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So many shoes are dropping out there that reality is starting to look and sound like the tap-line in a Busby Berkeley production number. The meme-scape, too, is humming with viral transmissions of dire doings. Is JP Morgan unwinding like a 1911 knitted woolen Yale varsity sweater? Did it booby-trap the credit default swap universe in the process, and is that getting ready to blow? The whole world is hanging by its fingernails, refusing to be dragged into the future.

That future is all about contraction. We could navigate our way into it but we don’t want to. We want to stay right where we are with all our stuff and no need to make new arrangements and we are trying every last trick to do that.

Can you not sense a terrible tidal surge of implacable forces under the headlines’ placid surface? I do offer Mark Zuckerberg best wishes on his nuptials, but I think he set himself up for one of fate’s great pranks as FB stock goes to 99 cents while he’s still on his honeymoon (playing Frogger in a super deluxe hotel suite).

Does anybody really believe that the European money problem has any other ending except massive repudiation of obligations and epic political realignment? Or that the USA isn’t caught in the undertow?

The only real question now is how the civilized world might remain civilized while it rebuilds its money system. Money, after all, is a representative of reality and the representations by nations and person and institutions have been so false for so long that, for practical purposes, there is no consensual reality anymore.

By the way, it was a nice gag at the time, but Karl Rove was wrong. We are not creating our own reality.

Reality’s theme going forward is changing from liquidity to liquidation. The European LTRO was a nice fairy tail, and the mild buzz lasted a few months, but its flimsy spell is broken.

An awful lot of parties may be liquidating gold and silver, too, this week but under the circumstances I’ve got to think there will be plenty of counterparties looking to buy, since uncertainty is crushing all other media of exchange. The process begins to look like a mass metamorphic conversion of winners to losers and vice-versa.

In a giant unwinding of paper assets the result may be that precious metals go sideways while all other assets tank – and then once everything’s in the tank, PMs tank, too, because nobody is left standing with that kind of cash. Of course, in the event just a little bitty bit of gold will still buy a lot of stuff. The other possibility is that the rumored global coordinated central bank QE doomsday machine goes off, destroying the meaning of cash money altogether. Surely that sort or stunt will not cast the same spell as the LTRO, a more measured act of desperation, but will call into question the very meaning of dollars, euros, yen, and pounds sterling. That’s when you’ll be paying $25,000 for a Little Debbie snack cake.

Let me be first of the non-right-wing in the blogster corps to venture the somewhat un-PC idea that Barack Obama turned out to be the first black schmuck elected President of the US.

He didn’t do the one thing that would have mattered most: put an end to government sponsored control fraud. Control fraud at that level is so pernicious because it destroys the legitimacy of institutions. It can only make a nation cynical, by which I don’t mean given to malicious humor, which is different, but just always thinking the worst of your fellow man and the very idea that the human race ever produced anything fine and durable.

And on top of that malfeasance, to try to suspend due process of law in Section 1021 of the NDAA bill – smacked down by federal judge Katherine Forrest last week – was an amazing transgression that the mainstream press greeted four months ago with barely a shrug. Can’t we just start a movement to go down to Charlotte, NC, this summer and levitate the convention center into outer space? It nearly worked with the Pentagon forty odd years ago.

What do you suppose Obama and the other feckless schmucks of the G-8 were telling each other this weekend at Camp David between weenie roasts and ping-pong round robins? It must have been the emptiest dumb show of mere protocol; an exchange of tie-tacks in the national colors, the playing of many anthems and flying of flags, issuance of bland assurances and platitudes. Nobody believes any of them anymore, even poor Mr. Hollandaise, who has been on the job a few days. Angela Merkel must be good and goddam sick of even showing up at the office.

Well, perhaps it’s best that the world will go where it has to go without leadership. After all, human history is emergent and improvisation suits us. Forceful leaders often only leave a big mess behind.

But imagine a world where nobody gets paid. That might be our world by the end of the week.

  My books are available at all the usual places.

   

  

(Originally appeared at Clusterfuck Nation. Image  Some rights reserved by Ariel Ophelia)

Are you a Republican – or do you know one – who is sincerely fretful about the GOP’s ticket for the coming quadrennial?  Well, there’s good reason (on many levels).

But it appears there is hope!  Or at least a fun wish fantasy, written and published with stunning speed by a master science fiction author, John Barnes.

And it gives Republicans their utter wish fantasy, especially after wading through a primary season filled with dismal choices.  Picture the scenario - Ronald Reagan, risen from the dead, tanned-rested-and-ready (hampered only slightly by the lack of a pulse) to lead the GOP to victory!

In a quick-topical (and hilarious) shortie-novel that’s set right now!  In the few weeks before this year’s Republican National Convention.

RAISE THE GIPPER! is more a sudden piece of performance art than anything else. Staged precisely for a given moment in time, it fits into the tradition of such old-time favorites as The Mouse that Roared and Rally Around the Flag, Boys.

Worried that it’s all one-sided? Well, Barnes has some clever fun at the expense of flakey, Gaia worshipping, PC-vegan lefty-liberals, too!  It’s a rollicking good time. Try some free sample chapters! (Or get it on Amazon.) And support performance art.

Is it understandable that some Republicans nurse dream-wish fantasies? One is tempted, indeed, to dream up alternatives to the current presumptive nominee – whose prep-school pranks included the deliberately traumatic bullying of helpless adolescents. Yes, there is forgiveness.  But character is generally persistent, unless you see major life reversals that indicate a true change of direction. And in that case, would he not have sought out his victims, later, to make amends? Or shown compassion in his business affairs?

Oh one can sympathize. Raise the Gipper, indeed! (Sample chapter starts on the next page)…

(Originally appeared at Contrary Brin.)

“Who would get the water and who would pay the bill, which is now estimated to be $20 billion to upwards of $50 billion?” asked Conner Everts, Executive Director for the Southern California Watershed Alliance. “MWD opposes an independent cost-benefit analysis. But it’s MWD customers and other water district ratepayers in the southland who would pay the bill.”

Speakers include Conner Everts, Executive Director, Southern California Watershed Alliance; Garrick Ruiz, Water Campaign Manager, Green LA; and Adam Scow, California Campaigns Director, Food & Water Watch.

The event will be held today at 10:30 am outside the Metropolitan Water District (MWD), 700 North Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012-2944.

The Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee on April 24 voted 10 to 2 to approve legislation requiring an independent cost-benefit analysis before committing the public to pay tens of billions of dollars to build a peripheral canal or tunnel to divert more Delta water.

A coalition of consumer, environmental and fishing groups and Delta cities and counties backed the legislation, AB 2421 (B. Berryhill), while agribusiness groups, the California Chamber of Commerce and southern California water agencies including the Metropolitan Water District opposed the bill.

The bill’s fate now rests with Assembly member Felipe Fuentes and Speaker John Perez, who will largely determine whether AB 2421 advances or dies by May 25.

The bill “requires that an independent third party costs and benefits of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) be submitted to the Legislature prior to the BDCP’s inclusion in the Delta Plan, or by June 30, 2013, whichever comes first.”

The legislation also requires that the third party conducting the analysis shall be chosen by one representative each from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the Delta Protection Commission, and the State Water Contractors, Assemblyman Bill Berryhill (R-Stockton), told the Committee. “A fair and balanced analysis is all we want,” said Berryhill.

Before the vote, Committee Chair Jared Huffman said he believes “the public is entitled to know if it is investing in something that is on a path toward success.”

Southern California ratepayers have expressed strong support for the legislation, since they fear the construction of the canal could increase their water rates.

“Urban water users would pay billions of dollars for a massive peripheral canal or tunnel,” Everts, told the committee. “Those who’ll pay deserve to know how much they’d pay and how much benefit would go to those ratepayers.”

Not only would urban water users pay billions of dollars for the canal, but Delta advocates say the construction of the peripheral canal or tunnel will hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter and spring run chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, Sacramento splittail and other imperiled fish species. The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is the largest and most significant estuary on the West Coast of the Americas – it is considered the ecological heart of California.

For more information, contact: Steve Hopcraft 916/457-5546, steve [at] hopcraft.com; Twitter: @shopcraft; Conner Everts, 310.394.6162 [1] ext. #111; connere [at] west.net; Adam Scow, ascow [at] fwwatch.org.

Now, in 2012, it looks like the same scenario is playing out again. The Tea Party learned nothing from the ideologically-pure ass-kicking it received two years ago, and is begging for more in races from Indiana to Nebraska, where tonight’s primary results could hold more good news for the Democrats.

Moderate Nebraska Dem Ben Nelson left his party in the lurch repeatedly over the past few years by withholding his vote unless legislation was made more “centrist”, and then in the end decided not to run for re-election this year. Even with former Senator Bob Kerrey returning as the Dem candidate, the seat was a pretty sure pick-up for the GOP, who had a strong contender in  state Attorney General Jon Bruning.

Enter Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts, who has dropped $200,000 of his own money into ads supporting Deb Fischer. It seems to be working: The latest Public Policy Polling survey gives Fischer the lead, with 37%. The former leader, Bruning, has dropped to 33%, with Don Stenberg at 17 percent. Republican-affiliated pollster We Ask America similarly shows the race at 39/34/18, a huge change from a 42/26/23 Bruning lead just over a week ago.

Since Rickett’s anti-Bruning and pro-Fischer ads have aired (and $200k can buy a lot of ads in low-rent Omaha), PPP reports,

Bruning’s image has taken a huge hit… His favorability rating is a net +13 at 49/36. That’s a 27 point decline from late March when he was at +40 (57/17.) …Fischer meanwhile has seen an incredible improvement in how voters view her. On our last poll she had only 44% name recognition and Republicans were split on her 22/22. Now she’s by far and away the most popular candidate in the race with a +45 favorability rating at 62/17.

Muddying the waters even further, Tea Party godfather Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) had backed Sternberg…

UPDATE 9:30 Omaha time: With about a third of the vote reporting, Bruning is holding a slim lead over Fischer. It’s going to be a long night again…

UPDATE 9:42 Omaha time: It’s been tightening up all evening, and now Fischer has taken the lead.

UPDATE 10:30 Omaha time: It’s over. Fischer is leading by 8,000 votes – no way Bruning can possibly catch her. Add one more Senate race to the “tossup” or possibly even “lean Dem” category.

Update: If you’re not reading the snarky and erudite Charles Pierce at Esquire’s politics blog, this might draw you over there:

As I had suspected on primary morning and not so much in my travels there two weeks ago, Deb Fischer came roaring out of dusty obscurity in Nebraska on Tuesday night to rout two better-known candidates, drink their blood, and listen to the lamentations of their women. She will now face Bob Kerrey for the Senate seat left formally vacant by Ben Nelson who, for all practical Democratic Party purposes, absented himself from that seat 10 years ago.

More damage in Indiana

Last week, it was the Indiana Senate primary, where Richard Nixon’s favorite mayor, Richard Lugar, got booted after 36 (!) years in Washington. His crime: Being too Washington, too moderate, and willing to actually compromise and work with Democrats.

In his stead, Hoosiers get Richard Mourdock, a screaming ideologue who actually said that in his mind, bipartisanship means the Democrats giving in to whatever the GOP wants.

But can he hold the seat? Lugar would have been a guaranteed re-elect for the general election; instead it now looks like a real battle between Mourdock and Democrat Rep. Joe Donnelly. A poll out this week shows the race all tied up at 40-40.

And still more in Wisconsin

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, Tommy Thomson was expected to be the favorite to pick up the seat that had been held by retiring Democrat Herb Kohl. Another moderate Republican who’s been around forever (first elected to the state Assembly in 1966!), Thomson is a former Governor, Bush II cabinet member and Presidential candidate with name-recognition and fundraising power.

But that’s not enough for the Teahadists and the purity goons at the Club for Growth, who’ve been pouring money into the campaign of ex-Rep Mark Neumann, who this weekend kept Thomson to an embarrassing third place finish at the state’s GOP convention. That kind of energizing could propel Neumann into a victory in the August primary… but then he’d have to face off against Democrat Tammy Baldwin. Latest polling:

How far will it go? Missouri is another place where the Tea Party could tip a race from “vulnerable Democratic incumbent” to “leans Dem.” Even Arizona and Texas could turn into battlegrounds, although it looks like Utah Senator Orrin Hatch has turned hard and sharp enough to the right that he managed to avoid the fate suffered by his Senate Colleague Bob Bennett, who got tossed out by a Tea Party insurrection two years ago.

But with enough close races on the line, three seats might be enough to keep the Senate in Democratic hands for another two years….

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The Delta Stewardship Council staff on May 14 released the final draft Delta Plan, drawing a response from Delta advocates that the fix is in to build a peripheral canal or tunnel that would grab millions of gallons of water for agribusiness and Southern California development, leaving fish, native tribes, and other users high and dry.

No matter what reasons the Council conjures up to back the construction of new conveyance - a euphemism for the Peripheral Canal - Delta advocates contend that exporting more water to corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley is the ultimate goal behind the campaign to build a canal or tunnel. The export of more Delta water will hasten the extinction of Central Valley chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other fish species, according to agency and independent scientists.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD), slammed the plan for recommending the construction of new conveyance facilities as well as its failure to adopt cost benefit, public trust, water quality and flow analyses.

“[Council Executive Officer] Joe Grindstaff… says the Delta Plan recommends new conveyance as a way to improve water quality,” said Barrigan-Parrilla. “Without a water quality analysis that examines how eliminating fresh water flows from entering the Delta will affect water quality, this draft of the Delta Plan is as incomplete as the last draft. The Delta Stewardship Council must build its plan on a cost benefit analysis, a public trust analysis, a water quality analysis, and a flow analysis, and until it does so, its planning will remain incomplete.”

“By indicating that new conveyance and the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) will be favored by the Delta Stewardship Council, Joe Grindstaff has undermined the intent of the legislation that created the DSC. The DSC was given the charge to make its determination regarding the BDCP after members of the public appealed the merits of the plan to the DSC. But apparently, such appeals will not carry much weight if the decision has already been made. From a Delta perspective, the fix is in,” she emphasized.

Grindstaff touted the plan, submitted to the seven-member Council for review, comment and adoption, as:

 …A common sense approach to achieving the coequal goals of restoring the Delta ecosystem and providing a reliable water supply for California.

He added that, “We expect the Council to make revisions, and make a final decision after an appropriate environmental review.”

Grindstaff said the staff draft Delta Plan is the last in a series of six drafts presented to the Council over the past 14 months. It reflects public comments made on all five staff drafts and is informed by analysis contained in the draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Report.

“The final staff draft Delta Plan reflects changes to policies and recommendations regarding Delta levee priorities, flow objectives, land development and water quality,” according to Grindstaff. “It also recognizes the role of various agencies involved in the Delta; and makes recommendations to ensure that responsibilities are coordinated to wisely use limited resources. The Delta Plan interagency committee, which will be established by the Council, will include agencies and others that have a role in the Delta.”

He claimed the Delta Plan is designed to:

• Increase water supply reliability through better water management across California, more conservation and diversification of water supplies, including reduced reliance on water from the Delta watershed, and “improved Delta conveyance” and “expansion of groundwater and surface storage.” The Delta Plan recognizes the importance of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) and urges its completion and successful permitting.
• Improve the Delta ecosystem by protecting five high-priority restoration areas from development. The Delta Plan also recommends actions to reduce pollution, invasive species and more. The Delta Plan sets a deadline for the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) to update flow objectives for the major rivers and tributaries of the Delta. The Delta Plan emphasizes SWRCB actions to deal with high-priority Delta-specific water quality problems, too.
• Protect “Delta-as-a-Place” by seeking its designation as a National Heritage Area; protecting agriculture by locating urban development in cities rather than on rural farmlands; conserving legacy communities like Locke and Clarksburg; and encouraging recreation and tourism.
• Reduce risk by improving levees and bypasses and requiring new development in the Delta floodplain to have adequate flood protection.
• Ensure fairness by encouraging the financing principles of beneficiaries pay for benefits received and stressors pay for problems caused.

“While there is no simple low-cost plan that gives everyone what they want, it is possible for California to have the water it needs and at the same time protect the ecosystem,” Grindstaff said. “The plan identifies a path forward that develops a more reliable water supply, significantly improves the delta ecosystem while protecting the special character of Delta as it changes into the future.”

The Council will first review the final staff draft Delta Plan at its regularly-scheduled meeting on May 24 in West Sacramento and will discuss it in detail with the Council at the June 14-15 meeting.

Barrigan-Parrilla also criticized the plan’s failure to adopt the highest standards for levee improvements.

“The Delta Plan fails to call for levee improvements at the highest standard as called for by the Delta Protection Commission, and last week by the Army Corps of Engineers,” said Barrigan-Parrilla. “They are adhering to a lower levee safety standard as put forth by the Department of Water Resources. The Delta Stewardship Council is therefore failing in its mission to protect the Delta as a place.”

Created as part of the controversial water policy/water bond package by the Legislature in 2009, the Delta Stewardship Council is composed of members who represent different parts of the state and offer diverse expertise in fields such as agriculture, science, the environment, and public service. Of the seven, four are appointed by the Governor, one each by the Senate and Assembly, and the seventh is the Chair of the Delta Protection Commission. (More information is available on the DSC website.)

Phil Isenberg of Sacramento is chair of the Delta Stewardship Council. A former opponent of the peripheral canal, he is now one of its key promoters.

Isenberg served as chair of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s privately funded California Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create so-called “marine protected areas” from 2004 to 2006. He also served as chairman of Schwarzenegger’s equally controversial Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force from 2007 to 2008.

“The recommendations of the Delta Vision Task Force provided much of the structure of the major water/Delta policy changes adopted by the legislature in 2009 and signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger,” according to the Council.

The full staff draft of the Delta Plan and the Executive Summary can be found at the DSC website.

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By Jill Richardson

Here’s what happens when corporations begin to control education.

“When I approached professors to discuss research projects addressing organic agriculture in farmer’s markets, the first one told me that ‘no one cares about people selling food in parking lots on the other side of the train tracks,’” said a PhD student at a large land-grant university who did not wish to be identified. “My academic adviser told me my best bet was to write a grant for Monsanto or the Department of Homeland Security to fund my research on why farmer’s markets were stocked with ‘black market vegetables’ that ‘are a bioterrorism threat waiting to happen.’ It was communicated to me on more than one occasion throughout my education that I should just study something Monsanto would fund rather than ideas to which I was deeply committed. I ended up studying what I wanted, but received no financial support, and paid for my education out of pocket.”

Unfortunately, she’s not alone. Conducting research requires funding, and today’s research follows the golden rule: The one with the gold makes the rules.

A report just released by Food and Water Watch examines the role of corporate funding of agricultural research at land grant universities, of which there are more than 100. “You hear again and again Congress and regulators clamoring for science-based rules, policies, regulations,” says Food and Water Watch researcher Tim Schwab, explaining why he began investigating corporate influence in agricultural research. “So if the rules and regulations and policies are based on science that is industry-biased, then the fallout goes beyond academic articles. It really trickles down to farmer livelihoods and consumer choice.”

The report found that nearly one quarter of research funding at land grant universities now comes from corporations, compared to less than 15 percent from the USDA. Although corporate funding of research surpassed USDA funding at these universities in the mid-1990s, the gap is now larger than ever. What’s more, a broader look at all corporate agricultural research, $7.4 billion in 2006, dwarfs the mere $5.7 billion in all public funding of agricultural research spent the same year.

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Influence does not end with research funding, however. In 2005, nearly one third of agricultural scientists reported consulting for private industry. Corporations endow professorships and donate money to universities in return for having buildings, labs and wings named for them. Purdue University’s Department of Nutrition Science blatantly offers corporate affiliates “corporate visibility with students and faculty” and “commitment by faculty and administration to address [corporate] members’ needs,” in return for the $6,000 each corporate affiliate pays annually.

In perhaps the most egregious cases, corporate boards and college leadership overlap. In 2009, South Dakota State’s president, for example, joined the board of directors of Monsanto, where he earns six figures each year. Bruce Rastetter is simultaneously the co-founder and managing director of a company called AgriSol Energy and a member of the Iowa Board of Regents. Under his influence, Iowa State joined AgriSol in a venture in Tanzania that would have forcefully removed 162,000 people from their land, but the university later pulled out of the project after public outcry.

What is the impact of the flood of corporate cash? “We know from a number of meta-analyses, that corporate funding leads to results that are favorable to the corporate funder,” says Schwab. For example, one peer-reviewed study found that corporate-funded nutrition research on soft drinks, juice and milk were four to eight times more likely to reach conclusions in line with the sponsors’ interests. And when a scrupulous scientist publishes research that is unfavorable to the study’s funder, he or she should be prepared to look for a new source of funding.

That’s what happened to a team of researchers at University of Illinois who were funded by a statewide fertilizer “checkoff” after they published a finding that nitrogen fertilizer depletes organic matter in the soil. Checkoffs are a common method used to market agricultural products, and they are funded by a small amount from each sale of a product – in this case, fertilizer. Richard Mulvaney, one of the U of I researchers, feels it is twisted that, in this way, farmers fund research intended to promote fertilizer use with their own fertilizer purchases.

But often the industry influence may be more subtle. Joyce Lok, a graduate student at Iowa State University, said, “If a corporation funds your research, they want you to look at certain research questions that they want answered. So if that happens it’s not like you can explore other things they don’t want you to look at… I think they direct the research in that way.”

John Henry Wells, who spent several decades as a student, professor and administrator at land grant universities sees it a different way. As an academic, he hopes that his research is relevant to real world problems that agriculture faces at the time. “When you ask the question, did I ever outline a research plan with the explicit notion of is this going to be fundable, I would say no. But I thought very deeply about whether my research plan was going to be relevant, and one of the indicators of relevancy would be if the ideas I put forward would get the attention of trade associations, private industry, benefactors, etc.”

If scientists use fundability as an important criteria of selecting research topics, research intended to serve the needs of the poor and the powerless will be at a disadvantage. However, Wells says that this is hardly a new phenomenon: land grants have existed to serve the elites since their creation in the 19th century.

“As its basis, the land-grant university was intended to cater to a narrow political interest of landowners and homesteaders – individuals who had the right to vote and participate in the political structure of a representative democracy.” he says. “Contemporarily, it is not so much that the land-grant university has been corrupted by modern agro-industrial influence, as it has been historically successful in focusing on its mission in the context of our Constitutional framework of governance. For the land-grant university, its greatest strength – a political collaboration spanning the top-to-bottom echelons of influence – has been its greatest weakness.”

Land grant universities and the USDA itself first came into being at a time when the academic view of agriculture was fundamentally changing – even if most farmers at the time ignored the advice of academics, dismissing them as “book farmers” who knew little about actually working the land. Will Allen writes about this period in his book ”The War on Bugs,” telling the story of Justus von Liebig, a prominent agricultural chemist in Germany.

“In the 1830s, Liebig began asserting that the most essential plant nutrients were nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. His theories fueled the development of chemical fertilizers and ushered in a new age of agricultural science and soil chemistry in the 1840s and 1850s. Though many of Liebig’s theories were wrong, he was the first great propagandist for chemistry and for chemical-industrial agriculture.” Perhaps the most significant of his mistakes was his belief that organic matter in the soil was unimportant.

Dozens of Americans studied under Liebig and returned to the U.S. to continue their work. Two of these students established labs at Harvard and Yale, and soon “all agricultural schools and experiment stations in the country followed their lead.” Thus, practically from the start, the elites in this country served the interests of those who peddled chemical fertilizers and other agricultural inputs – even if that wasn’t their intent. No doubt many were enticed by the prospect of founding a new, modern, scientific form of agriculture, as they felt they were doing.

The unholy trinity of industry, government and academics promoting industrial agriculture and de-emphasizing or dismissing sustainable methods has a long history and it continues today. In its report, Food and Water Watch advocates a return to robust federal funding of research at land grant universities. But government is hardly immune from serving the corporate agenda either.

Take, for example, Roger Beachy, the former head of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the agency in the USDA that doles out research grants. Beachy spent much of his career as an academic, collaborating with Monsanto to produce the world’s first genetically engineered tomato. He later became the founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Monsanto’s non-profit arm, before President Obama appointed him to lead NIFA.

As Schwab noted, policy is often based on research, but good policy requires a basis in unbiased, objective research. In a system in which corporations and government both fund research, but due to the revolving door, the same people switch between positions within industry, lobbying for industry, and within government, what is the solution?

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(Originally appeared at Alternet. Photo Credit: Shutterstock/mostafa fawzy)

We told you way back in January of 2011 that there was a narrow window to fix the spectacularly broken Senate.

We told you over and over again, in fact (see: Filibuster reform is good for the planet). But despite the fact that a number of Senators had signed on to the reform effort pushed by Sens. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Jeff. Merkley (D-OR), Harry Reid decided not to push for real reform, instead going for one more toothless gentleman’s agreement with the GOP.

Well, guess what? Despite that gentleman’s agreement, the GOP side has used the Senate’s old rules – designed back in the day when actual gentlemen occupied the chamber – to block every damn thing that the majority has tried to do. And ol’ Harry has finally come around to thinking that maybe we were right.

“If there were ever a time when Tom Udall and Jeff Merkley were prophetic, it’s tonight,” Reid said on the floor. “These two young, fine senators said it was time to change the rules of the Senate, and we didn’t. They were right. The rest of us were wrong — or most of us, anyway. What a shame.”

“If there were anything that ever needed changing in this body, it’s the filibuster rules, because it’s been abused, abused, abused.”

What finally pushed him over the edge? The House had passed a needed bill to reauthorize the Import-Export Bank. Boring stuff – but not boring enough for the GOP. They objected to simply passing the damn bill, setting up a series of cloture votes and time delays that are mandated under the ancient rules.

This is a bill that everyone needs and wants to pass. The language of the bill came from the Republican House. There’s a huge backlog of bills that need to be addressed –  jobs bills and energy bills and transportation bills and budget bills. But the GOP has decided they’re going to chew up a few days of the Senate’s time on this – just because.

This is how the bullies in the Senate GOP has been rolling, over and over and over again. And the spineless play-nice Democrats have been playing along.

Nice to know Reid has finally come around to our point of view – now that it’s too late to do anything about it.

The New Urbanists held their big annual meet-up for four days last week and I

stomped a big carbon footprint flying down to West Palm Beach for the doings. I don’t know who exactly picked West Palm, but it was at once peculiar, disheartening, instructive, and exhausting.

The Congress for the New Urbanism has been throwing this yearly fandango since its founding in 1993 as a fire-eating reform movement dedicated to transforming the horrifying and toxic human habitat of America.

Hopes were lofty in the early days that the US public would recognize the self-evident benefits of ditching suburban sprawl for walkable towns, but it didn’t quite work out that way. The last frantic phase of sprawl-building commenced exactly the same time, jacked on easy lending steroids, and upping the stakes of the battle. That story ended in the baleful collapse of the housing bubble and the sad particulars need not be rehearsed here.

During the boom of the ’90s and aughties, about 99.5% of the new real estate development was done by the conventional schlock sprawl-builders and the New Urbanists did much of the remaining 0.5% – which was enough to get their point across.

Some of their projects (e.g. Seaside, Fla., pictured) are now iconic examples of excellence in urban design artistry. Many others were botched by compromises made in the planning board battles, and another bunch were either half-assed from the get-go or plain fakes. These traditional neighborhood developments were almost always built on greenfield sites, provoking controversy that could not be briskly dismissed.

At the same time, quite a bit of New Urbanist work was done in re-making existing town centers and in retrofits of sclerotic older suburban parcels, and their influence was later seen in the many big city streetscape redesigns from Times Square to Santa Monica. Their laborious work in reforming the intricate idiocies of zoning law made possible better development outcomes in towns all over the land which adopted so-called Smart Codes.

The housing bubble bust massacred the New Urbanists. Many of the firms had tied their fortunes to the production house builders and the commercial real estate developers doing large projects, often hundreds of acres, and when the market imploded around 2007 their work dried up. Now there is very little new real estate development of any kind going on around the country. Many talents languish while the nation broods over the fate of its obsolete suburban dream and fails to recognize that we have to make drastically new arrangements for inhabiting the landscape.

But the mood at the 2012 CNU was still buoyant, considering. For all their vocational anguish, the New Urbanists are still about the only intellectual cohort in the USA with a coherent vision of what has gone wrong in our society – our ruinous investments in futureless infrastructure – and what can be done about it – the reconstruction of traditional human habitat as the armature for enduring economies.

Compared with the brainless religious zealotry and sexual hysteria of the right wing and the ruinous social services pandering of the left, the New Urbanists look like the only organized group of adults in the nation who have not completely lost their minds. So it was a pleasure to spend four days among them. They are a valiant band of cultural warriors.

Events are now in the driver’s seat. The long battle against the continuation of suburban sprawl is over, despite the happy-talk noises made by what’s left of the real estate industry. Half a decade of absolutely flat oil production – propaganda to the contrary – guarantees that the suburban project is finished. We’re done building things that way (even if we don’t quite realize it yet) so the New Urbanists have won the argument by default.

Quite a few non-New Urbanist “pundits” such as Ed Glaeser, the asinine Joel Kotkin, and dashing Richard Florida predict that the action has shifted to the big cities, and that may appear to be the case for this deceptive moment. But the mega-cities are in for a tsunami of troubles all their own in the form of vanishing wealth, fiscal disorder, sclerotic infrastructure failures, service interruptions, and ethnic turf battles as the effects of the epochal economic contraction bite deeper and harder.

The inescapable downscaling of America means that we are heading toward a new disposition of things on the landscape in just the way the New Urbanists have prescribed: a declension of ecologies ranging from dense, walkable human-dominated urban habitats in the form of traditional towns and cities through a range of rural conditions running from farmland to wilderness necessary to support the health of the planet.

Time and nature will help take care of the accumulated suburban dreck on the ground. Humans are very skillful sorters of things and the disassembly of salvaged materials will be a big industry in a world taking a “time out” from industrial progress. The timeless principles that the New Urbanists revived will be the common sense of whatever we build in the future, even when the planning board battles of recent years are long forgotten.

We will almost certainly return to social conditions in which nobody will dare put up a building devoid of conscious artistry. There’s a lot to like in this quadrant of the Long Emergency.

The 20th reunion of old CNU friends was a little disenchanted by the conference site. West Palm Beach contains one of their showpiece projects, the nightlife and shopping district called City Place that was created out of a bombed out neighborhood. Casual observers crack on City Place as an “urban mall,” but it’s really just Rosemary Street rebuilt of new traditionally-scaled buildings with shops and bistros programmed in.

But City Place does include some pretty well-composed public space in the form of a central plaza and a palm court running off it, and it was full of people enjoying themselves in the cafes those nights, and the ensemble managed to incorporate a very nice Beaux Arts church-turned-theater (the Harriet Himmel) in the Spanish neo-classical manner.A lot of it is generic chain business. Another sad element is the cartoonish, low quality finish of the buildings – sprayed on stucco and ornaments with no conviction. Both of these failures of quality represent the fast buck mentality of the big commercial developers and the larger vulgar so-called consumer culture they served.

The trouble was when you strayed a block off Rosemary Street the fabric of the city fell apart. Some of it was just vacant land. Further east between Olive Street and the intercostal waterway stood a swath of oversized giant condo towers that represented the worst of the lamented housing bubble. Many were “see-through” buildings of empty, unsold units. The streets along these behemoths were as dead as any neighborhood on a Zombie planet, and traversing them to get anywhere was hugely depressing.

The convention center, where the CNU meeting actually took place, stood off in its own twilight zone of separation, cut off from the beginning of City Place by the ghastly ten-lane Okeechobee Boulevard. The five-block walk (of very large super-blocks) to and fro from my hotel was like unto reenacting the Bataan Death March under that brutal Floridian sun.

Things are changing fast now though. The New Urbanists still standing are the strongest and most nimble. They are also the ones most deeply engaged in the trenches of architectural education, and they are as certain to win the ideology battles still raging in that realm as they won the battle over suburban sprawl.

Most of all, though, I’m glad to be home in my quiet backwater of this poor floundering nation.

Want to learn more about New Urbanism? Check out a wealth of resources, videos and presentations from the conference at the CNU 20 website.

  My books are available at all the usual places.

   

  

(Originally appeared at Clusterfuck Nation)

By Emma Newman

As coal plants in the United States continue to close, local organizations around the country appear to have struck a blow to the industry. But in reality, as coal consumption decreases in our country, global demand continues to rise. A result of this shift in demand can be found in recent proposals to ship Powder River Basin coal from Montana and Wyoming through several Northwest ports. One of these proposals would bring coal right through the city of Eugene, to the Port of Coos Bay.

Eugene has been given a unique opportunity to combat coal by rallying against this proposal. Not only are coal mining and combustion dirty; its transportation presents significant health hazards as well. The coal passing right through downtown Eugene, slowing traffic for up to eight minutes would be transported in open bed coal trains. More than 100 tons of coal dust per train will blow off between Montana and Coos Bay. The dust contains heavy metals such as lead and mercury and causes lung diseases, as well as pollution from the diesel that fuels the trains. Regionally, the health impacts of coal follow the transportation and watershed routes.

This is a major issue we face as a community, region, and nation and it represents a textbook environmental justice problem. Environmental justice (EJ) is a social movement that includes mainly people of marginalized communities and focuses on the environment directly around people in society who carry many environmental burdens in their everyday lives, including living and working conditions. EJ strives to bring communities autonomy through their fight for civil and human rights. The coal trains will be passing directly through the Whiteaker neighborhood, a historically working class part of the city.

Emma Newman, a Co-Director of CCN went on an environmental justice tour in West Eugene last week and saw the neighborhoods that would be hardest hit. “One neighborhood,” Emma said, “was literally surrounded by a train yard on one side and train tracks on the other. They are already suffering from a toxic plume in their well water and the last thing that they need is coal dust drifting over their park and onto their vegetable gardens.”

The consequences of building these coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest would be widespread and severe; from the direct impact on the health of citizens and the local economy, to the contribution of coal to climate change. There are very real implications when it comes to environmental justice, and the disproportionate amount of harm this project would present to people in our community, particularly those unfortunate enough to live close enough to the tracks to experience firsthand the pollution caused by the transportation of coal. These ports would not benefit the vitality of the Northwest or the individuals mining the coal, but they would continue to fill the pocketbooks of those most powerful in the coal industry.

People in the region are working to stop this, both through direct actions and legislative measures, as well as campus initiatives to show student support for alternatives to coal. The Climate Justice League, a student organization at the University of Oregon, is working with local groups including the community-wide group No Coal Eugene to assert the rights of Eugene over big coal. Say No to coal in Eugene.

To learn more, please visit nocoaleugene.org or climatejusticeleague.org.

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Update: No Coal Eugene got some great local media today!http://kezi.com/news/local/244341

In a joint statement on May 7, California’s Secretary for Natural Resources John Laird and Director of Fish and Game Chuck Bonham announced that implementation of the state’s Marine Protected Areas” in San Francisco Bay will be delayed until the completion of planning efforts for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP).

The BDCP is a plan to build a peripheral canal or tunnel to export more Delta water to southern California and to corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. A broad coalition of Delta residents, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, Indian Tribes, family farmers, grassroots environmentalists and elected officials oppose the peripheral canal’s construction because it would hasten the extinction of Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other fish species and take vast areas of Delta farmland out of production under the guise of habitat “restoration.”

“We appreciate receiving ‘San Francisco Bay Options Report: Considering MPA Planning’ prepared by the California Marine Life Protection Act Initiative,” said Laird and Bonham. “The report identifies a range of options for how to approach marine protected area planning in San Francisco Bay.”

“As noted in the report’s response to science questions, protecting San Francisco Bay’s ecosystem is intricately connected to the marshes of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. As such, any successful planning for and implementation of marine protected areas in San Francisco Bay must complement the historic effort to meet co-equal goals of ecosystem restoration and water supply reliability in the delta,” they stated.

“We look forward to continuing to work with all local, state and federal agencies dedicated to ensuring successful marine planning and protection for San Francisco Bay subsequent to completing planning efforts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta,” Laird and Bonham concluded.

Six options for S.F. Bay ‘marine protected areas’

A memo from Ken Wiseman, Executive Director of the MLPA Initiative, says the options report presents six process design options for San Francisco Bay that “can be approached individually or as a series of steps,” beginning at Option Zero (no process) and moving toward Option Five (comprehensive MLPA Initiative-type planning process).

“Some options, but not all, include the development of MPA proposals; those that do not include an MPA planning component call for information collection and data analysis, which lays a foundation for potential future MPA planning,” said Wiseman.

The options are as follows:

• Option Zero: No Process and No Change to Existing MPAs.
• Option One: Collect and Compile Existing Information – To provide a foundation for a future regional MPA planning process. Information would be compiled and publicly accessible.
• Option Two: Analyze Existing Information and Enhance Communication – Synthesizing the collected information and revising MLPA science guidelines to reflect the unique setting of the SFSR.
• Option Three: Conduct MPA Planning Process with Self-Organized Groups – MPA Planning and proposal development without MLPA Initiative-type staff support.
• Option Four: Conduct MPA Planning Process that Integrates Elements of Existing Processes and Programs – Traditional MLPA Initiative framework (including a regional stakeholder group) that incorporates key elements of and groups involved with existing San Francisco Bay planning processes.
• Option Five: Conduct MLPA Initiative-type MPA Planning Process – an MLPA Initiative-type planning process including developing new information socioeconomic impacts of MPA proposals to inform the process.

Jim Martin, West Coast Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, had mixed feelings about the decision to postpone the MLPA process on San Francisco Bay until after the BDCP process to build the canal is completed.

“On the one hand, we won’t have to deal with no=fishing zones in San Francisco Bay under the MLPA Initiative in the near future,” said Martin. “On the other hand, the state is not going to address water quality issues on San Francisco Bay that need to be addressed.”

The options report is available here.

Laird now a prime mover of peripheral canal

Ironically, John Laird in October 2009 criticized an article I wrote drawing the connections between the MLPA Initiative and the peripheral canal plan. My response documented the intimate connections between the MLPA Initiative and the Delta Vision and BDCP processes to build the peripheral canal.

“In my long public career, I have not supported the Peripheral Canal, and certainly (read my columns online at the SF Chronicle) have taken on Governor Schwarzenegger my fair share,” claimed Laird. “This process (MLPA) is designed to restore the science to marine protection policy, and the discussion of it deserves the same principled and science-based review.”

Less than three years later, Laird, as the current California Natural Resources Secretary, and Deputy Secretary Jerry Meral are in fact the Brown Administration’s prime movers behind the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral canal!

In the most recent development in the controversial BDCP process, Laird sent a letter to David Hayes, Deputy Secretary of the Interior, stating that the state “will not be ready” to release public review drafts of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) and its environmental impact report/statement at the end of June, as originally expected.

Even more ironic, Laird and Bonham in their announcement proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the two processes are connected when they stated that “any successful planning for and implementation of marine protected areas in San Francisco Bay must complement the historic effort to meet co-equal goals of ecosystem restoration and water supply reliability in the delta.”

MLPA Initiative abounds with conflicts of interest

The Central Coast, North Central Coast and Southern California “Marine Protected Areas” created under the MLPA Initiative are already in place. The Fish and Game Commission plans to make its final decision regarding the North Coast marine protected areas in Eureka on Thursday, June 14.

Grassroots environmentalists, fishermen, and Tribal members have criticized the so-called “marine protected areas” created under the MLPA Initiative, privately funded by the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation. The groups say the MPAs fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture, wind and wave energy projects and all other human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and gathering.

They have also slammed the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces that oversee the initiative for their domination by corporate interests, including a powerful oil industry lobbyist, real estate developer and marina operator.

In the most overt conflict of interest, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force that developed the “marine protected areas” that went into effect in Southern California waters on January 1, 2012.

Reheis Boyd is a relentless advocate for new offshore oil drilling off the West Coast, the environmentally destructive practice of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and the evisceration of environmental laws.

Tribal harvesting still unresolved

The issue of traditional tribal harvesting under the MLPA Initiative hasn’t been resolved yet, although Laird on April 18 announced the release of a draft policy directing the resources agency and its departments to “increase communication and collaboration with California’s Native American tribes.”

In 2010 and 2011, members of North Coast Indian Nations organized direct action protests to defend traditional gathering rights.

On June 18, 2011, members of the Yurok, Hoopa Valley, Karuk and other Tribes gathered seaweed, mussels and clams at three beaches on the North Coast to protest restrictions on coastal gathering proposed under the MLPA Initiative. The Tribal members, organized by the grassroots Klamath and Coastal Justice Coalitions, gathered at Patrick’s Point State Park, Clam Beach and Wilson Creek Beach near Klamath.

“Our rights are not negotiable,” said Hoopa Tribal Citizen Dania Rose Colegrove, an organizer for the Klamath Justice Coalition, who gathered seaweed and mussels along with 11 others at Patrick’s Point.

Last month, the Yurok Tribe delivered a proposal before the California Fish and Game Commission in Eureka providing them “an opportunity to better protect the Tribe’s right to traditionally harvest of marine resources“.

“Yurok people are a vital part of the marine ecosystem,” the Tribe stated. “Yurok Tribal members have traditionally harvested marine resources for subsistence or ceremony in a way that is culturally appropriate and completely sustainable since time immemorial.”

For more information about the MLPA Initiative, go to the Klamath Justice website.