Sustainable Middle Class

In his book A People’s History of the United States, author-historian Howard Zinn warns that the electorate’s political energy required to achieve real democratic and economic reform gets absorbed and used up during elections. After election day, we’re too bored, tired, and broke to do anything.

Our latest national election started earlier, lasted longer, and cost more than any previous election.

To affect real change in the economy, health care, renewable energy, education, foreign relations, and so many other critical areas, do we have any “juice” left?

Barack Obama’s people sent me a potential invitation to attend the Inauguration coming up January 20. For $25 I can enter a drawing that might get me into the big celebration. I like Obama and I’m proud that our country elected him. I appreciate the opportunity to get invited to the party. However, not being fond of huge crowds and long lines to the bathroom, I think I’ll pass. My job doesn’t offer much paid vacation, and it’s a school day for the kids.

Besides, $25 buys a little more “juice.”

The sludge lagoon failure at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant raises serious questions about the future of “clean coal.”

On the morning of December 22, 2008, an earthen dam on a 40-acre sludge lagoon broke releasing 5.4 million cubic yards of wet sludge, covering about 300 acres of land, destroying 3 homes, and breaking a major gas pipeline near Harriman, TN. The environmental cost will take a long time to assess.

What is this sludge? Coal doesn’t burn completely. It is an organic sedimentary deposit derived from ancient forested swamps containing, among other things, giant ferns the size of modern trees. After burning, the coal leaves a mineral residue called flyash that is collected from the power plant’s furnace. The flyash is the texture of silt, which is finer than sand but coarser than clay - about like flour.

Flyash can be used to make cement, concrete, asphalt, grouting materials, and other useful products, according to the Federal Highway Administration’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center.

The market for flyash doesn’t keep up with it’s production, apparently, so the stuff piles up, either in wet lagoons or in dry piles. When the wet sludge enters water bodies, it’s constituent metals like arsenic, mercury, and lead pollute the water. The silt is suspended in the water column or coats the benthic community, causing problems for fish, fresh water clams, and other aquatic life.

When the siliceous dry sludge is wind-blown, it’s an air pollutant. Fine silica dust is a respiratory irritant responsible for silicosis.

According to the Engineering News Record, the lagoon has recently shown signs of trouble:

…Jack Sparado, a former national mine safety and health engineer, says that the inspection report indicates serious problems that TVA should have addressed. He conducted the engineering analysis of a similar, 300-million-gal, coal slurry spill in Martin County, Ky., in 2000 and wrote the engineering report of the Buffalo Creek, W.Va., coal slurry spill that killed more than 100 people in 1972.

Sparado says the dike has been failing since 2003 because of foundation piping, or internal erosion. There had been two minor blowouts in recent years and TVA noted seepage. The agency took corrective measures, Sparado says, but the only solution would have been to drain the reservoir and reconstruct the dam. “It was completely irresponsible of TVA to allow the dam to continue to be used when they knew of these previous problems,” he says. “They should have done a complete stability analysis of whole dam and essentially reconstructed it. It certainly should have been engineered better than it was.”

Ronald Hall, Kingston plant manager, says that other than the blowouts, TVA had “no indication or concerns leading up to the event.”

If Ronald Hall actually said that, he should be fired -at minimum. That’s just crazy.

The Knoxville News Sentinel is keeping an updated list of articles from various sources about the Kingston lagoon disaster and freelance photojournalist Antrim Caskey has this interesting set of photos:

Aerial view of the breach site at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tennessee.

Man with reptile.

Aerial view of the Kingston Fossil Coal Plant on December 29, 2008.

James Schean’s home thrown off its foundation

Set of all 17 photos.

The Natural Resources Defense Council’s blog OnEarth has a good summary of the incident, including an aerial video clip shot from a helicopter.

As America simultaneously rebuilds it’s economy and plans for it’s energy future, King Coal will fight hard to hold it’s current dominant position. Those of us who want clean renewable energy should gird their loins for a tough fight.

A beautiful song from Gordon Lightfoot. Happy Holidays.

Source: thomasj157 at the Lightfoot Tribute Team

This past Thursday, NPR Fresh Air talk show host Terry Gross interviewed Elizabeth Warren, who was recently hired by Congress to chair the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP). The COP is charged with making sure the $700 billion financial bailout package is spent in the taxpayers’ interest.

Many of us who write on economic and political issues first became familiar with Dr. Warren through her blog, Warren Reports, over at Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo. Dr. Warren and her graduate students from Harvard Law School wrote a lot of good stuff on their blog.

In the Fresh Air interview, Terry Gross asked her how she got the COP job. Dr. Warren recounted getting a phone call from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid while treating her grad students to a backyard barbeque. Reid could have done a lot worse.

I just have one question: isn’t it Congress’s job to do oversight of the Department of Treasury? Congress appropriates all government expenditures. Don’t they have to make sure it’s spent responsibly? Aren’t there banking committees in the House and Senate that are charged with oversight? What are Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd doing these days? Frank chairs the House Committee on Financial Services and Dodd chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban affairs.

If Frank and Dodd and their powerful committees don’t want the responsibility of oversight, then there is the well established Government Accountability Office. Over at its website, the GAO describes its mission this way:

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is known as “the investigative arm of Congress” and “the congressional watchdog.” GAO supports the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and helps improve the performance and accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people.

We’ll have to wait and see whether or not Dr. Warren was chosen for the COP job because of sincere faith in her unique abilities, or if Congress and the GAO are just ducking for cover.

Ronnie Earl live in Boston
Ronnie Earl’s Bio

The April 2008 issue of Harper’s Magazine quoted an estimate that 144,000 New York City pigeons are illegally trapped and sold each year to shooting clubs. The article also cited data indicating that pigeons, on average, generate 26 pounds of waste each year. Do the math and it’s clear that the outlaw trappers are preventing 3,744,000 pounds of pigeon guano from washing down the New York City storm sewer pipes that ultimately discharge to the city’s rivers and bays.

Earnest Hemingway, literary giant and avid sportsman, wrote of shooting pigeons with a slingshot out the window of his Paris flat after WWI. The extra meat no doubt supplimented the young Hemingway family grocery budget and saved a few francs he could spend later on at the bar. Did that make Earnest a criminal?

For a sobering look at the potential for pigeon feces spreading diseases to humans, there is this University of Nebraska paper describing fungal, bacterial, protozoan, and viral diseases of serious concern.

They (pigeons) trample back and forth through their copious excretion on window ledges and air intake vents. Dusts to contaminate food or homes enter through air conditioners and ventilators…

Yersinosis is a plague-like disease by Yersinia pseudotuberculosos and Y. enterocolitica. The disease is clinically indistinguishable from appendicitis. Both diseases cause fever, nausea, headach, hard and painful stomachs. Because of the similarity, there were 32 school children hospitalized in Oneida County, New York in September 1976. Fourteen were reported to have had unnecessary appendectomies. Y.enterocolitica serotype 8 was isolated from the ill children.

Those worried about humane treatment of pigeons may have a point, but they really need to spend some time on a factory farm.

To the big city trappers and sling shooters, I say good luck and be careful; know your target.

Photo Source: Birdslide Anti-Roosting Solutions.
Post updated Dec 6, 2008.

Among retailers, the day after Thanksgiving is known as “Black Friday.” It’s the day that for so many businesses determines whether or not they finish the year with a profit, that is, “in the black,” or come up short “in the red.” The color terms harken back to the old days when bespectacled bookkeepers wearing green eye visors manually entered debits and credits in neat columns, black ink for credits, red for losses.

It’s not like I’m a real economist so there’s nothing to lose by going out on a limb and making a prediction: tomorrow’s going to be a good day for the stores. I base this on the recent Simplified Stagflation Index.

For the past three months, average hourly earnings have exceeded the rate of inflation. This means that workers have been gaining purchasing power. This is largely due to the bottom falling out of gasoline prices. Whatever the reason, a lot of workers may find they have a few bucks in their pockets and want to shop for bargains.

On the other hand, if business tomorrow is lousy, it may mean that the vast majority of Americans are in such a deep financial hole, any extra money has to go to paying existing debts, probably credit card debts. That would be bad news for Main Street.

Related article: Bargain Hunting Home Buyers

Financialization of the American Economy: Kevin Phillips on the Paula Gordon Show

Listening to the news, it seems like all banks, all the time. Why is this so? Is it because the economic planners in our government are bankers? Is it because they’re basically clueless with respect to building a sustainable, diversified economy for the 21st Century? Here is how Robert Reich recently put it:

…Citi is about to be bailed out while GM is allowed to languish. That’s because Wall Street’s self-serving view of the unique role of financial institutions is mirrored in the two agencies that run the American economy — the Treasury and the Fed. Their job, as they see it, is to keep the financial economy “sound,” by which they mean keeping Wall Street’s own investors and creditors happy.

Because the public doesn’t understand the intricacies of finance, it’s easily persuaded that this is the same thing as keeping credit flowing to Main Street. That’s why the public and its representatives have committed $700 billion of taxpayer money to Wall Street and another $500 to $600 billion of subsidized loans to the Street from the Fed — bailing out the investors and creditors of every major bank, including , momentarily, Citi — only to discover, at the end of this frantic and unbelievably expensive exercise, that American jobs and communities are more endangered than they were at the start.

Americans want to build the future. We need to update our building and transportation infrastructure, our water supply and waste water treatment facilities. We need to develop and commercialize technologies that conserve resources and make our lives more efficient. We need to re-invent the automobile and mass-produce renewable energy systems. The nation is ready to move on these projects. When will our economic leaders finally “get it?”

I was in the third grade at Slocum Elementary. Eight years old. A few years before, I remember my dad voted for Nixon because he thought old Joe Kennedy was a crook. My mom liked Kennedy, because he was Irish, he was good looking, he and Jackie had young kids and, like us, they were Catholic. Given the divided family loyalties, I wasn’t sure what to think of it all that day we learned he’d been shot and killed.

At school, we kids didn’t know what was going on until a few hours after the shooting. A little while after lunch, my class, along with several others, were led back to the cafeteria where we watched home movies of one of the teacher’s summer vacations out West. It was dark in the cafeteria. There were only a few glass block windows near the ceiling and it was one of those cold and grayest of November days, after the leaves but before the snow, that grip the Great Lakes Region and make us question why we live here.

Sitting in the dark, the movies were gorgeous, the colors brilliant. The father’s face and arms sunburnt, the girls in shorts, freckled and their hair blowing in the mountain wind. Deep-green pine forest climbing the mountain slopes, yielding to to golden bedrock summits.

The open road. A clear horizon. Room to roam. Room to grow. Bright sun and piercing blue skies. This was America. A summer for the family to remember and treasure forever.

The film ended and the cafeteria lights went back on. One of the fourth-grade teachers told us briefly what had happened. A terrible thing - the President had been shot. A couple of the teachers sobbed. School would be dismissed early. We’d go back to class to get our coats.

I walked home by myself, past the lumber mill and through the car dealership like I always did, crossed Clinton Street and a few more blocks to home, too young and stupid to fully comprehend what was happening. Completely unaware that the killing was just getting started. Killing. Crazy killing, here in America, and in strange places around the world. War and murder - was just getting started in those years that became known as The Sixties. So much killing, so long a war. So many kids growing up with it all.

Among teachers, it’s known as “filler.” Stuff to do to fill time and keep kids occupied. Presumably, someone, probably the principal, realized the staff was too distraught or stunned to do any teaching that afternoon. Somebody went home to get some 8-millimeter home movies to show the kids and finish out the day. I don’t know how much thought they put into it.

For me, the memories of that day and the bizaar weekend that followed are a strange contrast of black-and-white TV news images resembling a violent cop show and the riot of color home movies of a young family exploring the American West. The new America. The America that was still there to be discovered. An awesome America.

Showing us kids those home movies might not have been “just filler,” after all. Maybe someone considered what we’d remember from that day. What those memories would cost us. Maybe the movies were a message of hope. An act of love.

Is Mr. Potter getting a big tax break to buy George Bailey’s Building & Loan?

The Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) report that a recent quiet ruling by the IRS gives away huge tax breaks to rich banks that buy other banks burdoned with bad loans. The tax breaks are in addition to the notorious $700 billion bailout. CTJ sites four problems with the ruling:

1. “the IRS has apparently usurped the legislative role of Congressional tax writers…Iowa Senator Charles Grassley has expressed his surprise at what he called Treasury’s ‘astonishing action.’”

2. “the new rules give an artificial competitive advantage to banks that can afford to expand now by effectively offering a tax break for acquiring other banks. The single most
prominent beneficiary of the new rules is Wells Fargo, which by one estimate will see a federal tax cut of $19 billion from its purchase of Wachovia…”

3. “the change could be incredibly costly to federal taxpayers. A widely-cited analysis from the law firm Jones Day concludes that the ruling could eventually cost as much as $140 billion…”

4. “the new rules present an unnecessary and harmful challenge to already-stressed state governments…” In assessing bank taxes, the states follow the IRS rules.

Why is it only Grassley, a Republican, making some noise about this? Where is the Democratic leadership? The campaign may be over and we only have one president at a time, but Obama can still speak out on important issues. Are the college football playoffs more important?

The October Simplified Stagflation Index (SFI) was 122, up from 17 in September. This was very good news for those who hung onto their jobs. This was the third month in a row with positive stagflation values. With lower gasoline prices, consumers have money for other things.

The October data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that wages rose faster than inflation for non-managerial workers in the private sector, who make up about 80% of the American workforce. The key data:

Consumer Price Index (CPI) -1.0%
Average Hourly Earnings (AHE) +$0.04 or +0.22%
Average Hourly Wage $18.21/hour

Calculating October percent increase in earnings adjusted for inflation:
AHE - CPI = 0.22 -(-1.0) = 1.22.

October Simplified Stagflation Index = 1.22 X 100 = 122.
12-Month Cumulative SFI = -9, an improvement over the past several months.

The 12-Month Cumulative SFI means that over the past year, prices have risen slightly faster than wages for 80% of the workforce.

“…an estimated 70 percent of all U.S. antibiotics and related drugs are given to animals that are not sick. This overuse of antibiotics contributes to the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, with the result that antibiotics we commonly use are becoming less effective in fighting human illnesses, including some life-threatening infections.” - Union of Concerned Scientists

In the above photo, courtesy of EPA Region 8, the steel storage bins in the background hold corn for the cows. Corn is hard on the bovine digestive system, which is designed for grass. I’ve seen these kinds of “cow cities” in eastern Colorado and Texas. The business model depends on cheap corn, which puts weight on the cows much faster than green, low-carb grass.

The ground beneath the cows is actually a huge pile of manure. If one views the larger image, it’s apparent that many of the cows are sitting or lying down. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are sick, but that still looks like a lot of cows down.

The implications of this kind of factory farming extend well beyond the aesthetic to a serious public health issue. Antibiotic resistence is recognized as a major problem in treating major diseases such as MRSA, tuberculosis, staph, strep, malaria, typhoid fever, and others. Source: Center for Disease Control.

There is an alternative to this kind of beef. Grass-fed beef is available and found with a bit of searching. Information on producers by state is available from AmericanGrassFed.org and LocalHarvest.org

Maxed out on credit and broke, Americans have lost their buying power.

If anything characterizes the economic status of “middle class,” it’s the opportunity and practice of saving for the future. To do this requires a few things, two of which relate to policy:
(1) a living wage or better,
(2) adequate insurance against life’s major setbacks such as serious illness and job loss, and
(3) personal discipline to delay gratification.

”

The above graph shows a fundamental change in the collective behavior of Americans with respect to saving. Personal savings peaked early in the Reagan Administration and have essentially taken a dive ever since.

It’s interesting to compare the above graph to this graph, which shows robust wage growth across all income brackets from 1946 to 1979, and this graph, which shows stagnant wage growth from 1979 to 2005 in the bottom 80% of income groups, and soaring growth for those at the top. This second graph reflects the “trickle down” or supply-side economic model.

Until wages and cost of living are rebalanced to enable the middle class to get out of debt and start saving again, and until the middle class can afford to make big purchases like cars and homes again, it’s doubtful whether or not the nation can pull out of a deepening recession.

More information on the graphs, including primary data sources, is available at Inequality.org

McCain constantly reminds us of his POW years.

Is the presidency an enormous job requiring a sharp mind, intellectual curiosity, self discipline and steady nerves? Or, is it a grand prize to bestow upon a citizen who sacrificed as a prisoner of war as a result of service to his country?

That seems to be a stark difference between Barack Obama and John McCain. Obama has proven himself exceptionally focused and disciplined. He’s also a good listener seeking alternative points of view. John McCain constantly reminds us of his POW record, his supreme sacrifice. In effect, he asks us to believe he’s earned the highest political position, arguably, in the world.

In the movie Inherit the Wind, which was a dramatization of the Scopes “monkey trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, Spencer Tracy, who was playing the character modeled after real-life defense attorney Clarence Darrow, made this comment regarding his opposing prosecutor played by Frederic March, who represented the real-life prosecutor and presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan:

“I wouldn’t have voted for him for president, Tracy said, “but I would have voted for him for king…”

If we had a ceremonial king and queen who didn’t have to work too hard, like the king and queen of Norway, someone who, once in a while, stood up and said something inspiring, John and Cindy McCain would be perfect. He’d look great in full military regalia with all his medals. Cindy would look beautiful in a tiara.

But, fact is, we are about to elect a new president of a civilian government. We need somebody smart, disciplined and agile. McCain is none of those things. He is a patriot. He’s earned a nation’s thanks and respect. He’s earned a chest full of medals. He’s a multi-millionaire and a father.

But is the presidency, especially at this point in history, an enormous job with high expectations and a price to pay for incompetence? Or, is it a ceremonial grand prize to be awarded a nation’s favorite patriot?

I think it’s a job - a full-time job for an exceptional individual. Of the two major candidates, Obama has the brains and temperment to be successful. John McCain was never the kind of guy that does his homework.

In the third and final presidential debate, McCain derided Obama for proposing to “spread the wealth around” by making the income tax more like it was during the Clinton Administration. On the campaign stump, McCain has been mocking Obama as the “redistributionist in chief,” and Palin has been calling Obama’s tax plan “socialism.”

Seventy-two year-old McCain is likely ten years behind the voters on this issue. Here are some questions and results from an April 2008 Gallup Poll on this topic:

Gallup Poll. April 6-9, 2008. N=1,021 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

Should 51%
Should Not 43%
Unsure 5%

Source: PollingReport.com

November 2, 2008 Real Clear Politics National Average (Presidential Polls)
Obama 50.7%
McCain 44.3%
Undecided 5%

End of Story?