Pillars (or is it pedlars?) of virtue

We need to push for health care reform NOW

The push is on for health care reform and the push-back has been launched by insurance companies and the profiteers that run most of America’s health care system. We need to contact our congressional reps and DEMAND a better plan. And we need to spread the word that all those “socialist” countries out there with single payer plans are getting better care, for less money, with better outcomes for more people. Here’s one article.

Debunking Canadian health care myths

By Rhonda Hackett

As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one.

Often I’ll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner’s nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one’s merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.

Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.

To read more click here.

Obama causes retroactive unemployment

Well, well. An online journal which dubs itself the American Thinker has published a piece which purportedly proves that the stimulus package has caused unemployment to be worse than it would have been without the stimulus. This, the author claims, establishes the “fact” that we are experiencing the “Obama recession.”

To accomplish this piece of legerdemain, they published a graph which illustrates the unemployment figures Obama’s team projected if there were no stimulus bill, and the figures they projected if the plan went forward. (One has to accept on faith that the two graphs are, in fact, those of the administration.) Then the author(s) plot the actual unemployment stats for recent months and argue that since the jobless rate is higher than Obama’s team predicted, he must have caused it.

Uh-huh.

There are so many problems with this logic that it’s hard to know where to start, but the most glaring bit of nuttiness is that the graph shows that the steep rise in unemployment started long before Obama became the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Therefore we must conclude that it was his candidacy which caused unemployment to climb.

My own conclusion, based on the evidence in this article, the rantings of Rush, the vile self-justification of Cheney, and all the rest, is that Obama is having a very negative effect on the mental health of right wing ideologues. He’s driving them nuts. They all clearly need medication (well, not Rush, it didn’t work out very well last time).

And the tragedy of this is that we are supposed to believe that we can have a civil debate about issues in this country, with two (or more) sides offering reasonable arguments that lead to the best outcome for all. Instead, one wing of the American experiment has gone utterly looney-tunes.

Water, water, everywhere or nowhere?

Just finished reading James Workman’s latest, Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought, and it has fed into my thinking about Asheville’s water rates.

Heretofore I have advocated that we encourage conservation by determining average per capita use (which for bookkeeping reasons probably means average per-bedroom use), then reducing rates below the average and raising rates above the average. This would enable rate payers to limit their bills more significantly through conservation efforts.

Workman’s careful analysis of water use and water problems around the globe has led me to consider a new formulation: The first 50 or 100 gallons per person per day should be free, with sharply steeper rates above that. (The number of free gallons is subject to analysis and debate – but is based on the idea that everyone has right to some quantity of potable water.) At the same time we create a water credit system. You would accumulate credits by using less than your free allotment, and the credits could be traded. The value of a credit would be established in the marketplace and would presumably be lower than the established rate. Therefore, those who conserve could sell credits to big users. Overall the price for “big” use would still be higher than it is today, so everyone would be encouraged to conserve, but the tradable credits would help big users to offset some of the price increase. This kind of system is no more difficult to operate than cell phone minutes or frequent flier miles, both of which are quite familiar to modern citizens.

Because the system would apply to all on the Asheville water system it would meet the requirements of the Sullivan Acts that we offer the same rates inside and outside the city limits, but because there are more large users outside the city limits it would presumably shift more of the burden to county customers.

International action to save Troy Davis

Advocates for justice staged an international day of action, May 19, to raise awareness of the plight of Troy Davis, a 40-year-old man who has spent the past 18 years on death row in Georgia for a crime he evidently did not commit. Davis was on the scene when a law enforcement officer was murdered and was convicted on the basis of witness testimony which has since been recanted. Jurors have come forward to insist they were misinformed about evidence in the case. No weapon was ever found. Furthermore, one of the witnesses who testified against Davis is a principal suspect in the case.

In Asheville, more than three dozen people gathered at the Brooks-Howell Home, for a candlelight service and vigil Tuesday evening. Dr. Kiran Sigmon, a local physician and friend of Davis, led the service, describing her family’s contact with Davis over several years, and reading a profoundly moving letter the inmate had sent to his supporters around the world last November. Sigmon’s daughters participated: Joy played a quiet piano accompaniment and read a list of states which still embrace capital punishment, together with the number of inmates on each state’s death row; Lee lit a candle of hope for each state as the names were read. The ceremony was interspersed with song, “How can I keep from singing?” and poetry.

State Senate twists RJA

Yesterday the NC Senate approved the Racial Justice Act on the second reading but added a provision that will make it easier to execute people in this state. The amendment was added in apparent reaction to the NC Medical Association rule prohibiting doctors from participating in executions. (Anyone recall, “First, do no harm” ?)

The Republican majority on the NC Supreme Court ruled last week that the medical group could not impose penalties on its members if they helped kill people. Their convoluted ruling said, in effect: Lethal injection is not a medical procedure, therefore it is appropriate for the state to require a doctor to oversee the execution.

Huh?

Well, the pro-execution majority in the Senate has now moved to enshrine that rule in the Racial Justice Act. If the bill passes as now written, we can only hope that the doctors themselves will simply refuse to participate.

Any questions?

This says it all. We need to pass the NC Racial Justice Act.

NC Racial Justice Act

It’s urgent that we contact our legislators to encourage support for the NC Racial Justice Act. It has passed in the state House and is now in committee in the NC Senate.

Race is a major factor in death sentences in our state (as in many others). While murder rates across racial lines are constant, the population of death row is largely black. Convicted murderers of whites are far more likely to be accorded death sentences than murderers of non-whites. In at least one case, the white man who planned a murder was given life in prison while the black man he hired was sentenced to death. And death penalty juries in this state have historically been mostly white.

(Here’s the story of one innocent man convicted, in large part, due to his race.)

This law, when passed, will permit convicted murderers to argue that race played a role in their sentencing and, if successful, would change the sentence to life without parole.

Sen. Martin Nesbitt
300 N. Salisbury St., Room 300-B
Raleigh, NC 27603-5925
919-715-3001
martin.nesbitt@ncleg.net

Sen. Tom Apodaca
16 W. Jones Street, Room 1127
Raleigh, NC 27601-2808
919-733-5745
828-696-3510
tom.apodaca@ncleg.net

Concerning butterflies

A letter in this week’s Mountain Xpress reminded me of an essay that was aired on WNCW and in print nationally about 15 years ago (and updated in 2002 to reflect the bee catastrophe then unfolding). (Thanks to Kristen MacLeod for her lovely tribute to the Mourning Cloak.)

On a wing and a prayer
by Cecil Bothwell

Last August we had out-of-state visitors on our mountain. They were impressed with the beauty of the Appalachian Mountains and enjoyed the relative cool above 3000 feet. But the highest praise and loudest exclamations were reserved for the insects.
“So many butterflies!” they exclaimed.
Fair enough. We do enjoy a great diversity of beautiful butterflies. If that were the only comment you might think that we just happen to have more members of the order Lepidoptera here than they do back in flatland. But listen to the next line.
“I haven’t seen so many since I was a child!” said one. “We don’t have butterflies like these anymore,” lamented another.
Do you hear the drumbeat of death in those words? No? Well, you should. There is a slow change moving across the land and it is at minimum profound and disturbing. It may be a catastrophe.
Pollinator populations are collapsing in many places around the world. That is, the insects, birds and mammals that fertilize flowers by transferring pollen from one to the next, are in sharp decline. Last year the disappearance of honey bees in the mid-west and Carolinas made the news, but honeybees are only the most familiar of the pollinator species.
Without pollination we and the rest of the animals on earth would lose our lunches. And our breakfasts and dinners. Most flowering plants need help with fertilization of their seeds, and the animal forms that have co-evolved with them do the job perfectly. There are butterflies and moths with long probosci that can reach deep into tubular flowers, and hummingbirds with a similar long reach. Many varieties of bats pollinate night blooming flowers while they feed on nectar. And thousands of species of bees, from tiny bright colored sweat bees to the huge dark carpenter sort, move pollen grains from anthers to stigmas on weeds and trees and orchids and peas. There are beetles and ants and even mosquitos who each have an important role to play.
In many cases flowers and the critters that fertilize them are very tightly entwined, one-on-one, so that neither can survive without the other. Others depend on just a few species of plants or animals. In every case they are part of the great chain of life which created and maintains the living world we inhabit.
But, back to the butterflies. Why did my guests react so strongly? They live in Ohio in a residential area between a city and surrounding farms. Because of pesticide sprays on lawns and fields, wild insects and flowers have disappeared. Many of the plants that sustain butterflies and moths are considered weeds and are subject to eradication programs.
On top of the chemical assault, habitats are fragmented by cleared fields and lawns that replace native vegetation with imported monocultures. If a butterfly, or a hummingbird or bat for that matter, cannot find a high enough concentration of food in an area, it will move on, or starve to death.
The problem would be merely aesthetic if we lost life forms that we find beautiful and appealing. But our understanding of the web of life is still very rudimentary. We have only a sketchy appreciation of the intricacy of plant and animal interactions that maintain soil fertility, atmospheric oxygen levels, water purity and other chemical systems that are the foundation of life. We know that humans cannot live alone without any other species, but we have no clue which species those might be. Pollination is the crucial juncture for all flowering plants, and the disappearance of pollinator animals will impact our lives in ways we cannot foresee. Yet we continue to abet an extinction spasm that will take hundreds or thousands of critters and plants out of the loop forever.
You can help. Encourage weeds and wildflowers. Let part of your lawn go wild. Learn to live with wasps and bees and beetles and ants and even mosquitos. Repel insects with screens, long sleeves or incense instead of killing them. If you garden choose organic controls. In silviculture avoid herbicides and allow space for mixed stands. Oppose clearcuts. Remind others of the vital services living systems provide us, and the urgent need to protect whole natural communities. Learn more by contacting the Forgotten Pollinator Project. Email .
If you marvel that a fragile Monarch butterfly migrates thousands of miles, or that a delicate swallowtail survives a tornado, remember this: those tissue paper wings very likely carry our own future as well.

(This essay is included in Gorillas in the Myth: A Duck Soup Reader, Brave Ulysses Books, Second edition 2008)

MSNBC is polling on Obama’s first 100 days

It’s one of those relatively meaningless polls that anyone with too much time on their hands can game by deleting cookies and re-voting. But for what it’s worth, click here.