Your country needs you now, in whatever way you can help, to keep some more of the first-world infrastructure that we take for granted, the infrastructure that sustains us and allows us to get on the with the rest of our lives.  What do I mean?  We take for granted, nowadays, that a job means 40 hours a week; anything over that is overtime (whether you find yourself paid extra for it or not); workers expect vacations, sick time, timely paychecks with appropriate deductions and contributions, reasonable breaks, safe working conditions, freedom from exploitation in ordinary employment, and much more — all won for us over many decades by unions able to take collective action.

If you care at all about what is happening in Wisconsin right now, and I hope you do, read this article.  Then think carefully about what you may be willing to do — whether it’s gather on statehouse steps or Twitter, Facebook, or just talk it up, or perhaps donate to organizations such as MoveOn.org or Democracy For America, or an organization of your choice — or perhaps pray hard, if you are moved to do so.

In practical terms, in the first world, things work, and there is a reasonable expectation that they will continue to do so (hence our impatience when they occasionally or, sometimes, routinely, don’t).  When you flip on the light switch, the light comes on.  The refrigerator, plugged in, keeps your food in cold storage around the clock (assuming you’ve paid the bill).  Sometimes,of course, extraordinary things happen that can disrupt our lives: major hurricanes and tornadoes, strokes of lightning, trees falling on the roof, record snowfall or freezes taking down wires and trees, breaking water mains that freeze and cause car crashes — but by and large, things work, and work as we expect them to.

Why is that?  Because an infrastructure — don’t you love that word and its overuse — has been built up over the years: electrical power grids, natural gas pipelines, interstate highway systems, railways and public transit, subways and buses, local shopping malls, systems of building codes and inspectors to enforce them, and licensing of skilled craftspeople (electricians, plumbers, and others) whose licenses depend on their working according to the established codes.  Also: fire and police and paramedics, systems of public education through university level educating and training a workforce, public libraries (often woefully underused but nearly irreplaceable once gone), private versions of schools and libraries, a scientific community (now world-wide), a huge number of companies and businesses, large and small, that offer employment in their attempts to generate a profit. Also: broadcast and cable networks, wireless networks for phones and computers, satellites for communication, weather, observation and GPS.  Also: safe municipal and regional water systems, sanitary sewage treatment, farming and agriculture, food picking and processing (canning, freezing, boxing up, packing for shipment), trucking and distribution (there are those interstate highways again), gas and oil refinement and distribution.  And I’m sure you could think of more, many more.

None of these things work absolutely perfectly.  Some of them could be much improved.  Accidents and delays happen, and much worse. But our expectation is always that the infrastructure is and will be in place, and, in the first world, that it will work.  It works so well we don’t even think about it…

…until one day it doesn’t work, through accident, carelessness, neglect, or greed: those massive layoffs and cutbacks leading to job loss and, too often, foreclosure, sometimes even homelessness, or severe or chronic illness draining all family money: we’ve seen too much of it in the last decade.  Or a toxic spill or leak covers acres or square miles of land or of water.  Or, on a lesser scale, the local water company has to lay new pipe or repair a major leak, and the water’s off for a day, or several days in a row, while they do it. Or the local electrical substation is hit by lightning and lights (and refrigerators) go out over a large area.  The price of infrastructure is eternal upkeep and fast recovery.

In the third world, this expectation of things working, and the ability to take them for granted and get on with the rest of your life, is stood on its head.  Everything is ad hoc. The business of the day, every day, is survival. Life is much more of a do-it-yourself project down to the smallest degree. You may have to build your own house or shelter from whatever materials you can find, make, trade for, or (if you must) buy from whoever is selling or leaving them behind. Perhaps you can generate or share with someone else, or a nearby power line. You may have to find and haul your own water.  If you are lucky, there is a pump somewhere within reasonable walking distance: grab your can or pail and get started.

The infrastructure the first world has come to expect is what is missing.

Why don’t the third world countries have infrastructures of the type seen in the first world?  In practical terms, it takes a very long time and work and, over time, significant amounts of money to build up infrastructure.  The interstate highway system here  didn’t get built until after WWII. Roads had to be extended to reach new towns and developments, with intersections, overpasses, tunnels, cloverleafs, even (sigh) roundabouts. The railroads were built in the 19th century.  Systems of growing food and moving it to market have always had to be in place, locally at first, extending and developing over time and taking advantage of new transportation opportunities (rail, rivers, highways, etc.) as they became available.  Hubs of activity sprang up (Chicago as butcher to the world, with ranchers driving their cattle to railheads where they could be taken there — what would Western movies have done without the cattle drive and the rustlers?).  The United States has slowly been building and consolidating its infrastructure since it was founded; Europe and other parts of the world have been doing so far longer.  (Americans who visit London notice that all the buildings there are stone or brick, thanks to lessons learned in the Great Fire, and as they come back to this country by air after a week there they see all the wooden frame houses and buildings here that, to their London-accustomed eyes, now look as though they were put up yesterday and may blow down in a high wind tomorrow.)

My point is, it all has to be put in place over many years, with huge amounts of money paid out to get it done, for all that time. Whether it’s private money or public money, it takes a lot of money. Younger, third world countries trying to catch up in a few years to a process that has been going on for centuries elsewhere is a little like someone saying they plan to be a millionaire by the time they are forty — but announcing that  goal when they are already 38 years old.  It can be done, and I hope for success, but it’s not easy to do, and may take longer than anyone wants it to.  As I understand it, the undeveloped countries with natural resources are selling them off to developed countries, many of them, to raise the money to develop their countries.  And many countries already have development projects and plans underway —and have for some time — that are well on their way to achieving their goals.

I have purposely avoided talking about history or politics (always wise) or even, gasp, economics in any detail. I make no mention of colonization, exploitation, racism, religious or ethnic intolerance, civil wars, killings and assassinations — why should I?  These are all things that have happened in my own country.  But I have lived in the third world as a Peace Corps volunteer (long ago and far away) and I have lived the rest of my life in the first world, so I know at least a little of both.

I can only hope that we find a way for everyone to live peaceably and safely and well, and save our over-populated and over-exploited planet Earth as we do, for the benefit of ourselves and our children and grandchildren — and their chldren, too.

If you are a user of a public library, or a reader of books from any source, especially since the recent economic unpleasantness, you will definitely want to read about what happened when the citizens of Oxford, England held a meeting protesting library cuts, and author Philip Pullman, a local resident and the author of many books, including one made into the movie The Golden Compass, spoke at that meeting. Here is his speech. Readers and town budgeters both, take heed.

The Challenger disaster was for me and many people I knew not only the national tragedy everyone felt that day, and long afterwards — it was certainly all of that — but it marked another moment.  Our friend had been a huge fan of the space program, going down to the Cape to watch liftoffs, talking up the program, educating his students and teachers in the schools in NYC where he was a loved and respected elementary school princlpal.

A loved and respected principal? Isn’t that an oxymoron? But a high school friend of mine and I went to visit his school in Harlem at his invitation, and saw his Pied Piper-like way with the students and children.  He took us around to classrooms in the school, not interrupting them, but having us look in through the glass, and letting us hear the sound of a good classroom: a kind of quiet murmur where students worked on projects, not unruly uproar and not stony silence. He was incredibly happy and proud that there was a teacher, Christa MacAuliffe, on the shuttle.

His witty comments about the life all around him were practically a running commentary that his friends looked forward to hearing; he exercised the same Pied Piper kind of friendly magnetism on us that he did on his school pupils.  His words were never unkind, never at the expense of others.

That commentary stopped forever as he watched the Challenger liftoff turn into a disaster.

A close friend of mine, who also knew our friend and his family, said to me last night as I spoke to him of that double disaster, and taking nothing from the Challenger tragedy itself, now so long ago, ”Whenever I hear of the Challenger disaster I think of him as one of the team on that flight.”

Well put.  And so now do I.

The first link  is from the American Museum of Natural History.

The second link is from the SLOAN digital sky survey.

The third link is a somewhat different SLOAN digital sky release — an important step in understanding the view.

The fourth link is to a news story on BBC.

The fifth link is to the Eighth Data Release (DR8) web site.

Great stuff, in every sense.

1.  With freedom comes responsibility.

2.  Comparison with the past can give context. How does real terrorism begin?   This entire linked article is first-rate, but the part beginning below the box is to me the most important information.  The article was written in 2009, but the analysis remains top-notch.

3.  There’s nothing better than a bracing dose of cold, clear facts.  Are the two sides ‘just as bad’ as each other? No way. Want proof, facts, evidence? Here’s some good, complete, in-depth research and fact-finding.  Melissa McEwan lays it out for you.

4. Can speech that does not quite tell anyone to do anything violent, but does everything else to get a target in the public eye, still be responsible for causing the harm that follows from it? Read this article.

5. The Supreme Court decision of June 26, 2008, may well have marked the beginning of a great many incidents, of which this is only the latest. Check this lengthy list.

I learned a lot from these posts; I hope both my readers will do so, too.

As Hertzberg explains,

It is taken for granted that without the support of sixty of the hundred senators, the number needed to invoke “cloture,” nothing emerges from the Senate alive. The minority can’t quite rule, exactly, but it can, and does, use the rules to ruin.

And just in case you missed them as they went by, Hertzberg enumerates what would have happened in the absence of filibuster and its cousin “holds” in the two years just past.

Read this article: it’s informative and fascinating.  And, at last,  something is actually happening in the Senate to remove the roadblocks.  We can only hope.

Before you decide it doesn’t matter to you, ask yourself: just how are those market-based investments doing these days? Do you like your savings account interest rate?  Have you got a rich relative ready to leave it all to you?  Are you planning to win the lottery?  Or perhaps you’re already well enough off that you don’t really worry about it.

If you cynically don’t believe it will be there for you by the time you need it,  or just don’t care enough to see that it will, then you’re in danger of creating your own self-fulfilling prophecy.   Before this, opponents of Social Security have never made any headway in their attempts to get rid of it, because with all their arguments, plans, and schemes, the senior citizens and others who receive it — 47,038,486 as of 2003 — and those who don’t but have parents and family depending on it have formed a huge block of public opinion that cannot be budged.  Social Security is needed.  It’s used.

And it doesn’t add a single dime to the national debt, ever, as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont  assures us.  Here’s Bernie, in an email to his supporters:

… One of the most underreported parts of this deal is a cut to the Social Security payroll tax. In just one year, over $120 billion of revenue will be cut from Social Security under the President’s compromise plan, weakening the program and virtually guaranteeing benefit cuts in the future.

Make no mistake about it. Social Security has not added one dime to the national debt and this cut will only embolden Republican attempts to privatize the program and increase the age of retirement. Social Security is a vital safety net for all Americans and a cornerstone of our commitment to protect the middle class.

We are not alone in standing against this compromise. Republicans are holding the middle class hostage and the American people know it. I come from a small state and last week my office received thousands of phone calls on this issue, with over 95% of them in opposition to this deal.

Yes, there is something you can do now to protect Social Security at no cost to you or to the nation.

Bernie is collecting signatures on a petition.  Go to www.DemocracyForAmerica.com/NoDeal and sign the petition.  Optionally, you may wish to donate to the effort — but you don’t have to, in order to sign and be counted.

Social Security is an absolutely necessary, hard-won safety net.  There is no other in this country — as we are finding out in the current financial climate, despite all our investments, savings, lottery tickets, crossed fingers, longer working hours, stagnant salaries (if we have jobs at all), etc.

Whether you sign or not, watch Bernie’s Senate floor speech (a 13-minute video on that “No Deal” page) as he lays it out.  I guarantee, some of the facts he cites will astonish you.

For more in-depth background, watch the first twelve minutes of Bernie’s 8½ hour speech in the Senate.  His point over and over is what the deal will cost ordinary Americans — including giving a foot in the door to opponents of Social Security, Medicare, and much else.  You can see his speech here.

Prefer print? Read his main points here: Mother Jones: Filibernie’s Greatest Hits.

Read.  Sign.  Or not.  But don’t say Bernie didn’t warn you.

You have to keep your eye on the ball.  Let me direct your attention to the ball: it was the Republicans, especially under Bush’s presidency, who got us into this financial mess, and who have kept the President and the House and Senate from doing more than they have done (which considering the level of opposition, is quite a bit, and has been under-publicized).

So: let’s NOT hand the ball back to the people who did this to us.  They will not make it better. How do I know? It was their ideas of ‘fiscal responsibility’ that got us into the huge mess our economy, and that of many nations of the world, are in. That’s how.

So, please, and especially if you don’t like the idea of having done to us all over again what was done to us before, make sure you know which are the rascals before you vote them out. Then vote the real rascals out. Let the administration and the Congress do the job you elected them to do in 2008.

One helping of bad economy is enough, thanks, no matter what they call it. Don’t give anyone a chance of serving you another.

That’s the message.

For those who want more detail and some good links, backing up what I’ve said, read on:

The big meltdown took place Sept. 15, 2008, seven weeks before election day.  Bush was still President, and John McCain had said that very day, as pointed out by Hendrik Hertzberg in his editorial in The New Yorker that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”

We all know how that worked out.

Obama hadn’t yet been elected, and when he was, neither he nor any president-elect could have done anything about public policy or government actions until he was inaugurated as President in January of the following year.

Then he did do a lot — he hadn’t wasted his preparation time, so he was ready to go right away.  But alas, the Republicans — despite barely being a minority — were not ready to cooperate or compromise in any way.  Read about it here:

“I still remember going over to the Republican caucus to meet with them and present our ideas, and to solicit ideas from them before we presented the final package. And on the way over, the caucus essentially released a statement that said, “We’re going to all vote ‘No’ as a caucus.” And this was before we’d even had the conversation.” — President Obama

The President went on to describe the tactics the Republicans used.  They were

“…trying to gum up the works, based on the assumption that given the scope and size of the recovery, the economy probably wouldn’t be very good, even in 2010, and that they were better off being able to assign the blame to us than work with us to try to solve the problem.”

The Democrats and the Administration have not been credited very widely with the accomplishments that were rightly theirs, as Hertzberg tells us:

“…few know that the Democrats had their filibuster-proof majority—sixty votes, not all of them reliable—for just seven of the Obama Administration’s twenty-one months. Under the circumstances, the record is impressive: a health-care program that will cover twenty million of the uninsured while restraining costs; partial reform of the financial industry; the rescue of the American auto industry, saving a million jobs; and a fiscal stimulus—$814 billion of tax cuts, infrastructure projects, and help for states and cities—without which, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, today’s unemployment rate would be pushing twelve per cent.”

Eventually, the President said to Jann Wenner,

“we were able to wear them down, so that we were able to finally get really important laws passed, some of which haven’t gotten a lot of attention — the credit-card reform bill, or the anti-tobacco legislation, or preventing housing and mortgage fraud. We’d be able to pick off two or three Republicans who wanted to do the right thing.”

Thinking clearly about the election?  Good idea.

Voting in the election? Better idea.

Handing the country back to the people who did it to us in the first place? Bad idea.