Category Archives: Lessons Learned (or not)

Sequestration illuminates absence of long-term, coherent risk policies

Our national policy for disaster recovery and rebuilding – putting aside, for the moment, risk assessment, mitigation, planning, and response – is effectively no policy. We make it up as we go along.  Did victims of terrorism on September 10, 2001, or beforehand receive compensation? Did airlines before 9/11 get special legislation absolving them of liability? Even assuming that there is a legitimate question about the etiology of Ground Zero responders’ illnesses, wouldn’t a reasonable and compassionate country willingly support dying and seriously ill responders and their families – rather than stalling, essentially starving them out? James Zadroga,   The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act allocated $4.2 billion to create the World Trade Center Health Program; the legislation was signed in January 2011; Zadroga died in January, 2006.  Then, as now, partisan legislative politics delayed the matter.

 

21 Century Energy or Business As Usual?

NY Times Special (Business As Usual) Energy Section

Clifford Krauss’ “Can We Do Without the Mideast?” sets the tone for the “Special Energy Section” in the NY Times, March 31, 2011. “The path to independence – or at least an end to dependence on the Mideast – could well be dirty, expensive and politically explosive.” Is this an April Fool’s Day joke? The path to sustainable energy requires vision and hard work. a solar array on every roof and insulation in every wall and every attic. It will be better for the economy, better for the environment, and better for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren. Continue reading →

Bernie Madoff, Richard Feynman, and The Financial Crisis

Bernie Madoff

Bernie Madoff - In Prison

Interviewed in prison, Bernie Madoff asserted that banks and hedge funds were “complicit” in his elaborate fraud. Diana Henriques, writing in the NY Times, 2/15/11, (here) said “Madoff described as ‘willful blindness’ their failure to examine discrepancies between his regulatory filings and other information,” Quoting Madoff, “They had to know. But the attitude was sort of, ‘If you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.’ ”

Look at this in the context of the the Financial Crisis. The bi-partisan committee on the financial crisis, FiscalCommission.Gov,  released its findings on Thursday, 27, January, 2011.  The Commission, I think, got this one right. The financial crisis could have been avoided.  This thirty-year economic experiment in de-regulation, which started under President Reagan, has proven that self-regulation doesn’t work; the government must regulate the financial industry. The foxes can’t guard the henhouse. Continue reading →

Earth Day 2009

Shows Oxygen and Fish Catch in the Chesapeake

The Chesapeake: Oxygen & Fish Catch

“Poisoned Waters,” a documentary on PBS Frontline examines the state of our nation’s waterways. It focuses on the Chesapeake and the Puget Sound. As the title suggests, the nation’s waterways are far from pristine. Click here for Tim Wheeler’s review in the Baltimore Sun and here for Frontline. The documentary suggests that the Clean Water Act, in response to Earth Day, 1970, started off well. But gutting regulation, castrating the EPA, allowing open dumping and externalizing cleanup costs do not solve pollution problems. Perdue, in his denial that chicken manure contributes to algae blooms in the Chesapeake, sounds like a shill for the tobacco industry saying “Well we know the plaintiff smoked 4 packs a day for 25 years. How do we know the cigarettes caused lung cancer? How do we know lung cancer killed him? He died when his heart stopped. The cancer was in his lungs.”

This image, from Science Daily, shows a dead zone in the northern stem of the Chesapeake. The area in red shows oxygen depletion. The area in blue shows oxygen. The green circles in the blue zone show fish catch.

On Earth Day, 2009, we have much to do.  It is not as if we have accomplished nothing in the last 39 years. However, we see two glaring omissions in the clean water act. It doesn’t regulate farm waste or coal ash. We also need to understand that regulation and enforcement are effective and deregulation and voluntary compliance does not work.  After all,  we have police and prosecutors to chase and bring to trial criminals in order to protect the citizens. Speed limits and parking regulations are not “goals” or “guidelines” for voluntary compliance. They are hard and fast laws. Break the law; get a ticket. This paradigm must be applied to protecting the nation’s waterways.

But here’s an idea: Take this algae-manure system and transform it from one that is destroying an estuary into one that is creating the biofuels for the next generation of cars and power plants!

Scott Simon: Captains of Integrity

From this morning’s Weekend Edition Saturday, Scott Simon’s essay, Captains of Integrity. Even if you’re a regular listener – it’s worth reading on the page for the essay itself, as a reminder that at times the production values of radio – and a familiar voice – can prevent us from catching the full power of words. Here’s a link to the piece, including the audio. The full text follows:

· Over the past few weeks, there have been captains in the news to remind us of responsibility, which is a form of conscience.

Capt. Richard Phillips has been acclaimed for risking his own safety for that of his crewmates aboard the cargo ship Maersk Alabama.

But another ship’s captain, Cmdr. Frank Castellano of the U-S-S Bainbridge, took the responsibility to order Navy Seals to open fire on the pirates when he thought, after four days, there might be a moment of opportunity to free Captain Phillips.

If something had gone only slightly wrong – if a single bullet, fired by a man on the deck of a boat in a bobbing sea, had missed by a fraction – Captain Phillips might have been killed, and Commander Castellano would have been second-guessed by every talking head from Fox News to Pacifica Radio.

Capt. Chesley Sullenberger has reminded admirers how many things had to go utterly right for him to make his famous, almost splashless landing of his disabled US Airways jet onto the Hudson River in January.

His decision to put down in the water, rather than risk crashing into midtown Manhattan, seems so wise now. But had wind whipped up the water or tipped a wing, people who don’t know how to make a paper airplane would have second-guessed the decision Captain Sullenberger made in a split second.

This week, Richard Scheidt died, at the age of 81. Mr. Scheidt became a photographic icon when he was a Chicago firefighter in December, 1958, and called to a fire at the Our Lady of Angels school.

Ninety-two children and three nuns were killed in the smoke and flames. The photograph that raced around the world showed Mr. Scheidt, his face grimy and his shoulders slumped, carrying the body of a 10-year-old boy in his arms.

He became a captain. And this week, Dep. Commissioner Bob Hoff recalled how, in scores of fires that were never in the news, Captain Scheidt would hold back his men but go first into a burning building.

Commissioner Hoff told the Chicago Tribune, “He never asked anyone to do something he wouldn’t do.”

I think many Americans have been uplifted to see real-life captains who, unlike some captains of finance and industry, have the character to make hard decisions, share risks, think of others, and live by the consequences.

It’s been reassuring to see such men and women and know that in these times, in scores of places, “The captain is on the bridge.”

The Wolf Inside

This is not, strictly speaking, emergency preparedness, public health, or environmental policy.  But it’s in the intersection. Click Here.

An old Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, “A battle is raging inside me … it is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The old man fixed the children with a firm stare. “This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather,

“Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee replied: “The one you feed.”

Jews, Moslems, and Humanity: A Christmas Story.

dervis_korkut11

This is the story of how Dervish Korkut, and his wife, Servet, Muslims of Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, saved the life of Mira Papo Solomanova, a young Jewish woman during World War II, how Mr. Korkut, the curator of the Sarajevo Museum, also saved the Sarajevo Haggada (click here), from the Nazis, and how Mira then saved Dervis and Servet’s daughter, Lamija and her family from the Serbs.  Click here for the details in the New Yorker, here,  here and here for other documentation on the Internet.

In 1942, Naza Commander Yohan Fortner arrived at the Bosnian National Museum in Sarajevo demanding the Sarajevo Hagadda. Dervish Korkut, Muslim, librarian, intellectual anti-fascist, and anti-communist, hid the book. He told Fortner that the book had already been taken by the Nazis. One way of looking at this is that Mr. Korkut risked his life to save a book. However, I would suggest that he devoted his life to saving books, ideas, culture, and humanity.

In April, 1942, Dervish protected a young Jewish woman, Mira Papo Solomanova, by bringing her home and passing her off as “Amira,” a Muslim servant, a cousin of his young wife, Servet, to help care for their infant son, Munib. They risked their lives to save another person.

In 1994, in a letter to the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem, Israel, Mira documented how Dervish and Servet saved her life.

Dervish passed away in 1969. (While we originally reported that Servet had passed away in 1998 we now know that) Servet lives in Sarajevo, and we hope, in good health. In 1999 their daughter Lamija evacuated her children in advance of the collapse of Kosovo. Lamija and her husband were sent by the Serbs to a refugee camp. Lamija went to the Jewish community in Kosovo with a photocopy of Mira’s testimony. Four days later she and her husband were flown to Tel Aviv and reunited with their children, and Mira’s Israeli son, Davor Bakovic.

If this story is filmed, Harrison Ford should play Dervish, to Angleina Jolie’s Mira, and Uma Thuman’s Servet. Robert DiNiro should direct and play both Munib Korkut, and Davor Balkovic.

Regardless of whether or not this story makes it to the silver screen, the world needs more Dervish Korkuts, more Servet Korkuts, more Mira Papo Salomanovas, and fewer Yohan Fortners.

Hugh’s Katrina Timeline

Came across a well-detailed Katrina timeline   – the timeline speaks for itself. Here’s the introduction:

It is hoped that, by recording the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans on August 29, 2005, some insight will be gained into the mechanism of disaster. We need to understand how Federal and local government, Republican and Democratic alike, could be so inadequate to a calamity that had been predicted for decades. What emerges from any attempt at doing so is no less than a damning account of corruption, indifference, racism, classism, oppression, ignorance, historical mistrust, and finally a near-total breakdown in all levels of American political and social institutions.

 From Ominous Valve. Which is mostly about cool technology, funny things, and good art.