Will Nature, Young People and Future Generations Forgive Us?

   By Jay - Ottawa

 Earth scientists have documented five mass extinctions.  In simple terms extinction works like this: A new world blooms, life flourishes for a while, a fatal problem develops and most of that epoch’s creatures are wiped out.  Forever.  Sometimes the die off is swift, sometimes slow but relentless.

 Despite a handful of extinctions, Earth hasn’t turned into a Moon or a Mars.  The vital spark has survived –– so far –– through a few small, base creatures who survive one epoch to reanimate another world full of life –– but always a new world that never quite replicates the flora and fauna of the previous epoch.  Humans should take note: after a mass extinction, millions of years go by in recovery before the Earth is inherited by different plant specimens and a different zoo of creatures.  For most vertebrates –– and that would include the complex, high maintenance human race –– there is no second chance of a comeback post extinction, anymore than there was for the dinosaurs.  If the number of a species is reduced to zero by a mass extinction, too bad.  One chance per species per epoch seems to be the rule.

 In geological circles the most profound mass extinction was the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, also known as “The Great Dying.”  It began a little over 250 million years ago and unwound very slowly over the course of 80,000 years.  By the time it bottomed out, 95% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate species were gone.1

The trigger for the Great Dying was not the impact of a big comet but rising global temperatures.  It took about ten million years after Permian for the Earth to recover its healthy equilibrium for the evolution of new life in abundance. 

Ancestors of the human race emerged around 1.8 million years ago in the Pleistocene Era of the Quaternary Period.  Around 200,000 years ago, evolution gave rise to homo sapiens and, today, we humans number 7 billion.  Since the Industrial Revolution, the human race has rapidly developed the means to speed up its own encounter with extinction –– either through the exchange of nuclear blasts in a war to end all wars or through the insatiable pursuit of abundance during times of peace.  Nuclear winter or global warming, take your pick.  Either calamity would set up another Great Dying, our own.

Earth scientists have begun sounding alarms in their journals.  Our immediate descendants, they say, are at risk of a lifetime of hardship followed by the extinction of our species.  Once the buildup to extinction approaches a tipping point, there will be too little time to take radical corrective action on a global scale.  Furthermore, the environment is so complex it is impossible to know at exactly what level of environmental stress runaway cascades will take over and bring us to the point of “game over.” 

What do we care about the past five extinction events?  Well, it seems “[w]e are currently in the midst of what most scientists consider the sixth mass extinction in planetary history, with between 150 and 200 species going extinct daily, a pace 1,000 times greater than the ‘natural’ or ‘background’ extinction rate.”2  This time our human race and the other creatures of our garden world are on the line.  Nevertheless, denial statements abound.  A sampling:

“Climate change is a hoax.”

“The market place will make necessary adjustments in time.”

“It’s absurd to think the human race will be included along with                          the extinction off lesser creatures.”

“Fossil fuels are indispensable: they create jobs and support

 our standard of living.”

 “Maybe we should do something, but nothing too radical and abrupt."

  If you suppose people who dismiss climate change are misinformed and short sighted, you’re right.  It may come as no surprise to learn that political leaders are often beholden to special interests, not the long-term interests of the larger society.  Governments around the globe are presently doing tepid little things, or nothing, in response to alarms about environmental disaster.  In fact, most advanced countries are doing worse than nothing by implementing policies that are totally in agreement with climate change deniers.  It is time we hold our political class accountable to insure that government does not become the enemy of society.

 As NASA’s James Hansen reminds us, nations are aggressively facilitating activity that will intensify catastrophic climate change and hasten the next generation’s encounter with extinction scenarios:

 “Humans are now the main cause of changes of Earth’s atmospheric composition and thus the drive for future climate change….   More than 170 nations have agreed on the need to limit fossil fuel emissions to avoid dangerous human-made climate change, as formalized in the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.  However, the stark reality is that global emissions have accelerated and new efforts are underway to massively expand fossil fuel extraction by drilling to increasing ocean depths and into the Arctic, squeezing oil from tar sands and tar shale, hydro-fracking to expand extraction of natural gas, developing exploitation of methane hydrates, and mining of coal via mountaintop removal….  The growth rate of fossil fuel emissions increased from 1.5%/year during 1980–2000 to 3%/year in 2000–2012, mainly because of increased coal use.”3

 Extreme global weather events are becoming more common and contributing to major problems.  Climate change  is severely stressing plant and animal life today.  Fresh water is more scarce today.  The health of the oceans is declining as they become more acid, anoxic and polluted and, because of rapid ice melt at the poles and higher elevations, the oceans are rising to levels endangering hundreds of millions of people living in coastal zones.  At this pace of environmental destruction, crop failures, displacement, famine and social chaos on a global scale could be upon us within decades.

 “Arctic sea ice end-of-summer minimum area, although variable from year to year, has plummeted by more than a third in the past few decades, at a faster rate than in most models, with the sea ice thickness declining a factor of four faster than simulated in … climate models.  The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets began to shed ice at a rate, now several hundred cubic kilometers per year, which is continuing to accelerate.  Mountain glaciers are receding rapidly all around the world with effects on seasonal freshwater availability of major rivers.

 The hot dry subtropical climate belts have expanded as the troposphere has warmed and the stratosphere cooled, contributing to increases in the area and intensity of drought and wildfires. The abundance of reef-building corals is decreasing at a rate of 0.5–2%/year, at least in part due to ocean warming and possibly ocean acidification caused by rising dissolved CO₂. More than half of all wild species have shown significant changes in where they live and in the timing of major life events. Mega-heatwaves, such as those in Europe in 2003, the Moscow area in 2010, Texas and Oklahoma in 2011, Greenland in 2012, and Australia in 2013 have become more widespread with the increase demonstrably linked to global warming….  These growing climate impacts, many more rapid than anticipated and occurring while global warming is less than 1°C, imply that society should reassess what constitutes a ‘dangerous level’ of global warming.”4.

 Those of us who are old may not be stung too badly by climate change.  But a growing number of scientific papers indicate that young people –– the younger generation walking around now, our children and their children –– will be severely affected throughout their lives unless the massive contribution to global warming by the human race is reversed –– not slowed, not stopped, but reversed –– very soon.  Reversed before key indicators reach “tipping points,” which by definition are irreversible on the human timescale.  

To date, big corporations have not begun to reduce their contributions to plumes of CO₂ and methane, which are being released into the already saturated atmosphere. “[C]arbon stays in the climate system for hundreds of thousands of years.  Thus fossil fuel carbon is the crucial human input that must be limited.”5

Dare we interrupt corporate CEOs busy in further saturating the environment with toxins and waste for the short-term benefit of their stockholders?  Dare we insist that political leaders work in the interests of society, and not so much in the interests of their backdoor paymasters in the corporate and financial world?  How much longer can we afford to stand on the sidelines waiting for someone else to take life-saving initiatives to protect the coming generation, not to mention the animal, plant and insect life on which we all depend?

 Now is the time to begin your “planet saving” lifestyle.  Plant fruit trees, recycle all you can, compost, install low wattage bulbs, use water twice: the water that washed your salad greens can then water your indoor plants; install rain barrels to catch rain water to water your garden; purchase local produce and avoid produce that requires shipping from other countries. 

It has been well documented that if all families around the world were to consume like a “frugal” American family, we would need the resources of three earths. If all the families of the world were to consume like a “typical” American family, we would need the resources six earths.6  Can there be any question that current levels of consumption in advanced economies are excessive and unsustainable?

Don‘t stand by waiting for Washington,  Peking or Paris to do the right thing.  It’s up to you to act with your neighbors.  Organizations near you are working responsibly to reverse suicidal corporate and government policies that are herding civilization down the path to extinction.  Get involved with an environmental effort,  like the anti-fracking movement,  and take responsible action to save what’s left of the Good Earth.  The human race is facing nothing less than an existential threat.  Intergenerational justice calls you to get involved now to save our young people, the children of their children and Nature itself.        

 FOOTNOTES

---

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event

2 Dahr Jamail, “The Climate Change Score Card.”  Italics added.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175785

3 Hansen J. et al., “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of carbon emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature”

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0081648;jsessionid=8F9A4DC3E4B6888E725143D696CD75A6

4 Hansen, “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’”             

5 Hansen, “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’”

6 The number of worlds needed to sustain consumption varies from source to source, depending on methodologies and timeframes.  A good place to begin comparing national footprints is here:

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/

Poverty Gold

President Obama has marked the 50th Anniversary of LBJ's War on Poverty speech with yet another cynical dog whistle to Wall Street. In announcing the formation of "Promise Zones" in five carefully selected communities, Obama effectively assured the ruling class that their record windfalls will continue, unimpeded and unabated. There's gold in them thar blighted hills and dales, so the free market is cordially invited to line its pockets from so-called Poverty Pockets.

As CounterPunch's Mike Whitney so saliently observes (h/t AnneEnigma), Obama's promise zones are nothing more than corporate plantations designed to exploit the poor under the guise of helping them. And as I mentioned in my response to Paul Krugman's latest column, praising the pseudo-progressive War on Poverty:

If the erstwhile party of LBJ thinks that advocating for the poor is a winning political strategy, they sure have a funny way of showing it. Senate Dems just "compromised" with the GOP yet again, agreeing to cut another $9 billion from the food stamp program over the next decade, thus condemning a million more people to life-threatening hunger in the richest nation on earth.

Even the proposed deal to extend long-term unemployment benefits would hinge on extending the Sequester (another plutocratic front in the war on the poor) for another year.

It's the same old, same old: the millionaires in Congress aim to help the poor by robbing the poor. And they're not even trying to hide their true motivation, which is to protect their own pampered hides at the polls. The good cop/bad cop routine is wearing thin for people getting more disgusted by the day.

According a Gallup poll, 42% of voters now identify as independent. This has nothing to do with people's desire for "bipartisanship" and everything to do with the growing rejection of both corporate wings of the Money Party.

All they offer is an insulting $10 an hour minimum wage, and cynical "promise zones" filled with charter schools and tax breaks for businesses in "poverty pockets".

When it comes to the War on Poverty, the politicians are mostly AWOL. So let's give the slackers a dishonorable discharge. and become active draftees in our own war. Our survival depends on it.

And Obama's own political survival depends on spewing the same propaganda over and over and over again for the next three years, hoping that Goebbels' advice (that the constant repetition of mendacity breeds belief) will also work out for him and both corporate branches of the uniparty. If Obama keeps insisting that income inequality is the defining issue of our time, maybe he'll convince a couple of rubes that he actually plans to do anything about it.

If there's anything that CEOs crave, it's that the two right wings just get along and do what's best for CEOs. And Obama was only too happy to oblige last week, inviting both Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell to his latest staged production. Their state (Kentucky) is host to one of the five Promise Zones, and the two GOPers beamed their approval of Obama's plantation plan, which includes tax credits to businesses that, in theory, would trickle down to slaves residents providing all that cheap new labor.

Obama must have made them even happier when he surrounded himself with a backdrop of dark-skinned "those people" from Harlem, obligingly dog-whistling his contempt for them through jokes and remarks about their physical appearances. He singled out one young man for faint praise by quipping, "I used to have a haircut like that," before noting that the youth had come from a family of losers (including the demonized single mom, of course) before being saved by a charter school. He made sure that Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell know that these kids will not be getting government handouts, but trickle-down corporate hand-ups. And only if they work hard and free themselves from the Culture of Dependency.

Obama even told a bald-faced lie about charter schools: "Last year," he said, "a study found that students who win a spot in one of the charter schools score higher on standardized tests than those who don't in a neighborhood where higher education was once just something that other people did."

The truth is just the opposite. As education historian/activist Diane Ravitch points out, studies show that students from for-profit charter schools in New York City actually score lower on standardized tests than do those attending traditional public schools, with their better-paid unionized teachers. So I can't help but suspect that Obama's praise of charter schools, and New York City charter schools like the Harlem Children's Zone in particular, is also a subtle dig at Bill de Blasio. The new mayor ran on a campaign of stemming the growth of the charters.

And of course it is no accident that Geoffrey Canada was Obama's guest of honor at Poverty Fest. Founder of the Harlem charter, Canada is partnering with his college classmate, billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, in the plutocratic campaign to dismantle the New Deal based on the discredited "generational theft" theory. Last year, before embarking on a college tour to convince young people that Grandma is robbing them blind to hide the truth that Wall Street is robbing them blind, the bipartisan duo wrote an op-ed in (where else?) The Wall Street Journal:

 Yet, together, we recognize several hard truths: Government spending levels are unsustainable. Higher taxes, however advisable or not, fail to come close to solving the problem. Discretionary spending must be reduced but without harming the safety net for our most vulnerable, or sacrificing future growth (e.g., research and education). Defense and homeland security spending should not be immune to reductions. Most consequentially, the growth in spending on entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare—must be curbed.

 (snip)

The government has an obligation, of course, to support needy seniors. But this pension system is ripe for common-sense reforms, including changing eligibility ages and benefit structures for those with greater means, ridding the Social Security disability program of pervasive fraud, and removing disincentives for those who would rather work in their later years.

Powerful, vested interests portray reformers as avowed enemies of seniors. But, the status quo is, in fact, tantamount to saddling school-age children with more debt, weaker economic growth, and fewer opportunities for jobs and advancement.

I love the way these guys portray ordinary people trying to protect the safety net as "powerful vested interests" who not only want to snatch the food from the mouths of children, but are unfairly preventing tired older people from working till they drop. Plus, to think that retirees are stealing more assets than the Surveillance State and the War on Terror! Grandma is worse than the NSA and predator drones in her greedy quest for shelter and medical care. Who knew?

(Obama, for his part, has not removed the Chained CPI plan for cutting Social Security and impoverishing seniors and survivors and veterans from his proposed budget. And the Dems are "pleading" with him to abandon the idea... out of selfless concern for their own electoral chances, of course.) 

I'm actually kind of surprised that Obama didn't also give a shout-out to Druckenmiller at his performance last week. I'm also kind of surprised he didn't give a shout-out to their mutual friend, Chris Christie, whom Drucky is busy defending as a "once in a generation leader." I think Drucky is getting kind of confused over that whole Generation thing, don't you? I think he probably meant to say that Christie is a Thief for All Generations.

Meanwhile, Obama further reassured Wall Street that he is on their side by announcing he'll be inviting CEOs to the White House "not once, but twice!" this month so they can present their own ideas and represent their own front in the War On Poverty, a k a War on the Poor. Making poverty pockets attractive to big donor pockets is his highest priority.

"Thanks to the hard work and sacrifice of the American people, the economy is recovering," Obama hilariously proclaimed. (Austerity worked!). "And our businesses are booming."

He apparently did not see fit to burst the propaganda balloon by explaining that income disparity has widened to record levels under his personal watch. As a matter of fact, on the same day as his speech, the Census Bureau announced that fully one third of the American people had fallen below the poverty level for periods lasting at least two months during the first three years of his administration.

Meanwhile, the beatings will continue until morale improves. All Obama has to do is reach inside his cheap plastic tub for an unlimited supply of his fake buttery spread, slathering it with abandon over every social ill.

You're In the Zone.... the Twilight Zone

A Little Poisoned Water Never Stopped a Good Brawl

A chemical spill into a river has spawned a major federal emergency declaration, with hundreds of thousands of West Virginia residents told not to drink, do laundry, or bathe with their tap water. Schools have been closed, bars and restaurants shut down, and the National Guard called out to deliver bottled water and emergency supplies.

But when you go to the West Virginia Gazette website to get more info on this unfolding tragedy, one of the first things you learn is that the Rough N Rowdy Brawl at the Charleston Civic Center will still go on as planned!*

Nothing will stop this real-life version of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, the event where those "man enough" can pay to beat the living shit out their fellow human beings. The champion in each division (including the top bikini-clad "ring girl") will win $1,000. That's "a substantial sum when you're working two low-paying restaurant jobs to make ends meet" in a state where 17.6% of residents live below the federal poverty level. That's especially true this weekend, when all those minimum-wage eateries are closed because of the water contamination.

 You may not be able to wash the blood off yourselves with the tainted water, but event coordinators do want all of you manly germophobes out there to rest assured that hand sanitizers will be thoughtfully provided in bathrooms.

Now that the important stuff is out of the way, West Virginia water officials say there is still no timeline for when the situation will be alleviated, or even how toxic the licorice-smelling water really is. They don't know for sure that the water is unsafe, but neither can they guarantee that it is. That is because the leaking chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, has never before been added to water as a chemical additive or flavor enhancer. Its apparent purpose was, oxymoronically enough, to clean coal.

 As of this morning,  Freedom Industries, source of the contamination, was not talking to the water people. As a matter of fact, according to the Gazette, it was business as usual at the chemical plant on Friday morning. Not one government official had yet visited the site.With a welcome sign like this greeting all comers, perhaps you can understand why:

It also might be a blessing in disguise that the leak occurred at the Charleston plant rather than at its other facility in a town called Nitro. According to the Freedom Industries website, the company is a leading producer of freeze conditioning agents, dust control palliatives, flotation reagents, water treatment polymers and other chemicals. It boasts that it can treat huge volumes of chemicals "rapidly and cost-effectively." 

Nothing spells freedom like speedy and cheap.

* Update: Sanity later prevailed, and the event was postponed until next weekend.

Stopping TPP In Its Tracks

Even though the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is now being described as shaky, it won't hurt to call your Congress Critter to finally stop this abomination once and for all.

 Public Citizen provides a convenient form to help you contact your reps, urging them to deny President Obama his so-called "fast track authority" to approve a corporation-friendly pact that has little to do with free trade and everything to do with giving entertainment conglomerates control of the Internet, giving multinationals the right to sue sovereign governments in kangaroo courts, allowing Big Tobacco to spread the cigarette habit to poor kids in third world countries, fixing the high price of life-saving drugs, and loosening food safety regulations. And those are just a few of the leaked parts we actually know about.

Max Baucus (D-UnitedHealthCare) and Dave Camp (R-House Ways to Be Mean Committee) have introduced legislation that would ram the fast-track authority through without giving our reps the ability to even read what's in it or attach their own amendments. Debate on final passage would also be limited, lest too many questions be asked. And so far, at least 150 Democrats have vowed to oppose it. Last fall, they wrote to the president, complaining about being left out of the negotiating loop.

But just because our reps are refusing to play along at the moment doesn't mean they won't play along in the future. Life sure has a funny way of getting the champions of democracy in a back room where they're urged to "embrace the suck" if they have any prayer of getting campaign funds from their party. If these people went home for Christmas without giving extended aid to the unemployed, I wouldn't put anything past them.

So call them. Write to them. Take nothing for granted.

Holey Corpus Christie!

Like many people with nothing better to do this afternoon, I was glued to CNN's coverage of the Chris Christie marathon news con.

"I am a very sad person today," he sneered.

 If there is any justice, the New Jersey governor will get sadder still. His former Port Authority appointee, implicated in the deliberate snarling of George Washington Bridge traffic last fall, reportedly is cutting a deal with prosecutors for immunity in exchange for testimony. It remains to be seen whether Bridget Ann Kelly, fired over her own gleefully vindictive machinations, will remain vindictive enough to testify against her former boss. Then again, this being Jersey, I suspect she got a consolatory parting gift or two for taking the fall for the Boss. Or maybe she'll go into seclusion in the Pine Barrens.

Ditto for the mayor of Fort Lee, who initially demurring, finally accepted an offer he couldn't refuse for a Christie apology today. Christie described the meeting as "warm and productive," and threatened even more meet-ups in the future. The mayor, for his part, expressed gratitude that Christie had even acknowledged his existence.

In any case, Christie is already indicting himself in a narrative more full of holes than the victim of the week in a Sopranos episode. Besides the dead giveaway of "mistakes were made," his claim that he'd lost two nights of sleep over a scandal he didn't learn about until yesterday is curious, to put it kindly.

Just when cabin fever was setting in with a vengeance during this, the winter of our discontent, we are being treated to some brand new political infotainment to fritter away the chilly hours.

Oh, and speaking of gridlock -- have you noticed that new "sleek and intuitive" Gray Lady makeover? It's such a complete mess that it's garnered nearly 800 complaints on the Public Editor's blog. I was happy to see that Sardonicky contributor AnneEnigma got top reader recommendations for her entry:

Wow. This Public Editor section is the only part I still like. Here the comments are directly below, easy to read through quickly, and it's easy to comment - as it's always been. Not so with the new format in the rest of the paper.

Does the paper even realize how important the comments are to readers now that news sources no longer provide in depth analysis with context, history, inconsistencies, implications? It's up to readers to share those thoughts and we do. I bet I'm not the only one who often goes right to the comments. Commentators are often far more enlightening and entertaining than some of your paid staff. You should consider making comments available on a lot more news and opinions. It's a big draw and makes us feel like a community.

If I had just one request, I would ask that the comments section be returned to the format that is on this page so we can view, scroll, and read them quickly and easily.

Don't fix what isn't broken!

Ditto that. Readers are even complaining on the op-ed pages, where the third most popular comment (by David Underwood) to Gail Collins's takedown of Chris Christie completely sidestepped the topic and urged commenters to join forces and complain about the new format. The editors' response? They removed his comment. (suppression seems to be reaching epidemic proportions at the Paper of Record) But they forgot to remove the many responses agreeing with him! (If you have not yet attempted to visit the stingy little scroll that judders down readers comments a few lines at a time, do yourself a favor and skip it. Your eyes will thank you. But anyway, here was my two cents:

I have already left my thumbs-down comment on Margaret Sullivan's blog. Navigating this new format is like struggling to cross the GWB from Fort Lee on a Monday morning with Chris Christie personally manning the cones. Pure torture, and not aesthetically pleasing.

And here's what I wrote on the actual preapproved Chris Christie topic:

 My son, trying to get into the city over the GWB last fall, was among the many, many collateral damage victims of Chris Christie's criminal vindictiveness. So I am taking this very personally. Maybe some enterprising lawyer (Better Call Saul?) can begin a class action lawsuit, the evidence including millions of crumpled up E-Z pass receipts and other documents of the four hours of misery it took to go a couple of miles.

But first, indict him, convict him, and throw his corpus in jail. (a change of venue may be needed to Wyoming. That Jersey jury pool is already hopelessly biased.) Not a minimum security fancy country club, mind you, but one of those private for-profit overcrowded affairs, staffed by non-background checked $10/hour corrections officers. Chris will be doing his huge patriotic part to fill the GOP-mandated body quota for the private prison industry, the better to enrich his plutocratic pals. He will fit in just perfectly in the general population.

When Chris is up for parole, if he is ever up for parole, he can reside in one of those infested halfway houses he has a personal financial stake in. Or maybe he can be enrolled in a work-study program whereby he is forced to physically help dig the Hudson River tunnel he was once so instrumental in quashing.... again, out of his pure pathological hatred of the whole human race.

 This could be the first wonderful day of the rest of New Jersey's life. Happy New Year, everybody!

Twisted Logic: The Kafkaesque Saga Continues

Imagine if you dunked the Obama Pretzel into a cup of your favorite winter-time comfort beverage. Not only would it get increasingly soggy, it would inevitably dissolve into a pathetic clump of dough, never to be a popular taste sensation again.

That now appears to be the fate of the secrecy-obsessed president. Even with a complicit federal court actually agreeing that we the citizens have no right to see all the sorry excuses the Justice Department has dreamed up over the years to cover up for the human rights abuses perpetrated both at home and abroad, there is no longer much public appetite for Obama's bag of propaganda goodies. We have Edward Snowden to thank for that.

 Still, it isn't stopping Obama's soggy pretzel logic. The latest morsel: a federal court panel has just decreed that if the abuse stems from an informal closed-door bull session amongst goons, it is not official policy. And if it's not official policy, then it's none of our beeswax either what the government does to us or how they justify it. The logic of the court decision upholding the illogic of the Obama administration is eerily reminiscent of Franz Kafka's Before the Law, a parable in which the legal gatekeeper, insisting that the system is transparent, strings the supplicant along for a lifetime while simultaneously denying him entry.  Charlie Savage of the New York Times explains the 21st Century version:

The memo establishes the legal basis for telephone companies to hand over customers’ calling records to the government without a subpoena or court order, even when there is no emergency, according to a 2010 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The details of the legal theory, and the circumstances in which it could be invoked, remain unclear.

The document at issue is a classified memo issued by the Office of Legal Counsel on Jan. 8, 2010. A report later that year by the Justice Department’s inspector general at the time, Glenn A. Fine, disclosed the memo’s existence and its broad conclusion that telephone companies may voluntarily provide records to the government “without legal process or a qualifying emergency,” notwithstanding the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

The F.B.I. had asked for the memo as part of an investigation by Mr. Fine into problems with the bureau’s use of so-called exigent letters to obtain telephone and financial records without following any legal procedures.

The bureau, which has abandoned exigent letters, said that it did not employ the legal theory outlined in the memo when using the letters, and that it had no plans to use it in the future. But Mr. Fine warned that the existence of the Office of Legal Counsel’s theory created a “significant gap” in “accountability and oversight,” and urged Congress to modify the statute. Lawmakers have not acted on that recommendation.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit in 2011 seeking to obtain the memo under the Freedom of Information Act. But a District Court judge ruled that the memo fell into an exception to that law covering materials developed when the executive branch is deliberating internally about what policy to select, and a three-judge panel on the appeals court agreed on Friday.

The Office of Legal Counsel issues binding legal advice to the executive branch. If it says something is permitted, officials who act on that advice are essentially immune from prosecution. Its power to adopt secret legal theories has come under greater scrutiny since a string of controversial opinions it produced during the Bush administration, including signing off on warrantless wiretapping and on the brutal questioning of detainees.

Meanwhile, rather than lambasting Obama, the editorial board of the New York Times today merely asks that he simply honor his campaign promise to be "more transparent" about government illogic and malfeasance. I mean, if he's going to spy on us, the least he can do is release the secret recipe of the Obama Twisted Pretzel to make us all feel better about it! Hmm. It's the parable of the Gatekeeper all over again. My comment:

Every day we're confronted with more examples of the erosion of democracy and the rising specter of totalitarianism.

While we're not yet denied the privilege of choosing between two pre-approved big money parties, that whole Bill of Rights thing is starting to come apart at the seams. And meanwhile, according to the P.E.N. American Center for human rights and literary expression, one in four writers working today reports self-censoring as well as avoiding social media and certain topics in emails and phone conversations because they are convinced that Big Brother is watching. And of course, he is.

The Sunlight Foundation and other open government groups decided to give Obama a transparency award early in his first term. To their dismay, Obama closed the ceremony to the press. That was perhaps our first clue that his administration would be Nixon-on-steroids.

Besides winning too many Kafkaesque court decisions upholding secrecy for the sake of secrecy, Obama is also seeking fast-track Congressional approval for the corporation-friendly Transpacific Partnership while refusing to allow anyone but corporations see what's really in it. He has even implemented an "Insider Threat" program mandating that government employees snitch on each other.

When Obama brags about transparency, I wonder if he isn't just reveling in the knowledge that all our lives are now an open book, whether we like it or not.

That polar vortex may be retreating, but the big chill is here to stay.

I ran out of allotted characters at that point. So let me add that the big chill is here to stay unless enough people get together and thaw it out. And judging from the comments from other readers, it's the type of heat not likely to warm the alleged hearts of our feckless leaders.

Oh, and speaking of Kafka -- the Orson Welles film version of The Trial is now available on Netflix (and probably elsewhere online too, since the copyright has expired.) Highly recommended. Here's just one of its all-too-familiar scenes:

Transparency in the Age of Obama

From the Laboratories of the Plutocracy

"Nothing Exceeds Like Excess"

On the off-chance that some of you think that the Democrats are really, really sincere this time about helping poor jobless people, and that Barack Obama really, really means it when he says he will make income inequality the defining issue of his second term, permit me to gently burst your balloon.

Just because Obama has stopped vocally espousing cutting the safety net as part of his Grand Bargain of deficit reduction with his GOP frenemies doesn't mean that his deeply ingrained desire for austerity for the masses isn't still merrily simmering on the back burner of his mind.

 Need proof? Just read the latest stenography from his favorite multimillionaire muse and golfing buddy, Thomas Friedman. His Sunday column is simply a laundry list of the pro-business centrist policies beloved of the New Democrats and Obama's Bowles-Simpson Catfood Commission. To wit:

 We have to raise the retirement and Medicare eligibility ages, so the greedy geezers will stop stealing from the young'uns! We have to reduce the corporate tax rate (as if corporate taxes were real), getting rid of pesky regulations that impede innovation! We have to frack, frack and frack some more! We have to get on with privatization of education, because:

In some cities, teachers’ unions really are holding up education reform. But we need to stop blaming teachers alone. We also have a parent problem: parents who do not take an interest in their children’s schooling or set high standards. And we have a student problem: students who do not understand the connection between their skills and their life opportunities and are unwilling to work to today’s global standards. Reform requires a hybrid of both teacher reform and a sustained — not just one speech — national campaign to challenge parents and create a culture of respect and excitement for learning.

If only the Republicans were more reasonable, Friedman whines,

 I’m certain that a second-term Obama, who is much more center-left than the ridiculous G.O.P. caricatures, would meet them in the middle. Absent that, we’re going to drift, unable to address effectively any of our biggest challenges or opportunities.

As it is, poor beleaguered Obama is being forced to join the Democratic Orchestra's income inequality theme of Campaign 2014. And that leaves Thomas Friedman to toot out the cadenza in the Trumpet Austerity Concerto in Plutocrat-Major, Opus (Forbes) 400. It blares out dissonantly in this feel-good era of wedge-issue populism, but so what? It's out there, hovering malignantly in the poisoned acoustic atmosphere.

How, you may ask, does Thomas Friedman's Sunday screed tie in to President Obama's own shadow agenda? Dylan Byers of Politico wrote a revealing piece last fall about the macho White House bull sessions of which Friedman is a regular and valued participant:

The sessions, which have become more frequent in Obama’s second term — he held at least three in October — provide a stark contrast to the combative, sometimes cantankerous relationship between the White House and the press corps. They also serve as an alternate means of shaping the debate in Washington: a private back-channel of genuine sentiment that seeps into the echo-chamber, while Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, delivers largely scripted responses in the public briefings. Obama holds the occasional off-the-record meeting with top White House correspondents, but they are few and far between — a fact that rankles some members of the press corps.

(snip) 

The goal in these get-togethers, participants said, is two-fold: First, the president wants to convince the columnists that he’s right — about the debt ceiling, about health care, about Syria — and that his opponents are wrong.

“The president is thoroughly convinced that the course he has set out is correct, and that his opponents are either wrong-headed or crazy or, in the case of [House Speaker John] Boehner, insufficiently courageous,” said a journalist who has attended off-the-record meetings. “By getting together a group of intelligent people who are going to be writing about him or talking about him, he thinks he can show them how obviously everything he is doing makes sense.”

The second goal is more tactical: By meeting privately with the people who shape national opinion, the president ensures that his points of view will be represented in the media — even if those points of view aren’t directly attributable to him. 

He sees columnists as portals,” another journalist who has attended meetings said. “It works — I feel it work with me. It’s almost impossible to spend hours face-to-face with the president, unfiltered, then write a column or go on television without taking his point of view into account.”

It's impossible to read Friedman (or David Brooks, or David Ignatius, or the whole gamut of centrist Beltway elites)  without also hearing the dulcet tones of Barack Obama in the background. And that is absolutely chilling. It's how democracy is subsumed by big money interests, and how public consent is manufactured.

Meanwhile, my published comment to Friedman's column, which had garnered the most reader recommendations, has been removed by the New York Times. I guess they thought I was being too mean to very serious important people. Here's what I wrote:

Just when we thought the zombies were finally taking their long-overdue winter nap, we are assaulted with another press release from the Fix the Debt cult of tax-phobic parasitical billionaires. The words "Alan Simpson" in the first sentence is our first warning to run for the hills. Simpson will not rest until an entire nation of impoverished retirees has been reduced to subsisting on cat food. He once derisively claimed (plagiarizing from Mencken) that Social Security is a "milk cow with 300 million tits." I guess he thinks the whole world is out to suck him and his rich friends dry. What a load of bull!

Paul Krugman just wrote a column celebrating the long-overdue debunking of deficit reduction as economic policy. At the time, I commented that the austerians were merely in temporary retreat, strategizing their next move.

Like malaria, deficit fever strikes when you least expect it. This time, the vector is another droning Friedman column, replete with all the usual neoliberal buzzwords (long-term challenges, innovation, heavy fiscal burden on our children) in a feeble attempt to disguise the true meaning: the rich shall get richer and the poor shall be damned.

We don't have a long-term deficit problem. We have a long-term greed problem.

Nice try, Mr. Friedman, at unleashing the pathogens from the test tubes of the plutocracy. But you should be aware that more and more of us are developing a healthy immunity to what you're trying to spread.

Come to think of it, it's pretty amazing that my little rant survived for 36 hours before being relegated to the ether. Was it because of the tits part, the Friedman as a mosquito part, or the Friedman as Dr. Moreau part?  But anyway, it was nice to see that Dean Baker took note, more politely than I did, that Friedman's readers told him he was full of crap.

***

As of this posting, my other comment on the equally annoying Ross Douthat column still survives in the digital domain of the Gray Lady. His particular brand of bunk comes from the far right side of the Right Wing Money Party. The big difference between him and Friedman is that he gets his anti-equality plutocratic talking points direct from Koch-funded stink tanks instead of through White House back-channels. So I says to Ross:

Here's just one example of how Douthat's beloved rich people are being squeezed:

As of January 2, the 900 wealthiest Americans became officially exempt from paying any more Social Security taxes for the rest of the year. That is because they earned the cap of $117,000 in only two days. If the billionaires of the Fix the Debt brigade of prosperity for them, austerity for everybody else, were truly interested in the long-term solvency of what they love to call "entitlements," they'd join with progressives and call for scrapping the cap entirely, expanding the program, and protecting the trust fund for Ross's beloved unborn children far, far, far into the future.

But Douthat and his conservative media cohort are too busy wasting their time, feverishly concern-trolling the poor now that their plutocratic claptrap is being called out for the fraud it is by the likes of DeBlasio, Elizabeth Warren and the Pope.

And we'd be remiss if we didn't also call out the studies referenced in his Think Tank Links. The Manhattan Institute is funded by the Koch Brothers, the Scaife Foundation, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and several too-big-to fail/jail banks. The Heritage Foundation does not disclose its donors. It recently gained notoriety with the disclosure that one of its experts (Jason Richwine) had previously and mendaciously claimed that Blacks and Hispanics have lower IQs than whites.

So, Ross, when you use such suspect sources as backup, your entire column becomes instantly tainted.

The Devil in the Details

Since American students now rank a dismal 21st in scientific proficiency among their global peers, it should come as no surprise that four in ten American adults do not believe in the evolution of species.

According to a recent Pew poll, the number of people denying that human beings slowly evolved over millions of years is about the same as it was four years ago.  The main difference is that the belief gap appears to be widening based upon political party affiliation:

In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time, a difference of 10 percentage points. Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved, a 24-point gap.

 

 

 
When you consider that more than half of Americans also believe that the devil is a living, breathing entity who literally walks among us, the evolution poll results are actually a little better than I would have expected. Sizeable minorities also believe in UFOs, witches, ghosts and astrology. Throughout our brief history, the championship of ignorance as a virtue has dominated the American landscape, much to the bafflement of the rest of the educated world. And New York Times columnist Charles Blow smells a Republican conspiracy to explain the widening gap:

I believe this is a natural result of a long-running ploy by Republican party leaders to play on the most base convictions of conservative voters in order to solidify their support. Convince people that they’re fighting a religious war for religious freedom, a war in which passion and devotion are one’s weapons against doubt and confusion, and you make loyal soldiers.

Blow notes that the self-described staunch conservatives denying evolution are also staunch viewers of Fox News, that cesspit of cable hate propaganda. The increasing denial of science, he believes, is the direct result of the GOP propaganda surge. 

But maybe, just maybe, their cynicism and cruelty will end up biting them in the butt. People still have to pay to get the message, and the pay is getting mightily reduced through the parallel surge of austerity. My comment:

The same people who deny evolution and climate change also believe that the devil is an actual living person. Polls show that between a half and two-thirds of Americans are convinced that Old Nick walks among us.

As the wealth gap between rich and poor widens, so too does the gap between ignorance and enlightenment, critical thinking and paranoia. People have got to blame somebody for their suffering, so it might as well be Satan. I reckon that a fair number of those most recently polled on evolution probably thought they were being questioned on evil-ution, and thus summoned their guardian angels for succor against the disembodied voice on the other end of the phone line.

Meanwhile, if the Republicans think they can maintain their grasp on power simply by fomenting the ignorance of their base, they'd better think again. Life itself is getting too damned expensive for millions and millions of people. Those losing unemployment benefits and food stamp assistance are already having to give up watching Sarah Palin in favor of eating. The cable TV industry just reported its worst year ever, losing a million new customers on top of the five million who've already cut the cord.

So who knows? Maybe people will go to the library. And when they discover that all the "Left Behind" books have been checked out, they'll discover Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle," and get hooked on Science, vote their economic interests, and we'll all live happily ever after.

The devil you say!

 

2014 Promises To Be a Ripping New Annus

While it may stay horribilis before it gets any better, there is reason to hope:

A leading IT research firm is predicting the resurgence of the Occupy movement on an even larger scale, the beginnings of a barter economy in the wake of mass boycotts, and a movement toward nonprofit-driven medical care instigated by activist volunteers. 

The information technology research firm, Gartner, which describes itself as “the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company" warns its clients not to be seen as culprits in the inevitable labor unrest, consumer boycotts, and mass social upheaval. CEOs had better get ready for some heavy-duty backlash and enhanced public scrutiny of their greed. They had better get their PR asses in gear, in other words.

 Of course, the ultra-rich are paying no heed. One tycoon named Ken Langone is so pissed off by the sudden unwarranted attention being paid to the poor that he is petulantly threatening to cut off the cash for the refurbishment of St. Pat's Cathedral in NYC. He's warning Pope Francis, through his pal Tim Cardinal Dolan, to tone down that inequality rhetoric -- or else. Dolan was forced to go on the Plutocrat Channel to do damage control, simultaneously pushing back against this trendy new demonization of The Obscene Rich and insisting no such demonization is even taking place. I guess that makes him an ecclesiastical centrist.

 Langone,  billionaire founder of Home Depot, funder of both Republicans and Wall Street Democrats, had approached Dolan and complained that another  billionaire who of course is not named Ken Langone got his feelings hurt by the Pope. From the CNBC transcript: 

So, he says to me (Dolan)-- "Pope Francis is helping us big time. Because there's such an enthusiasm and a love-- for him and for the church that he said, "People are more interested in our project of Saint Patrick's Cathedral." He did pass on to me.

He said, "Now, one person said, 'You know, you come to us who have been-- blessed, who are wealthy. And, yet, we sense that, perhaps, the Pope is less than enthusiastic about us.'" And he said, "We need to correct that."

And I said, "Well-- Ken, that would be a misunderstanding of the Holy Father's-- message. The Pope loves poor people. He also loves rich people. He loves people, all right. He's -- and he-- and he's not into the condemning game for anybody." His famous, renowned statement now, "Who am I to judge?" So, I said, "Ken, thanks for bringing it to my attention. We've got to correct to make sure this gentleman, who's the only one I've heard, understands the Holy Father's message properly. And then, I think he's going to say, 'Oh, okay. If that's the case, count me in for Saint Patrick's Cathedral,' so.  

So, yeah. But I trust Ken's judgment so much that if he tells me, "This is a potential donor who's a little confused and perhaps irritated about the Pope's message. Can you help me out here?" So, I think we have. Yeah.

If anybody can put the extreme back in unctuousness it is Tim Dolan.

Langone, for his part, recently went on another plutocrat channel to deliver his own pro-rich people anti-Paul Krugman rant, urging that Social Security be cut. Along with the other CEOs of the Fix the Debt austerian crowd, he falsely claims that poverty-stricken old geezers are stealing pensions and healthcare from the unborn. But since he also spends part of his billions glorifying the house of the Lord(s), he also passed on to his pal the Card the message that obscenely wealthy Americans are preferable to obscenely wealthy foreign people.   

So, yeah. It is indeed shaping up to be the year to end all Annuses (sic). Cheers, everybody!