One year after Mohammed al-Bouazizi lit himself on fire in protest against mistreatment by police, sparking a movement that has toppled regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, a global wave of popular protest continues, from the Arabic-speaking world to Europe, India, Chile, the United States and Russia. Today, democracy advocates protest unlawful detention, arbitrary power and socio-economic injustice across the world.

December 17, 2011, marks the one year anniversary of Mohammed al-Bouazizis desperate self-immolation, the 24th birthday of Bradley Manning, a US Army private held in solitary confinement in conditions some have described as torture, for allegedly releasing secret documents, and the three-month mark of the Occupy Wall Street movement seeking to take back public spaces, Constitutional liberties, and the fundamental right to active participation.

Tragically, in Egypt, this day of worldwide celebration and peaceful protest is being marked by a deliberate campaign of killing against unarmed civilian demonstrators, by the last holdouts of the old criminal regime, who now say democratic gatherings are counter-revolutionary activities that warrant deadly force.

The news from Cairo today: military police squads stormed into Tahrir Square, lit the protest camp on fire, have shot and killed an unknown number of unarmed civilians, and have allegedly begin throwing people off of a bridge into the Nile River. The depraved indifference to human life is so extreme, the civilian advisory council, that was supposed to lend some legitimacy to the military junta running the country, has resigned in protest.

It now appears that under the negotiations agreed after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the military council now longer wields any legitimate authority, and it is time forth international community to apply maximum pressure to force all military personnel out of power and implement an immediate, and orderly, transition to 100% civilian rule.

All acts of violence against civilian demonstrators must now be treated by the international community as deliberate, coordinated crimes against humanity, and arrest warrants and/or material witness warrants issued for every member of the ruling military council. International warrants should be put on hold only if the crimes committed are prosecuted through a credible, legitimate, transparent system of due process, in Egypt.

In Syria, after 9 months of resistance to the escalating aggression and violence of the Assad regime against its own people, at least 35 people have been killed in direct military assaults against civilians. Russia and China are blocking direct action through the United Nations Security Council, but Assad has now lost all legitimacy, and will likely be the next dictator swept from the scene. One can only hope it is achieved before he kills another 5,000 of his own people.

In the United States, the use of paramilitary tactics and alternative combat weaponry (including chemical agents, LRAD sound cannon, flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets) to evict or shut down Occupy protest camps, has become commonplace. There is, now, a mounting popular concern about the commitment of elected officials to the fundamental principles of the Constitution.

Instead of honoring the historic force of principle being expressed by the American people, city governments across the US have given in to the darkest temptations of arbitrary power, and have declared the commons off limits for peaceful protest, using potentially deadly force at times to bar citizens from exercising their constitutional rights to free assembly, free speech and open protest (to petition the government for a redress of grievances, many and far-reaching).

But TIME Magazine, recognizing the worldwide wave of citizen awakening that has marked the year 2011, has named The Protester its Person of the Year. Across the middle east, across Europe, in India, Chile, the United States, and now in Russia, a movement of citizen-centered activism is not only occupying public spaces to demand immediate positive change in political and economic structures, but is now publishing, webcasting and building a global collaboration to bear witness to any and all obstacles to genuine democracy.

On December 17, 2011, hundreds of thousands of people across the world are honoring the cause of humanity: freedom, dignity, equal treatment and equal opportunity, and the primacy of the citizen over the power of the public servant. #D17 is intended to be a global day of celebration and resistance.

The Occupy movement in the United States marks its third full month in practice today, and a transition to focused actions to right injustices is underway. Occupy assemblies are discussing and deciding plans for new encampments and an OccupyHomes movement is spreading, as legal advisers, protesters, concerned citizens and others, join together to literally take back foreclosed homes from banks the occupiers accuse of criminal activity and predatory mortgage and foreclosure practices.

The world will enter the year 2012 infused with a now explicit and spreading demand for an end to all forms of tyranny, including that great weapon of all tyrants: official secrecy. Technology, democratic process, creative media and nonviolent civil disobedience are converging to allow citizen volunteers to retake the reins of the decision-making process, potentially turning advisory protest movement into a new civic order, designed to uphold and propagate genuine democratic rights and safeguards.

Engaged citizens everywhere should demand that every public official at every level honor the primacy of citizens over the exercise of power.

The spreading Occupy movement has seen one after another sit-in, protest camp or march brutally and inexcusably assaulted by paramilitary police actions, using chemical agents and other weapons of war, against unarmed, nonviolent citizens exercising their basic constitutional rights. The result has been a rash of unfettered violence across the world against pro-democracy advocates.

In Egypt, officials have openly said they should be allowed to use military violence against civilian demonstrators, because it is being done across the United States. After the atrocities of Oakland, when police fired rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades and tear gas canisters at point-blank range at penned-in, unarmed demonstrators, sending ex-Marine Scott Olsen to the hospital with a fractured skull and brain injuries, the use of paramilitary tactics seems only to have spread.

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week staged an unannounced, midnight raid on the original Occupy Wall Street protest site, using chemical weapons, LRAD combat sound cannon, and police officers in riot gear swinging wildly with billy clubs against anyone in sight, regardless of threat or posture. There has been no penalty, and no punishment, for officers engaged in aggravated assault against civilians.

Mayor Bloomberg deployed counter-terrorist police helicopters to the scene of the violent assault, to prevent news helicopters from filming what occurred. Press were banned from the site, by what authority it remains unclear. At least 26 journalists were assaulted, beaten, injured, and/or detained, on the night of the Zuccotti Park raid. There was a planned, deliberate use of violence and combat tactics against unarmed, nonviolent, even sleeping and prone demonstrators.

The brutality of the raid was so severe that when City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Washington Heights) rushed to the site to observe and to make the case against the use of violence to disperse the protesters, he was assaulted by police and arrested for disorderly conduct. According to the New York Daily News: Several people detained with him told me Rodriguez was bleeding badly from a gash in his forehead. Still, by 6 p.m., he had not been arraigned and his lawyer, Leo Glickman, had not been allowed to see him.

Glickman says his client is not even being afforded the basic due process protections afforded to any arrestee and that the citys treatment of the protest and of the councilman is an effort to silence the movement. At least one retired state Supreme Court justice also found her attempts to provide legal observation to the raid obstructed. The Daily News reports the scene as follows:

Retired Supreme Court Judge Karen Smith can’t believe what she saw this week. At the urging of her son, who joined the Zuccotti Park protests weeks ago, Smith had volunteered to be a legal observer in case of mass arrests.

She received a text message early Tuesday that a bust was imminent, so she got to Zuccotti around 1:30 a.m. As she exited the subway at Broadway and Dey St., she met a wall of cops in riot gear who were preventing people from getting anywhere near the park.

“There was a black woman standing next to me,” Smith said. “She kept frantically telling the cops her daughter was in the park and she wanted to make sure the girl was okay.”

“All of a sudden, a cop takes his baton and cracks her in the head,” Smith said. “She hadn’t done a thing. Then they started chasing people down the street.”

Smith’s efforts to get police to recognize her as a legal observer proved futile. Likewise, several reporters who were arrested while covering the protest found their press credentials worthless.

Crimes were committed by authorities that directly violate the Constitution of the United States and its fundamental protections for free speech, freedom of the press and the freedom of the people to peaceably assemble. The denial of access to counsel for some and the barring of press and legal observers from the scene is a clear attempt to circumvent the right of the people to petition their government for the redress of grievances. Some First Amendment advocates have accused the city of barring press and legal observers in order to 1) undermine the evidentiary process and 2) allow for impunity in the use of extreme force by police.

Across the United States, we are witnessing, sadly, one after another mayor decide that the free exercise of constitutional liberties is a threat to public order, only to deploy paramilitary tactics to crush peaceful protests.

There are accusations of a coordinated planning strategy among mayors to determine what level of force they will deploy, and by what means, to crush the demonstrations. Some mayors offices have claimed the right to secrecy for security reasons, and there are Freedom of Information filings being made to learn who knew what when, and who gave which order that led to police firing on demonstrators, or using chemical weapons in unprovoked attacks against citizens.

In Egypt, where the nonviolent Tahrir Square uprising brought down the dictator Hosni Mubarak, in just 18 days between January 25 and February 11 of this year, authorities are now openly citing the actions of American mayors and police forces as justification for their use of extreme violence against nonviolent civilian demonstrators calling for genuine democratic reform. Mayors Bloomberg, Emanuel, Quan and others, are aiding and abetting the use of extreme violence to crush pro-democracy movements across the world.

This is not hyperbole. This is not interpretation. This is what is happening:

• In the streets of New York City, paramilitary forces were deployed, using tactics designed for armed combat in a warzone, using weapons designed specifically for combat in a war zone, deploying chemical weapons against unarmed civilians and banning all press coverage of the event.
• In the streets of Oakland, police shot a former Marine in the face at point-blank range, while he was penned in, and despite his having no weapon of any kind, posing no threat to anyone, and doing nothing of any kind in violation of any law. When he fell to the ground, gushing blood and good samaritans rushed to his aid, which not one of the police present did, an Oakland police officer fired a flash-bang grenade apparently loaded with tear gas directly into the huddle of people trying to help him, as if to finish off the protest with one last shot.
• At UC Davis, police walked along a row of nonviolent student protesters linking arms, and deployed a chemical weapon directly into their faces, with reckless and abject disregard for their health, their wellbeing, their rights, the rule of law or their own obligation to protect and serve.

In each case, the authorities behaved in direct contravention of the Constitution of the United States, and carried out brutal, wanton, physical assault against unarmed civilians. The violence against journalists in New York City is among the most worrying developments, because it suggests a depraved disregard for American law at the highest levels and directly mirrors the kind of planned atrocities being carried out in countries where corrupt regimes are actively trying to stamp out all pro-democracy protest.

In Egypt, the escalation of official violence against protesters has left 33 people dead since Saturday. The lesson of military impunity taught by Mayor Bloombergs assault on demonstrators has been learned, and is being treated almost as legal precedent by corrupt regimes unwilling to consent to any genuine open democratic process. The consequences are increased impunity, increased suffering, the deaths of innocents and an attempt across the region to roll back the democratic gains of the Arab spring.

People across the United States should stand together, regardless of party or ideology, and demand that there never again be even one instance of law enforcement being deployed to use force against any civilians exercising their basic rights.

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Related:

• The Oakland Crackdown (discussion)
• What is the Meaning of This?
• Occupy Wall Street, with a People-centered Investment Bank

Robert Reich explains how big money is taking over the privileges of democratic rights, to the exclusion of ordinary people, and to the detriment of citizens who seek to exercise their basic civil liberties. The violence of police against unarmed civilians is absolutely inexcusable, and it is motivated in part by a systemic disregard for the value of the human individual, of basic rights, of citizenship and of the obligation public servants have to work for, not against, the people they are elected to serve. Says Reich: “WE NEED TO OCCUPY OUR DEMOCRACY.”

The city of Oakland is experiencing a deep crisis of conscience, amid what appears to be the moral confusion of its administration. The mayor, who had marched with the Occupy Oakland demonstrators, has now ordered not one but two paramilitary strikes against nonviolent protesters, in which tear gas, “flash-bang” grenades, rubber bullets and powerful sonic pulses were fired directly at unarmed civilians.

An ex-Marine is now in the hospital, reported in critical condition, and authorities say the paramilitary tactics were justified. New video has emerged clearly showing a policeman firing directly at a group of unthreatening unarmed civilians simply attempting to assist a man injured by the attacks. To many, the crisis seems incomprehensible, even moreso because the mayor herself previously marched among them.

There are calls for attempted murder prosecutions against some of the officers. Thousands are now demonstrating against clear violations of constitutional civil liberties, caught on video. The reaction has spread across the country, and some have questioned whether the mayor should resign.

The most vital question, however, is how can the people of Oakland rally to the Occupy cause, without further inflaming tensions in a city where the elected government openly violates basic civil liberties? What strategy should the demonstrators adopt in order to maintain and defend their rights to peaceable assembly, free expression and to seek redress for grievances, that will allow them to show how steadfast nonviolence wins the struggle against brutal aggression?

Join the discussion here

We need a system of cooperative public-private infrastructure financing, a national infrastructure bank. But we also need to use that fabric of cooperative investment and output to foster specific areas of major improvement to our national economy. The model could be replicated across the world, but the US is uniquely positioned to deploy this solution and to vastly improve its chances of restoring vibrancy to the wider middle class by doing so.

Two parallel projects are necessary to make the infrastructure redevelopment and economic recovery strategy a success:

• a renewable energy infrastructure bank – to help target some of the wider funding options to the project of building a sustainable, smart energy economy, free of the massive externalized costs of carbon-based fuels
• an economic opportunity bank – to aggressively, specifically and persistently direct funds to businesses that are hiring, building capacity at the community level, and restoring real wage gains to the middle class

The first is our topic here: a national renewable energy infrastructure bank. To build such a bank, we would need to first establish how a cooperative public-private infrastructure financing scheme would work. Ideally, it needs to work much like an investment bank, where individual investors see visible gains, but money is kept in the pot for a long enough period of time to produce gain across the full spectrum of investor contributions.

In other words, there has to be commitment to the project, and that shared commitment of resources will yield shared substantial gains to all parties. In the area of clean energy investment, this is possibly much easier than with other types of infrastructure investment, because the industry is entering into a period of massive, and necessary, prolonged expansion. Big investors understand that big investment will help to secure that prolonged expansion.

If Congress acts to incentivize this investment, massive amounts of private-sector capital will flow to clean energy resources. There are three reasons why this will happen:

1. Fossil fuels carry with them massive production costs that have long been externalized; the economy can no longer afford to continue such a strategy.
2. Clean energy technologies offer a major opportunity for prolonged expansion of business value, as information technologies have shown over the last 30 years.
3. There are literally hundreds of billions of dollars of private capital sitting on the sidelines, waiting for directional certainty that fossil fuels cannot provide.

So, how to structure such an operation? The renewable energy infrastructure bank would need the following to reach its full potential:

1. A national price signal or clear set of incentives to direct investment to clean energy
2. An investment strategy that looks at best practices, value to community, prospects for building aggregate demand, and structural resiliency
3. A focus on job-creation, skilled retraining, and positive value feedback loops that favor consumers
4. A legislative charter that sets forth priorities favorable to public-sector, private-sector and start-up investors alike
5. A model for redirecting funding when key elements of a project require support or restructuring
6. A focus on rewarding institutions, individuals and investors who do cutting-edge R&D that is practicable, 100% carbon-emissions-free and scalable
7. Short-, medium- and long-term investment strategies for building, optimizing and utilizing the smart grid

Suggestions for deployment:

1. Implement a national carbon fee and dividend policy, to correct market failures in the pricing of carbon, return control of the energy economy to households and incentivize major private capital investment in the rapidly expanding clean tech sector
2. Identify, build or support and expand, focus facilities in cities and regions across the country, to operate as cooperative laboratories of R&D, start-up incubators, and investment engines (examples might be Brooklyn Navy Yard or Philadelphia Navy Yard, or the Fab Labs project)
3. Motivate scalability planning for distributed clean energy production projects, to ensure sustained investment opportunities, and optimized overlap between community-building, job-creation and investment strategies, for higher overall cost efficiency
4. Ensure legal support for avoiding corrosive business models, favoring generative ones, to ensure Investment flows to the new technologies and collaborative strategies that build future prosperity, not to extraction-oriented investments
5. Reward rapid ramping up of high-efficiency clean energy tech, because this will build structural resiliency, favor the highest-value market-healing technologies, and help to revive the middle class

We can begin doing this nationally tomorrow, if:

• We focus first on wind and solar, due to their naturally occurring US domestic supply far outstripping total demand and all possible demand growth
• We commit to decentralizing innovation, influence and income-growth in the energy sector, so community and regional economies are empowered by the transition
• We recognize the need to fully develop leading-edge infrastructure at all levels
• We identify and elevate the pioneers who already know how to motivate and execute this transition
• We charter public-private partnerships to manage investment flows to stakeholder-defined initiatives

The clean energy economy is coming, and to fully enable its expansion, the US needs to flex the muscle necessry to turn the ship of state, to wrest from entrenched industries and financial investment patterns rooted more in extraction than in generative payoff the ability to decide what comes next. There is nothing beyond clean and renewable in terms of energy production and distribution, except the work of achieving the most advanced efficiency gains and making robust power generation an ever more ephemeral affair, at an ever faster rate.

To lead in that new economy, we need to be the first to build its value.

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Originally published October 12, 2011, at ProjectQuipu.net

The Occupy Wall Street movement—now being called “the American Autumn”, after the Arab Spring, or the September 17th movement, after the day it got started in lower Manhattan—is now completing four weeks on the scene. Yet we can still be astounded to hear so many incredulous “experts” unable to understand how a grassroots movement, infused with the zeitgeist of very problematic times, is working toward anything constructive. What is the meaning of this? Why don’t they have a ready-to-go list of demands? What are they asking us to think?

It’s actually very simple. It’s self-evident, but if you’re at a loss, you can also go to Zuccotti Park, or to any of the Occupy Together protest sites, and just talk to people, and what did not seem evident will rapidly become so. The meaning of the Occupy Wall Street movement that is spreading across the United States like wildfire is: democracy. The unifying sentiment, which is actively put into practice every day at Occupy encampments, is that citizens have a right to participate. They are building a participatory process to restore the principle of informed citizen participation to our political system and our economy.

Listen to the protesters: “Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!” This is not pretend protest; this is the message. The message is that people have a right to free assembly, have a right to free expression, have a right to govern their own destiny, have a right to earn a living, to expect that as citizens of a free society, as implicit signatories to the social contract that gives legitimacy to our democracy, they have a right to be treated with dignity.

Above all, they believe it is necessary to restore to prominence the idea that we all have a right to expect that the powers that decide the shape of our everyday existence 1) represent us, and 2) be accountable directly to us, to the people. Participation and transparency are antidotes to the temptations of unfettered power, elite negotiating environments, and deals that ignore the interest of most people and structure outcomes to favor insider interests. Participation and transparency are democracy; their absence is not.

The non-violent citizen-action uprisings that ousted dictators in Tunisia and Egypt early this year inspired a wave of protest across Spain, in which people calling themselves Los Indignados—the indignant—occupied central squares in Madrid, Barcelona and cities across the country, with semipermanent encampments: acampadas. They formed asambleas by topic or task and held asambleas generales to decide the direction of the national movement through direct democracy.

OccupyWallStreet.org describes the American movement as follows:

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET is a people powered movement for democracy that began in America on September 17 with an encampment in the financial district of New York City. Inspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas, we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy … join us!

There is now a nationwide OccupyTogether movement that seeks to coordinate the actions, debates and proposals of protesters across the United States, and across the world. As of today, they have rallies planned for 1,539 cities, large and small.

The global movement inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings has spawned not only the Spanish acampadas and the American Occupy protests, but also the Chilean student uprising, which has shut down much of Chile throughout the southern winter, as students demand wider access to high quality public education.

Some participants have been very vocal that the message should consistently be anti-corruption. And it clearly is. In every sense, the non-violent, sleep-on-the-street, do-for-others, collaborative enterprise that is the Occupy Wall Street movement, has persistently demanded transparency, integrity, corporate social responsibility and accountability. It is very much about transcending what is corrupt in the current system. But it is also about something deeper than that.

Last week, with a large crowd echoing her words in chorus—a practice called “the people’s mic”, done to amplify spontaneously, at the human scale, without electrified amplification—Naomi Klein said the movement was attempting one of the most arduous, improbable and time-consuming tasks: that of “changing the underlying values of our culture”.

There have been crazily tone-deaf responses from some in the political establishment, calling citizens engaging in constitutionally protected non-violent assembly “mobs” and referring to calls for justice, fairness and the restoration of middle class opportunity “class warfare”. What motivates such comment is hard to fathom, though pundits, activists and foreign observers alike seem to think it is simply an unwillingness to see the obvious truth: that the powers that be have forged a dysfunctional and distorted economy that does not benefit most people and does not foster real democratic freedom at the human scale.

The movement has consistently made reference to “the 99 percent“, the vast majority of people not earning 7-figure annual income. The movement seeks to represent the right of that 99 percent of all people to be heard, to have a direct role in helping to fashion the policies that determine what kind of society they and their children and families will inhabit. Messages describing the complaints and motivations of those who want better treatment of the 99 percent are posted at We are the 99 percent.

And they have won support from many of the 1 percent that do benefit from the policies that disadvantage so many. A Tumblr page called We stand with the 99 percent is recording their messages of support for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Occupy Wall Street movement seems only to be spreading, gaining support and becoming more organized, because it is focused on restoring a sense of reason and justice to a nation too long forced to accept widening inequality, rigged markets and pervasive corporate tax dodging. The cause is as close to universal as one can get. It is about calling on those with responsibilities to hundreds of millions of people, whose decisions affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people, to behave as if that responsibility carried some weight in the calculus of their decisions.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is about people willing to give voice to those without a voice. In the assembly process, people don’t just debate ideas, or choose leaders. They aren’t caucusing for positions, or jockeying for influence. The assemblies allow anyone to speak, and aim for consensus. The consensus building process entails hearing all voices, considering competing ideas, then building coalitions of support in order to achieve real consensus among those in attendance. The plan is direct democracy, plain and simple, but specifically a kind of direct democracy in which no one is marginalized.

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Originally published October 14, 2011, at ProjectQuipu.net

With gasoline prices at record highs in 2008, 2009 and 2010, 2011 has looked like a microcosm of the longer oil-market trend: consistent increases in pricing, fuel costs hurting small business and the middle class, slowing the pace of economic growth in the US, and—maybe most strangely of all—no national policy to motivate a rapid, comprehensive transition away from fossil fuels and the volatility and cost inefficiency of their products to the wider marketplace. Instead, we have seen a recommitment to ramping up production, expanding drilling and exploration, and prioritizing local importation (from Canada and Mexico), instead of real coordinated policy planning to end dependency on foreign-sourced fuels.

With the oil strain on an already precarious American economy at an historic extreme, Pres. Bush in 2008 pushed Congress to hold an “up-or-down vote” on renewed exploration of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) before its August recess. Opponents protested vocally that none of any oil found there would be available for production for 10 to 15 years, the total amount would do little to ease the overall dependency on foreign-sourced fuels, and that the OCS plan was little more than an aggressive attempt to deliver to hugely profitable oil firms an unjustifiable gift, taking advantage of the pressurized situation of exorbitant prices.

The Energy Information Agency (EIA), evaluating the OCS strategy, found that opening offshore sites in the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico would still not produce enough oil and natural gas to have a significant effect on domestic reserves, even as far out as the year 2030. In July 2008, as the debate raged over drilling, CNN reported that Democratic members of Congress were saying a preliminary investigation was attributing more than 50% of the soaring oil prices to speculation, while traders were saying OPEC had deliberately held production low in order to drive prices up. Dependency on speculation-susceptible foreign-sourced fuels was building unaffordability into the US economy.

So, after three years of prolonged economic malaise, with the energy and fuel sectors continuing to extract massive amounts of wealth from our local and regional economies, transferring economic leverage away from the middle class and spontaneous job creation, we must face the underlying truth: that fossil fuels work on the marketplace in ways that are corrosive to the long-term health and stability of democratic societies conducive to a vibrant middle class. And given the massive negative externalities, which all of us are funding all of the time, and the unaffordability of so much of the stagnant, status-quo industrial economy, we must also face the increasingly clear economic reality that carbon emissions are not just destructive to the health of our natural environment, but that they have real economic costs not directly related to ecosystem resilience, such as human health, and the cost of industrial activity related to clean-up and to the obsolescence of devices running on combustible fuels.

Devoting increasing amounts of our energy economy to combustible fuels at a time when prices are soaring—a periodic reverse trend of a few months of gradually easing prices is not a reversal of the long-term trend—has a multiple-negative economic effect. The key to understanding what is happening, and which looks likely to make recourse to nuclear and carbon-based fuels counterproductive, is to understand that we are no longer living in a traditional industrial energy economy. We are now dealing with the consequences of that economy’s exploration and combustion burden. The “carbon footprint” is not merely an environmental ethics concern, but a serious economic factor potentially mitigating future productivity, or added long-term costs on a scale never before seen.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the 2008 Republican nominee for president, proposed building 45 new nuclear plants across the country in order to bring down energy prices overall. The idea was borrowed, to a large extent, from then Vice President Dick Cheney, who had long been close to the nuclear lobby and who included nuclear energy as part of his initial proposals for a new national energy policy. Yet the economic reasoning behind such proposals is dubious: no plants have been built in the US in three decades, and environmental and cost concerns, including pending court rulings, make the strategy unlikely to be implemented.

The state of California—the world’s 5th largest economy—has only two nuclear plants, so the amount of energy sought in producing 45 plants is more than ambitious, especially when compared to the promise of new alternative fuel and energy-production options. That each plant could ulimately cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in construction, maintenance, security, decomissioning, insurance, health and environmental costs, makes the proposition seem like an ill-informed proposed detour into fiscal collapse.

The entire nation has only 104 nuclear reactors, so the commitment to 45 new nuclear power plants—under McCain’s 2008 plan—would be serious, even as new options become available. What’s more, the history of accidents and near accidents is widely unknown among the public. We know the word “Chernobyl”, but most people don’t know that the V.I. Lenin Memorial Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station had four reactors, only one of which exploded in the cataclismic disaster of 1986. The other three reactors were finally shut down only years afterward, in 1991, 1996 and 2000, respectively. And, the Ukraine’s largest nuclear plant, also Europe’s largest, at Zaporizhzhia, has six pressurized light-water reactors.

We saw this spring what kind of unrelenting social, economic and biological catastrophe can result from the failure of multiple reactor cores, containment strategies and engineering and regulatory mechanisms, when Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi complex went into meltdown, after being struck by a tsunami. That crisis has yet to be fully contained, and no government agency in Japan or elsewhere, seems willing to publish definitive statistics detailing the full scale of the radiation released into the air and water. We know that contaminated rain has fallen on the other side of the Pacific Ocean—which covers half the globe—and so the US is living with fallout from the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi disaster.

We have heard of the serious nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in March 1979, in which partial core meltdown in one reactor led to the release of 43,000 curies of radioactive krypton (1.59 PBq), and 20 curies (740 GBq), considered a relatively small amount of the especially dangerous iodine-131 isotope, into the surrounding environment. But few people are aware of the major explosion, following core meltdown, in January 1961, at the National Reactor Testing Station in the Idaho desert. All three people working the plant during the explosion were killed and the radioactivity levels were so intense, they were required to be buried in lead coffins.

A massive 890 square-mile complex, now known as the Idaho National Laboratory, was the site of the first success in producing electricity from nuclear reactions, and is in part a national historic landmark. But among its 52 reactors, only three are currently operational, and there are reported to be plans to use at least one to produce plutonium-238 for classified national security purposes.

Now, given the intense security concerns related to nuclear power, rapid construction is literally impossible. Federal public health and environmental laws also require fastidious attention to detail, which has intensified since the last plant was constructed 3 decades ago. Failure to meet with absolute precision all the security requirements can result in catastrophic accidents and/or major cost-overruns in relation to federal regulatory fines and/or takeovers. This means that entirely new systems for construction need to be designed and tested before even the first construction of any new plant can begin.

There is, simply put, no way that new nuclear plants can affect current gas prices.The timeline here has also been pushed back as far as 2030 for any significant shift on percentage of national energy production derived from nuclear power, if the massive new construction project were undertaken.

With both offshore drilling and new nuclear construction likely to delay the infusion of new supply into the domestic energy economy, the real economic result of committing to these strategies for expanding domestic energy production may actually be the increase in prices for oil and automotive gasoline, as it becomes clear that overall supply depends heavily on these resources for the foreseeable future. Over the last few years, as carbon pricing legislation has stalled, discussion about future economic development has shifted to the need for funding the broad expansion of national infrastructure for renewable resources, like wind and solar power.

It is fair to say that given the revolutionary advances in cost-effective construction and comparable end-user cost for renewable resources—we now know existing wind and solar technologies can power the entire US economy—, there has not been enough attention given to the potential for rapid infrastructure development that could bring new sources of energy production online within 2 to 3 years.

We face a stark choice, at this moment of economic division, confusion and peril: we can continue to heavily invest in the old, dirty, costly energy paradigm, or we can deploy smart policies to price carbon accurately, in a way that is designed to return economic influence to the middle class, to innovators and communities, and build a local, user-centered smart energy economy.

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A version of this report was originally published July 31, 2008, at CafeSentido.com

The above video shows the altercations leading up to the unprovoked macing of two women by an NYPD detective inspector, identified by online activists as Anthony Bologna, a finding confirmed by the NYPD itself. The incident has raised serious questions about what the planned response to the protests was, and whether there were orders in place for officers to intervene to halt the peaceful demonstrations. In the video, there are numerous incidents where individual officers, apparently acting in a disorganized and spontaneous fashion, physically strike, tackle, drag or pepper-spray unarmed civilians on a public street.

It is clear that police officers do heroic work in service of the public order, and that their active role in promoting the rule of law and keeping the peace is vital to the functioning of an open, democratic, civil society. But it is also clear that citizens cannot permit the justice system to be corrupted by undisciplined, unruly or even violent individuals who betray their uniform and their oath to serve and to protect the public. The NYPD is facing a decision, about whether to side with an absolute ban on unprovoked assaults of unarmed civilian bystanders legally entitled to both assemble and to use public streets for personal business or to condone the unjustified, unlawful physical assault of such persons by officers operating beyond their legal authority.

The choice is that stark, and the City of New York should make clear that there is no moral dilemma to consider: any unprovoked assault by an officer of the law against any unarmed civilian—including where the officer believed he was being forced to listen to uncomfortable words and slogans—must be treated as a violent, unprovoked assault, not as the lawful conduct of police business. All accused should be accorded appropriate due process, but unlawful physical violence against civilians cannot go unpunished if the rule of law and the integrity of the authorities of the City of New York are to be credible.

It is ultimately citizens, not agents of the government, who govern in the American system of democracy. It is citizens who have the higher standing before the law. Citizens are subject to reasonable prohibitions enacted in law, but so are law-enforcement officers. It is the law-enforcement officers whose freedom to act without deference to others is constrained by the Constitutional principle that only those powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution can accrue to the government.

No such provision exists for treating unarmed civilians as hostile combatants simply for walking on a public street, gathering to chant slogans, or discussing matters of controversy. In fact, numerous amendments to the Constitution specifically prohibit such actions by police.

The First Amendment guarantees the right to free assembly, to free expression and to petition the government for redress of grievances. For police to claim they were forced into violent acts because people expressed their views, gathered in public or voiced complaints about police activity, is as absurd as it is irrational. It is not a legal defense.

The Fourth Amendment protects the rights of all individuals against “unreasonable search and seizure”. Altercations in which police lay hands on unarmed civilians without legal just cause are incidents occurring outside the law, and which directly violate the Constitutional protection of civil liberties. Such incidents are an affront to due process and an abdication of any special authority under the law.

Any incident in which physical force is used to coerce behavior, coerce movement, retaliate for words spoken, or otherwise improperly seize control of the person or the property of any civilian, is an aggression against the citizens of the United States generally and against those individuals personally, and should be treated as a criminal act. We write with a spirit of genuine sympathy for the hard-working people of the NYPD, and for their normally world-leading professional service to the public. But we believe that as citizens, we all have a right to demand that no arm of our government ever be forced to undergo the shame and corruption of direct association with such unlawful behavior or such fundamentally undemocratic pretensions to unassigned powers.

The City of New York has an opportunity, provided by the nonviolent protest movement seeking to use purely peaceful, entirely lawful, strictly democratic means of protest, to show to the world what a genuinely stable, upstanding, and secure civil society does when there is widespread public dissatisfaction. The City of New York has an opportunity to show it stands with the people who comprise its body politic, the people who in fact govern and whose consent gives legitimacy to those who serve in government office.

The choice is clear: reprimand, suspend, investigate and punish—according to the evidence and the law—all acts of physical violence against unarmed civilians. Do this, and show deference to the rule of law, the virtues of a vibrant civil society, and the need for an active, informed citizenry. The soul of the City of New York is now on trial.

Today, the 20th of September, 2011, the discriminatory US military policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, which required thousands of gay personnel to serve their country while keeping their private life secret. Honorable people were discharged only because someone else found out they were not heterosexual. In some cases, the ideal military officer for a highly skilled, difficult-to-fill position were discharged despite being the most qualified person for operationally vital positions.

“The strength of America is her ability to undo her faults,” said Alexis de Tocqueville. For nearly two decades, the United States military has lived with a law that hampered its readiness, undermined the shared trust of its service members, and threatened to ruin the professional lives of some of its most committed and selfless patriots. From today, those committed professionals and selfless citizen volunteers, will be able to serve honorably, and openly, improving the readiness and excellence of our military.

The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, ends a tragic example of prejudice ordained by federal law, and helps to restore the dignity and integrity of a nation of law, founded to uphold the equal, natural, universal rights, of all people.

Saturation means more of a given ingredient cannot be added to a given volume or fabric of activity, without spilling over, and being wasted. The fossil fuels market is saturated, in the sense that it cannot effectively capitalize on major new production investment without major new construction of productive facilities. The industry has effectively pushed prices higher and cannot reduce them without seeing a dropoff in profits. Most people can no longer afford the fuel they used to consume.

This raises the question of scalability. Scalability refers to the notion that as activity of a given kind expands, as the benefits and efficiencies of size, reinforced by growing market share, which means a greater ability to determine outcomes, an economy of scale arises: a thing begins to cost less per unit or per usage, because a scalable activity has made the unit or the usage cost less without reducing overall revenues.

Scalability depends on many other features of the marketplace, however. One of these is the value of investment. Another is the availability of that investment. When a market has already gone global, and is controlled by a handful of megaconglomerates and governments, and is saturated, and is pricing reliant consumers out, investment slows down. In a credit-scarce economy where no one is as rich as the oil interests, even moreso.

The ability to rapidly scale up production, and to create a potent and escalating visible return on investment for consumers, is hampered by justifiable skepticism about where this globalized, saturated and entrenched market sector can hope to go. Add to that this problem of a business model whereby one consumes a finite fossil resource that cannot be reproduced, burning one’s assets as one goes, and you have a model that does not shape up favorably for the 21st century.

The S&P 500 are now sitting on over $1 trillion in accumulated cash reserves. This money could, and normally would, be invested in future economic development. But sclerosis in the top-heavy oil sector, a serious lack of capital in the hands of consumers, and the real vulnerability of banks and even governments, are all conspiring to hold that money back. Wise investors understand that when the marketplace for risk and investment fails, a rainy-day fund is the best option.

In stark contrast to the fossil fuels sector, the clean renewables sector:

• is far from saturated,
• produces an ever-increasing rate of return for investors,
• is primed to produce economies of scale,
• can offer more jobs at better wages over a longer term,
• and lends itself to accelerating efficiency gains.

So, why are so many smart people still saying they favor the economics of oil? Two reasons:

1. They are invested in the fossil-burning-for-profits model and so don’t accurately perceive the saturation problem;
2. They don’t understand the paradigm shift and so view clean energy not as a rapidly expanding market but as a feeble one.

It’s not presumptuous to make these assertions about the anti-clean-energy crowd; it’s giving the benefit of the doubt to people who are not seeing the lay of the land as it is, but rather as they are accustomed to hoping it is. It is wishful thinking to hold that oil will always be king and no better option will replace it, wishful, that is, if you profit from oil’s dominance. The same with coal.

We are running out of ways to extract coal cheaply without literally blowing mountains apart, wiping them off them map, which carries very significant costs. Coal is an 18th-century technology not optimized for our 21st century needs. While employment from coal steadily declines, the risks and costs of its production mount, and coal-rich communities continue to experience chronic endemic poverty which the industry has been unable to solve.

We are running out of easy access to oil; the remaining reserves are trapped in undeveloped remote wilderness, behind high-risk, low-yield extraction processes that require major new dirty energy infrastructure to be built. Their development will impede investment in and development of better, cleaner, more efficient alternatives. We can do much better.

The fossil fuel saturation problem, known to states like Texas as an ongoing “energy emergency”, means we need to be actively searching not only for alternative fuels, but also for investment opportunities where we can build in drivers of more generalized prosperity, i.e. a restored and strengthened middle class, and accelerating returns in productive capacity.

The only way to achieve that is by building a smart-grid-based distributed clean renewable-energy market.

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Cross-posted from TheHotSpring.net

The four coordinated hijackings, resulting in three deliberate attacks and one downed passenger jet, took 2,977 innocent lives and sowed fear and dismay across the world. They were acts of unconscionable evil intended to not only harm innocents and terrify the wider population, but to destabilize American democracy itself, and derail a people’s journey through history, possibly to erode its most virtuous contributions.

It was a clear, sunny morning and the first plane crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center had sparked a sustained global news flash, bringing hundreds of millions of eyes to the television footage. There was confusion and disbelief, and just as it was becoming clear there must have been a devastating loss of life, a massive fireball engulfed the top half of the South Tower, clearly signaling a deliberate terrorist attack was underway.

Less than 2 minutes later, the White House chief of staff told the president, then in a public event with schoolchildren, that “America is under attack.” A third plane flew into the Pentagon, headquarters of the US Dept. of Defense, while the fourth crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers reportedly made a fateful and heroic decision to rush the cockpit and take back the plane from the hijackers.

In the days after the attacks, it was often said such heinous acts would not be allowed to change our open, democratic culture or to reduce our commitment to moral leadership in the world. Pres. Bush made a visible, conscious effort to ask that no one treat Muslims or people of Arabic origin or descent, as anything other than members of an open, democratic society, as neighbors and possibly as victims, of the attacks.

But in the months and years that followed, the pressures and temptations inherent in legislating and prosecuting the war on terror drew the US federal government into planning and implementing policies that marked an appreciable and concerning detour away from many of our most cherished shared principles.

We have suffered, in the aftermath of the attacks, fully a decade of war. From the standpoint of an idealist democracy, or of just war theory, from the standpoint of a civilization committed to peaceful coexistence and negotiated outcomes, war is failure. It is the failure of peace, of the institutions of peaceful negotiation; it is the threat of a descent into chaos. War tests the moral fiber of a society more than any other experience.

In one of the most emotional and solemn of the speeches given to commemorate the legacy of those lost, Vice President Joseph Biden noted that “Never before in our history, has America asked so much over such a sustained period of an all volunteer force. I can say without fear of contradiction or being accused of exaggeration that the 9/11 generation ranks among the greatest our nation has ever produced.”

He spoke of 4,478 “fallen angels” who died in Iraq, another 1,648 who gave their lives in Afghanistan, over ten years, many of them in recent weeks, and the more than 40,000 wounded in both wars. Biden has visited the wounded soldiers many times, and said “I am awed not only by their capability, but by their sacrifices, today and every day.”

To this day, military strategists disagree about whether going to war as a response was a major strategic blunder. It was important, and positive, to oust the Taliban from power, to end the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein, but the unity and the worldwide human fabric of sympathy that grew immediately after the 9/11 attacks bled away as a politics of division and confrontation took hold.

Some professional politicians deliberately adopted the attacks as a “wedge issue”, and sought to paint rivals to their political philosophy or to their job security as enemies of the state. A naturally occurring sense of democratic, civic unity was replaced by a push for ideological uniformity. Many Americans began to feel, for the first time in their lives, as if dissent, or even critical thinking, was not welcome in the public discourse.

The very idea of engaged citizenship was challenged by a prevailing attitude of hardline politics, and for many, fear and suspicion. In retrospect, it may have been possible to depose the Taliban and to counter Al Qaeda, without ever going to war in Iraq, without adopting interrogation techniques borrowed from Cambodian death camps, and without giving in to the suspicion that due process was somehow a risky departure from the best service of justice in a free society.

In retrospect, there may have been better ways to channel the collective emotional upheaval that followed the attacks. Historians were already talking of how quickly the political capital of the moment was “squandered”, as less than two years after the attacks, an aggressive, unilateralist drive had totally overtaken American foreign policy. There was, for several years, a great risk that American democracy would be forever changed, and many of its most vital ideals eroded.

But today, in northern Virginia, Vice President Biden reminded us of something else: the attackers misunderstood the nature of the event they had planned and its likely impact on the nation they were targeting. While the risk was there that our culture could be comprehensively destabilized by the grief and anger that follow such an event, Biden suggested we were ultimately protected against that deviation by something Al Qaeda may never have understood:

With the fully restored Pentagon behind him, Biden intoned: “The true source of American power does not lie within that building, because as Americans, we draw our strength from the rich tapestry of our people.” He added that “The true legacy of 9/11 is that our spirit is mightier, the bonds that unite us are thicker, and the resolve is firmer than the millions of tons of limestone and concrete that make up that great edifice behind me.”

Biden explained the miscalculation of a small group of extremists who “never imagined” that the killing of 3,000 people would inspire 3,000,000 to volunteer for military service, to strengthen and defend a population of over 300,000,000. He spoke of the “sleeping giant” that was awakened by the shock and horror of the attacks. He was speaking not of a will to violence or retaliation, but of a spirit of aid to one’s fellow citizens.

In the hours after the attacks on New York City, a fleet of ferries, fishing boats, tug boats, small craft, commercial vessels and patrol boats, spontaneously gathered around lower Manhattan. The United States Coast Guard then sent out a message to “all available boats” to “report to Governor’s Island”. Hundreds of boats converged on the city to assist in the evacuation, arriving at what witnesses describe as astonishing speed.

After the North Tower collapsed into its footprint, engulfing lower Manhattan in a cloud of toxic dust, heat, smoke and debris, tens of thousands of evacuees—some injured, some in shock, many hysterical with panic, some just acting in service of those around them—were flooding the waterfront. Some were jumping into the water, despite the heavy boat traffic, desperate to get off the island and if possible swim to safety.

In what is now referred to as the great Manhattan “boatlift”, nearly 500,000 civilian refugees were evacuated in just nine hours. It was the largest evacuation by sea in history. By comparison, the legendary military evacuation of Dunkirk, during some of the darkest days of World War II, evacuated 350,000 French and British soldiers from France to Britain.

The great Manhattan boatlift was possible because conscientious citizen volunteers from across the region shot into action, heading into the unknowable dangers of an unprecedented disaster zone, risking their lives and livelihoods to help total strangers in desperate need. This was emblematic of a society infused with a strong sense of public trust and civic responsibility, where citizenship and shared destiny are implicit in our sense of who we are.

Ten years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, we have seen a spiritual recovery, in which people recognize that the values of such a society cannot be cast aside for any temporary sense of security. Our politics have seen a reversal, in which an unprecedented number of people voted, in 2008, for a politics of unity and civic engagement. And the hotly contested political campaigns have continued, with fevered disagreement over policy and ideology, but we can, perhaps say, that the freedom to disagree so vehemently is a celebration of the virtues of a free and open society.

Vice President Biden said to the families of victims today, “My prayer for you is that ten years later when you think of them, ten years later when you think of them, that it brings a smile to your lips instead of a pain in your heart.” There are many ways in which the legacy of the 9/11 attacks has long since been reclaimed from both the terrorists and the hardliners, and has come to inspire a commitment to service and shared responsibility.

Speaking of the bond between her family and the family of her brother’s great friend, coworker and fellow victim of the 9/11 attacks, Debra Epps today said, at the opening of the World Trade Center’s new 9/11 Memorial park, that the tragedy had brought the lesson that “People really do catch you, when you fall. It’s been a blessing.”

There are societies where unity in service of the civic space and one’s fellow citizens is a rare, if not unthinkable eventuality, and there are societies that are strong because free people naturally and voluntarily engage with each other with a sense of holding the civic space in trust, with a sense of commitment to the virtues and the vulnerabilities of their common humanity.

Ten years after the attacks of 9/11, the United States has been through many choices, many complexes of complicating choices, in response to the attacks. Many of those choices were controversial, and many have been reversed. Many curbs on civil liberties are still in place, and top officials disagree vehemently about whether there needs to be a trade-off between commitment to Constitutional protections of civil liberties and security.

Now, we enter a new period, in which withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan is already underway, a sometimes clumsy and always complicated process of nation-building is giving way to remote security actions, forceful “smart diplomacy” and a cooperative effort to prevent civil war in both countries. Osama bin Laden, and a number of “second-in-command” and “third-in-command” Al Qaeda operatives have been killed.

Some say the struggle against militant groups with “global reach” may be entering a more conscious deliberative phase, where the liberty-security tradeoff is not seen as being so economical. There is a hunger for reviving a less militaristic civic space, in which the cooperative voluntary citizenship of free people is the strength and the hope of a great democracy, in which the value of the service of millions of volunteers can be truly honored as an expression of their selflessness.

9/11 should, after this 10th anniversary, and in the aftermath of the deviation from and restoration of core values that we have undergone, become a national day of solemn recognition, collaborative restoration, and an affirmation of our civic space, in which citizenship is a sacred trust and human interest in the principal goal of our activity. It should be a day of national reflection and of the reaffirmation of the value of an open, democratic and voluntary civic space.

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Cross-posted from Independents of Principle

Across the eastern seaboard of the United States, from South Carolina to Maine, there is an intense and well-ordered preparation underway to brace against and limit the fallout from Hurricane Irene. In North Carolina, 300,000 people have been ordered to evacuate the Outer Banks and low-lying coastal areas. The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, has ordered the first ever mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas in all five boroughs.

New York City evacuations are underway—the first mandatory evacuation in the city’s history. This afternoon, mass transit will be entirely shut down. 370,000 New Yorkers are in the evacuation zone. With a substantial amount of the city expected to be subject to severe flooding if the storm makes a direct hit, the Bloomberg administration is taking care to do everything that was not done in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina’s arrival in New Orleans.

The highest winds yet recorded were 110 mph, at Cedar Ferry Terminal, North Carolina. MSNBC is reporting that hurricane-force winds are extending 90 miles out from the eye of the storm, even several hours after landfall.

There have been reports of at least one tornado touching down in Maryland, and a federal tornado wach zone now covers eastern parts of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and southern New Jersey. The latest satellite modeling suggests the storm’s most intense winds will rake the coasts of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey, hitting New York City with winds in excess of 70 mph. Delaware’s governor has ordered mandatory evacuations.

The state of New Jersey is under a blanket state of emergency, with some coastal areas under mandatory evacuation. The counties are issuing evacuation updates, including official state-backed shelters for evacuees. The NJ Office of Emergency Management has posted pdf documents with advised coastal evacuation routes. New Jersey storm surge maps have also been made available through the Office of Emergency Management.

New Jersey Transit will be entirely shut down as of noon today. New York’s public transit will be shut down at noon, as well. Five New York area airports will be closed, with thousands of flights canceled.

Hospitals and nursing homes are also being evacuated, a first for many of them. Some of the world’s most powerful financial institutions are in the mandatory evacuation zone, including Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, Nomura Securities, RBC Capital Markets and the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Map: Click here for a pdf map of New York City’s mandatory evacuation zones.

Planning: Click here for a pdf guide to hurricane readiness, evacuation and response, for NYC.

This morning, Mayor Bloomberg issued the following statements, with a press release:

“During the storm, please stay off streets and sidewalks to prevent injury, and stay away from the windows if you live on the tenth floor of a high rise or above that. The risk of window damage is greater, so it’d be smart to stay away from the windows or go to a lower floor.

“If the low-lying areas of our city begin to flood, I mentioned the Con Ed may have to shut down their power lines. NYCHA buildings will be shutting down their elevators, as will other buildings. And if you’re using generated power, please do not have a generator inside your house or your apartment. Carbon monoxide fumes kill.

“In terms of our city buildings: All construction has been stopped. Our inspectors are working to make sure that construction sites are locked down.

“Homeowners and residents: If you haven’t done so already, please bring outdoor furniture inside – plywood, trashcans, any loose items that can blow around.

“So in conclusion: If you live in a low-lying Zone A areas or in the Rockaways, you have to leave, and you should start right now. Do not delay. Do not wait for the weather to be bad. It’s starting to rain here in Coney Island right now. This is just the beginning. You say it’s a few drops – this is going to be a very serious storm. No matter what the track is, no matter how much it weakens, this is a life threatening storm to people here.”

The city’s maps and readiness guide are also available in the following ten languages:

An additional 470,000 people live in the mandatory evacuation zones on Long Island, one of the most densely populated areas of the country.

Nassau County: Evacuation notice and resources

Suffolk County: Emergency preparedness resources

Most will likely have to evacuate inland or to official shelters, as New York City’s evacuation procedures and public transit shutdown will make it difficult to get through to the mainland. Some ferries may be able to move people from Long Island’s coastal areas to Connecticut, but these services will shut down when heavy winds and rough seas arrive, if they have not already. Evacuees should check with local authorities and transport services.

Fox 29 Philadelphia is reporting that the 8+ inches of rain expected to hit Philadelphia and New York would be equivalent to more than 60 inches of snow, a measure better understood by residents of the northeast. Some worst-case estimates are for twice that amount of precipitation. The National Hurricane Center is warning that before the storm relents, at least 15 inches of rain are expected to have fallen on North Carolina.

FEMA’s Craig Fugate is warning that tornadoes are expected to accompany the storm, and that anyone outside evacuation zones should remain indoors and keep away from doors and windows. The tornado warnings will last longer than usual, because the risk is tied to the full cyclone.

Storm surges have already been seen in North Carolina, roadways are beginning to see serious flooding, and Fugate also reminded the public that some of the worst floods ever seen came with tropical storms, not hurricanes. Hurricane category ratings are linked to wind-speeds and storm surge projections, not to rain volume.

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Hurricane Emergency Maps for New Jersey:

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New York

Suffolk County links:

• To find a list of open shelters, please click here.
• To find a Red Cross Shelter near you, please click here
• To see the coastal evacuation routes for Suffolk County, click here.
• To see the storm surge zones for Suffolk County, click here.

Nassau County:

• Evacuation notice and list of shelters
• Evacuation routes, maps and instructions
• County evacuation route map

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More links and emergency planning and evacuation resources:

Washington, DC, area

• News releases from the Mayor’s Office
• Follow Mayor Vincent C. Gray on Twitter and Facebook
• Register for Alert DC

• DDOT website information and on Twitter
• DPW website information and on Twitter
• HSEMA and 72hours.dc.gov
• DISB provides flood insurance information and tips on storm recovery
• MPD website information
• DCOA offers tips for preparing
• Evacuation route planning tool

Federal Government

• Ready.gov – hurricane preparedness and response resources
• NOAA Watch – tracking maps for Hurricane Irene
• National Hurricane Center – Hurricane Irene Public Advisory
• NOAA / NHC - Atlantic Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook

Pres. Barack Obama, who with Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has managed a complex array of shifting diplomatic relations throughout the developing democratic awakening across the Arabic-speaking world, yesterday demanded that Syria’s authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad relinquish power. Assad has engaged in five months of full-scale military attacks on unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators.

Obama and Clinton have been diligently working to build a global “coalition of condemnation” of the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown of peaceful protest. Working to win support from China and Russia is crucial, because Assad’s regime benefits from trade with both nations, and substantive action to move Syria into a peaceful transition to democracy will require UN Security Council support for the democracy movement.

With Russia and China agreeing to the US and European demand that Syria end its military assault on demonstrators, Obama was able to say that only the hardline regime in Iran—which also used extreme violence to suppress a pro-democracy protest movement—continues to support Assad. That support for the demand to halt military operations, however, does not equate to a Russian or Chinese agreement that Assad should step down.

Today, Russia expressed opposition to the effort to force Assad to leave power. It is not clear if this opposition would translate into a vote to oppose official UN sanctions or whether the opposition would hold up if Assad continues the slaughter of unarmed civilians.

The government says its troops have pulled out of key cities where the protest movement has swelled its ranks. But protesters in Hama and elsewhere say live fire attacks are ongoing and the Syrian military continues to attack unarmed protesters and civilian bystanders. There are reports at least 17 civilians have been killed by Assad’s security forces today alone, even as he tells the international community he has halted military operations against civilians.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrian citizens are reportedly now planning to stage yet another massive protest against the Assad regime, which will soon see revenues declining as new sanctions take hold. The protest movement originally called for reform, but not the ouster of Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s reaction, using lethal force consistently, and over an ever wider area across the nation, killing literally thousands of his own people, has led to the demand that he resign and leave power.

The Syrian protest movement has asked foreign nations not to intervene militarily, because they want their movement to have the legitimacy of a non-violent protest movement. But spokespeople for the movement say the protesters support diplomatic opposition to Assad’s government and sanctions designed to cut off oil and gas revenues that flow to the ministry of defense, which is engaged in full-blown military operations against unarmed civilian demonstrators.

Syria may be the next of the pro-democracy protest nations to set up a transitional democratic council, to oversee an orderly transition to democracy. This has been done in Libya and in Yemen. The Libyan Transitional National Council has won international recognition as the official legitimate authorities in Libya, after Qadhafi military officers defected, explaining the dictator hard ordered ballistic missile strikes against crowds of demonstrators and Qadhafi himself threatened to annihilate the population of Benghazi, taking every man woman and child from their homes.

The Yemeni transitional council has not yet won support from the international community though there is talk that if Pres. Saleh—currently receiving medical treatment outside the country—does not follow through on his three pledges to step down, he may be detained, in favor of a coordinated effort to support the pro-democracy movement’s transitional governing authority.

El ser humano se ha vuelto tan influyente en los proceso naturales que los científicos ahora temen que la naturaleza ha perdido capacidades vitales de resistencia

Futurismo Verde :: En una reunión de científicos europeos, en Estocolmo, el hombre que inventó el término ‘antropoceno’ para describir una nueva época geológica—en la que la influencia humana domina los proceso naturales—ha anunciado que el término ahora se está aplicando desde múltiples campos de estudio. La importancia real del término es que la información ecológica es cada vez más imprescindible para poder llevar a cabo las ambiciones humanas de una forma responsable y sostenible.

The Financial Times, de Londres, ahora informa que “The EuroScience forum in Stockholm heard on Thursday that climate change was the most obvious of a complex range of man-made effects that is rapidly changing the physics, chemistry and biology of the planet.” [En el foro EuroScience, en Estocolmo, el jueves pasado, escucharon que el cambio climático era el más obvio de un complejo tejido de efectos de la actividad humana, que están cambiando rápidamente la física, la química y la biología del planeta."] Otros efectos tendrán que ver con la resistencia de la cosecha, fertilidad de la tierra, elasticidad de habitat vital para especies de sustento.

El alba de la época Antropocena, en la historia geológica, conlleva una cantidad importante de desafíos y oportunidades. En sentido de llevar a cabo una transición rápida de ubicuos modelos económicos a una metodología sostenible, hay una gran oportunidad de aumentar la producción económica potencial de la economía global. Hacerlo, sin embargo, exigirá cantidades masivas de inversión y de innovación acelerada.

Un grupo de 21 de los científicos e investigadores más respetados ha publicado su estudio de la cronología geológica en GSA Journal, y han confirmado que ocurrió un cambio fundamental a una época geológica definida por el efecto humano en el medio ambiente, a principios del siglo XIX. Lo que ocurre ahora, más allá de eso, es que se está desarrollando una conciencia del impacto severo de 200 años de expansión industrial agresiva, incluyendo explotación de recursos, construcción urbana y remodelación terrenal sin precedentes.

Estamos llegando a un punto de inflexión, después del que la ciencia no podrá evitar la necesidad de reconocer y manejar los impactos de la actividad humana en los sistemas naturales. Se ve ahora alteraciones fundamentales en la sedimentación, calidad de tierra, patrones geológicos y habitat biológico, hasta en la misma flora y fauna que habita los sistemas naturales afectados, y en la atmósfera respirable.

Específicamente:

From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present day, global human population has climbed rapidly from under a billion to its current 6.5 billion (Fig. 1), and it continues to rise. The exploitation of coal, oil, and gas in particular has enabled planet-wide industrialization, construction, and mass transport, the ensuing changes encompassing a wide variety of phenomena, summarized as follows. [...]

Humans have caused a dramatic increase in erosion and the denudation of the continents, both directly, through agriculture and construction, and indirectly, by damming most major rivers, that now exceeds natural sediment production by an order of magnitude [...]

Carbon dioxide levels (379 ppm in 2005) are over a third higher than in pre-industrial times and at any time in the past 0.9 million years [...]

The projected temperature rise will certainly cause changes in habitat beyond environmental tolerance for many taxa (Thomas et al., 2004). The effects will be more severe than in past glacial-interglacial transitions because, with the anthropogenic fragmentation of natural ecosystems, ‘escape’ routes are fewer.

Los mecanismos principales de resistencia ecológica se ven erosionados, y el medio ambiente natural se encuentra menos capaz de adaptarse a los cambios en los sistemas naturales y su manera de competir dentro de y entre sí. El estudio también cita evidencia de un nivel acelerado de extinción de especies y de la creciente probabilidad de una ola masiva de extinciones, resultado directo de la actividad humana.

La comunidad científica ha comenzado a elaborar modelos informáticos del sistema natural integral, un complejo de ecosistemas e interacciones a nivel planetario. Esos modelos servirán para averiguar hasta qué punto la actividad humana influye en el medio ambiente y cómo se puede actuar para mitigar esos impactos y lograr un futuro más sostenible, y más capaz de seguir proporcionando los beneficios naturales necesarios como base de la civilización humana.

La idea del periodo Antropoceno es más que una clasificación cronológica del momento en el que nos encontramos. Se trata de una conciencia cada vez más desarrollada de la necesidad de modificar nuestras tendencias para colaborar con los sistemas naturales de los que dependemos tanto para la supervivencia. Es un despertar al efecto que tiene nuestro nivel de vida, nuestra producción y consumo industriales, y a lo que significa la integración de las sociedades alrededor del planeta, en una red global de comunicación y un mercado global de intercambio material y cultural.

Es posible ahora hablar de una creciente conciencia global de la necesidad de cambiar las motivaciones básicas de la política estatal, el negocio privado, el consumo y los mercados en general. Es posible ahora hablar de un momento en el que la evidencia existe para darnos cuenta del poder que tiene la industria de una civilización globalizada sobre el medio ambiente.

La época Antropocena existe porque el impacto medioambiental ya no se trata de un impacto local, en un ambiente limitado, sino de un impacto a nivel global, con secuelas en ecosistemas que no parecen tener contacto directo con la causa de su malestar. El cambio de pensamiento que ahora viene tiene que coincidir con una creciente capacidad de imaginación y colaboración, para dejar atrás la dependencia peligrosa que nos ata a los combustibles fósil.

• Geological Society of America: “Are we now living in the Anthropocene”
• Financial Times / MSNBC: “Scientists warn of a new Anthropocene age”
• About.com Geology: “Introducing the Anthropocene”
• Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie: “Anthropocene” [article that coined the term]
• Resilience 2008: “Resilience, Adaptation & Transformation in Turbulent Times” [Conf., Stockholm 14-17 April]
• Albaeco, Sustainability School: “Masking Environmental Feedbacks”

A return to people-centered investment can motivate the flow of private capital

As I go back and look over what was being written about the economy, and the federal budget, the lost Clinton surpluses, falling wages, and the property bubble, throughout George W. Bush’s second term in office, it is clear the signs were there throughout that a major financial collapse was coming. Many observers, some more astute than others, predicted a correction was in the offing, without having to depend on very complex analysis.

In fact, simple arithmetic sufficed: there was not enough private wealth being generated in the Bush economy to sustain generalized economic growth. Millions of people were not earning enough to pay back what they owed. The mortgage industry was too reliant on refinancing to make existing loans payable—too often, the logic was: take out a second loan to pay your first. Cost of living was soaring while wages were falling, and Bush’s budgets were essentially pretending the two most expensive wars in US history were not real spending.

Now, in 2011, with the benefit of hindsight, we have learned that economic growth was substantially slower, at least in 2008, than we had previously thought. Some defend the Bush administration, saying the numbers could not be known adequately then, that the measures were flawed, or that we have expanded economic transparency generally since then, and so now know more than we could have then.

From The Economist:

ON DECEMBER 16th, 2008, President-Elect Barack Obama met in Chicago with key members of his economic team to discuss their response to the deteriorating economic situation. Just two weeks earlier, the Bureau of Labour Statistics reported that 533,000 jobs had been lost in November, after a decline of 302,000 in October. According to the latest output figures, the economy had contracted by 0.5% in the third quarter, and much worse was expected of the fourth. …

President Obama was inaugurated on January 20th, and a stimulus bill was introduced in the House of Representatives on January 26th. A stimulus package worth $819 billion passed in the House just two days later.

Two days after that, Americans received grim news about the economy: in the fourth quarter of 2008, GDP contracted at a 3.8% annual pace—the worst quarterly performance since the deep recession of 1982.

What we now know, however, is that those reports—which were the mathematical foundation for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the Obama administration’s belief that unemployment could be kept to 8%—were radical understatements of the economic chaos that was unfolding.

In fact, as The Economist report continues:

Output in the third and fourth quarters fell by 3.7% and 8.9%, respectively, not at 0.5% and 3.8% as believed at the time. Employment was also falling much faster than estimated. Some 820,000 jobs were lost in January, rather than the 598,000 then reported. In the three months prior to the passage of stimulus, the economy cut loose 2.2m workers, not 1.8m. In January, total employment was already 1m workers below the level shown in the official data.

When Obama was implementing the stimulus, the official numbers from George W. Bush’s administration showed negative growth in the third and fourth quarters of 2008 to be 0.5% and 3.8%, respectively. In fact, the reality, never shown to Obama or any top policy-makers in Washington until two years after the Recovery Act was law, was negative growth of 3.7% and 8.9% in the last two quarters of 2008.

Both of those figures were worse than anything seen in nearly 20 years. The fourth quarter decline of 8.9% was the worst since the double-digit single-quarter decline of 1957. And there were very good reasons to worry that GDP was being artificially inflated by anomalous activity: the Pentagon’s record budget, for instance, counts as GDP, but was far beyond any historically normal level, and with two concurrent wars, would eventually have to decline. (The recession of 1945, many believe, is attributable in part to the war-spending bubble deflating as the war came to an end.)

But the question then would have to be: what was really going on in the private-sector economy, if government policies were propping up GDP? Where was household wealth going to come from to fund the record, and rapidly expanding, debt Americans had taken on? How could people get this wealth, if it was not available through wages and other costs of living, aside from credit repayment, were rapidly escalating?

For trained observers watching financial markets, and who had some understanding of the “extreme investing” that was going on, and becoming mainstream, through complex mortgage-backed securities and credit-default swaps, it was clear huge swaths of the financial sector were essentially underfunded and could collapse. The property bubble, however, was visible, and was well understood—and discussed—by prominent voices as early as 2005.

The Economist magazine ran a cover story in June 2005, exploring what would happen “after the fall”, projecting a global collapse in real estate markets, severe economic fallout in Europe and the US especially, the contraction of private wealth generation for most people in those markets, and resulting budgetary shortfalls that could cripple governments and their ability to respond.

Part of the problem is the idea of GDP itself: it is a flawed measure of economic health and wellbeing, because sometimes expansion is illusory or somehow counterproductive, and contraction can be a healthy correction, resetting apparent values to where they actually lie. That something was wrong with GDP measures across the developed world was evident throughout Bush’s second term; what was not evident was how to get out of the mess without inviting economic collapse.

Is that, however, a defense of the policies enacted from 2005 to 2009? In early 2008, when George W. Bush introduced his federal budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2009, his last official budget, there was widespread concern the policies he proposed were reflective of and would invite more sustained economic malaise. He had built into the federal budget record deficits, but had not yet begun counting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as budget items—the fear was this would give a distorted impression of the nation’s fiscal health, and might conceal from key decision makers worrying revenue shortfalls that could hamper overall growth.

Interestingly, the longest recession since the Great Depression—it lasted 18 months, from Q1 2008 through Q2 2009—with such deep declines in GDP was over by the third quarter of 2009, Pres. Obama’s second full quarter in office. The GDP growth rates for that period were:

• Q1 2008: -1.8%
• Q2 2008: 1.3%
• Q3 2008: -3.7%
• Q4 2008: -8.9%

• Q1 2009: -6.7%
• Q2 2009: -0.7%
• Q3 2009: 1.6%
• Q4 2009: 3.8%

It is evident that the Recovery Act worked. Economic growth continued steadily throughout 2010, and is weaker now that the stimulus spending is beginning to wind down. There are mounting concerns that massive federal budget cuts will have a depressive effect on the economy, literally withdrawing hundreds of billions of dollars a year in economic output from the domestic economy.

For some, this is healthy and corrective. But to the average American household, it feels very much like a period of prolonged economic malaise. We can blame financial analysts, rating agencies and policy-makers, for creating the economic framework that ignored long-running pathologies and exacerbated the crisis, by using unfunded derivatives, rampant credit expansion, tricky accounting and record Defense spending, to conceal the clues, but it is more important to learn the lessons, to avoid doing the kind of things that impose crisis on ordinary working families and small businesses.

At present, the government has issued so many historic tax cuts, from 2001 right through 2011, that revenues are at historic lows, just 14% of GDP. Budgetary requirements, by contrast, are upwards of 22% of GDP. That is the cause of the record deficits, and much of it is about correcting course from a time of underfunded hyper-exploitation, in which the underpinnings of sustainable economic growth were eroded by flawed theories, flawed reporting of data, unsustainable borrowing and unwarranted gambles.

Total federal government revenue for 2010 was just $2.092 trillion, while GDP for 2010 was $14.66 trillion, so revenues amount to only 14.27% of GDP. With spending at $3.397 trillion, or 23.17% of GDP, there is a resulting stimulus shortfall to the wider economy. The deficits from the Bush years, which helped to conceal the gravity of the mounting economic crisis, have been passed to the Obama years. And now, with BEA revising its reporting for all GDP figures since 2006, in July 2011, it is clear the 2009 stimulus was less than was needed, not more.

The question is: if we were able to see the oncoming economic collapse years before it happened, but we are still living with the legacy of the policies that created it, how can we get back to the healthy growth of late 2009, early 2010, and avoid slipping into another recession? American businesses are sitting on record amounts of cash, and banks enjoy record low interest rates, to stimulate lending, yet neither are putting money into the economy.

A specific kind of policy course correction, then, is needed to motivate significant private investment in new industry, new technologies, and new jobs. It has to be the kind of policy that will not cost taxpayers a lot of money, that gets money from industry profits moving through the consumer economy, and which either before or after achieving that, results in the net creation of millions of new jobs.

There are few ways to achieve this, but there is real promise in the energy sector. Because energy is tied into all other economic activity, which means that virtuous adjustments to how we find energy, how we harvest it, and how we get it to consumers, will ultimately push a cascade of positive impacts through the economy.

According to the Carbon War Room:

Investing $1.3 trillion each year in green sectors would deliver long-term stability in the global economy, a new UN report has suggested. Spending about 2 percent of global GDP in 10 key areas would kick-start a global low carbon, resource efficient green economy.

Since the oil crises of the 1970s, billions of dollars have been pumped into technology development in the areas of energy efficiency, low carbon energy, efficient transportation, bio-fuels, and other areas. This investment has led to hundreds of breakthroughs that are today cost effective. Yet, full commercial utilization of these innovations and their financial rewards still elude us.

What is needed to deploy those breakthrough innovations is for private capital to come off the sidelines and motivate collateral investment in an overhaul of our outmoded energy sector. Clean, renewable energy sources will replace dirty, finite combustible fuels; the question is whether it happens sooner, bringing the economic benefits to more people at a lower overall investment cost, or later, putting off the moment of maximum opportunity.

In many ways, the legacy of the Bush years will be one of putting off the moment of maximum generalized economic opportunity. Much was done to slow the development of rivals to the fossil fuels sector, and unprecedented amounts of money were spent to protect, obtain and propagate the use of fossil fuels. Even the catastrophic deepwater BP oil well failure of 2010, with net cost impact estimates running as high as $100 billion, was the result of a culture of lax regulation and virtually non-existent safety and emergency planning, instituted by the Bush-era Interior Department.

That the signs of impending economic calamity were visible for at least four to five years before the financial collapse of 2008 is an indication of how urgently policy makers need to learn the lesson that all citizens are stakeholders in the outcome of our broader economic policy and that the work of government is to protect stakeholder interest, not shareholder interest.

A confusion of the two may be the leading philosophical driver of the 2008 collapse, as shareholder interest was thought to be inherently virtuous for wider economic prosperity. But in the hyperactive financial markets of 2001-2008, shareholder interest was too often served by practices that ran contrary to the wider interests of sustainable economic growth and generalized prosperity.

If we are to emerge from the Great Recession and its aftermath stronger and more resilient than we were when it set in, then we need to favor government policies that actively consider the stakeholder interests of citizens and incentivize private investment to work for the wider economy. The capture-and-hold profit-making of the Bush years was in many ways illusory and corrosive to long-term economic health; we need real investment, with resilient, optimizing impacts on the consumer economy, so that more people are earning, more people are spending, and more people are building assets and buying power to keep us secure against another collapse.

Recommendations: 

• To Solve the Debt Crisis, Rebuild the Middle Class
• Why We Should Have a National Infrastructure Bank
• Fee and Dividend: To Spur Job Creation, Industrial Boom

Perry touts Texas jobs record, promises to make government “inconsequential”

Today, three-term Texas governor Rick Perry announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, promising to foster innovation and enterprise. The speech offered no specifics, but Perry called for simplifying the tax code and promoting private business interests. In what may be the most striking and unusual phrasing of the speech, Perry promised, with passion: “I’ll work every day to make Washington, DC, as inconsequential in your lives as I can.”

Perry offered no plan for balancing the widening federal budget deficits, calling instead for what appeared to be a new round of tax cuts for business and decrying the American government as an institution that “takes too much” from its people. While short on specifics, Perry’s speech was a startling departure from what many believe to be the economic reality of the times: taxes are at historically low rates, revenues are so low, economists fear budget shortfalls are stunting economic growth, and Perry, who has left Texas with a $27 billion budget deficit is calling for cuts and for a radical rolling back of government.

The speech was in many ways like the speeches given by George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign, referring wistfully to the ideology of Margaret Thatcher, decrying the American government as intrusive and corrosive of free enterprise, and promising tax cuts that could lead to serious long-term stagnation for average household wages and the wider consumer economy. Perry attacked Pres. Obama, suggesting that his economic agenda—which has favored entrepreneurship, small business and innovation—is somehow the opposite of what it has been.

And in what appears to be a foreshadowing of Perry’s coming campaign of free-market rhetoric, Perry vowed to repeal Pres. Obama’s “one-size-fits-all government healthcare plan”—which, incidentally, does not exist and was never part of the Affordable Care Act. Perry’s rhetoric is tough, aggressive and ideologically deep-seated, but he will have to be far more disciplined about facts and solutions. Beyond that, he will have to grapple with the realities of both the healthcare law—already paying dividends in lower cost growth and popular among many who have benefited—and the budget—where he will not have the liberty to run up massive deficit spending to pay for new tax cuts.

Perry’s record in Texas is decidedly mixed: while he and his supporters have talked up the so-called “Texas miracle”, the miracle is in many ways an illusion. While there have been more new jobs created in Texas than in other states, unemployment remains high, wages have declined, most of the new jobs are very low paying, and immigration, including illegal immigration, which Perry has opposed, is considered to be the main source of growth in the Texas economy.

On energy, Perry’s record also must be of interest to voters: while Texas has more developed energy infrastructure than any other state, it is presently in its fifth “energy emergency” of 2011, and has had to resort to importing electricity from Mexico. This is in part because, while talking up his interest in renewables, and benefitting from a ground-up boom in wind energy production in his state, Perry has helped to impede the building of new clean energy infrastructure, favoring huge subsidies for fossil fuels production, making his state more vulnerable to foreign oil powers, price fluctuations, cartels and high fuel costs.

According to TIME Magazine’s Swampland blog:

In a report written for Perry last spring, Porter found that Texas’ overall prosperity growth, as measured by the rate of change in per capita GDP, was the eighth slowest in the country from 1998 to 2008. Texas has the highest proportion of minimum-wage jobs and the lowest median wage in the country. Porter found that Texas’ labor-force productivity was growing more slowly than 37 other states, further suggesting that the job-creation machine may not be keeping pace with productivity improvements in the rest of the country.

Perry offered no plan for taxes, war, healthcare, education, debt and deficit reduction, or economic recovery. In fact, his speech sounded much like it was intended to convey the message that he would call for aggressive austerity measures of the type that pushed the UK into a recession, after the were pushed through by David Cameron’s government.

In Texas, Perry has developed a reputation for being tough politically, but never truly popular with the legislature or with the people. He has won three consecutive terms, which many attribute to a kind of aggressive and hyperbolic rhetoric that is designed to obscure the realities of the public policy landscape, where his performance has not been as winning as he would like voters to believe.

His chief political adviser says Perry’s jobs record will make him the strongest possible Republican candidate to take on Obama, especially in a slow recovery with sparse job creation. But there are concerns about whether Perry’s record really stands up to scrutiny and whether once some of his more extreme positions become known, he might not appeal to moderates and to swing-state independent voters needed to win the presidency.

According to Politico:

One veteran GOP strategist said that multiple members of Congress had “expressed concerns about Perry’s ability to compete in not only the traditional 10 to 12 swing states, but also some of the lean-Republican states.”

The same state party chair, who spoke on condition of anonymity, voiced a worry that Perry hasn’t been “thoroughly vetted” and predicted: “If he’s the nominee, the first thing the White House is going to do is make an issue of secession.”

Perry’s 2009 comment — he said he didn’t want to “dissolve” the Union, “but if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that?” — is already the most famous black mark on his political resume.

Republican operatives have reportedly expressed worry that he is a “bombastic regional politician” who is not equipped to appeal to the governing priorities the majority of the country want to see. They worry that his extremist rhetoric, threatening secession if he were to disagree with Washington policy, calling for war against Mexico, will persuade most voters that Perry might be dangerous distracted by ideology and by personal obsessions, and not focused on serving all of the people.

Perry’s campaign announcement speech did little to calm those worries, and in fact may have exacerbated them. There is analysis that suggests Perry’s early moves will determine primarily whether the “smart money” starts to flow in decisive amounts to frontrunner and reputed moderate Mitt Romney, or whether a competitive Perry will dilute funding and support among a wider number of candidates, undermining the party’s chances to defeat Obama—the most prolific fundraiser in US history.

Perry’s “rogue” status may also work against him. While some believe a tough, “truth-talking” cowboy image will appeal to voters who are tired of the nuance and maneuvering of so many Congressional factions, others say Sarah Palin’s struggle to draw interest for her film or for a potential candidacy is a general fatigue with the very idea of a “rogue” candidate.

After a great deal of media hype, during several weeks, Gov. Perry announced his candidacy from South Carolina, on the day of the Republican Straw Poll, in Ames, Iowa, and Perry supporters can write in his name in Ames, if they support him. If he fails to show in the top half of the list of candidates, at the very least, there will be questions about his appeal to voters outside of Texas and the south.

Unlike Huntsman and Romney, who have set themselves up as problem-solvers, Perry seems to be betting his campaign on Bush-era Republican ideology and his record in Texas. The Obama campaign is almost certain to set itself up not as the “big government” campaign, but as the “good government” campaign. Perry’s attacks on the very idea of government playing a constructive role in the economic landscape may unnerve voters in the vital center of the ideological spectrum.

TheHotSpring.net :: The debt crisis is attributable to “structural” causes, meaning the way the nation’s financing is structured over the next several decades, but also to political and economic causes, meaning both the way we make policy and the way we live and experience the marketplace for trade, credit and consumer purchases. So, we need to implement policies that make serious, sustainable corrections on all three fronts.

Most of the Republican candidates for their party’s presidential nomination debated last night in Iowa, two days ahead of the crucial Ames Straw Poll, thought to be a leading indicator of which candidates are credible and which are less likely to win in January. Rick Perry, who has not yet announced his candidacy, was not in attendance, and Fred Karger—who met all the criteria for attendance—was not allowed to participate, some say because he is openly gay.

The questions were direct, tough and probing. Challenged on her claim that she could turn the US economy around in just three months, Michelle Bachmann fielded the first of many tough questions. She backtracked somewhat, claiming that she could not fix the economy in three months, but that she could enact policies that could eventually have a positive impact. She then trailed off into a “one term president” rant against Obama, which opened her to the critique that her policy plans lack substance.

Mitt Romney attempted to deliver an economic-policy stump speech. He launched into a Republican talking point, calling for a steep reduction in “corporate tax rates”, which are either the lowest in the industrialized world or the highest, depending how they are defined. He called for energy independence, suggesting new drilling, but not openly saying so, and vaguely said we need “the rule of law” to shore up our economy.

Romney’s reference to “rule of law” struck many as odd and off-topic, in part because the Obama record has been one of trying to force major corporate interests to follow existing law and end the regulatory non-action of the Bush years. But Romney’s meaning was far more likely to be about taxes: he has been facing criticism for having “raised taxes” while governor of Massachusetts, but has said he was able to bring in “new revenues” by “closing loopholes”, i.e. enforcing the law.

Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty got off to a very rocky start, showing either plain ignorance of active government policy and recent political history or a willingness to tell very big fibs in order to make difficult rhetorical points—alleging that Barack Obama has never presented a plan to reform Medicare. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—which Pawlenty likes to call “Obamneycare”—included Medicare reform specifically designed to cut $500 billion of “waste, fraud and abuse” from Medicare, without reducing benefits or access to care.

In fact, while it achieves those cost savings, it also establishes that no insurance managers, public or private sector, can interfere with doctor-patient decisions on appropriate course of treatment. So Pawlenty missed the mark dramatically, while saying little about his own plan, getting the facts wrong and leading research-minded voters to look up Obama’s already in place and very specific Medicare reform plan. The president has called for an expansion of that reform plan, again without cutting benefits.

Rick Santorum announced his plan to “cut the corporate tax rate to zero, for manufacturers”, and he did so with a smile, as if anticipating major new corporate financing for his campaign. Santorum seemed eager, throughout the night, to glisten with new ideas of this kind which he hoped would capture new support and new momentum, going into Saturday’s straw poll.

Chris Wallace—who consistently asked aggressive, difficult questions—asked Pawlenty if Bachmann was really unqualified, as he had claimed, and had no achievements, but he added the quip that Pawlenty might be attacking her simply because “she’s beating you in the polls”. Pawlenty repeated that her record is simply lacking, that she has no accomplishments at all as a legislator.

Referring to the Bachmann’s catch-line that she has a “titanium spine” and will never relent on her ideological demands, Pawlenty said “It’s not her spine we’re interested in; it’s her record of achievement.” He then addressed her directly, saying “If that’s your view of leadership with effective results, please stop, because you’re killing us,” implying that by sabotaging deals that get much of what Republicans seek, she is losing the wider policy war for the party.

Romney faced his toughest question when he was challenged on his record at Bain Capital, which acquired American Paper, closed two plants, and imposed 2,000 layoffs. Romney says not all of the companies Bain invested in while he was there worked, and so some had to fail. He sought to paint this record of experience as an education in what works to allow businesses to grow and create jobs, but he offered no specifics on how that education would play out in presidential policy.

Wallace asked Gingrich if his record on the campaign trail—top advisers resigning en masse—shows he is not fit for the presidency. Gingrich bristled and decried what he called “gotcha questions”. He criticized the press corps generally, for focusing on “campaign minutia” and ignoring the basic ideas that distinguish Republicans from Pres. Obama.

He made the most specific policy suggestion of the evening, saying the government should make “Lean Six Sigma”—a combination of Toyota’s Lean manufacturing model and Motorola’s Six Sigma production process—the national manufacturing standard.

He asked Huntsman if his record of service as Barack Obama’s representative to China means he is not a true Republican. He said he is proud to serve and that when your country calls, you step up and serve. Huntsman repeated throughout the night that he is proud of his record of public service and that he believes that experience is the best sign that he is prepared to be president.

Herman Cain was asked if his extreme statements—like calling on communities to ban mosques—and saying he knew little about the war in Afghanistan made him too ignorant to be president. Cain seemed to agree with Gingrich’s critique of unfair questions, and said he has learned, that as a businessman he knows the ability to learn and to develop more complex understanding of such complex issues makes a good leader.

On immigration, Cain said legal immigration is the already existing and appropriate “path to citizenship”. In what might be his most memorable remark of the campaign, he artfully threaded the needle of ethnic and ideological tensions relating to immigration, saying “America can be a nation with high fences and wide open doors.”

Gingrich took an extreme tack to the hard right, calling for moving millions of people to the southern states to police the borders, the establishment of English as “the official language of government”—a radical position that ignores the First Amendment and holds that we will not inform anyone who does not understand English of their rights, or what they may need to do in an emergency.

Gingrich also added that he would “distinguish between people who have been here a very long time and people who have come more recently”. This last comment seemed to some to mean he would allow for something like amnesty for those who have been here longer, while others were chilled by what seemed to be a nativist rejection of immigrants’ rights.

Romney was asked about how he used new revenues to fix the Massachusetts state budget, and whether he would raise taxes to balance the budget. By simple arithmetic, it looks nearly impossible to balance the federal budget any time soon without raising taxes, but Romney defended his record in Massachusetts, explaining that he balanced the budget every year, and that he only needed to close loopholes, not to raise taxes, while imposing sharp cuts.

Pawlenty was asked about his having increased the cigarette tax in his state, in order to balance the budget. He made reference to whether it was a “fee” or a “tax” and to court rulings on the subject, and said he would later regret having done it, but it seemed clear that this was instrumental to his budget policy and a sticking point that could be to his favor or to his disadvantage, depending on whether GOP primary voters include the majority of Republicans who favor raising revenues to balance the budget.

Bachmann said she had opposed the cigarette tax hike, when she was in the state legislature, and that she was determined not to support it. But she did in fact vote to increase the cigarette tax. She claimed Pawlenty forced her to do so, by attaching a rider that would “protect the rights of the unborn”, so that she was forced to choose between voting against rights for the unborn and voting to raise taxes.

Bachmann said her view was that you can get things wrong when it comes to money but not when it comes to life. The exchange, however, seemed to play into Pawlenty’s argument, that he is better at getting results than Bachmann, who is a hapless prisoner to her own ideological priorities, and who—despite this, and contrary to what she says—will vote against her principles.

Rick Santorum, former senator from Pennsylvania, appeared to agree with Pawlenty’s critique of Bachmann, saying that a leader needs to know how to get a good deal and get results. Santorum sought to tout his record of “leadership” at the state and federal level, and argued that he was better able to serve the conservative ideals than Bachmann, because he knows how to negotiate.

When the question was posed if the candidates felt so strongly about opposing any increase of any kind in tax rates, would they oppose even a deficit reduction deal that made $10 in cuts for every $1 in new revenues, every member of the debate panel raised their hands. After-debate analysis suggested this moment may become “iconic”, indicating that the Republican party is only interested in tax cuts, not in deficit reduction, fiscal responsibility or protecting Medicare and Social Security.

The image of the Republican candidates dutifully—some with reluctance—raising their hands to support Grover Norquist’s radical anti-tax pledge could become the signal moment of the primary campaign, when Republican candidates announced their intention to enforce the tea party radical position of obstructing deficit reduction in order to prioritize tax breaks, at a time of historically low tax rates, perilously low revenues and escalating debt.

Santorum took issue with Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann’s reference to the 10th Amendment, and the question of states’ rights, saying their theories were “the 10th Amendment run amok”, and that “Our country is based on moral laws, ladies and gentlemen. Abraham Lincoln said the states don’t have the right to do wrong.” It was a moment of passion and principle that stood out, but which will require Santorum to make clear how he would deal with issues like same-sex marriage or abortion, where prevailing law conflicts with his views.

Asked about the entrance of Rick Perry into the race, Ron Paul said Perry “represents the status quo” and that he will make Paul’s own unique views stand out more. Herman Cain agreed, saying Perry would dilute the vote for “politicians” and make his business record stand out. Bachmann said there is room for another conservative in the race, though many strategists believe Perry will cut into her vote-getting ability.

Newt Gingrich was asked if he has a clear vision of what should be done in Libya, after taking two diametrically opposing views within a few days, at the start of the conflict. He said he recently spoke to Gen. Abizaid, who speaks Arabic, is one of the foremost security policy experts on the region, and who said we have a “strategic deficit” that needs to be closed through intelligent, persistent diplomatic engagement.

In what is perhaps an interesting angle, politically, Abizaid has been a supporter of the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts in the region, which taken with Gingrich’s characterization of the state of affairs, suggests the Obama administration’s policies are potentially closing that deficit.

Gingrich did not offer a clear policy position on the current situation in Libya, but complained that the press were criticizing him for Pres. Obama’s having coordinated a humanitarian crisis response in Libya.

Huntsman was asked what it meant that China has been hacking into US corporations and US government servers. He said he has long experience with China, and believes the United States needs to have a robust, informed, collaborative and secure relationship with the rising world power. He also said it would be naïve to expect China not to behave like a rival, and that we nee a president who understands the relationship.

Ron Paul decried sanctions against Iran, saying that military threats and sanctions are precursors to real military conflict, costly policy mistakes and would only worsen the security situation worldwide. Paul believes that foreign wars that are not of absolute defensive necessity are contrary to democratic values, undermine the principles of liberty and create enmities that would continue to threaten US interests far into the future.

Cain was asked by Wallace about his comment that US energy independence would be the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The suggestion was that it might be irrational to claim that drilling for oil in North America would persuade Iran’s hardline regime not to develop nuclear weapons. Cain explained that he views economic policy as one element of a complex foreign policy, where economic pressures can be brought to bear to incentivize the behavior of even extreme governments.

When Ron Paul was asked why he disagreed with Michelle Bachmann’s view that accused terrorists should not have due process rights, he said “she turns our rule of law on its head.” Paul explained that for individuals accused of terrorist activity to be treated as terrorists, “They have to be ruled a terrorist. Who rules them a terrorist?” He said the Constitution requires due process and a court ruling based on evidence. Bachmann, he said, is rejecting the rule of law and the traditions of American democracy, instead proposing “mob rule”.

Santorum said that under the regime of the Shah, the Iranian people were “free”—disregarding the police state, disappearances and torture used by that regime. He then complained that the “mullocracy” in Tehran “tramples the rights of gays”—a remark that surprised many, given his relentless pursuit of a national ban on same-sex marriage.

Gingrich was asked why he proposed a “loyalty test” for any Muslim that might serve in his administration. He said he would impose a loyalty test on every person who would serve in government, but gave no specifics as to how that test would be carried out. He cited incidents of Cold War espionage, where people that seemed above suspicion turned out to be foreign spies, and one case where an alleged terrorist conspirator said he “lied” when asked how he could take an oath of loyalty and then behave as America’s enemy.

Herman Cain was asked what it was he believes southerners “find objectionable about Mormonism”? He said that he, personally, has no problem with it, but that he believes many southerners simply don’t understand how Mormonism fits into the culture of protestant Christianity that they are familiar with.

Asked about her having said she hated her husband’s idea that she should study tax law, “But the Lord said, be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands,” Rep. Bachmann seemed genuinely embarrassed and stunned. She paused for an uncomfortable length of time, then offered the explanation that she meant by this term “respect” and that her husband respects her as well.

Romney may have waded into waters that will hurt him in the general election, when he shed the moderate tone of his campaign, saying “our marriage status relationship should be consistent at the national level” and he supported a national law to define marriage as between a man and a woman. He justified this by expressing concern that some same sex couples might have a hard time divorcing if they are in states that have different marriage laws from those where they married.

Huntsman supports civil unions, and spoke of “reciprocal beneficiary rights”. He said “I believe in traditional marriage, but subordinate to that, I believe that we haven’t done a good enough job at equality.” This helped to define Huntsman’s position as the true moderate conservative in the field, and a pragmatist. Many critics have been wary of the conservative candidates’ unwillingness to admit that any injustice could be in need of correction that does not need conservative ideological solutions.

Paul took a position that many find hard to grasp, given his arch-libertarian tendencies. He said “just so long as they don’t impose their vision of marriage on you”, that his priority was to ensure that no one had their private life defined by the government. This was in line with his libertarian principles, but he also specified that he believes marriage should be between one man and one woman, a concession to the conservative ideology he is known for criticizing.

Bachmann offered the awkward statement that “I have an absolutely unblemished record when it comes to this issue of man-woman marriage”. She has not supported same-sex marriage, certainly, but there have been questions about “blemishes” to her record, including alleged support for the extreme and discredited “treatment” option of prayer to cure homosexuality. Questions have also been raised about whether she and her husband have been spokespeople for this policy.

Romney may have made his most significant slip-up of the night—in line with his statement the previous day that “corporations are people”—when he said that “We’ve got to find a way to reduce our spending on a lot of anti-poverty programs”. He said this in responding to a question about whether he would extend unemployment benefits.

Romney has sought to blame both general economic pathologies and the president’s policy response for prolonged unemployment, which would suggest those who are suffering the impact are not in any way responsible for their predicament, so his admonition that in times of economic hardship the government should roll back its anti-poverty efforts seemed more than a bit awkward.

He said he would “go to Congress with a new plan for unemployment benefits”, but that he would not extend the current program of unemployment benefits. He was not pressed on what he would do should Congress fail to give him the option he prefers.

Huntsman took issue with the regulatory system and made what might be his most immoderate policy assertion of the night, saying that “If you want to build a facility in this country, you can’t, because of the EPA’s regulatory reign of terror“. He was defending the Huntsman company’s chemical operations, and by implication was suggesting chemical plants need more leeway to release dangerous toxins into the environment.

The use of the phrase “reign of terror”—a reference to the French revolutionary period and a campaign of torture and mass execution of “enemies of the revolution”—echoed the much maligned rhetoric of bloodshed and exaggeration increasingly used by Republicans since the summer of 2008, and through the 2010 elections. Huntsman did not backtrack, but repeated his allegation of a “reign of terror”, without giving any specifics about how that “terror” was imposed.

Newt Gingrich was asked to explain why he does not favor Ron Paul’s demand that the Federal Reserve Bank be “abolished”. “Having some sort of central bank”, he said, is necessary for dealing with the money supply “in the modern world”. He added, “I think the fact that the Fed is secret is a scandal” and repeated his demand that the Federal Reserve Bank be audited, that its books be open to public scrutiny.

Ron Paul celebrated what he called an awakening of the mainstream to the need to audit the Fed, but said we need to phase out the Fed, and that it is important to “understand the business cycle” in order to prevent recessions.

On education, Huntsman was firm, saying “No Child Left Behind hasn’t worked for this country; it ought to be done away with.” He called for a greater emphasis on governance at the local level, and said there is no one so interested in schools succeeding as the communities they serve. Herman Cain seconded this response, saying he would abandon NCLB and focus on local control of schools.

Huntsman added that he stood against letting the nation default, because the United States is 25% of the world’s GDP and by far the largest financial services industry in the world. This was a critique of the radical factions in his party, including Bachmann, who have said that they believe default could be beneficial for long-term fiscal solvency, acting as a kind of spur to activate serious budget reform.

The debate showed new rifts between and among the candidates and allowed them to stake out certain clear positions: Gingrich emerged as the “ideas” candidate, demanding that everyone focus more on ideas and less on rhetoric, style and the “minutia” of what goes on along the campaign trail. Romney sought to remain largely above the fray, and managed to do so, but gave few specifics. Ron Paul staked out a position of radical reform, in language many voters support.

Herman Cain talked up his business record, but mostly offered what he considered common-sense ideas. Rick Santorum promised bold leadership, offered some radical positions on taxation, and confounded some of the most problematic critiques of his ideas. Huntsman stood as the principled moderate, and a conservative problem solver.

Bachmann was on the defensive, but was poised; she moderated some of her most hardline views, but gave few specifics. Pawlenty became something of an attacker, and began what could be the most effective argument for his campaign: getting things done. It was not clear if anyone “won” the debate, though Romney, Bachmann and Gingrich were all given praise for their demeanor, for different reasons. Pawlenty may have made a dent in Bachmann’s armor, however, and some now expect him to be a tougher campaigner.

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Report and analysis from Independents of Principle

On Monday, the first day of trading after a credit downgrade of US Treasury bonds from Standard and Poors, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 624 points. On Tuesday, it gained 429 points. On Wednesday, it dropped by 509. And on Thursday, it gained 414. It is the first time in its history that the DJIA saw swings of 400 points or more for four consecutive days, swings that far out-strip some of the worst one-day declines in its history.

But perhaps most importantly, Thursday, August 11, 2011, marked the eighth consecutive trading session in which the DJIA changed the direction of its net increase or decrease. The volatility is literally unprecedented, and analysts have been at a loss to explain why. Some say US employment numbers drove the market down, others that they are what pulled the market back up. Some say European banks are “scaring” investors, others that American banks may be less solvent than previously known.

According to Dow Jones, as of Aug 11, 2011:

• The DJIA has changed directions each day for the past eight sessions.
• This is the first time in its history, the DJIA has closed with a net change of 400 points or greater for four consecutive days.
• This is the fourth straight day of 3.5% + moves; the last time this occurred was the four-day period ended November 24, 2008.
• Second largest point and percent gain this year.
• An intraday high of 11278.90 occurred at 15:46:44 today, representing an increase of 558.96 points, or 5.21%.
• An intraday low of 10729.85 occurred at the open today.
• The DJIA has now had six consecutive days of 400+ point high/low swings (549.05 points today) — The last time this occurred was during the six-day period ended 10/29/2008.
• Down 3021.22 points, or 21.33% from its record close of 14164.53 on October 9, 2007.
• Up 7.98% from 52 weeks ago.
• Up 70.20% from its 12-year closing low of 6547.05 on March 9, 2009.

What may astonish many of the uninitiated is that in just one day, on August 11, “The market capitalization of the DJIA rose $140.8B today.” That means the 30 corporations that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average appreciated in value by a total of $140.8 billion, in just a few hours.

What’s more, “All 30 component stocks closed up today; the last session where all 30 stocks traded higher was 08/09/2011.” So, in the midst of this “summer of uncertainty”, every “blue-chip” stock on the DJIA gained in value for two out of the four most volatile trading days in history.

Some have said the reason for the declines was that American businesses are not as competitive; others say Apple’s new position as the nation’s most valuable corporation has buoyed stocks in general, showing that innovation and consumer products can restore economic growth. Some say markets are worried about government policy; others say it is the Fed’s unprecedented decision to set interest rates as near zero for at least two years that has allowed a rebound to occur.

Nevertheless, over the eight sessions in which the DJIA has swung back and forth each day, the overall decline has been 986 points or 8.1%. Since July 22, when concerns that the US would default on its debt actually became credible, as Republicans walked out of talks, the decline has been 1,581 points, or 12.4%.

Why is that important? It is important, because it actually gives us a real and relevant marker of enough significance to explain why the market has seen some of the most intense volatility it has ever seen. It began to become clear, on the 22nd of July, that Republicans in the US House of Representatives were not willing to make a “grand bargain” to reduce the American budget deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, because they had vowed not to raise taxes.

Markets responded by declining steadily. In fact, between July 22 and August 3, the DJIA declined steadily every single day, as the US debt crisis came to a head. Then, on August 4, began the daily reversals that have puzzled so many investors, analysts and policy makers. And there is good reason for this period of intense confusion: US Treasury bonds, the value of which was called into question by the debt-ceiling crisis, underpin the entire global financial system.

August 2011 has posed grave and unanswerable questions to the worldwide financial sector: What would happen if the US defaulted on its debt? What would happen if the most stable financial investment in the world suddenly saw its credit rating downgraded? More confusing still: what if only one agency downgraded it, while the rest disagreed with what are patently unsound calculations by that one agency?

What will happen to the American economy if Texas experiences its fifth energy emergency of the year, while Dallas endures 40 consecutive days of 100ºF heat and the state begins importing electricity from Mexico? What if austerity measures—deep cuts in government spending—in Europe and the US begin to impede economic growth and destabilize major consumer economies?

This period of intense volatility is attributable to a lot of economic challenges, but mainly to the unprecedented confusion over whether the US government will work across party lines to support its long-term debt obligations. That policy logjam has very savvy investors, some of the world’s best, confused as to how best to judge the long-term value of not just US Treasury bonds, but thousands of different kinds of investments.

The relentless inflexibility of anti-tax radicals in the House of Representatives has destabilized the world financial system, in that it has injected irrationality into the management of the most rational, stable, form of financial investment and called into question. The world’s major industrial economies are facing unprecedented coordinated pressures, with food prices and cost of living rising in China, and Europe and the US experiencing massive employment crises and declining overall wages.

While Pres. Obama’s economic stewardship has coincided with the DJIA having gained “70.20% from its 12-year closing low of 6547.05 on March 9, 2009″, he has not had a cooperative opposition, and the steady—if gradual—recovery is seen as being in doubt by many investors. Yet Warren Buffett, thought by many to be the world’s most successful, steady and reliable investor, has said the entire debate is off the mark, that he would give US Treasury bonds a AAAA rating, if one existed.

So, four days of radical stock market swings—eight days of unprecedented back-and-forthing—show… very little with clarity. More than half of all trades are now computerized, following pattern-based programs for investment, which means the markets are not necessarily “commenting” on economic reality, so much as they are being driven by machines trying to maximize returns, given the moment to moment activity of other traders.

Whatever the underlying dynamic, it will surely play out as ripple effects of uncertainty that have very certain impacts, jogging or slowing credit markets and undermining the ability of home-buyers to fund new purchases or new construction. Indeed, in what may be a story of massive overriding significance, 60 Minutes this week began to report on what may yet be the most important economic trend of the year: how banks’ insistence on foreclosure as a tool for optimizing their home-loan ROI might be dragging the housing sector down.

Wisconsin is holding six recall elections tonight in response to popular petition to unseat Republican state senators who supported Gov. Walker’s plan to strip public servants of their collective bargaining rights. Each of the six Republican incumbents occupy senate seats representing districts drawn by Republicans to ensure Republican victories, so any victory represents a significant shift in party preference.

The Democrats need to win three seats in order to take control of the state Senate, and deal a serious blow to Gov. Walker and his allies in the state legislature.

As of 10:02 local time, the Republicans had saved three seats:

• In District 2, Sen. Robert Cowles defeated Nancy Nusbaum—59%-41% (94% reporting).
• In District 10, Sen. Sheila Harsdorf fought off the challenger Shelly Moore—58%-42%.
• In District 14, Sen. Luther Olson defeated Fred Clark—52%-48%.

In the other three races, the story was more favorable to the Democratic challengers:

• In the 32nd district, challenger Jennifer Shilling was leading incumbent Dan Kapanke by 8 percentage points.
• Incumbent Randy Hopper was leading Jessica King by 2, separated by just 500 votes, with King’s base of support in Osh Kosh yet to report.
• But most significantly, Walker ally Alberta Darling—for whom Republican supporters and outside groups spent at least $8 million—was trailing Sandy Pasch by 8%, though there were still some very favorable areas for Darling yet to report.

Just a few minutes later, with 87% reporting, Jessica King had pulled ahead of Randy Hopper by 137 votes.

At 10:08 pm, Democrat Jennifer Shilling became the first challenger to unseat one of the recalled Republicans. John Nichols noted that Dan Kapanke was elected during the Obama landslide election year, and has been removed for office after voting to strip public servants of their organizing rights.

The race between Pasch and Darling shifted quickly, as Pasch first widened her lead, then ceded ground, leaving the race too close to call:

• By 10:11 pm, Sandy Pasch was holding her lead over Alberta Darling by a margin of 55% to 45%, and King and Hopper remained too close to call.
• By 10:18 pm local time, with 57% of the votes counted, Pasch was leading Darling by a margin of 58% to 42%.
• But just two minutes later, with the latest reports showing 63% reporting, Darling had closed the gap to 51% to 49%.

At 10:20 pm, Jessica King was leading incumbent Randy Hopper by less than 200 votes, with 87% of the votes counted. There are concerns that irregularities that occurred during state Supreme Court elections earlier this year might be repeated in some pro-Republican areas. Observers have suggested a Pasch win would be a major defeat for the Republicans, while local Democratic organizers remained confident King would pull ahead of Hopper when the number from Osh Kosh came in.

At 10:30 pm local time, Pasch was holding her lead over Darling, 51% to 49%, leading by a margin of fewer than 1,000 votes.

At 10:38 pm, with 97% of precincts reporting, Jessica King was leading Randy Hopper by 27,123 votes to 25,951—51% to 49%. In District 8, with 67% of precincts reporting, Pasch was leading Darling 52% to 48%, by a reported margin of roughly 1,200 votes.

At 10:39 pm Wisconsin time, in District 18, Jessica King was named the projected winner, becoming the second Democrat to unseat a Republican state senator for supporting Gov. Walker’s anti-union agenda.

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Suspicion of irregularities: Shortly before 11:00 pm local time, with 68% reporting from District 8, Sandy Pasch was still leading Alberta Darling by a margin of 51% to 49%, but the vote counting reportedly stopped.

Think Progress is reporting that Waukesha County would be providing no further results for at least an hour. The announcement is reminiscent of what has occurred in multiple past elections, where similar stalls in the release of vote counts immediately preceded the “discovery” of new votes that swung a tight election toward the Republican candidate.

The county clerk, Kathy Nickolaus has become known for her involvement in these alleged irregularities, and tonight there has been fast and furious criticism of her handling of elections, her party’s tolerance of what is seen as a deeply flawed track record, and of what appear to be new irregularities.

At this hour, there are mounting concerns that a county official with a history of being involved in irregularities that shift the vote toward the Republican party might interfere with the integrity of the election. One Wisconsin member of the House of Representatives called on the United States Dept. of Justice to investigate the irregularities that took place earlier this year.

With the history of manipulations, allegations of criminal election fraud, and the balance of power in the Wisconsin state Senate at risk, it is suspected that irregularities may be in the works. Democratic State Sen. Jon Erpenbach said it was “ridiculous” that the local county officials stalled the count, because they are using the exact same machines used throughout the state.

At 11:12 pm local time, the news broke that with 79% of local precincts reporting, the incumbent Alberta Darling had taken the lead, by a margin of 52% to 48% over challenger Sandy Pasch. At 11:19, with 80% reporting, Darling widened her lead to 53% to 47%.

Sen. Erpenbach expressed concern about the integrity of the election process in Waukesha County. Mike Tate, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic party, issued a statement shortly after the sudden swing to Darling, suggesting there is now evidence of election tampering and a serious need for a closer look at what has taken place at the county clerk’s office in Waukesha County.

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At 11:31 pm local time, with 82% of precincts reporting, Darling was leading 53% to 47%. After the back and forth swings throughout the evening, the consistent 53% to 47% reporting sparked still more suspicion of irregularities.

— Wednesday, August 10, 2011 —

At 12:36 am, local time, the AP called the election for Alberta Darling, with observers split over whether the recall election had been conducted legally. In Waukesha County, the county clerk has been accused of manipulating the release of ballots, and there are mounting calls for a federal criminal probe.

At 7:41 am, local time, with 100% of all precincts reporting in District 10, the vote count was 39,471 to 34,096, giving Darling a 54% to 46% victory over Pasch. Some Democratic party members have softened their criticism of Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nickolaus, while others are alleging election fraud.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is being sued for allegedly formulating policies that led to the torture of multiple American citizens, at the hands of American military personnel in Iraq. Now, for the second time this month, in two distinct cases, a federal court has found that Mr. Rumsfeld does not enjoy any immunity for actions occurring either during his service as Secretary of Defense or in a war zone.

The government had argued that Mr. Rumsfeld enjoyed a special immunity from liability for any actions taken during his tenure as Secretary of Defense or for any activities that occurred in a war zone. The two criteria, according to the court, would result in the essential stripping of any right of citizens to seek redress for grievances against public officials or against unlawful military action in a “warzone”, loosely defined—there was never a formal declaration of war against Iraq.

According to the Christian Science Monitor:

“We agree with the district court that a … remedy is available for the alleged torture of civilian US citizens by US military personnel in a war zone,” Judge David Hamilton wrote for the two-judge majority.

He said the government’s argument, if accepted, would “deprive civilian US citizens of a civil judicial remedy for torture or even cold-blooded murder by federal officials and soldiers, at any level, in a war zone.”

“United States law provides a civil damages remedy for aliens who are tortured by their own governments,” Judge Hamilton wrote. “It would be startling and unprecedented to conclude that the United States would not provide such a remedy to its own citizens.”

The court’s finding is consistent with other cases, where serious crimes have been alleged and government officials were found to have been involved in ordering, overseeing or condoning the unlawful activity. In Mr. Rumsfeld’s case, it is public knowledge that he helped Pres. George W. Bush institute a program of “harsh interrogation” techniques and military detention without charge.

The lawsuit is likely to open up, in some cases for the first time, details of how the use of the term “enemy combatant” came to be applied in what some constitutional scholars say was an unprecedented campaign of extrajudicial detentions. It is also likely to bring into court some startling revelations that emerged when WikiLeaks released documents detailing official awareness of extreme, and even fatal, methods of torture being used by Iraqi forces.

According to official US government documents, US soldiers reported the torture being conducted by Iraqi military personnel on at least 100 separate occasions to their superiors, but were uniformly ordered, by command “at the highest levels”—reports the Christian Science Monitor—not to intervene.

According to the court filings, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel were in Iraq working for a private military contractor, when they became suspicious the company was engaged in corruption. The firm’s reaction, allegedly, was to strip them of authorization to enter the so-called Green Zone—relegating them to urban areas subject to persistent open combat.

Vance and Ertel then took their case to the US Embassy, to ask for assistance. The two men allege that instead of being rewarded for blowing the whistle, they were detained and held incommunicado by the US military. They say they were subjected to phyical and psychological abuse throughout their entire term of detention, and that Mr. Rumsfeld was the government official who orchestrated the type of detention and abuse to which they were subjected, with no foundation in law.

The appeals court ruling brings the case one step closer to a full hearing, and raises the possibility that Rumsfeld could be found personally liable for criminal abuse, illegal detention and civil rights violations, in civil court. Such an outcome would almost certainly raise the prospects for domestic criminal charges against the former Defense secretary, and possibly other officials of the former administration.

The stock market is a driver of economic activity, not a mood ring

It has become a standard of political and economic commentary that the stock market is a “reflection” of the general economic mood or of wider economic health and wellbeing. It is not. The stock market is not a mood ring and it was not designed to be. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow/DJIA) was not designed to stand alone as an economic indicator, but rather as part of a fabric of tools and analyses that would, taken together, give a more insightful, more complete picture of generalized economic balance.

Specifically, the Dow was designed to measure the stability and progress of major industrial corporations—a narrow but highly relevant interest within a much wider pool of economic interests. And there are numerous examples of the stock market’s divorce from economic and political reality, which makes sense, because it is not focused on the whole economy, but rather on what investors can do with a certain subset of economic interests.

During the 1930s, to take an extreme example, numerous Wall Street firms fought to avoid national divestment from Nazi Germany, so they could continue to profit from the regime’s aggressive military build-up and industrial expansion; they were on the wrong side of history, and they opposed the war, because  they believed it ran counter to their narrow profit interests. Their vision of what was economically sound was, to be polite, deeply flawed.

In fairness, not everyone on Wall Street shared that narrowly interested view, but that the flawed metrics of what was economically or politically wise, what was in the nation’s best interests, and what served the national interest of maintaining a vibrant, free democracy, intervened in the calculus of some firms, for some years, is not in dispute.

For much of the last decade, Wall Street’s top banks actively modeled, incentivized and promoted a business model whereby insurers were rewarded for failure to provide insurance or to hold down costs—their two reasons for being. They also modeled, incentivized and promoted “toxic” derivatives that could never have yielded what was promised and which brought about the near collapse of the global financial system.

We do not hear much in the way of self-criticism or public apology for the intense commitment to gravely mistaken investment priorities. We do not hear the major firms on Wall Street urging their current managers, clients and/or lobbyists, to reverse the gravely mistaken interpretation of reality, whereby anything that could “generate profit” could be justified and consequences—some very serious and very foreseeable—were largely ignored or obscured.

The myth of the stock market protest vote—”the market is reacting negatively to express its displeasure”—is very specifically part of a refusal to take responsibility for the active role the stock market’s leading agents play in motivating economic activity. The market’s failure to perform is partly—to be fair—related to economic factors, partly related to the financial maneuvering of investors and the traders who represent them, but it is also partly attributable to what is, at the end of the day, the market’s own failure to perform.

The “mood ring” myth is a way of deflecting blame: We have not failed; we have not lost money; we did not make bad judgments—the world did it to us.

That is not the picture of an institution at the height of its relevance or the peak of its abilities. It is the kind of attitude that arises in an atmosphere of irresponsibility, confusion, misrepresentation and flawed logic. The complexity of high-risk derivatives has been widely talked up as a key source of confusion leading to poor judgment across the financial services sector. But others have argued there was deliberate obfuscation involved, rooted in a belief that as long as it was never understood that there might not be any substance to some of those products, they would not collapse.

That’s not to say that everyone in finance was engaged in a sordid criminal conspiracy. It is more a problem of access, responsibility and attitudes: for one, there is too much automatic trading built into the financial sector, so human agents do less of the thinking for each trade than used to be the case. This limits access—to information, to the reasoning behind trading trends, and to corrective measures—and it expands the territory for the spread of the attitude that the market is not responsible for what happens in connections with its activities.

Today’s stock market makes almost incomprehensible volumes of automatic trading, managed by computers using advanced algorithms to judge what is sold or bought and when—not always with any deep human intellectual examination of the real promise or risk inherent in the enterprises, or even the sector, in question.

Glenn Hall, editor in chief of The Street, wrote last week that:

Machines don’t understand the responsibilities of ownership. They obviously don’t care about the fundamentals behind the numbers or understand the power of responsible and responsive corporate leadership.

Beyond that, what’s wrong with high-tech trading? In my opinion, it’s too fast and too stupid. I like to think humans are smart enough to avoid a massive selloff like we had yesterday, when there was no particular news or event that merited such a drop.

Hall cites Doug Kass as observing that “high-frequency-trading funds are very active and have taken the role as the dominant investor in the U.S. stock market. The market’s spastic action reflects, in part, the disproportionate role of high-frequency-trading funds on the market over the past few weeks.”

An July 2010 article by Matt Krantz, published in USA Today, warned that computerized trading was now dominating overall stock trading activity:

Most of those trades aren’t coming from trigger-happy day traders and mutual fund managers with billions of dollars at their disposal. It’s a flood of machine-gun speed fury coming from an army of computers programmed to obey complicated algorithms that are hyperactively buying and selling.

What does that mean to you, the individual investor? The next time you buy or sell a stock, forget the quaint idea that there is a living, breathing human being on the other side of the transaction. You’re trading with a computer.

Not only are the markets completely computerized, more than half of the market’s volume is churned by computers programmed to spot certain patterns in trading. These machines see stocks not as securities used by companies to raise money, but rather, symbols, numbers and bits that are traded, swapped and exchanged.

And now, traders say, humans are responding to machines rather than the other way around. Increasingly, too, the machines are reacting to each other, trying to second-guess what their next moves might be on how to take advantage of an edge that might be gone in milliseconds.

That automaticity takes much of the intelligence out of the stock market, but it also demonstrates the extent to which the market is not a mood ring and does not serve as some sort of game theory real-time poll of the nation’s economic attitudes, health status or even prevailing trend lines.

The stock market is not, and cannot be, a reflection of the human-scale economic landscape, because it is specifically designed to be an abstract realm in which abstract values are traded, and where profit is to be gained from gambling on the trends in those numbers, not in the long-term economic relevance or resiliency of a particular enterprise.

There are now thousands of different automated “trading systems”, each looking to predict, trace and capitalize on trends that may have little to do with the long-term economic promise or viability of a given financial product. It is the zealous pursuit of automatic wealth creation that cuts off stock trading and the financial services sector from the rest of the economy, and gives us such deeply flawed metrics and such inexplicable trading variations.

There are important differences between stocks and bonds, of course, and the two often comprise opposing and complementary trends for major investment, but it is worth noting that while stocks plunged in value after the S&P downgrade, the bonds themselves hit record demand, suggesting the S&P finding was very much off the mark.

There is informational confusion in the financial services sector, at the moment, and this is due to, more than anything else, the persistent and pervasive disconnect between the present day realm of high finance and the overall economy. We need to forget about the idea that the market rises and falls as a commentary on the events of the day, and get back to a model whereby human beings plan and commit to investments that make sense, because they have real economic promise on their side.

TheHotSpring.net :: With the objectivity and commitment to fact of S&P now seriously in question, and allegations now revived that it and other rating agencies were paid to give AAA ratings to junk securities derivatives, it is clear that we need a 100% not-for-profit (NFP) cooperative bond rating agency. The independent NFP agency could be one of several, staffed by top economists, stakeholders and public servants, and standing somewhere between the public and the private sectors.

The role of such a new cooperative agency would be to take the profit motive and the complication of day to day financial dealings out of the rating agency portfolio. While Standard and Poors is owned by the publishing conglomerate McGraw Hill, its analysts have been accused of incestuous relationships with the entities they are tasked with rating, sometimes taking huge profits in financial services fees while evaluating risky products put out by their patrons.

A not-for-profit rating agency would allow for greater transparency, a more aggressive process of analysis, and more unbiased foundation for that analysis. It would allow for a wider-ranging and more flexible input of data to ensure that evaluations correspond in some clear way to genuine long-term value. It would, in short, ensure that private interests don’t interfere with the straightforward process of factual analysis.

It would also, maybe more than any other single factor, help to contribute to a virtuous cycle of transitioning back toward separation of interests, diversification of markets, and decentralization of financial sector influence and wealth creation. How would this benefit society at large? It would allow for a more democratic, more evidentiary, more pragmatic reading of bonds and other financial services products.

The first step is to remove the profit motive from the evaluation process. The reason for this is that the assumption that narrow profit motives somehow spark virtuous behavior, “efficiency” and “performance” loses relevance when the incentive to produce a given rating—like AAA on high-risk subprime mortgage-backed derivatives—conflicts with the evidence-based analysis, which indicates that there is no way that product can be a safe bet for most investors.

- – - A brief aside: The same can be true in reverse: a bond rating agency that made such catastrophically bad misjudgments when there was a conflicting interest in play could seek to be more aggressive, in a highly visible way, to restore its reputation for seriousness of purpose, when—by coincidence—there is no direct accounts receivable windfall in play.

There is enough room for doubt that on the first day of trading since S&P’s downgrade of US Treasury bonds, those same bonds have hit an all-time record for demand, as investors seek shelter in the very product that was just downgraded. That suggests the S&P evaluation was flawed, or was issued for mathematically inconsistent reasons, or simply that—as one analyst suggested today—their poor performance during the mortgage bubble has left them less relevant and less well regarded generally. 

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, wrote today that “they may be a prestigious organization for some reason, but their track record is ludicrously bad.” In fact, he is not the only prominent economist expressing concern that the Wall Street firms and the financial services sector more broadly are becoming perilously divorced from the wider economy. – - -

The American economic system has artfully grappled for generations with the problematic tension between narrow, well-funded interests, and the wider landscape of stakeholder interests. A strong regulatory system and vibrant democratic marketplace have been able, periodically, to rein in abusive behavior and make it visibly profitable for powerful interests driving economic behavior to line up their interests with those of the wider economy.

Some now believe that time may have passed. A generation’s worth of deregulation and financial experimentation have led to the widest wealth gap since before the Great Depression, and credible economic analysis suggests the stagnant economic trendlines are the result of having a post-Depression system, with meaningful checks and balances, and a Depression-era economic dynamism. In other words, we should be experiencing a depression, but we have deployed failsafe measures to make it less likely.

The stakeholder problem is a very real bone of economic contention, and very much worthy of close scrutiny. Where financial instruments are based on bad investments, then pitched as good investments, and tens of trillions of dollars in private wealth evaporate, even the most minute activities within the financial services sector have high-stakes consequences for people and institutions throughout the economy.

A genuinely useful, wholly relevant and economically optimally constructive rating system requires real independence. It requires a commitment to fact, and a commitment to economic balance and generalized prosperity. It requires a substantive, transparent measure of the major economic drivers that induce periods of “irrational exuberance” for bad investments, which by extension bring widespread economic hardship in their wake, when banks shut down many of their financial support services to the middle class and small businesses.

The proposed NFP cooperative bond rating agency would be:

• fully independent of ties to Wall Street firms;
• required to publish source material and white-paper reports detailing internal discussions;
• required to publish information regarding all meetings with any interested parties;
• focused on stakeholder interests across the economy;
• responsible for public comment fora, at least one per month, to gather anecdotal guidance;
• staffed with independent economists, former financial services professionals, public service veterans—each without active ties to interested parties;
• required to pay only base stipends, with no bonuses except for consistent accuracy over the long term;
• a model for similar NFP financial analysis projects.

The four central ideas motivating this new model, and which should then be emulated by competing institutions are:

1. eliminating professional conflict of interest;
2. comprehensive transparency of process, sourcing and aims;
3. focus on overall stakeholder interest;
4. reliable precision, based on health modeling, not profit forecasting.

The simplest way to institute a project on this scale, with this level of responsibility and in a visible enough way to give it active influence and long-term viability is, of course, a public-private partnership. It should be funded in part by the federal government, and in part by the financial services sector, and top schools of economics should hold competitions to bring on board some of the world’s most visionary, flexible and precise economic minds.

The process should begin this fall and winter, with the goal of holding public hearings for the creation of the first independent NFP cooperative rating agency in the spring and fall of 2012. The fully functional institution could be active by the end of 2012, in time to play a constructive role in the landscape of analysis surrounding the 2013 negotiations on the 2014 federal budget, and the financial planning of major banks, insurers, governments and industry.

creative prosperity is sustainable prosperity

To build a future of vibrant open democracy and robust and sustainable economic prosperity, it is necessary to privilege creative activities and constructive solutions to the challenges we face. Addressing major challenges in constructive, innovative ways, is the single most significant driver, historically, of sustained economic booms. In short, we need to move deliberately and swiftly toward a creative prosperity agenda.

The first consideration, then, is to examine how the creative prosperity agenda would differ from what we are doing now. At present, we are wrestling with the complex fabric of consequence related to long-running economic distortions, most of which we have not yet corrected. Healthcare reform and financial regulatory reform were comprehensive in scope, but moderate in impact, cautious and rooted in the prevailing model; energy reform needs to move forward rapidly and do more to prioritize innovation.

We are facing a major, civilization-wide transition from one way of conceptualizing political and economic power to another. We stand at the dawn of what should be the global solidification of open democracy as the standard for elevating and defending human dignity and freedom of thought. But we need to build creative prosperity into that future, and this will require a fundamental shift in the dominant view which holds that power is more effective when concentrated in fewer hands.

That view comes from ancient times—from prehistoric times, in fact—when the governing principle of human life was the need to survive in competition with forces far more powerful than any one individual, family or band. Power, then, was a combination of accumulated resources and raw force. In that light, power is a destructive force, requiring intense concentration of resources and the ability to draw a line between the inside and the outside of the power circle.

the feudal (concentration) model

Economically, the fact of human society was that there was not enough technology, enough resources, enough liberty, to deliver real comfort to most or all people. In fact, there was only the material wealth to deliver substantial comfort to about 1 in every 100 people. The model of concentration allowed those in that 1 percent to cling to comfort and fight off would-be attackers.

The only way into the circle in which power, means and comfort were concentrated was to pay the toll for access. That might be done by force of arms, or by handing over significant sums of wealth. Paying the toll perpetuated the model, and won significant privileges for those who helped to make sure that system remained viable.

This developed eventually into authoritarian empires and the medieval elevation of aristocracy. The logic of the model of concentration held: those inside the circle must remain there, and the society must be organized to keep them there. They were, it was presumed, worth more than other people, and so they were able to treat their privilege as if it were part of a life of service—maintaining law and order—to those with less.

the democracy (decentralization) model

Modern democracy posits an entirely different model: the model of decentralization. Modern democracy, according to the ideals of the American revolution and the French revolution, requires a comprehensive departure from the status quo of feudal dominance. It requires the engineering of a model for economic and political activity whereby power cannot be concentrated, and where excessive concentration of power brings disadvantage.

A creative prosperity agenda for public policy and economic renewal would put aside the bias of the old model, once and for all, asking enterprises large and small to join together in a fabric of imaginative competition, prioritizing localization, innovation and service value to the marketplace. It would help to recapture the energy of modern democracy, wherein monopolies and juggernauts sputter and trudge, slowed by their weight, and individuals and small businesses are better able to take the field, to effect positive change, to feed a generalized economic expansion.

The key to that model is the vibrancy of an expanding and upwardly mobile middle class. Achieving that means doing what the United States did so effectively in the 1950s and 1960s, decentralizing the levers for creating wealth, allowing more free people to participate not only as citizens but as leaders and entrepreneurs.

losing our former focus on creative (decentralized) prosperity

A period of intensive deregulation in key industries has led the United States’ economy into a period of prolonged slow growth, because it has led to the hyper-concentration of wealth and of access to the levers of wealth-creation generally. Average household income has dropped by about $2,500 since 2000, even as the gap between average pay and the earnings of the wealthiest has expanded to historic highs.

There is a problematic knock-on effect of this, which is that innovation is no longer a priority, as major conglomerates seek first of all to secure their position. Upstarts like Apple are not emerging at the rate they were during previous periods of economic expansion, and the most powerful, most concentrated interests—Apple now among them—are controlling the field of play.

recapturing momentum: how to build a creative prosperity agenda

There are a couple of key changes that need to take place to move toward a creative prosperity agenda:

1. Move from a bias favoring large conglomerates to one against them;
2. Move away from subsidies for high-polluting, low-yield fossil fuels;
3. Move toward clean energy technologies that favor rapid innovation, brainy startups, more robust job creation, and local economies;
4. Revive national commitment, public and private, to infrastructure redevelopment;
5. Provide direct tax credits for real job creation (payable on a per-job basis);
6. Establish sustainability incentives for municipalities (ref: Sustainable Jersey), states and businesses;
7. Establish an aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standard;
8. Prioritize higher education spending, including post-graduate studies incentives for businesses looking to sponsor their employees;
9. Introduce critical thinking, macroeconomic studies, engineering basics and public policy debate, to public high schools—judge these as more valuable than test scores;
10. Make sure tax reforms are not regressive; make sure they prioritize family and community-level “thriving”, i.e. asset-building, quality of life and spending power;
11. Tax derivative financial instruments at a higher rate than direct capital investments in enterprise, innovation and hiring;
12. Apply national policy to correct market distortions relating to fossil fuel costs.

The outcome of this process of reform would be:

• accelerated, more widespread innovation;
• entree for creative small business models;
• unprecedented opportunities for sustained hiring;
• more vibrant, resilient local economies;
• a consumer-centered smart electricity grid;
• cleaner air and water;
• a sustainable economy where growth is not tied to the promotion of vast negative externalities;
• more robust civic engagement from citizens, communities and creative thinkers…

The United States is perfectly capable of achieving this kind of virtuous cycle between democratization, decentralization, creative thinking, entrepreneurship and the expansion of the middle class. But substantive policy changes need to be made—to remove the incentive for corrosive activities that favor the unhealthy concentration of wealth and productive capacity and motivate the revival of generative activities that favor the healthy decentralization of assets and productive capacity.

A vibrant middle class—where the best ideas can come to the fore and be implemented and the dignity and worth of citizens and communities takes priority over the naked pursuit of profit—is better suited to fostering creative, sustainable prosperity. The first step is to recognize where we favor profit over people, and then work to change the prevailing model and free human creative talent to achieve that goal.

Critics express concern Perry is supporting groups that promote hate, seek a totalitarian theocracy to replace Constitutional system

There is dispute as to whether attendance at Gov. Perry’s prayer rally was 30,000, as organizers claim, or 15,000, as other news sources have estimated. Observers have expressed concern that the event featured radicals whose views oppose the constitutional order of the American political system, and who have called for the establishment of an absolutist theocratic regime.

The following report from Suite101 is indicative of the concerns being expressed by people across the political spectrum:

Possible 2012 GOP candidate Rick Perry was a hit with the 15,000 gathered for August 6, 2011 prayer meeting held in Houston.
Rick Perry, who is eyeing a run for the Presidency in 2012, may eventually have to distance himself from his more extremist Christian supporters. The trouble is that Perry needs the support of the American Family Association, which sponsored Perry’s allegedly non-political prayer meeting called The Response. An even more troubling possibility is that Perry may be in full agreement with their Reconstructionist plan to take down the Federal government and create a U.S. theocracy, under Biblical law.

Christian Extremists

The idea that Christians should physically overcome their enemies and rule in righteousness is not new in the United States, and the current thread of theocratic Christian Reconstructionists goes back at least to 1948. The movement has operated under various names such as the Latter Rain movement, Joel’s Army, the Manifest Sons of God, and now the Seven Mountain Mandate.

Conquer and Occupy Public Institutions

According to Chip Berlet, writing in the Huffington Post, “Christian Reconstructionism is a form of theocratic dominion theology…The core theme of dominion theology is that the Bible mandates Christians to take over and “occupy” secular institutions.” Dominionists and followers of the Seven Mountain Mandate came to public attention in 2005 when a video of Kenyan Pastor, Thomas Muthee anointing Sara Palin for leadership, was uploaded on Youtube.

One group participating, in particular, has been cited as an extremist organization, founded on the missionary promotion of intolerance and prejudice. According to People for the American Way, the so-called American Family Association has:

• held gays responsible for the Holocaust and likened them to domestic terrorists and Nazis who are intent on committing “virtual genocide” against the military, and asserts that “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office”;
• said “we have feminized the Medal of Honor” by awarding it to a soldier who saved his fellow combatants rather than killing enemies;
• demanded all immigrants “convert to Christianity” and renounce their religions;
• asserted that Muslims have “no fundamental First Amendment claims” and should be banned from building mosques and deported from the US, adding that Muslims are inherently stupid as a result of inbreeding;
• claimed African American women “rut like rabbits” due to welfare and that Native Americans are “morally disqualified” from living in America because they didn’t convert to Christianity and were consequently cursed by God with alcoholism and poverty;
• said that the anti-Muslim manifesto of the right-wing Christian terrorist who killed dozens in Norway was “accurate.”

The Dallas Morning News has reported that Perry’s affiliation with extremist organizations, and his radical policies, which have undermined overall economic progress for the population of his state, are driving Democratic party views that he is a deeply flawed candidate, too far out of the mainstream to be electable nationally. From today’s DMN:

As Rick Perry gears up for a presidential bid, Democrats also are making preparations — dusting off years of opposition research, sharpening attack points, designing anti-Perry websites and, for the most part, awaiting his entry with more eagerness than anxiety.

They’re not trying to tip the GOP primary. But in seeking to tar Perry as a flawed extremist, they want to ensure that as voters beyond Texas get to know him, he won’t be able to shake that image later.

“He has a pretty poor record as governor of Texas on a lot of measures — on wage growth, on job growth, on health care,” said Bill Burton, head of a new pro-Obama political action committee, Priorities USA, and until recently the deputy White House press secretary.

He called it “fairly amazing” that a quarter of Texas are uninsured, and that Perry wanted to opt out of Medicaid and “suggested secession as a remedy to the health care bill.”

The secessionist narrative is particularly disturbing to many in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Perry is seen as a wild-card that would not be likely to take responsible positions on the direction of national policy, and who might bring fringe ideas into the heart of the American government.

At a time of severe economic difficulty, there is concern Perry’s often rosy-eyed commitment to market-distorting deregulatory policies could deepen and prolong the years-long economic slowdown. His state has one of the nation’s most massive budget deficits, and no substantive plan to address it, other than cutting back on needed public services, and economists are now starting to look at whether the extreme positions and under-thought policy approaches might pervade his economic policy strategy.

The news today seems to indicate that while Rick Perry may have shored up a radical segment of the evangelical vote, he has succeeded in casting himself as an ally to extremists with little regard to the perils of programmatic intolerance and discrimination.

IndependentsOfPrinciple.com :: What’s wrong with the stock market, particularly the New York Stock Exchange and the Dow Jones Industrial Average? The most significant problem facing the stock market is really a confluence of two problems: 1) we have too little middle class wealth, and so too little consumer demand, and 2) we face an urgent need to accelerate the transition to a new economy, but we are focused on trying to revive an old economy.

On Thursday, August 4, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped almost 513 points, losing 4.3% of its total value, the worst one-day decline since December 2008, and an effective reversal of 8 months’ worth of gains. It happened two days after the United States avoided a default by raising the debt ceiling and cutting government spending by about $250 billion per year over the next 10 years.

Analysts differ over whether the massive stock sell-off is attributable to concerns about an impending default by Italy, or whether it indicates some sort of deep weakness suddenly revealed in the dealings of American banks. What is evident, however, is that with massive cuts in government spending planned, the nation’s leading industrial corporations may lose needed funding and/or incentives for new investment.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average measures the collective value of 30 leading publicly traded industrial corporations. It is rooted in a 19th-century industrial economic model, in which the value of these firms grows as the wider economy is developed. In a fully developed post-industrial economy, connected at countless points of contact to a global marketplace, and driven by consumer behavior, there are obstacles to modeling economic health in this way.

But beyond the power and relevance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, stock indices in general are prone to certain inherent flaws that can incentivize the slowing or even reversal of trends that would be healthy for the overall economy. This is because they favor already powerful entities, and are often ill equipped to measure or reward activities that substantially disperse wealth creation.

Stock indices are at best an indirect measure of capital decentralization, because they measure its centralization, albeit in a way that could, if all other conditions are right, result in more people gaining access to the levers of capitalization and wealth creation. In other words, the best-case scenario is: if everyone gets in, and makes the same bets, and most people keep up, then maybe most people get richer. But that is not the point, and the indices don’t even attempt to tell that story.

When banks come to depend on the commonly held belief that they control wealth that does not in fact exist, the possibility of wealth being decentralized in a way that drives consumer spending is greatly reduced. It has to be, because to meet the demands of their own fictional wealth claims, banks must persuade others, i.e. many or most people, to take on unsustainable debt.

Ultimately, this practice drives the deployment of still more unsustainable debt, and deprives consumers of too great a portion of their wealth, cutting into economic output, slowing economic growth and impeding hiring. This is where we find ourselves, and the banks, investment firms and major industrial corporations, are sitting on massive real wealth, waiting for government to somehow force consumer spending higher.

But the summer of 2011 has seen two worrying trends that make it less likely government can motivate new growth: the United States has committed to removing $2.5 trillion in government spending from the economy, over ten years, and multiple eurozone countries appear closer to default than before the US debt ceiling debacle.

Austerity plans in the US and the EU now threaten to destabilize major western commercial markets, even as investors grapple with the shift toward more volatile consumer markets in Brazil, Russia, India and China, sometimes grouped together as the “BRIC” bloc. Much conventional industry is still heavily invested in mineral fuels, a dependency which could lead to cost swings so severe as to limit investment of even huge pools of cash in reserve.

So, what is wrong with the stock market? It is viscerally linked to trends that no longer support sustained unlimited expansion. The fabric of our global economy, and the technologies and innovations that make it work, have evolved so far as to work, in many ways, against the continued expansion of the specific values counted by the various stock indices, given the way they are counted.

We need a more astute, more precise, more direct and versatile way to read the economic landscape that offers up the best opportunities for investment. We need to consider and then to integrate into our planning and our value judgments real measures of generalized quality of life, corresponding to household autonomy, individual career choice, and opportunities for asset building and middle-class entrepreneurship. And then we need to find ways of measuring these indicators that actually drive the underlying economic reality to improve.

We need to remember that not everyone trades stocks and bonds for a living, not everyone is hoping banks and insurers can continue to reap major profits without providing consumer-centered service, real wealth expansion and a more resilient foundation for sustained prosperity, and not everyone is served by a system that focuses on concentrations of wealth near the top of the income ladder.

We need to stay global in our thinking, and make sure we are inspired by the aim of building a robust, democratic society; the middle class will thrive if we do.

The United States government, until Friday, had more than twice the AAA debt outstanding as any other category of AAA debt. According to Nomura, while the US had $11.2 trillion in AAA debt oustanding, agency mortgage backed securities account for over $5 trillion, and Germany and France follow with less than $2 trillion. Standard and Poors has now downgraded the credit worthiness of the United States government, though there was no default and no indication the government was in any way likely to default.

S&P has come under fire for reportedly having made a $2 trillion error in its calculations. Though its estimations are based on publicly available data, the ratings agency reportedly estimated $2 trillion more in government spending than actually exists. According to Reuters: “S&P was forced to remove the number from its analysis after Treasury officials discovered that the rating agency’s estimates of the government’s discretionary spending was $2 trillion too high, sources familiar with the discussions said.”

Though the underlying economic reasoning for the credit downgrade was the figure which was $2 trillion too high, and the difference between the debt ceiling deal and the $4 trillion demand made by S&P is less than $2 trillion, the ratings agency refused to forego the credit downgrade. S&P suffered a severe blow to its reputation, when it was revealed that the agency has maintained, with little to no evidence of merit, AAA ratings on subprime mortgage-backed securities, which eventually collapsed, and led to the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

Reuters also includes this detail in its report:

Ian Lyngen, a senior government bond strategist at CRT Capital Group in Connecticut, agreed S&P now had more than just a credibility problem.

“The fact that they have now downgraded the United States suggests to me that they are now going to be dealing with a relevance issue,” he said. “Because the fact of the matter is that 10-year (Treasury note) yields are near 2.5 percent, and that in no way suggests a lack of sponsorship for U.S. debt.”

Yields on U.S. 10-year notes US10YT=RR, a benchmark for borrowing rates throughout the economy, fell as far as 2.34 percent on Friday — their lowest since October 2010 and very low by historical standards.

The credit downgrade was expected to impose massive escalating costs on the entire US economy, the borrowing of the US government, and also competing sovereign debt products and commercial investment. The fear, then, would be that a credit downgrade on the entity whose bond products and currency support the entire global financial system could lead to a second great recession, possibly a global economic depression.

But Standard and Poors has possibly waded into quicksand, for six crucial reasons:

1. The United States did not, in fact, default;
2. The ratings agency in question made a $2 trillion error in its calculations;
3. Despite conceding that its chief calculations were erroneous, the agency insisted on the downgrade;
4. Treasury officials were told that S&P was using the downgrade to express its displeasure that a bigger debt package was not agreed;
5. Other ratings agencies have not seen fit to downgrade US Treasury bonds;
6. There does not appear to be a lag in investment in Treasury bonds…

Taken together, it would appear that while there is virtually no evidence to substantiate the downgrade, and with S&P’s only internal justification for the downgrade discredited, S&P representatives expressed a desire to downgrade Treasury bonds—with all the global economic fallout that might entail—in order to express displeasure that their will was not done on Capitol Hill. S&P may now lose relevance, even as its actions may motivate serious economic slowdown around the world.

There are reports that China will immediately seek to begin diversifying its bond holdings and reserves. The S&P downgrade could ultimately threaten the value of the US government’s lending and the Chinese government’s holdings, and undermine the legitimacy and security of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It now appears Treasury officials will be meeting with key players in the world’s financial markets, including major foreign bondholders, like China, to hold off interest rate increases, and possibly to marginalize the S&P finding.

Shoring up the US and the world financial markets is now crucial, as another financial collapse could leave the world economy with negative growth, and could destabilize governments in fractious regions and even do serious harm to the fiscal integrity of the European Union. The S&P downgrade will be less influential if it is limited to one rating agency, and could have massive unintended consequences, if it is not contained.

John Chambers, chair of S&P’s sovereign ratings committee, said today that “There are two things that we should emphasize. One is that the political discourse has diminished the credit standing of the United States. The other is a fiscal analysis.” This makes four distinct justifications given so far for the downgrade: the $2 trillion in (non-existent) extra spending; the structural problems that might materialize despite the $2 trillion error; the agency’s expression of “displeasure”; and the fact that “political discourse has diminished the credit standing of the United States.”

In April, a bipartisan Senate committee found that S&P, Moody’s and other rating agencies may actually have directly “triggered” the financial crisis:

In one of the most stark condemnations of the credit rating agencies, a Senate investigations panel said the agencies continued to give top ratings to mortgage-backed securities months after the housing market started to collapse.

The agencies then unleashed on the financial system a flood of downgrades in July 2007, the panel said.

“Perhaps more than any other single event, the sudden mass downgrades of (residential mortgage-backed securities) and (collateralized debt obligation) ratings were the immediate trigger for the financial crisis,” the staff for Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn wrote in their report.

Today, there are mounting questions about how S&P came to make direct policy demands on the United States Congress, under threat of a credit downgrade, and if the agency is now expressing displeasure, what is the actual ask? Numerous economists have taken issue with the S&P demand for $4 trillion in deficit reduction now, in the midst of a slow recovery, warning that draining that amount of capital from the economy could end the recovery and push the economy back into recession.

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who is reportedly contemplating a run for the presidency, will be attending an evangelical prayer service on Saturday, labeled “The Response”. Perry has been heavily criticized for his participation, both by critics who say the event violates his constitutional oath to treat all Texans equally and by groups like the Anti-Defamation League, which is concerned about the hate-based policies of some of the event’s backers.

According to CBS News:

A number of controversial groups and individuals are linked to the event, including the American Family Association, which is providing financial backing; AFA representatives have called for a ban on Muslim immigrants and for gay men and women to “be disqualified from public office.” Others tied to the event have called for the government to be placed under Christian control and suggested Oprah Winfrey is setting the stage for the antichrist.

Some have suggested the event could link Perry to the religious fringes in a way that could hurt him both in states like New Hampshire and with the full electorate if he wins the GOP nomination, and have speculated that Perry may thus play down his involvement in the event he initiated. But Bearse, the spokesman for The Response, said that is not the case.

One preacher expected to participate has said Hitler was “God’s hunter” and another has allegedly called for armed defense of the white race. Perry himself was the event’s originator, but during the past week, he and his spokespeople have been attempting to suggest he is not the lead supporter and may not even speak at the event.

There has been widespread criticism of Mr. Perry, suggesting he is both out of touch and perilously aligned with extremist organizations. There has been criticism that Perry, now seen as a viable Republican presidential primary candidate could stain the party with the taint of racial hate, ideological extremism, and fundamentalist zealotry.

UPDATE, Sun., August 7, 2011: There is dispute as to whether attendance at Gov. Perry’s prayer rally was 30,000, as organizers claim, or 15,000, as other news sources have estimated. Observers have expressed concern that the event featured radicals whose views oppose the constitutional order of the American political system, and who have called for the establishment of an absolutist theocratic regime.

The following report from Suite101 is particularly telling:

Possible 2012 GOP candidate Rick Perry was a hit with the 15,000 gathered for August 6, 2011 prayer meeting held in Houston.

Rick Perry, who is eyeing a run for the Presidency in 2012, may eventually have to distance himself from his more extremist Christian supporters. The trouble is that Perry needs the support of the American Family Association, which sponsored Perry’s allegedly non-political prayer meeting called The Response. An even more troubling possibility is that Perry may be in full agreement with their Reconstructionist plan to take down the Federal government and create a U.S. theocracy, under Biblical law.

Christian Extremists

The idea that Christians should physically overcome their enemies and rule in righteousness is not new in the United States, and the current thread of theocratic Christian Reconstructionists goes back at least to 1948. The movement has operated under various names such as the Latter Rain movement, Joel’s Army, the Manifest Sons of God, and now the Seven Mountain Mandate.

Conquer and Occupy Public Institutions

According to Chip Berlet, writing in the Huffington Post, “Christian Reconstructionism is a form of theocratic dominion theology…The core theme of dominion theology is that the Bible mandates Christians to take over and “occupy” secular institutions.” Dominionists and followers of the Seven Mountain Mandate came to public attention in 2005 when a video of Kenyan Pastor, Thomas Muthee anointing Sara Palin for leadership, was uploaded on Youtube.

One group participating, in particular, has been cited as an extremist organization, founded on the missionary promotion of intolerance and prejudice. According to People for the American Way, the so-called American Family Association has:

• held gays responsible for the Holocaust and likened them to domestic terrorists and Nazis who are intent on committing “virtual genocide” against the military, and asserts that “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office”;
• said “we have feminized the Medal of Honor” by awarding it to a soldier who saved his fellow combatants rather than killing enemies;
• demanded all immigrants “convert to Christianity” and renounce their religions;
• asserted that Muslims have “no fundamental First Amendment claims” and should be banned from building mosques and deported from the US, adding that Muslims are inherently stupid as a result of inbreeding;
• claimed African American women “rut like rabbits” due to welfare and that Native Americans are “morally disqualified” from living in America because they didn’t convert to Christianity and were consequently cursed by God with alcoholism and poverty;
• said that the anti-Muslim manifesto of the right-wing Christian terrorist who killed dozens in Norway was “accurate.”

The Dallas Morning News has reported that Perry’s affiliation with extremist organizations, and his radical policies, which have undermined overall economic progress for the population of his state, are driving Democratic party views that he is a deeply flawed candidate, too far out of the mainstream to be electable nationally. From today’s DMN:

As Rick Perry gears up for a presidential bid, Democrats also are making preparations — dusting off years of opposition research, sharpening attack points, designing anti-Perry websites and, for the most part, awaiting his entry with more eagerness than anxiety.

They’re not trying to tip the GOP primary. But in seeking to tar Perry as a flawed extremist, they want to ensure that as voters beyond Texas get to know him, he won’t be able to shake that image later.

“He has a pretty poor record as governor of Texas on a lot of measures — on wage growth, on job growth, on health care,” said Bill Burton, head of a new pro-Obama political action committee, Priorities USA, and until recently the deputy White House press secretary.

He called it “fairly amazing” that a quarter of Texas are uninsured, and that Perry wanted to opt out of Medicaid and “suggested secession as a remedy to the health care bill.”

The secessionist narrative is particularly disturbing to many in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Perry is seen as a wild-card that would not be likely to take responsible positions on the direction of national policy, and who might bring fringe ideas into the heart of the American government.

At a time of severe economic difficulty, there is concern Perry’s often rosy-eyed commitment to market-distorting deregulatory policies could deepen and prolong the years-long economic slowdown. His state has one of the nation’s most massive budget deficits, and no substantive plan to address it, other than cutting back on needed public services, and economists are now starting to look at whether the extreme positions and under-thought policy approaches might pervade his economic policy strategy.

The news today seems to indicate that while Rick Perry may have shored up a radical segment of the evangelical vote, he has succeeded in casting himself as an ally to extremists with little regard to the perils of programmatic intolerance and discrimination.

Texas, the most energy-rich populous state in the country, with more oil, more wind, more sun, and a more developed energy sector, than any other state, is now undergoing rolling blackouts, in part because Gov. Rick Perry’s budget policy is bankrupting the state, ending incentives and cutting off supply. Under Perry, the state has run up a $28 billion deficit, and Chinese firms have been buying up major wind energy projects.

Perry’s ideological manipulation of state budget priorities has not only hampered the state’s development of cutting-edge clean energy sources, it has eroded the educational opportunity, targeted lower income families for reduced opportunity, and slowed job creation. The one thing propping up the state’s economic output is immigration, which has allowed new opportunity, new hiring and new capital flows, despite the governor’s attempts to shut them down.

When he named a top utility regulator to head the state’s railroad agency, he did so specifically proclaiming his appointee ”will continue to push back against the Obama Administration’s misguided energy policies which threaten Texas jobs and our nation’s energy security”.

Specifically, Perry meant he wanted to stop construction of high-speed railways—which would create tens of thousands of jobs—and slow, halt or even reverse the transition from costly fossil fuels to more efficient clean energy technologies. The reason? Fossil fuels produce a higher profit margin for the interests that back them, though clean energy technologies, high-speed rail and the smart grid would produce more generalized prosperity and a healthier economy for the state and the region.

Perry has consistently sought to stock the state’s regulatory authorities with industry-interested figures. He has complained that Texas, which emits a huge amount of carbon-dioxide and other pollutants, from fossil fuel-powered plants, should not be subject to the clean air rule that seeks to prevent contamination of one state’s air by activities in another state. He maintains that Texas is above federal law, and has been criticized for a ‘head-in-the-sand’ approach to energy.

Now, in the long, hot summer of 2011, Rick Perry’s Texas has run out of energy, and is experiencing rolling blackouts. The energy capital of the United States is out of energy, because the governor’s fiscal policies and manipulation of incentives has been reckless, ill-informed and biased, crimping the flow of investment and undermining the rate of innovation.

Though oil and gas are not producing the level of job creation of wind, solar, geothermal and renewables, Perry has sought to curtail investment in new technologies, privileging outdated fuel sources whose entrenched power is hampering the job creation potential of what has been Texas’ best opportunity for growth: wind and solar power.

While the nation has been moving toward, albeit at a painfully slow pace, a cleaner energy paradigm, for three decades, with technologies to achieve this accelerating in efficiency and productivity several fold in the last ten years alone, and while Texas is the nation’s wind-energy leader, he has sought to put fossil fuel interests first, to the detriment of the state’s immediate and long-term economic health and vibrancy.

Under Perry’s stewardship, the leading energy-rich state in the nation has been forced into its fifth “energy emergency” this year alone, and is now importing electricity from Mexico. According to a Texas Tribute report from earlier this week:

As scorching temperatures continued and Texas electricity use reached another all-time high, the state grid operator initiated the first step of emergency procedures today, seeking power from other grids, including Mexico.

About 20 power generation units, accounting for around 3,000 megawatts of capacity, were unavailable today during unplanned outages, adding to the strain on the grid. Today’s temperatures soared well past 100 degrees, and it’s not likely that the situation will get better Wednesday or Thursday unless some thunderstorms pass over a major metropolitan area, like Houston or Dallas, to lessen demand.

ERCOT—the Energy Reliability Council of Texas—has sought to implement these emergency procedures due to a combination of record electricity demand and inadequate supply. The unplanned outages were the most significant development, in that they suggest the grid itself has been underfunded and unprepared for the volume needed.

When Perry’s bad fiscal planning and ideological manipulation of taxes is combined with his loyalty to entrenched oil, gas and coal interests, it is clear the clean energy and smart grid industry is fending for itself, and doing very well, but not as well as Texas’ world leading electricity demand requires. His policies have, in fact, left his state with a massive and worsening budget deficit, with no serious plan for course correction, and with severe obstacles to improving the electricity generation crisis.

According to the New Republic:

The Lone Star State has a standing $10 billion shortfall every two-year budget cycle, thanks to a faulty tax system pushed by Perry that fails to balance the budget. Although the governor normally stays away from the state Legislature—sightings in either chamber are rare and exciting—Perry engineered a new business tax in 2006 to replace a prior one riddled with loopholes. Ostensibly a good idea, his new tax nonetheless suffered from the simple fact that it didn’t bring in enough revenue. Furthermore, it turned out to be incredibly complex, leaving many business owners scratching their heads. Those who figured it out, meanwhile, realized that, because the new tax was levied on gross margins as opposed to profits, companies could be losing money and still find themselves on the hook.

State legislators on both sides of the aisle have decried Perry’s ill-conceived fiscal planning. The chief Senate budget writer, Republican Steve Ogden, hasn’t been afraid to mince words about just how bad the business tax is. “None of us were elected to raise taxes on anybody,” he said the first day of the session. “But the margins tax is different. If we don’t fix the margins tax, local property taxes will definitely go up.” The regular legislative session came and went, however, without any real effort to fix the broken tax. The result is that the state is still operating with a structural deficit, and will very likely face more cuts the next time around.

Perry’s loyalty to old energy interests means the state’s cuts are hurting the more job-creation-intensive new energy sector. There has not been the funding available to develop the smart grid, or the major transmission lines, needed to maximize output from wind farms. So even as the Texas wind industry has seen a nation-leading boom in the last decade, its ability to adequately serve the marketplace has been slowed by outdated priorities and what some call overt political bias.

Due to its Renewable Portfolio Standard, which Perry supported, Texas has outpaced other states in wind energy sector development, but critics say too much of the profit is going to foreign companies, not enough Recovery Act funding was deployed to spur investment and too few incentives are in place for in-state start-ups to compete with big oil, coal and gas, and with the Chinese firms Perry is now relying on to fund wind development.

When the Texas wind industry was gearing up for what was likely to be one of the biggest investment booms the state, or the nation, for that matter, had seen in a long time, as a result of Congressional action to reduce carbon emissions and incentivize a transition to clean energy, Perry vehemently opposed the action. When the carbon pricing legislation failed, in the summer of 2010, the result was a swift reversal on the part of major investors, like oil tycoon Boone Pickens, who had been ready to devote record sums to the wind energy sector.

One year later, Texas is undergoing rolling blackouts, its fifth energy emergency in just 8 months, and is having to import electricity from Mexico, because the fiscal and regulatory management of Gov. Rick Perry is not designed to, and is not capable of providing for a more robust smart energy economy. The state has more demand than conventional energy sources can provide, and Gov. Perry has sought to prop up those power sources, to the detriment of innovation and job creation.

The most wind-rich state in the Union could be supplying more than half its electricity from advanced wind power systems, were the infrastructure in place to do so, and Perry’s budgetary mismanagement has diverted both public and private investment to wasteful spending on outmoded power sources, which are costing the state still more in terms of regulatory and public health adaptation, and in opportunity costs from jobs foregone, competition not stimulated, and infrastructure not built.

A wind-and-solar supplied smart grid would allow Texas’ hobbled fossil fuel economy to meet demand, and could, within just two years, reach the 20% clean energy threshold, using existing public-private investment incentives, were they directed where they need to be. The long-term plan should be for 50% wind and solar by 2020, something an adequately funded Texas clean energy sector could easily accomplish, with its abundance of wind, solar and land area.

There are also concerns that, as the focus has moved away from aggressive development of wind energy, Texas may now be experiencing a kind of energy market manipulation like what took place in California, right before the collapse of Enron, when power utilities and power-supply traders colluded to deprive the market of supply in order to force blackouts, during hot—deadly—summer months, and extract huge long-term price hikes from the state. Public policy in Texas has been steered toward subsidizing low consumer electricity prices, but now, the same suppliers that benefit from the resulting massive demand are crying poverty, producing too little and demanding higher prices.

They have hit the state electricity price cap of $3,000 per megawatt-hour, but despite that cap, and what should be the potential to rapidly ramp up clean energy output, the deregulated Texas energy sector leaves the state vulnerable to this kind of underfunded energy production, supply shortages and potential market pricing disruptions. It will be up to Rick Perry to figure out if the status quo is the best thing for Texas; we can only hope he sees that what Texas needs is a majority-renewable smart energy sector, sooner rather than later.

In order to win support from radical Tea Party freshmen, most of whom voted against the legislation anyway, Congressional leaders imposed stiff new tax penalties on radiate students across the country. Specifically, subsidized loans for grad students were cut—the government provides all student loans, so this effectively eliminates funding for post-graduate education—and a tax credit for borrowers who repay student loans on time for 12 consecutive months was eliminated.

The tax credit eliminated costs far less than the massive subsidies going to oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power companies, yet the Tea Party freshmen, who have touted their opposition to any and every tax increase, did nothing to oppose the tax hikes on students. And while the tax credits may be much smaller than fossil fuel subsidies, or nuclear, eliminating them will cost far more.

Eliminating the on-time repayment credit will reduce the likelihood of on-time repayment significantly, potentially costing the government billions, over time, as well as subjecting more borrowers to fines and fees, depleting their personal economic footprint, and serving as a drag on growth.

The logic is simply astonishing: while the radical anti-tax Tea Partiers, backed by billionaire partisans, claim as an article of faith the absolute truth that any and all tax cuts incentivize the wealthy to create jobs—though we have ten years of evidence this is often not the case—, they reject the idea that a direct cash incentive for repayment will pay off—despite the evidence that it does.

In fact, the particular kind of tax increase the Tea Partiers have demanded and are supporting is more costly and will exacerbate not only budget shortfalls but also the negative economic trends whereby the American people are unnecessarily disadvantaged in the face of far more powerful economic forces.

Allegations that the so-called Tea Party caucus has degenerated into little more than a lobby for the wealthy interests that back them gain credibility when they support tax hikes on the vulnerable, and which will have a direct negative impact on the middle class. It should be well understood by all: the House Tea Party Republicans have pushed for and supported—the anti-student provisions in the failed Republican-only House bills were far worse—tax hikes that will make college more expensive and eat way at middle class wealth.