Looking Ahead

PolLOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis Global warming revisited; also, an election of national and personal significance This article was written upstate, in picturesque Hudson Valley, hiding from the powerful sunshine, and completed during a brief heavy-duty downpour, little late to help my plants. So be it. Anyway, this summer has been disastrous, climate-wise. We East Midtown cityites were minimally bothered by the heat, being able to escape it behind air-conditioned walls, but up here in the North Hudson Valley the country garden produce, local and commercial, ripened early and badly, and ran out fast. Mowing lawns was easy if you did not mind brown foliage; the grass turned color and did not grow.. Agricultural America was in trouble, 27 mid-country states, the breadbasket, suffered the plagues of destroyed crops, cattle died for lack of fodder and water, and prices for food essentials grew alarmingly, Republicans could not blame it on President Obama, along the recession and 42 months of eight percent joblessness, since denial of climate changes as human handiwork has been a basic element of the GOP and tea party philosophy. However, finally, an impotant reversal of scientific opinion, Professor of Physics at UCAL Berkeley, Richard A Muller, who discovered and made public three years ago some climate change findings misstated by overanxious savants in Britain that threw doubt on climate change and gave impetus to the deniers' outbursts, reverted a year ago.. Growing doubtful of the magnitude of the errors, he and a dozen other scientists in 2011 reviewed the data and found that the conclusions if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN project, were correct. This project in 2007 reported that much of the warming in the past 50 years was attributable to human activities, with earlier years' damage shared by humans and nature. Prof Muller now founded a Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, and thoroughly reviewed all prior research and more , and found that facts substantially fault human activity The Muller group finds that the 3 1/2 degree F temperature increase in past 250 years is due to human emission of greenhouse gases, with2 ½ degrees due in the next fifty years. There is a July 30 summary on the op-ed page of the NYTimes, that you should read for details, if you are still doubtful. Apart from the horrible impact on this year's agriculture product growth throughout the world, the political ethicists must re-address global warming as the long term impact on mankind, China's 10 percent annual economic growth , which may accelerate the expected global heating from a 50 year slot to 20 years. Also, also the question of how the people of the Appalachia’s four key states will earn a livelihood without coal. , listen up. This said for climate change and morality, we want to turn to a really significant upstate political campaign, that of Democrat Julian Schreibman for Congress, in the much re-divided 20th CD, which from 1913 to 1983 cove red part of Manhattan and Bronx., actually some of T&V territory. In the 1970s this family actually campaigned, as Charles Kinsolving's Murray Hill Reform Democratic Club (now defunct) members, for William Fitts Ryan (D, 1961-72), who died in office , a young man. He was followed by Bella Apzug(D, 1973-77), and Theodore Weiss (D,1977-83), after that Manhattan split away into the 17th CD, and the 20th CD's southern border moved north to Duchess County. It is now a skinny strip north of Putnam County, stretching to Canada, encompassing hunks of 10 counties, touching four states. It was, at times, part of the 17th, 18th, 22nd, 24th, or 19th CDs , once represented by Fusion’s Fiorello LaGuardia 1923-33) , intermittently ALP’s (near-Communist) Vitoand Marcantonio 1935-45), liberal Bella Abzug; and Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. (D,1949-55). After the spliting away of Manhattan, notable congresspeople were Nita Lowey (D, 1983-93) and Ben Gillman (1993-2003), more recently current Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.. Since 2010 it has been held by a Tea Party representative, Col. Chris Gibson (R, 20 year military vet and West Poin’s Professor of American Politics) supporter of the Paul Ryan budget (now he’s recanted, sees the military chunk too high), also supporting the turning of Medicare into a coupon program and for reducing Social Security, for weakening Fresh Air Act, for defunding Planned Parenthood, for cutting Broadband budget for rural areas by $21M and for providing $2B tax break for big oil companies. Julian Schreibman, Yale grad (two degrees, paid from scholarships and summer jobs, son of a small businessman and an immigrant mother who at 75 still teaches ballet for a living) protects Med and SS coverages, defends environmental legislation (is anti oil fracking), is for job creation ( broadband is a necessity), and for women’s health . He was an Assistant General Counsel at the CIA, (prosecuted terrorists who in 1998 bombed US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam), then fought crime as an ADA for Ulster County, and a federal prosecutor, Schreibman, from conversations, shows a deep fund of cross discipline knowledge and understanding of the economic prblems, here and abroad. What makes this 20th ED election special is the fact that it is one of eight, that Dems Central expect to win it back. What can New York cityites do? Well, my intuition based research says our splendid rainbow of East Midtown citizens points to many apple knocker transplants who have upstate roots and interests. . One comment re good jobs from broadband access.. I have heard of a developer who refused fed funds, because that carried with them union rates, and he would have to raise his current employees, well compensated by local standards. It is ugly but here it is. GM unions had to accept rate differentials. Should Obama compromise for this ugliness, in the interest of jobs? Look, the golden age of US supremacy of everything is over, we have to live on less to compete in the world. Europe is getting a beating, and we are close behind. More anon from upstate, about how politics undermine basic principles of behavior we learned in kindergarten. itical dogs & catsPolitical dogs & cats