EQ 14: Executive Orders = Action

Dear Friends,

I was reminded this morning by my wife that President Obama is doing a good job enacting policy through Executive Orders.  While Executive Orders are by their nature limited in the scope of what they can accomplish, they do provide a way to get somethings done when a President is faced with an opposition party that is against anything that he proposes.  Since the Republicans have made it clear that they will oppose anything that President Obama is for (think Obamacare and Cap and Trade both originally Republican ideas), President Obama has been forced to use Executive Orders to get things done.  Today he announced one directing federal agencies to find ways to expand flexible work place policies to be more family friendly.  Previously, he has used Executive Orders to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.  He has made it easier to have the states provide information about mental illness to the federal gun background check system.  He has increased the minimum wage for federal contractors.  He has addressed climate change, most recently with coal fired power plant emissions.  The list goes on and you can see it here.

Each of these orders is just a small step.  It would be far better to have Congress act much more broadly in these areas, but that is not going to happen so we should encourage President Obama to continue to use Executive Orders whenever he can.  We should particularly encourage him to stop deporting people who may be here illegally but who do not pose any safety threat to our communities and if people are being deported to do so in a much more humanitarian way.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

EQ 13: Iraq War = Bush = SOFA = Iraq Withdrawal

Dear Friends,

The Republicans are blaming President Obama for everything that is going wrong in the world for the most part without any actual basis, but blaming President Obama for the current state of Iraq is absurd.  It was President George W. Bush that pushed us into the Iraq war by lying to the American people.  By toppling Saddam Hussein without being prepared for the aftermath, President Bush allowed the centuries old sectarian hatreds and rivalries to come to the fore.  That very same President Bush negotiated and entered into the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government in November 2008 which required all United States troops to be out in three years.  The allies of President Bush now have the gall to blame President Obama for the current state of Iraq because he removed United States troops too quickly.

So the facts are all on the side of President Obama yet he refuses to call out the Republicans for their lies.  He should be making the facts clear to everybody that the Iraq War was President Bush's war, that President Bush lied to get us into it, that President Bush was unprepared for what would happen after we invaded, that President Bush is responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives lost and ruined, that President Bush set the timetable for withdrawal, that President Bush's policy was a total failure and his execution of that policy was inept and disastrous and that the United States cannot fix Iraq.

It is time for the United States to get out of Iraq.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

EQ 12: Ecological Strain + Wealth Inequality = Civilization Collapse

Dear Friends,

A cross-disciplinary group led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation using the new Human And Nature DYnamical (HANDY) model according The Guardian (here) has reached the following conclusions:

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:
"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."
By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.
These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."

 Except for the science deniers in the Republican Party, there is almost universal agreement that climate change brought on by human activity will destroy our planet if we do not act quickly to reverse human's impact on the environment.  Yesterday it became clear that there is at least one Republican that is not a science denier perhaps his courage will give other Republicans the courage to face an existential issue for our planet.  You can read his op-ed in The New York Times here.

With respect to the wealth disparity, the United States is clearly off the charts.  It has been widely reported that the Walton Family (Walmart) has more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans.  See here and here.  That analysis uses 2010 data.  In 2007 the Walton Family's wealth was estimated at $73.3 billion.  In 2010, it was estimated at $89.5 billion.  During those same three years the median wealth of American families dropped by 38.8%.  The Walton Family wealth is now estimated to be $111.5 billion.

Huff Post Business recently published an analysis of which billionaires could purchase all the houses in which cities (here).  It is a fun article even if extremely frightening.  The top four billionaires have a combined wealth of over $322 billion.  Here they are along with the cities in which they could buy every home:
Walton              $111.5 billion     Seattle
Koch                  $78.1 billion     Atlanta
Gates                 $76.6 billion     Boston
Buffett               $56.1 billion     Charlotte

That concentration of wealth in four families is astounding and certainly speaks to the haves and the have nots.  I do not know if the HANDY model works or if our civilization will actually collapse but I do know:
The disparity between the really rich and the rest is immoral and not sustainable.
The fact that the really rich can buy our elections will destroy our democracy.
The science deniers will continue to block action to reverse climate change and other environmental disasters so long as they are backed by super rich like the Koch brothers.
That all means that we will destroy our country and our planet.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal