Morning Fog

A Memorial Day Cause

An interesting tale in today's news is that of the American cemetery that was formerly a part of Clark U.S. Air Force Base, in the Philippines.  The base was turned back to the Philippines government a decade ago without any special arrangements having been made for the upkeep of the cemetery, which is the final resting place of about 9,000 Americans, one-quarter of whom are former U.S. military.  Now, as the Washington Post reports, a few concerned organizations consider that the cemetery isn't being kept up properly (though to me the photo accompanying the article makes it look a lot like the community cemetery near me), and they have launched a campaign to get the U.S. government to pay for the refurbishment and continuing maintenance of the site. 

What a great tale!  It struck me at first that this was a no-brainer.  Uncle Sam should pay for this; how could it have been overlooked? 

But speaking of overlooking, it's important not to overlook a few points.  The military people buried there, if I read the article correctly, mostly aren't there because they died in battle.  They are veterans of many different wars, who served in all branches of the service, who for the most part ended up in the Philippines by taking military or civilian jobs at the base long after their combat service, or maybe by marrying a Filipino.  Since the place apparently never was designated as a "National Cemetery," or a battlefield monument, it doesn't receive federal funding.  I'd say the Air Force erred in establishing this cemetery at all; the deceased should have been shipped home or buried in local cemeteries off base.

In that respect, The Clark facility seems to be just like any general purpose cemetery anywhere in the U.S., i.e., a lot of combat veterans may be buried there, but Uncle Sam doesn't pick up the tab for maintenance.  I think of the cemetery in Kansas where my WWII-vet father is buried along with many others who were not veterans.  The local VFW puts a flag on his grave on Memorial Day, but the federal government doesn't pay upkeep for the cemetery.  

The Air Force having made the mistake of creating this burial ground, though, I suspect most Americans would agree that we as a nation, and the military services in particular, do have an obligation to help (help!) maintain it. 

Timing is everything.  I'm betting that the publicity for this cause, published on Memorial Day (observed date), will probably catalyze some kind of action by which the USG will eventually provide the funding requested.  Military veterans, and others buried on the former Clark AFB, will have reason to thank writer William Branigan and the Washington Post. 

BP In the Gulf: Not The Cutting Edge

Amidst all the depressing news from the Gulf of Mexico and worries about the future of the Gulf economy, the environment, and even the viability of sectors of the oil industry, we still have to marvel at the technology of offshore oil.  For example, this passage from today's bad-news article, regarding the next stab at controlling the escaping gunk:

With robotic submarines, the company will sever the leaking, kinked riser pipe that emerges from the top of the blowout preventer, the five-story-tall contraption on top of the wellhead. Then engineers will guide the LMRP cap onto the pipe. The cap is fitted with a grommet designed to keep out seawater and prevent the formation of slushy methane hydrates that bedeviled an earlier containment dome effort.

Really, isn't it amazing that we can do these things, more than three miles under water?  Even the malfunctioning blowout preventer is a pretty interesting bit of technology.  It looked as if it should have worked, but I suppose there wasn't any real way to test it in real-world conditions.  Overall, this technology isn't even cutting-edge any more, but it's impressive nevertheless.

After a minor failure in another energy technology at the nuclear plant at Three Mile Island in 1979, even though the danger was contained, interest in nuclear energy took a nosedive (although some deny the accident was the cause).  I wonder if greater caution in offshore drilling will be a result of the current mess, and whether already-reawakening interest in nuclear power will be spurred by a failure in oil exploitation technology. 

On The Edge Of The Oil Spill

Again today, news from the Gulf of Mexico is disappointing:  neither the "top kill" nor the "junk shot" has worked to stop the flow.  Once again I urge, let's face the truth and deal with it:  This is a catastrophic accident, made more apocalyptic by the fact that the end is not in sight, but it is an accident.   Call it an act of god, or if you prefer, an act of man, but cope. People of the Gulf Coast in particular can be forgiven for being emotional (James Carville, hysteria does not become you, take it down a notch!) -- but all the talk of blame, or of action not being taken fast enough, is empty and useless.

Meanwhile, some more random observations related to this calamity.

It's been said already, but if ever there were a compelling argument for effective government regulation of industry, this is surely it.  I stress "effective" since people who say there's no need for government or for taxes to pay for it are suddenly looking to government to handle this problem, or to blame government because of failings in oversight.  But oversight must be ongoing; and the setting of standards, the conduct of inspections, and similar functions cost money.  We can't starve regulatory agencies and rely on private enterprise to police itself in good times, then expect government after the fact to have done a job it wasn't given resources to do.  For conservatives: Ronald Reagan said, "Trust but verify."  Why shouldn't that apply to business?  Could effective oversight have prevented the blowout?  I doubt it, but I do believe operations managers are more cautious when they know someone's looking over their shoulder.

State and local officials have been ducking for cover too, hoping to blame somebody else.  But while there is a lot of talk also about the deleterious effects of the spill on the local economy, Louisianans and their politicians, from Governor Jindal on down, need to think about their own decisions, years ago, regarding the economic mix.  I have no doubt that when these rigs were built, local officials pushed strongly for approval of offshore drilling, just as Virginia's new governor, Robert McDonnell, who has no drilling but covets the prospective revenues, continues to do today.  Risks were downplayed, on the assumption the huge gains were worth the chance.  That may still turn out to have been true, in the long run, but in the short run, some parts of the region's economy will be hard-hit.  Lives were lost, too, but we aren't hearing a lot these days about those fellows who died when the platform exploded and collapsed. 

Finally, I'm surprised that so far, no one has raised the specter of terrorism related to this incident.  Is that a possible explanation for this?  Probably not -- no one has claimed responsibility. It does however, raise the question of the security of these oil platforms, largely unprotected, in mid-ocean.  Look for the movie soon, if not the reality.   

The Politics Of Texas Schoolbooks

For some time now, a mini-controversy has been roiling around the eccentric actions of the Texas Board of Education.  At issue are the efforts of a regressivist majority on that body to tinker with the approved language of school textbooks to be used in the Lone Star State over the next decade.   You can find many internet references to at least some of the specific changes the Board approved last Friday (May 21), but I think it's fair to say they tend toward conservatism, both political and religious.

The above-linked article by Michael Brick is fairly restrained in its summary:

Last year, conservatives on the board changed the state science curriculum to undermine the teaching of evolution, cell formation and the Big Bang.

While many of the changes to the science curriculum used coded language to advance conservative principles, some additions to the history standards were more overtly political. Board members planned to add language requiring high school students of the civil rights movement to “describe the role of individuals such as governors George Wallace, Orval Faubus, and Lester Maddox and groups, including the Congressional bloc of southern Democrats, that sought to maintain the status quo.”

In another passage, the board would require students to explain the roles of “Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.”

Many groups have expressed concern, often approaching outrage, about these changes because the publishers of school textbooks have historically tailored their texts for the entire country to the parochial tastes of Texas.  (That's because Texas is big, folks.)

Personally I don't agree with some of the changes that passed last week, but I suspect the dangers of the Board's textual deviation are being much exaggerated.  Several of these arch-conservatives have already been voted out, so their work can be redone if necessary.  Publishers these days can easily produce different editions of textbooks for different regional "tastes," and surely will be required by other states to to so.   Technologically, textbooks are obsolete, and I'm not so sure kids really pay much attention to what's in their school books. 

And if they do, isn't it perhaps OK for them to learn - to take one example - a little bit about such opponents of desegregation as Lester Maddox or OrvaI Faubus?   If nothing else, our sons and daughters will be wowed to discover that there once was a culture that named people Orval and Lester.  And I think students and pupils today will probably see through any attempt to rehabilitate the segregationist image; even the briefest consideration of the record will make clear these guys weren't heroes and weren't admirable.  

There's another reason to make them a part of the curriculum, though.  These politicians of the past receded into obscurity for a reason.  The forward progress of mankind brushed them almost unnoticed from the road of history like an armadillo hit by a speeding pick-up truck.  Their obstructionist and regressive views were discredited, but just as there are neo-Nazi groups around the world today, there are Lester Maddoxes and even Jefferson Davises at large in the land, and people who romanticize them.  They're the Texas Board of Education crowd, and the current Attorneys-General of several states (including my current state, Virginia) who seek to refight old battles by petitioning to have health care reform declared unconstitutional; and the Governor of Texas (Texas again?) who's trying to defy U.S. law in order to give polluters more wiggle room.

Thus, the political lesson of the Texas Schoolbook caper is that voter apathy can allow an organized minority of wackos to take over.  I'm sure that a lot of Texans didn't think very hard about the significance of the state Board of Education, or even go vote.   I don't have kids in my local school system so I don't really bother to find out what candidates for my county school board are planning, but I should - it can be important.  The hijacking of the Texas school board had a precursor in a similar takeover in Kansas a few years ago (that's when, if you recall, Kansas officials declared creationism should be taught in schools there in lieu of evolution.  With elections pending in an atmosphere of extreme partisanship, anti-incumbent mood, and tea-partyism, voters should avoid the temptation to wallow in their own economic problems, and never suppose that any office up for grabs "doesn't matter."  They should look at the issues, find out what's what, and go vote in primaries and in the general election.

Beyond that political lesson, all the to-do about Texas schoolbooks is more laughable than serious.  So the state that gave us the Inarticulate President has a bunch of clowns on its Board of Education?  Har har, who cares?  Well... except for those poor Texans who would rather their state not be a national joke, or who would like to see their kids educated in science rather than religious opinion, and in history rather than political bias.  They should take this seriously, and do something about it.

For the rest of us, let's remember the role played in 1963 by the Texas School Book Depository in one attempt to resist progress; now perhaps we should label this episode the Texas School Book Suppository, to give the Texas B of E a hint as to what the rest of the country would like them to do with their curriculum tweaks.   

Banning The Burqa - Some Advice For Europe

In Europe* the headgear of Muslim women, especially those forms of it that obscure the face partly or entirely, is evoking a lot of negative public reaction from non-Muslims.  Several countries have banned, or are considering banning, the "burqa."  Belgium headed that direction last month; now France is considering a similar ukase. 

The problem with banning certain forms of dress, of course, is that if those forms are worn only by members of a certain religion, it can appear to be (in fact probably is) religious discrimination.  Muslims in Europe have noticed, and are complaining.  Commentators in the U.S. have noticed, and Michael Gerson, for one, has penned a useful review of the issues, concluding that the French ban is insupportable.

Here in the U.S., we don't seem to have this problem just yet.  So, perhaps it's time for a little more Lend-Lease -- advice instead of equipment? 

Europeans, just solve this the way we do things here in the U.S.:  Turn it over to free enterprise!  Since full-burqa'd Muslim ladies resemble nuns anyway, probably a good businessman could offer incentives to them to make a minor swap of beliefs and "get them to a nunnery," thus replenishing the dwindling numbers of nuns in Europe's cloisters.  Say what?  You find that unserious?  Irreverent?  You're right, that was just my little joke.  We don't want BP trying to keep the lid on women's facewear ... an explosion could result.

But here's a serious idea that really might work for beleaguered European governments:  You are free, democratic societies devoted to the expression of individual will.  Don't ban the burqa, don't challenge the chador, don't vituperate the veil.  No! 

Instead, pass a law declaring that all women will have a legally recognized right NOT to wear any religiously mandated headcovering, and that no woman's decision to abandon the veil may be interfered with in any way.  This leaves the decision to the woman herself and meets human rights criteria -- it's a positive right, not a ban.  Despite pressures from husbands and muftis, I believe it would not be long before at least some women - they'll need the courage of any pioneers of course -- would start deviating from the arbitrary dictates of others.  Their example would cause others to follow suit.  Some never would, of course, but over time it's likely more would exercise their right.  And from the kernel of emancipation from the veil could develop other forms of emancipation as well.

*  Footnote:  The issue is not limited to European pluralistic democracies, either.  It's been a hot-button topic in Turkey for many a year.  However, the solution proposed above is probably not practical for Turkey, a 99% Muslim country, even though many shades of religious orthodoxy, from the purely secular to the radically fundamental, do exist there.

Follow-Up On BP

It's always nice when today's news and views dovetail neatly with yesterday's blog. 

For one thing, I stuck tongue in cheek to suggest that, while assessing blame should be left to a later time, there might be some inclination on the part of the public, if not of their duly unelected corporations, to think about the real need for regulation.  Steven Pearlstein makes this point very convincingly today (and without tongue in cheek), in "Time for Industry to End its War on Regulation."

I had also mentioned the possibility that some politicians would stop calling for unlimited oil drilling, noting that Sarah Palin had in fact ceased (presumably, only temporarily) taking a pause in order to suggest that Democrats (but not Republicans!) received too much in the way of political contributions from big oil.  On that question and a broader assessment of Palin, I recommend Ruth Marcus's "Sarah Palin's Fact-Free Commentary..." today.

The British Petroleum Way

Like most of us who stay informed on current events, I have followed the continuing saga of the big oil drilling platform that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, and the subsequent daily reports on the movement of the slick and the efforts to stanch the flow.  But I hadn't seen anything that prompted me to blog about it until now.

A couple days ago I was astonished to hear the President pressuring BP to move faster or "move aside" so the federal government could take over.  Then his Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, repeated pretty much the same thing.  Not long after, Louisiana state officials, including Governor Bobby Jindal, announced that both BP and the USG had better hurry up or the state would push them aside to mount its own containment effort. 

What were all these people thinking?  What, did they think, was the alternative to BP?  It's possible the federal government has some experts in the control of underwater oil wells run amok, but what physical and financial resources would they be able to deploy?  The state? Even more of a joke.  Other private concerns?  They'd surely do the same things BP is doing.

Luckily, yesterday evening at least one administration official, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen (who is actually in charge of the government's piece of the effort) had the good sense to see --and say -- that BP's stepping aside really wasn't an option:  "To push BP out of the way would raise the question of: Replace them with what?"  Well yes, exactly.

No, unfortunately I think we have to accept that the current situation is one of those events it was impossible to plan for; a perfect storm in which not only did a disaster occur (the original explosion) but the safety mechanisms that were supposed to prevent it from getting out of hand failed to function.  There will be investigations; there will be recriminations; but we should remember that underwater drilling has been going on for many years; the well that exploded wasn't new. 

All the elements of this disaster were in place years ago -- the wells, the policies, the regulation or lack thereof, the poor organization that had the same government agency responsible for overseeing the industry also being partly funded by it.  And for years no one had thought to go looking for a problem where none seemed to exist, when there were so many glaring problems that needed attention.  Accidents happen.  Blaming Obama, (or Bush!) or the current BP corporate leadership, or the Interior Secretary, won't help a bit.  After all, we don't really even know yet what caused it to blow.

Priorities should be getting the leakage stopped, of course; but along with that, somebody -- and this might be a good government role -- should be looking right now at what needs to be done to prevent the next blow-out.  How many of those potentially malfunctioning shut-down valves are out there?  We may survive one disaster like this every twenty years or so, but not one every year.

The only silver lining I see is that this event may drive home some of the unforeseen risks to which our continued reliance on fossil fuels subjects us.  Much the same could be said of the two mining disasters in the past year. 

• Maybe the advocates big oil will stop telling us it's too costly, or just plain unnecessary, to invest in renewable energy.
• Maybe the "People of the American Petrolum Institute" will stop running those annoying ads about how just one oil platform on the ocean surface can run octopus-like conduits to as many as eight or ten wellheads. Do they realize now, as any reasoning being did long ago, that it's not about the visibility of the platforms? (Actually, I think they did stop running those - I haven't seen one in a week or two.)
• And maybe (though I doubt it) oil-state politicians will think twice about preaching that the answer to our energy needs is more oil, and more oil again. Earth to Sarah Palin: How's that "drill, baby, drill" thingy workin' out for ya?

Casting Dispersions - The Gulf of Mexico BP Oil Spill

As a footnote to the ongoing saga of the giant petroleum disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, government officials and BP technicians seem to have different concepts regarding the chemicals being used to "disperse" the oil in the ocean.  The government says they could be as environmentally destructive as the crude oil itself; BP says not, that they're only doing what's prescribed in existing protocols for oil spills, and that safer chemicals aren't available in the massive quantities needed.

I'm uncertain.  I've read that the chemicals, called dispersal agents or dispersants, are really a lot like dishwashing detergent.  If that's the case, I submit that it doesn't matter much whether we're using chemical A or chemical B.   Although all parties seem to agree "dispersants" are a good thing, I'm still waiting for the article that would explain why. 

From my (layman's) point of view, I wonder why it's good to break the goop into smaller and smaller particles.  A video widely shown by all the media suggests that that's what's happening underwater.  In your kitchen sink, dispersants may make sense -- they help the grease flow down the drain without clogging it.  Where's the drain in the Gulf of Mexico?  And if there isn't one, aren't small drops just harder to clean up than big globs?

How To Handle Pirates

I couldn't let Anne Applebaum's opinion piece from last week ("Somali Pirates' Clash with Russian Navy Reveals a Gap in the Rule of Law") without a comment.

Ms. A argues that leaving captured pirates to fend for themselves in a life raft on the high seas (as occurred recently in at least one case involving a Russian ship) is like making them "walk the plank," and that this is a serious breach of the rule of law.  

I'm all for the rule of law but it can't exist where there's no way to put it into practice.  In Somalia, there is no functioning legal or governmental structure, so chaos prevails.  The same is true on the high seas around the Horn of Africa.  Where there is no law, historically, people have organized their own, whether for pirates or for cattle rustling in the U.S. West. Haven't the captains of ships at sea always had far-reaching authority to enforce order and discipline, using whatever measures float their boats, including not making nice with pirates or mutineers?   For those who prefer more formality, ship captains can be provided a set of guidelines for holding a summary court.  So, walking the plank?  Sounds OK to me. 

Ms. Applebaum continues.  Describing the plight of a group of captured pirates who are now in the U.S. courts in the Norfolk area, she worries "how they can be guaranteed a jury of their peers, as required under American law?"  Well, I don't subscribe to the notion that imported criminals should have all the rights and legal guarantees enjoyed by citizens of this country; if they want that, they should get a green card before they go out a-pirating.  But if you think, as many do, that anybody who lands on our shores should be treated like a citizen, I think that's a good argument for not bringing them to our shores in the first place (a point with which Ms. Applebaum agrees, though for different reasons).  Which takes us back to "walking the plank," or its modern equivalent. 

Of course, the piracy problem won't be solved until governments that ply the waters of the area gin up a concerted military anti-piracy strategy.  Evidently, piracy has not yet reached the trigger level for that kind of action.   

Supreme High-Jinks

What's up with that zany, fun-loving gaggle of justices down at the supreme Court?  A couple of recent decisions got little attention as the news cycle focused on a handful of primary elections last week, but these headlines struck me as a curious and inconsistent pair:

Justices Restrict Life Terms for Youths  
Sexually Dangerous Inmates Can Be Kept In Prison Indefinitely

There's long been a dynamic in the legal system between the need to protect society as a whole and the desire to protect the rights of individuals.  The law as a system deals with entire classes of criminals, but underlying it, of course, is the consideration of individual criminal cases, in which the issue in sentencing often is whether someone who has committed a crime is beyond redemption, or whether the possibility of rehabilitation exists.  

Both the cases headlined above impinge on these gray areas, and the two decisions -- arrived at with essentially the same group of justices in the majority -- at first glance seem totally incompatible to me:  The first one leans toward individual rights and rehabilitation, while the latter favors protecting society and the belief that some offenders are incorrigible.

But the devil is in the details (and in the reporting of them).  Regarding youthful offenders, the court's decision to ban life terms without parole applies to all crimes except murder and, while it can be argued that some other crimes may be equally heinous (the example Justice Thomas offered, of rape/beating that leaves the victim for dead), the line the Court has drawn between murder and other crimes seems reasonable.  Obviously the Court thought that "youthful" offenders always merit a second chance and have a greater likelihood of reform or rehabilitation.  Given the right environment, they may be right, but prison rarely offers the "right environment."

As for 'sexually dangerous' adult criminals, the headline suggests the Court would allow such offenders to remain incarcerated indefinitely and without cause, beyond their sentences. The full story is more nuanced:  First, the Court is extending to federal penal authorities the same ability that states already have; and more important, it doesn't grant authority to arbitrarily hold criminals beyond their terms, it allows them to seek to have the individual committed (presumably to a psychiatric facility or to remain incarcerated with psychiatric treatment). 

I'm not entirely comfortable with either decision.  I don't believe "youths" should get a free pass for every offense.  There is such a thing as a "bad kid," though it isn't politically correct to hold that belief these days.  I agree that releasing a sexual offender back into society where he can do more harm is awful, but psychiatry is at best an inexact science, with a long history of locking up people who weren't really ill.   

I suspect the Justices aren't completely at ease with these decisions either, but the decisions reached may be the best we can hope for.