Campus Question – August 15, 2011

17 Comments

1. JanF on August 15, 2011 at 6:02 pm

   82 degrees in North Central Blogistan.

   Today on Campus
   Morning Feature – Waddaya Want? (Meta Monday)
   Midday Matinee – addisnana with The Wrong Change

   Our Earth – citisven with Freiburg, Germany: City of the Future. Part II: How to Build an Eco-Suburb from Scratch

2. JanF on August 15, 2011 at 6:04 pm

   addisnana said that cool things were happening in Minnesota today. And she was correct:

   Hitting back against an emboldened GOP, President Barack Obama launched a rare direct attack Monday on the Republican presidential field, criticizing his potential 2012 rivals for their blanket opposition to any deficit-cutting compromise involving new taxes.

   “Think about that. I mean, that’s just not common sense,” Obama said at a town hall-style meeting in Cannon Falls, Minn., as he kicked off a three-day bus tour through Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.

   Obama recalled a moment in last week’s GOP presidential debate when all eight of the candidates said they would refuse to support a deal with tax increases, even if tax revenues were outweighed 10-to-1 by spending cuts.

   From MPR:
   

   From the lead up to the visit:

   Cannon Falls may only have one traffic light, but its three-block downtown is active. This is the kind of small town that’s thrived, a place where people still browse antique shops, stroll down Main Street, and stop at the bakery every day for fresh bread.

   Phil and Cindy Terpstra stopped by the Hi-Quality Bakery to buy a cake for their son on a recent day. They’re frustrated with Congress but don’t blame the president for the country’s fiscal problems.

   “The mess he took over, the people that created the mess, are right away fighting him like everything was his fault,” said Phil Terpstra. “He’s trying to explain stuff, and he’s trying to straighten out the mess that he was given and nobody’s working with him.”

   • Jim W on August 15, 2011 at 6:52 pm

     I loved Obama’s comment today about government.

     You’ll hear a lot of folks, by the way, say that government is broken. Well, government and politics are two different things. Government is our troops who are fighting on our behalf in Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s government. (Applause.) Government are also those FEMA folks when there’s a flood or a drought or some emergency who come out and are helping people out. That’s government. Government is Social Security. Government are teachers in the classroom. (Applause.) Government are our firefighters and our police officers, and the folks who keep our water clean and our air clean to breathe, and our agricultural workers. And when you go to a national park, and those folks in the hats — that’s government.

     So don’t be confused — as frustrated as you are about politics, don’t buy into this notion that somehow government is what’s holding us back. Now, too much government — if it’s oppressive and bureaucratic and it’s not listening to people and it’s not responsive to the needs of people and isn’t customer friendly — that’s a problem. And if you stand in line at some government office and nobody seems to be paying any attention to you, well, that needs to be fixed. And if somebody is trying to regulate a small business and they’re not paying attention to the realities of the small business, that’s a problem.

     But don’t buy into this whole notion that somehow government doesn’t do us any good; government is what protects us. The government is what built the Interstate Highway System. Government is what sent a man to the Moon. It’s what invested in the research and development that created innovations all across this country. (Applause.)

     • JanF on August 15, 2011 at 7:25 pm

       The Big Dog is on the same theme:
       

     • winterbanyan on August 16, 2011 at 8:08 am

       This gave me chills, Jim. Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to read it. It is SO true.

   • addisnana on August 15, 2011 at 8:37 pm

     Thanks Jan. I was/am traveling. http://www.mpr.org has photos of Obama’s meeting up on its website.

   • winterbanyan on August 16, 2011 at 8:09 am

     I like these people. 🙂 Some in this country clearly have their heads on straight. In fact, I’m counting on the majority of us to have our heads on straight next fall.

3. JanF on August 15, 2011 at 6:14 pm

   Washington Post gives Rick Perry’s announcement speech Two Pinochios.

   And Ezra Klein rips apart Perry’s bemoaning that some Americans are not paying income taxes

   “the basic structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income from tax.”

   Funny how ordinary Americans not paying income tax because they are too poor irritates Rick Perry. I thought Republicans were all about “no taxes”. I suspect they actually mean “no taxes on rich Republicans”.

4. JanF on August 15, 2011 at 6:20 pm

   Speaking of Texas, the drought is not keeping oil companies from pumping freshwater into wells to get gas out:

   While much of the criticism around hydrofracking has focused on concerns that the process might contaminate drinking supplies — something the industry has long said is impossible — environmental groups in North Texas have also worried about the amount of water it’s required in the Barnett Shale. Those concerns were highlighted in a report released in April by the Texas Oil and Gas Accountability Project:

   Amid increasing scarcity of water supplies, the immense quantities of water required for hydraulic fracturing are not sustainable. Huge volumes of water are needed to extract shale gas. Estimates range from 1.5 million to five million gallons of water per well, and wells may be refracked several times over the life of each well. Recently, the oil and gas industry announced a new 12-stage completion method that uses over 9 million gallons of water per well.

5. JanF on August 15, 2011 at 6:22 pm

   It is SO nice to see the pundits ganging up on a Republican for once:

   “Perry is a huge threat to Bachmann,” says Dennis Goldford, a politics professor at Drake University in Iowa, “because their base is substantially the same: that angry, insurgent, populist, ‘hell no’ side of the Republican Party represented by the tea party and the religious conservatives.”

   This guy suggests that Rick Perry is more like Fred Thompson and that living up to the pre-hype hype may be impossible.

6. JanF on August 15, 2011 at 6:27 pm

   While you are waiting for part II of Sven’s great series on Future Cities:
   

7. glendaw271 on August 15, 2011 at 6:38 pm

   It seems that Governor Branstad has listened to the people of Iowa on at least one topic. When he first took office, one of his priorities was shutting down the universal preschool that was just beginning to be implemented after passage during Governor Culver’s administration.

   Today, our agency had the director of the Iowa Department of Education speak to us at our annual all-agency meeting. One point that he was asked about was the current position of the Department of Education on Early Childhood Education. His response was that he and the government had gotten the message from the citizens of Iowa and they would no longer be pursuing that idea.

   • JanF on August 15, 2011 at 7:39 pm

     I wonder if some of the not-quite-crazy governors are going to put the brakes on some of their agendas since it is not going so well for the tea party these days.

     Even if Gov. Branstad is not technically a tea partier, any Republican elected in 2010 will have to run forcefully away from the brand because it is associated with that election year.

     In Wisconsin in 2010, seven new Republican state senators were elected. Five were seats that switched from D to R. Yet the local paper right-wing rag is saying that Kim Simac, who is running against state senator Jim Holperin tomorrow, would be the first tea party candidate to be a member of the Wisconsin legislature. How can that be? It is only possible by denying reality and only happening because those who were swept in on tea party votes are now running away from them. What the tea party did during the debt default negotiations was more like graffiti than governing.

8. NCrissieB on August 15, 2011 at 8:17 pm

   The Great Recession was not simply a mental depression, Gov. Perry’s small town roots won’t win an election, and Phil Gramm’s endorsement isn’t exactly a sterling trophy. Most of the candidates Phil Gramm has endorsed … lost … badly.

   • JanF on August 15, 2011 at 9:03 pm

     Ha!

     Phil Gramm’s endorsement isn’t exactly a sterling trophy.

     Don’t tell him that. 😉

     • winterbanyan on August 16, 2011 at 8:10 am

       LOL. That was my thought when I read the question. Gramm? Really??????

       • JanF on August 16, 2011 at 8:24 am

         I am sure he is right now calling us a “nation of whiners” for complaining about his one tiny little error mislabeling the worst economic downturn in 60 years as a “mental recession”. 😉

         This should be a reminder to everyone who rejected McCainsian Economic Theory. That was the one where all problems can be solved by McCain rushing back to Washington to sit at a table with people discussing the economy while looking completely clueless.