The Whistle of a Distant Train

At the 2008 NC Planning Conference, I delivered a presentation called 
"Overcoming Comprehensive Planning Challenges in Rural Local Government". 
Some of the concepts I discussed eventually became part of my dissertation. 
I am interested in how elements of structure and procedure affect land use 
governance. I have been working on some introductory data analyses for my 
dissertation and thought it might make a good blog post to discuss a proposition 
or two for those who may be interested in what I study. 

I am using a dataset from the Wharton Business School at the University of 
Pennsylvania, a nationwide study that was conducted to examine the effect 
of local land use governance on real estate. I am finding moderate to strong 
statistical correlations between the degree of involvement of community groups
in land use regulation, and the degree of involvement of local boards and 
administrators in land use regulation. There are two ways this perhaps can 
be interpreted (from theliterature I have collected thus far). First, municipalities 
with an involved citizenry demand administrators and boards who take more
interventionist approaches in land use governance. This means that even
across municipalities in states with the same enabling statutes, that
planning outcomes are not always determined by the merits of the proposals
or their compliance with local ordinances. Instead, the characteristics of
the population help determine what local government structures and
processes emerge, which consequently influences the nature of the outcomes
of local land use governance.

Another proposition is that local boards and administrators are partially
deterministic of the degree of public participation. Planning is becoming
an increasingly technical process, and the degree of specialist knowledge
(and the cost to effectively participate) is sufficient enough to present
a barrier to effective participation for the average citizen and perhaps
entire groups. Literature from the EU I have found seems to point toward a
model of increased administrator/citizen interaction in explaining
satisfaction with the land use planning process.

Most citizens simply cannot afford to hire private consultants to provide
the technical knowledge to effectively deliberate (which can create a
structural bias towards more resourced interests), so they must depend on
local boards and staff to help them provide this technical expertise. This
is known as the "consultant" model of planner/citizen interaction. The
planner is perhaps not an active advocate of the citizen's (or groups)
position, but is instead can be used as a coping mechanism for the public
to overcome the technical and resource advantages of private interest
coalitions, who often employ their own consultants. Otherwise, public
interest coalitions are largely dependent on the knowledge/resources of
their members can mobilize and government partially cedes its obligation
to protect the "health, safety and welfare" of it's citizens.

Cliffs Notes: Different governance structures and administrative
procedures emerge between similarly enabled local governments, in part from
the characteristics and expectations of their citizens. Administrators/planners 
who actively provide technical assistance to the public enable them to be more 
effective participants in land use governance.

I applaud a recent decision by Wal-Mart to require "green" labeling of the products it sells. Given the degree of influence Wal-Mart has in the US consumer market, this could be a fairly big deal if its practice became an de-facto industry standard. While done under the premise of retaining more lucrative higher-income customers, environmentalists will take a win wherever they can get it. Provisioning information is generally the least demanding mechanism that either government or private enterprise can require.

Consumers should be able to have the information to make informed decisions about their consumption patterns. The premise has been firmly established for some time now, particularly in the realm of food safety. Personally, my food consumption is partially directed by product information labels, as I choose to watch my sodium and fat intake. If people are aware of the potential impacts of their consumption, it will affect their behavior. It's even better that this is a market-driven initiative and not an unfunded government mandate. It is my assertion that a truly free market empowers the consumer with choice.

I suppose if conscionable consumers felt the societal cost of a certain lead-based widget exceeded it's relative benefits, it might change their consumption behavior. There's no law that says we have to buy goods that have unacceptable environmental externalities. We currently outsource much of our manufacturing in part because Americans are no longer willing to bear the public burdens of heavy industrial production (disease, air & water pollution, land deformation from raw material extraction). We still seek to consume products, but allow the externalities of production to be felt borne in countries with weak labor and environmental protections. Impact assessment initiatives like this would assist people in understanding the consequences of consumption without regard to "where" it happens. This could also help the beleaguered US manufacturing sector; if consumers demand green goods, it provides less of an impetus to move production to countries with weak environmental laws.

An interesting proposition in light of all the recent news about pirate attacks off Somalia...what helped create this phenomenon? It turns out it might be overfishing and perhaps illegal dumping. Somalia has been bereft of a functioning government for nearly twenty years, leaving it without any functioning entity to regulate its fisheries or prevent encroachment by foreign fishing vessels in its territorial waters. After years of excessive overfishing, fish stocks became so low that the Somalis were basically being fished out of existence. The armed raids were initially launched by disgruntled coastal fisherman as an effort to drive foreign fishing vessels from Somali coastal waters, or at a minimum to collect some sort of tax. The piracy trend has continued to expand from the lack of alternative industries for economic growth, the huge potential payoffs and the general desperation of a life in violence-wracked Eastern Africa. I think it's an interesting example of how environmental problems can have foreign affairs, trade and national security implications.

I knew what it was even before going to look. Pacing around the Caldwell student lounge on a cold January afternoon, I remembered an article I had read in Audubon's monthly magazine about bird mortality when I noticed the little twisted heap of something on the ledge, underneath the huge bay windows. I drew in close to see a dead bird, with a small feather still attached to the nick it had made in the window. Society's fascination with clear walls had claimed another victim.

 Unfortuantely birds have never been taught about these things called windows. It turns out that millions of birds die every year from striking windows in everything from skyscrapers to car windows. But it doesn't have to remain that way. Part of the solution? Fritted glass.

Quite simply, fritted glass is glass that is enmeshed with patterns to give it visibility, which birds can see. In addition to decreasing bird mortality, it saves money; the fritting helps reduce cooling costs by reducing the amount of sunlight that enters the building. The article mentions that Swarthmore College installed the fritted panes for a cost of $20k and have already reduced their cooling expenditures by $40k. Fritted panes pass the test of being both sustainable and economically defensible. Could this be an option for NC State and other UNC schools? I certainly hope so.

After taking a bit of a sabbatical in the month of December, I plan on starting back on posting on this blog in the next week. I have been busy assembling publications and devising course content for PS 320 (US Environmental Law & Politics) and it has taken quite a toll (particularly on my sanity). In the mean time, please visit TreeHugger, an interesting and popular environmental blog for lots of great information about environmental politics and technology. Its owned by Discovery, so its really well done.

After decades of relative stasis in the development of new automobile technology, the big three automakers find themselves in a difficult position. First, faced with record oil prices, the industry which had predicated its business heavily on truck and SUV sales saw its sales plummet by double digit percentages as consumers yearned for more fuel efficient cars. It turns out that the power of the markets is a much more effective sanction to reduce consumption than any government policy. Although oil prices have declined dramatically (without an additional ounce of increased capacity from "drill baby drill") the economic recession has lead to a considerable lack of available credit from lending institutions. Even if a person wants to buy an American truck or SUV, it's very difficult to get acceptable financing terms.

A major reason for Detroit's inability to innovate was it's political influence. So strong is its political influence that to this day, Michigan does not have any annual safety or emissions inspection requirement for automobiles. The big three have always had considerable influence in both political parties and have been successful in lobbying to prevent new legislation that would have kept it competitive with foreign automakers. They have also fought state initiatives to establish fuel economy standards and to regulate emissions. One of the most influential Democrats in the US House, John Dingell (D-MI) has been a champion for the automotive industry, much to the consternation of consumer advocates and environmentalists. He has been instrumental in fighting increases in Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE) and also fought for separate standards and exclusions for light trucks. These efforts effectively froze fuel economy standards from 1979 to 2005, with only tiny incremental increases since then. It is this perceived lack of compatibility with the future Obama administration's goals towards fuel economy and climate change that Rep. Dingell was released from his chairmanship of the powerful House Energy & Commerce committee in favor of California Democrat Henry Waxman.

Foreign automakers operate under different political systems, that have not been influenced by Detroit. Their governments have fought to keep their economies from becoming increasingly dependent on foreign oil and sought to promote innovation and the use of mass transit. They have often turned to the politically unpopular method of creating price floors for oil. Instead of allowing wild swings in the prices of gasoline to occur, the price stays relatively high regardless. This guarantees that citizens remain conservation minded, and that automakers have a stable market to produce vehicles and an incentive to create more efficient automobiles. Contrast this with Detroit, that must endure considerable cost to retool its entire industry to adapt to these wild shifts in consumer patterns due to fluctuations in crude oil markets.

 Now some may argue that Unions have an effect on Detroit's situation. It's true that UAW unions have some effect on the US automaker's bottom line, but its hardly as damning as the fall in SUV and truck sales. Detroit has been successful for decades with unionized labor and the production regime is much more mechanized now than it was in the past. Honda seems to be weathering the downturn much better than its competitors, despite being produced in the US by union workers. Other countries have considerable amounts of unionization within their auto industries, as well as lower worker productivity from shorter working hours and longer vacation time. We can't blame all (or even much) of this on union workers; differences in labor costs are basically incidental when compared to manufacturer incentives in these market conditions. People are looking for inexpensive, smaller cars that are significantly less cheaper than SUVs, which in turn accounts to $5-6,000 less profit per vehicle sold (at least in Ford's case). I would wager that if the big three did not have fleet contracts for nearly all local, state and federal government agencies, they would have not lasted as long as they have.

It seems incredulous that even though that electric car technology has been around since the late 1800's, the US auto industry has done absolutely nothing to make this commercially viable until now. As a condition of any bailout package, Detroit must be mandated to produce hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles and retool their industry to provide clean mass transit and renewable energy infrastructure. We should no longer support an auto industry whose business model is counter to national environmental and national security goals.

 

Image credit - unknown author

I have been drowning in work and dissertation during the past few weeks, but I apologize for not making time to update the blog. I ran across this map-based presentation from the NY Times that details (on a county level) how presidential voting preferences have changed since 2004 (by either voting more Democratic or Republican ...sorry Libertarians). There are also breakdowns of demographic patterns in individual battleground states later in the presentation. Enjoy!

Electoral shift since 2004

Pretty powerful stuff  from one of the biggest Republican names out there. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, surprised both parties (to an extent) by endorsing Barack Obama today on Meet the Press. To give you an idea of how important this endorsement is, only Bush or Cheney hold more prominent positions within the Republican establishment (Condoleeza Rice being equivalent). I would recommend watching the video and getting the entire context of the endorsement.

A few notable quotes from the interview with Tom Brokaw

On Palin:
"She's a very distinguished woman, and she's to be admired," he said. "But at the same, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made."

On the Economy:
"Powell said that as he watched McCain, the Republican ?was a little unsure as to how to deal with the economic problems that we were having, and almost every day, there was a different approach to the problem, and that concerned me, sensing that he didn't have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had."

On the inferences that Obama associates with terrorists
'"They're trying to connect [Obama] to some kind of terrorist feelings, and I think that's inappropriate," Powell said. "Now I understand what politics is all about ? I know how you can go after one another. And that's good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign, and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right, and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift."

Powell said he has "heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion [that Obama's] a Muslim and might be associated with terrorists."

"This is not the way we should be doing it in America. I feel strongly about this particular point," Powell said. "We have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way. And John McCain is as non-discriminatory as anyone I know. But I'm troubled about the fact that within the party, we have these kinds of expressions."

Have you become a political junkie in the run-up to the election? Can't seem to get enough? Well, what better way to help you feed your appetite for election analysis than creating a list of websites followed yours truly (budding political science instructor). In here you will find news, analysis and outright partisan hackery (I'm leering at you uncomfortably, Weekly Standard). Enjoy!

Magazines

The American Prospect (Liberal)
http://www.prospect.org

The Atlantic (Centrist)
http://www.theatlantic.com

The New Republic (Liberal)
http://www.tnr.com

The National Review (Conservative)
http://www.nationalreview.com

Slate (Liberal)
http://www.slate.com

The Weekly Standard (Embarassingly Neoconservative)
http://www.theweeklystandard.com

News

The Washington Post (best political coverage, great columnists)
http://www.washingtonpost.com

The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com

Web Resources

Real Clear Politics (lots of cool charts and maps)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com

Politico (good one-stop for stories)
http://www.politico.com

Pollster
http://www.pollster.com

Blogs

The Huffington Post (Occasionally insufferable)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Fully Myelinated (Dr. Steven Greene from NCSU Pol. Sci.)
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/shgreene

This was forwarded to me in a email from a friend at Virginia Tech. Its a parody of the Nigerian 419 scam emails you probably have received at some point in the past, commenting on the current Treasury Department bailout plan. Thought you all might get a laugh out of it.

"DEAR AMERICAN:

Theres a rather alarming editorial in today's Washington Post about the state of the economy. Because of commitments I have in the next week or so, I can't spend much time expanding on them, but I'll post some excerpts to help goad you into following the link.

"What we are witnessing may be the greatest destruction of financial wealth that the world has ever seen -- paper losses measured in the trillions of dollars. Corporate wealth. Oil wealth. Real estate wealth. Bank wealth. Private-equity wealth. Hedge fund wealth. Pension wealth. It's a painful reminder that, when you strip away all the complexity and trappings from the magnificent new global infrastructure, finance is still a confidence game -- and once the confidence goes, there's no telling when the selling will stop".

and

"We are now nearing the end of the rocky process of uncovering the full extent of the credit losses of the major Wall Street banks and hedge funds. But as Robert Dugger, an economist and partner in a leading hedge fund likes to points out, the markets have only just begun to force some financial discipline on the majority of U.S. households that relied on borrowed money to maintain their lifestyles."

And a quick Tom Toles and Glenn McCoy cartoon from the Post:

Glad to see that the Washington Post has a sense of humor about the election!

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/roughsketch/2008/09/the_eastern_media_elite.html

Well, despite all the "drill baby drill" hysteria of the RNC, crude oil prices have been falling steadily for the last few weeks. Currently, prices are down to $96 a barrel from historic highs of nearly $150 a barrel in July. Might I add that there has been very little change in market conditions... prices may be higher in the short term due to supply disruptions by Hurricane Ike, but fundamentally the market is just as well supplied now as it was at much lower prices.

No drilling of the Arctic Nation Wildlife Refuge. No opening public waters to offshore drilling. It turns out that just a handful of speculators in the futures markets drove the prices up to artificial highs. Firms like Vitol that bought huge contracts (enough to fuel the US for 3 days at a time) with no intention of ever delivering the oil to the market. They were simply middlemen, operating in markets without proper regulatory oversight, which allowed prices to reach their illogical extremes.

At one time, Vitol alone controlled 11 percent of all the oil futures traded on the NY Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). The article states that up to 81 percent of all contracts were controlled by financial firms speculating "for themselves or their clients", meaning that the market was controlled by short term speculators attempting to create false demand and drive prices up, not deliver the oil to the market.

Quoted from the linked piece:

"It is now evident that speculators in the energy futures markets play a much larger role than previously thought, and it is now even harder to accept the agency's laughable assertion that excessive speculation has not contributed to rising energy prices," said Rep. John Dingell (D-MI)

and later

"When the CFTC granted the 1991 hedging exemption to J. Aron (a division of Goldman Sachs), it signaled a major shift that has since allowed investors to accumulate enormous positions for purely speculative purposes," said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) Now, he added, "legitimate businesses that hedge and take physical delivery of oil are being trampled by the speculators who are in the market purely to make profit."

Could Republicans be attempting to deceive voters in a hard fought race for Senate seats in Mississippi? That what an editorial in The New York Times explicitly states... that partisan politics are working their way into the ballots themselves. The governor and secretary of state of Mississippi are attempting to place a hotly contested US Senate race onto the bottom of the ballot, below state and local races, with the obvious intention that people would overlook the race and perhaps affect the outcome.

An excerpt from the piece:

"Mississippi election law clearly states that federal elections must go at the top of ballots. And the secretary of state, Delbert Hosemann, plans to list the states other Senate race ? incumbent Thad Cochran is running far ahead of his Democratic challenger, Erik Fleming ? where it belongs, right below the presidential contest.

But Mr. Hosemann argues that because the Wicker-Musgrove race is a special election to fill the remainder of Mr. Lotts term, he is free to place it at the bottom, below state and county races.

Mr. Hosemann is insisting on that placement even after the state attorney generals office notified him that his ballot design violates state law.

Mr. Hosemanns ballot also violates the Voting Rights Act, which requires that changes in election procedures that could make it harder for people to vote ? and this certainly fits that bill ? be cleared in advance with the Justice Department."

Although I disagree with the Libertarians on a number of things, there are two things that I do admire about them. First, like populists,  they are ideologically consistent. They believe that the government should be prevented from injecting themselves into regulating morality and social affairs as much as they should keep their hands out of the markets (although the current economic crisis shows what happens when reasonable oversight is removed).

Second, they understand a two party system precludes competition and is detrimental to the overall political climate of the country. I'm not a member of the "Ron Paul Revolution", nor would I probably vote for a third party candidate unless a system of instant runoff voting were instituted. But Ron Paul's steadfast refusal to endorse his party's candidate (and instead push supporters to vote for a third party) has earned my respect as perhaps the only true "maverick" in this election cycle.

The Libertarians have long been excluded from public debates by the media, which allows private (for-profit) companies to determine which of the prevailing ideologies are valid (or marketable) enough to warrant access to the public. Perhaps that point is the true irony of some of the Libertarian platform... that when all governmental controls are removed, the markets can operate without regard to the larger public interest.Third parties don't help the profitability of the major news networks, so they are excluded. In effect, Libertarians are the unfortunate victim of their own ideology.

This blog post is, like many others at this time is about Sarah Palin. If you have ever seen Peter Pan, particularly in person, you know the character of Tinkerbell. Part of the experience of seeing the play is near the end, ole Tink will be no more unless she gets rapturous applause from the crowd. Parents have put up with this for generations, feigning excitement with a half-hearted clap while their 4 year old fervently claps their heart out in the childish (but lets face it, cute) belief that they can save her by suspending all reason and clapping untill their hands hurt. Maybe, just maybe it will work!

Honestly, that's all I can really see with this blind allegiance to Sarah Palin. Social conservatives are not particularly enthralled about the nominee and were looking for something (perhaps anything) to latch on to help rally the troops against "Obomba Hussein Bin Biden".

Enter Palin. In a dramatic (and perhaps ironic) attempt to steal the thunder from all accounts, a triumphant conclusion to last week's Democratic National Convention, the McCain campaign strategically released their stunning VP pick. They have since disclosed that McCain had only met her once before in person and had only decided to do any sort of due diligence until a day or so before she was announced as the nominee. The McCain camp should have known by now how deep the media would dig into a story like this. They had months and months to figure all this out but yet they waited to the last minute possible. It seems desperate, it seems calculated.

The media has no doubt played up the "politics of mortality" and raised the specter that a 72 year old who has fought four bouts of deadly skin cancer might not be the picture of health he portrays. The media, quite rightly so, has asked if this person has the credentials and the experience to lead in case he fell ill or worse. Strategists and pundits alike on the Sunday talk show circuit seemed to echo the exact same point...that she has executive experience, and that is the only experience that matters. If you would believe this assertion, she would have more experience than Joe Biden (35 years) John McCain (26 years) and Barack Obama (10 years, state and US Senate) combined. No rational person in the political stream uses this cherry-picked metric of experience. Not only does this undercut the experience argument that has been hammered home for months by the McCain camp, you now have to question the judgment of a candidate that thinks this is the best candidate to lead the free world in his absence.

Regardless of the baby-daddy scandals (as enthralling fodder as it might be for the Enquirer to have our own Britney and K-Fed in the VP Mansion) and other deliberate smears, the McCain camp has taken direct aim at the media for even legitimate questions. John McCain just withdrew from an interview with CNN's Larry King because CNN's Campbell Brown asked pokesman Tucker Brown to name one decision Palin has made as the commander of the Alaska National Guard, which he could not do after espousing that position as one of her national security credentials. Convention delegates have have turned their hubris onto the press boxes and yelled "tell the truth" as if the media was doing anything other than that. No doubt, the old addage of "working the refs" holds true, the McCain camp is having a terrible time at damage control and the attempt to control the perceptions of the campaign have been devastating.

What does Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan (whose WSJ piece today said the left should be afraid) and Republican Strategist Mike Murphy feel about the pick (when they thought the cameras were off?

"It's over," said Noonan, and then responded to a question of whether Palin is the most qualified Republican woman McCain could have chosen.

"The most qualified? No. I think they went for this ? excuse me ? political bullsh** about narratives," she said. "Every time Republicans do that ? because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at ? they blow it."

Those expecting a speech from the heart this evening from Palin should take note that it was already leaked that the speech had been written previously and needed more revision for a "less masculine" perspective, meaning that the nominee was probably changed last minute. I wouldn't expect anything transcendental or personal from Palin, the speech will no doubt be canned and targeting specific demographics in an attempt to create some sort of grand event. And according to the McCain, this campaign is "not about issues" so if you're looking to hear about the economy, good luck.

I thought perhaps this would be a different kind of election, with different types of candidates. So now in my classes, instead of talking about issues I'll have to focus on the reingnition of the culture wars that was started with one of the most spectacularly questionable decisions in presidential campaign history. The McCain camp will have a lot of work to get out of this hole that they have dug for themselves. With a large number of skeptical moderate voters and even party loyalists out there, its gonna take more than applause and pixie dust to fix this mess.

Teaching Intro to American Government demands a bit of effort on my part to stay abreast of current events, particularly to help clarify the events that happen in our political stream. Since the big event in the media this week is the Democratic National Convention, I have made a concerted effort to follow it, much like I will for the RNC next week. I am dismayed that the only venues I could view the DNC proceedings without constant interruption were PBS and C-SPAN.

Every single cable news channel has a neverending chorus of mindless pundits speculating on the game theory behind the convention. Was the speech "genuine enough", is the venue "too symbolic"; hours and hours of mindless drivel and speculation. If this isn't bad enough, some of the best non-headliner speeches have not been broadcast to viewers to make sure that we can hear talking heads like David Gergen, Anderson Cooper, Joe Scarborough and Sean Hannity mindlessly prattle on with their interpretations of the events. We have missed speeches by generals and millworkers, victims of violent crime and pay discrimination. We have also missed plenty of speeches of lesser know party officials and state governors.

I say, let the people decide. Its a pretty damning case against the motives of the cable networks for the proceedings of the conventions to be so heavily filtered. Am I to let partisan commentators such as Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer play the revisionism card and make me rethink that Michelle Obama's speech Monday night wasn't spectacular? Am I to let Donna Brazille and Paul Begala butter me up to expect more out the Hillary Clinton speech than was probably delivered? It seems the cable news channels are more interested in stoking the fires of conflict to improve their own bottom line than being the unbiased conduit for information the country needs. And why should I let someone tell me how I am (or not going) to feel about a speech that hasn't even been delivered yet?

Do yourself a favor. If you are gonna watch the conventions, catch it on PBS or C-SPAN. Decide for yourself if the speaker makes a compelling case. And might I add that there are no commercials!

Last week I heard someone humorously remark that the situation in Georgia seemed reminescent of the beginning of a Tom Clancy novel, which got me to thinking. I read the novel "Red Storm Rising" in middle school and can vaguely remember the plot; the Soviet Union launches a war to control oil fields in the middle east. It continues on, and through a system of alliances, NATO ends up fighting the Soviets in a protracted battle across Europe.

Although such a conflict is unlikely in our current state of affairs, it is not impossible. Georgia has been considered for NATO membership. If approved, it would have joined other former Soviet Republics such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the alliance. It would have been much less likely that Russia would have made such aggressive moves into Georgia had it been a member of NATO. And if it had, consequences would certainly have been much more severe.

It certainly makes strategic sense for the Russians to control Georgia, as it contains one of the only major non-Russian controlled oil supply routes to the Europe. Previously Russia has had a virtual monopoly on oil production and extorted considerable sums from satellite nations to allow their oil passage. Now with their monopoly threatened, it's easy for the Russians to feign concern for the South Ossetians and Azbhkians and simply grab the Georgian State, in an attempt to destroy a sovereign,Western leaning democracy to help guarantee their economic security.

Now comes further sabre rattling from the Russians, who state that basing interceptor missiles in Poland or radar equipment in Czechslovakia would "expose" itself to some sort of military response, perhaps even a nuclear first strike. The former Soviet republic of Ukraine has also been warned that admittance into NATO "will trigger a deep crisis in the Russian-Ukrainian relations". This sudden change in language and the extent of Medvedev and Putin's paranoia with the West cannot be underestimated. It has even been reported on Russian state radio that the war with Georgia might have been plotted by Dick Cheney to help get John McCain elected. I would hate to give any credence to such a rumor, but in light of this current administration's record, I can't rule it out (as outlandish as it seems).

It seems that Russia, flush with cash from high oil prices, is rebuilding its military and seeking to reassert itself into the world stage. At a minimum, it seems we are primed for another cold war with Russia. In a worst case scenario, we have so many troops tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan that we might be at our most vulnerable point since WWII. If Russia were to start a preemptive war, it might be difficult for the US to respond.

So far, the US has had little to offer the Georgians other than humanitarian aid and "our prayers". The threat of expulsion from the G8 has largely fallen on deaf ears. And despite several truces, the Russians are continuing to occupy Georgia and destroy much of its strategic assests. It seems that NATO and the US have lost their influence and it will be difficult to convince the Russians to refrain from interjecting themselves into the affairs of its former states.

Update: The New York Times has reported that Russia has positioned SS-21 short range ballistic missiles within South Ossetia. These are not only conventional, but are also capable of carrying nuclear and biological warheads.
.

Being the environmentally minded person in my cohort, I have always had an interest in the politics of waste. It is my view that somewhere in our course of American history, we lost our pragamatic and conservative consumption practices and instead supplanted them with the reckless and irresponsible culture we have today. To give you an idea of how different our culture is today from the past, here is illustration.

In the early 1900's, King Camp Gillette invented the disposable safety razor. There was initially a muted acceptance to the product's introduction. People were wary about anything "disposable", and people already owned straight razors that could be resharpened ... so why would they agree to continually purchase new sets of razor blades? WWI largely provided the stimulus for the spread of the disposable razor, as it was issued to all American forces. The degree of convenience during wartime overtook the conventionally pragmatic culture of the day, and as troops returned from war, they spread the idea that the convenience of a disposable product outweighed the merits of saving money.

In the larger context, the acceptance of disposability has lead to considerable amounts of solid waste being generated. But people seem to be jumping on board the recycling bandwagon as environmental consciousness becomes the vogue. But recycling is as much a false idol as the biblical golden calf. Sure recycling can help reduce the amount of resource extraction required to maintain our current consumption practices, but overall its simply a delaying mechanism for the inevitable final discard.

Each time a bottle or can is "recycled", the material becomes a lower grade material and must be supplanted with newly extracted material or must be made into a lower grade material that can be used in an application that uses a coarser material. The belief that all those bottles and cans thrown in recycling bins are directly returned to bottling plants and remanufactured into equivalent numbers of bottles and cans is simply untrue. Perhaps the operative term here is remanufacturing. Somewhere along the line the vernacular has been twisted and we have described our waste disposal programs as "recycling", but what we are doing does not particularly fit that definition.

The term "recycle" at least infers that we are taking a consumer product and reusing it for its intended purpose (hence a cycle). When you buy an Aquafina bottle, and then proceed to refill that bottle with tap water (thats all Aquafina is anyway; label says "public source water supply") then you are recycling in the truest sense of the word. When you take that same bottle and place it in the recycling bin, it goes to a processing plant where it is deconstructed into into small plastic chips, ready to be reformed into some type of product, thus you are remanufacturing. In addition to the detriment of the perception of the "green" nature of recycling, an enormous amount of energy is required to deconstruct recycled materials and then melt or shape them into their subsequent forms. As a large portion of America's energy demand is met by coal fired power plants, recycling contributes to air pollution and global climate change.

The more I shop (particularly at grocery stores) the more alarmed I am to see the amount of packaging and the durability of the containers that are used in retail food sales. I bought a $2.50 gallon of Arizona Green Tea that came in a jug that was thicker and more durable than the "permanent" water container I owned to hold water for my camping trips (purchased at REI for $7 no less). I'm glad to report that the Green Tea jug is now a permanent fixture in my camping equipment, which leads me to another point... people have lost their creativity and sensibility for reusing materials.

I remember growing up, I would visit my grandfather in Missouri. He had a AMC Eagle (Google it) which he would work on from time to time. I remembered one particular instance in which he had to add some coolant to the car, so he took a milk jug out of the garbage and cut off most of the bottom with a pocketknife. He flipped it upside down and voila! A funnel. I must have been only like 8 years old, but I never had thought of the jug being anything other than a milk jug. When he was done, he put it in the corner of the garage (didn't throw away) to use again. To this day, it perplexes me that people buy funnels at auto parts stores... just buy a Coke and you have both a Coke and a funnel.

But reuse can only take us so far. In the end, municipal recycling programs are only a delaying mechanism and despite our best intentions, recycling does not stop post consumer waste from ending up in landfills. If you are truly trying to reduce your impact, buy a nice water bottle and refill it often. Not only will you save hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of dollars on products you do not need to buy (contrary to popular belief, there wasn't always bottled water for sale), but you will be making a real impact on reducing your impact on the environment. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle..... with an emphasis on reduce and reuse!

PS - Check out Chris Jordan's environmental art (particularly "Running the Numbers"). It really makes you think about the magnitude of the waste we generate.

There's a really great feature in the New York Times on Barack Obama's time spent teaching constitutional law at The University of Chicago. For those of you who are not knowledgable on Midwestern universities, it is one of the best schools in the nation, comparably ranked to Duke or Columbia. Anyway, the piece does discuss much about his classroom demeanor and materials, even posting some of his exam questions.

A few excerpts:

"For all the weighty material, Mr. Obama had a disarming touch. He did not belittle students; instead he drew them out, restating and polishing halting answers, students recall. In one class on race, he imitated the way clueless white people talked. Why are your friends at the housing projects shooting each other?" he asked in a mock-innocent voice."

"On the national level, bipartisanship usually means Democrats ignore the needs of the poor and abandon the idea that government can play a role in issues of poverty, race discrimination, sex discrimination or environmental protection," Mr. Obama said.

"No one speaks this way anymore," Mr. Obama told his class, wondering aloud what had happened to the art of political oratory. In particular, Mr. Obama admired (Frederick) Douglass's use of a collective voice that embraced black and white concerns, one that Mr. Obama has now adopted himself.

In the late 80's and early 90's, a group of five US Senators were embroiled in a scandal in which they were accused of pressuring federal investigators to "lay off" of Lincoln Savings & Loan, a bank owned by real estate developer Charles Keating. Reagan's insistence on deregulating the banking industry allowed many S&L's to make risky investments (using their depositor's money) which eventually went sour. Lincoln Savings & Loan, like many S&L's during this period, failed. Lincoln was the largest individual S&L failure, costing taxpayers nearly $3 billion.

The members of the Keating Five recieved over a million dollars in campaign contributions from Charles Keating. One Republican senator not only received campaign contributions, but took free vacations in the Bahamas with the Keating family. His wife even had a considerable investment in one of Keating's shopping centers. The Senator was later rebuked for showing "poor judgement" by the Senate Ethics Committee.

In all fairness, four members of the Keating Five were Democrats. But in all fairness, the only Republican is now running for President.

I decided to do this post on a topic near and dear to my heart, environmentalism. And when I talk of "extremism" I talk not of true extremism like the type advanced by the Earth Liberation Front. I talk of the perception, particularly in the southern United States, that being an advocate for environmental causes is somewhat deviant. The more I have spoken with people in the course of my travels, the greater I get this sense that there is a perception that any sort of environmental advocacy is "extremism". I endured regular hammerings in my  position as a county planner by development interests who viewed open space or vegetation ordinances as "extreme" (who then proceeded to bulldoze the piece of land until it looked like the surface of the moon, which is not extreme in itself?). I have endured similar, though more respectful criticism in my efforts to help push renewable energy incentives.

I have been following the developments in regards to off-road vehicle management of Cape Hatteras National Seashore and have come across the same vein of rhetoric, where anyone who is against (what I view as reasonable) restrictions on off-road vehicles use are labeled "environmental extremists". I recently spent a week on Ocracoke Island, where I talked to several people in different capacities about the recent natural resource closures to beach driving and found that there is generally a common theme, people's resentment to the curtailment of previously held liberties. And despite all the outcry about the effect on local businesses, the economic impacts seem to have been somewhat overblown. Perhaps its difficult to discern the effects of the closures on tourism when coupled with the impact of $4+ gasoline, but this perhaps won't been seen as clearly until the onset of the fall fishing season.

What perhaps drives this post the much is the particular language that I encountered from the people I spoke to on Ocracoke. Environmentalists were called "the dark side" and a host of other names that belied some sense of supremacy by those who spoke it. A few environmentally minded people I met had similar words for the recreational community. Both sides lie on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum, but both are as adamantly absolutist in their certainty as the other. Both have cast themselves as the forces of good, sent to vanquish their respective foes.

The people who are engaged in this struggle need to realize it is not a fight of good versus evil. If anything, it is a fight of good versus good. Both sides believe they are acting in the best interest of the public and have standing to be the guarantors of the public good. I doubt that regardless of the science involved that economic interests will agree to any voluntary restriction of access that would reduce tourism. Environmental groups will not accept the permanent loss of biological diversity in the name of economic gain. Thus both sides have claimed the rigidly inflexible high ground based on their own definitive value structures.

Both sides are attempting to control the outcomes by moving them to different forums. The negotiated rulemaking groups are stacked with a number of local interests who seek to push the least restrictive possible outcome and perhaps have not been bargaining with any real concern towards environmental interests. The environmental groups filed suit in the court system and won a settlement to force the National Park Service to institute a system of resource protection closures, which have resulted in a lot of acrimony from local interests. Both are positioning themselves for an extended battle to control access at the seashore.

I feel they both have valid arguments; I am a fan of liberty but also of responsibility. I would hope that environmental groups would not needlessly seek to push coercive government measures unless they are of clear importance and sound scientific basis. I would hope that economic interests would recognize that long term ecological stability is more beneficial to them than they realize and that there are other values then simply economics. I doubt either will occur anytime soon.

I'm not a fan of Jesse Helms, but in the wake of his death I read a quote of his that I actually agree with. In a 1959 editorial, Helms was quoted as saying:

"Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line ? and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?"

What happened today with the signing of the amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is another slice of freedom being doled out in the name of security. Since 9/11 there has been a constant digression of civil liberties in this country, most visibly incorporated in the sardonically named "Patriot Act". Since that time, it has allowed government agents to wiretap phones, intercept emails, rifle through medical records, check bank accounts and academic records, largely without oversight and judicial review. People have been wrongfully arrested/imprisoned or are unable to travel because they have been placed on "no-fly" lists because their names are similar to persons of interest.

The FISA amendments contain a blanket immunity provision to protect private telecommunications companies from being prosecuted for carrying out illegal surveillance of private citizens. I am deeply concerned at giving any type of blanket immunity because it creates a moral hazard that encourages abuse. As Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) puts it, there's nothing to fear unless you have Al Qaeda on your speed dial". Good show Senator Bond; just label everyone who is concerned about the subjugation of their civil rights as terrorists. Hell, maybe Toby Keith will make a song about it for you (perhaps one where you are putting a boot into their asses).

I mention this topic in my class every semester and every semester people are generally indifferent to most of their civil liberties. God help you if you want to take away their guns, but they really could care less if the government listens to their emails or phone calls. This is probably because they feel like it will never happen to them (and they are probably right). I know I wouldn't want to listen to them droll on about Soulja Boy or whatever forgettable tripe is on "the MTV" nowadays. *shakes cane disapprovingly*

The slow but steady incremental unraveling of the Bill of Rights in the name of security is disturbing . Who knows how this dramatic expansion of government surveillance will be abused. Perhaps it will be used to spy on domestic political dissent or members of political parties. Its almost as if they are re-establishing a more formal version of COINTELPRO. I must say I am thoroughly disappointed in both Democrats and Republicans for passing this.

Does the President have too much authority to start armed conflicts? Yes, according to former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher in a piece in today's NY Times. They propose scrapping the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and instituting a new system of "closer consultation" between the legislative and executive branches in relation to the use of military forces. Baker states the law is ?ineffective at best and unconstitutional at worst", which is a determination I largely agree with. He also notes that "As a consequence, the 1973 statute has been regularly ignored ? a situation that undermines the rule of law, the centerpiece of American democracy.?

 The statute was intended to curtail the powers of the President in light of the Vietnam Conflict, a response to both President Johnson and Nixon who continued the prosecution of the conflict without it ever being declared a "war". Under the War Powers Resolution, The President has up to 90 days to get congressional approval for military action once it has been initiated, but in light of our new technological gains and rapid deployment capacity, an entire conflict could be completed within this span (such as Grenada, Panama, Haiti, etc.). A formal declaration of war has also not been made since WWII, which has ensured that our current conflicts have been technically "operations".

I must say that it is perhaps a sad state of affairs that we have to address such an issue. But as a subsequent  summary article also points out, McCain has stated that he "would take military action without going to Congress first" but only if it was deemed necessary. Determinations of necessity are entirely subjective and I don't know (in light of this current administration's messianic tendencies) if we can continue to trust a single executive to have the judgment to commit troops or initiate military action that could result in a protracted conflict. I remain a fan of the concept of pluralistic thinking and also providing several levels of review, particularly in relation to national defense. Our service members (former Army myself) deserve much better than to be sent off needlessly into conflict by the self interested whims of politicians.

Or is it? For someone in my field (Environmental Policy), its a pretty good time to be alive. There seems to be a dramatic expansion of interdisciplinary programs with an environmental focus in academia, as well as new sustainability programs for the facilities of universities themselves. Such programs have filtered down here to NC State, which is home to the NC Solar Center. We even have a commitment to fight global warming at the university from our chancellor, who signed the University President Climate Change Commitment. Its not a surprise that universities are the leaders in this area, just perhaps that its catching on so well.

I must say that I am perplexed (but not surprised) about the uproar over California's legalization of gay marriage. Reports have already surfaced that county clerks are refusing to issue marriage licenses or preside over them because they believe it would effect "administrative and budgetary concerns", but others are at least  honest in saying that it would conflict with their religious beliefs, a premise that I believe is misguided. Let me explain.

Religious people contend that marriage is a sacred religious institution, and with regards to their particular religuous beliefs, it in theory is. But religious institutions are private entities removed from the state. A "traditional" marriage in those terms is an institution defined by the tenants of your particular religion,with little intrusion from the state. Legal instruments are atheist (or at least agnostic) in their design and conduct.

State sanctioned "marriage" is not a marriage at all.. Going to a courthouse and filling out an application and paying a fee is no different for obtaining a marriage license than it is for reassigning a car title at the DMV. Clerks that regard their duties to sign marriage licenses only for traditional couples are in fact annointing themselves as clergy, which I think is an illogical and unwarranted expansion of their mission and power. They seem to imply that somehow the rights to purchase health insurance for a partner or transfer property to another party in the event of death are codified in religious texts, reserved only for straight couples. Its been a little while since I picked up the bible, so forgive me if I fail to cite which passage deals with filing a joint tax return.

Whether you agree or not, in the eyes of the state, all state sanctioned marriages are civil unions. They are simply contracts which hold us to legal standards of a freely democratic and secular state. People are only married within a private religious institution that exists within our existing social framework and thus your are held accountable by the deity (or deities) of your respective religion. Clerks are bureaucratic administrators, not religious leaders. Thus, it is difficult for them to say that their role as a clerk conflicts with their religious beliefs. Could you imagine if they started denying the legalty of wills or stopped issuing driver's licenses to gays? We would (or should) understandly be outraged. How dare their beliefs intrude on the private lives of others?

To me, refusal to issue a state sponsored marriage certificate is inconsistent with the belief in individualism and limited government intervention. This seems to be the hallmark of our current iteration of conservatives. They are fine with allowing the various robber barons of the day to have their way with the citizenry.... but if two gay people want to have a loving relationship, then they seem to revel in directing the state to intervene and seperate them like a teacher at a middle school dance. To me this seems both contradictory and malicious.

There are only two reasons I can identify why people would oppose gay marriage. First, people do not want want to lose the social status of being "married".By denying alternative structures of "marriage" they can help promote themselves and their religious institutions as being the dominant value structure in society. Secondly, people believe that validation of the legal framework for alternative marriages will promote them and undermine "family values". But there is plenty of information out there that refutes the idea that sanction is an effective deterrent to alternative lifestyles.

In the most extreme case.... despite the threat of execution, there appears to be a bustling, though secretive gay population in Iran. So it is perhaps not a phenomenon that is conditioned by its environment. As for family values, how can week seek to promote love and understanding in a society that does not view them as legitimate values? Not giving gay couples the right to enter into government sanctioned contracts is not going to dissuade people from being gay, if anything it empowers their struggle for acceptance. As gays are estimated to constitute perhaps 10% of the population (though a difficult population to gauge) the population is too sizeable to simply ignore (could be over 30 million). I would also have to question the commitment of the moral majority on the "sanctity of marriage" argument on an institution that ultimately fails over half of the time.

Perhaps it is merely a question of semantics. Nearly 60% of Americans are in support of "civil unions" but constitutional bans on "gay marriage" are likely to pass in even in the most liberal states (ex. California passed Proposition 22 in 2000). This is highly unusual, as perhaps the only difference between the two would be the title on the application. Any student of policy diffusion can see the writing on the wall that these court decisions and gay marriage licence provisions will be interpreted as equal protection under the Constitution and disseminate out into a larger number of the states over time. Its just a shame that millions will be denied the exercise of basic civil rights until the rest of America progresses enough to live up to its principles.

Since the Democratic primary season has drawn to a close, its interesting to note some of the demographics in the voting patterns that emerged for each candidate. Hillary Clinton found support among older voters and less educated whites while the Obama message resonated overwhelmingly with the young, those with higher degrees of formal education and voters with higher incomes. Perhaps nowhere was this divide as evident as it was in Kentucky, where Obama won just two counties, one which non-coincidentally contained the University of Kentucky and  the other Louisville, home of the University of Louisville and one of the only significant concentrations of minority voters in the entire state. 

The scene was replayed in Indiana later where Clinton eeked out narrow win (perhaps with the aid of Operation Chaos?) in mostly rural Indiana counties. Obama won the large population centers like Indianapolis, but also in areas that contained large universities such as Indiana University and Purdue University, that were islands of Obama support in a sea of Hillary voters. Not that this is surprising, universities have always been considered liberally minded. But then again it is very difficult to adequately fulfill the missions of learning and innovation in a prohibitively conservative vaccum.

As Dr. Steven Greene points out in a recent blog, Obama doesn't have a problem with white voters, just white Appalachian voters (whom incidentally hail from some areas with the lowest rates of formal education in the entire country). Obama easily won the almost exclusively white states of Oregon and Iowa, and almost all of the remaining Upper Midwest by large margins (for example he won Kansas with 74% percent of the vote). Indeed it is more an issue of culture than race. Perhaps we are moving into less racial era in American politics, but there's certainly more work that remains to be done.

I am happy to see that we have arrived in a day where it seems that Americans, particularly our young, are refusing to be afraid of the racial boogeyman that has been perpetuated by the older generations and our nation's collective historical baggage.Certainly our political cultures and socialization have a major effect on this phenomenon. It is certain that there will always be some degree of conflict between the new ideas of young and the old. But perhaps despite all their faults, it seems that the kids are alright.

Greetings from lovely (dreary and overcast) Blacksburg, Virginia. The Burg is known as the home of the Virginia Tech Hokies. I'm currently leading a project to help fit a fraternity house with a 10 kW wind turbine with the assistance of the house owner, making it one of the first green fraternity houses in the nation and perhaps even the world. While I am up here, I do like to check the news and came upon a feature of the The New York Times about inflation for all sorts of goods. The Times used data from the Consumer Price Index (collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) to create a detailed graph that shows you what Americans are spending their money on. It also shows you what products/sectors are increasing or decreasing in price. Its pretty cool, you can find it here.

It's been a little while since I've posted, but here are some thoughts about Obama's potential running mates. This, of course assumes that he does pick up the nomination that is being projected by the wide range of pundits in the last couple of days. These are my top six potential picks for VP. With my luck it will probably be someone out of left field, but this is my best assessment.

6. Evan Bayh - The Senator from Indiana has considerable appeal with voters, and would nicely complement Obama's platform of change. He has been mentioned as a potential Presidential candidate in Democratic circles before, bringing a Jack Kennedy-esque persona. He has endorsed Hillary Clinton, which could be a potential issue. He was one of the most popular governors in the history of Indiana, and created the largest taxcut in the state's history while continuing to reap budget surplusses. He has also dabbled with the idea of running for office, forming a presidential exploratory committee in 2006.

5. Joe Biden - Delaware Senator and current chairman of the Foreign Relations committee. He has considerable foreign policy experience, and taking the VP seat would help bolster a future bid for the Presidency himself. As experience goes, there are few that match his credentials. He was heavily involved in the Balkan conflicts during the Clinton presidency (Bosnia, Serbia, etc.). He isn't perhaps the most dynamic of candidates personality wise, but then again... is Dick Cheney?

4. Bill Richardson - Current New Mexico governor, former US Representative, UN Ambassador and Secretary of Energy. He has strong foreign policy experience and is perhaps the most knowledgable in diplomatic relations with North Korea. He is well liked, multi-lingual and was rated by the Cato Institute as "one of the most fiscally responsible governors in the nation". Perhaps has a unique perspective on NAFTA and other free trade agreements. He is Hispanic, which could help energize the vote of the US's largest ethinic minority.

3. John Edwards - NC State graduate (before UNC law). A one term senator from North Carolina and lawyer. Optimistic, populist message and general likability mesh with the Obama campaign. His "trial lawyer" tag has been a point of contention in his own campaigns. He has previously been the Vice Presidential nominee, running with John Kerry in 2004. He has not currently endorsed either of the remaining candidates. I would speculate that in doing so he has kept himself in position to earn the VP nod or to be appointed Attorney General in either candidate's administration.

2. Jim Webb - This current Virginia Senator and former Reagan-era Secretary of the Navy has strong DOD ties, which could be an asset to help assuage the fears of potential cross-over voters who favor McCain's security platform. He is a Vietnam Veteran (Marine) and his son has served in Iraq. He also delivered the Democratic response to the 2007 State of the Union address, showing that he does have a high degree of visibility within the party's hierarchy. There's probably no-one better in either party for providing national security credentials during a wartime election.

1. Hillary Clinton - They don't call it the "dream ticket" for nothing. The Senator from NY certainly has a broad base of support to offer. Potential switch voters who find her polarizing can be relieved that she could be contained in the office of the Vice President. Hillary can be glad that she is back in the White House, as being the VP would be more advantageous than simply being "just another Senator". It could be a springboard to another run of her own in the future. She could also bring in the support of women and less educated whites that have been lacking in the Obama campaign.