#Participate!

Everyone’s sick of hearing about the debt ceiling. You’re probably sick of hearing about Congress and Washington in general. And with good reason. They repeatedly demonstrate how inept and corrupt our system of government is today. But they didn’t get there by themselves. Someone, lots of people, voted them in. It’s tempting to shut down and shut out political events, but this is lazy. It’s simple to slip into apathy. It avoids confrontation. But it’s the wrong approach.

It’s easy to be cynical about the state of governance in this country. It seems dysfunction is rampant in virtually every statehouse in the nation. It’s easy to be mad, to fling all the blame upon their elected shoulders. And we should be upset. It’s incredibly disheartening to watch this happen. It’s disheartening for our patriotism. It’s disheartening to see the effect this has had on our international standing, to watch our nation become a laughingstock across the world. It’s disheartening for our future.

But we cannot slip into apathy. Even though our parents and grandparents had a much larger role in electing those in Washington, our generation can change it. Our elders won’t be here forever, and we have to be prepared as a generation to take up the responsibility of a participatory democracy, to be an educated populace. We can have a say, and we can make what we think known.

But we have to say it.

We have to participate.

We have a role to play in this democracy, and too often we forfeit it. We don’t participate, then complain about the way things are. Like my dad told me, “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.”

As much as it sucks to realize it, our elected officials have very real influence on how we live our lives. Every single one of us is affected by the rule of law they are called to create and uphold. If you shop at a grocery store; if you own property, if you buy anything, the government has an effect on your life. If you have a kid, if you start a business, if you go to school, these elected men and women have touched your life. Hell, if you breathe air and drink water, you have a very real and immediate interest in how our nation is run. So no matter what the issue is, no matter how repugnant your congressmen may be, you have to participate. You have to care. You can’t tune it out.

It’s attractive to drop out, at least on the surface. Life goes on, the government still functions, and pushing politics out of your life can be a relief. But then a funny thing happens. People start referring to government as “them,” an alien life form sent here to infiltrate and suppress our lives. But we are “them.” We elect. We vote. We are responsible for the people that hold office. When we start tuning out, we start seeing the government as something we can’t change. But we can.

I see this in Starkville, Mississippi, where I live now. City officials hold public meetings and round tables, and only people with a vested, direct interest show up. No voice of the general population is present. The result is that the rules and ordinances of the town are steered by a very small minority of the population, often in conflict with the general desires of the population. If you ask someone about an issue, they usually have something to say about it. But when it comes to speak out about it, they are nowhere to be found. In Starkville in particular, one of the main roadblocks keeping it from becoming a standout college town is the apathy of the college students. I know I’m guilty of it. But we are one of the largest voting blocks in the town, and if we mobilized behind something and spoke out about it, we could shift the debate substantially. Why don’t we?

So here’s a challenge: do something about it. Take an hour or two, whatever time you would have spent watching TV or checking Facebook, and read about the debt ceiling. Find out what’s going on in your state. Read your local newspaper, and make sure you read different perspectives. Become educated on what’s happening.

Then take another step: write your congressmen. Their websites are easy to find. Write a letter, call or email. Tell them what you think. If you feel like your one letter won’t make a difference, you’re right. WE have to do this. We are not autonomous beings living our very own, independent lives. We have to do this together.

You only have so many days. Kill the distractions. Do something.

Here’s some links to get you started:

• Fact-checking: Politifact
• Right-leaning: National Review, Townhall
• Left-leaning: Think Progress, Mother Jones
• Center: The Atlantic, The New Republic

And if you are really interested in developing a well-rounded, intelligent perspective, don’t watch Fox News (or, at least, don’t only watch them). Here’s a big reason why:

#Social Security Killed the Church?

Ran across this article today by Doug Baker, arguing that by endorsing Social Security legislation in the 1930s, the church abdicated it’s responsibility of caring for the poor to the state. At the time, many church leaders were supportive of this policy, believing that it aided the church’s mission to care for the poor and infirm. Baker calls this “disturbing,” saying that “the state began to function in roles once reserved for the church—to the detriment of any who would question the legitimacy of the legislation on theological grounds.”

And I kind of agree with him. I think the church as a whole has largely minimized its true commitment to helping the needy, prioritizing their bank accounts towards new buildings, high production values, and glitzy media campaigns. This is certainly not to say that all have; many churches do great things for those around them. I don’t feel the main problem is Social Security, though. It has more to do with the creeping rationalization of the pursuit of monetary success and individualism. When does Jesus ever say anything about the rich being blessed? How refreshing it is to read that at one point in time American church leaders were actively campaigning for the American people, as a whole, to make the care of the poor a national priority. Having steadily aligned with the right, much of the church has now lost this calling, spending more time defending capitalism and individual rights than a collective concern for those less fortunate.

From another angle, I’m having a tough time differentiating between Baker’s argument and the cadre of church leaders today campaigning against issues like abortion and gay marriage (to just name two). They have made it very clear that they believe America should be a Christian nation, and that we should elect leaders that believe the same. So, if we’re fighting to impose Christian morality upon the nation at large, why are we not fighting for what should biblically be one of the core missions of the church? Could it be that with a national program, we don’t get to choose who to help? Is that the stance we’re taking with this, that the help of the church should only be dispensed to the approved?

The fact that Baker finds reason to be “disturbed” by any church’s alignment with “progressive ideals” speaks to the state of the American church today. If we can campaign tooth and nail to fight civil unions, and support candidates that openly support the obstruction of other religions’ right to practice, while at the same time bemoaning any sort of collective well-being, we have to take a moment and ask ourselves why. Thoughts?

#The Family Tree

How I told my parents they were grandparents now:

I wanted something subtle, something that would take them a bit to see. We don’t have a family tree hanging around the house, so I thought they would be so interested in the design that they would read through it before they saw we were having a baby. Rolled it up in a scroll, put it in a bag, and done. Worked perfectly!

#Access v. Preservation on Half Dome

My buddy Kyle sent me this, wondering what I thought. Quick rundown: A lot of people like going to Half Dome at Yosemite National Park, and they’re having difficulty handling it. They have a permitting process in place, but it’s not very good. Now a group is making noise about adding additional routes to the top and doing away with the permits. Bad idea. Here’s why, and what I think they should do about it:

First thing, you must limit crowds. A third cable is out of the question. Like Ms. Cobb said, goal #1 of the NPS is to preserve for future generations. Increasing the capacity of Half Dome probably won’t affect it physically so much; it is, after all, a rock. I’m glad the writer hit on the potential impact to the trail, and the fact that the point is not to turn it into a theme park ride. Sure, you could pave a 15 foot wide path all the way to the base and sell lemonade and turkey legs along the way, and the park could probably make good money doing that, but that’s totally not the point. Harrison’s an idiot to think that adding a third rail and doing away with the permitting process would be a good move; like the article said, maybe he should go be a traffic engineer.

Another consideration is the view and the experience. People go to Half Dome to experience the climb and the view and the beauty of it all. Crowding a huge number of people up on top ruins the experience. As much as you can, you have to preserve that and keep it sacred. That’s the beauty of the place being publicly owned; no profit motive. The motive is provide the best experience possible, not cram as many people onto the trail as they can.

Also, don’t drag the “I’ve been doing this for 30 years!” argument into it. Does California have the same amount of people it did 30 years ago? Has the number of people coming to Yosemite changed in 30 years? I would bet yes, and substantially so. Park management has to change to meet changing demands, and the Park Service has to make access to the place as fair as they can. They are, after all, OUR parks. Not yours.

As far as the process goes, it does seem a little jacked up. The article makes it sound like you can buy as many as you want, and that a few certain people bought them all up. In reality, it says you can only buy 4 at a time. The problem is that you can immediately call back or go back to the website and buy 4 more. It probably should just be 4 and done. The easiest thing to do would be to raise the prices, but again, that’s not the point of the parks. They have to serve everyone, and they try to avoid pricing people out of a visit. You could probably raise the price to $5, but I don’t think they could raise the price enough to have an impact on demand without pricing some people out. And you have to make sure the person that bought the pass is the one that uses the pass. You could set this up like hotels and online reservations: buy the pass online, and when you get to the park, someone is there to scan your card and give you the pass. You identify by using the same card in both instances. Also, I would be for a “use it or lose it” policy. The name of the person would be printed on the pass, and they should have to show ID before they start on the trail. This would keep people from giving away passes at the trailhead, and also eliminate crowds of people loitering, trying to get a pass.

You have to make it clear and simple, though. The process they have now concerning how many passes they release is way too complex. Cap it at a certain amount, and explain the policy and its purpose clearly and passionately, and be relatable. So many times parks do a terrible job at PR in situations like this, and they come off as aloof or uncaring about the visitors.

So, to summarize: No third rail. Raise the price of the passes, and make sure the person buying the pass is the same person that uses the pass. Prevent any transfer of passes to other people. Make the policy clear and simple. Explain it to people so they understand and are cool with it. If people love the Dome, they’ll understand. If they don’t, screw ’em. The experience will be more enjoyable if they weren’t there.

#The Glean #2

I’m currently working on a internship in historic preservation for the second consecutive summer, and my masters’ thesis is all about the topic, so I can speak on a small amount of experience when I say that many preservationists are nuts. Apparently some of these people are campaigning against new density standards in DC, and Yglesias is all over it.  The problem with these people is that they want nothing to change, nothing to evolve with the times. They pick some specific time period and decide that it is the pinnacle of all that has been or ever will be done with a space. I’m all for building regulation, and I think that historic preservation is important, as long as it has a brain. Approaching an urban design problem by banning new development is not an elegant solution - it’s lazy.

Prime example of this? The National Park Service. While they’ve been adding structures to the National Mall for years, and especially in the last several with new security measures (why would someone blow up the Jefferson Memorial, again?), apparently a bikeshare station is a bridge too far. God forbid we enhance service to the public in the name of preserving some fiction of integrity. I’m sure L’Enfant would be thrilled by the 5-lane ring around the Lincoln Memorial.

Maybe they should be reading this post, about a woman near Atlanta who’s being charged with vehicular homicide because her son was killed by a drunk driver (who’s only getting charged with a hit-and-run) while she was trying to cross the road. People always talk about how incompetent engineers can kill people, but incompetent planners and landscape architects can do the same - as long as they keep allowing pedestrian-unfriendly infrastructure to be built. They probably advocated for it, though. It’s just that their writing looked like this.

And if more of them (us) put some thought into transit spaces, we wouldn’t have as many people driving around. Being a user of mass transit, I would definitely appreciate a coffee table with some flowers at my bus stop.

But the costs! The costs! Well, if we weren’t spending so much on health care, we might have money for sidewalks (more of which would, ironically, lower health costs). While the Gang of Five/Six is (re)hammering a deal we’ve seen before, Klein opines on the paradox of presidential leadership. He basically says that the president can’t lead, because anything he puts his name on is instantly blasphemous to the opposing party, no matter how identical it may be to their past demands. IMHO, it’s less a paradox of presidential leadership and more a quagmire of congressional idiocy. It’s amazing how quickly their strategy falls apart when a few minutes thought gets devoted to it. Why does it seem that comedy news seems increasingly like real life? Probably because they don’t really have to make up stories any more.

Be thankful, England. At least they can behave and do their job in front of Rupert Murdoch. The last time they were interested in getting the truth was back when they were grilling these guys. In other breathtakingly important issues of national interest, MediaMatters puts together this mashup of various blowhards on Fox wailing about fluorescent lights, and promptly dispels the myths. Apparently no one in the video has actually tried a CFL; I have several in the house and love them. Good color, no heat, and haven’t had to replace one yet. Meanwhile, the Dept. of Energy has made some new ads about the financial efficiency of using CFLs and LEDs that are already being hailed as propaganda. I would explain why it’s important to stop using incandescent bulbs, but didn’t we agree about this in 2007?

Speaking of concepts that need no explaining, pesticides are bad for insects. You know what’s an insect? Bees. And we’re killing them with these pesticides, successfully exterminating the very critters that make agriculture possible (except for corn. It’s wind-pollinated. But we don’t need anything else anyway!). Turns out, herbicides are now taking out monarch butterflies. Not the butterflies themselves, but the milkweed plants they depend on. Once again, thank Monsanto.

I don’t know why they would want to take out milkweed plants. They’re beautiful.

More people would probably be up on the importance of these issues if they had access to academic work, and I agree. If a public university produces academic work, it should be publicly available, not hidden behind a paywall.

Instead of reading papers, though, we watch TV. Felix Salmon proposes a better Netflix business model, one in which studios were paid for every stream. This way it’s a win-win: both Netflix and the studios want as many people as possible to watch Netflix. But why would they do that when they could just set up their own streaming site? Withhold from Netflix, get people to be subscribers (key difference over pay-per-view: we all know how long DVDs sit at the house. A subscriber is almost guaranteed to cost you less money than a PPV customer, and they’ll make up for the heavy users), and you have yourself a streaming service. Bonus? It’s content-driven. If you put out movies that suck, no one will pay you to stream them.

And finally, China thinks Nepal overestimates the size of their mountain. How long will it take to measure? Two years.

#The Glean #1

The Road Not Taken | Brooks does a great job of attacking one of the central tenets to this whole debt ceiling/cut-cap-balance mess: none of this is focused on governing. All of it is focused on getting reelected. If the American people suddenly disappeared, the pols would keep on playing their game, like a bunch of Warcraft gamers ignorant of the sun.

Think back to cap and trade. It never happened, but Bachmann and others constantly reference it as if it was passed into law. And that’s all this stuff is: fodder for their political ads. They can say “I voted to balance the budget,” and while that would technically be true, the standard American idiot (completely oblivious to the context of the vote) would just think that sounded good and cast a vote. Also read How the Game is Played. (via NYT and Mother Jones)

What the Keynesians learned from the crisis | It’s amazing how people develop wildly different explanations for the same thing. Klein does a good job showing what the main thrust behind “Keynesian” means. (via Ezra Klein)

Creative Financing | The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time. Boom. All Geithner has to do is mint a large platinum coin valued at $14 trillion. Debt problem over. (via Matt Yglesias)

Billsezwhat? | I would too…what would they do? Constitution > statue. (via Politico)

Eurobondage | Been thinking this would happen sooner or later. The problem is that everyone in the Eurozone is conjoined, but only partially. So something could affect say, Greece, and put them in danger of default, but because they have forfeited their financial sovereignty to the EU, they have no room to execute the maneuvers that countries like the US and Sweden have been able to do. Because the hit is asymmetrical, it’s dragging nations into a crisis that would otherwise be in fine shape (Italy, Germany, France) because while their currency is tied together, everything else is independent. So, the EU has two choices: get close or fall apart. I’m voting the latter. (via Matt Yglesias)

Who’s Rupert Murdoch? | The alternative reality of Fox News. (via politprof)

Bob Lutz, MBA’s & Leadership | This is precisely why I didn’t go back to school to get my MBA, even though I had some pressure to do so. It’s the same with public policy, law, and education degrees, in terms of who should be in charge. In city government, who do you want leading? The guy who can write technically perfect policy, or the guy who understands what policies need to be put in place? In the classroom, would you rather your kid be taught biology by a “classroom manager” or an actual biologist? In an organization, shouldn’t lawyers be in positions of counsel rather than positions of vision?There are (not enough) examples of cities that turned things around and became great places once landscape architects, architects, and engineers became the leaders, instead of policy writers and bureaucrats. (via Time)

Carma-non-event | So Carmageddon wasn’t a big deal. Surprised? Apparently the same thing happened in St. Louis a few years ago. Point becoming, we don’t need no more roads. In fact, it’s becoming apparent that we could operate better with less, at least when we talk about freeways. (via streetsblog)

Circumstantial Evidence | Remember Climategate? Though the “scandal” was a big made-up to-do in the media, the scientists’ exoneration was much less publicized. In another interesting twist, no one ever found out who did the hacking. Now, with information on News Corp’s hacking scandal flooding out of England, people are starting to wonder if it was Murdoch’s group behind the “expose.”

Fracked Forests | Salt kills plants. This we know. In that regard, this study is unremarkable. In every other regard, this study should scare the hell out of anyone living near fracking sites. Also, if I went out and dumped heavy salts in my neighbors’ water system, I would be arrested. How does that not apply here? Maybe Talisman Terry the Frackosaurus knows. (via NYT and The Colbert Report)

Heavy Metal Mite | I’m thankful this thing is so small we can’t see it. Also thankful we have tools that can, in order to reveal the impressive details and downright scariness built into something so small. (via Treehugger)

Natural Networks | You know all that hippie-dippie, Pandora nature-is-all-connected talk? Turns out it seems more and more likely to be true. The implications of this are, understandably, enormous. (via Andrew Sullivan)