February 6, 2012 by Mike.

The Thurston County Progressive Network are a great bunch of folks who work year-round to produce a more progressive community in the Olympia area.  In this week’s calendar they share a link to World Life Expectancy website and a cancer cluster map. 

It’s an interesting website from an epidemiology perspective.  The suggestion in the cancer cluster webpage is that environmental degradation can be tracked to a certain extent by cancer rates.  I think there are a lot of regional cultural issues, like diet, wealth/poverty that also contribute to the cancer clusters, but environmental degradation is probably part of the story.  If you live in one of the black (high cancer rate incidence) counties, you can weigh in with why you think your county might have high cancer rates.

I am in Lewis County, WA.  It’s a relatively low income per capita by WA standards, so we probably have a lower rate of preventive medical care, but we also have a couple of superfund cleanup sites, one for PCBs, and we have a coal mine (not operational today) and a coal-fired electricity plant, known locally as the Centralia Steam Plant.  We try not to mention coal here on either shore of Coal Creek, but the steam plant and the steam mine have been a large part of Lewis County economy over the decades.

This website also has an informative interactive world life expectancy map that includes gender life expectancy.  Pretty cool website.  Lots of information.

oh, friendship is good for longevity, according to these folks.  Sounds right to me.

Don’t miss this page if you are a budding epidemiologist.

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November 26, 2011 by mike.

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October 2, 2011 by mike.

It’s easy to beat up on Keynsian economics in good times, but in a serious economic downturns, keynsian economics are the way up and out.  The push and pull between keynsian economics and free market economics represent a scale and reasonable people will understand that both have their place in large-scale economic, real world applications.  <img src=”http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/US_annual_federal_deficits_1901_to_2006_redblue.svg/449px-US_annual_federal_deficits_1901_to_2006_redblue.svg.png” title=”Wiki Commons courtesy 84user” alt=”Wiki Commons courtesy 84user” vspace=”3″ width=”365″ align=”right” border=”2″ height=”271″ hspace=”3″ />

Unregulated free markets give you the mortgage crisis economic collapse.  The answer?  regulate the free market.  Regulation does cut into profits.  It also prevents rampant corruption in the free market that can create a long term economic downturn in exchange for short term bonus income.  Regulate the free economy.  It ain’t rocket science.  The second tool to create a relatively stable and honest “free” market is a steeply progressive tax schedule that makes short term profit-taking too difficult.  It changes the dynamics of corruption, greed, temptation for folks with weak ethical constitutions if they know that the government is going to get the lion’s share of their income if they throw out good sense and choose to enrich themselves at the expense of their businesses and the larger economy.

Well, that’s where we are these days and we are not getting out of the global economic slump without turning to Keynsian economic fixes.  They are counter intuitive and they work.  The deficits have to increase to get the economy growing again (this would be a good time to spur green economic growth - clean energy?  energy independence? move away from internal combustion personal transportation?).

But the free market fundamentalists cannot understand that their end of the economic scheme spectrum cannot bring an economy out of a slump.  It’s akin to “the beatings will continue until morale improves,” pulling more money out of the economy in a slump by cutting government spending simply deepens the downturn.

There are different problems that can develop with an economic model that is too tightly regulated, central state economic planning cannot harness the economic engine of fashion, desire, etc. that is like a force of nature.  Free market economics knows how to derive growth from the force of nature that is fashion, fad and desire.  But we don’t have to worry about too little free market freedom.  That is not our problem today.

<a href=”http://news.yahoo.com/doubts-grow-not-economy-under-uk-austerity-drive-071138072.html” target=”_blank”>David Stringer at AP has an article</a> out:
<blockquote><strong>Doubts grow, not economy, under UK austerity drive </strong>
<p id=”yui_3_3_0_1_1317568704325295″>MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Jobs have been lost, libraries shuttered, sailors sacked and street lights dimmed — <span class=”yshortcuts cs4-visible” id=”lw_1317559979_2″>Britain</span> is beginning to taste the bitter medicine <span class=”yshortcuts cs4-visible” id=”lw_1317559979_0″>David Cameron</span> warned was necessary to fix its wounded economy. It’s left some wondering: Is the remedy worse than the symptoms?</p>
</blockquote>
<p id=”yui_3_3_0_1_1317568704325295″>This is a badly flawed question.  The framing of the question suggests that an austerity program is the remedy to deficits that pile up in an economic downturn.  It is not a remedy, it is an expression of free market fundamentalism.</p>
<p id=”yui_3_3_0_1_1317568704325295″>The US free market fundamentalists have a hybrid model, they love government spending that feeds corporations, they have no qualms about government spending as long as the spending is not committed to health care, education, food security.  There is a low profit margin in that stuff compared to weapons systems and war profiteering.  The “austerity” program of US free market fundamentalists is not about austerity, it is about class warfare.  The shift of wealth from the many to the few that has occurred over the past thirty years is not about rewarding the most productive folks in our society, it is about class warfare. Top tax rates of 70% plus did not prevent the US economy from growing and adding jobs.  Obama was correct when he said, it’s not class warfare, it’s math.   And a little history.</p>
The website of G. William Domhoff (sociology professor, UC Santa Cruz) seems to have a lot  of good information.  <a href=”http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html”>Who rules America?</a> Is that a rhetorical question?
<p style=”text-align: center”><img src=”http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Gini_since_WWII.svg/800px-Gini_since_WWII.svg.png” title=”Wiki Commons GNU license” alt=”Wiki Commons GNU license” vspace=”3″ width=”582″ border=”2″ height=”422″ hspace=”3″ /></p>
<p style=”text-align: center” align=”right”> </p>
<p style=”text-align: center” align=”left”>hmm..  we are up there is the top three or four countries of income disparity.  Brazil, US, and China, UK going for more disparity, Bulgaria, Norway, Mexico trending for less disparity.</p>
<p style=”text-align: center”> </p>

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October 1, 2011 by mike.

Your state is on fire, the drought is causing rivers and lakes to dry up and that could go on for a long time.  Meanwhile, ice shelves in Canada are collapsing faster than expected and these collapses will serve to speed global warming at ocean surface absorbs more solar radiation than ice surface which reflects solar radiation to an extent.  And Britain has recorded the hottest day ever in October.  You might want to revisit your belief system that global warming is not happening.  You are on the wrong side of history with this one.

You might want to walk that position back a wee bit.

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September 25, 2011 by mike.

It’s a live feed, for as long as it lasts or as long as they loop the footage, so the activity and engagement level varies depending on what is going on at any given moment, but thought I would embed the video in case you want to plug in for a minute or two and “be present at this moment” in the Wall Street occupation.

I think it’s fair to say that the corporate media coverage of this real occupation is very slight, but they will jump and run to cover a tea party event funded by right wing plutocrats. Connect the dots, Kemosabe. Catapult the propaganda.

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September 21, 2011 by mike.

if you’re talking about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out…

I share John Lennon’s ambivalence about the revolution, but I think there are revolutions coming.  Maybe a revolution doesn’t have to include the choreography and armament to take the Bastille?

How about a revolution in agriculture?  We watched a video about colony collapse disorder last night: Vanishing of the Bees.   Well done, sobering, broad review of the situation for our pollination partners.  I used to keep bees.  Most beekeepers develop a pretty strong connection to their hives, to the collective being that is a beehive.  The beekeepers in this movie certainly showed that connection.  I don’t want to give the story away, so I will just say that I think the filmmakers are correct to identify bees as “canaries in the coal mine.”  I think we need a revolution in the way we approach agriculture and food.   Global food.  What should it look like?

Also thinking about our global economic system.  Tikkun has a piece by Leonardo Boff on the Crisis of Capitalism.  This is an interesting read.  I do have a sense that the current global economic crisis is qualitatively different from previous downturns.  We face some pretty staggering demands from the natural world.  We now live in a world of more extreme weather and the likelihood is that the trend to more extreme weather is just getting started, so the solution is a really major retooling of the world economy where sustainability rather than profit is the goal. Stabilizing the environment is going to require more than a game of three card monte based on cap and trade.  The shell game has always been entertaining, but the game is fixed and the outcome is about fleecing the mark.   (if you look around and you can’t spot the mark, you are the mark).  Here’s a little taste of that Boff piece:

I believe the present crisis of capitalism is more than cyclical and structural. It is terminal. Are we seeing the end of the genius of capitalism, of always being able to adapt to any circumstance? I am aware that only few other people maintain this thesis. Two things, however, bring me to this conclusion.

The first is the following: the crisis is terminal because we all, but in particular capitalism, have exceeded the limits of the Earth. We have occupied and depredated the whole planet, destroying her subtle equilibrium and exhausting her goods and services, to the point that she alone can no longer replenish all that has been removed…

The second reason is linked to the humanitarian crisis that capitalism is creating.

Before, it was limited to the peripheral countries. Now it is global, and it has reached the central countries. The economic question cannot be resolved by dismantling society. The victims, connected by new venues of communication, resist, revolt and threaten the present order. Ever more people, especially the young, reject the perverse capitalist political economic logic: the dictatorship of finance that, through the market, subjugates the States to its interests, and the profitability of speculative capital, that circulates from one stock market to another, reaping profits without producing anything at all, except more money for the stockholders.

So our gaze in the US of A is currently fixed on the three card monte game that is the national election cycle.  Here we go, keep the cards rotating, let the media cover the “debates” and comment on who won and who lost, like a winner could be found in this crowd (Huntsman?  What is he doing in the GOP?) The media talking heads perform like they have one lonely brain cell in their pretty little heads, they stay away from any significant, in-depth questions, or if they ask a good question, they watch as somebody pulls the string so the candidate can recite a talking  point that may or may not have anything to do with the question or the underlying and significant issue.

Just think about how bad it is when the country is having trouble deciding whether Obama is a better choice than a candidate like Perry or Bachman.  Yikes!  Obama has made some disastrous choices, starting with his choice of Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner and he’s turned out to be sort of an Eisenhower Republican, though maybe some of us were hoping to get a democrat in the WH or even a Rockefeller Republican.  Can’t get there from here.

Imagine this country electing an FDR type democrat?  That would be a revolution (and would probably spark one as well).

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August 26, 2011 by mike.

Haven’t had time to look hard at this group - Climate Reality, but at first glance it appears to be an education campaign.  I am down with that.

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August 26, 2011 by mike.

Global warming, big hurricanes. Any questions?

Governor Rick Perry - please report to the North Carolina Coast to pray this huge storm away.

For those of you hanging over on the right coast, move to high ground.  Find a dry place and stay safe.

Think about the long term impact of global warming and what you want to do about it.

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June 27, 2011 by mike.

Common Dreams is reporting that the berm around Fort Calhoun nuclear plant has breached.

The story continues to be spun, suppressed, and misreported.  I agree with many of the commenters who think this particular event may not be particularly dangerous.  The coverage of the story is a bigger story.  The dangers of building nuclear plants in floodplains along rivers (essential cooling water source) and the accumulation of residential growth and population in close proximity to nuclear plants is a big story.  The essential unsafe nature of nuclear engineering, the problem with “mothballing” plants, disposing (where you gonna dispose of stuff that will be dangerous for thousands of years?) of waste, the collateral damage to public health by the occasional radioactive emission when an “event” occurs; these things are or should be a big story.

Dahr Jamail has an update story on Fukushima at Aljazeera.   Thanks to my friend Pat Rasmussen at Temperate Rainforests for passing that one on.

There is an essay out about a spike in infant mortality that suggests Fukushima may have had some public health impact here on the Left Coast.

This is complicated stuff, but the handwriting is on the wall for those who want to read it: nuclear power is not safe or clean.

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June 23, 2011 by mike.

It’s hard to sort the information on the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant Story, but for context, here are a couple of items to consider:

• KETV 7 in Omaha ran a story on March 31, 2011 that stated that Fort Calhoun is “one of three reactors across the country that federal regulators said they are most concerned about.”

• On June 6, 2011, the FAA issued a notice banning air flight in a 2 mile radius around Fort Calhoun.

• On June 7, 2011, there was an accident/fire of some sort at the plant.  It may have been a small matter, but like turning off the valves at Chernobyl, sometimes small matters at nuclear plants become big matters when the engineering systems develop issues.

• Business Insider has a poorly written piece (sorry, ricky, but who is OPPD?) from Jun 15, 2011 that has some good time line info and some video coverage.  OPPD is reported to have requested the video coverage not be aired.  (Omaha Public Power District) per coverage from Henry Blodget, also Business Insider story.

• Here’s an interesting story from AP that the local Olympia newspaper that covers the weakening of regulation to accommodate an aging and possibly unsafe nuclear energy industry.  (privatized profit, socialized risk model in action)

The timelines and stories, particularly the foreign coverage, do not fit together well, but the March story suggests context that Fort Calhoun is a worrisome plant.  The pictures of the plant surrounded by the Missouri River reinforce that context.  If you are interested in responsible, accurate coverage of the story, I would go with Pro Publica’s coverage.  It does not have the political edge and mission of the foreign coverage and it is likely to be more forthright that the corporate media coverage of nuclear accident stories.Another wrinkle in this story is the report that dry storage is outside the containment area and half-submerged.  True?  Maybe.  A well-informed citizenry needs to study important issues with a keen eye.  Or you can watch Fox News if you want Corporate Infotainment.

The real story, and it is being severely under-reported is that the flooding, like the tornadoes this year, is that these events are driven by global warming and climate change.  Another aspect of this story is that the nuclear industry is trying to increase its US energy future by noting the low level of greenhouse gas emissions.  But as Chernobyl made so clear, nuclear emissions are also a problem.

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