Category: Political

Categories
Critters Political

Election, undone

So much for the importance of the vote. So much for the will of the people.

Other stories have popped up about Missouri state representatives deciding to undo Proposition B in the state legislature. Not a lot of representatives, and none from the urban areas:

That Missouri lawmakers would even consider overriding the will of the people is disturbing, but to do so in support of animal cruelty is astonishing.

This year, one of the most important movies is “Winter’s Bone”, a movie about a family in the Ozarks caught up in the Meth trade. Due to the critical acclaim and popularity of the movie, this is how many people will “see” Missouri.

We do not need to add to this story that Missouri also condones puppy mills, and disregards the vote of the people. We need to re-write the tale that is Missouri into something better.

As for some state representatives thinking that they can overturn Proposition B, I am going to borrow from history and promise that I have not yet begun to fight.

update The Humane Society of the United States responds to the recent discussions.

Categories
Critters Political

Election, please be done

Election 2010 is one of the most exciting mid-terms I’ve been through, and the one I want finished more than any other in the past. That the election has been ugly is the mother of all understatements. Add to this the anxiousness of seeing people I would expect to find living behind barbed wire with signs saying “Trezpassers will be shot”, amid hills filled with buried food and real metal coins, as candidates for national office, and I find myself wishing for an alien invasion from space.

Except the aliens wouldn’t be welcome in Arizona, and no matter their appearance, Sharron Angle would say they look vaguely Asian. It is that kind of fruitcake year.

The effect the Tea Party has had on the election is evident, and not just on the chosen candidates. The Tea Party folks said they were angry and that anger continued and solidified until we now have this sullen ember of burning, querulous discontent that is the antithesis of hope that marked 2008. That a campaign worker would stomp on a woman after she was knocked to the ground just doesn’t surprise us. That he would then ask for an apology from the women is no more than a head shaking moment. Worse, in all the foot stomping media coverage, no one asked the question, “Why was she knocked down in the first place?” She was neither armed nor a threat, and the only crime she seemed to be guilty of is that she wasn’t one of the people around her. But she was knocked down, and the police actually called and no one has said, “Wait? What’s up with that?”

Of course, this doesn’t surprise us either, as we’ve watched candidates literally fleeing from buildings and handcuffing journalists, rather than answer questions that should be asked, to get answers we need.

What’s most frightening though is knowing that there will be people who vote for candidates with staff members that stomp on a woman as she is held helpless on the ground or handcuff a journalist asking questions; candidates who refuse to answer questions and then display an unseemly pride in the fact. “We don’t answer questions from the liberal media”, they shout. When you look around, though, you quickly realize that all but a few are deemed liberal media.

What’s a little humorous, in a sad, shadowy way, is that here in Missouri, one of the birthplaces of the Tea Party movement, not one Tea Party candidate for national office made it to the polls. I’m not sure what that says about Missouri, other than it can be an exhausting place to live sometimes.

We do have our share of contentiousness, though. The Blunt/Carnahan race has been deemed one of the ugliest in the nation, and that tells you a lot when you consider how ugly the campaigns have been. We also have controversial issues up for a vote including Propositions A and B: The Earnings Tax Initiative and the Puppy Mill Cruelty Act. You would expect an issue related to taxes to be acrimonious…but puppies?

Early on, thanks to a rant from Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, it was thought that the Tea Party movement would move, as one monolithic body, against the puppies, but no such event happened. It would seem that the Angry Ones draw the line when it comes to their dogs. However, there is still plenty of hostility remaining, as the agricultural interests worked hard to ensure that they would be allowed to treat their animals however they wanted. It is none of our business, they tell us, if dogs live their lives on wire floors, in small cages that barely allow the dog to turn around, without a chance to run on the grass, sniff the air, or even chew a dog bone. One pet shop owner said in an interview that the dogs’ needs are met, and that we should be so lucky to live so well.

Unemployment is high, too high. Companies are actually doing well, but we’re faced with a new phenomena where companies having money no longer translate into jobs, as employees are expected to do more for less pay, or jobs are outsourced to other countries. Some say all we need do is lower taxes, but taxes are not the problem, nor are they the solution.

And yet, among all the anger and evasiveness, and cruelty and greed, the hope does still remain.

This last weekend, as a closed down factory farm breeder auctioned off 800 dogs, rescuers came from all over the country to try to save some of them. They managed to save 200, probably the ones that needed help the most. The other 600 went to commercial dog breeders, primarily the Amish who have taken to large scale dog breeding like ducks to water, but there’s hope for the dogs. There’s a change in the wind, and a growing awareness of what lies behind that cute little doggy in the window, and the days of these large, inhumane facilities are coming to a close.

Today, we also have a national health care plan. If all goes as planned, the majority of those currently uninsured will be covered in three years. In three years, no one need fear having to go bankrupt when they become ill; people will no longer be dying solely because they don’t have insurance. A need for a national health care plan has been one of the top concerns of every president since Harry Truman, and now that we have one, I’ll be damned if I’ll let someone tell me it’s a failure.

Unemployment is high, yes, but we have stopped that out-of-control upward spiral that began in 2008. We are spending a little more—not a lot, but we spending. There is no longer a threat of financial collapse, and people’s pension funds now look a lot safer than they were a few years back. People seemingly hate the stimulus fund, but it has provided jobs. They hate TARP, but it actually succeeded, and may even make the country money someday. We should actually be more hopeful today, if it weren’t for the incessant messages of doom and gloom— messages that reflect political and corporate motivation more than reality.

After years of watching consumer rights eroded, they’re back and even stronger with new consumer protection laws. The practices that triggered our financial meltdown have now been blocked and hopefully blasted into enough pieces so they can never surface again. The FCC came out with a report condemning the debt collection practices and urging states to crack down on abusive debt collectors. A state attorney general managed to convince the largest and most notorious arbitration firm to no longer take consumer cases—people’s constitutional rights to the courts have been restored.

Thanks to the new health care act, health care clinics in our state and others have received enough money to expand their operations; sick kids can’t be denied coverage; the ill can continue needed treatments; college students can remain on their parent’s policies, rather than trust to youth to keep them from financial disaster.

We’re gaining private sector jobs, not losing them. The Osage Bridge opened recently, and our beloved Eades bridge is getting a safety upgrade—just a few of the many stimulus-funded projects that dot the land and provide signs that something is working.

Considering how bad things were two years ago—how hopeless and terrifying the times—the fact that people now have the luxury to be angry is nothing short of a miracle. I have never been more proud of being a Democrat.

And this morning, 200 dogs now have a chance for a better life.

Categories
Environment Political

Oil Story

I am pleased to see President Obama more engaged in the Gulf crises, but how much control the federal government has is still open for debate. As long as BP controls where resources are allocated in the region, as well as controlling information access, then the Federal government is not in control.

Yes, BP is responsible for all of the costs of the clean up, but it should never have been given the authority in the clean up effort it has been given. It would seem that the Coast Guard in the region, as well as Mineral Management Services, has too cozy a relationship with the oil companies. This also has to end.

The bright spot this week was the moratorium on new oil drilling, particularly along the Arctic. It’s obvious we don’t have a handle on offshore drilling. All we’ve had, is a bit of luck.

Consider what’s happening now: we’ve put the company that caused this disaster in charge of fixing the problem, because the government doesn’t have the expertise or equipment in order to manage the effort. So, now we’re trusting in the competence of the same company whose incompetence triggered this mess. A company that has demonstrated, time and again, that it is acting less than honorably: hiding how much oil is spilling; not allowing independent experts access to the video; preventing media access; downplaying the seriousness of the spill; continuing to use a toxic chemical despite EPA demands. At what point in time is the government going to wake up to the fact that BP is more interested in protecting its butt than the Gulf?

However, the federal government isn’t the only governmental body that needs to be slapped awake. This tragedy is just as much a Louisiana mess as it is a federal government mess. Even now that the state faces untold damage to its coast, it still hastens to assure the oil industry that the two are friends, forever. The state wants the oil jobs and oil revenue, but doesn’t want the oil. As we’re now finding, though, every silver lining has its dark, oily cloud—you can’t separate the oil from the oil wealth.

But lets not talk about this now. This kind of talk is for later, after this current crises is over. You know, when clear heads can prevail. After all, we need the oil: Apple has more iPads to sell. Gosh darn it, can’t make iPads without oil. Instead, let’s focus on good old American ingenuity and know how. There’s no disaster so bad that can’t be fixed with the right mix of technology if we all work together. All we really need, is a wiki.

Governor “never met a press conference he didn’t like” Jindal wants the Army Corps of Engineers to build sand berms to protect the coastal areas. Instead of the oil lapping along the fragile marshes, it hits the sand berms, which can be easily cleaned. Or at least, that’s what we’re told. However, many experts believe the sand berms won’t work, at best, or may push the oil towards the Mississippi state coast line, at worst. It is a politically expedient move, though, and perhaps we may learn from the effort—because goodness knows I hope we learn something, now that we’ve turned the Gulf into one great big oil spill laboratory, already equipped with test animals.

update

I really hope that BP has succeeded in stopping the oil.

Second update

CNN has come out with an article about how little scientists know about the long term impact of the Gulf oil spill. Sometimes scientists irritate the hell out of me. One is “hopeful that scientists will be able to figure out a way to tackle the problem”, which again puts too much reliance on science to fix the problem, rather than changing human behavior to prevent the problem. Another says hopefully we’ll learn from this event for the next time. There should not be a “next time”. If we can’t guarantee the absolute safety of offshore oil platforms, they should be closed down.

However, I do agree with the scientists who are pissed that we didn’t have the research in hand about how to handle a spill before the spill—what were we thinking, to allow all of these drill rigs to operate in the Gulf, without any kind of emergency plan in place? To allow the use of chemicals, when we don’t understand their impact?

Categories
Government

Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources: In Transition

Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources (MoDNR), has been the focus of contention for the last several years. One of the first acts the state’s last governor, Matt Blunt, did when he first came to office back in 2005 was fire most of the DNR’s upper management—including the director, Steve Mahood, who was greatly respected in the environmental community. Mahood eventually went on to a position with the Nature Conservancy.

In Mahood’s place, Blunt appointed Doyle Childers, a long time Republican Missouri State Senator. Childer’s appointment was not without controversy, primarily because of his business focus, and by his lack of natural resource management experience. The controversy around Childers was exacerbated by his own politically motivated actions as regards to two specific events related to the DNR: the Taum Sauk dam break, and the Boonville Bridge.

The Boonville Bridge is an old train bridge outside the town of Boonville that advocates wanted to restore and include as part of the Katy Trail. However, Union Pacific wanted the bridge condemned so it could recover the steel used in its construction. Childers, in his position at DNR, supported the Union Pacific. Governor Jay Nixon, in his role, then, as state Attorney General, filed a lawsuit to stop the Union Pacific, contending that the bridge was deeded to the Katy Trail effort. When I last checked this item, the appeals court had sided with the DNR, the case was headed to the State Supreme court, and bridge supporters were looking for compromises, such as letting the Union Pacific have the steel, but keeping the bridge.

The Boonville Bridge wasn’t the only time that Childers and Nixon clashed. Following the Ameren Taum Sauk dam break, which caused devastating damage to the state’s Johnson’s Shut-Ins state park, both Childers in the DNR and Nixon as state Attorney General fought over who had control over the litigation related to the event. Nixon, as Attorney General should have been the obvious choice, but Childers accused Nixon of taking campaign contributions from Ameren. Of course, we later found out that the money came to Nixon indirectly, from general Democratic campaign organizations; that the campaign contributions were part of Ameren’s stock donations it makes to all political parties. In addition, Matt Blunt and his father, both, also received campaign contributions from Ameren. Regardless, the Childers accusation ended up being one of this state’s uglier events in the last few years, and also formed part of the unsuccessful election campaign against Nixon.

No surprise, then, that when Jay Nixon won the election for Governor that Childers signaled that he would be resigning, taking one last parting shot in the process

Childers said he and Nixon have had an openly contentious relationship and that he would have been able to do more as the director of the DNR had he not been in continuous conflict with Nixon.

He said his time at the department was consumed by fights with Nixon. One confrontation was over a proposal to tear down the Katy Trail railroad bridge that crosses the Missouri River near Boonville, and another involved the cleanup of Johnson Shut-Ins State Park after a dam holding back the Taum Sauk Reservoir burst in Southeast Missouri.

“It made for more complications,” Childers said. “The Boonville bridge, well, we beat him three times in court on that. It took up a lot of our time and effort. After that, Johnson Shut-Ins took a huge amount of time.”

He said it’s “no secret” that he and Nixon had been at odds.

“He’s a good politician — an excellent politician — but I do not have a lot of respect for him as an individual,” Childers said.

Of course, it was a given that Nixon would fire Childers, but Nixon also replaced many of the upper management in the DNR, as well as all DNR ombudsmen. The question on everyone’s mind at that point was: who Nixon would pick to be the new director of the DNR? The farmers had their own idea as to a good candidate, as did the environmental groups.

On January 12th, we had our answer: Mark Templeton. The response was a resounding, “Who?”, as people and organizations scrambled to find what they could about this surprising choice.

What is known, based on the resume provided by Governor Nixon’s office, and what can be deduced from online searches is that Mark N. Templeton is a 39 year old former Missouri citizen, who attended both Harvard and Yale before getting a degree in law. According to the bio at the DNR

A native of Olivette, Mo., Mr. Templeton developed environmental and sustainability strategies during his tenure with McKinsey & Company, a global management consultancy headquartered in New York. From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Templeton worked with clients to explore new, “green” markets for products and services and develop next-generation jobs in the environmental and energy sectors. While at McKinsey, Mr. Templeton advised major organizations in the public, private and non-profit sectors, including the United Nations Development Programme’s Commission on the Private Sector and Development. In 2005, Mr. Templeton left McKinsey to become associate dean and chief operating office of Yale Law School, his alma mater.

As associate dean and chief operating officer at Yale Law, Mr. Templeton managed more than 200 administrative personnel and an annual budget of $105 million. Among other duties, Mr. Templeton was responsible for approving departmental budgets, monitoring accounts and negotiating with other academic and administrative units.

Prior to joining McKinsey, Mr. Templeton was special assistant and senior adviser to the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and an adviser to the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. He worked as office director of the Human Rights Documentation Center in Bangkok, Thailand, from 1999 to 2000 and as a research associate with the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center in New Delhi in 1997.

Mr. Templeton, 39, earned his bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1994 and his juris doctorate from Yale Law in 1999. He graduated from Horton Watkins High School.

Mr. Templeton and his wife, Kathy Dull, also a Missouri native, have two young children, Paisley and Graham.

An impressive background, but one that left everyone scratching their heads in wonderment as to Templeton’s qualification to running a department related to natural resources. Contrary to conservative opinion, Templeton is just as much an unknown the environmentalists as he is to the farmers.

What we have been able to find, primarily through determined Google searches, is that Mark N. Templeton is not Mark Templeton, the CEO or Citrix Systems. “Our” Mark Templeton has a law degree and is a member of the California Bar. His work with “green” jobs took place with McKinsey & Company, and since McKinsey is infamous for not divulging information about its clients, we may never know who Templeton worked with.

Before the McKinsey consulting gig, Templeton worked for the State Department, as well advising the US delegation to the UN. After his tenure at McKinsey, Templeton took a job as Chief Operating Officer at Yale University.

One other piece of information about our new Director of Missouri’s DNR that was not part of the public resume provided by Governor Nixon or the DNR, is that Mark Templeton is an original founder, and former director, of a company named Cobra Legal Solutions—a firm that specializes in outsourcing legal work for American corporations to India. Templeton is still listed as original founder and early investor, but the reference to his position as Acting Executive Directory has since been removed from the web site.

Cobra Legal Solutions: Founders and Investors - Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 2
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!
Cobra Legal Solutions - Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 2
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

I have a request into the DNR about Templeton’s current financial association with Cobra Legal Solutions, and the communications department responded with a note that they would check with him this week, since his first day at work at the DNR was Monday. When I have more information, I’ll provide an update.

Why was Mark Templeton picked to be the new Director of the Department of Natural Resources? It’s obvious that he does not bring with him any background in management of natural resources, or the environment, or even science, in general. According to Governor Nixon, Templeton’s focus within the DNR will be more on alternative energy and jobs, than day to day DNR management (Joplin Globe):

Said Nixon: “Finding new energy solutions and protecting our natural resources are the keys to Missouri’s environmental and economic future. Here in Missouri, we’re perfectly positioned to harness multiple new forms of energy, including wind, solar, nuclear, hydroelectric and biofuels. These energy solutions will lessen our dependence on foreign oil, create next-generation jobs and help turn this economy around.

“Mark Templeton has helped governmental, business and nonprofit groups find the links between environmental stewardship, alternative energy and sound business practices, and he will bring that cutting-edge thinking to our Department of Natural Resources.”

Sometimes the best way to end acrimonious and persistent contention is to surprise all of the players. In this regard, Nixon’s appointment of Mark Templeton is already a success. Whether Templeton will continue to enjoy success in his new role, though, is anyone’s guess.

Hearings to confirm Mark Templeton’s appointment as Director of DNR began on Wednesday. Unfortunately, there’s no public record of this session that I can find.

Mark Templeton was confirmed to the position at the DNR. I must admit to being somewhat surprised at the level of disinterest about Templeton’s involvement with Cobra Legal Solutions, particularly since the only reason he seems to have been hired was to generate jobs.

Mark Templeton’s name has been removed from the Cobra Legal Systems web site, as founder and investor. Surprising, because whatever his association with the group, he’s still an original founder, and investor.

Categories
Political

I’m a lefty and what Obama’s Warren pick means to me

In an article for NPR, David Weinberger tells his fellow liberals to “chill out”. That Obama’s pick of Rick Warren to participate in the inauguration is actually a good thing; a case of bridge-building promised by President-elect Obama during his campaign.

My first impulse was to disagree, vehemently, both with David and with Obama’s pick. Kathryn Kolbert at CNN best explains why this is so

Warren has worked hard to cultivate a moderate public personality but his views are very similar to those of traditional Religious Right leaders.In an email sent before the 2004 election he wrote a Falwell-esque message proclaiming that, for Christian voters, the issues of abortion, marriage for same-sex couples, stem cell research, cloning and euthanasia were “non-negotiable.” In fact, he said, they are “not even debatable because God’s word is clear on these issues.”

Warren is adamantly against reproductive rights for women; against gays, for all of his talk of serving gay people water and donuts. He is worse, in many ways, than someone like Falwell, because he pretends to be open-minded, when he is anything but. There is no bridge-building with a man who coldly and unequivocally rejects equality for gays, reproductive rights for women, and, frankly, religious freedom for everyone.

Warren is a man who will sit at one end of whatever bridge is being built, and demand that it meet him, rather than make any movement to build any part of the bridge, himself. His choice leaves me to wonder: why are we progressives always asked to give? To sacrifice our beliefs, our rights, our hopes and dreams for true equality in this country? In particular, why should women and gay rights be the pillars on which this new “bridge-building” occurs?

Obama’s choice is a painful one, given how this country has suffered under a religious fundamentalist-backed president for eight years. And especially painful, following the passing of the constitutionally authorized bigotry that was Proposition 8 in California.

As I wrote earlier, my first impulse was to disagree with Obama’s choice, but now, I’m beginning to think it may be an excellent choice in the long run—and not because of any absurd statements about “bridge-building”. The left is coming perilously close to deifying President-elect Obama, and that’s not a healthy state for us to be in. We needed something to shake us up, and it would seem that Warren’s pick is it.

In the last few months, we’ve built up such a faith in Obama that to criticize anything he does, even mildly, brings down “wrath of the progressives” upon our heads. Obama can do no wrong, and though he has made, to me, and others, some questionable choices for his Cabinet, the most that happens is a sage, head-nodding among his loyal supports, as we admire his bridge-building skills. When we do have concerns, we whisper them rather than speak out loudly. We’ve become fearful that any criticism will lose the floods of Republican conservatism and all hope will be lost.

The real danger in our country isn’t so much that we’re parties at odds with each other. There is no such thing as a country by consensus, and every politician knows the unobtainability of this dream. No, the real problem isn’t that we question those ranged against us, but that we don’t question those on our own side.

During the Presidential campaign, John Scalzi published a post titled, Reminder: There’s No Actual Office for “President of the Left”. In it, he wrote, Obama’s probably also aware that he’s got the left in the tank.

he’s got the left in the tank…

Obama has made a choice for his inauguration that, to all intents and purposes, betrays the very progressives whose base he relies on. Rather than “chill out”, we should be shouting our anger out, loud and clear, not only to remind ourselves what being a progressive really means, but also to remind Obama that, contrary to expectations, he does not have a lock on us.

Obama cannot assume we will look upon him, forever a day, with the indulgence a parent gives a favored child; that he can make decisions like this with impunity, based on an assumption that we “lefties”, as David calls us, will grumble and growl but ultimately stand behind him as our dear leader. No matter what. Such an assumption emasculates the left, doing little more than reducing us to sycophants and bobbing heads. Blind belief in one’s chosen leader may be acceptable to the fundamentalists, but it ill suits progressives. We needed a reminder of this, and now we have it.

Choosing a man (Warren) who symbolizes exclusion (and then hides such, when caught), as a way of symbolizing inclusion, just does not compute to this progressive. Mr. President-elect Obama, sir, you blew it with this one.