Second Covenant Sneak Preview Now Live! And More...

(Cover created in MS Paint, MS Photo Editor, and MS PowerPoint. Click here to see original photo context.)

I'm having a Traffic Jam Special! Earthlink has informed me that the Deviations site "has been so popular that it has exceeded its monthly traffic allotment." Access should resume on June 1, but my download files are on a separate directory. Click here to get the HTML version of Second Covenant, which is Vol. 6 and the conclusion of the Deviations saga. Free downloads in additional e-book formats should be available once my site is back up.

Here are some reviews I've recently discovered (sometimes it takes me a while). Murray Gunn posted this on Goodreads last August:

"It's difficult to believe that such a well-written book could be free. I didn't lose a moment of my reading time to my editing mindset as I have with other Creative Commons ebooks. Covenant is the story of two races locked in a fatally symbiotic relationship and the desperate attempts of rebels from each to break the cycle. The characters are engaging and the plot moves along with a good rhythm. I can't wait to read the next one."

Two new reviews have appeared on Manybooks:

"Loved this series. Really takes you to a different place. Not for the faint of heart. Once I read the first one....I had to read the rest!" -- holbritter

"Love this book and the entire series." -- ian

This nice nod comes from Jo Walton, who writes, "Elissa Malcohn has continued to produce poems, short stories and novels without ever having a breakout hit to bring her visibility," in her recap of 1985 Hugo Nominees. I had been a finalist that year for the John W. Campbell Award -- not a Hugo, but given out during the awards ceremony to the best new SF writer of the year. A single novelette -- "Lazuli" (Asimov's, Nov. 1984) -- had gotten me on the ballot.

Mythic Delirium Issue 24 is slated to appear in June. Here's what reviewer Alexandra Seidel says in Fantastique Unfettered:

-----excerpt start-----

"[A] venture into lightheartedness" is what editor Mike Allen calls this latest issue of Mythic Delirium. The poetry assembled here certainly makes for an excellent adventure, and lightheartedness often plays a part, but even so, all these lyrical quests have a weighty center.

The best example for this is probably 'The Last Dragon Slayer' by Elissa Malcohn, a poem in eight parts, eight parts of tale that is nothing if not epic. Each part is in itself a poem and comes to you each in a different form. This poem of a dragon and questing dragon slayers --while it does many other things--clearly acknowledges the longing for myth, the longing for adventure in all of us.

-----excerpt end-----

You can also preview the issue's gorgeous cover image on Mike Allen's home page.

My article "Social Networking and the Found Poem" can now be accessed from the WyoPoets site, in their April newsletter (.pdf file). If you're connected with me on Facebook, you can view the original post here.

Watch this space for Second Covenant updates!

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.

Free downloads at the Deviations website, Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

"Barbecue" Rymes with "Argue"

Though mostly good natured arguing. Because at the heart of the matter, we are talking about sharing food with family, community, and culture,. Sauce and style have become more of a team effort in the internet age. Wear your Eastern Carolina jersey proudly, y'all, I'll be over here onboard the Southern Soul train reppin' Island City barbecue 'till I die.

Where I grew up in Georgia, we had a lot of barbecue at a lot of different places. Some was pork, some was beef, some was chicken or sausage or venison cooked over the same coals. Because if you've already got the coals working, what's the harm in more meat over the fire?

There was usually a selection of sauces: vinegar based, tomato based, mustard based. There were even flavors: hot, sweet, and regular. And you could order it chopped or pulled.

Now that I live in New Orleans, there is cochon-de-lait. Which is either very similar or entirely different from "barbecue" depending on who you are talking to. And, of course, barbecue shrimp - which is its own culinary category altogether.

For some folks, "barbecue" is a noun: the pork and/or beef that is cooked for a long time at "low" heat over a pit of coals. Chicken or sausage or venison didn't count as "barbecue," but were just the sauce covered side-items to the "barbecue."

For others "barbecue" is the verb of cooking any or all meats at "low" heat over a pit of coals. As someone who grew up in Coastal Georgia, this is the closest to my cultural upbringing.

Though there is one line I draw with my inclusiveness: grillin' is not barbecue.

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I'mma Do Me

More GOP elected officials sounding like gangsta rappers.

What happens in the Paul Ryan End Medicare Plan when your private employer does not offer retirees medical benefits? Here's what GOP Representative Rob Woodall of Georgia's 7th Congressional District had to say:

"You want the government to take care of you, because your employer decided not to take care of you. My question is, 'When do I decide I'm going to take care of me?'"

As if the woman hadn't been paying into Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid through her years of work at a private company. Someone needs to explain to these fools that the woman did take care of herself by working and paying into the program. A program enacted through popular legislation, executive signature, and supported over judicial challenges since the 1930's.

And that GOP representative has the temerity to call her a freeloader in front of a town hall meeting. Because that's what he did. And the "handout" narrative is so deep at this point, he gets applause for saying it. As if Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all programs forced upon the middle class by a government controlled by a bunch of laughing, lazy, good for nothing layabouts in their Welfare Cadillacs.

Every place I have worked professionally has employed some measure of custodial staff (mostly through contractors) that show up to work at crappy times, work long hours on their feet, pitch in to help other members of their working families, and still have to recieve some sort of food stamp benefit to make ends meet. I can guaran-damn-tee you that the "private company" they work for doesn't offer them retirement benefits. And they're going to be shit out of luck and a burden on their families once they aren't able to work anymore - because they're going to work until their health gives out. They have no real recourse for retirement or medical care once retired, after all.

Somebody needs to explain to me how, exactly, they haven't been taking care of themselves after paying into their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits their whole working lives. Somebody needs to explain to me how the Ryan plan deals with those people. Because I haven't heard a good explanation so far.

I've been trying not to drink too deeply of the "Ending Medicare Forever to Pay for Our Newly Minted Feudal System of Subsidizing the Already Uber Wealthy" Demagougery flavored Kool-Aid, but at what point should I start taking this more seriously? At what point do I have to listen to the very words of the GOP Congressmen themselves when they say "Ending Medicare Forever" and question the morality or philosophy or work ethics of people who are depending on the system they've paid into like they were supposed to.

At what point can I begin to accept that Ending Medicare Forever to pay for tax breaks is not a demogouging fear tactic to win elections, but the GOP's stated philosophical and legislative goal.

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House of Cards

Here's a cautionary tale if there ever was one.

You want to know how Georgia's economy fell apart, read it. That kind of development situation, replicated over and over again - maybe not to scale - combined to crush the state's banks. Though not every situation was big enough to thoroughly derail the Jekyll Island redevelopment.

You'll also notice the absence of federal government culpability, so loudly touted as a way to explain the economic collapse. Instead, this is a story of a previously successful private developer borrowing hundreds of millions from banks while recieving tax breaks from the state government specifically to inflate the prices of real estate oversupply.

The collateral for the loans? Real estate oversupply with inflated prices.

I'd also like to point out how the state government (dominated by the GOP) directly subsidized the already wealthy development company to the point where the state would be losing money on the deal.

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The Kitchen Staff

Jay Bookman at the AJC interviews an anonymous restaurant owner whose business is going to be smacked by Georgia's new immigration law. While the anonymous subtext may threaten the credibility of the interview in some people's eyes, as a former member of the service industry caste, the entire scenario is far more than plausible.

Hell, I've had the same conversation with dyed in the wool Republican small business owners. My position on illegal immigration has always been to start with the businesses who hire workers illegally. Sorry. I know it will cause a lot of people a lot of problems. I know a lot of good folks who might go out of business because of the rapidity of change.

But there's political power to be gained by demagouging this populist issue. The problem with an unstable or unpredictable policy is that you can't plan for it. You can only react to the facts on the ground. For a restaurant owner, where margin is everything, you go with the most dependable employee you can get on staff for the lowest price. Guess who fit that mold for the last decade or so?

But that leaves you vulnerable to the politics. A lot of folks have exploited the xenophobia for a long time, without having to actually fix a problem. At the same time, a lot of folks have exploited the marginal lives most illegal immigrants maintain in this country - hidden away from legal protections and workplace laws.

The bottom line as I see it? Illegal immigration hurts this nation's economy, it hurts those who immigrate here legally and illegally, it creates unsustainable economic conditions, it kneecaps development in home countries, and no one has been able to do anything effective about any of it. Now, as the previous status quo changes to a different ineffective policy, you'll have shocking changes full of unintended consequences. Unscrupulous business owners won't really change, they'll just find new and exciting ways to keep cutting corners. Those who try to do right by their employees and keep their businesses afloat are the ones who will get hammered in the middle.

Build all the walls you want, if there are jobs here folks will find a way around them. Deport all the illegals you want, if there are jobs here folks will replace them faster than you can get rid of them. Harass them all you want, you'll only kneecap your own businesses who depend on paying low wages to make their margins. Throw in the added luxury of curbing civil liberties so undermanned and undertrained authorities can participate in enforcement. Hell of a policy we've got going on here.

But the writing has been on the wall for quite some time. As soon as you lose the protection of the developers (and their money and connections) where most illegals were employed during the "boom" years, they're going to come after the agriculture and hospitality industries. As they now will. And they aren't going to go about it out of some deep seated desire for justice - this isn't about respect for the law, this is about winning elections and controlling political donations.

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On South Carolina

The college football offseason would be shorter for me if all the team previews read a little more like this.

(HT: The Senator's always essential Wednesday Morning Buffet.

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MOAR ROADS PLZ!

By passing a $0.01 sales tax referendum, voters in heavily conservative Cherokee County will get a lot of infrastructure improvements, mostly centered around widening their own roads.

Roads that will, of course, increase development opportunities, increasing residences, and increasing cars on the roads. Not to mention how badly it ties the exurban county to gasoline prices.

But whatever, it is their money and their time. If they want to spend that money on gasoline for their cars and they want to spend their time sitting in traffic, that's up to them.

Two things though:

I don't want to hear complaints from these folks when gasoline prices go up. Y'all chose where to live and how to live, and y'all chose those long commutes.

I think that tying these folks' vote into the regional transportation plan is folly. If they don't want to pay for their new roads, let them not have new roads and put the funds elsewhere. It is time we start letting the suburbs and exurbs pay their own damn way in this country.

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The Not-So-Funny Farm

So, if the GOP nominates one of their two (nominally) reality-based candidates for President, and that candidate loses to Obama, there is an expectation that the GOP will really lose it.

But a win by one of their reality-based candidates will return the GOP from the alternate dimension in which they currently reside, as will the defeat of a reality-denial candidate (the rest of the GOP presidential field).

Really?

I've got a couple of questions:

1) At this point, how much worse can the reality-denial get? Seriously consider the ramifications of a large, well armed segment of the United States population becoming more paranoid, more extreme, and more distrustful of any information contrary to their own self-perpetuating world view.

2) How will the GOP become more reasonable if one of the two their reality based candidates is elected President by winning a primary election in which they are forced by their own base to deny reality? The deniers will become emboldened, and think all the nonsense they have engaged over the last four years was effective. That's like giving a toddler a cookie for throwing a tantrum.

3) Is the reality-basis for American narrative really determined by individual campaigns? Think about how effective reality-deniers and historical-revisionists have been already in terms of policy: our nation is currently discussing the dismantling of Medicare, permanent occupation of Iraq and Afganistan, engaging in another war with Iran, resegregating schools based on parental ability, rolling back the medical decisions of women, paying oil companies to raise the prices of gasoline and poison our food and water, and gutting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - and these are all the parts of the right's platform currently considered "reality-based." Where, exactly, do we go from there in terms of policy? They don't need a candidate to say they support those things, their party branding and primary success makes it nearly implicit that they do.

And the crazy thing is - and the thing most "liberals" and "progressives" and "Democrats" never seem to realize - the GOP is winning all of those arguments with the voters because they aren't really worried about candidates, they're worried about marketing a specific narrative until enough people buy into it.

And the power of getting people to buy into a narrative beats reality every single time.

(HT: Andrew Sullivan.)

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Well Played, Sir.

I'm jealous that we don't have politicians that can give these sorts of speeches anymore. This is the kind of speech with the capacity to actually change hearts and minds. The "real democracy" ad-lib was especially nice.

When Irish Ties Are Smiling

The White House protocol folks in the early days of the administration may have screwed up with the gifts to the British government, but whoever's running the show now got the Ireland visit just right.

And I'll be needing one of those t-shirts for 2012.

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4th Amendment?

What 4th Amendment?

The case ultimately reached the Indiana Supreme Court, which ruled last week that current "public policy" is not conducive to resisting entry because civil protections have arisen to mitigate the threats of pre-industrial prison life -- threats like indefinite detention, violence or disease from unclean, overcrowded facilities.

The court reasoned that since those things are no longer of concern (even though they are), Indiana should not permit citizens to resist unlawful police entry, which they saw as having the potential to cause an escalation of violence toward officers.

The decision (PDF).

This reminds me of Arizona's Jan Crow laws - where police are able to stop anyone anytime and demand to see their papers proof of United States citizenship.

So now police in some of the several states have the ability to check someone's identification (and prove some cause later) and to enter someone's home without a warrant (and prove some cause later). Which isn't terribly different from what came before, but now has explicit legal allowance to do so. Why is it so difficult for some individuals to envision the intended and unintended consequences of such allowances?

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Not Justice

This is not justice, or anything that appears to be justice. Multiple murders, multiple rapes, completely random victims in the neighborhood, evading police for weeks.

Of course this individual appears incapable of helping in his own defense. From a moral standpoint, however, mental incapacity only goes so far.

This seems to me more a decision on the part of the criminal justice system in New Orleans to not bring this case before a jury, because they are afraid such a system that we have will not be considered credible enough to land a conviction for these crimes. Better the accused receive treatment now with a chance of conviction later.

At least, I can only hope that is the case; that the reevaluation to come will allow a trial to proceed. What I fear is that this system wants to wait until the crimes aren't so fresh; that the victims have moved away to safer places; that the outcry is not so loud. That way, they can just turn him lose back on a neighborhood, and hope someone there takes care of the problem for them.

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Right-Wingery

What's the difference between the reality-denying American Right Wing and the Republican Party?

One controls the other. Can you figure out which way it goes? I'll just leave this right here next to this.

Update: Oh, and we can't forget this.

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Refighting the Past

You're never really done with legislation. You're never really done with human freedom or civil rights. Once you think you have them, there will always be someone who wants to try and roll them back. The price for freedom is eternal vigilance in so many definitions of the word.

Sometimes that vigilance means keeping your eyes open when the guy next to you in the subway keeps trying to light a fuse in his jacket. Other times that vigilance requires you to keep people from re-writing history to move political goal posts today.

The ongoing battle over the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - and yes I said ongoing because we aren't really done with it - got another boost with Ron Paul recently. While liberals and progressives stand around shocked to find out that people will actually say in public that they don't support the CRA (and are more shocked to find out these individuals still command political support), the forces of revisionism are hard at work to justify such political beliefs.

And it works. Remember folks, "the free market didn't enforce segregation, the government enforced segregation." Or that's the narrative, at least.

While hardly all-in with this narrative (like the Pauls), Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway comes dangerously close to rationalizing it.

Racial segregation in the South wasn’t a product of the free market, it was the product of a state imposing racial prejudices under the threat of criminal prosecution.

"Big Government" strikes again? Hardly.

While this article's explorations of SCOTUS decisions kneecapping the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873 (involving New Orleans) and the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 are quite valuable, I take issue with the idea that,

different outcome in The Slaughterhouse Cases and The Civil Rights Cases, the entire system of mandated racial segregation known as Jim Crow would have been under direct legal assault at the time of it’s birth.

There's a big concern I have with saying things like that. You see, Jim Crow was under legal assault from the time of its birth - The Civil Rights cases represented the first wave of such assaults, and Plessy vs. Ferguson represented the second wave. What we also know from our history is that these robust legal assaults, as well as others, failed.

An argument that:

So, as a philosophical matter, the Pauls are both correct that the state should not have the authority to tell businesses who they can choose as customers.

Is a almost an identical argument used by the Supreme Court to strike down the Civil Rights Act of 1875. And look what that philosophical matter got us - nearly 100 more years of Jim Crow and ongoing Jim Crow legacy today.

This issue is another place where I take exception with "libertarianism," even as I have my own robust blue libertarian streak of cynical distrust of the government.

Sorry folks, I. Live. In. The. South. Down here, you can't go six months without some popular politician reminding folks the importance of "state's rights" to ignore Federal laws (like the CRA) or complaining that all redistricting has to go through Justice Department approval in the same breath that carries discussions of diluting or off-loading minority voting strength.

Segregation and Jim Crow were state government mandates, free-market mandates, and cultural mandates all wrapped up in one. Businesses were getting subsidies and contributing to political campaigns back in the day just as much as they are today. As a matter of fact, that era is often described as the "good ole days" before all the "government regulations" came in and "ruined business." One wonders if more regular health inspections are the "government regulations" being discussed...

Should we even talk about the social stigma that would be ascribed to businesses that served "mixed" clientele during that time? After all, once schools and businesses were legally forced to integrate, white people fled to the suburbs and exurbs. There, they spent time socially engineering their own communities far away from the cities and the colored folks. They didn't have to go to school, shop with, or hire the colored folks if there ain't no colored folks around. And yet, the government doesn't interfere with their right to do so. As a matter of fact, it subsidizes the ability to self-segregate, by subsidizing road construction and oil exploration.

I think about all those free market forces at work when I drive through New Orleans East, an area where 71,000 people live where there's only ONE grocery store. Guess what race most of the residents there are.

The author sums up my whole opinion on the CRA in his closing:

by the time the 1964 Civil Rights Act came into being the distinction between private and public behavior under Jim Crow was a hard line to draw, especially when social pressure by Southern whites made it virtually impossible for any business owner who didn’t want to discriminate against blacks from doing so. The only way to bring down the whole system, a system that arguably might not have existed if the 14th Amendment hadn’t been virtually gutted in the latter years of the 19th Century, was to use the authority of the Federal Government to do so.

So, yeah, you could say that I don't mind "Big Government" robustly enforcing the 14th Amendment through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While it may be philosophically OK to think that parts of the CRA are coercive in nature, and a little bit of overreach on the part of the government, I only wished we lived in a society so perfect that we didn't need a government to make sure doors of opportunity are open to all citizens. Until we get to that More Perfect Union, I don't mind "Big Government" telling people interested in starting a business that they will be unable to segregate based on race, creed, or color if they would like to do business in the United States. We ain't yet far enough removed from the bad ole days yet.

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Credibility, the Final Frontier

Every time I think that the American Right, Talk-Radio, Fox News, and rank and file Republicans can't get any further from reality, they simply pick up their things and keep marching on. To explore new memes and new rationalizations. To boldy go where no mainstream political party has gone before.

At this point, their credibility is so far in the red (literally and figureatively) that it will take some serious consideration on my part to even entertain listening to Republican candidates, because they are are part of an organization where the national leaders who didn't stop with blatantly attempting to lie their way through the issues, but who are attempting to wholly rewrite history.

And not just early American history, or Civil War history, or history from the pre-Reagan 20th Century - but all American history, including parts thorough which I lived. They're now telling me that things I remember happening did not actually happen.

On Thursday, I thought the President delivered a fairly ho-hum speech, full of platitutdes and same-old, same-old. I remember every President since Clinton working on this issue in almost the exact same way. Reading actual history about the Middle East Peace Process, it appeared (up until Thursday on Fox News) that American Presidents have been working on these goals for quite some time.

So color me stunned to see the reaction on the right. Y'all, this is simply insane demagougery, the coup de grace of the "Barack Hussein Obama is an Un-American Muslim Mau-Mau" narrative.

Which means their narrative, right now, stands at this:

I am an America-hating, baby-killing, terrorist-sympathizer who, with help from my illegal immigrant friends and union thugs, will follow our Mau Mau illegitimately elected Kenyan anti-colonialist President to turn this nation into a communist economy with a sharia legal code that follows the homosexual agenda in an unholy alliance of secular atheist Islamic fundamentalists even as we work to destroy the state of Israel.

That is what the GOP is saying about people like me and people I want to see elected. From the top national candidates to the local police bureaucracy. But that's OK, they aren't intended to be factual statements and if we quote the actual words they say we are the ones who are lying. That makes it OK for me to believe them about taxes, infrastructure, and the deficit?

Face it, folks, the American right has now joyfully taken up the full moonbat status of the old "looney left," who used to expose all Democrats to paint from the insanity brush. The shoe is firmly on the other foot now.

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The Middle East, Condensed

You're doubtlessly hearing a great deal of bullshit today from the right wing and the Israeli Prime Minister (who himself might as well be part of the American right wing).

For any confusions you might have, please refer to Jay Bookman's write up in the AJC. This fantastic piece lays out what is really at stake and why, from an American point of view. Meanwhile, Yossi Klein Halevi at The New Republic looks at the same problem from the dualist Israeli view. (HT: Andrew Sullivan)

Both are essential, reality-based reads about a complex problem and the President's speech from yesterday, free of the disgusting demagougery and political goal-post moving you are currently seeing from the American right-wing.

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An Adult Problem

Like so many School Boards and School Systems across this country, students get to deal with the mess the adults make of things.

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The VP Field

Charlie at Peach Pundit asks Is Newt Gingrich learning?

A candidate that mastered the use of the media against his political opponents when in the House minority was reduced do whining about liberal media after self inflicting wounds.

And that's a primarily Republican Georgia website. Which should tell you about where Newt's stock is this week. So much for the Idea Man.

Meanwhile, back on the left, Mark Mosely at The Lens scours the GOP's "Action" Man.

Jindal argued that volcano monitoring (and, implicitly, stream monitoring) should be cut from the bill because it is “wasteful spending.” He explicitly contrasted these programs with other (unnamed) programs in the bill that “make sense.” Jindal wasn’t merely mocking a potentially worthy program because it was misplaced in a stimulus bill, he was mocking it as an example of a bogus priority. Government should cut its spending, rather invest $140 million to monitor volcanoes (and floods).

Because why on Earth would Louisiana need to monitor floods? (HT: Jeffery.)

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A Wild Narrative Appears

Following up on last week's flop daring ALL BLACK RAPPERS ARE SCARY THUGS!, Right Wing Studios is set to release an even bigger pile of crap Summer Action Flick.

PIRATES OF THE MIDDLE EAST IV: ON ISRAELI SIDES

This newest installment of the classic franchise has the chance to top the Fox Box Office all summer. Even if you don't want to, you're guaranteed to see it again and again and again!

This film has been rated BS by the Reality Based Association of America.

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9.9% Problems

Charlie at Peach Pundit wins the Understatement of the Week Award:

Georgia still has massive structural economic problems in housing and banking which are limiting recovery.

Yes. Those problems are housing "supply" far outstripping housing "demand," while the banks are still heavily invested in getting the projected return on their financing of the oversupply.

Thus, you have a bumper crop of overpriced homes that no one can afford to buy in the first place, notwithstanding the fact that the banks' money was already lended to developers to build those overpriced homes. And don't even get me started on how the developers increased their profit margins by paying illegal immigrants pennies on the dollar to get the overpriced oversupply built as cheaply as possible.

What happens when you use fake money to build too many homes that cost too much while kneecapping your own working population with illegal hiring practices? Well, then only developers could afford the tens of thousands of homes they were building, and those developers were paying with credit futures based on the belief those homes being occupied at asking price.

Eventually, you reach a point where you have to look at the house of cards that existed before and thank your lucky stars unemployment only got to 10.1% statewide, and that it coming down to 9.9% so soon is an economic miracle. For a GOP controlled state swearing fealty to the almighty invisible hand of the free market, they sure do complain a lot when that hand slaps them in the face.

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The Sacrifice

Owen Courreges at Uptown Messenger tracks the latest national media narrative concerning New Orleans.

[T]he media has been presenting this event as a matter of the Atchafalaya Basin being flooded to save New Orleans. This is a narrative we’ve all heard before – that others are unfairly made to sacrifice for flood-prone New Orleans. We heard it time and time again after Hurricane Katrina from those naysayers who argued that we shouldn’t rebuild.

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From Cancer Patient to “Respant” (Responsible Participant) by Bernie Siegel, MD

This blog is posted with permission of cancer pioneer, author of Love, Medicine and Miracles (and many other books and CDs), and Emerald Heart Advisor Dr. Bernie Siegel. This somewhat shortened version is a one borrowed from The Emerald Heart Cancer Foundation. To read the entire article and others, please visit Bernie at www.berniesiegelmd.com. To view more posts on the EHCF's blog, please visit www.emeraldheart.org.

Enjoy, this is a powerful post.

Elyn Jacobs, Director, The Emerald Heart Cancer Foundation

From Cancer Patient to “Respant” (Responsible Participant)
by Bernie Siegel, MD
Unfortunately doctors and health professionals, in general, do not study success. We are far more likely to consider an unexpected recovery to be due to the treatment or a spontaneous remission. However, I have learned from my experience with patients and by asking them, “Why didn’t you die when you were supposed to?” that they always had a story to tell.
By speaking up and becoming a character or problem patient you become identified as a person and not by your room number or disease and, therefore, are far less likely to have a fatal or non-fatal medical error made while being cared for. The word patient derives its meaning from submissive sufferer. That is not a good thing to be when hospitalized or receiving medical treatment of any kind. You need to be a respant, or responsible participant if you want to heal and survive.

We now know from studies how one’s emotions and personality affect survival rates. I was criticized years ago for speaking about many things; no one had researched because no one believed they made sense, which are now scientific. Simple things like laughter affecting the survival of cancer patients and loneliness affecting the genes which control immune function are now proven to be true by studies. The fact that women live longer than men and married men live longer than single men with the same cancers, is not about female hormones or sleeping with them, but about relationships and meaning in your life. Survival behavior and an immune competent personality are not an accident or luck.

…When people have a sense of meaning in their life, express anger and emotions appropriately in defense of themselves, ask for help from family and friends, participate in their health care decisions, say no to what they choose not to do, find time to do what they enjoy and to play, use their feelings to help them to heal their lives and do not live a role but an authentic life they will always do better than expected. I would add that a spiritual faith and not seeing the disease as God punishing them also plays a role, as well as, their desire and intention to survive. Disease is a loss of health, not punishment, and your health is to be looked for as you would seek to find your lost car keys.
Difficult patients do not die when they are supposed to. Statistics do not determine their outcome or results. Those with inspiration who transform their lives and rebirth themselves give their bodies live messages and the body then does the best it can for them. Our bodies love us but if we do not love our life and bodies it sees illness and death as a way to be free of our afflictions… When you let an MD, or Medical Deity, determine whether you live or die you are giving away your power. I have seen people, whose hope was taken away by doctors,….go home, climb into bed and die. I have also seen others get damn angry at their doctors and go on to survive for many years or be cured of their disease.

You have to start with a belief in yourself and faith in all the things you incorporate into your life and choose as therapy. I know people who have left their troubles to God and been cured of cancer. A patient of mine, who was a landscaper, after surgery refused treatment for his cancer because it was springtime and he wanted to go home and make the world beautiful before he died. He lived to be ninety-four and became my teacher…

….When patients become empowered they do not just respond from their intellect but use their intuition too. When you are submissive and let others prescribe for you, you are in trouble…
Last but not least one must also choose the therapy you believe in and you can reprogram your mind and body through guided imagery if there are any conflicts. I know of a case where, after repairing the radiation therapy machine, the radioactive material was not replaced. So for one month people were not being treated and yet the radiation therapist did not know this until their routine inspection of the machine was done a month later. He was telling me how terrible he felt about not treating anyone for a month when I said, “You’d have to be an idiot to not know you weren’t treating anyone. So obviously people had side effects and their tumors shrinking because they thought they were being treated.” His response, “Oh my God you’re right.”
…Patients need to be respants and keep their power and feel free to change doctors and criticize them in a constructive way. The best doctors are criticized by patients, nurses and family. Why? Because they do not make excuses and learn from their mistakes. So love yourself, take responsibility for and participate in your life and state of health. This is not about avoiding dying but about living and its beneficial side effects.


Elyn Jacobs
elyn@elynjacobs.com

If You Thought the Roads Were Bad...

Someone needs to remind Ron Paul that, as taxpaying citizens of the United States, the victims of the Mississippi River flood have built their own levees.

(HT: Library Chronicles)

This is where libertarianism fails for me as an effective government policy. The Mississippi River affects people from Montana to New York. It affects commerce all throughout the center of the country. When you dam the river to provide power for the cold nights in North Dakota, Louisiana loses coastal land; when heavy snows melt in the Midwest, people in Mississippi are flooded out of their homes.

All you have to do to see this won't work is to examine the dysfunction that accompanied the Georgia/Alabama/Florida water wars over the Chattahoochie River. Those states are still trying to work something out themselves, and will be back at one another's throats when the drought comes back.

You want to see a nighmare scenario on the Mississippi River? Let's throw that back to the states and tell them to figure it out themselves with their own budgets and their own contractors. Welcome back to the 19th Century of each state and each port having its own tax system for river traffic (driving up costs and corruption) and the killings that will go on as agents from each state go after each other's levees to relieve pressure on their own.

The Mississippi River is a national resource and trade network. River management is a national concern. The response to the USACoE's areas of insufficiency is to address those problems within the one agency, not to create a bunch of state agencies with the same insufficiencies and less resources to deal with it.

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High Cost of the War on Drugs

Someday, I hope someone can explain to me why, in a legitimate and compelling way, this is a worthwhile expenditure of tax dollars. I hope someone will explain why that is a priority.

Because I drove over crumbling roads to work in a city filled with blighted houses and at-risk schools in a state where people's homes are being intentionally flooded by the government so other people's homes don't flood accidentally.

And I hope my brother will recognize that this is what I'm talking about when I say that drug policy in this country is an absolute but expensive failure.

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Worried About the Side Effects of the Pill? You Should Be.

The use of oral contraceptives invites a host of side effects, but perhaps breast cancer was not one of the highlighted risks mentioned by your doctor. Scientists have connected the use of birth control pills to a higher risk for breast cancer for many years. An association between estrogen and increased risk of breast cancer has led to a continuing debate about the role birth control pills play in developing breast cancer. Research suggests that some cancers depend on naturally occurring sex hormones for their development and growth, so logic would say that more hormones are not a good idea. The NCI openly acknowledges the hormonal connection between birth control pills and HRT and cancer. However, the real question is why are they not talking about the fact that both oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy are known to be carcinogenic, and are known to cause cancer in humans?

On Sunday, I had the pleasure of meeting with Kathleen Ruddy, breast cancer surgeon and Founder of the Breast Health & Healing Foundation. Kathleen shared with me her knowledge regarding the connection between BCP’s and cancer.

The following is a summary of our discussion on this topic:

In 2005, after reviewing the world’s literature on oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy, the IARC, a branch of the WHO, declared both to be Group I Carcinogens, known to cause cancer in humans. Specifically, birth control pills cause breast cancer, especially when they are used prior to a woman’s first full-term pregnancy (as they most often are) – in which case, they increase the risk of premenopausal breast cancer by more than 40%. Every day, an estimated 100 million women use the pill, excreting (via urine) into our shared environment 30% that is still biologically active. This is equivalent to just dumping 30 millions pills into the water supply every day. Therefore, the users of the pills are at increased risk from carcinogens, but so are the rest of us.

To read a summary of the IARC report, with reference to the full 200+ page document, please go to this link: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_pill_and_breast_cancer.html

Read more:
http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2005/pr167.html

Elyn Jacobs
elyn@elynjacobs.com
**********************************************************
The Breast Health and Healing Foundation is the only non-profit organization whose specific mission is to discover the causes of breast cancer.
Elyn Jacobs is President of Elyn Jacobs Consulting, Inc. and a breast cancer survivor. She helps women diagnosed with cancer to navigate the process of treatment and care, and she educates about how to prevent recurrence and new cancers. She is passionate about helping others get past their cancer and into a cancer-free life.

This one isn't the tax man's fault...

A solar farm in Charleston Township, Michigan is claiming they're losing money because of property taxes. FTA:

The property tax issue has been the one surprise in the whole solar farm venture, according to Field, “It never crossed my mind that the property taxes would become a significant obstacle to our success. I thought it was all kinds of other things. We didn’t know whether our design was going to work or whether the location was a good location or so many things,” [Sam Field, part owner of solar farm] said.

W
T
F
?

No, you're not losing money because of property taxes. You're losing money because you're an idiot. Are you telling me that nobody in that solar farm project ever thought, "Hey, we have to pay property taxes on the land we're using to run our business." It took me all of 3 minutes to find the tax assessor's page for Charleston Township. They could've easily looked up property tax info before starting their business.

Also FTA:

“On a level playing field, I’m convinced more than ever that solar is going to prevail and carry the day,” [Field] said.

You have a level playing field. Your company pays taxes just like everyone else.

Mo' Money Mo' Choices

This.

Think of all the ideas put forth during the health care "debate" about how everybody should try to get the best "deal" on their care. That presumes that people (who are sick, by the way) have time to call doctor after doctor and hassle office manager after office manager for prices on stuff, and I don't know about you, but my doctor's office generally acts like money doesn't exist, so trying to get them to show me the price tag is an all-day endeavor.

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Hope

Today I have the pleasure of sharing a guest post by Tami Boehmer,cancer survivor and author of From Incurable to Incredible, a must read for anyone affected by cancer.

Hope … it’s one four-letter-word that should be spoken more often. For someone with cancer, especially metastatic cancer, I believe it’s more effective than chemotherapy or radiation. But it wasn’t until recently that hope became a mission for me.
In February 2008, I was desperate for hope. I had just learned that after five years of being in remission from stage II breast cancer, it had come back in the lymph nodes in my right armpit and liver. All of a sudden, a hopeful prognosis turned sour. In my heart, I knew not to ask about my statistics. I knew they were awful, but my spiritual coach urged me to ask to see what I was facing.
So we went down to MD Anderson, the world-renown cancer center, for a second opinion. The oncologist scooted her chair up to my husband Mike and me and told us, “You could live 2 years or 20 years, but you will die of breast cancer.” I’ve since heard a lot worse from doctors, some who think 20 years, even 10 years, is an unrealistic expectation. But I became angry on our ride home and was determined to prove her wrong. After all, she just met me. How did she know how long I had to live?
Luckily I had mentors like Bernie Siegel who decades ago coined the term, “exceptional cancer patient.” I learned there was a lot more to healing than medical science can explain. Stories of these patients were the most powerful things I took away from his book, Love, Medicine and Miracles. These patients had hope, faith and determination. They didn’t give up and neither would I. After all, I had my wonderful husband and a daughter, who was eight at the time.
So I started down my path using everything in my arsenal—from a healthy, whole-food diet void of sugary foods to prayer and visualization. Knowing stress contributes to cancer growth, I decided to take leave of my job and focus on getting Tami well.
Yet fear and loneliness crept in and I felt I needed to do something meaningful. I had spent my career in public relations, ironically in the health care field, and loved writing inspiring stories about people the organization had helped. I desperately needed to hear about metastatic cancer survivors who were doing well and decided more of these stories needed to be shared.
After months of overcoming self-doubt, I finally began interviewing people whom I called “miracle survivors” and began a blog by that name www.miraclesurvivors.com. In June 2010, I released From Incurable to Incredible: Cancer Survivors Who Beat the Odds, featuring 27 stories of people around the country. In the book, I share what I found to be common attributes of these amazing people: attitude, perseverance, faith, purpose, proactivity, and support. It has been an amazingly healing experience for me. With each story I heard, I became hopeful if they could overcome this tricky disease, so can I. Many people who visit the blog and read the book tell me they feel the same way.
I feel extremely blessed and that I am fulfilling my higher purpose. In almost every way, I feel healthier and happier than ever before. Indeed, hope is a wonderful four-letter word.
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About the Author

After being diagnosed with a metastatic breast cancer recurrence at age 45, Tami Boehmer began interviewing survivors nationwide who survived and thrived years beyond what medical science predicted. Tami compiled these inspirational stories into her book, From Incurable to Incredible: Cancer Survivors Who Beat the Odds. You can learn more about her book, as well as valuable information on healing the body, mind and spirit; on her Web site and blog www.miraclesurvivors.com.

Elyn Jacobs
elyn@elynjacobs.com

Flood Panels (continued)

This weekend, decisions were made. In Louisiana, the US Army Corps of Engineers doesn't need to blow up levees along the Mississippi River, because there are already flood control structures in place to handle the overflow.

For the Bonne Carre spillway, this decision is easier made. Water flows from the River into Lake Pontchartrain. This might raise the level of the lake a few feet, causing some problems to those who live in low lying areas. It also affects the fisheries, as that much freshwater can change the habitats of lake and sea life very rapidly. When making the call between threatening the levees and industrial infrastructure downriver, that's not a difficult choice to make. The Bonne Carre has been open for some time now.

But those costs are minor ones compared to the opening of the Morganza. The Morganza spills Mississippi River water into the Atchafalaya River, and into communities that aren't as well-protected as Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The water is going to back up tributaries and bayous significantly (as it did on the Mississippi far upriver) and flood a lot of homes even far away from the banks of the river.

Hence the long wait to open Morganza. Not only did the USACoE have to give those people time to evacuate, or protect their property with sandbags, but it had to make a case that leaving the Mississippi River flowing at its current volume could do massive damage to Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and the nation's shipping and oil refining infrastructure. With a flood this big, it doesn't really matter how strong the levees are in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Those costs were weighed both ways, and the decision was made. Morganza opened this weekend. Acadiana is preparing for high water, again, and Louisiana is preparing to bear the brunt of high human costs associated with flooding.

The political implications boil my blood. Demagouges and populist sentiment won't wait long to point out that rural communities in "Real America" were sacrificed for cities and "elites" as if that makes any sort of sense in Louisiana's case. The same people would be screaming about the high price of gasoline if the refineries were allowed to flood for a month. There will - of course - be a racial undertone to it, as insidious as that is. I've already heard the phrase "President Obama Doesn't Care About White People," in reference to Kanye West's infamous response to flooding after Hurricane Katrina.

But what won't be talked about - again - is why this is happening. Why is the river flooding so badly up and down the Mississippi River? Why did decisions like this have to be made? How can our current infrastructure and zoning be made to more effectively mitigate this sort of thing? Why did most flooding come from tributaries? Why is the Louisiana coast disappearing? Why are areas so much more prone to flooding today?

Because - pay attention - this is what it looks like when the system we currently have works. This is the plan. This is our nation's cost of doing business the same way we always have. Two observations come from that:

One - if you think this cost too much, imagine if the system wasn't working as planned. I'll give you a hint, it would be 2005 flooding expensive.

Two - if you want a better flood control policy in this country, it is going to cost a lot of long term money. You have to weigh that against long-term costs.

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Empowerment is the Key to a Successful Journey

The following is a guest Blog I wrote for the Emerald Heart Cancer Foundation:

“You have cancer.” Three of the most dreaded words you can hear from your doctor. Your world has changed and you feel a loss of control. A moment ago you were a student, parent, wife, maybe even a doctor. Now, suddenly, you are a patient. In the ensuing panic, disbelief, fear, and confusion you have to make decisions. But you don’t feel like a patient. Maybe accepting the role of patient is unsettling to you. You are not just a patient, someone who is expected to passively accept the treatment plan being offered, you are a person. Being a passive participant in your care is a recipe for disaster. As an empowered individual, you can take the path of action and self-advocacy; you can be part of your treatment team.

Empowerment is essential in the fight against cancer. It can help you to successfully navigate the cancer journey. Every individual is different and every situation is different. Knowing your options and obtaining the necessary information is critical in order to make the right choices for you, for your cancer. The right plan and the right team can make all the difference in mortality as well as in quality of life.

You have more options than you think when choosing a treatment plan. Conventional (allopathic) medicine offers surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and other medical interventions to battle cancer. For many, this is the route to take. For others, surgery may be acceptable, but radiation and or chemotherapy either are not an option or are not acceptable to the patient. Some will take the integrative approach, combing conventional with alternative therapies. Massage, acupuncture, nutritional therapy and other treatments associated with complementary medicine can support patients during their journey, and more and more allopathic cancer facilities are incorporating integrative medicine into their programs. Still others will choose to use only alternative methods. The important thing is to choose what feels best to you. Keep in mind that within these methods, there will be further decisions to make, for example which of the surgeries available would be best or which alternative treatment would be the most effective and tolerable. Information is power and is necessary to a successful outcome.

Finding the right team is equally important. Institutions and doctors often have very different approaches to treatment, as well as different personalities. Be sure that your team understands your goals, limitations, fears, and questions. I cannot stress this enough. You deserve the “A Team”; you need the “A Team”, so find it. I recently had a client come to me post-surgery. She had a huge scar for a surgery that should have been very minor. However, her doctor had one mission, that being to remove the cancer. I know of many doctors who could have operated on her with minimal battle scars. If life after cancer, including cosmetic appearance, is important to you, you must be proactive in discussions with your team.

The cancer journey is not an easy one, but there are many wonderful doctors who can get you to the path of recovery. Just because a team or treatment has worked for others, make sure the plan is working for you. Teams work together. If you find it hard to communicate with your team, or are not getting results, fire them and find a new one. You owe it to yourself to get it right the first time.

Elyn Jacobs
elyn@elynjacobs.com

**********************************************************
Emerald Heart guest Elyn Jacobs is President of Elyn Jacobs Consulting, Inc., a breast cancer survivor and cancer empowerment coach. Elyn helps women diagnosed with cancer navigate the process of treatment and care, and she educates about how to prevent recurrence and new cancers. She is passionate about helping others get past their cancer and into a cancer-free life. Her informative and helpful blog is enthusiastically read by many, and we are delighted to share her important words of experience and wisdom.

A Fistful of Meh

In 1994 Republicans swept into control of the House and Senate. They held onto this power for over a decade. Yet somehow with all of the momentum in the world they completely and totally muffed the 1996 Presidential election. Part of that was a brilliant populist move by Clinton to actually push popular portions of conservatism. Part of that was Bob Dole, the guy whose face is in the dictionary next to the word "meh."

If Republicans think they'll ride anti-Obama sentiment into an easy 2012 Presidential election win, they're sadly mistaken. I saw the Republican debate on Fox a few nights ago. Most of those guys could give Dole a run for the money in the meh category. As far as I'm concerned my primary vote is Ron Paul's to lose. He's ideologically consistent and the places where I disagree with him most are on issues I think he has no shot at actually implementing. But even he didn't bowl me over.

It looks like I'm not alone in the underwhelmed department. But what interests me more than the apathy is what exactly Republican voters are looking for. It seems if you ask 10 of them, you'll get 12 different answers. The only thing I can gather from this is that we don't know exactly what we want but we know this isn't it. That's not a good environment for a Party to have going into the Presidential elections.

The Credibility Gap Widens

From the same people that brought you the terrifying GROUND ZERO MOSQUE, the thrilling KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM, and 2009's storytelling masterpiece, DEATH PANELS FOR GRANDMA, comes this May's Blockbuster Culture War Hit:

ALL BLACK RAPPERS ARE SCARY THUGS!

Follow Sarah Palin, Warrior Princess, and Karl Rove, Boy Genius, as they take the fight to those who seek to destroy gentle, homogenous American culture.

This summer in the GOP, COMMON is just a little too close to COMMUNIZM!


This film has been rated BS by the Reality Based Association of America.

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Too Busy to Schedule Annual Exams? Think Again

I know, annual exams are time consuming, and for someone who is in or has gone through treatment for cancer, routine exams may feel like just one additional burden. However, anyone who has faced cancer or any life-changing condition knows that prevention and early detection are critical. We also know that some issues don’t always present themselves with symptoms and many are often difficult to diagnose. We know that there is cross-over detection when you see more than one doctor (i.e. your ob-gyn may discover something your internist may have missed, dermatologist might see something one of your other doctors missed…you get the idea). Likely you feel compelled to put off these exams. I like all of my doctors; I just prefer to spend my time elsewhere. However, I urge you to make and keep those appointments.

I was scheduled to see my Ophthalmologist in March, but gave my appointment to my son as he wanted to get new glasses and I wanted his eyes checked first. I rescheduled for a month later. After my routine exam, the doctor tells me, “Okay, the good news is that your vision hasn’t changed. However, we need to talk”. I never like to hear these words from any doctor. He proceeds to tell me that last year I was at medium risk for Acute Glaucoma and that now my risk has elevated to high. He tells me that AG is somewhat common in people who are very farsighted (has to do with angles, I will spare you all the details here). He proceeds to tell me that I could live for 100 years and never suffer an attack. The problem is there is no way to know which of the patients with this problem will suffer an attack. However, if I did this would be a medical emergency, and if I did not get proper medical treatment immediately I would suffer complete and irreversible loss of vision. The room goes quiet. I had no symptoms as there are few. The warning sign for an attack is you wake up during the night in excruciating pain and need to rush to the ER. He explains the preventive procedure, that this is a laser procedure and is mostly risk-free. I ask him when I need to do this surgery. He says there is no rush, just don’t leave town and don’t use any form of antihistamine as this could trigger an attack. I tell him I suffer terribly with allergies and go away most weekends. I schedule the appointment for the following week. I will need to come back for the second eye; they don’t do both at the same time, just in case. Humm….I think, I thought this was risk-free. A gentle reminder that there is a language barrier between patients and doctors.

I am happy to report that two procedures later, I have my vision. I am not a believer in “what if’s.” They have no purpose in life except to add excess worry and fear into one’s life. However, I am once again reminded that life and its gifts are not to be taken lightly. Today, I made an appointment with my oncologist, just to say hello—


Elyn Jacobs
elyn@elynjacobs.com
http://elynjacobs@blogspot.com

Fighting Back

I'm just going to leave this right here next to this.

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Disaster Politics

Unsurprisingly, there are a few individuals (mostly website comment trolls) who consider themselves on "the left," who are taking the opportunity of the Tornado disasters and Mississippi River flooding to oversimplify the political beliefs of Southerners and write us all off as Tea Partiers demanding smaller government. By virtue of our assumed collective hatred for TEH SOCIALIZMS of disaster recovery, they think we should live our values now and not ask for any Federal aid. Viewing the South through such a lens, they then descend into "blame the victim" territory so ably applied by their political rivals.

Beyond the fact that their finger-wagging is an absolute failure of narrative building (at which they simply are not prepared to compete with the right), they end up running into other folks on "the left" who despise the concepts of collective blame, political marketing, and false equivalence.

Folks with more crediblity are ready to stop them in their tracks:

Hating on the South in the comments for voting Republican will get you banned, permanently. I'm in no mood.

Thanks for that.

It also got me thinking. Most importantly, disasters don't check your voter registration before they come crashing through the door. Anyone, anywhere. There but for the Grace of God go I.

But there are apparently plenty of folks who do concern themselves with the voting patterns of Southerners as it relates to the current state of disaster. Not that it should matter, but look at this map alongside the one of where flooding is the worst. Look at the 2008 election returns in Tuscaloosa and Jefferson Counties in Alabama.

Which way did the disaster victims vote, again? And, again, why does it matter?

I hesitate to bring that up. The chorus of "why do you live by a river" is already warming up in the national narrative, and I'm sure there are plenty of right wing elements who are going to use the "handouts" to flood victims and anecdotes of government ineffectiveness in their own states in order to raise some political capital for the next election. I'd expect the same demagougery from Democratic or "liberal" elements as well. Same as it ever was.

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Flood Panels

You remember "Death Panels?" They were fake.

But Flood Panels actually do exist, and they decide whose property gets flooded and whose doesn't. And they do it all with your tax dollars.

Maybe if the people who got all riled up about the fake Death Panels came back to reality for 5 minutes and thought about our nation's very real Flood Panels, we might actually get a sane flood control policy in this country.

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Running Back Publicity, LLC

Well, if the whole sports thing doesn't work out for Washaun Ealey and Reggie Bush, at least they can always turn to mass communication and public relations.

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Streetcars & Cash Money

Owen Courreges at Uptown Messenger seems to think New Orleans is making unsound financial sense and living in the past by building new streetcars.

He uses Houston, TX as an example of how investing in light rail hasn't made a return on investment. Since folks who live in New Orleans seem almost contractually obligated to compare NOLA's decision making processes to those in Houston or Atlanta, I'll go with the devil I know and bring up the ATL. Here's part of my comment:

But when it comes to the capital costs of building and maintaining roads vs. streetcar lines, let us not kid ourselves – the fantasy land cost-benefit analyses come into play with roads.

Y’all may not be used to it in New Orleans, but I come from a place where no one ever saw a road project they didn’t like. In this land of massive concrete projects the pitiance of the gasoline tax doesn’t make a dent in the DOT budget – when a gasoline tax exists at all.

As far as streetcars are concerned, they will really provide the return on investment when gasoline runs up over $5 per gallon, and people are looking for alternatives.

Mass transit ridership increased 14% even in auto centric Atlanta the last time gas was over $4 a gallon. As prices continue to rise due to increased demand, you can expect more folks to ride transit, and buses to cost more.

You can also expect the politicians, fearing voter backlash over high gasoline prices, to gut road and transportation budgets as they fall over themselves lowering gas taxes so they can appear to be doing something about a problem they cannot control.

We can invest now and benefit, or we can invest later when it costs far more to do so.

You know what transportation budgets are often first to see the axe? Mass transit. You know what happens when you cut access to mass transit? Low ridership and less return on investment. The thing I don't understand is cutting back on transit precisely at the time it is needed most by American commuters.


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Republican Change I Can Believe In

Louisiana School Board members having to serve as substitute teachers in their systems?

Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.

Hell, I don't even think the bill goes far enough.

One day a month substitute teaching whenever school is in session. At the most at-risk public schools. At least.

And it should be every single elected state official. Don't just stop at School Board members. The governor and the legislators and, yes, even judges - they should all get a chance to see what consequences their decisions have on the children of this state.

And to the business man who doesn't want to do it? Choice words. Elections have consequences, after all.

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Change I Still Believe In

I've been pretty plain in that I don't think the successful OBL operation had anything to do with George W. Bush's time as Presdient any more than it had to do with Clinton's.

The foregin policy this nation has (so far) engaged under the Obama Administration is far from perfect. But it is a tremendous positive change from what we faced under the last administration, and it has accomplished far more in two and a half years than Bush accomplished in 8.

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Small Government at Work

You know why I don't trust the "Small Government" concept of political management? Contractors. If you operate on the premise that you can "run government like a business" and that "government can't manage things correctly," then it makes sense that one of the ways you deliver public services to the community is to set out a bid for a contract, and go with the lowest bidder for the services.

On its face, this appears to shrink the government and save the taxpayers money.

In practice, however, it leads to nonsense like New Orleans' traffic camera fiasco.*

In this case, an external entity has convinced a government officials to purchase their services in an effort to raise revenue for the government budget under the guise of increasing safety. This is an incredibly unpopular program that would likely be voted down if offered up on a referendum, and has been the subject of many lawsuits. To legally administer the program while protecting the city from litigation raised by the program requires measures that have led to the suspensions of high level police officials who were part of the "clean up corruption" regime.

This happens because the program is ripe for corruption, and even the most above-board administration appears dirty when you've got this much money made from a low political risk program that delivers nearly unchallengeable verdicts regarding an almost indefensible crime. (Disclaimer: I've been caught by one of these cameras.)

My problem is that the city shouldn't be making money in this way, and shouldn't be depending on revenue generated. As Mark points out:

Even if you buy into the idea that the cameras are more about safety than revenues, it still doesn’t make sense for a city to rely on revenues from scofflaws. If the cameras DO actually change driving behavior, as proponents suggest, then these traffic camera revenues will decline over time anyway, as people drive more safely. That creates an incentive for the city to install ever more cameras to overcome the decline in ticket funds.

If the program's big proponents are defending it because the city will lose money if it is terminated, then you see the only reason we have this program. And it ain't public safety. It is about a snake-oil solution to a problem no one wants to face politically.

The better idea, it seems to me, is for this city to fix its incredible revenue problems as well as the city's unbelievable spending problems. Because, like most governments, this city has both problems in abundance.

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* Which is not to be confused with the non-revenue generating New Orleans crime camera fiasco. That wasn't about public safety, either.

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Flood History

It is a shame that with almost every problem that faces the United States, our nation has already dealt with a similar problem in the past. At some point between then and now, we've either willfully forgotten the lessons or fallen prey to the snake-oil salesmen who convinces us that his medicine works the best.

Has it occurred to anyone why we have problems with flooding in this country? John Barry penned a must-read Saturday Essay in the WSJ on April 30 to describe, in layman's terms, what is going on here. (HT: YRHT)

Some of the questions Barry takes a crack at:

1. Why do all these people live in danger of flooding, and can't they just move somewhere else?

2. When did this become the Federal government's problem? What group of socialists decided that the government should be in the flood control business?

3. When did African-Americans abandon the Republican Party?

4. How do decisions made in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota end up contributing to massive property damage in Louisiana?

5. What kind of person lives in flood-prone areas and doesn't have flood insurance?

6. If the USACoE know how to build better levees, why don't they do it?

Of course, you can find more detailed answers to most of these questions by reading Barry's book, Rising Tide, but actual US history may not be compatible with an already made-up mind.

Update: Oh, here are a few ideas.

(HT: EJ)

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No Drive List

I guess we now have the theme for Security Theater Season 2.

Anyone want to guess what Season 3 might have in store?

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The Flood

Jerz and I have often spoken of government waste over the years.

Is anyone ready to start questioning why the best plan available to the Midwest and South is to blow up the levees?

I mean, if you have to destroy something and cause a catastrophe in order to escape and even bigger catastrophe, what does that tell you?

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Not Exactly News

I'm glad someone finally did a study to prove Chris Rock was right.

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Dozens

Two questions:

1) Do the majority of Muslims in the world really hate America?
2) How does the American media inadvertently make the case that they do?

Case Study.

We knew that, after the death of Osama bin Laden, there would be some individuals in the world who would take that opportunity to rally other discontented individuals against the United States. This is how attention-seekers get their attention: they do things they know the cameras will catch and broadcast. They know such things will overstate their importance.

Most of all, they know that if even one American flag is burned in the streets of Pakistan, then many Americans will go on to assume that represents all Pakistanis' opinions. The "Death to America" narrative is fed. This is all part of the "clash of civilizations" feedback loop that we can't seem to break.

Consider the article. If you look at the pictures associated with the story (on the front page of MSNBC when I opened my computer) you saw a crowd burning American flags. The story text itself shows a sunglasses-clad individual pointing an accusing finger at the camera.

Even the text is designed to further the narrative:

Muslims in the Philippines, Indonesia and Pakistan protested Friday over the killing of Osama bin Laden, with one cleric vowing the holy war against the U.S. "will not stop with the death of Osama."

Muslims protested. Not "individuals sympathetic to al-Queda." Not "Islamists," or "Fundamentalists," or even "disaffected citizens of." Nope. These people are Muslims, that's all the American people need (or want) to know about the protesters. I bet the same news outlet will later have a poll asking why viewers tend to think all Muslims are terrorists.

I think America would have a completely different view of religion and the clash of civilizations if a religious affiliation was included every time something unpopular happened. Or every single time there was a crime. Imagine it:

"Christian politician leaves wife with cancer, marries mistress."

"Christians protest at funerals of dead US soldiers in opposition to United States civil rights laws."

"Christian teens beat transsexual woman in McDonalds."

"Christians hold mock trial against Koran, burn Muslim holy book after guilty verdict."

"Major drug bust: Christians apprehended with twenty pounds of cocaine in hidden compartment."

"Meth Lab Discovered, 4 Christians arrested."

Could you imagine the outrage that would come from that? It would be incredible, especially among the mainstream Christian population, who would go to great lengths to prove that they were not affiliated with such behaviors. There is a great deal of social construct dedicated to describing deviant social groups or progress-resistant behaviors as "other." That's why the media and popular culture uses such terms as fundamentalist and controversial when describing certain Christian out-groups. That's also why the religion of crime perpetrators are never part of the story unless the accused adheres to an "exotic" religion which is already a group considered "other." Or if the accused is a pastor or leadership figure in a mainstream Christian organization.

Muslims in America have no such social protections, so it is very easy to attribute unpopular behaviors with Muslims generally. This does not help our nation understand the true problems our nation is facing, and allows our popular culture to set up a too-easy scapegoat to deflect self-criticism.

Back to the case study, from just those images and the headlines, one might be led to believe that huge crowds were gathered around the Muslim world condemning America. But here's what you would miss:

In Manila, Philippine police used anti-riot shields to stop a march on the U.S. Embassy by dozens of Muslims.

Emphasis mine.

Dozens, hunh?

While "dozens" might be a news-worthy protest in my hometown (population 12,000ish), the Phillippines are a nation of approximately 98,000,000 individuals, with 5% claiming Islam as their primary religion. So, out of an approximate population of 4,850,000 Phillipino Muslims, a few dozen protest in the capital city of over 11,550,000 residents, and it makes front-page news in America.

A few more protesters showed up in Pakistan, though. At least here we have some attempt to address the actual situation, and the actual identity of the protesters.

In Pakistan, about 1,500 people protested, saying more figures like bin Laden would arise to wage holy war against the United States.

Predominantly Muslim Pakistan has yet to see any major backlash after U.S. special forces killed bin Laden early on Monday.

But his death has angered Islamists, with one major hardline political party calling on Pakistan's government to end its support for the U.S. war on militancy.

Again, the 1,500 number exists in relationship to a nation of 187,000,000 people, of which 97% are Muslims. You'll note the headlines do not read:

While some individuals protested US action against Osama bin Laden within thier country, 181,388,500 Pakistani Muslims were busy doing something else.

So are there really widespread protests that required media attention, or did elements of the American media expect to report on protests and then find some small events to justify the story?

Bonus question: Now that some small groups have proven they can get worldwide attention through these actions, will other groups begin to behave in such ways as well?

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A Window from Heart to Heart

I’m excited to share a special guest post by Sue Memhard, founder of the Emerald Heart Cancer Foundation. The Emerald Heart Cancer Foundation supports women in holistic/integrative cancer care. This post is a reprint of her post on Miracle Survivors*. Thank you, Sue and Tami for sharing this wonderful post.

 By all medical standards, my being here is a miracle. Since early 2009 I’ve been on a crash course in miracles beginning on my 60th birthday, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer again.

I was a two-time survivor (16 and 14 years prior), and had each time undergone surgery, chemotherapy, and complementary treatments of supplements, diet change, and spiritual work. My oncologist each time directed me to stop the chemo, as it made me seriously ill, and I declined recommended radiation. Nevertheless, I survived for 14 years.

However, the chemo made me increasingly susceptible to lingering respiratory infections, chronic low energy, mysterious immune and neurological dysfunctions, generalized suppressed health…. and later, severe chemical sensitivity. This time, I knew that surgery and chemo were not options for me: it was unlikely that I would survive the surgical anesthesia.

While I was considering what to do, the cancer quickly became very advanced. In early June, husband Jim and I abruptly flew across the country for me to begin intensive treatments with a holistic & powerful energy healer. Gradually, I began to feel stronger. The treatments, in addition to dietary changes, daily Kundalini yoga, an herbal program, spiritual work and supportive acupuncture; began to have an effect.  Miracles began to happen.

We moved into a hotel for four months while Jim went back to Massachusetts to collect our loyal old dog, pack up our house, and wrap up our long-time New England lives. While he was gone, a wonderful hotel staff shopped for food and drove me to my daily appointments

We were spending down our modest life savings, and my husband was out of work. While costing a fraction of a conventional, insurance-covered treatment regime, my daily out-of-pocket treatments and supplemental interventions were crushingly expensive. I spent all free time researching cancer organizations for financial help.

Repeatedly I heard: there was no help available unless an individual was doing chemotherapy or radiation.

My treatments were saving my life, and healing my soul. They cost far less than chemotherapy or radiation. I deeply wanted to live. But no help was available.

 A year later, much stronger and still healing, I decided to start The Emerald Heart Cancer Foundation to help other women (there are thousands) who seek to enhance or extend their lives with the help of holistic, or CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) cancer interventions. Our vision: that all women can afford to pursue healing with dignity, hope and grace. 

It’s my passion, and my purpose. Please visit us at www.emeraldheart.org. We’re a year old now, and we welcome your support. 

May you be blessed with healing, happiness and light. Sue

"There's a window that opens from heart to heart"  --Rumi

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Sue was inspired to start Emerald Heart Cancer Foundation by her own challenges paying for holistic treatment for her cancer. Sue is an internationally collected painter, and she is selling her art to pay for her treatments. To view Sue’s art, please visit:

http://www.suememhard.com/stillavailable.html

*To view more on Tami’s blog, please visit http://www.tamiboehmer.com/