September 8, 2010 by mike.

clipped from dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com

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September 8, 2010 by mike.

The last major GE factory making light bulbs in the US is closing later this month. WAPO has that story.  It’s a metaphor for how US national policy has encouraged the shift of manufacturing jobs outside US borders to cut costs and maximize corporate profits. It also illustrates how our federal policy has neglected to encourage research, development, and manufacturing in green technology. Here is a piece from 2007 on the loss of manufacturing jobs.  That’s before the housing bubble burst and things took a really bad turn.

This last US GE plant in Winchester VA makes incandescent bulbs. The future is not in incandescent bulbs. Heck, the present should not be in incandescent bulbs. Here’s a link to a piece on compact fluorescents I did a few years ago.

I think US manufacturing is predominantly war materials. I think that may not be best choice.

Another interesting story.  The NYT and everybody has this one I think.  Richard Daley is not going to run for re-election for Mayor of Chicago.

Mayor of Chicago?  is that a emphemism?  Rahm Emanuel is interested in the job.  I say make Rahm produce his birth certificate first.

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Light bulb factory closes; End of era for U.S. means more jobs overseas WINCHESTER, VA. - The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s. The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs. “Now what’re we going to do?” said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful.

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September 7, 2010 by mike.

Dahr Jamail has a piece on the threat of global warming on Truthout.   Erika Blumenfeld is the photographer for the Jamail piece and has done a great job of capturing the devastation of the BP gusher in the Gulf.  Here is a link to a sample of Blumenfeld photography called The Polar Project.  

That’s a Blumenfeld photo to the right of an iceberg calved from Antarctica.

Climate Progress has this piece: Newark Star Ledger Editorial Board - Face facts: Climate change is unfolding as predicted. It’s worth a couple of minutes to read.

Finally, we have Bill McKibben calling for direct action.  Grist has that piece.

Here are some facts from the Dahr Jamail piece.  And noting that Jamail is reporting on the work of Derrick Jensen.

Read’em and weep.

clipped from www.truth-out.org Life vs. Productivity: “What Would You Live and Die to Protect?” Here are some recent headlines from this summer: Greenland Ice Sheet loses 100 square miles, biggest loss since 1962 (Aug. 2010) Russia’s drought-driven halt to wheat exports panics world grain markets (Aug. 2010) Pakistan’s worst flood in recorded history claims some 1,100 lives (July, 2010) International study confirms accelerating warming trend (July, 2010) Rapid decline in phytoplankton population stuns scientists (July, 2010) Flash floods seen increasing as Milwaukee gets eight inches in two hours (July, 2010) �Senate climate bill collapses (July, 2010) Coral reef deaths soar in record ocean heat (July, 2010) First half of 2010 was hottest such period on record (July, 2010) Carbon lobby launches “CO2 is Green” campaign (July, 2010) Massive Greenland glacier retreats one mile in one night (July, 2010) Military declares climate change “a catalyst for conflict” (June, 2010)

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September 6, 2010 by mike.

Thinking about Mary’s post on Krugman and his take on things.  I continue to be completely convinced that Obama should have made Paul Krugman the Environmental Czar for a two year project to right the economy back in January 2009.

Nope, Obama had to go with Goldman Sachs guys like Geithner, Bernanke. Similarly, Obama seems to think that Alan Simpson is the guy who knows how to fix Social Security.  Hm..  how about checking in with Ezra Klein first?

Ezra Klein makes the cut for the big look at Social Security and his article in the Washington Post.  

Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (that’s a hyperlink graph to the left for the wonks who want words to go with picture) has extensive analysis of the economic benefits of Social Security, the costs of keeping the fund solvent (assuming we could keep Congress from robbing the fund to invade Iran, Venezuela, or Grenada again).

This is really not a matter of economics, it is a matter of priorities.  Do we want to continue the shift of wealth and income to the top 1 to 5% of the population or do we want to shift the wealth and income of the country back into the hands of folks with no trust funds or banker bonuses in their futures?

So, we make Social Security healthy by simply trading that cost for letting the tax cuts for the rich expire. Sounds fine to me.

That simple change fixes Social Security.

The next step to really fix the economy of this country would be to reinstate a steeply progressive tax rate model in the near future.

And remember, when the trolls say that a steeply progressive tax rate will stifle the economy and cost jobs, that all we have to do is to direct their attention to the Eisenhower era.   Here is a decidely wonky analysis from Santa Cruz wannabe Steve Kangas.  Steve is looking for help getting out of Vegas, VEGAS, BABY!, and back to more left coasterly environs.

It ain’t rocket science.  Higher top rates spur investment in infrastructure.  Infrastructure is good for communities.

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Making Social Security less generous isn’t the answer There are a lot of things Congress doesn’t know right now. What to do about jobs, for instance. Who’ll be running the House come January. How to balance the budget. But there is one thing that both parties increasingly seem to agree on: You should work longer. And so what? Lurking beneath this conversation is an unquestioned assumption: We live longer, so we should work longer. That’s pretty intuitive to members of Congress, who seem to like their jobs and don’t seem to like the idea of retiring. It’s also pretty intuitive to blogger/columnists, who spend their time in air-conditioned rooms opining about pension programs. But most people don’t work in Congress or in the media. They work on their feet. They strain their backs. They’re bored silly at the end of the day. By the time they’re in their 60s, they want to retire.

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September 4, 2010 by mike.

Reich would like to up the minimum wage. I would like to instate a maximum wage through a steeply progressive tax rate with a top rate that is essentially confiscatory. If a really wealthy person know they are going to pay 85 cents per dollar in taxes once they are collecting their second or third million dollars in taxable income in the year, they will invest in infrastructure instead of a third or fourth home in a gated community. Infrastructure means industry, jobs, prosperity even for folks who don’t live in gated communities.

I am not sure how we persuade the CEOs to take less and pay better wages to more employees without a tax axe over their heads, but if you think it can be done, weigh in. How’s that going to happen? That rising tide lifting the yachts of the bankers and CEOs? Is it translating into any widespread prosperity? If concentrating wealth in the hands of the few was going to create lots of jobs, wouldn’t that have worked by now?

Reich says the problem is structural.  Consumers no longer have the ability to power an economy.  They first tried shifting to two incomes per household, women left the kitchen and went to work, then families tried putting in more hours, then they shifted to debt, stripping imaginary equity out of the family home and maxing out the credit cards, but the air went out of that scheme when the real estate bubble burst, and now here we are.  That’s a pretty professorial, historical evaluation of our situation, but it fails to recognize that the real cause of our economic woes are the illegal immigrants who are taking our jobs and beheading us.

Hmm…  pick’em.

clipped from www.nytimes.com How to End the Great Recession The national economy isn’t escaping the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. None of the standard booster rockets are working: near-zero short-term interest rates from the Fed, almost record-low borrowing costs in the bond market, a giant stimulus package and tax credits for small businesses that hire the long-term unemployed have all failed to do enough. This crisis began decades ago when a new wave of technology — things like satellite communications, container ships, computers and eventually the Internet — made it cheaper for American employers to use low-wage labor abroad or labor-replacing software here at home than to continue paying the typical worker a middle-class wage. Even though the American economy kept growing, hourly wages flattened. The median male worker earns less today, adjusted for inflation, than he did 30 years ago.

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September 2, 2010 by mike.

Initial reports say the crew got off and all are accounted for. Hopefully, this will not turn out to be another runaway well.

clipped from news.yahoo.com Gulf oil platform explodes, burning off La. coast GRAND ISLE, La. – An offshore petroleum platform exploded and was burning Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico about 80 miles off the Louisiana coast, west of the site where BP’s undersea well spilled after a rig explosion. The Coast Guard says no one was killed in the blast, which was reported by a commercial helicopter flying over the area Thursday morning. All 13 people aboard the rig have been accounted for, with one injury. The extent of the injury was not known. The Department of Homeland Security said the platform was in about 2,500 feet of water and owned by Mariner Energy of Houston. DHS said it was not producing oil and gas.

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September 2, 2010 by mike.

If there was ever any reason for us to invade Afghanistan, it got away along Osama Bin Laden when Bush let the Al Qaeda folks slip away into Pakistan from Tora Bora.

Now we are in a really disastrous situation in Afpakistan, an area that is home to both nuclear weapons and a lot of folks with a grudge against the US.

I never expected anything good from the Bush-Cheney folks, but I thought the Obama administration might make better choices, but I have been disappointed as Obama earns his warrior scout badge by escalating the death and destruction in Afghanistan.

Too bad about this Kabul Bank, though. Are we going to need to prop up another bank? Can we persuade Kabul Bank to merge with Goldman Sachs?

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Nervous Afghans pull money from Kabul Bank, raising fears KABUL - With Afghans clamoring to pull their cash from their nation’s biggest bank, the United States risks a politically perilous decision: whether to step in to help shore up a wobbly bank critical not only to Afghanistan’s economy but also to the battle against the Taliban. A swarm of customers at the headquarters of Kabul Bank in the Afghan capital on Wednesday raised the prospect of a full-scale bank run that would further alienate dispirited Afghans from their government and imperil American efforts to contain the insurgency.

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September 1, 2010 by mike.

Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada spoke to a capacity crowd at the Olympia Center about why the Olympia Food Co-op decision to join the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement was a big deal. And up the road a piece in Seattle, a guy walked into a convenience store and assaulted the store employee who was wearing a turban.

I caught that story on Slate, who say they got it from Talking Points Memo, but the Slate link jumps to Gawker.

I think that assault story is part of the larger wave of Islamophobia that is being stoked by the right-wing as an election tactic and it’s a big story.  But the possibility of pressing Israel to deal fairly with the Palestinians through the BDS movement, the tactic that has been used in the past against South African apartheid, against grapes to support the UFW and Cesar Chavez and more is also a big story.

Ali Abunimah was persuasive, rational, collected and engaging.  He’s an articulate spokesman for Palestine.

Speaking of elections, Feingold seems to be in a tight race in Wisconsin, Murkowski got bumped by a tea partier who found some room to Murkowski’s right, and the prospects for the dems holding on to any congressional majorities continue to dim.

We progressives may feel it makes no difference when the dems are as hapless as they have been since the 2006 election when they were given a chance by the electorate, but then there is always the opportunity to look back and wonder if a President Gore would have used the 9-11 events to attack Iraq.  Even though Obama again declared the mission complete in Iraq yesterday, we will continue to reap the dubious benefits of that military adventure for many years and we are facing deficit hawks who want to cut Medicare and Social Security, but have no reservations about deficits if we are putting boots on the ground, drones in the air, or bailing out the bankers.

Oh, weather report - there’s a hurricane approaching the east coast.  Not just the political storm of tea parties in sequins, Hurricane Earl is currently pointed at North Carolina.    Category 4, that’s a big storm.  Earl also.

Cheers!

clipped from gawker.com A Washington man was charged with a hate crime today for assaulting a 7-11 clerk wearing a turban last week. His words to the convenience store employee? “You’re not even American, you’re Al-Qaeda. Go back to your country.” A 35-year-old Seattle man has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly punching a 7-11 clerk in the head. Police say Brock Stainbrook walked into the 7-11 just after midnight Aug. 24, approached a clerk wearing a turban, threw change on the floor and then punched the clerk in the side of the head. “You’re not even American, you’re Al-Qaeda. Go back to your country,” he then said, according to police. Another clerk then forced the man, kicking and screaming, to leave the store. Police picked him up a few blocks away after witnesses described a man in a white shirt, black pants and carrying one shoe. The Post-Intelligencer notes that the victim’s last name “is common within the Sikh community.” (Sikhs are, notably, not Muslim.)

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August 29, 2010 by mike.

I think that covers our options.

clipped from climateprogress.org Real adaptation is as politically tough as real mitigation, but much more expensive and not as effective in reducing future misery Rhetorical adaptation, however, is a political winner. Too bad it means preventable suffering for billions. clipped from climateprogress.org We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be. clipped from climateprogress.org August 27, 2010

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August 29, 2010 by mike.

Planet Earth’s attic is on fire.

clipped from climateprogress.org Arctic sea ice volume heads toward record low as Northwest Passage melts free fourth year in a row Masters rebukes disinformers: “Diminishing the importance of Arctic sea ice loss by calling attention to Antarctic sea ice gain is like telling someone to ignore the fire smoldering in their attic, and instead go appreciate the coolness of the basement, because there is no fire there. Planet Earth’s attic is on fire.” Arctic sea ice volume heads toward record low as Northwest Passage melts free fourth year in a row Chris Mooney has a good piece in New Scientist, “Arctic ice: Less than meets the eye,” the source of the above figures.  Mooney focuses on the work of Canada’s David Barber — you can find his peer-reviewed work here:  “Where on Earth is it unusually warm? Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, which is full of rotten ice” — New study supports finding that “the amount of [multi-year] sea ice in the northern hemisphere was the lowest on record in 2009.” Mooney also discusses the PIOMAS ice volume model developed by the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center in Seattle, which I have been featuring on CP this year.  Their analysis finds “not only has the total volume of Arctic ice continued to decline since 2007, but that the rate of loss is accelerating” [see also Arctic death spiral: Naval Postgrad School’s Maslowski “projects ice-free* fall by 2016 (+/- 3 yrs)”].

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