The antidote to bombast: politicians who will listen

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As I wrote last time, the Knight Foundation recently reported the lowest levels of trust in our government since Gallup began tracking the issue sixty years ago. In 1964, for example, 74 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to do what is right at least most of the time. Today that figure is less than 25 percent. 

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An Immigrant, an Artist and an American Mythmaker

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Two hundred years ago 17-year-old Thomas Cole emigrated from England to the United States, where he would revolutionize painting in his new country by creating “wild landscapes that were unmistakably American.” Born at the onset of the industrial revolution, Cole discovered in the American wilderness an antidote to the polluted rivers, poisoned air, and exploited working people that he had witnessed in the land of his birth.

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Washington Menu: Universal Service, Public Service and Self Service

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I have written in the past about universal service for all Americans, not military service only, but a whole range of “opportunities” – from working in our underfunded public schools to cleaning up our national parks to rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, from the Peace Corps to the Civilian Conservation Corps – and nobody ever disagreed.

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Scott Pruitt, Man of the People

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Scott Pruitt, the cabinet officer charged with dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, generally travels first class to avoid people who say mean things to him at airports. This is costing American taxpayers a lot of money. It’s also insulating one more politician from the people he is supposed to represent.

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Draft 'em all: an appeal for universal service (Part 2)

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From 1968 to 1970 I was stationed at ACE Counterintelligence in Mons, Belgium. ACE was not a description of our professional prowess. It was, like most things in the military, an acronym, standing for Allied Command Europe. We were the intelligence unit for NATO’s military headquarters.

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Looking for America: Portland’s melting pot (a series)

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Many supporters of Maine’s governor and America’s president would have you believe that the changes are not a good thing, that they exemplify the shifting demographics that are making the country increasingly unrecognizable to them. Others would argue that Portland’s vitality – and its continuing attraction to young people – derives in no small part from its diversity.

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NIMBY is Not a Four-Letter Word (Part 2)

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Hey! You! Get off of my Coast (with apologies to the Rolling Stones)

In these days of intense partisanship and Congressional gridlock, here’s a plan for bringing the representatives of both parties together: propose drilling for oil and gas in their coastal waters.

Take the state of Maine, for example, which has a Republican senator (Susan Collins), an Independent senator who caucuses with the Democrats (Angus King), a Republican congressman (Bruce Poliquin), and a Democratic congresswoman (Chellie Pingree). All four expressed immediate opposition to the Department of the Interior’s announcement last week to open up over 90% of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas drilling – a modest expansion over the current limit of 6%.

Only Maine’s Republican governor, Paul LePage, who loves oil even more than he loathes environmentalists, refused to condemn the proposal on its face. “The governor believes in a balanced approach,” said a spokeswoman, using a phrase that long ago became a euphemism for “drill, baby drill.” But even LePage seems prepared to oppose some drilling sites to protect the environment, commercial fishing and tourism.

And it’s not only Maine. Almost every coastal state opposes drilling off its shores, which begs the obvious question: if this is such a great idea, why are those most directly affected by it so resistant? Is this just another example of NIMBYs who want to protect their neighborhoods? Of coastal elites who are pleased to fill their tanks and furnaces with oil, gas and coal from “flyover country,” happy to pollute the Gulf of Mexico but hands off the Gulf of Maine?

Maybe it’s all a cynical plot to stick it to the blue states. After all, the red state of Florida got an exemption almost before the ink was dry on Ryan Zinke’s press release.

But maybe these states are on to something. After all, the Interior Department didn’t just vastly expand the proposed areas of drilling, it simultaneously repealed the safety regulations put in after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, while Congress didn’t see fit to renew the oil tax that funds cleaning up the oil companies’ inevitable messes – all in the name of “the most far-reaching regulatory reform in history” we keep hearing is so good for America. Yet no one who has read Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land will soon forget the environmental damage the people in Lake Charles, Louisiana, endure every single day.

My local newspaper noted that Zinke’s call to achieve “American energy dominance” conflicts with our community’s current efforts to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels.

Maybe the NIMBYs in Maine are like the canaries in the coal mines who sense the danger of poisoning the places where we live.

 

Maine coast on a winter evening (photo by Daniel Blaine).  

Maine coast on a winter evening (photo by Daniel Blaine).