After today’s show I went back and watched the Koster/Tea Party video that had been posted on Rick Larsen’s website:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0FvniKzvPQ&feature=related

Larsen should apologize for this?  It’s all true.  And if those are “civil war re-enactors” I’m a monkey’s uncle.  I’ve never know civil war buffs to parade around in shorts and t-shirts.  I would be wondering why Koster was cozying up to the Confederate flag, too, if I had been at that parade.

I don’t really have the answer to that, but, when it comes to the economy, more and more of those who were influences on him and his policies are speaking out against the stance Republicans are taking today.  First Bruce Bartlett, the supply sider who helped write the tax bill that became the basis for the Reagan tax cuts, came out solidly in favor of tighter financial regulation.  Now David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan is chiding the Republican leadership in congress for refusing to consider rescinding some of the Bush tax cuts. 

Sure, cuts in spending have to be part of the effort to deal with the deficit.  But the tax cuts for the wealthy have been a budget buster and maintaining them would be, as Timothy Geithner said today, “deeply fiscally irresponsible.”

Conservatives keep telling me that Washington is a terrible state in which to do business.  Rules and regulations crush small businesses and taxes milk them dry.  So imagine my surprise when I drove the streets of Bellingham yesterday and actually saw businesses thriving.  How can this be?

Businesses are here because people are here and those people spend money at local businesses.  Those businesses are vital to our economy and must be nurtured, but they must pay back into the system that helps them be successful.  And regulation isn’t aimed at hurting business but rather at protecting it.  A lot of people were hurt and a major business was destroyed when a lack of regulation allowed its executives to drive Wamu off a cliff.  And that’s just one example.

It’s all a balancing act that the players (business, consumers, government) must work at to keep us all on the tightrope.

First we find overwhelming consensus among scientists that human-caused global warming is happening, and now we find that the American people haven’t rejected health care reform!  Not a good week for the right.

A caller to the morning show on KGMI recently claimed that NBC’s Brian Williams stated that the volcano eruption in Iceland released more greenhouse gases than has been produced by all the automobiles ever driven.  I don’t know if he actually made that statement but he was dead wrong if he did.

The fact is that at the height of the eruption the volcano wasn’t even emitting as much greenhouse gas pollution as European air traffic produces.  And with flights grounded due to the ash, there was a net drop in CO2 during the event.  And human-produced greenhouse gas emissions dwarf that of all the earth’s volcanos every year.

Looks like we’re still champs at mucking up the planet.

“Judicial activism” is a label conservatives have long slapped on Supreme Court decisions they disagree with.  Justices are supposed to be strict readers of the Constitution and never legislate from the bench.  But that’s exactly what conservatives have given us in the form of W’s remake of the court.

The latest example of this judicial activism is the Roberts court’s smack down on Arizona’s campaign finance law that allows candidates who accept public campaign funds to get matching funds if another candidate who’s not taking public money goes on a spending spree.  An unfair infringement of the weathly candidate’s free speech rights the court says.  Nonsense.  We have a right to free speech in this country, not a right to outshout everyone else.  But that’s what the court’s ruling establishes in elections.

Now, every dollar a candidate has increases the volume of his or her campaign, giving them a distinct advantage over less well healed, or less well financed (by entities who, of course, want some bang for their buck) candidates.  This court is actively turning our elections, and, ultimately, our society, completely over to big money interests.  That should terrify everyone, regardless of their political views. 

Can you say “Corporatocracy.”

I was certain I could hear Glenn Beck’s face turning red as he shouted on his radio show yesterday about someone from FreePress helping to write FCC regulations dealing with the Internet.  Well, simmer down, dude.  First off, people with special interests help write legislation all the time.  I guess it’s just fine if it’s a lawyer helping write police-state style immigration laws.  But if advocates for a free and open Internet are helping write new rules they must be stopped (and, of course, branded Communists).  Beck’s contention that FreePress is advocating government regulation of the Internet is a complete lie.  The regulation it’s pushing for is of the Internet Service Providers, who want to limit access and speed of some content while allowing other content to flow freely for a fee.  It’s about our freedom to access what we the public want to access when we want to access it.  Beck obviously feels that’s much less important than the right of huge corporations to dictate what we can do on the Internet to help secure their bottom lines.

Beck should honor the spirit of the title of his last book and start arguing with himself.

A group of wealthy Washingtonians, including Bill Gates Sr., is announcing an initiative that, if passed, would establish a state income tax on high earners.  The comments on the talk show this morning were all negative.  “Redistribution of wealth,” “a bait and switch,” “stealing someone else’s money” were some of the charges made. 

Now I don’t believe that a majority, or even a big minority, of KGMI listeners even fall into the income brackets that would face this tax.  What I don’t understand is how all these people portray the wealthy as victims.  And it happens over and over again.  Have the wealthy somehow convinced the masses that they must vote to protect that wealth, even at their own expense?  (The proposed measure would reduce property taxes by 20% and eliminate the B&O tax for many small businesses)

I don’t advocate stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but the fact is that the gap between the wealthy and the middle and lower classes has steadily expanded, and the rich are now more rich than ever before.  And, though the wealthy pay the bulk of the taxes in this country, they also hold the vast majority of the available assets.  Where else will the money come from?

We’re struggling to recover from the worst economic downturn since the great depression and Republicans in congress don’t want to take any steps aimed at keeping it from happening again?  Obama’s plan would tax banks “too big to fail” and put that money in an account that would be used to prop up teetering banks in the future.  I guess I can understand why big banks would be against that idea.  They just want to count on tax-payer bailouts when they run into trouble.  Why should they have to pay to clean up their own messes?  I just can’t figure out why anyone else would oppose that and other reforms…oh wait, now I’m getting it.  Someone donated to somebody’s campaign.

Don’t believe the Rush Limbaugh lie that the government (or, more precisely, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Bill Clinton) created the housing bubble and caused the economy to crater.  It was, and will be again, greedy bankers.  Unless meaningful regulation reform is passed.

We are very species-centric and view the world and universe with very human eyes and analyze them from a human perspective.  That, of course, makes sense, since the scope of our perception is only as broad as our humanity allows.  Our eyesight allows us to only see certain wavelengths of light, our sense of hearing is adapted to function properly only in this specific atmosphere, etc.

But those facts and our capacity for intellect lead us to perceive ourselves as somehow different from, or outside of, the rest of the natural world when really we’re not.  This extends into the discussion of global warming or climate change. 

The debate has pretty much now centered not on whether warming is occuring, but rather the cause.  Is it “natural” warming or is it “manmade?”  I suggest that the two are the same.  Skeptics of “manmade” global warming point to ancient incidents of climate change, when humans weren’t even present to have a hand in it, as evidence that it has to be a “natural” phenomenon this time around, too.  But humans are part of nature.  And as our population and use of fossil fuels grow so does our impact on the environment.  That we weren’t the cause of long past warming episodes is irrelevant to what’s happening now.  We are now a population of billions and are having a profound impact on our planet.  We are a part of nature that is, like it or not, out of balance.

Stop the gasps of horror.  I’m not advocating anything other than doing all we can do to mitigate the effects we’re having on our environment.  It’s our responsibility no matter what the cost.