Purple Oceans and Pink Skies

Somehow, with the way things are digressing these days, all of this doesn’t surprise me. We have an ass-backwards administration who ran on the platform of a ‘War on Terror’. Pulling out all the stops, they said we weren’t secure. And attack, they said, could come at any moment from anywhere. You’d think with this attitude and view point, the Republicans would do everything in their power to push all spending towards securing the Nation. That, however, would only happen if we lived in a world where things made sense- where they skies were blue and the oceans were made up of salty water.

Over the past few weeks, the Republicans have managed to block numerous bills on the floor of the House that would secure our ports, channel funds to first responders- helping them get the correct equipment and personel needed and, in general, help the American people. For example:

Lieberman Amdt No. 3034:

To protect the American people from terrorist attacks by providing $8 billion in additional funds for homeland security government-wide, by restoring cuts to vital first responder programs in the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, by providing an additional $1.2 billion for first responders, $1.7 billion for the Coast Guard and port security, $150 million for chemical security, $1 billion for rail and transit security, $456 million for FEMA, $1 billion for health preparedness programs, and $752 million for aviation security.
REJECTED by Republicans.

Menendez Amdt. No. 3054:

To provide an additional $965 million to make our ports more secure by increasing port security grants, increasing inspections, improving existing programs, and increasing research and development, and to fully offset this additional funding by closing tax loopholes.

REJECTED by Republicans.

Stabenow Amdt. No. 3056:

To provide $5 billion for our emergency responders so that they can field effective and reliable interoperable communications equipment to respond to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and the public safety needs of America’s communities and fully offset this by closing tax loopholes and collecting more from the tax gap.

REJECTED by Republicans.

A part of me thinks they’re wishing for another attack to bulster their platform. “See!” They’d say. “We aren’t safe! And it’s because of those pesky Dems!” The other part says that no one can be that stupid. Then again, it all goes back to looking at this current Administration and their track record. We’ve got purple oceans and pink skies.

And now, drum roll please… warrentless physical searches on domestic soil! Ta-da!

My head is going to explode.

- Trevor N. Rager

Progressive Thinking @ K-Zoo Public Schools

Yes, there really is a town called Kalamazoo (or “K-Zoo” as some of us locals call it). It’s a small town in Michigan with a population of just over 77,000, and is roughly a 2 1/2 hour drive northeast of Chicago, 45 minutes south of Grand Rapids.

During the second half of last year, Kalamazoo Public Schools started a program called “The Kalamazoo Promise”. Cheesy title, great idea. The program’s intent is “to provide each Kalamazoo Public School graduate with the opportunity to attend post –secondary education with up to a 100% tuition scholarship”.

At first one might conjur ideas of the state of California offering free tuition to residents, but the word “free” is not quite true. California universities and colleges often have fees that equal the price of attendance elsewhere. Some states have smilar programs, but have a GPA requirement, such as Georgia. But “The Kalamzoo Promise” has a different aim.

As a rustbelt city still feeling the hurt from industry packing up its bags, Kalamazoo is seeing the same thing happen as a lot of this country’s urban areas. Downtowns are being traded in for cushy suburbs and strip malls, ever eroding the city’s tax base while still stretching its budget to cover the added infastructure costs associated with exurban development. Additionally, there is a growing level of poverty, and a widening gap between rich and poor.

Whereas state programs do not do anything to curb sprawl and social stratification, this city-only program is already reversing the trend.

A week ago The Wall Street Journal covered some of this story:

With its commitment to the Promise, Kalamazoo is upsetting the traditional economic-development model. In the past, blighted cities across the nation signed onto various types of revitalization plans. Mainly, they focused on physical improvements — including new public spaces, office parks and other civic amenities — in hopes of spurring economic and social progress.

The Promise is different. By making education the cornerstone of the city’s turnaround plan, Kalamazoo is hoping that other positive changes will follow.

Mr. DeHaan, the developer, says the Promise already has helped fuel housing demand. His company plans to put up 70 houses in Kalamazoo this year, and perhaps 500 over the next five years. Suburbanites have begun moving into the city. Both families and investors from outside the state are hunting for property, which has seen modest price increases.

What isn’t clear is whether the Promise will bring much-needed jobs to Kalamazoo. Although the plan hasn’t lured any companies yet, Southwest Michigan First, a regional development agency, says the number of inquiries from small businesses has recently quadrupled to between 20 to 25 calls a week.

This is of particular interest to me as I am a student at Michigan State University majoring in Community Relations, with focii in urban planning and anthropology. But I also believe what has happened to Kalamazoo is the same as most urban areas, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Outsourcing and unchecked corporate capitalism is leaving America without its once vibrant communities. By thinking closer to home we can empower ourselves as citizens and reverse the trends.

In the future I will update with more community-based options that anyone can take part in; simple actions (such as buying local) that have the potential for a myriad of positive outcomes.

For more information on this program, click over to Kalamazoo Public Schools

B. Robb

Take Part in Climate Change Research

From the BBC

Your computer can perform billions of calculations a second. Donate the potential you’re not using, and take part in the world’s largest climate experiment.

Details @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/

Creating Change Through Movement

Day in and day out we sit in our offices or at restaurants or walk down the street and laugh and smile at our familiarities, ignoring the world around us. The nightly news is a flicker in the dark, only on before we go to sleep. And by the morning everything has returned to normal.

“…I don’t mind being nice every once-in-a-while.”

An older woman wearing a black button down suit and brown flimsy overcoat said it as she was making her way out of the elevator on the ground floor of my building.

“…I don’t mind being nice every once-in-a-while.”

It latched in my brain and made my head tilt and mouth purse. Rather than being grateful most of the time it’s the other way round. A token of gratitude or sign of humanity or, at the very least, satisfaction, given without second thought is looked upon as odd and irregular.

A little over a year ago I was wedged in a Tsunami. The earth shook and the waters bubbled and the wet, soppy guts of the oceans floor stood bare for a few seconds. And then darkness. Over the following months the body count rose- only to eventually have entire countries literally give up. A final body count, they said, could never be possible.

A few years before, the skies rained bombs on an innocent country. Men and women and children sat helpless as they watched their livelihoods turn to ash. And a few years after, a similar thing happen, although this time we sat around playing golf as a majestic city sank beneath broke open flood gates rather than military might. Bodies upon bodies.

It all could have been prevented. Fair trade to build up the economies of underdeveloped nations. Tax reductions to help the poor and needy. The boycotting of sweatshop goods to give the working class a real chance.

These are all issues that every one of us should be taking a part in- the world outside of our own personal bubble; Reading and devouring all the information we can. We are our own future. Be the difference. Stand up and shout and live and pursue. It’s all in our hands. And it’s something we can obtain if you believe. Have a purpose.

Ways To Help:

Make Trade Fair
Direct Relief
Human Rights Watch
Make Poverty History
Amnesty International
Sweat Shop Watch
Speak Out
Network for Good
Habitat For Humanity
Media Matters
The Humane Society
Preservation Hall

Make Levees, Not Wars.

- Trevor N. Rager

A Woman’s Right? Not So Much.

When Is an Abortion Not an Abortion?
By Nancy Gibbs of TIME’s

South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds had to decide whether to side with the Purists or the Pragmatists in the Abortion Wars. His decision to sign the state’s dramatic new abortion bill means the Purists have prevailed, and the moral, political and legal argument surrounding abortion rights is about to turn a corner.

In a country where two thirds of the public does not want to see Roe vs. Wade overturned, but nearly as many favor stricter limits on abortion, pragmatic abortion opponents have pushed for parental notification laws, waiting periods, restrictions on late term abortions: The strategy was to chip away at Roe to try to shrink it, change its shape, and over time promote a “culture of life” that would view abortion less as a right than a tragedy, perhaps eventually a crime. That gradual approach requires a certain level of hypocrisy—or at least a willing suspension of moral belief—because if you truly equate abortion with murder, it’s hard to settle for slowing it down rather than stopping it altogether, right away: the Purist approach.

Which is what South Dakota now proposes to do. Lawmakers threw away the chisel, grabbed a sledgehammer and went at Roe with a fury, all but daring the Supreme Court to step in.

The bill they passed last month, HB 1215, bans all abortion, including in cases of rape and incest, including cases that threaten the health of the mother; the only exception is if the mother’s survival itself is at risk, and even in those instances the doctor must “make reasonable medical efforts under the circumstances to preserve both the life of the mother and the life of her unborn child.” Doctors caught performing abortions would be charged with a Class 5 felony, punishable by up to five years in prison…

The Music Sampler

I know you’re a busy person. Sometimes there’s not enough time to keep up with what’s going on in the quick-moving, mucky world of music. Or at least that’s your excuse for losing touch with the times–loser. I kid, I kid. Well no worries because I’ve put together a cd of some of the best music that I’ve come across in the past year or so. Consider it a gift by which to ring in the quickly approaching spring season. Here’s to finally being able to roll down your car windows! Rock out with your bad self.

1. The New Pornographers – The Jessika Numbers
2. Deerhoof – You Can See
3. Tapes N’ Tapes – Insistor
4. Spoon – I Summon You
5. Broken Social Scene – Hotel
6. Hot Chip – Just Like We (Breakdown)
7. Aceyalone and rJd2 – Here and Now
8. The Flaming Lips – Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
9. Liars – A Visit from Drum
10. Belle & Sebastion – White Collar Boy
11. Wolf Parade – Fancy Claps
12. Sigur Ros – Saeglopur
13. Super Furry Animals – Cloudberries
14. Goldfrapp – Lovely 2 C U
15. LCD Soundsystem – Losing My Edge

They’re all zipped up nicely, so just right click the link, click “save target as”, and you’re there.

http://www.southpawreview.com/review2.zip

If the server is slow, try this mirror: http://www.msu.edu/~robbbrya/review2.zip

Cheers, enjoy, and go buy those CDs.
B. Robb

Ethanol 101

There’s been a lot of talk about ethanol lately. You have to admit: the potential for the US to be less reliant on foreign sources of oil plus the added environmental benefits makes ethanol sound like pretty exciting stuff.

But why the sudden singling out recently of ethanol as a fuel source when places such as Brazil have been using ethanol and flex-fuel vehicles for decades?

I nearly shit myself when G.W.B. announced in his State of the Union Address that America is “addicted to oil” and that we need to increase funding for research in renewable energies, noting the proposed funding for additional research for “cutting edge” ethanol production. You don’t say, Mr. Bush.

This all sounds fine except for the fact that we’re about 30 years behind the times. Using ethanol would have been a good transition period in US history when the technologies were not yet available for hybrids and hydrogen-powered vehicles. But gasoline was cheap then and there was no drive for such markets because outside (environmental) costs were handed to future generations in exchange for cheap prices at the pump. Just now GM is rolling out its ad campaign for its million and a half vehicles “already” equipped with flexible fuel technologies, employing engines that can use both ethanol and gasoline. This stuff is evidently cutting-edge, and GM is on the forefront. Nevermind Brazil.

True, Brazil supplies its ethanol habit through sugarcane which yields about 6 times the amount of ethanol that corn does, and the fuel is far more expensive to produce in the U.S. as there is no place to viably grow sugarcane. So G.W.B. proposes we use the whole stalk of corn. And switchgrass. Couldn’t we have simply imported some of the ethanol crop from Brazil 30 years ago and made ourselves slowly less reliant on oil? More importantly, if we had done that, would we be involved in the current Middle Eastern predicament we find ourselves in today?

There is another cost of ethanol production in the US that hasn’t been given much coverage lately. Today, roughly 15% of the corn crop in the US is devoted to ethanol production, as gasoline at the pump already has about 10% ethanol mixed in to improve octane. Another 50% of the yield is used for livestock feed. The remainder of the corn crop is largely used for the production of high-fructose corn syrup, our nation’s sweetener of choice (check the ingredients on any food package in your house). So what happens when the demand for ethanol goes skyward and vehicles are suddenly competing for the corn crop to feed their engines that run on 85% ethanol (as proposed)? Elementary economics would suggest that food prices would skyrocket. Shall we outsource our beef and poultry production just like everything else so that we can still afford them?

We may never see widespread usage or large-scale production of ethanol, but this is just food for thought since it’s being hailed as something larger and more important than it really is. Ethanol is not the wave of the future, but instead a step backward from the direction we should be headed–zero-emission vehicles that keep us completely self-reliant.