http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/opinion/18herbert.html?ref=opinion
Two Different Worlds By Bob Herbert: NY Times Op-Ed: September 18, 2010 I didn't notice much when a terrific storm slammed into parts of New York City on Thursday evening. I was working at my computer in a quiet apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The skies darkened and it began to rain, and I could hear thunder. But that's all. I made a cup of coffee and kept working. While I remained oblivious, the storm took a frightening toll in the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. A woman who was trying to walk home with her 10-year-old daughter from Prospect Park in Brooklyn told me the next day that it had been the most harrowing experience of her life. "With the wind and the rain, it was like being trapped in a car wash," she said. "And then a tree crashed down on a car right in front of us." They ran soaking wet up the steps of a brownstone and the owner, a stranger, let them come inside. The winds reached tornadolike intensity. Trees were uprooted and blown into electrical power lines. Roofs were blown from buildings. One woman was killed, and several neighborhoods were devastated. I eventually heard about it on the news. The movers and shakers of our society seem similarly oblivious to the terrible destruction wrought by the economic storm that has roared through America. They've heard some thunder, perhaps, and seen some lightning, and maybe felt a bit of the wind. But there is nothing that society's leaders are doing - no sense of urgency in their policies or attitudes - that suggests they understand the extent of the economic devastation that has come crashing down like a plague on the poor and much of the middle class. The American economy is on its knees and the suffering has reached historic levels. Nearly 44 million people were living in poverty last year, which is more than 14 percent of the population. That is an increase of 4 million over the previous year, the highest percentage in 15 years, and the highest number in more than a half-century of record-keeping. Millions more are teetering on the edge, poised to fall into poverty. More than a quarter of all blacks and a similar percentage of Hispanics are poor. More than 15 million children are poor. The movers and shakers, including most of the mainstream media, have paid precious little attention to this wide-scale economic disaster. Meanwhile, the middle class, hobbled for years with the stagnant incomes that accompany extreme employment insecurity, is now in retreat. Joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcy - pick your poison. Median family incomes were 5 percent lower in 2009 than they were a decade earlier. The Harvard economist Lawrence Katz told The Times, "This is the first time in memory that an entire decade has produced essentially no economic growth for the typical American household." I don't know what it will take, maybe a full-blown depression, for policy makers to decide that they need to take extraordinary additional steps to cope with this drastic economic and employment emergency. Nothing currently on the table will turn things around in a meaningful way. We're facing a jobs deficit of about 11 million, which is about how many new ones we'd have to create just to get our heads above water. It will take years - years - just to get employment back to where it was when the recession struck in December 2007. If Republicans take over the policy levers, forget about it. The party of Palin, Limbaugh and Boehner - with its tax cuts for the rich and obsession with the deregulatory, free-market zealotry that brought us the Great Recession - will only accelerate the mass march into poverty. The G.O.P. wants to further shred the safety net, wants to give corporations even greater clout over already debased workers, and wants to fatten the coffers of the already obscenely rich. While working people are suffering the torments of joblessness, underemployment and dwindling compensation, corporate profits have rebounded and the financial sector is once again living the high life. This helps to keep the people at the top comfortably in denial about the extent of the carnage. Millions of struggling voters have no idea which way to turn. They are suffering under the status quo, but those with any memory at all are afraid of a rerun of the catastrophic George W. Bush era. An Associated Press article, based on recent polling, summed the matter up: "Glum and distrusting, a majority of Americans today are very confident in - nobody." What is desperately needed is leadership that recognizes the depth and intensity of the economic crisis facing so many ordinary Americans. It's time for the movers and shakers to lift the shroud of oblivion and reach out to those many millions of Americans trapped in a world of hurt. *** http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/15-7 A Little Missed Sunshine by Amy Goodman Truthdig.com: September 15, 2010 BONN, Germany-When first lady Michelle Obama started an organic garden at the White House, she sparked a national discussion on food, obesity, health and sustainability. But the green action on the White House lawn hasn't made it to the White House roof, unfortunately. Back in 1979, President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the West Wing as part of a new solar strategy. "In the year 2000," Carter said, "the solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here, supplying cheap, efficient energy. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people." Sadly, after President Ronald Reagan came into office, he had the panels removed, and some of them did end up in museums. Environmental activist Bill McKibben, founder of the group 350.org, told me, "You know where one of these other panels is? It's in the private museum of the Chinese entrepreneur who's built the world's largest solar thermal company on earth, Himin Solar. They've installed 60 million arrays like this across China." In 1990, the White House panels were retrieved from government storage and put back into use by Unity College in Maine. To make the case for solar, McKibben joined with a group of Unity College students and drove one of the panels from their campus to the White House, asking that it be put back on the roof. The White House declined the offer. President Barack Obama campaigned on the pledge that he would create millions of new green jobs. He hired Van Jones as his White House green jobs czar-only to fire him shortly after Jones became the target of what he called a "vicious smear campaign," which was promulgated by Fox News Channel. Now Obama faces a massive unemployment problem, jeopardizing not only the livelihoods of tens of millions, but the political prospects for the Democrats. Here in Bonn, the answer couldn't be clearer: Use stimulus money and policy to jump-start a green job sector, to help create, for example, solar panel manufacturing, installation and servicing. Germany, one of the most advanced economies in the world, did just that. Now, as reported in the Financial Times, German photovoltaic cell installations last year amount to more than one-half of those in the world. I'm here covering the 30th anniversary of the Right Livelihood Awards, an amazing gathering of scores of activists and thinkers from around the world. Among them is Hermann Scheer, a member of the German Parliament. When he received his Right Livelihood Award, he said: "Solar energy is the energy of the people. To use this energy does not require big investments of only a few big corporations. It requires billions of investments by billions of people. They have the opportunity to switch from being a part of the problem to becoming a part of the global solution." And Germany is making this happen. Small-scale residential and commercial solar power installations are not only providing jobs, increased efficiency and cost savings-they actually are allowing the owners of the systems to sell excess power back to the power grid, running their meters in reverse, when conditions allow. Here, too, are representatives of the Bangladeshi organization Grameen Shakti, which makes loans and offers technical assistance to allow poor, rural people to install solar power in their homes, often granting access to electricity for the first time in their family's history. They have helped install more than 110,000 systems, often with a woman hired to maintain the system-creating jobs, empowering women and raising the standard of living. Also in Bonn is the headquarters of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the sponsor of the failed Copenhagen climate talks last year. U.N. member countries and other stakeholders will meet again in December in Cancun, Mexico, with expectations for substantial progress declining almost daily. The Obamas' organic garden shows that when the most powerful, public couple takes a stand, people pay attention. Instead of just saying no, President Obama could make an important statement in restoring the White House solar panels to the roof: After the BP Gulf oil disaster, after the reckless invasion and profoundly costly occupation of Iraq (which many believe was based on our need for oil), after the massive, ongoing loss of jobs, we are changing. We will power a vital movement away from fossil fuels, to sustainable energy, to green jobs. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. © 2010 Amy Goodman Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 800 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the "Alternative Nobel" prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December. ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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