cascadian telegrams

liberalism

Tony Judt (Postwar) steps back and thinks about liberalism and the US in the NYRB:

 

Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so? We appear to have lost the capacity to question the present, much less offer alternatives to it. Why is it so beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage?

sourcemap

(hat tip to my friend Richard for this one)

I’ve thought about this idea for ages, and someone is finally implementing it:  Show me precisely the source (and by extension, a way to gauge environmental impact) for all the materials in things I purchase so that I can make good decisions.

sourcemap is brilliant.  From the site:

SourceMap is an open source project about where things come from.

Simply put: We believe that people have the right to know where things come from and what they are made of.
Sourcemap is a platform for researching, optimizing and sharing the supply chains behind a number of everyday products (more info).

Here’s a snippet from their site of what’s behind a “typical laptop computer”

‘gatesgate’

so instead of talking about health care, the defining issue of the day, the MSM spends the last three days talking about ‘GatesGate’, where Prof. Henry Gates of Harvard gets arrested after a police office arrives at his house due to a neighbor phoning about a suspected break-in.

What happened?  No one can say.  None of us were there.  My take:

this isn’t about race… it is about class. It is about a celebrity Harvard academic who lost his temper and believed he could “dress down” a police officer and get away with it. I’m sorry, but most people who try that will end up in the back of a squad car. Gates is the one who “acted stupidly”.

There is zero evidence that this particular cop has any history of racial problems. So why did President Obama even *mention* racial profiling? What bearing does racial profiling have on this incident, based on the facts? None.

I support the president, but he dropped the ball yesterday.

for real?

I doubt it… this ‘commemorative’ invite to the inauguration is probably just for people like us who sent the Obama campaign money.  Maybe they think we’ll frame it or something.  I’m giving it to a coworker who is going to D.C. for the inauguration… let’s see if it gets him in to at least a party or two.  We’ll watch on the telly.

[UPDATE] Not for real.  It is a commemorative invite sent out to 1,000,000 early supporters of Barack Obama.  I will give it to Malcolm so when we're gone he can sell it on eBay or something :).

merry christmas to us: obama announces the science ‘dream team’

I could not be more pleased with this Obama’s appointments this week for science advisors, running NOAA and more.  In his weekly radio address, Obama said:

…science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States—and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.

 

From ScienceDebate2008’s Shawn Otto::

In addition to Steven Chu, John Holdren, and Jane Lubchenco, we would like to congratulate Science Debate 2008 supporters Harold Varmus and Eric Lander on being named co-chars of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  A 1989 Nobel laureate in medicine, Dr Varmus is former director of NIH and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and has been one of our closest and strongest advocates throughout the last year - we are very pleased and proud of his appointment.  Also an early supporter of Science debate 2008, Dr Lander is the Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; the first author of the Human Genome Project, and one of TIME's 100 most influential people of our time (2004).

America was founded by scientist-statesmen like Jefferson and Franklin.  It has always been an important part of our identity and success as a nation.  We are hopeful that with these appointments, the American destiny with science can be reengaged to tackle our most pressing challenges as a nation, nearly all of which revolve around questions of science and technology.   Now, the next step for the new administration will be successfully communicating this agenda to the American public, and reengaging the American media on these questions which are so critical to our ongoing success as a nation.

This is fantastic news for all of us who have lived under administrations with theocratic and dogmatic leanings, and it is great to see President Obama putting science and reason front-and-center.  This is why I voted for him.

My only complaints with the appointments thus far are the appointments of Tom Vilsack of Agriculture Secretary (like Michael Pollan, I wanted someone who would revolutionize the way we produce and think about food, not an ag-advocate) and Robert Rubin, who at CitiBank presided over the current catastrophe.  He does not deserve a place at the table.

amory lovins for energy secretary

(I just posted this over at daily kos, x-posting here for posterity…)

The web is now chockablock with "Open Letters to President-Elect Obama" where the world feels compelled to climb on our collective soapbox in the hope that he, like Santa, will read each letter and put something nice in the Christmas sack.

But this post isn't addressed directly to Obama... it is for you, netizens.  It is a plea to help push the idea of Amory Lovins for Energy Czar in an Obama administration (an idea that has been pushed by Chris McGowan and others).

In our current situation -- a listing auto industry, tanking economy and soaring energy prices -- I can think of no more important position than Energy Secretary, and no better place to affect change. 

The auto industry is asking for a huge bailout.  Many jobs will likely depend on the outcome.  But the big three automakers have dug their own, deep hole by building vehicles that are inefficient and that fewer and fewer people are willing to buy.  They have also resisted attempts to increase fuel efficiency standards and they haven't seriously invested in LEV/ZEV research such as Toyota or Honda have. 

So clearly, we are at an inflection point.  A targeted bailout with requirements to invest in building LEV/ZEVs is an opportunity to affect our auto industry, our energy future, our economy and the environment with a single stroke.  It is also an opportunity for an Obama administration to demonstrate leadership and boldness. 

But who to lead such an effort?  The names that have been floated around the 'net thus far -- Schwarzenegger, Sibelius etc. -- are not the names of people with the vision or background to enact such a game-changing gesture.

But Amory Lovins is such a peson.   He's a scientist, entrepeneur,  environmentalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient and inventor of the hypercar, a 100 mpg design prototype.  He's an expert in energy efficiency and author of 29 books including "Winning the Energy Endgame".  He received a Time Magazine "Hero of the Planet" award in 2007 and has advised the pentagon and over a dozen countries on energy and security issues.

Drafting Lovins for Energy Czar and striking a forward-looking bailout deal with the big three would be game-changing moves by the Obama adminstration.  It would signal to Detroit and the world that we in the United States are serious about energy efficiency and transportation, and that we're willing to compete to build the cars and infrastructure for the future.  Cars that US workers would build.  Cars that we could once again export to the world.

[Update:  Well that went over like a lead balloon… but I feel better for trying!]

"look what we did..."

spreading the wealth around

As Michael Kinsley notes, John McCain has been busy hammering Obama on his off-the-cuff comment (to "Joe" the "Plumber") about 'spreading the wealth around' ":

John McCain thinks Obama's "spread the wealth" comment is a major gotcha. He has locked his chops around this remark like a terrier around Obama's ankle and keeps repeating it. He regards it as self-evidently self-damning. On Meet the Press, McCain ducked Tom Brokaw's invitation to agree or disagree with Sarah Palin that Obama is a "socialist." But a day later McCain brandished a radio interview from seven years ago in which Obama had used the term redistributive change.

Besides the fact that it is a churlish and likely-futile meme, it disregards an important fact:  Sometimes, spreading the wealth around is good (and I say this as someone who will likely be spreading wealth around -- a bit -- to others, if Obama wins).

We lived in Denmark for 3 years.  One statistic the Danes are especially proud of is the fact that 97% of the population there is 'middle class'.   That is an astounding statistic.  It means that they have no extreme poor and few extremely rich.  They also consistently rank at or near the top in things like 'happiness index' which merely polls people and asks them how happy they are.  This is in spite of the fact that virtually everyone there pays > 50% in income tax to the government, which is a huge number.  They get many services in return such as cradle-to-grave healthcare, fully-paid education from kindergarten through university and more, but it is still a significant tax burden.

Now, I would say that Denmark is clearly 'socialist' (even though it is also considered an attractive location for business due to a progressive business tax structure) and I don't think their system would apply directly here in the US.  But there is a middle ground to be struck between European-style social democracy and the laissez-faire systems of, say, South America.  Kinsley, again:

Although it was an off-the-cuff remark and one that Obama probably regrets, he actually put it well, avoiding the suggestion of envy or class war, which are the usual accusations about such talk. Spreading it around is "good for everybody," he says. And who disagrees? Or would you like to live behind locked gates and hire guards to protect your family from kidnapping, as in places where they spread it around even less than here?

Any place there are great disparities in wealth, there will be increases in crime.  You can see this firsthand in large cities such as New York, where there are people living in refrigerator boxes on the sidewalk next to very expensive Central Park hotels (I witnessed this firsthand, not long ago). Besides the fact that it is morally reprehensible to ignore these facts, it is in our own self-interest in more peaceful lives to help ameliorate these problems.

The New Empiricism in Politics (Sullivan)

Today Andrew Sullivan points out Seed Magazine's endorsement of Obama in the name of science and empirical thinking.  Moving government away from dogmatism is a large part of why I'm voting for Obama.

Seed endorses Obama:

Science is a way of governing, not just something to be governed. Science offers a methodology and philosophy rooted in evidence, kept in check by persistent inquiry, and bounded by the constraints of a self-critical and rigorous method. Science is a lens through which we can and should visualize and solve complex problems, organize government and multilateral bodies, establish international alliances, inspire national pride, restore positive feelings about America around the globe, embolden democracy, and ultimately, lead the world. More than anything, what this lens offers the next administration is a limitless capacity to handle all that comes its way, no matter how complex or unanticipated.

Sen. Obama's embrace of transparency and evidence-based decision-making, his intelligence and curiosity echo this new way of looking at the world.

And this, I think, helps describe Obama's political disposition pretty accurately: a liberal empiricist. And it's the empiricism that makes him attractive to conservatives of a Burkean disposition.

if mccain wins...