SEPTEMBER 2005

New Book Examines Maze of Failed Environmental Policies

http://independent.org/newsroom

Proposes New Green Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy
July 11, 2005

“Environmental policy in the United States is not entirely without success stories, but for the most part has been unexpectedly costly, corrosive to America’s liberal political and legal traditions, and not very effective in enhancing environmental quality,” write Robert Higgs and Carl Close, editors of a new book, Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy (The Independent Institute/August 2005). “These failures are rooted in the bureaucratic, top-down approach that has characterized environmental policy.”

In Re-Thinking Green twenty-two economists, political scientists, and philosophers show how environmental quality can be enhanced more effectively by relying less on government agencies that are increasingly politicized, bureaucratized and unaccountable and more on environmental entrepreneurship and the strict enforcement of private-property rights.

The maze of government regulations and environment laws enacted since the 1970’s has created more waste and failure than innovation and success, say the book’s contributors. They point out that many current environmental policies fly in the face of American liberal legal and political traditions. Unless we are mindful of the incentives and constraints of the political process—and reform our public policies accordingly—the problem of government failure in environmental policy will continue, they claim.

Re-Thinking Green examines some of today’s most hotly debated environmental issues including oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, population growth, global warming, endangered species, land use, coastal waters, air quality, urban planning, and transportation. These essays point to the limitations of a one-size-fits-all regulatory process that has crowded out potentially far more effective approaches to dealing with environmental problems.

Re-Thinking Green will challenge readers with new paradigms for resolving environmental problems, stimulate discussion on how best to “humanize” environmental policy and inspire policymakers to seek effective alternatives to environmental bureaucracy.

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent Institute, and Editor of the Institute’s quarterly journal, The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy.

Carl P. Close is Academic Affairs Director at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review.

RE-THINKING GREEN: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy
Edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close
$22.95 Paper • ISBN 0-945999-97-6 • 6 X 9, 480 Pages
Date of Publication: August 2005
Published by The Independent Institute, Oakland California
Distributed to the Trade by Independent Publishers Group

Zadie Smith's "White Teeth"
The multicultural nature of British society owes much to the country's rebuilding effort after the Second World War. Faced with a severely battered economy and handicapped by a depleted labour force, Britain turned to the importation of workers from its colonies to breathe new life in its industries. But the multicultural life in London and the large cities across Britain does not exactly equate to a melting pot. Mulicultural life  the idea of people of multiple origins and diverse backgrounds coalescing into a single distinctive identity is not exactly taking place.

Few writers capture the essence of multicultural life in London as does Zadie Smith. Perhaps it is because of her own multicultural roots  Smith's mother is Jamaican and her father is British. In her novel White Teeth she examines the complex interaction among three families: a semi-Jamaican family, a family from Bangladesh and an educated white middle-class English family. Indeed, Smith with her sharp, humorous dialogues, outrageous wit and colourful characters, has portrayed multicultural London in a way comparable only to Dickens and his depiction of the dark underbelly of Victorian England.

In a sense, Smith conveys the impression that London is a place where Jamaicans remain Jamaicans, Bangladeshi remain Bangladeshi and the British remain British. Yet, ironically out of necessity, choice and sometimes for reasons of sheer survival, they are forced to mix with each other. This is in sharp contrast to American multicultural life. In the U.S., at least up until recently, there seems to be the sharing of a unifying value.

Sociologists suggest that in the U.S. there is an implicit acceptance among the vast majority of the population of the American dream. Perhaps this might be the reason why, up until the 1980s Jamaicans always considered their relatives returning after a long stay in England to be a little strange in their heads while they did not regard those from the U.S. in the same way. It is a multicultural life that is resistant to a blending of values that leads to madness. The British society is no melting pot.

Some people attribute the bombing to Britain's involvement in the Iraqi war, but others have a difficulty accepting that view because the attack was from British citizens. The British authorities who take pride in cultural tolerance are in the process of rethinking how people from its former colonies, particularly those of the Moslem faith, are integrated in the society. In all of this, the question that must be asked is why have people from former colonies in Britain not embraced 'Britishness'?

Smith's White Teeth may very well provide the answer. There is a scene in which Iqbal, the Bangladeshi protagonist, finds himself hopelessly attracted to his son's white British teacher. Confused, he seeks advice from a younger co-worker, Shiva from Calcutta, who has more experience with women. Shiva explained to Iqbal that he had made love to two Americans, a girl from France and even a Romanian woman but never an English girl. Of course, Iqbal asked "Why?" To this Shiva resolutely replied, "Too much history ... too much bloody history."

Despite its multicultural life in Britain, the greatest challenge to its internal stability may not reside in its present  but in its past.

Cedric Wilson is an economist who specialises in market regulations. He
may be contacted at conoswil@hotmail.com.

  Essay Collection

On conversing with a friend, by Norman Wilkinson

  Reader: I am reading a great collection of essays at the moment entitled 'Our Lady of Sorrow' available on http://www.booksurge.com/product.
php3?bookID=GPUB02699-00002  

Friend: Sounds a bit too religious.  

Reader: Well not entirely, a lot about world politics, the Middle East problems, the Jews, the Arabs, religious history.....a sort of modern prophesy.  

Friend: I haven't seen it reviewed in the Australian press.....who is the author anyway?  

Reader: Well, you may not have heard of him, but really.......the wisdom of GK Chesterton, the political instincts of Hilaire Belloc, the descriptive eloquence of DH Lawrence, the metaphysical and environmental insights of Manley Hopkins (see Binsey Poplars), the courage of a lion......and he is Jewish.....an Israeli war hero apparently.

  Friend: A successful heroic Jew?.....Israeli?......how come he is not acknowledged by our press.....it cannot be.  

Reader: Well, actually, he converted to Christianity.  

Friend: Huh,....that would get him nowhere.....one of your sort I suppose....Traditional Catholic....those who revered the nazi Pope Pius XII who wore jackboots under his long dress. Good Pope JP II did at least apologise to the Jews....but now the Church has elected a German Pope who was in the Hitler youth, and jeopardised the whole dialogue process by toying with antisemitism.  

Reader: Well, actually, he is Russian Orthodox I think.  

Friend: Even worse......how many Jews did they kill?  

Reader: Well, anyway, I do get the impression they he has a genuine love of all humanity, the Jews of course, but even the Palestinians, Iraqis and Iranians. I get the feeling he may be even rash enough to love his own enemies.  

Friend: Stop! This stretches the bonds of friendship to breaking point. YOU are antisemitic.....and keep your voice down....you don't know who might be listening in this restaurant.  

Reader: (changing the subject) An amazing place the internet...almost pure anarchy for the first time in human history. We can pick and choose our good or evil. But it is a dangerous place to be without an informed concience.  

Friend: The sooner we have an effective policing of the internet the better. Stop all this antisemitism.

  Reader: I was thinking more of the problem of mass pornography.  

 

US Military Digs
Trenches For Dead
Comrades In Iraq
Dandelion Books.net

8-10-5

TEMPE, AZ -- "Most people simply do not want to believe the US Army would simply bulldoze trenches in the combat areas [of Iraq] and toss in mangled GIs who were in such a shape as to preclude their being shipped back to Baghdad en route to the United States," writes Walter Storch of TBR News [www.tbrnews.org] to a loyal web subscriber.

 

States Storch: "We have had access to the so-called 'Supplemental Lists' that list the number of the actual dead and injured in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Brian Harring, a computer data specialist obtained and sent TBR News these official Department of Defense U.S. Military casualty reports.

 

In September, Dandelion Books, www.dandelionbooks.net will publish the full list in a book titled Prelude to Disaster: The Harring Report - Complete Official DoD Iraq & Afghanistan US Military Casualty List.

 

"Unpleasant as this may seem," states Storch, "there are rolls of pictures taken by several foreign journalists, one of which picture we published... the others are too sickening to put up... that more than support this terrible story.

 

"We also have located and published, complete with all the official headings, a report from the Pentagon that between March of 2003 when the conflict with Iraq began, to date, that over 25,000 seriously wounded US soldiers were evacuated to the US military facility at Landstuhl, Germany and Walter Reed military hospital in the US."

 

Says Storch: "I have said that Iraq was going to be Bush's Achilles Heel and it looks as if this will prove to be true. Stories like the ones we, and now others, are following and printing, are impossible to conceal for long and when they become common knowledge, the results will be predictable...and terrible."

 

The Harring Report is part of Dandelion's America Speaks Out! series that includes investigative reporters and analysts Sherman Skolnick, Norman D. Livergood, Wayne Madsen, John Stanton, John Kaminski, John H. Brand, Jaffer Ali, Aldo D. Pascale, and others.

All Dandelion Books are for sale at www.dandelionbooks.net

Herding Cats, A Lifetime in Politics
by Senator Trent Lott

In "Herding Cats, A Lifetime in Politics," Lott wrote that Sen. Bill Frist, his successor as majority leader, was one of the "main manipulators" in the events that resulted in his own loss of power. Lott lost his post in 2002 after making racially tinged remarks at a 100th birthday party for one-time segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond.

"Frist's actions amounted to a "personal betrayal," Lott wrote. "I had taken him under my wing. ... He was my protege. ... We'd been friends off and on the floor, and that's pretty rare in a governmental body loaded with lone wolves and enormous egos."

Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Frist, R-Tenn., said the senator "hasn't read the book, so he can't comment directly, but he always appreciates Senator Lott's advice."

President Bush also played a role in his downfall, Lott wrote, not so much with what he said, but by saying it in a tone that was "devastating ... booming and nasty."

Colin Powell damaged his chances, Lott wrote. "That one hurt," he added, saying he once had prevailed on the president to name the former secretary of state's son to the Federal Communications Commission.

And Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont was a "loose cannon," going back for years, Lott said of the one-time Republican whose defection from the GOP handed Democrats the Senate majority in 2001. "He's always had a habit of bartering his vote on crucial legislation for his own pet projects."

A conservative Republican from Mississippi, Lott said his partnership with former President Clinton blossomed in 1996, when he became majority leader. His predecessor, Bob Dole, had resigned the Senate to campaign full time for the White House, and Lott said political consultant Dick Morris quickly became a critical go-between with the president.

Eventually, there were "scores of direct conversations between President Clinton and me. I took to calling Morris `Mr. Prime Minister; he dubbed me `HMO - His majesty's opposition,"' Lott wrote.

The "backstairs arrangement" produced major health and welfare legislation, "but I was treading on dangerous territory," Lott wrote.

Dole protested, "But I thought there was more at stake than Dole's chances at winning the White House. Dole wasn't providing as much coattails for other Republicans on the ticket as we had hoped," the Mississippian added.

Sometimes, he recalled, Clinton would call late at night. "I seemed to offer some sort of rare zen role for Clinton _ the careful listener on the other end of the line who politely acknowledged the high-level ramblings of the commander in chief, and just as promptly forgot them."

Later, Lott said he thought Clinton deserved to be removed from office, but knew there were never enough votes in the Senate to convict the president at his 1999 impeachment trial.

Lott had had earlier experience with presidential impeachment. As a young House member, he voted against impeaching President Nixon during the Watergate scandal.

But then, he wrote, Vice President Gerald R. Ford "told me not to go so far out on a limb for the president. I was speechless."

Race relations is a recurrent theme of the book, from Lott's student days to what he described as off-the-cuff remarks that eventually cost him his leadership post.

A native of Mississippi, Lott recalled feeling "anger in my heart over the way the federal government had invaded Ole Miss to accomplish something that could have been handled peacefully and administratively," a reference to the admission of the University of Mississippi's first black student in 1962.

Later, as a law student at the same school, he remembered the visiting professors from Yale University, brought in to teach constitutional law.

"Instead of making us more liberal, they helped create a generation of thoughtful, issue-oriented conservatives who grew up to run Mississippi politics," he wrote.

© 2005 The Associated Press