This is the second part of two posts analyzing New York's recent Republican primary. It will focus upon Republican weakness in New York City, as revealed by the primary. The previous part can be found here.
New York City in the Republican Primary
One of the more interesting things about American politics is the rural-urban divide. The weakness of the modern Republican Party in urban areas is quite astounding. Much of this has to do with the history of the American city, especially the way in which many cities have become reservoirs of poor minorities.
The Republican gubernatorial primary constituted a particularly powerful demonstration of Republican weakness in American cities. To illustrate this, let's look at a map of turn-out in businessman Carl Paladino's victory over former representative Rick Lazio:
This is the first part of two posts analyzing New York's recent Republican primary. It will focus upon the upstate-downstate divide revealed by the primary. The next part can be found here.
The 2010 Republican Gubernatorial Primary
On September 14th 2010 the Republican Party held its primary in New York. In the gubernatorial primary, party favorite Rick Lazio was defeated by the Tea Party Candidate: businessman Carl Paladino. Mr. Paladino won a comprehensive victory, with 62% of the vote to Mr. Lazio's 38%.
In the long run, this primary did not matter at all. Already the primary is forgotten by even the most politically intense folk. Most Americans probably weren't even aware that there was a primary in the first place. Mr. Paladino went on to a stunning loss against the Democratic candidate in the general election.
Yet, whatever its long-term importance, the primary constitutes a valuable tool for exploring New York's electoral geography. Mr. Paladino's victory revealed two interesting facts of New York politics. This post will explore the first one.
Dr. Kenneth Katz recently published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Health Hazards of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell." This week, he penned an op/ed for RH Reality Check about his experiences treating U.S. military at an STD clinic in San Diego. Dr. Katz sees the Pentagon's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" rule for LGB members of the military as a huge roadblock to good medical care. He's pretty confident that his military patients feel safe divulging their sexual histories to a civilian doctor like himself. But when those troops go overseas, they are cared for by military doctors. Technically, doctor-patient communication is exempt from DADT, but many patients don't realize that they can tell their military doctors about gay sex without fear of reprisals (at least in theory). Dr. Katz's patients have told him that they won't go for recommended follow-up STD screening after they ship out because they're afraid to be honest with their doctors. He worries about how many troops are suffering from treatable infections in war zones because they aren't allowed to serve openly.
Food stamp use skyrockets, swordfish sales unaccountably flat
Monica Potts of TAPPED points to the alarming statistic that in the last month alone an additional 500,000 Americans went on food stamps. She notes that the right wing website Daily Calleris alarmed not by the fact that fellow citizens can't afford food, but rather that there's no gruel-only foodstamp program available:
Meanwhile, the conservative news site The Daily Calleris shocked, shocked, to learn that you can use food stamps to buy all manner of food. The government, apparently, doesn't restrict you from purchasing an $18-per-pound swordfish steak from Whole Foods. But that kind of discovery, like almost everything else in the "debate" over food stamp use, is the sort of ridiculous one that comes from a person who's never been hungry.
The Hyde Amendment
In Campus Progress, Jessica Arons and Madina Agénor call for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment for being an assault on the reproductive rights of poor women and women of color. The Supreme Court declared abortion to be a constitutional right in 1973, yet nearly 40 years later, the Hyde Amendment still prohibits nearly all federal funding for abortions. In practice, the women most affected by the Hyde Amendment are those who depend on government health care programs like Medicaid and the Indian Health Service:
Former U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), the law's sponsor, admitted during debate of his proposal that he was targeting poor women because they were the only ones vulnerable enough for him to reach. "I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman," he said. "Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the ... Medicaid bill."
Meanwhile, ultra-conservative Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is calling on Congress to de-fund the reproductive health provider Planned Parenthood, Andy Birkey reports in the Minnesota Independent. In an interview with a conservative news site, Bachmann doubled down on that idea, suggesting that all of health care reform be de-funded because it funds abortions. This is not true. The aforementioned Hyde Amendment guarantees as much. Furthermore, even though health reform never would have funded abortions, President Obama signed an eleventh-hour executive order guaranteeing that health care reform would not fund abortions.
Brooklyn bees gorge on maraschino cherry run-off
Home beekeeping is the hottest new trend for health-conscious locavores. New York City recently changed the law to accommodate beekeepers in the five boroughs. Just because you live in an industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn is no reason to miss out on this sweet action, right? Well, actually, there is a catch. That nice honey at the farmers' market tastes like lavender because that's what those rural bees ate. What do bees in Red Hook, Brooklyn eat? Run-off from a maraschino cherry factory. The overindulgent bees "look like vampires" according to one local keeper and their honey runs bright red. Maraschino honey sounds like a delicious mash-up of high and low culture. Unfortunately, Sarah Goodyear reports in Grist that the end product doesn't taste nearly as good as it looks. Arthur Mondella, the owner of Dell's Maraschino Cherries, wants to do right by the beekeepers. He initially suggested putting out vats of different colored syrup to "help" the bees make rainbow honey. His proposal was not well-received by the crunchy set. Instead, he has agreed to work with the beekeepers to keep the bees out of the vats next year.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is asking the USDA to approve a pilot program that would prevent his city's residents from buying sugar-sweetened soda with food stamps. Some have called the proposal paternalistic. However, at In These Times, Terry J. Allen argues that Bloomberg's proposal makes sense.
Allen notes that New Yorkers may spend up to $135 million in food stamp benefits on sodas. Nationwide, the food stamp program funnels about $4 billion into the pockets of soda manufacturers. Sugary carbonated drinks are artificially profitable for Big Pop because they are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, a heavily subsidized by-product of our broken agricultural system.
There are already restrictions on what you can buy with food stamps. Nobody thinks it's patronizing that alcohol is off-limits, even though alcoholic beverage are a potential source of calories. A little discussed benefit of ending the soda subsidy within the food stamp program would be the incentive it gives to small storekeepers in poor neighborhoods to devote less floor and refrigerator space to carbonated drinks and more room to real food. Many low income New Yorkers struggle to buy healthy food in their neighborhoods. Soda subsidies only make the "food desert" problem worse.
Impatient to die
Prisoners on Death Row in Texas spend 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. The death house in Texas is one of the most restrictive in the nation. Conditions are so bad that many inmates are actively looking forward to their execution day to put an end to the crushing isolation, Dave Mann reports in the Texas Observer. There is a growing consensus among psychiatrists that solitary confinement is a form of torture. Some experts, and many inmates, believe that solitary confinement is literally driving Texas death row inmates insane.
Daniel Lopez is in a hurry to die: "I don't see no point in waiting 20 years for them to finally decide to execute me." That's the first thing he tells me when I sit down to interview him. We are seated in the Polunsky Unit's visiting room. Lopez is encased in a small booth. We are separated by thick, soundproof glass and talk through phones. [...] [Lopez] says he has no desire to remain on death row. He says he's looking forward to execution day. He doesn't want to live much longer in his small cell. "I don't think that's a life for somebody," he says.
Health reform and the courts
Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones takes a closer look a the legal challenges to health care reform. Republicans in Virginia have been given the green light to challenge the constitutionality of the individual mandate in court. In October, a U.S. District judge in Detroit refused to issue a preliminary injunction to stop the implementation of health care reform in Michigan. On Monday, a U.S. District judge in Lynchburg, VA, dismissed Liberty University's anti-health reform lawsuit. Another Virginia judge says he will rule on a similar suit by the State Attorney General by the end of the year.
The current crop of politically motivated lawsuits challenging the individual mandate are legally tenuous at best. Aziz Huq wrote in The Nation: "Among constitutional scholars, the puzzle is not how the federal government can defend the new law, but why anyone thinks a constitutional challenge is even worth making."
As Columbia law professor Gillian Metzger explained to Chris Hayes of The Nation earlier this year, the constitutionality of the individual mandate is basically a "no-brainer." The way the Affordable Care Act is written, everyone who doesn't have health insurance from some provider has two options: Buy subsidized health insurance or pay a tax. The federal government obviously has the right to collect taxes. The case is expected to go all the way to the Supreme Court, but it seems unlikely to prevail. The real fear is that a lower court will paralyze the implementation of health care reform while the decision is pending.
Crisis pregnancy center bill
Shakthi Jothianandan of Ms. Magazine has the latest on proposed legislation that would force so-called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in New York City to disclose that they are not real reproductive health clinics. The New York City Council held a hearing on the proposed legislation in mid-November, which brought together officials from the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene, Planned Parenthood, Concerned Clergy for Choice and staff from CPCs around the city. The representatives for the CPCs claimed that the bill violates their free speech rights, but the head of the New York Civil Liberties Union testified that requiring organizations to disclose that they are not real health care facilities and don't provide a full range of services does not infringe on any First Amendment right.
CeCe Heil, senior counsel with the Christian anti-abortion group American Center for Law and Justice, claimed the legislation was unnecessary because women are already smart enough to know that "abortion alternatives" means "alternatives to abortion." Many of the CPCs have "life" in their name, which should signal to potential clients that they do not provide abortion or abortion referrals. But if it's really so obvious that CPCs are just anti-choice ministries posing as reproductive health clinics, why oppose a law that simply requires all facilities to disclose the obvious?
Boehner meets with anti-choice extremist
Future Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) met with anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry, as Miriam Perez of Feministing reports. Terry is the founder of the radical anti-choice group Operation Rescue, which has a long record of advocating violence against abortion providers. After Dr. George Tiller, one of the country's last high-profile late-term abortion providers, was assassinated, Terry called Tiller a "mass murderer" who "horrifically, reaped what he sowed."
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
As some Americans obsess over whether to brine or deep-fry their Thanksgiving turkeys, others are going hungry. Seth Freed Wessler reports for ColorLines that 50 million Americans went hungry in 2009, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Astonishingly, more than 36% of female-headed households suffered from food insecurity last year, in spite of a massive expansion of federal food stamp benefits as part of the economic stimulus. Forty-two million families received food stamps last year, 10 million more than the year before. Congress gutted the food stamp program this summer. If something isn't done, families of four will lose $59 a month in food stamp benefits at the end of 2014. At the time of the cuts, House Democrats promised to restore food stamp benefits during the lame duck session of Congress, but Freed notes there's been little sign recently that they plan to follow through on the promise.
Making Crisis Pregnancy Centers come clean
The New York City Council is preparing to vote on the legislation to force so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" (CPCs) to disclose that they are not health care facilities and that they do not provide birth control or abortions. CPCs are anti-choice ministries that deliberately mimic abortion clinics in order to trick women who might be seeking abortions. It's all a ruse to bombard these women with false information about abortion under the guise of health care. As we discussed last week in the Pulse, CPCs also serve as incubators for more extreme forms of anti-choice activism, from clinic obstruction to violence.
In RH Reality Check, Dr. Lynette Leighton explains why she supports New York City's proposed bill to require so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" to disclose that they aren't real clinics staffed by health care providers:
As a family physician, I provide comprehensive health care for all of my patients, including safe abortions for women who decide to end a pregnancy. I've cared for many women who came to me in crisis when they learned they were pregnant. The last thing my patients need is to be misled by anti-abortion organizations masquerading as health clinics. I'm strongly in favor of the New York City bill requiring crisis pregnancy centers to disclose that they do not provide abortions or contraception, or offer referrals for these services.
New York CPCs are claiming that the requirement to disclose violates their freedom of speech, Robin Marty notes in RH Reality Check. In other words, they are claiming a First Amendment right to bait and switch. The executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is scheduled to testify before the City Council that the free speech claim is baseless.
See you in court!
In other reproductive rights news, the Center for Reproductive Rights took the FDA to court on Tuesday over access to the morning after pill. The FDA has been ignoring a court order to make emergency contraception available over the counter to women of all ages, and the Center is going to court to spur the agency to comply, Vanessa Valenti reports for Feministing.
Look at this smokin' hipster
Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds is courting hipsters with a new "Williamsburg" cigarette, Brie Cadman reports for Change.org. "[Smoking Camels is] about last call, a sloppy kiss goodbye and a solo saunter to a rock show in an abandoned building... It's where a tree grows," according to the online ad copy. Mmm, kissing smokers.
It's all part of an online marketing campaign in which users are invited to guess where brand mascot Joe Camel will show up next week. Interestingly, the contest's name is "Break Free Adventure," a twist on the Camel brand's "Break Free" tagline. Odd that they'd pick a slogan usually associated with quitting smoking, rather than feeding the addiction. Those hipsters sure love irony.
Blowing the whistle on health insurers
On Democracy Now!, health insurance executive turned whistleblower Wendell Potter predicts that the Republicans will back off their grandiose campaign promises to repeal health care reform and instead try to dismantle the bill's provisions that protect consumers. Potter notes that health insurers are major Republican donors, and that parts of the law are very good for insurers, notably the mandate forcing everyone to buy health insurance.
Apparently, some true believers haven't gotten the memo. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly notes that some Republican members of Congress are still gunning to shut down the government over health care reform and other spending.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
There won't be any national or international movement on climate policy for the rest of this year, at the very least. And while Washington waits to act on climate change, at least one group is benefiting. The natural gas industry is flourishing, despite reports that its practices lead to flammable tap water, poisoned aquifers, and multiple health problems.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), who is emerging as a new leader in Congress on these issues, said this week that a comprehensive climate bill had little chance of passing through the Senate in the next two years. Furthermore, the expectations for the next round of international climate negotiations, to be held this winter in Cancun, are abysmally low, as Inter Press Service reports.
Say no to the status quo
In the past, the volatility of gas prices limited the industry's share of the energy market, but now, hydrofracking techniques guarantee a more steady supply, meaning steadier prices. It helps that green leaders have talked up natural gas as a clean energy source.
Natural gas does emit less carbon than coal, but the process of extracting it through hydrofracking-pushing chemical-laden water into the ground to create cracks and allow gas to bubble up to the surface-has serious environmental impacts.
Sandra Steingraber, in Orion Magazine, calls the rise of hydrofracking "the environmental issue of our time." Environmentalists based support for natural gas production on the premise that natural gas would serve as a "bridge fuel" while renewable energy infrastructure grew enough to provide much of the country's fuel needs. But without stronger support from Washington for renewables, that bridge may never reach the other side.
The high cost of hydrofracking
The alliance between the environmental movement and the natural gas industry has always been uneasy. Both sides regard each other suspiciously. As evidence mounts that hydrofracking pollutes air and water, posing health risks, the worries of local environmentalists are beginning to outweigh the advantages of gas.
"Fracking is linked to every part of the environmental crisis-from radiation exposure to habitat loss-and contravenes every principle of environmental thinking," Steingraber writes in Orion. "It's the tornado on the horizon that is poised to wreck ongoing efforts to create green economies, local agriculture, investments in renewable energy, and the ability to ride your bike along country roads."
On the ground, fracking is frightening, as Kate Sinding, an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council told Change.org's Jess Leber.
"Drinking water wells are being contaminated, livestock are being poisoned, explosions are occurring when methane has gotten backed up inside a drinking water well after the underground water supply became contaminated," Sinding said.
Facing down gas companies
Steingraber argues that these effects-the true impact of natural gas extraction-should be factored into the cost of gas and that the public health implications deserve the benefit of the doubt. Even weighed against a lower level of carbon emissions, these considerations make gas look much more like a bridge to nowhere.
In New York, the state government is trying to reign in the industry, Sinding says. "Culturally and politically, I think New Yorkers may be more skeptical about a new heavy industry coming in," she told Leber. While the promise of jobs is as tempting in New York as it is in places like Pennsylvania and Wyoming that had rushed ahead with fracking, New Yorkers are seeing, Sinding says, that "now residents still face the same problems as they did before, but now, in addition, also can't drink their water."
Outside of New York, there are other initiatives that could slow the momentum behind fracking. The Nation's Peter Rothberg suggests supporting United for Action, a group that's fighting the practice, or pushing congressional reps to support the FRAC Act, which would increase regulation of the fracking process. (FRAC stands for Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals.)
Fracking and flammable tap water
Fracking can pollute water supplies, as the flammable tap water in fracking areas demonstrates. But the process also demands huge volumes of water as a matter of course. Fracking companies mix chemicals into the water and use it to keep the cracks in the earth open in order to access gas.
But fracking isn't the only water-guzzling energy process. Keith Schneider, speaking for a network of journalists and scientists called Circle of Blue, told Inter Press Service that "the competition for water at every stage of the mining, processing, production, shipping and use of energy is growing more fierce, more complex and much more difficult to resolve."
More than 200 billion gallons of water go to cooling power plants each day. Harvesting solar energy also demands huge quantities of water.
As water resources grow scarcer, this demand could drive huge conflicts, both internationally, and in the United States. As Making Contact reports, in Michigan, lawmakers are weighing the idea of putting water resources into a public trust, but already the ecological arguments for that idea and the economic arguments against it are clashing. Imagine how much harder it will be to divvy up water if energy companies got involved.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
While we have already posted several telling interviews from our filming at Glenn Beck's 828 Restoring Honor Rally, but we haven't yet posted our most emotional, interactive, and intense experiences. Towards the end of our day downtown, we stopped to chat with some folks from the crowd- as we did throughout the day. When we began our interview with Madonna from Indiana, we were in the exact center of a circular cement area that is the entrance way to the World War II Memorial. Our conversation started with Madonna, the only person in her group of 5 or so who decided to stop and chat with us. Quickly, however, not only did several of her friends decide to join our discussion, but several onlookers decided that they belonged in our conversation as well. Before we knew it, we were encircled by 30 or so rally goers who decided to engage us (verbally) in an effort to try and convert us to Glen Beck's White Christian Civil Rights Utopia. Below is the majority of the half hour experience in 6 parts and at the very bottom is all 30 minutes of our discussions unedited.
"America treasures the relationship we have with our many Muslim friends, and we respect the vibrant faith of Islam which inspires countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality. This year, may Eid also be a time in which we recognize the values of progress, pluralism, and acceptance that bind us together as a Nation and a global community. By working together to advance mutual understanding, we point the way to a brighter future for all."
When President George W. Bush said those words to mark 2002's Eid al-Fitr, I agreed with him. I still do. But as the controversy surrounding the plan to build a mosque in Lower Manhattan continues to intensify along political and religious lines, our national discussion increasingly points the way to a much dimmer future.
I have spent my career fighting for religious freedom and combating discrimination at home and abroad, first at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and now at Human Rights First. Over the years, I've sat in the same room with countless foreign government officials and religious leaders and asked them to condemn violence and other human rights abuses fueled by discrimination and hatred. And no matter where I was-in Saudi Arabia or Russia or Pakistan or France-the American example of religious freedom, tolerance and inclusion-while not perfect-strengthened my belief that those values are universal and promoting them benefits all of us.
I have found that the vast majority of Americans cherish these values. On many occasions, leaders from all denominations have worked hand in hand to strengthen religious freedom at home and advance it abroad. Today's challenges present yet another opportunity for these leaders to come together and demonstrate that the values that unite us are far more powerful than the fears that divide us.
It won't be easy. Just this week, a cab driver in New York City was stabbed after the perpetrator asked if he was a Muslim. A Florida church is sponsoring a national "Burn a Koran Day" on September 11. Mosques planned for construction in Tennessee, Wisconsin, California and Florida have been challenged by Americans claiming that Islam is not a religion or that Muslims are inherently violent and at odds with U.S. values. Sponsors of the Park51 project are being asked to forego their constitutional rights because many believe an Islamic center has no place in the same neighborhood as the site of the 9/11 tragedy.
Genuine discourse about the propriety of the mosque is not unexpected. After all, open discussion and honest disagreement are part of the American fabric. But at this critical moment in time, all of us need to speak up and speak out to reject stereotypes and prejudices that lead to exclusion and even violence if we are serious about securing religious freedom and confronting hatred at home and abroad. We must defend that principle because it is what makes us different than our enemies.
This week at Gracie Mansion, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it eloquently. He noted, "(I)f we say that a mosque and community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom. We would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting. We would feed the false impressions that some Americans have about Muslims. We would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen. And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam. Islam did not attack the World Trade Center - Al-Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American."
Mayor Bloomberg's predictions are not rhetoric. They are reality. National Public Radio reported earlier this week that extremists are using the mosque debate and other events targeting Muslims as evidence of America's "war on Islam"-evidence they are hoping will help them recruit young Muslims who visit jihadi chat rooms or frequent radical Islamic Web sites.
Vilification of Islam and Muslims harms our security efforts. Local and national law enforcement need to work together with all communities-including American Muslims-to protect the homeland. Our men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan need to work with local authorities and Muslim populations to form a more peaceful path forward, one in which conflict is addressed through a rule of law grounded in equality and protection of fundamental freedoms.
To date, the decision makers with power to influence the construction of the mosque in Lower Manhattan have done their best to uphold these ideas. They have stood up for religious freedom, inclusion and tolerance. They have upheld the Constitutional rights that make our nation great.
Now it's our turn.
It's time to put this debate back on course and recognize that hate-filled rhetoric, violence and intolerance hurt nobody but us. It does not keep us safe. It does not reflect our values. It does nothing but weaken our resilience as a nation and our position as an international example in the fight to defend the rights of all people - regardless of their race, religion, nationality, sexuality or political opinion.
Earlier this month as he appeared on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show, former Bush and Reagan Administration advisor Ken Adelman noted that "the United States should stick with its values of tolerance and understanding ...." He then added that the he was "a little disappointed" that former President George W. Bush - whose remarks I quoted at the beginning of this piece - has not come out to give voice to the same ideals he so eloquently outlined in 2002. I agree. More of that kind of leadership from those who haven't spoken out already is what the nation needs now to put us back on the right track.
This is the first part of a series of posts analyzing competitive Senate elections in blue states. The third part, which analyzes California, can be found here.
Out of the three heavily Democratic states being analyzed, Republicans probably have the least chance of winning New York. A serious Republican challenger to Senator Kristen Gillibrand has yet to emerge. Moreover, Ms. Gillibrand has proven an adept politician willing to campaign hard.
Nevertheless, in a bad national environment with low name recognition, victory for Democrats is not assured. Under the right circumstances (perhaps a Gillibrand scandal), Republicans may be able to pull off a shocker.
Like Illinois, New York can be divided into three sections: upstate, the suburbs downstate, and New York City. A New York Republican must win upstate and the suburbs by substantial margins - and perform extremely well in New York City.
BP oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months, and while attention has focused there, deepwater oil drilling is just one of many risky methods of energy extraction that industry is pursuing. Gasland, Josh Fox's documentary about the effects of hydrofracking, a new technique for extracting natural gas, was broadcast this week on HBO. In the film, Fox travels across the country visiting families whose water has turned toxic since gas companies began drilling in their area.
"So many people were quick to respond to our requests to be interviewed about fracking that I could tell instantly that this was a national problem-and nobody had really talked enough about it," Fox told The Nation this week.
Natural gas
In Washington, even green groups like the Sierra Club have been pushing natural gas as a clean alternative to fuels like coal; reports like Fox's suggest that the environmental costs of obtaining that gas are not yet clear. Besides water contamination, natural gas opponents are also documenting environmental damage to air quality. Like the problems with deepwater oil drillin, which became apparent after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, the dangers of hydrofracking could go unchecked until disaster strikes.
And both deepwater drilling and hydrofracking are symptoms of the greater crisis threatening the country: as energy resources become harder to extract, energy companies are taking greater risks to get at the valuable fuels.
Drilling on government land
As Fox documents, new gas wells are popping up like gopher holes all over the country, on private and public lands. Just this week, Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy law group, challenged the Bureau of Land Management's decision to allow drilling in a southwestern Colorado mountain range, the Colorado Independent reports.
"The HD Mountains are the last tiny, little corner of the San Juan Basin not yet drilled for natural gas development," Jim Fitzgerald, a farmer, told Earthjustice. "This whole area depends on the HD Mountains watersheds. Drilling could have disastrous effects upon them."
From coast to coast
Coloradans are not the only ones pushing back against drilling. In The Nation, Kara Cusolito writes about the problems Dimock, PA, has faced:
After a stray drill bit banged four wells in 2008...weird things started happening to people's water: some flushed black, some orange, some turned bubbly. One well exploded, the result of methane migration, and residents say elevated metal and toluene levels have ruined twelve others. Then, in September 2009, about 8,000 gallons of hazardous drilling fluids spilled into nearby fields and creeks.
After that second incident, fifteen families began a lawsuit against Cabot Oil and Gas, the gas company that's dominating that area. In The American Prospect, Alex Halperin wrote a couple of months back about efforts to fight back against natural gas drilling in Ithaca, NY.
Regulation
One of the problems with hydrofracking is that it's poorly regulated right now. No one except the natural gas companies know what goes into the "fracking fluid" that they pour into wells to help bubble the gas up to the surface. A loophole in the Safe Water Drinking Act also exempted the practice from regulation.
"Thanks in large part to the work done by a handful of journalists and angry residents over the past couple of years, the EPA is finally looking into fracking more seriously. In fact, they're looking into it so comprehensively the energy companies are getting worried. It's worth noting here that all the big oil guys have a big stake in natural gas drilling, and many of them have contractual loopholes with the smaller companies that own the gas drilling leases that if fracking is taken off the table as a legitimate drilling process, they're out."
Like deepwater oil drilling, fracking is a relatively new endeavor, the risks of which are not fully understood. Unlike that type of drilling, though, the opportunity still exists to create a framework in which the companies will have some accountability to the environments and communities that they threaten.
Future present
Besides regulating the industries who are providing energy now, the environmental community needs to keep pressing towards a future where the country does not depend on fossil fuels like oil and gas to run our world. This week, at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, thousands of people are considering how to fight against problems like these.
Ahmina Maxey, for instance, is a member of the Zero Waste Detroit Coalition. "We are planning, next Saturday, the Clean Air, Good Jobs, Justice march to the incinerator to demand that the city of Detroit clean up its air," she told Democracy Now!
"Detroit's population has shrunk to about a quarter of what it was forty or fifty years ago, leaving lots of open green space. But neighborhood groups are transforming these vacant lots into community gardens. Seven years ago there were 8o community gardens, consisting of neighborhood gardens, backyard patches, and school gardens. By 2009, there were 800 community gardens. This year there are 1200, including some urban farms."
"What we need now is a collaborative effort that could echo around the world. An Urban Green Lab. What possible better stage than the 11th largest city in the United States which is experiencing Depression-level economic conditions? Let's take sustainability home. Collectively we have everything the people of Detroit need to build their city anew. Their solutions are likely to be the very same solutions every community will need in some form in the years ahead."
Here's hoping ideas like this take root.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
On May 15th the Green Party of New York met in Albany to nominate candidates for statewide office. The Greens nominated Howie Hawkins for Governor, Gloria Mattera for Lieutenant Governor, Colia Clark and Cecile Lawrence for US Senate, and Julia Willebrand for Comptroller, as well as a number of candidates for state legislature.
Howie Hawkins, the Green candidate for Governor of New York, has been an organizer in movements for peace, justice, labor, the environment, and independent politics since the late 1960s. Hawkins is running on a Green platform with planks including: Progressive Taxes; Reform Albany; Full Employment; Health Care for All; Clean Energy (ban hydrofracking, support public power); Good Schools for All Communities; Economic Democracy for Economic Renewal (establish a state bank); Sustainable Green Economy; Organic Food and Agriculture; Affordable Housing; Retirement Security; Workers Rights; Fair Elections (proportional representation, instant runoff voting, public campaign financing); End the "War on Drugs"; Reproductive Freedom; Gay Marriage; Peace (recall the NY national guard); Criminal Justice Reform (abolish the death penalty); Regional Planning; and Local Government and Grassroots Democracy. Emerging details can be found at HowieHawkins.com/2010.
At his website, Hawkins elaborates on why he is running and his campaign goals:
The basic issue in this campaign is: Will our state government be for the people, or continue to serve the super-rich and the giant corporations?
We are running because we are on the side of the people.
We are running – we, not me – because I cannot win the goals of our campaign alone. I will not have the tens of millions of dollars for media advertising that the corporate-financed Democratic and Republican candidates will have. But organized people can beat organized money…
We are running to offer a real alternative to the two-party system of corporate rule. The Democrats have replaced the Republicans in the State House and the Governor’s Mansion, and in Congress and the White House, but little has changed. The two-party system is a very sophisticated scheme for presenting the illusion of real choice when both major parties are funded by the same corporate, financial, and real estate interests. Whether the A Team of Republicans or the B Team of Democrats are in the majority, it is still corporate power dictating policy.
The ongoing Wall Street bailout is the greatest transfer of wealth in world history. If our schools were banks, they would have been bailed out. Instead the creditor class of wealthy elites is making the borrower class of working and middle class taxpayers pay for the whole bailout for their bad investments through higher taxes, lower wages and benefits, and cuts in public services. The catastrophic destruction of our climate and oceans is accelerating, but the incumbent fossil fuel and nuclear corporations still capture far more government subsidies than clean, renewable energy. Whether it is job creation, health care, housing, or the environment, the government sides with the corporate vested interests against the broad public interest.
The progressives and independents who voted the Republicans out and the Democrats in are now taken for granted by the Democrats in power, because these voters have no where else to take their votes. We are running to give these voters a place to go.
50,000 Votes Wins a Green Party Ballot Line
One key goal of our campaign is to build the Green Party as a powerful, well-organized alternative to the corporate state’s two-party system. With 50,000+ votes for the Green gubernatorial ticket – a very achievable goal – the Green Party wins a permanent ballot line and reasonable ballot petitioning requirements for the next four years, enabling us to contest elections at every level as we continue to build our movement. We are building this campaign county by county to leave in place a grassroots party organization that can carry on the movement for our policy platform after the November 2 election.
Putting Our Solutions into Public Debate
A second goal of our campaign is to move the policy debate in New York. We are going to present before the public – and make the mass media and corporate candidates deal with – our platform of solutions to the problems we face: progressive taxation and revenue sharing, fully funded schools, full employment, single-payer health care, renewable energy, a state bank to finance a sustainable green economic revival, clean government, proportional representation, and more.
Building Independent Power
We won’t be completely satisfied unless we win the office. But if that turns out to be beyond our reach in this election, every vote we win and every person we recruit to the movement builds our power. Our power is based on our political independence from the corporate interests and their political representatives in both corporate parties. Our votes cannot be taken for granted. We will make the politicians and the policy debate in the media and in our communities deal with our solutions. We will lay the foundation for winning future elections.
Gloria Mattera, a Brooklyn health care worker and activist who ran for Brooklyn Borough President in 2005 to oppose the incumbent’s abuse of eminent domain to benefit private corporations, received the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor.
Colia Clark, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement who worked with Medgar Evers and SNCC, was nominated as the Green candidate for the US Senate seat currently held by Charles Schumer. Immigration reform will be a key focus of the Clark candidacy.
"As US Senator from New York, I will work tirelessly with my colleagues in the Senate and on Capitol Hill to address the failing economy, failing schools, failing infrastructure, crisis in energy, health care, food production and other areas of the USA socio-political economy," said Ms. Clark.
"The right of immigrants to live, work and have their families visit is a human right. NAFTA, CAFTA, Project Hope and other infringements on the right of workers in other nations is unacceptable and as Senator from NYS I will work on all fronts to cancel these hideous instruments of corporate power," added Clark.
Clark said she was strongly opposed to Sen. Schumer’s proposal to require a new social security card that includes bio-metric information like finger prints for every U.S. citizen. Clarke compared this to the slave passes that Africans in USA enslavement carried up to 1865.
"The right to privacy, the right to move about the nation freely without police intrusion is quickly becoming an endangered right. Any remnant of slave pass laws/ Apartheid pass laws must be challenged and defeated in the interest of freedom for NYS and the nation," Clark added.
Cecile Lawrence, a resident of Apalachin in Tioga County who has been active in the movement against hydrofracking and other health issues, will run for the Senate seat to fill out the term of Hillary Clinton.
Lawrence said that "We need to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan now and return the troops home in early 2011. The U.S. must cease its drive for empire and domination of the planet including the embeddedness of its military forces with corporations whose drive for access to the resources of other countries lead to the destruction of their environmental and socio-economic health. Corporations must be stripped of the artificial personhood granted them by an accident of the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting not in human personhood but in god-like status, since they never get sick, and can never die. Reform Wall Street, getting rid of the practices that led to the idea of ‘too big to fail."
Active in the fight against hydrofracking for natural gas in the Southern Tier, Lawrence added that "the focus of my campaign will be on health in all forms, the health of individuals, the health of the soil, air and water, the health of all life forms, the health of society. This goal cannot be met without the elimination of for-profit health insurance companies, the complete renovation of our food system, which has led to astronomical rates of obesity nationwide, and the elimination of this country’s attitude of control over other countries."
"We need to cancel all subsidies to CAFO’s (concentrated animal feeding operations) and rapidly phase out their existence nationwide. Transfer those subsidies to the development of small scale organic, permaculture, or biodynamic methods of farming at the state level. We should transfer all current federal subsidies to coal, gas, oil and nuclear to the development and installation of solar, small-scale wind farms disconnected from each other, ground source heat pumps and yet to be invented methods. We must ban all offshore drilling for gas and oil in U.S. waters," stated Lawrence.
Julia Willebrand, a long time environmental leader from Manhattan, was nominated to run for State Comptroller, a position she received 117,908 votes for 4 years ago.
Other candidates petitioning to be on the Green Party ballot include Anthony Gronowicz (NY-7) and Hank Bardel (NY-13) for US House of Representatives, John Reynolds for State Senate (NY-33), and 5 candidates for State Assembly: Walter Nestler (NY-76), Carl Lundgren (NY-82), Trevor Archer (NY-83), Daniel Zuger (NY-85), and Mike Donelly (NY-119).
Like all Green Party candidates, the New York Green Party’s 2010 candidates pledge not to accept money from corporations and corporate-sponsored PACs.
You can learn more about the Green Party of New York’s 2010 campaigns and how you can get involved at the GPNY website, http://www.gpny.org/ .
Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee today urged Attorney General Eric Holder to stick to his initial determination that the alleged 9/11 plotters should be tried in civilian court, and not bow to partisan politics on what should be a legal determination.
Apparently inspired by certain Democrats voting against the health insurance reform, the Service Employees International Union - a union representing over 2 million workers - is surprisingly planning to work against Democrats this election season.
Perhaps the strongest challenge to Democrats, if not the Democratic establishment itself, will be in North Carolina. The national SEIU is working with the State Employees Association of North Carolina, its state affiliate, to form the North Carolina First Party.
A true shift in consciousness can only come when people begin to see the world not as it is, but as it should be. While advocates can provide powerful arguments and compelling data, it is artists and media makers who create a window into the possible.
To truly move hearts and minds, artists, advocates, and media makers must collaborate deeply, developing a shared vision and a coordinated set of strategies for achieving it.
It was with this in mind that The Opportunity Agenda launched our Arts + Culture Initiative. The hope is to create a space for collaboration, strengthening the work of advocates and allowing artists and media makers to make an impact on the issues that matter to them. Designed to move the social justice movement towards greater innovation, the Initiative serves as a catalyst for inspiration and action, incubating new ideas, relationships, and opportunities to move beyond traditional modes of organizing and activating constituencies.
"Prophecy" is the title of a new play by Karen Malpede, and I'm here to attempt the unamerican task of telling you to see it without telling you it's a comedy. In fact, I'm going to confess that I had to take a break from it and recover before I could write about it. I felt like I'd taken a blow with an enormous sledge hammer, even though I knew that a whole orchestra of smaller instruments had produced what I was feeling.
It was not a bad feeling, not an undesirable feeling. The play is a thing of beauty, and not all beauty fits into that Hollywood sensation of wouldn't-such-a-thing-be-sweet-but-I-bet-they're-divorced-in-a-year-and-I-shouldn't-have-had-that-last-gallon-of-coke.
