Obsidian Wings

Read the News Today, Oh Boy

by publius

Pew released a new poll outlining a gap between scientists and the general public on various issues.  There's a lot to chew on, but these numbers in particular stood out:

First thought -- isn't 87% a bit low for scientists' belief in natural selection?  I would hope that number is close to 100%.  But regardless, it's nothing compared to the general public's depressing numbers.  Apparently only 32% believe in natural selection.  I mean, really?  In 2009?  32%?  Good lord.

And then we have the global warming numbers.  Roughly half the public disagrees with the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are contributing to global warming. 

It's all very depressing.  And it just goes to show that sustained, systematic efforts of fraud and lying can indeed pay dividends.  It also shows the harm the media inflicts when it doesn't expose and push back on demonstrably false statements, which includes virtually everything that Senator Inhofe says.

My One and Only Sanford Post

by publius

Poor Mark Sanford – the skeletons keep spilling out of his closet.  And I suspect he’s not long for the Governor’s office.

I can’t help but feel bad for him.  And I suppose this is inappropriate – but from a purely voyeuristic perspective, there’s something tragically beautiful about the whole thing in an ancient Greek/Shakespearian sense. 

To me, the essence of Shakespearian tragedies is that they feature our most basic human animal emotions playing out at the very highest levels of political power.  Enormous public consequences result from individuals acting on their most primitive of emotions.  Acts of rage and lust and jealousy, for instance, cause entire kingdoms to rise and fall.

And that’s what’s tragic about Sanford.  Here’s a governor who was a rising star and a very credible presidential candidate.  He had the affection of ideological conservatives.  In short, he had everything going for him.  But then lust – basic human lust – brought the whole thing crashing down.  I can’t really speak to the morality of it, but it’s good theater from an aesthetic perspective.

The other tragic dimension here – one shared by people like Clinton and Edwards – is that the basic human emotions that brought Sanford down are, ironically, the very same traits that fueled his rise to power.  The yin comes with the yang.

This is armchair psychology to be sure – but successful politicians have a lot of common traits.  They are passionate, ambitious, determined – and they have a real thirst for winning, and for conquest.  If you don’t have this primal ambition driving you, it’s hard to go very far in politics.  Kerry had it.  Bush had it.  Clinton had it.  Carcetti had it.  I think Obama has it too – he’s just better at masking it.

And while these traits have their benefits, they have their costs too.  They can make you reckless – they can make you jump into battles better left alone.  And I can see Sanford in that light.  He was one of the most ideological Republicans in the country – and that helped fuel his rise to power.  It doesn’t shock me, then, that he would be willing to lose himself in ideological love for a mistress abroad.  It all sort of fits.

Quote That Man

by publius

Noted communist Michael Gerson spells out the case for emission regulation as succinctly as anyone I've read.  In particular, he notes that one of the underlying purposes of the regulation is to spur market innovation.  Take it away:

Critics argue that carbon restrictions, even if fully implemented, would reduce global temperatures only by minor amounts, which is true. We are not going to regulate our way out of global climate disruption. . . .

But conservatives seem strangely intent on ignoring the power of markets to encourage such innovation. Right now, the emission of carbon is essentially cost-free. Putting a price on carbon would make the development of cleaner energy technologies more profitable.

It's actually worse than cost-free.  There are huge costs -- it's just that they're borne by the public at large rather than by emitters.  Pricing carbon internalizes these costs -- it's the same idea underlying regulation of pollution.

The Great Susan Collins

by publius

Boy, this isn't going to age well (via Yglesias/Political Carnival).  Here's Susan Collins in a press conference on February 5, 2009:

And these decisions are difficult. For example, I think everybody in the room is concerned about pandemic flu. Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill? No, we should not. So, after discussion, we agreed that we would cut the funding for that, knowing that we can deal with that issue later.

And here's another on January 31 (via CNN/Lexis):

COLLINS: There is funding to help improve our preparedness for a pandemic flu. There is funding to help improve cyber-security. What does that have to do with an economic stimulus package?

I'll field that one -- it's hard to go to work if you have pandemic flu.

Clearly she should have the deciding vote on all issues of national importance.

[UPDATE:  John Nichols has much more.]

Over One In Eight

by hilzoy

Brandon Friedman has a scary article in the Military Times (h/t):

"The Army is in the midst of a disturbing trend that threatens not only our immediate goals in the current conflicts, but, more importantly, the long term health of the organization.  The fact is, while the Army has been lowering its entrance standards with regard to education, physical fitness, and crime since the end of the Cold War, that process has accelerated since the invasion of Iraq.  And this is something that the incoming Army Secretary should address.

The numbers are shocking when you actually see the scope of the issue:

Dr. Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer,  points out that in 1992 98 percent of recruits had a high school diploma.  By 2004, that number had fallen to 86 percent.  In 2007, only 79 percent of Army recruits had completed high school.  Whereas nearly everyone in the Army had a diploma 15 years earlier, by 2007, fewer than four out five soldiers did.

In terms of maintaining a professional force, the numbers of "conduct" waivers are  even more troubling.  For felonies or serious misdemeanors (or three minor misdemeanors), the Army granted entrance waivers to 4.6 percent of its recruits in 2004.  That number had more than doubled to 11 percent at the end of 2007. And in the first half of 2008, the number ballooned to 13 percent.  To put it starkly, this means that one out of every eight Army recruits now has a criminal record."

Actually, it's probably higher than that: recruits with fewer than three misdemeanors don't need a waiver, and so aren't included in that 13%. 

The idea that over one in eight Army recruits has a criminal record is really scary. But hey: at least they aren't lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender! 

Tennessee Environmental Disaster Update

by hilzoy

From the NYT, a few days ago:

"In a single year, a coal-fired electric plant deposited more than 2.2 million pounds of toxic materials in a holding pond that failed last week, flooding 300 acres in East Tennessee, according to a 2007 inventory filed with the Environmental Protection Agency.

The inventory, disclosed by the Tennessee Valley Authority on Monday at the request of The New York Times, showed that in just one year, the plant’s byproducts included 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, 1.4 million pounds of barium, 91,000 pounds of chromium and 140,000 pounds of manganese. Those metals can cause cancer, liver damage and neurological complications, among other health problems.

And the holding pond, at the Kingston Fossil Plant, a T.V.A. plant 40 miles west of Knoxville, contained many decades' worth of these deposits.

For days, authority officials have maintained that the sludge released in the spill is not toxic, though coal ash has long been known to contain dangerous concentrations of heavy metals. On Monday, a week after the spill, the authority issued a joint statement with the E.P.A. and other agencies recommending that direct contact with the ash be avoided and that pets and children should be kept away from affected areas."

I would have thought that when sludge containing these quantities of toxins spills into the water supply, the presumption ought to be that it is toxic. Of course, one ought to test the water supply to see -- evidence is better than presumptions. Oddly enough, though, this hasn't really happened:

"Though the E.P.A., the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the authority have spoken daily about their efforts to monitor air, soil and water quality, complete results have been released for only two samples, both taken from a drinking water intake site that is upstream of the spill. The water there met drinking standards.

A test for heavy metals in water, soil or sediment should take two to eight hours, said Peter Schulert, the chief executive of the Environmental Science Corporation, an environmental laboratory near Nashville. "There's no reason why you couldn't have the results within a day," Mr. Schulert said.

The data on the toxic compounds produced by the plant was filed with the E.P.A. this year, said Barbara Martocci, a spokeswoman for the power authority. It was posted on the authority's Web site only in a section labeled "air quality.""

I can see using tests of water upstream from the spill as part of a comparison: they would provide a natural baseline against which to measure the effects of the spill on the water supply. But is there any reason at all for releasing them as stand-alone pieces of data that are supposed to be in any way relevant to this catastrophe, let alone as the only tests released?

Luckily, other groups are testing as well:

"High levels of toxic heavy metals are present in samples taken from the Kingston Fossil Plant ash spill in Harriman, TN, independent testing shows.

Preliminary testing was conducted on samples from the Emory River by scientists working in coordination with Appalachian Voices and the Waterkeeper Alliance's Upper Watauga Riverkeeper Program. (...)

According to the tests, arsenic levels from the Kingston power plant intake canal tested at close to 300 times the allowable amounts in drinking water, while a sample from two miles downstream still revealed arsenic at approximately 30 times the allowed limits. Lead was present at between twice to 21 times the legal drinking water limits, and thallium levels tested at three to four times the allowable amounts.

All water samples were found to contain elevated levels of arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and thallium. The samples were taken from the immediate area of the coal waste spill, in front of the Kingston Fossil plant intake canal just downstream from the spill site, and at a power line crossing two miles downstream from the spill.

"I have never seen levels of arsenic, lead and copper this high in natural waters," said Babyak."

I hope Tennesseeans have plenty of bottled water, and that someone is trying to make it available to those in the affected area who can't afford it, and especially to poorer kids. I also hope the maintenance records for the site that spilled are investigated within an inch of their lives.

The Disaster In Tennessee

by hilzoy

I'm late to this story, but: what's happening in Tennessee sounds horrific:

"A coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee that experts were already calling the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States is more than three times as large as initially estimated, according to an updated survey by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Officials at the authority initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.

The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

A test of river water near the spill showed elevated levels of lead and thallium, which can cause birth defects and nervous and reproductive system disorders, said John Moulton, a spokesman for the T.V.A., which owns the electrical generating plant, one of the authority’s largest.

Mr. Moulton said Friday that the levels exceeded safety limits for drinking water, but that both metals were filtered out by water treatment processes.

Mercury and arsenic, he said, were "barely detectable" in the samples."

This is much bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill. You can see aerial video here. I find it disturbing that the amount of fly ash now thought to have been released is over twice as much as the TVA originally thought was in the entire pond.

Fly ash has a lot of bad stuff in it. Besides this Scientific American article with the comforting title "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste", there's this:

"A draft report last year by the federal Environmental Protection Agency found that fly ash, a byproduct of the burning of coal to produce electricity, does contain significant amounts of carcinogens and retains the heavy metal present in coal in far higher concentrations. The report found that the concentrations of arsenic to which people might be exposed through drinking water contaminated by fly ash could increase cancer risks several hundredfold.

Similarly, a 2006 study by the federally chartered National Research Council found that these coal-burning byproducts "often contain a mixture of metals and other constituents in sufficient quantities that they may pose public health and environmental concerns if improperly managed." The study said "risks to human health and ecosystems" might occur when these contaminants entered drinking water supplies or surface water bodies."

And guess what? It's headed into the Chatanooga water supply. Oh goody. There are reports of fish kills, though a TVA spokesman claims they are not the result of toxic substances, but of a surge of water beaching a lot of fish. However, I can't imagine a sudden influx of heavy metals and neurotoxins did the fish any good.

As David Roberts at Gristmill says, "There is no clean coal."

A Special Note Re: Senator Shelby

by The Management*

Most readers know that the views expressed by Publius are his own and don’t always reflect the views of the institutional blog. Such is the case with regard to Matt’s Publius's comments about Senator Shelby and the bailout. Shelby is a fine principled man, and he just paid all of us (except for Publius) $100. Therefore, we have a great deal of respect for his critical thinking and excellent, totally principled work product. Therefore, we are intruding and actually posting on this blog to let you know that we think Shelby is awesome. Senator -- we emailed you our mailing address.

Detroit and the Battle for Norms

by publius

So I've been reading Lessig's new book Remix, which provides further examples of how idiotic our copyright policy is. I'll write more later, but one of Lessig's main goals is "norms" reform. That is, he wants to change what people conceive of as normal and accepted.

For instance, it would be perceived as outrageous if, say, Josh Marshall sued me for excerpting a piece of his post. Even if fair use didn't exist, selective quoting would be perceived as "ok" -- that's the prevailing norm. File sharing is the other side of that coin. We may not like the fact that RIAA was allowed to sue elderly people and penniless college students. But because of prevailing norms, the broader public didn't see it as the utter outrage that it is.

This idea of "norms" is playing a key part in the Detroit debate. The debate not only reflects the poverty of our existing norms about economic relations, but it provides an opportunity to change them -- one we seem to be squandering.

Republican opponents of the bailout like Senator Shelby (libertarian hero; defender of state-subsidized Alabama plants) have unfairly targeted union workers throughout this debate. One goal of their rhetoric is to discredit the norm of union-provided prosperity. The very idea that workers could enjoy a higher premium and better benefits through union negotiations is anathema to them. The UAW's success isn't Exhibit A for the benefits that unions could provide to middle-class America -- they're an undeserved freak show that violates the immutable natural laws of the great free market.

In short, the great tragedy of Detroit could be the idea (the norm) that this form of middle-class prosperity is possible. As Jonathan Cohn explains, the success of UAW earlier last century cascaded to employees across the country. Its failure (its forced failure) will do the same.

Looking forward, the debate would also allow us to change other norms -- such as the idea that it's ok for executives to receive gazillion times more income than workers whose wages have stagnated for decades. We've come to accept this idea -- this norm -- but it's a pernicious one. Concentrating wealth at the top creates all sorts of problems -- it helped, for example, create the conditions of our current meltdown. If the top 1% didn't have all this disposable income sitting around, maybe they wouldn't be as inclined to blow money on the latest speculative fad.

The larger point here is that the battle for Detroit is about more than just the auto industry. It will also help reinforce -- or reverse -- the norms that currently govern economic allocation questions.

The Post's Crappy EFCA Article

by publius

The Post's article today on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is an example of a new pet peeve of mine -- namely, the failure to fairly explain the reasons why the EFCA is so essential. The article is nominally about the looming legislative battle. But the article -- unwittingly -- presents a very pro-business perspective by glossing over the elections point.

As for the EFCA and elections -- here's the nickel version. To organize, unions today generally must petition for, and win, an election. Under the EFCA, an employer would also be required to recognize a union if a majority of workers signed a card indicating support. The big critique of the EFCA, of course, is that it would bypass or undermine secret ballot elections -- and admittedly, that doesn't sound good in the abstract.

But the real story is much, much different. The current "election" system is an absolute fraud. It's an employer-dominated affair, and the elections resemble those found in a banana republic. Imagine, for instance, a Senate race (let's say Minnesota) where only Al Franken was allowed to campaign, and where Franken could randomly fire Coleman's campaign managers. Not much of a fair campaign, right?

Well, that's how it works in today's workplace. Elections are utterly unfair. To begin, employers routinely fire union organizers who push for an election. Understandably, that gets people's attention. But there are a million other forms of pressure -- employers can stretch out the actual election for weeks and months. During this time, they can conduct a totally one-sided campaign where they pressure employees. For instance, employees are often required to sit through business-sponsored propaganda meetings, where the employer threatens to relocate or close the company (or even call immigration services). Employees also endure one-on-one coercion from individual supervisors. (Alleged union coercion is basically a fantasy as well given the incentives unions have to remain in employees' good graces).

In short, the current election system is a scam. If it weren't, then maybe some of these "undemocratic" criticisms would have some weight. But you'll be shocked to know (considering the sources) that these criticisms are essentially done in bad faith with the hopes you don't know the facts.

And that brings me back to the Post. It's a he said/she said template -- that's life. But it's a really crappy one. The Post dutifully reports the criticism of businesses in detail -- i.e., undemocratic, will force people to join unions. Here, by contrast, is the grand total of what the Post writes about the elections from labor's perspective (and it comes much later in the article):

Labor organizers say the rules allow companies to pressure workers through campaigns that often include closed-door meetings.

That's it. (on the elections point anyway, which is the primary justification for the bill). The press (and liberal bloggers like me) have been bad on getting the real facts out there. But it's time to push back on this -- particularly the elections point. People can disagree about unions, but we should at least make sure people understand the true reason for the bill.