Pretty Lies

Bucks County Democrats, who ironically call themselves "Bucks for Change," are trying to promote pro-war candidates to run against Mike Fitzpatrick for the PA 8th congressional district. Democrats who oppose havinig a pro war candidate are being told to stop dissenting, that everyone must focus only on winning. Why are important issues like the Iraq war considered to be no more than annoying diversions along the path to political power?

The way I see it is that politics inevitably attracts people with an exaggerated sense of self-importance, a need to be in the limelight, or just a greed for power and control. This happens at all levels of government, and regardless of ideology: left, right, or center. It happens in other fields as well. As an educator, I have become used to seeing bad teachers flee the classroom-- not to a different profession, but to become school administrators . . . bad ones!

These individuals become attracted to the political process, not to pursue an ideology, but in order to satisfy a psychological need. Their ideology will generally fit their personality profile, but there is often much flexibility, and the need for power will always trump ideology. Newt Gingrich and (probably) Andy Warren are good examples of people who switched ideology to open a better road to power. They are often very intelligent people, but unfortunately they spend most of their intellectual energy, not in creative problem solving, but in pursuing, expanding, or protecting power. This obsession with power insures that they will not grow as human beings.

Something is going on in the Green party similar to what’s happening to the Democrats. The only difference is that with the Greens this tendency to abandon values in order to grow power is only in its infancy. With the Democrats it is in an advanced, probably terminal stage. In their desperate, but futile attempt to regain their old glory, the Democrats have completely lost their moral compass. It takes people a long time to switch party allegiances. Most Americans belong to the same party as their parents. The Democrats know this. They think, therefore, they can take votes of many groups for granted, as long as they continue to give them lip service. Bill Clinton would go to an African-American church on Sunday, and cut welfare on Monday. And he pretty much got away with it. There was more clear-cutting of virgin forest timber in one year of Clinton’s reign than in the first four years of Bush— but progressives mostly think of Clinton as an environmental hero.

So the Democrats can and will be as ruthless as they need to be to garner corporate dollars. They will be as hawkish as they need to be to garner votes in middle America. When they see your peace button, they will wink and whisper, “I’m going to end this war, and get the troops home as soon as humanly possible,” or some other such insincerity, and chances are, the majority will believe them because it’s what they want to hear. Sadly, most Americans prefer hearing pretty lies to hearing truth.

Baby, It's Cold Inside

For most of the past three weeks we have been in an extreme heat emergency. Last Thursday it was 94 degrees outside when I entered an administrative office in a large County facility and noticed that is was much warmer there than the comfortably air conditioned corridor and other areas I had just passed through. I soon realized that the receptionist had an electric heater by her desk running on high. I thought this must be a bizarre anomaly-- perhaps a secretary with a large position in Exelon stock, trying to help her company boost its profits in the third quarter. I tried to forget the incident.

But that wasn't the end of it: the next day was again an extreme heat emergency. I went into a branch of the Wachovia Bank, the image of the space heater still crowding my brain. While depositing a check, I told the story to the teller, and she immediately pointed to the drive thru window, and said, "Oh, she runs one all the time." Sure enough there was a space heater running full blast at the drive thru window. I said, "Well the Wachovia stockholders might not be very happy, but at least it's not being paid for by my tax money."

Now I have become obsessed. How many offices are there across the country where people-- instead of being appreciative of having some refuge from the heat-- are running space heaters? How do you educate people? What will it take for people to grow up and begin to realize their perilous situation, living in the most spoiled and energy dependent country on the planet.

When we produced a symposium in Doylestown in April about the coming energy crisis, oil was at a record high of $50 a barrel. Four months later it has passed $64, and we're running our space heaters in August, as if energy were free and infinite. Will we be known someday as Homo Americanus or Homo Clulessnsensless. Sapien is not just losing, it's been deleted.

I checked the County office again today, just to be sure I hadn’t been hallucinating. The space heater's still cranking away.

Greens Endorse Earth Charter

At yesterday's meeting the Bucks County Green Party endorsed the Earth Charter Initiative with the following letter to the Secretariat in san José, Costa Rica:

Earth Charter International Secretariat
P.O. Box 138-6100
San José
Costa Rica

We are pleased to inform you that The Bucks County Greens of Pennsylvania, as of yesterday’s membership meeting, has formally endorsed the Earth Charter as a fine example of the integration of the principles and Ten Key Values of Greens everywhere.

We will seek to apply principles of the Earth Charter Initiative in our programs, policies and other activities. When feasible, we will promote it at an educational level in formal and non-formal settings.

With best wishes, and in loving memory of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

etc.

How to Handle a Hybrid

How to Handle a Hybrid
From Amory Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute: "How to Drive a Hybrid Car"

To get a state-of-the-art 4-/5-seat hybrid-electric midsize sedan to perform at ~53–55 mpg (it’s rated at 55) rather than in the low 40s, it needs “pulse driving,” which differs in two ways from our old driving habits:

1. When you see that you’ll need to slow or stop up ahead, start braking gently and as early as possible so you recover the most braking energy back into the battery for later reuse. Priusrecovers 62–66 percent of braking energy in its regenerative mode, but if you brake too late, hence too hard, the mechanical brakes will override, and they simply turn motion into useless heat.

2. Contrary to what we were all taught in high-school driver’s ed, when you’re accelerating up to cruising speed, do so briskly. The engine is most efficient at high speed and torque, so you’ll use less fuel accelerating aggressively for a short time than gently for a long time.

Note: Many reviewers test hybrids driven in the same way as non-hybrids, then gripe that hybrids fall short of their rated efficiency by more than non-hybrids do. This is incorrect; properly driven hybrids can actually match their EPA-rated mpg more closely than non-hybrids can. (My Honda Insight hybrid, for example, averages 63 mpg and is rated 64, the difference being more than attributable to snow tires; Toyota’s U.S. Executive Engineer, Dave Hermance, gets 53–55 mpg on his 55-mpg-rated Prius.) Consumer Reports is a major source of this confusion, having repeatedly refused to print a correction explaining that its standardized test procedure disproportionately reduces the mpg of the hybrids it tests. CR also calculates combined city-highway mpg differently than EPA and automakers do.

Consistent with attentive driving, you’ll also find it very instructive, when driving a hybrid, to keep an eye on the real-time mpg display and (like a videogame) use the feedback to improve your driving habits for best mpg. —ABL "

Whither the Green Party?

It is apparent from the results of last week's convention in Tulsa, OK, that there is a serious rift in the national party (GPUS). The convention was largely controlled by a relatively small minority of former Cobb/LaMarche supporters, who now control the steering committee and many state organizations, including Pennsylvania. The initiative to support the principle of "one-Green-one-vote" was soundly defeated by delegates in Tulsa.! The feeling of most of our regular members in Bucks County is to not be too concerned with what the national and state parties do, but continue to operate and organize locally. What’s your opinion?

PEAK OIL: We expect that rapidly rising energy prices will drive all politics to become intensely local in the near future. It will become just too difficult and costly to travel great distances on a regular basis to attend meetings. It is urgent that we prepare to preserve the health and cohesion of our local communities.

Meanwhile, there is a virtual official blackout on the issue of ‘peak oil.’ Roscoe Bartlett (R, Maryland) met with president Bush in early July, and still speaks regularly on the floor of Congress about the looming energy crisis, but as yet no other officials elected or appointed— local or national, have joined him. According to an article in Counterpunch this week by Richard Heinberg, The Hirsch report has been so suppressed by the government that ordered it, Project Censored is listing the report as one of the top censored stories of the year.

The Hirsch Report can be found in Heinberg’s article or here in pdf format.