Saturday, March 2, 2013

Sequestration and solitary confinement

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: This is the big documentary film festival weekend in Columbia, the True/False festival and the thermometer is stubbornly staying at 32 degrees so that when I put my Ford 150 in gear all that happens is the wheels spin. Yesterday, the temperature rose a little so I rode with Marshall to town and I got to see the grandkids, in from sunny California for the festival. James and I built a hospital ship out of leggos, his cousin’s leggos as he reminded me frequently. So we were very careful not to lose any. We got the ship built and rescued three sick Leggo people—one with malaria, one with what James called “infinity diarrhea” and one with hypertension. Since we were out of people, having only three, we had to build a robot doctor. Fortunately, we had barrels of medicines on the ship and cured the malaria quickly. The diarrhea case was a little more tricky, since the medication made him cough. Not a good outcome for someone with diarrhea. We were lucky, though, and found the right pills to get it under control. The Leggo guy with hypertension was also in handcuffs. Did you know they make handcuffs for leggo characters? Do you find that outrageous? Since I’ve spent much of the snowstorm in my cozy bedroom working on an essay about women in the prison system, to accompany the memoir of a prison superintendent, I find it insane that our society will buy for plastic handcuffs for child play. Should we next begin telling them to build isolation cells from Leggos for plastic dolls in solitary confinement? It ain’t normal, folks. Solitary confinement, which visiting experts found in a Missouri reform school, was deemed inhumane in the 1920s and had a resurgence in the 1930s. Again, the experts discouraged it but even enlightened superintendents and wardens have used it all along, even though there are barrels of medicine available that supposedly control people. With this year’s budget “sequestration,” which sounds sort of like putting money in solitary confinement, we’re going to hear a lot about isolation, confinement, shackles on our most cantankerous folks. With no money for education, medications or any kind of reward system for good behavior, it will not be surprising if officials are driven to medieval systems of treatment. Budget cuts for federal employees? Let’s start with Congress and the President. Judges, too. One of my dairy friends, living on credit cards, figured out that if milk prices had risen like government salaries, milk would cost $25 a gallon.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Editorial: The Debt Alarm Sham


From the March 15, 2013 edition:

 Democrats and Republicans alike depicted a hellscape if the federal budget “sequester” was allowed to take effect on March 1. The only difference is that Republicans were looking forward to blaming the apocalypse on President Obama.

 That is, until House Speaker John Boehner was reminded that in July 2011 he told House Republicans the sequestration process was included in the Budget Control Act of 2011 to force $1.2 trillion in cuts across the board over 10 years if a joint committee couldn’t agree to more targeted cuts and/or revenue increases.

 Boehner thought that, as the sequester deadline approached, the House would be able to force the Senate and President Obama to accept a substitute bill that would keep the military budget largely intact but force the cuts disproportionately on domestic programs. (But Republicans didn’t bother to pass that bill in the current Congress. Instead, they left town.)

 When the President insisted that any sequester deal include tax reforms that limit tax breaks for the wealthy, Republicans balked, saying they would not go beyond the restoration of the pre-Bush tax rates for the wealthiest Americans that was approved in January. The Republican intransigence on taxes is proof that their alarms over the federal budget deficit are a sham. Rational Republicans know that budget cutting during a recession doesn’t close a deficit; it merely puts more people out of work — an estimated 750,000 jobs could be lost from the sequester — and those lost jobs reduce tax revenue, further increasing the deficit.

 We know that tax rates must generate about 20% of the gross domestic product during normal economic times to balance the federal budget. That’s what Bill Clinton and the Democrats set up in 1993 when they raised tax rates modestly without a single Republican vote in favor. Instead, Republican leaders denounced the Clinton tax-raising budget as an economy killer that would certainly bring on a recession. Of course, the economy boomed. Through the ’90s we saw low unemployment rates, the Treasury reaped the benefits and, when he left the White House, Clinton turned over to new President George W. Bush a balanced budget that was on course to pay off the national debt by 2010.

 But Bush denounced the surplus as proof that the government was collecting too much money. Then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan warned that paying off the national debt too fast could be bad for the nation. So instead Bush cut taxes on the wealthy, even as he ramped up two wars. The problem of retiring the national debt was solved!

 Republicans did not discover the problems of the ballooning debt until Jan. 20, 2009. While Barack and Michelle Obama were making the rounds of Inaugural balls, GOP leaders met secretly to vow to do everything they could to make sure Obama did not succeed in pulling the economy out of the tailspin Bush had put it in.

 Revenue as a percentage of the GDP bottomed out at 15.1% in the depth of the Great Recession in 2009 and 2010, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Deficits of $1.4 trillion in 2009 and $1.3 trillion in 2010, when measured as a share of GDP, were the largest since the end of World War II — representing 10% and 8.9% of the nation’s output, respectively. But with the economy in recovery and the slightly higher tax rates on the wealthy that were approved in January, tax revenue this year is expected to increase to 17.8% of GDP and 19.2% by 2017 under current laws.

 If those laws do not change, the Congressional Budget Office reported Feb. 5, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $845 billion, or 5.3% of the GDP, its smallest size since 2008. But the CBO also reported that the economy shrank by a tenth of 1% in the last quarter of 2012, largely because of a reduction in federal spending, and the fiscal contraction would shrink the growth rate to 1.4% this fiscal year.

 The nonpartisan CBO expects deficits to continue to shrink over the next few year to 2.4% of GDP by 2015. But a poll conducted for Bloomberg News (Feb. 15-18) found that 94% of Americans did not know the budget deficit was shrinking. The survey found 62% thought the deficit was growing, while 28% said it was about the same and 4% were not sure. Only 6% correctly said the deficit was smaller.

 So there is no emergency and Democrats in Congress must reject any deals President Obama might reach with Republicans that would cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid and put the burden of deficit reduction on the poor and/or the elderly.

 In the first place, Social Security has nothing to do with the federal deficit — the Social Security Trust Fund is self-sustaining through the payroll tax and promised benefits are secure at least for the next 20 years. The “problem” is that Congress borrowed $2.5 trillion from the Trust Fund to keep income taxes low while Bush was fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now Congress doesn’t want to pay the money back to Social Security.

 Assuming Congress honors its obligations to seniors and pays its debt to the Trust Fund, if there is a longer-term problem in paying promised Social Security benefits — and that is only indicated under pessimistic economic projections — the shortfall could be closed by removing the cap on income subject to the payroll tax, which is now $113,700. But you wouldn’t know about that solution from listening to the pundits, most of whom don’t want to pay more payroll tax.

 In the second place, the Affordable Care Act is projected to reduce the deficit by billions over the next 10 years, and it already has played a role in reducing the growth of Medicare costs. Since the health care reform was passed in 2010, the projections of the growth of health care costs has dropped by $511 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. At least some of that slowdown in health costs may be due to the the passage of Obamacare, which is phasing in new incentives and reforms to make health care delivery more efficient.

 In the third place, Medicaid expansion will help to reduce costs to insurance companies, healthcare providers and local taxpayers because they will no longer have to subsidize health coverage of uninsured working-class families whose employers cannot or will not provide health coverage.

 Simply put, any Democratic member of Congress, in the House or Senate, who supports cuts in benefits to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in an attempt to resolve the latest Republican-imposed budget crisis should get a challenger in next year’s Democratic primary. Labor unions should make it clear that officeholders who agree to cut Social Security — even the “minor” cuts envisioned in the proposed “Chained CPI” changes — will find themselves banished from labor’s push cards.

 As Dean Baker has written, the Chained CPI, which reduces benefits compared with the current schedule by 0.3% annually, adds up to a 3% cut in annual benefits after 10 years. Since Social Security provides more than half of the income for almost 70% of retirees, a 3% cut in Social Security benefits amounts to a reduction in their total income of more than 1.5%. “By contrast, if a wealthy couple has an income of $500,000 a year, as a result of President Obama’s tax increases, they would be paying an addition 3 percentage points in taxes, or $3,000, on the income above $400,000. That comes to just 0.6% of their income,” he noted.

 If the Chained CPI cut is not a big deal for Social Security retirees then the tax increases on the wealthy are even less of a big deal. And the One Percenters can better afford them.

 Yet even if progressives keep Congress from raiding Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to settle the sequestration, the Republicans will come back after them at the next self-imposed crisis, when funding for the current fiscal year expires on March 27, and again in mid-May, when the Treasury is expected to run up against its borrowing limit again. The economic terrorists won’t quit, and neither can the rest of us. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2013

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Selections from the March 15, 2013 issue













Thursday, February 28, 2013

Snow can't stop the Missouri Senate from evil--can we?

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: It feels like a long time since the snow started, but it’s only been a week. We got our chores done, everyone settled with food and water, made our run to town for eggs (hens don’t lay eggs in bad weather, FYI if you’re getting hens) and got back in time for the snow to begin in earnest. Then the electricity went off for a day, 24 hours, and we really felt sorry for ourselves. No internet. No TV. No radio. After a day, I started calling neighbors and found out that being cut off is harder on some folks than others. We were generally OK, but one neighbor was having panic attacks at being alone. I tried to get him to go to the gas station and hang out, maybe he did. You know how it is when you get to a certain point and you can’t think what to do? He was at that point. My idea, to get out, seemed brilliant to him and he thanked me over and over. Another neighbor heard the timbers of his barn cracking at night when he was in bed and he was too worried to go out and look. Had the roof fallen completely in? Did it kill his livestock? He couldn’t bring himself to go out. After talking to a few folks, I felt really lucky. Our barn is OK and we have plenty of food in the cupboard and wood in the woodpile. Chilly, but lucky. Everything has been cancelled for the most part, but wouldn’t you know the legislature figured out a way to hold sessions and that old bugaboo, Senate Bill 41, “the polluters’ protection act” is making its way through the Missouri Senate again. We defeated it last year, but Senator Munzlinger, a Farm Bureau puppet, brought it up again. You’d think, as a Republican, that he’d know that his bill takes away constitutional rights of farmers and landowners to protect their property & property rights through the court system. In my neighborhood, the hog CAFO owner nearby does a great job of keeping his place clean and only mildly stinky but he didn’t do that until some of the neighbors threatened a lawsuit and settled out of court. Still, corporate lobbyists have once again convinced some legislators of the need to protect a very small minority of corporate industrial livestock operations at the expense of the property rights of the majority of family farms, rural landowners and other property owners. But, hey, this law wouldn’t affect only rural folks. Anyone living near an industrial facility—a landfill, chemical plant or even a sausage making plant—can be affected by runoff and bad air. SB 41clearly favors the “rights” of corporations over the rights of Missourians, our families and our communities. So, yeah, we’re back on the phone today. Tonight, the legislature goes home and enough snow has melted that I’ll get out tomorrow. A whole new world out there!

Monday, February 25, 2013

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Drone


By Charles Cullen

I'm going to make an argument that few progressives on Earth will be entirely comfortable reading. But I'm making it because the subject is one of the few areas where progressives are as scattered and self-deluded as the Right. As long as the Right continues to insist on taking a leave from sanity, the task of governing falls to us. And this is an issue we need to get straight.

Every pious Progressive knows how they should feel about drone strikes and drone technology in general. We are supposed to reject drones as a kind of neo-imperialistic affront to humanity; a rough beast that never should have been brought forth from the belly of the War Machine, and should be abandoned as soon as possible. But whenever we talk about drones we end up mixing the issues regarding drones and stirring these issues into a fine sauce of nonsense and general outrage. General outrage is incredibly dangerous here because it's useless in this case — it won't get anything done. It's dangerous because this is something we have to get right and because specific outrage is so desperately needed.

Chances are you have a few progressive friends. The next time you're having a drink with them, try talking drones. I guarantee that within seconds you will have managed to weave policy, legality, intelligence, and the knee jerk reaction to something fearful and inhuman roaming the skies into a finely knit crimes-against-humanity sweater. I'd like to pull the strands apart.

First we have several legal arguments about governance: how and when and on whom drones may be used, and then we have the argument about general constraints on the drone master. We need to look at each of these issues individually (as many, including the President, have already suggested). We need clear rules governing the use of drones, careful oversight of drone-strikes, and a policy commitment to sustaining excellent, actionable intelligence.

But we cannot allow a general fear of drones as a technology to bleed into our discussion of law or policy. It's fine if you're outraged by the very idea of drones, but I hope you are at minimum equally outraged by all troops currently stationed in other countries as they fight our ongoing war on a concept. As long as we are at war with “terror,” we will never be free of the need to assert some sort of military presence in countries not our own. We will always have to have some way of destroying terrorist networks, and that will usually involve killing people. As inaccurate as drones can be, I would argue that when tasked with killing enemies of our State, panicked, insufficiently supported soldiers are just as inaccurate and more likely to fan the flames of anger among members of the occupied foreign populace. People don't like houses blowing up without warning, causing collateral damage. They like being occupied even less. This is why violent occupation has and always will lead to organized resistance. If you, as an oppressed member of the native populace, pass your enemy every day on the street, folks suggesting creative ways to deal with your oppressors start sounding more and more reasonable by the day. Just ask the Taliban.

Soldiers have to deal with the shattering emotional toll of killing another human being (assuming of course they aren't killed themselves) and we are just seeing the start of what that means as veterans try to reeintegrate into normal life. Drones, as far as I know, are pretty ok with the whole thing.

So here's how the argument has to go: First, what legal changes do we need to make to drone policy? Second, what governmental changes do we need to make as far as the implimentation of policy and general oversite? And specifically, how much oversight can we ask for without jeopardizing the quick-strike necessity of drones? Third, what changes can we make to drone technology to lessen the possibilty of collateral damage in drone kills and make sure the only people we kill are the ones we mean to kill.

Countless advancements in killing technology have been greeted by people with a strong moral radar as the final step over the line; too far for a society to go and still call itself a just society. And that's good. It's necessary. But if we think that drone outrage is the first time people have looked at a weapon and recoiled, we're kidding ourselves. Certain members of the English military considered the crossbow to be “unsporting,” and some refused to use them. Refused, that is, until the other side picked them up.

And that is essentially where we find ourselves: in the grip of a policy, not a technology crisis. We can have the ethical argument when we decide to stop passing the ethical buck. If we suggest abandoning drones, we must also offer a comprehensive way to prevent our soldiers from having to sneak around buildings in the middle of the night, house to house, using the same intelligence we might give to a drone, kick down the door of the (hopefully) correct place, and execute whomever happens to be inside. Until we do that, we're worse than hypocrites, we're lazy, sadistic hypocrites.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Humane?

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: From where I sit, I have a great view of two male blue jays pecking at the eaves of the garage. No idea what’s keeping them at it—bugs in the eaves? Melted snow? Something tasty in the paint? Whatever it is, they’ve been pecking for a half hour and they’re doing considerable damage to the wood. In the barn, two pigeons have nested and set up house, dropping poo all over the tractor, chore cart and all the other equipment in there. Last year we had eight or ten and we tried to trap them in live traps like raccoons but no success. We can’t use poisons because we have so many pets around. So I finally had to find a hunter with a shotgun. This year, we’re trying again to find a better way, have strung nets around the barn in hopes of nabbing them without using bullets. Seems like we’re always battling predators. They come after our lambs, our hens, our guineas. Now that the neighbors are reporting mountain lions around, I won’t let anyone go in the woods alone, even just to pick mushrooms. Got to have a buddy and got to make lots of noise. Those are my rules for the woods. But these vegans. They never have problems with mice, cockroaches, ants in the pantry, moths, mountain lions. How do they do it? Well, near as I can figure, they are rich people, movie stars. They don’t worry about fixing the garage and they have someone else take care of the mice, ants, moths. And they banish the animals from their lives. They might have a few pet dogs, vegan ones, but they don’t have goats or calves or even goldfish in their ponds. They want the planet for themselves, humans, only. They want to eat foods from fields nourished with chemicals rather than animal products. A lot of the vegans look unhealthy. Too much sugar and refined flour. Twinkies and chips, sodas and vitamin pills. And, they don’t worry about the people involved in making the things they eat, like the sugar cane harvesters that can’t feed their own kids or the farmers handling dangerous chemicals so they can raise corn for sweeteners and soy for thickening. I read one time that all humane societies begin with horses. Someone sees horses treated cruelly and they protest. Then they move to protecting dogs, cats and finally to protecting humans. Seems backwards, but that’s how it goes. At least that’s what I read. Well, enough for today. February 22, 2013.

Let’s keep the military cuts in the sequester but not the cuts to social services

By Marc Jampole

February’s crisis of the month is the looming “sequester,” which will automatically make deep cuts in government programs unless Congress gets its act together and passes an alternative fiscal plan by March 1.

As usual when it comes to money issues, Democrats and Republicans are at an impasse on how to avoid the sequester. Democrats want to replace it with a mix of tax increases and program cuts. Republicans want government services such as air traffic controller staffs, food stamps and health programs for children to take the brunt of program cuts, with no cut to military spending and no increase in taxes.

Both sides have it wrong. If the concern is to help the economy recover, we should raise taxes on the wealthy and not cut any programs.  The government will spend every penny it gets, which will pump up the economy. True enough, poor people and much of the middle class support the economy by spending most of the money that they don’t pay in taxes on goods and services. History demonstrates, however, that the wealthy will invest much of their tax savings in ways that do not help the economy, for example in stocks on the secondary market (which means the company that originally issued the stock gets nothing) and overpriced art work.  That’s why we should raise taxes on the wealthy only.

I agree with Paul Krugman, who in many of his New York Times articles over the past months has made the case that addressing the deficit can wait until the country has stabilized the economy. But if we do want to address the deficit right now, we should do it by addressing the two reasons why it is too large: war-time military spending and the Bush II reduction of taxes on the wealthy.  That means raising taxes and cutting the military, but not other programs.

When thinking about cuts in government spending, ask yourself these questions:
  1. Would you rather see children in the United States have enough to eat or the U.S. stay in the senseless, objectiveless war in Afghanistan?
  2. Would you rather repair bridges and put decent mass transit into our mid-sized cities or continue developing drone technology?
  3. Would you rather see us work on green energies or develop that new-fangled aircraft that Congress is insisting be built even though our military leaders say we don’t need it?
  4. Would you rather cut our nuclear program (which can destroy all known civilization many times over) or cut air traffic controllers and slow down the takeoff and landing of all flights across the country.
I vote for children with full bellies, bridges that don’t fall down, research that addresses global warming (as opposed to research that kills people) and getting to my destination on time.

That’s why I advocate that we replace the sequester with a mix of tax increases and cuts only in military spending.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Bowman v. Monsanto deliberations

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: The Supreme Court heard the Bowman v. Monsanto case last Tuesday, attracting much more media attention than the 40,000 people who went to D.C. to advocate for the climate. Attorney Seth Waxman, arguing for Monsanto, turned in the classic statement: “Without the ability to limit the reproduction of soybeans containing this patented trait, Monsanto could not have commercialized its invention and never would have produced what is now the most popular patented technology in farming.” Imagine an attorney making that statement for a murderer, thief or kidnapper. “Without the ability to snatch children away from their homes and extract ransom, Monsanto could not have commercialized its invention and never would have produced a system to make money from desperate parents trying to save their kids.” “Without the ability to kill people, Monsanto could not have commercialized its invention . . . Well, you get the picture. But the law depends not on comparisons or fairness but on precedents. Monsanto has plenty of precedents with the Supremes. The judges will have a written opinion in June, the papers say, and we’ll see what they say. This morning, at 8 a.m., the horseshoer called. It wasn’t snowing yet at his place (about 30 miles west of here) but he was expecting it any minute, so he cancelled our appointment. Then, around 9 a.m. the snow started to fall here—big, fluffy flakes. It was warm enough that the snow was accompanied by thunder. We heard it three times. Thunder in February means snow the next October, they used to say. After a couple of hours, it got colder and the flakes got smaller, but it’s still accumulating. I’d say we have 6 to 8 inches already and it’s only 2:00.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The XL Pipeline and Local Foods

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: According to one map, on Wikipedia, a route for the Keystone XL pipeline goes right through my neighborhood, or, as my husband put it, “past our back door.” So I’m particularly glad that an estimated 3,000 Missouri college students went to DC for the protest. Can’t wait to see the few that went from our campus and hear what they think! Here's the link to the pipeline map: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline Last night, the PBS news program, Newshour, covered the action and had interviews with a couple of folks with different opinions. I had just locked the sheep in the barn and come into the house, reported to my husband that a swarm of bright red cardinals were cleaning out the suet feeder and he should go look. But he was immersed in the TV where the talking heads were expressing different opinions about just where the tar sands oil, once refined, would go. Would it be piped to a Louisiana port, then traded to Asia for more computers and cars? Or would it help America overcome our fuel deficit with the middle east? Truly, neither of the guys seemed convinced that they knew. To Bill McKibben and the enviros, that doesn’t really matter. The point, to them, is that the planet can’t afford the carbon output, no matter if it’s burned in New York or Beijing. They point to the increase in carbon and the heat it traps, globally speaking. They say, “leave it in the ground and figure out new ways to take care of our needs.” They point to a 10% decrease in fuel consumption since Obama has taken office and say that’s great and we can do better. If a link in the XL pipeline comes through my neighborhood, and what does XL stand for anyway? Extra Large? Extra Leaky? Entirely X-cessive? Well, if it comes here, there’ll be thousands of new jobs and farmers will have to leave. To our biggest neighbors, that would be the end of hours on huge tractors, things they don’t really love to begin with. To the Economic Development people, it’s about good jobs that pay well. To sustainable vegetable farmers like us, it’s the end of community, nature, and our lives. To the eaters that depend on us, it’s back to canned foods from who knows where?

Monday, February 18, 2013

A Good Walk Unspoiled


By Charles Cullen

You may already be aware that the White House Babysitting Service, also known as the White House Press Corps, went nuts recently because they weren't granted full access to the President's golf outing with Tiger Woods. While this might seem like a story directly from “The Daily Show,” it isn't. Their outrage is very real, and very, very silly.

This President has been hounded for myriad made up scandals. I'm going to pick one; feel free to insert your own—the birther scandal—which received wall to wall coverage ... even though anyone with a brain not covered with the worst comb-over in history knew the whole thing to be baseless.

I find it highly unlikely that any reporter clamoring to walk the links with Obama wanted to ask him serious questions about drone strikes, economic policy, or the Hagel confirmation. Perhaps they were worried that he would fudge the numbers on his score. Maybe take a drop without accepting the penalty? Come to think of it, maybe we do need to see his long-form scorecard.

The sad fact, for reporters at least, is that there's a pretty good case to be made for Obama not granting the Press Corps any access at all. On the rare occasion they get something right, they find the need to insert the inevitably ludicrous Republican side and just “teach the controversy.” They also generally get scooped by bloggers anyway.

The President has made it a point to make himself available to the American people directly through new media — online chats, looped phone calls where ordinary citizens can ask him questions directly, and constant updates from his government website.

Since reporters have been behaving like children, Obama has begun treating them accordingly. You wouldn't force your toddler to waddle along the golf course, would you? Well, neither would Obama.

This is not George “Brush Clearin'” Bush, who, by the way, was famously skittish when it came to engaging the press. This is a man who understands that no matter what he does, a vast majority of the press will simply make something up and call it news.

I saw this habit first hand at the Democratic National Convention. Reporters from austensably reputable news sources would write “quotes” from speakers including the President before the speaker in question had uttered these “quotes.” These “quotes” would then be reported as gospel on talk-news shows, crowed about on talk radio, and so the cycle would continue; a self sustaining nonsense machine.

If reporters wish more access to the President, they need only to act less like petulant children, and more like reporters. A good start would be the reporting of facts.

The Nimzo-Indian Defence

By Charles Cullen


Chess nerds will recognize the “Nimzo-Indian Defence” as an effective, if rudimentary, opening when playing as black. For those not fortunate enough to be chess nerds, here's a brief description of the opening by Tony Kosten. Kosten writes “When Nimzowitsch introduced his defence in the 1920's, his idea was that Black would fight for control of the centre […] with pieces other than pawns. His concept, the Nimzo-Indian Defence rapidly became one of Black's most popular defences and established a reputation for offering a wide range of strategically rich possibilities.”

After participating in a nationwide Organizing for Action call with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and Chief Economist and Cabinet member Austan Goolsbee, I am more certain than ever that there were sophisticated political undertones to President Obama's State of the Union address; suggesting that he is playing political chess, while the Republicans wait for him at the checkers board. Particularly relevant seems his decision to single out Georgia and Oklahoma as beacons of hope when it comes to effective, productive, early education.

A big part of the Nimzo-Indian defence is forcing your will upon your opponent by offering choices that seem impossible to pass up. And this is essentially what Obama is doing by focusing on red states and forcing Republican leaders to either stand against the education reforms they themselves had a part in creating (and doing so simply because the President says he likes them) or going along with the President and his desire to see every child enrolled in high quality early education.

The focus of this Organizing for Action call was supposed to be jobs, but time and time again both Goolsbee and Emmanuel returned to the issue of early and available education, making it a point to single out red states for praise. Things like this don't happen by accident, and my ears perked up when Mayor Emmanuel pivoted a jobs question into a discussion of the interesting early education programs in (you guessed it) Georgia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Emmanuel argued for the necessity of a “race to the top,” reiterated the President's call for “full-day pre-K,” and expanded on the President's plan by suggesting the idea of teaching “parent's how to be parents” as a part of the administration's overall education initiative.

Emmanuel accused the Republican Congress of governing “from the outside in.” Suggesting that they are not only out of touch, but would do well to govern from the inside ... by accepting the President's plans for early education. Goolsbee echoed many of Emmanuel's sentiments regarding education while also getting a dig in at the Republicans for our current, ridiculous sequester boondoggle. He also promised that “courageous votes” would be taken -- over, of course, Republican objection--on “gun control,” and “immigration.”

Anyone who's ever lost a game of Chess knows how the Republicans must be feeling in private. For all their posturing and ridiculous filibustering, they don't really know what they're doing. Heads in hands they find themselves in the shocked stasis of defeat — a splintered, weak, directionless party wondering helplessly where it all went wrong.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

350.org and Daryl Hannah

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Here are four words I never thought I’d write: “Thank you, Daryl Hannah!” Without her arrest, thousands of protestors outside the White House might not have gotten a line of print in the media. There has been, as far as I can tell, a mainstream media blackout. Only the bloggers covered the “Forward on Climate” protest that brought an estimated 40,000 people to Washington DC today. As Jamie Henn, a writer for Huffington Post put it, “It's a movement that has united nearly every environmental group in the country, from grassroots coalitions like the Indigenous Environmental Network to big green groups like the Sierra Club to a new generation of upstarts like 350.org. But it's also a movement that extends far beyond "traditional environmentalists" -- last Wednesday, civil rights leader Julian Bond, the president emeritus of the NAACP was arrested at the White House in a sit-in against Keystone XL.” Julian Bond, of course, recognizes that the fingers of injustice are long and mean. If a company is willing to create injustice on the earth, stealing land and resources from farmers and indigenous peoples, that same company is willing to create injustice on humankind. 40,000 people. That’s hardly a number that can be ignored. Mass arrests, including Daryl Hannah and Robert Kennedy, Jr. are the way this administration has chosen to send their message. Mass arrests will, they think, stop the protestors. For some folks, that will work. Nobody wants to be arrested time after time, pay a fine, do some time, miss the bus back home. But I think the movement has gone past the stage where people are scared of the police. Indeed, being arrested in DC can become a badge of honor. Protestors, including Sierra Club members, are choosing Civil Disobedience as a tactic to get attention. And, if the media doesn’t cover this, it’s another win for the protestors. They’ll become investigators on their own, and learn what’s been happening behind the curtains of big business and bought-off government. This is how revolutions begin. This is what democracy looks like if the peaceful messages are ignored. Obama can step up to the plate and defuse the anger. He can talk to the protestors, stop the pipeline, make his climate change promises real.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Lessons from the bare ground

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: What a gorgeous day! We’re enjoying the last little shiver of winter, 15 degrees when I went out to feed, and next week it could be 70 again. I took a long walk, picked up a few bits of trash in the pasture—-glass bottles, plastic lids, a big old iron wheel that we can use some time for something. I put them on the pile of recycleables. Last week, I lost a lamb to a predator. That morning, on my walk across the bare ground, I saw a streak of blood on the path but not a trace of the lamb. It was one of our biggest, so this predator is large and choosy. It left the little ones. And I couldn’t see any hair on the fence, indicating the predator might have jumped with it. A big cat? One of our neighbors photographed a mountain lion playing in her pond. Or, could an eagle swoop away a lamb? I saw an eagle in another neighbor’s pasture a couple of weeks ago. And what, pray tell, were my guard donkeys doing on that morning? Obviously, they were playing a game that didn’t include guarding sheep. So I moved the female donkey away from the male and so far so good. I’m also locking everyone up at night, which is not my preferred strategy. Would rather let them stay out. But today is bright and chilly, and the baby lambs are having a blast running around. They make me think about the future. My kids. Grandkids. The world we’re leaving them isn’t the world we inherited 50 or 60 years ago. A lot of what’s here is stuff we put down and it ain’t good. Trashy old wheel hubs. Chemical stuff designed to kill weeds or bugs or rodents or whatever. We kept the yards and fields tidy, but we’ve left stuff with side effects that hurt every living thing. So I see my daughter and her friends spending all their money buying organic, trying to find time and space to keep gardens, wearing themselves out with worry, as if there’s not enough to be worn out about when you have kids. Tomorrow, there will be a protest in Washington DC to demonstrate that citizens are sick of waiting for action on environmental problems. I hope the media is there and the message gets out.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Obama urges a fair start for youngsters with pre-K programs


By Charles Cullen

DECATUR, Ga. — President Obama chose Valentine's Day to give a speech misleading and confusing a generation of schoolchildren. Impressionable young minds were subjected to the idea that Commanders in Chief really do care about education and the task of elevating youngsters to a level playing field on which they may be judged by talent and drive, instead of prenatal economic circumstance.

I am, of course, joking, but it was striking to see the President act upon his State of the Union nod to Georgia and Oklahoma as models for opportunity to set a solid groundwork for success later in life. Advancement, in other words, through high quality pre-K programs.

Before an enthusiastic crowd in Decatur, Ga., President Obama on Thursday briefly outlined his plans to turn every city into a hotbed of exceptional early education. In attendance were Congressman Hank Johnson, newly elected Decatur Mayor Jim Baskett, and the Mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed. Obama acknowledged them all and then asked them to role up their sleeves to “make this a national priority,” laying out a case for the immediate necessity of his plans.

Echoing the sentiment of the State of the Union, Obama referred to education as the “true engine of American growth,” and was careful to point out that “fewer than three in ten four year olds” are enrolled in high quality early education programs.

For its brevity, Obama's speech was striking in its passion and specificity. This wasn't just a stopover in a red state. Taking issue with the idea that early education exists mostly as a way for parents to deposit their children under the watchful eye of an adult during work hours, he reminded the crowd that “this is not babysitting, this is teaching.” He also made the case that those children deprived of effective early education would suffer from it; partially because they would know that they were beginning the academic race already behind their peers. “They know they're behind at a certain point,” the President argued, “and they start pulling back.”

President Obama cited the need to train 100,000 new teachers in disciplines like science and technology. In an effort to further level the playing field — for all students — he asked that children with disabilities not be separated from non-disabled children. He also mentioned his administration's newly released “college scorecard” as a useful tool for students and parents as they continue the shared academic journey of the American student.

He acknowledged that teaching is a labor of love, noting that “behind every child who's doing great, there's a great teacher,” and “you don't go into teaching to get rich.” And he continued to argue for the universal benefit of this undertaking. Children's prosperity will benefit all of us, he reminded the crowd, “we'll all prosper that way.”

Those who've followed Obama will point out (rightly so) that his enthusiasm for excellent teachers and the value of education is nothing new. But there does seem to be a new or perhaps renewed urgency to his insistence that the United States accept education reform as a real and essential part of our efforts to move forward as a nation. Inaction, he seems to be saying, is unacceptable. And leaving things as they are is not an option.

Charles Cullen is a writer in Atlanta, Ga.

State of the climate, revisited

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: A reader comments regarding my blog entry, “State of the Climate”, which refers to scientists that apologize for the corporations. Her comment reads: Wow, Margot - what scientists are you reading/listening to? Apparently just a very small sliver, and none of the better thinkers. What sort of scientist would "believe that it doesn't matter if species die, or even entire oceans"? Certainly not the conservation scientists/biologists I've read or worked with! Or that "meat from obese, corn-fed cows and hogs can make healthy food for people"? Is it possible you're confusing the statements of people obsessed with corporate profits and year-end bonuses for those of the true researchers and innovators on which the future of our overburdened planet may well depend? Of course the scientists I refer to are “people obsessed with corporate profits and year-end bonuses” as she puts it. And they work in our universities today. At this very moment, they’re working on ways to make crops immune to 2,4D so that farmers can use more of it. 2,4D, you remember, is part of Agent Orange used to defoliate jungles so that soldiers could find them. It’s a poison that poisons people as well as plants. To greenwash the 2,4D story, they’ve pulled The Nature Conservancy in. TNC will evaluate the benefits of plantings around a Texas 2,4D manufacturing factory. Never mind that 2,4D will be carefully controlled in this factory, but then released to be sprayed in fields all over the planet. TNC, who we would hope are the “true researchers and innovators on which the future of our overburdened planet may well depend” opines: “Nature provides benefits, often called ecosystem services, which we all depend on.” Other ag scientists are convincing the media and politicians, at this very minute, that meat raised in Confined Animal Feeding Operations, fed on corn and other grains, is the only way to feed a growing population. Here’s their carefully worked statement about Bowman v. Monsanto: “The Supreme Court will decide a case this term that has the potential to jeopardize some of the most innovative biotechnology research in the country and alter U.S. patent law in a way that would have profound consequences for a range of industries — from agriculture to medicine to environmental science — that rely on the patent system to make their R&D investments economically viable.” That’s how corporations confuse science. Check out www.innovationatstake.com/

Editorial: Save the Postal Service


The announcement that Postmaster General Patrick Donahue plans to stop delivery of first class mail on Saturdays, starting in August, marks the latest turn in a long-term scheme to privatize the US Postal Service and break its unions.

The cutback to five-day-a-week delivery is supposed to save $2 billion but it is only one of a series of cuts being pushed by right wingers who are hoping to degrade the Postal Service so they can carve it up and let private carriers such as UPS and FedEx take over the profitable package delivery and overnight mail services.

The “austerians” also propose closures or cuts in hours at rural postal offices, closure of processing centers where mail is sorted and privatization of postal truck routes, with plans to slash as many as 220,000 of the Postal Service’s 650,000 employees. Among the targets for job losses are members of four major unions — the American Postal Workers, Letter Carriers, Rural Letter Carriers and Mail Handlers, all of whom are resisting the cuts even as they have cooperated with efficiency measures.

Although the Postal Service’s financial woes are popularly blamed on the loss of first-class mail volume due to competition from email (see the cover story by Andrew Leonard), a closer look reveals that the financial troubles have much to do with extortion by Congress.

In December 2006, the lame-duck Republican Congress passed HR 6407, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. The bill required the Postal Service to make payments of $5.5 billion per year between 2007 and 2016 to pre-fund postal retirees’ health benefits 75 years into the future. No other agency or company is required to pre-fund such obligations that far into the future, the postal unions have noted. The Postal Service not only was forced to use its limited borrowing authority to make those payments to the US Treasury, but it also effectively uses postal workers’ retirement funds to subsidize the national debt in a manner similar to the raiding of Social Security trust funds.

The same law also prohibits the Postal Service from raising its rates to cover the actual cost of delivery, or seeking new revenue streams. A recent 1-cent increase in first-class stamps only covers the increase in inflation. A nickel increase might erase the deficit.

Before the bill was passed in 2006, the USPS was profitable and debt-free. From 2007 to 2012, the Postal Service reported losses of $31.8 billion, with 85% of those deficits a direct result of the pre-funding mandate, the Delivering For America coalition reported. Pre-funding of retiree health benefits accounted for 94% of the Postal Service losses in the first half of fiscal year 2012.

In fact, USPS reported a $100 million operational profit during the first quarter of FY 2013 (ending Dec. 31). It earned $17.7 billion in revenue and had $17.6 billion in expenses, excluding $1.4 billion in payments for health benefits for future retirees. The decline in first-class mail was more than offset by gains in standard mail and in package deliveries.

We agree with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who worked to pass a bipartisan bill in the Senate last year that would have allowed reforms without cuts in postal service. “The postmaster general cannot save the Postal Service by ending one of its major competitive advantages,” Sanders said. “Cutting six-day delivery is not a viable plan for the future. It will lead to a death spiral that will harm rural America while doing very little to improve the financial condition of the Postal Service. Providing fewer services and less quality will cause more customers to seek other options. Rural Americans, businesses, senior citizens and veterans will be hurt by ending Saturday mail,” Sanders added.

David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis wrote at Truthout.org that closing local post offices and ending next-day first-class mail delivery to local areas could place a significant burden on the most vulnerable of our citizens. William C. Snodgrass, owner of a pharmacy in North Platte, Neb., told Morris his store mails hundreds of prescriptions a week to residents in mostly rural areas of the state that lack local pharmacies. If first-class delivery were delayed to three days and Saturday mail service also were suspended, a resident whose medicine was mailed on Wednesday might not get it until the following week. “A lot of people in these communities are 65 or 70 years old, and transportation is an issue for them,” said Snodgrass. “It’s impossible for many of my customers to drive 100 miles, especially in the winter, to get the medications they need.”

The Senate passed the bill last year that would update the Postal Service’s business model, allow it to ship beer and wine, recoup more than $11 billion it overpaid into pension funds and protect rural post offices. But the House has resisted action. The Republican platform calls for privatization of the Postal Service and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has proposed HR 2309, which would set up a new authority with a mandate to restructure the Postal Service and reduce costs “in order to bring the institution back to fiscal solvency.” That is, break the unions.

In March 2012, a USPS witness at the Postal Regulatory Commission acknowledged that a study ordered (but later stopped) by the Postal Service indicated that the combined effects of all the service cuts under consideration, including elimination of Saturday delivery, would reduce mail volume by 10.3%. “The practical effect of such a drastic reduction in mail volume would mean that the lost revenue from customers could actually EXCEED the projected savings,” Delivering For America noted.

“USPS executives cannot save the Postal Service by tearing it apart,” said Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union. “These across-the-board cutbacks will weaken the nation’s mail system and put it on a path to privatization.”

Bob Sloan of the Voters Legislative Transparency Project noted that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), with the support of right-wing “think tanks” financed by the Koch brothers and other right-wing billionaires, had been pushing for privatization since the 1990s and the “point man” behind the Postal Accountability bill was John McHugh (R-N.Y.), who had been promoting “postal reform” legislation since 1996. He was the sponsor of HR 6407 in 2006.

From 2003 through passage of HR 6407 in 2006, the right-wing cabal worked diligently, getting articles published in favor of privatizing the USPS.

A trio of independent studies by actuarial companies in 2010 found that the Postal Service had a surplus of between $50 billion and $75 billion in its Civil Service Retirement System pension account and up to $7 billion in its Federal Employees Retirement System account.

Rather than shrinking the Postal Service by cutting services and degrading the delivery network, the Postal Service should develop a new business model that looks for new revenue streams.

As more American order products online, there is tremendous potential for boosting USPS revenues from parcel deliveries.

Congress also should relax the constraints on the types of products and services the Postal Service can provide.

Congress also should give the Postal Service more flexibility in pricing its products to reflect the actual cost of providing services.

Remember that providing postal services is a constitutional responsibility. Article 1, Section 8, directs Congress “To establish Post Offices and post Roads.” Nothing about subsidizing oil companies.

President Obama just delivered his State of the Union speech, and he had some great proposals that don’t stand a chance of getting through the teabagger House. We will have more on that in the next issue, but in the meantime, as Congress enters another round of negotiating over budget cuts to stave off the “sequester,” don’t forget to make it clear to your member of Congress and senators that any vote to reduce Social Security benefits, including the “chained CPI,” will get them a primary challenger who will get your vote, regardless of whether President Obama signed off on it. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2013

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Selections from the March 1, 2013 issue











Thursday, February 14, 2013

Bowman vs. Monsanto

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Today, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear Bowman v. Monsanto, a case that tests the patenting law. That’s about all you can say for it, because unless the Supremes overturn the entire history of Monsanto’s carefully-built legal structure, the decision will bring no changes to family farmers. The structure unfolded over roughly two decades, sort of like this: 1. Monsanto developed a soybean variety that could survive repeated drenching with Roundup, a powerful herbicide that killed every green thing in its path. Monsanto patented the seed, arguing that it was innovative. Then they sold it to farmers and, eventually, food processors, arguing that it was the same as normal soybeans. Indeed, if you buy non-organic soy milk, soy sauce, chocolate made with soy lecithin or any other soy products you are eating this innovative patented soybean. 2. Monsanto’s bean wiped out the ordinary beans all over North America. The first year they were out, farmers stopped cleaning their own seeds and saving them to re-plant. This changed centuries of tradition overnight. 3. Monsanto tested the strength of their patent in court. Many, many times. In 2002, the Supremes ruled that any seed could be patented, whether or not it was “innovative.” Now, Monsanto sees a new chance to test their legal structure, using a case against an old bean farmer from Indiana. As NPR began their story, “Why do so many people hate Monsanto? Is it because this multinational corporation pioneered some enormously successful genetically engineered crops, including corn, soybeans and cotton? Maybe, but I suspect that much of the passion is inspired by Monsanto's hard-line approach to ownership of those crops. Monsanto claims those seeds — and all offspring of those seeds — as its intellectual property. Farmers aren't allowed to save and replant any part of their harvest; if they do, Monsanto takes them to courtand demands large damages. Critics call the company bullying and ruthless.” So what this farmer, Bowman, did, is buy some cheap seeds that were not covered by Monsanto’s label. No patent fee, see? But, since all the beans in Indiana—94%--are Roundup-Ready, patented seeds, he knew they’d have the GMO trait. He sprayed them with Roundup, they survived, he took them to market and then refused to pay the patent fee. Monsanto sued. There ya go. It could be argued that one gene does not a patent make. Sort of like patenting a note on the scale and demanding a fee every time someone plays, say, a G. Or like patenting a color and demanding a fee from artists when they use, say, red. But the law has become so corrupt that an argument for patenting a G or the color red just might fly. Obviously, we need new strategies to kill this legal GMO monster. Farmers need to sue on the basis of side effects of this system, like cotton farmers needing to hand weed half the cotton crop because weeds can’t be killed by Roundup any more. Or folks with allergies should sue on the basis of not being able to kill ragweed with normal herbicides any more. Or farmers with cancer should sue on the basis of exposure to 2,4D or other known carcinogens that USDA has approved for our fields.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Paterno family implements a flawed PR strategy flawlessly

By Marc Jampole

The family of Joe Paterno engaged in a media blitz this week in an effort to convince people that the Penn State sexual abuse report by ex-FBI director Louis Freeh was inaccurate when it said that Joe-Pa was part of the cover-up.  First the family released its own report, titled “Critique of the Freeh Report: The Rush to Injustice Regarding Joe Paterno,” which lambasts the Freeh report and its accusations against the venerated Penn State football coach. Next, Paterno family members signed themselves up for as many media television and radio talk shows as they could. I heard Jay Paterno several times and found him to be articulate, very sympathetic and earnest about what he called the facts.  For a few days, Paterno once again was one of the two or three news stories dominating media coverage.

All in all, the Paternos and their attorneys and public relations counselors did a stellar job of implementing their PR plan.  From the technical standpoint of controlling the media and articulating a set of messages, it was a flawless execution of strategy.

Too bad they didn’t think through the strategy first, because it was wrong.

First of all, it was wrong from the ethical standpoint. The Paternos created another news cycle of stories, thereby inflicting another cycle of pain on the dozens of damaged boys and men victimized by the monster Sandusky.

Let’s assume, though, we’re talking about a business decision only, and not an ethical one. A business decision focuses solely on what’s best for the business (and not the collateral damage that might be inflicted on others). In this case the business is the Joe Paterno legacy and the money that the Paterno family can make from it. From the business standpoint, it was a terrible decision, ranking among the worst since the chairman of BP pretended not to have facts about a disastrous oil spill that as head of the company he should have had or when the chairman of Mylan Inc. claimed that a Federal Drug Administration (FDA) investigation was completed even after the FDA said it wasn’t.

It was just plain stupid for the Paternos to think that releasing an obviously partisan report would move people to exonerate Paterno. If the Paternos had engaged me as their PR counsel, I would have told them to shut up and do nothing for the time being because whatever they said would only make people believe more ardently what they currently believe about the scandal. We won’t know for certain until someone does a legitimate survey, but early reaction in the media suggests that the Paterno plan did fail:  While ardent Paterno supporters have rallied behind the report, those convinced by the Freeh report are criticizing the Paternos, although always with a great deal of respect.

It’s something I call the “mirror” effect, when the new facts or new point of view do nothing but convince people of what they already believed. The new information in a sense holds a mirror up to the people consuming the information. What people see in the mirror is themselves—or to be more specific, their point of view.

Unless the Paternos’ report had showed that Freeh lied or neglected to include exonerating facts, it was bound to have a mirror effect on the public. Too much has already been written and opined on the subject.  Media saturation has already cast in stone both the facts and the way that most people are reacting.

Not only did the Paternos’ PR campaign probably not convince anyone  (or convinced very few) of Joe-Pa’s innocence, it created an additional news cycle, so for one more time, the news media preoccupied itself with the horrible scandal. That can’t help Joe-Pa’s reputation or Penn State’s (even if we forget about the victims).

In any crisis situation, we look for a key fact that pretty much sums up the argument the client wants to make. For example, years ago we had to close down a large factory in a small town and expected trouble from elected officials and problems with the workers. As it turned out, if all the employees of the division had worked for free during the prior two years, the company would have still lost money. That was the key fact we told everyone, and what could have been harsh criticism disappeared. Everyone had the common sense to understand that the business was just not viable. 

In the Penn State child abuse situation, the key fact is the conversation that Joe-Pa had with his assistant Mike McQueary in which McQueary told the head coach he caught Sandusky with a boy in the showers. Paterno kicked the matter to the administration and then neglected to follow-up aggressively to see what was being done.

No matter how hard the Paterno family tries, they can’t get away from that key fact, which establishes that Joe-Pa was culpable.  But that key fact also limits the extent of Paterno’s culpability. No matter what the truth really was, his guilt is tied to the one act (really several acts bundled into one) of not following up on the McQueary accusation.

As time goes by, the public is going to remember fewer of the details of the Sandusky scandal. Paterno’s involvement, tied up as it is in the one action, will seem less terrible, especially when compared to Sandusky’s and perhaps several high-ranking Penn State administrators.  Over time, the football-loving public would weigh Joe-Pa’s legendary reputation and won-loss record against this one (terrible) mistake. Paterno would (and probably still will) end up to be revered as a great, if flawed man. That may not help the current Paterno business franchise today, but nothing can help the current reputation of Joe Paterno except time. 

The impatient and seemingly insensitive Paterno family would have been better off letting the sleeping dog lie.

State of the Climate

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Attaboy, President Obama! You mentioned Global Climate Change in the State of the Nation address last night. I didn’t stay to watch the punditry or the response, too busy thinking. If there’s any hope we should be hoping, it’s that the scientists are wrong about global warming. They’re wrong about so many things. They believe, for example, that we can pour poisons on the farmland year after year and still raise good, healthy crops. They believe, for example, that the meat from obese, corn-fed cows and hogs can make healthy food for people. They believe that it doesn’t matter if species die, or even entire oceans. So let’s hope that the planet’s climate isn’t changing and that they’re wrong about this. Of course, for me, as one that farms and lives outside much of the time, the proof is indisputable. We have, for example, armadillos in mid-Missouri. This was a species that we excitedly pointed out in Texas when the kids were little, 30 years ago. And we have consistent 105-plus degree days in the summer, too hot to bother watering the tomato plants. This weekend, busloads of college kids will gather for marches in several major cities. One march is in Washington, D.C. and another in Chicago. When I heard “Grant Park” it reminded me of the Vietnam protest days. It took ten years, but we stopped the war. Global climate change—not immigration, abortion, drones, nor even gun control--is the issue of this new generation of activists and kids. Good luck and safe travel to all of them.
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