University of North Carolina. Scott is a student from Philadelphia and only came up for the day. His sign reads "Capitalism is a religion that makes Satan a God." Typical of the OWS protesters, these are thoughtful, intelligent and sincere fellows.

Ryan's sign on ending our wars, thus fixing our economy, may sound too simplistic. However, the cost of our wars since 9/11 is at least $3.7 trillion and it could easily reach $4.4 trillion. Under half of that sum would have sufficed to upgrade and modernize all of our infrastructure problems: aviation, bridges, dams, drinking water, national energy power grid, hazardous waste, navigable waterways, railroads, roads, schools, solid waste, transit systems, and wastewater. This, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which has given America a grade of "D" on its infrastructures.

Zucotti Park: Henry Ford on our Banking System, Myles

Myles is an "IT-guy" from Queens and comes down to volunteer his time for the cause. His quotation from Henry Ford hints at the longer history behind the criminal disregard for people within our banking system. This, alone, ought to call into question the deregulation of that industry that has taken place over that past thirty years and has been promoted, in particular but not solely, by our Republican politicians.

But we could go back even farther in our history for insightful warnings about banks. Thomas Jefferson, in the 1809 debate over the re-charter of the Bank Bill said: "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." A century later, Theodore Roosevelt said that "The issue of currency should...be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to...provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands."

But, alas, what contemporary Republican can resist privatizing any moving body under the sun? And so, we come to today's fiscal and economic crisis, fueled by the greed of Wall Street bankers. Even J. Edgar Hoover realized the danger when, in 1955, he wrote, "Banks are an almost irresistible attraction for that element of our society which seeks unearned money."

Zuccotti Park: Devon, Read the Bible

Devon came up from Jersey City, NJ and already had been in New York for five days. He came when he saw the video of a senior police officer pepper spraying two women who were talking to a representative of Democracy Now and were properly standing behind the orange netting of the police lines. His sign asks "right wing politicians" to read the Bible and "follow its teachings!" He then quotes from 1 John, 3:17 to illustrate the hypocrisy of many of the religious right: "If we are rich and see others in need, yet close our hearts against them, how can we claim to love God?

Even if religious placards hardly dominate the signs at OWS, many commentators have noted a religious dimension to the movement. Marisa Egerstrom, a PhD candidate in American Religious History at Harvard observes that the democratic society that OWS is promoting "sounds pretty Christian to me. What the early Apostles called 'The Way'...repudiates the pursuit of individual wealth in favor of building communities that care for the marginalized, the desperate and the powerless. Jesus demonstrated this by healing lepers and dining with prostitutes and tax collectors." Others have made similar associations.

Zuccotti Park: Aly's Coffee, et. al.

Moving on to a few examples of what I call "other interactions with the city beyond," here we see the Cedar Street edge of Zuccotti Park lined with food kiosks from early morning until late afternoon: Aly's Coffee, Halal, Sam's Falafel, Smoothie and even two upstate farmers familiar to local farmer's markets, Migliorelli Farms and Pick of New York have set up tents to provide the demonstrators with fresh fruits and vegetables. Free enterprise is alive and well, even in Zuccotti Park!

Rising above the kiosks in the background are two neo-Gothic office buildings built between 1904-07, the Trinity building and the US Realty Building.

Zuccotti Park: Chris watches as Anthony plays chess with a passer-by

Chris, from Long Beach, CA watches as his friend Anthony, from Philadelphia, plays chess with a New Yorker who had passed through the park. This was just one of many examples of local office workers, residents, and tourists engaging with the demonstrators in their encampment.

Zuccotti Park: Construction Workers on lunch break on Cedar Street

Workers from a nearby construction site sit on the granite wall defining the southern edge of Zuccotti Park. Behind them can be seen some of the fifty-four honey locusts that were part of the 2006 remaking of the park and that provide the campers with the comfort of shade and protection from the elements.

Although these workers have their backs to the Park interior, many others were interacting with the demonstrators elsewhere. Although initially skeptical about the young demonstrators, the construction workers have been won over to their support. One worker was quoted as saying, "You are our future, and I will march with you!" Another remarked, "'We are the 99%' is pretty f**ng genius," in regard to the main motto for OWS. A third added, "Thank you for sparking the labor movement...and for showing us how to do it."

The most powerful endorsement of all, however, might be the first several minutes of this YouTube video of several thoughtful, and eloquent construction workers--clearly a part of the 99%.

Zuccotti Park: Kitchen

Inside, the Park may at first appear chaotic, but soon its organization becomes apparent. Located in the center is the Kitchen, serving free food donated from various organizations, from local restaurants, and from individual, local donations at collection jars within the Park itself. Thousands are fed daily, and seemingly smoothly, even without a centralized acquisition system, nor on-site ovens or refrigerators. As Michael Kimmelman has written in the New York Times, the demonstrators "have devised their own form of leaderless governance....[and] the governing process they choose is itself a bedrock message of the protest."

Zuccotti Park: The People's Library

The Library, which takes up about half of the Liberty Street edge of the park and makes use of its granite wall and bench structure to serve as shelving, contains donated books on nearly all subjects, including a children's book section.

Zuccotti Park: Occupation Status Board

Posted near a locust tree is a large cardboard sheet noting that this is day 25, indicating the weather predictions, cautioning what should not be done, noting required "quiet hours" (10:00 pm-8:00 am), other important regulations and events, and updates on kindred movements in other cities around the world. Nearby is a "Comfort Center" stocked with donated clothing, bedding, toothpaste, deodorant, all free for the taking.

Zuccotti Park: Drum Circle

At the western edge of the Park, facing Trinity Place and taking advantage of the steps that lead up into the Park from that side to form a convenient amphitheater, drummers and other musicians entertain themselves and a gathering crowd. At times, celebrity entertainers have joined them.

Zuccotti Park: Dancers

Festive music and a heavy beat entertain the gathering crowd as several of the "campers" perform an ecstatic dance. One holds a sign that admonishes us: "You weren't afraid to dance as a baby."

In the background can be seen the black structural steel frame of the original US Steel Building, designed by the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and built in 1972. Its site was that of the former Singer Building designed by Ernest Flagg; when completed in 1908, this was briefly the tallest building in the world.

Zuccotti Park: Sacred Space and Tree of Life

The single London plane tree, encircled by a granite bench, occupies the north-west corner of the Park. The demonstrators have christened this their sacred space with an altar full of offerings surrounding the base of the tree. Their intention is hardly pagan, and the concept of the tree of life, found in so many mythologies, appropriately conveys the idea that all life on earth is related.

Just out of the picture is a bronze sculpture, entitled Double Check, of a life-sized, seated man looking into his briefcase. It is a work by the New Jersey artist, J. Seward Johnson. Thus, at least one (inanimate) Wall Street type businessman sits among the demonstrators who are trying to change his ways. And so, within the compass of the "tree of life" the 1% and the 99% also unite.

Zuccotti Park: Greedozer and Company, detail

Zuccotti Park: Greedozer and Company, view from behind

Zuccotti Park: Greedozer and Company, front view

Greedozer, the embodiment of human greed and industrial disregard for our environment, is the invention of the Australian performance artist, Benny Zable. He has been using some version of this figure to protest around the world ever since the early 1970s. Silently, as a mime, he stands, then slowly turns to reveal his full message: "There are no jobs on a dead planet."

Assuming the form of Greedozer, Zable encourages his audience to "work, consume, be silent." He relies on our apathy to achieve his goal of making earth a dead planet. On the back of his black robe he informs us that we have chosen extinction.

This is a powerful piece of performance art. Too bad our politicians continue to approve drilling, fracking, mountaintop removal, factory farming, greenhouse gas emissions, ever increasing consumption and growth, private modes of transportation and the many other things that jeopardize our earth but increase the wealth of the individuals and industries that lobby Congress and serve Greeedozer hourly.

Zuccotti Park: Stephen

Stephen, as his sign makes perfectly clear, can't afford a lobbyist. Luckily, he could afford to fly to New York for five days to participate in OWS. He arrived from Minneapolis and was inspired to come to New York in his words, "to go to the heart of the beast." His moment of inspiration was Steve Jobs, not his untimely death, but his words about living: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

Zuccotti Park: Charlie

Charlie came to New York from Arkansas, claiming to have been inspired by the Transit Workers Union. His message asks our leaders to activate their conscience.

Zuccotti Park: Chris (in tank top)

I found Chris working at the Info Desk in the northwest corner of the Park. He came from New Jersey, has been with OWS for seven days, and says that he will stay "indefinitely." The energy and dedication of these kids is wonderful, as is their discipline to remain calm and focused.

For example, Chris told me about an encounter with a Tea Partier who was attempting to foment trouble, but he and others simply laughed at the man, rather than engage him in a challenging way. Their mirth increased when the man tried to tell them that Eisenhower was not a Republican, and he apparently went off to find other, more gullible, victims.

Zuccotti Park: Media Center, Colin

Colin was one of several workers at the Media Center, which has computers powered by generators. He comes from Connecticut, is interested in journalism, and claims to have been with OWS for seventeen days.

Zuccotti Park: Herbie, OWS to SCOTUS

Herbie lives near Albany, NY, and comes down to volunteer for several days at a time. This was his third trip to New York to work with OWS. His sign is a message from OWS to the Supreme Court of the United States, its logic clear except within the Wonderland that seems to have turned our Supreme Court topsy-turvy: "Corporations are not persons," and "money is not speech."

We all know about the Citizens United v. FEC case, to which his first statement about corporations refers. But the Roberts' court has come out with several other decisions that would seem to be giving corporations free rein to completely handcuff workers and individuals. Wal-Mart v. Dukes, essentially says that there can be no class-action suits, that some companies are just too big to sue; so does AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. Then, going further through the looking glass, in Janus Capital Group v. First Derivative Traders, the Supreme Court essentially has allowed large financial companies to produce false prospectuses and lie to clients with impunity, simply by doing so through dummy corporations.

As Dahlia Lithwick writes in Slate in July of this year, "the Supreme Court is giving corporate America a handbook on how to engage in misconduct." Ralph Nader, in a scathing analysis of this most "activist" [my word] Supreme Court ever, whose majority is completely beholden to big business, concludes an article entitled "The Corporate Supreme Court" (July 18, 2011) with these words: "Never have I urged impeachment of Supreme Court justices. I do so now, for the sake of ending the Supreme Court's corporate-judicial dictatorship that is not accountable under our system of checks and balance in any other way."

Zuccotti Park: Just waking up, Kaley

Kaley, in her fake fur boa, arrived the previous night from Sarasota, FL, along with twenty-five other students from the New College of Florida. They all decided to come to volunteer with OWS during their Fall Break. Now, isn't that a change from college students using their break to party in Ft. Lauderdale!

Zuccotti Park: Rae and friends

Rae, the gal in the center with her head turned down to her right, came from Michigan for a few days with the blessings, so she says, of her professors. her sign reveals the disillusion of so many of our youth: "They call it the American Dream--you have to be asleep to believe it. WAKE UP."

Zuccotti Park: Library Reference Desk, Sam

Sam, who is working the People's Library Reference Desk, has been helping OWS for the past five days. he arrived from Pennsylvania in order "to be productive," since, in his words, "America today has no work for people."

Of course there's no work for Sam and millions of others. Senate Republicans have blocked the American Jobs Act and won't allow it to go forward in the Senate, even though it would likely have led to the creation of 2 million new jobs. And House Republicans, after claiming to be in favor of infrastructure investments, blocked the Infrastructure Investment Plan. Sorry, Sam, you may have to stay in Zuccotti park a while longer, but you're in good company.

Zuccotti Park: Paul

Paul, who was a veteran and served in Iraq, came down from New Hampshire, although he first volunteered for one day in Chicago and then in Boston. He says that he will remain in New York "for the duration." His sign captures many of the uncommitted of the 99%, and he becomes their surrogate: those who can't, those who won't, and those who are too afraid.

Zuccotti Park: The Undocumented

The undocumented may well be among those too afraid to protest, so Paul can serve as their surrogate. What are we to do when some of us legislate against others. Alabama is seeing Hispanic students disappearing from school rosters, too scared to attend classes. It is losing Hispanic farm workers for the same reason, threatening to lead to millions of dollars lost in unharvested crops. Michelle Bachmann has pledged to build a double fence the entire length of our border with Mexico; so has Herman Cain, an electrified fence twenty feet high that can kill, topped with barbed wire, and guarded by military troops. Won't that be beautiful! South Carolina, Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia are all calling for Big Brother Government to check immigration status, as is the Tea Party in Texas.

These people are part of us. They are part of the 99%. How pathetically shameful we have become!

Zuccotti Park: When Texas Executes One

Among the many signs waiting for a march is the one in the center distance: "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." More shame on our wonderful country. Texas Governor Rick Perry has been in office eleven years and has allowed 234 executions to take place. This number is more than executions in the next two states, not in eleven years, but in the thirty-five years since the death penalty was restored in our country. Those two other states, California and Florida, even have larger "death row" populations than Texas.

Given the fact that Texas has spent $700 million on those executions, we must question Perry's claim to being a fiscal conservative. We already know that he isn't a compassionate conservative!

Zuccotti Park: Sleeping Inside

If you are counting, you know this is photograph 29 (out of my stated 28). It was taken by my friend, Leslie Wagner, who sent it to me with the following poem that she wrote. I thought that her poem was the perfect way to conclude this post, and so it is the companion to this twenty-ninth image:

the park

trees and flags

trunks and poles

for catapulting and leaning on

for belongings

like friends

leaves falling, now, my bed

a blanket of stars

and stripes

this park to sleep in

The 99% Occupy Wall Street in Search of Another World

2011-10-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

In the later afternoon of Wednesday, October 5, people began to gather in Foley Square, just north of City Hall in Manhattan. Word had it that the labor unions would join with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators on a march from there down to Wall Street. With about two hours to spare before I met a friend for dinner, I went to Foley Square, camera in hand, to have a second look at the demonstrations that had begun two-and-a-half weeks ago.

The photographs that follow represent my second attempt to present and interpret this growing movement that calls itself Occupy Wall Street. They are my main material for this post, although I have added some commentary after each one. I also have chosen to make the horizontal images the same size as the vertical ones so they "read" better, even though they then will extend beyond the right margin of the text ( a design issue within the Google blog over which I have no control). Enjoy.

New York Supreme Court, 60 Centre Street

Before marching down to Wall Street, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators gathered in Foley Square. I left the square before the march started, but in the hour-and-a-half that I was there, I watched it fill to bursting, to the point where I could barely manage to blaze a trail out to the subways.

This courthouse, with its pedimented Corinthian front, overlooks Foley Square from the east and provides a certain gravitas to the civic center. It was designed by Guy Lowell, a Boston architect, and completed in 1925. Engraved above the columns are the words of George Washington, “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.”

Supreme Court reflected in façade of Court of International Trade

Across Foley Square to the west, we see the James L. Watson Court of International Trade building reflecting the Supreme Court as well as a demonstrator’s sign that is emblematic of this event: “It’s About Freedom.”

America is losing its freedom, and it’s not from outside forces. Rather the threat comes from unregulated and increasingly unfettered greed and hunger for power from within our own country.

Anti-Corporate Flag

Replacing the stars on this American Flag are corporate logos, and it’s an equal opportunity selection. Not only are the obvious culprits like Shell, Chase Manhattan, Citigroup, GE, IBM, CBS and Xerox represented, but also corporations that do not so clearly lean to the political right, like Adidas, Nike, Pizza Hut, Pepsi, Playboy and Quiznos. Overlaid on this field of "uncaring corporate greed" [my words] is the symbol of denial, a circle with a diagonal line through it.

Corporations, no matter what they make, have become insatiable. They are structured for short-term gains and they neglect long-term decisions that would benefit them as well as the country, such as educational and social programs. Today’s corporations have no respect for national boundaries, and the idea of local, American corporations in which we can take pride is a thing of the past. Why we still feel loyalty to them is a mystery. They only care for the bottom line. They are prepared to destroy our environment for it and to sell us dangerous products for it. They are inhuman entities and they are definitely not individuals!

We Are The 99%: Barry with a Transport Workers Union sign

In contrast to the corporations that seem to have taken over the soul of our country, here is the real heart of America--the other 99%: those who are actual people and not corporate entities, who are not millionaires, who right now pay a higher percentage of their earnings in taxes than do the very wealthy. They are the upper middle class, the middle class, the working class, the poor, the out of work, the out-of-home. They are doctors, teachers, truck drivers, packers, public servants (including the police overseeing this demonstration), workers in the private service industry. They are the backbone of America and they are being eaten from within, at their marrow, by the greed of our large corporations, banks, other Wall Street operatives, and by wealthy people like the Koch Brothers who don’t give a damn for our country and just want to make more money for themselves.

This sign represents the Transport Workers Union, which was founded in 1934 by New York subway workers, and later became a member of the AFL-CIO. Since 1945 the TWU also began to represent airline employees, and since 1954, railway employees. Barry, who is holding the sign, lives in Manhattan. He is not a member of the union, but has come out to support this and other unions, as of course he should support them. We all should. Without the TWU, we would not be flying, taking the train, or the subways and busses. Without the 99%, even the Koch Brothers would be unable to leave their gated community!

The Cancer Cell

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the CANCER cell,” reads the sign. In one sentence, this manages to summarize the problem of America today and the reason for this on-going Occupy Wall Street demonstration.

Cancer, the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body which divide and grow, invades neighboring tissues and spreads throughout its host body. One of many ways to apply this cancer analogy to today's political environment is to use it as a lens by which to examine the the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision: what can possibly be more “abnormal” than calling a corporation a “person?”

We are seeing the results of this decision already with the cancerous spread of untold amounts of corporate money funding efforts to restricting voting in many states, to buying elections and candidates, to destroying public and private unions, to rescinding child labor laws, to cutting health coverage for low-income families, to selling state-owned entities to private (corporate) buyers, to dismissing elected officials of local government and appointing unelected "emergency managers" (isn't this what dictatorships do?!). I could go on for paragraphs, but you get the picture. A cancer is destroying America, and our Supreme Court is helping to spread this infection.

Government for the People

Andy, who is holding this sign, is from the Bronx, and how can we argue with his message which simply asks for a government of, by, and for the people? How is it that we have come to the point of needing to state the obvious? These words, of course, reference Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Isn’t it ironic that we need to recall the words and the message of a great Republican president because today’s Republicans (and the right wing that it embraces) are undermining the great government that Lincoln envisioned and served!

Real Democracy

This sign, “We want REAL Democracy, not 2 ‘Parties’ run by Wall Street,” echoes the sentiment of Andy’s sign as well as the meaning behind Lincoln’s words.

God and Wealth

Annie, who attends Union Theological Seminary, quotes Matthew on one side: “You Cannot Serve God & Wealth,” while on the other side she has written, “people of faith support Occupy Wall Street.” This is a good reminder that, among the other 99% that constitute normal, everyday Americans, there are many people of faith, many religious people. Very likely, the majority of Christian Americans are not the right-wing evangelicals who always seem to enjoy national press coverage.

Books not Bombs

Barbara from Manhattan is a member of Code Pink, a well-known women’s anti-war group founded in 2002. She holds up a sign that ought to have every American thinking and reconsidering our priorities: Why IS there always money for war but not for education?

Teamsters Local 111

Bill represents the Teamsters and the official presence of unions, which have joined Occupy Wall Street as of Wednesday.

Chop from the Top

Katherine from Brooklyn expresses what well over 90% of Americans would like to see: a much greater measure of economic equality among Americans. In fact, a recent study revealed that 92% of Americans would prefer a society with much less income disparity, choosing Sweden's model over ours. Given that the average CEO today makes well over 400 times what his average employee makes, and the top 1% of Americans own 38% of the nation’s wealth, the outcome of this recent study makes complete sense.

Keep this in mind: The wealthy were still wealthy during the Eisenhower era, when the top tax bracket was 91%; yet today they (and their Republican toadys) are screaming “class warfare” at the idea of returning to the relatively paltry 39% tax bracket of the recent pre-Bush era. Maybe they'd stop their screaming were we to threaten to impose Sweden's tax rates on wealthy Americans!

Katherine represents US Uncut, a grassroots movement fighting the budget cuts that are now directed toward working Americans and also acting against corporate tax cheats and public service cuts.

Holly & Ken from the Judson Memorial Church

Holly and Ken hold the banner of the Judson Memorial Church, a Greenwich Village landmark that dates from 1892 and was designed by McKim, Mead & White. Long known for its progressive activism and support of art and artists, the Judson Church works on immigrant rights, peace action and women’s reproductive rights. Its senior minister, Donna Schaper calls it a “gathering place for people who seek spiritual nurture to build public capacity for social change.”

Joel with Shirtwaists

One hundred years ago, March 25, 1911, the Triangle shirtwaist factory caught fire, killing 146 garment workers within eighteen minutes, then the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York. The reason: managers had locked the doors to stairwells and exits.

Here we see Joel, a retired teamster, who, with some friends, is carrying actual shirtwaists overlaid with diagonal sashes that call for “Solidarity,” “Power to the People,” “People Over Profits,” and several similar statements. Rather than mere placards, these shirtwaists serve as inspiring pieces of activist art. In the context of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, these "talking" shirtwaists serves as powerful reminders of America's corporate greed and a lack of concern for the worker.

Michael and the RICO Law

Michael from Manhattan carries a sign that equates the Wall Street bankers with a crime family and calls for them to be indicted under the RICO Laws. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act allows for the leaders of a syndicate to be tried for crimes that they ordered others to do, even if they remained above the acts themselves. Naturally, what Michael asks for will never happen; but it should. After all, virtually every bank and financial company on Wall Street was involved in criminal scandals that destroyed trillions of the world’s wealth. As Matt Taibbi wrote in an article of March 3, 2011 titled “Why Isn’t Wall Street In Jail?,” ours was “an industrywide scandal that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities.”

Vernal and the NYCC

Vernal, from Brooklyn, is one of several representatives for New York Communities for Change at the demonstration. NYCC is a coalition of low and moderate income families fighting for social and economic justice throughout the state.

Writing on their web site as to why NYCC is joining Occupy Wall Street, John Kest puts forth the theme shared by most of the demonstrators: “While the big banks have destroyed our economy and working people have fought to make do with less and less, the richest one percent of Americans continue to take of more of the pie.”

Collective Bargaining Works

In the mid-1950s, 36% of America’s labor force was unionized, a number far below the percentages of almost every other developed democracy of the world. By 2007, this number had fallen to 13.3%, due to a half-century of business propaganda that demonized unions because they were feared as a democratizing force that needed to be eliminated in order to promote the “capitalist story.”

Collective bargaining, the process of normal union employment negotiations as well as a way to resolve labor-management conflicts, “is, essentially, a recognized way of creating a system of industrial jurisprudence.” It forces management to honor the civil rights of workers and to operate within a set of established rules. Of course collective bargaining works; and without it, workers work less well.

Donna for Workers' Rights

How can one argue with this statement? Workers’ rights are human rights. Worker’s rights are simply a cry for a living wage, job safety, workers’ compensation, a paid vacation, health benefits, pensions, an eight-hour work day...and a right to organize to insure that all these other rights are recognized.

War on Workers

Collective bargaining and trade unions are being castigated by many Republicans today, especially by governors of states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and Maine, who clearly have declared a war on workers. Nevertheless, collective bargaining is recognized internationally through human rights conventions, while the organization of trade unions is recognized as a fundamental human right as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. In other words, America’s demonization of unions and today’s war on workers places us squarely on the opposite side of most of the world’s developed democracies and in conflict with one of the early, major declarations of the United Nations General Assembly.

Chuck says "Tax the rich until they're poor"

Chuck came in from New Jersey with this sign that indicates the degree to which growing economic inequality and wealth stratification has overtaken America. Income inequality has been increasing since the 1970s, in contrast to America in the mid-20th century, when income inequality had been decreasing; and in 2006, the United States had one of the highest levels of income inequality among high income countries.

Chuck's sign reads: “Tax the Rich Until They’re Poor...Let them see what it’s like.” Below this it reads: “Corporate America is stealing the American Dream from your children and grandchildren.”

Robbing the Middle Class

There are so many ways in which today’s Republicans are robbing the middle class (and giving tax breaks to the rich) that I hesitate to start down this rocky road. Instead, why not state one example in which Republicans and Democrats have been ganging up on the middle class like some trash-talking WWE tag team. That example is Social Security. Although Social Security actually has a $2.5 trillion surplus, Congress (during the Bush Presidency) blithely (and improperly) spent much of it for year-to-year budget allocations for the wars, tax cuts and oil subsidies.

Nicole: Greed Against the Earth

Nicole, from New Jersey, brings forth a broader, ecological, problem of greed, not only of Wall Street and the banking industry but also of the extractive industries. Fracking and the pollution of our land and water, mountaintop removal, deep water oil drilling, the heating of the globe due to human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are putting us close to a point of no return, a “tipping point,” after which we may not be able to survive on this earth. But, of course, there is money to be made, and some of those making it are happy to fund the dissemination of misinformation that leads to the insane denials of global warming, or the equally insane rally cries of “drill, baby, drill.”

Analyzing this crisis in its broadest context, paleontologist Peter Ward has coined a phrase for this (and he also has written a book), calling it the Medea Hypothesis, which claims that our very success will cause our extinction.

Civil Liberties, et. al.

A man holding a sign saying “Jobs not Cuts,” a younger man raising his right hand in a clenched-fist salute, a Muslim woman with a sign reading, “Dude, Where’s My Civil Liberties?,” a fourth man with a sign that appears to be a play on the word “bomb” that may also allude to Obama, and a fifth sign indicating the lack of truth in television. This photograph captures the wonderful eclecticism that characterizes the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

Erica: Star Stuff

Erica, a graduate student at CUNY, holds up a sign that reads, “We are ONE SPECIES; we are star stuff, harvesting star light,” a quotation from Carl Sagan. So, Erica urges us to think beyond our country and the earth and into the Cosmos, or, more accurately, back to the Big Bang, which caused the earth and every living thing to be made of star stuff.

Michelle: My Professor

As Michelle, a student at Pratt, implies, everyone in this country ought to have health insurance, even her professor. Now, most professors have health insurance through their college or university plans. However, since we are in New York City, and New York colleges have the “luxury” of hiring many adjuncts along with full-time faculty, it may well be that her professor is an adjunct and does not on a college health plan. Yes, he should be covered--and so should every other person in America. But because of private insurance company greed and inefficiency, health spending per capita is much higher in America than in most other countries, the quality of care is lower, and our system is among the least equitable.

Richard: Strumming for the Social Contract

Richard, an actor with the WorkShop Theater Company, is entertaining the growing crowds on his banjo and has written a song, “Marching Down to Wall Street,” which can be found on YouTube. As he says, the reason he is here is that we are all in this together, and we must find a balance between socialism and capitalism. For a healthy social order, they need to co-exist.

The NYC Raging Grannies

Also entertaining the growing crowds in Foley Square are the Raging Grannies, or to be specific, the NYC Metro Raging Grannies and Their Daughters, for the Raging Grannies is an international movement which began in 1987 in British Columbia. Their purpose, as stated on their website, is to “promote global peace, justice and social and economic equality by raising consciousness through song parodies and satire.”

Foley Square ca. 4:30 pm, October 5, 2011

Here is what Foley Square looked like around 4:30 pm. The march downtown would not begin for quite some time, but it seemed as if a body was occupying every square foot of the civic center.

Christopher: Another World Is Possible

Christopher, from Brooklyn, holds two signs. The one states optimistically, “Another World Is Possible.” The other is a quotation from George Soros: “The Collapse of the Global Marketplace would be a Traumatic Event with Unimaginable Consequences. Yet I Find It Easier to Imagine than the Continuation of the Present Regime.”

George Soros has devoted himself to creating and promoting open societies around the globe, particularly in the Eastern bloc as the Soviet empire crumbled. He has championed tolerance, democratic governance, and human rights through his Open Society Foundations.

I and the many thousands of participants in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations would love to entertain the possibility of another world, a world of greater equality, a world in which the wealthy, the big bankers, the heads of our corporations all felt an obligation to the poor and the less wealthy, a world in which politicians cooperated consistently with the opposing party for the benefit of all their constituents and their country, a world in which no entity would consider defiling the natural environment, a world in which politicians and other decision makers primarily would consult scientific experts and not paid lobbyists, and a world in which the health and education of the entire citizenry would be given primacy.

These, indeed are the goals and the dreams of the 99% who are Occupy Wall Street. If only the other 1% would listen and join in; then, maybe, we could rescue our country.

WHEN I WAS A BOY

2011-09-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

THEN:

When I was a little boy, I lived with my family in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela, a town on the Orinoco River. At times we would drive to the capitol city of Caracas, or to Maracaibo, where, as I recall, we would take a Grace Line boat back to the United States. Both drives are quite long, even longer with the poor roads and the car tires of the years ca. 1946-50; rarely did we make the over 600 km. drive without at least two tire changes.

However, my strongest recollection of the trip was driving through the oil fields somewhere outside of Caracas and, most definitely outside of Maracaibo, which has some of the largest oil fields in the world. Because of the length of these trips, we always entered Caracas or Maracaibo in the evening, and my most powerful memory was of gas flare-offs illuminating the distant night sky. Bright tongues of fire, rising for what seemed to me like hundreds of feet, dotted the landscape beyond the relative safety of our road.

Gas Flare-off from an oil rig

To me, these flare-offs were like threatening, prehistoric beasts, and I would feel uneasy until our car would leave them behind. I was somewhere between the ages of seven and ten during these Venezuelan years, a fairly innocent young lad. Still, I questioned my father about those flare-offs. I would ask: “Isn’t it a waste of perfectly good gas?” “Why can’t they find some way to pipe and contain it?” “Can’t they turn it to use for the people living in the region?”

I don’t recall many specifics from my father’s answers to my questions, but, essentially, he said this is the way oil extraction work is done, that the burn-off of gas is also done as a safety precaution, and, anyway, there is no easy way to bottle or contain the gas. Now, this latter statement, coming from a man who had taught me, early on, “never to say never,” did not sit well with me. I thought: “So what if it may not be easy?” “There must be a way to contain that flare gas, and we should find that way to avoid such a waste of resources!”

But as the oil fields disappeared from view, I would drop the subject and accept my father’s explanations. After all, my father was a highly-educated geologist and the head of iron ore exploration in Venezuela for US Steel. Still, to this day, in my mind, the flame-off is a metaphor for thoughtless corporate greed, lazy technology, and inadequate science. It reeks of complacency and sloppiness.

Now, keep in mind, these were the thoughts of a young boy under the age of ten. The environmental movement which had its beginnings in the nineteenth century had waned by this time; DDT was still the pesticide of choice; and Rachel Carson had yet to awaken the world with her wonderfully popularizing books, The Sea Around Us (1951) and The Silent Spring (1962). Not that this particular boy, in 1951, would have ever read The Sea Around Us; reading, back then, was far from his favored activities, such as combining tree branches, strips of rubber cut from Mack truck inner-tubes, and leather patches to make slingshots, climbing mango trees, and taking pot shots at iguanas.

All I was doing with my questioning was simply giving free rein to my common sense. It hardly takes a grown-up or a college education to distinguish activities that are destructive from those that are constructive. Common sense, as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary constitutes “the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way.”

To me, those gas field flare-offs were neither reasonable nor safe. And today, we have the data to prove this to be true. Canadian researchers have measured more than sixty air pollutants carried downwind from natural gas flares, and among the air pollutants released, according to a California study of 2001, are: benzene, formaldehyde, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, including naphthalene, acetaldehyde, acrolein, propylene, toluene, xylenes, ethyl benzene and hexane. [for more on oil industry harmful pollutants, see my blogpost “Our Water & Fracking, Sunday, February 6, 2011]

Moreover, these pollutants are merely the icing on this destructive “cake.” The cake itself is the tons of carbon dioxide and methane that are major contributors to global warming and to the (very likely) eventual destruction of life on earth.

NOW:

But that was then, you may say. This is now. We have learned better. The environmental movement grew once more after the publication of Carlson’s Silent Spring (1962), and today’s world can even boast of green parties that promote sustainable societies based on environmentalism, social liberalism and grassroots democracy.

And yet, oil field flare-offs still exist. The worst examples are in Russia, Nigeria and Iran, but they can be found anywhere where oil is being extracted from the ground. In the past decade, Nigeria has received the most press, and rightly so. Shell Oil’s operations in the Niger Delta have polluted the region for decades, destroyed the lives and livelihood of the native tribes, most notably the Ogoni, and threaten the health of our global environment. Those operations also led to the murder of the now legendary and internationally-recognized activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Boy walking past gas flare-off near Port Harcourt, Nigeria

In an article written in 2010 on Nigerian oil production, Daniel Howden refers to the “destructive and wasteful practice of gas flaring” and notes ironically that “the gas flares, some of which have been burning constantly since the 1960s, are visible from space. In a country where more than 60 per cent of the people have no reliable electricity supply, the satellite images show the flares burning more brightly than the lights of Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos.”

Howden goes on to observe that the Nigerian flare-off, “If put through a modern, combined-cycle power station...could fuel about a quarter of Britain's power needs. It is equivalent to more than one third of the natural gas produced in the UK's North Sea oil and gas fields and would meet the entire energy requirements of German industry.” So, while our global oil corporations pretend to be the champions of western (and global) energy needs, they also disregard those needs and continue to squander potentially vast energy sources because they don’t want to spend any extra money to harness them.

Since Russia leads all countries in regard to the volume of flare-off, its pollution is even worse, although it most likely causes less deleterious effects on the local populations than in the Niger Delta.

Russia, natural gas flare-offs

But what of our country, the United States? My childhood memories in Venezuela were awakened by recent events in America: specifically, in yesterday’s New York Times. There, Clifford Kraus wrote an article titled, “In North Dakota, Flames of Wasted Natural Gas Light the Prairie.” I could hardly believe my eyes.

North Dakota, natural gas flare-off

Kraus writes that, in North Dakota’s Bakken shale fields, on a daily basis, “more than 100 million cubic feet of natural gas is flared this way - enough energy to heat half a million homes for a day.” He goes on to observe that, “all told, 30 percent of the natural gas produced in North Dakota is burned as waste. No other major domestic oil field currently flares close to that much, though the practice is still common in countries like Russia, Nigeria and Iran.”

How could this be happening in the United States of America? Don’t we have regulations? Even Nigeria has regulations: flare-offs have been illegal there since 1984, only Shell and those in power whom it pays off simply ignore the laws.

Of course, with our democratic system of checks and balances, our lawmakers can’t be bought off. Well, at least not in the way of Nigeria, which is simply to turn a blind eye to illegal activity. In America, our lawmakers have to work for their bribes. They have to draft and then pass new bills that weaken governmental regulations, thus enabling the large corporations to do as they please with our land and its resources. It’s all quite legal.

Our lawmakers, Republicans in particular, just let the major energy corporations help them write new legislation. Dick Cheney’s task force, charged with developing America’s energy policy, held secret meetings and relied on the recommendations of Big Oil: Exxon, Mobil, Conoco, Shell Oil, BP America and Chevron. Moreover, during the Bush/Cheney years in the White House, “the oil and gas industry has spent $393.2 million on lobbying the federal government.” [on our politicians appeasing large corporations, see my blog post “America’s Corporate Dragon,” Saturday, April 2, 2011]

Most of this money went to Republican members of Congress. For example, in the 2006 election cycle, oil and gas companies contributed over $19 million to political campaigns (82% to Republicans); in 2004 it was over $25 million (80% to Republicans), and in 2000 it was over $34 million (78% to Republicans). Some of this money surely purchased the weakening of regulations on flare-offs, and there’s not much that we can do about it except to vote in many more environmentally-conscious politicians. The situation in America today is as dire as ever. As Dan Froomkin has written, “Now that the House is controlled by the GOP, Obama's proposal [to repeal the enormous subsidies to the oil and gas industries] is deader than an oil-soaked pelican. Over the last decade in particular, the Republican Party's anti-tax policies and pro-drilling campaign rhetoric have become nearly indistinguishable from those of Big Oil.”

Thus, at North Dakota’s Bakken shale field, as Clifford Krauss notes, “the widespread flaring is a step backward for a domestic energy industry. Most oil and gas fields in the United States have well-developed facilities to gather and process gas. But the recent rise of shale drilling has changed the economic calculus....[and] in the Bakken, drillers have found it more profitable to just grab the oil and burn the gas.”

Natural gas flare-off, Bakken shale field, North Dakota

We have better solutions to managing natural gas emissions. One can reinject it back underground. One can convert it into liquid fuel (although this is an expensive option). And one can convert it into jet fuel (a much more affordable process). But these solutions require a strong will, and such a will needs to be backed by strong regulations, which we no longer have.

Corporations do not willingly spend money on the common good. Instead, they spend money on television ads like the one making the rounds today in which Exxon geologist Erik Oswald assures us that fracking is harmless, that “technology has made it possible to safely unlock this cleaner burning natural gas...[that] these deposits can provide us with fuel for a hundred years...[and provide us with] energy security.” Oswald is photogenic and handsome; he looks at us and speaks so earnestly; it’s hard not to believe him. However, he is lying to us. One cannot “safely unlock” this gas any more than one can claim that the flare-offs are necessary or are safe.

I don’t know what we ordinary citizens can do. We don’t have the money to buy back our politicians (both the 80% who are Republicans and the 20% who are Democrats). We can’t afford to hire four lobbyists for every member of Congress, as Big Oil does. We certainly can’t rely on Congress to do what’s right for America and our earth, especially when half of these supposedly educated people find it convenient to deny the findings of hard science.

However, we are in danger of destroying our planet in the very near future, and the activities of the oil corporations are playing a major role in this destruction. Within the next twenty years, we are likely to reach the tipping point when nothing we can do will reverse the process set in motion by our irresponsible and greedy activities. Kevin Schaefer of the US Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, CO states in regard to global warming: “Our research shows that the release of carbon from permafrost will result in an irreversible climate tipping point in only 20 years... Once the frozen carbon thaws out and decays, there is no way to put it back into the permafrost.”

What are we to do? A blog post like this won't reach many people (and what if it did?). Anyway, it's too long for most readers (my apologies). Maybe what we need are more naive, eight-year-old boys in charge of the world's oil corporations--or at least eight-year-old boys as young sons of the presidents of those corporations, exercising their common sense by asking their dads some tough questions about what they are doing to insure the future of our world.

Wall Street, September 17: Notes & Observations

2011-09-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

At noon on Saturday, as one url headline announced, “Thousands to protest on Wall Street for US Day of Rage September 17, 2011.” There certainly were hundreds (and Bloomberg News estimated about a thousand), but hardly “thousands,” who made their way down to lower Manhattan. Since the event had been part of a floating discussion on the internet for some time, "New York’s Finest" had sufficient warning and were out in force, blocking access to Wall Street for all but those with legitimate reason for entry.

The activist group Adbusters had begun discussions of this event in early July and, harboring visions of an American Tahrir Square, had hoped that 20,000 people would “flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months.” No wonder the police were ready with barricades. In Tahrir Square, that many people might seem a drop-in-the-bucket; in the narrow confines of Wall Street, they would be sleeping three-deep on top of each other!

But the issue was moot, as one can see from the three photos below.

An Empty, Barricaded, Wall Street (seen from Broadway)

Wall Street with Police Redirecting People

Exchange Place, also Barricaded and Inaccessible

Once thwarted from entering Wall Street, everyone naturally gravitated south to the bottom of Broadway. However, one group seemed content to confine itself to the few blocks of Broadway around Wall Street, stopping to unfurl its banner promoting the Glass-Steagall Act and, on cue from its choral director, breaking into patriotic song.

As I focused my camera, I began to sing the Star Spangled Banner with them. Then my eye caught the identifier at the bottom of their banner, “larouchepac.com.” My accompaniment stopped abruptly. I had been seduced, through song and sentiment, into joining an activity of an organization I otherwise distrust, if not detest!

LaRouche Choral Group

Still, I was with the LaRouchers, not only in the momentary act of singing, but also in their stated purpose: The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 had established the FDIC and regulated bank speculation. Unfortunately, sixty-six years later, this Act was repealed through the machinations of three Republicans, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act effectively removed those protections that had separated investment banks and commercial banks. In so doing, this new act opened the door to our present financial crisis. So yes, in this instance, I joined the LaRouchers, or at least held out hope for some new version of Glass-Steagall.

But then, one of the male singers in the second row held up a despicable banner reading “Invoke the 25th Amendment” and picturing President Obama with a Hitler mustache.

LaRouche Choral Group Revealing their True Selves

Their true, deluded nature shattered their seductive singing, as they continued to beat old, nonsensical horses: last year Lyndon LaRouche--hardly someone whom I would call mentally competent--had called for Obama’s removal from office for mental incompetency; his tool of extraction would be the never-invoked Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. It’s the birthers in another guise!

One might ask why the LaRouchers were at this otherwise progressive demonstration. But then, after a look at the demonstrators and the range of their causes, one might just as easily ask, “why not?”

Code Pink Demonstrators, Broadway

Here, for example, is Code Pink, a women’s organization which promotes peace and social justice and, in particular, places its focus on ending wars and changing our militarism.

Veterans for Peace Flag, Crowd, Bowling Green

Or here, we see the flag of Veterans for Peace. One encounters their members often at local demonstrations, at least in New York City. This organization was founded in 1985, with a national office in Saint Louis, MO. It’s objective is “to raise public awareness of the true costs and consequences of militarism and war--and to seek peaceful, effective alternatives.”

Bradley Manning Sign, Bowling Green

Then, there were several people who were championing the cause of Bradley Manning. Manning, as many of us recall, was the Army soldier arrested in Iraq in May of 2010 on suspicion of passing restricted material to WikiLeaks. He remains in solitary confinement in a brig in Quantico, VA.

Among the material leaked were two videos, one of airstrikes in which US helicopters attacked a district in Iraq, killing Reuters war correspondents and innocent citizens, and another of a US airstrike in Afghanistan, known as the Granai Massacre, in which a village south of Herat was attacked (apparently in error), leading to one of the highest civilian death tolls caused by western action since the war began in 2001.

Troy Davis Signs, Broadway

Throughout the mass of demonstrators, one could see signs pleading for leniency in the case of Troy Davis. Davis is scheduled to be executed by the State of Georgia later today (Wednesday, September 21) for the murder of a policeman, even though there are major doubts about his guilt: no physical evidence has connected him to the murder; no murder weapon has ever been found; seven of the original nine witnesses have recanted, and of the remaining two, one is highly suspect and the other may in fact be the murderer.

This case has spread far beyond our borders and is seen as an example of the corrupted justice system in America’s Deep South. On September 17, there were ten events in France alone protesting the execution, and rallies began in Hong Kong and carried on in other parts of Asia, Latin America and Europe.

America Is Not Broke Sign

Here, in a veiled challenge to Republican hypocrisy regarding the economy, national debt, their refusal to raise our debt ceiling and their proposals for a balanced budget amendment, is truth in a nutshell: America ain’t broke; it’s all a ruse, a smokescreen.

The statement apparently was taken from Michael Moore’s speech of early March, delivered to the protesters in Madison, WI. In it, Moore pointed out that “today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.” In other words, 400 individuals possess more money than 155 million people. This should be a national embarrassment.

The organization listed at the bottom of the sign, usuncut.org, has focused its efforts against corporate tax cheats and unfair public service cuts.

Guy Fawkes Masks

Along with Adbusters, which operates without a central planning committee or even a website, another group associated with encouraging this march on Wall Street is Anonymous. It was formed in 2003 and is dedicated to using the internet to promote civil disobedience while remaining hidden.

Anonymous is a form of international, decentralized collective that manages to operate in a coordinated way to accomplish self-agreed goals. Many participants of Saturday's demonstration wore these Guy Fawkes masks, which I suspect is a reference to Anonymous. However, they wore them as caps on top of their heads because it is illegal for more than two people to wear masks in public. I confess to asking these three young men to wear their masks over their faces in order to make this photograph. Guy Fawkes, of course, was the English revolutionary who plotted to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the British throne.

View Down Broadway to Bowling Green

Police Car and Charging Bull

Charging Bull and Policemen, View North from Bowling Green

The now famous Wall Street Bull, here protected by a police cruiser from the front and several policemen from its rear, is actually titled Charging Bull. It was designed and cast by the artist Arturo di Modica after the 1987 market crash and represents, in the artist’s words, "the strength, power and hope of the American people for the future."

Di Modica clandestinely installed it on the night of December 15, 1989 in front of the NYSE and in the middle of Broad Street. As he had no permit, the statue was impounded, but within six days, Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern had it moved to its present spot at the foot of Broadway. Stern neither consulted the Arts Commission nor the Community Board, as is required by law, before reinstalling the bull. Di Modica has not been able to find a buyer for it--Merrill Lynch and Standard and Poor’s declined to purchase it for the city--so it remains on loan from the artist. This, despite the fact that art on loan to the city is limited to a year’s display time.

In essence, the Charging Bull, now a fixture and a tourist favorite, is a perfect symbol for Wall Street and our big banks: it is an entity that gets its way and doesn’t play by the rules.

Unloading More Barriers, State Street and Bowling Green

Bowling Green, Crowd

Puppeteer: Our Economy Is Modeled On A Cancer

As a place for a demonstration, Bowling Green certainly is more pleasant than Wall Street would have been and it, too, offers symbolic meaning to political activity. In the 17th century it served as a cattle market and parade ground, but in 1733 it took its present form as a teardrop-shaped park. It contained an equestrian statue of King George III, and this was torn down in 1776 by the Sons of Liberty.

In these three photographs above, we see, first, more barriers being unloaded and erected around the outer edge of the park. Rumor spread that demonstrators best leave the park before the police “penned” them all in, but I suspect that was paranoia triggered by dusky memories of events such as the Democratic Convention in Chicago of 1968 or the Kent State shootings of 1970 (or possibly I’m just dating myself!). The other photographs show the crowd milling just outside of the park’s fence and a puppeteer manipulating a broken, toy doll as an emblem of our economy--two of the many activities that were taking place in and around Bowling Green park.

No More Corruption in Chinese, Portugese, Norwegian

Corruption of the moneyed interests certainly was a main theme of the demonstrations, and here we get some of the event’s international flavor. As the US Day of Rage organizers stated: “Unfortunately, free and fair elections are a thing of the past in America. Because of recent Supreme Court decisions, money is flowing freely and unaccountably into the American electoral process. Elections will be swayed by interests opposed to those of the United States. Corporations, even those owned by foreign shareholders, will and do use money to act as the voices of millions, while individual citizens, the legitimate voters, are silenced and demoralized by the farce of American Democracy.”

Reverend Billy, Bowling Green

Reverend Billy of the Church of Life After Shopping is always a striking presence. As more barriers were going up around Bowling Green, he called out, “Are you penning us in or penning us out?” Later, he would give a short, inspirational sermon to the crowd from the steps of the National Museum of the American Indian, culminating in shouts of “Change Alleluia.”

Need Must Trump Greed

The perceived greed that drives Wall Street as well as our large corporations and banks certainly is undermining our society and creating a world of increasing economic disparity. It also is not simply an American problem. It is global. On this same day of September 17, for example, the indignados of Spain joined with the indignés of France as part of a global action against the banks.

Call for a True Democracy

What does seem to be particularly prevalent in our United States today is the undermining of our great democracy, even at the grass-roots level, as can be witnessed in the actions of Republican governors in several states, such as Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and Maine, to name just a few. This fellow’s sign may be simple and crude, but its message is spot on: we do need to revive a true democracy in America.

Prayer Circle, People not Profits

Vietnam Veteran, Steps of National Museum of the American Indian

Saturday’s demonstration was peaceful and completely law-abiding, as far as I could make out. Despite the appearances of the Veteran with the megaphone, the messages were reasonable, the delivery respectful. Many demonstrators referred to a group calling itself the NYC General Assembly, and they handed out a leaflet entitled “Occupy Wall Street: Legal Information.” This enabled all present to know their rights as well as to know what they could and could not do.

This event generated an enormous amount of positive energy, maybe because it wasn’t focused on some very specific complaint. As Nathan Schneider wrote in a piece that asked who would be occupying Wall Street, it “seems to be an aesthetic more than anything, a longing to see Wall Street full of the people whose concerns its operations have been blind to, and who are ready to get their due.”

Whatever the intentions of its various organizers, this event made me proud to be an American and a New Yorker.

The final six photographs, I hope, offer a sampling of the wonderful, anonymous citizens of our country who came from all over, intending to camp out on Wall Street. Of course they were thwarted in that, yet they happily assumed new roles that I hope will, each in her/his own way, work to regain that “true democracy” that we have been losing of late.

Wiljago (from Oakland, CA)

Those 39 countries Wijago lists all spend more on education that does the United States. This is beyond tragic.

Zack (from Long Island)

Zack came in part through computer alerts from the group Anonymous (although I have no idea whether I actually ever met someone from Anonymous). His message couldn’t be any clearer.

Rheannone (from Brooklyn)

Dissent is frightening and likely to meet with righteous indignation, but it is patriotic, even if (under certain, narrower legal situations) it may be seen as wrong.

Rafael (from the Bronx)

Rafael is holding a sign against the Supreme Court's ruling in the Citizens United Case, but I was attracted by the orange button directly above that reads, “Fight Like An Egyptian.” Very clever!

Margaret (from Baltimore)

Margaret was passing out announcements for the October 2011 Movement (see October2011.org) calling for a demonstration in Washington, D.C. on October 6, 2011. It is in support of peace, social, economic, and environmental justice and against corporatism and militarism.

Greg (from Pittsburgh, PA)

I love this hat of Greg's. "There's no government like no government." It says it all. How can anyone consider voting for people, like Rick Perry for example, who call for the destruction of government? How much lunacy can we afford to support and still remain a great country and major world force?

A Party Against Its Country

2011-09-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

In today’s New York Times’ Op-Ed Section, Helene Cooper and Jennifer Steinhauer wrote an article titled, “Obama Offers Jobs Bill, and the G.O.P. Balks,” to which most of us would respond, “and so, what else is new?”

Doing what they do so well, which is to invoke the specter of fear of anything the opposition offers, one House Republican staff member sent out an email with the subject line, “Beware the Tax Man.” And then House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R, VA), always ready with a monkey wrench to toss into the works, warned that no Republicans would support Obama’s bill if it involved any tax increases and then proceeded to wrap himself (once again) in the cloak of “the American people.”

Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) quickly added that Obama’s proposal “doesn’t appear to have been offered in...bipartisan spirit.” This bit of willful insanity, of course, disregards the fact that for the past two years Obama has bent over backwards to try to bring bipartisanship to the fore, only to be rebuffed by the opposition party every time. In fact, I imagine that the image much of the country shares in this regard is that of Charlie Brown [Obama] once more trusting Lucy [Republican, any/all] to actually continue to hold the football so he can kick a field goal.

In a wonderful bit of irony, the Republicans--today’s version maybe being the most inflexible group of politicians our country has ever witnessed--are accusing President Obama of being too inflexible, according to Cooper and Steinhauer.

This is what we have come to expect of today’s Republicans: when presented with a reasonable solution by their opposition and unwilling to admit to its reasonableness, they project their own unjustifiable behavior onto the opposition. So now Obama, who has frustrated his base and most of his own party with what it sees as his naive belief in the merits of being flexible, is suddenly characterized by Republican leaders for being too inflexible!

But let’s allow this most recent attempt by President Obama to work with the opposition party for the good of the country to fully develop. President Obama still has to present the full version of his Jobs Bill and the Republicans still need to give us something more substantive than their normal, reflexive piss and vinegar.

Instead, let’s reflect on what this once grand Party of Lincoln has become. An epic topic this is, but I will restrict myself to a single example (for now), and let a Republican speak.

For 28 years, Mike Lofgren has been a dedicated Republican Congressional staffer, and for the past 16 years served both the House and the Senate Republicans on their Budget Committees. But he recently retired, as he has written, because “the pernicious ideas they [mainstream Republicans] represent...impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill.”

Lofgren’s essay, publlished on September 3, 2011 and titled “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult,” is truly frightening as it lays out the willful disregard for Americans, our democracy and our Constitution.

I read it with the intention of selecting a few of the most revealing quotations; but I soon gave up on this because I encountered at least one such quotation in almost every paragraph. So, instead, I simply urge you to read this essay and conclude with his last paragraph.

In it, Lofgren writes that, to the extent that “Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America's status as the world's leading power.” If you were only to read one essay on contemporary American politics, Lofgren’s is that essay.

“Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult” ought to be required reading for every concerned citizen of this country. God help us. The Republicans sure won’t.

9/11: A Visual Memory

2011-09-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I hinted that I would not return to regular postings until after the U.S. Open. However, in honor of tomorrow's day of remembrance, I decided to post a few of the photographs that I had taken of the World Trade Center tower and of the aftermath of that horrific event of ten years ago.

World Trade Center Towers from Liberty Park, New Jersey

In the foreground is a detail of the War Memorial by sculptor Nathan Rapoport, dedicated in 1985. We see the legs of an American WWII soldier who is carrying a concentration camp survivor (whose hand dangles at the top right of the photo). It is dedicated to America's role in preserving freedom and in rescuing the oppressed.

World Trade Center Tridents

A detail of the peripheral steel columns, so closely spaced as to create a structure that was defined as a rigid hollow tube.

Lost in Fog

The Towers enshrouded in fog, seen from the east with the Municipal Building by McKim, Mead, and White in the foreground. Capping it off is the gilded statue of Civic Fame by Adolph A. Weinman.

September 23, 2001

I came to New York nearly two weeks later to find this, a still smoldering, blackened hole. Nothing near the site was accessible. The building with some window damage on the right background is in Battery Park City. All the buildings in lower Manhattan were still covered with soot, which enabled them to serve as "chalkboards" on which to write words of support and sympathy.

Visiting Ground Zero

In the photo above, we see a view several years later, once the site had been cleaned and fenced off in preparation for new construction. It had become a pilgrimage site, and thousands of people from all over the country and the world visit it daily.

The following photos below are of the fence that encloses the yard of St. Paul's Chapel, which is the oldest public building in continuous use in New York City. Because of St. Paul's proximity to the site of the Towers, the church became a place for recovery workers to rest and recuperate. It's fence became a place on which flowers, banners, written words, art and all manner of memorial objects would be hung in dedication and celebration.

St. Paul's Chapel, General View of Fence

St. Paul's Chapel Fence with Boots of Fireman McLaughlin and Other Memorabilia

Message from Antrim

The hand-written letter reads: "In loving memory of so many innocent people who lost their lives on that terrible day September 11th 2001. God bless their families and friends....from Jonathan & Wendy Saorise McAuley, Dunloy, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland."

Mourning into Dancing

This composition encompasses three main images: a reproduction of a Byzantine Madonna on the left, a pair of ballet toe shoes in the center, and a corner of the American flag on the right. The owner of the shoes, one Beth Ann Maslinoff of Gainesville, Florida, wrote in ink on the right shoe a verse from Psalm 30: "You have turned for me my mourning into dancing."

Wall of Prayers: Bellevue

The entire city became a place for impromptu memorials, not only those nearby sites in Lower Manhattan. Underscoring the personal tragedy of 9/11, many of the more distant sites were pleas for information of loved ones. Above, a policeman stands guard outside of Bellevue Hospital, where a quasi-official wall of missing people was put up and covered with plastic for protection.

The remainder of the images are from other parts of Manhattan from the East Village, Gramercy and Murray Hill.

Wall of the Missing

Wall of the Missing: Sunflower

Missing Kit...Please Call

Call Waiting

This phone booth was on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 26th Street--in the left background one can see the 69th Regiment Armory.

Signing On

In these last two photos, we see a long frieze-like print of the Towers and other buildings of Manhattan. Above, a man signs his name to it. Below, a detail reveals some of the text and the several languages in which contributors wrote messages, including one in Chinese.

It Will Take All of Us, detail of Signing On

Willie Nelson, Kansas City and Farm Aid

2011-08-19T16:04:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I attended the 26th annual benefit concert for Farm Aid, held this year in Kansas City. Since I am not a music critic and had no intention of sitting in a stadium for ten hours straight listening to music, I decided to organize this blog post around a few random photographs that I took, some at the concert venue, some of the celebrity performers, and some of Kansas City itself (the Missouri side). I begin with the latter.

Kansas City, Missouri, Country Club Plaza

Reputed to be the first regional shopping center in the world dedicated to automobile access, Country Club Plaza was built in 1922 on 55 acres, located about four miles south of downtown KC. At the time, the area was best known as a location for pig farms. But it soon would be stunningly transformed, with its main commercial structures designed as scaled-down replicas of some of the famous buildings of Seville, Spain.

Still beautifully preserved today, Country Club Plaza boasts the longest life of any planned shopping center in the world. It offers lessons in what foresight and creativity, when merged with a commitment to aesthetic beauty, can contribute to a community over the long run. In contrast, consider how many seedy, abandoned shopping centers, many under ten years old, despoil the American landscape today! Originally disparaged as "Nichols’ Folly" (after its developer, J. C. Nichols) for its (then) undesirable location, Country Club Plaza provides a powerful, visual emblem of the thriving urban center that Kansas City is today.


Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO, main entrance


Nelson Atkins Museum, Henry Moore, Reclining Figure: Hand, sculpture lawn Rather than attend the early musical performances on Saturday afternoon, I visited the Nelson Atkins Museum in KC, MO, one of the wonderful smaller museums in our country. Here (top photograph) is the front of the old classical building, completed in 1933. The Shuttlecock, one of four placed by Claes Oldenburg, suggests that some giant race has been using the building as a net. The other three Shuttlecocks will be found on the cascading sculpture lawn on the other side of the museum, where (above) we see one in the distance beyond one of the thirteen monumental sculptures by the British artist, Henry Moore.

Kansas City, Kansas, Livestrong Stadium, Farm Aid Show

The new Livestrong Stadium, located in a dedicated sporting park outside of Kansas City, Kansas, holds 18,467 when configured for soccer, but also can create a large stage at one end, and, with the additional seating on the field, it accommodates 25,000. I thought that this stadium worked amazingly well as a concert venue. Populous, its architects, also were the designers of the new Yankee Stadium and Wimbledon’s Centre Court.

Livestrong Stadium Plaza, Patchwork Family Farms stand

On the plaza outside of Livestrong Sporting Park were stands and tents with educational displays, games, and activities related to farm and food issues. Here, Patchwork Family Farms serves up delicious pork chops while its staff sports t-shirts calling for the end to factory farms. As Neil Young remarked when visiting this area, which was called Homegrown Village, “My name is Neil Young and I want a Fair Farm Bill because real money should go to real farmers.”

At another booth, the Kansas Farmer’s Union compared the retail prices of common food items with the amount received by the farmer. Thus, for a loaf of bread costing $3.89, the farmer receives a mere $0.19. The data was quite revealing.

We all need to understand the implications of factory farms on our health, environment and economy. As Willie Nelson has often said, “If you eat, you’re involved.” He founded Farm Aid in 1985 in support of family farms and the value of hard work. Over the following 26 years, Farm Aid has raised over $39 million in support of family farm agriculture. Looking to the future, Neil Young stated that “Farm aid needs new blood. We need to educate kids in school that being a farmer is really good … We need to stay together. Lets go forward and keep our food clean and pure and grow it together.”

The alternative, large industrialized farms (or factory farms) pose major threats to our health, the environment, and our economy.

Dave Matthews, Wilie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young at Livestrong Stadium

In the stadium, Saturday morning, just prior to the press conference that would kick off the day, we here see the four main performers for the evening music program: Dave Matthews, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Young. Here are some excerpts from their statements at the press conference that followed.

Jim Hightower & Dennis Kucinich talking after the Press Conference

Jim Hightower was the MC for the press conference, and often had the crowd of ca. 600 people in stitches with his laconic, low-keyed, down-home humor. But we might also remember him as the Texas Agriculture Commissioner for a decade in the 1980s and a progressive thinker who has championed positions in support of the common man over corporate greed and control.

Dennis Kucinich is Ohio’s representative from the the 10th Congressional District and one of the true liberals of Congress. In many ways, he represents the conscience of our country within Congress. But given the radical turn to the right over the past fifteen years, his is a voice of reason and ethics crying in the American wilderness.

Both Hightower and Kucinich are supporters of Farm Aid and family farms.

Mark Rothbaum, manager of Willie Nelson

Caught doing what he does invisibly and so well, is Willie Nelson’s manager, Mark Rothbaum, here working his PDA behind the scenes during the Saturday morning press conference. Mark is the person who has insured that Farm Aid continues as a major venue for great musical presentation. As long as he has his PDA, his office is wherever he happens to be, which is usually far from the limelight.

Willie Nelson displaying Agricultural Hall of Fame induction plaque

Willie Nelson, after the press conference, here holds up the plaque honoring him as the most recent inductee into the Agricultural Hall of Fame for his support of the family farmer and for being the main force behind Farm Aid. Willie refers to family farmers as “the backbone of our country.”

Willie is the 38th person to be inducted into the Agricultural Hall of Fame since it was chartered in 1960. Among the other inductees are George Washington, for his innovations in fertilizer and the prevention of soil erosion; John Deere, for the development of the durable steel plow; Eli Whitney, for his invention of the cotton gin; and Squanto, for helping the starving Pilgrims and teaching them to fish and to plant corn using fish as fertilizer.

In contrast to the today’s totally ineffectual and counterproductive members of Congress, two of its earlier members were also inductees: Arthur Capper and Andrew Volstead, who gave their names to the act of 1922 that guaranteed the rights of farmers to organize and operate cooperatives without any governmental anti-trust backlash. Both were Republicans, the one a senator from Kansas, the other a representative from Minnesota...but this was back in those arcadian times when Republicans actually served our country and worked for the common good.

Ray Price, the "Cherokee Cowboy" at Livestrong Stadium

Here I catch Ray Price starting out the program in the early afternoon. Only before the crowds came in for the evening performances could one get up front to take a photograph (wide angle at that) near the stage.

Painting John Mellencamp during show, Livestrong Stadium

While the musicians performed, two painters collaborated on a portrait of that musician. Here is one of Mellencamp, although well on its way towards the far end of expressionism, it still captures his recognizable features. Since the painters themselves are a bit of an act, they eventually will get carried away on this work as they slather on more pigment and John begins to dissolve behind a swirling river of acrylic. If he seems a bit bi-polar, realize that the two painters each work on one side only!

Neil Young on big screen, Livestrong Stadium

Neil Young’s act was the penultimate of the evening, just preceding that of Willie Nelson. He came solo, with just his guitar and harmonica, and captivated the audience both with his statements in support of family farms and at least one new song he wrote for the occasion. Among the lyrics of Young’s Farm Aid Song are these:

Well I hate to say the farmer
Was the last of a dying breed
Living off the land
And taking what he needs...

Enter the corporate farm in the next stanza, where Young sings:

...Yeah, they want to feed the world
But for power and for greed
Then they'll cut off the supply
Until they get what they need.

What follows is a warning, as equally unheeded as those today about global warming and the real causes of our economic catastrophe:

Well I dreamed I saw a dust bowl
Where the farmers used to live
Earth was flying through the sky
It had nothing left to give...

The conclusion is hardly uplifting, but Young’s composition is a powerful bit of homespun poetry:

Don't say much for the future
When a family can't survive.
I'd hate to say the farmer
Was the last of his kind.

You're In Kansas Now 1, Livestrong Stadium

You're In Kansas Now 2, Livestrong Stadium

You're In Kansas Now 3, Livestrong Stadium

As a way of conclusion, and just to assure you, my dear readers, that I actually left the security of the south Bronx to venture into the wild (mid)west, I offer these three photographs as proof. I title them You’re In Kansas Now, 1, 2, and 3.

No promises, but I hope soon, maybe by Labor Day (or after the US Open tournament) to become more regular again in my posts so that Wassup This Week doesn’t completely devolve into Wassup This Month.

Rupert Murdoch's Diseased Ethics

2011-07-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

At noon on July 14, 2011, about 100 people gathered on the west side of 5th Avenue at 64th Street, directly across from Rupert Murdoch’s apartment building. They were demonstrating against the constant race-baiting of Fox News as well as the growing evidence of illegal wire-tapping solely for the purpose of news scoops.

The demonstration was organized by ColorOfChange.org, an African American civil rights organization. Color of Change also had over 112,000 petitions calling on Fox News to fire Eric Bolling for his racial stereotyping, such as when he accused President Obama of “chugging forties” in Ireland and inviting “hoodlums to the hizzouse.” Remember, under Bush, how Fox News would call him “Commander in Chief” in an almost sacrosanct manner? Doesn’t Obama deserve the same? What became of Fox’s deep respect for the office of the President of the United States?

Rashad Robinson, Color of Change’s executive director told the demonstrators that Americans were tired of being divided by race and that “We are standing up to say that we will no longer allow our communities to be attacked by a man more interested in profits than American values.” When he and the group attempted to deliver the petitions to the Murdoch address, the doorman, predictably, claimed the building “was not accepting packages” and refused to take them.

The Petitions at the door

In the following days, as we know all too well, the lid blew off the top of the long-simmering News of the World wiretapping scandal in Britain, and the world has been introduced to a rogues’ gallery of criminal misbehavior and unethical practices by Murdoch’s underlings. Here are some of the players:

Rupert Murdoch: chairman and controlling shareholder of News Corporation, one of the world’s largest media conglomerates; he is the 117th wealthiest person in the world; called to testify before Parliament last week.

James Murdoch: Rupert’s son, who is in charge of News Corporation’s European operations; called to testify before Parliament last week.

Rebekah Brooks: former editor of News of the World and chief executive of News International; resigned on July 15, 2011, arrested two days later in connection with phone hacking and corruption, released and also testified before Parliament.

Neil Wallis: former senior editor of News of the World; then worked as a public relations consultant for the Metropolitan Police, for which he was getting paid $1,600 per day; arrested in connection with the phone hacking probe, subsequently released.

Andy Coulson: former editor of News of the World; then he became Prime Minister James Cameron’s director of communications; left post in January because of phone-hacking affair; arrested in July.

Clive Goodman: royal correspondent for News of the World; arrested for intercepting royal household phone messages; served a four-month jail term in 2007; rearrested in July 2011 with new hacking revelations.

Glen Mulcaire: News of the World investigator; pleaded guilty to phone hacking in 2007, and jailed; News of the World had been paying his legal fees until the day after the Murdochs’ recent testimony before Parliament.

Sir Paul Stephenson: Once Scotland Yard’s deputy commissioner and now its chief, the most senior police officer in the UK; he had approved almost $40,000 in payments in 2009-10 to the second ranking editor at News of the World, who was acting as his personal media consultant; he has announced his resignation because of his connections with the Murdochs.

Dick Fedorcio: Metropolitan Police communications director, who played a role in the hiring of Neil Wallis; during the phone hacking probe, he dined regularly with News of the World executives.

John Yates: Former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, resigned Monday, July 18 over criticism of his investigation of the phone hacking scandal.

David Cameron: Prime Minister of the United Kingdom/leader of the Conservative Party; in trouble for his cozy friendships with Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, and for the hiring of Coulson.

Les Hinton: former editor of News of the World, then executive chairman of News International; one of Murdoch’s closest deputies; came to America as chief executive of Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, from which he just resigned

Joel I. Klein: Former New York City Schools chancellor; now a senior News Corp executive and close confidante to Murdoch, often referred to as Murdoch’s consigliere

These merely scratch the surface of this rogue's gallery, and now that the Murdoch empire can no longer rely on buying special treatment and intimidating its way out of investigations, more emerge every day. The myriad unethical activities that he and his organizations condoned and partook in finally tilted the scales against him because one, specific phone hacking incident was just too egregious--that perpetrated on 13-year-old Milly Dowler, who had been abducted and murdered in 2002.

For at least two decades, Murdoch and his media empire have played kingmaker in British politics. As was written in the New York Times on July 16, “Mr. Murdoch has been a figure of towering political importance, credited by many British politicians with the power to make and unmake governments as well as influence government policies that affect the fortunes of his newspaper and television interests.” For example, he dumped the Conservatives to support Labour in 1997, and Labour stayed in power under Blair until Murdoch decided to support the Conservatives and Cameron in 2010. This is not what news organizations are meant to do.

And let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that this is simply a British issue. Murdoch’s talons are deep into America’s flesh (as well as that of Asian countries). He shuttles his senior executives and editors across the Atlantic, and their questionable ethics accompany them. There’s a promiscuity in all this. Whatever Murdoch touches gets affected by his diseased sense of ethics, no matter which continent we examine.

Here in America, he wrested control of Dow Jones and Company (and with that, The Wall Street Journal) from the Bancroft family with one of his favorite tactics--divide and conquer. He then installed two of his closest deputies, Robert Thomson and Les Hinton. In the process, as Joe Nocera has written, The Wall Street Journal became “Fox-ified” with shorter articles, less depth and more politically propagandistic towards the right. Thus, the “disease” has already infected and weakened one of our once-great newspapers.

In another instance, Murdoch has somehow managed to cut a special deal with Apple and won a recurring subscription on its iPad for his news app, The Daily, designed solely for iPads and other tablet computers. In so doing, he is cornering the market in a new form on online media based on paid content. This will make him even richer and able to buy greater power and influence.

More brazenly, ever since the election of President Obama, Fox News has forcefully promoted conservative candidates and the Tea Party movement. Murdoch’s News Corporation has entered into partisan politics as no organization like it has ever before. In 2010, it gave $1 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for the purpose of electing Republicans; its News America division gave better than $1 million to the Republican Governors Association. For an organization ostensibly dedicated to providing news, this is hardly “fair and balanced!” The “fourth estate,” by tradition and definition, is meant to be independent of government.

In the past decade, Murdoch’s News Corporation has paved a money trail deep into Congress and the federal agencies that oversee his industry. Since 2001, his company has spent over $42 million in lobbying lawmakers and regulators. Through intimidation, bribery, illegal phone hacking and other unethical practices, Rupert Murdoch has built a powerful media empire that is intent upon influencing elections and changing laws that interfere with its growth. Is this really what we want for America?

David Brooks and Dr. Strangelove

2011-07-26T07:44:00.000-07:00

Every so often, maybe 30% of the time, the usually astute David Brooks lets his Republican heart take control of his column, and his analytic rigor goes south. “Congress In the Lead” (New York Times, July 26, 2011) represents one of these lapses.

Let me first state that there are a few places in this Op-Ed piece where Brooks gets it right. One is connecting Obama’s Friday appearance before the public with “bringing Congress together.” But since Boehner had, once more, walked out on discussions, the onus should be placed on him and Republicans' continued recalcitrance, not on the President’s Friday appearance, which is what Brooks does.

Then Brooks states that “the White House negotiating process was inadequate:” no argument here. Obama tends to make concessions before ever starting the actual negotiations; that's not merely inadequate, it's naive and counterproductive. So he and I can agree on this, but for rather different reasons, I suspect.

I also would agree with Brooks’ observation that “Obama won’t get his centrist election boost.” Again, we concur for different reasons. As I see it, Obama may not get a centrist boost because he already has positioned himself far right of center. Many centrists may well be praying for a viable third party candidate, and so deny him of that boost.

But then, we come to David Brooks’ dark, Republican heart, taking over the discourse much like the way Dr. Strangelove’s arm would uncontrollably give him away by snapping into a Nazi salute in Kubrick’s film.

For example, Brooks, referring to Obama’s Friday appearance, states that “the president lost his cool.” Most of America is anxiously waiting for Obama to lose his cool; alas, that seems not to be in his nature. If it were, Congressional Republicans by now (or maybe even a year ago) might have been chastised into some form of sane behavior, and we wouldn’t be at today’s impasse.

Second, he implies the breakdown in talks is partly due to Obama and Boehner not writing down and releasing their “negotiating positions.” Is he joking? Given the Tea Party “tail” wagging the Republican “dog,” had Obama written down anything (and one aspect would certainly have had to be at least some consideration of tax/revenue issues) Boehner would never had stepped through the portal to begin negotiations.

Thirdly, Brooks blames the President for projecting “‘I’m the only mature person in Washington’ condescension that drives everybody else crazy.” You know something, David? Obama may well be the only mature person in Washington, at least among anyone who is being given any public coverage at the moment.

Furthermore, when people feel condescended to, it often is because they are behaving immaturely and they are aware of this. Therefore, they--and I include you in this--are the ones projecting. Obama is merely being Obama; remember “no-drama-Obama?” Republican Congress is simply scrambling to find the high ground that they frittered away two years ago.

Finally, Brooks conveniently leaves out a crucial issue that must be addressed (and he is far from alone in this omission). That issue is jobs--the need for some sort of jobs program--which is much more important than the debt ceiling issue.

But all Brooks can talk about is “the country’s awful debt problems.” If you want to talk debt, David, please be honest enough to remind your readers that President Clinton left our country with a $5-trillion surplus, which was quickly squandered by President Bush (maybe the worst president our country has ever had).

Please, also, remind your readers that Republicans in Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling seven (7) times under president Bush. Armed with these facts, your readers might really begin to question your wording--“the country’s awful debt problem”--and the tacit implication that this is a problem caused by Obama and Democrats.

And finally, near the end of his article, Brooks refers to “the next debt ceiling fight,” which suggests that he has embraced the new “Boehner” plan (which leaves open such insanity to our immediate future) over the “Reed” plan (which actually gives the Republicans more than they ever could have dreamed of a year ago but also resolves the debt ceiling issue once-and-for-all).

I find it hard to believe that someone of Brooks’ intellect can actually embrace the possibility of retaining this “blackmail” card of another debt-ceiling fight that the Republicans have already played with such insidious irresponsibility. But then, one never knows when that black heart of his will take over from his otherwise powerful mind.