Demanding Infrastructure spending.

Bernie Sanders has 12 points for his plank. They are (I've added priority marks, High=H, M=Medium, L=Low):

1. Rebuilding Our Roads H
2. Reversing Climate Change M
3. Creating Jobs M
4. Protecting Unions M
5. Raising the Wage M
6. Pay Equity M
7. Making Trade Work for Workers M
8. Cutting College Costs M
9. Breaking Up Big Banks M
10. Bringing Health Care to All M
11. Ending Poverty M
12. Stopping Tax Dodging Corporations M

I think that his list makes a good starting point for some concrete demands. The difference between a plank and a demand is that a plank is usually general and nobody cares if one makes it in a particular year. A set of demands is something that is specific and meeting it can be measured. What is needed now are demands that all Democrats can agree on and that we can make part of the Democratic plank and hold our candidates to pursuing. For that reason they have to be converted to numbers.

A few months ago, I remember, I think it was Obama, floated the following ideas covering point 1. He was immediately shot down, not only by Cons but by our own party. Yet this is and should be the first demand of Democrats over the next 20 years.

Demand Highway and Infrastructure Repair

We must repair our infrastructure. This is a critical capability that has to be fixed. According to the Society of Engineers We must spend 3.6 Trillion dollars by 2020 to fix our infrastruture to the point where it is minimally servicable. [http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/] http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/documents/2013-Report-Card.pdf addressed needs that haven't been met. This is a security issue more important than Al Qaeda or ISIS as they have nothing to attack if we let our bridges collapse from neglect.

Infrastructure Demands:

Demand 1: Must have 50 billion per year and 250 billion total for infrastucture investment over next 5 years.

Demand 2: Must create an Infrastructure Finance Authority to Fund and regulate Infrastructure projects

Demand 3: Must make Membership in that Finance Authority mandatory to give States access to match funds with private activity bonds.

Demand 4: Must create a Infrastructure Trust fund to manage SuperFund monies and other investments in cooperation with EPA and State Branch authorities.

Demand 5: Must make all existing Infrastructure Authorities and states automatic members of the Infrastructure Finance Authority unless they opt out. They shall have representation in a Requirements Board and oversight body on legislative & Budget matters and on a Governors Board for executive matters.

We should take money out of DoD and put it into these projects. DoD spends too much money, wastes too much money and risks our country in the process by stirring up hatred and insurrection around the world while serving local Caliph wannabes and Kings. The USA Cannot afford to be an empire. It will destroy our Republic.

 

Infrastructure investment Demand details:

 

Component 1; Dams: 21 billion Total needed, 4.2 billion per year over 5 years needed.

Component 2: Water Safety requires a minimum of 1.25 billion per year total of 7.5 billion $ over 5 years for Water Infrastructure:

Component 3: We must Reinvigorate State Revolving Loan Fund (SRF) program under the Safe Drinking Water Act

Component 5: Eliminate the state cap on private activity bonds for infrastructure projects allowing states to match Federal spending. And put Federal matching activity bonds under control of the Federal Infrastructure Finance Authority or local subdivisions of the Authority.

Component 6: Infrastructure Finance Authority:

Create a Infrastructure Finance Innovations Authority (IFIA), essentially an infrastructure Bank

This would access funds from the U.S. Treasury at Treasury rates and use those funds to support loans and other credit mechanisms for water and other Infrastructure projects. The loans would be repaid to the Authority and then to the U.S. Treasury with interest

Component 7: Infrastructure Trust Fund:

Establish a federal Infrastructure Trust Fund to finance shortfalls in water and other infrastructure and ultimately make these programs self funding. Can also be used to manage the Environmental Superfund.

This is needed because "At the dawn of the 21st century, much of our drinking water infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life. There are an estimated 240,000 water main breaks per year in the United States. Assuming every pipe would need to be replaced (or at the minimum relined), the cost over the coming decades could reach more than $1 trillion, according to the American Water Works Association (AWWA).

Component 8: 500 Million one time outlay to Trust Fund to replenish Superfund:

We must replenish the Superfund Trust Fund by a minimum of 500 Million Dollars to deal with Hazardous Waste:

Annual funding for Superfund site cleanup is estimated to be as much as $500 million short of what is needed, and 1,280 sites remain on the National Priorities List with an unknown number of potential sites yet to be identified. More than 400,000 brownfields sites await cleanup and redevelopment.

Component 9: Levies: 20 Billion per year (100 Billion total) to repair and improve levies

Public safety remains at risk from these aging structures, and the cost to repair or rehabilitate these levees is roughly estimated to be $100 billion by the National Committee on Levee Safety. However, the return on investment is clear – as levees helped in the prevention of more than $141 billion in flood damages in 2011.[http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/documents/2013-Report-Card.pdf]

Component 10: Bridges 20.5 billion$ annually.

Component 11: Remaining infrastructure, ports, rails, waterways, and other infrastructure all need investment too.

But these investments can be self funding and the role of the Federal Government can and should be to provide the banking and investment needs of States, Counties, Cities and Towns, all of which can be funded through an infrastructure Finance Authority and through cooperation across the country.

Little Coffins

Oh, don't make me cry again my friend.

I see a child who has reached the end,

and what can I say?

My tears won't give him life,

or take the pain away.

Or make the tiny coffin any lighter.

Christopher H. Holte

Hearing the story of a child who died of Wilm's Tumor (a kidney cancer).

That is not who I am?

 

This is not who I am,

But I did it.

As surely as if I tied those arms,

or poured the water.

 

That is not who I am,

but while I stood around,

children were raped in front of me,

and people were ground down into concrete.

 

And I said nothing while they did it.

I looked in guilty perversion,

And I defended the perverts

when I should have condemned them.

 

That is not who I am.

Or is it?

Christopher H. Holte, 12/11/2014 in reaction to  Senate Torture Report & reactions

Building A Democratic party that can "be all it can be"

Lakoff identifies what is wrong

If we want our party to "be all that it can be" -- we need to recognize that party officers do not always have the same interest as party members. The Democratic party doesn't belong to the officials, if it is to be a democratic institution it has to belong to US.

To move the conversation forward we have to start with the recognition that our own leadership has been failing us. They've been doing so for some very understandable reasons. Some of this is articulated in an article by George Lakoff that someone shared with me last night/this morning, but that I've noticed myself. He at least puts it into a list of bullet points.[http://georgelakoff.com/2014/11/13/democratic-strategies-lost-big-heres-why-and-how-to-fix-it/]

Brain Pickings "Baloney Detector"

This is like an extended "favorite". The website Brain Pickings, which lists 9 Techniques for discovering and fighting "Baloney". Suggest people read their blog. But for my own memory I'll list them as 10 techniques:

1. Testable: Confirm Facts, make sure verifiable assertion (testable)
2. Validate POV: Debate Evidence from Multiple Points of View (POV)
3. Discount Arg from Authority: Ensure Authority based on Facts & Experience. Discount arguments from authority.
4. Test alternatives: Spin and Test multiple hypotheses, Examine all possible arguments and use 1 & 2 to eliminate bogus ones.
5. Watch Personal Bias: Do not attach to hypothesis, even one's own or one's null hypothesis. Compare alternatives.
6. Validate all links in a chained argument: To be an integral hypothesis all links must be validated.
7. Validate Premises (this was listed under above). Faulty arguments usually based on faulty premises.
8. Falsfiable: Ask if the hypothesis is falsifiable. If it's not it's out of scope for practical application.
9. Occams Razor. If you have more than one hypothesis that fits facts, simpler and easier one probably true.
10. Duplicatable? Practical? Is the hypothesis in the scope of practicality? Theories about origins of the Universe are fun, but not practical. Can it be duplicated? Can it be tested?

From: http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan/?utm_content=bufferc2b4d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

More at: http://www.brainpickings.org/

The Wasteland

 

We were wandering in a world

Where the sun won't shine and the dark seems interminable

And shadows flit across the land

we are living in a wasteland.

and I'm trying to understand.

Is that illusion or is it really the end?

 

The spell was on me, all seemed so dark.

Dark things close to me seemed insidious and stark

While all that was far seemed vague and dusty

And this world seemed ill, sick and musty.

Pungent with the smell of spreading death.

Soft and spongy, spreading dark spores all around.

Dark and discordant, offkey sounds.

And all I could see was darkness all around.

 

But then I took deep breaths and disciplined my mind.

And I focused on the first good thing I could find.

 

I looked at the blighted wasteland.

and I sought a struggling flower.

 

I looked in my heart

and I found a struggling flower.

I planted a seed.

I watered it.

I smiled at it.

I talked to it.

and I told it wonderful things.

I protected it from the zombies all around.

 

And it grew.

From a flower a garden came too.

And from the garden came people.

And we nurtured trees,

...and removed disease

and healed the sick.

and we held down the slick

so they couldn't slither away

And the blighted land was transformed.

Starting in my mind.

and complete when we said "we"

 

Christopher H. Holte

Malvina Burstein

On the 19th of November 2010 my friend Malvina Burstein passed away. She was a Holocaust survivor, though she was never in the death camps but was instead someone who did some heroic things during the time when the Nazis were killing nearly every single Jew they could get their hands on. I think of her everytime I visit her wife. Her grave is near that of my wife and I always say hi to her when I visit my wife. It has no headstone. I remember where it is because her husbands grave (Max Burstein) is right next to it. I always put a stone on it when I'm visiting her. And it makes me sad that she is forgotten, apparently by her own children and friends. But I do not forget her. I don't know what day her yartzeit is but today is close enough for this year. I'd been thinking of her and then I saw a memorial to another hero of that time who died this week and it reminded me of her while I was near a computer. Gariwo net summarizes her experience:

"Malvina was from Trebisow, in Czechoslowakia. When the village was invaded by the Nazis she closed her milliner's shop and hid in a cellar for one year. In 1942 she reached Budapest thanks to forged documents. Here she met other Jews." [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]

She told me she made a living as a seamstress. I think she said she made hats. She told me other stories too, including one story of one German Nazi officer who seemed to have a crush on her and how she was able to use that to help her stay alive. As she also told me (Washington Post Reports):

"A Jew could exist in Hungary at that time," she told The Washington Post in 1981. "I had illegal papers and no visa, but I got along. You had to keep well-dressed, look clean and neat, with nail polish and everything." [Post Article]

She had to act like she wasn't afraid. She seemed a fearless person to me. She smiled for us, she and my wife got along like mother and daughter. And My wife's mother ("La Suegra") loved her too. My Mother In Law didn't want to visit the retirement home however, she didn't want to move to one and those places gave her the heebie jeebies. So we'd pick Malvina up and bring her to the house or go to a restaurant. She needed to get out of the place. My Mother in Law could speak Yiddish with her. She adored her.

"One of them managed to obtain hundreds forged work permits for non Jews by ordering them on the phone from the national printing institute, by pretending he was a prominent industrialist. [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]

He goes on:

"Malvina, who was smart and good-looking, accepted to run the risk of life to fetch these permits for three times, saying she was the secretary of the faked enterpreneur.[http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]

The Nazis and their European Allies from every single country operated their project of murder by starting with dehumanizing and denying citizenship to Jewish citizens. Non citizens had nowhere to go but Gas Chambers. British, French and US colonies wouldn't take them. If they coud make it to Israel the British would put them in concentration camps on Cyprus if they captured them. Or sink their boats before they reached Israel. The Mufti of Jerusalem was in Berlin egging on Hitler to finish the job. Rommel's target was Israel. People forget this.

"Most of the people who received the permits survived and fled to Israel. After the war Malvina emigrated to the United States where she ran a quiet life in the shade. She spent the closing time of her life in a resting house in Maryland." [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]

My wife and I knew her from the Synagogue and we visited her frequently in the the retirement home she moved to when she left her house. Her house in Silver Spring was less than a mile from mine. One year we spent time during Sukkot in her Sukkose Shelter soon after we moved to Maryland from DC. My wife and I adored her.

"The woman who took 1,500 Hungarian Jews into safety during the Holocaust passed away at age 97." [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]

Malvina was also a good painter. Here she is with my wife and one of her paintings:

They sleep within feet of each other. I believe I have that painting and one other. She was a marvelous painter too.

I miss them both. I really want to get a memorial stone for Malvina however. I know she's there, but who else does? I've got more photos but I have to either scan them off of old fashioned pictures or find my backup disks. I think I'll blog on her every year til it's my turn to join my wife.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/19/AR2010111906477.html

Further reading on the "homecoming" survivors got from non-Nazi Europeans:

Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48

When Malvina tried to return to Trebisow after the war she was treated vilely. She never shared the details with me but with another interviewer from 2005 she said (see above Beyond Violence reference):

"After the war, I traveled to see my house. We had a big house. I came back and the woman [the maid before the war who was the caretaker] hit me" and said "why didn't you die with the rest of the people"[http://books.google.com/books?id=hem3AwAAQBAJ&dq=Malvina+Burstein

Malvina called the police and "she hit me again in front of a policeman and he didn't do anything." Malvina wasn't the kind to be intimidated. She stayed long enough to get her house back, then "sold" "cleared" her house and left the country. I don't think she looked back. The choices were the USA or Israel. And for many USA had entry barriers. She married Max Burstein. Had children and lived (more or less) happily ever after.

Further Reading:

http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504844 (terrible picture)