An Important Discovery

Steve, at a blog called “Rabid Sanity“, has discovered that politicians often try to disguise private and nefarious agendas in simple-minded catch phrases.

He has submitted a paper to the American Psychological Society. Surely there is more to follow. This is a stunning breakthrough.

Are Public Lands Poorly Managed? (II)

I started and stopped below, having to leave town for a day. The responses were interesting – Swede lamenting his lack of ability to wrought further destruction upon our public lands with ATV’s, and Bob locating the words from PERC (Hamowy, Anderson and Leal, none of whom I have read) about how public ownership is a curse upon the land itself. No one was able to locate Professor Natelson’s words, leading me to believe that I had a psychic interaction with him that left me slightly scarred and cynical.

There are two types of land ownership – private and public. Both are necessary – private ownership so that we may enjoy privacy and harvest the resources, public so we all may enjoy the benefits. Some types of land are suitable for private ownership, some private, and some are suspended for various reasons.

Private land is used for occupancy and resource production. There are few more important freedoms than the ability to own a piece of land, to keep all others off, to have privacy. From the standpoint of public good, we need the resources the land offers, and private farms and ranches and mines are the best way to get at these resources, providing us all that we use and eat. Public ownership of resource-producing land has not shown any advantage over private. Communal farms in the Soviet Union were a sad joke. The profit motive serves us well.

But because private ownership of land is such a benefit to us, does it naturally follow that all ownership of land should be private? No, it does not. It is often more important for many of us of ordinary means to have private enjoyment of special lands. If our wilderness areas, National Parks and national forests were privately owned, there would be little access, and they would naturally exist for the benefit of the wealthy. Our most pristine and beautiful lakes would be fenced and gated, as many are anyway. Our rivers would be blocked to public use as many landowners in Montana are trying to do. It is just as important to have public as well as private land.

But what about the condition of public land – is it worse than that of private lands? Yes, and no. It depends – ask anyone in Butte, Montana about the public lands that became private now known as the Berkeley Pit. Since that land was stripped of its resources, private owners have run from it, and it is left to the public to clean it up. That’s an extreme example, of course, but the point is that when there are no resources left to exploit, private owners often abandon land with haste.

I see four levels of public land, in descending order of quality:

Wilderness: This is our most pristine land, rescued from development and preserved for future generations to enjoy – places where “man himself is a visitor”, as the law is written. Many on the right complain that resources on these lands are “locked up” – what is really locked up is private enjoyment of the commons for all time. If they were opened up to development and extraction, future generations would be robbed of something precious but not appreciated by all – the natural experience. (Often times we read of a Boy Scout or hunter who perished in a wilderness area. Edward Abbey thought that losing a few people was an important part of the wild experience – if it ain’t dangerous, it ain’t natural.) Some, like those who think it a right to ride an ATV anywhere, don’t seem to care about that. Thankfully enough of us do that we have millions of acres of wilderness. We will always have to fight to keep it, but for now, it is there for all of us to enjoy.

National Parks: These are also pristine lands, but are not “wilderness” per se, as the law that supports them mandates that the public be allowed to enjoy them as much as possible. No profit-motivated development of these lands is allowed, but lots of public money is expended to allow public access. Roads and hotels and restaurants abound, along with public facilities like museums to highlight the features. Yellowstone Park is such a place – visited each year by millions, healthy and handicapped alike, who enjoy the place – each in their own way.

National Forests: The public (especially environmentalists) are at odds with the government over management of national forests. Public land managers, industry and the conservationists perceive the lands differently. Conservationists see the forests as potential wilderness, and tend to resist any incursions for timber harvests, roads and trails, especially for off-road use. Industry sees a resources in need of development, and often exerts its influence through lobbyists and campaign contributions to exert its will over the public. Managers, on the other hand, preserve the lands as best they are able for harvest and exploitation, but also private enjoyment. There is a constant battle going on, with land managers caught in the middle. They are no one’s friend, everyone’s enemy.

In fact, what Teddy Roosevelt saw in the early 20th century was the slow but inevitable destruction of these lands. He realized that if he did not intervene, we would lose the resource entirely. Public ownership saved our national forests, but the urge to develop them so that they lose their natural appeal is still there. We have all seen private forests – no diversity, deer an enemy rather than a friend, roads all about – a sterile experience. We have also witnessed extreme development where the resources are depleted in full, leaving moonscapes and desert, ala Haiti. That was our fate before TR stepped in.

The conflict over national forests will go on in perpetuity, but public ownership has been a greater good than private ownership. Conservationists have to come to grips with the fact that resource development has to be allowed. Industry has to be forced by law to allow for the other resources, like big game, to be enjoyed by the public.

BLM Lands: Eastern Montana is largely owned by the public and managed by the Bureau of Land Management. So are wide swaths of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and virtually all of Nevada. BLM lands are bottom-of-the-barrel type – having little profitable use or natural appeal. I grew up in Eastern Montana, and remember May and June, still my favorite months, because they were green. The rest of the year …. not so cool.

Montana is widely perceived as a cattle state, but Midwest states have better claim to that title. Indiana outproduces Montana. The reason is that it takes so damned much land to raise one cow out here, due to the low quality of the land. BLM lands are usually managed by the public because no one else wants them. They sit idle, offering grazing acreage for ranchers, or waiting to be turned private should some valuable resource, like oil or gas, be discovered. In the 19th and 20th century much of this land was given to the public as part of the Homestead Acts – thousands of families were lured out west only to be turned away by nature and the poor quality of the land.

The land naturally had two fates – one to be turned back to public ownership after the private owner failed, the other to be congregated in huge ranches – economies of scale being the only way to justify private ownership.

I think it is BLM land that gives public land its bad name, and allows PERC and others to say that our lands our poorly managed. But that is far from the case – our public land managers are doing a wonderful job for us, managing our resources for various purposes as the law requires, all the while caught between our vigorous disputes. Gloria Flora, former Superintendent of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana, was a tough administrator. But she was practically driven from office by loud and various right wingers, receiving personal threats and wide abuse. Like teaching in the inner cities, such work is a calling for only a few brave souls.

To summarize, private land ownership is our heritage and an essential right for every citizen of the world, but public land ownership is also as important. The very best lands must be publicly owned, lest they be lost to all of us and future generations. Private land often suffers when its resources are depleted. Government often ends up owning our worst and most unprofitable land, and for that reason gets an undeserved reputation as a poor land manager.

Addendum: I inadvertently overlooked one category of public land, the National Monument. This type of land comes into being under the Antiquities Act of 1906. The purpose of the act was to protect resources from looting or destruction during the time it might take Congress to act to protect them – say, for instance, a mining company coming across ancient ruins, the president has the right to step in and protect the site. A president can create a National Monument, but cannot unmake one. (Miners and oil and gas companies usually operate under the mantra STFU.)

President Clinton used Antiquities as a means of bypassing Congress and protecting some small tracts of land, including parts of the Missouri River. It was his way of giving a green hue to his very ungreen administration.

Are Public Lands Poorly Managed?

Maybe I dreamed this, but at one time I could have sworn that Rob Natelson wrote over at Electric City Weblog something to the effect of the words that follow:

public lands are poorly managed because if everyone owns them, no one does. …

I’ve been through his posts now back to the beginning of October, have used Google and my search feature, and I cannot find these words. Is anyone familiar with the concept? I think at the time he said it, Natelson was quoting someone – probably some right wing think tank guy.

Anyway, it’s one of those propositions they have over on the right, like “cutting taxes raises revenues” that is patently absurd yet accepted as gospel. The baseline assumption is that public lands are poorly managed, private lands well-managed.

Anyway, I’m willing to debate both the substance of the debate and the facts on the ground. First, I need to find the source of Natelson’s quote. Any helpers?

Bond: Holder to Hand Out Free Passes

According to the Washington Times,

President Obama’s choice to run the Justice Department has assured senior Republican senators that he won’t prosecute intelligence officers or political appointees who were involved in the Bush administration’s policy of “enhanced interrogations.”

Missouri Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond said he was given assurances by Eric Holder that there would be no prosecutions. Liberal pundits and bloggers are said to be skeptical about the assurance, as the Washington Times is a “Moonie” paper.

I take little comfort in that. I’ve been suspicious from November 4 forward that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft/Gonzales would get a free ride from Obama. They can say anything they want about it, but it comes down to the U.S. having a bipartisan foreign policy. Bush didn’t pardon anybody for a reason. He knew he didn’t have to.

No comment yet from Holder. But if there is to be prosecution for war crimes, it appears it will only come about due to pressure from citizens of this country, or from United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak.

It would indeed be humorous to know that these above-named parties could not leave the country for fear of being arrested – aka – the Pinochet treatment.

Take That!

A favored political tactic among those of us who debate down here in the gallows is to take words uttered by opposition leaders that happen to harmonize with our own thoughts and feelings, and toss them at the other side like guacamole at a food fight. I hereby indulge myself.

Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. I oppose this–in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything–even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
Dwight Eisenhower, letter to his brother, Edgar Newton, November, 1954

Perceptions

Making the rounds – gallows humor from Jay Leno:

1. The US has made a new weapon that destroys people but keeps the building standing. Its called the stock market.

2. Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are? Wall Street is now being called Wal-Mart Street.

3. The difference between a pigeon and an investment banker. The pigeon can still make a deposit on a BMW

4. What’s the difference between a guy who lost everything in Las Vegas and an investment banker? A tie!

5. The problem with investment bank balance sheet is that on the left side nothing’s right and on the right side nothing’s left.

6. I want to warn people from Nigeria. if you get any emails from Washington asking for money, it’s a scam. Don’t fall for it

7. What worries me most about the credit crunch, is that if one of my checks is returned stamped ‘insufficient funds’. I won’t know whether that refers to mine or the bank’s.

New Stock Market Terms

BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investment banker to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET — A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry.

BROKER — What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR — An index of businesses – You’ll find me under “Poor”.

MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.

On a serious note, one of the legacies of the Reagan era is the 401K – making us all part of the ownership society. They have slowly displaced pensions. There are two problems with them – most people are underfunding themselves, and they tend to take a mighty hit in markets like we have today. Employers are allowed to match employee contributions to 401K’s, but there is no requirement that they do so. I don’t know the statistics, but would guess that these days there is not much matching going on.

Contrast this with the old-fashioned pension. An employee was guaranteed a certain income after retirement until death. It was expensive – one might call it is “drain on profits” if the only purpose of profits is to serve the investing class. Unfunded pension liabilities were often large, and companies resisted FASB initiatives to force them to state the unfunded liability. The bottom line was that pensions got funded (or in the case of TWA, dumped on the government), and while businesses did not show as much profit, they did indeed realize as much profit, and only distributed it in a different manner.

It’s all a matter of perception. Say company X makes $1 million, and it all accrues to the stockholders. Wonderful! We all benefit! Say the same company makes $1 million, and gives workers a raise of $500K – “earnings” are now cut by half. Horrible! We all suffer!

Except that in the second case, more people benefited from the same revenue stream.

The long-term goal of the right wing is to disembowel the pension system, including Social Security, and leaving us only with 401K’s, generally stuck in mutual funds that drain off as much as a quarter of wealth over time. Maybe one of the benefits of the current kick-back, where conservatism is temporarily in decline, will be to restore the notion of a pension.

Joshua Bell Plays the Metro

From an email I received and verified at Snopes:

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats averaged $100.

Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Some of the best sidewalk music and acrobatics I’ve ever seen was in Barcelona, Spain. One man held a hundred of us captive for half an hour as he performed various tricks with a bicycle, like balancing it on his nose. Walking through the ancient architecture we found various groups singing and playing instruments. The quality was very high.

But we were on vacation, and had time to take it in. We weren’t on our way to work. I wonder what they proved here?

Passing thoughts …

Been kind of slow here. We’ve been traveling – it was shirtsleeve weather in Colorado. We drove from Denver to Bozeman today – icy roads around Cheyenne, but thankfully the Mrs. was driving. The temperature dropped from 40’s to low tens as we moved north. Between Billings and Bozeman we had drifting snow and those tempestuous SUV’er who pass and blind you with snow. I need flashing window sign – never mind what it would say.

I wondered today as we passed through miles of prairie how the election would have turned out if Obama had two kids who had dropped out of high school, one of whom was knocked up.

It may be true that we have a black president, but I’m pretty sure we still have double standards.

Godwin on Steroids

The United States, during the Southeast Asia wars of the 1960’s and 70’s, leveled Cambodia, dropping more bombs on that country alone than had been dropped in all of World War II. In the wake of such devastation, an angry and terrorized population turned to a psychopath named Pol Pot for validation and salvation. It only got worse for them. We in the U.S. like to recount the Pol Pot era as something that merely ‘happened’ in their history, as if we were not the cause of it. In fact, we like to use Pol Pot to point out the depravities of our enemies of the day. But actions have consequences – our destruction of a country fertilized the killing fields for Mr. Pot.

I wonder about that now and then, especially as I watch Israeli behavior in Palestine. Jews were subjected to the worst of horrors in World War II, and it appears as though they have since that time been getting even. They are behaving now in Palestine as if they had found their own old private Pol. He has taken many forms, from terrorist Menachim Begin to Gold Mier to Ariel Sharon to its current form, Ehud Olmert. Others will soon follow. The behavior is the same – brutal and indiscriminate killing and elaborate self justification, dutifully echoed here in the U.S.

We anointed a new leader yesterday, and right before Israel pulled out of Gaza. They had attacked on December 19th after breaking a cease fire on November 4th. Prior to Obama’s inauguration Israel inflicted at least 1,400 casualties, most civilian and hundreds of them children. Even by Israeli standards, this is only a minor massacre. But neighborhoods have been leveled, hospitals bombed, white phosphorus used (according to Amnesty International). The savage attack was coupled with a siege wherein food and medical supplies along with parts necessary for water treatment plants were withheld. UN missions were attacked. Food had been emargoed since the cease fire violation in November.

We won’t know the full extent of the barbarism for weeks, if ever. Palestinians, after all, are not Israelis or Americans, so their deaths are not tallied like ours were after 9/11. Just as we don’t count dead Iraqis, dead Palestinians are of no consequence either.

The pretext for the attacks, which had been in planning stages for at least six months, was Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel. Analogies were everywhere to be found here in the Land of the Free, with President-elect Obama himself raising the specter of losing his own temper should anyone launch a rocket at his daughters. The response by Israel was wildly disproportionate and surely unrelated. There’s a much larger agenda at work. Israel is busy stealing Palestine from the Palestinians. It’s a tribute to the slavish submissiveness of the American news media that Israel can commit its crimes right under our noses, and yet tell us that the Palestinians are the criminals. And that most of us believe it to be so.

Israel has since its inception thought itself entitled to all of Palestine. This was reaffirmed by Prime Minister Olmert, who in 2006 told an applauding Knesset that “I believed, and to this day still believe, in our people’s eternal and historic right to this entire land.” No matter international law, UN resolutions, the World Court, world opinion (outside of the U.S.), Israel has been relentless – it has committed war crimes aplenty, among them occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, walling of its inhabitants into cantons and imposition of Apartheid on that land. This along with brutal attacks on southern Lebanon. The West Bank of Palestine is now occupied and subdued, and is no longer a problem for Israel. But Gaza has been a problem. Its people have been uppity, and in 2006 went so far as to elect Hamas as its legal representatives. Hamas is not submissive as is Fatah (the Palestinian Authority), and fights back. Therefore, it is a “terrorist” organization.

Not that the U.S. and Israel needed much of a pretext, but since Hamas was elected, Gaza has been sealed off, embargoed, harassed, starved and impoverished, its young men disappeared. Palestinian occupants of that prison camp are like a helpless child lashing out at its parent – too weak to inflict any damage, too enraged to be quiet. Israel means to bludgeon them into submission, and will commit any crime to achieve its goals. It is truly an evil empire.

How did this travesty come about?

It all goes back to Hitler and the Holocaust, I fear. He created this state. Jews were rightly enraged after World War II, and set out to take what they wanted, normal restraints aside. They realized that they could only achieve their objectives with brute force, and that their more liberal brethren would have to stand quietly by and watch as psychopaths went about their business. It’s not been easy – there are many good and kind Israelis who object to the current attack and the overall thrust of Israeli policy. But they are a minority. The rest of the country acts as if it is on a religious mission – Old Testament, not New. They are, as Pol Pot was to beleaguered Cambodians, avenging angels.

According to an article by John Seabrook in the New Yorker, something like one percent of males are psychopaths. But they are not openly so – that is, they pass as normal humans in everyday life, having families and imitating the emotions of those around them. According to Seabrook, psychopaths are naturally drawn to the military and police work, though most go into the business world. In the military, they naturally rise to power. It’s a perfect place for them. Israel is now likely in the hands of psychopaths, and the good people who moved there for a better life are caught up in it all. They are taking what they want, as there is no one to stop them. Their leaders know that to achieve their goals they have to perform unsavory actions. They seem to do it with relish.

George W. Bush is a merely sociopath by Israeli standards, though he certainly left his mark. He obviously cared little for his legions of victims. As I watched the Israelis act with deliberate cruelty this last month, I realized that actions have consequences, and just as two million Cambodians had to pay for U.S. crimes in the form of Pol Pot, so too do 11 million Palestinians have to pay for Hitler’s crimes.

Mind Your Manners

Just sayin’ here, I think it is unpatriotic to criticize a sitting president while we are in the midst of two wars. Especially a president that was actually elected.

And by gawd, don’t dare say anything about him overseas. Clear Channel will be on you like white on rice. I know that, because they are balanced in their approach to public policy.

Any criticism of President Obama will heretofore be knowns as “Obama bashing.” It’s not allowed.