Liar, Liar, Forest's On Fire

"Good science," my eye. We're supposed to listen to lectures about what constitutes "good science" from people who, for political reasons, can't accept evolution?

The Fight Over Forests
AS WILDFIRE SCORCHES WOODS, POLITICAL CROSSFIRE INTENSIFIES
GOP Cherry-Picks Its Own 'Good Science'
East Valley Tribune, Jul. 13, 2003

The least convincing utterance in the debate over Arizona’s forests -- about as useful as our GOP congressional delegation’s refusal to help obtain emergency aid for Arizona unless Gov. Napolitano endorses the Bush administration’s long-term anti-environmental agenda -- is the oft-made claim that we should use “good science” in forest management. The people using the phrase (call them “suddenly ecosystem-aware Republicans”) know good science when they see it: Science that’s politically correct.

The “good science” rhetoric rests on fundamental misunderstandings of how science actually works. The really interesting issues in science are an ongoing, collaborative discussion. It’s not like a simple math question, to which the answer is either right or wrong. Science is essentially a series of “best guesses,” eventually narrowing toward consensus.

Always, some scientists disagree with the consensus. These outliers sometimes strengthen the theory by noting flaws and encouraging refinements. In remarkable cases, they develop either the data or theory that shatters the previous consensus. But not every crank is Copernicus; humanity always produces far more crackpots than Einsteins.

I’ve used previously the analogy by the author Kim Stanley Robinson likening scientific inquiry -- the construction of a theory -- to building a wall. Scientists place individual bricks of knowledge in what may be seem initially a random pattern; it’s not clear whether there will be a wall, much less what it will look like. Eventually, a wall emerges; scientists test its structural integrity, and if it holds, move to the next challenge.

Few new theories persuade everybody, and there are always some ostensible scientists who aren’t convinced that the wall is solid. But over time, their number dwindles, and when they retire, their successors look for more interesting areas to research.

Unfortunately for the public good, some of these “minority reports” are just too ideologically and politically correct for the Bush administration to resist.

The “good science” of forest health is a theory -- yes, a theory -- no more solid than the science behind global warming. Of course, GOP leaders call global warming “liberal claptrap.” The Bush administration initially misled the American people (sound familiar?) about the National Academy of Sciences report they commissioned which concluded that global warming is real and potentially dangerous. The administration recently made the EPA remove mentions of scientific concerns about global warming from its reports, and instead keeps referring reporters to the small, and shrinking, band of scientists who still doubt global warming.

But doubting and denying global warming serves the political interests of the Bush administration in serving its big-business base.

Take stem-cell research. President Bush used bogus data about the number of viable stem cell lines available to justify his 2001 decision. Instead of the 60-plus Bush claimed, the National Institute of Health so far has confirmed only 11 viable lines, most of which were grown in mouse feeder cells -- greatly complicating any human trials. Scientists since have developed alternative to mouse feeder cells, but Bush’s edict makes these newer, cleaner, and better lines ineligible for federal research funding.

Stem-cell research holds tremendous promise for medical advances and remarkable cures. But hindering that research serves the political interests of the Bush administration in serving its evangelical base.

Or take one of the best-accepted scientific walls of all, evolution. GOP House Majority Leader Tom DeLay derides evolution as “unproven,” and President Bush himself equivocates, as if “the jury is still out.” These same Republicans (who, for political reasons, can’t publicly accept the scientific principle of evolution) want us to accept their new-found devotion to “good science” for our forests.

But to these guys, “good science” means only science that’s good for them -- and their political supporters.

Apparently It's Hard to Remember Who's in Charge Here

The headline on this week's column is certainly not what I would have chosen; not that much that's going on in Iraq appears all that comedic. The Time magazine quote is available here; the transcript of McCain's appearance on "Face the Nation" is here; and Adam Felber's entire piece ("Bush Double-Dog Dares Militants to Hurt US Soldiers") is here. There's no easy link to John D. McDonald's remarks, which appeared in the comments to this post on Patrick Nielsen Hayden's site.


ADMINISTRATION'S ACTIONS ON IRAQ A COMEDY OF ERRORS
East Valley Tribune, Jul. 6, 2003

The head of your federal government is hard at work, according to last week’s Time magazine, searching for those apparently easily overlooked and tough-to-find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq:

“Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, ‘Are you in charge of finding WMD?’ Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn’t his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. ‘Who?’ Bush asked.”

The guy doesn’t know who’s doing the allegedly most important thing in Iraq, or much care about the fact that the guy actually works in Washington instead, but President Bush sure does know how to move those goalposts closer. We’ve gone from claiming that Iraq represented a mushroom-cloud-imminent threat to the U.S. to announcing the discovery of PFWMD, plans for future
Pretty soon we’ll have the administration claiming that evidence that Iraqi government officials downloaded from the web articles about Bush’s claims about Iraqi WMD justifying preemptive war as the justification for the war. (“Nobody with a clean conscience could possibly have believed that we were telling the truth,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will claim, to appreciative chuckles from the Pentagon press corps.)

Hey, but Iraq is free now, right? Let’s cheer, and certainly not waste any time wondering exactly how free is, say, Saudi Arabia.

Even with the administration’s claims decomposing faster than precursor chemicals in desert heat -- to name three, the claims about imminent WMD threats, that military action had concluded, and that our troops will be home soon -- it’s still hard for some folks to abandon their Iraqophobia. Sen. John McCain appeared last Sunday on “Face the Nation” and opined that finding Saddam Hussein was “very, very, very important . . . . far more important -- in my view, than capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, although that’s important, too.”

As James D. Macdonald pointed out, these priorities make perfect sense because (1) Osama bin Laden attacked the United States, and (2) Saddam Hussein hasn’t.

But the best evidence that we’re in Iraq for only the absolutely best reasons came last Wednesday, when President Bush made clear that the difference between U.S. foreign policy and professional wrestling is that with U.S foreign policy, you get an official transcript.

As reported by Reuters, President Bush “challenged militants who have been killing and injuring U.S. forces in Iraq, saying ‘bring them on’ because American forces were tough enough to deal with their attacks. ‘There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: Bring them on.’ ”

As satirist Adam Felber noted, these taunts were made by guy who avoided the draft, had an attendance record for his National Guard service that was (ahem) spotty at best, and who said these brave words thousands of miles from the front lines. Felber bets our troops actually in the line of fire in Iraq enjoyed this White House bravado. If they had worried that they might stop getting ambushed and attacked, or that President Bush might treasure their safety more than a good line, well, they can breathe easy now.

Republicans for the Ecosystem. Yeah, Right.

The large, and destructive, fire atop Mount Lemmon outside Tucson has put some of our congressional delegation into unusual contortions. They can't blame environmentalists for stopping forest-thinning and fire-reduction projects on the Catalina Mountains, or even in the entire Coronado National Forest, and have to justify having steered wildly inadequate Forest Service resources to fire projects out in the middle of nowhere. In Arizona, two projects near Flagstaff--both near houses and communities--haven't received funding while the Forest Service fights to allow logging of mature trees north of the Grand Canyon. It's the GOP environmental motto: Do last things first!



Saving the Forests
BLAMING 'GREENS' FOR FIRES IS JUST BLOWING SMOKE
East Valley Tribune, Jun. 29, 2003

The Tribune editorial page tried pinning the Mount Lemmon fire on the usual suspects; hit the F6 key and another editorial emerges blaming environmentalists, environmental laws, and appeals of Forest Service projects. There was just one problem with using last year’s ideology on this year’s fires -- the truth.

As noted by several environmental activists on this page Thursday, environmental appeals played no role in the Aspen fire. Unfortunately for the “log first, think later” crowd, nobody ever challenged any planned fuel reduction projects in the Catalina Mountains. In the entire Coronado National Forest, millions of acres, it appears there was only one, quickly-resolved, appeal filed, and the project went forward.

Blaming forest fires on environmental appeal delays is the Iraqi WMD of our national forests -- a cynical way to push a pre-existing agenda, with an argument that depends on exaggerating data, ignoring evidence, and substituting ideology for fact.

Instead of environmental appeals, the reality is that fuel-reduction programs aren’t going forward because the Bush administration and the GOP Congress aren’t funding them. Forest health apparently just isn’t important enough. While Arizona’s drought worsens, the Republicans funded fewer and fewer acres of fuel reduction programs each of the past three years.

In 2001, the Coronado National Forest got funding for tree thinning, brush removal, and controlled burns for some 5,000 acres; in 2002, for 1,800 acres; and in 2003, for a measly 202 acres. This year, the Forest Service requested $1 million for fuel reduction around Summerhaven atop Mount Lemmon; the Bush administration and Congress gave them only $120,000.

Unlike some politicians, the numbers don’t lie. As Arizona’s fire danger has increased, the Republicans have responded as they only know how: By doing less.

As doing less isn’t enough, they actually want to make things worse by doing what little they’re willing to fund in really, really remote areas.

Suddenly, with the flames highlighting their record, the GOP must justify spending scare tax dollars (that pesky discretionary federal spending that we must cut to justify those tax cuts) miles from nowhere. Instead of dealing with an immediate crisis at the forest interface, where people are at greatest risk and where basically everybody agrees on the need to act, key Republicans suddenly start worrying about -- get this -- the “ecosystem.”

There’s Sen. Jon Kyl, who says it’s not enough to protect communities from an immediate crisis when we also should “protect the greater forest and its wildlife.”

Rep. J. D. Hayworth also won’t let the Forest Service concentrate on doing the most important work first. Instead, he wants the federal government also to “protect the forestland and the ecosystems and wildlife and watersheds as well.” Sheesh -- who’s the environmental extremist now?

Since when do these guys care about wildlife and ecosystems? Since when is it good governance to spend scarce tax dollars in lower-priority ways and therefore do increasingly less in the places facing the greatest dangers?

The so-called “Healthy Forest Initiative” isn’t about health or forests, and the only initiatives are to eliminate public input and gut environmental protections. To the Bush administration, the fires are a smokescreen, hiding their real goal of helping GOP timber industry contributors, who make their money miles from the homes, communities, and people at greatest risk.

Follow the money, people. For the past three years, the Republicans in Washington have pointed fingers at environmentalists, all while funding fewer and fewer acres for fuel reduction programs in the areas facing the greatest dangers from fire.

If they actually considered forest health important, the Bush administration would devote resources to it. They’re responsible for this job. They haven’t done it.

Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Flat To Me

This column drew a letter to the editor today, who said I was all wet because the rich pay more in income taxes--the same old misdirection, that no taxes could possibly matter other than income taxes, suckers. Remember when those guys wanted to privatize Social Security but now just consider it an investment and not a tax so they can make these ridiculous arguments?


HOW TO MAKE TAX SYSTEM LESS REGRESSIVE
East Valley Tribune, Jun. 22, 2003

My side will miss a pretty big bet if we don’t support a “flat tax” at the state and local level.

Right-wingers are upset with Gov. Janet Napolitano’s citizen’s fiscal study commission because of its decision not to consider a so-called flat tax. The commissioners prefer to spend their time studying more “politically feasible” alternatives.

But during the past 50 years, the percentage of income paid by those in the top tier has been steadily reduced. In the 1960’s, millionaires paid a much larger share in taxes than did the middle class, without too much complaining. Today, millionaires pay basically the same percentage as do the middle and lower classes, and the whining of the rich never ceases.

The federal tax system is now only slightly progressive, while state and local taxes fall more heavily, in percentage terms, on those below the top. Whatever progressivity remains in the federal tax code -- even before these latest tax cuts, which gave the vast majority of benefits to those at the very top -- is overcome by the regressivity of state and local taxes. We already have a flat tax in this country; everybody basically pays the same percentage.

So a flat tax at the state and local level would be an improvement. If people at different percentiles paid the same share of their incomes to the state and cities, we’d have a more progressive tax system -- unlike today’s arrangement in Arizona, which asks more of working families and the middle class than the rich. Going “flat” at the state and local level might help compensate for these federal tax breaks to top-tier earners, making the overall system not quite so unfair to those not already rich.

Pointing out the “class warfare” aspects of GOP tax policy -- how we’re changing the system so that the top 1 percent pay a lesser share and the “bottom 99 percent” pay more -- is supposedly (according to polls!) not effective, because people always overestimate their own percentile. Just as every child in Lake Wobegon is above average, apparently some 40 percent of Americans think they are (or will be) in the top 1 percent.

I admire that kind of optimism. So instead of percentages, let’s talk actual numbers. Our current tax system is like an airport ticket counter. There are incredibly long lines, and nobody understands ticket pricing due to bizarrely complex and constantly changing fares.

The vast majority -- the “bottom 99 percent” -- must wait in long, slow-moving lines. There’s a much shorter “first class” line, where people get whisked through security in style, but first class requires an annual income greater than $400,000. That’s what it takes to join the top 1 percent and to truly enjoy the recent tax cut. If you make less than $400,000, welcome to the long, slow line with the rest of the “lucky duckies.”

People traveling coach soon discover that while they’re still paying about the same for their tickets as before -- after all, for the person making $100,000 or less, the tax cuts meant only “chump change” -- this particular airline has slashed the cost of first class travel. It still costs more to fly first class, but a lot less than it did. It also means that first class travelers now pay a much smaller percentage of their incomes than do coach flyers for the same trip.

That’s “Bush Tax-Cut Airlines” for you. The skies are friendlier for people making at least $400,000. But the vast majority get long lines, high prices, and bad service. So keep your seatbelts buckled, and don’t even think about using that first class lavatory.

More on "Yellow Rain"

I'm responding to a letter to the editor objecting to the reference to the unproven "yellow rain" allegations in my June 9 column (link not functioning).

MUCH EVIDENCE REFUTES 'YELLOW RAIN' CHARGE
East Valley Tribune, Jun. 15, 2003

Bill Laurie of Mesa wrote a letter in last Thursday’s Tribune claiming that the Reagan administration “yellow rain” claims were really true. I’ll never convince grassy knoll types, but “yellow rain” shows how GOP administrations stretch intelligence to fit ideological requirements.

First, while recently declassified CIA documents indicate that the USSR tried to develop mycotoxin weapons, they contained no evidence the Soviets actually used any.

Second, the “yellow rain” theory cannot explain the high levels of pollens in the samples. Pollen isn’t an effective dispersal agent. Citing sample contamination won’t work, because that undermines whether the samples -- not taken under controlled conditions, and lacking a chain of custody -- were valid.

Third, Meselson isn’t the only opponent of Seagrave (whose book, now out of print, was published in 1981) and Hamilton-Merritt. Meselson’s explanation also was supported by Seeley, Sarver, and Porton.

Fourth, the “bee feces” explanation got additional confirmation in June 2002, when a bee swarm in West Bengal province, near Calcutta, India, caused more “yellow rain.” “Bee feces” may sound funny, but it's been documented, multiple times.

Thus, while Meselson and Seeley’s explanation has been duplicated, nobody has found hard evidence of mycotoxins in any Southeast Asia battle zone -- no shell casings, dispersal devices, or residues. The Reagan administration-Seagrave hypothesis also depends on claims about secret evidence still not public, even 20 years later.

Fifth, the interviews with Hmong refugees have been widely discredited. Hamilton-Merritt did wonderful work among the Hmong, but the government’s investigatory interviews were contradictory, selective, and overstated.

Finally, for those confused by the science, recall that The Wall Street Journal editorial page made “yellow rain” a crusade, devoting almost as much ink as to Whitewater. If the “yellow rain” theory were proven, wouldn’t they be trumpeting it, now that the Bush administration cannot justify pre-war assertions that Iraq represented an imminent threat?

The silence simply thunders.

Getting Our Money's Worth

The headline's not quite accurate, as my point involved not just federal spending but also state budgets, which particular bullet we may have dodged here in Arizona, at least this year, but the threats to funding for developmental disabilities--to pick an example about which I often write--will return again anon.


BUSH'S TAX CUTS WILL TOUCH YOUR LIFE -- HARD
East Valley Tribune, Jun. 15, 2003

As Thomas Friedman of The New York Times wrote last week (he supported the Iraq war, so you’re obliged to listen), start deciding what you will do without.

With the budget battles at both the state and federal level winding down, start figuring out what services you won’t get anymore. Everybody loves getting something for less than its cost, or even for nothing. But that’s no formula for long-term survival, much less success.

That’s what all these tax cuts mean. Arizona fixed this year’s budget with federal bailout funds, but we’re committed, at both the state and federal levels, to paying less. So start thinking about getting less.

Do you prefer fewer cops, prosecutors, judges, trials, or prison sentences? Even if nobody moves to Arizona, there’s inflation, and people in the system expect to earn more as they gain experience. Just keeping up costs more each year.

But as Arizona grows, we’ll have more crooks and scoundrels. You can’t handle a larger problem effectively using the same numbers of people and money. Without more of both, we stretch the system even thinner -- and the crime that falls through the cracks could be the one against you.

Everybody must get less. We have to pay interest on the rapidly-increasing national debt; the alternative minimum tax (AMT) needs fixed, and then there’s that Medicare prescription drug benefit. Military spending is increasing rapidly, and the Bush administration wants to spend billions on a missile defense system that will be built first and tested, if at all, later. That’s a pretty long line.

With less to go around, seniors on Medicare will get less health care, or their physicians and hospitals will get paid less. Veterans will find longer lines and fewer benefits. College students will graduate with greater debts.

We can’t hire more border patrol agents, buy more high-tech weapons, protect civilian airliners from terrorist attack with electronic flares, and funnel money to so-called faith-based charities and cut spending simultaneously.

Forget about doing anything new. Take one example: A permanent death benefit for fire and emergency workers. How can we pay for an entirely new discretionary spending program, when Congress and the Bush administration have committed us to spend less in that category, in real terms, than now?

Oh, nominal spending numbers may increase eventually, due to inflation. But inflation, advances in technology, and population growth mean getting less because (on average, anyway) we’re paying less. (You may not notice, because those big breaks for the rich really skew the averages.) You’ll do without, or else pay more for services you now get. Forget dreaming about some big new program. The future is clearly less, not more.

We’re way beyond throwing out bathwater; with the Arizona legislature considering cutting funding for prenatal care and caring for premature births, we’re throwing out the babies. The new state budget makes it more expensive to adopt special-needs kids with disabilities, too.

The next time somebody -- like my friends on The Tribune editorial page -- talks generally about cutting spending, stop them. It’s not abstract anymore. We’re cutting services, by the billions. Make ‘em tell you specifically what they want you to give up.

Sure, you may not have an autistic kid, so that budget cut won’t bankrupt your family. But you, or somebody on whom you depend, probably get something out of the social compact, whether it’s Medicare, a state university, your kids’ public school, or even a government job.

Figure out what you’re willing to do without, because something’s gotta give. And it isn’t going to be the big tax breaks for people making more than $330,000 a year.