A Letter to Sen. Bunning, Hall of Famer

Hey, there, Jimbo, how's things?  It's your old buddy, Chilly Stantz here.  Remember me? Utility infielder for the Richmond, Indiana, Tigers back before you became rich and famous and I went back to pumping gas in Okemah, OK.

You was makin' maybe $150 a month, big money for class D back then, because you was a startin' pitcher.  Me?  I got the minor league minimum -- 75 lousy bucks -- because I was just a reserve infielder and occasional pinch-runner.  You and a coupla other "prospects" -- that's what they called you back then, "prospects," cuz the scouts for the Big Club thought there was a "prospect" that you could make the big leagues -- you "prospects" had an attytood.  Specially you, Jimbo.

There you'd be, on that rattly old bus, in the best seats, right behind The Skipper, and the rest of us, the non-prospects, we were just dirt.  Remember, Jimbo?  You didn't even know the first baseman's name, that quiet, bow-legged Pennsylvania Dutch boy  from Reading, PA.  "Hey you," you'd say, and ast him to fetch you a Coke, and you'd flip him two bits, and say, git one for yesself and keep the change, which was all of a nickel.

You moved on up the minor league ladder.  I got released and went back to pumpin' gas. I had a bunch of jobs after that, and picked up a few extra dollars playin' semi-pro on the sandlots around Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle till I got too old.  Only thing I ever had was good wheels and when I blew out a knee, nobody wanted me.

And y'all finally made the big show, with Dee-troit, and you pitched a perfect game one time, and you struck out three men in one inning on nine pitches -- now that there was really somethin'.  An' you made the Hall of Fame, by gum, and gotcherself elected to Congress and all.  You are one big deal.

So I gotta ask you, Jimbo, why you doin' this?  Why you cuttin' off the unemployment checks and the Medicare payments?  Why you doin' that, Jim?  We ain't done nuthin' to you, us poor folks out here in what they useta call th' Dust Bowl.

My boy, he got laid off last year and when the unemployment ran out, he had to move in with me.  I got a little old shack on a patch of ground outside of Arapaho, livin' on the Social Security.  It's tough feedin' two people on the Social Security.  And I got me a medical condition -- remember when "medical condition" jist meant a bad case of th' R.A.? Anyway the doc says he can't afford to treat me no more cuz they cut back the Medicare payments.

Why ya doin' this Jim?  Why?

Yer ol' minor league teammate, Chilly.

* * *

James Paul David Bunning made $96,513,000 playing major league baseball between 1955 and 1971.  That does not include money from endorsements, personal appearances, baseball cards or memorabilia. 

* * *

From the Lexington Herald-Leader, Dec. 18, 2008: The non-profit Jim Bunning Foundation, which collects the money the former pitcher gets from autographing baseball memorabilia, has taken in more than $504,000, Senate and tax records show. Of that, Bunning has earned $180,000 in salary for working a reported one hour a week. By contrast, the foundation has given $136,435, or about one-fourth of its income, to churches and charitable groups around Northern Kentucky. The largest sums went to local Catholic churches Bunning has attended. Records show that Bunning is the foundation's sole employee and the only person to draw a paycheck from it.

Earthquakes, Marsupials and Man

The Common Scold came by the other day to have coffee with The Better Half.  I shuffled into the kitchen for a second cuppa and she spotted me.

"Why are you writing about silly animals," she Scolded, "when there is so much human tragedy in the world?  Earthquakes in Haiti and Chile!  Tsunamis. . ."

You know how it is when you haven't had your second cuppa.  You ought to have a rejoinder, but there's nothing upstairs except the mental image of a big, steaming, heavenly-scented cuppa.

"Thanks for your concern," I think I mumbled and went off to sulk.  Three or four glorious sips later, the fog began to lift.

Earthquakes are terrible, I imagined myself saying, but they are natural.  Man did not create the Nazca tectonic plate, whose scraping against the South American tectonic plate 22 miles under the Pacific Ocean floor is what caused the Chilean quake.  The plates have been down there a long time.  They caused an even more powerful earthquake in Chile in 1960 that killed thousands. Nothing man knows how to do will prevent those plates from causing more tremors.

But as the planet's very climate changes around us, man is the cause.  As the very air we breathe and water we drink does harm to living things, man is the cause.  As species disappear from the planet we share with them, man is the cause.  And so when I learn what's happening to the koala, and now the kangaroo, I ask myself over and over:

When will we ever learn?

We tend to think of Australia as one vast outback, unsullied by man, home to happy marsupials romping against the backdrop of Ayers Rock.  Yet even there, the koala is dying off  because its habitat is vanishing and an AIDS-like disease is infecting the population. (See previous post).

Now an Australian publication, The Age, reports that kangaroos are being euthanized because of "debilitating deformities caused by toxic emissions from nearby factories."

One recent day nearly 50 of the iconic animals had to be killed in the vicinity of Portland, Victoria because they were suffering from extremely painful bone and tooth deformities.  Autopsies determined that the ailments were the direct result of breathing and ingesting fluoride emissions from nearby smelting operations.

For years, Australia's environmental protection agency had poo-poo'd concerns about the smelters by assuring everyone that the fluoride levels in the air and water were within "tolerance."

When will we ever learn?

Oufitting for a National Parks Vacation

If you're planning a National Park vacation this year, here are some things you ought to know:

Body armor

Most police departments use protective clothing made of aramind fabric, first and foremost among which is DuPont's Kevlar.  Kevlar vests can be made to custom sizes and usually cost between $390 and $700. Specially engineered women's vests cost $430 to $630 and are not available in the ultra-light, ultra-thin but extremely effective version of Kevlar called GoldFlex, made by Honeywell.  Aramind protective clothing called Twaron, made by a Japanese firm, is popular in Europe and priced about the same.  Very tall or very large people may have to pay $1,000 or more for proper coverage.

Automobile touring 

Steel armor plating has been used for years to bullet-proof cars, trucks and limos.  But steel is soooo yesterday. Check out "Microtruss." a vehicle armoring material that is "lightweight, strong and environmentally rugged," according to its manufacturer.  This is billed as  a periodic cellular material offering protection "without compromising vehicle weight."  For prices, contact: http://www.cellularmaterials.com/applications/armor.asp?gclid=CLnUv-_QlaACFQP7agodY2yHO

International Armoring Corp. claims to have invented the "lightest armoring in the industry" back in 1993, a synthetic fiber laminate called "Armormax."  IAC also sells "a revolutionary all curved 1" to 3" thick rebated transparent ballistic glass" and a material called Elitus, whose curved overlap function "provides even greater passenger protection." For prices: http://www.iacarmormax.com/

Or you might want to consider ceramic protection.  A company called CoorsTek produces "ceramic armor components used as the ballistic armor strikeface of lightweight composite armor systems."  The company advertises that its "CeraShield" ceramics, with "an appropriate backing system, can defeat various threats including armor-piercing rounds and IEDs."  Ceramic armor is said to be half the weight of comparable steel systems.  Pricing: http://www.coorstek.com/products/ceramic-armor.asp?gclid=CILSlvTRlaACFSYaawodlmDQdg

Camping

Check the above manufacturers to find out if their armor is suitable for travel trailers and RVs, and for cost estimates.  You might also consider rigid, bullet-resistant fiberglass panels.  It comes in three levels of protection, ranging in weight from 2.6 to 4.9 pounds per square foot.  It can be cut to size.  It's about the thickness of plywood -- 1/4" to 7/16".  Pricing: http://www.pacificbulletproof.com/get-pricing/


Tent campers don't have many options.  Working with the military, Zumro Inc. of Hatboro, PA, came up with a thing consisting of an inner and outer Kevlar tent, which can be placed over an explosive device.  When the device detonates, the two-tent gizmo prevents shrapnel and gas from escaping into the atmosphere.  To find out if the material could be used for ballistic protection in recreational tents, contact Zumro at 401 Jacksonville Rd, Hatboro, PA, 19040-4605. Phone: (215) 957-6502 .  Or perhaps you could build a cubicle of bullet resistant fiberglass over your tent. 

The federal law that allows loaded guns, of any type, in national parks took effect Feb. 22.  In the House, 105 Democrats and 174 Republicans voted for passage.  In the Senate,  27 Democrats joined 39 Republicans voting "aye."

God Bless America.

'Good Enough' for Whom?

When I was a little boy, I loved the sports books of John R. Tunis.  There were villains in his books, of course, but nobody remembered them; they remembered his straight-arrow athletes, pure of heart, fleet of foot, nimble of mind, who could conquer whatever Fate threw at them and emerge on the winner's podium at the Olympics, triumphant in the World Series, champions of the Rose Bowl.

But in one book that I was particularly fond of, no sports were played.  There was a sports hero: the local high school basketball coach who, in a previous book, had to suspend the star player for breaking rules, but managed to win the state championship anyway.  He had decided to resign from the faculty and run for mayor because crooks had taken over city hall.  Underfunded, opposed by the Power Structure, he urged the people to join him in making "a city good enough for Lincoln."  That was the book's title: "A City for Lincoln."  Of course he was elected, and he took the oath of office pledging to form a "government of the people, by the people and for the people."

Back then we believed that the pure of heart who played clean always won; that we had the kind of democracy that put its best and its brightest into office to form  a government "good enough for Lincoln"

And then we grew up and went out into the real world and we learned that life ain't like that.

I wonder what Honest Abe would have said if he'd still been President yesterday when the Republican Senator Lamar Alexander said that if we passed health care reform, “for millions of Americans, premiums will go up.” This is every bit as much a lie as the "death panels" the Republicans conjured when the first health bill went to the House floor.

The Republicans had ample time to finally craft some solid proposals for meeting the expressed wants and needs of the American people: affordable health care for every American.  What they offered at the White House summit was the same arrogance, ritualistic slogans, lies, distortions, playground bullying and childish nonsense that they have been feeding the American public for nearly a year now.

"Good enough for Lincoln?"  What they gave us yesterday was an x-rated performance, an obscene parody of government.  Tunis's straight-arrow basketball coach would have thrown every one of them off the team.

After reviewing the Republicans' history of lies and obstruction on behalf of profiteering insurance companies, Nancy Pelosi gave us a sports metaphor worthy of Mr. Tunis: "We have lived on their playing field all this time," she said. "It's time for the insurance companies to exist on the playing field of the American people."

Or else what we'll have is a government "good enough for Lincoln National Insurance."

Epic? What's This Epic Crap?

You heard it, too, didn't you, about 14 months ago?

The president, the treasury secretary, the talking heads on TV, all telling us the only way to save our economy -- hell, the economy of the whole world! -- was to send trainloads of money to the Wall Street banks.  So much money we had to print more just to fill the box cars.  We had to do this because then the big banks would start lending money again and businesses would start hiring people and things would get better.

"Better" sounded good.  We'd lost 43% of our life savings in 2008.  Or we'd lost our jobs and used up our savings just trying to eat.  Or we were living on food stamps.  Or in a big empty box under an overpass.

For most of us the retirement accounts have recovered some of their losses.  But precious few of those who lost their jobs are back at work.  Businesses are still laying people off in the hope that Wall Street banks will notice and stock prices will go up. Rush and Glenn and the Tea Cup Dingbats are railing against the folks on food stamps and the boxes under the underpass are getting crowded.

A year after the congress approved the boxcars of cash for the big banks, the President declared "Mission Accomplished" even though a few of us were having trouble making ends meet because we were still out of work.  Say, 10 or 12 million of us.

The bankers paid themselves 19 billion or so of the boxcar dollars in bonuses for their good work.

But wait a second.  Wasn't there something else?  Oh, yes, the banks were going to start lending again, remember?  And when the banks started lending again, businesses would get healthy and when businesses got healthy money would trickle down and pretty soon we'd all be back in the land of milk and honey.

That's what they told us, remember?

So what's with this headline at the top of the front page of the Wall Street Journal the other day?  LENDING FALLS AT EPIC PACE, it read.  Epic pace!   The sharpest decline in bank lending since 1942.

How can this be?  Mr. President, Mr. Treasury Secretary, Mr. Congressman, Mr. Talking Head -- HOW CAN THIS BE?

If Wishes Were Horses, All Could Ride

Big day today for hopes and dreams.

Marchers arrive in Washington today to rally for real health care reform.  Many of them marched more than a hundred miles in memory of a progressive activist who died of breast cancer while still fighting an insurance company for benefits.  Others are armed with personal stories from around the country of victims of the industrialized world's worst health care system.

On the other coast,  Bloom Energy will unveil its much-hyped fuel cell, known as the Bloom Box, at eBay headquarters in California. The company calls it an off-grid source of cheap electric energy -- from a cell the size of a loaf of bread.

The health marchers are sincere, but not likely to succeed.  Dr. Kidglove has already given us the "reform" he will talk about tomorrow at the over-hyped bipartisan gathering of the congressional clan at the White House. No public option; hence, no real reform.  Twenty-some Senators have signed a proposal to pass a public option using budget reconciliation rules -- a process that circumvents Republican filibustering and needs only 51 votes for passage.  But the Republicans are solidly against anything, and the Milquetoasts with (D) after their name are afraid of all the papier mache ogres the Republicans have built to do battle against reconciliation.

The Bloom Box has been developed in more secrecy than Dick Cheney's energy plan. Not even a sign on the secret location headquarters.  Bloom has dropped enough hints about the technology to attract $400 million in venture capital and the support of Colin Powell.  "I have seen the technology and it works," said the general and former Secretary of State.  He is on Bloom Energy's board of directors.

Of course, Gen. Powell also told the United Nations, "What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  You be the judge.

Bloom energy has provided tantalizing little peeks at its gizmos to Atlantic magazine and the CBS TV show "60 Minutes." Who would not share in the hope that this will be what 60 Minutes called "the holy grail" of clean energy?

But anyone who would bet the farm on it should join those marchers in Washington who believe, really believe, that the corporatized wimps who hold office there will give us something  resembling real health care reform.

 Dreams die hard.  Hope dies last.

Canine Therapy

A lawyer friend used to suffer from terribly painful gout.  His most reliable source of relief was to stroke, and be "kissed" by, his dog, Boots.  Never mind the cynics who say painful gout is a just God's retribution for being a lawyer.  Noah was a good guy and he was onto something.

Dogs are good for lots of human ailments.  I speak from experience, with dogs and with ailments.

When I was recovering from lung cancer surgery, the pain ebbed if Sandy, the cocker spaniel, napped in my lap. His big, brown eyes and jaunty way of cocking his head were more effective than pain pills. Taking him for walks provided the exercise the doctors said I needed when the pain subsided.  Jogging in the woods with him helped improve my lung capacity.  Like Lord Byron's Boatswain, Sandy was "in life the firmest friend, the first to welcome, foremost to defend," and when he died I could not imagine any other animal replacing him.

But then one day I visited the animal shelter where my wife intended to adopt a cat.  Someone else had adopted the animal she wanted, but I strolled past a cage that housed a litter of puppies.  One of them shouldered aside his siblings and stepped forward to perform for me.  It was an unforgettable series of dances, smiles, squeals and tumbles.  Saxon the Rottweagle went home with us that very day.

When I took him for his second veterinary appointment for vaccinations, an attendant spotted us coming in the door and called out, "Hey, Everyone!  The happy puppy is back!"


Today, at 14, he's still the same happy puppy, willing to dance on arthritic legs, light up a greying muzzle with the same big smile, charm ladies and beguile gentlemen.

Saxon and I have shared a thousand adventures,  walked a thousand miles together, up mountains and across deserts, chased a thousand critters from deer and rabbits to lizards and roadrunners.  We have soothed one another's pain, bluffed away one another's enemies, played stick and chase-me and dodge 'em and other, nameless games he invented and taught me. 

We have exchanged profound thoughts; he, by reading my tone of voice if not my words, and my gestures; I, by reading his posture, facial expressions, nods, moods and gaits. 

These days, we help one another to cope with the infirmities of our aging.  I assist his getting up into the car; he slows his pace for the desert walks, and settles for short paths of level ground, rather than the canyons and mesas we used to explore, because he knows I can't go there any more.  Perhaps, if pressed, he could even identify the anatomical part  that's at fault: the lumbar region of my back.  All sorts of bad stuff in there.

Other treatments having failed, I'm hopeful that a spinal surgeon can restore some mobility.  Perhaps that will involve "open back" surgery, which I've experienced once and didn't want to go through again.  But now if it's the last resort, let's go for it.

Whatever the outcome, however difficult the rehab might be, however long it takes, I've got the best therapist in the world: Saxon the Rottweagle.

Quicksand

The American Civil Liberties Union betrayed its base when it filed an amicus  brief  in what became the infamous Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court.

On the ground that the First Amendment protects free speech even by bad guys, it supported opening the door for corporate control of our elections and elected officials.

The decision essentially held that, because corporations are legal persons,  imposing political contribution limits on them violates their first amendment right to free speech.

The First Amendment doesn't say anything about persons, except that "the people" have a right to peaceable assembly. Congress, it says, shall make no law abridging free speech.

The Fourteenth (civil rights) Amendment says:  "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The idea that corporations are "persons" within the sense of this amendment seems to go back to an 1886 Supreme Court case called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific.  There's not much in the decision itself to get riled up about; it's a boring tax case and the court ruled on behalf of the railroad without addressing the corporate personhood business.

However, before oral arguments began, Chief Justice Morrison Waite admonished the lawyers for both sides that "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution,  which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."

This extraordinary statement was used by the court reporter, J.C. Bancroft  Davis, in the headnote for the case in the United States Reports.  Before he did so, however, he wrote the following to Chief Justice Waite:

"I have a memorandum in the California Cases Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific &c As follows. In opening the Court stated that it did not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to such corporations as are parties in these suits. All the Judges were of the opinion that it does."

The Chief Justice wrote in reply:

"I think your mem. in the California Railroad Tax cases expresses with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision."

Headnotes for United States Reports, written by the court reporter, are intended to be summaries for lawyers of the decision and the main facts and arguments in a case.  In a 1905 case, U.S. v. Detroit Timber and Lumber,  the Court itself said headnotes are "not the work of the Court, but are simply the work of the Reporter, giving his understanding of the decision, prepared for the convenience of the profession."

I'm no lawyer, but I can read.  The Tinker to Evers to Chance basis for the 5-4 Citizens United decision is about as firm as quicksand. And that doesn't even take into account the bigger legal question: does money constitute "speech?"

I received my renewal notice yesterday for membership in the ACLU, along with a request for an additional donation to support its "important work." I told 'em to go pound quicksand.

Say It Ain't So, Doc!

It's another bad news day: Australia's koalas are dying off.  AIDS.  Really.

In the last six years, according to the Australian Koala Foundation, the population of the cuddly marsupial in the wild has dropped from more than 100,000 to fewer than 43,000.

A disease called Koala Immune Deficiency Syndrome has been positively identified by Dr. Jon Hanger, head veterinary scientist for the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital.  He told CNN it's just as severe as AIDS in humans, but does its deadly work faster in the koala.  "It's knocking off a large proportion of koalas that come into this hospital and that means a large number in the bush are dying, too," he said.

I remember watching the koala exhibit in the Australian Zoo with our friend Jeanie, who wouldn't eat our fresh-caught bluefish one day on Cape Cod because she'd been charmed by their eyes when we caught them.  That kind of animal lover.  We might never have dragged her away from the koala exhibit, except that a passer-by mentioned the butterfly house where, if you stood perfectly still, one might perch on your nose.  This was after we'd struggled through a horde of Nikon-toting tourists to catch a glimpse of the pygmy penguins coming in from the sea southwest of Melbourne.  Please, Jack, don't let Jeanie read this! 

Dr. Hanger said, “There is no vaccine available now and may never be, but what it’s saying to us is that we need to be very careful about the way we manage the population. We have to stop destroying habitat and fragmenting it and we’ve got to address all the causes of death.” 

In an official snit it can only have learned from American Republicans, the Australian government refuses to give the koala endangered species protection under the law.  The Spotted Owl Syndrome.  What would the extraction and development industries do if we protected wildlife?

Koalas are losing their homes in the eucalyptus forests, being injured by cars and animals moving into their areas and dying from sexually transmitted diseases. The marsupials seem to be particularly susceptible to Chlamydia. The disease affects their eyesight, urinary tract and leaves them infertile.  It also causes a slow, painful death.

The Ozzies might consider bringing James Dobson over to teach koala abstinence, but that would be counter-productive.  Can you imagine trying to artificially inseminate a koala?

Two professors from the Queensland University of Technology are working on a vaccine for Koala Chlamydia.  Peter Timms and Ken Beagley estimate that, “As many as 25-50 percent of koalas coming into care in both Queensland and New South Wales are showing clinical signs of the disease and it seems to be getting worse.”

Dr. Hanger isn't optimistic.  “Extinction is inevitable in some areas” he said.  “I certainly hope we don’t see it across Australia.  But if we don’t take the decline seriously and pick up on the warning signs now it’s certainly a risk.”

In animal-loving France, the news fell like the knell of doom.  Jean Claude heard about the koala while lunching in a bistro in Clermont-l'Herault.  "An Australia without koalas," he said, "would be like a meal without wine."

(Words) Anagram for Peace (Sword)

More than one historian will attest that the Battle of Britain was won by a single human voice: Winston Churchill's.

Buildings and bridges broke under the relentless Nazi bombing, but thanks to the great rhetorician's  unwavering encouragement, the will of the people never broke.

What a political figure says, and how he says it, does have an importance of its own.

Douglas L. Wilson, in Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words, makes the point persuasively that Lincoln's rhetoric bypassed the two other branches of government and went directly to the people to rally them through a terrible Civil War.

While less eloquent than Churchill's as spoken literature, the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats put steel into the spines of the people who put steel into the weaponry of World War II.

With all due respect to the oratory of the contemporary leader who has yet to put substance behind his own fine words, I submit that there have been two sublime examples of great political oratory in my lifetime:

John F. Kennedy's inaugural address provoked an entire nation into a new and better view of the world and itself.

And eight years ago yesterday, while the drums of war thundered and a trauma-shocked nation numbly allowed the unraveling of its Constitution, a single voice uttered a Prayer for America.  It rings as true today as it did then.  You can read it here:
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0226-09.htm

Stimulus, Dimulus! Mobulus Jobuless.

Hot air drives public policy farther than cold facts. 

The American right has learned to create demons like death panels and global cooling myths, and then blow hot air all over them until they've diverted elected officials from doing the right thing.

Meanwhile two deadly facts confront us and languish in governmental limbo.  One such fact is massive unemployment.  If we magically produced 10,000 new jobs overnight, we would simply have restored the unemployment levels of 2007.  The second fact is this:  Our entire infrastructure is in deadly decay.  We have unsafe bridges, falling-down schools, leaking and degraded water systems and crumbling highways.

It would seem logical to draw a connection between those two facts and create most of those 10,000 needed jobs by setting out to make all those needed infrastructure repairs, right?  Wrong!  It would cost trillions,  cry the Republican guardians of the treasury, blowing hot air all over their new demon, The Dreaded Federal Deficit.

Never mind that those same Republicans still defend the unwinnable wars, triggered by illegal U.S. invasions of sovereign nations eight years ago, that cost us many trillions more.  Their wars, expanded by Dr. Kidglove the reborn militarist,  are draining away the dollars that are needed at home.

Why not stop that drain? Why not divert those dollars to needed projects at home?

For example: we prate piously about the importance of education to our society.  Yet without even mentioning curriculum needs, we face a looming disaster in the deteriorating condition of the very buildings in which we endeavor to teach our young.  An immediate investment of $12 billion or so, creating 1.5 million new jobs, would provide the needed repairs.

Consider bridges.  When the the I-35 bridge across the Mississippi River at Minneapolis collapsed during rush hour in August of 2007, the nation briefly took notice of the infrastructure problem, -- an interest that quickly and predictably waned.  We had celebrity marriages to fret about.  Yet at that time Pennsylvania alone had 5,600 unsafe and structurally deficient bridges.  Its Democratic governor muscled through a capital budget with 700 million extra dollars earmarked annually to fix the things.  "Every time we fixed two," lamented Gov, Ed Rendell, "three would bump onto the list."  Last year the state had more than 6,000 structurally obsolete bridges.

In Washington today, the President thumped his chest over the year-old economic stimulus law as having staved off a second Great Depression and preserved some 2 million jobs.  He acknowledged that for the many millions more angry Americans who are still jobless, "It doesn't feel like much of a recovery."  Thank you, Dr. Kidglove. What are you doing about it?

Every state has its own bridge problems like Pennsylvania's: at least a quarter of the nation's bridges, including the iconic Brooklyn Bridge,  are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

We're accustomed to drought here in the Southwest, but two years ago Atlantans had to ration water because of drought conditions -- while 18 per cent of their drinking water leaked away every day because of ancient, deteriorating pipes.  Where clean water seeps out, contaminants often seep in.  Virtually every American city is in desperate need of repairs to its water system.  The same is true for aging sewage removal and treatment systems.

Thanks to Bush's tax cuts, cities and states can't afford to fix these things. 

Deregulation of polluting industries and wink-wink non-enforcement of existing laws and regulations have created massive environmental damage that needs to be repaired.  Water tables corrupted by mining and drilling, streams poisoned by mountaintop removal, rivers befouled by runoff -- these things are fixable if we act now.

A year after government saved the big banks and their executive bonuses, it is time for real economic stimulus: federal funds that will put Americans back to work fixing the things that threaten our health, safety and daily lives.

Update


Whirlpool, the appliance manufacturer, received 19 million of those taxpayer stimulus dollars the Administration is so proud of.  Whirlpool is thanking working Americans by closing a refrigerator manufacturing plant in Evansville, Ind., putting more than 1,100 people out of work. Whirlpool will continue to produce the refrigerators -- in Mexico. Muy bueno, Amigo!

Sound, Fury and Idiots

The scientific illiteracy of the American public is a rising concern of scientists, educators and the handful of public policy-makers who still believe their role is to serve the interests of the people.

While many public opinion polls in the United States seem to reflect a favorable opinion of science and scientists, other polls and studies have betrayed Americans' collective ignorance of basic science.

The condition is manifest in the public debate on issues ranging from education to climate change. A powerful member of the Texas state board of education is proud that he was able to force into the state's textbooks a "teaching" that the planet Earth was created by a supernatural being 6,000 years ago. Deniers of climate science spout nonsense like the following statement from a recent letter to the editor of a southern New Mexico newspaper:

"True science is proven fact."

 In the first place, science needs no adjective such as "true" or "sound."  Science is what it is: disciplined study seeking to explain phenomena through observation, experimentation and logical deduction.  Scientific logic specifically rules out absolute certainty, or what the letter-writer calls "proven fact."  Scientists insist on many tests, and peer review of the tests, all of which must tend in the same direction, before they accept a hypothesis as probably true.  The more evidence, and the more acceptable it is, the higher the probability of truth.

Contrarily, experiment and observation can only falsify hypotheses or even theories (two different things).  When a theory, such as evolution or Einstein's theory of relativity, has a long history of being tested and never falsified, scientists accept that its probability of being true is close to 100 per cent.

Science that indicates the earth is undergoing climate change because of human activity, especially the emission of carbons into the atmosphere, has not yet been sufficiently tested and re-tested to be accorded the same degree of probability.  Neither has it been falsified by any rigorous study, experimentation, observation and deduction followed by intense peer review and re-testing.  Hence science accepts it as probably true, if in need of further rigorous scientific study.  Such study can not only enhance the probability of truth, but also lead to theories that enable the development of technology to solve the problems created by climate change.

Of course, in any massive study that crosses lines of scientific discipline and seeks consilience among them, individual scientists with good credentials may and do disagree with the scientific methodology or conclusions of hypotheses like climate change.  But until they produce rigorous, disciplined, tested and peer reviewed science to falsify the hypothesis, their views are strictly their own, to be regarded as "opinion" and not "science."

Moreover, the motivations of the questioners need to be examined as well as their arguments.  "Follow the money."

If their "work" is funded by folks with a dog in the fight, be wary.  Exxon Mobil, the most profitable corporation in the history of the world, achieved its obscene wealth by extracting, refining and selling fossil fuel to produce energy.  Since the findings of climate science would tend to encourage public policy makers to support development of new, renewable sources of energy, Exxon and its partners in fossil fuel energy have an enormous dog in the fight.  That's why they shower dollars and euros and yen on people with degrees in science to derogate climate science.

To distinguish their propaganda from science, the rent-a-scientists began to attach adjectives to their work.  Hence one Steven Milloy, for example, was hired by the Phillip Morris and RJR tobacco companies to claim that second-hand tobacco smoke did not cause cancer.  Phillip Morris is believed to have invented the term "sound science" at that time.

George W. Bush picked up on it, and his friends at Fox Fiction not only picked up on it, they also hired Milloy to spout his nonsense over the airwaves.  Milloy was paid handsomely by Exxon to denounce climate science, which the Foxies saw as no conflict of interest. Yet even the far right-wing Cato Institute saw the conflict and acted on it.  It stopped sponsoring Milloy's "Junk Science" website and removed him from its list of adjunct scholars.

None of this seems to have diminished his ready acceptance by the world's most scientifically illiterate society.