DEEP GREEN PERSPECTIVE

Things are looking rough down in Spring Hill. The Saturn plant is going retrograde. GM is closing one production line, and moving the other line’s product, an SUV, to Mexico. Company officials say they are looking for another vehicle for the plant, but this may be the equivalent of saying, “let’s stay friends” when you break up with someone. Meanwhile, Spring Hill, which has grown in the last twenty years from a sleepy village of fifteen hundred to a high-pressure suburb of fifteen thousand, is looking at its future and thinking, “Detroit here we come? Oops!” Maybe some other automaker will come along and pick up the pieces, but don’t hold your breath, guys….there’s a lot of abandoned manufacturing capacity in this country, and you, too, can have a big piece of it.

This is the end of what was supposed to be a new era in American automobile manufacturing. The Saturn plant was intended to be GM’s answer to the more efficient production methods and management strategies that have helped Toyota and other foreign-owned car companies take US automakers to the cleaners over the last thirty years. The plant worked well, but the company’s sales plan didn’t. Workers who thought they had a sure thing because they had such good relations with management are getting the boot. That’ll teach ‘em! GM is also closing two other plants that have won awards for efficiency and quality. In the corporate world, nothing fails like success.

But, at the dawn of the post-carbon era, how could the manufacture of gas-burning cars be termed a “success”? Maybe they should have been making plug-in hybrids?

Maybe there shouldn’t have been an automobile plant there at all.

Spring Hill was gifted by geology with some of the most fertile soil in the state of Tennessee, Mississippi delta included. You can grow just about anything there. The state of Tennessee has a Spring Hill experimental farm that has demonstrated this, over and over again, to a largely indifferent public. Yeah, I know it’s never been big on organics, but that could change….

Middle Tennessee imports about ninety-nine percent of all the food we eat: fruits and vegetables mostly from California, some from Florida, some from farther afield; meat and grains from god knows where—some beef sold in Nashville comes all the way from Australia and is touted for its “organic certification.” To me, its carbon footprint—and the carbon footprint of just about any organic item grown outside middle Tennessee—outweighs its organic value. “ Buy organic” is only half of what’s important—the other half is, “buy local.” Currently there is enough food grown in the middle Tennessee area to support a few thousand people. This makes me feel very insecure.

It didn’t used to be this way. Back around the turn of the last century, a hundred years ago, Tennessee was one of the top ten fruit and vegetable producing states in the country, with most production coming from small, diverse farms. This was not a bad thing.

If the government of Tennessee had had any sense whatsoever, it would have just said no to Saturn and developed the Spring Hill area as the agricultural hub of dozens, if not hundreds. of small, owner-operated farms that could have provided the bulk of middle Tennessee’s food needs—eggs, apples, grains, greens, oilseeds—you name it—well, OK, we’d still have to bring in citrus and rice.

Instead, the power of the state was used to create a multi-million dollar tax break for GM to come in and pave over prime farmland with roads, schools, and subdivisions–which, now that they’re putting the brakes on, are no longer needed, but will still need to be paid for. Maury County, Williamson County, and the State of Tennessee are being hung out to dry, along with the City of Spring Hill and the thousands of families who moved into the area. Gee, maybe some of them will take up gardening to supplement their unemployment….

They’re going to need to do something innovative, because all those houses come with a whale of a utility bill. Thirty years after Jimmy Carter declared that we ought to make solving America’s exorbitant energy demands “the moral equivalent of war,” the construction industry has done the moral equivalent of nothing to implement this. Every house built in the last thirty years should have been solar paneled, solar-oriented and super-insulated, at the very least. Like the idea of turning Spring Hill into a local food production center, this hasn’t even been on the radar of the business and political leaders of this country. By remaining under the spell of the religion of the short-term bottom line, they have seriously lessened the possibility of a graceful, enjoyable, prosperous future for all of us, including their own grandchildren.

This, to me, is truly criminal negligence, because it is our exorbitant need for energy that has driven us into a war of aggression in Iraq,ands caused the deaths of more Iraqis in a shorter period of time than that dictator we toppled—and let’s not forget, this country supplied him with his weapons of mass destruction and encouraged him to use them, all in the name of securing our oil supply.

I’ve been saying that the US had as much right to invade Iraq as Hitler had to invade Poland, but I think I’m going to start saying that the US showed as much sense invading Iraq as Hitler showed invading Russia, because Baghdad is turning into the Bush Junta’s Stalingrad.

But, I digress….our so-called politicians have pandered to the short-term needs of wealthy corporations, from Spring Hill to Kyoto. The about-face of the last election was a mini-step in the right direction, although you’d scarcely know it by the election results (or major-party candidates) here in Tennessee. Spring Hill has been badly malled by consumer culture and is not likely to become a showplace for small farm-centered Jeffersonian democracy any time soon. But we’ve got to keep trying.

music:  James McMurtry, “We Can’t Make It Here Any More“

So, there’s new n!@#$rs in America….people even African-Americans can look down on.  No, I’m not talking about hippies.  We’re old news, and few enough in number to be mostly invisible.  I’m talking about Latinos.  Nashville is likely to pass an ordinance that insists that English is the “first” language of Davidson County, and that says Latinos have to let whites and Negroes ahead of them in line at drinking fountains.  It’s  a toned-down version of a bill that would have made English the only official language of Davidson County and forced Latinos to drink at separate fountains.  Just kidding about the fountains.  I hope.According to the Nashville Scene, local right-wing talk radio host Phil Valentine said that the US should just shoot anybody caught crossing the border illegally.  As far as I know, there are no plans to prosecute him for these remarks, although if he were a Muslim talking about killing Americans who invaded Iraq, he would have been dead meat himself.   After all, Iraqis are dealing with the Americans who crossed their border illegally by shooting them and blowing them up.  What’s sauce for the goose, eh?

At a recent anti-immigration (i.e.,anti-Latino) rally, the Scene reported that a local black minister railed against the new occupants of the bottom of the social pyramid.  It must feel good to have someone white folks will cheer you to dump on after all these centuries.  One question, Reverend—who would Jesus dump on?

The Scene reports that since word got out that the Marshall County Library has a handful of books in Spanish, and a Hispanic employee who teaches English and computer skills to Latinos, the Library has received a steady stream of angry phone calls, such as “I will no longer use the library as long as Hispanics use it.”  Viva Jose Crow!  Of course, the people who object to the English lessons are the same ones who want “English only” to be the rule.  Logic be damned, our turf is at stake!

And what an ironic turf battle it is, when you think of how we got this turf, and who the Latinos really are.  Our ancestors came here, uninvited and unwanted, in a massive, genocidal wave of immigration that overwhelmed North America’s truly native nations. The Spanish, while they enslaved the native people of Central America, never really eliminated them—and so most Latinos are, ultimately, detribalized indigenous peoples, the cousins of the tribes we destroyed.  This continent is much more their home than it is ours.  No wonder some white folks get so shrill about Latinos and their “threat to our culture.”  Historically, this is the Latinos’ continent, and theirs is the older culture.

The other, likewise largely ignored, irony of this situation is its genesis.  In the early nineties, Democrats and Republicans agreed that creating the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization would be good for business—and what’s good for business must be good for the people, right?

Wrong.  Corporate profits soared, alright, but they soared as major companies jettisoned an estimated thirty million American workers and moved manufacturing out of the US into countries with lower wage rates and environmental standards.   On the other hand, U.S. farm products, no longer kept out of Mexico and Central America by tariffs that protected the livelihoods of small farmers in those countries, flooded our southern neighbors, drying up the economies of rural communities.  At first, the unemployed masses flocked to the maquilas, factories set up by US companies to take advantage of lower wages to manufacture goods for resale into America; but then the lure of even cheaper labor beckoned and many factories left Mexico and Central America for China, leaving millions of Latinos  financially desperate.

Meanwhile, the US has been experiencing a “boom in the service sector economy, ”  and a bit of a boom in the housing market.  “Service sector jobs” is a fancy way to say, “being a servant.”  Now, “service,” can be an act of worship, but in this case it boils down to the likes of flipping burgers or running a cash register, jobs which just about any warm body can do and which pay accordingly.   55% of all jobs in America now pay less than $13.50/hr; 40% pay less than $10/hr.
It didn’t used to be like that.  In most places, it takes the upper end of that to provide minimum support for a small family—what’s called “a living wage”; when it takes both parents working full time to support a family financially, you start creating social and psychological problems that are far more costly than the income generated.

The  housing boom has occurred as the twenty percent of Americans who are getting richer build themselves ever-cheesier McMansions.  These people believe in stretching their dollars as far as they can—so they are always happy to hire the person who will work for the least amount of money, no matter their country of origin or legal status.  Americans who are in the job market bring with them the preferences and expectations of citizens of the wealthiest large nation on earth.  They would like a living wage (generally over about twelve dollars an hour), a chance to get ahead, and some kind of benefits, thank you.  Mexicans are coming from a country where well-paid factory workers make about thirty dollars a week.  Seven-fifty an hour beats six dollars a day, don’t it?

So, the thing that happens when you go from six dollars a day to seven-fifty an hour is that, because you know how to live so cheap, you end up saving a lot of money and sending it home to Mexico.  The most recent estimate I could find was for 2004, when Mexicans sent sixteen billion dollars back to Mexico, more than large corporations invested in Mexico.  This money is not filtered through large corporations.  Nobody is getting rich off it.  It goes directly into the households of about a quarter of the population of Mexico, mostly the poorest quarter of the population of Mexico.

So, when a bunch of racist smartasses start talking about sending all the Mexicans home, they’re not thinking very long term, or very clearly.  Every wealthy person in Mexico understands that the US is Mexico’s safety valve.  Make all those people go back to Mexico, or even a sizable percentage of them, and subtract the money they’re sending home, and Mexico will blow up and things will be even messier.  Think, “what if Iraq was on the southern border of the United States?”  Aside from all arguments of compassion and justice, the pure self-interest of not having a failed state on our southern border is enough to keep any sane politician from doing anything too stupid and drastic.

But, can we count on sane politicians not doing anything too stupid or drastic?  The recent history of the US is not reassuring!  Let’s not forget that those Democrats everybody is now viewing as saviors are, by and large, the same batch who voted for the free trade agreements that created this mess to begin with.  Maybe they’ve learned their lesson; certainly many of those who were elected this year ran on “save American jobs/end free trade” platforms.  Will their resolve stand up to K street’s blandishments?  Steny Hoyer, who will be the Democratic Speaker of the House, is known as “the chief K St liaison for House Democrats,” according to the National Journal.  He has promised that there won’t be “an orgy of business bashing”  in the new, Democratic congress.  Charles Rangel, who will chair the Ways and Means Committee, has promised to work closely with business lobbyists on trade and tax reform.  And what about immigration?

The issues are inextricably linked.  The hapless Latinos who are risking everything to get into this country to find jobs are not the bad actors in this drama.  They are just trying to take care of their families, and they would rather be home with their families than mowing your lawn or shivering through our winters.  The bad actors in this play can be found in the boardrooms and legislatures of America, where policy is fixed in a way that tilts the playing field ever more sharply in favor of the already wealthy, and the bad actors are taking advantage of people’s ignorance to turn poor,  exploited whites, blacks, and Latinos against each other and prevent us from uniting against our common enemy—the selfishly wealthy.  When enough Americans come to our senses about this con game, the resulting political earthquake will make last month’s electoral shakeup feel like a minor tremor.

Buffy St. Marie, Now that the Buffalo’s Gone

We just listened toBuffy St. Marie, who, by the way, says she has evidencethat the US government leaned on record companies, TV networks, and concert promoters to shut down her career in the 1970’s, possibly even going so far as to hijack shipments of her albums so they never reached record stores. Although some of the evidence looks a little dubious, this wouldn’t surprise me at all. The American Indian Movement scared the hell out of the US government, which responded by framing movement leader Leonard Peltier for murder and terrorizing his followers.

Nor were the Native people alone in being subverted. A covert government program called COINTELPRO broke up not just Black Power political groups but also black cultural organizations, disrupted the burgeoning underground newspaper movement by denying access to newsprint and persuading printers and advertisers not to do business with the anti-establishment press, and a whole lot more. Although COINTELPRO officially ended in 1971, it was surreptitiously continued by the Nixon administration, survived the Carter interregnum, and blossomed into the persecution of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador and and the Christic Institute in the eighties and nineties. So I believe the government screwed her over, although I have my doubts about the guy who says the government killed Buddy Holly.

Nor have things abated. Those Democratic Senators and Representatives who are now supposed to save our asses joined almost unanimously with the Bush Junta’s party to pass “The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,” which makes it a federal crime to disrupt the activities or profits of any business that “uses or sells animals.” “Terrorism” is defined as “placing a person in reasonable fear of the death of, or serious bodily injury to that person, a member of the immediate family of that person, or a spouse or intimate partner of that person by a course of conduct involving threats, acts of vandalism, property damage, trespass, harassment, or intimidation.” The thing is, the fear has been injected into this issue by the “animal enterprises”themselves–slaughterhouses, oversized chicken, hog and fur farms, and laboratories that do testing on live animals. They keep talking up the possibility of violence by those who oppose them, and have used their lobbying power to make outlaws of their opposition. Animal rights groups, now viewed as “domestic terrorist organizations,” have never had a policy of threatening those whose activities they protest, although some individual members occasionally seem to get a bit unhinged and threatening. Provocateurs, perhaps?

And who’s not on the short list of domestic terrorist organizations? Anti-abortion groups—who have bombed clinics, assassinated doctors, and threatened pregnant women. Right-wing militia groups in the US are not on the short list. And remember, the vote to pass this bill singling out animal rights groups as terrorists was passed almost unanimously, with Dennis Kucinich the only dissenting voice. So yeah, I think it’s quite believable that the government hijacked Buffy St. Marie’s recordings and undermined her career. Do you know who’s reading your email?

Buffy St. Marie, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee“

Our Truth in Strange Places Award this month goes to Virginia Senator-elect James Webb, for his essay in that radical rag, The Wall Street Journal. Here’s some of what he said:

“The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

“Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic’s range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.

“In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn’t happen. Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that increase comes from wage-earners’ pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.

“Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Many earned pension programs have collapsed in the wake of corporate ‘reorganization.’ And workers’ ability to negotiate their futures has been eviscerated by the twin threats of modern corporate America: If they complain too loudly, their jobs might either be outsourced overseas or given to illegal immigrants.

“This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries. A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on hubris. When I raised this issue with corporate leaders during the recent political campaign, I was met repeatedly with denials, and, from some, an overt lack of concern for those who are falling behind. A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation’s most fortunate.”

These are the remarks of a long-time Republican, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy, a career military man who was thought of as a “conservative” Democrat. We need more conservatives like him!

And then there’s his famous exchange with Dubya, when he declined to have his picture taken with der Furher. Then things got really interesting. Bush had been told by his handlers than Webb’s son is with the US army in Iraq, and so Bush asked him, “how’s your boy doing?” Webb’s response to this, according to witnesses, was “I’d really like to see him brought back home.” Bush replied, “I didn’t ask you that.” In other words, “Hey, you’re not playing along with the script.” Isn’t that amazing?

Webb said later that he “felt like slugging” Mr. Bush for his insensitivity. Here’s some background: while Bush was riding out Vietnam being AWOL from the Air National Guard in Alabama, Jim Webb was in Vietnam, getting medals for facing down (and shooting up) people who were going after him with hand grenades. I was not a supporter of the Vietnam War, but I have to admit that surviving situations like that takes a lot of intelligence, psychological integration, and split-second reflexes, and I respect Mr. Webb for his conduct under fire, no matter how misguided the whole war may have been.

His actions at the White House and his attitude towards its resident stem from his core beliefs. In a speech in 1990, he said, , in relation to a President’s obligation to the armed forces, ” You hold our soldiers’ lives in sacred trust. When a citizen has sworn to obey you, and follow your judgment, and walk onto a battlefield to defend the interests you define as worthy of his blood, do not abuse that awesome power through careless policy, unclear objectives, or inflexible leadership. “

Those are exactly the qualities he has criticized in Mr. Bush’s regime. I’m beginning to like this guy. I think he might vote to impeach.

Jackson Browne, “Till I Go Down”

Don’t think that just because we’re having a cold fall here in the eastern US that all this talk of global warming is hot air. The rest of the world is getting very, very warm. Researchers first announced that Europe is having its warmest Autumn in five hundred years—then they did the tree ring thing a little deeper and came back with no, it’s the warmest autumn in twelve hundred years. At least.

And Europe isn’t the only part of the world that’s getting warmer. The oceans are getting warmer, and when they get warmer, the phytoplankton that are the major source of oxygen on the planet die off in massive numbers. Parts of the Pacific ocean saw a fifty percent drop. Fifty percent. Phytoplankton take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, use the carbon to make their shells, and exhale oxygen back into the atmosphere. Fewer of them means less carbon dioxide getting taken out means it gets warmer means there are even fewer phytoplankton. And less and less oxygen. Catch my drift? Can you catch your breath? Still? Enjoy it while you can—it could get stuffy around here in a few decades if this keeps up. To quote from an article in USA Today (don’t you love my esoteric, hard to find sources!),

“What you’re looking at is almost an avalanche of each individual effect,” said Stanford University biological sciences professor Stephen Schneider. “As it gets warmer and as we measure more things, the evidence accumulates.”

If USA Today is willing to call it “almost an avalanche,” you can bet it’s worse than they’re letting on—indeed, a comprehensive UN study is due out soon and is likely to confirm that things are worse than we thought.

And meanwhile Congress is back and it looks like all the Democrats’ election-year rhetoric is subsiding. Impeachment is off the table. Immediate withdrawal from Iraq is off the table. Unindicted Iran-Contra conspirator Robert Gates got a free pass. When the ecological rhetoric bumps up against the reality of offending big business’s short-term profits, we will probably smell burning rubber as the Dems back away from doing anything significant about that, either. And things will just get worse, until climate change picks the whole country up by the scruff of the neck, just as it did to New Orleans, and gives us a good shake. That will not be pleasant. Y’all have a nice holiday!

James McMurtry, “Holiday”