2:00PM Water Cooler 5/27/15

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

TPP

Pro-slavery Republican Paul Ryan to join forces with pro-slavery Democrat Obama to remove the Mendendez anti-trafficking provision from Fast Track, through language in a customs bill that will come to the floor after Fast Track does [HuffPo, and kudos to HuffPo for their TPP coverage]. It’s bipartisan. So that’s alright, then. And nice work on the “cooling saucer” thing, dudes.

“The TPP is nothing but an effort by the globalists to circumvent American sovereignty” [Dick Morris, The Hill]. “The long-term goal of the globalists is an international rule of law unaccompanied by democracy.”

Clinton State department Flexians pass through the revolving door, lobby for TPP [First Look].

“Here’s how much corporations paid US senators to fast-track the TPP bill” [Guardian]. Not very much, either!

Guide from EFF on how to set up a meeting with your representative [Electronic Frontier Foundation]. Do it!

“Julian Assange on the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Secretive Deal Isn’t About Trade, But Corporate Control” [Democracy Now!]. Interview.

2016

Sanders

“‘Today, with your support and the support of millions of people throughout this country, we begin a political revolution to transform our country economically, politically, socially and environmentally,’ the U.S. senator from Vermont told supporters in Burlington.” [McClatchy].

“7 ways Bernie Sanders will run against Hillary Clinton” [WaPo].

“Bernie Sanders: Hillary Clinton’s money ‘hustle’ could isolate her from reality” [Yahoo]. Or involve her intimately with it.

The Sanders “404 not found” page [Bernie Sanders].

The S.S. Clinton

“Hillary Clinton’s financial disclosure omitted ‘pass-through’ company used by Bill Clinton to collect consulting fees – and nobody knows how much” [AP, via Daily Mail].

The newly released financial files on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s growing fortune omit a company with no apparent employees or assets that the former president has legally used to provide consulting and other services, but which demonstrates the complexity of the family’s finances.

Because the company, WJC, LLC, has no financial assets, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was not obligated to report its existence in her recent financial disclosure report, officials with Bill Clinton’s private office and the Clinton campaign said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide private details of the former president’s finances on the record, said the entity was a ‘pass-through’ company designed to channel payments to the former president.

I suggest “A pass-through entity for every American!” as a plank in the newly populist Clinton’s platform.

Julian Castro auditions for role as Hillary’s veep? [WaPo]. Corey Booker’s not in the photograph. He must be very unhappy.

Republican Clown Car

“Rick Santorum launching second White House run” [WaPo]. Looks like Dan Savage’s Google bomb still works.

“Lindsey Graham Knows the ‘Iranians Are Lying’ Because His Parents Owned a Pool Room” [Bloomberg]. Graham’s just running for the book deal and the shouting head gig.

“How the Money Primary Is Undermining Voting Rights” [The Nation].

How to deal with so many candidates [Political Wire]. Too many choices cause depression….

“Woman Gets 3 1/2 Years In Prison For Running Over Her Husband For Not Voting For Romney” [The Viral Vault].

It’s becoming cooler to call yourself a liberal [WaPo].

Dear Old Blighty

“Understanding the unthinkable post-2015 cuts”  [Wonkhe]. U.K. voted for austerity and now they’re going to get it. Hard.

“Labour dies again” [London Review of Books]. Another fine post mortem.

“Sir Malcolm Bruce, Ex Deputy Lib Dem Leader, Admits Lying Politicians Are ‘Widespread’ In Defence Of Alistair Carmichael Leak” [HuffPo]. Film at 11?

Black Injustice Tipping Point

“American Civil Liberties Union says Cleveland has long way to go after consent decree” [Plain Dealer].

“Cleveland consent decree being watched in Baltimore” [Baltimore Sun].

Why DOJ police reforms fall short [Vox]. Not possible. I mean, this is Obama we’re talking about.

“More Than 20 U.S. Cities Are Currently Under a DOJ Consent Decree, But Do They Really Work?” [Blue Nation Review].

Corruption

“New York Real Estate Executive With ‘Access to Politicians’ Is at Center of Scandals” [New York Times]. Shocked, shocked.

“Major End Of Session Legislation In Limbo Because Preet Bharara Is In Senate GOP’s Heads” [The Albany Project]. Including rent control, which might expire. So, life’s little ironies, Bharara anti-corruption campaign may have the (unintended?) effect of giving a sloppy wet kiss to New York real estate interests, who could kick thousands of not-so-rich New Yorkers out of their homes so they can make a quick buck selling luxury apartments to Saudi and Russian squillionaires, who then leave them vacant and don’t even bother to turn on the lights, because markets.

FIFA

“U.S. indicts world soccer officials in alleged $150 million FIFA bribery scandal” [WaPo].

“FIFA Inquiry Yields Indictments; U.S. Officials Vow to Pursue More” [New York Times].

“Fifa in crisis amid corruption arrests and World Cup voting inquiry – live updates” [Guardian, live blog].

IRS chief on FIFA bribery scandal: “[T]he World Cup of fraud” [WaPo]. Oh, really? The Swiss have banks, I understand. As does the United States. And the U.K. #JustSaying.

“Qatar Is Treating Its World Cup Workers Like Slaves: Nepal Earthquake Edition” [Mother Jones]. 4,000 deaths seems like rather a lot of dead labor to condense into a stadium. #JustSaying.

“Statement: FIFA is fully cooperating as injured party in the actions by Swiss authorities” [FIFA].

Water

“Rain was in the forecast, but not 162 billion gallons of it” [Houston Chronicle]. Federal assistance no doubt on the way to the Republic of Texas.

“Epic Rains, Disastrous Floods Plague Texas, Oklahoma” [Weather Underground].

“Roughly 75% of the cattle in San Luis Obispo County have been sold or taken out of state over the last four years to escape conditions in the most drought-stricken region in California” [Los Angeles Times]. Meat should be a condiment anyhow.

California Drought: El Niño Won’t End Dry Times In California [Capital Public Radio].

Drought-policy expert Linda Botterill of the University of Canberra: “We can expect longer, deeper and more severe droughts in Australia, and I believe the same applies in the U.S. As a result, we need to develop strategies that are not knee-jerk responses, but that are planned risk-management strategies” [US News].

“[I]f you’re searching for profligate water users, immigrant communities, which are typically low-income, are the wrong place to look” [Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times].

“The [Los Angeles Municipal Water District will boost its turf-replacement budget by $350 million for one year, but will also change certain terms and conditions of the extremely popular program. The district voted to cap the total reimbursement for residential customers at $6,000, paying $2 per square foot of lawn removed.” [Los Angeles Times]. The photo caption says the money goes to “plant drought-resistant plants,” which would be great. If the money goes to (petroleum-based) Astroturf, because freedom, that would be awful. Readers?

A drought watch has been declared in 27 northeast and central Pennsylvania counties after low groundwater and surface water levels have been identified [Patriot-News].

America the Petrostate

California gives free solar panels to the poor [Motherboard].

“Solar as Fastest Growing U.S. Power Source Rivals Shale Boom” [Bloomberg].

Class Warfare

“Today there are nearly 40,000 foreign contract workers on bases in the U.S. military’s Central Command” [Al Jazeera].

“At a maid-training center on Jakarta’s outskirts, dozens of women on floor mats listen intently to an instructor talking about how to manage money” [Wall Street Journal, “Indonesia Trains Migrant Workers to Make Most of Their Earnings”].

“Toronto Real Estate Is So Preposterous People Are Protesting Condos That ‘Only’ Cost $500K’ [Buzzfeed].

Media heads rule ranks of best-paid CEOs [AP].

News of the Wired

  • Facebook and the media unite to attack the web [Baldur Bjarnason]. This is a very important post that all publishers should read:

    [Y]our web developers are treating the web like an app platform when your very business hinges on it being a quick, lightweight media platform with a worldwide reach.

    I honestly think it could be time to stop using the world “developer,” so familiar from real estate. How about “web devolver”?

  • “Introduction to Keyboard Programming” [MassDrop].
  • Open office: “[A] sense of privacy boosts job performance, while the opposite can cause feelings of helplessness” [WaPo]. So, it’s a two-fer: Capitalism sabotaging industry and power tripping in the business.
  • Twitter bans Charles Johnson after he tried to crowdsource funding to “take out” @deray [WaPo].
  • “‘Free range’ parents cleared of child neglect in 1 case” [AP]. I really ought to file these stories under “Police State.”
  • “Getting old ain’t for sissies” [Jack Ohman (Kevin F)]. Part I.
  • “Tribes withdraw from Maine Legislature” [Bangor Daily News].
  • “Kendell Jenner is good for business” [Fashion Law]. Gotta keep those Bangladeshi sewing machines humming….
  • “Peggy Noonan Joins George Will in Being Enraged at Rape – Victims” [New Economic Perspectives].

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant, the third of Gardens, Week Four:

violets

Paging Claud Monet….

NOTE: My contact form has a poor user experience: It defaults to my email when you don’t fill in yours. I have to fix this, but in the meantime, please remember to fill in your email if you want me to contact you!

If you enjoy Water Cooler, please consider tipping and click the hat. It’s the soil, seeds, flats, and planting season!

Donate

(Readers will notice that I have, at long last, improved the hat!)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
This entry was posted in Guest Post, Water Cooler on by .

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

51 comments

  1. OIFVet

    From the Colonial Free Press on the FIFA arrests: the US moved in because:

    Americans are once again in the role of world police, as with the banks during the financial crisis. Now, however, the Justice Department and the US FBI rushed where others fear to tread. What makes them different? First, Americans are deeply rooted and historical abhorrence of crime in “white collar” . There are several fully satisfactory explanation for this . Some have suggested that it offends a sense of justice , which is the foundation of the American Dream . But whatever the reason the end result is that if found guilty of the crime scene in “white collar” in the US, he goes to jail . Federal prosecutors can for example count every email that criminals are sent in the course of activities carried out by these crimes as a separate event of systematic fraud . And each can lead to a maximum sentence of 2 0 years . Second – the road from the Law Faculty in the legal office to the office of district attorney or other regulatory authorities , and then to political office is well packed in the USA . This means that staff regulatory authorities in the country is composed of ambitious people who regularly go hunting for big scalps . Third – US law allows its agencies prosecute foreign citizens and companies, and co an organization store their emails on the server of the US or use US bank account . Which leads to the fourth – the most powerful weapon the Americans in the fight against money laundering and other financial fraud dollar . Regulatory authorities in the US are in TATE effectively force foreign banks to assist their investigations. How ? If banks do not want it do US authorities will hit them there , where it most hurts them by excluding them from the largest financial market in the world . The smell of corruption lies about FIFA for many years. There were also serious journalistic investigations, mainly from Britain. Yet most countries have proved powerless to do anything about it , perhaps, as Simon Cooper wrote in the ” Financial Times ” this weekend, because ” they are not ready to make the necessary sacrifices for their principles.

    Google translation so don’t mind the bad English, I don’t have the time for proper translation. So there you have it folks: USA!USA!USA! I punched my laptop screen in frustration.

    1. hunkerdown

      Principles, empires, what’s the difference…

      Unplugging from the MSM seems to be the only way to avoid getting a full day’s supply of mental illness every day. Moonbat pillars blathering about foppy nonsense to avoid having to fail to answer the question of what the hell use they are to anyone but themselves.

      1. OIFVet

        It’s your tax dollars at work paying for propaganda, comrade!

        The media in which this screed was published is part of the Economedia media group owned by an oligarch closely connected with the current government, and whose media has received millions from the US government-funded America for Bulgaria Foundation and Soros’ Open Society.

        1. Carolinian

          This is where you mutter “Soros!” the way Seinfeld used to say “Newman!”

          I’ve lately begun to think that, with no tumbrils in the offing, the only thing for it is for these villainous old farts to all die off. Soros, Murdoch, Buffet, Adelson….even Rubin is 78– practically a member of the 80+ club. We are living in a gerontocracy, and a new generation might be able to save us if these aging plutocrats would let go of the tiller.

            1. Carolinian

              Needless to say I meant more in the natural course of events. Plank-walking, like tumbrils, would appear to be out.

          1. hunkerdown

            Ever notice all the “non-emergency medical transportation” vans on the road these days? Is it even possible to avoid gerontocracy at the intersection of long life expectancy and the fetishization of progress?

            Too bad Tumblr “owns” tumbrl.com. I wonder if it would be possible to get the WTO to screw them out of it.

          2. Ian

            We can only hope that the science of life extension doesn’t improve too greatly until after they are dead.

    2. ProNewerDeal

      I also found it comical that 0bama & Atty Gen. Loretta Lynch, protector of 2B2F Criminal Bank$tas even when they launder money for terrorist groups and Mexican narcotics cartels, are fake-righteously indignant about prosecuting these lower-than-2B2F-level FIFA criminals. Ditto about 0bama prosecuting bribes, 0bama/Clintons & their team of hacks are super-bribed via campaign contributions, $100K speech-bribes, and revolving-door jobs.

      Nevertheless it is a good thing for these FIFA criminals to possibly get felony prison time, something that white-collar criminals seemingly rarely get in Murica.

      1. hunkerdown

        If they had been less selective about targeting political criminals before the law’s even passed (or did the anti-BDS stuff get a vote already?) I might believe that there is actually any morality other than political convenience or plain old white-on-olive criminality. I don’t think this instance is meaningfully precedential to the ends of justice.

    3. craazyboy

      hahaha. How much foreign aid money did they get for writing that piece? They make it sound like Batman is POTUS and his sidekick Robin runs the DOJ.

      1. craazyboy

        Oh. I see you already answered that question up above. Yeah, Soros – the guy that thought we missed an opportunity to nationalize all Western banks back in 2009. Must have had a change of heart.

      2. OIFVet

        For a real good laugh check out the comments under the article. Even google translate will give you a pretty good idea just how well this sort of thing goes down. They lap it up! Either that, or large part of the commentariat is on salary; rumor has it that all that money also pays for a boiler room operation to churn out comments supportive of the various propaganda. After all this is a country where 70%+ identify as rusophiles and the comments are not at all representative of the general population, to put it mildly.

    4. different clue

      This is what American media consumers are being guided and massaged to absorb and believe. It may not be what all individual Americans in the field are believing, however. How many Americans might have had an initial reaction like mine . . . . that they don’t mind FIRE sector perpetrators at all but they can go after SPORTS figures? This must remind at least some people of the Senate’s diversionary waste-of-time hearings about steroids in baseball.

      This reporting is part of the process of brain-marinating people as illustrated in this video which I believe I found on Naked Capitalism itself at one point.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz1qIj3_1U4

  2. Carolinian

    Re our Lindsey–you beat me to this one. Just to sum up

    Washington, DC – The National Iranian American Council, the largest Iranian-American grassroots organization in the United States, strongly condemns Senator Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) comments that “Iranians are liars” and demands an apology to the Iranian-American community.

    The Senator and Presidential hopeful’s comments were given Friday morning to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference via video from Washington.

    “Everything I learned about Iranians I learned working in the pool room,” Graham said. “I met a lot of liars, and I know Iranians are liars.”

    My take: there are Iranians in South Carolina? And they play pool?

    The dubious plausibility might lead one to conclude that when it comes to Graham and liars “it takes one to know one” (although he did grow up working in his parents’ pool room/liquor store in tiny Central, SC–pop 5,184).

    However a more serious point would be that when it comes to rainbow America there are still some flavors of bigotry that are socially acceptable. After all Lindsey is a regular whipping boy of the Daily Show, which also finds Iran good for many a sinister punchline.

    Bottom line: The complainants might not want to hang around the office waiting for that apology.

  3. hunkerdown

    Nice intro piece on keyboards, and not a single erroneous oversimplification that I could spot.

    Aw, and here I was hoping that Charles Johnson the Obot was crashing and burning. Nope, someone else. Rats.

    And what *is* it with all the newish SUVs with bad brakes barely even yielding for the stop sign outside my office?

    1. subgenius

      …suvs, thats easy…ENTITLEMENT.

      Don’t worry, though, as history has taught us that someday soon being an entitled suv owning asshole will be enough to get you right up near the top of the list….

      1. abynormal

        one nasty rainy day in 03 i was dropping kiddo off at school…an suv in front of me had 1 bumper sticker stating MY SUV LOVES IRAQI OIL. i pulled into the closest parking lot…couldn’t see to drive.


        He never did rid himself of the feeling that he had been denied his rightful place. It kept him from being good-natured, and made him unwilling to forget grudges.

        Eyster

  4. grayslady

    A succinct and devastating takedown of TPP by Dick Morris. Not the person I would have expected to hear this from. Alan Grayson has been saying for months now that if the TPP passes it will end U.S. democracy; Morris explains why this is exactly what the new corporate aristocracy wants.

    1. edmondo

      if the TPP passes it will end U.S. democracy…

      I’m pretty sure that the election of 2016 pretty much seals that deal.

      1. Eureka Springs

        I’m pretty sure it was the Constitution whose authors decidedly failed to so much as use the word in it, much less establish it.

        1. todde

          change the word ‘democracy’ for ‘self-government’ then.

          the principle is the same

          1. hunkerdown

            If choosing which outsider gets to exploit us in the name of their personal glory is meaningfully democratic, and not just an exercise in fashionable self-delusion, then so is filling out comment cards on the way to pay your bill at the time clock in USA Inc.

            Who cares about government? The rulers are the ones who need to be deposed, not protected by a bread-and-circus.

    2. Chauncey Gardiner

      Setting aside the awfulness of the TPA and TPP damage to sovereignty, democracy and the Constitution, seems that the anti-democratic corporatists are perhaps most concerned about the House mandating enforceable rules to combat currency manipulation:

      http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2015/05/26-tpa-tpp-portman-currency-solis

      When I look around the world at all the shiny cities and new infrastructure in foreign lands contrasted with Detroit, Camden and so many other American cities; stagnant American real wages; and so many other issues; I wonder what the all-in cost of U.S. trade deficits and US dollar hegemony has been in current trillions of dollars? Enough already!

    3. Carla

      I don’t think that citing Dick Morris on the evils of the TPP particularly helps our case. I mean at some point, you gotta consider the source. And I say this not as a left vs. right thing at all, but more as a human vs. scumbag thing.

  5. Clive

    If there’s a Conservative government after the UK general election on May 7th, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights. Oh, wait a minute…

    1. James Levy

      Although there is a lot of sentiment and nostalgia around here for breaking up countries, I don’t see it, from an historian’s perspective, as much of an answer to anything, and the Conservatives will drive the Welsh, Scotch, and Irish out if they keep it up. The Conservatives are the natural party of government, as they represent all the money men and all the land-owners and so it is relatively easy for them to do what they want because the most powerful interests in society are automatically on board with whatever crap Cameron and his ilk can dream up. But they are also among the most stupid and blinkered old fools and have lost touch with anything resembling the man in the pub. What keeps them going is either a complete lack of imagination on the part of “Little England” as to how they might ever be replaced, or a division amongst those who can so imagine the world over who should replace them. Just so as not to sound too superior, we Americans can’t imagine a world where money doesn’t buy everything, including political power and influence, and we are at least as deferential to money as the British are to class. The reaction to Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades versus the rush to exonerate him and Hilary for obvious corruption and conflict of interest (by the WSJ no less!) speaks volumes. People in the pay of the Koch’s and Adelson are finding it hard to bitch about Hilary and Bill’s “entrepreneurship”.

      It’s all going to have to come crashing down before we can try to put it all back together in a more humane and democratic way.

  6. Kurt Sperry

    “It’s becoming cooler to call yourself a liberal [WaPo].” link has an added semicolon at the end killing the link.

  7. gene

    At a glance I don’t see Bernie Sanders mentioning single payer, medicare for all. What’s he got to lose if his campaign is symbolic anyway? Why not?

      1. hunkerdown

        Establishment sources would be rather invested in building a log cabin narrative (and MoJo may as well be the signpost at the edge of the Democratic policy space warning of dragons). Funny how lending one’s brand to an Establishment party’s PR efforts — and it scarcely matters whose — seems to pay off with Establishment endorsements.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      Sanders introduced S703 in the Senate during the ObamaCare crapfest. It wasn’t identical to HR676, but single payer it was.

      Sanders is not quite as disciplined in his talking points as Warren (which, I grant, is a lot like saying he’s not as focused as a white-hot laser beam drilling through a steel plate, but you see what I mean).

      1. Carolinian

        Not to reopen the whole BAR can of worms but here’s a pretty thorough takedown of HIllary that says the only opponent she was really scared of was Warren.

        http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41956.htm

        The gist is that HIllary’s money will win. Plus there’s this for what it’s worth.

        Of course Sanders could have avoided the “spoiler” charge by running for and very likely winning Vermont’s Governorship as the standard-bearer of that state’s Progressive Party. There Sanders could likely succeed in pushing through single-payer health insurance, recently and shamefully abandoned by Vermont’s Democratic governor Peter Shumlin. That would be a very significant progressive victory with very real social-democratic substance. But Vermont working peoples’ loss is Hillary Clinton’s gain. A very strange choice for an independent “socialist.”

        At any rate I have to wonder whether that laser like focus and charisma isn’t what was really needed to upend the Dem apple cart. Hope to be proven wrong.

    2. grayslady

      If Bernie’ campaign were purely symbolic, he wouldn’t be running as a Democrat–he’d be running as an independent. He opted for universal ballot access. That alone should tell you he is serious about winning.

      1. hunkerdown

        The Democratic ticket, like any abyss, has a way of staring back into those who stare into it. The Party’s marketing plan is to use a straw leftist to bait the switch, and Kucinich ain’t running this year.

        Of course, that isn’t necessarily Sanders’ plan, yet I see entirely too much confidence on the part of the GOP to think that the fix isn’t in (and won’t be knocked out of place by Anonymous from jail).

  8. abynormal

    BREAKING: The EPA Just Protected Drinking Water For Millions Of Americans
    http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/27/3662802/epas-new-clean-water-rule/
    “The confusion about what waters can be regulated stems from 2001, when the Supreme Court found that the EPA did not have jurisdiction to regulate isolated wetlands. That decision created confusion about how and where pollution can enter the water system — and what regulators can do about it.”

    im having a badfuckingday!

    is it me or does this site look a wee bit EPAish
    http://www.nestle-watersna.com/en/bottled-water-sources-and-quality/spring-water-quality/localwaterquality

  9. jjmacjohnson

    Ari Berman’s Nation article just has to put a dig in to Ralph Nader after all these years. Geez!

  10. Jerry Denim

    “The [Los Angeles Municipal Water District will boost its turf-replacement budget by $350 million for one year, but will also change certain terms and conditions of the extremely popular program. The district voted to cap the total reimbursement for residential customers at $6,000, paying $2 per square foot of lawn removed.” [Los Angeles Times]. The photo caption says the money goes to “plant drought-resistant plants,” which would be great. If the money goes to (petroleum-based) Astroturf, because freedom, that would be awful. Readers…”

    I don’t have a yard of my own but my inlaws that do are considering laying down some of that LA County subsidized artificial turf you speak of in place of their currently very thirsty natural stuff. Drought resistant plants are great to look at but cacti and succulents planted in a bed of gravel doesn’t make for the most pet and grandchild friendly play surface. Do you have any realistic alternative suggestions that dogs and kids can both enjoy?

    1. subgenius

      Drought resistant plants are great to look at but cacti and succulents planted in a bed of gravel doesn’t make for the most pet and grandchild friendly play surface. Do you have any realistic alternative suggestions that dogs and kids can both enjoy?

      How about dealing with the fact that both natural AND artificial turf are environmentally unsound in SoCal, and people should do what is right rather than what they want, and that in reality you might have to go with something imperfect according to the demands of an arbitrary lifestyle?

  11. hunkerdown

    Patrick Durusau, responding to some listicle by Max Fisher:

    People make entire careers at keeping old injustices alive. Taking up historical causes is safe because the past is beyond our ability to change. You don’t want to be the March of Dimes when they discover a cure for polio.

    He’s been doing some interesting writing on propaganda on his Topic Maps blog, referencing Chompsky (sic) interviews and catching The Master himself merely drawing a comparison, not an equivalence, between US covert operations and terrorism (then again, who knows what scares Alternet editors these days).

Comments are closed.