News & Articles

I love groups with the gumption to take on big tasks and do what needs to be done – can-do groups that can, and do. But, uh-oh, here comes The Little Choo-Choo That Couldn’t: The US Congress.
Since the earliest days of our US of A, the most basic task of this legislative body has been to keep our national house in good repair – tending to roads, bridges, rail systems, airports, school buildings, parks, internet access, etc. Yet, with a toxic mix of anti-government ideology and fiscal foolishness, Congressional Republicans have recently been blocking every serious proposal to reinvest in America’s collapsing infrastructure.
The result is an inexcusable drop in maintenance, even as our population has expanded dramatically and the wear and tear on all parts of the infrastructure has created disasters-in-the-making. As one senator says of our increasingly-ramshackle house, “I’ve been here seven and a half years. We have not solved one single problem. It’s just so frustrating.”
That was no tax-and-spend liberal Democrat talking – it was a penny-pinching Republican, Bob Corker of Tennessee. Indeed, it was not that long ago that most Republicans understood and funded infrastructure – from Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Ike, and even Reagan, who called such common sense maintenance “an investment in tomorrow that we must make today.”
Gail Collins, the superbly sensible New York Times columnist, recently noted that, “In a perfect world, Congress would figure out a serious, long-term plan to fix bridges, [etc.].” Yes, but I would amend her observation with this: It shouldn’t take “a perfect world” – even a Congress in a half-way mediocre world ought to be able to do that job.
Actually, thanks to GOP obstinacy, Congress isn’t the Little Choo-Choo That Couldn’t. It’s the Choo-Choo that could, but won’t.
“Congress: The Road To Roads,” The New York Times, August 1, 2014.
“Build We Won’t,” The New York Times, July 4, 2014.
“America’s Highways, Running on Empty,” The New York Times, June 2, 2014.
“Remarks by the President on Building a 21st Century Infrastructure,” www.whitehouse.gov, May 14, 2014.


Frackers face a comeuppance on unexpected battlefield

The University of North Texas, known for its jazz school and sometimes for its “Mean Green” football team, might soon be known nationwide as Frack U.
UNT (where I went to college back in the Paleocene Epoch) and the good people of the surrounding city of Denton – just 30 miles north of Dallas – are at the center of an epochal fight between Big Oil Frackers and common sense citizens.
Unbeknownst to nearly all Dentonites until recently, they sit atop the Barnett shale field, a deposit of natural gas locked a mile and a half underground in ancient rock. Suddenly, the city was invaded by Shell Oil and other profiteers drilling deep wells to “frack” that rock – literally shattering it with a high-pressure slurry of water, sand, and a witch’s brew of toxic chemicals. Fracking rigs popped up next to schools, homes, and even on campus, generating waves of pollution, a constant roar, and the rumble of hundreds of heavy trucks through neighborhoods. People got the mess, corporations got the profit, and foreign nations are getting the energy.
So, Rebellion! A gutsy and savvy group of hundreds of grassroots Dentonites – led by the likes of a home care nurse, a UNT philosophy professor, and a jazz drummer – has proposed a city ban on future fracking, and they stunned the arrogant, aloof fracker club by getting the proposal on the November 4 ballot. Of course, the industry powers are now rolling out their usual politicking arsenal of big money, lies, fake economic reports, and slander – accusing the grassroots people of being “wacko” and even terrorists.
But nothing’s more wacko than letting corporate giants plunder our environment, threaten our health, and frack our democratic right to govern our local communities. To follow and help the people’s fight in Denton, go to www.FrackFreeDenton.com.

How goes America’s war on Afghan poppies?

I have breaking news from the frontlines of the war.
No, not the new war in Iraq, which really is Iraq War III for us – our nation’s third trip there in just 25 years (maybe the third try will be the charm, though I really don’t think there’s anything charming about it). Nor do I mean our wars in Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, or… oh, hell who can keep up? Rather I mean our oldest ongoing war and the longest in American history, now going on 13 years: Afghanistan.
This life-destroying, money-sucking, soul-sapping, wreck of a military escapade has not gone at all well for Team USA, having failed to crush the Taliban, plant the flower of democracy, or even slow the elite’s culture of corruption. And now I bring hard news about the most modest of American goals in Afghanistan, namely defeating the poppy flowers. Yes, even fields of flowers have gotten the best of us in that woeful land.
After Bush-Cheney invaded, one major priority was to stop the planting of poppies, the flower that produces opium and heroin. Afghanistan was number one in world opium production – the sale of which financed the repressive Taliban forces we had come to defeat. For a decade, our troops eradicated poppy fields, lectured farmers, paid officials and farmers to switch to alternative crops, and waged all-out war on the pretty flower that turns so ugly.
Having spent 10 years and $7.6 billion on the Afghan Poppy War, where are we? A new report by a US Inspector General reveals that more land than ever was dedicated to growing the flowers last year, producing an all-time record harvest that generated some $3 billion in profits for the Taliban – a billion more than the year before.
Not only does Afghanistan remain number one in the opium trade, but it provided 80 percent of the world opium supply last year. Like they say, war is hell.