Growth and Degrowth

Chris Martenson, The Really Really Big Picture
Dave Lindorff, What is Wrong with America
Richard Heinberg, Why is the Economy Shrinking?

The Extraenvironmentalist: Episode 55 - Degrowth (hi - low)
'In this epic length episode #55 of The Extraenvironmentalist we cover the Montreal Degrowth Conference from May 2013[sic]. We hear from a number of degrowth academics and activists about the ideas in the movement. Through more than twelve interviews we speak with Peter Brown, Michael M’Gonigle, Josh Farley, David Suzuki, Bill Rees, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Janice Harvey, Charles Hall, Gail Tverberg, Juliet Schor, Joan Martinez-Alier and Erik Assadourian. Then, we recap 2012 by hearing from Gregor MacDonald about the IEA’s headline grabbing scenario for a United States that produces more oil than Saudi Arabia and Jeremy Grantham’s recent eyebrow raising report on resource scarcity. We close out with a preview of our 2013 interviews."

Misc.
Something from Norcia - a lecture given at Wyoming Catholic College - The Great Divorce.

Items of Interest, 12 July 2012

Kevin Carson, “Green Economy?” We’re Not Green Enough to Buy It
Carson: Time to decide, "Green" Capitalism or Solidarity Economy? You shouldn't have to think about it long.

Tomgram: Rebecca Solnit, One Big Continent of Pain

Rod Dreher, A Tragic Journey To a Monastery


From Counterpunch:
Information Overload by DAVE LINDORFF
Driving a Stake Through the National Security State

Fukushima And The Nuclear Pushers by KARL GROSSMAN

Jolting The Mind For Action by RALPH NADER

Items of Interest, 29 June 2011

Renouncing, reclaiming, rebuilding: The 3 steps of radical homemaking

Shannon Hayes, Yes! Magazine  

 

Bigger farms, bigger headaches

Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer, Mulligan Books

It took three 150 hp plus tractors, two backhoes and a bulldozer to finally free the rig. In the process three pull chains, each with 55,000 pound pulling capacity, snapped in one awesome surge of assembled horsepower. The country road alongside the field looked like a superhighway as the local population drove by to enjoy the show.

Brace yourselves for the next oil price shock
Dave Cohen, Decline of the empire

Karl Grossman, The Nuclear Gang Regroups
Harvey Wasserman, We've Almost Lost Nebraska
Paul Craig Roberts, A World Overwhelmed by Western Hypocrisy
Dave Lindorff, The US Military's A/C Bill for Iraq and Afghanistan Gives Me the Shivers
Henry Giroux, War Colleges

Counterpunch: Blowback From the Arrest of the CIA's Raymond Davis
By DAVE LINDORFF

Counterpunch Weekend: Mike Whitney, Bernanke Gets His Pink Slip
Dave Lindorff, America's Happy News Media

An excerpt from Bye Bye, Miss American Empire

Bill Kauffman, Wherein We Meet Genial Radicals by the Shores of Lake Champlain

Bye Bye, Miss American Empire

More from Counterpunch:
Gareth Porter, Bomb Iran? Neocon Nutballs Ramp Up Campaign
Patrick Cockburn, Getting Out of Afghanistan
Chase Madar, Torturing the Rule of Law at Obama's Gitmo
Mike Whitney, Trillions for Wall Street
Dave Lindorff, National Insecurity Complex
Conn Haliinan, The Great Myth of Counter-Insurgency

Dave Lindorff, BP's Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy

Items of Interest, 15 July 2010

CHT: On the Anti-Occidental Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal

Field Report: A Michigan Teen Farms Her Backyard (via Rod Dreher)

Zenit:
History of Norms Addressing Gravest Crimes

Father Lombardi on Significance of New Norms
"A Great Contribution to the Clarity and Certainty of Law in This Field"

Norms Addressing "Gravioribus Delictis"

Changes Made to "Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela"
Made to "Render the Text More Useful"

Asia News:
Fr. Samir: French ban on burqa a welcome law!
by Samir Khalil Samir
For the expert on Islam, the law is an invitation for European Muslims to strive for integration and marginalize Salafi trends of opposition and conflict. Moreover, the burqa has no justification in the Koran or Islamic tradition, it is merely a custom of Saudi Arabia (and some other countries) which confirms chauvinism and the "the woman’s grave".

New bishop of Yulin (Yan’an), a PhD graduate from Rome
by Zhen Yuan

Church tightens, clarifies rules on sex abuses by priests
Changes on ‘Rules on the Most Serious Crimes’ are made public today. They include faster procedures, a longer statute of limitations (20 years), treating as a crime the acquisition, possession or disclosure “in any way and by any means” of pornographic images of minors by priests. Changes are also made to the rules that govern crimes against the faith and the sacraments.

Religious freedom, the path to peace: a Carmelite convert from Hinduism comments
by Nirmala Carvalho
Sister Mary Joseph, a former Brahmin Hindu, since 1977 has lived in the cloistered Carmelite Convent in Mumbai. Here she comments to AsiaNews the theme "Religious freedom, the path to peace", chosen by Pope Benedict XVI for World Day for Peace 2011.

Ethnic unrest in Guangxi over water pollution by industrial plant
Thousands of villagers come out to protest against polluting aluminium plant, but are beaten by company security guards. Police face sit-ins and demonstrators, who belong to the Zhuang ethnic minority.

Asia Times:
Death on your doorstep
Restrepo directed by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger

Repeated tight shots of earnest US soldiers are the perfect metaphor for what makes an otherwise cinematically-pleasing film almost useless for telling us anything about the real war. The lack of critical local knowledge of what it's like to live through decades of conflict leaves a gaping hole in this Sundance prize-winner. - Nick Turse

A year after Xinjiang riots, tensions simmer
On the surface, Urumqi, scene of last year's deadly riots in China's western Xinjiang autonomous region, seems calm. But as Beijing moves to develop the country's west, there are underlying ethnic tensions it will need to address to avoid future flare-ups. - Gordon Ross

Counterpunch:
Frida Berrigan, Trillion Dollar Babies: Re-examining the Pentagon's Spending Habits
Dave Lindorff, How Bank of America Got Away With a Huge Swindle
Paul Craig Roberts, Economics in Freefall

Another of Stiglitz’s shortcomings, one that he shares with most economists, is his habit of reifying the market economy. The market is a social organization. The results of market activity reflect the behavior of the human participants in the market. When economists reify the market, they attribute the behavior, ethics, and morality--or lack thereof--of humans to the market itself. Thus, Stiglitz describes human failures as “market failures,” and he asks in his new book, Freefall, “why didn’t the market exercise discipline on bad corporate governance and bad incentive structures?”

Social institutions are inanimate. They do not possess life and cannot impose good outcomes on human action.

Libertarians also reify markets, but instead of blaming markets for human failures, they imbue the market with human virtues and even with the super-human virtue of producing results that human intelligence cannot improve upon. Economists’ “risk models” for which Nobel Prizes have been awarded and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan attributed the social institution with economic wisdom beyond man’s.

It is likely that the practice of reifying the market economy developed as a form of shorthand. It was convenient to say that the market did this and that rather than to have to describe the human interactions that produced the results. The market was transformed from an abstraction into a life form and became the actor instead of the humans operating within the institution.

If the outcomes are good, libertarians attribute the good results to the market’s virtues; if bad, libertarians blame human interference--government regulation. Economists of Stiglitz’s persuasion see it in the opposite way. Good results are produced by regulation; bad results are the result of allowing the market to make decisions on its own.

This way of thinking, which reifies a social institution, is ingrained in economics. It is the source of enormous confusion and has resulted in a pointless long-running ideological battle that Stiglitz calls “a battle of ideas.”

It is possible to clear away the confusion. First, understand that a free market is one in which prices are free to respond to supply and demand. Economists of all persuasions understand that to fix a price below the price at which supply and demand equate results in shortages. Economists have learned this from rent control. Fixing a price above the price at which supply and demand equate results in surpluses. Economists have learned this from agricultural subsidies. A free market does not mean a market in which human behavior is not regulated. A free market is one in which supply and demand are permitted to equate.

Second, understand that regulation regulates human behavior, not the market. It is the actors in the market who are charged with regulatory infractions, not the institution itself. Regulation is necessary because of human faults, such as greed, fraud, carelessness, not because of market faults. Regulation is necessary because of human failure, not because of market failure.

Third, understand that the problem of regulation is that it is done by flawed humans. Human flaws do not disappear by moving human action from the economy to government. Most likely the flaws worsen as government decisions are often unaccountable. Many economists assume that regulators act in the public interest. However, as George Stigler, another Nobel Prizewinner, pointed out several decades ago, regulators are invariably captured by the industries that they regulate.

Deepwater Horizon: the best-case and most-likely scenarios

Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute

What would make the difference between the worst and best cases? That difference would flow not just from a single factor, but from a confluence of many through three main tributaries: luck, competence, and courage.

Dave Lindorff, The Oil Industry's Go-To Judge Comes Through

Counterpunch roundup for the week

Alexander Cockburn, The Cover-Ups That Exploded
Michael Hudson, The Looming European Debt Wars
Mike Whitney, Give Greenspan an Oscar
Saul Landau, The Most Dangerous Man in the World
Alan Farago, Why They Call It King Coal
Andrew Cockburn, Financial Reform Bids Collapse Into Farce
Gareth Porter, Killings and Cover-Ups in Afghanistan
Dean Baker, The Myth of Market Fundamentalism
Mike Whitney, China's Flawed Economic Model
Ralph Nader, Becky McClain's Crusade Against Pfizer
Dave Lindorff, Welcome to Obama's War

The Battle for Marjah: Why the US has Already Lost by Dave Lindorff

Krugman's Health Care Sell-Out By DAVE LINDORFF

Certainly the Senate bill, and the only slightly less cruddy House version, with which it must be reconciled (let’s be clear here that the ultimate act, when passed, will much more closely hew to the Senate version than the House version, given the number of conservative Democrats in the Senate), does a few good things, such as increasing funding for community health clinics, expanding Medicaid, the health insurance system for the poor, and banning the current insurance industry practice of denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. But these small positive steps pale in comparison to the truly noxious things this bill does, and the things it fails to do.

The most outrageous thing the health “reform” bill does is further consolidate the death grip that the insurance industry has over health care access and delivery in America. It does this by mandating that everyone buy health insurance, on pain of being slapped with a heavy fine by the IRS. Since most of the 47 million Americans without health insurance are younger and healthier than average, what this measure does is hand the private insurance industry a huge captive customer population who will be stuck with high-cost, low-benefit insurance that will generate huge profits for the industry. The industry will be further enriched by nearly half a trillion dollars in subsidies needed to help low-income people or small businesses buy their mandated health insurance--subsidies which will end up going directly to insurance companies, which will be offering in return wretched bare-bones plans that will only cover some 60% of actual medical costs.

Supporters say that mandating that everyone have health insurance is akin to mandating that every driver of a car buy liability insurance, but there actually is a huge difference. Driving is a matter of choice. If a person doesn’t want to buy car insurance, she or he can decide not to own a car. That reality at least forces auto insurers to compete in offering low-cost minimal insurance plans. Nobody can decide not to buy health insurance under this plan though. It is a historic first: a law requiring American citizens to buy a service from a private company.

Adding insult to injury, the bill does almost nothing to limit costs. This is why doctors, hospital and drug companies and the insurance industry, all of which spend millions of dollars lobbying for this law, love it (health insurance company shares jumped on word of Senate passage). Indeed, the government’s own Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), predicts that the law, if enacted, will cause US health care costs--already the highest in the world on a per capita basis and as a share of GDP by a factor of almost two--to rise faster than ever. Furthermore, to keep the projected costs of this bill at an alleged $871 billion over ten years, a huge amount of money is stolen from important existing programs, including $43 billion from payments to safety-net hospitals (mostly public institutions in urban centers which serve poor populations), and from cuts in Medicare funding that could for the first time lead significant numbers of physicians to stop seeing elderly patients on Medicare.

The reform plan is terrible for other important reasons too. In order to sell it to one lone hold-out Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Senate leaders allowed strict limits to be put into the bill making it almost impossible for low-income women or families to buy insurance that includes payments for abortions. The bill also undermines trade unions by taxing, at a rate of as much as 40%, those health plans which, through years of negotiations, offered quality care to workers. As the group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) points out, group health insurance costs are also largely driven by geographical and demographic considerations, and thus this penalty tax actually targets workplaces that employ more women, or that have older workers, or which are located in higher-cost regions such as New York or California.

But surely the worst thing about this bill is that far from putting the US on a course towards some eventual humane national health system like those that exist in the rest of the developed world, and even in many countries in the less developed world, it actually locks in the power of the insurance industry even more solidly, making achieving true health reform an even more difficult challenge than it has been.

A Longer, Deeper Recession Looms by DAVE LINDORFF

Obama's Shameful War By DAVE LINDORFF
A Self-Promoting and Permanent Occupation?

The Epicenter of Mendacity By DAVE LINDORFF
Obama's Illegal War on Afghanistan

Dave Lindorff, Health Care Reform: DOA

I definitely don't agree with Lindorff regarding abortion:

But with the ban on abortion coverage, there is a chance that at least some principled members of Congress, backers of a woman's right to unimpeded health care that she and her doctor say she needs, will reject the whole obscene package. If they do, this fradulent reform legislation will go down in flames.

But he and some of the other columnists at Counterpunch give us a good idea of how far the current health care bill does not address the problems with the health care system, even if it is from the viewpoint of the radical left, and how much Congress and the President are in the pocket of the insurance companies.

Dave Lindorff, The Kafka Economy

Dave Lindorff, Happy Talk Amid the Wreckage: Stocks Up, Jobs Down (Plus Alexandra Early, What a "Jobless" Recovery Means for Young Workers)

Pentagon Dirty Bombers, By DAVE LINDORFF

(See also Kelley Vlahos, Vets Score One Against DoD on Burn Pits.)

The Worst and the Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years

By DAVE LINDORFF

Last fall, I and many progressives urged voters to elect Obama, not because we thought he was a progressive, but because we hoped that his background—community organizer, raised by a single mother, experience living in a third world country (Indonesia), multi-racial—would lead him to make at least some right decisions. We, or certainly I, hoped too that the energized young and working class electorate that came out for him in the fall would continue to press him aggressively to do the right thing on war, environment, civil liberties and the economy.

I was wrong on the first count: Obama has been a corporatist through and through on all the major issues that matter. And I was wrong on the second. Most of the left in the US, from the labor movement to the environmentalist movement to the anti-war movement, has to date remained glumly quiescent as Obama has sold them out on each of their key issues.

But here is the silver lining: The sell-out this time is so much more blatant, and so much more serious, than it was with Clinton, and for all the talk about Obama’s ability to string words together, he is so much less of a charismatic figure than the gregarious Bill Clinton, that he is unlikely to hang on to the ardent support that propelled him to his victory last November. The disappointment and sense of betrayal among progressives this time is palpable, especially because, while Clinton, by 1994, had the excuse that he was working with a Republican, or partially Republican Congress, Obama has solid control of both houses, but refuses to use it. If, as I expect, the recession continues to deepen, with more and more people losing jobs and homes, if, as I predict, health care continues to be unaffordable and inaccessible, and if, as I am equally certain, Iraq explodes and the war in Afghanistan continue to worsen, the left is going to see Obama and the Democrats in Congress as the failures and corrupt frauds they are, and will abandon them.

That's the problem with projecting your expectations unto others, when you know virtually nothing about their character or their true beliefs. The pitfalls of mass "democracy."