Break for WAMC fundraising

I expect to be back on February 14 – seg

Well they needed a second Tuesday. Back later today, 2/21/12.

The Cost of Non-Regulation

The debate over pipelines in New York, and from Canada through the midwest, has been cast as the value of the natural gas versus the value of the environment, particularly water supplies. We can have one or the other. But not both. Either the environment or the gas.

Persian Culture and Iranian Behavior

We had dinner the other night with a friend who had lived in the same city in Iran where I had. We missed each other there by a few months. We were talking about the tense situation in the Persian Gulf and what they might do.

Race & Economic Justice, for Martin Luther King

Yesterday was Martin Luther King day. That actually led me to think some more about the Occupy Movement and their slogan, the 99%.

Movements for economic justice have repeatedly had their backs broken over the race issue. In the 19th century, the surging Populist Movement tried to ignore race and bring poor whites and blacks together. But it was destroyed in the South over race. We limped into the 20th century without major reforms although the Progressive Movement that brought Woodrow Wilson to the White House enacted pieces of the Populist creed and the Roosevelt Administration enacted more.

But the Roosevelt Administration also steered clear of race in ways that would have an enormous impact on America.

Steve Gottlieb will be back on January 13