#60 / Cycles Of Funding

Tully MacKay-Tisbert is an associate director at a nonprofit organization in the Los Angeles area that serves homeless individuals with a mental illness. He has a master’s degree in applied anthropology from California State University Long Beach. On February 21, 2016, the San Francisco Chronicle ran his opinion piece, "Endless cycle of funding won't end homelessness."

MacKay-Tisbert, who works for a nonprofit, says this: "The nonprofit industry and all our emergencies will not end homeless [sic]."

What will, then? MacKay-Tisbert asks exactly that question, and then provides this answer: "Real advocacy that isn’t compromised by the funding of an industry. Advocacy that produces deep changes in how our economic system creates and responds to poverty, how we create housing, how people get the health care they need."

Frankly, to me, this suggested solution seems somewhat opaque. Because of my twenty years of experience as a local elected official in Santa Cruz County, I do have some understanding of how local governments are struggling with the problem of homelessness, almost always in alliance with the nonprofit sector. MacKay-Tisbert is concerned, speaking from within the "nonprofit industry," as he calls it, that nonprofits working on homelessness issues are largely motivated in their daily work by a desire to qualify for the next grant opportunity. That has not actually been my own experience, though maintaining the flow of grant funding to the nonprofits that deal with homeless people is critically important, as we in Santa Cruz recently learned, when our Homeless Services Center lost a major grant. 

In fact, the way I read MacKay-Tisbert, he is actually advocating for what one candidate for President is calling a "political revolution." 

No more bandaid grants!

Instead, "deep changes in ... our economic system." 

I'm glad that the nonprofit "industry" is out there doing everything it can, and hustling the funding and grants to do it. 

But that "political revolution" is actually what's required!

Image Credit:

http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/02/17/homeless-services-dont-end-homelessness/ideas/nexus/

#59 / Muddied

The picture above is from the online version of an article that appeared in the February 20, 2016 edition of The New York Times. In the print edition, the article was titled, "Clean Power Muddied by Cheap Fuel." The picture shows a wind farm in England, and the article's description of these facilities is encouraging, since we know that we must, at the earliest time possible, completely eliminate the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels: 

A wind farm here, along the River Trent, cranks out enough clean electricity to power as many as 57,000 homes. Monitored remotely, the windmills, 34 turbines each about 400 feet high, require little attention or maintenance and are expected to produce electricity for decades to come.

This is very good news! However, the article goes on to explain that the British electricity company SSE, the owner of the wind farm, is "reconsidering plans for large wind farms and even restarting a mothballed power plant that runs on fossil fuel."

Why would they do this? The price of oil is down, that's why. “We obviously need to be pragmatic,” said Lee-Ann Fullerton, an SSE spokeswoman."

Might I suggest that there is nothing "pragmatic" about burning more fossil fuel, just because the price is low? The more fossil fuel we burn, the more we destroy the conditions that make it possible for our current human civilization to continue to exist. Self-preservation, which is universally considered to be "pragmatic," counsels that we must do everything we can to substitute non-fossil fuel energy sources for energy production that is based on the combustion of hydrocarbons. 

In other words, it is a fallacy to think that "market signals" always provide us with a reliable guide to right action. 

If "the market" encourages the use of fossil fuels, we can raise the price of those fossil fuels by imposing a tax. Or, we can simply regulate our use of fossil fuels, and prohibit the combustion of fossil fuels if there is any other energy source available. In other words, we can decide what we ought to do, and then take collective action to make sure we actually do it. 

What we need to do is to leave the oil in the ground.

What we need to do is to build more non-hydrocarbon based energy systems.

Don't get confused. Don't let low fuel prices muddy your thinking. 

We need to STOP burning hydrocarbon fuels. Period.

That's possible. 

That's pragmatic!

Image Credit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/business/energy-environment/in-britain-a-green-utility-company-sees-winds-of-change.html?_r=0

#58 / Crashers

Jill Lepore, an historian and a writer for The New Yorker, takes on the party system in American politics, and asserts that our two-party system is a "creation of the press." You can read all about it in her article called, "The Party Crashers," which appeared in the February 22, 2016 edition of the magazine. 

By Lepore's count, there have been six different "party systems" since 1796, when the Federalists (aligned with John Adams) and the Democratic-Republicans (aligned with Thomas Jefferson) hurled their bitter barbs back and forth in the hundreds of weekly newspapers that were the source of political information in the early days of the Republic. 

It is Lepore's contention that changes to our party system, over time, have always occurred in connection with new information technologies or arrangements. She documents the various changes that have occurred to our political parties, and discusses how different ways to access political information have been associated with those changes. According to Lepore, we are probably just about to move into a seventh "party system," this one ushered in by the Internet, and this one, perhaps, ending up with the effective destruction of the kind of two-party system we have relied upon to structure our political decision-making. 

"With our phones in our hands and our eyes on our phones," says Lepore, "each of us is a reporter, each a photographer, unedited and ill judged, chatting, snapping, tweeting, and posting, yikking and yakking. At some point, does each of us become a party of one?"

Lepore's article is premised, at least partly, on a play on the word "party." A party is the kind of organized political association that has guided our politics, one way or another, since the American Revolution, but a "party" is also a kind of celebration in which you aim to have a lot of fun. Hannah Arendt, my favorite political philosopher, has noted that the practice of politics was actually what the founding fathers had in mind when they stated that our inalienable rights included not only "life" and "liberty," but the "pursuit of happiness," too. Politics, in other words, was seen to be a source of personal joy and self-fulfillment. 

If Lepore is right about where our modern information technologies may be taking us, we need to be careful. You can't really "crash" a party of one. And that "party of one" idea doesn't sound like it would be too much fun, either. 

I think Lepore is giving us a clue that we had better get together, and not let the rampant individualism that has so completely transformed our contemporary world, and undermined all of our community institutions, destroy our politics, too. 

Image Credit:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/22/did-social-media-produce-the-new-populism

#57 / Not Above The Law

Senator Dianne Feinstein

An article ran in the San Jose Mercury News, yesterday, February 25, 2016, based on reporting from the McClatchy Washington Bureau. The Mercury article carried this headline: 

Feinstein: Apple not above the law

Speaking for myself, I would hope not! I would hope that no one is above the law (including United States Senator Dianne Feinstein).

Allow me, however, to suggest to the Senator, who was referencing Apple's refusal to reengineer an Apple iPhone, that there is actually no "law" that says that Apple has any such obligation. This article, by Irina Raicu, who is Internet Ethics Program Director at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, properly explains the legal situation.

The Senator seems to think (as a federal official) that if the federal government wants a person to do something to help the federal government, and if the government can get a judge to agree with the government, then the person approached by the government has an actual legal obligation to do whatever the federal government wants and demands. This is not, however, the "law," and is, in fact, totally contrary to the basic foundations upon which our democratic government is based. The government has only limited powers. It doesn't have the power to order people around at the government's convenience, and to tell people that they have to do whatever the government wants, whenever the government decides it wants them to do something.

The case under discussion is not a case in which Apple has possession of any evidence whatsoever that might have some relevance to the government's investigation of the terrorist attack that occurred in San Bernardino, California in December of last year. If that were the case, a properly executed search warrant could impose a legal obligation on Apple to turn over evidence in Apple's possession. However, that is not actually the situation. What the federal government wants is truly "extraordinary," in both a legal sense (an "extraordinary writ" is involved), and in the usual meaning of the word.

The fact that the phone used by the terrorists was manufactured by Apple does not make Apple complicit in their crimes. The phones that Apple makes, and sells by the millions, will not reveal their data to someone who doesn't have the password. That's true of every late-model iPhone. Apple isn't hiding data. Apple has no connection to the data, or to the phone, which was apparently sold to the County of San Bernardino, and then used by those who made the terrorist attack. The federal government's assertion is that since the government now wants to look at the data on that phone, Apple must figure out how to make it available. 

Let me repeat. There is no "law" that says that anyone has to go to work for the federal government, to help the government do whatever it wants to do, whenever the government wants them to do it. And that is what is going on here. The government has decided that Apple could help the government get information that the government wants, and so the government is trying to compel Apple to work for the government to achieve the government's objectives. 

Apparently, the federal government is asserting that it has the authority to issue such a directive, based on provisions in the All Writs Act, originally enacted in 1789. The relevant language reads as follows:

The Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.

Apple, and I think quite properly, is contesting the idea that "the usages and principles of law" require it to reengineer its phones, once sold, when the government tells the company that reengineering the phone might help the government uncover evidence.

Suppose I were a crack computer guy who really knew the technologies involved in encryption. Could the federal government order me to work on the phone? If the government can force Apple to do that, it could force anyone to do that. And if the government can force Apple to work to decrypt one phone, it is clear that it can also force Apple to work to decrypt other phones, too!

Maybe, the Supreme Court will ultimately decide that the federal government can, with a court order, tell anyone to do anything that the government decides would be helpful to deal with crime, or terrorism. There was a government that asserted that sort of power, once. The government of Great Britain made that claim, and British courts issued "Writs of Assistance," which essentially did exactly the same thing that the federal government is now claiming that it can do in this case involving Apple.

The result of Great Britain's assertions was the American Revolution. 

Would Dianne Feinstein have been a Tory?

It sure looks like it!

Image Credit:

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/dianne-feinstein-the-most-corrupt-person-in-congress-routes-even-more-money-to-husbands-firm/question-3651127/

#56 / Apocalyptic French Philiosophy

Joe Mathews writes the "Connecting California" column for Zócalo Public Square. In one of his most recent columns, Mathews suggests that California is being governed by an apocalyptic French philosopher, citing to Governor Brown's "friendship with Jean-Pierre Dupuy, who practices what is called 'enlightened doomsaying' from academic perches at Stanford and Paris’ École Polytechnique."

Naturally, hearing about "enlightened doomsaying," which sounds to me like it has the ring of truth, I rushed out to acquire Dupuy's book, The Mark of the Sacred. Here is a pertinent quote, from Page 58:

Martin Rees ... one of the keepers of the Doomsday Clock ... gives humanity only a 50 percent chance of surviving until the end of the present century ... Rees is certainly not alone in speaking of the possible extinction of the human race."

I have not yet finished this book. I am recommending it, even so. Dupuy claims that his "doomsaying" is, indeed, "enlightened," in that there is a way to transcend the virtually inevitable end of the processes now underway, the processes advancing the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock. 

We need lots of people trying to find out how to make that kind of transcendence happen. More eyes on Dupuy's book can't hurt. I'll report in as soon as I have found the secret.

Meanwhile, Bob Dylan's advice also rings true: 

It's now or never. More than ever.

Bob Dylan, "Soon After Midnight" 

Image Credit:

http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/02/04/california-needs-to-embrace-the-apocalypse/inquiries/connecting-california/

#55 / Questions On Clean

The "quest for clean" may be doing more harm than good. That's the story line put forward by an article in the February 16, 2016 edition of The Wall Street Journal, asking whether antibacterial soaps are safe. 

As earlier noted, I have been doing some reading in a book by Jean-Pierre Dupuy, an "apocalyptic French philosopher" who is supposedly being taken quite seriously by California Governor Jerry Brown. 

I am taking him seriously, too, now that I am deeply into his book, The Mark of the Sacred, and I am pretty sure that Dupuy would agree with me that the passion to kill germs is, at one level, an attempt to reject the living world, the World of Nature, and to make a claim that humans should live independently of Nature, encased and enclosed totally within a world that they themselves construct. 

As The Journal article documents, denying the primacy of the World of Nature, including its germs, turns out not to be a good idea!

Image Credit:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/are-antibacterial-soaps-safe-1455592023

#54 / The Roosevelt Approach

David Brooks, the almost always full of himself columnist for The New York Times, pontificated to the four winds on Tuesday, February 16th, addressing his column on that day to "Dear Hillary, Jeb, Marco, and John." 

For those not closely following the politics of the various Presidential campaigns, the candidates Brooks chose to address in his column were Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich.

Brooks apparently deemed it unnecessary to address any advice to Donald Trump or to Bernie Sanders, both of whose candidacies he deems "wildly impractical."

In fact, Brooks' observation is that the Trump and Sanders candidacies are not only "wildly impractical;" they are also campaigns that generate "passionate intensity." He really hates that!

Brooks wants to help out those candidates he specifically addresses, giving them pointers on how to defuse that "passionate intensity" thing. Full of himself as he is, Brooks apparently has no hesitation whatsoever in thinking that he knows just the right way to help out those "worthy" candidates that he deems better than the wildly impractical ones. 

What is Brooks' advice? Well, essentially, Brooks believes that Hillary, Jeb, Marco, and John should all try to channel Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 

That may be a great idea, though none of the candidates to whom Brooks is giving this advice seem to have the potential or the capacity to emulate Roosevelt in any significant way. If you are acquainted with Roosevelt's tenure, you will remember that he tended to evoke passionate intensity, from both supporters and opponents, and though it may have surprised everyone (who probably would have deemed it wildly impractical), Roosevelt shepherded through fundamental changes in government, politics, and the economy, in what any fair observer would call a "political revolution."

Wait a minute!! That's what Bernie Sanders is calling for. Could it be that Brooks has picked the wrong candidates to try to channel Roosevelt?

I suspect that's true. Take, for instance, this actual quotation:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

Who spoke those words? That's right: President Roosevelt!

But I bet you could see Bernie Sanders saying just the same thing. In fact, he pretty much has!

Hillary, Jeb, Marco, and John don't really have that same spirit. You just don't hear them saying anything like, "I am fighting against the wealthy special interests, and I don't care what they think!" You'd have to go with Bernie Sanders if you really want to find a candidate who takes "The Roosevelt Approach," which was the title of Brooks' column.

In terms of governing, the "Roosevelt Approach" was the opposite of what Brooks counsels. He says that Sanders is "uninhibited by the constraints of reality." By this he means that Sanders refuses to concede that the way things are today is the way they have to be.

And Franklin Roosevelt didn't accept that either. He was famously willing to experiment with change, to create a new reality.

He did that, too.

And any fair minded observer would say that this was a "political revolution."

We know it can be done!

Image Credit:

http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/franklin-d-roosevelt

#53 / War As Public Relations

The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities at Bard College is sponsoring a "virtual reading group," which meets by way of a monthly video conference. Currently, the group is devoting three sessions to the study of Arendt's 1969 book, On Violence. 

Incidentally, if you are tempted (as I clearly was) by the idea of being able to take part in a book group devoted to the works of the person who may well be the 20th Century's most important political philosopher, you should know that members of the Hannah Arendt Center participate free. You can join the Hannah Arendt Center by clicking the link, and making a (tax deductible) contribution. 

At the last session, discussion touched on the legitimacy (and efficacy) of war, and Roger Berkowitz, the Academic Director of the Center, who led the discussion, said that Arendt distinguished between wars aimed at achieving some concrete result in the real world and war waged purely for "public relations" purposes, as for instance to demonstrate to the world that a nation participating in or waging the war should be taken seriously, and that such a nation has a legitimate right to claim world leadership.

The Vietnam War was, in fact, just such a war. 

A war like that can't be "successful" in the sense of accomplishing any specific objective, since there isn't, in fact, any specific objective motivating the violence. 

And...

There is a real question how much public relations value is actually realized, either. As a way to get good public relations for the United States, war didn't work out so well in the case of the Vietnam conflict; at least, that's my observation!

Image Credit:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156695006/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2?pf_rd_p=1944687522&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=082233769X&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=15TYGJ1YWD1GYSP0VKAT

#52 / Swartz

Ava Kofman, a New York based writer and journalist, has most recently written an article about Aaron Swartz (pictured above). Swartz committed suicide at age twenty-six, two weeks before the beginning of his trial on two counts of wire fraud and eleven separate charges that he violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, by downloading several million articles from JSTOR, a database of academic journals.

If you click the JSTOR link, you will notice that JSTOR wants you to log in with "your personal account, or get JSTOR access through your library or other institution." Better believe they're serious!

Speaking of "serious," Kofman's story, published in the February 22, 2016 edition of The Nation, was titled, "A Serious Man," and is, in essence, a review of a new book compiling some of Swartz' writings, The Boy Who Could Change The World. 

I am recommending the review, and then you can go from there on the book itself. I personally appreciated Swartz' evaluation of blogging: 

"I don’t consider this writing, I consider this thinking,” he wrote about blogging in a 2006 post. “I like sharing my thoughts and I like hearing yours and I like practicing expressing ideas, but fundamentally this blog is not for you, it’s for me. I hope that you enjoy it anyway.”

My sentiments (about blogging) exactly. 

And, what about that "changing the world" idea? When it comes to changing the world, I think we need to reverse the polarity of Swartz' perspective on blogging. 

That changing the world idea is not "for me."

It's for us.

Image Credit: 
http://en.r8lst.com/extraordinary%20pictures%20of%20Aaron%20Schwartz

#51 / Facing Columns

     

For those who take their New York Times the old-fashioned way, by reading a physical newspaper, the photos above will be familiar. On the left is Times columnist David Brooks. His column ran on the lefthand side of the editorial page on Friday, February 19th. On the right is Paul Krugman. His column was on the righthand side of the editorial page on the same date. 

In terms of their political philosophies, this is a reverse of the normal polarity. Krugman is usually on the "left," and Brooks is generally more to the "right." On February the 19th, however, the column placements did seem to reflect the political points of view being expressed in the columns. Brooks penned a rather nice argument in favor of a more positive and welcoming approach to immigration. 

Krugman used his column to savage Bernie Sanders, suggesting that Sanders' suggestions on the economy were nothing less than "voodoo economics," and that Sanders had joined the Republicans that Krugman typically criticizes by opting for "economic fantasies." 

A writer for Salon, Elias Isquith, has noted how Krugman has veered to the right on Sanders, and is now using his considerable influence with political progressives to undermine Sanders' challenge to the candidate favored by the Democratic Party establishment, Hillary Clinton. 

Who comprises that "establishment?" I think you can get the idea from reading this excerpt from Krugman's column:

Mr. Sanders is calling for a large expansion of the U.S. social safety net, which is something I would like to see, too. But the problem with such a move is that it would probably create many losers as well as winners — a substantial number of Americans, mainly in the upper middle class, who would end up paying more in additional taxes than they would gain in enhanced benefits.

Krugman is arguing that protecting the economic position of the "upper middle class" should be a priority, and that anything that would reduce their economic advantages is not only politically difficult (which can be admitted) but is actually "wrong," and bad policy.

Obviously, Sanders is shooting to help the "ordinary" folks. 

I'm with Bernie!

Image Credits:

(1) - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/opinion/a-little-reality-on-immigration.html

(2) - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/opinion/varieties-of-voodoo.html?_r=0

#50 / Oh, No There Won't !!!

The Washington Post ran a story under a picture like the one shown above, and the headline said this:

By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans. . .

My reaction was pretty immediate: 

Oh, No There Won't !!!

How can I say that? There was a reputable report that made that prediction.

Here's the thing: we get used to extrapolating from existing conditions and then saying how things "will be." 

That's not how it works.

Things "will be" the way we make them. At least that will be the case if we stop acting like our role in the world is to observe what's happening to us. 

Our role in the world isn't to "watch what's happening."

Our role in the world is to make things happen. 

We are not going to let plastic beat out fish, are we?

No!

I didn't think so!!!

Image Credit:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/24/plastic-new-epoch-human-damage

#49 / Bizarro Meets Tussman

I pretty much love everything that Dan Piraro (Bizarro) does. The comic above, which appeared in the San Jose Mercury on February 5th, illuminates an important political point, one documented in a much more scholarly fashion by Joseph Tussman, in his 1960 book, Obligation and The Body Politic:

There are, says Tussman, two radically distinct points of view or perspectives from which political life or the political process can be studied. First, there is the perspective of the external observer concerned with the description of political behavior. This is continuous with the interest in prediction.... 

But second, there is the point of view, not of the observer, but of the person (or persons) ... confronting his task. And this task is not predicting but deciding; the question is not what will I do but what should I do....This essentially "normative" or "practical" perspective [is] the perspective of action (Tussman, page 12).

We can, in other words, in politics and in life, be either "Spectators" or "Participants." We can be either "Observers," or "Actors."

Here is where we shouldn't let the Bizarro cartoon mislead us, however. If you want to be an actor, a "participant," you have to wake up and get involved! Hopefully, you might do that before that stick of dynamite goes off; before the whole world blows up!

Image Credit:

http://safr.kingfeatures.com/idn/cnfeed/zone/js/content.php?file=aHR0cDovL3NhZnIua2luZ2ZlYXR1cmVzLmNvbS9CaXphcnJvLzIwMTYvMDIvQml6YXJyb19wLjIwMTYwMjA1XzYxNi5naWY=

#48 / Sunshine Sadness

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD for short), is "a type of depression that is related to changes in seasons ... If you're like most people with SAD, your symptoms start in the fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody." I am quoting, here, from the Mayo Clinic's online health information website.

There are lots of places online where you can find out more. Lack of sunshine is taken to be a major causative factor, and "treatment for SAD may include light therapy (phototherapy)."

The picture to the right, taken on the University of California, Santa Cruz campus on February 16th, at just about 11:30 a.m., documents how things looked right then, right in the heart of winter.

As I emerged from teaching my class on "Privacy, Technology, And Freedom," I felt the hot weather hit my face, and I want to self-report the terrific sense of sadness that overcame me. This is not how things should be, in February. In fact, when I checked, the average high temperature for February 16th, in Santa Cruz, has historically been 64.3 degrees. I didn't immediately check the temperature at 11:30 a.m.; however, the temperature was 74 degrees at 5:12 p.m. I think it was near 80 degrees at noon.

Our failure to heed the built-in limits of the Natural World, as we continue to act like the world we build doesn't have to pay attention to those limits, is putting human civilization, and the continued existence of many species (including redwood trees, so prominently visible on the UCSC campus) in mortal danger.

I'm SAD. 

But this sadness isn't going to pass when winter turns to spring and summer. It's only going to get worse.

Image Credits:

(1) - Gary A. Patton Personal Photo
(2) - http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34853-the-beetles-eighty-nine-million-acres-of-abrupt-climate-change

#47 / Water Market Watch Out!

Pictured is the Bangkok floating water market. This is not the kind of water market I am thinking about today. 

The Water Maven, whose real name is Chris Austin, writes a daily compendium of news about California water. It's free to subscribe, and if you'd like to do that, you can click right here to get yourself to a webpage that will let you sign up for daily email alerts. 

A week or so ago, the Maven's Notebook alerted readers to a new bill introduced into the California State Legislature by Assembly Member Bill Dodd. Dodd's bill is AB 1755, entitled "The Open and Transparent Water Data Act." 

The Maven said that the purpose of the bill is to "create [a] more robust water market." Jim Wunderman, President and CEO of the Bay Area Council, hailed the bill. He said, “California's current water transfer market is inefficient. With the right market signals, water agencies and private capital will want to invest in conservation and improvement of our water delivery system. California leads the world in developing new and innovative technologies. It's time to take the first step and invest in a better water information system.”

It is almost always a good idea to find ways to make good information more available, and that is what Dodd's bill is aimed at. However, I want to provide a cautionary "watch out" warning. A water market is a mechanism for making sure that those with the most money can buy what they want, and those water "transfers" mentioned by Jim Wunderman may have negative impacts in the places from which the water is transferred. Traditionally, we have assumed that water is place-associated; in other words, if your community has water resources, those water resources will remain in, and be utilized in, your community.

Water "markets" change that assumption. A local community whose water resources are adequate for that local community may find that the water it has relied upon to meet local needs will be "sold" to a higher bidder, usually some large, municipal water agency in the Central Valley or Southern California.

The rule of "markets" is the "Golden Rule." Those who have the gold make the rules.

This is not always the best system, when a necessity of life is what's being sold in the market.

Consider this blog posting your Water Market Watch Out.

Heads up!

Image Credit:

http://paradiseintheworld.com/bangkok-about-contrasts-and-surprise/

#46 / A Postcapitalism Future?

As I indicated when I wrote about Davos, I don't have any faith that the state of the world is going to be "improved" through the "top down efforts" of the rich and famous, and certainly not by the corporate powers that command the world's wealth.

Paul Mason, a British economics journalist, seems to believe that information technology, which does have a type of "bottoms up" aspect, will be able to accomplish that result.

Color me skeptical on that one, too!

However, if you'd like to read a quick review of Mason's book, Postcapitalism: A Guide To Our Future, you can click on this link. That link will take you to what Peter C. Grosvenor has to say about Mason's prognostications. Grosvenor's review appears in the online edition of In These Times. 

Based on the Grosvenor article (and not my personal perusal of Mason's book), my skepticism is rooted in what appears to be the thought that technology can, in and of itself, act as an autonomous force, "changing the world" in positive ways without any need for the application of a specific human intention.

I think that either "we" change "the world," or "the world" will change "us." In other words, we will either make things happen the way we want, or we will find that the future "happens to us."

When the future "happens to us," we almost always find that this is not a future that meets our deepest aspirations, or that fulfills the hopes and desires that should drive our lives.

Image Credit:

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18776/paul-mason-on-techs-post-capitalist-promise

#45 / Social Media

Thomas Friedman, columnist for The New York Times, has written a column saying that the Internet will not be able to create the kind of democratic political changes that are so hoped for, and that are so needed throughout the world (not even excepting the United States of America, in my estimation). 

The focus of Friedman's column is not on the United States, but on the countries that experienced what is called the "Arab Spring." Friedman cites to the current thinking of Wael Ghonim, pictured at the center of the photograph above. 

As Friedman explains, Ghonim was the "Egyptian Google employee whose anonymous Facebook page helped to launch the Tahrir Square revolution in early 2011 that toppled President Hosni Mubarak — but then failed to give birth to a true democratic alternative." 

At the time, Ghonim was quoted to the effect that "if you want to liberate a society, all you need is the Internet." Ghonim has now moved to the United States, and no longer thinks that "all you need is the Internet." He has authored a TED talk that documents this realization. He is now placing his bet on "civility and reasoned argument."

I am all for "civility and reasoned argument," too, but I don't think that this will drive democratic change either. I agree with another commentator on the Arab Spring, Zeynep Tufekci, who has her own TED talk on this subject. I agree with Alicia Garza, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, who spoke at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on Friday, February 12th, and who told the crowd that "we are not going to 'like' or 'share' our way to the kind of social changes we need."

Talking about it, and particularly talking about it with civility, as advised by Thomas Friedman, won't be enough. The Internet, however helpful, is also not going to be sufficient. If we want a politics responsive to real people and their real concerns, we are going to have to meet face to face, and get "down and dirty," and go from there.

I recommend it!

Image Credit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/opinion/social-media-destroyer-or-creator.html

#44 / Is It Always Good?

If I have any "claim to fame" around my local area, it's probably related to the fact that I was the author of Measure J, Santa Cruz County's rather effective growth management ordinance, adopted by a vote of the people in June 1978. 

Measure J prevents the development of prime farmland. It directs new growth into existing urban areas. It directs capital improvement funds into such areas, too, to stop infrastructure expenditures from encouraging sprawl. 

Measure J requires that fifteen percent of the housing newly constructed each year be affordable to a person with an average or below average income. It provides special protections for specially sensitive environmental areas in the County, and it requires the Board of Supervisors to hold a public hearing and then to set a growth goal, each year, so that future growth is under the political control of the people, and so that growth doesn't "just happen," without a specific decision that says it should. This formula for growth management, which essentially mandated "smart growth" before that term was in wide use, is completely unique, and it has made a big difference in what has happened in Santa Cruz County.

You can read The Story of Measure J by clicking the link. Measure J itself has been codified, and is now found as Chapter 17.01 in the Santa Cruz County Code. 

I served on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995, and for most of those years, debates about growth were the hot button topics in the political life of our local community. The local daily newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, was invariably on the pro-growth side of the debate, and when I woke up on Sunday morning, on January 31st of this year, I found that nothing had changed. The editorial in the Sentinel that morning was titled, "The Cost of Growth Control."

As the newspaper had claimed so often in the past, it was arguing, again, that trying to limit or "control" growth makes it impossible for younger people to live in Santa Cruz County, because (so goes the argument) limiting the amount of housing increases its price. 

Here's the problem: no matter how much housing might be constructed in Santa Cruz County (the smallest county in the state, geographically speaking), that housing will be acquired by those with the most money, and whether it's lots of housing or not very much housing, the "market" follows the "Golden Rule of Capitalism." You know how it goes: "Those who have the gold make the rules." In terms of the housing market, it goes like this: "Those who have the gold, get the goods." Unconstrained housing development does not lead to lower housing prices. The experience of the City of San Jose, and the Silicon Valley generally, demonstrates this truth. There is no "growth control" there, and the housing prices are even higher than they are in Santa Cruz County. 

Despite about forty years of drumbeating for more growth, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and other development advocates, keep pumping out the same old, untrue bromides, because the object isn't really to lower housing prices for young people; it's to make development more profitable for the developers.

The Sentinel editorial got me going, but here's the point I actually want to make: growth is not "good," in the sense that there is an inevitable connection between growth and a better life. Good is good, and growth is growth, and they may or may not be related. 

Above all, growth is not "God." Worshipping growth is a particularly ill-informed brand of religion.

We create the human world by the choices we make. So far, we have set the rules, almost always, to stimulate growth and more growth. The natural environment, the World of Nature upon which our world is ultimately dependent, is definitely finite. We've got a problem here!

I'd like to think our politics, at the local level and beyond, might start questioning the "growth is good" equation. 

Is growth always good?

Not always (by any means)!!

Image Credit:

http://www.outreachmagazine.com/features/4880-ed-stetzer-is-growth-always-good.html

#43 / Institution And Revolution

Amanda Taub writes for Vox.com. She identifies herself as "Senior Sadness Correspondent," and as a former human rights lawyer who now covers a news beat that includes "foreign policy, human rights, and shetland ponies."

I don't know how well Taub does with the shetland ponies topic, but I found her article on "The unsexy truth about why the Arab Spring failed" to be well worth reading. Click the link if you'd like to second guess my judgment.

The main point of Taub's article is her assertion that the democratic uprisings that constituted what is called the "Arab Spring" failed to create truly democratic governments because of the "catastrophic failure of institutions" within the countries that experienced those revolutionary moments:

Democratic transition, it turns out, isn’t about whom you can overthrow or whom you replace them with. It's about whether or how you can change the vast network of institutions underneath that person. 

If you don't make those institutions work — and often, by the dictator's deliberate design, you simply can't — then your revolution is doomed. No matter how many times you topple the dictator, no matter how pure and good your protesters are, it won't be enough. That's the real lesson of the Arab Spring — and it's important precisely because it's not as exciting or emotionally satisfying as the good-versus-evil story we prefer to tell....

Many of Morsi's failures were self-inflicted, but even if he had been better at governing, the hollowness of Egypt's state would still have at least severely weakened and possibly doomed him. And so when Morsi faltered, the country's democratic transition collapsed. The military filled the void left by the rest of the state's failures.

It has often struck me that we think of our "institutions" as though they were were "things," existing separately from us, and from our actions. We assume that the word "institution" is always a noun. That is definitely the way that Taub employs it.

In fact, though, while it is indubitable that the word "institution" is usually employed as a noun, the word is a participle, too, referencing action. The word "institution" means, in that sense, the "process of instituting, and of beginning anew." 

Hannah Arendt, for those who know her writings, insisted that genuine "revolutions" were always associated with "beginnings," and with our surprising ability to make some new thing appear out of nothing. In fact, a revolution is NOT defined by an overthrow of some existing order, however poorly propped on corrupted foundations; revolutions are defined precisely by the process of "institution," of making something new. 

Taub's piece, it seems to me, understands the first thing quite well - revolutions are not about overthrowing those in current power - but she somewhat misunderstands how revolutions relate to institutions. 

Taub assumes (as most do) that institutions are things, and that the word 'institution" is a "noun." If the thing is no good, as the institutions of Egypt, for instance were no good, then a genuine revolution can only be brought about by creating new institutions. Genuine revolutions do not simply take over the institutions of the old order, and entrust those institutions to new persons. Genuine revolutions create a whole new "order in the world." The success of the American Revolution (partial to be sure) is commemorated by the reference to that new order in the world, that "novus ordo seclorum," which appears as a kind of mystic talisman on our dollar bill. 

One final thought: "Institutions" are about "beginnings," but we know our institutions most immediately in their "noun" form. We know our bodies, too, as "things," yet we know our bodies are actually constantly being reborn, at the cellular level, tiny changes constantly generating the "new order" that maintains us alive. 

In the political world this kind of institution building means that we must, ourselves, constantly be engaged in the life of politics, renewing and rebuilding the institutions upon which our lives depend. My homely way of phrasing this, however lacking in "flash," I believe gets at the heart of how we can prevent our own institutions from being "hollowed out," as Taub says Egypt's were: 

If we want to have self-government, then we have to be involved in government ourselves. 

Image Credit:

http://www.vox.com/2016/1/27/10845114/arab-spring-failure

#42 / Mr. Bill

I guess I ought to watch more television. Until last night, I didn't know a thing about Mr. Bill and his connection to Saturday Night Live, but immediately after the California Coastal Commission fired Dr. Charles Lester, its Executive Director, Mr. Bill's image popped up on my Facebook page. The knowledgeable observer who put it there obviously felt that Mr. Bill was properly reacting to the 7-5 vote to terminate Dr. Lester, which vote was taken in a closed meeting from which the public was excluded. 

The public did get to present their thoughts before the Commission ducked behind closed doors to terminate Dr. Lester. In fact, I watched a live stream of the Commission's meeting almost all day, from 10:00 a.m. to just about dinner time. Hundreds of individuals, from all over California, came to present their views, and I believe that EVERY person who testified supported Dr. Lester. As one person said, when you added up the members of the organizations which spoke out in favor of Dr. Lester over ONE MILLION Californians urged the Commission not to do what it did.

Those who voted to fire the Executive Director didn't give any significant substantive reason for doing so; however, they did mightily object to various press statements made in advance of the meeting (like my own column in the Santa Cruz Sentinel) that called the effort to fire Dr. Lester a "coastal coup."

Well, as I say, I watched the Commission meeting all day. I watched it till the end. It sure looked like a coup to me, and it was a sad day for the state (and the coast), in my opinion.

Here is an early report from the Los Angeles Times. Watch the newspapers and online reports for more detailed coverage. 

In the meantime, I am quite sure that Mr. Bill got it right!

Image Credit:

http://photobucket.com/images/oh%20no%20mr%20bill

#41 / The Way It's Supposed To Be

The photo above can be found on the website of CBS news. It also ran at the top of a news article printed in The Wall Street Journal on January 29, 2016. That Wall Street Journal article described the preliminary steps that Iran is taking toward leasing or buying commercial satellites and acquiring related technologies.

The picture depicts French President François Hollande greeting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Paris on Thursday, January 28th. 

The photo depicts an American ally doing business with "the enemy." 

Instead of bombing the people who live in that "enemy" country.

What a concept!

Presidential candidate Donald Trump can fulminate all he wants, but that is actually the way the world is supposed to be. We are all in the same world, together, so let's get along. Hey, even better, let's do business!

Let's give our thanks to President Barack Obama for the "Iran deal" that made this picture possible. 

Let's keep doing business.

Let's stop the bombing in the Middle East.

Image Credit: 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/france-iran-hassan-rouhani-business-trade-naked-protester-noose/

#40 / Plutocrats And Prejudice

Paul Krugman wrote what I thought was a column worth reading on Friday, January 29th, titled "Plutocrats and Prejudice." I encourage anyone reading this blog to track it down, and to think about what Krugman is saying. 

One purpose of the Krugman column was to compare and contrast the Bernie Sanders' and the Hillary Clinton approach to political change. In this column, as well as in previous pronouncements, Krugman comes down on the Clinton side, or on what he designates in the column as the "many evils" side, of the debate. In Krugman's characterization, Sanders believes that "money is the root of all evil," and Clinton has a more nuanced view, with her thought being that "money is the root of some evil, maybe a lot of evil, but it isn't the whole story."

That distinction is nice for the purpose of discussing various approaches to political change, but I doubt it's actually a fair way to describe Bernie Sanders' thinking. I have not observed that Sanders is oblivious to the evils related to racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice. I think that both Clinton and Sanders have a full appreciation of ALL of those powerful forces working to undermine the health of our society, economy, and political life.

Krugman notes that it is not ONLY the success of billionaires seeking power that has worked to deteriorate politics in the United States. In what he properly says has been a political "race to the bottom" in the Republican Party, it has been the combination of the power of big money coupled with an appeal to the racism and sexism of the South that has been so politically effective to bad ends. 

Maybe, as Krugman posits, a "political revolution from the left is off the table," but I really wonder what else is going to change the equation that Krugman quite accurately notes has corrupted our current politics. As I see it, Sanders is suggesting that we might be able to leverage our growing understanding of how the "billionaire class" has perverted our politics, to the extent that we could actually break the political connection between the billionaires and prejudice. In fact, decency and democracy have not completely fled the South (or the country in general). Who is going to appeal to that basic decency, instead of ceding ground to prejudice?

Saying that an effort to break the powerful connection that Krugman identifies is an effort that is "off the table" seems to me to be a counsel of despair.

I'm sticking with that "hopey changey" thing that (as Krugman admits) has actually led to some wonderful, progressive changes over the past eight years.

Image Credit:

https://ricodilello.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/why-i-quit-being-a-financial-advisor/

#39 / The Attraction Of Distraction

NPR's "Fresh Air" ran a show on January 26, 2016 that told listeners "How Meditation, Placebos And Virtual Reality Help Power 'Mind Over Body.'"

Among other revelations, the show described how a person's immersion in a virtual reality game could so distract her mind that she was unaware of burning water being poured over her feet. Earlier, without the distraction provided by the video game and the noise-cancelling headphones, the subject of this experiment  definitely noted the painful sensations in her feet when they were exposed to the super-hot water.

Pain hurts, and that's bad, but I am not so sure that this technique of pain reduction by distraction is actually a good thing. Pain is generally there to tell us that we need to do something, because we're in some sort of danger, and that we need to change some condition afflicting us. Enough distraction will take our mind off the pain, perhaps, but how does this change what is causing the pain?

In a larger perspective, thinking about conditions in the world today, there is a lot of pain out there, and a lot of distraction. In the context of that world full of pain, I'd have to say that the fact that distraction can take our mind off the pain does not strike me as being a very good thing. 

Maybe you disagree. Heck, why don't we watch another segment of CSI, and forget about all that global warming stuff?

Image Credit:

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/01/26/464372009/how-meditation-placebos-and-virtual-reality-help-power-mind-over-body