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Flip, flop, ow!


I have stated this danger for years! 

Lesson of the Day

Beware flip-flop wearers. Though flip-flops are a summer religion for many, they are also extremely dangerous. The floppy style of sandal originated in ancient Egypt, and what we call “flip flops” today descended from the Japanese zori shoe. The footwear was first popularized in the West by Allied soldiers returning from WWII. Unfortunately, no major improvements have been made since then. If you don’t believe the shoes are dangerous, check out these stats. In 2014, there were over 25,000 flip-flop related emergency room visits in the US alone! Plus, podiatrists blame them for everything from blisters to infections, bad posture, shooting pains, athlete’s foot, and droopy arches. Not to mention they have been shown to cause serious hip, knee, and back injuries. A recent study of flip-flops found their wearers took shorter strides and their heels hit the ground with less vertical force than when they wore athletic shoes. The main problem is that unless you change your gait and adapt how you walk, flip flops won’t stay on. None of this seems to be hurting the $20 billion sandal industry, which is even larger than athletic footwear. I’ve been trying to convince my kids to stop wearing them for a while, but nothing worked until I started calling them by the name we used for them as kids: thongs. Now my kids won’t touch them for some reason.

 

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Clearly Revealed


Wed Jan 23, 2013 at 08:08 AM PST

A Republican explains what’s wrong with the Republican party in just 14 words

by Barbara Morrill

 

In the coming months, Republican lawmakers will be fighting tooth and nail against the agenda President Obama laid out during Tuesday’s inaugural address: his call to action on equality, immigration reform, reducing gun violence, protecting social programs, addressing climate change and more.And Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan neatly explains why the upcoming fights might be a problem for the GOP:

The public is not behind us, and that’s a real problem for our party.

Unfortunately, Republicans don’t give a damn what the public wants. And that’s a real problem for the country.

Originally posted to Barbara Morrill on Wed Jan 23, 2013 at 08:08 AM PST.

Also republished by Daily Kos Classics and Daily Kos.

Jimmy Carter Is Correct that the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy


This was posted in The Huffington Post by Investigative historian Eric Zuesse. 

On July 28th, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as if this massive question were merely an aftethought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter answered:

“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. … At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.”

He was then cut off by the program, though that statement by Carter should have been the start of the program, not its end. (And the program didn’t end with an invitation for him to return to discuss this crucial matter in depth — something for which he’s qualified.)

So: was this former president’s provocative allegation merely his opinion? Or was it actually lots more than that? It was lots more than that.

Only a single empirical study has actually been done in the social sciences regarding whether the historical record shows that the United States has been, during the survey’s period, which in that case was between 1981 and 2002, a democracy (a nation whose leaders represent the public-at-large), or instead an aristocracy (or ‘oligarchy’) — a nation in which only the desires of the richest citizens end up being reflected in governmental actions. This study was titled “Testing Theories of American Politics,” and it was published by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page in the journal Perspectives on Politics, issued by the American Political Science Association in September 2014. I had summarized it earlier, on 14 April 2014, while the article was still awaiting its publication.

The headline of my summary-article was “U.S. Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy Says Scientific Study.” I reported: “The clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it’s pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation’s ‘news’ media).” I then quoted the authors’ own summary: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

The scientific study closed by saying: “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule–at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.” A few other tolerably clear sentences managed to make their ways into this well-researched, but, sadly, atrociously written, paper, such as: “The preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of ‘affluent’ citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.” In other words, they found: The rich rule the U.S.

Their study investigated specifically “1,779 instances between 1981 and 2002 in which a national survey of the general public asked a favor/oppose question about a proposed policy change,” and then the policy-follow-ups, of whether or not the polled public preferences had been turned into polices, or, alternatively, whether the relevant corporate-lobbied positions had instead become public policy on the given matter, irrespective of what the public had wanted concerning it.

The study period, 1981-2002, covered the wake of the landmark 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo, which had started the aristocratic assault on American democracy, and which seminal (and bipartisan) pro-aristocratic court decision is described as follows by wikipedia: It “struck down on First Amendment grounds several provisions in the 1974 Amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. The most prominent portions of the case struck down limits on spending in campaigns, but upheld the provision limiting the size of individual contributions to campaigns. The Court also narrowed, and then upheld, the Act’s disclosure provisions, and struck down (on separation of powers grounds) the make-up of the Federal Election Commission, which as written allowed Congress to directly appoint members of the Commission, an executive agency.”

Basically, the Buckley decision, and subsequent (increasingly partisan Republican) Supreme Court decisions, have allowed aristocrats to buy and control politicians.

Already, the major ‘news’ media were owned and controlled by the aristocracy, and ‘freedom of the press’ was really just freedom of aristocrats to control the ‘news’ — to frame public issues in the ways the owners want. The media managers who are appointed by those owners select, in turn, the editors who, in their turn, hire only reporters who produce the propaganda that’s within the acceptable range for the owners, to be ‘the news’ as the public comes to know it.

But, now, in the post-Buckley-v.-Valeo world, from Reagan on (and the resulting study-period of 1981-2002), aristocrats became almost totally free to buy also the political candidates they wanted. The ‘right’ candidates, plus the ‘right’ ‘news’-reporting about them, has thus bought the ‘right’ people to ‘represent’ the public, in the new American ‘democracy,’ which Jimmy Carter now aptly calls “subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.”

Carter — who had entered office in 1977, at the very start of that entire era of transition into an aristocratically controlled United States (and he left office in 1981, just as the study-period was starting) — expressed his opinion that, in the wake now of the two most extreme pro-aristocratic U.S. Supreme Court decisions ever (which are Citizens United in 2010, and McCutcheon in 2014), American democracy is really only past tense, not present tense at all — no longer a reality.

He is saying, in effect, that, no matter how much the U.S. was a dictatorship by the rich during 1981-2002 (the Gilens-Page study era), it’s far worse now.

Apparently, Carter is correct: The New York Times front page on Sunday 2 August 2015 bannered, “Small Pool of Rich Donors Dominates Election Giving,” and reported that:

“A New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission reports and Internal Revenue Service records shows that the fund-raising arms race has made most of the presidential hopefuls deeply dependent on a small pool of the richest Americans. The concentration of donors is greatest on the Republican side, according to the Times analysis, where consultants and lawyers have pushed more aggressively to exploit the looser fund-raising rules that have fueled the rise of super PACs. Just 130 or so families and their businesses provided more than half the money raised through June by Republican candidates and their super PACs.”

The Times study shows that the Republican Party is overwhelmingly advantaged by the recent unleashing of big-corporate money power. All of the evidence suggests that though different aristocrats compete against each other for the biggest chunks of whatever the given nation has to offer, they all compete on the same side against the public, in order to lower the wages of their workers, and to lower the standards for consumers’ safety and welfare so as to increase their own profits (transfer their costs and investment-losses onto others); and, so, now, the U.S. is soaring again toward Gilded Age economic inequality, perhaps to surpass the earlier era of unrestrained robber barons. And, the Times study shows: even in the Democratic Party, the mega-donations are going to only the most conservative (pro-corporate, anti-public) Democrats. Grass-roots politics could be vestigial, or even dead, in the new America.

The question has become whether the unrestrained power of the aristocracy is locked in this time even more permanently than it was in that earlier era. Or: will there be yet another FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) to restore a democracy that once was? Or: is a president like that any longer even possible in America?

As for today’s political incumbents: they now have their careers for as long as they want and are willing to do the biddings of their masters. And, then, they retire to become, themselves, new members of the aristocracy, such as the Clintons have done, and such as the Obamas will do. (Of course, the Bushes have been aristocrats since early in the last century.)

Furthermore, the new age of aristocratic control is not merely national but international in scope; so, the global aristocracy have probably found the formula that will keep them in control until they destroy the entire world. What’s especially interesting is that, with all of the many tax-exempt, ‘non-profit’ ‘charities,’ which aristocrats have established, none of them is warring to defeat the aristocracy itself — to defeat the aristocrats’ system of exploitation of the public. It’s the one thing they won’t create a ‘charity’ for; none of them will go to war against the expoitative interests of themselves and of their own exploitative peers. They’re all in this together, even though they do compete amongst themselves for dominance, as to which ones of them will lead against the public. And the public seem to accept this modern form of debt-bondage, perhaps because of the ‘news’ they see, and because of the news they don’t see (such as this).

———-

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

 

Illinois Budget Problems


10 Reasons For Illinois’ Budget Mess

By Sean Crawford • 2 hours ago

Chris Mooney

Credit igpa

You may be asking: How did Illinois get to this point?

The State of Illinois can’t pay its bills — literally. Without a budget for the new fiscal year, the state’s bank account is frozen (with some exceptions). Those receiving various social services from the state — generally the poor or otherwise challenged — have already been hit hard. Soon, state workers will miss paychecks. And we all will feel the pain as services that we count on start disappearing.

Chris Mooney, Director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, breaks it down.

Chris Mooney talks with Sean Crawford

With apologies to David Letterman, here are “The Top 10 Reasons Why the State of Illinois Is in its Current Financial Stalemate.”

#10. Failure to adjust significantly after 2008

Almost every state was in deep deficit after the 2008 market crash and recession. Most states undertook tough tax increases and budget cuts that put them on an even keel with the recovery. The Illinois budget was cut and the income tax was raised, but only temporarily. When that 2011 increase disappeared last January, the budget picture turned bleak again.

#9. A tax system out of sync with the modern economy

Our sales tax rate is high, and its base is narrow. Our flat income tax doesn’t yield the increased revenue that progressive systems do with greater productivity. We rely very heavily on property taxes to fund our schools. Our motor fuel taxes are set at a fixed number of cents per gallon that not only don’t rise with inflation, but generate less revenue with today’s better-mileage vehicles.

#8. Pension payments are easy to put off

Policymakers (and the voters who elect them) prefer current spending to saving for the future. This has led to a staggering $100+ billion difference between what we owe our current and former public employees for their retirement and what the state has put away for it.

#7. Strict pension language in the state Constitution

Public pensions are “an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.” In May, the state Supreme Court strongly affirmed this constitutional restriction when it overturned the 2013 pension reform, essentially telling the state to “pay up.”

#6. Tough non-budgetary demands

Gov. Bruce Rauner has tied a variety of reform proposals to budget negotiations. Fair enough — he’s a governor with strong policy views. But these controversial proposals make budget compromise more difficult. Some of these items — like term limits and redistricting reform — are tantamount to asking the Democratic power structure to cut off its own head. Not an easy ask.

#5. Gubernatorial “union bashing”

Rauner toured the state preaching the right-to-work gospel last winter and spring. This is an existential issue for unions, and they and their Democratic allies have been energized in opposition, further poisoning the budget negotiations waters. Ironically, few believe that right-to-work is likely to become law in Illinois.

#4. National ambitions?

Some observers have jumped to the conclusion that Rauner has his sights set on the White House. As a GOP governor of a largely Democrat state who is “taking on the unions,” the scenario is not implausible. But having a governor with national ambitions is a mixed blessing, at best. Ask your friends in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Louisiana.

#3. A “doubly new” governor

Any newly elected governor is going to be tested by the General Assembly. But as a rookie to government and an unknown quantity to his negotiating partners, Rauner truly is a wild card. Legislative leaders don’t know his motivations, his modus operandi or his bottom lines, making negotiation difficult.

#2. Challenging the “alpha dog”

House Speaker Mike Madigan has held his position for decades and is used to winning. He has power, and he is darned good at his job. But today, he faces a new governor with uncertain incentives, strategies and goals and who has essentially unlimited resources — and who is also used to winning. This is a recipe for an all-out brawl.

#1. Years of poor financial management

Even aside from the pension problem, in recent years policymakers have carried over deficits, delayed payments, used one-time money, and resorted to other budgetary tricks to get from one fiscal year to the next. Simply put, this comes from a short-sighted focus on the next election. The result has been a huge structural deficit that no longer can be ignored. Fixing this requires service cuts and tax hikes, neither of which anyone likes — least of all legislators who have to explain them to voters.

Illinois’ policymakers face a very difficult problem under very difficult circumstances. But solve it they must and they will. The only questions are when they will do so and how the resulting pain will be distributed.

Christopher Z. Mooney is director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois

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Apparently the legislature is broken, the various committees are not much more than a group of bullies rather than evaluators and advisors which is what I believe their jobs should be. They recently attempted to tear into the Department of veterans affairs head about spending. This report tells how VA chief Bob McDonald replied.

VA Chief Counterpunches Over ‘Community Care’ Costs

July 23, 2015 | Tom Philpott

The Veterans Choice, Access and Accountability Act of 2014, which Congress rushed to pass last summer to address a patient wait-time scandal at dozens of VA hospitals and clinics, spurred VA to broaden access to care.

Turns out it did so largely through use of existing and often costly contract authorities and partnerships for non-VA health care with local communities rather than the new, more complex Choice Card plan.

 

The result was seven million new health care appointments for veterans the past year, but also a flood of new enrollees into VA care, an accounting nightmare for health care administrators and a surprising budget shortfall, which VA officials concede they failed to forecast and which angry lawmakers realize they must repair before going on August recess.
If not, VA leaders warn, VA medical facilities will shut their doors.

VA Secretary Bob McDonald came before the Veterans Affairs Committee on Wednesday to explain why VA needs emergency authority to shift $3 billion from an account fenced for the Choice Card program, and use it instead for other burgeoning community care costs, plus a $500 million tab VA faces to buy new wonder drugs for treatment of late-stage Hepatitis C.

If denied flexibility to access Choice fund, McDonald said, “we will have no option at the end of July but to defer all remaining non-Choice-care-in-the-community authorizations until October, provide staff furlough notices, and notify vendors we cannot pay them as we begin an orderly shutdown of hospitals and clinics across the country.”

McDonald issued his blunt warning knowing he had support of the nation’s largest veteran service organizations for the funding shift. VSO leaders had written in the past week to Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) and other chairmen and ranking members of key congressional committees, urging swift transfer of funds to avoid any interruption in veterans’ health services. They largely praised McDonald for expanding access to care without regard to cost.

By Tuesday, Miller and Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on military construction and veterans’ affairs, released a joint statement citing “blatant mismanagement” at VA for the surprise budget shortfall. But they added their assurances “that no veterans will be denied the care they need and deserve.”

Two weeks ago, they angrily added, the VA “couldn’t tell Congress it would be shutting down hospitals next month. No viable organization can function this way. The VA’s continued lack of transparency and refusal to be forthright with Congress and the American people is unacceptable.”

Miller continued to disparage McDonald and his team in opening his hearing, saying “never before can I recall VA — or any agency — completely exhausting its operational funds prior to the end of the fiscal year, with the consequences for VA being the cessation of hospital operations.”

Though vowing to protect veterans once more from VA management failures, Miller also warned “the days when VA can come to Congress and just say ‘Cut us a check’ are gone.”

McDonald was unapologetic. He said Congress shares blame for the budget shortfall. It passed the Choice Act promising to reduce veterans’ wait times for care, so McDonald decided to manage his department to address those pressing care requirements rather manage to a hobbled budget.

Still, he said, VA would have been able to give more timely warning of a budget shortfall except for another provision of Choice Act that forced VA to consolidate accounting processes for seven different community care programs under a single central office. That hampered VA’s ability to track rising non-VA or community care costs using regional budget expertise resident at VA medical centers, even as those centers were urged to refer many more patients to outside providers to ensure timely access to care.

“When you passed the Choice Act you demanded…that we account for care in the community in a different way than we did previously,” McDonald said. “You asked us to centralize that at our business office. I’m sure you did that to keep control of that money and make sure we weren’t spending it for something else.” But “it helped to exacerbate the situation,” McDonald said.

Without medical centers monitoring community care costs, “we lost a lot of intelligence about the obligations that were being made,” added Dr. James Tuchschmidt, VA’s principal deputy under secretary for health. Those regional experts even knew how to use VA’s “clunky” financial management system, he said. “And when we centralized that, maybe we should have anticipated some of the problems. But we didn’t.”

Instead, as VA began buying an “unprecedented volume of care” from caregivers in local communities, VA authorizations for such care were being loaded onto one computer system and cost obligations being incurred were tracked on a different system, Tuchschmidt said.

“We tried through brute force to keep that accounting whole so that we could understand what’s going on,” McDonald said. “But there’s no question that we’ve got to do a better job.”

Before Congress added the Choice program last year, VA already operated six other programs under separate authorities to provide patient access to outside care, including its Patient Centered Community Program (PC3) and Project Arch (Access Received Closer to Home), a pilot program for expanding access to health care for veterans in rural areas.

What makes Choice unique is veterans living more than 40 miles from a VA medical facility or facing waits for VA care longer than 30 days get to decide themselves to use outside care. McDonald said that makes VA budgeting more unpredictable, particularly as Congress has insisted on keeping Choice dollars separate from other VA health care funding needs.

Some committee members conceded that would have to change. Meanwhile, McDonald counterpunched every charge from irate lawmakers, mostly Republicans, that mismanagement had created a VA budget crisis.

The simple fix VA proposes, he said, is to use “part of the $10 billion that’s already been appropriated by Congress for care in the community — to pay for care in the community. That’s the lunacy of why we are here talking about this.”

Read more: http://militaryadvantage.military.com/2015/07/va-chief-counterpunches-over-community-care-costs/#ixzz3hBrJD0Tf
MilitaryAdvantage.Military.com

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Peace Is Good


Post from Martin Of Battle Creek

Peace is good

Abel Oldsworth, my reticent friend, wonders why some presidential candidates and Congressmen contend that we would be safer if we had stayed in Iraq longer, deployed more fighting troops now , and   the nuclear treaty with Iraq.. Most people agree that the US could not overcome with money or negotiations the deep centuries old religious schisms, hatreds, and abuses that fuel the current wars throughout the Middle E ast. Is that now achievable? Should we not give peace a chance and approve the treaty?

A recent study indicates the Iraq war cost 2 trillion dollars, all from borrowed money, 4488 US soldiers were killed, 32,223 wounded, 134,000 civilians were killed, and 2.5 million displaced. Do we want to add to these totals? Our role there seeks not only military preparedness but also Shite and Sunni cooperation in the fight against ISLS. That cooperative relationship has to evolve to sustain to unified efforts. How much can we help on this front? Do we want to see more of our young men killed and wounded?

O Biblical Gilead, where is your healing balm

To make the Middle East calm?

For religious wars leave no chance to heal

The age old hatreds that are real,

Nor will their seeking all the foreign aid they can palm.

Martin Egelston

Battle Creek

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Voters Rights In Texas


90 Year Old Legendary Speaker of the House Jim Wright Denied Texas Voter ID Card

by Heavy Mettle Follow

  • A 90 year old man who happens to be the former Speaker of the US House was denied a voter ID according to Texas’s new voter ID requirements.

FORT WORTH — Former House Speaker Jim Wright was denied a voter ID card Saturday at a Texas Department of Public Safety office.“Nobody was ugly to us, but they insisted that they wouldn’t give me an ID,” Wright said.

The legendary Texas political figure says that he has worked things out with DPS and that he will get a state-issued personal identification card in time for him to vote Tuesday in the state and local elections.

Because a 90 year old man is trying to game the system, right?

But here is the real problem:

But after the difficulty he had this weekend getting a proper ID card, Wright, 90, expressed concern that such problems could deter others from voting and stifle turnout. After spending much of his life fighting to make it easier to vote, the Democratic Party icon said he is troubled by what he’s seeing happen under the state’s new voter ID law.“I earnestly hope these unduly stringent requirements on voters won’t dramatically reduce the number of people who vote,” Wright told the Star-Telegram. “I think they will reduce the number to some extent.”

Wright and his assistant, Norma Ritchson, went to the DPS office on Woodway Drive to get a State of Texas Election Identification Certificate. Wright said he realized earlier in the week that the photo identifications he had — a Texas driver’s license that expired in 2010 and a TCU faculty ID — do not satisfy requirements of the voter ID law, enacted in 2011 by the Legislature. DPS officials concurred.

Not everyone will have the resources, or knowledge, that Wright has to overcome these obstacles. And Wright puts it very well:

We want to make sure that every eligible Texan who wants to cast a ballot can,” Pierce said. “We want to help any Texan who needs additional information.”Wright, who said he has voted in every election since 1944, lamented that such help is called for.

“From my youth I have tried to expand the elections,” Wright said. “I pushed to abolish the poll tax. I was the first to come out for lowering the voting age to 18.”

The state put up these obstacles in the firstplace- now they are ‘concerned’ to make sure everyone can overcome them. They have ‘solved’ non-existent voter fraud problems by creating actual problems.9:59 AM PT: For help with getting Voter ID the linked article suggests:

For more information, voters may call the Texas secretary of state’s office at 800-252-VOTE (8683) or the Tarrant County Elections Office at 817-831-VOTE (8683). Go online for more information at http://www.tarrantcounty.com/evote or votexas.org.

 

Originally posted to Heavy Mettle on Sun Nov 03, 2013 at 08:33 AM PST.

Also republished by Turning Texas: Election Digest and TexKos-Messing with Texas

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No More To Be Said


Darrin Bell

Post from Darrin Bell

Jim Hightower on BIg Money’s Influence


June 2015, Volume 17, Number 6

Written by Jim Hightower

Plan to visit a national park this year?

Let’s defend our public treasures: ‘America’s best idea’ is under attack

In his 2012 presidential escapade, Mitt Romney cast himself as just a regular fella, but his inner son-of-privilege kept coming out, exposing him as completely out of touch with regular Janes and Joes. Meeting with Nevada newspaper editors in February 2012, for example, Romney confided his concern for a problem of rising importance: America’s national parks.

Great! Parks really matter to the Janes and Joes, too. They’d be excited by any presidential contender making an issue of our parks’ dilapidated facilities, shortened hours, closed-off sections, locked visitor centers, cancelled programs, ranger shortages, etc. Folks are angry that politicians subsidize rich peoples’ private jets, yachts, and multiple vacation homes while constantly and callously cutting funds for public parklands. So was Mitt their guy–who’d fully fund, restore, and expand these neglected jewels of our common wealth?

Get real. This multimillionaire’s concern was not the parks’ deterioration, but their very existence. Noting that millions of US acres are tied up in public parks, forests, seashores, wilderness areas, historic lands, and preserves, a baffled Romney told the editors: “I don’t know why the government owns so much of this land… what the purpose is.”

Really, Mitt? Any Jane or Joe could tell you “the purpose” of our 84 million acres of public lands. From the Everglades National Park down in Florida to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, from Yosemite’s giant sequoia trees out west to the wild horses back east on Assateague Island, their purpose is plain: Just be there.

First, be there for their own sake, for their unique natural beauty, history, ecological importance, or simply for their survival. Second, be there as proof that not every acre in our land has to be a theme park, a strip mine, a mall, an oilfield, or anything that produces even a dime in profit for some rapacious group of humans. And third, be there for us– for the millions of workaday families who don’t summer in the south of France or have a getaway ski mansion overlooking Aspen.

We have so many public spaces because we have so many un-rich people who count on, enjoy, and love them. Far from having too many, we need more. Last year, our national parks had 292 million visitors, 19 million more than the year before. This year is expected to be the busiest summer yet, and next year–the centennial of the National Park Service (NPS)–even busier.

Ironically, this expansive network of public lands was launched by the conservatives of Romney’s own party. Before today’s daffy Koch-headedness, “conserving” was a core principle of Republican conservatism, and preservation of the people’s natural treasures in public parks was touted as a party goal.

HISTORICAL TIDBIT I. The GOP’s own Abraham Lincoln started this national set-aside of park land in 1864 when he designated California’s Yosemite Valley as a state park expressly “held for public use, resort, and recreation.”

HISTORICAL TIDBIT II. Which president created a system of national parks and made their maintenance a core responsibility of the federal government? Roosevelt. The Republican one, Teddy, who with vim and vigor reserved 280,000 square miles–an area the size of Texas–for future generations of the public.

“(O)ur people should see to it that [America’s national parks] are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with the majestic beauty all unmarred.” –Theodore Roosevelt, 1905

TR’s initial network–five parks, 150 forests, the US Forest Service, four game preserves, 51 bird sanctuaries, the Antiquities Act, and 18 monuments– provided the foundation for the NPS, which President Wilson established as a federal agency in 1916. Every president since has added treasures to America’s unparalleled and universally admired trove of protected public lands, rivers, sites, structures, and other spaces. So today–whether for a two-week camp-out, a lunch hour stress break, a cross-country road trip, or a dip into America’s rich history and diverse cultures–there’s an affordable, accessible place for us.

These places are available to us only because they belong to us.

When Romney–aspiring to sit in the chair of Lincoln and Roosevelt–revealed his cluelessness, Ed Schultz, the plain-spoken populist host of the The Ed Show, was blunt: “Our public lands make everyone rich. Not Mitt Romney-rich, but… you can drive a couple of hours into the wilderness, and all of sudden, you have more than Romney ever will.”

Year after year, polls make clear that these public resources are not merely supported, but cherished. A 2012 survey is typical: 88 percent of registered voters–and 81 percent of Republicans–consider it “extremely important” (59 percent) or “quite important” (29 percent) for the federal government to protect and support these public places, with zero percent considering them “not at all important.” Meanwhile, 80 percent of voters complained that officials are not funding the essential upkeep of the parks.

A thousand cuts

An unfortunate recent trend is for presidents to praise parks but fail to pay for them. Bill Clinton-the-candidate spoke of how lucky he was to have Hot Springs National Park as a childhood playground. Yet Clinton-the-president sat idle as natural wonders crumbled, facilities deteriorated, and the NPS maintenance backlog soared to $5 billion.

In his 2000 campaign, a khaki-clad George W posed in the majestic Cascade Mountain Range, wailed that parks were “at the breaking point,” and vowed to eliminate Clinton’s backlog. Instead he slashed the NPS budget (including a 40 percent cut in repair funds for the Cascade parklands he’d used as a political prop). The maintenance backlog ballooned to nearly $9 billion.

Ranger George did make one fix, however–a PR fix. Bush operatives instructed park superintendents to make budget cuts in “areas that won’t cause public or political controversy.” When discussing park deterioration they were to avoid the phrase “budget cutbacks” and say instead that parks were undergoing “service level adjustments.”

Under Obama, who speaks movingly of a childhood Greyhound bus trip with his family to see some of our parks, another 12 percent has been chopped from the NPS budget–bumping the deferred maintenance bill to a staggering $11.5 billion!

To his credit, Obama has proposed a 2016 “Centennial Budget” for NPS, mitigating years of destructive underfunding and calling for $1 billion to address the backlog. Good for him. But the sour duo of Sen. Mitch McConnell and Speaker John Boehner, with Mitt-like cluelessness about “what the purpose is,” will oppose even a dime increase. Hidebound by their twisted corporate ideology, they dismiss public parks as government intrusion into the private realms of Disneyland and Sea World.

Washington is literally stripping “service” out of the National Park Service. And, by refusing essential upkeep year after year, America’s so-called “leaders” are guaranteeing that this invaluable national asset–deemed America’s “best idea” by novelist and historian Wallace Stegner–will fall into acute disrepair. The only solution, they say, is to commercialize, industrialize, and privatize, converting our common good into just another corporate cash cow.

PROUD PARTNERS. Step one in the corporatization process was “co-branding” agreements, rationalized by NPS as “aligning the economic and historical legacies” of public parks with crassly commercial advertisers. They are selling the Park Service’s proud public brand… as well as its soul.

First in line was Coca-Cola. In 2010, the multibillion-dollar colossus donated a mere $2.5 million (tax-deductible, meaning we taxpayers subsidized the deal) to the NPS fundraising arm. In return, not only did Coke get exclusive rights to use park logos in its ads, but it was effectively allowed to veto a scheduled NPS ban on selling bottled water in the Grand Canyon park. Disposable plastic bottles are the park’s biggest source of trash, but Coke’s Dasani is the top-selling water, so bye-bye ban. Public outrage forced the ban to be reinstated, but NPS’ integrity has yet to recover.

Then this April, the park service abandoned its longstanding policy of disallowing links to alcohol or tobacco products. Anheuser-Busch became a “Proud Partner” with NPS by making a $2.5 million tax-deductible “gift.” In turn, its Budweiser brand was given the Statue of Liberty. Not literally, but symbolically, authorized to roll out “patriotic packaging” featuring Lady Liberty, the iconic symbol of the USA.

Never mind that Busch is now Belgian-owned, the real hypocrisy is the claim that such co-branding is a philanthropic service to the commons. Indeed, creeping commercialization no longer creeps but runs rampant, with brands such as Disney, L.L. Bean, and Subaru buying their pieces of NPS integrity. And take a whiff of this: Air Wick is being allowed to market a fragrance collection “uniquely inspired by America’s national parks.”

DRILLERS, MINERS, DEVELOPERS. A rash of corporate exploiters is all over our pristine lands, cashing in on the public’s wealth. Oil and gas giants, for example, have drilling leases on 38 million acres (45 percent of the people’s parkland), where they are producing record levels of fossil fuels, especially natural gas. They get the profits, foreign countries get much of the energy, and everyone gets more global climate change. Annual gas production on public lands and waters produces as much global warming methane pollution as 42 million cars.

Now comes uranium mining to the very edge of the Grand Canyon. Energy Fuels, Inc. intends to re-open Canyon Mine, a uranium venture that failed in 1992. Located in the Kaibab National Forest, just six miles from the majestic park, the mine perches atop an aquifer that supplies water to locals and discharges into creeks along the South Rim, as well as into Havasu Falls in the park itself. Levels of cancer-causing uranium in excess of EPA drinking water standards have already been found. Full-scale mining threatens to contaminate the Colorado River, a major water source for cities in Arizona and California.

On April 7, American Rivers, an environmental advocacy group, named the Colorado the “Most Endangered River” of 2015. That very same day, a federal judge in Arizona okayed Energy Fuel’s plan to restart Canyon Mine–without even requiring an update of an obsolete 1986 environmental review. Wasting no time, the corporation has begun refurbishing the site in preparation for mining. But the battle continues: The Havasupai tribe that lives on the Canyon floor and Sierra Club, which sued to stop the mine, have filed an appeal.

Piling insanity on insanity, the US Forest Service is now considering a crass scheme of plunder by Italian consortium Grupo Stilo, which is hot to build a grandiose mega-mall at the park’s south entrance. Bigger than Mall of America, it includes plans for a shopping mall, a dude ranch, resort hotels, high-end restaurants, and 2,100 housing units. Rather than allowing Grupo to bring the traffic, pollution, noise, artificial light, and sprawl of Everyplace USA into the mystical ambience of the Canyon’s natural wonder, the Forest Service should simply heed the timeless advice of Teddy Roosevelt: “Leave [the Grand Canyon] it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

RIGHT-WING LANDGRABBERS. After de-funding and commercialization, the next step is obvious: Privatization. For that job, bring in the clowns. And here they come–a gaggle of GOP congress critters, ALEC-trained state legislators, tea-party-infused presidential candidates, and corporate front groups–all with pockets stuffed with cash from the Koch brothers, Big Oil, and other plutocratic interests that combine ideological disdain for anything “public” with selfish coveting of our public assets.

This clique is riding in from the right-wing fringe on a tired old horse named “states’ rights,” shouting that the Western territories were induced to join the Union with a pledge that all federally owned lands within their boundaries would be transferred back to them. This “take-back” campaign panders to and energizes far-right extremists who hate the national government. The attack is orchestrated by two Koch-funded groups: ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and Americans for Prosperity.

Legislators in several Western states, as well as a swarm of DC Republicans and such presidential wannabes as Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum, have been hawking cookie-cutter versions of a model take-back bill dubbed the “Sagebrush Rebellion Act.” It was written and distributed by ALEC, based on legal fantasies concocted by corporate lawyers.

There are, however, four large hickies on the GOP’s scheme. First, none of the “sagebrush” states could begin to afford man-aging these lands–wildfire control alone costs $4 billion a year. Second, lawmakers pushing for federal disinvestments brag that state control would allow them to privatize the lands and raise big bucks for the states. But privatization would mean locking out millions of people with signs reading “Private Property–No camping, swimming, hunting, fishing, or trespassing.”

Third, their pipedream is enormously unpopular with normal people who don’t wear tri-cornered hats with teabags dangling from them. A 2012 bipartisan survey of voters found that 95 percent (!) agree that protecting and supporting national parklands is “an appropriate role for the federal government.” Nine out of 10 Republican voters agreed. Moreover, in two recent polls of Western-state voters, big majorities say “too much public land” is not a problem; 80 percent want our presidents to continue protecting public lands; six out of 10 disapprove of their states taking over management; and 96 percent want to ensure universal access to public lands.

Fourth, the states’ rights claim is pure hokum. When they joined the US, all the Western states signed standard agreements specifically renouncing claims to the public properties. Utah’s agreement, which is typical, states that “the people inhabiting said proposed state do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof.”

Keep public parks in public hands

The political attack on America’s public lands is the work of a tiny but powerful minority of elitists, ideologues, and profiteers. They have only the most shriveled, narcissistic sense of America–so shriveled that they are selfishly rejecting the essential, democratic maxim that we’re all in this together. They’d gladly reduce National Parks to the spiritless level of property transactions and profit.

In fact, much more than acreage and sites, our parks embody the core idea of America itself–the Big Idea of egalitarianism. These treasures belong to all of us. For a self-absorbed few to think that they’re entitled to take them for personal gain is a shameful affront to our shared heritage, democratic ideals, and future generations. Keeping public parks in public hands is not only logical, but necessary–a continuum of the historic struggle of us commoners against would-be royals. It’s nothing less than a battle for America’s soul.

Do something!

This summer, many people will visit our national parks, but may not be aware of the history of the system or the threats it faces. Share this issue with friends, family, and colleagues. Even those who don’t agree with Lowdowners on other issues are very likely to agree that we need our parks, and they need us. (And to those unpersuaded by the pure public good of national parks, it’s worth noting that parks add billions of dollars to regional economies and support hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs.) And with the upcoming 2016 centennial, now is the time for our public officials to hear from us about the importance of our national parks. Here are some groups leading the fight to save our public parklands and national monuments:

Center for Western Priorities: http://westernpriorities.org
National Parks Conservation Association: http://npca.org
Our American Public Lands: http://americanpubliclands.com
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: http://peer.org

Andrew Bacevich On Iraq, ISIS


It should be clear to all of us that the debacle initiated by The Bush Administration searching for the now legendary WMD’s has created more problems cost more money and lives than we understand. While support NGO’s made millions, the U.S. Military lost equipment, men and ultimately prestige. Former General Stanley McChrystal stated the same thing on The Daily Show several days ago. The Middle east issues can only resolved by the Middle Eastern powers, not The US, Britain or any European nation. The war (if that’s what it is)  is non-conventional and we as a country cannot fight such a war and that was proven at Custer’s Last stand and also at the inception of our Country while fighting for our own independence. We have a few elite troops who are trained to fight such a war but not nearly enough to make a difference and we should not attempt any involvement on that score. We (the US) needs to get out and let the Middle Eastern powers work this out. Any of our Legislators who think differently needs to be removed from office as they are not representing this country just themselves and their big money backers.

Andrew Bacevich On Iraq, ISIS

As the U.S. led fight against ISIS continues in Iraq, Here & Now starts a series of segments about how that war is going and the role the original U.S. invasion of Iraq plays in the current fight. Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson speaks to a former Bush administration official who supported the previous war, a journalist who covered it, and a Marine who fought in Iraq. The series starting Monday features Andrew Bacevich, a military analyst who opposed the war from the start.

Interview Highlights: Andrew Bacevich

On how U.S. actions lead to the rise of ISIS
“When the George W. Bush administration decided to go into Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, it did so with the expectation that removing Saddam would somehow, not simply pacify Iraq itself, but lead to some broader benefits in terms of calming the situation in the region, and I think the rise of ISIS as the new threat really is the ultimate demonstration of the American failure in the previous Iraq War.”

On why ISIS exists
“The reason ISIS exists is because the George W. Bush administration introduced U.S. forces into Iraq in the first place. More broadly, our Iraq War, or ‘Bush’s Iraq War,’ broke Iraq, ended its stability. The Iraqi government we’ve created, the Iraqi army that we’ve created has proven itself unable to cope with the instability we created. ISIS is simply a symptom, or a manifestation of that instability.”

“The Iraqi government we’ve created, the Iraqi army that we’ve created has proven itself unable to cope with the instability we created. ISIS is simply a symptom, or a manifestation of that instability.”

– Andrew Bacevich

On whether the U.S. prepared Iraqi troops to fight ISIS
“Any effective fighting force is effective if it can claim two qualities: The one quality is the capacity to fight — the skills, the weaponry, the wherewithal. But the second quality is the will to fight. We spent several years building up this new Iraqi army, and I’m not frankly in a position to question whether or not the training was adequate, or whether we provided them with sufficient arms. My sense is that we did a lot in that arena, but I’m not sure we ever had the ability to inculcate that will to fight to persuade young Iraqi men that the nation of Iraq, the state that we created, the government apparatus we created was worth fighting and dying for. So the argument that the current mess is Obama’s fault, seems to me has merit only if the people making that argument are also willing to argue that we should have stayed in [Iraq] far longer than we did with a far greater military presence. And frankly there was no willingness on the part of the American people to undertake that endless occupation.”

On what American military leaders should do now
“We need to begin by making a sober and realistic assessment of exactly what sort of threat we’re facing. And I think the most important point to recognize is that what we’re facing, as vile and as vicious as ISIS clearly is, it doesn’t represent an immediate threat to the United States of America. It has no air force, it has no navy, it has a relatively small army, no weapons of mass destruction, no ability to project power across the ocean to threaten the United States. And so we need to have a sober appreciation of exactly what they are able to do. Now that said, ISIS does represent a profound threat to the region. And it seems to me that recognizing that should lead us to examine more carefully whether or not there are actors within the region who have a greater interest than we do in taking up this fight and who may have the capacity to do so. In other words, this is a burden that should be borne by nations within this region that do not wish to see this supposed new caliphate succeed.”

“[The fight against ISIS] is a burden that should be borne by nations within this region that do not wish to see this supposed new caliphate succeed.”

– Andrew Bacevich

On how the U.S. should address threats from ISIS
“I would want to push back against the notion that doing something necessarily means doing something militarily. I push back on that because it seems to me that the historical record over the past several decades is quite clear. There’s a historical record that shows that U.S. military involvement in the region simply does not work. When we intervene, directly or indirectly, the result is not greater stability, it’s greater instability. And therefore, the question ‘what should we do?’ seems to me should spur us to think creatively, about non-military means to address this military threat.”

On actions Bacevich would support
“I would support President Obama announcing tomorrow that the United States recognizes the failure of its effort to re-stabilize the greater Middle East by relying on U.S. military power. In other words, that he indicated the direction of U.S. policy henceforward will be towards reducing our military footprint, reducing our military obligations to the region.”

  • Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations and history at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies
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