Dinosaurs in Detroit

Much talk in the national media lately has focused on the so-called Big Three automakers and their plea to be given a part of the $700 billion bail-out to help them dig out of their current dire financial straits.

The Bush administration and many Republicans oppose the idea, while several key Democrats and president-elect Obama support the notion.

Me? I think it's a mixed bag, but I am somewhat surprised to find myself leaning more closely to the Republican opinion on this one.

Don't pass out just yet.

I believe that the Republican-dominated government of the past 8 years (and the Republican dominance of policy for much of the last couple of decades) were huge faciliatators of the rampant deregulation that helped foster the current economic meltdown. Now that the automakers are failing, too, it's not hard to see why so many of them would be opposed to helping them out: most of these companies are based in Detroit--not exactly a Republican base--and, well, unions.

Still, I find myself agreeing with them that maybe throwing a bunch of money at floundering car companies isn't such a hot idea.

The New York Times recently published an interesting article dealing with the issue, wherein it was proposed that part of the reason so many Americans are opposed to bailing out Detroit automakers is that the industry has been so resistant to higher fuel efficiency standards at a time when oil prices are through the roof and climate change is more severe than ever.

I think there's something to that. The Big Three spent millions of dollars to lobby Washington not to pass higher fuel efficiency standards, complaining that they simply didn't have the technology to make these modest changes. All the while their bottom line was suffering dramatically, factories were shutting down, and workers were being laid off. Oh, but they still had/have enough money to pay out huge sums for CEO bonuses.

You'll forgive folks if they're not terribly sympathetic to their plight.

What makes the situation so complex, though, is that Detroit's automakers have their fingers sunk so deeply into the American business landscape. Everything from the factories to the parts suppliers to the dealerships would be negatively impacted by one or more of the big companies going belly up. It would result in job losses on an epic scale, and no one relishes that possibility.

But it may have to happen. After all, I suspect that, in addition to the financial burden the $700 billion bail-out puts on taxpayers, another big reason for public resistance to such ideas is that we're supposed to have an economy based on merit. Companies that don't run themselves efficiently, aren't innovative and creative, fail. Companies that do all of those things succeed, and rightfully so. It's economic survival-of-the-fittest, (in theory) insuring that only the best business practices survive to serve the people.

Instead, here we are with companies that were allowed to grow huge and all-encompassing despite poor business practices, cronyism, and book-cooking (a lot of this thanks to the enabling acts of Republicans--and some Democrats--who were so gung-ho to deregulate everything). And now they're paying the piper and teetering on the brink of oblivion--only, the Vested Interests That Be are trying to use taxpayer money to save them. This flies in the face of everything we as Americans were taught about what capitalism ought to be.

Detroit could have learned a thing or two from the foreign automakers that moved their factories into the southern United States. Companies like Honda and Toyota make much more fuel-efficient vehicles and take very decent care of their workers, right here in America (side note: I find it ironic that the "American" car makers have most of their factories located offshore now, and a lot of the foreign car makers build them right here in the country).

Instead, they chose to plow ahead with their giant, gas-guzzling fleets, outsourced assembly, and big fat CEO bonuses. In their wake lies a devastated Detroit, where large swaths of once-glorious industrial buildings now sit abandoned in a post-apocalyptic-like landscape. Good jobs are hard to come by. Crime rates are high. Corruption infects the local government. Certainly, not all of that can be blamed solely on the automakers, but a large chunk can: after all, when a city comes to rely on one primary industry, and that industry then conducts itself selfishly to the point of negligence, it leads to massive layoffs and outsourcing and sucks much of the life right out of the city it once supported.

We're now looking at this sort of thing happening on a national scale.

In the NYT article, it's noted that Susan Tompor, a columnist with the Detroit Free Press, was moved by all this recent criticism of the Big Three to write "I never knew Detroit was a dirty word."

I would argue that "Detroit" isn't a dirty word, but "Detroit Automakers?" Not really winning any new fans at the moment.

Painful as it's likely to be, perhaps it's time to let these companies fail. It could be done with forethought--a plan to help layed off workers retrain and/or move into different lines of work (and shift their health plans over to a new universal Medicade program). There are still relatively successful car companies operating in the country; some could go to work there, building the more efficient vehicle models of the future. Because the thing is, we're always going to need car-like transport. As big an advocate as I am for biking and public transit, I recognize that cars and trucks have become an integral and important part of our world. There is a way to build them to have less negative impact on the climate, and to design cities to be less car-centric. That's what we should be focusing on, and those businesses that work toward those ends should be given our full support.

If the Big Three make an honest effort to get in on that, great, help 'em out. If not? I'm tempted to say let 'em fall.

Biblioburro

I'm just back from an incredibly exhausting weekend, and am not entirely sure I have a proper post in me. We'll see, but in the meantime I wanted to share this wonderful article from the New York Times. Long live the Biblioburro!

Expect a recounting of my weekend adventures at some point either late tonight or tomorrow: of minivans breaking down in Indiana, drag kings, German villages, bike/clothes shops, and Roman nudity. Huzzah!

Oh and apparently Barack Obama himself is going to be rocking the capitol steps here in Madison on Thursday. Will you play hooky from work to see him?

And on a final note, I have to brag a little bit: my first published-in-print article since college is in the current issue of Isthmus, and I couldn't be more pleased. You can also read it online, if you're so inclined.

The future of food

I highly, highly recommend reading an article recently published in the New York Times by Michael Pollan, written as a letter to the next president, all about moving America toward a better, more secure food future.

Seriously, read the whole thing.

Pollan has so many good suggestions for moving away from monocultures and toward more sustainable, but still large-scale food production techniques: "sun-based regional agriculture", he calls it. Some of the proposals are so simple that you'd be hard pressed to think of a reason not to implement them. Even the trickier ones still make perfect sense.

This should be required reading for everyone, especially the next president.

Casting off the ballot casters

In the push to bring their states into compliance with HAVA, it looks like many have gone too far. According to a recent study by the New York Times:

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

The study didn't find any particularly partisan reasons for these purges, which is good, but it does, I think, illustrate what can happen when we value kicking people off the rolls over getting them properly registered.

This certainly isn't true across the board, but more Democrats seem primarily concerned with making sure anyone and everyone who can vote is able to do so, whereas more Republicans seem primarily concerned with making sure anyone and everyone who cannot vote is not able to do so. It's a notable difference in philosophies. Both are important, but I happen to believe that the former should be our priority.

As for these swing states' overzealous and improper enforcement of HAVA requirements, I can't help but be reminded of the voter registration controversy here in Wisconsin. Aside from the fact that it's looking more and more like Attorney General Van Hollen filed it for somewhat dubious, partisan reasons, I'm left wondering just how effective it's possible for HAVA to be in its current incarnation. It seems to be wreaking havoc all over the country.

Yes, our voting system needs overhauling--you've only to refer to the 2000 elections in Florida and the 2004 elections in Ohio for prime examples of why--but I'm not convinced that this is the way to go about it. Fact is, the spectre of voter fraud so often and ominously raised is rather flimsy. Cases of individual voter fraud are few and far between, and hardly merit the panic and radical action (ID requirements, for instance) so often being called for.

According to truthaboutfraud.org, in the 2004 elections in Wisconsin:

...allegations yielded only 7 substantiated cases of individuals knowingly casting invalid votes that counted -- all persons with felony convictions. This amounts to a rate of 0.0025% within Milwaukee and 0.0002% within the state as a whole. None of these problems could have been resolved by requiring photo ID at the polls.

So while it's important to make sure that people legally barred from voting--or people who don't exist in the first place--don't cast ballots, it's not nearly so pressing and huge an issue as some folks would have us believe. Shouldn't we be more concerned with things like hackable ballot machines without paper trails? Provisional ballots not being counted? Disenfranchisement of certain legal voters?

Fact is, there are far more crucial issues in our election system that need addressing, too. Perhaps we should revisit HAVA. Absolutely we should make sure that states are following appropriate procedures when checking voter registration databases instead of wildly purging thousands from the rolls based on incorrect information. Again, the NYT:

In Michigan, some 33,000 voters were removed from the rolls in August, a figure that is far higher than the number of deaths in the state during the same period — about 7,100 — or the number of people who moved out of the state — about 4,400, according to data from the Postal Service.

In Colorado, some 37,000 people were removed from the rolls in the three weeks after July 21. During that time, about 5,100 people moved out of the state and about 2,400 died, according to postal data and death records.

In Louisiana, at least 18,000 people were dropped from the rolls in the five weeks after July 23. Over the same period, at least 1,600 people moved out of state and at least 3,300 died.

This could very well lead to some serious problems come election day, as these tens of thousands of people unfairly removed from lists show up at the polls expecting to cast their ballots, only to meet challenges from party officials or election workers.

Frankly, registration and election laws in this country are a mess. We need a standardized, streamlined, and as fool-proof as possible system of checking registrations. We need ballot machines, like the optical scanner versions we have in Wisconsin, that are 1) easy to read and fill out, 2) electronic and so easy to count, and 3) still have a paper trail (plus, there's pretty much nothing to hack in these). We need same-day and motor-voter registration laws, like those in Wisconsin, for the entire country. And heck, while we're at it, why not consider holding elections on weekends, and let them span two days instead of just one? It would make it easier for people to find time to vote, and allow for more time to count all of the ballots, instead of this weird insistance on having results the same day.

Making sure that every eligible voter gets to have their say should be the priority.

Eerily familiar

The New York Times published a really excellent, well-researched article about Sarah Palin in yesterday's paper, and I highly recommend giving it a read.

The most telling quotes from it, however, have got to be these, from Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996:

[Chase] recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’"

And then...

"I'm still proud of Sarah," she added, "but she scares the bejeebers out of me."

Much of the article details the Palin administration's seeming obsession with secrecy and cronyism: using private email addresses for official government correspondence so they couldn't later be subpoenaed, firing anyone who disagreed with their policies, hiring old school friends for top level positions they were pretty unqualified to hold, etc. It all seems strangely, eerily familiar, doesn't it?

And for a slightly less scary, but still fairly right-on commentary about this whole debacle, be sure to watch the opening skit from this weekend's episode of Saturday Night Live, featuring, thank goodness, the (all-too-brief) return of Tina Fey as Palin.

We'll all pay for their idiocy

Read this...

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency's conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

...and then tell me with a straight face that the Bush administration and its apologists are all roses and fucking sunshine.

We are a nation run by ill-tempered 5-year-olds.

Illegal hiring practices at the DoJ

The first part of a report that seems to confirm what we've suspected all along about hiring practices at the DoJ during the Bush administration:

Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.

I'm overjoyed to see that someone is following up on this, but sadly, won't be surprised if no one of consequence is held accountable for it. These days, the most the public can seem to hope for is that the wrongdoings are brought to light. Hoping for the responsible parties to meet with appropriate punishment, however, is far too often all for naught.

Maybe I'll be surprised this time.

As cynical as this administration (and our mostly spineless Democrats) has made me over the last eight years, I can't help but still be royally pissed off at the rough shod that's been run over this country's most essential organizations (DoJ, FEMA, CIA, etc.) and most dearly held rights and ideals. No one is being held accountable. At most, they get a slap on the wrist and a well-paid job with some lobbying firm--which, really, seems to be the new American way. And that's a crying fucking shame, and we need to actually do something about it.

We can never deter everyone from doing anything wrong--that's a pipe dream if ever there was one. Thing is, we've done very little to deter anyone from doing anything wrong. What kind of example is that to set?

The other great polluter

I have been a vegetarian since my junior year of high school. The decision and the change was actually pretty easy for me to make, which is just one reason why I don't really go out of my way to brag or proselytize about it. See, I never really liked most meat. Growing up, I was that oddball child who loved her strained carrots and peas, but when it came to meat--say, the perfectly delicious to the rest of the world steak that my dad cooked up--I would more often than not take a few bites before wadding it up in a napkin and discreetly discarding the thing. We didn't get dessert if we didn't clean our plates.

I did like turkey and chicken, so it took me a couple of years after my initial decision before I was able to fully cut them out of my diet. That and the omnipresence of chicken stock in pretty much everything. Seriously, vegetable soup? Chicken stock.

Anyway, I've been meat free for many years, and my reasons for it have evolved over that time. At first, it was because I didn't like the stuff and because, y'know, cows were treated pretty badly and stuff. Now, it's because of those things and because the way in which we get our meat has become one of the biggest sources of pollution in the world.

My good friend Mari recently pointed out a really well-written and very informative piece about this very subject in the New York Times. You can read the whole thing here, but I'd like to bring up some of its finer points:

The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons.

...the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land. In the last five months alone, the government says, 1,250 square miles were lost.

...if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

...about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption...

Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

In Iowa alone, hog factories and farms produce more than 50 million tons of excrement annually.

If the cruelty exhibited toward animals by most major production facilities isn't enough to deter us from over consumption, perhaps the sheer waste and destruction resulting from these practices would be. It's an intriguing argument, especially as more and more people are taking the threats of environmental degradation more seriously.

I have never been an "all meat is murder" advocate, though I certainly understand why some people might be pushed to such a place. Modern techniques for growing meat are atrocious and unhealthy. Ultimately, however, I do believe that some consumption of animal products is good and necessary. Hunting certain species keeps their populations in check, and meat in general, when raised and prepared in a more natural manner, is perfectly healthy. Plus, a lot of people really seem to enjoy the stuff.

The real issue at hand should be just how much meat we consume (if we so choose to consume it) and then, stemming from that, how and where we get it from. Massive feed lots, where the animals are stuffed in by the thousands and pretty much expected to be sick, where the enormous amounts of waste are drained into the local water supplies, should be disgusting and unacceptable to everyone.

Plus, by improving the way we treat and raise feed animals and also the way we treat and use their waste, we tackle an important and oft-overlooked facet of the pollution problem. By growing more crops for human consumption instead of animal feed, we can decrease the amount of forest land that's cleared and help to decrease the number of people who go hungry in the world.

It seems like a no-brainer, but the dominant culture, at least in the United States, still holds that we should eat large quantities of meat. And so long as we don't have to see where it comes from, what toll it's taking on the land and air, and so long as the prices don't spike, too many folks will go on not caring. That's why it takes education and legislation, and we should be pushing for both tactics by cutting back and speaking out.

I've been heartened to see a small but steadily growing movement toward free-grazing, free-range animal husbandry in this country. When, recently, I attended a cheese class at Fromagination (highly recommended, by the way), I learned that the makers of Wisconsin's famed Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese, the fine folks at Uplands Farm, use what's called "intensive rotational grazing" with their cattle:

The pasture is subdivided into separate paddocks that the cows are moved through in a rotational manner. They get fresh pasture at the optimum stage of growth each day. The pasture, along with a small amount of grain, makes up their summer diet.

The cows are also allowed to stay with their calves for the first six months, which is nearly unheard of in major factory farming operations.

You can find an extensive list of other Wisconsin farms that raise grass fed, pastured and free-range animals at EatWild.com, too. It's mighty encouraging to see that the list is so long.

Still, the main producers of beef, pork and poultry are huge corporations that will be hard to convince to make fundamental changes to the way they do things. It needs to be done, though, and it's high time we all started to take the problem seriously.