Stop Fat Cats

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This is from Public Campaign:

Tell Congress to Support the Fair Elections Now Act

When will elections be about voters instead of campaign donors? Clean elections systems have worked in Arizona, Maine and elsewhere. If we want progress on national issues, it’s time for public financing of congressional campaigns.

It’s no secret that the skyrocketing costs of congressional campaigns have turned our political system into what amounts to legalized bribery. Politicians feel compelled to raise huge sums of cash from special interests – often the very same people they’re supposed to be regulating.

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Time for a Moratorium on Children?

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Thank you, Al Guess, for saying that which few dare to speak, even by the greenest of environmentalists. In a letter to the editor in last week’s The State, he wrote:

Bob Guild of the Sierra Club espouses the “conservationist” approach to global warming and says we must start now. I agree — with two caveats:
1. “Now” is at least 100 years too late.
2. Population creates demand for fuel use. No amount of conservation will be effective unless we curb worldwide population. That includes by each individual in the United States.

Since the traditional attempts have failed, the only workable solution I see is a worldwide monetary incentive program. I wish the Sierra Club and others would take a leap forward from their slow-moving, somewhat politically correct approach.

AL GUESS, Columbia

His letter prompted this one, which ran today:

Al Guess writes Saturday that we need to “curb worldwide population” to fight global warming. Regardless of how much this tactic may help reduce greenhouse gases, I am disturbed by the inhumane nature of this suggestion. Does not promoting “curbing of the population” indicate a belief that human beings are some kind of disease? Human beings are the reason that we should be trying to improve the environment. The more, the merrier!

GREG GOEBEL, Columbia

I’m afraid Mr. Goebel makes Mr. Guess’ point, but that’s neither here nor there.

The point is, with all this talk about global warming, perhaps it’s time to question our casual attitude toward making babies. Lord knows there are more than enough already here, many without homes. Don’t we have a moral obligation to tend to them first? And don’t we owe Mother Earth a break? She is already drowning in our waste.

Every baby adds to the strain on the environment. Their diapers alone are a problem. Consider these numbers, posted on the cloth diaper service web site Punkin Butt.

For every baby diapered with single-use diapers for a 2 1/2 year period, over 2 tons of waste is generated. Disposable diapers make up the 3rd largest single consumer item in our waste system – following newspapers and beverage containers. They account for nearly 4% of the total amount of solid waste, and 30% of the non-biodegradable waste. It takes 500 years for one disposable diaper to decompose. Yes, while a cloth diaper, if it is ever thrown away, will become one with the earth within six months, a disposable diaper will just sit there and do what it was made to do: absorb. Ever seen a disposable diaper get wet? A child’s disposable diapers sit in a landfill and continue to swell and absorb water.

So why isn’t population control a topic worth debate? It seems past time we give it serious thought. The forward-thinking Alice Walker has.

Her latest book, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, includes a graduation address she gave to students at Agnes Scott College in 2000. She said, “I believe there should be a moratorium on the birth of children. That not one more child should be born on this planet until certain conditions are met.”

She goes on to list the ills of the world weighing heavily on her mind (poverty, plutonium, pollution, animals in cages). In the end she concedes, “You will have children, the majority of you. Some of you may already have them. You will not listen to me at all… Have your work in the world, and have your children. Only one, please, out of respect for the weight we are to our Mother. But be aware that the other children of the world are your responsibility as well. You must learn to see them, to feel them, as yours. Until you do, there is no way you can make your own child feel safe.”

Amen, sister Alice. Amen.

Becci Robbins

SC Trivia

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Amaze and amuse your friends with these fun facts about the Iodine State*.

* ~ Before becoming known as the Palmetto State, South Carolina was known as the Iodine State. It even said so on the license plates.

~ The first boll weevil found in South Carolina is on display at the Pendleton District Agricultural Museum.

~ Fountain Inn is proud of the town’s most famous native son. Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates lost his leg in a cotton gin accident at the age of 12. He overcame his tragedy to become a famous dancer. His signature step was the “Imitation American Jet Plane,” in which he would jump five feet in the air and land on his peg leg, with his good leg sticking straight out behind him. During his career, Bates performed more than 20 times on the Ed Sullivan show – more than any other artist.

~ John Don Cooper is the reigning kudzu-eating champ in Blythewood, where the Kudzu Festival each September pays tribute to the vine. In 1999, Cooper ate 10 pounds, 6 ounces of kudzu.

~ The only major league baseball player to wear the name of his hometown on his uniform was pitcher Bill Voiselle. He wore number 96.

~ The salamander is the official state amphibian. [Insert your own joke here.]

~ Alan Greenspan’s successor as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke, was raised in Dillon. Always studious, Bernanke won the state spelling bee in sixth grade, but lost in the national competition when he misspelled “edelweiss.”

~ Florena Budwin is believed to be the first woman buried in a national cemetery, Florence National Cemetery in Florence, in 1865. She disguised herself as a man to join the Union Army with her husband.

~ The nation’s first “green,” cemetery is Ramsey Creek Preserve in Westminster, where embalming fluids and vaults are forbidden. Burials are in biodegradable caskets and graves are marked in natural ways with a tree, shrub or stone.

~ A husband-hollering contest is one of the popular events at the Golden Leaf Festival held in Mullins each September. Winners get a $100 grand prize.

~ Myrtle Beach has more than 120 golf courses—the most per capita of any metropolitan area in the country. [It’s unclear whether those statistics include goofy golf courses.]

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~ In 1958, a B-47 Air Force pilot accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb on the William Gregg farm in Mars Bluff near Florence. Oops. Although the bomb’s nuclear rod hadn’t been inserted, the blast destroyed the home and left a 30-foot-deep crater. The Greggs family escaped with minor injuries.

~ In 1887, Mary Beatty of Conway guarded the town’s majestic oak trees with a shotgun when railroad officials threatened to cut them down. The tracks were rerouted, and Conway continues to protect its 220 historic oaks today.

~ Darlington Raceway, which opened in 1950, originally was designed as an oval track. An egg-shaped design was eventually created to accommodate a landowner who did not want his nearby minnow pond disturbed.

Tracking the $$$ Trail in Dixie

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The Institute for Southern Studies reports:

The presidential money race is well under way, and moving faster than ever. According to campaign finance data released July 15, White House hopefuls are smashing all fundraising records, collecting over $265 million in contributions in the first six months of 2007 alone. But what role is the South – one of the country’s fastest-growing regions, and home to 31% of the Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency – playing in the 2008 fundraising derby?

A new analysis of campaign records by the Institute finds that the five top fundraising campaigns in each party have collected over $45 million from 13 Southern states.

It’s a staggering sum – but only 16% of the national total, revealing the South’s campaign contributions have yet to catch up with the region’s electoral clout.

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Collaborative’s Collapse?

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The Collaborative for Community Trust was a longtime member of the Network – in name only. This year, after tightening up our membership to include groups that were actually doing something, the Collaborative chose not to re-up. We weren’t surprised.

According to the mission statement printed in our directory, the Collaborative “is owner and steward of the Modjeska Monteith Simkins Center for Justice, Ethics and Human Rights. The mission dictates creating new synergies among new populations for concrete outcomes in social change and protection of human rights around the world.” Pretty tall order for an organization with a staff of one.

The Collaborative and the Network were born in the same year, 1995. The organization was among our first members, and for awhile we held our monthly Midlands meetings there. It was the only time we ever saw or heard from Director Catherine Fleming Bruce. We could never figure out what, exactly, she was doing with the buildings she was charged with managing nor why she kept getting funded, especially since we know so many of our groups are doing so much more on so much less. It was frustrating to watch.

So now it appears that the Collaborative has been run into a ditch. How this could have gone on so long without anyone blowing the whistle is a mystery. What a sad turn for a project that had such great potential and the support of the city. Sadder still is the squandering of Ms. Simkins’ legacy.

Read Kevin Fisher’s column about the mess in this week’s Free Times.

Becci Robbins

New Nuclear Push

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Nuclear policy experts Bob Alvarez (Institute for Policy Studies) and Brent Blackwelder (Friends of the Earth) offered a peek at this country’s nuclear future at a seminar this afternoon at USC. And it looks pretty bleak.

The two talked about the wildly expensive (Bush wants to spend $405 million in fiscal year 2008) Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) – a program that plans to render plutonium inert in nuclear weapons but still useful in nuclear power plants.

The GNEP program raises concern about the costs of radioactive wastes it would produce. Some were outlined in an Institute for Policy Studies report released on April 23. Directed by Alvarez, Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy from 1993 to 1999, the report concludes that the program is likely to cost billions in taxpayer dollars on an unproven reprocessing technology that will generate unprecedented amounts of highly radioactive wastes without plausible disposition paths.

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Challenging Abstinence-Only Sex Ed

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Guttmacher Report:

Newly released data indicate that the declines in teen sexual activity among high school students largely predated the federal government’s major investment in abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education programs, and provides important new context for the ongoing debate over those expenditures. Despite compelling evidence that abstinence-only programs do not stop – or even delay – teen sex, these programs are currently funded at a level of $176 million annually. In contrast, there is no comparable federal program to support sex education that includes information about both abstinence and contraceptive use, an approach proven effective at promoting both delays in sexual activity and protective behaviors among teens when they do become sexually active.

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Constituent Service. Not.

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Rep. Henry Brown

This message was sent by ACLU activist Nancy Seufert about a recent trip to DC and her unpleasant experience with Rep. Henry Brown. She wanted to share her story.

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Nancy Seufert. I am in Dorchester County, SC. Yesterday, I had the distinct displeasure in meeting Congressman Henry Brown after an ACLU rally I participated in. I had an appointment in which I was going to speak to the Congressman regarding my concerns to Restore Rights, Stop Torture, and Close Guantánamo. When I arrived at Browns office, a young lady introduced herself as Tara, a freelance journalist working for the Times and Democrat, writing an article on the ACLU demonstration and how one of Congressman Browns constituents felt about the issue.

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