Septentrional - Ursa Major

While the focus of this log is mostly political, occasionally I indulge other interests, including unusual connections, where one thing leads to another.

I had occasion today to comment to my father, who was offering me several unusual words for use as my “words for the day,” on the word "Septentrional," a more or less interchangeable term with "boreal." "Septentrional" refers to the Seven Stars of Ursa Major (aka "Septentrion"), which dominates the skies of the North. I have been unable to find a truly comparable term linking the regions of the South with some prominent feature of the Southern Sky. "*Argonavital," "Magellanic," or even "Crucial" come to mind, but none of them has any pedigree, and the last one has obvious drawbacks in that it already has other meanings.

It’s a not-too-well known fact that the Sun and its planets are located in a somewhat enriched region of the Milky Way Galaxy, from the point of view of stellar populations and especially prevalence of bright stars in the vicinity. At least part of the reason for this is that the Sun happens to be in the midst of a slowly dissolving star cluster, the Ursa Major Stream or “Moving Group.”

The seven chief stars of Ursa Major (“The Big Dipper,”) and some of the other stars of the constellation, to which could be added Sirius, are the main members of a real star cluster in space, noticeable from any given direction for a distance of at least a couple of hundred light years. You may notice, from the inclusion of Sirius, which is something like 50 degrees of arc across the sky, that the Sun is actually inside this loose association of stars, but it is not a member of it. These are relatively young stars, having formed together from a protostellar nebula something like 150 million years ago, since which time they have been gradually drifting apart, and the cluster losing coherence as the stars "evaporate" into the general stream of stars in the galactic plane. The Sun, in its normal streaming orbit around the Galaxy, just drifted on in to their region.

Probably most stars in the galaxy are somewhere near something prominent like a group of bright stars, but this feature (usually called nowadays the "Ursa Major Moving Group" or “Ursa Major Stream,” and consisting of about 100 stars, most of them dimmer than the Sun), is the most prominent nearby feature for us. 30 or 40 million years ago, the Sun was nowhere near these stars, as it peregrinated on its 250 million year galactic orbit.

Compared to the bright stars of Orion's Belt, which are much younger, brighter, and farther away, this little cluster isn't much, and wouldn't gain any special notice from even 300 light years away.

Septentrional, incidentally, was one of those obscure words which turned up in James Joyce's Ulysses, to titillate the verbophiles of the Literary World.

For more information about Ursa Major as a real feature in nearby space, see this, from which the following is an exceprt:

Many other stars scattered all over the sky share a common space motion with the UMa cluster. And like the cluster the most massive, hence brightest, stars have evolved to the subgiant and even giant phases. One hundred or so stars have been accepted as members of the UMa stream, as it is called. Spanning a few hundred light years of space, it's much too big to be a cluster proper. As these stars are seen in all directions, we are obviously passing through the stream. The spectral types give stellar ages similar to that of the cluster, and this together with the space motions suggests a common origin about 150 million years ago -- just over half a galactic rotation. This age is about midway, ratio-wise, between the youngest and oldest star clusters (one million to 10 billion years).

Update:
It seems that the usual antonym for "septentrional" is "meridional." This word, however, doesn't refer to a celestial feature in the South, but to the noonday sun:

adj.
1. Of or relating to meridians or a meridian.
2. Located in the south; southern.
3. Of or characteristic of southern areas or people.

n.
An inhabitant of a southern region, especially the south of France.

[Middle English, pertaining to the sun's position at noon, from Old French meridionel, southern, from Late Latin meridionalis, from Latin meridianus, of midday, southern. ]

Why the noonday sun is associated with the South is a bit unclear to me.

Neo-Goldwater Conservatives v. Bush

See Bullmoose's interesting comments on the re-emergence of old fashioned conservative Republicans à la Barry Goldwater, who are very uncomfortable both with the big-government, fiscally irresponsible, and plutocratic tendencies, as well as the theocratic leanings, of the current administration.

Unlikely these folks will vote for a Democrat in a general election, but they very well might split the Republicans enough to enable the whole climate of politics in this country to finally shift away from its current dismal course.

Common Ground: Fiscal Conservatism and Liberalism

Many fiscal conservatives, like the Cunnning Realist, are sounding more like liberals than like the "Radical Conservatives," (as Robert Reich calls them), who rule Washington these days. It seems the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are becoming increasingly inaccurate and irrelevant as labels for people's political persuasions. See avowedly-conservative columnist David Brooks's piece in today’s New York Times, in which he talks about an emerging alliance between "liberals" like U2's Bono, and evangelical Christians on the issue of poverty amelioration.

Many Goldwater-style conservatives look at the 30+% growth in Federal spending in this administration, the unprecedented policy- and tax-cut- driven shift of wealth from the middle class to the rich, the fast and loose attitude towards the obligation to tell the public the truth, and the incredibly unrestrained growth in the national debt and annual deficit spending ... and say, “if this is conservative government, I want no part of it.”

At the same time, many liberals have come over the years to realize that a balanced policy, which respects the rights and values of religious people, which recognizes the necessity for incentives to work, and which strives to keep government within the means provided by its revenues, rather than shifting the burden of today's government to future generations, is best. These people are finding fiscal conservatives, who generally believe in the right of privacy and keeping government out of people's private lives, their natural allies.

The war in Iraq, too, is a terribly divisive issue. There are rational reasons for believing it was a good policy, although I do not believe they are right. In fact, this administration misrepresented the reasons for war, and continues to do a very poor job both of managing it and explaining in plain language why they believe it is in America's national interests to continue prosecuting it. Old fashioned conservatives, like Marshall Wittmann, even if inclined to give the administration some benefit of the doubt, just don't go for the kind of propaganda and double-speak coming out of the administration. No wonder many traditional conservatives are abandoning the Bush radical right-wing movement, and thinking it's time to work with liberals to move the country away from polarity and divisiveness, and towards comity, mutual respect, and a government which can function effectively both in the World and as steward of America's economic and social weal. Here, it seems to me inevitable that history will judge this President's government harshly indeed.

Rats and the Sinking Ship

Marshall Wittmann comments:

Ralph [Reed] and Grover [Norquist] are claiming that they were completely ignorant of any nefarious doings by their old pal. A curious case of amnesia perhaps. Or are they headed for the tall grass as the feds may be on their tails? In any event, it is not exactly a profile in loyalty. Consider this in today's New York Times,

"As Mr. Abramoff's problems touched Mr. DeLay - the majority leader may face an ethics inquiry over trips arranged by Mr. Abramoff - Mr. Norquist was their most vocal defender. But in recent weeks he has distanced himself from the two men whose success has been so intertwined with his own.

At a gala dinner this month to support Mr. DeLay, Mr. Norquist declined a seat on the dais, despite being listed as a host. He slipped out after a predinner reception, he said later, for a dinner party at his home.

Mr. Abramoff attended his wedding on April 2, yet Mr. Norquist described him as simply a "friend," someone he has lunch or dinner with a few times a year. "I knew him when we were in college," he said. "But there's no business or financial relationship."

Mr. Norquist later elaborated: "I haven't seen that much of him recently, and I don't - and it's mostly because - I'm not shunning him or anything. It's just, I'm busy, he's busy, he's in a different world. He took the path I didn't take, which was to go make money as a consultant, and I decided to build A.T.R."

Really, with the scabrous likes of these two, it seems hardly surprising.

My e-mail to pabaah.com

I tried to engage these loony toons, but it was no use. An obviously futile venture, I must admit.
§§§
To: jonalvy44@hotmail.com
Date: Thursday, May 19, 2005 10:36 am
Subject: My registration on pabaah.com
Dear Mr. Alvarez, [http://pabaah.com]

I was directed to your website by an article in the New York Times, and I mistakenly assumed that, as with most public interest websites, there would be room for a diversity of views. Having observed your "rules," which apparently quite explicitly prohibit any disagreement, I must ask that you delete my registration. I gather that were I to post anything on one of your message boards, I would find myself exiled to oblivion in any case.

If you will accept the challenge to read a few sentences of explanation:

I am an American with pre-Revolutionary antecedents (on my mother's side; the last name is Swiss). I am very proud to call myself a Patriot. I believe in America, not only as my homeland but as an embodiment of the ideal of representative government and guaranteed rights of free expression. These guaranteed rights make our nation stronger, not weaker. Your anti-dissent views are, I believe, anathema to the spirit of the American Revolution, and I find the unwillingness to even consider others' take on things to be characteristic of closed-minded people who really do not really believe in the principles of representative democracy on which our nation was founded. Moreover, I believe that the opinion, espoused everywhere on your webiste, that a man is a traitor because he is a dissident from the policies of his government, is a very betrayal of the spirit of the founding of this country. People holding such views have no legitimate claim to call themselves patriots.

Patriotism is not "supporting our president." It is supporting the ideals on which our nation is based. A patriot's duty to his country is to seek to change that with which he disagrees. If you do not understand this, you do not understand the central idea of America, and I am sorry for you.

I support your right, of course, to boycott entertainers who you think are advancing a political agenda with which you disagree. This is a time-honored form of dissent. But calling such people traitors, and shutting up all dissent in your own forums, is indicative of a profound lack of understanding of what the right to dissent is all about. Calling for the government to prosecute dissenters like Michael Moore, is a frightening and ugly throwback to the worst excesses of 1950s McCarthyism.

Some day, I believe, people will look back on people like you the way post-WWII thinking Americans have tended to look back on the regrettable racist-fascist views of such people as Huey Long, Father Conklin, and Charles Lindbergh. Which is to say, as part of a dark chapter of our history, but not in stream with its main currents.

Thank you.

David Studhalter

Gazpacho and Ensalada de lentejas

Once again, it's summer, and time for gazpacho. If you don't know gazpacho, try it. It's lovely. But don't use the the recipe in Pedro Almodovar's Mujeres al bordo de attaca de nervios... (barbiturates are not an essential ingredient).

Most gazpachos have oil and breadcrumbs, which make them heavy and filling. This one is light and delicious, like liquid salad. Put in ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, if you really want to, but leave out the breadcrumbs. Garnish with croutons if you like bread. Use a mandolin to cut up the vegetables if you have one.

Flexible Gazpacho Andaluz

1½ lb. ripe garden tomatoes, cut in chunks, carefully preserving juices (If all you have is supermarket tomatoes, used canned tomatoes instead, they're riper).
1 bell pepper, seeded and cut up
1 good size cucumber, peeled and cut into chunks
1 small onion, peeled and cut into chunks. Sweet onions are nice here.
1 clove garlic, toasted in the jacket in dry skillet, then peeled and minced (optional; or use raw if you don't mind the sharpness of raw garlic)
1 apple, peeled, cored, and cut up into chunks (optional, but it adds a nice fruitiness; pear is good too)
¼ - ½ tsp. tarragon or something similar; basil or marjoram. Not rosemary or sage, they're too distinctive.
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup tomato juice or ice water
1 tsp. sugar (may omit if using apple; substitute 1½ tsp. honey if you want)
2 tbs. wine vinegar, or 3 of rice vinegar (more vinegar to taste)
Few drops worcestershire, if desired

Mix in batches in blender until no big chunks remain, but don't puree. Strain, pushing mixture thru with wooden spoon into large bowl. Stir thoroughly to blend all the batches of different stuff into a unified mixture.

Chill at least 3 hours, better overnight. Keeps several days in refrigerator. Serves 6, but just barely (no room for seconds). Recipe can easily be doubled, if you want to make a lot.

Serve cold in tall bowls if you have them. Set out with small bowls of cut up onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, and croutons, if desired, as garnishes. (Traditional in Spain).

Delicious.

§

A good accompaniment:


Ensalada de lentejas (Spanish Lentil Salad)

2/3 cup of lentils, washed
2 cloves garlic, toasted in the jacket in dry skillet, then peeled and minced
2 cloves
½ tsp. cumin
bay leaf
2 tbs. pimientos, cut into strips
3 tbs. wine vinegar or use rice vinegar
2 tbs. extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
(optional) 1 small zucchini
½ cup shredded carrots... use more if you like more carrot

Put cloves and bay leaf in a bouquet garni or tea ball. Cover lentils with water at least 2 inches above surface of beans, add salt (about 1 tsp.) and cumin. Bring to boil, cover then cook on low heat until not quite tender, about 30 minutes. At this point, add the zucchini, cut into ½ inch pieces, and re-cover. Continue cooking another 5 min. or so, until lentils are just tender. If not using zucchini, skip this step, and just cook straight through until just tender, about 35 min.

Remove bouquet garni and pour beans into strainer and immediately rinse thoroughly with cold water, until cool.

Add remaining ingredients to lentils in bowl, stir together, add salt and pepper to taste; add other herbs like Ms. Dash if you want to, but not too much. Chill, preferably overnight, as it gets better if the ingredients marinate together for awhile. Serve cold. Serves 4, or 6 if you're giving French-size portions.

§

These two and a little pasta with pesto or agli oli, and/or bread (such as garlic bread, pan con tomate, or bruschetta) will make a light summer supper.

Carbon Dioxide and the Climate Change

I'd like to again take the opportunity to highly recommend The New Yorker: Annals of Science: The Climate of Man I, II, and III* by Elizabeth Kolbert, in the April 25, May 2 and May 9 issues. This is pretty clearly the dominant environmental issue of the present decades, and these pieces sound a warning which should compare with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring... except the stakes are far, far higher, and next to nothing is being done about it.
......
*Pt. III doesn't seem to be online currently, but should be shortly.

Krugman: The Final Insult

Please see Krugman's piece on how the Bush claim to be indexing social security to benefit the poor at the expense of the rich is ... well, a lie, as well as an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

This oughtta scare ya

From The New Yorker: Annals of Science: The Climate of Man - II, May 2, 2005:

...By studying Antarctic ice cores, researchers have been able to piece together a record both of the earth's temperature and of the composition of its atmosphere going back four full glacial cycles. (...) What this record shows is that the planet is now nearly as warm as it has been at any point in the last four hundred thousand years. A possible consequence of even a four- or five-degree temperature rise -- on the low end of projections for doubled CO2 -- is that the world will enter a completely new climate regime, one with which modern humans have no prior experience.
...
A scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) put it to me -- only half jokingly -- this way: "It's true that we've had higher CO2 levels before. But, then, of course, we also had dinosaurs."

Comity and Civility

We proud liberals tend to maintain comity and civility in public discourse a good deal better than our Radical Conservative opponents, but since they've essentially declared war on (almost) everything I believe in, I think it's necessary to call a spade a spade when these people spout dangerous nonsense. I will therefore continue to insult, cajole, and backbite these folks, at least until that scabrous drug-addict hatemonger Rush Limbaugh is off the air for good.

My e-mail to John Tierney

This is my e-mail to John Tierney re: his April 30 column claiming that Democrats are flummoxed by Bush's "progressive" Social Security gambit.

Mr. Tierney:

As usual, your column is Radical-Conservative nonsense. The most important effect of Bush's deceptive proposal would be cuts in retirement benefits for anybody earning over $20,000 a year. People making median income would be substantially impacted. These are FACTS, which give the lie to any idea that the Bush plan is truly "progressive indexing" rather than an overall, massive cut in benefits for the majority of American wage-earners. As Matthew Yglesias puts it in TPM, "people raising families on salaries in the $30,000-$60,000 range are hardly living high on the hog or setting up trust funds for their kids."

Social Security taxes are capped at $90,000 of payroll income, so the very rich ALREADY pay no more in taxes and receive no more in benefits than do those in the upper tier of the middle class. The very rich are irrelevant to the debate on social security.

The scam of Bush's plan, which you endorse, is simply belied by the inescapable facts. Fortunately, for once, the majority of Americans have their BS detectors set on high, and this crap isn't playing in Peoria.

I wish the Times would find someone other than you to replace old man Safire. At least he was witty.

My e-mail to Andrew Sullivan.

Andrew Sullivan, who's pretty good lately on social issues and foreign policy, continues his troglodyte politics on bread and butter issues. He posted a virtually content-free support for Bush on social security "indexing," with a gratuitous attack on Paul Krugman (see below). Here's my e-mail to him:
.....................
Your pro-Bush comments about means-testing social security are baffling and insubstantial, as is your attack on Paul Krugman, which amounts to nothing but an ad hominem. It should be fairly obvious that the issue of means testing is pretty meaningless without some parameters. There is a huge difference between a means testing regime that cuts benefits for almost everyone (like Bush's proposal) and one that (as an example) would continue social security in its role as minimal old age insurance for most working people while removing or limiting the benefit for those with such abundant resources that they are not needed. Such a scheme, were it to be proposed, might even win some bipartisan support, whereas the Bush plan is so lopsided it clearly will not.

Far more logical, in my view, is the idea of increasing the social security tax to include higher income levels, and capping social security benefits, so that they reach a maximum payout amount based on contemporaneous median income (i.e at the time benefits are paid out, not while the tax is being paid in). There could also be a sliding scale drop off after a certain level of current income, (i.e. retirement actual income, as opposed to wage history), so that those who truly have essentially no need for the benefits would not receive them. Something like this could be engineered to completely remove the fiscal problems the program faces, but this clearly is not anything like the plan Bush advocates, which is, just as clearly, a disguised incremental phase-out of social security for the middle class for purely ideological reasons.

Your attack on Krugman is completely unspecific. His article is clear, and his points have not been refuted in any way by anything you said.

I think as a "big league" commentator and blogger, you should be willing to back up your comments on economic issues with economic analysis of some kind. I've found none in your supposed justification for supporting Bush on this issue. Perhaps economics just isn't your strong suit; if so, perhaps you should spare us your unsupported opinions on these subjects.

Krugman Explains How Bush Plan is Really a "Gut Punch" to the Middle Class

Paul Krugman explains, about as clearly as it's possible to explain, how Bush's "indexing" of social security benefits proposal is really nothing less than an incremental scheme to do away with Social Security for the vast majority of Americans.

Speak Out! Crush the Dear Leader's Social Security Heist!

The Washington Post (Millbank and VandeHei) is saying that the Dear Leader is gambling his second term legacy on his bold stroke of outlining his social security plan and energy policy in last night's press conference.

Ow. I didn't watch the press conference. I just can't stand his smirky face or snotty voice anymore. But I did read the transcript. The "details" of the social security plan... huge benefit cuts falling mainly on the middle class, (especially impacting baby boomer members of that class up to age 55), all out of proportion to the modest fiscal problems of social security... are worse than might have been expected, given the abject failure of his taxpayer financed PR campaign over the last couple of months. Two out of three now oppose Bush on social security.

Time to remind our congressional representatives that we are strongly opposed to Bush's plan to take away ... however incrementally ... the most successful social program in American history.

The less said about the industry-pandering and useless energy "plan" the better, except that it's a real tragedy that we have no leadership in this country willing to confront this issue for real, since there can hardly be a more important one to our nation's future. (Vastly more important than the relatively modest problems with social security funding).

Pope Benedict XVI

I hope that Catholics around our sorry globe have the same kind of patient response to the events in Rome that progressives in America have had to try to muster in the wake of the last two presidential elections. Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, an inveterate ueber-conservative, seems a very unfortunate choice for Pope for anyone who believes in inclusiveness, consensus, openness and the concept of a popular church, but his reign will inevitably be relatively brief, and perhaps the future will hold a new outlook. Sorry, that's the best I can do in the way of optimism.

A matter of semantic courtesy

Something which has grated on me for years, ever since Bob Dole made his infamous crack about "Democrat wars," is the tendency of right wing partisans to use "Democrat" as an adjective, instead of "Democratic," as a fillip of deliberate discourtesy.

Legitimate commentators and news reporters are always careful to say "Democratic." Invariably partisans, and especially hard right partisans, including President Bush, will say things like "Democrat economist," (Bush recently), and "Democrat-friendly press," etc. (DeLay today).

There's a place for political invective and derision, but public statements intended for the general public is not it. Would they like it if our leaders called their policies "Republicist policies," or some other malapropism? This kind of deliberate discourtesy sends a message: you're not legitimate, and we are. I consider it just a subtle, but significant part of the right wing's efforts to stifle political diversity and freedom in this country, through all disinformation all the time.

Bill Frist Republican Presidential Nominee 08

I keep reading references to Senator Bill (Filibuster Killer) Frist's presidential ambitions in 08. I hope the Repubs do nominate this zero charisma goon. The only way he could win would be through massive vote fraud... oh, wait. Why do I have this sick, sick feeling?

12/03: BuzzFlash.com Talks with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., About His Emile Zola-like "J'Accuse" Indictment of the Bush Anti-Environmental Record

December, ‘03

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

"This, to me, is one of the most alarming things that this Administration is doing -- it’s compromised the scientific process and systematically intimidated, blackballed, fired, muzzled and gagged scientists in every department of government. Scientists who produce science that challenges corporate profit taking, or that might be an obstacle to corporate profit taking, are routinely punished or punished by muzzled or gagged." -- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

For his entire adult life, Robert F. Kennedy has fought to protect our environment. In a recent lengthy commentary in Rolling Stone Magazine, Kennedy issued a brilliant, impassioned, well-documented indictment of the Bush administration for its assault on the air, water, and land owned by all Americans for our common good.

Kennedy serves as chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and serves as the President of the Waterkeeper Alliance. He is a clinical professor and supervising attorney at the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University School of Law in New York.

BuzzFlash recently interviewed Kennedy about his case against the Bush administration's ruinous policies toward the environment.

* * *

BuzzFlash: Your recent article in Rolling Stone caught our attention because it’s sort of a modern version of Emile Zola’s J’Accuse -- in this case, an indictment of the environmental policies of President George W. Bush. And toward the end of this rather lengthy indictment, you ask the question: "Does the government protect the Commonwealth on behalf of all of the community members or does it allow wealth and political clout to steal the commons from the people?" That seems to be the central crux of the question about how any administration is dealing with issues of what belongs to "the American people in common." And certainly that’s something that applies to the environment. What is your judgment about the Bush Administration in terms of how it measures up on that question?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: One of the central roles of government from the beginning of the first organized communities has been protection -- the safeguarding of the commons on behalf of the public. The commons under Roman law -- under the Code of Justinian -- were defined as those things that are not susceptible to private ownership; in other words, the shared resources, the air that we breathe, the waterways, the dune lands, wetlands, wandering animals.

And under Roman law, if you were a citizen of Rome, the Emperor himself, whether you were humble, noble, rich or poor, could not stop you from crossing a beach flowing at an ebb and taking out the fish. Everybody had a right to use those resources. Nobody had a right to use them in a way that would diminish or injure their use and enjoyment by others.

That principle is echoed in the Magna Carta and in the constitutions of all of our states, through a doctrine that’s called the Public Trust Doctrine. And it’s at the heart of our environmental laws. And again, from the beginning of time, the first acts of tyranny were to privatize the commons. In fact, the Magna Carta was passed because of the Battle of Runneymede, which was precipitated by King John’s efforts to turn the rivers, the fisheries and the deer over to private corporations and privileged parties.

Under the Bush Administration, we’re seeing the same thing that happened in this country during the 1880s and 1890s, during the Gilded Age, where now -- as then -- large corporations have an undue influence on government officials, and where they are literally stealing things that belong to the public.

One out of every four black children in New York now has asthma. We don’t know what’s causing the pandemic itself, but we know that asthma attacks are triggered by ozone in particulates, and that the primary source -- about 40 percent of those components of air pollution -- are coming from 1,100 coal-fire power plants that were supposed to have been cleaned up 10 years ago.

But the energy industry gave $48 million to President Bush and the Republican Party during the 2000 race, and the payback is billions of dollars of relief from regulations that are meant to protect the commons, including the Clean Air Acts’ resource performance standards, which the Bush Administration abandoned last month. So it’s illegal for those companies to put those substances into our air, but the Bush Administration has now said that it is no longer going to enforce the laws against them.

BuzzFlash: You call this, in your article in Rolling Stone, "looting the commons."

Kennedy: Let me add one other thing. Yesterday, the Bush Administration announced that it wasn’t going to enforce mercury standards. And mercury, you know, is a potent neurotoxin brain poison. Forty percent of the mercury emissions in our country are coming from those same 1,100 power plants, and they have poisoned the fresh water bodies across America. They’re now 28 states in which it is unsafe to eat any freshwater fish in the state.

According to the CDC, there are 325,000 children born each year who have been subjected to such high levels of mercury in the womb that they are at risk for permanent brain damage. The Clinton Administration classified mercury as a toxic substance under the Clean Air Act, and required the utilities industry to remove 90 percent of the mercury within three years. But the Bush Administration has now abandoned that requirement and adopted a new proposal that will effectively allow them to discharge mercury forever.

BuzzFlash: How is this happening? You’ve been involved with the environment throughout your professional career. You’re an attorney who works on cases trying to protect the environment. How is the Bush Administration getting away with what you describe -- in essence, an assault on almost every aspect of the environment?

Kennedy: There are over 200 major environmental rollbacks that are now being promoted by the Bush Administration, and they’re listed on NRDC’s website. They’re getting away with this because the media isn’t paying attention. And the reason I say that is that polling, including the Republican Party polls taken by Frank Luntz, consistently shows that Americans across party lines favor strong environmental protection and strict enforcement of our laws. Republicans and Democrats favor strengthening our environmental laws by margins upwards of 75 percent. So the White House proceeded with an understanding that its anti-environmental agenda is unpopular with the American people and has successfully concealed its agenda through a series of stealth attacks designed to eviscerate 30 years of environmental law.

NRDC obtained a memo and released it to the press -- from Frank Luntz to the President and to top Republican leaders -- in which he recommended that strategy as necessary for preserving the President’s electoral strength. Luntz says in his memo that the rollbacks are unpopular with the public, including the Republican Party stalwarts, and that the science was against the Republicans on these issues. And he recommended recruiting industry scientists who would sow confusion about the science. And he recommended concealing the anti-environmental actions of the Administration underneath the mantle of environmental rhetoric.

BuzzFlash: Can you give examples? The cynically named "Clear Skies," for instance?

Kennedy: Yes, "The Clear Skies" initiative. The Bush Administration has followed Luntz’s advice by cloaking its anti-environmental agenda with deceptively named initiatives -- for example, "The Healthy Forests Act," which was passed Wednesday, is really a way of reintroducing 1950s-style industrial logging to public lands that were thought to be protected forever. "The Clear Skies" Agenda is a bill that guts the Clean Air Act. Environmentalists called it the Clear Lies Initiative. And Luntz recommends that, instead of weakening, that the Republicans use the word "streamlining," which they do.

The Administration invariably releases news about these initiatives on Friday afternoons when the press is sleeping, or on holidays. Over the next several weeks during the Christmas holiday, you can expect that we’re going to see a lot more of these initiatives.

BuzzFlash: The use of science comes off as somewhat ironic almost from the first week Bush was sworn in. One of the first issues that came up was global warming. He said we’re not going to enact any regulations unless we can first put them through a "science-based" series of tests. What you’re suggesting, Robert, as one of the subtitles in the Rolling Stones commentary states, is that they’re "cooking the books" scientifically.

Kennedy: Yes. This, to me, is one of the most alarming things that this Administration is doing -- it’s compromised the scientific process and systematically intimidated, blackballed, fired, muzzled and gagged scientists in every department of government. Scientists who produce science that challenges corporate profit taking, or that might be an obstacle to corporate profit taking, are routinely punished or punished by muzzled or gagged.

I’ll give you an example. Last year, a Department of Agriculture scientist produced a series of reports that showed that discharges from hog factories operated by big agri-businesses like Smithfield and Tyson’s Foods, the air emissions from these factories include, on average, a billion antibiotic-resistant bacteria every day, which cross property lines and threaten downwind neighbors and their herds.

I invited this scientist to make a presentation to a group of farmers and farm activists in Clear Lake, Iowa last year, to about 1,100 or 1,200 farmers and farm activists who are fighting agri-business on factory farms. And the hog industry -- the Pork Producers Council -- learned a day before he was supposed to make his presentation to us that he was going to visit our conference. They contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered him not to appear at the conference. He later told me that he had been ordered to not speak at over a dozen events -- mainly presentations to local county health departments on his findings. And remember, this is a taxpayer-funded study. The USDA also ordered him to withdraw the study and not publish it.

The study is peer-reviewed quality study that was funded with taxpayer money, but it offended the industry. And the industry has so much control over our government officials that the USDA, which is supposed to be protecting small farmers and rural communities, has instead become an advocate for big agri-business and is muzzling its own scientists when the science shows that agri-business practices are posing a public health threat. The same Administration ordered government scientists not to study methal bromide, another pesticide. They’ve ordered government scientists not to study mercury. And they’ve muzzled two scientists within the EPA who were studying mercury poisoning.

The U.S. Department of Interior has altered a series of reports on polar bears, trumpeter swans, and caribou in the Arctic that show that industry practices are damaging these animals. They’ve done the same on desert fishes in Arizona, on timber wolves, on grizzly bears. All of these reports indicated that corporate activity was threatening the continued existence of these species. And so the Administration ordered the science halted.

BuzzFlash: On this specific topic of manipulation of science, you have a paragraph, about midway through the article, about global warming, in which you mention that a report, which had been suppressed by the Bush Administration, was leaked by dissident EPA scientists. It showed that a Senate plan co-sponsored by John McCain could reduce pollution that causes global warming at a very small cost, and the Administration basically squashed that. To knock the leaked study off the radar screen, the Bush Administration announced it was launching a $100 million, 10-year effort to prove that global temperature changes have, in fact, occurred naturally.

Kennedy: Ha.

BuzzFlash: And you say now the delay tactic was done to benefit the fossil fuel barons. So we had a study ostensibly that showed really we could reduce the pollution that causes global warming for very little cost. The Bush Administration suppresses that. When it finally is leaked, then they come up with a study that’s going to waste one-tenth of a billion dollars to try to prove, over a 10-year period, that it’s all really due to natural causes.

Kennedy: That’s right. My Rolling Stone piece mentions 12 different major studies on global warming that have been suppressed or altered by the Bush Administration. And the President’s father did this same tactic. One of the studies that this Bush Administration has suppressed was a 10-year intensive study that was inaugurated by President Bush’s father when he was President for the same reason -- to delay action on what was already a consensus among the world’s scientists: that global warming exists, and that it’s caused by the byproducts of our population growth aided by industrial discharges into our atmosphere.

That report, inaugurated by the original President Bush, also concluded that this is a crisis that has to be addressed immediately. That was suppressed, and then the son has launched another 10-year study. His intention is transparent -- a continued delay on any action on global warming gasses.

BuzzFlash: Near the end of the indictment of the Bush Administration, you make the statement that corporate capitalists do not want free markets. They want dependable profits, and their surest route to crush competition is by controlling the government. You go on to suggest that what we’ve seen happen in the Bush Administration is that the industries that are governed are now basically governing themselves because Bush has appointed so many industry people to regulatory jobs. They’ve gone through the revolving door and end up policing the very industries they’re coming from.

Kennedy: All of our federal agencies have now been captured by the industries that they’re intended to regulate. The head of the Forest Service is a timber industry lobbyist. The head of our public lands is a mining industry lobbyist. The chief of staff in the White House, Andrew Card, was chief counsel to General Motors and its top lobbyists. And 22 of the top 38 White House officials all have energy industry pedigrees. We have a president that says that he doesn’t listen to TV, and he doesn’t get his news from the newspapers, but gets it from his staff. Unfortunately, all of his staff are from the energy industries, and the rest of them have corporate pedigrees. So they, of course, have a rosy view of what’s going on in our country, and their opinions about how our nation ought to work may not always reflect the best interests of the American public.

I think my concern regarding the increasing control of government by large corporations should be a central issue to all Americans. I was raised in a milieu where I was taught that communism leads to dictatorship and capitalism leads to democracy. But it’s not that simple. Free-market capitalism definitely democratizes a country. But corporate crony capitalism is as antithetical to democracy in America as it is in Nigeria. And corporate control of government is fascism. The definition of communism is the control of business by government. The definition of fascism is the control of government by business.

A farmer sent me a copy of the American Heritage Dictionary’s definition of fascism the other day, and the definition is roughly that the control of government by large corporations with right-wing ideologies, driven by bellicose nationalism. That has a familiar ring these days.

Democracy is fragile. It needs to be nurtured. It needs to be stewarded. And the free market has to be protected through government regulation. As I say, capitalists do not want free markets. They want profits. And the best way to capture profits -- to capture a reliable profit stream -- is to get control of government and use government to crush your competition.

And that’s what’s happening in this country -- the free market is being eliminated. And in many of the major sectors, the free market has already disappeared. There is no free market left in agriculture. A farmer can’t raise a pig and get it slaughtered, and bring it to a stockyard and sell it. The stockyards are gone. The farmers are out of business, and hog production and meat production and chicken production in this country is now controlled by giant agri-businesses, as is grain production. The same is true in the energy sector, and in the media -- you’ve got 17,000 news outlets in this country that are now controlled by 11 corporations. And it’s even happening on Main Street, where Wal-Mart is coming and knocking out the Main Street merchants, the small entrepreneurs. They’re really making American democracy viable. And it’s a frightening thing for our country. But we need a free market.

I heard him Jim Hightower the free market is a great thing. We should try it sometime. We’re losing it in America. And when we lose the free market -- the free market democracy, the democracy of the marketplace -- political democracy will fall soon after. And that’s something all of us should be afraid of.

BuzzFlash: Again, you’ve devoted your life to trying to keep the environment as pristine and as useable as possible for the public good. There’s been talk by some large corporations -- Enron was dabbling in it -- of actually privatizing water rights. Is the public not seeing what’s happening in terms of the privatization of the environment?

Kennedy: The privatization is occurring when a coal company and a utility poison the air that your children are supposed to be breathing. That’s the privatization of a public resource. It’s a privatization of a public resource when General Electric dumps PCBs into the Hudson River so that nobody can eat the fish, so it’s illegal to sell the fish in the marketplace, because those fish were owned by the public. And they were owned by the commercial fishermen who utilized that resource for generations -- for 350 years. But all of a sudden, those fishermen were put out of business -- the small business enterprises were put out of business because General Electric had better lobbyists up in Albany. And they were able to dump grease the political skids and dump their PCBs into the Hudson. They made a big profit by privatizing the commons -- by liquidating a public asset for cash, which were the fish of the Hudson River.

And the coal companies and the utilities are liquidating a public asset for cash, which is the air that we breathe. And it’s not just that our public lands are being opened, or that our water systems are being sold to private companies, but you can privatize the commons through pollution, because that’s a public asset that is being essentially reduced to private control. It’s being stolen from the public through your actions.

And that’s what’s going on on Capitol Hill. It’s much more subtle, in most cases, than somebody kind of outright buying a public water supply. But it’s much more ubiquitous too. It’s happening everywhere, all around us, with the things that we always took for granted -- the air, the water, the fisheries, the wetlands. All the things that are owned by the public, such as the aquifers that are the infrastructure to our quality of life. Those things are being stolen from us by private corporate entities with political clout.

BuzzFlash: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., thank you very much for your time.

Kennedy: Thanks for having me.

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From www.buzzflash.com

Ivins: Good Sense on Oil Policy: Not in Cheney's White House

See Molly Ivins's column from Mar. 29.

My letter to David Brooks

Mr. Brooks,

In your column today you assert that Democrats "just said no" (echoing an orchestrated G.O.P. canard) to Republican "offers" of a big payroll tax increase for the upper class and upper-middle class, and progressively indexing benefits to protect the poor and working class from benefit cuts. Your claim lacks substance. These "proposals" were nothing more than trial balloons, to which no response was required or even suggested, and I saw nothing in any news media reporting any specific negative responses attributed to congressional Democrats. If you seriously maintain the truth of this claim, you should back it up with specifics.

On another point, it has been repeatedly pointed out by your colleague Mr. Krugman, among many others, that the problems of funding Medicare and Medicaid so dwarf the problems with Social Security that the President's emphasis on the alleged "crisis" in Social Security comes off as disingenuous, at best. The Congress has long refused to deal with the elephant in the living room, namely the huge problem of financing health care in general and the millions of uninsured. Other countries have faced up to these responsibilities successfully, but our politics is so wedded to special interests in the health care industry that this one sector of the economy threatens to virtually bankrupt the treasury if the larger issue isn't dealt with. The problems of social security pale in comparison.

It has also been frequently mentioned that the President's tax cuts are undeniably far more detrimental to the fiscal health of the nation than either of these entitlement funding "crises," but this issue appears to be off the table for those on the right. As an example, the hypocritical shilling for the Administration done by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has recently been cast into high relief for anyone willing to look at it honestly.

I think you're right that Social Security "reform" is dead for the moment, but I think your refusal to look at it in the light of the big picture of the fiscal irresponsibility of the Republicans in Washington does a disservice to your readers.

Thank you.

David Studhalter.