Articles by JMG

Isn’t aiding and abetting tax evasion a crime?

Does anyone remember what a petard is? I think most folks only know them from the line in Shakespeare -- they picture some kind of quaint device, a Flintstones-like crane ... so you could be "hoisted on your own petard" in a clever, comical way.

Actually, a petard is a kind of primitive land mine.

The airlines have built an enormous petard beneath themselves; alas, they will not be the only ones hoisted when it explodes. 14 trillion miles of "free" flying outstanding ... man, that's a bunch of flying. OK, if only 1 percent are actually turned into flights, then it's only 140 billion miles of "free" jet travel.

Why we need to make makers take back what they make

Here's an actual photo of something some bikers found while doing a bikelane/bikepath cleanup day -- now, who says we don't need extended producer responsibility laws?

What if city hall had to disclose its assumptions like Wall Street does?

For those unaware, Michigan has been hard hit by the increasingly insistent intrusion of an unpleasant reality (that the era of cheap energy is over). Detroit and Wayne County are especially hard hit, as the economic malady destroying the auto industry hit a city already weakened to the point of collapse by stark racial segregation and disinvestment.

What Michigan likes to do is imagine that "big projects" will save it, so it tends to build enormous temples to optimism, much in the same way the pharaohs built the pyramids as monuments to themselves: "I may pass on, but my mighty empire will last forever," the pyramids say.

Well, in this country, not so much. Instead, you just get big tombs and sad little stabs at pouring big rivers of public money down leaky drains, hoping that somehow it will stick around long enough to fertilize some growth in the ruined soil.

The latest fantasy in Southeast Michigan is "Aerotropolis," a gigantic industrial park centered on, you guessed it, the airport, because we all know that every day, in every way, flying's getting better and better.

Sterling writer and columnist Jack Lessenberry wrote an article about the scheme here, which caused me to realize that one of the biggest reasons we have a hard time finding the capital needed to build a sustainable infrastructure in this country is that we squander it all on the kinds of investments that are:

• killing us, and
• clearly stupid at the time, no hindsight needed.

Hmmm, I thought -- when Wall Street wants to issue a new stock, they have to put out a prospectus that warns the rubes about the key assumptions made and the vulnerabilities of the company being touted. Like when they want to sell stock in a company whose profits all depend on cheap energy, they have to include some warnings about that dependence in the prospectus.

Garret Keizer burns in anger about ‘green capitalism’

The new Harper's (June 2007) contains a stunning and powerful "Notebook" essay titled "Climate, Class, and Claptrap," by Garret Keizer -- a minister, if I recall correctly. Keizer writes as well as Wendell Berry, but with a kind of righteous anger that the more ponderous Berry tamps down. This essay is about the contradictions inherent in the environmental community's fast embrace of "green capitalism" and wondertoys.

The intestinal tipping point came for me when a contingent of students from Middlebury College (annual tuition and fees $44,330) found both the gas money and the gall to drive to the town of Sheffield (annual per-capita income $13,277) in order to lecture the provincials on their responsibility to the earth and its myriad creatures. Not to be outdone, a small private school in our area (annual tuition and fees $76,900) has challenged the wind projects as a source of noise disturbance for its special-needs students. This could actually turn the tide. Like a bookie assessing the hindquarters of horses, I've learned to place my bets with a sharp eye on tuition and fees. Don't tell me where you went to school; just tell me what it cost.

Alas, the issue is not yet available online, but like every issue of Harpers, is well worth a read at your library or newsstand. (There is also a nice series of short pieces, including one by Bill McKibben -- of Middlebury College, I seem to recall -- on what needs to be done to repair the damage after W is impeached or limps home in disgrace in 2009.)

To whet your appetite, I'll further shred my carpal tunnels to share more of this powerful piece: