Climate-Energy – Leelanau’s Future Sustainability

Wednesday April 15 5:30 to 9:00 PM Old Art Building in Leland

“Climate-Energy – Leelanau’s Future Sustainability”

Come to Leland’s Old Art Building at 5:30 for a delicious chili and

biscuits supper, followed at 7 with presentations by guest

speakers Steve Smiley and Dave Barrons.

Donations at the door

Sponsored by the Leelanau Democrats.

Dan Scripps with News on Michigan Energy

I would read Dan Scripps' blog even if he wasn't running for the State House in my district. He writes about the things that I'm interested in, about the issues and problems that keep me up nights.

Two weeks ago he wrote about the differences between himself and his opponent on climate change. What a treat to be able to cast a vote for someone who is willing to confront climate change without a lot of mealy-mouthed caveats or head-in-the-sand denial.

Last week Dan broke the news on Michigan's comprehensive energy package.

The legislation passed by the state legislature yesterday is an important first step in building a long-range energy plan to make Michigan more competitive and in creating jobs now in this exciting growth area. What’s more, the fact that the legislation was supported by groups ranging from the Michigan Environmental Council to the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the Michigan Manufacturers Association shows that renewable energy solutions can help slow global warming and protect our natural environment while creating jobs and sparking investment in Michigan. This truly is a win-win, and a step towards a more diversified economy and a more prosperous Michigan. The cost for this: $3 a month. Not bad for a plan that can add 30,000 jobs to Michigan, and as part of an overall clean technology strategy than can reduce our highest-in-the-nation unemployment rate by nearly two points.

Pretty good stuff if we can slow climate change while putting people back to work.

More on School Equity

There was a long story in the Leelanau Enterprise this week about Leland School's band program and the hard decision not to grant tenure to our band teacher. Tonight I had a long conversation with a school board member as we waited for kids at choir. She confirmed what I had suspected, that the decision came down to a matter of money. Keeping the band teacher on, even part time, would have meant cutting an elementary teacher. We talked of keeping band as a pay-to-play activity or somehow drawing on talented members of the community to provide some sort of band experience. But a full-time tenured band teacher is not something that our school can afford.

As I explained last post, Leland School would be in a different position if we had been spending a little more money in 1994. We would have the option of asking the voters to approve millages for operations, for payroll, utilities, and bus fuel, the biggest hunks of a school's budget and the fastest rising portion of everybody's costs.

But Wait! There's More! If your school was one of those spending more than $6500 per student in 1994, your school gets special "20j money" straight from the state of Michigan because....well... just because.

Leland School's business manager, Sandy Potts, described the situation in a March 2008 paper. Here are some highlights:

PROPOSAL “A” AND SECTION 20j
The promise of Proposal “A” was that both property tax levies and educational dollars for K-12 schools would be equalized throughout the state. The formula created would, over time, narrow the gap between the highest funded and lowest funded K-12 school districts.

Language in Section 380.1211 of the State School Code, as revised, limited the increase in per pupil funding for each district to the lesser of the rate of inflation or the amount determined by the legislature in each year’s budget. This meant that those schools with very high per pupil funding would get enough to cover inflation but the lower paid schools would gradually be given more to bring the funding levels closer together. The gap between the highest and lowest school districts’ per-pupil funding began at $7,532 in 1994 and narrowed to $5,454 in 2000 under this formula.

In 2000, the increase to the Student Foundation Grant Allowance was $238 per pupil but the inflation rate was relatively low at 1.6%. This meant that the schools at the highest end of the funding range would have received less than $238 per pupil. (Remember that these schools were already receiving as much as $5,424 more per pupil than the lowest paid schools.) This was not satisfactory to the schools at the highest end of the scale and therefore the legislature was convinced to add Section 20j of the State Aid Fund which allows them to receive the full foundation increase. This was a direct, purposeful, political change in opposition to the intent of Proposal “A” as passed by the voters of the State of Michigan.

Section 20j payments average $251 per pupil and are given to the 51 highest paid schools in the state. The total paid out under Section 20j has averaged $54,000,000 annually for the last five years, for a total of $270,000,000 paid to the 51 wealthiest districts in the state...

...The 20j schools will insist that they can’t survive without the 20j payments but even you if remove the 20j payments, these schools will still receive a minimum of $1,118 and as much as $5,135 more per pupil than the base foundation grant which is the amount with which than half of Michigan’s schools must operate their programs.

In fiscal year 2000, to qualify for the original 20j monies, a school must have had a base grant of $6500 or greater. Since that time a hold-harmless base grant has been set each year and those above that amount receive the extra monies based on the above mentioned calculation. Fifty one districts qualified in the first year. However, only 50 districts qualified in 2000 based on their foundation grant allowance and only 45 districts qualified in years 2002-2008. Yet each year, all 51 of the original schools have been given 20j payments. To date, the 20j payments made to unqualified schools from 2000-2008 is approximately $84,250,000; money that should have been used elsewhere.

Dan Hanrahan, Director of the State Aid and School Finance Office, states that the legislature has never given him direction to change the funding formula for the 20j schools even though the base grant for those schools has been changed each year. Thus all 51 schools on the original list, whether they meet the new 20j base amount or not, continue to receive additional funding for each of their students.

I can't figure out what the moral of the story is. Schools that always had more money still get more money. The rules are so complicated that I can barely find out what they all are, let alone explain them to you. The Director of the School Aid Fund can't even give a good answer as to why some schools get more.

I keep thinking about last fall when the State of Michigan almost shut down because they couldn't come up with a balanced budget. My brother called some friends in Lansing and asked what the legislators were discussing. His friends said, "Oh the legislators aren't talking, they're just sitting around. The lobbyists are meeting and when they come up with a compromise, they'll tell the legislators what to do."

Meanwhile, there goes the band teacher.

Bradley on the Role of Citizen

From Bill Bradley's The New American Story:

Once you have a desire to make a difference and you've taken steps to be informed, the next step is to get involved, passionately. Socrates captured this spirit of involvement during his trial, when he was faced with the prospect of exile from Athens: "Perhaps someone may say, 'But surely, Socrates, after you have left us you can spend the rest of your life in quietly minding your own business,' this is the hardest thing of all to make some of you understand. If I say that....I cannot 'mind my own business' you will not believe that I am serious." Inherent in the job of being a citizen is the refusal to mind one's own business. As a citizen, you are the caretaker of the public good. You don't see yourself as a representative of a special interest, and you don't think democracy amounts only to a negotiation among special interests. You are disinterested; you act for the whole, not just yourself.

Such engagement will not be easy. It goes against the prevailing idea of how things ought to be done. In Unconscious Civilization, John Ralston Saul writes that being a citizen is "not a particularly pleasant or easy style of life. It is not profitable, efficient, competitive or rewarded. It often consists of being persistently annoying to others as well as being stubborn and repetitive." But when you keep at it, beautiful things can happen. Like Socrates, we need to challenge the public lies that too often pass without comment and explain what it means to be a democracy committed to humanism and globalization simultaneously. Our own philosophers, economists, political scientists, and sociologists should engage on the public issues of the day, not just hole up in their academic sanctuaries. Democracy depends on citizens who make waves. When citizens abdicate their inherent democratic power, they turn the system over to those who often use it for personal enrichment, or worse. A true citizen doesn't retreat to his or her private pleasures when the price of public silence is that society's big decisions are made by fewer and fewer people.

This was just one of many passages in Bradley's book that resonated with me. His method is to look at each of the major issues facing Americans and reiterate the "story" of that issue as we have become used to hearing it, then to retell the story of that issue in a new, more hopeful way.

He addresses world politics, the economy, oil and the environment, pensions, health care, and education. While I don't agree with him on every point of analysis, his perspective is far reaching and thoughtful. This book hit by library shelf in April 2007, but is almost eerily predicts the current meltdown of the housing market, sub prime mortgages, hedge fund market, and the fall of the dollar.

It would seem like he was a lone voice in the wilderness if I didn't hear so much of Bradley's ideas in reflected in this year's competition for the Democratic nomination, in Governor Granholm's alternative energy initiative, in the AARP ads featuring the purple elephant-donkey.

Granholm Pushes Alternative Energy for Michigan

I missed the State of the State address. There was nothing exciting about the news coverage of the State of the State address. But I heard the end of Governor Granholn's radio town meeting yesterday, when she was talking about luring alternative energy industries to Michigan by making a commitment to use alternative energy to meet the state's needs. I was enthralled. After all that "one state recession" talk, it is wonderful to hear her so comprehesively articulate the whole range of competitive advantages that Michigan has.

Here is part of the transcript of the State of the State address:

Why alternative energy? Because - to borrow a line from Wayne Gretzky - if you want to win, "don't skate to where the puck is - skate to where the puck is going."

The puck is going to alternative energy.

Any time you pick up a newspaper from here on out and see the terms "climate change" or "global warming," just think: "jobs for Michigan."

Because of the need to reduce global warming and end our dependence on expensive foreign oil, the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries will create millions of good paying jobs.

There's no question that these jobs are coming to our nation. The only question is, where?

I say we will win these jobs for Michigan and replace the lost manufacturing jobs with a whole new, growing sector.

Why us? Because, no other state - indeed few places in the world - have what we have to offer: our wind, our water, our woods - and thanks to the working men and women of Michigan - our skilled workforce.

Look at each of these resources.

The unique geography of our peninsulas makes us windy. Experts have said that we have the second best potential for wind generation and production in the country. In fact, the wind turbines we'd use to capture that power can be built right here in Michigan, because we have what's needed: manufacturing infrastructure; available factory space; a skilled workforce. And water - the Great Lakes - are one of the best ways to ship these huge turbines.

That Pure Michigan water will do even more for us. The natural movement, the waves of our Great Lakes waters, creates enormous energy. We are talking with businesses right now about coming to Michigan to convert water currents into electric currents.

And wood! The wood waste from the pulp and paper industry is being used to produce the next generation of biofuels. Cutting-edge companies like Mascoma, Chemrec, NewPage, and others are turning wood waste into fuel for your vehicles, and they want to come here because of our vast sustainable forests.

Our automotive base is also a huge asset: we are the automotive research capital of the world, and we are building the engines of the future - hybrids, clean diesel, electric, fuel cells, flexfuel - all of that is being, and will continue to be, researched, designed, and produced right here in Michigan.

There may be one or two other states that are sunnier than we are, but we are already a huge player in the solar energy industry. We have in Michigan the world's largest producer of the stuff that makes solar panels work. Polycrystalline silicon. Made by Hemlock Semiconductor right here in Michigan. They are in the middle of a billion dollar expansion, hiring 500 people in the Saginaw area. They have even bigger plans. And just last week, Dow Solar Solutions announced it was locating a new $52 million manufacturing facility in Midland, focusing on solar energy generating building materials. Saginaw Valley can be the Silicon Valley for the alternative energy business!

Even waste is being used: companies are taking household trash in landfills and converting it to green energy - the Lansing Board of Water and Light is doing it right now. Farms are turning animal waste into methane gas. Opportunities are everywhere in Michigan to create green energy.

Michigan must do as any successful business does. To compete, we need to capitalize on our natural advantages. For us, it's our geography and our history. Auto ingenuity. And our solar edge. Wind. Woods. Water. Workforce. Even waste. If we do this right, Michigan can be the alternative energy capital of North America, and create thousands and thousands of jobs.

But, for Michigan to win the race for those high-paying jobs, we have to out-hustle the competition. How?

First, we must commit as a state to use alternative energy to meet our own energy needs.

To understand the connection between renewable energy and jobs, just look at Sweden - a country with striking resemblances to our state: the same size population, similar geography with two-thirds of their land covered by forests, a strong automotive sector. Sweden set high goals for their use of renewable energy. The result? They created over 2,000 businesses and 400,000 jobs in their renewable energy sector. 400,000 jobs!

Alternative energy companies have watched closely as 25 other states have set aggressive goals for their alternative energy use. We have to meet and beat other states' goals here in Michigan if we are going to attract those companies here. That's why I am asking the Legislature to set ambitious alternative energy goals for Michigan - produce 10 percent of our electrical energy from renewable sources by the year 2015 and a full 25 percent by the year 2025. Thank you Sen. Patterson and Representative Accavitti for working to craft the bipartisan legislation that will transform our state.

There is no way to overestimate the importance of setting state renewable energy use goals when it comes to creating jobs.

It is interesting to actually watch the address, because you can see how flat footed the legislature seems when the governor segues from a hockey metaphor to the alternative energy spiel. She might as well be speaking French.

This is, of course, where we the people need to step in. I will be checking out Governor Granholm's proposal and leaning on my legislators to support it.

Chickens and Baseball

First the rant:

In 2002, our president was lying to us, to Congress, to all sorts of our (now former) allies about weapons of mass destruction and the rest of the reasons why it was necessary to start an unprovoked war. He also lied about how much it would cost and how long it would take, leaving us broke, stuck, and in ill-repute among our community of nations.

In 2002, Roger Clemens was directing his trainer to inject him in the buttocks with chemicals that he hoped would allow him to keep throwing strikes.

One of these men is now being hauled before Congress and asked uncomfortable questions, as a prelude to a perjury trial. As pathetic as Roger Clemens looked yesterday, I think that the real chickens are sitting in Congress, trying to distract us with this sideshow.


And then there's this:

The only good thing about the action on Capitol Hill yesterday was that it diverted attention away from the NY Times sports section piece about baseball players and cockfighting. It is no surprised that baseball players would be involved in cockfighting in their home countries. Roosters do fight, almost compulsively, and cockfighting goes on all over the world, with different local variants.

One of the underlying themes of this blog is "What Americans just don't know about chickens." That's why I published an account by a fellow casino dealer Dale S. Yeazel about visiting a cockfight with his in laws in the Philippines.

The locals move out of my way in order to give me a prime space to watch. There were no women or girls present. Everyone then starts to shout to the ringmaster in the center of the ring. Obviously they were making bets on either the white cock or the red one. I wasn't going to bet on the first match but after a couple of minutes the ringmaster looks at me and says; Hey Joe, you want to bet three hundred? I said; Yes, three hundred on the red one (pointing to the cock on my side of the ring). He waved his hand and with a smug expression indicated I had no bet. He then looked at me and waved his hand towards the opposite side of the ring. I then realized that since us bettors weren't laying odds or giving up points, he was trying to even up the betting at my expense. A minute later he asked me if I want to bet 500. I said yes and again pointed to the red bird. He waved off my bet and then grabbed himself in a Michael Jackson fashion, as if to dare me to bet on the white cock. Meanwhile the referee is writing down the bets in a spiral ring notebook.

The other man in the pit (the referee) then held a bird in each hand, faced them towards each other and released them. My bird scored the "dim mak" the other bird didn't die but was obviously unable to continue. This however, being a "fight to the death" the referee would grab a bird in each hand and face them off again. This process was repeated until the white cock was deemed to be dead.

The NY Times article describes another variation, without the casino dealer's attention to the intricacies of booking a bet. I'm not quite sure how a woman could write this story, since women aren't usually part of that scene. The last image in the article, that of a stray dog making off with a rooster's head, tells me that the rest of the rooster was someone's dinner that night.

There are plenty of reasons why a baseball player attending a legal cockfight in the Dominican Republic should not be seen in the same light as, say, the Michael Vick dogfighting debacle. For me, the two most compelling reasons are that you can't condemn the cockfight without making a judgement about someone else's culture and the fact that I can't keep my own roosters from fighting. I only have one rooster right now, and he will fight the dog, or Anna, or me, unless we smack him about once a week. If I didn't have the luxury of ordering sexed chicks from the hatchery, I would have many more rooster fights in my yard, until it was time for chicken dinner.

Selling our Schools to Pay the Bills

Michigan's slow-moving school funding crisis tends to get lost in the shuffle amid the bad news about the Big Three, the threatened state shutdowns, and the "one-state recession". Most people think like the lady down the road who told me "As long as the bus shows up every morning to take the kids to school, I just figure our school is doing alright."

It's hard to think beyond the local. Even if my kids' school and your kids' school seem to be doing fine, that doesn't mean the system isn't messed up. An article in today's Lansing State Journal, New proposal would solve school funding woes describes the biggest problem, in terms of dollars facing Michigan's school districts:

A 2004 report from the non-partisan Citizens Research Council found "unfunded pension and health liabilities" for Michigan school employees now amount to around $19.3 billion.

In this case, a "liability" means money legally owed to pensioners who have retired, confident their pensions would take care of them after their years of service. "Unfunded" means just that. There are no assets on the books allocated to cover the $19.3 billion in pension and health care liabilities promised by the system.

School districts make annual contributions to cover pension and health care obligations for their employees, both active and retired. These contributions today consume around 23 percent of all local school budgets. And they're rising fast. Estimates by Citizens Research Council economists predict their contribution rate will increase to around 32 percent in about a decade.

And that means that school districts, already hit hard by inflation and the funding rigidities imposed by Proposal A, risk being eaten alive by their fixed costs. Even then, what the school districts are paying in isn't going to be enough to cover their obligations.

The author doesn't mention the historical basis for this problem, that former governor Engler decided that the pension fund did not need to be fully funded, and then drained that account to make his tax cuts possible. No use crying over spilt milk, I guess. And of course those health care costs are crippling this and a lot of other pension funds, just like health care costs are crippling a host of other governments and industries.

Likewise, he doesn't mention that one of the fine-print side effects of Proposal A was to raise the local districts' portion of retirement costs from 5% to 100%. The author moves right along to the great new solution: sell our school buildings!

Take all the school buildings and real estate in the entire school system. Sell them to, say, a real estate trust. Lease back the buildings needed for school purposes. Take the excess and use it to fund the unfunded pension and health care liability.

Bingo! You've resolved the problem by, in the language of the accountants, "securitizing the asset value."

.....Naturally, the schools will have to pay rent on the buildings they've leased. If the trust needs to get a 5 percent return on its $30 billion investment to buy the buildings, that's $1.5 billion a year.

But consider that the real estate trust would without doubt manage and maintain the buildings far more efficiently than school districts do. Department of Education figures for 2006 show a $1.8 billion cost for building operations and maintenance.

Could that be halved?

Possibly. What seems certain is that the figure could be greatly reduced. So even without counting building maintenance savings, there's enough money to provide a return for investors in the trust.

The article plows on from that point, with the implicit assumption that local school districts are poor money managers and with the requisite vague example of mismanaged costs.

Frankly, it's hard for me to pay attention at that point. I can only remember those many evenings I spent at our Leland Public School working on the School Facilities Committee in the late 1990's, trying to decide what sort of building project we needed, and where we would build it. I was one of thirty-some volunteers engaged in this process, a lot for this small community. Our committee was only the second generation in a process that took three different attempts to pass a construction millage. What eventually emerged was a compact, versatile building located in the village and used by everyone from early-morning weightlifters to the evening senior citizens group. The building itself came in well under budget, partly due to lucky timing in the construction cycle. Our school is a centerpiece for the community, and it sits on a choice piece of land, to boot. Sell it? To a Real Estate Trust?

Handing control of school funds over to the state has been a losing proposition for our school district. We send boatloads of money to Lansing, we are refunded a mediocre amount, and then are asked to cover more and more in fixed costs. It's hard enough dealing with the State of Michigan, now we are supposed to sell our building and deal with a landlord as well?

What a mess. I don't have the answers, but I know that if the rural areas don't pay attention, we are going to have to swallow someone else's solution.

Obama

Barack Obama's victory speech after the South Carolina primary

When I read The Audacity of Hope last year, I was impressed. It was hard to admit that I was impressed; after all this guy was obviously ambitious, and since he was running for president, he would soon be sucking up to this or that interest group, contradicting himself from one week to the next, because that's how you get elected. Or he could be a sideshow candidate, true to his principles with a minuscule following.

Still, The Audacity of Hope was an impressive book. The Republican library volunteer sneered as I checked the book out, saying "Do you think he wrote it himself?" As I dug into it, I was sure he wrote it himself, since a publicist would have gutted the lectures on the constitution and the debates about the Founding Fathers' intentions and included many more heartwarming anecdotes in the manner of the Lifetime Channel.

What the publicist would not have known, what I didn't know, was that my heart was yearning to be lectured to by someone who knew intimately and revered our Constitution for the treasure that it is. When I came to the 27 pages of the book that detailed the history of US foreign policy from 1776 to the present, I was smitten. To think of all of that history as a single narrative, then to write it coherently in a mere 27 pages, was genius!

But geniuses don't get to be president. It's one thing to write well and another thing to win elections. It was Obama's victory speech in Iowa that sold me. Even then, I felt sheepish. Liz and Brendan watched the speech on YouTube with me, and I said, "Well, just being able to give a good speech doesn't mean he'd be a good president."

They laughed. "We've already seen what the guy who can't speak in public could do! Let's elect Obama!"

I do evaluate candidates on the basis of their stands on the various issues. But their stances aren't all that different, and my two big issues -- "How do we address climate change?" and "How do we get our Constitution back?" --aren't front and center in the debates. What my two issues have in common is that they require all of us to make some sacrifices for the common good, and Obama is the only one who is challenging us to do just that.

I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina. I saw crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children. I saw shuttered mills and homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from all walks of life, and men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. I saw what America is, and I believe in what this country can be.

That is the country I see. That is the country you see. But now it is up to us to help the entire nation embrace this vision. Because in the end, we are not just up against the ingrained and destructive habits of Washington, we are also struggling against our own doubts, our own fears, and our own cynicism. The change we seek has always required great struggle and sacrifice. And so this is a battle in our own hearts and minds about what kind of country we want and how hard we’re willing to work for it.

So let me remind you tonight that change will not be easy. That change will take time. There will be setbacks, and false starts, and sometimes we will make mistakes. But as hard as it may seem, we cannot lose hope. Because there are people all across this country who are counting us; who can’t afford another four years without health care or good schools or decent wages because our leaders couldn't come together and get it done.

That's a piece from Obama's victory speech in South Carolina. He uses the word "you" a lot, challenging people to step up, throw off the cynicism, and get to work.

Watching Obama's speeches on YouTube is a new pastime for Anna and me, a pleasure to look forward to.

Recession!

The nation has suddenly discovered that we are in a recession. In Michigan, this is no surprise. We have been in hard times for a few years already. I remember two Halloweens ago, trick or treating with one of Anna's classmates, a family that was trying to relocate from downstate. The friend's dad told me that in their subdivision downstate (Brighton, I think) half of the homes were for sale and a third were in foreclosure.

That was some time ago, but Michigan suffered quietly until our presidential primary a few weeks ago. Having all of the candidates show up and try to speechify about our "one state recession" was odd, sort of like when the doctor tells you you're going to be fine but your friends are acting like you're in your final days. Mitt Romney made me laugh, vowing to bring back every single one of Michigan's lost jobs, as if the jobs were lost sheep and Mitt was a sheepdog.

I think of this recession like labor pains. If houses aren't selling, well, no wonder! You can't build bigger and bigger houses farther and farther from civilization without buyers eventually deciding the all that commuting and home heating is more than they can afford. You can't expect to sell bigger and bigger trucks and SUVs to that same commuting population without eventually seeing that market collapse when oil prices get squirelly or when global warming becomes too hard to ignore. You can't outsource all manufacturing to cheaper labor markets without eventually causing consumers to doubt the quality of the goods that you're trying to sell.

When a person starts to think that they're travelling down the wrong path, the natural instict is to stop and think. That's where I see our nation right now, stopping and thinking about taking a new path.

Congress and the president are anxious to nip this recession stuff quickly, and they have been quite speedy in deciding that a tax rebate is just the thing. I don't think they've stopped and thought at all. I sent this message to my congresspeople today:

The talk radio today was all about the looming recession and the federal government's response to it -- another tax rebate. There seems to be general agreement that the recession was triggered by high oil prices. I wonder, then, why the stimulus package is not targeting energy conservation?

Instead of a "spend it how you want it" tax rebate, why not give cheap loans so that folks can install solar hot water heaters, put up home wind generators, update to more efficient furnaces, install effificient windows and insulation, trade in their gas guzzlers, renovate properties along public transit routes (start with the ones in foreclosure) relocate their businesses out of the suburbs and back to the cities, along public transportation routes?

We have contractors and skilled laborors sitting idle, ready to do this work. For an even quicker stimulus, we have organizations like Traverse City's Father Fred Foundation in need of funds to help families with home heating bills. Give them money tomorrow and it will be out in the economy next week! Another tax rebate seems like a knee-jerk response, and not a very effective one at that.

I suspect that my message is too late, as the tax rebate plan seems all but a done deal.

Chicken Citizen

(Note: Working with videos and Blogger presents some new challenges. When I went back to this post to add the "books" label at the bottom, I didn't wait for the video part to load correctly. When I reposted, the entire post was blank. I've reconstructed it as best I can.)

Al Gore, in The Assault on Reason, asserts that it is the one way nature of television that has propelled the downward spiral of democracy in America, and that the progress of internet technology in allowing everyone to contribute ideas and opinions to the idea marketplace that will eventually lead to a rennaisance of democracy:

Consider the rules by which our present public forum now operate and how different they are from the norms our Founders knew during the age of print. Today’s massive flows of information are largely only in one direction. The world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation.

Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They absorb, but they cannot share. They hear, but the do not speak. They see constant motion, but they do not move themselves. The “well-informed citizenry” is in danger of becoming the “well-assumed audience.”

I can't wait. As soon as I read that, I said to myself, "I've got to learn how to post videos!"

This is my first attempt. This is a video of my chickens roaming the yard on a rare sunny November day. The hens are Black Australorps, Partridge Rocks, and Speckled Sussex. The two Speckled Sussex always go everywhere together. The rooster is our "exotic chick" from McMurray Hatchery. We think it is an Egyptian Fayoumis.

You can see my stray grey hair blowing across the lens, and you can hear me breathing. The rooster does a great job of strutting his stuff, you can even see his slate blue feet. I thought he would crow, but he never did.

At the end, the Rhode Island Red comes up and pecks my hand. I don't know why I was so surprised, she does that every time I go in the barn.

Veteran's Day

Two scenes on my mind:

The first, this week, at an employee awards banquet at work. I was there to commemorate 15 years working for the tribe. I was glad to see Sue F, with whom I went through blackjack training those 15 years ago. We worked together until a few years ago, when she transferred over to our sister casino. Sue and I each have three daughters; her oldest daughter is a year older than my Shelagh.

Sue's daughter was a distance runner through high school. After graduation she joined the Marines, and was eventually stationed in Okinawa. I guess time passes, because Sue told me that Jana had married, completed her tour, and been home for a year, only to be recalled. She and her husband had both been recalled. The husband was already "over there" as Sue said, and Jana was waiting for her orders; she knew she was going "over there" as well.

Sue can force a smile as well as any veteran casino dealer, but her eyes looked worried and weary. She said the word "recalled" with no surprise. Everyone knows that nobody gets to just finish their tour and go home anymore.

The second scene was nearly a year ago, at a candidates' night before the 2006 election. The forum was sponsored by a group of early childhood educators; the invited guests were the candidates for State House and State Senator. Although the organizers has cleared the date with the candidates' office, it turned out to be in conflict with a Right To Life dinner, so none of the Republican candidates came in person.

The person representing David Palsrok, our state house representative, seemed to speak for his boss quite capably. He knew his candidate's stand on this and that and he cited Palsrok's voting record on a number of issues.

Towards the end of the forum, Dean Robb threw out a curve ball by asking about the candidates' stand on the Iraq war. The moderator reminded Dean that this was a forum about early childhood issues. "Well we can talk all night about what we'd like to do for kids," Dean reasoned, "but if the war has bankrupted us, all this talk won't amount to a thing.

"Fair enough!" The moderator then asked each candidate to comment on how the war was affecting Michigan.

I can't remember the other candidates' responses. But I'll never forget Palsrok's guy:

"The candidate and I have never discussed this issue."

I think now that Americans live in two different worlds. In my world, there are pictures of soldiers on the locker doors in the break room. Coworkers are deployed, and hopefully come home again. A former coworker got hit with an IED and died after a couple of months in the burn clinic in Texas. The people that play at my tables are also thinking about the war, having served them selves, or having loved ones who are "over there".

The wall at school displays second graders' writing samples, finishing the prompt "If I were President I would....." A goodly portion of them end that thought "....I would end the war." Second graders can discuss the war.

I suppose there are circles where people never have to "discuss this issue". I have chewed over that moment at the candidates' forum for this whole year, thinking of all the things I could have said. Even second graders discuss the issue. How the hell do you avoid discussing the issue?

How about if this Veteran's Day we don't just go through the motions of "honoring our troops", but if we actually discuss this war in the way our Constitution intended?

The Liz Report

We took a short trip down to Chicago to see Liz, now in her sophomore year at Northwestern University. It is that November time of year -- on the way down, on Sunday morning, the trees still sported many colors of leaves. On the way home, Tuesday night, it was snowing and the trees were bare.

Liz looks well. Last spring she had a an episode of Bell's Palsy that hit during her final exams. She woke up one morning feeling like her mouth was Novacained and during the course of the day her face became paralyzed. She went to the emergency room that night. picked up some medications, and then wrote her physics final the next day with her left eye swollen shut. Everyone automatically attributed the disease to "stress" because it came during finals, but she doesn't think that the exams were all that stressful, as she was prepared for the exams and was already doing well in her courses. We picked her up in Chicago after her exams, as planned, and brought her home with her half-sagged face. The paralysis made her look perpetually sardonic, which was kind of funny since she had been practsing that look through her teenage years. It brought to mind those wild threats of "If you keep making that face, you're going to freeze that way!"

She recovered quickly and stood as a bridesmaid at her sister's wedding three weeks later, looking fine in person but still a bit odd in photos. Now I find myself searching her face for signs of health, so it means something when I say she looks well. She shrank her meal plan this year and used the savings to afford herself a single room at the quiet end of the hall. She has always been an "early to bed and early to rise" sort and is enjoying the peace and privacy. She is taking five classes, working a work study job and also tutoring in the calculus lab. She is busy but she likes helping other students and with the calculus money she feels flush.

We hung out with Liz on Sunday, taking her grocery shopping at Target and then heading downtown on the train and showing Anna the large sculptures at Millennium Park. We were left to our own devices for most of Monday. Anna wanted to see the Shedd Aquarium, and we took advantage of the Monday discount day, when admission to the main building is free. Then we stopped by the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is free all the time, if you can avoid the $14 parking fee. We parked a ways off and hiked in, heading for the Large Cat house, always Anna's favorite. It was cold and there were very few people, but the animals seemed invigorated.

Liz's environmental science course this quarter is focused on transportation issues. She thinks about transportation a good deal anyway, since she likes to come home, go visit Shelagh in Ann Arbor, and is taking advantage of Chicago's mass transit options. She is planning to take a Scottish bus service, the Megabus, to Ann Arbor for Thanksgiving, and then ride home with Shelagh and Jordan. Students often run out of time to keep up with current events, I will send her this column about the US Senate's recent decision to fund Amtrak for the next while.

In the county, we are working to fund public transportation, as well. We made it home in time to continue on to Leland and vote in the election for which our only decision was whether to continue funding the Bay Area Transit Authority. The election workers were all talking about the awful weather. Now that I'm home, I'm reading the Thistledown Yarn' Shoppe's new blog and find out that two of Kathy's coworkers were stuck in their car half the morning with a live wires draped over their car.

The War on Science Grinds On

I didn't join in the rejoicing after the Democrats took back Congress. Sure, I was glad, but our troubles are far from over. The nation will soon find out what it's like to be Michigan in the post-Republican hangover period. Our economy is shot, our state coffers are empty, our schools are failing, the ex-governor who ran the state into the ground ids now a lobbyist in Texas. It's like the morning after the wild party: as long as the booze and food were free you had lots of friends, but now that it's time to clean up you're all alone. And broke. And out of trash bags.

The rest of the country may not realize that getting rid of the neocons is not enough. We're still going to have to clean up after them, and pay the bills for all they stole.

But some things can get better right away. This article about the censorship of science is a prime example:

The Bush administration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the latest agency subjected to controls on research that might go against official policy.

New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists who study everything from caribou mating to global warming. The rules apply to all scientific papers and other public documents, even minor reports or prepared talks, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

This sort of stuff irritates me to no end. I am interested in the process of science, not just the results, and if you don't "show your work", including all of the hypotheses that didn't prove true, you ain't doing science.

I can only imagine what the last six years might have been like if we had a president who was more familiar with the Scientific Method. Or one who was interested in a dialogue of competing ideas. Or one who censors policies to suit the results, instead of vica-versa.