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Failure to Communicate

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

The Republican Party recently released an analysis of their shocking Presidential campaign loss last November.

“Our message was weak; our ground game was insufficient; we weren’t inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital; our primary and debate process needed improvement,” Party Chair Priebus said of Mitt Romney and the GOP’s 2012 loss. “There’s no one solution. There’s a long list of them.”

The report outlines the need to reach out to women, African-Americans, Asian, Hispanic, and gay voters. They are going to do this by hiring staffers across the country to begin engaging those communities. They support comprehensive immigration reform, shortening the primary process with fewer debates, moving the convention date earlier in the summer, and investing in more technology.

“To be clear, our principles are sound, our principles are not old rusty thoughts in some book,” Priebus said, but the “report notes the way we communicate our principles isn’t resonating widely enough.”

Sally Bradshaw, a GOP strategist who was also on the committee, added that the GOP “needs to stop talking to itself” and needs to open the tent in order to win presidential elections in the future.

So the Republican Party is admitting that it can no longer win elections depending exclusively on the votes from old angry white men. That is progress.

The problem is that they are blaming their loss on a failure to communicate. They continue to insist that if women, minorities, young people, unions, and educated professionals voted for Obama ONLY because they didn’t understand what the Republican message really was.

A wonderful example of this delusional thinking is how Chairman Priebus handled the question of marriage equality. He held up Republican Senator Rob Portman’s recent public support of same sex marriage as an example of this new philosophy of inclusiveness.

“I think it’s about being decent,” Priebus said. “I think it’s about dignity and respect that nobody deserves to have their dignity diminished or people don’t deserve to be disrespected.

“I think that there isn’t anyone in this room, Republican, Democrat or in the middle, that doesn’t think that Rob Portman, for example, is a good conservative Republican.

“He is. And we know that. … I think that party leaders have to constantly remind everybody that we can’t build a party by division and subtraction. We can only build the party by addition and multiplication. We get that and that’s going to be our endeavor.”

When asked if the Republican Party supported Portman’s position, Prebius said, “It’s his decision. It’s not a matter of whether I support his decision. I support him doing what he wants to do as an elected person and as an American. If that’s his opinion, then I support him having that opinion.”

In other words, the Republican Party is going to continue to oppose marriage equality but will allow some who hold opposing views on the subject to still call themselves Republicans. The fact that this is newsworthy is testimony to the depths of the problem.

Conservative Republicans are so invested in their positions, that they can’t imagine why anyone familiar with those positions could oppose them.

They can’t imagine why women would object to being told that rape isn’t that bad, only whores use contraception, or if they become pregnant, regardless of the circumstances, they lose the right to make decisions about their own health.

They can’t imagine why Hispanic and Asian citizens object to being told that their efforts to fix a broken immigration system are just a thinly veiled attempt to secure amnesty for criminal behavior.

They can’t imagine why young people reject a party that says that homosexuality is sinful and college education should be available only to those who can afford it.

They can’t imagine why educated people reject a party that says that says that creationism is a science and climate change is a hoax.

The Republican Party doesn’t have a communications problem. Voters clearly understand where the Republican Party stands. The real problem is that voters REJECT Republican Party positions.

The best evidence of this is the most recent budget debate. House Republicans passed a reworked version of the Ryan budget that voters had just rejected in November. In fact, this new budget was, if anything, more cynical than the previous one. If you recall, the campaign budget had a math problem. This new budget solves some of the math problem by KEEPING the recently approved tax increases that Ryan and Romney campaigned so hard against. It also kept the taxes included in Obamacare, which Ryan claimed were job killers, while repealing the rest of the healthcare bill.

The Republican Party doesn’t have a communication problem. In fact, some of the steps they have recommended (fewer debates and a shorter primary season) may be intended to reduce the amount of information the party shares with the public.

The Republican Party has a philosophical problem. They underestimate the intelligence of the American voter and their ability to tell the difference between what the party says and what it does.

Posted in Abortion, Economy, Environment, Finance, Politics, Science | 75 Comments »

Crazy Train

Sunday, August 26th, 2012

This has been a remarkable week for exposing the crazy side of conservative Republicanism.

Women’s Issues
Suburban women were a significant part of Obama’s winning coalition in 2008 and were also the reason why so many Tea Party Congressmen were elected in 2010. So how are the Republicans doing with this particular voting block this year?

Look no further than Todd Akin the tea-party backed Congressman running against Clare McCaskill in the Missouri senate race. He referenced a loony theory created by Dr. Jack C. Willke, the father of the antiabortion movement, that pregnancy from rape is rare. This theory is important to the pro-life movement because it allows them to argue that the current exclusions of rape from abortion bans are unnecessary. Not only is this whole concept deeply offensive to women across the political spectrum, but the theory has no basis in fact.

It has also shined a light on Paul Ryan’s record regarding women’s rights. Ryan and Akin co-sponsored a bill which attempted to introduce this concept of “legitimate rape”. Ryan’s 100% rating from the National Right to Life Committee is the result of his support for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Ryan and Akin were also co-sponsors of the Sanctity of Human Life Act which sought to give a fertilized egg the same rights of “personhood” as a human being and would not only ban all abortions but outlaw some forms of birth control.

Ryan has said he will support the Romney position of allowing abortions in the case of rape, incest, or threat to the life of the mother. Some women are already wondering what would happen if Romney were elected and then could no longer serve?

Climate Change
We are going through the worst drought in 60 years which deeply affects famers. New scientific studies are released almost every week attributing this drought specifically to climate change caused by human activities. Yet, John Shimkus of Illinois who heads the house subcommittee on climate change says there is nothing to worry about. “The earth will end only when God declares it to be over,” he said, and then he went on to quote Genesis at some length.

John Barton is on the same committee. He’s the one who among other things apologized to BP because he felt the Obama administration was being too demanding following the gulf oil spill. Barton cited the Almighty in questioning energy from wind turbines. Careful, he warned, “wind is God’s way of balancing heat.” Clean energy, he said, “would slow the winds down” and thus could make it hotter. “You can’t regulate God!” Barton barked at the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in the midst of discussion on measures to curb global warming.

Michele Bachmann and Jim Inhofe claim that global warming is a hoax. Mr. Inhofe is a senior member on the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works.

Romney’s energy plan calls for increased oil drilling and relaxation of EPA regulations on the use of coal. He promises North American energy independence by 2020 (assuming Canada still likes us by then). He depends on a study by the Citigroup for his data but ignores the portion of the study which also recommends dramatic increases in conservation standards in order to achieve energy independence.

Finally Romney also promises freedom from foreign oil and cheaper gas. As long as oil is a globally traded commodity, he can’t deliver on either of these promises unless he is willing to restrict domestic oil exports. He’s said he won’t do that. So though the US balance of trade may improve when the US becomes a net oil exporter, prices will still fluctuate based on international events that could affect supply, and we will still be burning foreign oil.

Education
Jack Kingston of Georgia, a 20-year veteran of the House, is an evolution denier, apparently because he can’t see the indent where his ancestors’ monkey tail used to be. “Where’s the missing link?” he said in 2011. “I just want to know what it is.” He serves on a committee that oversees education.

Romney has taken the position that college students don’t need the loan supports they currently receive. His advice to a college student asking about how they are going to afford the costs of college is that they shop around for a cheaper college or borrow the money from parents and relatives.

Taxes
Romney does not want this election to turn on whether or not he releases his tax returns. However he continues to assist the Democrats in keeping this issue in the news. The latest evidence of this is from a talk he gave recently to a small business group.

“We’ve got to make it easier for small businesses,” Romney told a crowd of about 300 people at a high-dollar fundraiser in Minnesota. “Big business is doing fine in many places -they get the loans they need, they can deal with all the regulation. They know how to find ways to get through the tax code, save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens around the world for their businesses. But small business is getting crushed.”

So not only did he echo Obama’s remark regarding the private sector, and effectively take that off the table as a future talking point for his campaign, but one of his recommendation for helping small business appeared to be easier access to tax havens. This remark came on the heels of several reports on Bain’s practice of setting up tax havens for their customers and additional analysis of Romney’s public returns suggesting extensive use of off-shore accounts to avoid US taxes.

Budget
Romney has promised to balance the budget, but recently he also said he was going to add back $700B in Medicare spending which the Obama administration had listed as cost savings in the Affordable Care Act. This $700B, as many have already pointed out, is coming from reduced re-imbursements primarily to hospitals who have agreed to the cuts in return for seeing a reduction in their costs for caring for the uninsured. The other major source of that reduction comes from reducing the rates paid to insurance companies for the Medicare Advantage coverage since the Affordable Care Act also addresses many of the gaps in Medicare coverage that the Medicare Advantage plans filled. I’ll address the whole Medicare issue in another more detailed post. But Romney also hasn’t said how he hopes to pay for this additional $700B in spending and still keep his promise to balance the budget and reduce the deficit. His math didn’t work before. It has only gotten worse.

Birtherism
Romney has said that he doesn’t dispute Obama’s citizenship. At the same time, he met with Donald Trump during the primaries and recently made a joke about his own citizenship in a talk in Michigan where he said “no one ever asked to see my birth certificate”.

Welfare
Romney’s claim that the Obama administration is dismantling welfare work requirements has been widely criticized as a thinly veiled bit a race-baiting. It is factually inaccurate because if anything, the states requesting waivers of the current work rules were attempting to put MORE people to work rather than less. Instead it was an appeal to the portion of the Republican base who distrust an African American President and the motivation of the African Americans who support him.

Conclusion
There are a couple of things going on here.

There is a segment of the Republican party that hold beliefs well outside mainstream America. 34% of conservative Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim. 51% doubt his citizenship. 50% feel that he is a socialist. You can see that extremism in the Republican platform which includes a pledge to pass a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion without exception. It includes the construction of a giant wall along the US border with Mexico, mandatory use of electronic verification by private employers, no support for a path to citizenship, the blocking of funds to universities offering in-state tuition fees to the undocumented, and an end to federal lawsuits against controversial anti-immigrant legislation such as Arizona’s SB1070. There’s even language suggesting an annual audit of the Federal Reserve and a “gold commission” to investigate return to the gold standard.

Romney’s strategy to become President has shifted over the last month. Some pundits say that his selection of Ryan had much more to do with needing to put Wisconsin in play than it did anything else. That’s because many say that Romney can’t win Ohio. Romney has to win one of the rust belt states to have any hope of a November victory and he was willing to put Florida at risk because of Ryan’s unpopular Medicare proposals in order to improve his chances in Wisconsin.

The other shift in Romney’s strategy is that he has refocused his attention on his base. Selecting Ryan made it more difficult for him to win women, but it did guarantee a vigorous attack from Democrats. That attack and Romney’s recent statements on energy, welfare, and birtherism all indicate that the focus of the rest of his campaign is going to be on turning out the Republican base. He wants every Republican voter (including those with loony beliefs) so energized that they will be first in line when the polls open. The added benefit is that a divisive campaign not only gets his base to the polls but also suppresses the less partisan undecided voters who may decide to just stay home because they are so disgusted with the whole process.

This scorched earth strategy may work to get him elected.

It won’t leave much room for him to govern if he is successful.

Posted in Abortion, Bias, Economy, Environment, Finance, Immigration, Politics, Science | 2 Comments »

I Think We’re All Bozos on this Bus

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

For those of you too young to remember, that’s the title of Firesign Theater‘s fourth album released in 1971. One of the founders of Firesign Theater, Peter Bergman, passed on recently.

While the album ponders man’s place in a world dominated by technology, I think it is also an appropriate description of the political theater surrounding gas prices.

First the facts, the price of gas has gone up $.26 over the past year. That’s around 7%. We’ve seen those sorts of price spikes before, but this time the rise was more rapid than it has been in recent past.

The Republicans, who have been frustrated with the improving economic picture, have seized on this issue to support their claim that the current administration’s policies are really hurting the economy rather than helping it.

The general theme that all of the Republican presidential candidates have used is that more domestic drilling will bring down the price of gas. Gingrich has gone so far as to promise to bring the price down to $2.50.

The truth is that this President HAS increased domestic oil production dramatically. The last time we produced this much domestic oil was 2003. As a result we are reducing our dependence on foreign oil, but the cost of crude on the open market has still gone up.

The other reality is that oil is a globally traded commodity. As a result, there is precious little any President can do to affect the price over the short term. In fact the current run up in price has little to do with supply and everything to do with speculation.

From Politifact.com

“What can you do to change the market in the short term? The answer is not much,” said James Bartis of the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research group that provides independent policy analysis. “It takes many years to open up a new oil field, to prepare and get production from a new oilfield. Generally, I would say a decade is the minimum.”

So why are gas prices going up so quickly?

Speculators are concerned about the rising tensions between Iran, Israel, and the United States. In particular, the most recent jump in prices started more or less the same time as Republican candidates began talking about how they wouldn’t hesitate to attack Iran if Iran continued to enrich uranium.
The growth of the economies in India and China are driving up demand for cars and gas. Oil companies are expanding their production capabilities in these countries because they see the opportunity for growth. They are REDUCING their refining capacities in this country because demand for gas in this country is going down – 7% in the northeast since 2005. When demand goes down, refineries lose money. When refineries lose money, they close, as two did last year in Pennsylvania, another did last month in the USVI, and a huge Philadelphia refinery will in July if a buyer doesn’t step up. If this last refinery does close, gas will go up in the Northeast because it will have be transported from the Gulf or overseas. Huge new refineries in India are already delivering 40,000 gallons of gas a day to customers in the Northeast.
It is increasingly expensive to extract crude oil because all of the “easy” oil has already been pumped. That means more risk, more spills, and more expense. Domestic or international doesn’t matter. There is no “cheap” oil left in the ground.

While it may not be convenient for the Republicans to accept, the reality is that our best long-term options are not going to come from drilling another hole in the ground. They are going to come from more efficient use of our current resources and development of alternative energy sources and transportation options to replace fossil fuels.

That is best done by everyone getting on the same page regarding the components of a thoughtful energy policy.

Unfortunately, the clowns that populate the current political landscape seem incapable of having that sort of conversation.

Posted in Economy, Environment, Politics | 37 Comments »

Party Time

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

The Good News

In the words of Tom Friedman, “America is hard-wired to thrive” in this new world that is unfolding.

We are talking about a flat world where labor is going to flow, not just to the lowest cost markets, but to the most productive markets. This is a hyper connected world where companies have the information they need to determine which investments give them the best chance to maximize their return on investment. As an example, North America may become the cheapest place to manufacture energy intensive products (e.g. steel and aluminum) because of new domestic oil and gas discoveries. Lower costs for raw materials combined with high tech manufacturing will allow our automation-enhanced high wage workers to out compete low wage low skill alternatives.

This is a world that will reward education, innovation, and those economies that can best develop and attract talent. We are leaving the world where there are substantive differences between developed economies and developing economies. We are entering a world where the differences will be drawn between those economies who celebrate imagination and those that stifle it.

Here’s what we have to do to dominate this emerging “creativity” economy.

The Cost

We have in invest in better infrastructure, post secondary education for everyone, a welcome mat for talented immigrants, regulations that encourage risk-taking while preventing recklessness, and government funded R&D to create new opportunities for the VC community. Success depends on a strong public-private partnership where government understands its role, to make the world safe and fair for our businesses, and business understands its role, to compete aggressively, play by the rules, and grow the US economy.

We also have to address the two long-term challenges that could undermine our ability to grow this new economy – debt and entitlement obligations. There is no silver bullet here. The math is undeniable. These two problems cannot be solved without raising more revenue (likely through taxes), trimming entitlements, and reducing expenditures (primarily defense). We have to do all three. Anyone who tells you that we can accomplish this by doing less is using “magical” thinking. Magic may be entertaining, but it is only an illusion.

Finally, we have to embrace the changing energy landscape. Regardless of the new discoveries of oil and gas in North America, we will not be able to “drill” our way to a new economy. The most we can expect from those discoveries is more time to make the transitions away from fossil fuel that we all know must be made. The next great global industry is going to be efficient use of our existing resources and development of new clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels. The winners in this new economy are going to also be leaders in this new global industry.

The Bad News

We have a broken political system.

When Republicans say that they won’t accept $1 of increased revenue in return for $10 of spending cuts, they have cut themselves off from reality. It simply is not possible to make the sorts of investments that we need to make and bring down the deficit and restructure entitlements with spending cuts alone.

Similarly, when the Democrats suggest that the only thing we need to do is raise taxes on the rich, they are also not telling the truth. Entitlements also have to be restructured and spending cut.

The difference, however, is that Democrats don’t seem to have nearly the same hardened ideological positions as Republicans. In all of the confrontations that have happened since the Republicans gained control of the house and veto power in the Senate, virtually every confrontation has resulted in Democratic concessions to craft a compromise.

Third Choice

Right now the only thing that both parties are offering the American people is more of the same. They are in effect asking the voter to make a binary choice. Either voters elect enough Democrats to overcome Republican opposition to the Democratic agenda. Or voters elect enough Republicans to overcome Democratic opposition to the Republican agenda.

Both parties are guilty of “magical thinking” – suggesting that their flawed and partisan agendas are capable of addressing the needs of the country. In fact it is compromise that extracts a rational set of legislation from ideological positions that are not practical.

The way that it should work, or at least the way that it has worked in the past is that both parties bring their agendas to the table and negotiate legislation which has some Democratic items, some Republican items, and some items that are in the middle.

The Democrats still seem willing to engage in those discussions.

The Republicans, however, have rejected compromise as an option because they claim it means compromising their ideals. They have instead adopted a scorched earth strategy where they deliberately undermine the very institutions of government they took an oath to support.

If compromise is no longer part of the toolbox of the current set of Republicans, then we need a new set of Republicans.

We need are Republicans who are willing to fight for their ideas during the election cycles, but will also accept the results of an election. If they win, they will work with the Democratic minority to govern effectively. If they lose, they will engage in strategic compromises to advance the interests of country, rather than simply grind the government to a stop until the next election.

We need a Republican party that is going to offer a conservative rather than ideological vision of this new world. We need a Republican party that is willing to engage the Democrats in an informed debate on the best fiscal, energy, immigration, and public-private partnership policies. We need the sort of public dialog that educates voters on what the real issues and choices are. Then we need a Congress willing and able to craft legislation based on election results.

Conclusion

Since it is unlikely that Republicans will voluntarily abandon their current ideological crusade, there really is only one other alternative.

They have to lose and lose badly. They have to lose so badly that those who have been driving this hard turn to the right, are banished. They have to be crushed so badly that they are forced to engage in a fundamental reassessment of their strategy and values. They have to be banished to the wilderness by voters and told not to come back until they have something better to offer voters. They have to be beaten back to their senses and forced to re-engage with the Democrats rather than simply demonize them. This loss has to represent a wholesale rejection of ideology and a demand by the voters for a return of the practical, thoughtful, conservative Republicans who brought us the interstate highways system, the EPA, and the Helsinki Accord. Those Republicans can help create a new political structure where creativity rather than confrontation, ideas rather than ideology, compromise with an eye on the prize, lead us to the promised land of this new global creative economy.

Posted in Economy, Environment, Finance, Immigration, Politics, Science | 18 Comments »

Keystone Cops

Sunday, December 18th, 2011

The Keystone pipeline as been in the headlines lately as part of the “bargain” that the Republican Senators struck to pass an extension of the payroll tax holiday, unemployment benefits, and the current level of Medicare payments for physicians.

The Keystone pipeline is a project intended to cary crude oil extracted from tar sands in Canada to oil refineries in Texas.

The reason that the pipeline has been delayed is because it’s initial construction path took it through environmentally sensitive areas in Nebraska. Specifically, any oil spill in that area would threaten one of the largest supplies of underground water in the country. This aquifer supplies water to much of the upper Midwest.

Here’s what FactCheck.org said about the current status.

The president issued a statement supporting the delay, which the State Department announced Nov. 10, citing the need for an “in-depth assessment of potential alternative routes in Nebraska.” On Nov. 14 the developer announced it would change the route of the pipeline to avoid Nebraska’s sensitive Sandhills area, and said it was confident the project would ultimately be approved. On Nov. 15, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman (a Republican) praised the State Department’s action and called the re-routing a “common sense solution.”

The Nebraska governor recently signed two bills that enacted the compromise agreed upon with the pipeline builder to move the route, and approved up to $2 million in state funding for an environmental study of alternate routes.

So what is it that the Republicans want?

There is a deal in place with the Republican governor of Nebraska to find a route that doesn’t put the Ogallala Aquifer at risk. Nebraska has agreed to foot the bill for the study. The pipeline company has agreed to change the route pending the outcome of the study. The study of alternate routes should take about a year.

It appears that the Republicans are attempting to force President Obama into a public declaration of his position on this project. If he approves the project, he will upset environmentalists. If he cancels the project he will upset economic voters who are interested in jobs growth. Right now he can remain on the fence and I think has a strong defense for letting Nebraska work this out.

The President has already said publicly that he would veto any legislation requiring him to approve the Keystone pipeline project before the planned environmental study is done. The current proposed language in the payroll tax extension passed by the Senate gives him an easy out. He simply has to declare that it is not in the national interest to approve the project today.

I think that this proves how desperate the Republicans are becoming to develop substantive issues that they can use in the 2012 election.

Paul Begala recently published an interesting analysis in Newsweek.

I cannot think of a time when the economy declined but the president was not blamed—but this may be the first. If the Republicans were smart, they would do on taxes what they did on trade: quietly pass Obama’s proposals, knowing full well that even a million new jobs will not be enough to climb out of the hole Obama inherited. (Fourteen million Americans are unemployed.) The economy isn’t giving Obama enough jobs, but the Republicans are giving him the next best thing: a villain to blame for the poor economy. By killing Obama’s jobs agenda, Republicans may just save his presidency.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but so far the Obama team seems to be winning the tactical narrative battle. On the issue of jobs, the country wants the government to take action to create them. This is counter to the Republican claim that only private industry can create jobs. The country also appears perfectly fine with the concept that higher taxes on those making more than $1M a year should fund an expanded government jobs program. This is counter to the Republican claim that higher taxes on the rich will increase unemployment.

In this most recent payroll tax extension, for example, Obama successfully positioned himself as a supporter of tax cuts for the working man while Republicans were forced to oppose that tax cut if it meant raising taxes on the rich.

I think that this is going to be drumbeat from here through the election next year. Obama will continue to position Republicans as defenders of the rich and the status quo. He is certainly vulnerable to the attack that he is shirking his own responsibility for the past four years of economic pain, but as Paul Begala has pointed out, so far he has been successful in forcing the Republican party into positions where their actions confirm Obama’s narrative that they are the real villains.

Posted in Economy, Environment, Politics | No Comments »

Pray for Rain

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

First by way of disclosure, I do believe in the power of prayer.

I believe that God is all powerful, all knowing, and all loving. A loving God does not punish His people. We are His people – all of us. We also have the ability to turn our backs on our Creator and choose to pursue our own path. Not surprisingly, the further that path takes us from God, the more difficult it becomes for us because we start to live in a world of our own creation. The world we create is one governed by fear rather than love because God, who knows no fear, is not there. So we punish ourselves by choosing to live in our world rather than the one that God created for us.

It is prayer that brings us back into alignment with God. As we humbly give up our own view of how things should be and accept that God has to have a better plan for us than we could ever create, things get better.

That’s why public prayers for rain don’t work.

A public prayer for rain suggests that somehow God isn’t aware that droughts kill crops and livestock, and hurt people. But that doesn’t square with an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God who cares deeply for all His creation. So something is out of whack here. Either God is not who we think He is, or our perception of our circumstances is somehow skewed. A more effective prayer is one that is personal and private. One that reaffirms who God is and asks in deep humility and reverence for help in opening our eyes to God’s reality.

“And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” 2 Kings 6:17

The same thing applies to the perceived conflict between science and religion that some conservative Republicans have raised.

Science is not in conflict with God. Science helps reveal the grandeur and precision of God’s creation. There are laws which reliably govern the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. This is God at work left for man to discover.

As a result, science is not in and of itself political or ideological. Scientists are committed to a search for truth. The scientific peer review process has a built-in bias to new solutions and new theories. If someone has a disruptive idea and has the data to back up their claim, the scientific community engages to test both the idea and the data that the experiments created. If others can independently reproduce the data from the experiments, the data is confirmed. If the idea holds up to other tests with other data, the idea is also confirmed.

Sometimes people misconstrue open and frank debate over ideas as an indication that the idea itself is unreliable. Nothing could be further from the truth. This whole process of robust questioning is what STRENGTHENS ideas. Those that repeatedly survive challenges make the progress from theory to widely held belief.

So the theory of evolution and natural selection is widely and broadly supported by the scientific community even though there are some researchers who explore alternative ideas. The same thing is true regarding climate change. It is widely and broadly supported by the scientific community (97% at last count) as is the conclusion that these changes are the result of human activity even though there are some researchers who are exploring alternative ideas.

So when did science come into conflict with religion? When scientific advances call some religious beliefs into question, those who hold those beliefs are going to object. To be clear, scientists don’t generally seek to attack religious beliefs. They are simply trying to explain how this wonderful creation of God works.

Galileo was engaged in the scientific process of trying to test Copernicus’ heliocentric theory of the universe using an improved telescope of his own design. Using that telescope he discovered moons orbiting Jupiter. He presented this new data in an attempt to convince the Catholic Church that their geocentric theory was incorrect. They chose to persecute him as a heretic instead. That’s because of the belief by the church that their understanding of the Bible required the earth to be at the center of the universe. Ultimately the church had to admit centuries later that their interpretation of the Bible was wrong.

When Darwin proposed the theory of evolution, he was widely criticized as an apostate. That’s because fundamentalists promoted a literal interpretation of the Bible which said that God created the first man Adam. Most all progressive churches have no problem with evolutionary theory because they treat the Bible’s creation stories as metaphors. Fundamentalist churches, however, continue to offer alternative theories which better align with their beliefs even though those theories have not survived rigorous scientific peer review.

Neither Galileo nor Darwin overtly attacked religion. They were simply scientists doing what scientists do, take a set of data and build a theory to explain it. Religion on the other hand was loathe to change and as a result mounted a vigorous defense.

Global warming doesn’t have quite the same arc of revelation and response. The response here was by conservative politicians with close ties to the oil and gas industries. They successfully leveraged the skepticism that already existed among fundamentalist Christian communities regarding ANY scientific study. Global warming doesn’t directly call any fundamentalist belief into question. But because of the efforts of conservative politicians, fundamentalist Christians who were already reluctant to accept ANY science as reliable, now oppose climate change simply because it is something supported by scientists and liberals.

The most convincing demonstration of the power of the convergence of fundamentalist Christian beliefs and conservative politics is Rick Perry. The line between belief and politics is so blurred in his candidacy that he can hold beliefs such as questioning evolution and denying climate change and still be considered a serious contender for the office. In fact his position that there should be MORE religion in politics is one of the reasons that he quickly jumped to the head of the pack.

So many of the republican faithful are passionate about these positions that it has required less conservative candidates like Mitt Romney to walk back their previous science-based positions on Climate Change and Evolution. For example, only 21% of Republican voters in Iowa believe that the climate is changing. Only 35% accept the theory of evolution. Since willful ignorance seems to be a litmus test for Republican candidates, Mr. Romney is determined to pass that test in order to win the nomination.

These are now becoming dangerous waters because we may elect someone at some point in the future who either denies the value of scientific research or pretends to believe whatever will get him elected. This leaves only ideology as the guiding principle for leading the country. As we’ve seen in the recent debt ceiling debate, when people take ideological positions they reduce their ability to compromise. The result is conflict and crisis rather than effective government.

Given the challenges we face over next decade, can we really afford to elect someone who is anti-science and anti-knowledge – someone who is guided by a set of principles so rigid and inflexible that they can’t be questioned or challenged? I hope not.

Posted in Environment, Politics, Religious Conservatism, Science | No Comments »

The End of the Wealth-Driven Economy

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

First a definition: What I mean by the wealth-driven economy is classic capitalism. In a capitalist economic system, production is carried out to maximize private profit, decisions regarding investment and the use of the means of production are determined by competing business owners in the marketplace; production is based on the process of capital accumulation. The means of production are owned primarily by private enterprises and decisions regarding production and investment determined by private owners in capital markets.

Capitalism and the free market system have been at the foundation of most successful modern economies. There are certainly problems with this system as evidenced by the bubbles that tend to form which leads to boom and bust cycles. But that isn’t the purpose of this particular post.

I’m interested in something far more fundamental. What if capitalism stopped working on a global scale? Or perhaps more accurately, what if we discovered that capitalism was not only bad for the planet, but affected our ability as a species to survive? What would we do?

Would we continue to cling to this model as resource shortages drove countries to war? If we grew sick and died from polluted air, contaminated water, or tainted food would we change the way that we live?

Capitalism at its base is about expansion and consumption. That works as long as you have sufficient resources to support that expansion and demand for increased production. But what happens when you cut down all of the trees? What happens when you extract all of the oil? What happens when you use up all of the fresh water? What happens when you can no longer breathe the air? In other words, what happens if we determine that capitalism and the drive for individual wealth is making it harder rather than easier to live on this planet?

I would hope that we would change. Maslow certainly suggests that survival is our most powerful drive. So the next question is how? What would replace greed and self-interest as the basic economic motivation?

Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, has looked at this question and suggests that we could switch to a happiness economy rather than one driven by consumerism and the accumulation of wealth. We would work less, own less, consume less and focus more of our time on being happy rather than being wealthy. In other words, we skip right over dollars as a measure of happiness, and determine how to measure happiness directly. With a clearer understanding of what constitutes happiness, we’ll also gain a better understanding of what we need to do to increase our particular share.

All of this may sound hopelessly utopian at this point where the existential crisis aren’t obvious, but it is also consistent with what Jesus suggested his followers do if they wanted to experience eternal life. They had to leave their past life, give away all that they had, and follow Him.

The facts, however, point to a time in the fairly near future when capitalism will be a threat to our civilization and even our species.

The Global Footprint Network, for example, calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rate. According to their studies, we have already passed the point where the Earth can replenish the resources we are consuming with a growth rate of about 1.5 Earths.

Tom Friedman recently wrote in a column entitled The Earth is Full, “We’re currently caught in two loops: One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability. At the same time, improved productivity means fewer people are needed in every factory to produce more stuff. So if we want to have more jobs, we need more factories. More factories making more stuff make more global warming, and that is where the two loops meet.”

So will we change?

The prospect is intriguing – civilization moving closer to a spiritual measure of fulfillment (happiness) rather than a material measure (wealth). God does work in mysterious ways.

Posted in Economy, Environment | 3 Comments »

Resurrection of Global Warming

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

A couple of weeks ago the Republican-controlled house Science and Technology committee put together a “blue-ribbon” panel to demonstrate their side of the now highly politicized climate change debate. Their intent was to continue to introduce fear, uncertainty, and doubt into the scientific claim that the earth is warming at an alarming rate and humans are the cause of that warming. This was part of the larger Republican efforts to block EPA efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The panel was stuffed with anti-regulatory advocates. One called for called for the end of all government funding for climate change research, as well as support for all “global organizations” working toward agreements on reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Another said the US should not rely on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and needs a second opinion from a “non-activist” scientific team.

Richard Muller was supposed to be the lynch pin of this orchestrated attack on the EPA and the Obama administration’s support for restricting greenhouse gases. He is a UC Berkeley physicist and long time critic of government-led climate studies. He created The Berkeley Earth Science Project to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming. His project’s largest private backer is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. This foundation is one of the charitable funds set up by oil billionaires and tea-party funders, Charles and David Koch.

A funny thing happened on the way to forum.

Professor Muller took a statistical approach to analyzing the scientific data that has already been published on global warming. He was the first to speak and dropped a bombshell on the panel.

Instead of finding some variance in the results which would suggest that the data as well as the interpretations of the data suggesting global warming was suspect, he told the hearing that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is “excellent…. We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.”

Other members of the scientific community applauded Muller’s courage in recanting his previous views. Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, which contributed some funding to the Berkeley effort, said Muller’s statement to Congress was “honorable” in recognizing that “previous temperature reconstructions basically got it right…. Willingness to revise views in the face of empirical data is the hallmark of the good scientific process.”

Unfortunately, some global warming skeptics reacted differently to Muller’s conclusions.

Anthony Watts, a former TV weatherman who runs the skeptic blog WattsUpWithThat.com, made a name for himself through his efforts to show that weather station data in official studies are untrustworthy because of the urban heat island effect, which boosts temperature readings in areas that have been encroached on by cities and suburbs. Muller has praised Watts for his work in the past, but leading climatologists said the previous studies accounted for the effect. The Berkeley analysis confirmed that. “Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming?” Muller asked in his written testimony. “We’ve studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no.”

Watts responded that the Berkeley group is releasing results that are not “fully working and debugged yet…. But, post normal science political theater is like that.”

The realities are that this particular scientific issue has become so politicized that researchers are faced with the very real challenge that the result of their work may affect their future access to research funds. If we really DO want unbiased scientific research, we have to insulate researchers from the political effects of their findings. Professor Muller represents the best of what we should expect from our scientific community. When the data did not agree with his previous public position, he changed his position rather than continue to question the data.

Unfortunately we don’t seem willing or able to hold our politicians to the same high ethical standards as we expect from our scientists. The reality is that our politicians often represent what is best for their largest donors. Here are a couple of examples.

Sen. Jim Inhoffe is famous for saying, ”man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Inhofe has accepted $1.2 million from oil and gas interests over the course of his career, making the industry far and away his most generous contributor. He voted to preserve $35 billion in oil and gas subsidies last year.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) is a strenuous opponent of the Endangered Species Act because the economic consequences “would be utterly devastating”. Over the past few years, oil and gas companies have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Wyoming Republican.

This really comes down to a question of trust. If we trust our scientists, we have to force our politicians to respond to the guidance we are receiving from them. If we would prefer to trust our politicians, we leave ourselves vulnerable to those special interests who clearly are attempting to influence the political agenda for their own gain. Three quarters of the American people want to eliminate oil and gas subsidies. More than half call global warming a “major problem” and feel that the government is “doing too little”. It will be interesting in this next election cycle to see how long conservative Republicans can continue to hold out against both science and popular opinion.

Posted in Bias, Economy, Environment, Politics | 13 Comments »

Ignorance is not Bliss

Monday, February 28th, 2011

How do you explain at this point that one in three Republicans believe that President Obama is a foreign-born Muslim? Even Sara Palin has encouraged the birthers to give up the cause because it is starting to be embarrassing, but they remain steadfast in their commitment to their particular delusion.

We have more climate change deniers, creation “science” supporters, and Christian founding father historical revisionists in congress than ever. It doesn’t matter that none of these lunacies have any support from mainstream scientists or historians. They have become a conservative cult religion that can no longer be debated in any meaningful way.

We also have the largest gap between the rich and poor in the history of this country and larger than any other industrialized country in the world. This gap started widening in the 70′s when middle class wages stagnated and the wealthy won tax breaks from virtually every Republican administration.

The Republican Party’s latest ploy is to use the specter of our children being burdened with an unmanageable debt to create the impression that the nation is teetering on the brink of financial collapse. Nothing could be further from the truth. None of the traditional signals which indicate that our borrowing is causing a problem are present. Inflation is low. Foreigners are happy to buy our debt at historically low interest rates. There is also plenty of credit available for business.

While it is true that we have to deal with the deficit, it isn’t near term spending that financial markets are concerned with. It is our ability to deal with the long-term structural debt from healthcare and entitlement programs that worry our creditors.

Our more immediate concern should be increased employment. That is the single most effective and efficient way to reduce the short term deficit.

Instead, the cuts that are proposed will not only increase unemployment and reduce public safety, but also directly harm the very kids whose financial future we were supposed to be protecting.

Now the same folks are trying to take away the single most powerful right that the working man has. That’s the right to band together and bargain with their employers as a group.

This deficit is NOT the fault of the working man. It is the fault of unfunded wars, windfall tax cuts for the rich and unregulated financial markets. It is the result of decades of attack on the middle class by the wealthy and powerful. And it is being paid for by dismantling the social safety net which helps keep people from slipping back into poverty.

The rich are getting richer because they have used their wealth to purchase favors from the government while telling you that they shared your values and you believed them. They told you that your kids needed to save the world from Saddam while they made billions from no-bid defense contracts and you believed them. They told you that government was the problem while government was cutting them a special deal and you believed them. They told you that their wealth and power would trickle down to you, convinced you to give them tax breaks, and invested the money overseas while closing US plants and you believed them. They told you that you can’t trust scientists and professors who documented dangerous corporate practices and you believed them. They told you that mainstream newspapers are biased when they ran stories of corporate corruption and you believed them. They told you that liberal elites who tried to limit corporate power were the cause of all your problems and you believed them. They told you that they are the only people that you can trust and you believed them.

As they outsource your jobs, took your homes, drained your savings, starved your children, and turned you against your neighbor, you continued to believe. As they slowly sucked the last blood from your body and consumed the last bit of oxygen from your lungs, you cursed the darkness and wondered how this happened to you.

It happened to you to because you chose to ignore the facts that screamed that the rich and influential are not your friends and are stealing from you because you aren’t paying attention.

Posted in Economy, Environment, Finance, Politics, Religious Conservatism, Science | 13 Comments »

Sputniks

Sunday, December 12th, 2010

“Many of the people therefore, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the Prophet. Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was? So there was a division among the people because of him.” John 7:40-43

The Jews were divided on whether or not this man Jesus was the Christ that they had been waiting for. He healed in ways that no one had ever seen. He stirred such deep feelings in people that some left all they had to follow Him. Yet, some were so caught up in their own interpretations of scripture that they were unwilling to accept that the Messiah they had been praying for had come. They would rather deny the truth of what this man said and did than give up their particular ideology. There were also those in positions of power who felt threatened by ANY Messiah. They knew that the Messiah was supposed to overturn the current political order, defeat the Romans, and re-establish Israel as an independent and powerful country. They didn’t want to see that happen because it likely would have turned them out of power too. Ultimately these were the ones who arranged to kill him.

There is a lot of the same ideologically motivated self-centered short-term thinking going on in this country today.

It wasn’t always like that.

I grew up during the cold war and benefited from the government’s investment in math and science in the 60’s.

The Russians beat us into space with the Sputnik. Just like the various healings that Jesus performed, this was clear and undeniable evidence that Russian technology was better than ours. Their missiles didn’t blow up. Their missiles were powerful enough to put an object into orbit. If they could put a satellite into orbit, they might be able to put a nuclear bomb into orbit too. President Eisenhower rallied the country to respond. The response was the government’s commitment to produce a generation of engineers and scientists who would be the best in the world.

I was able to attend a college prep summer camp for bright math and science high school juniors sponsored by the National Science Administration. It’s where I met the cute smart girl who eventually became my wife.

I got a scholarship to Northwestern University that wouldn’t have been available to a kid from Omaha, if it weren’t for continued government support of math and science education.

That commitment turned things around in this country. We beat the Russians to the moon. We had the largest arms race in history. We fought a proxy war in Korea and another in Vietnam.

We also created a generation of tech savvy kids who went on to create the personal computer industry and start the largest industrial revolution since the printing press.

The world situation is not that much different now.

We aren’t engaged in a cold war with a power that has missiles pointed in our direction. Instead we are engaged in an economic war with emerging East Asian superpowers. They aren’t threatening us with missiles. They are overwhelming us with innovation and efficiency. They are doing a better job of educating their children and as a result, they are beating us in the marketplace of ideas.

That’s not the only place that they are beating us. They provide better healthcare. They live longer. They invest more in alternative energy. Their networks are faster. Their citizens are more connected. Their economies offer more opportunity. More than all of that, they have focus on what they are trying to accomplish and how they are going to accomplish it. The United States used to be where all the smart Asian kids wanted to move because it was the land of opportunity. Not anymore. They still come here for college and to learn english. When they graduate, however, they return home because that’s where the new fortunes are being made.

Now let’s compare that to how our government is spending it’s time. We are cutting educational budgets at all levels. College education is fast becoming a luxury that only the rich can afford. Our graduate schools are filled with foreign students who come here to learn how to beat us at our own game. We can’t agree on healthcare. We think our competition is the guy across the street that belongs to a different party, when our real competition is our Asian neighbors. They are happy to buy our debt, out educate and out work us, and take all of our manufacturing jobs. They will soon take our engineering and finance jobs too because we are more concerned about prayer, creationism, and sex education in school rather than the quality of our math and science courses.

By any objective measure (feel free to pick), we are falling behind our international competitors. Worse, we appear powerless to respond because we have allowed our leaders to convince us ideology is more important than our shared values of being the best.

We have created a political environment where it is impossible to speak out about our competitive disadvantage. Every time the President even hints at the fact that we are not the best in world at something, the right-wing media machine tries to nail him to the wall as being unpatriotic, socialistic, or some sort of Asian Manchurian candidate. The right wing starts every conversation with an affirmation that America is the greatest country in the world. Then they go on to chant that the only people who don’t believe it are the liberal elites who only care about tearing this country down.

The papers are filled with diatribes about competing ideologies with no explanation about how these ideologies will improve our international competitiveness. We are obsessed with illegal immigration while we blissfully ignore the jobs that we export with every purchase at Walmart. We depend on call centers in India to explain how to use our China-built technology. We allow our biggest companies to reduce their taxes by putting their profits in other country’s banks. We squander our wealth by giving tax breaks to folks who don’t need them and fighting dead-end wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The bad news is that the proverbial sputniks are flying over our head every day.

We ranked 17^th in recent world-wide standardized student testing. The top five were Shanghai, South Korea, Finland, Hong Kong, and Singapore. They didn’t get there by accident.

We have the most expensive healthcare system in the world, but are only 37^th in life expectancy. Why is this problem so hard for us to solve, when even poor tiny communist Cuba is able to beat us?

We don’t even crack the top ten in broadband internet availability per capita, and this was a technology that we invented.

We aren’t in the top twenty “greenest” countries. In terms of investment in the new growth field of alternative energy, China leads the world.

Even in measures of economic freedom where we think we are a world leader, we trail Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, and Australia.

We need the Tea Party to start thinking about what truly made this country great, which was our commitment to common purpose and our drive to be the best in all that we do. They should be holding government accountable for a real return on our investment, rather than labeling all government as evil and all tax revenue as waste. The Republicans need to engage in helping figure out how to fund our growth rather than cut our deficit. History has proven that you can’t cut your way to prosperity. Our competitors certainly understand that. The huge Chinese stimulus package was focused directly on growing their business exports. The Democrats need to remind themselves what it felt like to have a unified country, quit blaming the Republicans for getting in the way, and start giving the American people a vision and a promise of a future that they can believe in.

Most of all the American people need to accept the fact that we’ve done this to ourselves by focusing on our differences rather than our similarities. We’ve allowed our politicians to divide us up into warring camps, while our international competitors happily take advantage of us.

We can reclaim greatness, but only if we are willing to admit that our greatness comes from our ability to overcome our difference. We do that by celebrating a selfless commitment to the greater good. That greater good, by definition, must include everyone – not just those that agree with you. It means that the only progress that counts is progress where everyone gets ahead, not just the wealthy. It means that everyone is entitled to a piece of the pie as long as they are willing to work for it. For those who through no fault of their own are unable to work, they get to come along too, because another one of our shared values is that we don’t leave anyone behind.

Posted in Economy, Environment, Finance, Immigration, Politics, Religious Conservatism, Science | 2 Comments »

Spiritual wickedness in high places