QOTD

Larry Summers:

For reasons rooted in technological and demographic change...the global economy has difficulty generating demand for all that can be produced.

Emmanuel Goldstein had a solution for that if I recall correctly...

Oh wait, we already tried that ?  Shit !


Via Kevin Drum

Why Wasn't He Just Sent to Room 101 ?

VoldemortGovernor Rick Scott

There are different levels of crazy when it comes to Governors of US States; There's Bobby Jindal crazy, there's Sarah Palin crazy, and then...there's Rick Scott crazy.  Two-term governor Rick Scott, as in Florida actually re-elected this man after his first four years of radical Talibangelican craziness.

Florida, with its large population of transplants from New York and other Northeastern areas used to be thought of as one of the more liberal more Democratic states.  But today, it's rapidly turning into a lunatic-fringe Orwellian hellhole.

An employee of Florida’s environmental protection department was forced to take a leave of absence and seek a mental health evaluation for violating governor Rick Scott’s unwritten ban on using the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” under any circumstance, according to a complaint filed against the state.

Longtime employee Barton Bibler reportedly included an explicit mention of climate change in his official notes from a Florida Coastal Managers Forum meeting in late February, during which climate change, rising sea levels and the possible environmental impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline were discussed.

On 9 March, Bibler received a formal reprimand for “misrepresenting that ‘the official meeting agenda included climate change’”, according to a statement from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), a nationwide non-profit that champions public employees’ rights and providers resources and guidance to whistleblowers using its network of members across the country.

Bibler was instructed to stay away from the office for two days and told he could return to work only after a mental health evaluation from his doctor verified his “fitness for duty”, the complaint said. In the letter to Florida’s inspector general, Candie Fuller, the state’s Peer director calls for a full investigation to the matter.

Bibler told the Miami Herald that he “didn’t get the memo” about the gag order, so when he introduced himself by congratulating other officials on the call for the “exciting” work they were doing to address climate change, the “reaction was mostly shock”.

Keep in mind, this is Florida we are talking about here.

Of course, South Florida is not the only place that will be devastated by sea-level rise. London, Boston, New York and Shanghai are all vulnerable, as are low-lying underdeveloped nations like Bangladesh. But South Florida is uniquely screwed, in part because about 75 percent of the 5.5 million people in South Florida live along the coast. And unlike many cities, where the wealth congregates in the hills, southern Florida's most valuable real estate is right on the water. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development lists Miami as the number-one most vulnerable city worldwide in terms of property damage, with more than $416 billion in assets at risk to storm-related flooding and sea-level rise.

South Florida has two big problems. The first is its remarkably flat topography. Half the area that surrounds Miami is less than five feet above sea level. Its highest natural elevation, a limestone ridge that runs from Palm Beach to just south of the city, averages a scant 12 feet. With just three feet of sea-level rise, more than a third of southern Florida will vanish; at six feet, more than half will be gone; if the seas rise 12 feet, South Florida will be little more than an isolated archipelago surrounded by abandoned buildings and crumbling overpasses. And the waters won't just come in from the east – because the region is so flat, rising seas will come in nearly as fast from the west too, through the Everglades.

Even worse, South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. "Imagine Swiss cheese, and you'll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like," says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This means water moves around easily – it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below. "Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here," says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas. "Protecting the city, if it is possible, will require innovative solutions."

Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream (Animals, 1977)

If I had to pick one album by Pink Floyd as my favourite, Animals would probably be it. It's certainly in the top three with Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall.  This is Pink Floyd ten years

on from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a Pink Floyd that had stumbled a little with uneven albums such as Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother, only to find themselves ever more popular and famous with the release of The Dark Side of the Moon, and having subsequently to live in its shadow.  This is also Floyd in the age of Punk, a band probably eager to prove their relevance with a new more electronic sound and lyrics that reflected the political and social realities of the time.  This is the Pink Floyd that would crash out two years later with The Wall, a double disc epic that ended the Roger Waters era of Pink Floyd on a high much as The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway did for the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis.

Whilst much of Floyd's more ah-hippieish work hasn't dated all that well, the darker, more reflective, and the more politically incisive songs have stood the test of time quite well.  Thinking Welcome to the Machine here, Time, Money, and the like.  And this album has those same sort of attributes condensed into a perfect whole, one that really should be listened to in a single hearing.  It slows and builds up again with the (most played by radio) track Pigs (Three Different Ones), only to reach a crescendo in the manic and lyrically cutting Sheep:

Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air

You better watch out

There may be dogs about

I've looked over Jordan, and I have seen

Things are not what they seem

What do you get for pretending the danger's not real ?

Meek and obedient you follow the leader

Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel

What a surprise !

A look of terminal shock in your eyes

Now things are really what they seem

No, this is no bad dream

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want

He makes me down to lie

Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by

With bright knives He releaseth my soul

He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places

He converteth me to lamb cutlets

For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger

When cometh the day we lowly ones

Through quiet reflection, and great dedication

Master the art of karate

Lo, we shall rise up

And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water

Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream

Wave upon wave of demented avengers

March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream

Have you heard the news ?

The dogs are dead !

You better stay home and do as you're told

Get out of the road if you want to grow old

-- Roger Waters

The metaphor in the album of people as Pigs, Dogs, or Sheep, loosely inspired by Animal Farm is a simple one, but one that resonates to this day, as a minority of us amass ever more obscene levels of wealth and power, the Dogs of the world fight viciously for what wealth and privilege they can, and the majorities live meekly in denial and willful ignorance of their increasingly vulnerable serf-like place in society.  What do you get for pretending the danger's not real indeed ?