For the past week, farm families across the country (including my own) have been rising each morning to engage in what has become our own unique, albeit macabre, Thanksgiving Tradition.  We are processing our turkeys.  Unlike the factory-farmed birds found in most grocery stores, these birds are usually processed just a few feet from the lush grasses where they were raised, quite often by the same hands that first gently set their newly hatched toes into a brooder, and then carefully moved them, once they were old enough, out to the fields for a few months of free-ranging turkey living.  Now that the processing complete, our birds sit in our coolers and await our customers, who will venture out to the farm for a tradition of their own, retrieving their annual Thanksgiving feast.  For those of you who are new to this process, here is a list of tips to guide you through and make sure that you have a delicious holiday feast.  

1. Please be flexible. If you are buying your pasture-raised turkey from a small, local, sustainable farmer, thank you VERY much for supporting us. That said, please remember that pasture-raised turkeys are not like factory-farmed birds. Outside of conscientious animal husbandry, we are unable to control the size of our Thanksgiving turkeys. Please be forgiving if the bird we have for you is a little larger or a little smaller than you anticipated. Cook a sizeable quantity of sausage stuffing if it is too small (a recipe appears below), or enjoy the leftovers if it is too large.  If the bird is so large that it cannot fit in your oven, simply remove the legs before roasting it.
2. Know what you are buying. If you don’t personally know the farmer who is growing your turkey, take the time to know what you are buying! “Pastured” is not necessarily the same as “free-range.” Some grass-based farmers use the word “free-range” to describe their pasture-raised birds, but any conventional factory farm can also label their birds “free-range” if they are not in individual cages, and if they have “access” to the outdoors – even if the “outdoors” happens to be feces-laden penned-in concrete pads outside the barn door, with no access to grass. “Pastured” implies that the bird was out on grass for most of its life, where it ate grass and foraged for bugs, in addition to receiving some grain.
3. Brining optional. If tradition dictates that you season your meat by brining your bird, by all means, do so. However, many people brine in order to keep the bird from drying out. This is not at all necessary. Pastured birds are significantly juicier and more flavorful than factory farmed birds. You can spare yourself this extra step as a reward for making the sustainable holiday choice!
4. Monitor the internal temperature. Somewhere, a lot of folks came to believe that turkeys needed to be roasted until they had an internal temperature of 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Yuck. You don’t need to do that. Your turkey need only be cooked to 165 degrees. If the breast is done and the thighs are not, take the bird out of the oven, carve off the legs and thighs, and put them back in to cook while you carve the breast and make your gravy. That entire holiday myth about coming to the table with a perfect whole bird and then engaging in exposition carving is about as realistic as expecting our daughters will grow up to look like Barbie (and who’d want that, anyhow?). Just have fun and enjoy the good food.
5. Cook the stuffing separately. I know a lot of folks like to put the stuffing inside their holiday birds, and if Thanksgiving will be positively ruined if you break tradition, then stuff away. However, for a couple reasons, I recommend cooking your stuffing separately. First, everyone’s stuffing recipe is different. Therefore, the density will not be consistent, which means that cooking times will vary dramatically. I am unable to recommend a cooking time, since I cannot control what stuffing each person uses. Also, due to food safety concerns, I happen to think it is safer to cook the stuffing outside the bird. Plus, it is much easier to lift and move both the bird and the stuffing when prepared separately, and to monitor the doneness of each. Rather than putting stuffing in my bird’s cavity, I put in aromatics, like an onion, carrot, garlic and some fresh herbs. When the bird is cooked, I add these aromatics to my compost heap. The aromatics perfume the meat beautifully, and the only seasoning I wind up using on the surface is butter, salt and pepper.
6. No need to flip. I used to ascribe to that crazy method of first roasting the bird upside down, then flipping it over to brown the breast. The idea was that the bird would cook more evenly, and the breast wouldn’t dry out. When I did this, the turkey came out fine. But I suffered 2nd degree burns, threw out my back, ruined two sets of potholders and nearly dropped the thing on the floor. Pasture-raised turkeys are naturally juicy. Don’t make yourself crazy with this stunt. Just put it in the oven breast-side up, like you would a whole chicken, and don’t over-cook it. Take it out when the breast is 165 degrees (see #2, above).   If, despite the disparaging comments in item 2, above, you still want to show off the whole bird, then bring it into the dining room, allow everyone to ooh and aah, then scuttle back to the kitchen, and proceed as explained above.
7. Be ready for faster cook times. Pasture-raised turkeys will cook faster than factory-farmed birds. Figure on 12-15 minutes per pound, uncovered, at 325 degrees as you plan your dinner. That said, oven temperatures and individual birds will always vary. Use an internal meat thermometer to know for sure when the bird is cooked. For more help with cooking your turkey, don’t forget to refer to The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook by Shannon Hayes. What?!? You don’t own a copy yet? Click here to buy one immediately! 
8. Use a good-quality roasting pan. If this is your first Thanksgiving and you do not yet own a turkey roasting pan and cannot find one to borrow, treat yourself to a really top-quality roaster, especially if you have a sizeable bird. (I don’t like to endorse products, but I must say that my favorite is the large stainless All-Clad roaster. Last I knew they were still made in the U.S.A. – but then, I bought mine ten years ago, so that may have changed. My mom has other name-brand roasting pans, and they are shabby in comparison to mine. Please don’t tell her I said that….) Cheap aluminum pans from the grocery store can easily buckle when you remove the bird from the oven, potentially causing the cook serious burns or myriad other injuries in efforts to catch the falling fowl.  Plus, they often end up in the recycling bin, or worse, landfills. If you buy a good quality large roasting pan, and you happen to have a copy of The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook (another shameless hint), I guarantee you will have multiple uses for the pan!
9. Pick the meat off the bird before making stock. If you plan to make soup from your turkey leftovers, be sure to remove all the meat from the bones before you boil the carcass for stock. Add the chunks of turkey back to the broth just before serving the soup. This prevents the meat from getting rubbery and stringy. For an extra-nutritious stock, follow the advice offered in Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon, and add a tablespoon of vinegar to the water 30 minutes before you begin boiling the carcass or, better still, use the recipe for chicken stock in The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook (again, you still have time to order a copy!!). The process of adding acid to the stock draws more minerals from the bones and releases them into the liquid.
10. Help is available. In recent years, our home seems to have become the unofficial Sustainable Thanksgiving Hotline. Please do not hesitate to write to me with your questions at feedback@shannonhayes.info. I make a point of checking email often right up through Thanksgiving Day (I stop around noon), so that I can promptly respond to your questions or concerns. If you are in dire straights, you can call me at 518 827 7595 before 8pm most evenings, but I do prefer email. Enjoy your holiday!

And finally, here’s my favorite recipe for walnut sausage stuffing:  

Walnut Sausage Stuffing (serves 8 )

• 1 whole baguette, chopped into ½ inch cubes and allowed to sit out overnight
• 2 Tablespoons fennel seeds
• 1 cup walnuts, mildly crushed
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1# Sweet Italian, Hot Italian, or Breakfast sausage
• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 4 onions, chopped
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries (or use one cup fresh)
• ½ cup raisins
• 2 T rubbed sage
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons brandy
• 6 eggs
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 1 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper  

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 


Bring a mid-sized skillet up to a medium-hot temperature.  

Add the fennel seeds and allow them to toast until fragrant. 
Remove the seeds to a small dish, then add the walnuts to the same hot, dry skillet and allow them to toast 3-5 minutes, taking care to stir them constantly to prevent burning.  


Pour the walnuts off into a large bowl.  


Add olive oil to the same skillet, then fry the sausage until it is cooked through (about 8-10 minutes).  


Remove the sausage to the same large bowl containing the walnuts. 


Add the butter to the skillet, allowing it to melt and blend with the sausage drippings.  


Add the onions and carrots, sauté 2 minutes, then add the cranberries and raisins and sauté two minutes longer. 

Sprinkle the sage over the vegetables, sauté 1 minute, then add the garlic and toasted fennel seeds.  

Sauté two minutes longer, then add the entire mixture into the large bowl with the walnuts and sausage.  


To the same big bowl, add the bread, chicken broth, eggs, salt, pepper and brandy, and prepare to get messy.  

Using your hands (or salad servers), thoroughly mix all the ingredients.

Butter a 13 x 9 inch baking pan, add the stuffing, then cover tightly with a piece of buttered aluminum foil.  


Allow the stuffing to cook 35 minutes, the remove the foil and allow it to bake 30 minutes longer, until the top is nicely crisped and lightly browned.  

I’m sure I left a few questions unanswered. Please feel free to write to me at feedback@shannonhayes.info.  When you send your email, write “turkey question” in the heading so that I’ll know to respond as quickly as possible (otherwise, we’re so busy on the farm right now, I tend to fall behind with e-correspondence).    

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

  Shannon Hayes is the host of grassfedcooking.com and the author of The Farmer and the Grill and The Grassfed Gourmet. She works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York. Her newest book, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, is due out really really really soon….She can be reached at feedback@shannonhayes.info.

There have been all kinds of scary headlines and stories about food safety problems. The most recent was a front-page story in the New York Times a few weeks ago about a young dance instructor who wound up paralyzed from the waist down after a bout of illness from E.coli O157:H7 contained in a hamburger she ate. The story led to so much public upset that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was prompted to issue a statement saying the case was “unacceptable and tragic.”

Shortly after that, victims of foodborne illness were received by Obama administration officials at the White House for a high-profile photo session.

Besides health care reform, new food safety legislation moving through Congress (passed by the House, about to be voted on by the Senate) is billed as the most urgent consumer proposal in the Congress. It’s supposed to reduce the scary headlines about contaminated peanut butter, pistachios, ground beef, spinach, and other foods that have embarrassed the public health establishment over the last three years.

Unlike health care reform, food safety legislation, which is designed to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration more power to monitor food producers and institute recalls, is heavily supported by an array of consumer organizations and health industry professionals, not to mention bureaucrats and legislators. President Obama has indicated he’s ready to sign whatever Congress passes.

But in all the handwringing, there’s been very little data presented by public health officials to document that we have a worsening problem with foodborne illness. Indeed, when you review the testimony provided by the FDA and other experts to the House in connection with the legislation that passed there over the summer (HR 2749), no one even tried to make a statistical case that we have a worsening problem with foodborne illness. The best you’ll find is FDA food safety adviser Michael R. Taylor, saying, “Every year, millions of our friends and neighbors in the United States suffer from foodborne illness, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized, and thousands die.”

The reason FDA experts haven’t provided more convincing data is that it doesn’t exist. Indeed, if you examine the data on foodborne illness, you find a different sort of crisis—a crisis of credibility, based on ineffective and incomplete data gathering and investigation. And some of what is there actually shows declines in rates of foodborne illness.

The bastion of data on foodborne illness is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the data it pushes the public to consider as most relevant is a study scientists conducted more than ten years ago, and published in 1999. The study estimates that 76 million Americans are sickened by foodborne illness each year, with 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. (That’s the data the FDA’s Michael Taylor was quoting from.)

Three things are most notable about this data. First, it is old. Not only is the paper containing its findings more than ten years old, but the data it draws on goes back to as far as 1948.

Second, it is based entirely on what can only be termed wild estimates of the real situation. The number of reported illnesses are miniscule in comparison with the 76 million estimate. Even allowing for the multiplier effect—the likelihood that for every reported illness, there may be between ten and forty times that number not reported—the numbers don’t obviously add up to the millions projected by the CDC. Consider that in 2007, the CDC reported a total 21,183 cases of foodborne illness, based on reports from states and localities around the country. Multiplying that by 40, you still only get 847,000 illnesses, a far cry from 76 million.

Not only that, but the 2007 data of reported illnesses is down 15% from the 25,035 reported in 2001. The Center for Science and the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization that also monitors foodborne illnesses, reported last year that it counted 168,000 illnesses over the 17-year period 1990-2006. That averages out to fewer than 10,000 per year.

The problem here isn’t that the CDC is manipulating the data, but rather that the data is incomplete. Public health officials will tell you that states categorize illnesses differently, and vary widely in their aggressiveness in seeking out information. The Center for Science and the Public Interest in its 2008 report on foodborne illness, reported that “nearly half of all states do not follow national standards for tracking disease outbreaks. Those gaps are particularly troubling given the numerous recent large outbreaks.”

So what’s behind the hysteria on foodborne illness? Clearly, part of it has to do with the dramatic cases being reported of individuals who have suffered serious long-term repercussions. While the vast majority of foodborne illnesses involve mild gastrointestinal problems that last just a few days, the serious cases obviously capture public attention, and stir up nervousness, as well they should. They are tragic.

But there’s another factor at work here as well: a drive to broadly expand the powers of the FDA. As one example, it will have the power under the House legislation recently passed to require highly detailed written food plans from all food producers, including the smallest makers of artisan cheese and meats. The owner of a two-person California maker of specialty cheeses, fruits, and nuts, told me that creating such a plan would require about 100 hours of upfront work, and then two hours a day to be kept up to date. Failure to comply could result in a fine of $10,000 per infraction per day, this for a business doing less than $100,000 of annual revenues.

In addition, the FDA could inspect the records of all food producers at will, instead of the current requirement of having strong reason to believe a problem exists, or obtaining a search warrant. It will also be able to quarantine large areas of the country if it believes a serious source of pathogens exist, and shut down all food shipping in the process. And it will obtain substantial additional budget for inspection personnel.

Before requiring such an infringement on individual rights, and added costs for doing business, it would seem that the FDA should at the least put together data showing the nature of the foodborne-illness problem at hand, and to what extent its new powers will solve the problem. It could be that more targeted changes, costing less in funding for new personnel and foregone rights, could be quite effective in reducing foodborne illnesses.

Unemployment is a statistic. We hear it so often that, unless we are without work, it loses its meaning. Even when we learn that the U6 jobless rate hit 17.5 percent it doesn't really register. After all this isn't the 1930s. We have few bread lines or Hoovervilles. We're not lined up outside of banks praying we can get our savings. We've come a long way…or have we?

We learn today that unemployment still means hunger. The Department of Agriculture reports that 49 million Americans don't have enough food. That's up 13 million over the last year and is the highest number ever recorded since the survey began 14 years ago. Next time you hear people blame the crisis on poor people buying houses they couldn't afford, think about skipping meals because you don't have a job.

Meanwhile, unemployment and hunger are rising because the very banks we bailed out are not lending money. As Ben Bernanke put it just yesterday:

"Banks' reluctance to lend will limit the ability of some businesses to expand and hire. Because smaller businesses account for a significant portion of net employment gains during recoveries, limited credit could hinder job growth."

And if that isn't enough, the TARP special inspector general reports that Tim Geithner completely botched the AIG negotiations, thereby showering billions of our dollars onto Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and other large banks. This one is a beauty.

If you recall, AIG was about to go under last fall and take down the global banking system. In response, the NY Fed, under Geithner, arranged for an $85 billion emergency loan. AIG got into trouble by insuring $450 billion dollars of toxic assets held by the largest banks in the worlds. Goldman Sachs alone was due $12.9 billion from AIG. But if AIG folded, Goldman Sachs and the other banks would have received pennies on the dollar, which in financial circles is called a "haircut." Geithner tried to get the big banks to take a voluntary haircut. Credit Suise was willing to take 98 cents on the dollar, which hardly seems like much of a compromise but at least showed some twinge of good faith negotiation. But not Goldman Sachs. No way. Goldman Sachs knew that Geithner was bluffing and didn't have the spine to really let AIG go into bankruptcy. Besides, "voluntary" and "Goldman Sachs" are two words that do not belong in the same sentence. As a result, Goldman Sachs did not have to visit the barber. Instead, we taxpayers got the haircut and the big banks got a "backdoor bailout."Here's how the New York Times put it:

"There have been suggestions that the Fed chose to negotiate weakly, Mr. Barofsky said, to give a "backdoor bailout" to A.I.G.'s banks. He said Mr. Geithner and the Fed's lawyers had denied this, but added that "irrespective of their stated intent," there was no doubt about the result: "Tens of billions of dollars of government money was funneled inexorably and directly to A.I.G.'s counterparties."

Now think about this as we head into the holiday season: The big banks that we bailed out (and that are not making loans, which is driving up the unemployment rate and hunger) are making record profits as a direct result of our bailouts, and are about to award themselves record bonuses–again! This what the chairman of Goldman Sachs calls "doing God's will." He really did say that.

In a just world, Congress and the President would be all over this. They would immediately pass a 90 percent windfall profits tax on the large banks that would go to feed the hungry right now. But we know that our leaders don't have the will or the guts to take on the Wall Street billionaires.

In my own fantasy Christmas pageant, Wall Street would become haunted by the specter of 49 million Americans, mostly kids, going without the food they need. And in that dream, if there is a shred of decency left on Wall Street, they would decide to do God's will by donating their bonus pool to feed the hungry.

But back in the real world, we know that Wall Street doesn't take haircuts even if the entire world economy is collapsing. They will continue to ignore the anguish of our own people until we force them to take notice.

Welcome to the Billionaire Bailout economy.

 
This article was originally published on The Huffington Post.

Long before I ever thought about writing a book I was fascinated by indexes. I realize now that I have always wanted to read a history of indexes: how themes are chosen, the hidden politics of indexing, unsung heroic indexers etc. Is there one out there?

Of course this realization was spawned by the fact that I just found out that I’m getting an index. I know it makes sense, I just hadn’t thought about it! To me this is much more exciting that the cover finally being chosen.

I mean, check out this snippet:

Reagan, Ronald, 82–83, 96–98, 189–190, 195–196
Reblochon, 92

recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), 26, 74, 84–87, 94
Red Hawk, 134, 180, 184
rednecks, 41–42
Redwood Hill Farm, 44, 55–56, 88, 141, 151
rennet, 5, 93–96

That is a better advertisement for the book than anything I can come up with. My only regret is that I didn’t somehow incorporate The Rezillos into the manuscript. That would have made this little index cross section even better.

United Nations Rapporteur for Food Rights since 2008, Belgian Olivier de Schutter, is alarmed by the situation.

Le Monde: Has the situation improved since the "hunger riots" of 2008?

Olivier de Schutter: No. All the conditions for a new food crisis within a year or two are assembled. The question is not whether it will take place, but when. The structural causes for the 2008 food crisis - an abrupt increase in prices linked to cyclical factors and accelerated by speculation - remain in place. Only a single spark would be enough to relaunch the increase in prices. We have not learned our lessons from the last crisis.

Why are we in this situation?

Since June 2008, food prices have dropped sharply on international markets. But in the local markets of developing countries, food prices remain far higher than they were two or three years ago.

Here's the real issue: Are we going to continue to bet on a small number of big producers or will we buttress the small farmers on whom the majority of developing countries' populations depend?

Even before the 2008 riots, 900 million people suffered from hunger because of the policies effected during the last few decades: government intervention in prices was reduced; the biggest producers were helped to develop export channels and small farmers found themselves marginalized as a result - which produced a massive rural exodus.

Do you feel there has been any change in the attitudes of the elites?

In speeches, people are talking about small family agriculture more, but they persist in export- promoting policies. The prevailing discourse is that more must be produced, but the real problem is that a billion people don't have enough money to buy the food that is available.

When the FAO projects that to feed nine billion people in 2050, an increase in agricultural production of 70 percent will be required and that world meat production and consumption will go from 270 million tons to 470 million, it evades the issue of whether it makes any sense to encourage the perpetuation of modes of consumption with extremely negative impacts.

If the whole world were to imitate the United States' dietary regime, we'd need six planets.

How will the climate change question affect agriculture?

Agriculture is already the victim of climate change, with a drought that reduced harvests by 20 percent this summer in India, with recurrent drought in Central America …

The projections for 2020 are very worrying. At the same time, agriculture is co-responsible for this situation: 33 percent of green house gases are attributable to it.

Bringing agriculture to better respect the environment presupposes a move to agro-ecological modes of production.

May a connection be made between trade liberalization and the environment?

A recent World Trade Organization Report (WTO) concludes that trade and the environment may be complementary: Trade would promote the transfer of clean technologies; and, with climate change, more and more regions are going to find themselves in a food deficit situation and will have to buy more from others to feed themselves.

What's missing is an analysis of the environmental impact of export agriculture. When people produce for export, they revert to large monoculture plantations. They deplete the soil, provoke erosion and demand a great deal of fertilizer and pesticides.

Another aspect which this report deals with very inadequately is an analysis of the distances covered by food products from the places where they are produced to the places where they are consumed.

In the world today, every food product covers between 1,500 to 2,000 kilometers. Shorter supply lines use far less energy and fuel than long ones.

We must give priority to food-producing crops to respond to local needs and disperse food production so that it occurs as close as possible to where it is consumed.

Are you in favor of planting trees to compensate for CO2 emissions?

Among the many factors pushing land speculation are the great tree planting projects linked to the bait represented by the pollution rights market.

I think it's too facile a solution because it spares us from reflecting about the ways to reduce our energy consumption.

 
This article was originally published on Truthout.

Translation: Truthout French Language Editor Leslie Thatcher.

I would like to talk to you about some of the claims being published about the efficiency of earthen ovens.

I think we need to be clear that any masonry oven, whether it's made of unfired earth or fired brick, is not, by definition, a "fuel efficient appliance" – especially if it isn't insulated.

There are more and less efficient ways to work with an oven, and some of them make quite good use of the wood burnt in them, but in my experience, those ways don't apply to people who just want to cook a few pizzas, or a few loaves of bread, or perhaps a holiday turkey. That kind of use requires the burning of many pounds of fuel to cook just a few pounds of bread or meat. I don't think we can call that "fuel efficient."

There are different kinds of efficiency besides fuel efficiency, and those are, I think, equally important. "Efficiency" itself means "what comes of our making," and goes far beyond pounds of food cooked for pounds of fuel burnt. There is also the work of making family and community, which can benefit greatly from the kind of communal hearth provided by an oven. There is the work of building relationships with each other and the earth, which can benefit greatly from working together with strangers to build something beautiful and useful. Ovens can be wonderful even when they go unfired: simple and magical to build, lovely to look at, and beautiful for how they bring people together. But like every thing human — like every thing living — life comes at the cost of life — and in order to actually cook in your oven, the cost is the life of trees that we cut and burn as firewood.

I suspect that most of the ovens built in the US don't get used more than a few times a year, and if they bring people together for a day or even just a few hours, then perhaps the exchange of life for life is fair. If they are well insulated and fired with small dry sticks, the exchange is even better (good insulation under the hearth and over the dome can increase retention of useful baking temps from just a few hours to 12 or more).

But when we teach people to build ovens, or if we build ovens for clients, I think it's very important to be very clear that the simple /fuel efficiency/ of an oven can be anything from terrible (a few pizzas) to OK (pizzas, flatbread, loaf bread, meat, casseroles, lasagna, soup, pies, stew, cookies, warmed milk for yogurt, dried food, and dry wood for the next firing). In America, we are rich enough in fuel that we don't pay that close attention to how many trees we cut to cook our food — but that is not so in many other countries. So a claim of "efficiency" in America or on the web may carry the wrong message to a country where trees are scarce, and fuel is in short supply.

If you're interested, I'm happy for a chance to continue this discussion, either here on the blog site, through the comment option, or directly (contact me at handprintpress.com, or by snail mail at POB 576, Blodgett OR 97326). 

Here in the northeast it was a sopping wet spring and summer, with colder than normal temperatures. Swimming activities on my farm were way down, as I gather they were all around the region. Nevertheless, despite the weather and the economy (it was bad, right? – or good, if you had stocks or gold? Go figure…) new pond building and fix-ups of older ponds were quite active.

Judging by the ponds and pond sites I visited, there are several solid continuing trends, as well as a few new directions in pond use.

First, the majority of work focused on existing ponds that needed cleanouts or repairs, often both.

These were usually ponds that had been in the family for many years (sometimes decades), or part of a new purchase of country property.

In the case of old family ponds, they’d often been neglected until the invasive vegetation or water quality got so bad something had to be done – or lose the pond. Often these ponds are on vacation places that the owners may visit only occasionally, and they can be easy to ignore.

On the other hand, an aging pond might be part of a recently purchased property, and one of the first things the new owners want to do is restore the pond to its former glory. Which is why I always want to find out as much prior history as possible. If there was any old glory, great, the pond should be able to be restored. If the pond was always a problem, well, there may be more involved.

Rejuvenation work often involves drawdowns, dredging, disposal of material, and perhaps improvements of design features and water supply. If the pond has a water retention problem or water supply deficit, consideration of a liner may be involved.

In addition to invasive aquatic plants getting out of control, I saw quite a few ponds where trees had been allowed to grow on the dam. This can turn into a problem if tree roots compromise the integrity of the embankment. And after a certain point, cutting down the trees may not be much of a solution because of the leak potential of rotting roots.

I also saw several native spillways that had been allowed to clog up with aquatic vegetation and debris. With the heavy rains, these jammed up spillways raised pond water levels to heights near flood level. The dams and shore areas were saturated. In one case water was pouring through a leak started in an animal burrow.

After some spillway maintenance, the water levels were dropped, and these ponds restored to safe levels. Moral of the story: mind your spillways, especially in monsoon weather.

Seeing a lot of these aging ponds got me to thinking about the big wave of pond building in northern New England in the late 60s and 70s. These ponds are now over thirty years old, and it’s natural that they need work, especially if they’ve been ignored.

I also like to remind their owners that many of these ponds were built in the pre-wetland law days, and building them today might not be permitted. That makes them even more valuable and worthy of care.

So we’ve got a bunch of vintage ponds that need maintenance and repair, and if it’s not done the ponds will be swallowed up by invasive plants and sediment, or the dams will fail, etc. True, there’s nothing radically new about that. Work used to be done by bulldozers and draglines, today you’re more likely to see excavators and backhoes. What is new is an increasing interest in follow-up water maintenance. In other words, if you’re going to go to all the bother and expense of cleaning out your pond, how about taking care of it afterwards so you don’t have the same problem a few years down the road.

That’s where aeration comes in. Lots of folks are recognizing the potential of aeration to help decompose nutrients and circulate the water and generally improve water quality. It might be with an electric powered diffuser system or a windmill compressor. Owners might even combine aeration with crawfish or grass carp (where permitted) to graze down unwanted aquatic vegetation. Sometimes a new supply of water might be added to a rejuvenated pond to improve fresh water exchange. It might come from a well or springs, field drainage, or even water catchments from a roof or foundation drain. Sediment and erosion control is also important.

OK, those are the older ponds getting a recharge. What about new ponds?

Wetland laws can throw up some expensive and time consuming permitting hurdles, putting a land owner or possible land buyer in pond limboland. So here’s some good news: in one northern New England town several pond projects were able to detour around wetland permitting because the builder agreed to install a fire hydrant. Simple as that. So if permitting’s got you down, check with your fire department to see if they’re interested in a hydrant connected to your pond. Along with fire hydrants, ponds used for agricultural purposes can sometimes overcome wetland permitting hurdles.

Another permitting solution: plastic liners. Move the pond out of the wetland (and, alas, your natural water source) and use a liner to hold runoff or well water or spring water. This is a growing trend that I will discuss in a later Pondology, but for now just keep in mind that with liners it’s possible to build reliable ponds just about anywhere.

Alas, I saw a few new ponds this season that just didn’t work: they needed rebuilding or major repairs. This brings up a few points, but the main one is, hire an experienced contractor and be clear about following all best practice construction steps. It might cost more at the outset, but it could save a lot in the long run. Remember too that there’s always a gambling factor, a luck factor, in bringing in a successful earthen pond. The more you do your homework and make clear your contractor’s obligation to Make It Right, the better your chances.

Here’s to better swimming in 2010!

T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month in his poem, “The Wasteland.”

He understood that April is about waiting, waiting for the spring that he feared would never come.

I believe that November is about anticipation—anticipation of the winter that will come as we adjust our bodies, our houses, and our minds to this darker, colder season. We put another layer of insulation in the attic to keep out the cold, and turn the lights on early in the kitchen to keep out the dark.

The landscape has become monochrome. The brilliant foliage colors that had painted the hills in cheerful reds and yellows just a few weeks ago have been transformed into a carpet of dark brown leaves which we feel underfoot. Do I kick the leaves to get them out of the way, or do I do it as a protest against the season?

The beautiful Green Mountains are neither green nor white, except perhaps at the very top edges of Mount Mansfield and Camel’s Hump, where they are sprinkled like sugar by a hand from above. Snow, I think would be welcome because it etches the trees in sharp black and white.

Am I projecting too much of my mood on the landscape, I ask myself?

Is it really the disconcerting health care debate that makes the world look gray, or the weighty decision Obama has to make on Afghanistan that is making me feel cold drafts? Why can’t the world be like a summer day, when I thought that health care would be an ethical decision and wars existed only to be stopped? How much does the weather affect our moods?

One of the reasons we live in Vermont is that we love the cycle of the seasons—the contrast between hot and cold, wet and dry, wind and calm. The suspense that each day’s and each hour’s weather brings, keeps us guessing. We even get used to the idea that the weather is in fact, not predictable. It always gives us something to talk about. What do people talk about, I’ve often wondered, in parts of the country where the temperature is steady and the sun shines every day?

Surprise! This morning I woke up to blue skies and fresh winds. Even November can fool us, fortunately. Maybe a health care bill will pass after all, and a solution to the war in Afghanistan may be found.

 
This article originally aired as a commentary on Vermont Public Radio.

I learned a lesson or two on the bay. How to spot shrimp from a mile away. (Look for the sea gulls!) What does a watermelon smell on the bay mean? (trout just threw up) How to tell if a squall was gonna knock your boat over or lay down as harmless as a kitten. (anybody’s guess) But the best lesson that came home to roost was that boundaries were lies. There was no separation or division. No brick wall that divided San Antonio Bay from Esprito Santo Bay. Nothing to keep the sky from the water or the wind from the sea. Nothing to keep one person from a billion others. There was just flow and continuity of water and moon and dolphins and ratty ole captains in ratty ole shrimp boats hauling boogie across the bay to find those most elusive shrimp.

English pop singer Joss Stone has come under fire for highlighting the fact that marijuana is safer than alcohol, a viewpoint that has sparked intense debate this month in the UK.

As Stone told the UK Daily Mail:

Weed has been given this evil stamp, but how is it dangerous? It's going to make you laugh your arse off? You might go to sleep? I think alcohol is much more harmful.

People beat the f**k out of each other on alcohol. But I don't smoke weed all day long.

I live in Devon and hardly ever go to clubs. When I do, I'll drink three or four beers then move on to a vodka. I don't want to take all those horrible drugs. Although some sound fun, so I might dabble now and then!

She was unapologetic about her outburst, adding:

I'm very honest and I've been punished for that over and over again. Every time I say what I think I get s*** for it. But that won't stop me from being an honest person.

Yet Stone is not alone, both in her belief that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, and in the absurd treatment she is enduring for conveying this simple fact. Rather, she has some pretty solid back-up amongst the UK's scientific community.

Just last week Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), the UK's official drugs advisory body, was fired after giving a lecture in which he described marijuana as less harmful than alcohol.

Following the home secretary's request that Professor Nutt resign, the remaining 28 members of the ACMD issued a joint statement expressing serious concerns about the situation and threatening to resign if they were not addressed. Some (including the nation's top chemist) have since resigned in protest. The UK government's chief science adviser and the chief executive of the Medical Research Council, Britain's leading medical research organization, also spoke out against the treatment of Professor Nutt, citing the all too frequent and often dangerous clashes between politics and scientific evidence.

Like UK pop star Stone, Professor Nutt did not go quietly, speaking out vigorously in defense of his evidence-based position.

Last night Professor Nutt said he stood by his comments. 'My view is policy should be based on evidence. It's a bit odd to make policy that goes in the face of evidence. The danger is they are misleading us. The scientific evidence is there: it's in all the reports we published. Our judgments about the classification of drugs like cannabis and ecstasy have been based on a great deal of very detailed scientific appraisal.

Gordon Brown makes completely irrational statements about cannabis being 'lethal', which it is not. I'm not prepared to mislead the public about the harmfulness of drugs like cannabis and ecstasy. I think most scientists will see this as an example of the Luddite attitude of governments towards science.'

He repeated his view that cannabis was "not that harmful" and that parents should be more worried about alcohol.

The greatest concern to parents should be that their children do not get completely off their heads with alcohol because it can kill them … and it leads them to do things which are very dangerous, such as to kill themselves or others in cars, get into fights, get raped, and engage in other activities which they regret subsequently. My view is that, if you want to reduce the harm to society from drugs, alcohol is the drug to target at present.

Clearly Professor Nutt — a University of Bristol professor of psychopharmacology who is certainly more qualified in this area than the politicians who fired him — was not out to harm anyone; he was just doing his job, working in the best interest of the citizens he had been charged with serving. And Stone was not encouraging anyone to use marijuana; rather, she was speaking honestly about why she sometimes prefers to use it instead of drinking, and why she thinks she should be able to do so. Both have plenty of scientific evidence to back up their shared viewpoint, as every objective study on marijuana ever conducted has concluded that it poses far less harm than alcohol to the user and to society.

In the end, this all begs a very important and timely question that has yet to be addressed by opponents of marijuana policy reform or the mainstream media: just what is the bloody problem with pointing out the facts when it comes to cannabis and drink?

 
This article was originally published on The Huffington Post.

How do we save those women? I found one answer in a small story in The New York Times last week. The dateline was Afghanistan.

The reporter described a group of mullahs attending a class on birth control. Afghanistan has the second highest rate of maternal mortality, second only to Sierra Leone. The mullahs were “reluctant participants”; the writer acknowledged and had been paid to attend. Yet they listened, partly because the class was taught by one of their own, a fellow mullah.

Islam does not forbid birth control but having a child is considered a gift from God, the more births, the greater the blessings. On average, women bear six children in this country which has an average per capita income of $700 a year.

What were the lessons? Wait two years before having another baby to give your wife’s body a chance to rest, breast feed babies for 21 months. Simple advice, but new to a country where old traditions are difficult to change.

Providing birth control information and giving out pills is still dangerous in some areas. Many fear that birth control is an American plot to weaken the country.

If the mullahs decide to approve spacing their children and keeping both mothers and babies healthy, the transformation could be dramatic. Islam has one advantage: the mullahs are obeyed. “If the clerics will support this, no one will oppose it, “ one trainer said.

If spacing children takes hold, not only would the maternal mortality rate plunge, but the average family income would rise. It may seem strange to have to ask for the approval of the mullahs to enable women to survive childbirth. But as I think about it, we in the United States of America, who do not suffer like women in poor countries, still have to ask for the approval of the 83% male Congress for the right to have insurance plans cover abortions.

This article was originally published on Truthout.

This spells political catastrophe for Democrats in the 2010 mid-term election, as foreshadowed by the recent losses in the New Jersey and Virginia governors' races. But Obama's top economic advisers, such as Larry Summers, don't seem to get it. They continue to resist the idea of a second stimulus package.

"I think we got the Recovery Act right," Summers recently told the Washington Post's Alec MacGillis, adding, "We always recognized that America's problems were not created in a week or a month or a year and that they were not going to be solved quickly. We designed the Recovery Act to ramp up over time, through 2010, and to make sure that the investments we made were important for the country's future."

And other senior Obama officials such as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Office of Management and Budget Chief Peter Orszag are more concerned with cutting the deficit than spending more money to reduce joblessness. According to the Wall Street Journal, Orszag is sympathetic to the idea of a commission to cap government spending and Emanuel is floating the idea of spending some of the money that has been repaid from TARP bank bailouts on deficit reduction.

But this is putting the cart before the horse. We need larger deficits now, in order to get a real recovery going, so that a healthy economy will allow us to pay down public debt later. Specifically, we need to focus on three big things:

State and Local Fiscal Relief. You often hear that outlays on public infrastructure are not a good source of stimulus because they take too long to plan. But emergency revenue sharing to states and localities takes effect almost instantly because it prevents cuts in existing programs and layoffs of existing workers. Today, states and localities are not only cutting back outlays because their constitutions require balanced budgets; they are raising taxes, usually regressive taxes. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the three year state fiscal gap 2010-2012, will be at least $470 billion. So more than half of the federal stimulus is undermined by state and local belt tightening.

Accelerated Spending on Public Works. The Roosevelt administration, in an era before computers, got a lot of public works spending going in less than a year. There are massive unmet needs in public infrastructure. The Obama administration needs a short term and a long term strategy. Projects such as school repair and expansion, which can get underway in a few months, should get fast-tracked funding commitments right away. Longer term needs, such as smart electrical grids and modernization of water and sewer systems, expanded mass transit, and green energy, should be targeted for funding in 2011, so that plans can get on the drawing boards now.

Wage Subsidies. It is fashionable among American conservatives to make fun of the "rigidity" of European labor markets. But Germany today has a flexible and creative program of wage subsidies. The result is that the German unemployment rate has pealed at around 8 percent while ours has crashed through 10 percent. German companies suffering a downturn because of recession can get wage subsidies for their workers. Workers can also be put on reduced working time (kurzarbeit) and the German unemployment office will make up most of the loss in their take-home pay. According to the German government, a worker cut to 40 percent of his or her normal hours will end up with about 85 percent of usual take-home pay. Today, some 1.4 million German workers have been able to keep their jobs and most of their earnings thanks to the kurzarbeit plan. German firms keep their workers connected to the company, workers hold on to their jobs, and there are also incentives for workers on reduced time to use their spare hours to get additional training.

All told, we need additional federal spending in the range of at least $500 billion. But won't this increase the deficit? Yes it will, and that is the whole point. We are in a classic downward spiral of reduced household income and wealth, and a weakened financial sector. Many businesses face reduced consumer demand, compounded by a reluctance of banks to advance to any but the most blue chip borrowers.

In this climate, GDP growth can turn positive but companies are reluctant to hire. Full recovery will not resume spontaneously based on household or business demand, and the only source of increased demand to break the cycle is the government.

One of the most widespread and mistaken assumptions is that this bleak future is just baked into the cake. Because of the legacy of the financial collapse, and the limits of deficit spending, supposedly, we are just stuck with it. You hear that in testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and it is repeated mindlessly by the media.

This fatalism is just plain wrong, and history's great counter-example is World War II. In 1939, unemployment was stuck around 16 percent. GDP growth after 1933 was solid — 6 to 10 percent a year with the exception of 1937 — but the wounded economy was just not generating net jobs. Many expert commentators of that era concluded that there was something about the maturity of capitalism, or the replacement of human workers by machines, that consigned the economy to a chronic structurally high, rate of unemployment.

Then World War II broke out. The US government borrowed huge sums to recapitalize US industry and re-employ and retrain US worker in war production, to employ 12 million men and women in the armed forces, and to invest massively in science and technology to develop advanced weapons and substitutes for materials in short supply. The unemployment rate dropped to 2 percent by 1943. Deficits were enormous, as high as 29 percent of GDP in 1942 (this year they will be about 10 percent) but the economy grew at 12 percent a year for the four years of the war, and the high unemployment of the 1930s never returned.

The deficit hawks of that era worried that the very large national debt would be a millstone around the economy. At the end of 1945, the debt was 122 percent of GDP, compared to about 55 percent today, but of course the end of 1945 was the beginning of the 25 year postwar boom — the longest sustained boom in US history. GDP grew at 3.8 percent a year. The average deficit was about 1.1 percent, and with the economy growing much faster than the debt, the debt to GDP ratio declined to about 30 percent by the 1970s. So, we can grow our way out of debt — but we need to get a real recovery going first.

If past Obama White House Summits are any guide, this one will invite a broad cross section of people: trade unionists and deficit hawks, investment bankers and labor economists, industrialists and Republicans; and everyone will speak of the importance of their pet project for job creation. That's not good enough. This is not a moment for another White House gab fest. It's a time for progressive leadership.

This article was originally published on The Huffington Post.

Pros:
1. The bonus winners found a way to get rich. This is America and if you're smart enough to figure out how to play and win the money game at the highest levels, the money is yours. That's the real world.

2. They wouldn't be making so much money, if they weren't creating value. We may not understand the ins and outs of high finance, but in a market economy they have to create value in order to earn their money. Obviously, they create an enormous amount of value.

3. You're wrong to think these profits and bonuses came form the bailouts. These firms didn't need the bailout money. Their losses were hedged anyway. They're just really good at what they do. They've earned their wealth.

4. We may not like it, but financial services are America's future, not making consumer goods that low-wage countries can make better and cheaper. We lead the world in financial services. That's a key part of our GDP and thank goodness it's back on track.

5. If they don't pay out their bonuses, their best players will leave. That's the supply and demand of the marketplace. You don't like it? Then get a job in finance and claw your way to the top.

6. We want the financial system to be profitable. You can't stop a financial crash unless financial profits return. The bonuses drive the profits.

7. Inequality is good for society. It promotes a culture of hard work. It sets high standards. It promotes excellence. It makes our economy grow. Also, it's the natural order of things. Not everyone can be a star.

8. Wall Street's wealth really does trickle-down. The wealthy spend their money in a myriad of ways that create jobs. Workers who make luxury items need jobs just as much as those who make cheaper consumer goods.

9. You may not like the bonuses, but the alternative is too much government intrusion into our lives. Do we want the government to set wages? Do we want government to confiscate wealth? Next thing you know, the Pay Czar willl be telling the Yankees what they can pay A-Rod. It's not just a slippery slope, it's a cliff. You don't want an America where wages are set by bureaucrats and politicians.

10. Finally, enough with the hypocrisy. The financial sector should not be blamed for the crash. Let's look in the mirror. Everyone got too greedy. Consumers fell in love with credit and the government encouraged people to buy homes they couldn't afford. And you know it's true that when we do well, so do your 401ks. Don't tell me you're not peeking at your investments as we bring the stock markets back to life. We may not be doing "God's work"; but we're doing your work.

Cons:
1. If not for our bailout money and guarantees, there would be no bonuses or profits on Wall Street. Nada. Bupkis. It's our money and they should pay it back through a windfalls profits tax. It should not go to bonuses.

2. There is something very wrong with the financial sector. The pay structure is totally out of line with the rest of America. The free market is not functioning properly in that sector. The government must intervene.

3. Most of the profits come from high stakes gambling. These record profits do not reflect real value.

4. There is no connection between these profits and the economic health of America. There are over 30 million Americans without work or forced into part-time jobs. The major financial firms are doing nothing at all to fund industries and to create work.

5. Extreme inequality is a disaster both for our economy and our well-being. We have the worst income distribution since the 1928-29. When wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, it leads to financial gambling, which inevitably leads to bubbles and busts.(See The Looting of America

6. You can't blame the government for the crash. In fact it was lack of government regulation, not too much, that let the markets run wild and turn into a casino.

7. You also can't blame the consumer. The drive for subprime loans came from Wall Street which wanted more and more of them to package into fantasy finance securities.

8. Our society will be ruined if we don't redistribute a portion of the wealth that has accumulated in the hands of the very few. We need wealth taxes on those with over $500 million in assets and Eisenhower era 90 percent marginal tax rates on those with yearly incomes of over $10 million. That money must go to job creation.

9. We need to tie the fortunes of Wall Street to that of Main Street. The best way would be a President's Wage Cap: No one on Wall Street should earn more than the President of the United States until unemployment drops to below 5 percent. We need shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.

10. If lower-wages drive the best and the brightest away from Wall Street that would be a plus for our nation, not a minus. We'd be far better off if these croupiers helped create new forms of energy rather than new fantasy finance games.

Any additions or corrections? If not, the Pros seem have it, by popular default…so far.

But you have to wonder: why? The defense of the Billionaire Bailout Society is so thin, so faith-based, so contrary to the common good. Yet as we speak, the handsomely paid flacks for the elite are "messaging" us into oblivion with focus group-tested fairy tales about entrepreneurial virtue, free-markets and the curse of government interference. And of course, their tax-payer funded lobbyists are swarming over the political system to prevent even the mildest reforms.

Sadly, It may take another crash of even fiercer proportions to mobilize a deeper, more lasting response. Till then, this holiday season we'll be watching record bonuses go to those least in need, while unemployment continues its record climb.

 
This article was originally published on The Huffington Post.

Check out this similarly disturbing set of figures on income disparity over time, for which I am indebted to the Five Cent Nickel site. This is based on historical Federal Reserve data. The "mean" is the average, whereas the "median" is the line dividing the top of the sample from the bottom half:

1960: Median = $8,690; Mean = $10,420 (Median is 83% of mean.)
1976: Median = $13,549; Mean = $16,893 (Median is 80% of mean.)
1982: Median = $19,446; Mean = $26,259 (Median is 74% mean.)
2004: Median = $93,100; Mean = $448,200 (Median is 21% mean.)

Translation? Granted, the 2004 numbers include inflated real estate, which drives up peoples' paper net worth. But the bottom line is that a few SICKENINGLY rich people are distorting this in a very bad way. Shame on any of them for opposing health care as a universal right for all Americans. And shame on the big insurance companies and right wing for misleading everyone into believing in the false dilemma of the middle class: that health care means higher taxes and Soviet-style services. Somebody needs to pay for it, you say? I know just who can afford it, and taxing them won't cost you a dime.

These same people blame unions for being greedy. Public sector unions are blamed for pushing for more tax dollars for the government employees they represent, bankrupting the states. Private sector unions are blamed for driving up costs, and driving companies overseas. Auto workers unions are blamed for causing the demise of Detroit and of American manufacturing. Well, guess what? Unions helped create the middle class. Now the middle class has been outsourced and unions have less power than ever. But someone else is laughing all the way to the bank. And trying to pit the rest of us against one another. But I ain't buying it, and neither should you.

Take back the rhetoric. Remind people that the super rich in this country have cashed out the middle class, and that they can darn well afford to pay for health care, middle class employee benefits, school lunches for poor kids, student loans for college students and anything else we think we need. Health care, housing, and a good education should be universal rights for all Americans, and they are quite affordable through higher taxes for the rich.

The New York Solar Energy Society (NYSES) has sent out an action alert calling on its members to support Senate Bill S2715A, the New York Renewable Energy Sources Act. The bill was introduced by State Senator Antoine M. Thompson (D-Buffalo), Chair of the Senate's Standing Committee on Environmental Conservation.

NYSES' alert includes 14 talking points that explain why New York state needs renewable energy now and how feed-in tariffs will make it happen.

Previously, the New York State Solar Energy Industry Association (NYSEIA) had called for action on feed-in tariffs in support of Senator Thompson's bill. See New York SEIA Calls for Feed-in Tariffs.

Both Florida's SEIA and California's SEIA have called for various versions of feed-in tariffs in their respective states.

Neither the American Solar Energy Society nor the national Solar Energy Industries Association has explicitly called for feed-in tariffs. Recently, however, the Solar Alliance, a trade association of solar PV manufacturers and developers, posted its policy in support of feed-in tariffs. See Solar Alliance Position Paper on Feed-in Tariffs.

NYSES' campaign for feed-in tariffs in the Empire State is being led by Wyldon Fishman, the founder and current president of NYSES.

-End-

"My fellow-Americans,

We face a true national emergency. More than 30 million Americans are without jobs or are working part-time because there are no full-time jobs to be found. The official 10.2 percent unemployment rate hides the true extent of the problem. The real jobless rate is at least 17.5 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. This is unacceptable. No nation and no President can allow this to continue.

After one year on the job, I had hoped my economic program would have put more people to work. Obviously, it hasn't done nearly enough. Yes, the stock market is up, GDP is growing and Wall Street is making record profits again. But the only true measure of economic health is employment. Our people are truly hurting.

Therefore, I am proposing the following emergency actions:

First, I am creating a National Teachers' Corps that will add one million new teachers by September 1. Each job will cost us about $50,000 so the total bill is $50 billion for this badly needed program. We will target these jobs for recent college graduates who are unemployed. I'm sure that our school districts will find room for them immediately.

Second, I call for a Charitable Non-Profit Jobs Creation Program to provide each non-profit organization in this country with a $100,000 grant if they hire two new employees within the next two months. We have approximately 500,000 charitable non-profits so this program would create 1 million jobs for $50 billion. Charitable non-profits will have no problem creating these badly needed positions.

Third, I will create an Energy Civilian Conservation Corps to weatherize every business and home in the country. Because these jobs would require additional supplies they are more costly: For 500,000 jobs it will cost $50 billion. However, this program is financially sensible in face of rising oil prices and the costs of ongoing global warming.

These three programs would put 2.5 million of our unemployed to work in a matter of months at a cost of $150 billion. And this doesn't include the multiplier effect that would follow and would lead to another million jobs as the newly employed earn and spend their incomes.

But how do we pay for it?

I know you are worried about debts and deficits. You don't want us to become even more indebted to foreign powers. Nor do you want us to pass on these debts to our children. And you do not want to see your taxes rise, either. Neither do I.

But some of us are much more able to afford to contribute. Those of us who have made hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions, have more than enough to repay this great nation for all that it has provided. This is the time for those with phenomenal wealth to help put America back to work.

Therefore I propose:

1. A 5 percent wealth tax on all those with more than500 million in assets. This is temporary surcharge that would be removed once the unemployment rate goes below 5 percent). This surcharge would generate about75 billion in one year on just the 400 richest Americans, who collectively have 1.5 trillion in assets. The surcharge on the next one thousand wealthiest Americans would provide an additional50 billion. Surely these successful entrepreneurs want to put their fellow Americans to work in our schools, in our charitable organizations and in our energy efficiency programs.
2. Next I call for a 90 percent windfall profits tax on Wall Street profits and bonuses. (The major firms with over $10 billion in assets.) We all know that our bailouts are responsible for the new wave of record profits that now are returning after the worst financial year since the Great Depression. Every banker knows that a year ago Wall Street was in shambles after it took excessive risks that crashed our economy. Since then, we've rescued the entire financial sector from certain destruction with trillions of dollars in TARP funds and asset guarantees. Now Wall Street must contribute back to our nation in order to put Americans back to work. We will remove the windfall profits tax as soon as unemployment goes below 5 percent.
3. For the rest of us who want to contribute, we will be issuing new US Jobs Bonds. These long-term savings bonds would have a modest interest rate, pegged to stay above inflation. But every penny collected would be used to create jobs right now. This voluntary program is a way for all of you to help during this jobs emergency.
4. And finally, as Commander in Chief, I am ordering a pullout from Afghanistan over the next two years. We do not have the resources to rebuild that country and to win an un-winnable war. We need to spend our money at home.

It is time to put our people to work. No more trickle-down. No more billionaire bailouts. We need real jobs, right now and this emergency plan will do it.

The era of "greed is good" must end. This is the time for shared sacrifice toward shared gain. This is the time to pull together for the common good. Let us join together to put America back to work."

 
This article was originally published on The Huffington Post.

Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. At this point I want to say to all the people who have jumped on the "Honey Bees are disappearing, we're all doomed!" bandwagon: "Please read the literature." I also want to urge them to read my book, not to sell copies (order it through your library) but simply so the panic writers can find out the nature of the real crisis. Honey bees are important — and if you happen to be a honey bee (unlikely, but you never know) then obviously honey bees are the most important things on Earth — but if they were to reduce in numbers to just a few indigenous colonies, then humanity would be fine.

Agriculture, on the other hand would start having a pretty hard time of it:

If you happen to be a viewer of the PBS television network in the USA, which is watched by 73 million people a week and provides “high-quality documentary and dramatic entertainment”,8 then you may have come across a documentary called ‘Silence of the Bees,’ which showed the potential impact of Colony Collapse Disorder. I hesitate to quote from the trailer, but here goes:

“Life as we know it, I don’t think will exist.”
“You won’t get any fruits, and you won’t get any vegetables.”
“We’re scared to death!”

I hope those people were quoted out of context because they really looked like they were gearing up for global collapse. Actually, that may not be such a stupid idea, but it probably won’t have anything to do with bees. The sober truth is that if the world’s bees disappeared, we would be faced with a disaster of sorts, but that disaster would be far more economic than ecological.

Despite our claim to be omnivores, humans eat a surprisingly small number of different food items. This was certainly not the case before industrial agriculture became the norm, leading to a focus on the easiest to grow, the most disease- and pest-tolerant, and the most profitable crops – in fact ease of growing along with disease- and pest-tolerance are just different ways of ensuring a steady, reliable stream of income in the modern age.

Writing Chapter 4 of "Time's Up!" was interesting in two particular ways: first, the aforementioned "non disaster" came to light after reading various papers and articles, and realising very quickly that honey bees are exploited (although I don't make this too explicit in the text - perhaps I should have done) in order to increase crop yield and thus boost the power of the industrial machine. Intensive farming is how people in the industrial world get the vast majority of their food; but it is no safety net, and as you will discover later on in the book, it is this very intensity and complexity that makes the industrial food system so vulnerable. That said, honey bees are very useful to have around — they are excellent pollinators, and need to be encouraged in natural ways, rather than sticking them into rows and rows of boxes next to cash crops, then shipping them off to the next farm when they have done their duty.

The second thing I found interesting was the analogue between Colony Collapse Disorder and the collapse of civilizations. Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) has been baffling agriculturalists, scientists and politicians for a few years now, and no one has really come to an agreement as to what causes it (I have my own ideas), except that it is happening and it's probably down to a variety of causes. The key point is, though, that this phenomenon is repeated in all sorts of different situations where a number of pressures are brought to bear upon a system. Being of a slightly geeky nature, it was a delight to be able to use a simple Cusp Diagram, which is a mainstay of Chaos Theory, and tragically underused in climate science, given that it's actually quite easy to understand — an explanation is given in the book. Linking CCD to the collapse of civilizations is not that huge a jump to make:

The power of the cusp diagram is such that it can be applied to subjects as diverse as a chalk cliff, a bee colony or even human civilization. Change the horizontal axis to indicate the normal impacts of endemic disease, food availability, quality of healthcare and sanitation, and even government or cultural attitudes, on population, and you can follow the upper path quite happily up and down to show how these affect the human population of a country or a region. Change the depth axis to include unpredictable factors like the incidence of catastrophic flooding and storms, the outbreak of war or civil unrest, the sudden unavailability of energy supplies that feed every system in Industrial Civilization, or any other factor that can increase the sensitivity of a population, and you can be hurtling straight into the drop zone quicker than you can say, “I want to get off ”. And this is certainly not idle mathematical speculation: human civilizations have undergone collapse after collapse, in almost all cases with the post-collapse society left as a shadow of its previous might. The Ottoman Empire, the Mayan civilization and the Roman Empire all collapsed for different reasons, but all of the collapses were sudden and uncontrollable.

This is important because it signals the presence of a thread that runs through the entire book: the inevitability of social collapse under stress; and particularly the catastrophic collapse of complex systems, like civilizations, because they are simply unsustainable. Personally I think the bees will be fine in their natural habitats; it's just a shame that the way the civilized world produces food is taking away so much of that habitat that would otherwise be able to help us produce lots of food in a truly sustainable way.

Keith Farnish is the author of “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis”, which is published by Chelsea Green in the USA, and Green Books in the UK. He is also the founder of The Earth Blog and The Unsuitablog. He lives in Essex, UK, with his wife, two children and a much-loved garden.

We need a radical break with Wall Street, and we got the politics of prop up and bail out — with the result that most Americans don't think the program is benefiting them.

We needed President Obama to focus like a laser on economic recovery, and instead we got the distraction of a barely-worth-it health insurance patch. We needed the president to go to the country and win support for fundamental health reform, and instead we got Rahm Emanuel's deal with the drug and insurance industries that won House support by the barest of majorities and managed to frighten senior citizens — the most satisfied customers of our one public option — Medicare.

We needed a recovery program that held down unemployment, and instead we got a stimulus that even the Obama team considered too small at the time of its enactment, according to the reporting of The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza.

And now we are on the verge of Barack Obama's very own Vietnam, in an escalating Afghanistan entanglement.

The 2009 off-year elections were a repudiation of incumbents — only now the incumbent party is the Democrats. Popular cynicism about government representing the interests of insiders and economic elites is even more extreme now than in November 2008, when the desire for drastic change thrust Obama into the White House. If present economic trends continue, the Democrats could lose control of the House in 2010, setting up a repeat of Bill Clinton's period of "triangulation," but with an even more lunatic-fringe obstructionist Republican Party.

Yet, as a friend points out, if you had evaluated John F. Kennedy in November 1961, a year after his election, you would have adjudged him pretty much a failure. His administration began with the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy did not have firm control over his nominally Democratic majority in Congress (despite almost identical partisan margins as Obama's). He did not make an effective impression on Nikita Khrushchev at their Vienna Summit, and the Soviet Cuban Missile offensive followed. But by late 1963, Kennedy had begun the turn to détente, and he managed to lay the groundwork for the civil rights and antipoverty revolution that his successor, Lyndon Johnson, delivered.

So, can Barack Obama recoup, and can he recoup in time?

If you look at what most historians regard as Kennedy's finest hour, his leadership of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, you appreciate that Kennedy above all had to face down most of his own advisers. Most wanted a military confrontation with the Soviets. But the brothers Kennedy found an alternative to either war or surrender.

Obama, like Kennedy, needs to overcome the dubious counsel of his own advisers, this time both economic and military. With unemployment still rising to levels the administration did not anticipate, Messrs Summers and company are still opposed to a second stimulus, and the White House is mainly concerned with appeasing the budget hawks.

The president needs to listen to other voices, including his own. He needs to go to the country with a much stronger jobs program, to show people that his administration is on their side. He could take the TARP money that has been repaid by the banks and put it directly into mortgage foreclosure relief, as well as insisting that sub-prime bondholders take the same kind of write-down as auto-company bondholders. He could ask Congress for additional fiscal relief to the states, whose budget collapse is still worsening, undercutting the existing federal stimulus. Deficit reduction can come once the economy is back on track.

On Afghanistan, instead of the seemingly inevitable troop escalation that will please nobody and fail to alter events, he could pursue a policy of pressing the Karzai regime harder for reforms while helping Karzai keep the Taliban from taking control of Kabul and northern provinces — and using a small troop presence of 20,000 or less to keep al Qaeda off balance. He could firmly reject getting dragged piecemeal into a war that will only be a quagmire. The Republicans would rattle sabers but most Americans would cheer.

Some of what Obama has faced was beyond his control. Nobody said digging out from the financial catastrophe would be easy, or that fashioning a viable policy for Afghanistan would be a cakewalk. Taming a Democratic majority that included Blue Dogs obsessed with fiscal balance and New Dems in bed with Wall Street was not exactly child's play either. But events did not require him to appoint an economic team headed by Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, or to reappoint Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Fed, or Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, or to favor the escalation faction in his Afghanistan advisers. Events did not require him to play an inside game with powerful industries instead of taking a case for radical reform directly to the people and offering a Rooseveltian program too popular to oppose.

From the day he declared for the presidency — indeed, from the day he declared for the Illinois state senate — Obama has displayed an audacity, a decency, an idealism, and an eloquence that gave us hope that here was a great president. But as chief executive, he has seemed buttoned up and damped down while a great crisis threatens to envelop the country and his presidency. He had the audacity to run and to win. Now, will he have the audacity to learn and to lead?

 
This article was originally published on The Huffington Post.

Talk to your neighbors and you can sense how angry they are about the rich gaining ever more wealth during the Great Recession. They understand that the bailout money — our tax dollars — went to the largest financial institutions in the world which had caused the crisis in the first place. They sense that the middle class is getting screwed yet again.

What a teachable moment! But what are we teaching?

It looks as if this resentment may reinforce a conservative resurgence. The tea party storm troopers are but the tip of the renewed revulsion against big government that is likely to send many a Democrat to defeat. People will blame the government for its failure to reign in Wall Street. If they government won't punish Wall Street, then the public will punish the government.

If progressives don't intervene decisively, we'll soon return to the faith-based ideology that got us here in the first place. But what can we do in the face of so much wealth, so much lobbying power and so much weakness on the part of so many political leaders?

We can do the basics that every other movement in our nation's history has done. We need to work on three fronts:

1. We need a clear cut analysis and narrative that explains the problem in ways that everyone can understand.

2. We need a concise set of solutions that captures and directs the anger toward bold reforms.

3. We need a broad movement that takes the agenda door to door to build an organized, sustained response.

What's our Narrative?
This crisis is the direct result of a two-pronged, failed experiment starting in the late 1970s that supposedly was intended to lift all boats. The first part of the experiment was to set "free" the financial sector by taking away most of the strong controls put in place during the Great Depression. This was supposed to unleash financial innovation that would make our system stronger and richer.

The second part was to demolish the progressive tax system so that money would concentrate in the upper income brackets - the investor class. They supposedly would invest in new goods and services that in turn would create more jobs and increase incomes.

This experiment in deregulated finance and redistribution of income to the super-rich failed spectacularly.

Instead of an investment boom in the real economy, the super rich poured their money into Wall Street's deregulated fantasy finance casino. They got much richer. We didn't.

The last time our income distribution was this bad was 1929-28 when a similar fantasy finance casino exploded. One factoid tells it all: In 1970 the ratio of the top 100 CEOs compensation to that of the average workers was 45 to 1. By 2006 it was 1,723 to 1! (The Looting of America p.167)

The casino was betting on risky debt and pawning it off by claiming that the risk had been engineered away. When housing prices stopped climbing, the risk was revealed and the investments turned toxic. The financial sector froze up and pushed the real economy off a cliff. Unemployment rose rapidly and is continuing to rise.

To prevent another Great Depression, we poured trillions into the financial sector. Unfortunately we asked for and got little in return. The billionaire bailout society is still intact and we're paying for it.

What's our Agenda?
It's time for Wall Street and the billionaires at the public trough to pay their fair share:

a.) The President's Wage Cap: Until unemployment returns to below 5 percent, no one in the financial sector should earn more than the President of the United States: $400,000 a year. Why? Because the entire sector is on welfare to the tune of $13 trillion in TARP funds, liquidity programs, and various bond/asset guarantees. (See Nomi Prins ) This proposal calls for shared sacrifice. The super-rich can afford it more than the 29 million who are unemployed or stuck in part-time work because they can't find full time jobs.

b.) Windfall Profits Tax on Wall Street Profits: Until unemployment returns to below 5 percent, profitable Wall Street firms should return 90 percent to the US Treasury rather than to their shareholders and bonus pools. To make record profits during the deepest recession since the Great Depression is both obscene and impossible without tax payer support. It's time to pay us back.

c.) Wealth Tax of 5 percent a year on those with a net worth of over $500 million. Again, until unemployment goes below 5 percent, the super rich should pay their fair share. They benefited mightily from the billionaire bailout society that has unemployed so many and gutted the middle class. They can easily pay without suffering.

d.) Break up all institutions that are too big too fail so that they are small enough to fail. This is a no-brainer. Unless we do so, we'll always be bailing them out, making the billionaire bailout society permanent.

There's no need to be defensive about this kind of agenda. It's about as radical as the policies of Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt, who busted the trusts, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, who presided over an era where the marginal tax rate on those earning more that $3 million (in today's dollars) was 91 percent. These Republicans actually believed that a fairer income distribution was better for our country. These Republicans actually believed that concentrated power was a threat to liberty.

Obviously this agenda is not set in stone. Rather it could be a starting point for a discussion with our neighbors and other agenda creators. Only through a robust dialogue will we learn enough to formulate a final program that truly strikes a common cord.

How do we mobilize?
Ah, this is the hard part. We seem to have forgotten how to mobilize ourselves outside of elections that then disappoint us. But the civil rights and anti-war movements of a generation ago show that it can be done. However, it requires hard work and leadership by labor and church organizations that have sufficient resources to support a giant educational effort.

Somehow we have to get to a point where many progressive organizations are working in common to conduct a mass door to door canvassing campaign. The key is talking with our neighbors. I think you'd be surprised at how many people want to talk about how to end the billionaire bailout society and who currently are only hearing the voices of the Neanderthal talk shows. They know the system is messed up, and they know that Palin and Beck have some screws loose. But if those are the only critical voices they hear, then eventually those voices start sounding sensible. It's been a long, long time since we've had a door to door dialogue about the common good. (If we need devices to facilitate those encounters, it would be easy to come up petitions to deliver to congress and the media.)

I know, I know, many of us thought that by electing Obama, it would all change (and what, Paul Krugman would be economic Czar?). But it's never that easy. Nothing much of substance will happen unless we organize a mass debate around a common agenda and a definition of the common good.

Two things are certain: If we actually talk with our neighbors all over the country, our alternative agenda will become much, much stronger. And if we don't, we'll be stuck inside of the billionaire bailout society for decades to come.

 
This article was originally published on The Huffington Post.