The Candidate Forums...

I've now attended three forums, but before I discuss them and some conclusions, here are links to interviews with the candidates and  local forum video from  BTV10:
Print:

• Cascadia Weekly Interview with the Mayoral and County Executive Candidates
• Bellingham Herald Election Questionnaire
• Whatcom Watch Election Edition 
• Candidate Forum on Human Services

Media:

• League of Women Voters Candidate Forum:Includes discussions of State Initiatives and Amendments as well as the Whatcom County Charter Amendment .Held on Oct 15, 2011.
• Human Services Candidate Forum:Includes races for Sheriff, County Council, County Executive, Bellingham City Council and Bellingham Mayor. Held on Oct 12, 2011.
• League of Women Voters Candidate Forum Bellingham Mayor, Bellingham City Council, and Port Commissioners held on Sep 29, 2011.

The Human Services, Transition Whatcom, and Whatcom Progressive Solidarity Forums were vastly different structured forums: different formats, time limits, content. But all three offered excellent information on the issues and the candidates.  With the exception of the Human Services forum, these debates were not well attended. And that is the single biggest observation I have taken from my participation.  There will some number of forums yet to come, with the WWU forum and another League of Women Voters forum happening this Thursday evening, October 2oth.

I won't make any comments on the forum material or the candidates at this point, only to say that the print and especially media above is well worth watching.  Seeing the candidates answer questions in person is really, really important.  It gives the viewer not only a feel for the candidates but a feel for the issues and problems of local government.  Important facts are disbursed that are not easily available elsewhere.  It bothers me that local government is not given more attention by many of the professionals, students, and activists that inhabit this county and city. I know it is hard to make the debates. We all have families and jobs.  But you are missing out if you do not make a point to go.  We will not make any changes in our country, local or otherwise, if we don't start occupying our government. Now is a really good chance to hear the uncensored grist of those who work for you at a local level.

Bank Transfer Day

In the spirit of the fifth of November, a woman named Kristen Christian has organized a facebook page called "Bank Transfer Day":

"Together we can ensure that these banking institutions will ALWAYS remember the 5th of November!! If the 99% removes our funds from the major banking institutions to non-profit credit unions on or by this date, we will send a clear message to the 1% that conscious consumers won't support companies with unethical business practices.

• Research your local credit union options

• Open an account with the one that best suits your needs
• Cancel all automatic withdrawals & deposits
• Transfer your funds to the new account
• Follow your bank's procedures to close your account on or before 11/05"

It is an engaging idea at first  glance: pump money into your local credit union and away from multi-national banks. After all, who wouldn't consider doing this after reading the information that resulted from Bloomberg's long sought FOIA on the activities of the Federal Reserve's discount window during 2008 and 2009:

• http://www.bloomberg.com/data-visualization/federal-reserve-emergency-lending/
• http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html
• http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-01/foreign-banks-tapped-fed-s-lifeline-most-as-bernanke-kept-borrowers-secret.html
• http://www.governmentattic.org/4docs/BloombergFOIA2008-356.pdf
• http://www.zerohedge.com/article/excel-breakdown-all-discount-window-users-between-march-2008-2009?

Or perhaps you are just really pissed because your a small business person and can not get a loan? And then you read in the Wall Street Journal that "More than half of $4 billion in federal funds disbursed this year to spur small-business lending by community banks was used to repay bailout funds that the banks received under the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program."

Or maybe you are just tired of getting stuck with debit card fees and high overdrawn fees?  Or maybe you just finished Phil Angelides and crew excellent report on The Financial Crisis: Inquiry Report and haven't been able to stop vomiting? Or maybe you are just really upset that high rolling corporate men like the Koch brothers can "flout the law" and unduly influence grass roots political movements?

Or maybe you are one of tens of millions in the ranks of the permanently unemployed, your family has been through bankruptcy and you have lost your home due to foreclosure. Oh yeah brothers and sisters, you just might be one of those...In any event, "Bank Transfer Day" might be for you.

Robert Reich and Paul Krugman

Robert Reich destroys the fallacious economic arguments of the right wing in less than three minutes:



Paul Krugman outlines the "Panic of the Plutocrats"

"And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park."

Upcoming political forums!!

Bellingham Herald reporter Jared Paben has posted at length on upcoming political forums in the Whatcom County.  I've pulled off four and attached links. These four are:

• Bellingham located
• Evening Time slots
• Hosted by local political organizations and (wait for it...)
• Free to the general public!

Host	Location	Date/Time	Who
Opportunity Council and others	Bellingham Muni Court 2014 C ST.	10/12 5:30 – 8:30 PM	All candidates invited...
Transition Whatcom	Whatcom County Court House 311 Grand Ave.	10/14 7:30 – 9:30 PM	County Exec and Bellingham Mayor
League of Women Voters	Bellingham Muni Court 2014 C ST.	10/20 6 – 8 PM	County Exec and Council
WWU Student Government	WWU Performing Arts Center	10/20 5-7  PM	Bellingham Mayoral

Obviously, you will have choose between the last two as they are in similar time slots, although a pair of strong legs could help you get between the the first half of one and second half of the other!  I strongly recommend "The Candidate Forum on Human Services"  on October 12th which is being broadcast live on BTV10. I have attended  and blogged about this forum for each of the last two years (2009, 2010) and I find the content and presentation revealing.  "The Candidate Forum on Human Services"  asks questions of the candidates about poverty, hunger, and homelessness which are very serious problems in Whatcom County.  I find candidate responses to these questions reveal much about the candidates as people and administrators.  I'm going to try to cover all these events.  I hope you make it there as well. Come early to get a seat!

The protests spread across the country and the world this weekend...

There are now meetups and or occupiers in Friday Harbor, Anacortes, Mt. Vernon, Bellingham, Victoria, Vancouver among the 1297 occupy together communities as of 10/09/2011 9:00 PM PST.

Watch this video through to the end until an elderly women says, "I am so proud of Houston. We are no longer dormant."  When Houston goes revolutionary, not too many cities can be far behind.

A peaceful and productive first rally...

Several hundred (or more) protesters ("the 99%") marched peacefully through the streets of downtown Bellingham tonight to protest the inequality of wealth in our country. These protests are taking place literally in hundreds of cities across the United States and tonight's march in Bellingham showed just how deep the understanding and intuition of the malfeasance that corporate capitalism has foisted upon our country's socio-economic fabric.   Unlike the "Tea Party", there is no apparent big money behind these "occupations" or "rallies".  People across the nation seem to understand almost as one body that corporate capitalism and greed has sucked the wealth and prosperity out of our schools, governments, and families. The long standing imperialist wars our country has fought overseas,  the lack of appropriate taxation of the wealthy, and the unregulated, undisciplined excess of the leaders of our financialized economy has created grass roots discontent across a wide fabric. These were hardly just the young or students in this rally.  These protests will not stop or fade as long as joblessness, poverty, and inequality of wealth continue to maintain prominent profiles across small town America.

Here in Bellingham tonight there was no use of 'kettling', 'pepper spray', or any other evidence of 'police brutality'.  Our police department appeared to concentrate on creating a safe space for the protesters downtown to march despite the interruption of traffic.    Other municipalities could use some notes from the BPD on how to protect a democratic populace and allow for freedom of assembly simultaneously. These protesters are going to come back every Friday. I suggest we all join them. Too much financial collapse has gone on for too long, too many have lost their jobs, too many have lost their homes. At some point, if we wish our country to survive, we will have to work together to build an economic system not based upon "market forces" but upon deep and well-regarded principles of humanitarianism.

Occupy Bellingham is here!

Occupy Bellingham is here! and in 500 other cities including Washington D.C. and Wall Street. Occupy Bellingham is having a solidarity march Friday at the Federal Courthouse downtown from 4 - 7 PM:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-Bellingham/129622153804379
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=258059057563507

The struggle in New York continues. The teamsters joined the march yesterday with other unions.  True to history, the Guardian is covering the event as thoroughly as any other American paper:

Why the next five days are a critical part of the election period...

The next five days are a critical part of the election period.  Until October 10, you can register online and submit a change of address form in Washington State. After that you can walk into the Whatcom County Courthouse and do so in person until October 31st.  You must submit a change of address if you expect to receive by mail your printed ballot materials in  a timely manner.  I recommend that everyone check to make sure their registration is up to date, especially so if you are a returning student (with a new address). My site RMFMedia will be doing its best to help!!  Please register to vote!!

The Mayoral and County Executive Funding Races Through 09.30. 2011 : Part I

Last night I downloaded the Bellingham Mayoral and Whatcom County Executive funding data from the PDC (through September 30,2011?). I sorted the "cash contributions" of funding of each candidate by amount, count, and "populist ratio" (a synthetic statistic). You will have to click on the image below to enlarge. The spreadsheet data for this blog post can be found here.

The revolution will be multicast....

Register to Vote for the 2011 General Election!!!

"OMG!! Did I remember to register to vote?!"

MAKE SURE TO REGISTER TO VOTE!!!
October 10th is the standard deadline for voter registration for the 2011 final election in the state of Washington.

Here are some important links:

Visualizing Cherry Point...

The first few cars of a coal train make their way through Boulevard Park in Bellingham, WA.

Imagine the sheer audacity and arrogance of a capitalist society from the perspective of the local level.  For at least the last ten years, the residents of the city of Bellingham have been recovering from its industrial past, removing industrial plants from its waterfront, pursuing redevelopment plans, strengthening its downtown core, and developing a first rate economy based on education, health, and a progressive government.  While doing so, this city has attracted numerous ex-urbans, retirees, and wealthy immigrants, all who want to share in the growth of this small city with such mesmerizing beauty. Hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars have flooded into Whatcom County banking system on the basis of development and speculation. Now, on the near whim of a broken and bankrupt carbon-based national economy, a few wealthy corporations (with the backing of local, state, federal leaders)  think it is a good idea to run 48 million metric tons of coal through our recently revitalized downtown and merchant districts. And there really doesn't appear any good way to stop them.

Urban Farming and Democracy: Part III

The promise of the backyard

The New York Times has an excellent article on rural vegetable gardening for sustenance in West Virginia.  It represents national coverage for an important phenomena : the nation's families are worried about feeding themselves. Urban gardening contains rich possibilities for local policy and subsidization.  Why finance road building when you could be paying people for feeding themselves and their communities? At the very least, cities and counties could team up with university agricultural extensions to offer advice, subsidized equipment rentals, informal neighborhood markets, etc.   There is a good chance this will happen on it's own without help. But subsidizing and encouraging urban farming might just be a worthwhile public mission in times of economic contraction and increasing food prices.

Katia as it wanders by NYC...

Let's hope their right...

Let's hope NOAA is right!

Five Day Forecasts for TS Lee and TS Katia and the Jet Stream

These are the five day forecasts for TS Lee and TS Katia with the matching five day forecast for the jet stream:

We are Legion...

You have to admit, it is one eye-catching poster:

Irene

Irene from the latest Naval Monterey update:

Why Economic Planning and Economic Growth Matters

Crime Statistics for a small part of Oakland Ca (centered from our previous home) for the last month (July 22nd - August 22nd) from Oakland Crime Spotting:

There is a dangerous statistical analysis being propagated around the press based on some obviously fallacious presumptuous numbers which claims to show that crime rates (violent or otherwise) are headed down across the country for some number of years in spite of an unrelenting economic downturn.  Nominally, it could be the case that crime statistics can be shown to be falling. But no matter what those numbers say, the hard truth is they may not be very useful to understand our county or our country's economic future. I will explain.

Whither the anti Coal Terminal voters?

Most of the Whatcom County Executive votes are in. It appears Bellingham voters will have a choice only between two men who favor the development  of the GPT Coal Port at Cherry Point. Just for kicks I analyzed how many precincts had votes whose sum total for David Stallheim plus Tom Anderson exceeded Doug Erickson's total. That number is 54 precincts. Here are the top ten precincts where the combined votes of Stallheim and Anderson exceeded Ericksen for each precinct:

On Tuesday, we vote...(Primary Election)

On Tuesday, we vote.  Here are some still valid links to Voter Registration information from last year's election.  Here are the websites of the Bellingham Mayoral Candidates:

• http://www.stevemooreformayor.com
• http://petreeformayor.com/
• http://www.linvilleformayor.com/
• http://www.pikeforbellingham.com/

Here are the websites of the Whatcom County Executive candidates:

• http://www.davidstalheim.com/
• http://www.tomforwhatcom.com/
• http://iknowjack2011.com/
• http://www.dougericksen.com/

All I can say about this primary and the upcoming general election  is that the "make or break" issue will obviously be whether or not we want up to 25 miles of coal trains running through our city and county for the rest of  our lives. Strangely, almost no candidate features this issue on the front page of their websites. The second most important issue ought to be whether or not we want red light cameras strung up all over our town. Again, not well featured on any candidate website. 

Building Roads without Permits?

This is the King 5 video (from Monday) on the controversy created by Carl Weimer's discovery of extensive road building efforts at the Gateway Pacific Terminal site by SSA Marine:

This issue is getting lots of local discussion (1,2,3,4,5,6).  Is building roads without permits a classic expression of the lawlessness and arrogance of "The Carbon Club"?  Something akin, perhaps, to shipping coal without covered train cars? Or maybe creating global climate change while simultaneously denying it? Or maybe funding reactionary political movements in the United States? Or lobbying for genocidal, imperialist wars in the Middle East? Tonight, I registered nocoaltrains.blogspot.com. More coming soon...

The Violent Manifesto of a 'Cultural Conservative'

"Regardless of the above cultural Marxist propaganda; I will always know that I am perhaps
the biggest champion of cultural conservatism, Europe has ever witnessed since 1950. I am
one of many destroyers of cultural Marxism and as such; a hero of Europe, a savior of our
people and of European Christendom – by default. A perfect example which should be
copied, applauded and celebrated. The Perfect Knight I have always strived to be. A
Justiciar Knight is a destroyer of multiculturalism, and as such; a destroyer of evil and a
bringer of light. I will know that I did everything I could to stop and reverse the European
cultural and demographical genocide and end and reverse the Islamisation of Europe."

"From 2083: A European Declaration of Independence" 

The diary and Manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik is an extraordinary pathological, chilling and disturbed 1500 plus pages.  Largely the product of the absorption of reactionary and white supremacist dogma, Mr. Breivik hopes to become a martyr to his Anti-Jihad cause.  His manifesto is an explicit attack on secular liberalism, Marxism, and universalist ideology of all types.  It includes detailed instructions on bomb construction, arms purchase and training, and drug use for enhanced performance. I am surprised that (a) it has been published by the Washington Post and that (b) Mr. Breivik is so lucid and detailed in his writing. The specificity of his content and the details of his (apparently solitary) preparation are shocking.  Mr. Breivik's document is being compared to "The Unabomber Manifesto".  However, given the white nationalist message of Mr. Breivik's document, a more relevant comparison might be "The Turner Diaries". Mr. Breivik appears to be a Scandinavian version of Robert Jay Matthews, a Washington state based white-nationalist who founded The Order.  Unfortunately, we know quite a bit about the dangers of  white nationalism in Whatcom County and Washington State.  Perhaps, we should offer the Norwegians some help.

Urban Farming Part II

From Our Garden....

So this is not a terrible lot of food, but every two or three days I pull about this much vegetable/fruit mass out of my small garden. The tomatoes are way behind this year, the carrots will need another 30 days to  be useful, the onions probably needed more fertilizer and the squash (although) showing promise, is also late.

Bellingham Festival of Music: Free Performances and Master Classes

Stefan Jackiw helps bring out the passion in  a Bellingham Violinist as part of the free master classes offered at the Bellingham Festival of Music

 07/10/2011 : As an update to this post, Isabel and I have made it to two exciting and well played free performances and one exceptionally brilliant master class with Stefan Jackiw.  I am not sure what Mr. Jackiw thought of my fidgety daughter and my friend Jeff's snoring service dog, but we all thought he was brilliant. Seeing him work with the young musicians was revelatory. All of  the musicians were technically competent, but Mr. Jackiw worked to bring the depth and meaning out of their music, also adding important (and interesting) historical comments about the inspiration for each piece.  As a "Violin Dad", I was very impressed and I learned a considerable amount about the importance of playing the instrument with passion. What Stefan voiced was the implementation of what most of us feel when we hear a great performance, but for novice audience members like myself it was gratifying to receive some insight into how musicians convey the passion of  such music to the audience. Thanks again, Stefan and the Bellingham Festival of Music!

The Bellingham Festival of Music will be offering free performances and master classes during The Bellingham Festival of Music which kicked off last night at the WWU Performing Arts Center.  The rest of the schedule is impressive. As usual, fine art performances are now priced above working middle class family budgets.  But so is everything else anyway.  Someone should be seriously thanked for this effort to connect classical music to the wider community.  So today, after you are done shopping at the Bellingham Farmer's Market  (the best farmer's market on the West Coast according to Sunset Magazine), drop by Mallard's Ice Cream with your budding musical protege and enjoy the good life!

"Gasland"

Mike Markham lights his tap water on fire in "Gasland".

"Gasland", a movie by Josh Fox about "fracking" is now renting at Film is Truth in Bellingham, WA.  This film is worth your time, especially if you are one of the American cities lined up to export coal across the world.  "Gasland" has it all: disillusioned middle Americans sickened by living in a "fracked" landscape, water supplies than can be light on fire at the faucet, pristine creeks that bubble with "fracked gas".   What a truly terrifying and toxic process "fracking" is.  And yet these wells have spread by the thousands across America. Rent this film, and you will never trust the "carbon industry" again. The movie has moved many. Josh Fox is apparently working on a sequel. The bonus features on the DVD fill out the film significantly.

The "Left/Right Coalition" against the War in Afghanistan

This is a long discussion between liberal Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern and conservative North Carolina representative Walter Jones. The two of them sponsored a bill  that failed but showed strong bipartisan support. In this video, both congressman agree that the costs of war are impoverishing our economy and country.  Congressman Jones has a district heavily populated by military bases and retired military. He visits frequently, as did former Congressman John Murtha, Walter Reed hospital. Their discussion is about 20 minutes and worth listening to:

Nationalization, Secession, and Revolt

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate 2001 - 2011 from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics

There is now much talk about the impending "U.S. Crisis" : an endlessly sinking economy, high unemployment, collapsed housing economy, bloated national budget, disconcerted and disconnected populace; a populace that grows increasingly disillusioned (and angry) with almost every objective of the federal government and its empire. Yet, amidst this crisis, Rome fiddles with discussions of debt limits, health insurance, energy policy, 'terrorism', energy policy, and birth certificates. Everything is considered but the will of the people and the health of their communities. How much longer can such an alienated populace live in pain under a seemingly disconnected and uncaring authority?

Coal Trains in Bellingham (and Coal Mines in the Comox Valley) Part IV

Update to this post (05/31/2011): I saw Bill McKibben speak tonight on the Fairhaven Green. Very inspiring. There were about three or four hundred people I would imagine. Bill stressed how global warming effects the poor disproportionately. He wants the "carbon bomb" of the Powder River Basin left "in the ground."

Activist and author Bill McKibben speaks at the Fairhaven Green tomorrow in Bellingham, WA. The title of his speech is:"They Want to Build North America's Biggest Coal Terminal in Whatcom County? Really?".  Here is Mr. McKibben speaking at Powershift 2011 on April 17 of this year:

The band starts at 5:00 PM. Bill will speak at 7:00 PM. I've blogged about Coal Trains in Whatcom County (1,2,3) and a number of groups have been fervently engaged in community and environmental organization(1,2). In researching this topic today, I have discovered that the beautiful 'Comox Valley' and Port Alberni  is also going to be subject to the Coal Industry (1,2,3).  So they are going to mine coal from Victoria Island, ship it out of Port Alberni to....Of course the demand in Asia is driving all of this. The economics of coal export are hard to beat for profit. Canadians are having meetings this week:

• Monday May 30, 2011 - Florence Filberg Centre, Courtenay
• Thursday June 2, 2011 - Port Alberni Athletic Hall, Port Alberni
• Friday June 3, 2011 – Union Bay Community Club, Union Bay

The Sightline Daily has a series of excellent articles on "The Dirt on Coal" including an excellent April 28 article "What a Coal Export Terminal Looks Like"  which comes replete with exellent photographs by Bellinghammer Paul K. Anderson.  In honor of Mr. McKibben's visit, I am posting some archived material on Whatcom County coal mines I have accumulated from various sources. (More on this later...) I have to admit, I'm a little pissed off by this point. I moved to Bellingham to find a safe, clean, place to raise a family.  My wife and I both really liked the Comox Valley when we have visited it. We thought it might be a good place to own a retirement/vacation home. Wow...

But as Craig Cole said at the recent Bellingham City Club at the Gateway Pacific Terminal meeting, "we are a debtor nation, we owe the Chinese $3 Trillion dollars...we just can't go on being a buyer of things." And we do need jobs and tax monies. So I guess we will live with dirt and grime (and toxicity?) of coal dust here in Whatcom County...

map from "Coal Fields of Western Whatcom County, Washington", Olaf P. Jenkins 1923

Waiting for the Revolution...

Just some of the business space for rent, sale, or lease in and around downtown Bellingham.

 "Though national economists have declared a technical end to the deep recession that has plagued our country since at least 2008, we would be hard-pressed to find many in the local economy who feel that is true, based on the continuing financial pressures in their lives and businesses. "  Mayor Dan Pike from 2011 Budget Message

They say we have hit another "soft patch" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) - too many disasters, too little GDP, too much unemployment and under-employment, abysmal housing stats.  Productivity is up, Corporate profits, savings and earnings (in some cases) are sky high but...small businesses and families are collapsing in city after city across middle America. Residential construction activity levels are some slight level above rigor mortis.

It can't go on like this forever. At some point we will either have to:

The 'value' of walking...

The City of Bellingham Public Works department is requesting feedback on the Bellingham Pedestrian Master Plan. They have created a very comprehensive pedestrian survey.  Kim Brown is the public point of contact. If you are a pedestrian, I urge you to think seriously about the value of pedestrian walkways and pedestrian safety in your neighborhood. Then submit your ideas and talk about the problem pedestrian areas in your neighborhood.  To imagine the value of pedestrian access, imagine $8/gallon. Imagine a world where only the rich and high paid professionals drive. Or better yet, imagine $12/gallon in a world where the only downtown neighborhood residents are the rich or highly paid professionals and you (middle class family at that) are forced to bus to work and walk to shopping, school, entertainment. For some of you , that world is already here. Here are some of the comments I submitted:

An anomalous event?

Three fascinating studies measuring the diplacement of land and energy of the recent earthquake in Japan have been published by Science Magazine.  The research suggests an earthquake unusual if not anomalous in intensity, energy, and displacement. Science Magazine is making the news and research coverage of the quake free for all visitors.

"With such a limited perspective on the past release and the current buildup of strain, a magnitude-9 quake caught researchers by surprise. Learning that most of the March megaquake’s slip was concentrated on two segments makes scientists more worried about other faults around the Pacific. “If you can get a 9 that is this compact,” Wald says, “it increases the number of places you can [fit in] a 9 where you may not have expected one." "  from New Work Reinforces Megaquake’s Harsh Lessons in Geoscience 

"That the 2011 event produced approximately 50 m of slip up-dip of the historical Miyagi M7+ events is roughly consistent with a 500 to 1,000 year potential slip accumulation period. However, there is no basis on which to assume that the aforementioned interval of 1,100 years is representative of the recurrence interval of great earthquakes in this segment—it could be shorter by a factor of two and still be consistent with the surface displacement budget and the peak slip inferred in this recent earthquake."  from The 2011 Magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki Earthquake: Mosaicking the Megathrust from Seconds to Centuries

"We find a mainshock radiated energy ES = 9.1 × 10^18 J, averaged over all stations and all choices of eGf....Nevertheless,  our estimate is about twice as large as the 5.1 × 10^17 J determined by the USGS."  from "Shallow Dynamic Overshoot and Energetic Deep Rupture in the 2011 Mw 9.0 TohokuOki Earthquake"

"The focal region inferred from the distribution of aftershocks stretches about 500 km long and 200 km wide offshore (1)... In particular, at MYGI near the epicenter, we detected a huge  co-seismic displacement of about 24 m toward ESE and about 3 m upward."  from Displacement Above the Hypocenter of the 2011 Tohoku-Oki Earthquake 

Urban Farming and Democracy

From Top Left: Kale, Spinach,Strawberries,Bush Peas

This is my third year at gardening in our backyard.  What started out as an experiment  to see how much food I could grow in a small urban space at minimum cost and effort has now grown to encompass a $450/year budget and lots of work and 'new' skillsets.  The four 10' x 18' foot triangles have become quadrangles.  The soil has has been thoroughly enriched and every year I find myself creating more elaborate "greenhouse like" structures to protect my new seedlings from wind, rain, squirrels, cats, and deer.

So is the experiment successful? Is it possible to save money on increasingly expensive food bills by engaging in urban gardening?  It sure looked like it for the first two years.  The year before last produced so many tomatoes from a dozen or so plants, we had them daily from June through November - this despite my really limited use of fertilizer. We live in the "Squalicum River Basin" so the soil is sandy and rocky but contains some loam. The second year, I used a little more fertilizer and quite a bit of peat. The results were just fine, although it was a "blight" year for tomatoes.

The Coming Pacific Northwest Megaquake...

When disasters (geo-political or otherwise) happen, people often say, "How could anyone have known?" It is the ultimate defense mechanism of the uninformed to believe their lives are governed by fates for which no one could prepare. Well, here is a news flash on the upcoming Cascadia MegaThrust Quake :  The geologists in Oregon and Washington are telling you RIGHT NOW that we are in danger of tremendous death, damage, and upheaval in the Pacific Northwest and they have been telling us this for a number of years now.

The Meaning of War and Economic Collapse

"The real war, of which this sudden outburst of death and destruction is only an incident, began long ago. It has been raging for tens of years, but its battles have been so little advertised that they have been hardly noted. It is a clash of traders." - John Reed, 1914 from "The Trader's War"

I've cross-posted several comments I made at the New York Times on recent articles.  My comments essentially summarize my belief that the purpose and cause of the "War on Terror" has been to plunge the world into conflict to create a permanent state of war.  This permanent state of war achieves important goals for select actors:

• enriches important corporate actors in our economy 
• redistributes wealth to the rich
• destroys and brainwashes the sons and daughters of the working class
• condemns our society to a future of fossil fuels while diminishing R&D into sustainable energy
• diminishes the power of the electorate to create economic justice

What they ask us to believe...

The leaders of the United States Military-Industrial Complex watch Usama Bin Laden's assassination from a remote camera attached to the helmet of a special forces soldier. 

"Then there are intelligence agencies in the U.S., which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This [funding issue] was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usama and Taleban and then this incident happened. You see, the Bush Administration approved a budget of 40 billion dollars. Where will this huge amount go? It will be provided to the same agencies, which need huge funds and want to exert their importance. Now they will spend the money for their expansion and for increasing their importance."  attributed to Usama Bin Laden on October 16, 2001

On May 1st  ("International Worker's Day" or May Day) on 5/01/11, nearly 116 months to the day  after 9/11/01, the greatest straw man in the history of the world was found living in a palatial estate 800 yards from Pakistan's Military Academy. (Pakistan is a military junta with nuclear weapons to whom the United States has poured billions of dollars into since the start of the war on terror.)  No picture was shown of his face or body which was allegedly dumped into the North Arabian Sea.

Celebrating May Day...

Yesterday, thousands of people took to the streets to celebrate International Worker's Day or May Day. Protest and celebratory marches took place in India, Germany, Indonesia, Taiwan, Zimbabwe, Demark, Russia, Dubai, China, Cuba, Australia, Columbia, Venezuela, Utah, California, Wisconsin, Oregon,  and Maine.  Amidst inane amounts of media coverage of the assasination of Osama Bin Laden, the media has missed what should be the most important story of this May Day:  the vapid expropriation of the surplus value of working classes : the theft capitalists grotesquely mislabel as 'profit'.  Reactionary idealogues are full of propaganda these days condeming 'government' or calling for 'free markets' or worrying about 'consumers'.

Letter to ECY on Whatcom Waterway Cleanup...

04.28.2011: As an update to this post, here is the location of the official evacuation procedure for Bellingham in the event of a tsunami.


Far below is the e-mail I sent to Lucille T. McInerney  of WA State's Department of Ecology on the Whatcom Waterway Cleanup. We have until April 27 (tomorrow) to submit comment on Whatcom Waterfront environmental remediation. Although ECY probably can't be said to be directly responsible for Earthquake/Tsunami protection, any work they do will probably be for naught should the predicted 9.0Mw Cascadia Subduction Zone event happen in our lifetimes.  What I think most people do not realize is that the logarithmic Richter scale for Earthquakes makes a 9.0M about 100 times stronger than a 7.0M.  But that really doesn't speak to the difference in energy between two such events. Here's how the current Wikipedia article looks at this issue as they convert some historical known earthquakes into equivalent tons of TNT:


476 kilotons Haiti Earthquake 7.0Mw
476 megatons Sendai Earthquake 9.0Mw
or 476,000 tons of TNT vs 476,000,000 tons TNT 

Coal Trains in Bellingham Part III

Tim Johnson covers coal export plans for Whatcom County in this weeks Cascadia Weekly. It is worth the time to pick up a copy downtown.The print issue contains numerous, lengthly comments from concerned citizens in the letters to the editor and a notice of two upcoming meetings:

• April 27 11:15 AM City Club Meeting: "Economic Spark or Environmental Clinker"
• April 28  7:00 PM Acme Elementary School:  "Safe Guard The South Fork"

I can't help but point out the irony/tragedy of possibly running 43 million metric tons/year of coal through the South Fork Valley.  The closest thing Whatcom County now has to a "start-up community" of entrepreneurs are all those young families farming the rich earth of Whatcom County's South Fork Valley. Now that they are established  feeding healthy, organic local produce to residents of the Northwest, of course we are going to run coal right through their farming. Yep, we really support small business here in the Northwest... By the way, if you don't think coal is dirty and dangerous, just plug the phrase "coal ash" into Google... Or read this article...

A poster child for overbuilding and lack of middle class jobs

The Fourth Corner is a poster child for overbuilding and lack of middle class jobs. With an aging population, Whatcom County's housing market is traveling in one direction only. Down. I posted a bitmap of the Realty Trac's foreclosure stats.

Magdalena's Creperie

09/26/2011 Update:
I ordered the 'Chef's Special' crepe sometime last week: Incredible folded triangle with wholesome, delicious, filling ingredients and pot of french press!  I hope this restaurant continues to do well and make it. If  we were flush, I would be a regular.

Magdalena Thiesen (and friends I think) have run for quite some months now, an excellent Polish restaurant in the Fairhaven district of Bellingham, WA.  Magdalena apparently hails from Lubin, Poland and has brought her knowledge of her country's cuisine with her. The exterior of Magdalena's Creperie is almost non-descript, which provides a convenient reason for me to apologize for not sampling Magdalena's heart-warming and wholesome faire much earlier.

The interior of Magdalena's Creperie somehow reminds me of a home. Not a dirty, dusty home, but a tall grand home with high ceilings and a warming tile floor and friendly people in the kitchen. (The service, by the way, was extraordinarily friendly without being ostentatious.)  I selected today, from the many menu choices, a cup of borscht soup and a 1/2 salmon sandwich, both of which were very wholesome, delicious and heart-warming.  The borscht soup, a pink-red mixture seemingly made of  beets, cream, cabbage, potatoes, and beet tops, tasted just like heaven. Not salty or too spicy. Not harsh in any way. Simply very wholesome and filling, as if I was eating something produced by my Swiss-Italian great grandmother; grown from her garden.  This I followed with a salmon sandwich with greens which was equally wholesome and refreshing. Once again, flavorful without being overly spicy, wholesome without being too hearty, filling without being overly-rich.

By the time, I had finished the soup and the sandwich (reasonably priced at $9.00 together), I just had to ask about dessert. I selected a type of  "Polish Pastry" (whose name I could not pronounce correctly) that seemingly consisted of a graham cracker like crust, a berried fruit filing, and a buttery, but crunchy topping.  It was a served with  a pot of french-pressed coffee that was brewed to perfection.  The pastry was as wholesome and as comforting as the soup and sandwich.  By the time, I had finished most of it, I was thoroughly on my way to a very happy afternoon. For some reason, Christmas carols rang through my mind as I exited Magdalena`s!  What a nice lunch!  I love it when I walk out of restaurant feeling better than when I entered. Magdalena's Creperie, which is now open 7:30 - 4:00 PM seven days of the week, is a find.  Next time, I am going to show up at breakfast for a crepe...

Radiation Monitoring Part III

100 Sieverts/HR in Fukushima No. 1 after April 8 7.1M aftershock. 

Fukushima is still today, a month after the Tsunami hit Japan, a bleeding scab of radiation on the face of the Earth. Millions of gallons of radioactive water have already been released into the sea, Readings as high as 1000s of micro Sieverts/Hour are routinely being reported by Tepco, and  picocuries of  radiation are showing up in the air, water, and  milk of the world.  60,000 tons of radioactive water still needs to be dumped into the Ocean. Two Japanese journalists took a makeshift tour of the evacuated zone with their Geiger counters. This is twelve minutes long:

Radiation Monitoring... Part II

Updates (4/2/2011)

• UW has published a paper on the magnitude of airborne fission products arriving from Fukushima (1)
• UC Berkeley Nuclear engineering department is now testing rain water and commercial milk supplies (1,2)
• Japan has apparently communicated to the DOE that two reactors have suffered partial meltdowns (1)
• There is discussion of localized and intermittent criticality inside the damaged reactors (1)
• "Film is Truth" in Bellingham, WA has in its catalog an informative, and touching 2007 film: 

  	Heavy Water
  	A film for Chernobyl Directed by David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky

Coal Trains in Bellingham (and South Fork!) Part II

Below are just some of the latest news items on "Coal Trains in Whatcom County". The project has been 'fast tracked'. For public access to project information, you must register. Sorry campers, I do not have coherent thoughts on this issue yet. I have highlighted in red selected 'must read' sites.

Radiation Monitoring...

I have much I want to say about energy production and risk, but I don't have the time to say it all this week. It should be enough to say that the state of Washington and Northern Puget Sound have good reason to talk about BP's disastrous gulf oil spill and Japan's (and GE's) disastrous nuclear calamity and our new/old "War on Libya".

But for today, I am just presenting the statistical data I have gathered monitoring radiation in my office since March 15. Note that since I gather irregular periods, have the monitor located in my network closet, am not a physicist, have multiple layers of HVAC filtration, using a PC based Geiger counter, probably have lots of radon in my basement, etc...

"The system works...it works!"

"Let me try to explain to you something that unfortunately people do not understand. These plants are designed for the possibility of an accident. Every conceivable thing that could go wrong is taken into consideration...The system works...it works. There was no accident." 
Jack Lemmon to Jane Fonda in "The China Syndrome" now streaming (as of March 18, 2011) on NetFlix.com 

Image From Digital Globe
http://www.digitalglobe.com/downloads/featured_images/japan_earthquaketsu_fukushima_daiichi_march18_2011_dg.jpg

This is the Union of Concerned Scientists report on nuclear safety in 2010. 

This is their testimony to congress on "The Nuclear Plant Crisis in Japan and Implications for the United States."

 

Of Nuclear Power, Radiation, Tsunamis, and Global Politics...

Historical 'Rim of Fire' Earthquakes from "Subduction Zones of the World: Comparison to the Cascadia Subduction Zone and the Potential for Producing Large-scale Earthquakes"  by Alicia Thompson

"...Russia has the best engineers in the world..."

Below is select dialogue as printed by the White House yesterday between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and American Vice President Joseph Biden in Moscow.  Why the the White House printed this select translation snippet I am not quite clear. Please read with me:

What would a Marxist Revolution look like in the United States?

"This ruthless operation to liquidate the inglorious inheritance of the Sun King was carried out quickly and efficiently in the course of 1716 by a secret committee known as the Visa. At the same time the law courts brought to trial about 8,000 persons who had been involved  in some ways with the finances of the late king's reign: over half of them were convicted and either fined or condemned (to death, prison or the galleys) for fraud and malversation."

from The Emergence of Modern Finance in Europe 1550 -1730 by Geoffrey Parker as quoted  in
The Fontana Economic History of Europe "The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries"  Editor Carlo M. Cipolla, @1974

"America is not broke...The country is awash in wealth and cash. Its just that its not in your hands. It has been transferred in the greatest heist in history from the workers and consumers to the banks and portfolios of the uber rich. Right now... four hundred obscenely wealthy individuals...now have more cash, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined...For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond...with the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we would have to accept the humiliation that we have surrendered our precious democracy to the monied elite..."

Michael Moore in Madison, Wisconsin, March 5, 2011

"You load sixteen tons of number 9 coal, and the coal boss says..."

The rush is on to transport Coal to China! Quite possibly from Bellingham. See here and here and here for recent local discussion of this issue.

Madison, Wisconsin is on Fire

Chanting "Kill the Bill" and "Recall Walker", Wisconsin union members have stormed the Wisconsin Capital. They are protesting a bill sponsored by the Repbulican Governor that they claim will drastically reduce their rights to a fair wage and fair labor bargaining. One minister announced, "This is no more about the deficit than the war in Iraq was about those imaginary weapons of mass destruction." There is an excellent blog post by Rick Ungar at Forbes.com summarizing what is at stake.

Start-ups in Bellingham!

Today, I attended an thoroughly excellent first meeting of the "Bellingham Entrepreneur Coffee" hosted by NWRIC director John Sechrest  who is executive director of The Northwest Innovation Resource Center. This meeting focused on strategies to create startup groups in Bellingham and Whatcom County.  This effort has been spearheaded this year by the "BIG idea lab"  recently launched by a number of investors. Our "Entrepreneur Coffee" over impressed me with the amount of talent, experience and will that is continuing to be drawn to Bellingham's startup and high tech community.  I find it nearly impossible to imagine any other community with so much underemployed enthusiasm, talent, business experience, and drive.  Just in our small group today, many different backgrounds and experiences were represented.

Of 68,000 sq. ft of Cinemas, Russia, and Cisco

68,000 sq. ft. of Cinema. This is what is coming to Barkley Village, with construction starting this spring. The leasing promo for this development is very upbeat. It extolls the virtues of our fine city: close access to I-5, three higher educational facilities, 20 minutes from Canada, $60K plus 'median family income'.   Below is what this area looks like now  from the sky. The red oval is Haggens Barkley now. The light blue square is where this new complex with theater will be built. You can see a some illustrations here, here, and here. :

 

Funny, I don't remember anyone asking me if I wanted a 16 plex mega movie theater in my city. I see no evidence of any public hearing on the COB web site and I don't find it listed a "major project" on the COB planning web site.  I have driven by this site many times, as many of us do on our way to the Barkley shopping center. I have always thought to myself that this would be a fine place for Cisco Systems to employee about 5000 engineers. But Cisco isn't bringing any engineers to Whatcom County. Instead, they are going to "fight unemployment in Russia". Cisco will be investing over $1 Billion in the development of "Skolkovo, Russia’s Kremlin-sponsored Silicon Valley."

Book of the Century (thus far)....

Reading more like a financial thriller than a dry, academic treatise, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report may well be the best historical work you will read this year. Or maybe for the next ten years. The FCIC has produced an examination of the financial collapse as shocking as it is revelatory. Most of us understand some of the forces that produced the financial crisis, but the The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report rips them open, suctions away all the vapid blood, and then coolly dissects the players and the partners that colluded in the calamity.