Grover Norquist - The Most Dangerous Man in America. Part 1 - Privatize this, Grover?

John McPhee






This weekend I read an article about Grover Norquist, the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, an ultra-right wing advocacy group, and an old 1987 article by John McPhee about the junction of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers.  The articles seemed to be connected in a way I will explain over this and my next post. Let's start with McPhee's article.

John McPhee is one of the great U.S. writers of our generation.  He is a master of creative non-fiction.  He won  the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for Annals of the Former World,  his book on the geological history of North America.  My favorites of his thirty books are Looking for a Ship (about the U.S. Merchant Marine) and Uncommon Carriers (about many modes of commercial transportation).  He writes from a turret sticking up from the geology building at Princeton University where he teaches writing.  Among his former students are  a Pulitzer Prize winner, Editors-in-Chief and Managing Editors of  The New Yorker, Time, the New Republic and Slate, and Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation.

In 1987, McPhee wrote an article for The New Yorker entitled The Control of Nature - Atchafalaya. ( It is one of several dozen articles he's had published by The New Yorker since 1965.) The article describes the efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to keep the Mississippi River flowing in its current channel through Baton Rouge, Louisiana, past New Orleans, and out through the Mississippi Delta into the Gulf.  Here is part of his article, later included in his 1989 book, Control of Nature:

Always it is the river’s purpose to get to the Gulf by the shortest and steepest gradient. As the mouth advances southward and the river lengthens, the gradient declines, the current slows, and sediment builds up the bed. Eventually, it builds up so much that the river spills to one side. Major shifts of that nature have tended to occur roughly once a millennium.

. . . .

Eight hundred years before the birth of Christ, the channel was captured from the east. It shifted abruptly and flowed in that direction for about a thousand years. In the second century a.d., it was captured again, and taken south, by the now unprepossessing Bayou Lafourche, which, by the year 1000, was losing its hegemony to the river’s present course, through the region that would be known as Plaquemines. By the nineteen-fifties, the Mississippi River had advanced so far past New Orleans and out into the Gulf that it was about to shift again, and its offspring Atchafalaya was ready to receive it. By the route of the Atchafalaya, the distance across the delta plain was a hundred and forty-five miles—well under half the length of the route of the master stream.

. . . .

For the Mississippi to make such a change was completely natural, but in the interval since the last shift Europeans had settled beside the river, a nation had developed, and the nation could not afford nature. The consequences of the Atchafalaya’s conquest of the Mississippi would include but not be limited to the demise of Baton Rouge and the virtual destruction of New Orleans. With its fresh water gone, its harbor a silt bar, its economy disconnected from inland commerce, New Orleans would turn into New Gomorrah. Moreover, there were so many big industries between the two cities that at night they made the river glow like a worm. As a result of settlement patterns, this reach of the Mississippi had long been known as “the German coast,” and now, with B. F. Goodrich, E. I. du Pont, Union Carbide, Reynolds Metals, Shell, Mobil, Texaco, Exxon, Monsanto, Uniroyal, Georgia-Pacific, Hydrocarbon Industries, Vulcan Materials, Nalco Chemical, Freeport Chemical, Dow Chemical, Allied Chemical, Stauffer Chemical, Hooker Chemicals, Rubicon Chemicals, American Petrofina—with an infrastructural concentration equalled in few other places—it was often called “the American Ruhr.” The industries were there because of the river. They had come for its navigational convenience and its fresh water. They would not, and could not, linger beside a tidal creek. For nature to take its course was simply unthinkable. The Sixth World War would do less damage to southern Louisiana. Nature, in this place, had become an enemy of the state.

McPhee's article describes the elaborate lock and dams complex that was built where the Atchafalaya River turned to the south-west away from the Mississippi in Concordia Parish, Louisiana. As he notes above, had the dams and water release mechanisms not been built, the Mississippi River's main channel would have eventually shifted its flow into the Atchafalaya, bypassing Baton Rouge and New Orleans and leaving them to silt up and disappear as commercial ports.

 Here's a picture of the dam complex where the Atchafalaya branches off the Mississippi:

(Picture from Dr. Jeff Master's Wonderblog.)

You can see the barges on the Mississippi to the upper left.  The three channels leading into 

the Atchafalaya River are all controlled by dams that are visible across the channels.

In Life on the Mississippi, Twain once wrote of the river:

Ten thousand river commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or define it, cannot say to it "Go here," or "Go there," and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at.

The physical evidence to date supports that Twain under-estimated man's ability to control the river. The control structures in the picture above cost the United States Army Corps of Engineers over $300,000,000 in current dollars to construct.  The Corps of Engineers proposes in its 2012 budget (page 23) to spend over $75,000,000 in fiscal year 2012 to operate and maintain the structures that are pictured above, and other structures running down from Baton Rouge to the Delta, to keep the Mississippi in its banks and on its current course.  As John McPhee describes it, the "American Ruhr" industrial complex is dependent on it.  Baton Rouge is dependent on it. The Crescent City is dependent on it. Grain growers in our section of the upper Midwest are dependent on it.  It has been estimated that if the Old River Control Structure were to fail and the Mississippi diverted its main channel to the south along the "Atch," the commercial costs to the United States would end up being on the order of $295,000,000 per day. 

Grover Norquist is the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform.  In many ways, for Republican politicians, he may be the most feared man in America because of the famous "no tax increase" pledge that he has secured from so many of them.  In March of 2008, Norquist was interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and said that he favored having all but the most essential services transferred from the government to private enterprise. When asked to describe what was included by "essential services" he said that he was OK with the police to keep "bad guys from taking our property from us," and the military to keep "bad guys from coming shooting at us from overseas."  That was about it. (You can judge for yourself his position, the Daily Show clip is at the end of this post.)  I question whether he would include keeping the Mississippi in its current banks an essential government service.  Perhaps he is prepared to have the Mississippi River control structures taken over under lease arrangements by companies intent on keeping their costs low and profits high.

In my next post I will talk about Grover Norquist and why he should be feared not only by Republican politicians, but by all of us.

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Palin National Polling Abysmal

The Pollster website has been absorbed into Huffington Post - Pollster. Here is a graph showing how Sarah Palin has been doing over the past months in national polls. Her current unfavorable rating is at 60%.   This a graph of the data points of some hundred polls since 2009.  Perhaps I put too much into her national bus tour in my earlier post.

Journal-Sentinel Thinks GOP Should Take Judge Sumi's Decision as an Opportunity

Do Over Button




Yesterday's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had an editorial that recommends that the GOP-controlled legislature  use Judge Sumi's final judgment in the Open Meetings Law lawsuit as an welcomed invitation to go back to the drawing board on the budget repair bill's provisions on collective bargaining.

Money Quotes:

The budget-repair bill went further than was needed to accomplish Walker's goals. Not only would it have limited collective bargaining to wages, but it also would have capped any pay increases at the rate of inflation unless voters approved more in a referendum. And the bill would have required an annual re-certification of unions and done away with automatic withdrawal of union dues. That's union busting, plain and simple.

Worse, police and firefighters were exempted from these restrictions, which would put cities such as Milwaukee in a vise. A big chunk of the city's budget is tied up in wage and benefit costs for public safety workers.

Legislators in Massachusetts, one of the most reliably liberal bastions in the nation, are trying a different approach. In late April, the House of Representatives in that state voted 111-42 to limit the ability of public employees to collectively bargain for health care. The legislation would give mayors and local officials the ability to set co-pays and deductibles after a 30-day negotiation period with unions. The reforms are expected to save $100 million.

Facing a state budget that is billions of dollars out of balance, Walker and the Republicans in the Legislature are right to try to cut labor costs. But they don't need such a broad brush.

This is a sound recommendation by the editorial staff of the state's leading newspaper, which endorsed the governor last Fall.  Everyday there is growing indication that the majority of the citizens of the state believe that the effort by the GOP on the budget repair bill was crass class warfare. There is clear indication that the GOP is losing the support of many editorial boards that supported the governor just four months ago. The Governor's approval rating is dropping in polls month-by-month.  That isn't happening because he took a principled stand on collective bargaining, but because he unnecessarily demonized public workers and teachers and took away power for dealing with local problems  from local elected officials. Parents around the state are seeing their own children's school staffs decimated by retirements of experienced teachers far in excess of prior years. Voters are seeing the proposed move to more extensively available school vouchers as a calculated effort to harm public schools for political purposes, and privatize K-12 education in the face of clear data showing that school choice has failed to deliver on its promises from twenty years ago.

This isn't just hopeful thinking by the opponents of the Walker administration and.Republican legislature. The Republicans can see the handwriting on the wall.  That is why they are rushing to pass devoutly dumb new laws (voter ID, concealed carry, venture capital tax credit give-aways to insurance companies, killing renewable energy generation, politicizing the DNR, killing recycling) through the legislature before the recall elections. These new laws  have nothing whatsoever to do with the governor's and majority party's purported mandate to create jobs. 

It is time for the Governor and the legislature to put the word "compromise" back into the political lexicon in Wisconsin.  There is a chance that they can salvage the situation presented by the recalls if they quit pandering to the worst elements of the Wisconsin electorate, the self-proclaimed "patriots" who are generally at their happiest when they are angry.   If they doesn't quit pandering to this  small silly segment of the electorate, they will undoubtedly find themselves in trouble this summer and in 2012.

Why OBL was Buried at Sea - What Fox wants to Show, but the Government Won't Allow

Kid and Otter

You have to watch until the end.  I love how it dawns on this little guy to set up a control in the middle of his experimentation.

Jon Huntsman is already being "RINO'ed," While Palin Waits in the Wings

Jon Huntsman, former Governor of Utah





Jon Huntsman is a guy who I believe could give Barack Obama a real run for his money.  Smart, pragmatic, moderate, good values guy, Pennsylvania grad, former U.S. Ambassador to China (good foreign relations and trade cred.).  Unfortunately for him, he's in a party that won't be able to accept that his hair isn't totally on fire.

Here is a new video clip attacking Huntsman published on the internet  by Verum Serum, a conservative blog.



Look for the GOP to give us Palin for President shortly.  Her "One Nation" bus tour (to teach us about "founding principals") kicks off this weekend with the Rolling Thunder Memorial Day event in Washington, and a new two hour documentary of her life as Alaska governor is being debuted in Iowa soon.  According to the NY Times today, she also bought a home in Scottsdale, Arizona for $1.7 million as a better hub to move quickly around the lower 48.  Gallup has her trailing only Romney, 17% to 15%.  Strap on your seat belts!

Geez. We thought we had problems! MN planning to possibly shutdown its government

Minnesota's DFL (Democratic Farm Labor) Governor Mark Dayton and the Republican controlled legislature are not getting along in the biennial budget sandbox.  The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Governor Dayton is having his cabinet make plans to shut down non-essential government operations on July 1, if squabbling prevents a new budget from being passed before the end of the current biennium.

Money quotes:

Perhaps the most immediate consequence noticeable to the most people would be park closings. Amy Barrett, parks and trails information officer at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said the July 4 weekend is one of the three busiest of the year in Minnesota parks, the others being Memorial Day and Labor Day. 

The state park system earned nearly $1 million in revenue to the state in the first week of July 2010, Barrett said. 

The parks don't just operate in a vacuum. Many of the larger ones have inspired businesses to spring up nearby that cater to visitors to the area. 

Tom Atwood and his wife own Evergreen Gifts and Fun Park, which is in Park Rapids and about 10 miles south of Itasca State Park, one of the state's most popular. 

"It certainly would not help at all," Atwood said of the prospect of the park being closed that weekend. He said they've sunk thousands into improving their establishment's offerings this summer after a tough time last summer thanks to the economy and road construction in the area. 

"Now with gas prices we're worried, and if there's a shutdown ..." Atwood trailed off. "It won't help. It won't be good."

Earlier today I posted about the Eau Claire fourth-graders going on a field trip to the Minnesota capitol in St. Paul.  It is good they are getting that trip now, while the getting's good!

(One of my two wonderful Eau Claire sisters-in-law emailed me after the earlier post to make sure I hadn't missed the irony that the fourth-grade social science curriculum into which the kids' field trip is tied is Wisconsin History.)