Governance
In an agonizingly disingenuous oped, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently made the case that America urgently needs a “second” political party. His argument is that the GOP has become so “captive to conflicting ideological bases” that there can be no agreement on basic policy issues within the party that is sufficient to form a majority with which the Democrats — a “real” political party — can do the nation’s business. Here “we” are, Friedman worried, six months from the GOP nominating convention, and still no agreement on its candidate for president. A real political party, Friedman suggests, would be like...
Recent discoveries of not just significant, but huge oil and gas reserves in the little-explored Mediterranean Sea between Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, Syria and Lebanon suggest that the region could become literally a “new Persian Gulf” in terms of oil and gas riches. As with the old Persian Gulf, discovery of hydrocarbon riches could as well spell a geopolitical curse of staggering dimension.
Long-standing Middle East conflicts could soon be paled by new battles over rights to oil and gas resources beneath the eastern Mediterranean in the Levant Basin and Aegean Sea. Here we explore the implications of a...
When the Pentagon released its budget materials and press releases last Monday, the press dutifully reported the numbers. The Pentagon's "base" budget for 2013 is to be $525.4 billion, and with $88.5 billion for the war in Afghanistan and elsewhere added, the total comes to $613.9 billion. (See the two DOD press releases: DOD Releases Fiscal 2013 Budget Proposal and Summary of the DOD Fiscal 2013 Budget Proposal)
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I’m continually stunned by how many seemingly sane people believe you can have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Perpetual economic growth and its cousin, limitless technological expansion, are beliefs so deeply held by so many in this culture that they often go entirely unquestioned. Even more disturbing is the fact that these beliefs are somehow seen as the ultimate definition of what it is to be human: perpetual economic growth and limitless technological expansion are what we do.
Some of those who believe in perpetual growth are out-and-out nut jobs, like the economist and former...
The misalignment of politics and reality threatens to scuttle both major parties, but it's especially gratifying to see the Republicans sail off the edge of their own flat earth on the winds of religious idiocy. For forty years it has not been enough for them to just be a conservative party. They had to enlist the worst elements of ignorance and reaction, and they found an endless supply of it in the boom regions of the Sunbelt with its brotherhood of TV evangelist con-artists and a population fretful with suburban angst.
Now, in the last hours of the cheap oil economy, the forty...
A great video that covers most of the big issues around small food production (in this case raw milk) Infuriating and inspiring all at the same time. Please take 20 minutes to watch it.
Recently I was taking off from Rutland Airport. As you know, Vermont's taxes against the middle class force many middle class Vermonters to seek work elsewhere, or just plain leave. It had been foggy before dawn, but the day dawned clear and bright. About to take off, clearance from Air Traffic Control was abruptly revoked... they said that Rutland Airport was fogged in! So, for an hour, I just sat there with engines wasting fuel, polluting, polluting... because of some incompetent weather broadcast.
In the old days we had Flight...
Plato, author of The Republic, asserted that leaders create crises. Which in turn lets them do whatever they want. If ever there were a manufactured crisis in Vermont, it's the 'Vaccine Crisis'.
Rutland, Vermont Sen. Kevin Mullin's $20 thousand dollars in campaign contributions from outside Vermont made Rutland a 'safe seat', Mullin made multiple trips to DC with Governor Shumlin, according to a...
The most important question is not whether Vermont Yankee will close; it will certainly do that. The most important question is not even when it will close. The single, overwhelmingly important question is how it will close.
There are two ways a power plant can shut down. One is planned retirement. The other is unplanned failure. Which way depends to some extent on how it is run.
If its operating mode is run-to-retirement, it has a chance of retiring as gracefully as it can. When a plant is retired, the employees, community, and other stakeholders can be prepared for the...
What can happen in 2012 to further the objective of uniting the 99%? Or, as I wrote in my first “Uniting the 99%” column, how do we bring together the 70-75% that “potentially, could come together in support of a broadly-based, independent, progressive popular movement?”
Let’s start with how we will NOT, absolutely not, further that objective:
-Cutting back on independent, non-electoral organizing and independent, visible, demonstrative actions. I might argue differently if there was a powerful, multi-racial, multi-issue, “third force” mass movement that had come together and was running strong progressive...
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