Debating Marijuana

Since the electorate in two states has voted to legalize marijuana, there has been much discussion of the legalization of drugs.  News programs have been talking about it, and the most recent Intelligence Squared US debate took up the issue.  I have watched the marijuana debate with interest over the years, from its beginning as a medical drug, and now, as a legal drug.  With the vote in Colorado and Washington, it has become a major issue, and the one thing I notice about it is that neither side seems to be able to find a compelling argument.

My personal view is that marijuana should not be legal.  I have never used it, and I see no value in "recreational" drugs, of any kind.  I do not see the need to have alcohol, tobacco/nicotine, or caffeine legal either.  This is not to say that I am a prohibitionist, or seek to ban coffee, I just do not see what good these substances offer society.  Alcohol can be linked to violence, traffic incidents, and death (dare I say, overdosing?).  Caffeine, though I have no study to cite, can more than likely be linked to many fatal incidents on the road or at the workplace when people try to replace sleep with an upper.

Many will argue that this is a slippery slope.  After all, if everything dangerous is illegal, then we would not be able to drive cars.  Cars, unlike drugs, do add to society (the environmental problems are a topic for another post).  My argument is purely pragmatic, and my simple question is what good comes out of having these substances legal?  As of yet, I have heard nothing compelling.

The flip side to this is that I would happily ask the other side, what good comes to society by having these substances illegal?  Again, not a single solid, logical argument about societal good.  On one news program, a police officer was arguing that medical marijuana increase crime rates, because before it was legal for medical use in California, there were no medical marijuana dispensary break-ins.  While, I have no doubt he is correct, the point could be made that before there were cars the incidence of auto theft were pretty low, which is not an argument to outlaw innovation.

In the Intelligence Squared debate (IQ2) both sides relied heavily on emotion.  What if kids grew up in a world where they could walk to the corner store and buy heroine?  In the current world, kids, especially black kids, get put in jail for doing something that most Americans try!  Neither of these arguments are in anyway compelling to me.  I do not think anyone has ever argued in favor of selling heroine to kids, so whether or not that should be legal is not really a question that warrants debate.  Drug laws unfairly target minorities, but that is not an argument about the legalization of drugs, that is an argument about our broken, racist, and bigoted criminal justice system.  I just read an article about how girls (female minors) get the same medical care as boys in juvenile detention, saving being asked "are you pregnant," and a couple other gender specific questions?  That is clearly another issue that needs to be addressed, but it is not an argument for, or against, the legalization of any substance.  In the 90 minute IQ2 debate, a panel of four experts, were unable to put together consistent, logical arguments for either stance.  Both sides kept using arguments that were emotional, not logical.

Before I go to far down Mr. Spock's path, I will stop lamenting the emotional arguments, and return to the debate that people should be having.  My first stop is medical marijuana.  When people talk about getting high on marijuana, or using marijuana for medicinal purposes, they are primarily talking about the psychoactive compound tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC.  In all the medical marijuana debates I have not heard a single argument about medical use of THC, always marijuana.  This seems odd, until you realize that THC is a legal medical drug in the United States (and Canada), marketed under the brand Marinol.  When the FDA approved Marinol (synthetic THC is called by the generic name dronabinol) there was concern that there would be prescription chasing, but there wasn't.  This may be because if you are going to abuse prescription drugs, there are far better and more addictive options than dronabinol, like the opioids.  Which begs the question, if THC is legal, then why is there a debate to legalize marijuana?

As it turns out, the cannabis plant produces more than just THC, so taking Marinol is not as "pleasant" an experience as the drug cocktail found in marijuana.  It is slower acting (though presumably a dronabinol inhaler would fix that), and it has a fixed dosage when in pill form (again, this could probably be fixed with an inhaler).  Lastly, Marinol is more expensive than marijuana.  While this could easily become a debate about the problems of a healthcare system where drug dealers can more effectively treat the symptoms of senior citizens with cancer than oncologists, that would not be a debate about the legalization of drugs.  So the debate to have medical marijuana is in fact about the cannabis plant, and not the treatment of symptoms treatable by prescription Marinol (and therefore marijuana).  I actually have a hard time with this.  If Marinol is not the ideal drug, then a pharmaceutical company and the FDA should create and approve a better one, or a better delivery system.  Yet, I can appreciate the ridiculousness of redeveloping something that already exists.

The pro-medical marijuana campaign yet again disappoints me though.  They seek to legalize it for medical use, and bypass the FDA.  The California Medical Association endorses marijuana use for medicinal purposes, but an endorsement is not the intensive testing that FDA approval requires.  While the FDA does have problems, legalizing a drug by ballot initiative, rather than approval by the FDA defeats the purpose of living in a republic.

Historical evidence of marijuana use suggests that it is in fact safe.  In looking for a material safety data sheet for THC I found one for THC in methanol.  The methanol was far more dangerous than the THC, which lacked even basic toxicology information.  The DEA is partly to blame for that, as controlled substances are often mixed for laboratory use with a chemical that would kill the user before they were able to enjoy any of the drug's effects.  I suppose that does deter abuse, but anyone who can get the substance has the ability to refine it.  Yet, the point remains that THC is so benign that, according to the material safety data sheet, it is essential non-toxic.  This means that, unfortunately for everyone who are sick of hearing this (including myself), marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol.

Evidence of the non-harmful effects of marijuana is compelling.  Though arguing that it is worse than alcohol approaches arguing for the existence of the Easter Bunny, a comparison to alcohol is not be a sound argument for legalization!  It is a compelling prohibitionist argument.  If alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs, then alcohol should be illegal.  It all starts getting pretty circular at this point.

My first proposition will probably not please anyone, but I think it is worth consideration.  If Marinol is legal, then there is no rush to make medical marijuana legal.  Thus, Marinol is a perfect example that the medical system needs to be fixed so that the American medical system can compete with drug dealers at soothing the pain of the terminally ill.  While Congress debates healthcare reform, the FDA can find the safest, suitable ways to use marijuana medically.  Once the FDA has issued a ruling, marijuana (or an acceptably similar synthetic alternative) can be prescribed by physicians to patients.

With an FDA approved marijuana and delivery system, I see limited reason why people who want marijuana could not get it, after speaking with their physician.  I will go out on a limb, and say that "recreational" users of marijuana are self-medicating for malaise.  Let these people talk to health care providers about their malaise. It could be that speaking with a mental health clinician would be better treatment than a drug.  Perhaps some other activity would help as well, say exercise, enough sleep, or proper nutrition.  If the physician and patient agree that the best treatment is marijuana, then the physician can help choose the delivery system.  Obviously a diabetic should not be eating brownies, and someone who has a history of tobacco use should not be smoking.  A physician is qualified to consider the overall health of the individual, and their situation before the patient starts looking for illicit ways to treat their own condition.

Lastly under this system, to procure one's medical marijuana one would not go to a dispensary with lava lamps and tie-dye t-shirts.  Nor would they go to some warm coffee shop like the Netherlands.  They would queue-up with the coughing and sniveling masses, to be issued their medication from some judgmental old man who stands on an elevated platform, behind a counter, looking down at everyone through his ill-fitting bifocals.  (I have had some very warm and friendly pharmacists of all races and genders, but the field does seem to attract grumpy old men.)

I imagine that both sides of the debate are cringing at my suggestion.  The marijuana users do not, in fact, want to be treated like they are ill, and those opposed to the drug are imagining street gangs rampaging through their big box store pharmacy to score marijuana (rather than the previously mentioned much stronger other drugs they already stock).  To the anti-marijuana crowd I ask if this is really any different from Prozac or other SSRIs?  To the marijuana users I would like to hear an honest argument that they are not self-medicating.  Many of my friends are going to argue with me on this, but using drugs is not recreational.  Socializing is recreational, but using a social lubricant to do so (including alcohol) is treating the discomfort of this activity.  Just like the athlete who uses pain killers when their sport causes an injury, drug use is not recreational, but treats a negative effect of the recreational activity.  (A connoisseur of products that happen to contain drugs (e.g. wine, coffee, chocolate, etc.) is a reasonable exception, the motive is the key issue.)

I have now acknowledged that I do not support legalization, that the medical marijuana debate is little more than a sham, and that a form of medical marijuana could work, now for why marijuana should be illegal.  One of the things I most hate is being wrong.  Being wrong is something that makes me want to use drugs (for treatment of those feelings).  I choose to deal with it in other ways, and usually I try to just stop being wrong.  Thus, I cringe whenever I find myself siding with those arguing that marijuana should be illegal.  The arguments are flatly ludicrous.  Society will not collapse if marijuana is legalized, violent crime will not increase, and children will not become evil.  Marijuana has been in society for much longer than it has been illegal.  Some children will obtain marijuana illegally, and, like almost all other life experiences, most of those who do will do it in college first.

As for violent crime, there seems to be no correlation between homicide rate and marijuana use (though it can be tied to the illegal drug trade).  At the end of this post is a chart of cannabis use by percent of the population, and intentional homicide.  I will highlight a couple of countries here though, just for argument.  For example, in Canada 12.6% of the population report using cannabis, and the homicide rate is 1.8.  In the USA cannabis use is higher, 13.7%, as is the homicide rate, 5.4.  If cannabis use is correlated to homicide rate based on these two countries, then for every 1% increase in population using cannabis, homicide rate increases by a factor of three!  Sure this is oversimplified, but it means that Palau, with a cannabis use rate of 24.2% should have an astronomical homicide incidence.  They don't.  Palau's homicide rate is 0.0.

The "gateway drug" is another argument that is illogical.  This post hoc argument falls apart for me on keeping marijuana illegal.  First, of all the people I know who have used marijuana, to my knowledge they all used alcohol first.  In the IQ2 debate one panelist argues that mother's milk is the ultimate gateway substance by this argument.  While I will admit that once a person makes contact with someone who sells illegal drugs, they are more likely to be exposed to illegal drugs of all varieties.  This admission seems to make the gateway drug argument a strong case to decriminalize marijuana.

In my attempt to be correct as much as possible, it seems that the only way out of the marijuana issue is a dance of rhetoric.  If there is no logical argument to keep it illegal, and no logical argument to make it legal (moral and emotional arguments are not, generally, logic based), there must be a middle ground.  To me, that middle ground is decriminalizing marijuana.  This same argument can be made for some other drugs as well, for example cocaine is illegal in most places, the coca leaf is legal, and responsibly used, in many.  By leaving a relatively cheap and harmless drug legal, the much more dangerous, much more expensive drug becomes less desirable, or so the argument goes.  With the reduced demand for the dangerous drug, and reduced illegal activity, everyone is safer.

Some might say that is an argument for legalization, but it really is not.  It might have been an argument for intelligently creating drug laws in the first place, but it seems too late for that.  Further, in the decriminalization argument, our inability to create a fair criminal justice system is on the table.  If police target minorities unfairly (at the insistence of white voters) for crimes that are not dangerous, then we should change the laws such that everyone is less likely to be victims to society's irrational fears.  This requires some very big admissions though.  In order for decriminalizing anything to work society must admit two things.  First, we, owing to our own desires, are unable to regulate an activity that collectively we acknowledge has no positive effect on society.  Second, that we are actually a lot less scared than we want to be.

The first is probably harder to admit, but much easier to accomplish.  The second idea I first heard in a NPR interview.  The interviewee argued that we need to separate the criminals who we are mad at, and the people we are scared of.  We are scared of rapists and murders, for very good reason.  Violent people need to be separated from society for the benefit of society.  Other criminals need to be punished, say, those who evade taxes, or sell liquor to minors, but we are not afraid of these people, so they should not be sent to prison.  Why?  Because prison is very expensive.

According to this press release from the Drug Policy Alliance, New York spent $75 million on low-level arrests in 2011, and has spent $600 million on these arrests over the past decade.  With all the talk of the deficit, are we really even that mad at people who use marijuana at the lowest level?  I am not.  I am friends with a lot of people who could be prosecuted for these "crimes," and while we do not agree on the legality of this substance, I cannot even begin to say that I think they should be prosecuted for it.  If I think of my friends that way, then I cannot think of strangers any differently.  I have to admit that I am not scared of people using marijuana at this "casual" or "recreational" level.

My argument for decriminalization is simply this.  There is at most a dearth of evidence to keep marijuana illegal, and an equal paucity of evidence to legalize it.  While I have no desire to see marijuana legalized, I have no logical argument for it to not be decriminalized.  Decriminalization of minor offenses, like low-level marijuana use, would help to make the criminal justice system less unfair.  Decriminalization also makes sense from a financial standpoint.  The people of New York spent $75 million dollars last year enforcing a law that no one seems to have a logical argument for, that could be spent on a program that has some social good.




The following chart compares homicide rates compiled by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for 2008 with Cannabis use by country, which is also compiled by the UNODC, but was obtained from Wikipedia owing to the horrible PDF format that I found directly from the UNODC.  There are some huge issues with this massive oversimplification.  To begin, homicide rates are all from 2008, but cannabis use is from a multitude of years.  The assumption that the rates are similar between years is made for simplicity.  Second, obviously there are many factors that affect homicide rate.  For example, very high homicide rates in failed states or war zones can be correlated to little other than those.  Even under those circumstances interesting numbers are present, for example, Colombia has a horrific homicide rate, but marijuana use is actually fairly low.  A clear example showing that drug use is actually much less bad than the illegal drug trade.

To use the chart, note that the scale is different for the two series.  Homicide incidence is given per 100,000 people, and cannabis use is percent (or an incidence per 100 people).  Also, the X-axis is capped at 30, but several nations have homicide incidence that exceed thirty, in which case the incidence is given as a label along the Y-axis, e.g. Belize.  Cannabis use is given for individual countries within the UK, but homicide incidence is given for all of the UK.  As such, the homicide incidence for the entire country is compared to the cannabis use for England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland separately.  Lastly, if you want the Excel spreadsheet for your own use, I am happy to send it to you, just ask.

(Holi)Daily Wishes

Writing about holidays is always a challenge for me.  I do not have any specific aversion to holidays, yet I do not seem to hold them quite so sacred as many others.  I am not troubled by working on holidays, including Christmas.  Accordingly, I have a difficult time gathering the gumption to make long journeys during the busiest travel days of the year.  Yet, when working, any time off is worth traveling for (unless you travel for work).

Long before the beginning of the only four day weekend in the standard work calendar in the US, plans start being made.  What to do is a challenging choice between parents, siblings, friends, and personal time.  With so many interests it is difficult to make plans where everyone is content with their Thanksgiving, and yours.  After years of marathon attempts to travel and see everyone, I decided that holidays were time best spent at home, with only local guests.  The beginning of these no travel holidays was my last year in Las Vegas.

Thanksgiving was hosted by Denise, with a relative crowd of seven holiday refugees.  Christmas was at my house, with three non-travelers quietly enjoying the holiday around my Ace Hardware Christmas Tree that was as endearing as it was toilet brush-like.  Thanksgiving was spent discussing what holidays used to be for everyone, why we did not go home, and the usual odd and nerdy blend of science and eclectic topics found only when a group of people highly specialized in one small field gather (5 people were geoscientists, two were in relationships that drew them into the fray).  For Christmas, Denise and I had already discussed the holiday memories, so we spent very little time discussing holidays of previous years, and mostly just having a good meal and a good evening.

In the years since, I have not celebrated Thanksgiving in a meaningful way, being outside the US, and Christmas has shrunk from three to two.  They are quiet, and without demands.  New Year's on these years has sprouted a tradition of watching the Lord of the Rings.  This year, Thanksgiving is coming back into my life with travel, and it seems that Christmas may include the hateful ritual of trundling through airports clogged with stressed and angry travelers, who are constantly enraged, moments from physical violence, to ensure that this is the best celebration of peace, love, and acceptance ever.

To many, this will appear a grim and negative view of the holidays.  To those of you who choose to interpret it as such, my apologies, for that is not what I intend.  What I intend is to encourage that you have good holidays no matter what they include.  If you are creating new traditions, sharing time with new people, working, or gathering with loved ones for a ceremony steeped in rituals, I hope you find the holidays are warm.  If you are stuck in airports, or facing foreclosure and mounting bills, maybe there is something good that does not require the things or people you do not have.  I count myself thankful for the comforts I have, and the choices I get to make, as I know many do not have those luxuries.  I hope that others can be truly thankful for what they have, and can let the good things in other people's lives enrich their own.

Today, the sun rose everywhere, from war zones to wealthy suburbs, over those shivering in blankets and those basking on the beach, bringing the opportunity of a new day.  To everyone, everywhere, happy Thanksgiving from Faux Social, maybe today we can find the good in each other.

If not, the sun will rise tomorrow.

The Inevitability of Mining Pebble

On 7 October, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner published a column entitled, "Seductive 'silver': Pebble project is ethically and environmentally indefensible."  I think the title conveys that Eric Forrer, the author, is against the Pebble Mine project like many, if not most, Alaskans.  I know very little about the specifics of Pebble.  There were concerns about the seismic stability of the tailings impoundment, acid mine drainage, and the general despoiling of nearly pristine wilderness.  Complicating all of that, the deposit sits in the headwaters of one of the last great salmon fisheries in the world.

My intention is not to counter these arguments, as many of them are valid questions.  Most of them are also out of my area of expertise on the subject.  All that said, I think it is interesting that most of the opposing arguments are not actually about mining.  Salmon fisheries were destroyed in the North Atlantic because of fishing.  Similar mismanagement of fishing destroyed the salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest (in both the US and Canada).  Damns, logging, and other industries also had a severe effect on the fish, but mining is not the culprit in the destruction of any salmon fisheries.  Yet, the fishing companies are a major opponent of the mine to protect the fish.  If fishing is judged by the same rubric as mining, than I can see no way to argue that fishing is not also what Forrer calls an "environmental Armageddon."

The problem with mining is not the environmental catastrophes that it has caused, it is that people recognize a mine, and blame mining for the environmental problems they see.  In the Appalachians, for example, the historic mines remain, but the old growth forests do not.  Logging caused as much, if not more water contamination that killed streams, but since the trees are gone, it is hard for people to even imagine that from the east coast to Minnesota was once covered with endless forests of ancient trees, teeming with game.

Extractive industries are not the only ones that have horrific histories.  It should not be forgotten that farming was once carried out largely by slaves in this country.  That Henry Ford's plants were a model for union busting, corrupt police, corporate evil, and, lest we forget, antisemitism.  Every industry has skeletons in the closet.  The Cuyahoga River has caught fire 13 times, not owing to mining.  Love Canal, perhaps on of the most important environmental contamination cases for creating both environmental law, and precedence in dealing with liability law, was the dump site of 21,000 tons of toxic waste by a chemical company, not mining.  Perhaps the most important mining environmental disaster was Summitville, CO.

Summitville Mine has a long history of environmental issues.  Modern discovery of gold at Summitville happened in the late 19th century, but mining in the district had been undertaken by the Spanish, and, if memory serves, during pre-Columbian times.  By the middle of the 20th century, mining had largely exhausted the resource until technological improvements gave mining heap leaching and inexpensive haulage. Colorado issued a permit that, based on the geology, arguably should never have been issued.  The company was mismanaged, the mining was done poorly, and ultimately the result was an environmental catastrophe that should have been prevented by state and federal mining regulations and permitting bodies (too lax regulations do not help mining).

The point of this digression is that mining is judged by the failings of the past, yet most other industries are forgiven their trespasses.  In 2005 the Lisbon Valley Mine became the first copper mine to open in the US in 10 years, and to my knowledge, no copper mine has opened since then.  Which means in the last 17 years, there is but one mine using the newest technology.  Much has changed in those 17 years, and the technologies present in a mine that opened today would be as different as the technologies found in the American home over the last two decades.  It does not make mining without risk, but it does question the validity of an argument in opposition to mining based on technologies from 20 to 150 years ago.

Mining then, is no more environmentally indefensible than any other industry.  I went to the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour last night in Duluth, and one of the films featured several long time-elapse photography scenes of reservoirs in the Canadian Rockies.  The impact of dams on the natural environment are just as bad, if not worse than mining, yet they were being featured as things of beauty, and I assume that I was fairly alone in the audience cursing the Canadians (and an American filmmaker) for selling Hetch Hetchy-like projects as natural wonders.  I imagine that even Eric Forrer would not argue so strongly against the dams of the US and Canada as he does against the Pebble Mine.

The trouble I see for Mr. Forrer when it comes to Pebble is that it is likely the world's second largest copper deposit.  Beyond that, world class deposits do not occur alone.  Along the Alaska Peninsula there are undoubtedly numerous enormous deposits, much like those found in Chile.  This copper district, including the Pebble Mine, could be done properly, mined in Alaska, under strict EPA and state regulation.  This could provide wealth to the Alaska, that if used wisely, could develop infrastructure that would have long lasting, environmentally positive effects on the state.

The first part of this is strict regulation.  As an undergraduate, I toured a molybdenum mine.  One of the mine engineers admitted to the class that the Sierra Club actually helps them mine better.  He said that the Sierra Club sends engineers and lawyers, experts in the field, to review their plans, and point out things where mining could be done better.  He contrasted this against Greenpeace, who, according to him, simply looked for ways to be obstreperous.  I cannot help but see most of the Alaskans (and non-Alaskans) who are seeking to block the Pebble Mine as being like Greenpeace, looking to stop the project, rather than make regulations logical, strict, well-enforced, and, like the Alaska Constitution, a model of how good government works to protect the best interests of its people.

The second part of this is that mining Pebble has to be worth the risk, and loss of wilderness to society.  The revenue should be taxed, and that money should not go into further tax breaks for the oil industry, nor should it go into the permanent fund dividend, but it should go into schools, hospitals, roads, railroads, communications, air traffic control infrastructure, and alternative energy technologies.  Alaska could not only be a model for responsible, green mining, but also for what a state can look like when people collaborate, and create a place that is nice to live in now, and for generations to come.

I think it is unlikely that Alaskans have it in them to do this though.  Based on the results of the recent election in Alaska, most of the people who oppose Pebble Mine on the basis of environmental concerns support the Republican Party's mission to weaken environmental regulation.  The same people who would rather have a multi-billion dollar investment nationalized for environmental reasons argue against taxes, and for "small" government.  Because of this attitude, I think that the potential of what the Pebble Mine could be will be lost.
Though it will not be lost to a wilderness preserve, because Pebble will be mined.

The entire Alaska Peninsula could be turned into a National Park, or every gun-wielding Alaska could fortify the region and fire upon geologists.  It does not matter what type of action the people of Alaska or the United States take against Pebble Mine, one day, it will be mined because it is thought to be the second largest copper deposit in the world.

Pebble contains an estimated 55 billion pounds of copper, along with billions of pounds and millions of ounces of other elements including molybdenum, gold, silver, rhenium, and palladium.  This is a resource that society simply cannot leave in the ground.  Society is hungry for these resources.  The Minerals Information Institute publishes the MII Baby every year, which estimates the amount of mined natural resources an American will use over their lifetime.  The 2.92 million pounds of "minerals, metals, and fuels" that will be used by a Yankee includes 969 pounds of copper.  The 2008 Census predicted a population of over 400 million people in 2050, and the trend of most resources on the MII baby has been up or stable, every year I have looked at it.  Calling it 1,000 pounds of copper per person, and today's population, the US needs 310 billion pounds of copper for its population, or about six Pebble Mines!  Recall that Pebble is the second biggest in the world, and in production it would account for only one sixth of the copper America needs to preserve the status quo for the current population.  In 2050 the US will need eight Pebble Mines (for current consumption), and in the last 17 years the US has opened one small copper mine.

Opponents of mining will argue for recycling, but the problem with recycling is that it, at 100% efficiency, produces only the amount of materials we currently have.  Using worldwide production of automobiles, the problem with recycling becomes quickly evident.  In 1997 about 54 million automobiles were manufactured. In 2010 it was up to nearly 78 million, or almost a 50% increase.  For recycling to provide these automobiles, every car would need to be 50% smaller today than in 1997, but can cars shrink by 50% every 15 years in perpetuity?  Computers require a slew of mined minerals, the plug-in Toyota Prius requires on the order of 50 pounds of rare earth elements (more than non-hybrid automobiles), and wind turbines, cell phones, and just about every other new gadget is hungry for rare earths as well, all of which needs to be mined, not just recycled, to meet current demands.

It is easy to want mining to be conducted in remote China, rather than remote Alaska, when you are an Alaskan.  China is where most of the world's rare earth elements come from.  China has already acknowledged that their production is not sustainable, and in as soon as 2014, China's demand for these elements will exceed their production.  The United States will need to begin mining these deposits, or choose to stay married to coal power, and give up our cell phones and TVs.  Why not reinvent American mining to be responsible, even green, rather than await the inevitable?

Forrer, in his column, even acknowledges the inevitability of the Pebble Mine.  He thinks that Pebble will go into development when there is a favorable political climate at the federal level (which given the Obama Administration's track record on increased oil and gas production is arguably now), and he has a sad resignation about how the evil corporation will eventually triumph accordingly.  In this triumph of evil, he sees only an emotional loss, and that is the biggest loss of all.  Therein lies the biggest loss to society.  Mr. Forrer and the Pebble opponents cite more emotion than logic.  The pro-mining groups prey on the fears of people who need work.  The TV commercials show either leaping salmon or poverty stricken families, and no one seems to be interested in the science and engineering that can make the Pebble Mine a success for everyone.

Development of the Pebble Mine is inevitable, as is development of the countless other major deposits that are certainly hosted in the Alaska Peninsula.  The world needs commodities, and Pebble is simply too good to not mine.  The question that faces Alaskans, like all questions of the inevitable, is not whether or not, but how.

Changing a Tractor Tire

When I was in high school I worked on a farm.  When people think of farms it is often idyllic pastoral imagery.  This was not that kind of farm.  There was no livestock, meaning no the happy cow in front of a red barn.  The barns, if they could be called that, were steel buildings shoved full of a hoarder's dream.  The farmer went to an Alyeska auction once and came back with two trucks and what may have been a reel to reel computer, I do not quite remember.  The trucks needed to be waxed, a job best done not by Turtle Wax, but used automatic transmission fluid.  It was a different kind of place.

I could easily say that every day had a story, but most days were rather monotonous, and somehow one gets used to crazy.  When I first started, my task was to drive a quad around a giant field picking up sticks (logs) that were once wind rows that the farmer, Ken, had decided to plow into the field.  When the trailer behind my quad was full of sticks I used a mixture of diesel and gasoline poured out of a jug and a lighter to light the pile on fire.  Ken was not without precautions.  When he issued me my jug of diesel-gas fuel blend, he made sure I was using a long handled barbecue lighter, for "safety."  As fire season came on, with no rain and high winds, lighting 10 foot tall piles of wood on fire seemed a little risky, until my assignment one day was to try to start a forest fire in an island of trees that the original land owner probably pictured would be a perfect site for a his house.  With that, it proves that crazy is easy to accept, I just wrote that we were trying to start a forest fire, so the risk of starting a forest fire is already small potatoes.

One day I was sent out to run over six inch diameter aspen trees with a tractor.  For a week my job was to burn weeds (trees), a weed burner that had been affixed to a 500 lb propane tank on a trailer.  I dangled on a rope from the back of the tank, setting the world on fire.  Another day one of the farm trucks (with a broken gas gauge) ran out of gas.  Rather than putting more gas in the tank, Ken decided the truck needed starter fluid, not more fuel.  He turned it over, while I sprayed ethanol into the carburetor.  When the truck turned over, I stopped, and the truck would die.  We switched roles, as I obviously was not using the aerosol can correctly.  Ken sprayed the carburetor with the volatile aerosol until the engine compartment erupted into flames.  With crazy becoming normal, my own risk acceptance grew, and my ability to deal with "normal" monotony waned.

Driving a tractor, or any heavy equipment, is boring.  Some of the fields I would mow would take eight hours to make one lap of the field.  My day would be something along the lines of:  drive to the tractor, take lunch and water into the tractor, lube the tractor, start the tractor, drive two hours, turn right, drive two hours, turn right, stop for lunch, drive two hours, turn right, drive two hours, drive back to the barn.  One simply cannot alternate days between being tied to a bomb and sitting in a tractor cab keeping the wheel straight.  So I would come up with my own crazy ways to entertain myself.

Once, sitting in the cab, having done nothing for the last hour, I realized that the tractor drove itself.  The throttle could be set so that the tractor would drive at a constant speed without an operator.  The steering was stiff enough that on level ground the tractor drove straight without my touching the steering wheel.  I looked at the dual wheels, then at the mower behind and it occurred to me that I could jump out of the tractor, and clear all of the danger.  I slowed the tractor, then leaped from the hot, exhaust filled cab.  Clear of the danger, I proudly looked at the tractor lumbering along without me.  Then I realized I had to get back into the cab.

The story that I most enjoy from the farm, though it has been years since I have attempted to recall it in its entirety, is how to change a tractor tire.  Anyone who has been to a tire store has seen the various machinery available to change a tire.  There is a machine that breaks the bead, then an attachment is added, and the tire is pried off the rim.  Bicyclists are familiar with doing this process by hand, or with small nylon tire levers.  For heavy equipment there are similar machines, but these machines are expensive, and the Co-op was a long ways away.

Without the hydraulic driven machine to break the bead, farmers can use a momentum driven device, where a heavy metal sleeve is hoisted by hand, then slammed down a metal rod with a chisel-like head.  Using this tool is time consuming, physically demanding, and in no way dangerous.  Instead, Ken liked to use a 4x4 piece of lumber, and a truck.  One end of the board was jammed into the tractor tire next to the bead, the other was put wedged between the license plate and bumper of the truck.  The truck was then reversed into the tire.

"Careful," I was warned the first time we changed a tire, "if that slips it will kill you."  In addition to death by slipping lumber, I had already considered death by breaking lumber, death by being crushed between truck and tractor, and death by tractor falling off jack.

I stood clear of the operation.  The truck backed-up, the board slipped, and profanity flowed from the cab.  I reset the apparatus, then stepped away.  The truck backed-up, the board slipped, and profanity flowed from the cab.  I put the board back, and, reluctantly, held the board in place, awaiting certain death.

The bead broke, and I knew that from then on, I would have to be in the center of the operation to facilitate changing every tire.

Back in the tire shop, a tire iron-like attachment is slipped under the bead, and the machinery pulls the bead over the rim.  On the farm the first tire iron is slid into place, then a second, then a third, then profanity flows freely as one slips and all three go whipping through the air.  This is repeated until either the tire is off, or there is a human casualty.  Victory never went to the tire when I was a part of the mission though, and the bead was always pulled off the rim.

At this point, the tire is half on the rim.  Tubes could be replaced, and foreign objects could be removed.  Occasionally though, the tire needed work done on something that could not be reached with the half mounted tire.  The tire could be either be pried completely off the rim, or the youngest, smallest worker could climb into the tire.  Another farm hand would pull the bead wide, I would exhale, and squeeze inside.

With the tire fixed, the bead would have to be reset.  While this operation always included prolific, creative profanity, most of the really dodgy work was done.  The tractor would be sent back into service, and I would set about another task.  Like the time we were sorting used tires Ken had gotten for "cheap"...

And a Side of Italy

When Sarah and I started talking about travelling more, the first two locations we discussed were Greece and Japan.  I favored Greece in the short-term, as it seemed logistically and financially easier.  Sarah favored Japan, because these two locations would allow for Sarah to do some work on her field sites that may lead to those data being slightly more useful, and Japan was the better research choice.  Then we were invited to a wedding in Greece, and Greece catapulted into the lead.  Once we decided that Greece was financially reasonable, Sarah started talking to some of her other friends to see where they would be.  Her friends in Stockholm were out of town during the best time to visit them, and it would be a long way to go for a quick trip.  A friend of hers from Australia was going to be in Italy, which seemed like a more reasonable side trip.  I had some reservations about the extra cost of essentially three days in Italy, but we decided to give it a try.  Accordingly, the trip to Italy was destined to be a different type of trip.

On the morning of our flight to Rome, we said one last goodbye to the bride, groom, and groom's parents, as they happened to be at the airport at the same time we were.  We went to our budget airlines, and flew to Rome, ending out Greek travels, though our final flight would leave from Athens, we would spend no more time outside of an airport in the country.  At the gate, we both lamented not continuing on with what proved to be a fun group of Australians to Paros to have fun on the beach.  That said, we both agreed that we were Greeced-out.  We would not be missing the smell of hot animal feces that permeates Athens, nor would we really be missing the slow and vegan unfriendly style of life that we left behind on Milos.  With mixed emotions about moving on to a new country, we boarded the plane.

When we arrived in Rome, we headed to the train station to buy tickets into the heart of the city.  The automated kiosks for whatever reason were not taking anything but very small bills, for fairly expensive tickets.  We had to go to a booth, and talk to someone.  Talking to people, particularly people who are trying to sell me something, is a chore that I find most undesirable.  As we would begin to learn, the Italians take this displeasure to a level beyond anything I had ever known.  Sarah did most of the talking, and after asking for two train tickets to Termini, the teller gave her a sales pitch for the shuttle bus.
"No, just the train."
"Where are you staying"?
"Just two tickets to the train."
"Okay, but where are you staying"?
"Hotel Americana Nardizzi," I regretfully added.
"The shuttle bus will go straight to your hotel."
"The train is fine," Sarah says.
"It is faster, and will leave in two minutes, before the train even arrives."  This nonsense continued.  In the end, I decided that if the shuttle left sooner, took less time, and cost essentially the same, we could use the shuttle, since this woman seemed completely unwilling to sell us train tickets.  We bought the bus tickets, and sat down to wait.
"I hate being bullied into things like this," I say to Sarah.
"Me too, and I like trains better."
"Yeah, I would way rather take the train, and I hate rewarding people for behaving like that, rather than supporting public transit."  We stewed on this for a while.  Ten minutes passed, the train arrived, but the shuttle bus had not.  Sarah offered to go request our tickets be changed.  The teller just kept lying.  She could have lied and said the tickets were nonrefundable, but she chose to drag out the conversation with lies until the bus was actually ready to leave, again, we were bullied into taking the bus.

We followed the bus driver with a group of other people who presumably were duped into the same situation because they also did not travel with a wad of small bills.  We arrived at the bus, and sat in it, waiting for more passengers to show up.  We watched the train leave.  To pass the time, we lamented our plight, and sat, more and more frustrated with the teller, and our mishandling of the situation.  We reflected on it, and decided we should have just walked away, lessen learned.

The bus finally left.  The driving was vomit inducing, and took longer than the train (this meant being motion sick for longer).  The girl sitting next to me was a reasonably friendly Chinese girl studying art in Germany.  She was interesting enough to banter with, except that I was having flashbacks to the Greek ferry, and not feeling that talkative.  This lessened my enjoyment of chatting with her, and she started to chatter with her friend instead.  They got dropped off first, then it was our turn.

We stepped off the bus, and our hotel was somewhere in a giant wall, with giant locked wooden doors.  Next to the door was a sea of buzzers, one was labelled, "Hotel Americana Nadizzi."  After we pushed the button, the door slowly opened revealing a massive staircase, and a door into a church (the ground floor).  At the first floor are church offices (that is, the first floor above the ground floor).  The second and third floors were residences.  On the fourth floor was the Hotel Oceania.  The fifth and top floor was the lobby to our hotel.  As we walked down the corridor to the lobby, another patron offered encouragement, "this is the right place, you're almost there"!

Sarah dealt with the check-in.  We were led by an employee down a corridor, into a stairwell, down two floors, through a locked door that you must be rung into, then down the corridor where our room was.  The bed was more of a cot, and the door to our corridor was commonly impossible to get opened without walking back up to the front desk.  Rick Steves describes this as an "authentic" Italian experience.  We decided to find a hotel a little less authentic for the night before we flew out.

We washed up from our travel day, and went out for dinner.  We walked to the restaurant, Ops!, which I highly recommend, and discussed what we should do with our single day in Rome.  We decided to ride bicycles around the city, and retired to our cot for the night.

The next morning, we got up, and went to breakfast at a nearby hostel.  The food was good, and was made in a space the size of a child's bedroom by a friendly, lanky German with a hotplate.  After breakfast, we made our way to the bike rental.  When we arrived at the location of Top Bike Rentals and Tours, we were initially disappointed, thinking the business had closed.  As it turned out, the closed business was a bike shop, but the Top Bike was just around the corner.  We rented our bikes, and rolled into Rome.

Our first stop was the Colosseum.  The line was atrocious, not only for tickets, but it would also appear to get into the amphitheatre once tickets had been obtained.  Rick Steves recommended getting tickets at the Roman Forum instead, to skip the lines.  We decided to ride our bikes around the Colosseum to check out that option, and in so doing, missed the turn, and dedicated our day to riding around the city.  From somewhere near the Roman Forum, we headed to a bike path along the Tiber.

We rode under historic arches of the bridges of the Tiber, then up to Ponte Sant'Angelo.  At this bridge, we carried our bikes up the stairs out of the channelized river, and took in the Castel Sant'Angelo.  Then we headed over to the Vatican City for a bike-by view.  We found our way along the Pope's elevated walkway back to the castle, then back to the Tiber.  After days of limited exercise, it felt amazing to ride, so we carried the bikes back down the stairs, turned our handlebars north, and road past the end of the bike path.  We turned back to get back to the end of the path, and road up into the city.  We checked the map, finding that we had ridden well off any map we had, and decided to wind through the ancient city until we could find ourselves, then make for a restaurant for lunch.

On our ride, we saw the outside of essentially every major tourist site in the city.  We went into none, but with only a day in Rome, after returning our bikes we felt like we had experienced the city in a way that touring one or two tourist destinations would not have afforded us.  After dinner, we headed up to our cot, ready to meet up with Sarah's friend in the morning, then be whisked south on the famous European trains.

We met up with Sarah's friend at Termini, then bought tickets on the slow train to Naples.  Having not ever been to Europe before, I was looking forward to experiencing the wonder of bullet trains, and public transit second only to maybe Japan.  The train left promptly, but our seven euro tickets bought us seats not on the glamorous coaches, but instead on a train more like something out of Slumdog Millionaire, though I do not think anyone was on the roof.

It turned out that it was not entirely wise to arrive in Naples without a hotel reservation, but in not too much time we found accommodation for very cheap in a hotel that, aside from being an all smoking hotel, was much nicer than the hotel in Rome.  We wandered the streets of Naples looking for a restaurant, that turned out to not be open, then into a natural foods store.  Judging from the stares, and shopping advice from other patrons and employees, Sarah and I were decidedly a sight to see in this small shop in a gritty neighborhood, which can occasionally be fun.

In the morning we took the train to Pompeii, and toured the ruins.  Owing to time constraints we did not make it to Herculaneum.  Pompeii was worth the trip, but not really worth writing about.  It was amazing how well preserved the paintings, carvings, and frescoes were, by both the volcano, and the archaeologists.  After Pompeii, we headed up Vesuvius.

At the train station outside the gates of Pompeii is a tourist kiosk that sells tickets for a bus to the top of Vesuvius.  There are, supposedly, two bus services.  One that goes up the normal road, in a normal bus.  One that goes up a four wheel drive road in a Unimog.  We wanted the normal bus.  We attempted to buy tickets for the normal bus.  We were promised we were buying tickets for the normal bus.  When the bus pulled up, it was a normal bus, and we piled in, still skeptical that the person in the kiosk had not been lying to us.

Sure enough, the normal bus stopped just outside of town, and we were herded onto a Unimog.  The salesman also told us that we could take a later bus down, we just had to tell our driver.  We spoke with the driver who insisted that this was not possible, ensuring we would not be able to make it to the summit of Vesuvius, just the crater rim.  The Unimog lumbered up a gravel road that anyone from the Western US would describe as a highway.  We disembarked and wandered the crater rim among the trinket shops.  With our time nearly expired, we headed back to the Unimog, and the train station.

Back in the heart of Naples, we had dinner at Sorriso Integrale, including a dessert of fried peaches, which is a culinary divinity.  The next morning we went to Solfatara, a phreatic crater in Naples where sulfur-rich steam still rushes from the earth.  After Solfatara, we wandered down  to the third largest amphitheatre in the Roman Empire.  In contrast to the Colosseum, the third largest amphitheatre has no lines, costs very little, and the basement is open for anyone to wander through.

After the amphitheatre, it was time for us to begin our journey stateside.  We took the train to the main station in Naples, then to Rome, and spent the night.  The next day we took the train to the airport, then flew to Athens, and spent the night.  Following that, we flew to Minneapolis, and drove to Babbitt.  I spent the night in Babbitt, then drove back to Minneapolis and flew to Seattle.  It was a lot of travel.  I read A Song of Fire and Ice for well over 20 hours, painting my subconscious with some sort of fantasy Roman Empire.

The travel also provided us with much time to discuss our trip.  A major change I would recommend to anyone wanting to go up Vesuvius would be to rent a car.  If you are travelling alone, you will lose money on this deal, but with two or three people, especially if you plan ahead and rent from outside Italy, you will save money.  What you gain though is enough time on Vesuvius to walk around the crater, which includes summiting the peak responsible for what may well be the most famous volcanic disaster.  I think in the end we both regretted the limited time in Italy, but were generally happy with moving out from Greece, as that much time in Athens during the hot season could have easily spoiled much of the great memories from the trip.  It is possible that going to Paros would have accomplished this, but riding around Rome was fast paced and fun.  While I probably would have traded it for a long run on Mt. Olympus, it is in the top three experiences of the trip.

Photos from Italy can be found here:  https://picasaweb.google.com/113802252094103841878/Italy2012

Politically Divided

I am writing this post on election day.  The country has been divided politically for so long, it is hard for me to say when it began.  Certainly the country was divided under Clinton, but the country prospered under Clinton.  Millions of dollars were squandered on investigations that accomplished nothing but an impeachment meant entirely for show.  Perhaps that was the true beginning, but I think what galvanized the nation was the 2000 election.  I still hold a grudge against the Green Party for that election.  I find the actions of the Supreme Court indefensible.  Rather than find a fair, democratic, collaborative solution, they gave the election to President Bush.  The last twelve years have become more and more factional.

Many would likely argue with some of the things I have already said. I will try to quickly address those concerns before moving into what I most want to write about.  First, President Clinton's doing or not, the economy was pretty darn good under his administration.  Second, his approval ratings during his second term (after the impeachment) was congruent with F.D.R.'s, and Reagan's, so better than two thirds of Americans thought he did a pretty good job as president.  Third, Kenneth Starr was appointed to (re-)investigate the death of Vince Foster.  Starr found no wrong-doing of the Clinton Administration, or the Clintons, in the death.  The investigation continued into a real estate scandal called Whitewater, which uncovered nothing of significance.  In fact, after something approaching $80 million worth of investigating all that turned up was a sex scandal that Twitter and texting seem to be able to turn up for free today.  Lastly, it makes no matter who you supported, or who won the 2000 election, I have yet to hear someone make the argument that the election was well handled.  Maybe "gave" was too strong a word, but it was not the handling that befit this republic.

Whatever the cause, this, contrary to the Pledge of Allegiance, is a nation divided.  In this division, the nation has lost civility.  Lawmakers have rallied protester who were committing indefensible acts, satirists are taken for news, and name-calling abounds.

Some names and labels are helpful.  If we did not call the parties by a name, it would be difficult to know what was happening in politics.  Neither party, Democrats or Republicans, deserve to be called Nazis, yet it happens.  It can be a fun way to prove a point, but it does nothing to help the country, or to honor the Pledge of Allegiance.  It is quite unpatriotic to call any American lawmaker a Nazi.  The only people who should be called Nazis in 2012 are those who call themselves Nazis, and while they have the right to their beliefs, society should educate them about why it is abhorrent to have those beliefs.  Enough about Nazis though, because there are many other labels that might actually be helpful.

Other political and economic movements get thrown around as insults.  Calling someone a fascist, communist, or socialist is rarely done constructively.  I am liberal, according to an online quiz, I am actually very liberal.  One could thus attempt to call me a communist or a socialist, and ideologically, it would at least be the correct side of the spectrum.  Calling me a Fascist (or a Nazi), would be ridiculous.  As a liberal, I share very little with fascists when it comes to political ideology.  While fascism was created in Italy to provide a third option on the capitalism-communism spectrum.  Thus, it should avoid the left-right spectrum as well.  However, fascism seems to get pulled to the right whenever zealots get involved.  Hence, comparing communists and Nazis, communists and fascists, or liberals and fascists demonstrates a lack of understanding of those movements.  If you do not understand those logic problems, I recommend the Wikipedia page on Fascism.  Wikipedia also has pages on Communism and Socialism.  To wrap up this brief coverage of left and right, socialism (and communism at its heart) is an economic system, not a system of government.  Thus, fascists, communists, democrats, republicans, liberals, and conservatives all embrace some form of socialism, but I will come back to that in a bit.

I will start with communism.  It doesn't work.  Do I like the idea of communism?  Yeah, I think we all do.  Imagine a world without war, crime, class conflict, poor, sick, uneducated, etc.  It sounds pretty good, but it doesn't work.  There are no communist economies of scale left, and I do not think there ever was a real communist government (Stalin lived a far more comfortable life than the proletariat, meaning there were classes, which makes it not communism, but rather, Stalinism - if one defines Stalinism as what Stalin did, not what he said).  China became communist, but like Stalinist Russia, they were Moaist.  Today, China may be more capitalist than the US, though socialism is a key part of their economy.  Lastly, I think you would be hard pressed to make the argument that North Korea's economy is working.  Thus, communism does not work, accordingly there are few communists.  With essentially no one arguing the communist dogmas, one could use it pejoratively to mean "stupid liberal," but that is not constructive.

The socialist-capitalism of China is an interesting entity.  While calling an American a Pinko is a slur from McCarthyism, the one making the insult treads dangerous ground. Like China, America practices a form of socialist-capitalism.  To my knowledge, no economist would be caught dead using a term like socialist-capitalism.  They would probably use equally vague terms like state capitalism.  For my purposes, I want to stick with it though, because I think it proves my point better than bringing in more jargon, as, arguably, even in the most laissez-faire economy there would be some elements of socialism.  China's socialist-capitalism is coupled with a totalitarian government, but try to divorce economy from government.  China has amazing private industry.  The Foxconn factory has been getting a lot of press lately, and is undeniably a capitalist entity.  The factory (though Foxconn is Taiwanese) is a great example of Chinese capitalism.  In the US, there are literally thousands of businesses, from here and abroad, that are capitalist.  The US government plays are role in the economy through the Federal Reserve, much like China's government does.  The US government puts a vast amount of money into state run businesses, or state dependent businesses, that most people know as the military.  China also does this.  Both Presidential candidates want to continue to do this.  The Romney campaign has set its sights on PBS as part of a plan to balance the budget (something around one percent of one percent of the budget).  While PBS is a form of socialism, the military accounts for 20% of the budget, and 24% of the GDP.  This state-run or state-dependent sector of the economy is socialism.  This is not a statement of weather the military is good or bad, over- or under-funded, or weather socialism is good or bad in the American economy, simply that the word socialism applies to the military-industrial complex.

As for my relationship with socialism, it would be far more accurate, and far less hurtful to call me a socialist than a communist.  Am I a socialist, not in the strictest sense, but like Mitt Romney, and every president this country has ever had, I do take some aspects of socialism as a positive influence on capitalism.

When considering these generally left economic theories we can continue to use them how McCarthy would, but again, that is not very nice.  Thus, I would argue that they should be used correctly, to discuss economics and systems of government.  At this point, I feel like I need to talk about the right side of the spectrum.  Before I can do that, I want to make a few points abundantly clear.  First, just like the left, I will attempt to use these terms with positive or negative connotation, simply as names.  Thus, a fascist is one who, ideologically, knowingly or not, associates themselves with the values of fascism.  This is a hard line to walk.  Fascism is often associated with things like eugenics, which is generally considered abhorrent.  Yet, and I cringe at the possible repercussions of saying something like this, the hypothetical prevention of the breeding of people who would pass on undesirable genes could be argued positively (incest is frowned upon largely for this reason).  Further, as a liberal, I support an egalitarian acceptance that most Christians frown upon.  Yet, I am far too pragmatic to support the doctrines with which a true egalitarian would guide their thinking.  Thus, I am, in some ways, ill-suited to, without judgement, describe fascists without some level of judgement.  I will do my best to present a nomenclature for two types of conservatism that seem to have a growing number of Americans enamored with values that seem, to me, out of fashion for the 21st century.

The first group are the Free-market Fascists.  I am not completely satisfied with this name, but for these purposes it will work.  This group of people are nationalist, think society should be devoid of diversity, militaristic, and completely support autarky.  They differ from the original fascists in their dedication to religion, but their general unwillingness to collaborate or compromise in government does somewhat resemble an odd totalitarianism.  They claim to favor the proletariat, yet their policies almost always favor the very wealthy.  They never support workers' rights, and actively seek legislation to outlaw union actions.  To bring about their message, they favor vociferous rallies with hurtful slogans and threatening statements.  These values make them fascists (again, as an ideology, not an insult).  They differ from the Italians of the 1920s in their dedication to economics that support the very wealthy, and disadvantage the proletariat, hence the "free-market" aspect of Free-market Fascists.  A 20th century European fascist would push for a government that ensured the most fit, physically and mentally, citizenry, to reinforce their rightful place as the most advanced nation.  A 21st century American Free-market Fascist puts trust in the market to educate those who need education.

The idea for the second group of conservatives admittedly came from a pejorative description I came up with for an economist while I was listening to Planet Money.  The economist, a self-described conservative, was countering a more liberal economist who felt that no rational person would argue against stimulus-type projects that would rebuild national infrastructure projects.  The liberal economist argued that infrastructure projects are one of the things governments are for.  He argued that infrastructure does improve the economy by allowing businesses to grow, move, and communicate.  Further, he cited a report by an association of civil engineers (I do not recall which association), that stated the longer infrastructure improvement projects are put-off, the more they cost (e.g. a road could be re-surfaced now, but wait ten years and the whole road bed will need to be replaced).  The first economist, the conservative, disagreed.  He (and I do not recall his exact arguments, so I may misstate his positions) argued for the free-market to rebuild roads when needed, and, more importantly, that one cannot trust civil engineers to report on the necessity of civil engineering projects, as they would directly benefit.  I was in disbelief, so I listened to it again.  An expert, who gets paid for his expertise was arguing that expertise from experts who get paid for their expertise cannot be trusted.  This seemed the most hypocritical stance an expert could ever take, so I listened to it again.  It occurred to me that this was a Pol Pot Republican.

Thinking about this further, this economist was not the only one out there.  Everywhere, it seems, a faction of conservatives attack expertise and intelligence as something contrary to the functioning of an advanced nation.  I, perhaps even more so than the Free-market Fascists, have a difficult time thinking of this a legitimate view of the world.  I value my intelligence, what I learned obtaining an advanced degree, and the knowledge of other experts.  When I board an airplane, I am happy to know that teams of expert engineers have worked countless hours to ensure that it is safe.  When I think of commercial buildings and chemical plants I am thankful that experts have learned lessons from the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse and Bhopal.  To attack experts for being experts is unfathomable, and I, unfairly, compared this person to Pol Pot.

Yet, this group of people need a name.  Pol Pot condemned experts and urban dwellers to the rice fields, which bares resemblance to the hatred of those who are labeled "elites" by this group of conservatives.  Pol Pot then murdered 1 to 3 million of his own people, which makes it an atrocity that is incomparable in civil discourse.  Could they be Maoist Republicans?  No, that is totally illogical, like the communist fascists.  Agrarian Republicans?  It still seems nonsensical.  Proletariat Republicans?  No, none of these seem to do.  I am at something at a loss to name this group a constructive name that is congruent with precedence set by previous ideologies.  For the remainder of this post perhaps Ordinary Republicans will do (ordinary being the antonym of elite, not taken as the average republican).

With mere hours to go before election results begin coming in (reliably), and perhaps days before we know who our next president will be, I am skeptical that civil politics will return to this nation anytime soon, if they can in fact return at all.  My skepticism may stem from the fact that I have a hard time understanding the Free-market Fascists and the Ordinary Republicans.  They probably find my views equally incomprehensible.  Without understanding, I doubt we can discuss the future amicably.  Yet, I also see some hope.  If we are honest about our ideologies, and can use terms constructively, rather than with malice, maybe we can start to talk again.  I do not see politics going my way anytime soon, but if an Eisenhower Era (or even a Reagan Era) Republican was willing to have a constructive discussion about politics, policies, economics, and how we should be governed, I would be most interested to be a part of that discussion.  For that to happen though, I think we need to be honest about the factions of the parties we are part of, and the factions that we want to be in power.

Sarah's Dancing

In my previous post, "What is your Dance," I state that some Greek wedding guests stated that Sarah's dancing was good for her spirit.  After brief chastisement, I feel that I need to clarify this.  First, it was the professional dancers who told her that.  Second, Sarah is the best dance partner I have ever had the pleasure to dance with time and time again.

Dancing has always been important in my relationships.  I still feel nostalgic affection for Heidi when I remember dancing in my dorm room at UAF.  In the first weeks I spent with Sarah after separating with Corinne, we would dance in a Vancouver condo until the upstairs neighbor would pound on the floor, then collapse in sheepish giggles.  Whether it is talent or spirit, there are few memories I treasure more than dancing with her.

"Damn Right I Support It"

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