By The River

There's an interesting story this morning on the wire from Reuters which looks at the issue of whether the tremendous rainfall and flooding or near-flooding of the past week was linked to global warming. It's one of those cause-and-effect scenarios that can't be conclusively proven. But the pro-warming theorists provide enough circumstantial evidence to keep the argument interesting.

I also found interesting the comments from AccuWeather in State College to the effect that they don't believe in global warming, that their corporate position is that what might appear to be global warming is just a natural cycle in the weather, similar to what has happened on Earth before. That is a position often found in the writings and statements of global warming contrarians, the scientists who shun the overwheming body of scientific opinion that says global warming is real in favor of a position sure to win them favor with conservative Republicans and big oil companies like Exxon-Mobil. AccuWeather is a campaign contributor to Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who has been a prominent critic of AccuWeather's free competition, the National Weather Service.

Santorum's criticisms of the government weather forecasters, which I touched on in my last post, may have some validity. But to see Accu-Weather jumping into the global warming debate (which only exists to any real extent in the United States) puts a taint on things. Again I say, conduct a serious investigation of how the National Weather Service handled the flood forecasting this week, but keep ideology and corporations seeking commercial advantage out of it. Lets find out what really happened. Why did the computers fail?

Posted by David at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Susquehanna River continues to fall, allowing life in Shipoke to get back to a normal amount of drinking and partying. Hey, we'll take any excuse for a Happy Hour, but the real tension and anxiety of a flood, even one that doesn't occur, brings even more neighborhood residents than usual to impromptu parties in the street. Last night it was on Nagle Street near the big puddle that always forms on Race Street between Nagle and Tuscarora in the early stages of a flood. It was a pick-me-up for Officer Stephanie, the Harrisburg city police officer who lives on Nagle and is much appreciated by the neighborhood. She was halfway to St. Croix for a week's vacation when word came to her in the San Juan, P.R., airport that a flood was imminent. Back she came. Her house is among those in the neighborhood which are particularly prone to flooding.

The question going forward is what sort of investigation will be conducted of the National Weather Service and its predictions during the flood scare. You have to understand that forecasts by the Mid-Atlantic River Forecast Center in State College have been right on the money in past floods and near-floods. The crest predictions jumped around wildly this time, culminating in the 25-foot prediction that came out Tuesday around 4 p.m. That triggered a much higher level of response by the city of Harrisburg, because it meant a major flood was in the offing. On Tuesday night, the city was saying a crest of as much as 30 feet was possible, which would have made it the second-worst flood in the city's recorded history after Agnes in 1972.

I was the reporter who broke the 25-foot prediction. I had called MARFC to find out why their website was crashing and acting screwy. The forecaster to whom I spoke told me they have a weak, out-dated computer network across the Eastern Region. "It stinks," was how he put it. Before we hung up, he told me that the projected crest for Harrisburg was now 25 feet. I called back again, spoke to a different forecaster and got the same prediction. So did the city. One wonders if there were computer problems, as yet undisclosed, which affected forecasting during the flood threat this week. I was told that money woes at NOAA are to blame, that repeated complaints from forecasters have been largely ignored. I 've always suspected that all federal agencies are being starved to pay for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and here is an example of what can happen.

It will be interesting to see if Sen. Rick Santorum, who is no friend of the National Weather Service, will use Mayor Reed's legitimate complaint as a hammer to force a serious look at work of the government forecasters. His complaints about the forecasting of Hurricane Katrina went nowhere. Maybe he's on to something. But it ought to be a broadly focused, non-ideological investigation of all aspects of their work, including the impact of Bush Administration budget cuts on the forecasters' ability to carry out their core mission.

Posted by David at 07:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You be the judge, but if you compare this photo with the one I posted early this morning, it appears that slightly more of the '20' is visible. Or more to the point: over the past 5 hours, the river has certainly not risen any further. Indeed, NOAA's flood chart for Harrisburg shows that a crest of 19.66 feet was reached about 8 a.m. today.

Time to start moving things back to the basement. We'll be dancing in the streets of Shipoke tonight.

Posted by David at 01:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is the critical day for Shipoke residents. MARFC says the river will crest this afternoon at Harrisburg at 20-21 feet. Right now it looks to be at about 20 feet, judging by the "watch us flood" paint marks on the railroad bridge at the north end of Shipoke, seen in the photo above. Here is the current NOAA flood chart, showing a projected crest of 20.5 feet. If everything turns out the way MARFC says, we should be okay. But the projected crest is just below where the water starts spilling over into the street. Our basement is still bone dry this morning.

Posted by David at 07:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Shipoke apparently won't get flooded this time, but several upstate areas won't be so lucky. Danville in Montour County put out a desperate call for people to fill and place sandbags. The Susquehanna River is within inches of flood stage there. In Wilkes-Barre, which was devastated by the Agnes Flood in 1972, authorities ordered more than 200,000 residents of the areas hit by the Agnes Flood to evacuate.

Near Elysburg in Northumberland County, Knoebels Groves Amusement Park, always a flooding hotspot, was evacuating campers and cottage owners. Several parts of Schuylkill County, especially the town of Mount Carbon, have experienced serious flooding. Some are saying the overall damage in the state will be worse than the Agnes Flood in 1972.

Posted by David at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 28, 2006
at 2:00 P.M.

FLOOD LEVEL PREDICTION DOWNSIZED

To: Residents and Businesses

Yesterday, on Tuesday, June 27 at 4:00 p.m., the federal River Forecasting Center predicted the Susquehanna River would go to 25.1 feet by Thursday night and into early Friday morning, which would be a major flood.

Today, they have revised their predictions twice. They now forecast the river to reach 20.5 feet tomorrow, Thursday, June 29 around 1:00 p.m., with a slow drop in river levels after that.

To give citizens an idea of the range of predictions received in the past three days, this is the information received by the City:

On Monday, at 7:00 a.m., the river crest (maximum level) was projected to be 6 feet; at 9:00 a.m., it was revised to 15.3 feet.

On Tuesday morning, this was revised to 13.2 feet; at 11:30 a.m., it was changed to 18 feet; at 4:00 p.m., the ominous message that it would be 25.1 feet was received, which triggered a far greater preparatory response; as officials responsible for emergency management, we have the absolute duty to initiate major steps as and when a major flood warning is received.

Today, at 6:30 a.m. and again at 9:00 a.m., the prediction was again revised and affirmed to say 19.7 feet and at 11:10 a.m., it was changed yet another time to predict a level of 20.5 feet. (The National Weather Channel briefly posted an announcement of a river crest for 15.3 feet but National Weather Service representatives advised this was not accurate.)

In 25 years, this is the most significant series of varied river level forecasts ever seen and, as a direct result of yesterday’s 25.1 foot prediction, extensive activity --- and their costs --- were undertaken. Many residents and businesses also endured expense and effort to prepare for what was expected to be major flooding and, in some areas, evacuation.

The current prediction of 20.5 feet is subject to further change.

No one should assume we are “out of the woods”. There will still be flooding. Based on a 20.5 foot prediction, it is not likely there will be any evacuations but some streets will have street water and many basements will have back-up water. This will be especially true in the Shipoke Neighborhood. A large part of City Island, including the surface parking lots, will be covered by river water. The Paxton Creek and Spring Creek have a high potential of backing-up and creating localized flooding in their basin areas, which will also cause some street closures.

The flood warning bulletin issued Tuesday night, June 27, is therefore modified as a result of this new and revised forecast.

The City is asking the appropriate agencies to conduct a review of how the river level forecasts could vary so widely in such a short period of time to see if more concise and accurate predictions can be achieved in the future --- not only to prevent what turns out to be unnecessary cost and effort by local government and citizens but to avoid the inevitable doubt and skepticism that would arise if predictions lack public confidence.

_________________________
Mayor Stephen R. Reed

Posted by David at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I woke up this morning to good news, that the projected crest for the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg had been lowered to 19.7 feet. That meant no flood in Shipoke and no evacuation. That's what NOAA's flood chart on the Internet showed, but since I no longer trusted its accuracy, I phoned the Mid-Atlantic River Forecast Center in State College to verify. Happily, it was true. The forecaster told me that less rain fell upstate than anticipated. The phone rang and it was my neighbor, Ed Taylor, telling me he'd heard the news on the radio. He was as happy as us, though a bit chagrined because he'd had his carpenter, John, dismantle his new living room bookshelves to save them from what last night was forecast as a major flood. You have to understand that a crest of 29-30 feet, which the city had talked about last night, would have meant about four feet of water in our living rooms at this end of Shipoke.

But I'm not unpacking yet. A projected crest of 19.7 is too close to flood stage for me to be comfortable. The way things have changed over the past 24 hours, and given NOAA's now-acknowledged computer problems, caution is still advised. I'll hope for the best.

The latest is that Camp Lycogis, the Girl Scout camp in Sullivan County where my daughter Elizabeth and three of her friends are this week, is sending everyone home early because of high water. I got a call from the camp about 10 minutes ago explaining that high water from nearby Loyalsock Creek had cut off the campers from all of their activity areas. They were supposed to do whitewater rafting this week, but the water was just a little too white (and brown). Jeff Spangler, one of the parents, is going to pick up all the girls and their gear and bring them back to Harrisburg.

And the Shipoke chutzpah award goes to Char Magaro, who finished serving customers last night at her Bella Mundo restaurant, locked the doors and went home without apparently moving much of anything, not even the glass art by her daughter. Her restaurant was devastated in the 2004 flood. It would have been the same this time whether she moved anything or not. Thankfully, she won't face another disaster like that--as things stand now.

Posted by David at 06:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Shipoke is up late tonight. The streets of the neighborhood are crowded with moving vans. Some people are moving their furniture into storage, which is probably a good idea if you can still find a mover who can do it for you. Flood insurance supposedly pays up to a thousand dollars to get your belongings out of harm's way. Mike, my neighbor, paid $600 plus tips to have his furniture hauled away. He paid double time. As Mike acknowledged, it's a gamble. If no flood occurs, he won't get any of that back. But I don't think he has much to worry about.

Around 11 p.m., I mixed myself a screwdriver and, like Lt. Henry, went for a walk in the rain. I thought about using an umbrella, but decided to let the rain wash away away whatever sins led to this disaster. Or at least the sweat I worked up on a hundred or so trips to the basement and up to the second floor with our stuff. The rain felt good. So did the screwdriver.

The Shipoke bad timing award goes to a new neighbor across Conoy Street, who just moved into his house. The Shipoke good timing but just barely award goes to Louise and Chris, who picked today to move out of the neighborhood to Baltimore. Chris works for Channel 21, and has a new job at one of the Baltimore stations. Louise was standing on her stoop watching the movers load the van, quite relieved to be exiting ahead of the flood waters. I envied her.

Posted by David at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This afternoon, after I wrote my last post, I noticed that the NOAA website was going haywire. Was down for awhile, then up, but when it was up it was goofy. One time it showed a river chart from hours before, another time from days before. Never the current one. I finally got a number for the Mid-Atlantic River Forecast Center in State College and called them to find out why they were having problems on such a crucial day. I had first called NOAA in Washington, D.C., but they weren't able to say.

The forecaster who answered said that their computer network was crap and should have been replaced a long time ago. He said the forecasters had been complaining for a long time, but that higher-ups were unreponsive. No money, they were told. No money. I told him the public in Harrisburg had come to depend on their website to know what was going on when floods threatened. He said the public was going to pay the price for NOAA's lack of attention to its network.

I then asked him what the latest crest forecast was for Harrisburg. Now at that time, I was expecting him to say 18-20 feet, because that's what the National Weather Service was saying and that's what the city of Harrisburg was saying. "25 feet," he said. I nearly fell off my chair. "At Harrisburg?" I asked. "Yes." I went to tell the city editor, Mike Feeley. This caused no small degree of consternation, because it was at variance with the official story. I called back MARFC and talked to another forecaster, who told me the same thing. I duly reported that news to the editors. I e-mailed Randy King, the city spokesman, to see what he'd heard. He finally got through to MARFC and confirmed the bad news himself.

Here is the latest chart, I think: read it and weep. And it may not stop at 25. The city is now saying the flood will crest as high as 30 feet, putting it just short of the devastating Agnes Flood of 1972. God help us if that happens. My wife and I have just spent several hours moving stuff up from the basement. Now we're starting on the living room. It's raining like Noah knew.

Posted by David at 09:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

According to the city of Harrisburg, NOAA is now predicting a Susquehanna River crest of 18 feet on Friday morning. Not that you could find that on the NOAA website. It began crashing and going haywire around midday today. If you could access it at all, it often presented the incorrect chart for Harrisburg. The last time I checked, it was showing the chart for June 8. I'm trying to contact NOAA to find out what's going on.

The city is beginning to plan for a 20-foot crest in case the weather forecast turns against us. If the water reaches 20 feet, evacuation of Shipoke would be considered, I'm told. Shipoke floods at between 21-22 feet. And it's raining again.

Posted by David at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm glad I hedged my bets in my last posting. The National Weather Service has reversed course once again and predicted a higher crest for the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg. Now it is saying the river will crest at 17.3 feet on Friday morning. That is slightly above the official Harrisburg flood stage, but well below the Shipoke flood stage of 21-22 feet. It might cause some basement flooding, however, at Race & Tuscarora Streets. And it doesn't leave much margin for error. I have a twinge of anxiety, but just a twinge.

At noon today, the river had turned brown, and tree trunks and branches were beginning to float by. But the river was still at about 5.5 feet, not even covering the sidewalk that runs along the bank. In other words, the guy in the photo at the top of this page wouldn't have his feet wet if he were standing in that same spot today. There is a lot of water yet to come. From the NOAA chart, it appears the river will start rising at about 8 p.m. tonight.

One of the deceptive things about living in a flood zone is that the weather can be nice here, or bad here, and it doesn't matter. It's the weather upstream that matters. On the Saturday before the Ivan flood hit in September 2004, the weather was sunny and warm, a truly beautiful day. We spent the day moving things from the basement and first floor to the upper floors, knowing that despite how nice it was outside, a wall of water was moving down from the north. That night, our stuff moved, we cooked off the food in our refrigerators and drank a lot. In the morning, we evacuated.

Posted by David at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I've learned not to be over-confident when it comes to flood prediction, the forecast today is looking even better than yesterday. The National Weather Service is predicting a Susquehanna River crest at Harrisburg of 13.2 feet on Thursday evening, down from the 15.3 feet prediction yesterday. Given that the river is at about 5.5 feet now, a lot of water will be coming down to Harrisburg over the next three days. But it appears less and less likely to cause a flood in Shipoke.

Nevertheless, people are concerned. I was talking last night to my neighbor, Ed Taylor, and out of the corner of my eye saw a Fox 43 TV truck heading down Front Street. The TV crews will usually park down near the railroad bridge and let the reporter do a stand-up there, with the river in the background. I've seen it dozens of times. While I believe that overall, local TV does a good job of reporting the news, they tend to get carried away sometimes in flood reporting. This is not something that should be used to hype the 11 p.m. newscast. People in Shipoke want just the facts, which are dramatic enough by themselves without any help from the reporter or anchorman.

I tell newcomers to Shipoke to watch what the city of Harrisburg says about flood threats to get the most accurate and up-to-date data. If this minor scare became a real threat, meaning if the river stage reached 17 feet, the city would start delivering news flyers to mailboxes in Shipoke containing the latest forecast and helpful advice to prepare. Doesn't look like they'll need to do that this time, but I'll wait and see.

Posted by David at 07:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've lived in the Shipoke neighborhood by the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg (see name of this blog) long enough not to get overly worried when it rains hard. I've lived here since 1989, and I know it has to rain really, really hard for there to be a risk of the Susquehanna River coming over the top and into Riverfront Park. We moved here in May 1989, and the first month there was a week when it rained nearly every day. Water came up high, but didn't come over the top. Newcomers to the neighborhood understandably worry when the region gets hit by a hard rainstorm like it did Sunday, when Front Street in Harrisburg was awash in places.

That said, the Susquehanna River is going to come up a lot over the next few days. The linked chart is updated everyday at 4 p.m. My neighbor Todd VanderWoude, the general manager of the Harrisburg Senators, pays for a really good weather service (naturally for a team on City Island in the middle of the river) and says the word is that the river will crest Thursday morning at 15.3-17 feet, based on the watershed getting three more inches of rain today and tomorrow. Harrisburg's official flood stage is 17 feet, but Shipoke's is higher, 21-22 feet.

So we should be okay. We'll get to watch the water come up to within five feet of the park, and get to watch tree trunks and debris being swept down the river from upstate. My basement, thanks to some work done last fall by my able contractor, Randy Shreve, should stay dry. The only neighbor who might have cause to worry at 17 feet lives at the intersection of Race and Tuscarora, neighborhood lowpoint and location of the "first to flood" house. We'll all be ready to help Rod if it looks like that's going to happen.

Meanwhile, the city of Harrisburg, which takes floods seriously, was busy today moving barges out of the river (Mayor Reed's party barge was swept away in the 2004 flood, but later recovered) and moving the buildings in Riverside Village Park on City Island to higher ground. I also heard that the private marinas along the river were moving the boats moored there. Always pays to be prepared.

Posted by David at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the more disgusting aspects of the 2004 Presidential campaign was the "swift-boating" of Sen. John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War--and anti-war--hero. Vietnam War bitter-enders on the right set out to destroy Kerry through lies, half-truths, and slander. Now they're planning to do the same thing to U.S. Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania congressman who has become the conscience of the Congress on the disastrous Iraq War. Murtha wants our troops out of there now.

Raw Story has the latest on the rightwing effort to destroy Murtha. I have no doubt Murtha knew what he faced by becoming a public spokesman against the war, and it is a tribute to his courage that he never wavered.

Posted by David at 07:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Republicans in the U.S. House today "revolted" against a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the seminal law pushed through by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 to guarantee blacks the right to vote. House GOP leadership gave at least lip service to support for an extension, but the rank and file would have none of it and forced a postponement of a vote on the extension. Their main objections, other than the real one that the law stands in the way of efforts to hinder and impede the mainly Democratic black vote, were that the Voting Rights Act "singles out" Southern states for special scrutiny of their voting rules, and requires ballots in certain areas of the country to also be printed in Spanish or other languages.

Reality check: the Southern states singled out by the law are the same ones which enslaved blacks until the Civil War and then did everything up to and including committing murder to stop them from exercising their right to vote after the Civil War and continuing into the 1960s. The original law targeted states where less than 50 percent of all citizens were registered to vote, namely Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, and certain counties in North Carolina. The law had a dramatic effect: in Mississippi, 6.7 percent of non-whites were registered to vote in 1964. By 1969, the number had risen to 59.4 percent.

There's nothing unfair about this special scrutiny, which requires Justice Department approval in advance of any substantive change in voting rules that might put barriers to black voting. This sort of thing still goes on. Georgia, which is leading the charge against extension, recently tried to require all voters to present a photo i.d. card when voting. People who didn't have a driver's license or passport--mainly the poor, who mainly vote Democratic--could buy an official voter i.d. card for $20. No one outside of Georgia Republicans much bought the official argument that this was really about preventing voter fraud. The Bush Administration Justice Dept. turned a blind eye to this scheme, but Federal courts so far have enjoined Georgia from implementing the law, ruling it to be an unconstitutional poll tax.

Extending the Voting Rights Act for 25 years isn't a slap against the entire South. It is an attempt to rein in the racist impulses that still govern Republican politics in certain circles there, and give support to the good people in the South of both parties who want nothing to do with the hatred and ugliness of the past. It is instructive to know that the first attempt to limit the Voting Rights Act occurred during the tenure of President Richard Nixon, architect of the Republican Party's "Southern Strategy" of appealing to the racial fears of Southern whites.

The law will expire next year if it is not extended. Unfortunately, since the percentage of blacks voting Democratic is usually in the 90 percent range, Republicans have little to lose and much to gain by blocking extension. For the sake of the blood of the civil rights workers who were murdered in the 1960s South for their support of voting rights for blacks, and for the cause of basic human decency, the Voting Rights Act must be extended.

Posted by David at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have to admit I never saw the John Murtha phenomenon coming.

U.S. Rep. John "Jack" Murtha, a Democratic congressman from Johnstown, Pa., has become the conscience of the Congress on the Iraq War. He wants U.S. troops out of Iraq, if not tomorrow then very soon. Yesterday, he aimed his cannon at Karl Rove, George W. Bush's chief political adviser, who of late has been trying to turn around public support for his boss' Iraq adventure by reviving the slander of "cut and run Democrats." Murtha commented that Rove was "sitting in his air-conditioned ofice on his fat backside and saying, stay the course. That's not a policy." Burn!

A decorated former Marine, Murtha always seemed an interchangeable Jackson Democrat. If you're not familiar with that term, it refers to the late U.S. Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson of Washington and means that you are moderate to liberal on social issues but a hawk on defense. You like the military, you like military spending. Nothing about Murtha screamed Cassandra. My only personal encounter with him was in 1983, when in his then-capacity of chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, he came to Centralia, Pa., for a firsthand look at the encroaching mine fire. I covered Murtha's visit for The News-Item in Shamokin, Pa. Within the year, he and other members of Congress approved $42 million for the relocation of the people of Centralia.

Murtha, who announced recently that he will run for House Majority Leader if the Democrats recapture the House of Representatives in November, often seems to channel Pentagon angst over the disastrous Iraq War and the damage it is doing to U.S. fighting forces. He has been particularly outfront on the Haditha Massacre, in which revenge-seeking Marines apparently slaughtered 24 Iraqi civilians.

And meanwhile, the Bush Administration is again trying to equate the Iraq War, a war of choice, with World War II, a war of survival aimed at defeat of a real enemy. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Americans probably would have questioned World War II if a poll had been conducted during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944-45. Somehow, I doubt that.

Posted by David at 07:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It is the numbers and statistics and photos and maps which ultimately get to you in the Al Gore documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," which opened at the Midtown Theatre in Harrisburg last night and seeks to convince people that global warming is a terrifying reality. Gore, the former Vice President and 2000 Democratic Presidential candidate, has delivered this lecture to over a thousand audiences around the world.

The images I especially won't soon forget show areas of the world that would be flooded if sea levels rose 10-20 feet, which Gore says would happen if half of the Greenland ice cap and half of the Antarctic ice cap melted away. Large parts of Florida would disappear. So would most of the Netherlands, large parts of the San Francisco Bay region, sectons of lower Manhattan, and much of the area around Calcutta, India. Millions of people would be displaced.

Gore brings intelligence, passion, and an endearingly self-deprecating humor to the Cassandra role in this documentary, which was directed by Davis Guggenheim. Yet he remains a suppporting actor--a very good supporting actor--to the numbers and graphics. Everything Gore tells you is based on real science done by real scientists, not hacks on some interest group's payroll. As he notes, there is no controversy among legitimate scientists over the reality of global warming. That some think otherwise is a perverse tribute to efforts by companies like Exxon Mobil to plant doubt in people's minds, much as the tobacco companies did in the 1950s after the Surgeon General first linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer.

According to Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth" is not intended to lay the ground work for a 2008 Presidential run. I'm not so sure. There are parts in it about his life and career that would be at home in any campaign film and aren't really needed to make the case for global warming. But so what if it is? We could do far worse than to have a President who is intelligent, competent, cares passionately about the environment, and cares about helping people more than big oil companies.

Go to see this film and take your children--they will be able to understand and appreciate it, so well is the topic presented. You won't be bored--it's not just another dry PowerPoint presentation (and in fact, was done on Keynote, the Apple presentation software). I guarantee you'll come out of the film knowing something you didn't know before, will worry about the future, but know there are things that can be done if only the country can muster the political will.

Posted by David at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, on a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court all but threw out the exclusionary rule requiring evidence tainted by police misconduct to be suppressed at trial. In so doing, the Court overturned its own precedent dating to 1914 and based on English common law dating back to the Middle Ages. Need I say that Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding votes in a decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia?

The case in question involved a drug raid in Detroit (important Constitutional cases rarely involve Rotary Club presidents). Police announced themselves, but waited only 3-5 seconds before opening the unlocked door and rushing into the house, where they found evidence of illegal drugs that was ultimately used to convict. Precedent said the police must knock, announce themselves, and then wait 15-20 seconds to allow the homeowner time to answer the door. Precedent also said the trial judge should have thrown out the evidence and let the drug dealer go free. As repugnant as that is, there is no other effective check on police misconduct. It is the price we must occasionally pay for Constitutional protections that affect us all.

What is particularly troubling about this decision, other than opening the door, so to speak, to door-busting, Gestapo-style midnight police raids, is that the conservatives on the Court seem willing to throw precedent aside and decide cases more on right-wing mythology than the law. Ever since the 1960s, when the Warren Court wisely put checks on police misconduct in criminal investigations, the American Right has screamed and wailed about the supposed "handcuffs" placed on police. That little solid evidence of this ever materialized, and that police chiefs themselves tended to say the Court rulings made them do their job better, had little impact on this mythology. It was an effective fund-raising tool for the Right.

Technically, the Court did not throw out the exclusionary rule, just left it bleeding on the ground. Scalia and the majority appeared to have little sympathy for the rule, and a direct assault on it by some prosecutor somewhere seems likely in the future. It also seems likely that attacks on other settled principles of Constitutional law affecting police work, namely the Miranda Rule on police interrogations ("You have the right to remain silent..."), are coming.

Elections, even (or especially) stolen ones, do have consequences. Bush appointed Roberts and Alito. His father appointed two other members of the majority, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Anthony Kennedy, the fifth vote, was a Reagan appointee. The Republican Right has worked hard for this moment, and I shudder to think what may be ahead.

Posted by David at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Southern Baptist Convention yesterday refused to support a serious resolution calling on the conservative religious group to develop an exit strategy for removing all Southern Baptist children from the nation's public schools to be educated in religious schools or home-schooled by their parents.

Why? Because the two sponsors of the resolution are upset that increasing numbers of public schools teach tolerance for gay people, and because of the federal court ruling by District Judge John Jones III in Harrisburg, Pa., last December barring the so-called theory of Intelligent Design from being taught as science in public schools. The majority of the Southern Baptist leadership wasn't exactly unsympathetic to their concerns, but appeared to worry about the magnitude of the step. They urged Southern Baptists to "engage" the system by running for school board. That sort of "engagement," of course, is what ultimately led the Dover School District down the costly and damaging road to Intelligent Design. I don't think any of the school board members were Southern Baptists, but the key ones were members of fundamentalist churches of other stripes.

And always homosexuality. The devils again. I'll be interested in seeing whether the nearly identical bills introduced by Sen. Connie Williams, D-Montgomery, and Rep. Ed Wojnaroski, D-Cambria, to require public schools to develop anti-bullying and student intimidation programs founders on conservative religious opposition. I've read of this happening in certain areas, of fundamentalist church leaders demanding that student "witnessing" against gay students not be considered bullying or intimidation, on spurious "religious freedom" grounds.

If conservative religious leaders demanded the right for their young people to preach in the hallways of public schools in favor of black slavery or Jewish collective guilt for the death of Christ (both were once seriously argued by certain large churches, though not all) they would rightly be considered wackjobs. Why isn't a demand to bully gay students or students perceived as gay with sermons about their supposedly worthless lives in the same category?

There is a reason the Founding Fathers insisted on separation of church and state, and you're seeing it here. Whose church would set the rules if it were otherwise? My own Episcopal Church, which welcomes gays and embraces science, or the Southern Baptists, who put the Bible over science and despise gays? Why not fight it out? Shed a lot of blood to see whose God is stronger. Force the losers to adopt the religion of the winners under pain of death. Thankfully, the Founding Fathers had seen enough of that in Europe and decided on a new and better way.

Posted by David at 07:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Thursday, Republicans in Congress will force debate and a vote on a non-binding resolution urging the United States to remain in the Iraq War until Iraq is "free" and we have won the Global War on Terror, and I suppose hung Osama bin Laden from the sour apple tree. As political stunts go, this falls somewhere between resolutions in favor of motherhood and declarations of National Artichoke Week. Doesn't the Congress have something important to work on, like an anti-gay marriage resolution?

All kidding aside, any Democrat who votes for this deserves to have a well-funded Eric Epstein or Gene Stilp as a primary opponent the next time around. All Democratic members of Congress should look at what is happening to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. He may well lose the primary to an anti-war Democrat. Lieberman has gone from being Al Gore's vice presidential running mate in 2000 to the absolute doghouse because he wanted to be a Democrat in Name Only. He remains a big supporter of the Iraq War. Bush loves the guy.

The only proper response to the idiocy of a win-the-war resolution (which should really be called a bleed-forever resolution) is a silent, en masse walk-out by the Democratic caucus. Hint: you're being set up by the GOP. Let the Republicans have this millstone tied around their necks, and their necks alone. Iraq is not worth another American life, and the public knows it.

Posted by David at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-1 to advance a proposed amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage. The committee at least removed language that also would have banned civil unions between gay people, an action which enraged religious extremists and their Republican supporters. The bill must still pass the Senate, be reconciled with the House version (which would ban civil unions), and then be passed again by both houses of the General Assembly next year before it can go to the voters the year after that. In other words, it can still be stopped. Thankfully, it is far harder to enact an amendment to the state constitution here than it is in California.

While I don't excuse any of the votes for this ugly bit of discrimination, the Democrats on the committee ought to hang their heads in shame for surrendering to the rightwing pogrom against homosexuals. Gays are to American rightwing religious extremists as Jews were to the Nazis: a group to be villifed as outside the "normal" bounds of civil society, a group to blame for everything, a group entitled to no civil rights. If you mentally substitute "Jew" for "homosexual" in the rightwing hate speech against gay people, you are often left with something that could have come from the typewriters of the most vile Nazi propagandists of the early 20th century. Did we learn nothing?

The effort by some state Republicans to also ban gay civil unions, or "marriage lite," is particularly ugly. Among other things, such a ban would deprive lifelong gay partners of the right to be in their partner's hospital room when they are sick or dying. And to what end? When small towns across Pennsylvania are dying economically because they are isolated in mountain valleys at the end of two-lane roads, and can find no place in the 21st century economy, why is the Legislature wasting time on this?

I understand the discomfort many straight Americans have with homosexuality. I used to be among their number, still am in some ways: I found an excuse to leave the room a couple of times while watching "Brokeback Mountain" last week on DVD. I grew up in a small Midwestern town in the 1960s, a period when gays were firmly in the closet. I couldn't tell you a single person in my high school class of 400 who was gay, although there had to be some, since being gay is as much a biological roll of the dice as having blue eyes. Over the years, as I got to know gay people, my prejudice went away.

The campaign to ban gay marriage is a political campaign disguised as morality. State gay marriage referendums were used as a tool in the 2004 Presidential election to turn out religious conservative voters for the Bush-Cheney ticket. It worked, too. But I believe much of the public is catching on, and the campaign against gays is losing some of its effectiveness. That's part of the reason for the right's campaign against immigrants this year. Anything to distract conservative voters from the utter failure of the Bush Administration.

Posted by David at 07:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm wondering if Gov. Rendell is having second thoughts tonight about having signed the helmet law repeal act in 2003, which allowed adult motorcyclists like Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to cruise down the road with no head protection. Roethlisberger was seriously injured in Pittsburgh yesterday while riding his Suzuki Hayabusa, billed by the company as the world's fastest street bike. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette account, a 62-year-old woman made a left turn in front of him. The motorcycle, which a witness said was traveling at "a pretty good clip," crashed into the car, pitching the quarterback head first into the windshield, then head first onto the road. As of tonight, Roethlisberger is out of surgery and thankfully out of danger. But it's hard to imagine how he can recover from his injuries in time for the fall season. Given that he led the Steelers to the team's fifth Super Bowl victory last year, his absence will have consequences.

Roethlisberger famously disdained motorcycle helmets and wasn't wearing one at the time of the accident, according to police and witnesses interviewed by the Post-Gazette. His contract didn't forbid motorcycle riding, even though such prohibitions are not unknown in professional sports. Former QB Terry Bradshaw is said to have upbraided Roethlisberger about his two-wheel hobby, telling him to save it for after retirement.

This ought to bring a speedy return to a helmet law in Pennsylvania, but don't bet on it. The governor and a majority of the Legislature traded a few hundred biker votes for potentially millions of dollars in extra medical costs for society, and are more likely to be concerned about the former in an election year that is already charged with populist and pseudo-populist issues. Who did those who enabled helmet law repeal think would be the ultimate victims of their action? It had to have crossed their mind. Someone who could be in a storyline of "My Name is Earl," or someone like themselves, or their children, or a popular sports celebrity? My bet is on Earl.

As much as the libertarian crowd that pushed for helmet law repeal won't like to hear this, people do have responsibilities to more than just themselves. It's not "my life" when "my severe head injury" will cost an insurance company or government $4-9 million for a lifetime of care. I hope that what happened to Roethlisberger (may he recover quickly) will at least stop other governors from signing helmet law repeals. Michigan's legislature passed a repeal bill last week, but the early signs are that Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm will veto it.

Posted by David at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes a movie, intentionally or not, perfectly captures the emotional landscape of an era. Robert Altman's new film, "Prairie Home Companion," based on Garrison Keillor's long-running radio show of the same name, can be seen as simply a folksy tale about an old-time radio show doing its farewell performance. But it is also a dead-on parable of the sense of loss and despair many Americans feel after six years of George W. Bush, the Iraq War, and the staining of much that was good and right and joyful about their country.

I have no doubt this is what Keillor and Altman intended. It isn't even all that subtle. Keillor's radio show in the film is doing its final performance because a Texas businessman has purchased the radio station that hosts the show as well as the (F. Scott) Fitzgerald Theatre in St Paul, Minn., where the real show also performs. Known only as "The Axeman," this Texan intends to raze the theater. The Axeman is described verbally before he is seen, and the words form a picture of Bush. He is played by Tommy Lee Jones, an ironic touch given that Jones was Al Gore's roommate at Harvard.

The Axeman is an uncultured and heartless businessman who doesn't even know who F. Scott Fitzgerald was. Informed that many of the members of the troupe have devoted their lives to it, he comments that now, "they'll be free to do something else." One is reminded of Bush's infamous speech in India earlier this year in which he airly waved away the threat of outsourcing to American I.T. jobs, saying that displaced workers could now train for "21st century jobs."

Yet it isn't heavy-handed. The focus of the film is the show itself, full of wonderful folk and country music and humor. Some of it is presented by the real members of Keillor's show, including Keillor himself, but most is by the actresses Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin, and the actors Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly. The music offers an America of peaceful and tolerant values, of love and family. It is religious at times, but a very personal, heartfelt, and ultimately friendly religion, not the hard-edged beliefs of the howling American Taliban to which our lamentable President panders. You listen to all this and know that the goodness at its core will soon die, but not by its own hand.

The last six years have been a voyage of despair for many Americans, and not just liberals. There is no place for the massacre of innocents, or the casual torture of captives in the values of people who listen to "Prairie Home Companion." We have seen horrors we never expected to see, or thought were at worst a distant relic of our frontier past. Americans, if they are honest with themselves, have been forced to abandon the quaint notion, born of historical amnesia, that we are a unique, chosen people. In fact, we are just the latest country in the world's long history to gain great wealth, power, and influence and then lose it, or risk losing it, because of foolishness and stupidity. That isn't an easy conclusion to accept, but until we do there is no way back to what was.

Altman, who is 81 and no pie-eyed optimist, tricks the viewer by convincing him for a time that the bad Texan will be taken away by divine intervention, and that good will triumph. I won't give the ending away, but ultimately it is not what the audience expects, or probably wants. Suffice it to say it is a realistic ending.

(You can see "Prairie Home Companion" at the Midtown Theater in Harrisburg)

Posted by David at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It is hard to continue writing about the decertification of my union when things like this are going on. God help us all.

On Nov. 19, U.S. Marines avenging a comrade killed by a roadside bomb allegedly massacred 24 Iraqi men, women and children in the town of Haditha. Here are photos of the aftermath. They are grim and gruesome, just as the photos of the aftermath of the My Lai massacre were in 1969. And they are proof of why we will lose the Iraq War, just as we lost the Vietnam War. We will never win their hearts and minds. It is time to leave. Now.

Those poor little girls...

Posted by David at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Local 38016 of The Newspaper Guild lost the decertification election, 63-43. We fought hard to the end, but we couldn't overcome the financial enticements the company dangled in front of members--The Patriot-News essentially bought this election--and the irrational hatred of us by Nick Horvath's -company-pampered sports department. Or perhaps not so irrational: the sports department has long gotten special treatment from the company, allowed nearly unlimited travel when every other part of the newsroom was on an austerity budget. It was a long-term investment for the company and it paid off for them today. Yes, it was all perfectly legal in George W. Bush's America. After 72 years, a good and gentle union founded in the fervor of the New Deal in 1934 is no more. The worst part of this is knowing that colleagues lied to us about their support for the union. I'll be drinking myself blotto tonight.

Posted by David at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is the decertification election for The Newspaper Guild union at The Patriiot-News. As I've mentioned before, I am president of the Guild local here, the latest but hopefully not the last in the local's 72-year history. We must get 50 percent plus one of the bargaining unit members voting to stay in existence. We are confident we will win, but it will be close and every vote will count. Some of our members have cut vacations short to come back to vote in this life-or-death election. Having a union during troubled times for the newspaper industry is comforting protection for many of us. Newspapers without unions may command a premium price on the market when put up for sale, but their reporters and editors pay the real price.

The officers of the Guild have had to deal with ancient, forgotten grievances during this decert campaign, issues that long predated their own volunteer service to their co-workers. Perhaps the most inflammatory and hurtful was the accusation by one of our enemies that we had once tried to equate a staff member with substance abuse problems to staff members who died of cancer, a story that dates back to the early-1990s. We supposedly did this to muster support for saving her job. It simply never happened, but when a slur like that is dumped in your lap, it knocks you off kilter. You wrack your brain trying to remember what really happened, and wonder how you can prove a negative.

By chance last night, I ran into Irwin Aronson, a local labor lawyer. He was receiving an award from the Keystone Research Council. I was there to cover New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's speech. He was the Guild's lawyer years ago before his law firm split and he moved to a different firm. I told him about the decert election today, and he told me about some of the company's attempts to decertify the Guild and other unions at the paper in the early 1980s. The other unions are gone, but we have always survived. He wished us the best in our efforts to stay alive.

I want to publicly thank the international staff of The Newspaper Guild in Washington, D.C., especially Bruce Nelson, for the untiring help and assistance they have given us during these trying weeks. I would also like to thank the Guild members at the York Daily Record, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette who took time to come to Harrisburg to meet with bargaining unit members here and spread the good word. The Communication Workers of America, our parent union, has also been very supportive, especially organizer Pam Tronsor. My fellow Guild officers Chris Millette, Janet Pickel, Chris Courogen, and Andy Isaacs, and former Guild president Mary Klaus have worked hard to stop decertification from happening. Guild members Jim Brown, Mike Fernandez, and Steve Farley have also contributed much to the cause.

Now, on to the election. I have people to get to the polls. We will win this, and preserve our stake in our own destiny. To me, it's a no-brainer.

Posted by David at 07:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)