Letters to the Editor
Fred Heutte
Published Letters: 23 Editor's Choice: 5
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Just one suggestion
[Read the article: Welcome to the next 10 years of Salon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hire Robert Scheer.
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Katrina was the failure of national institutions
[Read the article: In too deep]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A failure of the press, the parties (local and national) and the president alike.
The most compelling news coverage I saw (from far away here in Oregon) was the live coverage on WWL TV. They threw away the local TV news rule book and covered it like journalists. Even the Times-Picayune, which certainly performed heroics, did not fully capture the enormity and the importance of this historic event.
My favorite WWL moment was the night that the two anchors took turns reading paragraphs from Anne Rice's angry lament that had just gone online at the New York Times web site. But while that offered an emotional release, the WWL coverage from the initial helicopter flyovers to the on-the-ground reporting filled in the picture far better than the national media, with their screaming headlines, self-important anchorfaces and haughty patronizing of the people of southern Louisiana and Mississippi ever did.
I'm particularly upset about the judgments being rendered on Mayor Ray Nagin. There are plenty of things to criticize in his political career and his performance during and after the hurricanes. But if you think about standing in his shoes for an hour, what would you do? The most disheartening moment of the entire period was also on WWL, when Nagin appeared on camera outside the Superdome the afternoon of August 30 and said the Corps of Engineers had stopped trying to fill the breach of the key levee break on the 17th St Canal and that "the bowl will be filled."
If you want a tough-minded read about the causes and possible solutions to that crucial issue, and the the hydrological quagmire of the Gulf Coast as a whole, read Ivor von Heerden's no-holds-barred "The Storm." Flawed as it is in some ways, at least it is from someone who is genuinely trying to change the situation rather than mostly make a buck off it.
In the end, though, Barra has it right. The fury of the storm -- just a Pretty Large One and not the fabled Big One that will inundate New Orleans under 25 feet of water -- caused terrible havoc.
But it took no less than three more days for the federal government after Nagin's lament on Tuesday the 30th to arrive in force in the region -- not one on the other side of the world but in the heart of our own country. The President of the United States doesn't care about the Gulf Coast, and truth be told, he really doesn't care about this nation.
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First, do the right thing
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've also been on the ground but off the gate for over 3 hours in Chicago in the summer.
Planes are too packed and conditions too dependent on full power operation (especially air handling) to be on the ground for very long.
Any plane that has not taken off within 2 hours of pushback should be given priority access to the next available gate, regardless of who "owns" the slot. Full Stop. End of Discussion.
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Corn and Sugar
[Read the article: Live by the corn syrup, die by the corn syrup]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Jim Harkness at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy has a good piece on corn making similar points and arguing that a high price for corn is a good thing: http://www.iatp.org/iatp/commentaries.cfm?refID=97429
Sugar is another matter. The federal program for sugar is not a subsidy oriented one as with corn and many other ag products, although it is often vaguely referred to as if it is. Instead, it is a marketing program based on trade import quotas. As an article in the Minneapolis City Pages noted in 2005 after CAFTA passed, "Although technically a subsidized agricultural commodity, unlike other crops sugar has historically earned its keep. The U.S. sugar program currently operates at no cost to taxpayers thanks to a system of loans, domestic quotas, and import restrictions." http://citypages.com/databank/26/1286/article13531.asp
IATP's Dennis Olson has done extensive research on sugar and concluded that, as the last remaining quota-oriented commodity program in the US, it is also the only one achieving its basic goals, which are to provide for a stable domestic industry as well as allow for a reasonable amount of imports. CAFTA's sugar loopholes began to unravel that system. Olson lays out the detail in a 2005 paper, "Sweet or Sour."
http://www.tradeobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=72784#search=%22Sweet%20and%20Sour%3A%20The%20U.S.%20Sugar%20Program%22
In the US, sugar is actually two quite different industries. One is sugar cane, with its historic tendency toward plantation agriculture in Florida, terrible conditions and treatment of workers, political muscle and secretive behavior. The other, which is actually a little larger, is the sugar beet industry, mostly found in northern areas like the Red River Valley and composed primarily of family farms and coops. Beet sugar goes into food processing and is the backbone of a healthy farm economy in many parts of Minnesota, North Dakota and elsewhere.
While US manufacturers and consumers pay more for sugar than they would if it was deregulated, the price and the farm sector are stable, and taxpayers are not on the hook for gigantic subsidies, as opposed to many other key agricultural products. As Olson points out, this system keeps prices up for farmers both in the US and in other countries, while maintaining stable markets for consumers.
Sugar beets also have potential as a significant future source of ethanol, yielding double the fuel per acre as corn though currently at a higher cost. That could be a considerable part of the biofuel market in the US . . . if there are any farmers left to grow sugar beets after major corporations like Coke get their way in demolishing the domestic sugar program.