Tough, Unfair Choices on the Mississippi

The opening of the Morganza spillway and other floodgates on the Mississippi to avoid flooding in Baton Rouge and New Orleans may be necessary, and it may be a last resort, but it's far from fair. To expect people in the Cajun country of Louisiana to sacrifice their homes, crops, and livelihoods for people downstream is cruel, and it exhibits a problem that needs to be addressed: that human beings have yet to learn to live with nature, and adapt to nature, rather than trying to contain it.

The levee system on the Mississippi has existed in some form since the early 1700s; in the 1850s the federal government got involved, and the result, over many decades, has been an elaborate system of barricades and spillways built and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and designed to contain the Mississippi within its banks. Unfortunately, by containing normal flooding that would ordinarily take place over a vast area, it channels the waters of this powerful river into a narrow path and, where flooding exists, makes it much worse than it would otherwise be.

To avoid an environmental catastrophe as the Mississippi floods Baton Rouge and New Orleans and the many oil refineries and oil storage facilities in the area, the people of rural Louisiana are being threatened with the loss of their way of life. It's time to come up with some solutions, both in terms of an environmentally sound response to the river's spring flooding and to the practice of locating homes, farms and businesses within the river's flood zones, that prevent this kind of human tragedy. A levee system that is more diffuse and that accommodates normal flooding while protecting people and property may be possible; oddball solutions like homes that actually float -- houseboats, in other words -- may make sense for people whose lives are tied to the flood zones of the Mississippi. Crops that can survive flooding or that can be replanted and grow after flooding make sense for the region. Maybe flooding can be controlled in such a way that it doesn't have the devastating impact that this major flood will likely have on the farmland itself. The best scientific minds need to be put onto this problem.

Meanwhile, in the short term, those who have been put in harm's way by the actions of the Army Corps of Engineers need to be compensated for their losses. The right of eminent domain allows land to be taken for the public good, but with fair compensation, and it seems that this concept applies here.

Why Red States Should Support High-Speed Rail

High-speed rail is being pushed by the Obama administration as vital to the future of the U.S., but is being opposed by conservative Republicans as an expensive "tax and spend" idea. The conservatives may want to think twice before dismissing the idea.

In parts of the Northeast and the Midwest, towns and cities are suffering a population drain as people move west and south; rural areas are hard-hit as young people unable to support themselves are moving away from their families to cities or to areas of the country with more opportunity.

High-speed rail could help resolve this problem. An individual living in a small town or on a rural farm could drive 30 minutes to the nearest train station, get on the train and commute 200 miles to a job in a major city, and then reverse the process and be home by supper. Residents of rural areas would no longer be confined to the limited career opportunities in their immediate area, but could easily have access to jobs -- and education, art, music, and culture -- in New York, Boston, Chicago, or L.A., and still enjoy the closeness and community of small-town living.

Small-business owners, artists and designers could commute to cities around the country and promote their services and goods in person. Realtors would have access to a vast new customer base as city dwellers of modest means are able to afford homes in rural areas, while keeping their city jobs. Farm families could have some family members with access to a much-needed big-city income as others maintain the farm.

High-speed rail has a lot to offer rural, red-state America -- perhaps even more than it offers the urban dweller. The Obama administration needs to include rural America in its plans for high-speed rail, and red-state Republicans need to get on board.

Why Rand Paul Is Wrong

Republican Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, who has argued against a section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bars discrimination in private businesses that serve the public, is wrong in his assumptions.

Setting aside the issue of common human decency, the argument itself--that private businesses not supported by public dollars can choose their customers--doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

Say Rand Paul decides to quit doctoring and start up a bait shop. Under his theory, he has the perfect right to ban African Americans, gay fishermen, midgets and mimes from his shop, because his business is not supported by public funds. But wait! How are his customers going to get to his bait shop? Probably via public roads, which are constructed and maintained using public funds. Maybe his customers could fly in on private planes. No, that involves using public airspace, owned by the public and regulated by the Federal government, and it involves licensing of the pilots, which is controlled by the FAA. I seem to recall that there's at least one private pilot's license in the Paul family, so the Pauls must not object to that form of regulation.

How is Dr. Paul going to get out the news about his bait shop? Not by radio or TV, both of which are controlled by the FCC, a publicly funded agency sworn to protect the public airwaves. Until Paul's customers learn to levitate and read his mind, operating his business without public support or funding is going to be pretty hard.

I think most of us have a libertarian streak--I know I do--but we decided as a species millennia ago to live in some form of social structure. It civilizes us, it gives us mutual support and protection, and when it works properly, it serves to protect the weak against the strong. To decide that a private person has the right to ban another human being from public accommodations severely restricts the right of the barred individual to function in the most basic way: the ability to grab a bite to eat at lunchtime; the ability to get on a bus and travel to another city or within his own city; the ability to go into an emergency room and seek treatment; the ability to use a restroom, for pity's sake.

Laws protect us from the most base instincts of human nature, and restrict the power of one person or group to oppress or harm another. While Rand Paul and his father Ron are right to challenge the assumptions that we make about government, and offer an important reminder that we need to be careful about investing too much power in any one entity, they fall short in recognizing the role of society--and government as a representative of that society--in defining and enforcing rules that protect human rights and dignity for us all. Without that line drawn to protect us against the cruelty and greed inherent in human nature, libertarianism becomes an exercise in self-indulgence, and the most extreme exercise of libertarianism potentially threatens us all.

Weird Wally's Worldview: Al Franken's SUPPLY SIDE JESUS: An animated comic strip.

Check out this satirical take on religion and politics:

Weird Wally's Worldview: Al Franken's SUPPLY SIDE JESUS: An animated comic strip.

The Single Best Stimulus Move Obama Can Do

The point of a stimulus package is to get money into the hands of consumers, so they can spend that money and get the economy moving again.

One thing none of the economists or politicians have given any thought to is the fact that since the 1990s, employer after employer has gone from paying people once a week to paying every two weeks. Once a practice among corporations employing highly paid, salaried workers, it has crept down to the lowest-paying jobs. A lot of people who used to get paid weekly never recovered from the switch, and built up consumer debt in large part as a result of having to cover living expenses with money that came in less frequently.

Obama needs to pass a simple bill, fast, that offers businesses a write-off of 150 percent of the cost of processing payroll, and put it into effect immediately. He also needs to do an aggressive campaign to promote this idea, and push banks to lend to companies that use credit to cover their payroll.

Pushing for weekly pay for America's workers will help solve a cash flow problem that has been haunting workers for almost two decades. Workers who get paid more often will likely spend more, because they know they will have more money coming in in a week. They will feel that they can let money go and begin to pay off their credit card debt.

Write to Barack Obama via the website whitehouse.gov, and tell him you want to get paid once a week. Call or write your congressional representatives and senators and tell them the same thing.

Let's put paychecks in the hands of hard-working Americans on a timely basis, and see what happens.

Henry Gates and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

From his hotel in China to his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Henry Gates probably traveled for a minimum of seventeen hours—to the international airport in China, waiting at the airport, one or more flights home, and then traffic on the way to his house. He arrived home only to find he couldn’t get in, and had to have help breaking into his own house.

And then the cop showed up.

I don’t know what transpired between Henry Gates and Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department, but if Doctor Gates had an utter, complete meltdown I wouldn’t blame him. That kind of high-stress, demanding day would push any of us to the brink. I suspect that, if we assume an overreaction on his part, it was an uncharacteristic lapse in someone who appears to be an intelligent, well-spoken, gentle man.

I don’t want to judge Sergeant James Crowley, either. The photograph showing Doctor Gates in handcuffs in front of his house also shows Sergeant Crowley looking not so much angry as baffled. I would be willing to bet that neither man can figure out exactly what happened or how the situation went so terribly wrong.

This situation has brought up strong feelings on both sides of the racial divide, and we do need to deal with the issues that this has unearthed. But we need to deal with it on a societal level, in our own lives, and in our interactions with others. If Henry Gates, James Crowley, and Barack Obama are indeed going to get together over a beer, they need to do it in private.

Maybe we all watch too much TV, but we seem to be wishing for a Hollywood ending. What we need to do is to leave these two men alone, let them get back to their private and professional lives, and allow them to put this very bad day behind them.

Republicans shouldn’t oppose empathy too soon

Now that the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor have started, the word “empathy” is rearing its head again. The party of “no” has come out strongly opposed to choosing a new Supreme Court justice based partly on President Obama’s stated quality of empathy, and now the attack dogs are circling, claiming that Obama’s use of the word “empathy” is code for “judicial activism.”

The Republicans shouldn’t be too fast to reject empathy. The most notorious Supreme Court decision of the past decade, Kelo vs. New London, could have done with a little empathy on the part of the Supremes. The city of New London, Connecticut, as part of an economic redevelopment plan designed to boost a sagging economy, decided to take by eminent domain an entire residential neighborhood to build a complex of for-profit, privately owned enterprises that included upscale housing, a high-end hotel, office space, and even a day spa. The 2005 Supreme Court decision, which affirmed a municipality’s right to take property by eminent domain for private enterprises as long as it could be judged to be for the higher good (possible translation: for higher property taxes than a residential owner could pay), put every homeowner in the country at risk at the hands of politicians and corporations. Empathy might have gotten the justices down out of their ivory tower long enough to anticipate the horrible consequences to ordinary citizens of this ruling; empathy might have allowed the justices to put aside their naïve, idealistic view of the world long enough for them to recognize not just the possibility, but the probability that corruption would taint the process.

The plaintiff, Suzanne Kelo, and her neighbors watched their neighborhood razed to the ground; homes were destroyed, but more than that, a complex, supportive social structure was torn apart as neighbors who had known each other for decades were uprooted and had to say good-bye. Four years after the Supreme Court decision, the former neighborhood is an empty lot, the private development company having abandoned the project. Litigation and damages have cost the city of New London millions of dollars. Supposedly trustworthy public officials charged with making the decisions involved with the redevelopment plan landed in the slammer for unrelated corruption charges; notably, then-Governor John Rowland, an early supporter of the redevelopment plan, ended up spending several months in prison for misusing his public office—not a sterling recommendation for his judgment on the New London redevelopment plan. Meanwhile, the entire New London debacle has apparently benefited no one.

Judges, including Supreme Court justices, need to be impartial, so that plaintiffs and defendants can have a fair hearing before the courts. But judges cannot be so cut off from the real world that their decisions are merely intellectual arguments devoid of any understanding of the consequences of their rulings. The law is created so that human beings have some kind of legally enforceable parameters about how to function in a complex society, and stripping the law of an understanding of its effect on humanity renders it useless or, infinitely more serious, dangerous.