More Notes from a Small Town Republican Meeting in Texas – October 2013

This is the fourth installment in a series of posts describing my experiences at a small town Republican meeting in Texas. Previous posts are available below. I try to present a neutral view while just reporting what was said, but I don’t always succeed.

This time the local Democrat and Republican meetings happen to fall on the same day, so I went to parts of both meetings. There were some interesting points of contrast. First, a quirky little thing I noticed is that the Democrats were much more willing to express their identity and views with bumper stickers, while the Republicans had very few bumper stickers. (Anyone want to offer an explanation of this phenomenon?) The Democrats were also more optimistic and lively. They talked quite a bit about the next Texas governor’s race and the leading Democratic candidate Wendy Davis, even though she is still a long shot to win the election. By contrast, the Republicans were much more subdued. This is consistent with a recent survey of Republican beliefs about the state of the country which listed the three most common words they used as “worried, concerned, and scared”. They didn’t mention the upcoming governor’s election even once during the meeting.

The only time national issues came up was during some pre-meeting discussion in the audience. One person felt compelled to share his belief that the country is getting close to the point where millions of people will march on Washington DC to throw Obama out of office. He was sure that Obama will declare martial law and try to use the military to protect himself when this happens, but “there are more of us than there are of them”.

Outside of such discussions there was little other talk of national politics, not even of Obamacare, which surprised me given the obsession with it at previous meetings. It was also surprising because this meeting occurred during the emotional height of the debt ceiling negotiations in the US Congress. The main speaker at the Republican meeting was a state legislator who seemed to make it a point to avoid discussing the situation in Washington DC. Most of the discussion centered on Texas and local issues. This included taxes, the state budget, and of course water issues. There will be a proposition on the ballot soon in Texas to authorize spending $2 billion on water infrastructure and conservation. This was supported by all the members who spoke up. (By contrast, the Texas Tea Party is strongly against this measure, and generally despises the establishment Republicans like those present at this meeting.)

Local water board elections where a big issue, and they discussed the need to keep liberals off the water board. Some background: in Texas the state regulates the taking of water from rivers and lakes. However there is a long standing part of Texas political culture that says any person can pump as much water from their well on their property as they want, and no government agency had better try to interfere with that right. You can pretty much guess what has been happening to the level of water in Texas’ aquifers in the last few decades.

According to the stories told at the meeting, the liberal members on the local water boards have been sitting on hundreds of applications to drill wells without processing them, and in the long term they plan to put meters on private wells in order to monitor the amount of water used and eventually charge the well owner per gallon. The response from an audience member was “when they trespass on my property to put a meter on my well, if they manage to get past my Rottweiler they’ll have to deal with by ‘45’ “. Obviously they were strongly against changing this part of the Texas political culture regarding water rights.

One of the other interesting topics discussed was increasing the support for vehicles being fueled by natural gas. There was also support for an interesting new proposal for underground aquifer storage and recovery of water instead of the above ground reservoirs which lose a lot of water to evaporation during Texas summers.

Finally, there was a familiar commentary on how it’s been proven that non-profit charities do a better job at providing food and health care to poor people than the government. It was recommended that people read the speech “Not Yours to Give” by Davy Crockett, in which he explains why it is not the government’s job to spend money on charity (Note: I looked this up, and it turns out the speech was almost certainly a fabrication by the author of a Davy Crocket biography).

More Notes from a Small Town Republican Meeting in Texas – Aug 2013

This is the third installment in a series of posts describing my experiences at a small town Republican meeting in Texas. Previous posts are available here and here. I try to present a neutral view while just reporting what was said, but I don’t always succeed.

This meeting occurred in August during the congressional break, and our local representative from the US House was the guest speaker. Like all such meetings, it started with pledges to the American and Texas flags. The opening prayer started with “We thank you Lord for this great country and its current leaders…” which was a phrase I didn’t expect. Various Republican candidates for local offices then introducing themselves and gave a 2 minute stump speech. I was actually impressed that they all discussed their experience and qualifications and avoided partisan ideology.

Our US congressman started his speech with a joke -“Redistricting is a sport in Texas”, which has some truth to it. That was followed by feeding red meat to a hungry audience. The basic outline of his talk was “obamacare, socialism, obamacare, impeachment, obamacare”. His priority on obamacare was to completely defund it, and then don’t replace it with anything else. In his view, our health care system was doing just fine until Obama tried to introduce socialized medicine. We need to get government completely out of health care and let the free market do its job.

An interesting moment occurred later during audience questions when a woman described herself as a moderate and asked him to consider something between all and nothing. Her husband is a cancer survivor and couldn’t get private insurance before obamacare because of that pre-existing condition. The congressman’s response was that government still needed to get out of health care and maybe we just needed to tweak the private market a little to handle such cases. I thanked the women afterwards for speaking up since I’m also a cancer survivor.

He was in favor of not raising the debt ceiling this fall unless obamacare was defunded, even if that meant the government would be shut down or default on its obligations. There audience cheered when he said that. He described their plan as having Congress pass a bill that gave Obama everything he wanted except funding for obamacare. Then if Obama vetoes it, the public will put all the blame on him for shutting down the government.

In terms of getting the economy moving again, his answer was to cut all tax rates including corporate taxes and the capital gains tax. Obama has already tried socialist solutions to help the economy and they didn’t work, and now he’s busy pitting people against each other as his next plan. He was mad at Obama for taking money from our military and instead sending it to those people on welfare. He stated that without a dominant US military the world would implode. On energy, he was for “all the above” (i.e. pursue all sources of energy). The government should get completely out of the energy business though. The government only has 3 legitimate functions: collect taxes, defend our borders, and manage our infrastructure. The topic of climate change didn’t come up.

The congressman described his platform priorities as: lower taxes, smaller government, defend our borders, the 10th amendment, and always stand with Israel. (The 10th amendment is a “states rights” thing). He was for independence instead of dependence. He was guided by the Constitution, his conscious, and the Bible. He also said that as grownups we will need to plant some trees that we will never stand under.

He defended his vote in support of the Ryan budget after an audience member complained that it didn’t cut spending enough. He also stated “I’m willing to negotiate on the budget, but I won’t compromise my core values, which are no tax increases and a strong military”. “Obama has broken every rule, why not impeach him?” an audience member asked. His response: impeachment papers have already been drawn up and we’re waiting for the right time to introduce them. They may take too long to go through the system to be effective though. When someone expressed concern over NSA spying, he said we need to reign in the NSA and go back to the Patriot Act.

A restaurant owner spoke up and said we desperately need a guest worker program, but not amnesty. Response from the Congressman: border security is a more important first priority. One audience member stated that the reason for the lower Republican vote in 2012 wasn’t bad policies, it was because (1) we didn’t run a true conservative candidate, and (2) we ran a Mormon and many Christians stayed home and refused to vote for him. The congressman responded that if we’re still upset about the 2012 elections we need to get over it. Focus on the 2014 elections; they may be the most important ones of our lives.

Fort Hood is in the congressman’s district, and he was upset that Obama labeled the shootings there as “workplace violence” instead of terrorism. There is a bill in Congress to label these as a terrorist act, which would mean those who were injured could receive additional financial aid and possibly a Purple Heart medal.

One audience member expressed concern about Obama signing “that UN gun thing”. The congressman’s response was that we don’t need to sign ANY UN treaty, and he will make sure that never happens.

As a final statement intended to inspire the crowd, he quoted Will Rogers - “Don't look back 'cause we ain't headed that way.” He apparently did not think there was any irony involved here.

Notes From a Small Town Republican Meeting in Texas Shortly after the 2012 Election

A few days after the election in November, I went to the local county Republican meeting. It was a small town gathering near Austin Texas, just far enough outside of Austin to qualify as a representative small town in rural Texas. Here is a description of what I observed that night. My intention is not to poke fun at anyone in a mean spirited way, but to try to present some honest observations. I can’t claim to be completely successful at all times, but I tried.

There was a real sense of gloom in the discussion before the meeting. Paraphrasing typical comments:

"I've lived through bad presidents and bad congresses, but I've never seen anything as bad as this. I don't know how we're going to get through these next 4 years."

“It's going to take millions of people learning hard lessons from the mistake they've made.”

“We need to be more conservative in these tough times”

“We lost because there were obviously there are more takers than producers.”

“We lost some local races because liberal PACs outspent us 10:1”

They saw this election as a “mistake” that can eventually be corrected and then things will return to normal. Nobody suggested that it was as a signal of some sort of permanent change. Interestingly Romney's name was not mentioned once. Republican/ Democrats were only rarely mentioned. It was all about the battle between liberals and conservatives. I also observed that the term "conservative" seemed to have evolve from defining a collection of political views, into something that was roughly synonymous with righteousness and strength of moral character. In such a view, there was no such thing as a balanced conservatism - being more conservative was ALWAYS better.

The meeting was opened in the usual way with a prayer, pledge to the American flag, followed by a pledge to the Texas flag. A local Republican county commissioner then gave a report on various local county issues: roads, taxes, emergency preparedness plans, and of course water issues. He came across as very experienced and knowledgeable, and motivated by a desire to do what’s best for the county without a hint of partisan politics appearing in his talk.

The Republican Texas State Representative from that area then gave his view on issues and priorities for the coming state congressional session. He supported what I found to be an interesting mix of ideas:

• Clamping down on immigration
• Tort reform - "looser pays" legislation
• Drug testing for welfare recipients
• Our schools needing more focus on vocational training and less on standardized testing. Vocational classes have been canceled over the need to focus too much time and funds on test preparation.
• Addressing our long term water needs. This includes building more reservoirs, as well as investigating “aquifer storage”, which involves pumping water back down into underground aquifers. It turns out that the city of Austin looses more water from evaporation from its reservoirs than the city actually uses. (This idea was new for me, and quite interesting)
• Improving our transportation infrastructure
• He also supported legislation to give people rights to carry guns on school grounds, including grade schools and high schools. This would only apply to adults with gun permits. His explanation was that churches sometimes worship at schools on weekends, and people need the right to defend themselves during church services because Christians are being increasingly persecuted.

The meeting then ended with a long lecture on socialism. The speaker was very sincere and gave a very well prepared talk. He had apparently migrated to the U.S. from an eastern European country when he was young. (This is where it becomes difficult for me to remain completely objective and avoid giving a biased and perhaps somewhat sarcastic view based on the selection of key points that I chose to include. I will say I found the talk entertaining. )

The Threat of Socialism:

• Capitalism is clearly based on Christian principles
• Socialism is the government control over means of production. The most socialistic agency in our current government is the EPA.

Here are the plans being used to introduce socialism into our society

• First corrupt our culture, starting at the universities
• Then the press and entertainment
• Finally destroy Christianity though liberal teachers at seminaries

Howard Zinn was singled out as being one of the most corrupting influences around because his books are corrupting US history. He is teaching our children that the U.S. did bad things at times, reducing the pride we have in our nation. This is a major problem, because it's very important for citizens to maintain their pride in America.

The real goal of the Obama administration is a “one world government” that takes away our guns.

The main groups working for socialism include: civil rights groups, feminists, the gay pride movement, environmentalists,liberal churches, organized labor, esp. the AFL-CIO, the far left radical liberals including Obama and Hillary, and of course the National Education Association.

The end result of socialism in Europe is the Muslims moving in and establishing sharia law. That's our future too, and George Soros is funding this. We may say that couldn't happen here, but they said the same thing in Europe, and it's happening now.

(End of lecture)

I don’t know to what extent the audience agreed with everything the speaker said, but they did give him a standing ovation after his talk.

A final observation: In my estimation these are not tea party people. They are run-of-the-mill mainstream small town Republicans. I've been to Texas tea party meeting. The Texas tea party folks despise the type of mainstream establishment Republican Party members gathered here for being too moderate in their views and actions.

BP's "Top Kill" Effort Fails - This Could Be Big

This could be really big.

I just heard the word that BP's best hope at stopping the oil flow, the "Top Kill" method, has failed. I wonder about the long term consequences now. I think it is misleading to think of this as a "spill", it's way beyond that. There is now a real possibility that the flow of oil could continue for years until most of the oil in that entire oil field has been emptied out into the gulf. People who have depended on catching fish and shrimp for generations in that area now say it is unlikely that they will be able to go back and resume their livelihoods at anytime during the rest of their lives. These are some of the same people hit hard by Katrina. And this is predicted to be another bad year for hurricanes. My heart goes out to these people.

What to do about BP? Traditional fines don't seem adequate in this case. I would support a permanent ban on BP doing any more offshore drilling off the coast of the U.S. They have demonstrated that they are not capable of doing this safely. That would make the rest of the industry think more seriously about safety. What if in the end it becomes apparent that no "for profit" corporation can drill for oil with adequate safety in water that is a mile deep or more? That is a real possibility that we must be prepared to accept.

There is an argument that BP is not a "bad company", it is just doing what all companies are chartered to do under the current system - maximize their short term profits. In this argument, there are no bad or good companies, there are just companies that do what companies are designed to do. Don't expect anything else to happen when we have set up the system to produce these results.

What is the long term impact of this? Instead of thinking about this as "Obama's Katrina", perhaps it is better to think about it as "Obama's 9/11". It's an unexpected event that could end up defining his presidency and shaping his policy focus in unexpected ways. This could have implications to national policy related to energy, the environment, and possibly to the way corporations are chartered and regulated. This could be big.

The End of Democracy As We Know It? - Part 1

I’ve spent some time reading and thinking about the recent Supreme Court Decision involving Citizens United. I’m not one to typically give in to rash statements, but this does seem to put in place the mechanism for the almost complete control of our government by wealthy corporations. We already have a situation where Rupert Murdoch and his FOX network effectively set much of the strategy for the Republican Party. Alumni from Goldman Sachs have a dominating influence on Obama’s financial policy. And both parties are heavily influenced by corporate donations and lobbyist. This ruling enables the takeover to be complete.

The first shoe to drop was the end of the Fairness Doctrine. This Supreme Court decision was the other shoe. I don’t claim that corporations will completely decide who will win elections. Rather, in practice they will have more like a veto power over candidates they don’t like thanks to the ability to unleash tremendous negative advertising campaigns, and a similar veto power over legislation they don’t like. Special interest will now be in a position to effectively prevent any change that will negatively impact them, regardless of the long term benefits to society as a whole. The long term impacts of this are quite substantial as we enter a period of rapid changes in the global society.

If that isn’t troubling enough, consider this: The ruling apparently applies to foreign based corporations too. There’s some uncertainty over this, but my understanding is that foreign corporations can now spend unlimited amounts of money to influence American elections just like US based corporations.

What can be done to fix this situation? There is a lot of focus on creating a new constitutional amendment that will explicitly state that corporations are not people and do not share in the same rights as people. I fear this is a misguided effort to focus on. First, it will take many years and has only a small chance of actually passing in the end. More importantly though, I don’t think it will actually cause the changes people are hoping for. It is my understanding that the Supreme Court decision is not based on the view that corporations are people. Instead, it is based on the argument that people have the right to organize in groups and speak out on political issues, whether those groups are non-profit organizations, labor unions, or corporations.

The real problem here, and the one we need to address to fix things, is that concentrations of money can have a significant influence on our government process. The idea that very wealthy individuals can exercise excessive influence on our government is also a problem that tends to get overlooked. I’ll give some thoughts on possible ways to address this in my next post.

Placing Palin's Book in the Appropriate Section

A friend of mine "went Rogue" in a local book store recently, and as a public service decided to re-shelve Sarah Palin's book into what they thought was the more appropriate fiction section. I wonder if this is a fad that has been happening (or will now start happening) elsewhere around the country?

While not exactly consistent with supporting more rational civil discussions, I can see such acts happening as the frustration grows within the progressive community. Think of it as a very modest little left wing version of the "tea party" movement.

Effects of Technology on the Events in Iran

A very interesting question that many people are watching closely "How will the internet and modern technology change the course of what happens in Iran?" More and more videos of the street marches and the violence are appearing on YouTube. One of the most famous has become the video of a young girl named "Neda" dying on the street after being shot by a sniper. This generates anger in the population, not fear. Modern communication technology is so far being used more successfully to organize than to control.

As Radley Balko writes on his blog:

Government has been murdering its own citizens for as long as we’ve had government, particularly when the people begin to pose a threat to those in power. The difference is that now, the entire world is watching. Iran’s brutality is on display for everyone to see, archived for history, in a way that we didn’t have even in Tiananmen, and haven’t had for most of human history. That, at least, is progress.

Has the methodology of political movements around the world undergone a major change?

The Key Assets of Our Society

Dmitry Orlov wrote an interesting comparison of how much better the former USSR was prepared for a financial collapse than the current USA is. In short, much of the USSR was already functioning closer to a subsistence economy, with people making due with what could be supplied locally instead of relying almost completely on a complex interconnected national economy. Additionally, the USSR had large oil supplies that could be exported to relatively rich and financially stable neighboring countries in order to help finance its recovery recovery. As the USA undergoes a financial crisis, it doesn't have that luxury of unaffected rich stable neighboring economies to help pull it out.

While this report paints a rather pessimistic picture, I think the author misses some fundamental differences between the former USSR and the current USA. First and foremost, we have a collection of what is probably the largest, most creative, best educated, and most motivated group of civic and entrepreneurial leaders that ever existed. We have a culture that enables and even encourages a massive grass roots campaign to rebuild a new and revitalized economy. We have communications systems that enables rapid organizing and sharing of information on a level that is order of magnitudes greater than anything we had in the past . Nothing like this ever existed in the former USSR, or it could be argued anywhere else at any other time in history. Finally, though our leadership in Washington cannot act as a messiah to deliver us from all our problems, we are fortunate at this critical time to have some of the best new leadership for responding to these new problems that we've had in many decades.

Van Jones, a Yale educated lawyer and social activists, has been leading a grass roots drive to spur an economic rebuilding based on environmentally sustainable green jobs for many years now. When he was first asked if there would be a role for him in the Obama administration, he just laughed at the absurdity of the thought of himself being in a formal government position. Earlier this month he was officially appointed as a Special Advisor at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. This is an example of why there is some long term hope for building a new revitalized economy despite the prevailing short term pessimism.

Preaching Politics form Church Pulpits

I’ll argue that one of the greatest innovations in government that made America so successful was the notion of separation of church and state. In our current version of that, religious organizations can get involved in promoting causes, but should stay out of party politics and elections. This may be challenged soon.

The socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to endorse political candidates from their pulpits Sept. 28, in defiance of IRS rules. Click here for an article on this.

Personally I think partisan political campaigning from the pulpit would be an absolute disaster for both religions and our political process. Democracy is supposed to be about building consensus through debate, discussions, and compromise. Admittedly it doesn't always work quite that way, and we suffer whenever such failures occur. But if religious leaders start routinely preaching that it is immoral and a sin to vote for a specific candidate, and that it is your moral duty to support some other one, than rational debate, discussion, and compromise get thrown out the window. Who would want to support listening to and compromising with "evil"? A more preferred view would be to do everything possible to defeat "evil", with the ends justifying the means in such an important struggle. Such extreme demonization of people in the political process is where I think this will quickly lead.

I also think that political parties and lobbying groups would start putting considerably more pressure on religious organizations to support them, with funds flowing to those who are willing to adjust their stances to match those of the political parties. Congregations would become scenes of bitter disputes and end up highly polarized, and in the end many would become branches of other political organizations. Are you worried about corporations controlling the government? Then you should be really scared about giving them the motivation to start controlling religions too. It's not a good circumstance for promoting the spiritual development of the membership of religious congregations.

Someone once said that when it comes to politics, religions work best when they are "outside forces" acting as checks and balances and providing independent moral direction to the political process. I completely agree. I think the historical record supports this too.

Keep in mind that religious leaders are free under law to say anything they want, including from the pulpit. It's just that if they want to keep the tax breaks of a non-profit non-political group they need to follow the tax rules.

I am getting concerned that there could be a major movement to change this though, especially after watching how religious groups influenced the selection of Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential candidates recently. I would hope that there would be a strong backlash against this from many religious and secular organizations.

Obama's Speach Condensed

I had somewhat mixed feelings about Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. To be realistic, it was almost impossible to live up to the hype and expectations that arose leading up to the speech. The speech did contain some very good and moving lines. But sometimes they seemed to get buried inside a more standard partisan political speech.

So here is my condensed version of the speech, focusing on the key lines that seemed to be the most inspirational about the need for a change and our moment in history. This is after all one of the most historically significant elections in our nation's history. Let's keep that in mind. The following are all direct words from Obama's speech - with sections of intervening text removed. Do you like it better?

It is that promise that's always set this country apart, that through hard work and sacrifice each of us can pursue our individual dreams, but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams, as well.

That's why I stand here tonight. Because for 232 years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women -- students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors -- found the courage to keep it alive.

We meet at one of those defining moments, a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.

America, now is not the time for small plans.

I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me; it's about you.

It's about you.

For 18 long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said, "Enough," to the politics of the past. You understand that, in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same, old politics with the same, old players and expect a different result.

You have shown what history teaches us, that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.

Change happens -- change happens because the American people demand it, because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.

I believe that, as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming, because I've seen it, because I've lived it.

America, we cannot turn back... not with so much work to be done.

America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone.

At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that American promise, and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

State of the Planet 08

I recently attended the State of the Planet conference at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. It's a conference put on every other year by Jeff Sachs and the Earth Institute. Videos from this year's presentations are available here.

Two years ago I went to this conference for the fist time. The focus that year was on sustainable development, and I have to say that the overall tone was rather depressing. In terms of achieving anything remotely resembling a sustainable society, the overall conclusion from most presenters was that we weren't even close.

This year's conference was much more optimistic. Here are some of the interesting points that were made:

• "We're in a process of heading towards a new global society. Yet our institutions and mindset is not ready for this. Much of the rest of the world is further along than we are at coming to grips with this."
  
• Greening of the world' infrastructure will become a trillion dollar industry. But timing is important. Business needs to move ahead aggressively on this. There was confidence that the private sector will lead in adaptation in the 21st century, but government has an important role to play as a partner.
  
• Kenya moved from civil war to a negotiated settlement in a few short weeks. There should be a real sense of optimism after seeing that such things are possible.
  
• Big business has much power to effect the world's problems. We need to ask them what they have done with that influence and power?
  
• We also need to ask the churches the same thing. Religions organizations have failed when they took sides based on identity politics. When they talk about "my people", they need to be talking about all of humankind.
  

Other signs of progress - we are actually succeeding when there is political will to change things for the better.

• The Millennium Development Goals call for cutting poverty in half between 2000 and 2015. We are actually likely to reach that goal in all areas except sub-Saharan Africa.
  
• 20 years ago there were 20 million refugees. Now there are 10 million.
  
• In 1989 there were 10 genocides unfolding in the world. Today there are one or two.
  
• There used to be 10 to 20 military coups per year in the world. Now there are typically 3 or 4.
  
• There is 50% less warfare today than in 1989
  

One nagging thought that occurred to me during the conference was that they were literally flying in people from around the world to give 20 minute presentations on environmental responsibility. This problem was also noted by Jeff Sachs at the end. He talked about the possibility that this may be the last of these conferences they hold in this form. The next one in two years may be in the form of a globally connected broadband video conference connecting cities all around the world. Such an approach will obviously take some experimentation before they get it right, but I can't think of a better conference to take such a bold step and start developing the techniques to hold such a conference on a global scale while minimizing the number of miles traveled. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Sustainability - the common thread among voter's priorities

We had a great informal discussion among friends recently to discuss our thoughts on the upcoming super Tuesday primaries. We started out by going around the room and letting each person talk about what issues were most important to them. This is a great way to proceed by the way, since talking about issues avoids anyone pushing someone's hot button by insulting their favorite candidate.

People brought up a wide variety of the regular issues, but I noticed one common theme as I listened to them - and that was sustainability. Although they didn't use that word, what people really seemed to consider important was to have a sustainable environment, a sustainable energy policy, a sustainable economy, a sustainable health care system, and a sustainable foreign policy. In each case I listed above, our current system is nowhere near being sustainable. For some cases in particular including our economy and energy policy, things are beginning to fall apart as I write. Sustainability is not a key word on the campaign trail this season, but it's a key aspect of what our priorities really are.

By the way, in the straw poll at the end of the discussion the overwhelming winner was Dennis Kucinich. When we restricted votes to the candidates still in the campaign, the clear winner was Obama.

Science Debate 2008

One of the most interesting presidential debates I can think of, and in many ways one of the most telling and important, would be one devoted to science. It's very clear that scientific issues will be in the forefront of the topics the next president will have to deal with. That's why I was glad to sign up as a supporter of the Science Debate 2008 movement. To quote from their website:

Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.

I can't imagine a more interesting and unpredictable presidential debate.