<$BlogRSDURL$>

Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Saturday, February 05, 2005

KILLER FLUORIDE AND THE OREGON DEBATE

...if you step back and look at the long picture, this current word war over fluoridation spurred by a bill in the Oregon Legislature makes a certain sort of weird twisted sense. We are, after all the only state that will allow its residents to legally choose to end their own lives but won't allow them to legally choose to pump their own gas. We are one of a very few states where it is easier to amend the State Constitution by ballot initiative than it is to pass a local school bond issue. Under these strange terms, it should only be natural to anyone who has lived in this state for a good period of time - or for more recent arrivals willing to dig deeply enough into a whiskey bottle to shut down those brain lobes that handle most rational thought processes - to be able to accept that such a firestorm of debate should be engendered by the subject of municipal water-system fluoridation. This most recent debate came on quickly like some unexpected February snow squall, causing me to grasp hastily for a calendar, not to check the day or the month but to provide sweet soothing reassurance that it is, in fact, 2005 and not the 1950's or '60's (although, if it were, and my age had retrograded accordingly, I was fully prepared to make a firm, concise list of certain things that I intended to do differently, having been accorded a second time around, and the hell with the impact to the future we are now living)...

...this debate has gone on
in Central Oregon recently, and may well have served as the pre-season for this current debate. Mysteries abound; the opponents, organized under the name Oregon Citizens for Safe Drinking Water, cite a laundry list of complaints ranging from the fundamental ineffectiveness of drinking water fluoridation to the witches' brew of other toxins that are introduced to the water supply by application of what they refer to as a mining waste byproduct. Yet reputable studies consistently show a benefit to oral health, especially in children, in areas which have either supplemental or natural fluoridation in their water. On top of that, Oregon is found to rank 46th in terms of municipal water fluoridation and is 48th in terms of overall oral health. Fluoridation opponents point out that fluoride is a toxin (a neurotoxin, in fact, going after the brain), but - just like fluoride - so are chlorine used in municipal water purification, chocolate, and fine double-malted scotch if consumed in inhumanly large quantities. It should also be noted, in addition, that communities that have two or three or four decades of fluoridation under their belt don't appear to have any significant number of residents lurching randomly around the streets like some cheap reenactment of "Night of the Living Dead"...

...there was a debate on Oregon Public Broadcasting Friday afternoon between opposing forces in the debate. The anti-fluoride lady insisted that the Food and Drug Administration had not approved fluoride in tablet form for human consumption and that dentists who prescribed it were issuing unauthorized prescriptions. Her assertions were, in combination, so absurd that I simply engaged in mind-humming during every subsequent word that she uttered; the opponents of fluoridation would be well-served by seeking better-prepared and better-informed representatives because they are not well served by some wacko's blathering on about what would amount to wide-spread criminal behavior by dentists dating back over a couple of decades. On the larger question of whether fluoride is a clear danger to an unsuspecting tapwater-drinking American public, who knows? Reputable scientific evidence seems to argue against that proposition, but - on the other hand - it would suggest a reasonable explanation for George W. Bush's reelection. The only good news in the debate is that the specter of a lurking Commie menace isn't openly being linked to the proposition...and that's about it. In truth, though the passion and intensity of this conflict is fascinating to observe, it doesn't have a personal impact since my water comes from a well and pigs will be calling for landing clearance at Roberts Field (the Redmond regional airport) before that circumstance changes. But, still, it's gonna be a heck of a show....

MORE HALLIBURTON HIJINKS

...and so now we find that, despite the recommendations of it's own auditors and in contradiction to acquisition rules put in place to protect the interests of the Government and the taxpayers, the Pentagon is going to pay full-boat price for work billed by Halliburton and it's subsidiary KBR, even though the companies haven't properly accounted for the work for which they are billing you and me. Once again we are being faced with the ongoing scam being perpetrated against the American people by Dick Cheney and his former employer. This time, however, in another of the increasingly common examples of the brazen nature of the Bush Monkeys' lust for control, power, and wealth, they are engaging - out in the open, in front of God and everybody - in activities that would earn procurement officials in any other branch of the Federal Government an invitation to explore other Federal career paths, if not outright removal from federal service...

...as the article explains, periodic payments are supposed to have 15% withheld in cases where contractual agreement has been made to perform work but all of the terms and conditions and costs haven't been negotiated (even though it should be noted that an initial price has been determined; otherwise there would have been no billing from which to deduct that 15%). Where this thing goes off the rails for me is in the details of the waiver. Deductions can be waived; many types of federal contracts have a 10% progress payment deduction that is routinely waived when the contractor is making good progress and is meeting specifications (I know these things because I have been involved in the administration of various sorts of Federal contracts for several presidencies). What is mystifying in this case is that the Army said it sought the waiver to ensure the continuation of contract operations in the field. That's all well and good, except for one of the fundamental realities of Federal contractual agreements: the contractor has to perform. Terms and conditions of change orders and work orders can be negotiated under certain circumstances, but - generally speaking - if you have entered into a contract with the Government to perform some task, you are obliged to prosecute your obligation in a workmanlike fashion regardless of your feelings about the circumstances. Federal contracts have a disputes clause that is intended to protect the interests of the contractor if he feels that his end of the stick isn't long enough, but he is not permitted to pull up his tent stakes and leave town because he doesn't feel that he is being fairly recompensed for his work...

...this whole thing stinks. We are being told that the 15% payment waiver has to be done to ensure continued provision of services to the troops in the field, as if KBR and Halliburton will refuse to perform certain contracted services if they don't get all their money. There are only two ways to go with this; either somebody is taking us for a ride out in the open based on the presumption that we don't understand anything about this convoluted subject, or Pentagon procurement specialists aren't quite up to the skill level of their counterparts in civilian Federal service to have allowed themselves to get into this position and abandon their trust responsibility to the American taxpayers. It's KBR, though, and it's Halliburton, so it's not too hard to guess how we got to this point. It is good to know that, given that it is the party of Tom Delay and his supporters that is in charge of Congress, we won't have to bother our pretty little heads with any degree of ethical outrage leading to some sort of investigation about these deviations from standard, well-established rules. Over at Ruminate This, I used to entitle the occasional post "This Is What You Voted For, Part (whatever)" when dealing with some of the ramifications of having the Republican party in charge of two-thirds of government. Maybe I should retitle this post in honor of that practice....

Friday, February 04, 2005

HERE WE GO AGAIN

...so now the sound of the beating drums are being focused in the direction of Iran. First, Gee Dub, in his "State of My Efforts to Destroy Social Security...oh, and Freedom for the World" speech, called Iran the world's primary sponsor of terror. Then Condoleezza Rice, winging her way across the Atlantic toward London, lays out three boffo charges against Iran:

1) An unelected handful of mullahs are "loathsome" in their approach to civil rights and the treatment of the Iranian people hungering for freedom.

2) Iran's attempt at a nuclear program represents a threat to American interests and security.

3) Iran is a terrorist supporter and a destabilizing influence in the Middle East.

...yeah, yeah, I know...stop me if you've heard this all before. It is apparently well nigh time, dear friends, to collectively proceed immediately to whichever window in the building faces toward Washington, DC, lean collectively out that open window, and shout at the top of our collective lungs "
Knock it the F... OFF! We're not DOIN' that sh.. anymore!" We are once again witness to classic propaganda techniques being used to begin the demonizing process against an enemy, with the eventual goal being to instill the national conviction that armed conflict against this enemy is not only imperative but also is the correct - perhaps only plausible - course of action. It's almost a line for line duplication of the early chatter about Iraq, with the only significant difference being the need to demonize a cadre of "evil" "repressive" mullahs instead of just that one Iraqi fella...

...it's hard to imagine, if it came to that, just what exactly we would use for invasion forces, given that the Army and the Marines are struggling to meet recruiting goals and we're going to be committed in Iraq for some time to come. A compulsory draft just might fit the bill, eh? One can only hope this is all just cheap saber-rattling; we've seen enough of this bunch of clowns so-called skill in freedom-bringing and nation-building to last a long time...

Thursday, February 03, 2005

AN ETHICS FREE ENVIRONMENT

...in order to make sure that you, a member of the unlettered peasant class, can clearly understand where they stand on matters of ethical behavior, the Leadership of the House of Representatives (which they insist is actually led by Dennis Hastert..really...honest) has decided to make some new appointments to the House Ethics committee. The two new members of the Republican portion of the Committee are Lamar Smith of Texas and Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who have donated $10,000 and $5,000, respectively, to Majority Leader Tom Delay's defense fund. There has been some degree of concern over a handful of perfectly legitimate censures that the bipartisan committee dope-slapped him with over the last year. The only obvious recourse the leadership had was to replace certain 'off-script' Republican committee members with new blood, the kind that would be far more inclined to drink their own bathwater than allow consideration of Tom Delay's clear, almost visceral, inability to discern of his own free will what the proper and ethical course of action would be in certain situations...

...this, of course, is just another free service that the Republican party offers. It is in turns charming in a roguish sort of fashion and dispiriting to the point of tears that the Republican political machine has developed some sort of sleek, glistening non-stick bullet-proof coating that has begin to allow it to just do these things out in the open. There almost doesn't even seem to be the energy or enthusiasm within the party to put forth the effort to construct even a remotely plausible lie for public release to at least offer some hint of camouflage for their true motives. This new high wild sense of freedom on display should make two things (well, maybe three) clear with crystal-like intensity in your mind: for a certain class of Republican, ethical behavior is not a core value; they're in charge and intend to do whatever they want and you can't stop them; and they have no interest in being held responsible for their actions and don't have any intention of letting anyone else hold them responsible either...

...I'm so relieved we have that all cleared up.....

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

WALL-MART UPDATE

...a terrible screeching noise in the background. It's the President giving his State of the Union Address, to which I suppose I should be listening for important blogging fodder, but a guy has to have at least some standards, so instead I'm going to address the need that I have discovered to offer an apology to certain members of the Bend City Council. It turns out that at least three of them have some reservations about the advent of a Wal-Mart Super Center. Two, Jim Clinton and Linda Johnson, are concerned about the impact on local businesses:

"I'm skeptical as to whether this is a positive addition to Bend. My leaning is toward it being more of a negative than a positive. They will have a big impact on the market. It will have an effect on both locally-owned and corporate stores in town. There will be winners and losers." Jim Clinton

"You could call my response tepid. I just heard about it and don't know many of the details. As far as I'm concerned it's not a slam dunk. Watching Wal-Mart over the years as a corporation, I have serious concerns about their impact on small businesses in the community..." Linda Johnson

...Mayor Bill Friedman has reservations of his own, but they appear to be more aesthetic in nature:

"There will be the usual difference of opinions about a large retailer coming into Bend. I think that the location that they are proposing is appropriate for a store like that. My concern is more on how flexible they will be working with the city on the type of store and the way it will look to the community."

...a little concern, a little suspicion, and a little bit of opposition on the part of city government is a good thing, and I'm glad to see some of the Bend City Council has it...
SUPERSTORE BLUES, CENTRAL OREGON STYLE

...the most recent sign of the Apocalypse can now be seen advancing over the gray-brown high desert winter hills of Central Oregon toward Bend, the largest community in the region. Wal-Mart has announced plans to build a Super Center on the north end of town, increasing the traffic density of an industrial/commercial area that already has a Home Depot, Lowes, Target, a small shopping mall, and a wholely inadequate transportation system. There appears at present to be absolutely no whiff of opposition at the governmental level to this planned invasion. There is also, as of now, no formal opposition to the proposal, but that is no doubt in large part because the proposal, although rumored, has been hush-hush up til yesterday...

...Oregon has been one of many battlefields over the further Wal-Martification of the suburban commercial landscape. The Portland suburbs of Oregon City and Hillsboro have fought Sam Walton's minions to a standstill, as have Hood River in the Columbia Gorge and Medford in Southwestern Oregon and a couple of others. The apparent lack of resistance on the part of Bend's city fathers and mothers, suggesting the likelihood of no governmental support for any opposition group that may spring up, is understandable given their constant unquenchable thirst for more and more economic expansion in the area. Wal-Mart's reputation, on the other hand, precedes it with a vengeance; googling up the words "Wal-Mart" and "Super Center" and any of a number of words that basically mean "chased out of town with cattleprods" will smear an avalanche of personal and organizational websites opposed to the very idea of Wal-Mart Super Centers across your screen. From Inglewood, CA, to the coast of Maine, groups have fought against Wal-Mart Super Centers because of allegations about their labor practices, poor wages, and anti-competitive practices intended to destroy small local businesses. To be sure, the linked story shows that a few grumbling voices of dissent are being heard, but Central Oregon is a quirky melting pot of rich golf-addled retirees, ski bums, leftist artistes, and rock-ribbed conservative farmers and ranchers. The small yet ritsy and exclusive community of Sisters, about a fifteen-minute drive west of this proposed Super Center location, almost devolved into gunplay in the streets of the aesthetic and cultural impacts that would come from allowing a McDonald's in town; cheap talk, flashy innuendo, and trash-talking abounded as the city council kicked around a proposed weasel-worded ordinance that would have barred all future chain drivein's. These views provide a clashing counterpoint to some portions of Bend which seem for all the world like the winter roosting home for every big-square-box store chain in the coundry...

...who knows how this will turn out, or even whether the proposed Super Center will have that much local impact. Bend is a rapidly growing 21st-Century - in some, but not all, respects - that is generally trapped in a 1970's infrastructure. The difficulty of navigating to the north part of town from many sections of the community may not make sense for some residents, especially given the presence of fine new comfortable Safeways in two other areas of town and a couple other name-brand outlets on the south end of the city. Still, a good ol' fashioned land use battle against the forces of corporate evil might just be a grand way to spend the spring. If it doesn't snow pretty soon, nobody around here is going to be skiing much longer, anyway, and a body has to have something to occupy it until the good mountain biking starts to come in and fishing season starts...

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

BIG AL GETS A PASS

...it's really a bit of a shame, in a way. Senate Democrats, having decided to refrain from filibustering the floor vote over Alberto Gonzales' nomination to Attorney General, seem on first view to have suffered a sudden deossification after an early start suggesting they were going to rise erected on the newly-found strength of their recently discovered bony spines and make a stand on this particularly hapless nominee. Their unified 'no' vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed like a good start. It wasn't just that Big Al seemed to be a principle architect of a policy that allows the President to pick and choose at his personal discretion who is protected by provisions of various Geneva conventions and who gets to be treated worse than animals for alleged information and cheap pleasures. It was also that Big Al doesn't, if his testimony is to be taken at face value, doesn't have the full set of intellectual powers necessary to be entrusted as the lead law enforcement officer of the country. Mr. Gonzales suffers mightily from lapses of memory; these memory failings seem to come particularly at critical moments of high policy or powerful importance. He doesn't remember being at certain meetings; he can't recall conversations that others seem to have experienced and drawn direction from; he even doesn't remember an off-the-record conversation with a Texas judge helping Gee Dub beat jury duty in an effort to shield his patron from the revelation of an embarrassing drunk driving episode, even though the judge, the district attorney, and the defense counsel all seem to have managed in the course of busy lives to have rather clear recall of the episode...

...people with children will recognize this behavior; this is what we have come to understand as the pernicious Convenient Children's Forgetfulness Syndrome (CCFS), a dreaded incurable mental condition that strikes kids without warning and is frequently connected to stimuli such as homework, verbal orders to carry out the garbage or complete other chores, a wide variety of highly detailed and oft-repeated home- or school-related directions, and expressed expectations of the achievement of parental standards of cleanliness with regard to said children's bedrooms, although this list is by no means inclusive. The primary symptom is absolute and total lack of recall, despite repeated parental insistence or even stark, hard evidence -including digital video - of the specific moment that has tragically lapsed from a child's memory. It appears that with Alberto Gonzales we are experiencing a case of arrested adolescent development. That has to be what it is, a persistent case of CCFS that should entirely disqualify Gonzales from operating in such a high-function position as Attorney General; it just simply would not do for a man in such an important position to offer to the President that his reading of the law indicates that there is no Presidential prohibition from declaring Methodists to be enemies of the state and shipping all of their shiny hind ends off to Gitmo because of their opposition to a massive freedom-heralding and terrorist-defeating invasion of Iran and then, at some later date, fail to recall - in the face of angry questioning by Methodist Senators who avoided the sweep - having actually had such a conversation with Gee Dub. We as citizens deserve a person in that position who can at least recall such conversations, and it would be wholly appropriate for Senate Democrats to demand a nominee who has at least achieved a nominal level of maturity to assure that he had outgrown this particular childhood disease. Apparently, however, we won't be getting that...

...there's only one other choice to consider, one that we parents occasionally mull over with regard to our children: maybe, just maybe, we're being lied to. Nobody likes to think that the kiddies would be trying to pull a fast one on dear old mom or dad, but that admittedly is a possibility. It may just also be that Gonzales is employing a ploy of convenience rather that suffering from a tragic childhood developmental syndrome when he seems to conveniently lack recall of some truly memorable episodes. In other words, perhaps Big Al is lying. There is no way of knowing; all we do know is that to lie under oath is a serious, serious offense. The Republicans taught us that fact. We know from their leadership that to commit such an offense is sufficient to warrant the impeachment of a sitting President. Under those particular terms, it can't do less than disqualify someone from sitting at a chair in Presidential Cabinet meetings. Were there to be some suspicion on the part of Senate Democrats that they were dealing with a less than fully forthcoming nominee, they would be fully within their right to combat the Gonzales nomination to the best of their ability, including filibuster. That won't happen, though, and it may not be happening because of a conscious decision to pick their battles carefully, saving the 'shut-down' card for lifetime federal judicial appointments instead of forcing a Frist-led 'nuclear option' being exercised on this one guy. It's a reasonable approach, in the long view, even given the admittedly remote possibility that the nominee for Attorney General failed to speak the full truth under oath.

...I suppose we'll just have to be satisfied with a 55/45 confirmation vote, allowing Big Al Gonzales to take the lead as the least secure Attorney General confirmation vote in the history of the Republic. That, all by itself, is a pretty powerful statement. If the vote is any less lopsided than that, there will loom an obvious need to start developing Democratic primary candidates to challenge Democratic supporters of the Gonzales nomination, because for one reason or another, he simply does not deserve to be entrusted with the power of the Department of Justice...

SOCIAL SECURITY MATH MADE SIMPLE

...courtesy of occasional commenter and fellow Central Orygun denizen Thomas Ware, I have been led to what has to be the most concise and convincing explanation I have yet seen of the risks/rewards of Gee Dub's hungered-for PRIVATIZATION of Social Security vs. the existing system. Paul Krugman, in today's New York Times, takes another step in his apparently diligent ongoing effort to get his name planted on whatever 'enemies' list that the unfettered second-term Bush Administration is no doubt cranking up, lays out a relatively simplified explanation of potential function of the economy and the stock markets. Long ago, as the glaciers receded and roaming herds of wooly mammoths beat the exposed ground into sufficiently firm condition to allow for the construction of universities, I was forced into several daunting and unwanted exposures to college economics classes. This left me with a serious, intense and adverse sensitivity to the general musings of economists, exposure to which would result in eyes rolling back in my head and a resounding face plant on the desk in front of me. What Krugman offers today, however, works. He offers a bare-bones but sufficient explanation of how the economy and stock earnings would need to work in order for various scenarios to come to pass and, in the process, hammers Gee Dub's carefully crafted facade portraying the desperate need for PRIVATIZED Social Security investment accounts into a useless and unrecognizable splinter-pile. For good measure, he administers a final coup de gras:

Which brings us to the privatizers' Catch-22.

They can rescue their happy vision for stock returns by claiming that the Social Security actuaries are vastly underestimating future economic growth. But in that case, we don't need to worry about Social Security's future: if the economy grows fast enough to generate a rate of return that makes privatization work, it will also yield a bonanza of payroll tax revenue that will keep the current system sound for generations to come.

Alternatively, privatizers can unhappily admit that future stock returns will be much lower than they have been claiming. But without those high returns, the arithmetic of their schemes collapses.

It really is that stark: any growth projection that would permit the stock returns the privatizers need to make their schemes work would put Social Security solidly in the black.

...it really is just that simple. The measure of the effectiveness of his argument has been and continues to be the lack of actual empirical arguments in opposition. There are lots of attacks and questions of character, but no reputable challenge to his actual numbers has yet been offered. Still, Bush's traveling
PRIVATIZATION road show rolls on, sucking up all the oxygen with his screeching fear-cries and a grimly determined effort to create a form of class warfare between those nearing retirement age and younger workers with decades left to go. The best approach to slowing this ugly juggernaut would be to hammer a copy of Krugman's editorial into the finely polished desktops of all 535 members of Congress, perhaps with a reminder that those of us closer to retirement age vote with far greater frequency than does that 18-to-30-something crowd (Class warfare? We've got yer class warfare right here, Gee Dub!)...

...I guess they don't call it "the Dismal Science" for no particular reason...

Monday, January 31, 2005

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

...first of all, it is important, I believe, to state for the record (and if you don't believe me, I cheerfully invite you to go to Hell) that I do not want Gee Dub's Marvelous Adventure in Iraq to go off the rails. Too many Americans have died and too much money has been spent in this conflict, and it would be a tragedy beyond all measure if it all were for naught. Very early in this conflict (before Baghdad was taken), a close relative of an acquaintence was killed in combat, so I have seen far closer than I ever cared to the cost that this conflict has inflicted. Having said that, I am concerned by the sense of triumphalism that has beset the Admistration over Sunday's Iraqi elections. Yes, 60% voted, and yes, that's the same turnout as was seen in the US last November. The thing to keep in mind is that - despite concerted Republican efforts - no single class or group of people was virturally excluded from the electoral process, and this is not the case in Iraq. The exact bitter scenario that could cause the most problem for the creation of a stable nation in Iraq, the virtual exclusion of the former big dogs of the Sunni minority, is exactly what came to pass. Despite all the high-fiving and back-slapping, the near future is a slippery treacherous place where the inclusiveness offered by the newly empowered Shiite majority and the willingness or ability of the Sunni's to accept inclusion far beyond their electoral representation will go a long way toward determining whether American troops march proudly back to their transport ships at the conclusion of a job well done or have to fight their way back to the beach in the midst of a vicious civil war....

...despite all of this (or perhaps because of it), we begin to hear rumors that Gee Dub's upcoming State of the Union speech will be a "war president's" call to endurance. Some commentators point to the potential of the President
falling into the intellectual syntax of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, or Lyndon Johnson, calling for stern, rock-ribbed resolve to see to its conclusion the ongoing 'War on Terra', even though nobody has yet described what "winning" looks like. When FDR or Truman spoke about winning in the fullness of time, the opponent was understandable and identifiable. The "War on Terra" is none of that; it is, as used by the Bushies, little more that a bit of rhetorical artifice, intended to send a message of uncertainty and potential fear rather than a message of pure resolve. There is no identifiable enemy to target in this war, no country to defeat; elimination of whatever head structure that exists will not kill the beast. Even thinking that you know what the head of the beast looks like is a dangerous luxury. I remember the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, because I'm a Federal employee and a lot of people just like me were the direct targets and among the 168 people who died when Tim McVeigh detonated a van full of diesel-soaked anfo-nitrate fertilizer against its facade on April 19, 1995. The battle against terror may in fact be a "War", but it is the ultimate in asymetrical warfare, lacking both a clear understanding of the lines of battle and an understanding of the enemy's distribution of forces. We are currently obsessed with shadowy radical Islamic fanatics, while home-grown anti-government fanatics and devotees of "The Turner Diaries" still exist in our midst...

...given the on-going insistence of our current President to style himself as a "War President" battling foreign terrorists and forcably changing governments on behalf of 'freedom' while the elusiveness of those foreign agents and more than enough good old fashioned home-grown bad actors of our very own make it clear that there probably isn't any such critter as an actual end to this "war", I can't help but reflect on the words of Winston Churchill after the defeat of German troops in North Africa during World War II: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Combatting terror may well need to be a consious part of our national life, but it is approaching being well past time where any President - and especially this particular guy - trys to wrap the mantle of "War President" around his insubstantial shoulders for little more than cheap political gain...

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?