The Big Turn Off

Do you really want the idiot in the seat sitting next to you on that overnight flight to yak it up on his smart phone? Picture a gaggle of gabbing grousers all over the flight chattering away, a cacophony of disruptive sounds. Put your head back on that neck pillow of yours, close your eyes and… listen to the myriad conversations around the plane. If there is any danger in the skies from the use of cell phones, it may well be from irate passengers desperately wanting some limited privacy for some truly second rate zzzz’s. A well-thrown punch or an angry confrontation in the skies.

But do such personal electronics actually disrupt the aircraft’s navigation system? Here’s the party line, reported back in September 2004 by the Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine: “The truth is that portable electronic devices, such as mobile phones, compact disc players, and remote-controlled toys, can emit powerful electromagnetic radiation that can muck up an aircraft’s navigation and communication systems and actually endanger a flight. Airline telephones, on the other hand, transmit radio signals to and from antennas mounted externally on the aircraft, and such phones meet Federal Aviation Administration specifications that prevent them from interfering with the aircraft’s radio and navigation systems. Portable electronic devices do not currently meet such FAA requirements…

“Bruce Donham, who has spent a decade studying such interference for Boeing, recalls several incidents when the manufacturer was informed of anomalies—like an autopilot turning itself off during cruise or an airplane banking on its own—and advised the airlines to purchase the suspect portable electronic devices for tests. To the frustration of Boeing engineers, follow-up testing never duplicated the problems, either on subsequent flights or in the lab. ‘We think it’s a very low risk,’ Donham says of the threat from electronic devices, ‘but we have to gather data to prove it out.’” Pilots have often pointed out cockpit avionics failures, and there has always been speculation that someone on the aircraft turned on an illicit electronic device that was the cause… but no one really every proved that to be the case.

Nick Bilton brought a healthy skepticism to the FAA proscription against such devices, particularly during take-off and landing: “Dealing with the F.A.A. on this topic is like arguing with a stubborn teenager. The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane’s avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims, spreading irrational fear among millions of fliers… A year ago, when I first asked Les Dorr, a spokesman for the F.A.A., why the rule existed, he said the agency was being cautious because there was no proof that device use was completely safe. He also said it was because passengers needed to pay attention during takeoff.

“When I asked why I can read a printed book but not a digital one, the agency changed its reasoning. I was told by another F.A.A. representative that it was because an iPad or Kindle could put out enough electromagnetic emissions to disrupt the flight. Yet a few weeks later, the F.A.A. proudly announced that pilots could now use iPads in the cockpit instead of paper flight manuals… The F.A.A. then told me that ‘two iPads are very different than 200.’ But experts at EMT Labs, an independent testing facility in Mountain View, Calif., say there is no difference in radio output between two iPads and 200. ‘Electromagnetic energy doesn’t add up like that,’ said Kevin Bothmann, the EMT Labs testing manager...

“The F.A.A. should check out an annual report issued by NASA that compiles cases involving electronic devices on planes. None of those episodes have produced scientific evidence that a device can harm a plane’s operation. Reports of such interference have been purely speculation by pilots about the cause of a problem.

“Other government agencies and elected officials are finally getting involved…This December, Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, sent a letter to the F.A.A. telling the agency that it had a responsibility to ‘enable greater use of tablets, e-readers and other portable devices’ during flights, as they empower people and allow ‘both large and small businesses to be more productive and efficient, helping drive economic growth and boost U.S. competitiveness.’” New York Times, December 30^th.

Devices that are quiet might make the grade, but in cramped spaces, conversations really need some sensible limits. “[M]ost passengers don’t actually want to talk in the air. Nor do they want to talk to their co-passengers… Apparently saying ‘I love you,’ at 35,000 feet isn’t a great a temptation for 38% of us who fly… It seems we’d rather enjoy the quietness of a Wi-Fi free zone. But, as Female First reports, way more than half of flying passengers would gladly give up the airlines’ in-flight entertainment systems if Wi-Fi were offered… The key attraction, predictably, is ‘keeping in touch.’” NewMediaTravel.com.

In the long run, such devices are so completely a part of our daily lives that airlines will increasingly build in communications capacities as part of the ticket price. For those airlines with pilot programs (he he) allowing phone and Web access, providing Wi-Fi/cell phone connectivity is simply a revenue-generator in a highly competitive space. Emirates is one airline where yakking it up is just fine… and their nav systems are very much intact. It seems the argument that such electronics interfere with the plane’s internal systems is no longer a viable defense.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I still don’t mind long flights where I can catch up on reading and to bag a few zzzzz’s.

Fractionalization, GOP Style

Back on October 23, 2012, I wrote my Country Values vs. Urban Realities? blog. The gist of the message is well summarized with this excerpt describing the conflict and transition of American values from rural and farm-centric to urban: “What is particularly interest then is how Republicans and Democrats address this difference. In his editorial on October 6^th, Kevin Baker analyzed the differences in an astounding piece in the New York Times. His conclusion? That the Republican Party overwhelmingly embraces these ‘country values’ at the almost total exclusion of concerns for urban problems.”

On December 30^th, I addressed The Hidden Price of Redistricting, noting how so many Gerrymandered House districts have been structured so as to be overwhelmingly Republican such that the local candidates are not running against Democrats in the election but against conservative Republicans in the primaries. The lack of sufficient swing voters in these districts has literally tanked these elected representatives from embracing the kind of Congressional compromise most Americans think they deserve, and dug in the underlying constituency into a rural value proposition that flies in the face of America’s obvious transition into an overwhelmingly urban society. Four fifths of Americans live in or around cities. But as long as these Gerrymandered districts sustain (which will endure until Democrats overcome this restructuring to win the House), and as long as there is a right to filibuster in the Senate, we are only deepening the divide between urban and rural factions.

Even within the Republican Party itself, there is a strong disdain for anything that smacks of city-orientation. Nothing could have highlighted this massive disconnect more than House Speaker John Boehner’s decision to table pending legislation that was to provide federal aid to the victims of Superstorm Sandy during the last minute machinations to keep the nation from going over the fiscal cliff. While he was forced to reverse direction under pressure from Republicans elected from impacted states (particularly New York, New Jersey and Connecticut), his incredibly callous initial reaction to providing such aid reflects this deep urban-vs-rural schism that may ultimately destroy the GOP ability to generate a national consensus. For anyone watching, it was clear that the GOP doesn’t really believe it represents the heavily urbanized (and generally perceived as liberal) Northeast.

After the House Speaker failed to take New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie’s initial telephone calls, when the governor did get the speaker on the line, the rage was less than subtle. “Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a potential Republican presidential contender in 2016 [pictured above], said Mr. Boehner had refused to take his calls on [January 1^st] night. He accused the House leadership of duplicity and selfishness, saying the inaction ‘is why the American people hate Congress.’ … After finally getting through to Mr. Boehner on [January 2^nd] morning, Mr. Christie expressed doubt in the speaker’s word in his characteristically blunt way…‘I’m not going to get into the specifics of what I discussed with John Boehner today,’ he told reporters in New Jersey. ‘But what I will tell you is there is no reason at the moment for me to believe anything they tell me. Because they have been telling me stuff for weeks, and they didn’t deliver.’” New York Times, January 2^nd.

Other Republicans, who later retreated and suggested that they were happy with the speaker’s willingness to place the legislation back onto the House priority list, were equally nonplussed: “Representative Michael G. Grimm, a Republican whose Staten Island district was among the hardest hit, threatened not to vote for Mr. Boehner in the election for speaker this week. Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican whose constituents also suffered huge losses in the storm, urged New York’s well-heeled donor community not to contribute to Mr. Boehner’s Republican majority… The anger that surfaced seemed to come as a bit of a shock to Mr. Boehner, who quickly sought to contain any political fallout…

“As much as the outcry spoke of the extraordinary dissension within the Republican ranks, it also underscored another political reality: the relative lack of clout that Northeastern states like New York have in the House, a chamber dominated by conservatives from the South and Midwest… In many respects, lawmakers from the region must frequently contend with the perception, whether fair or not, that the region they represent is a liberal bastion that is politically and culturally out of touch with the rest of the country.” NY Times. Republican lawmakers from impacted states were forced to call the influential Wall Street contributors and supporters of the Republican Party to enlist their aid in the battle to achieve aid for their constituencies. They couldn’t do it on their own.

Today, the Republican Party is bitter, angry and divided, seemingly pledged to return the United States to the rural “apple pie” values that hardly represent the urban-heavy mainstream anymore. Diehard GOP gun owners scream that the Second Amendment allows them to retain their mini-weapons of mass destruction (oversized magazines and assault rifles), people-killing systems, precisely because it gives them power to overthrow a government that they believe may oppress them… even if that oppression comes from a majority vote. Does this mean that if this angry minority doesn’t get to dictate their mandate for America, they will feel justified in killing those who disagree with them?

“Infighting has penetrated the highest levels of the House GOP leadership. Long-standing geographic tensions have increased, pitting endangered Northeastern Republicans against their colleagues from other parts of the country. Enraged tea party leaders are threatening to knock off dozens of Republicans who supported a measure that raised taxes on the nation's highest earners… ‘People are mad as hell. I'm right there with them,’ Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express, said late last week, declaring that she has ‘no confidence’ in the party her members typically support. Her remarks came after GOP lawmakers agreed to higher taxes but no broad spending cuts as part of a deal to avert the ‘fiscal cliff.’… ‘Anybody that voted `yes' in the House should be concerned’ about primary challenges in 2014, she said.” Huffington Post, January 5^th. Think there will be Congress that can find a path to move forward through compromise? Neither do I.

With global climate change equally impacting rural regions with unprecedented drought and with southern states vulnerable to storm surges and hurricanes, the fact that the GOP was so completely “against” a part of the land (as opposed to being “for” helping devastated areas) shows how deep and fractious their bias is. To Republicans seeking a new path to embrace a larger constituency, the attitude of this GOP contingent is a wake-up call to Party organizers. The trend toward non-white, urban voters is unstoppable. Former Utah governor and Republican presidential candidate, Jon Huntsman, put it this way on December 30th, criticizing his party’s obstructionist stance and accusing them of being “devoid of a soul.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and at a time when we should be figuring out how to work together, our elected representatives seem to be trying to figure out how to divide us further.

No More Cheapskates at the Missing Rink

As most of the developed world seems to be skating on thin ice – at least financially-speaking – the physical world appears to be mirroring that otherwise figurative paradigm. The glimmer of a navigable Northwest Passage has now become a reality. “The unprecedented rate of Arctic sea ice melt [in June and July of 2012] has led to the Parry Channel of the fabled Northwest Channel becoming mainly ice-free by early August… The greatest extent of summertime melting in the region usually doesn’t occur until about mid-September… Climate change has allowed for far more Arctic sea to melt over the past decade, with the Northwest Passage opening up and becoming navigable in early September 2007 for the first time in 125,000 years.” EarthWeek.com, August 10^th.

Even as moments of bitter cold have embraced parts of the United States, such phenomena are nothing more than a momentary southward bend of cold air – a  phenomenon known as sudden stratospheric warming – bringing frost from the Canadian north.. “The stratosphere is located between 6 miles and 30 miles above the ground. Often when this [anomaly] occurs, it forces cold air to build in the lowest layer of the atmosphere then to drive southward.” Weather.aol.com.

We all know that the overall vectors are providing higher levels of average global temperatures than we have experienced in recorded history. We know about the storm surges, increased ferocity of hurricanes and typhoons, rising ocean tides, migration of nasty insects to places that are not prepared for the onslaught, flooding in some areas with deep and sustained drought in others, the loss of habitat for so many species, the loss of structures and useable land by the shore, even the increased volcanic activity resulting from the change in sea pressure on the earth’s crust, etc, etc.

But then there are the little things that come out of left field. So many American, Canadian, Scandinavian, and Russian families hose down their backyards every winter for junior to don his/her hockey togs and play the puck. Ponds, lakes and rivers freeze, and kids by the thousands figure-skate and scrimmage in mini-hockey wars until the thaw. OK, the freeze comes later now and the thaw a bit earlier every year. But winter is often the blessing that allows more than a few Canadian hockey rinks to save money, making the sport a bit more affordable to communities without a lot of cash, by turning off the expensive refrigeration systems required for the rest of the year. Some rinks didn’t need cooling systems at all.

“It has been too warm for December hockey in the Arctic, the latest sign that climate change is altering the environment and the way people live — especially in the far north, where the effects of rising temperatures are most pronounced…  Nine of the 14 villages in Nunavik, a region in northernmost Quebec, have installed cooling systems at community arenas within the last five years…  In Canada’s Nunavut Territory, towns including Arviat, Igloolik, Sanikiluaq and Repulse Bay have resorted to cooling systems. A system is also being installed at the community arena in Cape Dorset, a hamlet of 1,400 just 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle… “‘We used to have natural ice in the arena in October, but that hasn’t happened for a long time,’ said Mike Hayward, a Cape Dorset town official. Now the ice isn’t fit for hockey until mid-January, he said. That is why a cooling system is being installed in the building.

“The Canadian environmental ministry reports that the country is warming more than twice as fast as the world as a whole, with annual average temperatures in Canada up about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1948. The warming in winter is even faster, almost 6 degrees Fahrenheit over the same period, and scientists have documented a substantially shorter outdoor skating season as a result…  A study published last year by climate scientists at McGill and Concordia universities in Montreal warned that natural ice for skating could disappear from southern Alberta and British Columbia by midcentury and be significantly diminished throughout the rest of the country.” New York Times, January 4^th.  Canada may pick up some more farmland in the process, and the Russians are celebrating the warming trend. It seems like such a little inconvenience… for some… but for the rest of us…

I’m Peter Dekom, and it will be in the aggregation of consequences that we fully appreciate what our callous disregard for the environment has done to us.

Who Owns the Piece that Killed?

We’ve got lots of laws and practices that help folks with guns who kill. My December 22^nd blog – Crazy About Guns – described how the majority of states simply don’t provide the FBI with lists of those found to be mentally ill as required by the 1993 Brady gun control act. Since there are plethora of guns out there – the Sandy Hook shooter (with a history of mental issues) simply helped himself to his mom’s legally-acquired weapons stash – if some mental case has killing on his/her mind, there’s always a place to go to get whatever level of guns you want… Most murders by gun are committed with legally-acquired weapons. The shooters from Aurora, Sandy Hook and Webster firefighters are pictured above.

But there are other roadblocks placed before government officials in tracing killing guns. Television suggests that a cop at murder scene simply types (or calls in) the serial number of the suspect’s gun into a computer, and the tracing information instantly provides the requested information. Easy and efficient. And totally fictional, because the average TV viewer really wouldn’t understand why, in a modern era, we have absolutely no centralized files on guns sales.

In real life, the gun lobby has actually precluded the government agency charged with tracking such weapons used in a crime – the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (ATF) – from maintaining a registry of gun transactions. Instead, inquiries go to a windowless ATF facility in Martinsburg, West Virginia where tracing is done the old fashioned way. A bureaucrat contacts the manufacturer to begin a step-by-step effort (by phone mostly) to find how the gun went from maker to user. If any of the intervening steps is no longer around – from bankruptcy, death, etc. – sometimes that tracing fails. If sales are made through the private-seller exception (40% of all gun sales), where ID and background checks are not required, well too bad.

The ATF is clearly the focus of the National Rifle Association. “In an age when data is often available with a few keystrokes, the A.T.F. is forced to follow this manual routine because the idea of establishing a central database of gun transactions has been rejected by lawmakers in Congress, who have sided with the National Rifle Association, which argues that such a database poses a threat to the Second Amendment. In other countries, gun rights groups argue, governments have used gun registries to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens… Advocates for increased gun regulation, however, contend that in a country plagued by gun violence, a central registry could help keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and allow law enforcement officials to act more effectively to prevent gun crime.” New York Times, December 25^th.

The NRA has also convinced Congress that the appointment of the director of the ATF is such an important post that requires the approval of the Senate. Senators who fear the political power of the NRA. They have also made sure that whoever gets that job is prepared to follow the NRA’s party line on all gun issues. “In 2010, Mr. Obama nominated Andrew Traver, who is now the head of the bureau’s Denver division, for the post. But Mr. Traver, whose candidacy is opposed by the N.R.A., has yet to have a hearing, and his nomination has languished in the Senate Judiciary Committee.” NY Times. Every ATF move is scrutinized and monitored by the NRA. Morale at the agency is non-existent. One would think that the ATF should be at the forefront of recommending and implementing laws and regulations that might just stem the rising tide of violence that kills Americans and kills jobs – a perception that Americans are “gun crazy” that makes vacationers from all over the world take the United States off their travel list. Instead, the President has to set up a separate task force – led by Vice President Joe Biden – to do this job.

The NRA has convinced too many Americans that if we curtailed assault weapons and oversized magazines, only criminals would have them… instead of militia who increasingly speak for a decreasing segment of our nation. That none the mass murderers of late were hardened gangbangers, rather nut-jobs with easy and usually legal access to sophisticated weapons, seems to be too logical to deny.  As I pointed out the effectiveness of laws taking sophisticated weapons out of a society that once condoned them, one of my conservative friends made up a statistic that murders only increase in those circumstances because criminals do not comply with the gun removal statute. Australia was discussed. He really didn’t want to hear the facts, but here they are.

Australia, responding to a madman on a mass-killing spree back in 1996, did pass a law resulting in the surrender of 640,381 personal firearms. If the NRA’s logic is correct, that event should have resulted in a dramatic increase of criminal shootings and a lack of civilians with the ability to defend themselves. Since the NRA is all about mythology and fear, they probably don’t want you to know that their dire predictions failed to materialize.

Here’s the way it happened. According to the August 12^th Washington Post: “John Howard, who served as prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, is no one’s idea of a lefty. He was one of George W. Bush’s closest allies, enthusiastically backing the Iraq intervention, and took a hard line domestically against increased immigration and union organizing (pdf)… But one of Howard’s other lasting legacies is Australia’s gun control regime, first passed in 1996 in response to a massacre in Tasmania that left 35 dead. The law banned semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns. It also instituted a mandatory buy-back program for newly banned weapons.

“So what have the Australian laws actually done for homicide and suicide rates? Howard cites a study (pdf) by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University finding that the firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That provides strong circumstantial evidence for the law’s effectiveness… The paper also estimated that buying back 3,500 guns per 100,000 people results in a 35 to 50 percent decline in the homicide rate…” America seems to a nation fueled by slogans, nurtured on mythology, easily manipulated with fear tactics with a chronic aversion to facts and common sense. What’s wrong with truth?

I’m Peter Dekom, and we repeatedly convince ourselves that we are correct even with a litany of hard facts to the contrary.

Changing Gears: How Do You De-Carbonize Energy Production?

Think of how much money is invested in fossil-fueled vehicles. Think of the oil-drilling rigs, the refineries, the massive fleets of ships and the miles of pipes and other delivery infrastructure. Just in the United States there are almost 170 thousand filling stations providing retail gasoline and occasionally diesel fuel to America’s thirsty vehicles.

According to the Energy Information Administration, “The U.S. transportation sector consumes about 220 billion gallons of liquid hydrocarbon fuel per year. Energy use in the transportation sector is primarily for passenger travel and freight movements. Passenger vehicles consist of light-duty vehicles (automobiles, motorcycles, and light trucks) and high-duty vehicles (buses, airplanes, boats, and trains). The freight modes of transport include truck, air, rail, pipeline, and marine (domestic barge and cargo). Energy is also used for military operations and off-highway vehicles used for construction and farming.

“Approximately 250 million personal vehicles are registered in the USA, which amounts to about 25% of all personal vehicles in the world. About 60% of the personal vehicles in the U.S. are cars, the other 40% are SUVs, pick-up trucks and motorcycles.

“U.S. Transportation fuel consumption accounts for over 70 percent of total U.S. oil consumption, and more than 65 percent of that amount is for personal vehicles. American drivers consume about nine million barrels of gasoline per day for personal transportation—378 million gallons every day—about 45 percent of total U.S. oil consumption.” Remember the 1973 gasoline shortage? Oh, most of you weren’t born yet. So look at the picture above, and ask yourself if you would like some current experience with this issue again?

Like a toasty house in the cold? In the US, 6.9 million homes (mostly in the northeast) use heating oil and 69 million use natural gas to get through a tough winter. We could go crazy thinking about the amount of coal-fired electrical plants around, but according to the World Coal Association. 41% of the world’s electricity in generated this way. 45% for the U.S. and a staggering 79% for China. In the US, natural gas and coal cover 70% of our electrical generation capacity.

What does all this mean? We have so much invested in fossil fuel infrastructure – incumbent companies and governments with trillions and trillions of dollars at stake – that the mere thought of transitioning to a system that would render just about all of this obsolete is powerful enough to deter the most relevant players in any sector of the global economy from pushing too hard for change. What makes this even more difficult is that will all of this infrastructure and plenty of coal and natural gas reserves (and new oil fields being discovered all the time), the risk-reward for committing to new energy sources collapsed in a world of relatively cheap existing fossil fuel.

The prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently issued a report (Unlocking Energy Innovation) that accepts these challenges and notes that big change by big companies and huge governments – the path that most of us assume will implement the transition – is so fraught with conflicts of interest that we probably should stop looking at such centralized solutions to manage our energy future. The December 27^th FastCompany.comreviews this massive text and highlights the underlying message: “It lays out a 40-year framework for decarbonizing the U.S. energy system, arguing that a ‘fundamental transformation’ is needed to avoid the worst (‘unmanageable’) impacts of climate change. ‘We face a very big innovation challenge over the next few decades, bigger than most people recognize. And the system as a whole isn’t close to being up to the task,’ [MIT Professor and co-lead author Richard] Lester says.

“The authors say energy innovation has lagged other sectors because companies and financial institutions have been ‘risk-averse,’ and often had a ‘strong interest in preserving the status quo.’ But it also says energy is different: It takes a long time to bring technology to commercialization because the system is complex and contingent. Before you can introduce lots of wind turbines, for example, you first need a better grid, more accurate forecasting, more energy storage, and so on.

“The book advises against a ‘moonshot mentality’ in favor of long-term collaboration between public and private research laboratories, small and large firms, financial intermediaries, schools and universities, and local, state, and federal agencies. ‘There is an enormous innovation agenda that does not depend on a ‘moonshot’ mentality,’ it says...

“More broadly, the report recommends looking beyond Washington, arguing that the parties are unlikely to come to agreement on a comprehensive way forward. Instead, it says the ecosystem may be better served with state or regional level initiatives, which are easier to negotiate and more responsive to local needs… [The authors say] intensive government-orchestrated projects like the Manhattan or Apollo Projects won’t bring about useful innovations. Instead, they say policy-makers should focus on what is achievable in the near and longer terms. It sees three ‘waves’ of development, starting with a focus on energy efficiency (particularly cars and buildings). Between 2020 and 2050, the U.S. can bring down the costs and risks of ‘known low-carbon energy-supply and electricity-storage technologies.’ And then, after 2050, it can finally bring fundamentally new energy technologies to market.”

When local experiments succeed, they reduce the economic risks of scaling the solution to national or global levels. Further, different regions have differing resources, and hence their ability to access non-fossil fuel alternatives will require myriad choices. With local initiatives, appropriate diversity of choice will be amplified.

The authors see the cap-and-trade solution (where polluters pay cash for the right to emit effluents into the atmosphere) as flawed and envision a series of breakthrough technologies in the coming decades that will produce vastly better answer to decarbonizing the world. Innovation has to recognize that it will be competing head-to-head with inexpensive coal-fired incumbents, so high-cost answers just won’t solve the biggest issues. But their focus is on generating electricity, to power industry, homes and cars, just not through legacy fossil fuel systems.

I think the answer lies in a combination of local initiatives (with strong governmental funding) plus overall national governmental policies to move away from fossil fuels – there is no other way to manage this change, particularly in centrally-directed economies such as China – with appropriate research funding, infrastructural commitments at the macro and micro levels. We need it all. In the end, this is an efficiency-creating effort that will add and sustain job growth to a battered economy. Just supporting legacy fossil fuel systems as our central policy – which is clearly what our current commitments are – just doesn’t cut it for the long haul… or even for the foreseeable near term.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in an impaired economy, the ability to secure our future while creating near-term job growth seems to be a compelling priority.

$17 Million a Day

All eyes are on the federal government and the deficit-gone-rogue. “Under current policy, the federal government is spending vastly more than it is collecting in tax revenue. And that will be true for the next several decades, thanks largely to the growth in entitlement spending that will occur automatically as the population ages and health care costs increase. As a result, the ratio of government debt to the nation’s gross domestic product is projected to rise, substantially and without an end in sight.” New York Times, December 29^th. Yep, terrible. But there is another equally debilitating reality facing us at the local level… the headlines aren’t so big, but the damage to our nation really could be.

It’s no secret that too many states and municipalities have commitments to retired and to-be-retired workers that are deeply underfunded. “U.S. states and localities have run up more than $2 trillion of unfunded pension liabilities, Moody's Investors Service said … citing data on plans offered by 8,500 local governments and over 14,000 individual entities. The Wall Street credit agency said that according to its estimate, the total liabilities for fiscal 2010 were more than three times the amount reported by local governments.” Reuters.com, July 2^nd.

Cities like Los Angeles have railed against the level of pension benefits they face, but powerful unions have slammed the brakes on any meaningful changes… even though it is clear that there is no way the city can meet its pension burdens. Police and firefighters in the City of the Angels can retire at age 50 with 20 years of service!

At a state level, however, California passed sweeping government pension reform legislation, raising the retirement age for new employees, capping the maximum benefits and requiring more contributions from the workers themselves. It is a trend that is generally finding traction across the United States, but we are miles and miles away from a sustainable solution. Municipal bankruptcy has been rising of late (Alabama, Michigan, California and Pennsylvania all have cities in bankruptcy), and we can expect a lot more.

There are holdouts, however, where denial and procrastination rule… where powerful public employee unions wield sufficient clout to hinder such necessary reforms. Nowhere is that more evident than in Illinois, which adds $17 million a day to its unfunded pension total of roughly $100 billion. The Illinois legislature intends to address this catastrophe in early 2013, but the state’s track record on public pensions is less-than-stellar. The failure to deal with these issues has created a nearly impossible, lose-lose scenario that will require politicians of every persuasion to renege on some of their most basic promises… or risk bankrupting the entire state.

“Critics blame Illinois’ situation on procrastination, budgetary ‘gimmicks’ and frequent raids on state-employee retirement funds to pay for other state expenses. Others blame an unwillingness to take on the unions, which help keep Democrats in power in President Barack Obama's home state. But it's a problem decades in the making, through nearly a dozen Republican and Democratic governors and through legislatures controlled by both parties, dating back to before Illinois changed its constitution in 1970 to prohibit reductions in state employee retirement plans…  ‘Nothing has changed in 40 years,’ said Elaine Nekritz, a suburban Chicago Democrat and chairman of the House Pensions Committee, who called for an end to ‘excuses’ when rolling out another proposal to solve the problem this month.

“Getting a deal done will most likely require lawmakers to do things practically unheard of; Democrats would have to anger loyal union supporters, while Republicans would have to support a plan they think will lead to a tax hike. But without a fix, the payment the state has to make to its pension fund each year will continue to grow, leaving less money for things like education and health care that already have seen big cuts. By 2016, Illinois would be spending more on pension payments than on schools, the governor's office estimates.” New York Times, December 30^th.

But Governor Pat Quinn has a pragmatic solution: “[He] is seeking to use the practical advantages of a lame-duck legislative calendar to fix the state’s pension systems — the most underfinanced in the nation — in a matter of days.” NY Times, Jan. 1^st. In dealing with his “rendezvous with reality,”  noted: “‘We’re trying to do fundamental pension reform that has confounded 12 governors, 13 speakers of the House and 13 Senate presidents over the last 70 years,’ … adding that despite that troubled history, he believed that a meaningful overhaul of the state’s pension systems could be passed through the current legislature in a single week — after lawmakers begin returning to Springfield on January 3^rd and wrapping up before newly elected lawmakers are sworn in at noon on Jan. 9.” NY Times. Think he’ll make it?  

All across our political spectrum are problems resulting from votes for short term popular issues with little or no thought to longer-term consequences. Whether it involves “righteous wars” that get declared all-too-quickly but sap our national strength as these ill-conceived efforts drag on for years and years without any positive results…. or promising powerful unions unsustainable benefits just to get their political machines to turn out the votes. “If there are future problems with this legislation, I will be long gone.” With the exception of the almost never-invoked and excessively cumbersome structure for amending our Constitution, there is a rather dramatic absence of any mechanism that rewards politicians for long-term thinking. With the quality of our educational system sinking faster than the Titanic, it is equally unlikely that voters will alter their “only what I see in the immediate future” mentality in electing their representatives. Every short-term vote, however, is a vote to put an end-date on that magnificent nation we call the United States of America

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is very little sympathy from the rest of the world for the harm we have repeatedly inflicted on ourselves.

Dry Desperation

We’d like to think that the Syrian rebellion was a product of people yearning to be free, craving a new democracy and inspired by their Arab Spring brethren in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. While the results of the Arab Spring may have suggested a path, the overwhelming motivator is that lesson history rich and powerful people never seem to learn: when enough people have nothing left to lose, expect a surging demand for regime change, violent if nothing else will work. In fact the real force behind the move to topple the al-Assad incumbency was most probably the result of climate change and the government’s reaction to it.

“One of the reasons that so many people decided they were prepared to risk death to oppose President Bashar al-Assad, were the consequences of the worst drought in Syria's recorded history, between 2006 and 2011. .. According to the UN, it wiped out the livelihoods of 800,000 people. In north-east Syria, 85% of the livestock died…The regime made matters worse by subsidising big land owners who intensively farmed thirsty crops like cotton and wheat. North-east Syria is now a stronghold of the rebellion.” BBC.uk.co, December 9^th.  The loss of family assets accumulated over decades if not centuries caused one of the most massive displacements in the region’s history.

“Half a decade of drought has forced the migration of 1.5 million rural residences to Syria’s urban centers, as the regime has paid little attention to water and agricultural issues, and this grossly overlooked climate situation has and will continue to help shape the outcome of the conflict and the prospects for future stability.

“According to a recent study released by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the ‘unparalleled’ drought in Syria … led to [this] mass migration of … people to urban centers, while the regime of Bashar al-Assad systematically ignored urgent issues of water access and sustainable agriculture, leading to the complete destruction of a large number of farming communities and placing immense stress on urban centers.” OilPrice.com, August 20^th.

“Ancient irrigation systems have collapsed, underground water sources have run dry and hundreds of villages have been abandoned as farmlands turn to cracked desert and grazing animals die off. Sandstorms have become far more common, and vast tent cities of dispossessed farmers and their families have risen up around the larger towns and cities of Syria and Iraq.” New York Times, October 13, 2010, written before the insurrection. Anger, frustration and nothing left to lose.

Sure there were activists ready to foment their own Arab Spring, students and intellectuals, nationalists and religious zealots, all seizing on this opportunity to force change. But without the desperation of starving farmers with no hope and no future, this movement would have died in the sandy soil of north-eastern Syria. After all, where would the rebellion have recruited the numbers of fighters needed to usurp the al-Assad government if folks were content on productive farms or well-employed in urban centers?

But none of this augurs well for the new Syria, beset with factionalism and dire economic needs, right smack in the middle of the one of the most troubled regions in the Middle East. Unlike fractured Somalia, isolated in a dry African desert, Syria is surrounded by important powers embroiled in conflicts and violent regional politics. There are Iran’s Shiite-dominated cronies (read: Assad’s buddies) on two sides: Lebanon with its Hezbollah government is on one side and Iraq on the other. Israel looms on the southern border. And two Sunni powers, Turkey and Jordan, make up the balance. With nearby Egypt (Syria and Egypt were once united into a single nation – the United Arab Republic – from 1958 through 1961) and Iran in the ‘hood, Syria’s politics are anything but internal.

To make matters much worse, Syria is 74% Sunni but its leadership is Alawite – a Shiite affiliate with only 13% of the population. These religious factions are traditional enemies. Iran is dedicated to preserve Shiite power, with men and arms to the al-Assad regime. Russia seems to share that commitment for other reasons including pressure from the Russian Orthodox Church seeking to protect the Christian minority (through a deal with the Assad government) and to preserve the massive Russian trade and economic holdings with the incumbent regime. But even Russia sees the writing on the wall. In December 14^th, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, “Unfortunately, we cannot rule out the victory of the Syrian opposition.” Europe and now the United States have recognized Syria’s rebels (through their National Coalition) as the nation’s only legitimate government.

Deadly Sarin gas is now loaded into active bombs, ready for use by the Assad-controlled Air Force. Al-Qaeda forces, Kurdish separatists, passionate students and intellectuals, angry farmers, military defectors and Muslim fundamentalists have joined forces to oppose the government. And if they win, what?

Does this break the country apart into regional war lords and extreme factions? Is the result civil war? Does the Syrian territory remain intact or do sections (like the Kurdish border region as I have recently blogged) break off to join their brethren on the other side? Do the regional players continue to launch their surrogates to battle within Syria, fomenting instability in an already-volatile region? And how does the world help those who lost everything in the drought achieve economic stability in a world of massive financial impairment?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the pages of Syria’s history seem destined to drip blood for a very long time.