False Equality

I am always surprised at the rhetorical lengths politicians will go to in order to promote a policy, but this "We Built It" crap is nonsense.  The worst of it all, is that Republicans play the victim and argue that there is equally hyperbolic and offensive attacks from the other side.  It isn't even close.  Yes, the Democrats have launched offensive advertisements, and Democratic politicians have painted pictures of Romney as callous, uncaring, immoral, etc.  I could not agree with you more on that point: many Democrats and Liberals are lying bastards, who will say anything to get their way.  I despise those sorts of people, who manipulate the facts and distort reality in order to promote a policy.  There are many instances where unions have distorted facts and lied in order to influence a policy change.  That is wrong, and I agree with you.  I only hope you can grant me the same outrage when I point it out in your own rhetoric, and illuminate the falsehoods you are perpetuating.

Please, take a second and really think about what words you are chanting, wearing on your shirts, displaying proudly online.  Think if you truly, in your heart of hearts, believe what you are saying and accept the implications of the statement.  To chant "We Built It" is to imply that the other party does not support the same thing.  The president's statement, "You Didn't Build That," was simply not about small businesses, or about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, or about demonizing success.  That is absolutely false, and bears no relation to reality.  Why would the president demonize success?  He is very successful, ultra-competitive, and is running an election campaign - why would he deliberately demonize any demographic, especially one so prominent as "successful people."  Success is such an amorphous term anyway.  There is no single definition of a successful person; I'm sure President Obama considers himself successful. What do you even mean by that, "demonizing success?"  Do you really think Barack Obama hates achievement, and wants all of America to, I don't even know what, be welfare slaves?  If you mean the kind of achievement that I would better characterize as capitalist rapaciousness, then I agree wholeheartedly with the criticism.  Not everyone rates success or achievement solely through one's (offshore) bank account or one's trust fund, in fact, most people will never enjoy the security of said trust fund, or savings account.

That is not to say that having a savings account, working hard, or achieving is wrong, or evil, or immoral.  I am not saying that at all.  Perhaps my greatest dream in life is owning a house, starting a family, having a stable, respectable job.  I believe that was what the American dream was all about in the first place.  In my mind, a society that can provide a reasonable and sustainable path to that dream is the greatest society that we can have in place.  And I believe that nearly every liberal, democrat, even most socialists would agree that providing a route to such success is a function of a good government.  I recognize there are radical elements out there who would do away with the notion of private property in all, and I disagree with those individuals.  The president does too.  He is not an anarchist, or a radical Muslim jihadist, who is the product of some half-century old communist scheme to elect a radical president at this precise moment.  The whole birther thing is an entirely different story - who the fuck cares?  What does it matter, in his policy, if he is born in Kenya?  But I'll have to leave that issue for another day.

It isn't a false equality of rhetoric at all.  One side says the other is unamerican, unpatriotic, atheist, muslim anarchist, communist, etc, and the other says the other are greedy bastards, who do not want to share the wealth.  How can you honestly equate the two?  Greed, need I remind all your Christian conservatives out there, is a sin.  In fact, if I remember correctly, greed and avarice are some of the seven deadly sins.  It isn't unamerican to decry greed and avarice, it is at the very center of our moral fabric.  Don't pretend for an instant that Mitt Romney is not a greedy man.  Why do you need $250 million dollars?  And you think only paying 13% on your taxes is somehow a fair rate, and that a more progressive tax code would somehow destroy innovation and wreak havoc on the entire economy.  The man has amassed a fortune amounting to a quarter of a billion dollars; do you really think he would not have been pretty damn successful with a 20% tax rate, or, God forbid, something a little bit higher than a janitor pays?  If you raise taxes on the wealthy, why would they just say "to hell with it all" and stop working entirely?  From the party of individual achievement in the face of obstacles, arguing that a higher tax rate would crush peoples urge to strive smacks of utter bullshit.  I thought that the poor should rise up themselves, even though times are tough.  But when the wealthy are asked to pay a bit more, suddenly it becomes impossible to achieve in a harder tax climate.

And finally, look around you as you chant "We Built It."  How many objects and services that you enjoy every day did you really build?  With your bare hands, with no help from the government in any shape or form.  Did you, for instance, build the Tampa convention center, or the roads to get there; did you lay the cable for the electrical infrastructure; did you fight, and die in battle, to protect your liberty to chant those words; or did the government play some role.  If you started a business, who educated your employees?  Do they drive on streets to get to work, or take public transportation?  You didn't build that.  Did you settle the town you grew up in, or did the government build up that city, invest millions of dollars and countless hours of union and public manpower to build it?  You didn't build that.  Think about it, there is honestly no way you can disagree with the role the government plays in a good society.  I don't want to destroy society when I say that there should be a more progressive tax code, I want to raise the funds necessary to keep those roads maintained, and keep those schools open, and keep those teachers employed.  Don't be a lemming, and accept some terrible talking point as your political mantra.  Please, just take a second, and just think about it.

Dinesh D'Souza is an idiot.

I'm not sure how many of you have heard about Dinesh D'Souza's new movie, 2016: Obama's America, but it looks like a piece of jingoistic garbage to me.  After hearing that it is setting box office records for documentaries, I decided I had to check out the trailer.  Here's what I found:

"Obama has a dream, a dream from his father: that the sins of colonialism be set right, and America be downsized... America has a dream, from our founding fathers: that together, we must protect liberty, and America must grow, so with it, liberty grows."

Whenever I hear statements like this, about how America is some bellwether of liberty, my first reaction is always confusion.  Dinesh D'Souza is a very successful man; he's been a writer and intellectual for many years, he's a Dartmouth graduate, and currently heads Kings College in New York.  For someone with that storied of an academic career, making such a sensational and ahistorical comment is perplexing.   The way I see it, either D'Souza is ignorant of American imperial history, or he's maliciously misrepresenting the facts in order to elect Romney.  Because I don't like to pin evil motives on people without good evidence, I'm going to opt for the other possibility, that D'Souza is an idiot.

Just off the top of my head, here's a brief history of how when America grows, so with it, liberty grows:

1492: White people "find" America.  Within decades, a once glorious civilization is reduced to less that 10% of its former size.  The extent of disease and famine ravishing the native communities cannot be fully known, but most historians estimate that untold millions of indigenous people lost their lives in a very short period of time.  Using alcohol and unfair bargaining techniques, settlers systematically rob native peoples of their lands.  Contract after contract is signed with the United States, and each is subsequently broken by "the land of the free."  This theft of land comes to a head under Andrew Jackson, the man who I consider to be the most reprehensible president of all time, who made a name for himself killing natives in order to drive them away from valuable farmland in the south.  (Doesn't that sound a lot like "protecting American interests?"  The same rationalizations are around today)  I'm sure you are familiar with the Cherokee nation's Trail of Tears, a grueling march in which many suffered and perish.  And to even think of glorifying General Custer and his "brave" last stand.  Custer provoked violence, and got himself into a stupid situation.  I cannot do the tragic history of American indigenous peoples true justice, but if you are unfamiliar with the extent of our nation's actions, a little research will be sobering.

Remember how glorified the battle of the Alamo was made out to be in school?  Why do you think the Mexican army was attacking the Alamo in the first place?  Because they hate "American exceptionalism?"  Absolutely not.  The lone star republic robbed the Mexican government of hundreds of square miles of land, upon which lived many Mexicans and indigenous peoples.  The Texans basically just declared that a vast swath of land was their right, and then proceded to kill and rob the owners of that land.  So much for America's sacred property rights.

Beyond the actions of a rogue state like Texas (who wants to take responsibility for Texans, anyway?), America has been far from a liberating force in Mexico.  From sacking cities to stealing Arizona, New Mexico, California, and more, America has been the exact opposite of liberators.  Even in the 20th century, American naval vessels were bombarding coastal towns in the Gulf of Mexico to dissuade the Mexican government from impeding American trade.  What harbingers of peace and liberty.

But Manifest Destiny was not enough for America.  After the frontier was closed, and we had taken all the land we could from Mexico, Spain, France, England, and millions of indigenous peoples, we had to turn our sights abroad.  Why do native Hawaiian's resent so many white tourists?  Because they represent the conquest over a once-free people.  We have holdings in Guam, in the Philippines, in the US Virgin islands, in Puerto Rico, in Cuba, in nearly every island group in the Caribbean and South Pacific.  Do you think that we gained those lands because the natives invited us to liberate them?  America was an imperial nation, plain and simple.  Anyone who tells you different either does not know their history, or is purposefully distorting the facts.  There is no gray area.

In WWI, America passed the Alien and Sedition acts, perhaps the least free laws that have ever been on the books.  Speaking out against the war effort, or even just making anti-American proclamations, was enough to get you jailed.  In the case of Saccho and Vanzetti, it got them hung.  The sheer amount of propaganda that was released in order to stir up a desire for war is staggering - it reeks of fascism. As a nation, we declared an official stance of neutrality only to continue selling arms to both sides of the war.  Today I read that America's arms sales have skyrocketed, to over $66 billion per year, by far the highest in the world.  Some things never change, do they?  The most pressing reason we entered the war was that the side we were most heavily invested in, the British especially, were losing.  We needed to hedge our financial bets.  Think of it in terms of a bailout: the British war profits were "too big to fail."

In WWII, America acted astonished when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, but there is insurmountable evidence that the White House had been repeatedly warned of Japanese aggression.  Because of our colonial holdings in the Pacific ocean, Japan was cut off from valuable resources like oil, steel, and rubber, all vital to an industrializing economy.  The Japanese made clear that they were being hemmed in by ABCD, or the Americans, British, Chinese, and Dutch.  They claimed that the colonial powers represented an existential threat to their nation and, after repeated warnings, attacked America.  It was then, and only then, that we entered the war in Europe.  We did nothing when the Alsace-Lorrain was conquered, nor when France was pummeled, nor when Eastern Europe was decimated.  Once again, it was only when American economic interests were threatened that we took action.

After WWII, having secured our place as one of the two largest world powers, we quickly antagonized the other.  The Soviet Union was a terrible regime also, but was it really so much worse than America? Think back on the Cold War, how often did Communists attack Americans?  When were we, unprovoked, threatened with invasion or bombing?  Then consider all of the times we enacted a policy of intervention, citing fears of a "domino effect" or worrying about "regional stability?"  The Cuban missile crisis was provoked by the Bay of Pigs boondoggle, the Korean war was never declared and never ended, Vietnam is a tragedy of epic proportions, and the even more extensive bombing of Laos and other Southeast Asian nations is appalling.  And at home, McCarthyism, Red scares, and xenophobia is the name of the game.  Thousands of artists, playwrights, musicians, academicians, and regular citizens were rounded up on charges of sedition.  So much for free speech, I suppose.

I can't write an article on American imperialism without mentioning NAFTA and our continued rape of everything else in the Western hemisphere.  NAFTA is free trade only by name, and is prejudiced against those who can least afford it.  Low-income people, especially from Mexico, resent this agreement because it has done nothing to improve their prospects.  The profits are all being bled back to wealthy individuals in the United States.  The history of CIA interference in Central and South America is disgusting, and much of it is still classified and unknown.  We have overthrown and opposed many popularly elected leaders in the last 50 or 60 years, and replaced them with brutal dictators and imposed regimes that are more friendly to American economic expansion.  I'm no expert on this part of history, but what I have read is truly horrifying.  We have become the agents of oppression and have opposed the popular will of millions of peoples only to more thickly line our pocket books.

I won't even get into the last 20 years of our history, except for one comment.  I have never understood how pre-emptively striking another nation is morally defensible.  How does the need to protect one nation's interests supercede the sovereignty of the other?  To millions of people, Americans do not represent liberty, equality, or brotherhood, but rather guns, bombs, and civil unrest.  Mission accomplished.

Now, I'd like to repeat: I did no extra research for this blog post, but simply wrote down what I could remember about America's bloody past in this world.  If you want to know where I am drawing most heavily from, check out Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States of America," Kenneth Davis's "Don't Know Much About History," and James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me."  They lay out, in much more extensive detail, exactly how despicable our nation's past has been.

So, Mr D'Souza, as America has grown, has liberty grown?

Welfare Reform

  Recently, welfare reform has returned to the forefront of our national political discussion and has just as quickly been turned from an opportunity for substantive discouse into little more than a shouting match over the airwaves.  The question is not whether welfare needs to be reformed, but how it can be reformed so that the government can continue providing benefits to millions of struggling Americans.  Entitlement spending, in the forms of welfare, social security, and health coverage, is growing exponentially, and the fear is that future costs will tank the national economy.  The fear of fiscal calamity is very real and rational - most models and projections agree that, if changes are not made, social spending will soon overwhelm the national deficit.  The question is, then, how should welfare be organized to maximize its impact?
  Like many issues about which conservatives are passionate, they argue about welfare based upon principle.  Welfare without a work requirement, conservatives argue, is nothing more than a free handout, and free handouts are unfair to the productive members of society.  They argue that it is unfair to use the success of one to pay for the failure of another.  They claim that welfare benefits encourage out-of-wedlock births, drug use, and engender a culture of dependency upon the government.  In a surprising twist of illogic, I have even heard it argued that welfare is a form of modern slavery, as though each welfare check comes pre-packaged with shackles and chains.  I'd like to combat these principles of "fairness" with a few principles of my own.
  There are few words so fundamentally American as: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness..."  The Declaration of Independence is the foundational document of our democracy, and guides the moral compass of our nation.  Where else should one begin when discussing principles of welfare?  The first thing I would like to point out is that the rights are "inalienable," meaning that no person can lawfully dispossess a citizen of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.  In regard to welfare, what is more fundamental to life than food and shelter?  The government's role is to safeguard our rights, therefore it follows that the government should ensure that every citizen has daily sustenance.  There are no qualifications or conditions attached to these rights; they are inalienable, fundamental.  We do not hold it to be self-evident that man has the right to food if and only if he works, or that man can only be free if he is a productive member of society.  In my mind, there is little else a government should be doing if its population is starving.  What else could be more democratic than ensuring that each man, woman, and child has enough food to make it to the next morning?
  The argument that welfare is a form of modern slavery is spurious at best.  No chains can bind so tightly as the confines of poverty - welfare provides a helping hand out of that cycle.  Think back on your own life: have you ever been bailed out by another?  Have you ever called your parents for a few extra bucks to make the next rent check?  Did doing so enslave you?  Nobody makes it through this world alone, and to muddy the issue by throwing around accusations of slavery is plainly dispicable.  Slavery is the theft of one's human rights, whereas welfare is a temporary form of assistance to those who are already struggling.  If someone is already living in conditions of poverty, would you begrudge them the food on their plate?
  Conservatives often argue that the government fulfills many unnecessary roles that would be better filled by the private sector - one such program is welfare.  They argue that, were the government to get out of the way, private charities would step in to fill the void.  I have never understood this claim. Poverty has already run rampant, so where are the private charities currently?  Whether or not welfare exists as a government program should have no bearing on the private charitable contributions of Americans.  If Americans are as generous as conservative think tanks argue, then they should already be working to solve poverty, rather than waiting for welfare to be gutted.  I contend that it is utterly irresponsible to argue that private charity can step up to fill the void that the federal government's millions of dollars currently fill.  I'm all for private charity and for volunteerism, but that charitable impulse exists independent of government action.  If you feel truly charitable, do something charitable.  Do not blame the policies of others for your inaction.
  The final point I'd like to make is also, to me, the strongest.  Regardless of the prevalence of out-of-wedlock births (which are a function of changing social standards), increased drug use among welfare recipients (drug use is widespread across all socio-economic statuses, especially if you consider alcohol use and abuse), or a degradation of the work ethic (a whole separate issue in itself), welfare reform impacts the children of these struggling families the most.  If we believe that "all men are created equal," then we should ensure that every child is guaranteed sustenance and shelter every day of their life, without any consideration of their parent's actions.  If my dad is a deadbeat drug dealer and criminal who never worked a day in his life, why should I have to suffer as a child?  You can make whatever argument you want about the moral implications of free handouts, or about the social implications of welfare without a work requirement, but in the end, it is the children who suffer most acutely from reduced benefits.  I think that welfare needs to be expanded, that more people need (and deserve) food assistance, that housing for low-income individuals needs to be more readily available, and that there is no higher purpose for the government than to address these issues.  Forget foreign wars, forget missions to Mars, let us fix the very real problems in our homeland.  People are starving, children are dying, and all our political leaders can do is point fingers at each other.  Nothing is of such paramount importance, and nothing deserves the focused attention of our nation as poverty reduction.

The Case For Renewable Energy

  My last post was about the dangers of doubling down on natural gas and coal production as our primary sources of electricity, while this post will focus on the benefits of a push toward renewable energy.  I think that now is precisely the time to begin an earnest national effort to revolutionize US energy production; every year we wait just diminishes our gains from making an early investment.  The arguments about global warming and the environmental benefits of renewable energy have been made time and time again, by folks who are much more knowledgeable about climate change, so I'll skip them for now.  The environmental preference for renewable energy is well-established, but changing our national energy production is always derailed by economic concerns.  I'll present my case for making a change to renewables solely through an economic lens in order to show how skewed the current system is, and how certain simple policy changes will redefine the energy industry.
  First, proponents of conventional energy production point to the fact that oil, coal, and gas are cheaper to produce than renewable energy.  If this were the case, why do those corporations get extremely special treatment in the tax code?  It isn't a fair fight in a free market when one side gets local, state, and national tax incentives due to the extremely influential energy lobbyists.  I'll give you a quick smattering of some statistics I dug up: the federal government provides about $2 billion in subsidies to conventional energy companies annually, from 1918-2009 that average federal subsidy was about $4.8 billion.  It is impossible to argue that the oil companies would have such a stranglehold upon energy production without the billions dollars of preferential treatment they have received from the federal government.  The American Coalition for Ethanol estimates that, when local and state tax breaks are factored in, the total tax subsidies for oil companies ranges from $133-280 billion pro annum.  All this is occurring at a time when the 3 largest domestic oil companies posted a combined profit of $80 billion dollars.  To put the icing on the cake, Exxon paid only a 2% tax rate last year, even though it is the third largest American corporation and continues to post massive profits.  I wonder how many other industries could benefit from a 2% tax rate and billions in tax subsidies?  It's no wonder that oil and other conventional fuels are currently more viable, because we built the system that way.
  Here's how we can balance the scales: make it a profitable venture to start a renewable energy company.  People worry that expensive initial costs will not be offset by the energy savings in the future, so we should provide huge incentives to entrepreneurs and small business owners to start renewable energy companies and implement environmentally friendly practices into their businesses.  There are some strides being made in this direction that are promising: federal tax deductions of up to 30% for solar and wind power, and 10% for some other renewable sources.  I would like to see those deductions go way up, perhaps in the form of federal subsidies so that the business owner doesn't have to deal with the burden of the upfront costs.  I've heard the argument that the reason the tax code favors the wealthier segment of the population is because it encourages innovation by promising huge rewards.  Thus, people will take a gamble because they hope to strike it big.  I think a better system would not raise the ceiling for accomplishment, but would raise the floor, so that if one fails, they don't fall so hard.  Make it easy to start a business, to acquire tax credits, to grow your company, and above all, make it less painful to fail.  This can be accomplished through business tax credits and incentives for renewable energies, as well as fixing and augmenting the social safety net (much easier said than done, I realize).
  On the other side of the tax code, we should tie the tax breaks of the energy companies to renewable incentives.  I don't think the best way to achieve energy independence from conventional sources is to go cold-turkey, because that would result in massive blackouts, inefficient distribution, and the loss of thousands of jobs.  The results would be catastrophic, if we simply pulled the plug on conventional energy sources.  So make it profitable for the big companies to change.  If we say, just as an example, Exxon can pay a low tax rate (although 2% is way too low,) as long as they meet such-and-such green standard, then green technologies become more economically viable.  One way to do so is link tax subsidies to research and development in renewable energy sources, or to provide a matching tax break whenever a company implements solar or wind power instead of oil.  Make it the same upfront cost to build a conventional oil rig as it would be to install a massive solar plant, and more companies will make the change.
  Aside from the tax code, which is broken in all sorts of places, we have quite the stagnant job market.  There is no time like the present to improve the infrastructure of America, and this creates many jobs on a national scale.  The transition to green energy production provides employment opportunities at every turn. We need construction workers to build new plants, install new equipment, retrofit schools and public buildings, etc.  The market for engineers expands greatly, as new technologies need to be improved and made more widely available.  There are a number of administrative and inspector positions to ensure that environmental standards are being met, and managerial positions will open up to manage new divisions of conventional energy companies.  I don't see how a massive investment in renewable energy would be bad for the economy, because it boosts private and public sector hiring, thereby growing the tax base and the number of consumers. The way to get ourselves out of this recession is by putting America back to work.
  At the very least, there is one policy that everyone should agree on: refitting our schools and public buildings to make them more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.  Many public buildings were constructed decades ago, with outdated standards for energy efficiency and environmental friendliness.  What better way to create jobs in every school district across the country than to renovate our public schools?  This would put thousands of people back to work in every state, thereby increasing tax revenues greatly.  Furthermore, green schools would pay for themselves in a relatively short period of time, when one factors in the savings on heat, gas, and electricity.  Something as simple as replacing the windows to let in less air, or to refit the insulation to save on heating and cooling bills would save millions of public dollars every year.  In short, going in and fixing up our schools saves public money through lowered operational costs, puts thousands of Americans back to work, grows the tax base, and puts a renewed sense of pride back in our schools.  It would be a point of national pride to say that we have the most environmentally friendly public schools in the world.  I have thought long and hard about this particular policy piece, and I cannot think of a good argument against it.  Renovating our schools and public buildings is a policy proposal that should gain national consensus - in fact, I think there are few issues that could garner such broad-based support.  It's time we led the charge to creating a more environmentally friendly world.  It will never happen without our support.

I'm an Energy Voter, Too

Frequent viewers of the network news stations may have become aware of the recent "I'm an Energy Voter" ads that have started popping up in support of domestic coal energy.  The ads capitalize on public discontent with large petroleum companies, then dangle coal power in front of the viewer as a sort of magical fix to all of America's energy concerns.  By using the attention grabber of "Coal: America's Power," and by saying increasing coal production will "create jobs," the commercials brush over environmental and health concerns, acting as though coal production would bring nothing but good to everyone.  This is simply not the case.

Coal is an extremely dirty source of energy, and is the exact opposite of the sort of energy we should be pursuing.  For example, in 2006, coal accounted for 49% of US energy production, but was responsible for 83% of CO2 emissions by energy production, meaning the ecological impact of coal is many times greater than other sources of power.  Less than half of domestic energy production accounted for over four fifths of CO2 emissions, yet large energy companies are pushing for increased coal production.  If coal production accounted for an even greater share of domestic energy production, the environmental impact would be vast, and irreversible.  It isn't only in carbon emissions that coal falls short of safety expectations, it also puts out dangerous quantities of sulfur dioxide and mercury, both of which are extremely hazardous to our health and the well-being of ecosystems near to the plants.  This is not just a climate change issue - coal is one of the largest culprits of smog creation, primarily composed of poisonous sulfur oxide and nitrous oxides. There is nothing that effects everyone so broadly as air quality, and nothing that is more important to protect.

Around the same time that I began noticing the coal advertisements, I also started hearing more and more about the benefits of natural gas.  Large companies, like Shell, are touting their natural gas interests because it has "50% fewer emissions than coal," and represents a clean and sustainable source of power for years to come.  While natural gas is certainly a better energy choice than coal, one method of extraction which has gained a lot of attention in the news lately, hydraulic fracking, is environmentally devastating.  Fracking is the process of shooting large quantities of high-pressure water into the ground in order to unearth natural gas supplies that are otherwise unreachable.  There are widespread concerns of atmospheric and groundwater contamination, with residents reporting undrinkable or flammable water near most large fracking sites.  The natural gas industry denies these claims, arguing that there has not been any direct causal relation between the actual fracking process and groundwater contamination.  But that is precisely where the industry's verbal sleight of hand may go unnoticed.  They claim that the actual fracking process, or the injection of the water into the soil, has not yet been linked to environmental damage, and the science is still unclear on the matter. There are, however, many associated processes that go along with fracking, such as construction, operation, flowback (when the fracking fluid and natural gas comes flowing back out of the earth), and frequent blowouts in the distribution pipes, all of which have been linked to severe environmental damage by independent researchers.  The most recent study (2012) commissioned by the EPA initially held that fracking was a dangerous process, before industry lobbying caused the EPA to narrow their scope to the water injection process.  This is dishonest, and unfair.  Residents of counties near hydraulic fracking operations have reported undrinkable, sometimes even flammable, water, and the ecological impacts will only become known in the years to come.  The hydraulic fracking process also releases dangerous methane gasses, carbon dioxide, and other hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.  Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is 20 times as harmful as CO2 in trapping atmospheric heat.  The fracking process has been shown to release from 4-8% of the extracted methane into the atmosphere, which would have a devastating impact on global climate change.  What is more disturbing about the whole affair is that court documents related to the fracking suits are sealed after the suits are resolved.  Taking the evidence as a whole, there is more than reasonable suspicion that the gas industry is aware of enivonmental effects of fracking, yet is suppressing this information in the name of profit.  In light of similar scandals in other corporate-dominated industries (BP underreporting scope of Deepwater Horizon leaks, LIBOR scandals in London, Big Pharm suppression of life-saving drugs), I believe that the natural gas industry is wilfully ignoring the health of residents so they can reap even greater profits.

Beyond the environmental impacts, pursuing greater coal and natural gas production will not serve the interests of the American people.  New technologies allow further distribution of natural gas by liquifying it, then shipping it around the world.  The market for natural gas abroad is very profitable, with prices per ton sometimes 4 or 5 times as high as they are domestically.  The largest and most profitable market is in Asia.  If energy industry lobbyists get their way, all that will happen is a great increase in energy exports, a fattening of industry executives' pocketbooks, and ecological havoc across this great nation.  Similarly with the Keystone XL pipeline.  Even if you don't believe in global warming, (although nearly every credible scientist does) the Keystone pipeline won't do you a lick of good, and likely will do a lot of bad.  Everyone should have the right to clean air and water.  Nothing should be supreme to that right, not even electricity production, and especially not profit.  The answer to America's energy problems is not more of the same, but a complete and total green revolution.  But that deserves a post in its own right, so I guess I'll just leave it at that.

On U.S. Military Primacy

    The United States holds a special place in world politics, that of the strongest global power -  economically, politically, and militarily.  This position, however, is not revered by the rest of the world, but resented; not lauded, but despised.  It is time for the United States to relinquish her stranglehold upon the world.  I urge this not only in view of the antagonized world, but also as a matter of national self-interest.
    To oversimplify history, the 18th century was the birth of the idea of the United States, while the 19th and 20th were the failed actualizations thereof.  Americans gloriously cast off the tyranny of one empire, then immediately donned the mantel of empire themselves.  In the 19th century, rich white men exploited natives, robbing them of life and land, Africans, removing them from their homeland in slavery, and women, by refusing them enfranchisement and education.  This was a systematic process designed to retain the status quo: wealthy Caucasians perched upon the backs of the repressed lower classes.  After fully colonizing the mainland, the American empire set its sights abroad.  The frontier was proclaimed "closed."  In other words, the natives had been dispossessed of their land, and there was nobody remaining on the mainland to steal land from.
    The 20th century was a procession of ever-increasing imperial dominance, all under the guise of democracy and freedom.  The Spanish-American War of 1898 was the precursor to this sort of imperial conquest.  Much of the scholarship around the war has been done on the Yellow Journalism of the time that may have whipped up the war fever.  This journalism vilified the Spanish for their atrocities against the Cuban revolutionaries, and painted the American soldiers as heroic protectors of liberty against a repressive regime.  This formula of journalism and vilification would remain mostly unchanged until today, only with ever greater perfections of the exact recipe.  American imperialism did not slow after this first sortie, but rather accelerated.  The United States took interest in the Philippines, opposing popular revolt there, attempted to install a puppet government in Cuba, stole Hawaii from the natives, and claimed sole possession of the Western Hemisphere in the Monroe Doctrine.  This is not to mention the clandestine actions taken in Central and South America by the CIA and other secret government arms.  These actions were all taken either to create business opportunities or to protect those already illegally and immorally fashioned.  And all of this was done under the auspices of liberty and democracy.
    Then there was WWI.  America, citing isolationism as the political paradigm, while maintaining a Western Hemisphere empire, claimed neutrality in the war.  This ostensible neutrality is undermined by the American dollars flowing to both sides of the conflict in Europe.  Quite simply, we were hedging our bets.  Loaning out huge sums of money to both Germany and Britain seemed like the best way to ensure profit.  It was only when Britain, where the preponderance of American money way, was poised to lose, that the United States intervened in the war.  American armed forces entered the conflict, using the sinking of the Lusitania as a pretext, to protect their business interests.  We entered the war a small nation and emerged a global power.
    Turning to WWII, there was a clear moral action to be taken.  There can be no denial that Hitler and the Nazis were immoral, aggressive and evil.  Thus, the United States had a moral obligation to come to the defense of the attacked nations.  This, however, is not how it happened.  Instead, we practically begged the Japanese to attack us, giving a pretext for further United States domination of East and South-East Asia.  Japan made it clear to both the United States and the international community that they were being squeezed industrially and militarily by Western Colonial powers.  They felt the pressure of ABCD: Americans, British, Chinese and Dutch economic interests.  Instead of placating the Japanese's concerns, we vigorously pursued further colonization of the Philippines in particular and of the entire Pacific in general.  We ignored warnings from the Japanese, much as we ignored German warnings that the Lusitania would be sunk if it came into German waters, then acted shocked when the warnings were actualized.  Then, of course, the United States war machine was reinstituted to bring us out of the Great Depression.
    The Cold War will be remembered by posterity as one of the darkest events in American history.  Much as how terrorism provides pretext for war and infringement of civil liberties today, communism was vilified in all apparitions, real of manufactured.  I only need to mention McCarthyism to show the end result of the route we are on again today.  However, as appalling as McCarthyism was from a civil liberties perspective, it pales in comparison to the havoc we wrecked abroad.  Wars of attrition in Vietnam and Korea were waged with no conceivable end gain.  We came in bearing the banner of democracy, yet instituted wars and regime change against the will of the people.  How is that democracy?  Instituted military action against the will of a people is the most fundamentally undemocratic action a nation can take, and the United States used the pretext of Communism to take this action many times in the Cold war.  War can only be justified if the moral benefits outweigh the costs.  There is no possible argument that can support Cold War military actions on moral grounds.  Similarly, clandestine actions in South and Central America, creating America-friendly regimes and puppet governments, were disgusting and wrong.  They were not enacted to defend Capitalism as a bringer of wealth nor the free market as a method for freedom and self-determination, but rather to protect specific American corporate interests.  We murdered thousands, wasted American lives and resources, overthrew sovereign nations, and forever blighted our reputation abroad, all in the aim of defending corporate profits.  Colonialism per se had been replaced by corporationism.
    The question, then, is "why?" Why would a nation undertake, so often and so avidly, such immoral actions?  It is all in the name of profit.  Not even profit for many, but profit for few.  A massive invested capital interest in was in WWI, and the profits reaped led to the Roaring Twenties.  The Roaring Twenties were not, however, a time of great prosperity for all Americans.  It was a time of fabulous profits and speculating on Wall Street, which did little else than sow the seeds of its own demise when the stock market inevitably crashed.  The Great Depression that ensued left many Americans unemployed, and putting men in uniform and women in factories provided a perfect employment solution.  If poor men died in combat for a rich man's war, then that was actually good for the system, as there would be less expense in veteran's benefits and one fewer person seeking employment upon coming home.  Once this gigantic war machine was set in motion, it needed ever-increasing conflicts to sustain itself.  With the gradual ceding of sovereign powers back to Axis powers after WWII, American soldiers were no longer explicitly needed abroad.  This would mean a massive homecoming of workers and a vast reduction of arms and munitions production.  Thus, the economy would suffer doubly.  The solution, find an enemy, and do so quickly.
    The solution was ingenious in that it provided an enemy that was an idea, not a place or people.  Not only was this enemy a military threat, it was an economic, ideological, theological and secretive threat.  The secrecy of the Kremlin fueled the fears over what exactly the Russians were doing and how far their influence really spread.  The logic of the times was to always assume the absolute worst scenario, regardless of how improbable that may be.  The constant klaxon call was that Communism was threatening to come to America.  Thus, the free market was threatened at a paradigmatic level.  So it was in the interest of the United States economy to defeat Communism as an idea as well as a foreign force.  It was also profitable to produce munitions for what was labeled a moral struggle, and it was better to keep young men away from home, in the military, where they could learn discipline and unquestioning obedience of superiors.
    Regardless, the Cold War is over, and logically the United States war machine should have shut down.  However, American military spending has continued to increase even in the absence of any superpower enemy.  What has now been substituted as the face of the enemy are terrorists: people so foreign to the bible-thumping, good-ole American perspective that they are easily vilified.  This is a beautiful model as far as the military-industrial complex is concerned.  This is not a war of equally matched superpowers clashing on the battlefield; it is a ridiculous struggle of hopelessly out-matched guerilla warriors, who are defending what is held most sacred to them.  They cannot win, but neither can we - and therein is the crux of the plan.  It is the perfect model of endless military consumption.  Bombs explode in the desert, bullets pepper the landscape, tanks and military vehicles endlessly traverse the desert, and every action increases the profit margin of the military industrial complex.
    This is a never-ending sustainable conflict.  The enemy can always fade into the shadows providing the military with ever more need to develop new scouting and tracking devices, to launch more surveillance missions, and above all to hold a constant military presence worldwide.  Military researchers and developers are happy, industrial producers are happy, fat cat politicians with defense industry-funded campaigns are happy, but hundreds of people lose their lives. This is all done in the name of spreading democracy and in the sacred American national security.
    The plan is flawless from the perspective of the military industrial complex.  However, from the point of view of the American people, the so-called "War on Terror" is the most detrimental action, whether analyzed morally, economically or politically.  As stated before, a war is only justified if the moral benefits outweigh the moral consequences.  Consider for example, how many Iraqi and Afghani citizens have been killed in order to protect American "national security."  Why is our national security supreme to their sovereignty?  We have invaded two sovereign nations preemptively, illegally, without world support, and with little regard toward collateral damage.  The message sent to the world, and the one received by the Middle East, is one of hypocrisy and arrogance.
    Economically this war is bankrupting the government in order to sustain the military industrial complex.  If military spending were cut to a fraction of its current turgid state, education, police, health care, and welfare could all easily be paid for.  There would be no need for a partisan discussion of a welfare state or a descent into socialism, because the services would be covered by the surplus.  It is only in times where money is scarce that such humanitarian projects are objected to.
    Politically the "War on Terror" has destroyed America's reputation worldwide.  Not only in the Middle East, but all across the world, nations are calling for an end to war.  They call the wars illegal, immoral, and wrong.  In today's ever-increasing globalization, we cannot afford the censorship of our historical allies, or the preclusion of emerging allies, based on our marriage to a faulty military system and ill-advised wars.  Demilitarization and an immediate end to warfare are the only solutions to save face on the global scope.
    Ironically, even from a national security perspective, our actions abroad are counterproductive.  Recent polls have shown a lack of knowledge in the young Afghan population about the attacks on 9/11.  This means that these people have no knowledge of even the pretext used as to why their homes are being destroyed.  The perception from the region, rightfully so, is that the United States is a repressive foreign power exercising its might in the region in pursuit of self-interest.  This broad-based belief, coupled with civilian casualties and constant military presence will of course breed unrest.  There need be no mastermind behind the scenes pulling the strings of the Middle East to brew unrest, because the seeds of unrest are constantly being sown by the occupying power.  A surge or further military action represents America's lack of confidence in the people to govern themselves as well as poses a security risk to the civilians.  If a foreign standing army was in the United States, regardless of how well-intentioned they would claim to be, American people would revolt, and rightfully so.
    There are currently over 700 active American military bases worldwide.  This includes tens of bases in Japan, where war has been finished for well over half a century.  While the United States maintains such a large military base abroad, there are zero foreign military bases on American soil.  Why?  Because a foreign military base on American soil would be an affront to American sovereignty. This shows the supreme arrogance and hypocrisy of the American military.
    The solution is simple: demilitarization.  This would reduce expenditures, release the stranglehold the military-industrial complex has had over our nation, and save face internationally.  The only way we can lead arms reductions talks is by enacting arms reductions ourselves.  Other nations have laid the conditions that they will disarm only if the United States does so first.  So the solution is simple: disarm.  Be a leader through action, not through empty promises.  The road to peace is never through war.  Let us cast down our military might, and welcome a more secure and peaceful age.
    It is difficult for other nations to accede to American demands when the United States does so as if from on high and rarely takes the same actions herself.  The route to smoother international relations, and hence a greater, not lesser, geopolitical role, is to renounce supremacy and end the hypocrisy.  America will remain the most powerful and richest nation on earth, but will not do so despite the international community, rather, with the support thereof.  America will not need to defend her interests through military actions, but rather through strengthened cooperation among her allies.  I call for an immediate end to war and disbanding of military bases abroad, as well as a substantial arms reduction.  The protection of American interests by the rifle is self-destructive and immoral.  Protect the nation morally and lawfully at the negotiation table, not on a fabricated battlefield.

Job-killing Regulations

Jobs have, understandably, been the primary focus of politics in America for the past few years, but at what cost?  Are there instances where, with our economic blinders on, we forget about the other important roles of government beyond job creation?  I am very tired of hearing each side of the political spectrum accuse the other of promoting "job-killing" legislation; in particular, the Republican attack has been relentless.  In fact, nearly every policy President Obama or Democratic legislators have proposed has been labeled "job-killing," if not socialist and atheist as well.  I'd like to argue that the loss of some jobs is worth it, and may be even necessary to our survival in some instances.

Let's take the EPA as an example, which has become a favorite punching bag of politicians as an example of broken government.  The EPA is billed as "anti-business," a "job-killer," and as a classic example of bloated national government, without taking into account the necessary purpose of the agency.  The most obvious argument for the continued existence of the EPA is the mounting climate change crisis.  It is unfortunate that the most obvious argument for the EPA can be derided by some as environmentalism (as if that is a dirty word), or liberal tree-hugging.  Protecting the environment is not some selfless act, undertaken simply because one loves those verdant greens; rather it is an act of self-preservation.  When the environment deteriorates, where the hell else are we supposed to live?  It is not as though the decimation of forestland and ecosystems solely affects vegetation, we are also intimately connected to our surrounding ecosystems.  For a capitalist society with a fetish for self-interest, environmentalism should be a no-brainer.  Perhaps we should turn our creative energy (which is vast, and mostly wasted) to a collective goal: a real, tangible, and broad response to global climate change.  Doing so would serve both collective and individual interests, and, if done properly, could create, rather than destroy, jobs.  More on that later, back to the climate change for now.  It is absolutely stunning to me that we can still have so many climate change deniers, who vehemently proclaim that man has no part to play in the warming process, or, conversely, that we are absolutely powerless to stop it.  The evidence in support of man's effect on the global climate is staggering, while skeptics provide evidence that is insubstantial, irrelevent, or outright false.  For a list of climate change deniers' claims and the scientific rebute, visit http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

Apart from the selfish arguments for environmentalism as self-preservation, we have a moral obligation to lead the charge against man's decimation of Earth's natural resources.  Small island nations are literally faced with a ticking time bomb, because rising ocean levels threaten their very existence.  For example, the Maldives, a collection of low-lying islands in the Indian ocean, is in immenent threat of being swallowed by the sea.  As CO2 emissions accelerate the melting of Arctic ice, which is melting at an exponential rate, ocean levels are predicted to rise.  This would have disasterous effects globally, not only in the major coastal metropolises (think London, New York, LA, and countless others), but also for millions of people in less-developed areas.  Many south-east Asian countries and island nations would be particularly devestated by a rise in ocean level, not to mention the well-documented correlation between climate change and natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis.  As the world's leading country in CO2 emissions per capita, and with the second-highest gross CO2 emissions, it is incumbent upon us in the developed world to make great strides in reducing our carbon output. I am not suggesting that the EPA alone can accomplish this goal, rather that the EPA is an important piece of the puzzle that cannot be discarded in the name of economic exigency.

What I'm proposing is a lot more regulation and a carbon tax, which I see as the only viable measure to bring down carbon emissions in a meaningful way.  I'm fully aware that this is the exact opposite of what business leaders and many politicians will fight for - I'm also not worried about the next election cycle and can entertain more honest and objective solutions.  We have seen, time and time again, that self-regulation does not work in private businesses.  The profit motive trumps all, especially when regulation would fly directly in the face of that profit motive.  Therefore, I propose expansion of the EPA to make it into a meaningful regulatory body, with real punitive force if violations are uncovered.  Currently, energy companies dominate the political landscape, and have cemented the claim that "regulations kill jobs," despite all evidence to the contrary: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/11/14/367539/american-electric-power-ceo-epa-regulations-will-create-new-jobs/.  What they really mean is that regulations will stop the reckless and dangerous exploitation of land and natural resources taking place every day across the country.  A more powerful regulatory body would create jobs in both the private and public sectors, by opening new positions in the EPA as more inspectors are needed and more research is being conducted, as well as in industries that are striving to meet the new standards.  Mike Morris, the CEO of American Electric Power, put it bluntly: "We have to hire plumbers, electricians, painters, folks who do that kind of work when you retrofit a plant. Jobs are created in the process - no question about that."  Furthermore, a carbon tax would redirect dollars from wealthy executive pockets toward the kind of work we can all agree on: funding police and other emergency services, providing for education, and paying for health care and social security.  To say that a 1% tax on carbon emissions is not worth the additional education or public safety dollars is a moral failing, in my opinion.  It represents the worst evils of the capitalist system, like blind pursuit of profit, and a wilful neglect of consequence. 

Even if environmental regulations did kill jobs, they are still worth it. The food we eat, the air we breath, and the water we drink should all be central concerns to all Americans (and no, the solution is not to buy bottled water.  Apart from the wasted plastic, it's more likely that chemicals leaching into the water from the plastic will harm you than drinking filtered water.)  If one person dies from water poisoning that could have been prevented by stronger regulations, how many jobs is that worth?  If I proposed regulation that could save ten lives, yet cost hundreds of jobs, is it worth it?  In the current political climate, the answer is tragically no.  We so blindly pursue job growth that we forget the real human costs of capitalist ventures.  Time and time again companies act against the health concerns of residents, one need only look at the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf, hydraulic fracking in the Appalachians, drilling in native lands in Alaska, or countless other instances where energy companies act against the interests of inhabitants.  And no, BP's nifty little Gulf coast tourism campaign does not make up for their past failures.  The EPA was tragically ill-equipped to deal with that disaster due to its lack of well-trained regulators.  Sounds like a good place to create some new jobs to me.