The New Oil

If you have money enough in Austin, Texas, you can have your own water well drilled into the Edwards Aquifer, at a cost of $18, 000 to $32, 000 within the city limits, and ignore the city water restrictions. According to the Austin American-Statesman:

As plummeting lake levels triggered drastic watering restrictions during the drought, homeowners drilled 47 new water wells in Austin last year — more than doubling the 19 drilled the year before, according to data from the Texas Water Development Board. More than 150 new wells have been drilled since 2006 — the number also jumped during droughts in 2006 and 2009 — and nearly all of those wells are in West Austin neighborhoods such as Pemberton Heights, Tarrytown and Balcones, where many homes boast lush, carefully manicured landscaping.

The owners of these homes, with an averaged assessed value of $2 million, claim that they are helping to conserve water by not taking city water--the use of which is regulated in drought-prone Austin--to water their lawns. Others see the increased use of aquifer water from private wells differently:

• Daryl Slusher, an assistant director at the Austin Water Utility, is more concerned with how the drilling of private water wells and the use of that water in drought will affect people's attitudes toward water. The first effect is on the attitude of the folks who have paid lots of money to have their well drilled. Not only do they have little incentive to conserve water, they also may feel that "the more water they pump from the aquifer, the faster they can recoup their investment." The second effect, he thinks, will be on the attitudes of folks who see their neighbors with a "lush green lawn" in times of drought. That attitude may cause those folks using city water to conserve less themselves.
• Others are concerned that folks fail to realize that aquifers aren't an endless supply of water, either.  John Dupnik, a senior regulatory compliance specialist for the Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, says that because it's difficult to measure the unregulated withdrawal of water from an aquifer, the end result could be an aquifer depleted by "a thousand cuts." Jason Hill, spokesman for the Austin Water Utility says that "'just because it's groundwater and not surface water doesn't mean it's an infinite supply. We do hope that customers (using wells) still are prudent and mindful of water use.'"
• As John Dupnik also points out, the use of privately drilled wells, especially in these times of drought when city water is being regulated, emphasizes the difference between the haves and have-nots. A recent Texas Supreme Court decision also throws that difference in a new light in its ruling that landowners own the water beneath their land, just as (some) land owners own the mineral and oil rights to their land.

Water is the new oil.

Best quote from my online reading this morning

"...[W]e have risked the fate of the earth, the fate of the species, on the mental stability of a few ambitious politicians who rise to the top of the heap, not necessarily because of their rationality." --from Ron Rosenbaum's "An Unsung Hero of the Nuclear Age," posted in Slate, 28 February 2011.

Corporate Welfare

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., who received such love from Senators, especially Republican senators, in a recent Senate hearing, owes some of his fortune to taxpayers. According to Bloomberg and research by the International Money Fund, JPMorgan "receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year....[which] helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses...[and] distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy." Read the entire article at: "Dear Mr. Dimon, Is Your Bank Getting Corporate Welfare?," to get a step-by-step discussion of how corporate welfare affects us all. (h/t Think Progress: Economy)

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, "the financial sector is far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties." In the 2011-2012 cycle so far, Mitt Romney has received far more contributions than any other presidential candidate: $19, 222, 965 to Obama's $8, 414, 629. Of the top 20 recipients of the financial industry's largesse, 14 are Republicans and 6 are Democrats. Insurance heads the financial industry PACs in contributions, with 62% of its contributions going to Republicans this year, compared to 38% to Democrats.

The financial industry is hedging its bets, of course, but it looks as if the Republicans are the favored horse in this year's race. Wonder what the industry will expect in return. Not.

Choosing: Reflection at the end of the summer solstice

where I choose to be happy

crooked neck squash plant overtaking the basil

Like many people, I find myself in a place I would not choose to be, given a true choice. And so I choose to make it into a place I like to be. Tough work, but it has to be done to be happy.

Genovese and lettuce leaf basil

My old cat seems happy enough, too, on this summer solstice.

Quote for the Day, Ta-Nehisi Coates

"...I can only stop talking about racism, when it ceases to be a significant force in our politics. When the mere act of being white gives Obama's opponent "a home-state advantage nationally," I can't stop. It would be deeply wrong to stop." Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Toward a Politically Correct Conservatism, cont.," posted online at The Atlantic, 20 June 2012.

Keeping Track of the PACs

Here are some links that might help those interested in keeping track of who is contributing to super PACs, along with links to articles and discussions about the current situation in campaign finance.

First up, ProPublica is updating a chart on super PAC donations and spending here: "PAC Track: What and Where are the Super PACs Spending?," Al Shaw and Kim Barker.

ProPublica also has a chart that visually illustrates who is donating and how much, here: "Who are the Super PACs Biggest Donors?."

ProPublica is also keeping track of where the money is being spent. Where do those campaign dollars go? Here is a link to the interactive graphic that will walk you through the tangled web of campaign spending: "A Tangled Web: Who's Making Money from all This Campaign Spending?"

You can access all of this information at ProPublica's "Campaign 2012" page.
 
Some discussion:
Several views on the Supreme Court ruling in Citizen's United vs. Federal Election Committee on Bill Moyer's website: "Corporations, Political Spending, and the Supreme Court" and here, "Free Speech for Corporations." Links within the posts lead to videos and further information.

And if you're interested in the power of Wall Street:
Frontline's "Money, Power, and Wall Street: Part One," Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.

Men Love Darkness Rather than Light: Republican Response to Dark Money

Campaign finance reform? Republicans aren't for that anymore. Now that the Supreme Court has armed them with Citizens United and their Wall Street financiers and billionaires are supporting the GOP with millions and millions of dollars, Republicans want to keep citizens in the dark about who is contributing to whom and why. The whole "Obama's enemy's list" talking point is all about that: convince folks that campaign donations should not be public knowledge:

So this is the world conservatives now want to create—unlimited donations, and we’ll never know from whom. That’s the goal. Trying to gin up a blog post into an enemies list is merely a device, a handy way to try to attain the goal. There is no enemies list. There is only, as usual, a lie, and a vast propaganda machine pushing it. [Michael Tomasky, "Stop the 'Obama's Enemies List' GOP Lies," posted 19 June 2012, on The Daily Beast]

some history here: Andy Kroll, "Follow the Dark Money," Mother Jones, July/August 2012 issue.

more info here: Alex Seitz-Wald, "GOP Senators: No Disclosure, Please," Salon, posted 19 June 2012.

Following the Money

Until the financial crisis of 2008, regulations such as the Glass-Steagall Act (and its demise under the Clinton administration--courtesy of Phil Graham of my home state of Texas) had barely registered on my radar. I had certainly seen how lack of sufficient regulation caused all kinds of problems (I did read history), but the political maneuvering that created an environment ripe for the financial predator and toxic for the ordinary citizen was in that realm of eye-glazing statutes that I was required to recall for government and civics classes and that I then promptly forgot. Since 2008, however, I've been paying a lot more attention to the Republican claim that markets should be less regulated than they currently are and to the influence of the wealthy people who benefit from that lack of regulation.

Now that the Supreme Court has more thoroughly provided ammunition for the wealthy in its ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee, my eyesight has sharpened, and it has begun following the money much more closely. Wealthy individuals and corporations have even more opportunities to influence elections and government legislation. As John Dunbar and Michael Beckel write in Forbes, in its Citizens United decision,

[t]he conservative majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled that spending on independent messages that support or oppose federal candidates by corporations and labor unions does not lead to corruption. A few months later, a federal court cited this rationale in SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission. That decision led directly to the creation of super PACs. It said that outside spending groups — like American Crossroads, for example — could accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals to be spent on political ads. Previously, if a group wanted to expressly advocate for or against a federal candidate, it could only collect $5,000 per person per year. If an independent group were to raise $5 million for high-profile TV ad campaign advocating against the president or members of Congress, it would need at least 1,000 donors in a year to give the legal maximum. Now, one wealthy individual can single-handedly give a super PAC the cash it needs — and change the political dynamics of a race overnight. [in "Top ten donors make up a third of donations to super pacs," 16 April 2012]

That kind of big money, most of it from Republican donors, is already having a huge impact on elections. Take, for instance, the recall election of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Most of the money for Walker's fight against recall came from out-of-state very wealthy individuals. Just look at the roll call of wealthy contributors, from the $100,000 contribution of billionaire hedge-fund trader Louis Bacon to the $490,000 contribution from Houston home builder Bob Perry, along with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from members of the Koch brothers' million dollar club. As Clare O'Connor wrote in Forbes before Walker's successful fight against recall:

If Scott Walker wins Tuesday’s recall election, he’ll have 14 of America’s richest people to thank. Wisconsin’s Governor has out-raised opponent Tom Barrett, the Mayor of Milwaukee, by almost 8 to one: $30.5 million to Barrett’s $3.9 million. Of that huge haul, $1.68 million — or, almost half Barrett’s total — came from 14 members of the Forbes billionaires list, all but one of whom live outside Wisconsin. [Clare O'Connor, "Gov. Scott Walker's Big Money Backers Include 13 Out-of-State Billionaires," Forbes 5 June 2012]

These contributions are disclosed, but you can bet, however, that wealthy individuals are looking for ways to support the candidates who will legislate their views without having to disclose their contributions, as Alec McGillis points out in The New Republic:

[I]t's likely that more and more mega-donors indeed are going to seek out ways to give that are undisclosed—it is the reason why Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS group is raising so much, because, as a group that focuses on “issues,” not “elections,” it does not have to name its donors. But this shift is a travesty, not a solution, and it's why anti-disclosure loopholes like the “issues” groups need to be closed. [in "About that Obama Enemies List," posted 16 May 2012]

Many of the extremely wealthy individuals who are now donating so generously to political campaigns have in the past remained out of the usual limelight. Some, such as Louis Bacon, have a reputation for being reclusive. (Bacon, in fact, sued in a London high-court to get several publishers--Wikipedia, WordPress, and the Denver Post--to track down and to reveal the identities of folks who had posted online what he determined to be libelous comments about him.) Yet, as Alec McGillis also rightly reminds us:

When you are giving on the level that Citizens United and related rulings allow you to give, you not only invite scrutiny, you demand it. When you are giving at levels hundreds of times larger than the $2,500 maximum for a regular donation to a campaign, or thousands of times larger than the size checks regular people send to candidates, then you are setting yourself apart. And the only thing that the rest of the citizenry has left to right the balance even slightly is to give you some added scrutiny—to see what personal interests, biases, you name it, might be prompting you to influence the political system in such an outsized way. It's all we've got, really—the Internet, the phone call, the visit to the courthouse. And yes, this applies to everyone. Why does everyone on the right know so much about George Soros? Because they were outraged at the scale of his giving in 2004 and 2006 and dug up everything they could on him. As is only right and proper. And now people are going to look into Frank VanderSloot, Harold Simmons and Paul Singer and the rest of Romney's million-dollar club.

As more and more news organizations are cutting back--for instance, the New Orleans Times Picayune is planning to publish only three days a week and is cutting half of its newsroom staff--the eyes doing the research and following the money are being severely curtailed. So it's up to us ordinary citizens to be alert, to determine how our government is being influenced by those with almost unlimited supplies of money.

For instance, it's important to know that nearly half of the money that the Mitt Romney Super-Pac Restore Our Future has raised has come from Wall Street contributors. According to OpenSecrets.org, Restore our Future is at the tip-top of the list of money-raising Super-Pacs. Organizations such as OpenSecrets give us some insight into how wealthy individuals spread their influence. You can track individual contributors to see where their political allegiance lies and to surmise, perhaps, what those contributors hope to gain from their out-sized contributions.

Try it. Your eyes may glaze over with the information, but you'll be a better citizen for it. Or maybe you'll just be depressed. 

See also:
Dave Weigel, "Pity the Poor Multimillionaire Campaign Donor," posted on Slate, 15 May 2012.
Stephanie Mencimer, "Get-Rich-Quick Profiteers Love Mitt Romney, and He Loves Them Back," in Mother Jones, May/June 2012 issue.
Benjy Sarlin, "Whitehouse: 'Very Little Hope' for Bipartisan Push to Roll Back Citizens United," TPM, posted 18 June 2012.
Monika Bauerline and Clara Jeffery, "How to Sweep Dark Money out of Politics," Mother Jones, July/August 2012 issue.

Grow Up! "Vagina" is not a "bad" word!

Unbelievable.  Michigan House Republicans  "prohibited state Rep. Lisa Brown from speaking on the floor Thursday after she ended a speech Wednesday against a bill restricting abortions by referencing her female anatomy." She used the word vagina.

What? Is the Michigan House full of middle-schoolers who snicker at words that refer to female anatomy?

See the story here: "Lawmaker Barred from Speaking Over 'Vagina' Comment," Detroit News, 14 June 2012, reported by Chad Livengood.

And you can listen to her words here: "Rep. Lisa Brown speaks out against House attack on women's health."

More here:  from the Detroit Free Press

I'm getting really tired of these Neanderthal attitudes towards women's bodies.

When the Pest Becomes the Pollinator

I think this is an Eastern Black Swallowtail on my zinnia

Because I planted lots of flowers and vegetables this spring, I am especially interested in all the pests that are competing with me for the food and with the pollinators that are insuring that the fruit matures. Getting rid of pests, however, is a delicate balance because some creatures are pests at one time in their development and beautiful pollinators at another, such as butterfly caterpillars. Some are more voracious than others in their caterpillar stage, destroying one's fruit or vegetable crop within days if not exterminated.  For instance, the adult moth (Helicoverpa zea) of the tomato fruitworm is a pollinator, but the caterpillar stage of the moth has been a constant problem this spring and summer. We have used Bacillus thuringiensis to combat the caterpillars, but they return, and by the time I see them (for they start out very small), they've done some damage to the fruit and leaves of an individual tomato plant.

According to Wikipedia, the tomato fruitworm is prolific in the wild,  eats many different kinds of agricultural plants, and is variably susceptible to Bt.  It's called the cotton bollworm when it feeds on cotton and the corn earworm when it feeds on corn, but it eats more crops than these. Because the tomato fruitworm is so voracious and because it eats the summer vegetable we love the most--tomatoes--I have become its sworn enemy this season.

caterpillar of Eastern Black Swallowtail eating my dill this morning

But I'm not consistent when it comes to killing caterpillars that eat my herbs, flowers, and vegetables. This morning, as she was leaving for work, my daughter called my attention to one of my dill plants. "There's a caterpillar on it, Mom!" she said. I know, however, that the larval stage of the Eastern Black Swallowtail can often be found on dill and other plants related to the carrot family. Sure enough, there was the caterpillar of a black swallowtail chomping on my dill. I couldn't bring myself to kill it. The dill is heading now and will soon seed, and while dill is one of my favorite herbs, I also love to see butterflies in the garden. This year, I planted three dill plants, but next year, I'm planting many more in a flower bed that I will devote to butterflies. I plan to remove humanely any butterfly caterpillars from the plants I don't want eaten to the butterfly garden where pollinators can chomp to their heart's content.

closer look at the front of the caterpillar

It is also possible that the Bt that Tom sprayed before the rain of last week might still be viable, especially in the flower heads of the dill, which the caterpillar is now eating. I will be saddened, however, to see another dead caterpillar of the Eastern Black Swallowtail on my dill. I found some earlier after Tom had sprayed the nearby zinnias, trying to get rid of the tomato fruitworms which seem to love zinnia leaves as well as tomato leaves.

Although I have gardened all of my life, for years I didn't pay much attention to pests or pollinators, beyond remarking on the beauty of a butterfly or on the ugly results of the pest. We would sprinkle a little Sevin dust on our plants and go on our way. Sevin is the pesticide that my father used on our tomatoes, too, when I was growing up in Southeast Texas. But Sevin has its issues. Sevin, Bayer's trade name for the active ingredient carbaryl, is very effective, but it's a pretty nasty chemical and will kill honeybees just as quickly as tomato fruitworms.

Sevin is used so often and for so many purposes (to kill bugs in the garden, to kill mite infestations on chickens, etc.) that it's probably safe to say that it is over-used and probably not used carefully. The ecological description on TechPac's "Material Safety Data Sheet" is enough to convince me not to use it:

This product is extremely toxic to aquatic and estuarine invertebrates. For terrestrial uses, do not apply directly to water, or to areas where surface water is present or to intertidal areas below the mean high water mark, except under the forest canopy and use on rice. Discharge from rice fields may kill aquatic and estuarine invertebrates. Do not contaminate water by cleaning of equipment or disposal of wastes. This product is highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment or residues on blooming crops or weeds. Do not apply this product or allow it to drift to blooming crops or weeds if bees are visiting the treatment area.

C'mon, does anyone really think that folks who use Sevin are following the advice in that last sentence?

Back to squishing the tomato fruitworms and using biological controls on pests.

Sucking up to Wall Street as Usual

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, testified before the Senate Banking Committee today about the more than $2 billion (and rising) the bank recently lost in risky hedges. Instead of being intensely questioned and sermonized on the need for regulation, Dimon

received a warm welcome from Republican lawmakers, suggesting that his status as Washington’s favorite banker remains intact. Some Republicans praised JPMorgan for navigating the financial crisis better than other Wall Street firms, and even sought Mr. Dimon’s advice on fixing the economy. ["JPMorgan's Chief Says Clawbacks 'Likely,'" in  The New York Times, 13 June 2012]

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) told Dimon that lawmakers "can hardly sit in judgment of your losing $2 billion."

Really? Well, what's the use of our lawmakers, huh?

Yep, just the person to trust.....if you're hoping for some Wall Street money for your political campaign. And, of course, the connections between JP Morgan and the Senate Banking Committee are very close and entangled; folks who work for our lawmakers on that committee become lobbyists for the financial institution. Kiss, kiss....

See Cora Currier's details of the revolving door in her article, "Charting the Cozy Connections between JP Morgan and the Senate Banking Committee," on ProPublica's website.

Too many pests, too few pollinators

bee on one of my zinnia blooms

By this spring, we had lived in our house in southeast Louisiana for one year, so we have much yet to do to prepare our property for gardening. In late winter and early spring, I cultivated new flower and herb beds near the house. Because those new beds had been lawn previously, I spent a great deal of time removing grass so that I would have to spend less time weeding later in the season. Now every morning, I go outside, pull a few weeds, check for vegetables that are ready to harvest, and take photos to record the changes in growth. I  also look for pollinators. As I have written in a previous post, pollinators such as bees and butterflies are diminishing in numbers, the victims of intense agricultural practices (pesticides and genetically-modified, insect-resistant plants) and habitat destruction.

Today, I spotted, at different times, four butterflies circling the zinnias and sunflowers in my backyard, the most I had seen at a time this season. Two of them were much the worse for wear, with ragged and missing wings. Those tattered wings didn't seem to slow the butterflies down, however.  I couldn't get close enough to them for a good photo.

The pests, however, were easy to spot and fairly easy to squash with my fingers or shoes. I caught a few leaf-foot stink bugs and squashed them with my sandals, but several flew away before I could capture them. Last week's rain dispersed the Bt that Tom had sprayed on the tomatoes, and what I have now identified as tomato fruitworms are once again infesting the tomatoes. I managed to squash some with my fingers; I've gotten over the gag reflex response to green caterpillar guts.

bee near Crimson Sun ornamental sunflower

tomatoes in 8'X8' bed (tarp in back killing grass for next bed)

We made the mistake of planting too many tomatoes in one 8-foot X 8-foot garden area. We didn't have the big garden dug and tilled at the beginning of the season, so we planted vegetables behind our house, in one of the 8-foot X 8-foot beds that will eventually be full of herbs and flowers. Tom planted more than twenty tomato plants in one of those square beds, and the plants are so close together that I can't walk between them. Thus, it's more difficult to reach the pests in order to eliminate them in a frontal assault. Next year, we will plant tomatoes in rows in our big garden, where I'll be able to examine each plant more carefully.

So for now, we're using Bt and our fingers to eliminate tomato fruitworms. Oh, and I followed the advice of some gardener in Austin, Texas, who wrote on her blog that she has vacuumed leaf-foot stink bugs off her tomatoes with a shop vac. That was fun.

Because we didn't get the big garden dug, tilled, and amended until later in the season, we planted hot weather vegetables there: peas, okra, peppers, mainly. The okra leaves are being munched on, and I discovered aphids on several of the leaves.

aphids on okra leaf

tomato fruitworm

It's hot and humid here in southeastern Louisiana now, so the pests are out in force. The battle over our food continues.

Leaving the untilled edges

at the edge of my yard

A few days ago, Tom and I were talking about gardening practices, and he remembered a story that one of our pastors told in a sermon years ago when we were young and still attending the Baptist church. This preacher used a farming story as an analogy for sin. He said that early Norse farmers had a practice of leaving the edges of their fields in weeds; they did not till up to the edges of their fields. Now, Tom didn't know how true this story of Norse farming was, and in several minutes of searching on the Internet, I couldn't find any reference to Norse farmers leaving the edges of their fields untilled. However, that's the story the Baptist preacher told; he probably got it out of a book of illustrations for sermons.

 So, what, according to this pastor, was so bad about leaving the edges of one's fields untilled? Weeds would flourish there, seed, and then disperse throughout the tilled land, infiltrating the harvest. A field with untilled edges is like a person who leaves just a little bit of sin in her life, the pastor said. That little bit of sin will spread its seed and poison the pure actions of a Christian. The Christian should be careful not to follow the practices of pagans; sin must be weeded out of every area of one's life. That Norse farmer would have a better harvest if he pulled out every plant not associated with the fruit of his harvest. 

This story struck us because it emphasizes a worldview that is inimical to any kind of chaos, that prefers an authoritarian control, that categorizes everything as good or evil, black or white, sin or innocence (and innocence is suspect). It's a worldview that preaches "dominion" over the earth, as if humans are the ultimate arbiters in and over Nature.  And it's a worldview with devastating consequences.

When every bit of arable land is pushed to the maximum in farming practices, the natural world suffers. Habitat is destroyed, and the creatures that depend upon that habitat are diminished as their habitat is diminished.  According to a comprehensive survey of American bird life in a report titled "The U.S. State of the Birds,"

[m]ore than 97% of the native grasslands of the U.S. have been lost, mostly because of conversion to agriculture. As a result, grassland bird populations have declined from historic levels far more than any other group of birds.

You see this worldview of authoritarian control over nature in suburban yards, where all the grass is one species, poisoned and pummeled to punish any plant that dares to raise its inflorescence above the height required by neighborhood lawn control. An unholy number of lawn and pest control products enable suburbanites to become little dictators to nature: herbicides and weed killers, fungus and disease control, algae and moss control, animal repellents (deer, rabbit, snake, mole, bird, bat, goose, cat and dog repellents), pest controls of all kinds. According to a 2002 fact sheet of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Americans use more than a billion pounds of pesticides each year to combat pests on farm crops, in homes, places of business, schools, parks, hospitals, and other public places." (my emphasis)

Everyone knows that our addiction to pest and weed control is hurting us and the planet, and yet we continue to slather the stuff on our lawns and public spaces. It just goes to show how powerful a metaphor can be: the American lawn is a stand-in for the soul--weeds and pests are the dark stain of "sin." Untidy lawns, the untilled edges of a field, are indications of moral failings.

So let's exterminate the metaphors that equate the natural world with sin.

 And leave the edges of the field untilled.


note:
Advice for creating a healthy yard, from Audubon

Save the pollinators! (Guess who cares)

bumblebee covered with pollen (I took this photo in Georgia)

In today's divisive political climate, government programs receive a lot of criticism just for existing; they are targeted as if they are monstrous ships of some threatening enemy. The work that they do, the people (citizens of this great country) who do that work, are collateral damage, not considered worth discussing. Instead, the focus is on "big government" and money, subjects all taken out of context in order to make the target easier to hit, in order to desensitize--and propagandize--the public over what will be the real consequences of destroying the target. Everyone complains about government programs until they realize that they benefit. I know people who have complained about welfare recipients, and then they discover their own need for government help in a financial crisis. Suddenly, the rules regarding governmental aid are too stringent; they need their money now and their loved ones provided for.

One of the recent targets of "big government" critics is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as I have discussed in a previous post about one of the Service's marshland reclamation projects. When I was ruminating on the disappearance of pollinators in a post yesterday, I discovered a web page of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that is devoted to pollinators. On that page, one can learn about all of the Service's programs dedicated to protecting pollinators, about the non-governmental organizations (private and non-profit) that partner with the Service to create a web of projects around the country to protect pollinators, about the status of pollinators and the importance of those creatures to the life of our planet--to our lives.

When I get ready to plant that butterfly/pollinator garden I mentioned in my previous post (and I'm planning already), I can go to this U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service's web page for advice and information: "Pollinators: What You Can Do to Help."  That page also includes links to web videos and to other sources for information. If my children were young, I could connect them to the "Neighborhood Explorers" page, with its educational videos and suggestions for outdoor activities. (Though I know a couple of young adult artists, writers, and computer programmers who could add something to the art and animation of some of these programs. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service needs to hire them when they complete their graduate degrees!)

An important goal of such government programs is educational outreach, and since these services are public services, paid for by us, with our taxes, that means education for us, the public. Local offices and refuges of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provide activities for folks in those areas. For example, one of the big events here in Southeast Louisiana is the "Wild Things" event, held every October at the Bayou Lacombe Center, in Lacombe, Louisiana. I attended that event last year and was very impressed with the hands-on activities available for the hundreds of children who showed up with their parents for the day-long event.

Young participant in "Wild Things 2011" shows us what she discovered in an owl pellet

Children learn about what birds eat at the "Wild Things" event

The Bayou Lacombe Center of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also has a butterfly garden on its grounds and other flowering plants throughout to attract pollinators. On the U. S. Fish and Wildlife pollinator page, visitors can locate pollinator gardens on the refuges in the areas where they live, too: "Pollinator Gardens & Trails." And if they don't find such a pollinator garden on a refuge near them, they can get in touch with the refuge office nearest their home to ask about other services available and, perhaps, to get a community group involved in starting a pollinator garden in partnership with their local U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service office.

One of the many free educational programs that the Southeast Louisiana division of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offers for school groups is the "Incredible Insect Pollinators" classroom interactive presentation for 3rd and 4th graders.

So, yeah, I'm glad that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is one government agency that cares about protecting birds, bees, butterflies, bats, and other creatures that pollinate nearly 75% of the fruits, nuts, and vegetables that we eat, and I'm happy that my taxes help pay for all of the associated programs. And I don't apologize for my support.

Now I've got to get back to planning my own pollinator garden.

Where are all the little pollinators?

mountain mint flowering in my backyard

Years ago, my family and I lived in Harris County, Georgia, on approximately 24 acres of land, much of which was mixed pine and hardwoods--hickories, oaks, loblolly pine. We lived there for almost seven years before we decided that we should move back to Texas (which turned out to be not such a great move for my career, but that's another story). On those almost twenty-four acres of land we raised a few chickens (most of which eventually fell prey to the local wildlife) and planted several garden areas. One of our friends, a professor of environmental horticulture with the University of Florida, brought us some mountain mint one year, and we planted it at the edge of our lawn, where it flourished. The plant was rather unassuming, three or four feet high, with inconspicuous flowers, but to our delight, it attracted the most interesting and diverse pollinators. We had never before seen so many different bees and wasps. When we returned to Georgia several years later, we purchased more mountain mint at a local native plant garden and then, a couple of years later, transplanted a plug of that mint at our new home in Louisiana.

The mountain mint is now blooming here where we have planted it at the back of our property near pine trees. However, I have yet to see any pollinators on the mint. I am waiting for those fascinating and diverse bees and wasps to show up. Will they come?

mountain mint flowers

I thought that our vegetable, herb, and flower blooms would be covered with pollinating wasps and bees. In the spring, I left a large patch of white clover in the yard for the bees, expecting to see huge numbers of bees buzzing the oval blooms. Maybe five or six bees seemed to be in the patch at one time. When I go outside in the mornings to check on my vegetables and flowers, I see a few bees and wasps among the tomato vines, in the squash blossoms, and among the hydrangeas, but not the numbers I expect. Where are all the little pollinators?

Have they all gone the way of the honeybee? In 2006, there was a honeybee crisis as bee keepers experienced huge colony losses. Lots of reasons were advanced for what became known as colony collapse disorder: modern transportation (airplanes carrying pathogens and diseases to new territory); drought, which made bees more susceptible to diseases and pathogens; a fungus, nosema ceranae, which is believed to have been introduced into the United States in 2007; pesticides; varroa mites; among others.

More recent studies indicate that pesticides play a bigger role in honeybee decline than companies that manufacture pesticides would want us to know--most specifically, "a new class of pesticides called neonicotinoids." Neonicotinoids were developed in the 1990s

as a relatively less-toxic alternative to pesticides that seriously harmed human health, [and]... soon became the world’s fastest-growing pesticide class and an integral part of industrial agricultural strategy. In the United States alone, neonicotinoid-treated corn now covers a total area slightly smaller than the state of Montana.

Like earlier pesticides, neonicotinoids disrupt insects’ central nervous systems. But unlike earlier pesticides, which affected insects during and immediately after spraying, neonicotinoids spread through the vascular tissues of plants. They’re toxic through entire growing seasons, including flowering times when bees consume their pollen. ["Controversy Deepens Over Pesticides and Bee Collapse," an article by Brandon Keim in Wired, 6 April 2012.]

The chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer manufactures neonicotinoids,  marketed as imidacloprid, an additive to many products, including flea control products, termite control products, roach bait gel, aerosol sprays for bedbugs, rose and flower food, and on and on and on.

As with the diminished menhaden that I described in my previous post, the primary reason for the disappearance of pollinators is ..... really, our inability or lack of will to connect the dots that demonstrate the interconnectedness of the choices we make to control pests and to grow our food. As Rowan Jacobsen, who has written a book about the honeybee crisis, reminds us:

Honeybee health is inextricably linked to the health of the entire environment, including our own. If we can create systems of domestic food production that take their cues from the cycles of nature, and let honeybees play the roles they evolved to play, then the system will take care of itself. But if we continue to push the system farther and farther out of equilibrium by relying on chemical shortcuts and fossil fuel intervention to fix the inevitable breakdowns, then we will never get off the crisis treadmill. [quoted in The New York Times'  article: "Saving Bees: What We Know Now," 2 September 2009]

Of course, we all want to control the pests that eat our plants and that bite and infect our pets. But at what cost? We use Frontline Plus on our cats to control fleas and mites. I just looked at the description of the product that we keep in a kitchen drawer; Frontline Plus contains fipronil, a pesticide that seems to work similarly to imidacloprid, if I can take Wikipedia's description at face value. Fleas that bite our treated cats die because their central nervous system is affected by the pesticide. Fipronil is also poisonous to bees and other wildlife and has been associated with colony collapse disorder. I'm not putting fipronil on my roses, so I doubt that pollinators are being affected by my cats' flea treatment, but, again, I am reminded of how each of us makes decisions every day that have consequences we least expect. Were I to choose to control the pests on my flowers and herbs with one of these pesticides, I would also be destroying the pollinators that visit those blooms.

Leaf-foot (stink) bugs on my tomato stakes

We have had a terrible recurring infestation of catepillars eating the foliage of our vegetables and flowers. To control them, Tom applied Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) on the plants. Bt is a bacterium that is considered an environmentally-friendly control for caterpillars. However, it does kill all caterpillars, and that includes the caterpillars of our most beautiful butterflies. I was distressed to discover two dead Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars on the dill that grow near the zinnias that were treated. Also, food crops have now been genetically modified to contain the Bt gene, and the consequences of these modifications might be enormous: the monarch butterfly, for one, has been greatly affected, and some studies suggest other detrimental effects that merit further study.

These are the consequences of the choices we make to control pests, and I am becoming increasingly aware of how my own individual choices are part of those global effects. When I found those dead Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars on my dill, I decided to grow a butterfly garden next year in which I will allow caterpillars to munch to their hearts' content. I've gotten over some of my squeamishness about directly targeting pests and squashing caterpillars with my fingers. I just returned from my garden with fingertips covered with green caterpillar guts. I've even been catching stink bugs with my own hands (ugh) and crushing them with my gardening shoes. And this morning I actually took out the shop vac and hoovered up an entire clump of leaf-foot stink bugs that were hanging out together on the top of some of the tomato stakes. Now that must have been a humorous sight.

Of course, farms that grow huge quantities of vegetables cannot afford to send out scores of folks every day to pinch bugs from their plants, but we have got to find a way to achieve balance in how we control the bugs that compete with us for our food.

Will there always be fish in the sea?

....not if there are no small fish for bigger fish to eat,
 not if one industry dominates a fishing culture,
not if politicians reject regulations and refuse to recognize the science that demonstrates the interconnectedness of life in the sea and the consequences of ignoring that interconnectedness.

In her article "A Fish Story: How an Angler and Two Government Bureaucrats May have Saved the Atlantic Ocean," Alison Fairbrother charts the decline of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay and demonstrates how one tiny fish can have a tremendous impact on recreational fishing, industry, conservation, and politics. Her "fish story" also reminds us how one or two engaged and focused individuals can start a chain of events that could result in remedying careless and unprincipled predation.

Like so many of the creatures we take for granted, menhaden were abundant when European colonists first stepped ashore in the New World. Fairbrother writes that: "early pioneers described [menhaden] as swimming in schools twenty-five miles long or more, packing themselves into bays and estuaries where they came to feed on dense schools of phytoplankton...," and in 1608, John Smith described the menhaden in Chesapeake Bay as "'lying so thick with their heads above the water, as for want of nets we attempted to catch them with a frying pan.'"

I'm envious of those early descriptions of the teaming flora and fauna early explorers described: the millions of bison thundering across the Great Plains; the prairie grasses that grew as high as a horse's belly as far as the eye could see, undulating in the wind like a mighty ocean; the great number of whales that came so close to shore that early pioneers of Nantucket could kill all they needed without going out of sight of land. That abundance is gone forever. Instead, we have fish stories such as Alison Fairbrother's,  in which we learn that "80 percent of the menhaden netted from the Atlantic are the property of a single company" (my emphasis).

In this fish story, the corporation is Omega Protein. Go to the corporation's website, and you can read how the company cares a lot about sustainability, about how the Atlantic menhaden are not overfished, and about how the company is "certified sustainable by Friend of the Sea, an organization dedicated to the preservation of marine resources." You can also read how the company takes those small, unassuming fish and turns them into products for

• animal nutrition ("for the nutritional needs of all animal species"),
• human nutrition (The product here is OmegaPure, which is "a highly refined, long-chain omega-3 fish oil specifically formulated as a food ingredient." The fish are extensively processed to be used as supplements or additives in various foods: dairy products, baked goods, margarines and spreads, etc.)
• plant nutrition (fertilizer)
• industrial applications (rust inhibitors, water repellant, additive to paint)

Wow! Menhaden--the Fish that Lay the Golden Roe!

Only the story doesn't end there....and the story isn't all that golden.

Alison Fairbrother describes how the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), a part-time board of regulators, had been using a seriously flawed formula to determine safe fish stock levels.  She shows how interest groups have manipulated that "science" to achieve the outcomes they want. And she demonstrates the short-sightedness of a computer formula that doesn't take into account all the species that depend upon menhaden for sustainability. Instead,

[T]he agency is guided by an older and more utilitarian doctrine that is commonly characterized as “single-species management,” in which the primary concern is to determine how much of a particular species can be removed from the ocean without undermining that species’s ability to reproduce.

The ASMFC has a complicated formula and computer model that takes into account the amount of fish that Omega captains have caught and are required to record, the number of eggs that menhaden historically spawn, an estimated number of menhaden that are killed by fishermen and predators, an estimate of the current spawning potential of the fish, among other variables.

More importantly, however, ASMFC's computer model doesn't take into account all the other fish that depend upon this little fish to maintain their own healthy numbers--the striped bass, the blue fish, the weakfish, and other fish--and fishing birds, such as the osprey. (In Virginia, where osprey feed heavily on menhaden, "[s]urvival of osprey nestlings in Virginia had fallen to its lowest levels since DDT was first introduced to the area," and that decline has been connected to the osprey's diminished diet of menhaden.)

By 2009, science had revealed that "the number of menhaden swimming in the Atlantic had declined by 88 percent since 1983." Research also indicated that "menhaden had been subject to overfishing in thirty-two of the past fifty-four years."

Of course, economics and politics are entwined in this fish story. Although recreational fishing (all those sport fish depend upon menhaden for survival) has a much higher economic impact on Virginia and Maryland, the Omega Protein corporation donates large amounts of money to politicians in those Atlantic states ("almost $60,000 to the current governor [of Virginia], Bob McDonnell") and thus has some pretty powerful allies.

This great fish story reminds me--I don't know about you--about the importance of the smallest creature in the Great Chain of Being. The hierarchy isn't all that evident, though. We're all interconnected and interdependent in ways we have only begun to understand. Too bad our public policies too often fail to reflect that wisdom.

----------------------
Read the entire story here: "A Fish Story." There are other implications to this story, too, such as why menhaden are processed to create fish food for farm-raised salmon, an activity that's pretty much an ecological disaster.

Let's Quit Sucking up to Wall Street!

Okay, I know that campaigns are expensive to run, that politicians running for office need money. I know that with the Supreme Court's Supremely Sucky decision on Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, huge amounts of Super Pac money are flowing into campaign coffers, and politicians hesitate to bite the golden hands that wave from the windows of Wall Street.  But, crap, will no one put country first and stand up for the millions of Americans who suffered and continue to suffer from the financial crisis of 2008?  Bill Clinton is praising the likes of Donald Trump and soft-soaping Wall Street, because, well, as Joan Walsh points out, Clinton's philanthropic enterprise depends upon deep pockets of the very rich. And I hear Republicans saying again and again that financial systems need LESS regulation--while again and again we learn more details of what inadequate regulation has done to us.

The latest reveal of the dirty tricks of finance? Top executives at Bank of America withheld from the bank's shareholders information that indicated how an acquisition of Merrill Lynch would negatively affect the organization:

Days before Bank of America shareholders approved the bank’s $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch in December 2008, top bank executives were advised that losses at the investment firm would most likely hammer the combined companies’ earnings in the years to come. But shareholders were not told about the looming losses...[snip]

....The bank’s purchase of Merrill, struck during the depths of the financial crisis, was the culmination of an acquisition binge by Mr. Lewis [CEO] that transformed Bank of America from its base in North Carolina into a financial behemoth that could compete head-to-head with the biggest institutions on Wall Street. 

But the transaction, which was ultimately encouraged by government officials who were concerned about the impact on the financial system of a foundering Merrill Lynch, also saddled the bank with billions in losses and required an additional $20 billion from taxpayers on top of an earlier bailout it received in 2008. [my emphasis] [from: Gretchen Morgenson, "Merrill Losses were Withheld before Bank of America Deal," The New York Times, 3 June 2012]

Jeffrey J. Brown, Bank of America's treasurer at the time, warned Joe L. Price, Bank of America's chief financial officer at the time, "that the failure to disclose [the extent of Merrill Lynch's losses to shareholders before the vote] 'could be a criminal offense, stating that he did not want to be ‘talking through a glass wall over a telephone’ if no disclosure was made.”["Merrill Losses were Withheld before Bank of America Deal"] Wow. How was Brown to know just how misplaced his fear of criminal charges was?  The SEC failed to prosecute those most responsible for the financial crisis--executives with Bank of America (which acquired Countrywide and Merrill Lynch), Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc., all those folks who continue to wield way too much power in this country.

In a blog post, Matt Taibbi, who has investigated and written extensively on the crimes of Wall Street, succinctly lists and describes those regulatory failures of the SEC: "SEC: Taking on Big Firms is 'Tempting,' but We Prefer Picking on Little Guys." Even when warned by insiders of massive fraud, the SEC failed to act. 

You can read Taibbi's article "How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform," on the Rolling Stone website, and you can sign up to join Matt Taibbi's "Thunderclap" here to add your tweet to the angry tweets of other citizens disgusted with how our government has let Wall Street get away with financial crimes and continue to use its influence to de-fang regulation meant to put the poison to malfeasance.

As Taibbi demonstrates in "How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform," the CEOs of those institutions, with their lawyers and their lobbyists, have way too much influence. Just look at what happened recently with J.P. Morgan. CEO Jamie Dimon and his aides were able to convince regulators to include loopholes in the regulatory laws passed after the financial crisis, laws that enabled J.P. Morgan to do the kind of risky trading that led to the bank's recent $2 billion loss. And don't count on shareholders to hold their executive officers responsible. Even after this latest crisis at J.P. Morgan (which had managed to escape damage in the 2008 financial meltdown), Jamie Dimon "survived a pair of key shareholder votes [on May 15th] on his pay and job responsibilities. [He] won an endorsement of his pay package, which was reportedly $23 million last year. He also can retain his second title as chair of the banking giant."

So don't believe anyone who says that Wall Street needs LESS regulation. Experience proves otherwise.

Fun, Fun: Education Reform in Louisiana

I am so glad that my two children are grown and at university rather than still in public school. We lived in Texas and Georgia at different times during the children's primary and high school years. My husband and I believed--and still believe--in public education. The schools our children attended were among the best public schools in the states where we lived, but we didn't expect those schools to provide our children with everything: we were the backup. My husband and I have diverse educational backgrounds: he's a scientist, with degrees in botany, range science, and forestry; I was a college instructor of writing and literature, and I had minored in history as an undergraduate. When the kids came home with math or science questions, they went to their father. When they had to write a paper, they knew I was going to make them correct their grammatical errors, provide proof for their assertions, and include a reference page for their research even if their teachers didn't require it. ("But my teacher said that grammar didn't matter in this assignment." Tough.)

Not every child has educational backup at home, and thus we're all for improving public education so that all children have a chance to succeed. Unfortunately, there's a strong reaction against public schools in this country, a negative culture that has had some success in promoting a negative image of "public school" by using such terms as "government schools," making public school seem sinister and Orwellian.

Teaching is hard work; guaranteeing good teaching is hard work. But today's politicians and leaders seem to be too easily charmed by business leaders and people with narrow agendas when it comes to providing education for our nation's children, the citizens of the future.

In Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal and the Louisiana legislature recently passed educational reform bills that have stirred up some controversy. One of the bills creates a new school voucher system: students in schools identified as C, D, or F schools (under-performing schools) can apply for a voucher that will enable them to attend a private or public school designated as an A or B school:

The new statewide program targets students who live in households with income at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty level. According to the department, all rising kindergarteners who meet that standard can apply for the vouchers. Older students must also be enrolled in a public school that rates as a C or below on the state's accountability scale. Under the program, students can use the vouchers at participating private schools or participating public schools that earn at least a B on the accountability scale. Taxpayers will finance the enrollment or tuition cost up to what the students' original local school would have received under the Minimum Foundation Program formula, which averages about $8,500 per pupil. [Bill Barrow, "State Opens Voucher Applications for more than 7,000 Spots,"  The Times-Picayne, 22 May 2012]

I am troubled that tax payer money, in the form of state funding, will go to private institutions, most, if not all, of which are religious institutions, thus further eroding separation of church and state. I am troubled that students left behind in the "failing" schools will have even less opportunity, as more money, peer role models, and the influence of active parents leave the schools for better-funded private and public schools. I am troubled that this whole educational reform movement is really an attack on public education and on public education teachers. As Diane Ravitch points out, the advocacy groups pushing these types of reforms "differ around the edges, but mostly they are pushing an agenda that will privatize public education and de-professionalize teaching."

Bobby Jindal's education reform has not begun auspiciously.  How well has the Commissioner of Education and the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education fared so far in oversight of the voucher system just instituted by Governor Jindal and the state legislature? Evidently, no one on the board that makes the decisions on which schools to accept as eligible for the voucher system actually visited the campuses of the private schools that submitted paperwork. Thus, some private schools that were accepted to participate in the state's scholarship program don't even have the facilities to accommodate those extra students. One of those schools, The New Living Word School, "was approved to provide 315 spots to students from failing schools, giving it 100 more slots than any other school in the state." However, a visit by a reporter from The News-Star "revealed New Living Word did not have facilities, computers or teachers to accommodate the students the state approved them to accept."

Since the newspaper's reporting, the Department of Education has added new requirements in the approval process, thus adding to the confusion of those school administrators who thought the process was complete.

Oh, and by the way, now that private schools are eligible for state funding, guess what's happening? Those schools are raising their tuition in order to benefit more generously from the state's funding.

The reform system has barely left the ground, and already we can see that the schools profiting from the voucher system have received even less oversight than the public schools that have been so criticized for their failings. And the opportunities for graft increase exponentially.

How about that?