If we can pipe oil all over the continent, why not water?

http://www.theodora.com/pipelines/north_america_oil_gas_and_products_pipelines.html

New Orleans is about to get a dump of 8-10 inches of water — again! The Mississippi had two 500 year floods. Texas and Arizona are dying due to drought and wildfires. So, above is a link to a map of the oil pipelines in North America. Is there anyone who can’t see the potential of pumping floodwaters (and only flood waters) into holding tanks and then piping it west to where lakes are nothing but dried up puddles? I am not a meteorologist but I understand that just wetting the land promotes rain due to rising humidity. The pumps in New Orleans can clear the city so it is likely they are capable of the job of moving the water into the lines, they just have to end somewhere where water is needed.  If this seems like an expensive idea, check out the Public Radio broadcast on the Texas drought (http://www.npr.org/2011/08/26/139947317/drought-puts-texas-ranchers-and-cattle-at-risk?ft=1&f=1001). We will all be paying for our negligence of this planet, and it may be too late to correct the damage we have done, but we can alleviate some of the effects with a little of that vision thing AND create jobs in the process. Yes, it will cost federal dollars, unless some enterprising businessmen take the lead. That would be better, but I doubt we’ll see it happen. Enterprising businessmen are under the thumbs of big business which, frankly, could not care less about Texas ranchers or wildlife. Maybe Pickens can come up with a plan…after all, natural gas pipelines could do double duty.

A Nation of Weasels

Years ago, JFK wrote Profiles in Courage, a book about those who took the right stand at great personal sacrifice to themselves. Today, our profile in courage is New York senator, Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for  months before concluding he had been wrong. “I apologize for those who feel  offended,” Mr. Grisanti, a Catholic who opposes same sex marriage on religious
grounds, nonetheless said, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a  worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is, the same rights that I have with my wife.”

It was a marvelous moment, one that has been sadly lacking in elected officials of both parties in stations from local to national to, to be fair,  international. If JFK were alive and wrote “Profiles: Part II,” it would be flash fiction. Some people are born weasels, and they do what weasels always do,  and that’s not too disappointing as we expected it. But there are others who  have been hugely disappointing and deserve to be called into account.

President  Obama
I make no secret that I am a progressive, but back in high school  and college, I was a libertarian Republican, snipping at LBJ for nothing that had anything to do with the Vietnam war, Republicans being notoriously pro-war  even then. I had a summer internship with Human Events Magazine and, as part of it, went to a White House press conference.

Press secretary George Christian made mention that LBJ was particularly keen to see passage of the “Rat Bill” – a bill which would provide federal funds to  eradicate rats in major cities – within a week. “The what bill?” one of the reporters yelled.

“The Rat Bill,” Christian replied.

“He means the little bitty mouse bill,” a southern reporter  drawled.

Christian stood a bit straighter and, in an angry tone, began  citing statistics concerning rat bites in New York, Boston, Chicago, etc.,  adding that this bill would be passed. The following day, the bill was  mentioned in short stories on front pages of major cities, with follow-up  features on the extent of the problems locally. The bill passed and, as I  recall, LBJ did not have to directly address it.

LBJ understood power and, reviled though he may have been for his stand on an earlier unwinnable war, his understanding of power created many of  the social programs we take for granted today.

Obama has no clue, indeed, he is so clueless that he is working with weasels that one wonders if  picking Sarah Palin to be an old man’s heartbeat from the presidency was the GOP way of throwing the election and having an unseasoned Democrat take the helm and try to solve the national emergency. If so, they were brilliant  weasels, willing to sacrifice the well being of the country for the sake of  holding power in the Beltway.

So what does the hope-master have to do?

First, stop telling congress to play nice. They are weasels and they love to nip at what smells like the blood of a wounded animal. Start using your  contacts to make policy and take the high road. When you do speak to the nation,
give them a plan of action, and let them know you are sticking to it.

Second, use  power covertly. This is something you seem to have no inclination to do, possibly because you have so few chips to bargain with. But on the occasion when you work covertly, more gets done. Defense of Marriage Act is no longer being defended  in court, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is a policy of the past, drug enforcement is stopping at state borders instead of busting medical marijuana suppliers, the  government is now targeting illegal aliens who commit crimes. It’s a step in
the right direction.

Third, when  you do speak, show some passion.
Those of us out here in recession  land are struggling, we are angry and we want our leader to stop being so damn cool and start showing his anger, too. When billionaire Warren Buffet seems more irate about no tax hikes on the rich  than a supposedly progressive president,  something is very wrong.

Fourth, try  a new jobs initiative that does not require those irritating yellow highway cones.
Want the red states to love you and create jobs at the same time? Create a Pickens Plan for water, a public works project that lays pumps and pipelines to  pull floodwaters from the Mississippi and other rivers when they swell to  dangerous heights and use the pipelines to fill reservoirs in drought-ravaged states like Texas and Arizona. It’s cheaper than desalinization and if the
pipelines leak, what’s a bit of water before the pumps get turned off? Anyone who doesn’t think this is important has ignored the number of Texas ranchers selling off their herds because they have no water for their cattle, or their feed crops (wait until the food prices start rising next year). If this seems  unreasonable, realize that the Trans-Alaska pipeline is 800 feet and that was  run over tundra under horrible conditions. And get some experts to repair the  plug that has been pulled on the Great Lakes before they become the Great  Puddles.

Fifth, keep your mouth shut, but ask others to start talking about climate change as if we  can still do something about it.
500-year back-to-back floods, 100-year  hurricanes, deadly heat waves that last for weeks, massive dust storms, mudslides in California, coastal areas so salty due to drought that the shrimp and clams are dying is pretty persuasive evidence that something is amiss on  our planet and it’s high time we did something about it – if we still can. And  if we can’t, we need to start planning on how we will face the world post-warming.

Next blog:  The biggest weasels look to a future in the Oval Office. What they need to do to actually get elected

My Rakia*-Inspired Dream

Did new Granddaughter inspire dream?

I dreamed I was on a cruise ship with friends. We were griping about the fact that we were sharing our ship with Sarah Palin and what sarcastic things we would say to her if we met her. We were heading down to watch one of the shows in the main theater when, in a side hallway, all along, sat Sarah. She was dressed nicely as one would on a cruise and she was alone. And, she looked really unhappy.

The writer in me could not resist this, so I went and sat next to her and introduced myself and asked why, on a beautiful ship on such a beautiful day, she looked so sad. She looked up at me (her head had been in her hands) and, with her lower lip quivering mama-grizzly style, she told me she was terribly worried about Bristol, who just could not cope with all the fame and the media pressure and, in spite of her age, was starting to act out.  I told her about my daughter who is a wonderful woman and friend today but who had sometimes driven me crazy when she was younger. And the next thing you know, we were both standing and she is hugging me and sobbing on my shoulder and I am wiping away tears, too. I would guess that my friends were a bit put out by my absence, particularly if they turned around and saw me hugging her, but it felt like a wonderful moment to me, that notion that parenthood and human-hood transcends politics.

Maybe it was the Rakia I drank the night before or the new granddaughter (Madeline Elaine, born St. Patrick’s day) or that brilliant full moon or hearing how the Japanese are sharing what they have with each other instead of looting and violence that made me have such a hopeful dream of how, in spite of our differences, Sarah and I could meet at our human level.

Then, of course, things got more dreamlike and somewhat calculating. I decided to give Sarah my card with my e-mail address thinking maybe we could keep in touch or she could put in a nice word about my books but I could not find a card or a pen that would write on the scrap of paper I’d dug out of my purse. I tried a long time and when I turned to say something apologetic to Sarah, she was gone and the moment had passed and life went back to normal.

*Homemade fruit brandy from Slovakia with a white lightning kick to it. Warms you everywhere.

Send a Letter — and a check — to Gov. Walker

Today, I am mailing the following letter and a check to Gov. Scott Walker. I did not want to go to Madison, I don’t much like crowds, but I think this is a good idea whatever side of the aisle you will agree with it.

Dear Gov. Walker:

I have watched with dismay the demonstrations in Madison and cannot help but think that seeing our beautiful Capitol turned into a mini-version of Cairo is not good for the business climate. As a taxpayer of this state for generations, I have noticed that I am paying less and less these days while the state is in want.

I am therefore enclosing a check for $37–the amount it is estimated every adult in the state needs to pay to cover the deficit — made out to the State of Wisconsin Emergency Budget Deficit Relief Fund (SOWEBDRF). I am posting this letter on my blogsite in the hope that other people will do the same. I also hope that a donation to this fund can be added to our income tax forms. If we can pay for Lambeau, why not a bit of extra support to the rest of the state?

Gov. Walker, if your plans to bring jobs and money to Wisconsin are successful, we should have no budget problems in the future as taxes are a percent of income.

Please accept this money in the spirit in which it was given, set up the fund and apply this to it. If not, please explain to me and, I hope others who are willing to voluntarily do this, why not.

Thank you — and God Bless the wonderful state we live in.

Elaine Bergstrom

From Energy and Capital … how to reduce the deficit

You want deficits cut?

Then you’re a supporter of renewable energy — and you’re not alone.

In a recent Gotham Research poll, 73% of Americans (that extrapolates to 226 million people) said they want half or all fossil fuel subsidies repurposed to support solar and other renewables.

Some of you will dismiss that result. Some of you will deny it. Some of you will say it’s a lie.

But here are some things you can’t argue with:

1. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) chief economist has said phasing out billions of dollars of fossil fuel subsidies “would trigger vast savings in energy consumption… and change the energy game quickly and substantially.” He added that fossil fuel subsidies are “the appendicitis of the global energy system which need to be removed for a healthy, sustainable development future.”
2. The IEA calculated that in 2008, 37 large developing countries spent about $557 billion in energy subsidies.
3. An Environmental Law Institute study estimated $72 billion in tax breaks to U.S. fossil fuel companies from 2002-2008.
4. An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study found direct subsidies that artificially lower the cost of fossil fuels amounted to $312 billion globally in 2009.

And yet, when a co-author of the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s World Energy Outlook was recently asked “if someone has actually done a credible, comprehensive, definitive count of how much taxpayers underwrite fossil fuels in this country”, he said there is no such widely accepted count or number available…

I guess it is pretty hard to count up all the:

• tax breaks
• subsidies
• the costs of government agencies that are set up to perform functions that these industries should pay full cost for doing — like figuring out how to stuff their pollution underground instead of wasting it on exorbitant, fantasy projects like “FutureGen”
• military expenditures to protect oil shipping lanes
• pollution forgiveness or remediation
• rock-bottom-price access to public property, such as mountains, subsurface property, aquifers, and ocean waters — all of which fossil energy companies routinely wreck and pay comparatively little to fix

If we want a discussion about wasteful spending, I think this is a pretty good place to start.

It is time to look at our values…

Kriista at Badger Camp.

On occasion, I’ve blogged about my daughter Kriista, who is deaf and has Down Syndrome. She is also the reason I still live in Wisconsin. After my divorce some years ago, I looked into moving to Ohio where my parents live. They were getting older and I am an only child. Counselors at Kriista’s school looked into Ohio services and told me, “Don’t move there. There are no services for her to equal these.”

They did not need to tell me twice. Years ago, I stayed with friends in the DC area of Virginia whose girls went to a high school with more than 5,000 students. It had a Cray computer, but no swimming pool. There were no public pools in their area and their lakes were privately owned and rather expensive. When you see poor kids playing in fire hydrants in DC in the summer, realize it’s that or the fountains. I am thankful we have pools and parks and free lakefront beaches here in Milwaukee County.

I live in Wisconsin because I believe in what our state offers its citizens, but I have seen these eroded time and time again. I recall when Milwaukee County residents voted for a .5% sales tax hike to raise money for the parks. Our then-county exec, Scott Walker, ignored the will of his constituents. And for what? A half a penny on every dollar spent here? How much would that increase affect, well, just about anyone not buying a luxury car or a yacht?

While the teachers and union members are marching in Madison today, I am wondering how the budget will affect my adult daughter. I have already seen her one social program, supported by Easter Seals in Southeastern Wisconsin, cut by about 10 weeks per year because of money issues. She dances, she bowls, she has a great time with her boyfriend — only now she does it that many weeks less. On the weeks there are no programs, she brings me the calendar and reminds me when they are starting up again.

Even worse, her work program at Goodwill has been under attack because it is “warehousing the handicapped.” I will happily post a video of my child’s reaction when I tell her she cannot go to her “warehouse” again; she would be devastated and I suspect it would go viral. A snow day, that most kids would relish, already leads to a full meltdown until she calms down, her personal sun comes out and she starts helping us shovel.

For years, I saw a letter come with my annual state tax forms saying that income taxes had again been cut. I, for one, want to pay more. Let’s say the state raised our taxes a reasonable 2%. Taking at my last tax return as a benchmark, this comes out to the equivalent of two Starbucks vente lattes per week! Is this really going to affect my buying power? Will I really not buy a home because I am taking home $10 per week less? If so, should I be thinking about buying anything?

And, we can’t even voluntarily do our part to help the things we love. We can contribute on our taxes for Lambeau field (I do) and for endangered resources (I do that, too), why don’t we at least have the option to pass part of our refunds back for things like our parks?

What our money-bought GOP legislators forget as that makes for a business-friendly state is not just the money. We have everything here, including that great lake which, as water becomes ever more precious, may turn out to be the equivalent of oil fields.  But it will mean nothing if our schools are garbage, our roads are potholed, transportation for workers is non-existant and our legislature is in the dark ages of money-is-everything. We had that, back at the turn of the last century, and with unity we overcame it. With unity, we will again. If Egypt can topple a dictator, we can take on our own version of it and overcome. Next January, Scott Walker, it’s topple time. Just wait.

That “Family Guy” Down Syndrome Episode

First, I will say that I do not watch Family Guy. I think it is crass and rude, and I was inclined to side with Palin when she said the episode was like “a kick in the gut” until I read this rather perfect comeback from Andrea Fay Friedman, the actress who voiced the DS character, and who has Down Syndrome herself. “My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes,” she says.

Check the full feature out at:

http://www.salon.com/news/media_criticism/index.html?story=/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2010/02/19/that_down_syndrome_girl

A Pre-Plane Disaster

A few weeks before the attempted holiday bombing of a flight nearing Detroit airport, I had a chance to see the good and bad of our security system. I had been warned in an email from Midwest Airlines to expect a long line at the security kiosks, and so I thankfully arrived at the Milwaukee airport bit early. I checked my bag easily, as I was one of few willing to fork over an extra $20 to avoid the pain of carting my bag along with me, and, with online boarding pass already printed from home, I went up to the entrance to the concourse. I usually walk right through security. Not this time.

And, I have to add that, were I a nervous terrorist standing in that very long line, I might start doing an informal body count and realize that, with some 300+ people in immediate proximity to me, I could take out the same number of people as would be on a jumbo jet, and maybe more, and not have to bother with getting through security at all. I am sure this same thought has occurred to smart terrorists as well as creative people involved in Homeland Security, just as the latter have realized that profiling on the basis of behavior (terrorists come in all nationalities and colors but humans all behave in an apparently similar manner when they have a bomb in their underwear) would be an effective addition to screenings. And we might consider starting those full body scans. With terrorists willing to put their genitals on the line, it would be way less intrusive than patting people in their crotch.

What a mess! It was barely 6:30 AM and already the line was over 300 feet. By the time I got to the first HSA checkpoint to show my ID, it had grown at least another 100 feet. This was the result of the incredibly stupid planning that had Southwest Airlines sharing a concourse with Midwest Airlines. When two huge carriers are fed by a single three-security-conveyor checkpoint things are bound to get ugly.

Now let us add in the bags that cheapskate fliers feel they must carry rather than pay to check. These created a mess of tangled straps and impatient parents and cranky kids and overworked but very efficient HSA personnel. Kudos to them for getting us through so quickly, and for being so polite, and for the humorous “Recombobulation Station” sign when we got through the security check. It brightened an otherwise dismal morning.

BUT, I am sure that in the sheer volume of what the agents need to do, they missed some things. How could they not when they are responsible for people, their carry-on bags, all their electronics and now, their suitcases? After the bombing attempt, Toronto’s airport banned all carry-ons with only a few exceptions. This ban makes sense, letting airlines cut ticket prices by charging to check passengers’ bags does not.

I have to add that my heart goes out to the father of the failed bomber. I am sure it was hard to report his son to American intelligence. I am also sure that one of the reasons he did so was to ensure his son did not become a victim of his own extremist views. Sadly, his son did, but at least he was the only one who will suffer for this. May it be a wake up call to those in power.

UPDATE: Some airlines have just raised their baggage checking fees, leading me to think maybe the solution to airplane security is to give the airlines the job of policing their customers. AND, should a plane go boom while airborne due to their negligence, they can deal with the lawsuits, the cost and the probable bankruptcy of their companies. Airlines are making airport security’s job harder, so let’s give them the responsibility. It’s a nice libertarian solution to a very serious problem.

A soldier’s amazing anti-war speech

There is nothing I can add to this, except for a comment Ron Paul made. He said we could balance the budget, and even have a surplus, if we would just bring out troops home. The interviewer asked him, “what would you do with the money?” He replied, ”Whatever the people want.”
This is, of course, all about what we want.
Elaine

Musings on Adam Lambert

I am a fan of extreme, a devotee of deviance and an admirer of raw charisma. I have played the video of Lambert’s performance at American Music Awards a number of times and I love it. It is a “fuck you” to every narrow-minded viewer (be he/she homophobic or merely uneasy) and revealed the raw talent that is Adam Lambert, the guy who didn’t win last season’s American Idol but should have.

He pulled a fast one on ABC, refusing to perform unless they promised it would be unedited. It wasn’t (even though I suspect there are execs at the networks tearing out their hair over that promise) but it did have a few things blurred and bleeped, as it should have. ABC, rightfully, did not cut the boy-on-boy kiss lest they prove the double standard Lambert has pointed out.

But since doing the act, Lambert has pulled back a bit on his performance, saying he was caught up “in the moment.” That is a troubling statement for a young performer clearly on his way to superstar status. Because, if I may speak to Adam directly for “my” moment, there will be so many moments you will be in center of.

There will be drugs, and groupies, and those that will tell you that you are fabulous even when you are being a jerk. Take your hint from Whitney Houston and from the late great Michael Jackson, both honored on Sunday night, and be aware – you are in charge, Adam. You will have to be the rational one. Once you hit a certain level in your career, no one else will do it for you.

Now – Entertain Us!