Resolutions

In addition to the usual ones--lose weight, check my email at least once a week, spend more time in the woods--I have three more for 2011.

Write to Heffley, Barletta, and Toomey at least once a month.  You’re thinking why bother, since those right-wing ideologues won’t listen to reason anyway.  Perhaps they won’t, but I plan to let Toomey, Barletta, and Heffley know they have constituents who are environmentalists, feminists, supportive of gay rights, pro-union, and  pro-health care reform.  (And I’m sending real letters on real paper with real stamps--emails are way too easy to delete or ignore.)

Boycott Walmart.  I’ve made that one for years, and I have kept it every year.  I have never shopped at Walmart.  My view is that if you have to go into Walmart to buy something, you really don’t need it.  Walmart is a terrible employer, a bully to its suppliers, a wrecker of small town main street shopping, an unfair competitor, a mainstay of the Chinese economy, a despoiler of Civil War battlefields, and its stores are architectural monstrosities.  What a blight on America, and soon the world.

Continue to blog.  As Groucho Marx once said, “These are my principles.  If you don’t like them, I have others.”

Destination Pittsburgh

Keystone Progress is holding a “Pennsylvania Progressive Summit” in Pittsburgh on January 22-23 at the Sheraton Station Square.  The Summit will feature workshops and training to build a progressive movement in Pennsylvania.  

There’s a registration fee and you’ll have to pay for a room, but this sounds like a worthy  event.  Perhaps one of the Demo clubs in Carbon County can sponsor a delegate.  I’m thinking of attending myself.  

 Mike Morrill <mike@keystoneprogess.org> recently sent me an email about the Summit.    Some readers may remember Mike for his work at the Carbon County Democratic Headquarters in Lehighton before the election.  He’s a great guy, and I believe the Summit will be well worth attending.  

Plus you get to hang out in Pittsburgh.

False optimism

Columnist John Tierney has written a rather smug article about a $5000 bet he made with Matthew Simmons, one-time member of the Council of Foreign Relations and an executive at a Houston bank, regarding the price of oil.  In 2005 Mr. Simmons predicted that the price of oil, then about $65 a barrel, would triple in five years. Mr. Tierney challenged him, and Simmons took the bet.  

Tierney is happy to report that he won.  Oil in 2010 came in below $80 a barrel. Tierney goes on to discuss the ideas of a group called the “Cornucopians,” who follow the philosophy of the late economist Julian L. Simon.  Mr. Simon predicted that we would always have abundant supplies of energy and other resources.

For years writers like Tierney and Simon have been deriding Malthus, or Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, or Al Gore and his warnings about global warming.  Environmentalists are frequently compared to Chicken Little, running around the barnyard clucking “The sky is falling, the sky is falling.”  

But Chicken Little is absolutely correct.  Pieces of the sky are already littering the ground.  We are in the middle of the earth’s sixth major species die-off and the first caused by humans.  The growing desertification and population increase in Somalia and the Sudan have already brought violent conflict.  The massacre in Rwanda was largely a result of  pressures on a finite amount of farmland by an exploding population. Millions of Pakistanis live on flood plains, the only fertile land remaining.  As for the idea that we will always have abundant supplies of resources, are the Cornucopians including clean air or clean water or nutritious food?

If you want to read Mr. Tierney’s article, it was in the December 27 Science Section of the New York Times.  

My five favorite Republicans

Sherwood Boehlert--Mr. Boehlert, a congressional representative from upstate New York, has been a strong voice for environmental protection.  I wish he’d switch parties.

Gifford Pinchot--He was elected governor of Pennsylvania in the middle of the Depression, which says something about his politics.  I know some environmentalists don’t like him because he emphasized the utility of conservation as opposed to protecting the environment for its own sake, but hey, by the standards of his time, he was one of the good guys.  (Plus he was married to a real feminist).

Teddy Roosevelt--On trust busting alone he deserves to be on the list. Bully.

William Ruckelshaus--I’d put him on the list for his integrity during the “Saturday Night Massacre,” but he was also the first EPA administrator, and in that position he set an excellent precedent.

Abraham Lincoln--I think the Democrats should hold a Lincoln Day dinner in Carbon County.  If Lincoln were alive today, he would be ashamed of the Republican Party.  He’s definitely one of us.

Unfortunately, four of the five are no longer alive. If you can think of living Republicans who deserve to be on the list, let me know. 

P.S.:

On a different subject entirely, “the wife” will be home from the hospital tomorrow morning.  I want to thank the readers who called or emailed to express their concern.

Death panels

Tomorrow my family is holding a memorial service for my Aunt Margaret.  She died last week at age 94.  She was frail, couldn’t see well, was almost completely deaf, and had talked about welcoming death for years.  

Thank goodness she had a “living will.” Her daughter and son had discussed her wishes with her, and she made it clear that she wanted no “heroic measures” taken to prolong her life.  My cousins and my aunt were intelligent people, and they were familiar with their rights and responsibilities; together they decided just what they expected of the medical profession as life neared its end.  

The Obama administration has now implemented a Medicare policy by administrative action that will pay physicians who counsel patients about “end-of-life” care.  Those consultations may include the discussion of living wills to prohibit the kind of heroic measures that can keep people alive in spite of their desires.  I have such a living will myself, signed and notarized.

If you have ever watched an aged relative who did not have a living will suffer through months of medical treatment that only prolonged misery, you will appreciate a policy that encourages doctors to discuss this issue with their patients and explain the options.

This is what the Republicans in the House and Senate were calling “death panels”  during the health care debate.  Members of congress were willing to have people suffer for political gain.  I don’t want to overuse the word “evil,” but that was evil. I am pleased the Obama administration found a way to promote a humane policy in spite of Republican opposition.

What's important

Today I had a number of topics to pick from, but this morning my wife had a heart attack, and none of those topics seem all that important. The attack was “minor” involving an artery too small even to use a stent, but to me, any heart attack that Linda has seems awfully major. She is Lehigh Valley Hospital and is being monitored.  She may even be discharged on Tuesday.  I must say that the doctors and nurses at Gnadden Heutten and Lehigh Valley were uniformly wonderful. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Good news, but

In keeping with the holiday spirit, may I draw your attention to two heartwarming developments brought to us by today’s New York Times.  In a front page article, the Times discusses a solar powered generator that has made life easier for a Kenyan family far from the power grid. One roof top solar panel generates enough electricity to charge the family’s cell phone and power a light by which the teenagers do their homework.  No greenhouse gases are emitted; no oil is used.

The small downside is that the solar generator was manufactured in China, not the U.S.

The second item was mentioned in an editorial.  The U.S. may soon be cracking down on American gun dealers who sell high-powered weaponry to Mexican drug gangs.  (Over 30,000 Mexicans were killed in drug-related shootings last year.)  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is asking for emergency authority to require gun dealers, some of whom have shops along the border, to report multiple purchases of AK-47s and other assault rifles.  The OMB must first sign off on the plan before it can be implemented.  

The small downside is that the reporting requirement is opposed by the N.R.A.