The Washington Freeze--What's New about It?

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by Richard Crews
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Historically the U.S. Federal Government has been frozen up before. The Founding Fathers faced enormous resistance over such issues as loyalty to England and States' rights, the far-flung economic and cultural differences among the Colonies, and, most of all, the very newness of it all--building a government and administrative system from scratch. As the country grew and matured, it was brought to its knees by corruption and populism (Jackson), slavery (Lincoln), mega-business (Teddy Roosevelt), international isolationism (Wilson), and the Great Depression (FDR), to mention only a few of the historical highlights.

The Bush era left the nation in disarray and disrepute. Education suffered from "No Child" lack of funding and teach-to-the-test; science and the environment, from the political-speak called "junk science"; civil rights (even human rights), from secret government intrusions; international relations, from preemption and cowboy diplomacy; and the national (and world) economy, from deregulation and trickle-down myopia.

Obama swept into office with large majorities in both houses of Congress and a mandate for change. He was a brilliant, charismatic, and populist-centrist liberal, dedicated to collegial, bipartisan functionality in government. Yet a year later Washington politics is frozen solid. What went wrong?

Obama's hands-off respect for Congress and the separation of powers left the Congressional leaders in a predicament, the Democrats flush with arrogance, the Republicans, with despair. As health-care reform festered, the Republicans discovered that by distortion and political hype, they could have some influence, much as a child's tantrum brings a family party to a halt. During the summer break, they sent agitators throughout the country to distort and disrupt town-hall meetings on health-care reform. This strategy proved so successful in garnering public notice and tea-party-type support, that over the ensuing months the Republicans escalated it--largely through aberrant Senate procedural rules--to total legislative shut-down.

Of particular note in perpetrating this debacle are Senators Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, Richard Shelby, John McCain, Jim Imhoffe, and Tom Coburn. Powerful lobbying groups contributed their heft--Dick Armey of FreedomWorks (previously Citizens for a Sound Economy), Labor Unions, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the Club for Growth, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and others. Dedicated media added their venomous fuel to the fire--Rush Linbaugh, Jane Hamaker, Frank Laentz, and even (perversely) Paul Krugman.

For a discussion of the individual roles played see--

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-23/washingtons-20-saboteurs/#gallery=1362;page=1

http://www.economist.com/world/united-states/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15544118&fsrc=rss

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/02/24/avlon.independent.voters/

What's to become of us? There are three factors to note. First, Obama is a brilliant and pragmatic politician. Second, he has nine months until the mid-term elections. Third, the country has been in constipated pickles like this before; we shall overcome.
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Bloom Box Energy

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by Richard Crews
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Bloom boxes are made from ceramic plates, painted with special paint, in a stack. They act as fuel cells, making energy through a chemical reaction between oxygen and a clean-energy fuel source such as natural gas or bio-fuels. Two brick-sized stacks of these cells will power a typical U.S. home.

So an individual house can be off the grid. (About half the energy produced at a utilities energy source is lost in transmission.)

Bloom boxes are currently sold as business-size units that cost $700,000 to $800,000. Several large companies including FedEx, Google, Walmart, and EBay, have been using refrigerator-sized Bloom Boxes with good results. eBay reports that it has saved $100,000 in energy costs since it started using five of the mega-Bloom Boxes nine months ago. Google has been Blooming for 18 months.

Eventually (over 5 to 10 years) the price for a brick-sized home unit is expected to come down to around $3,000.

http://www.theweek.com/article/index/106645/What_is_the_Bloom_Box_anyway
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Daivd Blaine

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by Richard Crews
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David Blaine is a remarkable man. He bills his primary vocation as "street magician": wearing jeans and a T-shirt, armed with a deck of cards (and followed by a camera crew) he has amazed passers by on city streets around the world, and even taken his "act" to primitive jungle tribes and desolate mountain villages. He says his performance abilities depend on long, arduous hours of practice over many years. He is fun to watch.

But more than being a "street magician," he also does "endurance stunts." These again often take long preparation and arduous self-discipline.

In this lecture at the TED series he describes the two-year ordeal of personal training he put himself through in order to break the world record for holding one's breath--a record he now holds at 17 minutes 4 seconds (the previous record was 16 minutes 30 seconds).

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_blaine_how_i_held_my_breath_for_17_min.html

Regardless of any histrionics you may impute and deplore, I think this is an amazing study of the human condition and human potential.

Traveling Wave Nuclear Reactors

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by Richard Crews
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Have you heard of "traveling wave" nuclear reactors?

Unlike the current reactor design that uses only enriched uranium for fuel, the traveling wave design largely uses waste byproducts of that enrichment process, that is, "waste" uranium.

A small amount of enriched uranium is used at the beginning of the process but then the nuclear reactor runs on the waste products and can make and consume its own fuel. The benefits are that the reactor doesn’t have to be refueled or have its waste removed until the end of life of the reactor (theoretically a couple hundred years). Using uranium wastes reduces the amount of waste in the overall nuclear life cycle, and extends the available supply of the world’s uranium for nuclear reactors by many times.

The leading company developing this technology is TerraPower, financed and championed by Bill Gates. The process depends on modern supercomputers. According to the Website of Intellectual Ventures, a spin-off from Gates' Microsoft:

"Extensive computer simulations and engineering studies have produced new evidence that a wave of fission moving slowly through a fuel core can generate a billion watts of electricity continuously for well over 50 years without enrichment or reprocessing. These results are made possible by advanced computational abilities of modern supercomputer clusters, the driving force behind one of the most promising nuclear reactor design efforts in the country."

How close to real-world use is this technology? According to experts, operation of a traveling wave reactor can be demonstrated in less than ten years, and commercial deployment can begin in less than fifteen years. The main difficulty is that significant materials advances would be required to create a cladding, or cover, for the core that could contain a fission reaction for decades.

I wonder why one can't just start with a tough, 6-foot thick ceramic layer, and then layer more ceramic on the outside of that as it vaporizes from the bottom and inside through the years. Maybe if the ceramic's residue degrades and collapses, it contaminates the core and disturbs the balance of the ongoing reaction (although the composition of the core is evidently not critically precise--and anyway adjusting to that is the giant computer's job).

Or make the core cone shaped (instead of cylindrical) so as it ages, it sinks to a smaller and smaller working diameter.

Take a look at an article in Scientific American for a more extensive discussion of the economic and technical problems of Traveling-Wave and other nuclear power technologies.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-new-types-of-reactors-needed-for-nuclear-renaissance&sc=DD_20100222
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Republican Errors on Health Care

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by Richard Crews
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There have been claims and counterclaims about whether the Republicans have distorted the facts about health-care legislation.

Setting aside irresponsible statements by such absurd characters as Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin (whose distortions and errors are too numerous to chronicle), there have been quite a few erroneous claims about health-care legislation by "responsible" Republicans such as the Republican leaders of the House and Senate.

Representative John Boehner of Ohio who is the leader of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives said of the Senate health-care legislation that "forcing Americans off of their current health coverage and onto a government-run plan isn't the answer, but that's exactly what the Democrats' plan would do."
In fact, nothing in the proposals would force people off their current coverage into a government-run plan; if they prefer and can pay for private coverage.

Boehner also commented that the health-care bill's plan for comparative effectiveness research "would be used by the government to ration care."
The facts: some insurers may decide to use the government's research findings to determine what kinds of medical services they will cover first, but given specific language in the bill to the contrary, it is outright wrong for Boehner to claim the research findings would be used by the government to ration care.

Boehner claimed that the Democrat-backed health-care reform plan "will require [Americans] to subsidize abortion with their hard-earned tax dollars." At another time he claimed it will "levy a new 'abortion premium' fee on Americans."
Nothing in the plans would require taxpayers to foot the bill for abortions. In fact, in a key version of the bill--the one passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee--members went to great pains to include an amendment to ensure that federal money is not used for abortion coverage.

Boehner warned that a provision that would permit end-of-life counseling sessions for seniors "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia." Another Republican leader echoed this end-of-life distortion: on July 23, Boehner released a statement along with Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan saying that the health-care bill would encourage euthanasia.
In truth, the pertinent section of the health-care bill would require Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling sessions helping seniors to plan for end-of-life medical care, including designating a health-care proxy, choosing a hospice, and making decisions about life-sustaining treatment. It would not be mandatory, and it certainly would not require doctors--or anyone--to counsel patients to refuse medical intervention.

What about Mitch McConnell, a U.S. Senator from Kentucky and the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate? He claimed that a public option for health-care would end private insurance "because the private insurance people will not be able to compete with a government option."
McConnell is incorrect. The Democratic plan does not do away with private insurance. His statement that private insurance "will not be able to compete with a government option" is challenged by nonpartisan health-care experts who disagree.

You can find these and other fact-check assessments of Republican's (and others' ) statements on a wide variety of topics at the following two Websites--

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/
http://factcheck.org/
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Is Obama "Brilliant"?

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by Richard Crews
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There are three sets of factors that convince me that Barack Obama is brilliant.

First, there are biographical factors. Obama graduated from Columbia University where his professors and classmates, including former international politics professor Michael Baron and current MTV president Michael Wolf, confirm that he was a brilliant, standout student and that he was an active participant in seminars. Baron said he was one of the top one or two students in his class.

After graduating from Columbia, he was admitted to Harvard Law School--a recognition granted to only a very few of the most excellent college graduates. Moreover, he was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year at Harvard Law School (a most unusual honor reflecting high intellectual respect from his fellow law students), and then as president of the journal in his second year. He graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude.

In 1991 (at age 30), Obama accepted a two-year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. He then served at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law for twelve years, as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004. Crain's Chicago Business named Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.

In 1993 he joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill, and Galland, a small, 13-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then promoted to the position "of counsel" from 1996 to 2004.

Second: Those are the impressive biographical facts, but what convinces me in addition is that I have heard him speak. He not only speaks (even off the cuff) in complete sentences with correct grammar and carefully accurate word usage, but also in organized paragraphs. Moreover, he is consummately well informed and also eloquent in his presentations.

Third, finally, he also is a good listener (many people who have dealt with him personally report this). Most significantly, he gathers the facts and opinions on an issue and then makes a decision based on logical, pragmatic thinking rather than ideology or hurried, emotional suasion.
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Presidential Brilliance

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by Richard Crews
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There is an interesting op-ed in this morning's NY Times on "great" and failed presidents. It lists "nine greats and near-greats: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, followed in various rank order [of various historians] by Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman." It also lists "those men judged by history to be presidential failures--James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Millard Fillmore, and Warren Harding." (It takes the Historian's Fifth in not listing Bush II among the worst because he is too recent to judge.) Clinton could have been great--he was brilliant and charismatic--but for two overriding problems: he got no great historical crises to confront, and he stumbled personally and pissed away his power (well, it wasn't piss actually, but that was the organ).

Obama has the brilliance and charisma to be one of the greatest presidents. Moreover, he has great historical crises to confront--BOY, does he ever! (a worldwide economic meltdown; two long and unpopular wars; and newly evident, impending ecologic Armageddon--in addition, the impending national bankruptcy from health-care costs, and the crises in trade imbalance and education are also tragically severe, but they have less glitz).

Obama has stumbled a bit during his first year in office in allowing Washington partisanship to escalate into legislative paralysis. Like Clinton, Obama (despite comparable political wizardry) did not handle well the court of public opinion (manipulated by a disloyal opposition). Some say this was largely because of the hyper-partisan approach of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and Harry Reid, Majority Leader of the Senate. But Obama's hands-off approach to the legislature contributed to the decline of legislature-executive relations.

Obama has a three-part plan of action to deal with this. First, he has expanded (and plans to further expand) the power of the president to govern in the absence of legislative effectiveness--through executive orders, recess appointments, signing letters, and increased executive initiative under existing legislation. Second, he has already begun to go around Reid and Pelosi in courting (and shaming) Republican legislators. Third, he has recognized the need to take his case, armed with his personal charisma and rhetorical brilliance, to the court of public appeal--via town meetings, media appearances, and savvy press releases.

Whether this will be enough to turn the tide and allow Obama's brilliance to come through and address effectively the nation's crises is an unanswered question--a work in progress--chillingly important--exciting to watch.
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Three Big Questions

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by Richard Crews
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In case you wonder sometimes, here's what concerns me. I've stripped these down to as simple a form as I can make them.

(1) How worn and torn is our natural world getting?
(What kind of Earth are we fixing to leave behind?)

(2) Will whiz-bang technology save us? (How?)

(3) Is globalization a suicide train? (Globalization of business, that is: the rest is a supporting sideshow.)

Your thoughts?
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Transition Towns

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by Richard Crews
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There are 275 "Transition Towns" around the world (as of January 2010). These are communities that have decided to live with as much local sustainability as possible. In other words, the local citizens have agreed--as much as they can--to:
(1) use locally grown foods
(2) support local businesses
(3) repair, reuse, and recycle (rather than discard)
(4) reduce environmental pollution
(5) produce their own energy locally, largely from solar and wind sources, while
(6) reducing their personal energy needs.

This often involves finding open space to set up community gardens, establishing business waste exchanges (matching the waste of one industry with another industry that uses that waste), and in some cases even establishing a local currency that is redeemable at local shops and businesses. It often significantly involves education on such matters as composting, recycling, permaculture (growing garden vegetables using no fertilizers other than compost and with minimal water loss, and cycling crops so that the land does not become nitrogen-depleted or otherwise exhausted), and house insulation and other ways to reduce energy use.

The Transition Town movement was created in 2005. There are now Transition Towns in seven countries. And they are not all "towns"--some are villages, council districts, or city boroughs.

The movement was conceived as responsive to two looming worldwide crises:
(1) over the next few decades CLIMATE CHANGE will displace millions of people, and dislocate and disrupt much modern production and transport of goods and services,
(2) PEAK OIL--humanity's oil-for-energy requirements continue to increase year by year while worldwide oil resources are expected shortly to start to decline.

Read more about Transition Towns at--

http://www.transitiontowns.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns
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Women's Rights and Wrongs

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by Richard Crews
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Relief workers distributing food in Haiti have discovered that when the food vouchers are given to men, disorderly riots break out, whereas if the vouchers are given to women, they--despite their hunger, pain, and frustration--form orderly and patient lines.

The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (and elsewhere) makes about 96% of its microloans to women because banking authorities have found over the past dozen years that men are far less likely than women to use the proceeds for the benefit of the family, and to pay the loan back.

Opotunidas in Mexico (and elsewhere) gives the government checks that are rewards for keeping children in school and getting them health care directly to the mothers, not the fathers. The authorities found that when the payments were made to the fathers, the money was significantly more like likely to go for gambling, tobacco, and alcohol.

When will this message get through to political powers around the world who still deprive women of civil rights, and thereby deprive humanity of this powerful civilizing force?
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Russian Lethal Conscription

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by Richard Crews
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Recognizing that humanitarian values within the Russian military may not be among your highest priorities, I hope you will find the following appalling, as I did--after all, ever since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Mother Russia has been increasingly "one of us" (particularly with China breathing down all of our Western and pro-Western necks these days).

The Russian military has about 200,000 conscripts (about half of its personnel are conscripted--half are voluntary or "professional"). To maintain this force, they draft about 25,000 young men a year.

But the Russian equivalent of "basic training" is traditionally harsh--even brutal--with considerable use of physical force, including beatings and "hazing" of recruits.

If fact, about 200 drafted recruits die during their first year of service, mostly during training.

In other words, a young man who is drafted (non-voluntarily) into the Russian military has about a 0.8% chance of getting killed in training during the first year.

By comparison, if the same rate held in the U.S. military (although, granted, it is all voluntary), we would be killing off about 1,200 recruits a year. Which makes the terrible "Fort Hood Massacre" in which 12 soldiers died seem pretty tame, doesn't it?

This also explains their de facto "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Although it is technically legal to be gay in the Russian military, in reality one wouldn't want to be caught dead admitting it.
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Caveat: Good stats within the Russian military are very hard to come by--the numbers reported above are gross guesstimates. Reportedly even the military authorities themselves don't have very good data on how many of whom are doing what.
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Geezers

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by Richard Crews
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There is a very interesting editorial by David Brooks in this morning's New York Times about the role of old folks in today's (U.S.) society.

I think it is very perceptive and informative, although its practicality is probably very limited--I wish not, but I fear so. Perhaps AARP can be persuaded to lobby "against itself" (so to speak), but I doubt it. AARP has always had, in my view, an invisible, predominant motive--making money--overlaying its visible, apparently predominant motive--getting the best for old folks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/opinion/02brooks.html?ref=opinion

Here is the test to see whether AARP really advocates the interests and priorities of seniors or just gives mouth to that, but advocates for broadly popular appeal.

(1) Does AARP advocate later retirement rather than earlier? Later is actually better for the seniors, plus it is better for society (the point of the editorial) and "real" seniors want what is best for future generations.

(2) Does AARP advocate scaling back MediCare benefits and costs? Again this runs counter to traditional, simplistic "good" for seniors, but it is better for society and "real" seniors want what is best for future generations.

(3) What happened to AARP in sustaining support for the "public option"? AARP got what it thought seniors (should) want, and abandoned the other 20 million Americans who don't have access to affordable health insurance.
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