Anderkoo

Finding ourselves unable to install a windmill on the roof, Gene and I choose the NStar Green option today. So this means that we’ll be running our lights and laptops on wind power, right? Not quite. Our switch to green supports wind power, but apparently can’t guarantee wind sourcing. For that, we’ll be paying an extra $2-$4 a month for the 150-200 kilowatt hours that we typically use.

How do we know that premium will, indeed, support wind power and move us closer to the day when wind is a standard option - perhaps even a cheaper one - on our energy bill? Well, we’re relying on the good word of folks at the Conservation Law Foundation and Union of Concerned Scientists, both of whom collaborated with NStar to create this program.

And while we wait for our green-energy-wind-power utopia to develop here in Massachusetts, take a look at this scenario in the New Yorker. Could it happen here?

– Rachel

I’ve been of many minds about this week’s New Yorker cover — I wrote the piece below yesterday but held back from publishing it because, well, on the face of it, it’s not exactly racist, and it is satire after all. But in some ways the furor is itself worth considering, and so I put this out there in, perhaps, the same spirit as the New Yorker put out their cover:

***

On the night of Barack Obama’s primary victory in South Carolina, thousands of us who gathered at the victory rally spontaneously erupted in the chant, “Race doesn’t matter!” This wasn’t a profession of faith so much as a willing suspension of disbelief: South Carolina’s January primary also marked the place and time when race did start to matter in the Presidential campaign.

Race matters, as the conflation of “white” with “American” illustrates. But in critiquing that attitude, Barry Blitt’s cover illustration for this week’s New Yorker commits the same error of judgment that a white man who uses the N-word among black friends would commit if he spoke in the same way among strangers. It’s the kind of faux passé that the privileged have the luxury of committing, and therefore the responsibility not to.

Privilege underlies the even deeper problem of the cover, which is the way it bounces its satire off a deep contempt for Michael Moore’s “stupid white men.” Moore, at least, could profess to be of the group he mocks; not so for the New Yorker. Thus the magazine does Obama few favors, instead cementing the perception that his campaign is fueled by limousine liberalism. But it also does itself a serious disfavor, demonstrating not just disdain for but also ignorance of these other Americans. Pauline Kael didn’t know anyone who voted for Nixon; I doubt the staff of the New Yorker know anyone who thinks Obama is Muslim. Obama calls for understanding over condemnation, and I hope his supporters – especially the privileged ones – will consider what kinds of attitudinal sacrifices such a politics would entail.

Sure, the Internet has given Barack Obama’s presidential campaign an incredible fundraising edge. But smart use of technology only partially explains the breathtaking numbers (over $260M raised, over 1.5M individual donors). Obama’s online fundraising strategy is possible only because of the Federal Election Campaign Act — ironically, the very legislation that pundits claim he now threatens with his decision to opt out of federal public campaign financing.

In 1974, Congress amended FECA to limit the total amount that individuals can contribute to individual candidates. One of the goals behind this cap was to somewhat equalize citizens’ voices by muffling the wealthiest (and therefore “loudest”) individuals. In reality, the cap remained high enough ($1,000 in 1974, $2,300 today) that while the filthy-rich could no longer buy the vote outright, the merely wealthy still had an outsized impact on elections. In 2000, of donors who contributed $200 or more to any given political contribution, those who gave more than $999 made up only 44% of contributors but constituted over 86% of the total dollars taken in.

Then Howard Dean came along and upended this cozy arrangement. The progressive Netroots helped Dean raise over $30M from small (under $200) donations during the 2004 Democratic primaries — just $4.4M shy of what Gore raised for the entire 2000 race. Suddenly, small donors became a viable way to fund a major campaign. And even though Dean was far more successful than his peers that year at galvanizing small-donor support — they made up 60% of his individual fundraising — both major parties’ 2004 nominees relied far more on small contributions than in 2000 (See chart).

Law matters, because without caps on the amount of hard money any one person could give to a candidate, neither Dean’s nor Obama’s army of small donors could keep up with the astonishingly deep pockets of the American mega-rich. Technology matters too, of course, because it is the mature Internet — one that citizens trust with their credit cards — that makes small-donor fundraising efficient enough to pursue as a serious fundraising strategy. But it took 30 years before fundraising technology realized FECA’s goal of (somewhat) leveling the playing field across campaign donors.

Policy — even if it’s no policy at all — always tilts the playing-field in one direction or another. Capping campaign contributions dampens the voices of the very rich; conversely, removing them would reduce the relative power of the small donor. Banning cash contributions altogether would favor those with time rather than money to give. Our laws define fair play: we can’t ban campaign money because it’s a Constitutionally protected form of free speech, but we don’t want it to be too influential, either.

For any given policy landscape, there’s a set of technologies and tactics that best advances the players’ strategic goals. It would seem that the Obama campaign has struck one such optimal combination, fusing Dean’s Netroots with old-fashioned grassroots. But lest Democrats feel too smug about striking that sweet spot, they might do well to recognize the Howard Dean of the 2008 Republican field: Mike Huckabee muscled his way to third place with half of his contributions coming from small donors. Broad-based, Internet-enabled fundraising has no ideological bias, only a small nudge for those with wide grassroots appeal.

What got me most excited to support Hillary Clinton in her 2000 Senate race was payback for the backlash she received in Bill’s 1992 campaign. She was castigated for allegedly disrespecting homemakers with this comment,

I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.

and then forced to quell the ensuing furor by participating in Family Circle magazine’s potential First Ladies’ bake-off. A cookie bake-off: are you kidding me? No, and sadly, the magazine’s readers have correctly predicted the results of the last four elections.

No surprise then that this year, two of the three recipes submitted so far turn out to be plagiarized. Just look at the contestants’ credentials: a former President, a multimillionaire heiress, and a self-made corporate lawyer. Does anyone really expect that they bake cookies, much less have a favorite recipe? Clearly no one was surprised that the lone man, Bill, swiped his recipe, which helps explain why Mrs. McCain is getting all the heat for her purloined cookies.

what century is this again?

Oh, and aren’t we having a national obesity epidemic? Cookie recipes?????

An open letter to Hillary Clinton:

Senator Clinton, I have admired you since 1992 when I saw you stand up to bullies who believed that a woman’s place is in the kitchen, baking cookies. When you ran for the US Senate in my home state of New York I knew your time had come, someone who will proudly represent the Empire State and show us that a wife can in every way be her husband’s equal, even his superior. And so I proudly cast my ballot for you then, and I have been so proud of your Senate career ever since.

And, as we pray for Senator Kennedy’s health, it should gives us pause to remember that the Senate is the heart of our federal democracy. And I look forward to all the work that you will continue to do for all Americans and all the world from the most important representative body in our nation. May we all one day look back and speak of our true “Lioness of the Senate.” (And remember that it’s the lioness that does the hard work in a pride!)

You have been an inspiration to us all. I am proud of what you have accomplished.

I wrote this sitting on the 1pm Peter Pan bus from New York back to Boston:

I’m noticed some pretty disturbing things:

1. The bus driver has been on the phone for a good portion of the drive.
2. Greyhound / Peter Pan doesn’t post a “How’s my driving?” phone number inside the cabin.
3. Even if they did, I’d be uncomfortable making that call in earshot of the driver. If I had the temerity to do that, I’d just tell the driver to his face.

Solution? Well the bus operators themselves ought to provide an SMS number for us to silently report bad driver behavior for immediate followup. But I don’t trust voluntary participation. This is one realm where the FTA should step in.

With Greyhound’s own BoltBus funneling off the crazy bargain shoppers, Greyhound’s Boston-New York discount fare (the one you have to click “Can I get a lower price?” to get) is now up to $45. But in a victory for transparency, they’ve also dropped the “convenience fee” of $3. So, compared with a month ago, the price is now UP $2, but at least there’s no bait-and-switch pricing going on any more.

(BoltBus runs fewer trips than Greyhound — I needed something around 8pm and BoltBus only runs until 5pm. And once again I needed to be Midtown, West Side).

The insane proposals by John McCain and Hillary Clinton to provide a “gas tax holiday” has shaken me out of media-induced stupor: there are real issues and real values at stake in this election. Jeremiah Wright, “snipergate,” and all the rest of that is just soporific to keep us from facing hard realities. Shame on me for forgetting.

You want to talk issues and facts? Here are issues and facts: on this issue of gas pricing, Barack Obama is the only Presidential candidate who is showing real leadership on energy. McCain and Clinton can talk a good game, but standing up to the pressure to pander is the first test of political courage. Cutting the gas tax would not only be a prelude to an even more ruinous carbon policy, but it also continues to play into the false notion that federal taxes are what keep working-class people down in this country.

On the New York Times comment page in response to the paper’s editorial opposing the McCain-Clinton proposal, David Keppel, Bloomington, Indiana writes:

At a rally in Bloomington, Indiana tonight, Barack Obama talked about the importance of telling the truth — and he used the gas tax as an example. We must learn to conserve. Technological innovation — in clean energy — is important, but social innovation is even more important. That’s why the election is not just what Senator Clinton calls “a hiring decision”; it is about inspring a nation to live differently.

Bravo, Barack. Finally, I’m wide awake again to the issues that matter, not the garbage that doesn’t.

And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. “
…
Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;
And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

– Genesis 19:17, 24-26 (KJV)

If the Obama campaign entails a fairy tale, then my own bit of magical thinking involves the conviction that if we could only collectively suspend our disbelief for just long enough, if we can just have faith that something new can transcend what was, then we can cross the chasm that divides our nation. But like all magical thinking, there’s also a catch: to walk on thin air we must, all of us, believe it together. Open our eyes, and the magic breaks. The hopes that buoy us halfway across proves more fatal than staying exactly where we are.

Rationally, of course, I don’t quite believe this story. All politics are in the system, and all our politicians merely players. But I also believe in mankind’s occasional capacity to transcend itself and its own institutions. I’ve always considered JFK a rather bad President by the merits, and yet his overall power to inspire was clearly greater than the sum of his policies and actions.

Presented with the opportunity to move forward and leave behind our place of damnation, how many of us would nonetheless do as Lot’s wife did — whether out of fear, doubt, perhaps even mere nostalgia? How many would look back?

This Presidential campaign isn’t a battle between black and white: it is, as Obama himself observed, about the past versus the future. And the forces of the past — whether in the guise of Hillary Clinton or Jeremiah Wright — keep shouting, “Look back! Look back! You are doomed by the weight of the heavy hand of history.”

Perhaps we are. But I will keep walking this chasm, my wide-open eyes firmly forward.

To stave off recession, Congress and the President urge us to buy more stuff. Encouraging Americans to keep shopping, they tell us, will plump our economy — despite fundamental shifts in the world economy, not to mention two large-scale wars. Whatever the economic merits of this plan, I believe that promoting consumerism is bad for our national soul. Indeed, I see the government offering us empty calories to satiate a bottomless hunger. And that’s why I am donating my stimulus check to charity.

The consumerist economy

Consumption represents the majority of our GDP. Cars and big-screen televisions keep a web of people employed domestically and internationally, from store clerks to factory workers to the cargo handlers in between. Consumption and consumerism are here to stay, and we would be foolish and delusional to wish otherwise.

But the recent boom was built on an illusion: Americans spent at a historically unprecedented scale by borrowing heavily against artificially inflated home prices. Well, it turns out that you can’t have your house and mortgage it, too. The buying binge is over, and it’s time for Americans to confront what all of this consumption has wrought.

We are still wealthy

The truth is that the United States is still the wealthiest nation this world has ever known. While almost half of the world lives on less than $2 a day, Americans are blessed with domestic tranquility, high literacy, and tremendous life opportunities. Understandably, many Americans find cold comfort in statistics when struggling with job loss, mushrooming health care costs, and rising gas prices. These problems are real, and right now they are growing. But the paradox is that more wealth can feed our gluttony rather than salve our want. In fact, the more money we make, the more we spend on ourselves and the less of it we give to charity.

Deprivation is relative: we don’t compare ourselves with the unseen poor halfway across the globe, but the Joneses next door. “I don’t think most people who are affluent feel affluent,” observes a participant in one of the Boston Faith & Justice Network’s economic discipleship groups. “We feel we are in debt and someone else is affluent…For my kids, poverty is not having Nintendo.”

From deprivation to gratitude

Without denying the reality of domestic poverty and inequality, I decline to view our economic circumstances through the lens of deprivation. For me, a more spiritually sound way of understanding wealth is as abundance. The glass isn’t merely half-full; it overflows.

It is out of gratitude for our wealth that some of us are choosing to do something different with our economic stimulus checks: donate them to charity. Certainly, those of us who are struggling financially are thankful for the opportunity to pay down debts, invest in schooling, or simply put food on the table. But many of us would otherwise binge on stuff we don’t really need.

One man gives freely, yet grows all the richer;
another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.
Proverbs 11:24 (RSV)

From the point of view of our national economy, donating our stimulus checks to charity will produce the same multiplier effects as buying a plasma-screen television. But it will mean something quite different to our own spiritual well-being. It’s not about denying ourselves by resisting temptation, but expanding ourselves by giving generously to others. Indeed, as the proverbs suggest, it’s not wealth that leads us to give, but giving that makes us realize we are wealthy.

I know we can’t extinguish consumerism, nor do I want to, but we can ask for a different kind of consumption. After all, the word “consumption” can mean “to use up.” But it can also mean, quite simply, “to eat.” Perhaps, whatever your spiritual beliefs, you too offer up words of thanks before you sit down to eat a meal. If so, consider offering some words of gratitude before you “consume” that stimulus check. You might find yourself feeling a lot wealthier for it.