Politics – Economics Related – Page 2 – education and deconstruction.com

The Riverkeepers

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a sponsored post.

The Book of the Week is “The Riverkeepers, Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right” by John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., published in 1997.

Riverkeeper is an environmental organization that, over the course of decades, has brought legal actions to minimize pollution of a few major rivers across the United States. Unsurprisingly, litigation and political shenanigans perpetrated by polluters, go together.

It is always local residents who are hurt the most from egregious acts of pollution (usually spread by big corporations) because: they can’t afford expensive legal costs, and are usually dying of cancer or are suffering serious health problems (never mind what the pollution does to plants and animals) by the time they are compensated (if they ever are) for damages inflicted by the defendants.

The authors began with a story of how wealthy political donors took an unlikely side against a utility project (because it happened to be proposed for their neighborhood). Beginning in early 1962, Riverkeeper attempted to stop Con Edison from building an electricity-generating reservoir (the Storm King project) that would make waterfront properties an eyesore in Westchester and Putnam counties, and kill many striped bass.

In the second half of the 1960’s, propaganda wars raged on both sides, but public opinion was against Con Edison. Stakeholders included: the federal government, five utilities, two state agencies, Scenic Hudson (an environmental group), the Fishermen, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and local residents.

And the insults and injuries just kept coming, even after the first Earth Day in 1970– with offenders like Exxon and local governments responsible for pollution levels in Quassaic Creek, Croton Landfill, and three cities in Connecticut.

Even worse, there was lack of regulatory action from politically entrenched government agencies such as the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Both feared retaliation from the NRA, whose gun clubs were polluting waterways with lead and other toxins. The NRA simply closed the gun clubs rather than clean up, and remained a political powerhouse.

In another story, in 1976, the Hudson river’s commercial fisheries were closed by local politicians after General Electric dumped an excessive amount of PCB’s in the river. Not only were local residents poorer in various ways for the outrageous crime, but so were hundreds of people trying to make a living through fishing.

In the early 1990’s, environmentalists saw “joy in Mudville” as New York City Democratic mayor David Dinkins express interest in actually helping enact legislation that would protect the city’s drinking water (as testing had shown that it contained as much as 2% sewage in it– after going through a treatment plant), whose source was upstate entities that controlled the watershed.

The attendant political hostility was such that a reviewer said of Pat Robertson’s 1991 book, The New World Order, “These ravings would hardly be worth mentioning had they not played such an important role in fueling the ideological underpinnings of the antienvironmental movement and the zealotry of its followers.”

The environmentalists’ dreams were dashed by 1995, when Republican Rudy Giuliani engaged in excessive deregulation. Daily, too many sociopathic political hacks around this country are slowly, indirectly, poisoning America via the discharge of: millions of gallons of raw sewage into waterways, pesticides onto golf courses, dirty water from storms, and innumerable toxins contained in everyday products into the air, water and earth.

Nevertheless, through the years, there have been a few isolated incidents of pollution reduction of environmentally conscious philanthropists, and a few legal triumphs when defendants were actually compelled to comply with hopeful-sounding federal laws: the Coastal Zone Management Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, to name just a few.

Grassroots groups need the higher authority of FEDERAL LAW to minimize pollution resulting from extremely consequential egregious acts because: 1) The polluters are politically entrenched at all government levels; 2) The polluters argue vehemently that pollution should be regulated locally. BUT, the enforcement of state laws has been lax because monster corporations divide and conquer, pitting state governments against each other when, for instance– deciding where to locate a plant or keep one open– by waving an economic carrot or stick.

Those big donors claim they will create jobs and grow the tax base of the area. Or, they’ll threaten to relocate, if their wrongdoing isn’t condoned by local politicians, who are also usually greedy and power-hungry.

However, along the lines of local enforcement, the authors recounted how a law officer showed that community policing concepts can minimize pollution, and keep local areas clean, on a small scale. He arrested small business owners for illegal disposal of garbage, debris, toxins and wastewater, etc.

If law-abiding citizens look around– and entities more powerful than themselves are allowed to get away with that kind of polluting– they feel they have license to do the same. The excuse “Everybody does it” allows everyone to contribute to the lawlessness, and there goes the neighborhood.

Read the book to learn of the other main influences and people (hint: one was Rachel Carson and her scary book) that and who have shaped the regulatory environment of the environment in the United States through the decades.

In honor of Earth Day (April 22), here is a little ditty:

THINGS CAN ONLY GET WETTER

sung to the tune of “Things Can Only Get Better” with apologies to Howard Jones.

We’re on a path to LOSE it all.
Acts of pollution affect us all.
It’s compromise we have to realize.
Greedy, selfish polluters shouldn’t keep us from natURE and health, unless we tolerate their smears and lies.

And I’m sure you care. Me, too.
But laws are hard to alter.
We spew toxins and sewage all day.
Things can only get wetter.

Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe
Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe

Reg-u-la-tors on political STRINGS run the show,
propagandize with no regrets.
Litigation takes forever, is a minefield. Taxpayers lose every time.
Where are the ethical philanthropists?

And I’m sure you care. Me, too.
But laws are hard to alter.
We spew toxins and sewage all day.
Things can only get wetter.

Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe
Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe

And I’m sure you care. Me, too.
But laws are hard to alter.
We spew toxins and sewage all day.
Things can only get wetter.

Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe
Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe

Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe
Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe…

Moving Water

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The Book of the Week is “Moving Water, The Everglades and Big Sugar” by Amy Green, published in 2021.

This volume discussed the people and forces that changed the Everglades (a landscape of waterways running through the central part of Florida all the way down), its vegetation, species and pollution from the 1960’s to date. The main agents of change have been (in no particular order): sugar growers, politicians of all levels of government, regulators, George and Mary Barley, Paul Tudor Jones II and grassroots groups.

After 1960, the United States began large-volume sugar-growing and processing, as it was no longer getting its sugar from Cuba. Soon, annually, 223,000 acres of land were growing 572,000 tons of sugar– half the nation’s crop– which was processed in eleven mills. This activity occupies slightly more than one quarter of the Everglades, and with a few other crops, comprises the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA).

Beginning in 1988, the federal government sued the Florida state government for damages due to the said pollution (caused mostly by the sugar growers). Everglades regulators are diverse: EPA, NOAA, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida Department of Health, local governments situated along the affected coasts of the lake and two rivers in the EAA, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. An entity that controls water levels around the whole region– pursuant to weather, environmental changes and political idiosyncrasies– is the South Florida Water Management District.

However, in previous decades, the politicians and some of the regulators (under pressure from the politicians) were besties with the sugar growers. That situation has changed with the worsening of pollution and other unexpected factors that have prompted actual action.

There is ample evidence that a large part of the pollution is caused by the operations of the sugar industry in the Lake Okeechobee area in the central part of the state. The industry uses fertilizer containing phosphorous, which gets into the vegetation; two major consequences include the poisoning of drinking water in South Florida, and river-course-changing excessive sawgrass, cattail and algae growth- at the expense of other plants, and at the expense of animals that eat those other plants.

Pollution has caused: the deaths of sponges, shrimp, seagrass and fish; turbid waters, hypersalinity and elevated temperatures. Some fish eat the aforementioned algae, which contain toxins such as cyanobacteria and red tide. Some humans used to eat such fish, but shouldn’t anymore, or they will likely get sick, at best.

Many people thought that the polluters should pay for the damage they were doing. At the book’s writing, nevertheless,TAXPAYERS, not the major polluters, were paying for cleanup. As can be seen, there are infinite complications, given the number of parties involved in the nature of the beast.

In the first half of 2016, disruption of the ecosystem by excessive algae growth, caused beach closings and a pervasive foul odor over a large territory. As recently as 2018, the aforementioned contaminants were sickening or killing beachgoers, manatees, sea turtles and tarpon.

Read the book to learn all about it.

Misfire

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The Book of the Week is “Misfire, Inside the Downfall of the NRA” by Tim Mak, published in 2021. This volume told the all-too-frequent story of alpha-male executives with hubris syndrome, who use their employer as their personal piggy bank, and bankrupt them. That of the National Rifle Association (NRA) was just the latest in a series of such scandals in recent decades.

As it began to go belly up, the NRA had 76 people on its board of directors, a few of whom were celebrities. They received no salary, but took ridiculous advantage of their expense accounts, and at the same time, and, in an obvious conflict, some were tasked with overseeing the NRA’s finances.

A power vacuum that started in the late 1980’s allowed Wayne LaPierre to assume the most powerful executive position in the organization by 1991. His colleagues– the NRA’s officers, and executives of its outside communications agency — manipulated him in order to form a cult of personality around him. This way, they, too, could partake of all the first-class travel, shopping and host of other aspects of a luxury lifestyle through their outsized salaries and expense accounts.

After the Sandy Hook elementary-school shooting in December 2012, the NRA became even more sociopathic, throwing up distractions in its messaging. It was already aggressively– as it had been since 1977– defeating every bit of firearms-restriction-legislation it possibly could using not only its money, but also its ability to influence politicians and voters through its network of priceless, powerful contacts; even to its own financial and reputational detriment. It argued that politicians should seek to improve America’s mental health system, and that everyone in the country had a right to own a firearm for the purpose of self-defense!

Countless, cowardly politicians have caved under pressure to the NRA’s demands; they voted against even weak proposed laws that would restrict gun acquisitions and gun usage, that would hardly have made a dent in sales of firearms, because they wanted to get reelected. As is well known, the NRA was a monster-sized lobbyist and political donor. It had a mean-spirited cancel-culture: publicly shaming its ex-employees on social media if they criticized it, even years after their employ.

Beginning in April 2019, a decades-long power struggle resulted in an orgy of litigation between and among the NRA, its communications agency, and its law firm, whose main go-to executive had become besties with LaPierre. That executive, too, was availing himself of the benefits derived from financial crimes of excess typical of these kinds of organizations.

Read the book to learn all about it. Wayne LaPierre has been just one (of those countless who are actually caught!) of a few poster boys whose financial crimes borne of excessive greed have been exposed, but sooo few organization leaders such as he, are punished for their misdeeds. Here are a few others, who were actually punished (and the year in which they went to jail):

2005, Dennis Kozlowski

2005, Bernie Ebbers

2006, Jack Abramoff

2007, Richard Scrushy

2012, Bernie Madoff

And here is the song they sing when caught:

I TOOK IT EASY

sung to the tune of “Take It Easy” with apologies to the Eagles.

Well, I got out on BAIL.
You can’t put me in JAIL.
I got SEVen sins on my mind.
Whistleblowers betrayed me.
Prosecutors flayed me.
My lawyers are close friends of mine.

I took it easy.
I took it easy.

Don’t believe the evil liars who say I’m guil-ty.

I live it up while I still can.
I hid my assets. Then it hit the fan.
I found a place to make my millions.
I took it easy.

Well I’m STILL your leading male.
I’m just too great to fail.
My claques, flacks and sycophants all aGREE.
I DID nothing wrong.
I’ll delay this CASE so long you’ll give up on punishing me.

Come on, payyy me,
my bonus and sa-alary.
I have no doubt that friends in high places are gonna SAVE me.

TaxPAYERS lose. I win.
You’ll never catch ME again.
So eat your heart out. Look at ME grin.
I took it easy.

Well, I got out on BAIL.
You can’t put me in JAIL.
I got NO remorse on my mind.
No matter how much you hover,
you’ll NEVER recover, all the money you say is not mine.

I took it easy.
I took it easy.
Don’t believe the evil liars who say I’m guil-ty.
Come on, payyy me,
my bonus and sa-alary.
I have no doubt that friends in high places are gonna SAVE me.

Oh, I got it easy.
YOU’RE the one who’s slea-eazy…

The King of Fifth Avenue

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The Book of the Week is “The King of Fifth Avenue, The Fortunes of August Belmont” by David Black, published in 1981.

Belmont was born in December 1813 in Alzey, the Jewish agricultural ghetto in Germany. Belmont got a member of the Rothschild family to convince his father to let him study the English language. Thanks to his grandmother’s contact with the Rothschilds’ family business (the most famous financial-services business in Europe), Belmont got a job. By 1830, he was making good money in high finance.

The summer of 1837 saw financial ruin in New York City, but Belmont was a take-charge kind of guy. Upon discovering that the American agents of the Rothschilds had gone out of business, he declared himself the new agent, hanging up a shingle bearing his name in a storefront on Wall Street. He used the Rothschild name to grow his company making investments and lending money. In 1844, he became an American citizen.

Descendants of the Knickerbockers (old, wealthy Dutch and English aristocrats in New York City) and other American-born people were anti-immigrant. They were also anti-Semitic, smearing the (Jewish) Rothschilds’ agent Belmont, especially when he jumped into politics, supporting the Democrat James Buchanan for president in 1852. But after Franklin Pierce won the nomination, Belmont backed Pierce instead.

Both the Democrats and the Whigs expressed anti-corporate feelings. But the former opposed Wall Street while the latter opposed foreign capitalists. The Whigs were mostly Wall-Streeters.

When Pierce won the election, James Buchanan turned out to have less political power than Belmont would have liked. Belmont desired to have the U.S. buy the territory of Cuba from Spain, and if Buchanan had been named secretary of state, he could have appointed Belmont a U.S. diplomat who could go to Naples to negotiate a deal. In August 1853, Belmont himself was appointed secretary of state but other events led him to go on a business tour of Europe with his family instead. He became head of the Democrat party in June 1861.

The summer of 1863 saw draft riots in New York City. The rebellion was led by conscripted men who couldn’t afford to pay $300 for someone else to soldier for them in the American civil war. Blacks suffered the most deaths during the violence, scapegoated as the cause of the war.

In the late 1860’s, Belmont became interested in horse-racing, buying land on which to build a racetrack. He became president of Leonard Jerome’s racetrack in the Fordham section of the Bronx.

Read the book to learn of a boatload more history and Belmont’s family history in 1800’s America, in politics and war, especially.

World Class

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The Book of the Week is “World Class, One Mother’s Journey Halfway Around the Globe in Search of the Best Education for Her Children” by Teru Clavel, published in 2019.

Born in the early 1960’s, the author had very different educational experiences from that of her children. She spent her early childhood years in Greenwich, Connecticut; middle years in New York City, and teens in Westchester county, New York. She, her husband and their three children spent a decade in Asia, and moved back to the United States in 2016.

They began their stay in Hong Kong in the expat community, but the author wanted her children to see how the natives actually lived and learned. The rat race among the super-rich elitists had become tiresome. So in Hong Kong and later in Shanghai, she found a preschool and elementary school that were right for her then-two children. Even so, most local Asian schools demanded discipline and rigorous academics that were standardized nationwide.

In Shanghai, though, her family endured hardships in order for her children to get the best educations– authentic to the culture of that place and time. In Asia, teaching is a highly respected profession for which there is rigorous training and a highly selective hiring process.

Both the author’s family’s local public school and their residence were structurally dilapidated. The former had classrooms that were unheated, so in winter, the kids wore their coats all day. The grounds had no playground, only a concrete basketball court with a bare hoop. The family’s home had vermin and unreliable water and internet service.

At the elementary school, the teachers specialized in math, Mandarin, English language or other subjects, and were paid more than the homeroom teacher. The kids learned with pencils and paper; not tablets and videos.

Every day before preschool began, the kids were subjected to a color-coded health examination: red (a lucky color in China) meant the child was well, yellow meant slight illness but okay to be in class, but blue indicated that the child would spend the day at the school infirmary. Most parents of elementary schoolers work to support a multi-generational household: an only child, the parents, and both sets of grandparents of the child.

The author’s six-year old son’s report card was a 46 page bound book containing assessments in each subject including social skills– comprised of opinions of the parents, teachers and students themselves. According to the author, the Chinese education system is a meritocracy, with high school and college entrance exams the keys to the kingdom.

The author wanted her children to attend high school in the United States, so the family moved to Palo Alto in California– the best school district in the nation; but, as the author found out, only reputationally.

Read the book to learn: many more details of Asian education and cultures, and how they compare to the American system in recent years; the author’s advice and tips for how parents can seek out the best education for their kids; and biographical information on the author and her family.

How I Cracked the Alpha Code – BONUS POST

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“The new guys were preoccupied with being reelected, the demands of which were not well served by ridiculous fantasies like fiscal discipline.”

American politics? Rogers was actually referring to the money managers of the euro in the early 2000’s. He was cautiously optimistic about the euro when it was first launched. Oh, well.

The Bonus Book of the Week is “How I Cracked the Alpha Code” by Jim Rogers, published in 2013. This was a partially autobiographical, extended essay that gave tips on how to gauge economic prosperity and prospects in different places. At all times, Rogers is on the lookout everywhere for investment opportunities. He made his (take this job and shove it) money and retired from investment banking at 37 years old.

Born in 1942, Rogers and his wife and young children tried living in Shanghai and Hong Kong (where there was horrible air pollution) beginning in 2005, before deciding to move to Singapore from New York City.

Singapore requires no security at public events, so it is safe for children. He claimed that the education and healthcare systems are excellent. It has entitlement programs in those areas and in home ownership that are roughly equivalent to health savings accounts and 529 plans in the U.S. with contribution-matching through employers, but administered by the government. The public schools require parents to volunteer to help in various capacities. Medical treatment is a great value compared to that in the U.S. No surprise there. It also has the equivalent of America’s E-ZPass system on toll roads and for parking, too.

However, Rogers merely listed the positive aspects of Singaporeans’ lifestyle. He listed no negatives, except for potential, general economic threats that could affect any nation. Another glaring omission of inconvenient information was cryptocurrencies. But he did reveal his basic philosophy: one’s real worth is what one would be worth if one lost all of his or her money. And let financial entities fail so as to encourage creative destruction. Do not bail them out.

Rogers listed some of the kinds of policies and practices that bring a country down economically: wars, litigation, and incompetent leadership. This blogger would add one more: excessive deregulation. He gave tips on what a nation should do to try to reverse its serious financial position: reform the tax system so as to encourage savings and investment, not consumption; “change the education system” and reform healthcare and litigation.

Read the book to learn more cherry-picked information that bolstered the author’s too brief, too pat pronouncements.

Exorbitant Privilege

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The Book of the Week is “Exorbitant Privilege, The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System” by Barry Eichengreen, published in 2011.

“Often these individuals had little professional training, there being no meaningful federal or in some cases, even state licensing requirements.”

No, the above refers to neither tax preparers nor life coaches.

The author was referring to the bandwagon-jumpers who worked for lenders taking advantage of the excessive deregulation that resulted in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis in America.

The author listed some factors favoring, and some disfavoring the American dollar’s ability to maintain its global power as a currency and store of value. However, one major factor the author completely neglected to mention (a glaring omission) was that of cryptocurrencies.

Anyway, Brooksley Born, head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, raised the alarm in the late 1990’s on the excessive deregulation that was to lead to the subprime crisis. She deserves more of a historical footnote than she has since received, because sadly, greedy alpha males are better propagandists than prescient, conscientious public-officials such as she.

The author contended that one major reason the American dollar will continue to maintain its dominance in the world, is that other industrialized nations can’t agree on what financial instrument should replace the American dollar as a stabilizer of the world’s other currencies. The greenback has compiled a longer history of trustworthiness, value-consistency, related liquidity-maintenance, and other benefits, in connection with transactions and international trade balances, more than any other instrument. China’s policy of keeping its central banks’ foreign-reserves balance a secret, reduces China’s currency’s trustworthiness.

The powerful U.S. government backs up its currency through treasury bonds and bills, while a (sometimes contentious) collective of European countries (not one government) must agree on how to act when a monetary crisis rears its ugly head. It stands to reason that disagreement or indecision leads to uncertainty, which leads to instability, and a possible worsening or hastening of, the collapse of modern civilization.

The aforementioned are just a few reasons why 54 countries pegged their currency’s values to the American dollar, while 27 pegged theirs to the euro, as of 2009. As is well known, the George W. Bush administration did a number on the U.S. economy, as “… tax cuts and unfunded spending increases [on two extremely expensive wars and a Medicare drug benefit] pushed the budget from surplus in 2000 to a structural deficit of 4 percent of GDP in 2007-2008.” The next two years saw the American government’s debt explosion at its worst.

The author outlined several possible (yet raucously controversial) ways to keep the American dollar globally powerful, through cost-cutting:

In a period of non-war– less defense-spending;

Reforming healthcare;

Raising the retirement age– less pension spending;

Liberalizing immigration policy — helps fund Social Security going forward; and

Increasing taxes of all kinds.

Read the book to learn a lot more about how the American dollar has fallen in stature in recent decades, and about other geopolitical international: monetary, financial and economic issues; explained for laypeople.

Boomerang

The Book of the Week is “Boomerang, Travels in the New Third World” by Michael Lewis, published in 2011. As the effects of the early 2000’s financial shenanigans began to be felt around the world, the author traveled to newly impoverished countries (Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany and the United States) to try to understand their situations, economically, politically and culturally. Human nature is such that very few people see the big picture before it’s too late. Besides that, it takes a long time for the victims to learn who really instigated and funded insidious propaganda campaigns or nefarious activities, if they ever do learn.

Kyle Bass, investment banker from Dallas, raised the alarm prior to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, but was shouted down by greedy alpha males with hubris syndrome. So he bet against the sheep and made a killing. But he believed the lowest-risk alternative to the securities market was physical gold, and nickels.

Iceland saw the U.S. in the 1980’s enjoying its material wealth, and wanted a piece of that. Iceland’s prime minister David Oddsson ushered in tax cuts and privatization, and greased the wheels of trade. In this way, the government was enticed into the vortex of excessive-deregulation-induced capitalistic greed. Around 2000, fishing industry regulations produced a maximally efficient, maximally profitable oligopoly that prompted Icelanders who weren’t in the fishing industry, to engage in aluminum smelting, and other economically rewarding careers.

The internet has facilitated the forming of relationships between hegemonic financial entities and overseas suckers. Beginning in 2003, young adults in Iceland found that speculative trading in stocks and currency was much more lucrative than fishing.

Ironically, Iceland– whose economy was based on fishing– was ready to take the bait, and become the fish. The former fishermen thought they’d succeed in the financial-services industry because fishing and money-management both involve risk-taking. However, the former requires specific physical and survival skills; the latter, knowledge and experience in the securities markets, business, economics and politics. Icelanders had none of the latter.

Unsurprisingly, when the money started rolling in, the newly rich started to buy houses and cars they couldn’t afford. Human nature is also such that, when people move numbers around on a screen, they don’t feel like they’re moving real money. The bankers and traders in Iceland were borrowing tens of billions from foreigners in the short term, “…then re-lending the money to themselves and their friends to…” overpay for a large financial stake in other banks, sports teams, and other assets. Astute sellers saw the writing on the wall, and left Iceland holding the bag.

European regulators were asleep at the switch. If U.S. financial institutions had been the targets, or had been engaging in such activity, there would have been more early awareness and safeguards in place, in fending off hostile takeovers.

The Americans have their lawyers, directors and officers, and consultants as the first line of defense. Their financial institutions didn’t play the fool the same way major banks in Iceland did. They were largely the lenders and sellers, not the borrowers. But they still got in trouble (!), and also needed adult supervision going forward to bail themselves out.

Incidentally, the SPAC affiliated with former U.S. president Donald Trump needs to continue to find foreign entities (like those that Iceland’s became) with whom he shares the same ethics (or lack thereof), to establish his new media empire. Here’s a little ditty about the situation thus far:

FUN, FUN, FUN

sung to the tune of “Fun, Fun, Fun” with apologies to the Beach Boys.

Well, he’s got his base’s-money
and he’s cruising to his next train WRECK now.

Seems like he forgot all-about
the REAsons he was banned from Big TECH now.

And with the hate-speech blasting
with over-whelming noise full of DRECK now.

And he’ll have fun, fun, fun
till the hackers take his network away.

(Fun, fun, fun till the hackers take his network away.)

Well, the Dems can’t stand him
’cause he’s STILL hogging media space now.

(He’s still hogging space now, he’s still hogging space.)

He gives American politics
a persistent Nix-onian face now.

(He’s still hogging space now, he’s still hogging space.)

A lotta critics try to nail him
but he spins a propaganda chase now.

(He’s still hogging space now, he’s still hogging space.)

And he’ll have fun, fun, fun
till the hackers take his network away.

(Fun, fun, fun till the hackers take his network away.)

Well, he knew all along
that his foes were getting wise to HIM now.

(He needs a new crew now, he needs a new crew.)

And since his stunts are getting old,
they’ve been wishing that his fun is all through now.

(He needs a new crew now, he needs a new crew.)

And things are coming to a head
and his lawyers got a lot to do now.

(He needs a new crew now, he needs a new crew.)

And he’ll have fun, fun, fun
till the hackers take his network away.

(Fun, fun, fun till the hackers take his network away.)

And he’ll have fun, fun, fun
till the hackers take his network away.

(Fun, fun, fun till the hackers take his network away.)

wo wo wo wo woo woo

(Fun, fun, fun till the hackers take his network away.)
(Fun, fun, fun till the hackers take his network away.)
(Fun, fun, fun till the hackers take his network away.)
(Fun, fun, fun till the hackers take his network away.)
(Fun, fun, fun till the hackers take his network away.)
(Fun, fun, fun till the hackers take his network away.)

Anyway, in October 2008, the party was over for Iceland. Lots of fire insurance was bought, and lots of Range Rovers were set on fire. Finally, in February 2009, the aforementioned Oddsson was ousted as head of the central bank.

The story in Greece was that the government was corrupt, overpaid and overstaffed. No tax collection took place because 2009 was an election year. Corporate employees only (not the self-employed) were the only workers who paid income taxes. All three hundred Parliament members evaded real-property taxes through dishonesty. Cash transactions with no paper trail facilitated the evasion of sales taxes throughout the country. There was wilful ignorance (unbelievably sloppy accounting) that masked just how serious the financial crisis was.

Read the book to learn much more about other aspects of the crisis– the alarm-raisers in Iceland, Ireland and the United States, the one protestor in Ireland, the German mentality, and the responses of a few local American politicians.

One for the Earth

The Book of the Week is “One for the Earth, Journal of A Sierra Club President” by Susan D. Merrow with Wanda A. Rickerby, published in 1992.

The Sierra Club, founded in May 1892, began with about one hundred members. Its original goal was to prevent the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California from becoming further polluted. Sadly, through the decades, the need for such an organization has grown exponentially. The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, a group that began using the Club’s name, actually helped raise more funds than otherwise for the Club, but took public stances with which the original group disagreed.

Beginning in May 1990, Merrow was appointed president of the Club for a year’s term. She had acquired previous experience teaching adult education classes and lobbying the Connecticut state government on environmental matters. Her new job– for which she received no salary, only reimbursement of expenses– required constant travel. Volunteers did the bulk of the Club’s work. Her and her employer’s major frustration with the then-federal government was that it was regressive in connection with all kinds of energy issues.

The Club’s lobbyists were awfully busy contacting politicians about: incinerators, recycling, composting and source reduction, increasing gas mileage and decreasing emissions in newer cars, advocating for stopping oil drilling in the Arctic, reducing pollution on land and in the sea and in the air, and arguing for stricter waste-disposal laws, etc., etc., etc.

It might be recalled that a year prior, the Exxon Valdez oil spill left about 380,000 birds dead, and resulted in severe health issues for many animals and plants, including hundreds of species of mollusks, fish and coral-reef animals, dolphins and whales. The then-legal case that might compensate injured parties (Alaska and the United States) for the disaster was still pending. However, in April 1990, Exxon suggested that it pay $100 million to settle the civil and criminal charges against it. Tens of studies done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showed grievous (and probably irreparable) harm that (if a dollar value had to be put on it) was estimated at $1.1 billion.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, astute people knew that the Clean Air Act that was then working its way through the Congressional-passage process would become diluted by profiteers aided by propagandists. In autumn 1990, the Bryan Bill– mandating the manufacturing of more fuel-efficient cars– was stalled too, by lobbyists in the oil and auto industries, and by other presidential supporters.

The First Gulf War wreaked environmental destruction (now forgotten by Americans) consisting of “… soot from 600 burning oil wells… cloud over farmland and villages in Turkey and Iran… rain filled with toxic chemicals, polluted both the air and water. Severe respiratory illness, cancer, and ruined crops…”

On a diplomatic mission, the author visited staffers at three different magazines: Good Housekeeping, Sports Illustrated, and Seventeen. She hoped to get articles published for targeted readers of their respective, widely different demographic groups in whose interest it was to save the earth.

One concept the author conveyed was that protecting the habitat of one species, aids in the survival of all of the other species in that habitat. So ensuring a safe environment for the bobolink helps: “…lichens, apple trees, ladybugs, sumac, earthworms, chipmunks, monarch butterflies, white birches, wild blueberry bushes, goldenrod, red foxes– even humans.” The flip side is that one negative consequence leads to another when the food chain is disrupted (See this blog’s post, Rat Island).

Read the book to learn what happened to the Johnston-Wallop bill, and much more about the author’s trials, tribulations and triumphs.

Made In China

The Book of the Week is “Made in China, A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Costs of America’s Cheap Goods” by Amelia Pang, published in 2021.

“A guard grabbed a prisoner by his hair, twisted his head, and smashed his face into a heater… They beat him with electric batons until his body convulsed, then hung him by his wrists for two weeks– with his toes barely touching the ground.”

No, the above describes not the Holocaust, not a lynching, but a forced-labor camp in China in 2008 (!)

In the last few decades, the Chinese government has committed human rights abuses against its own citizens– not only dissidents, but also against a group called the Falun Gong (a group that practices exercises, meditation, and espouses certain lifestyle choices). Such citizens are sent to slave-labor camps, where they are tortured and starved but kept alive long enough to serve their sentences by making consumer goods (for export) for no pay amid extremely squalid conditions; they are charged with crimes and punished through what would be considered a complete violation of American-style due process.

In China, as of 2013, the camps numbered an estimated one thousand, at minimum. The author wrote that in all her research, she found only one American company that was ever prosecuted for importing consumer goods from such a camp in China, in the course of twenty years. The camps are bad enough, but to add more shock value to the already unspeakable horrors, the camps are a source of black-market transplant-organs in China, estimated to be worth $1 billion. In December 2013, China said it would be converting its reeducation (brainwashing) camps to ones that imposed labor for drug rehabilitation instead. However, the lipstick on the pig didn’t change the pig.

The main focus of the book was the true story of a man named Sun– a Falun Gong member who was sentenced to two and a half years to an aforementioned camp. He risked his life to hand-write a note containing a desperate plea for help, that ended up in the package of a Halloween product purchased by a woman in Oregon in the United States.

In 2016, Big Brother was growing ever more intrusive in China, as Turkic Muslims (the Uyghur tribe and Kazhaks), were targeted for “blood tests, fingerprints, voice recordings, and facial scans.” An estimated three million of twelve million of them are detained in the camps. They live in a location where China borders more than a few strategically located nations on the Silk Road– still a crucial trade route. The Chinese government doesn’t want any rebellious behavior from them. Reeducation is the goal, besides the economic benefits for China. All of them are forced to speak Mandarin, or else.

The author wrote with some alarm, that the torture chambers for victimized ethnic groups are arguably genocidal. She suggested that China’s atrocities might become comparable to the Holocaust all over again. But– this is not a Hitler situation, and is unlikely to become one. This, because Hitler had grand designs to take over the world through arming a military that committed imperialism, and creating a master race through eliminating the Jews and others he deemed genetically inferior– through genocide.

Matters will eventually come to a head when a significant proportion of the two minority populations are in the camps, and the export market is oversaturated with goods made by them, sold through big-name companies like Nike, Apple, BMW, Amazon, etc. An economic slowdown will mean a reduction in the need for the camps. (That’s NOT to say that the camps should exist, or that nothing should be done to stop the atrocities.)

International outcry will eventually reach critical mass, so that pressure will be brought to bear on China to reduce its human rights abuses, through economic punishments. Unlike most of the rest of the world, –like clockwork every two years– the United States holds elections for some powerful federal and state offices during which, a significant number of Chinese voters can influence political candidates to take a stand on this issue.

Anyway, read the book to learn additional details about Sun’s fate, and how the situation can be changed for the better.