What is a Green Job?

This offshore windfarm is in Denmark, but it could easily be in Lake Ontario. How green can you get?

Every time I turn on the TV, some politician (often President Obama) is talking about creating green jobs. What is a green job? I mean, sometimes it is a no-brainer: Someone whose work is creating non-polluting, renewable energy is doing a green job. Yes? Okay, but even if that's accurate, what other green jobs are there? And what other green jobs could there be?

During the election campaign, Mr. Obama painted a very rosy picture of green employment: "Jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced; jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and fuel-efficient cars; jobs that will help us end our dependence on oil from Middle East dictators." California (which is presently staggering under the burden of something exceeding $45 billion of debt) is supposed to be the green capital of the United States. They have very high emissions standards for cars, for example, to reduce pollution. So, it seems like building low-emissions cars that reduce pollution would involve green jobs. By that logic, building energy efficient appliances and energy efficient houses must involve green jobs, too. And building hybrid cars that use less gasoline must be a green occupation. Does any of this make sense?

The thing is, you can get into difficulties in defining green activities pretty quickly. Suppose I hire someone to put more insulation into my house so I will use less energy? That sounds green to me. But if the person or persons who do this work drive gas-guzzling trucks and use materials that are bad for the environment, the job just got a lot less green. Right? So, is it a light green job?

Building or extending mass transit systems is obviously green in one way, but how much pollution does the construction activity itself entail? Centro, the bus company that services our region, operates both hybrid-diesel and compressed natural gas vehicles. That's good, although at this point a good many of their buses do not yet use a green technology. The more of these vehicles they buy, the less pollution they create, the less non-renewable fuel they use, and, I assume, the more they contribute to the creation of green jobs.

Organic farming must be a green activity. Would hazardous materials cleanup be a green occupation? But what do they do with the hazardous materials? Recycling seems like a green activity, but I have read that some of the paper, glass, and plastic that is collected ends up in landfills, not recycling plants. New York State is trying to pass a "bigger, better bottle bill," that would require people to pay a 5 cent deposit on cans and bottles of water and non-soda beverages. That seems like it must be a green activity, because it would expand recycling by encouraging people to collect and turn in those beverage containers that I see littering the streets all the time right now. As long as those containers don't end up in a landfill afterwards. Right?

My head is beginning to ache. I believe in cleaning up our environment and reducing greenhouse gases and reducing our carbon footprint and all of that stuff. I will pay taxes to support it, and I will learn to do things differently to encourage it. But somehow, I am sceptical about where all this green activity is going to come from and whether it is for real or just a scam. For example, did you know that Senator Edward Kennedy opposes the construction of a windfarm in Nantucket Sound five miles off Cape Cod? Yes, indeed he does, because it might spoil his view. Green is nice, but not in my backyard, pal!

Yes, green is good, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Are Government Spending Programs a Waste? Who Cares?

FDR's Works Progress Administration employed a lot of artists, so why not give a chunk of money to the National Endowment for the Arts?

While President Obama and all the members of Congress make themselves look foolish wrangling over the "stimulus package," and executives in the banking and financial industry keep giving their employees bonuses and riding around in corporate jets, and while Rush Limbaugh, the Loser-in-Chief, keeps braying that he hopes the Obama administration is a failure, you still can't help asking yourself whether most government spending programs are indeed a waste.

At least, I can't help asking myself that question, and my worries got a major boost this week as I listened to a presentation by a person who worked in a particular state educational program. I don't want to say anything bad about this person, so let's just say it was one of those situations where the state government had recognized that not enough students majored in certain important academic disciplines. The point of the program, as far as I can make out, is to get more people to study these subjects and give both emotional and material support to students who do. The problem is that not enough students have materialized to take advantage of the program. What does one do then? Well, one could re-assess the goal and decide it was bad. Or one could re-assess the program and decide it was faulty. If the goal is worthy but the program has flaws, one could work to fix those flaws so the program would work better. Right?

Not exactly, because there is another choice, a very common "Plan B" for government programs, which is to keep the program as it is and just reinterpret who it applies to, so you have enough people enrolled to keep the program going and spend the money allocated to it. And that is what the education program in question was obviously doing. This happens so often that it makes me want to tear my hair out, or at least tear somebody's hair out. Why is it that failing programs are not assessed and, if needed, corrected or eliminated?

I hope you don't expect me to have an answer to this question, other than to say that our government doesn't operate in a rational way. Maybe it's inertia-- once you set the old ball rolling, it continues to roll. In this example, it even rolls uphill. If I were in charge of it, something would have changed already, but I'm not sure anyone knows what happens to a lot of the taxpayer money that is spent by various governments every year.

I'm also not sure how to determine which spending is "good" spending and which isn't. If you are a Republican, any spending that doesn't benefit the rich or "the base" is bad spending. If you are a Democrat, nearly all spending is good spending, but spending on the so-called "liberal agenda" is the best spending. Honestly, I don't care if Congress gives the National Endowment for the Arts $50 million in the stimulus package. It probably won't be used any more wastefully than any other money that is included in the bill. But I really don't understand why one would cut out the $16 billion for K-12 school construction. Hey, we've got some of those "shovel-ready" school projects here in Oswego County, and we could use both the jobs and the schools. And even though the states are wasteful, they need that $40 billion that the Senate cut out of the stimulus package to help keep from going bankrupt. Yes, a lot of it will be wasted, but some of it will help, so keep it in.

Of course, you have already seen where my twisted logic is taking me. Yes, government spending programs tend to be wasteful, and yes, once they come into being they never seem to be fixed or eliminated, no matter how flawed they are. Yes, indeed. But guess what? The members of Congress may expect applause for proposing to forgo their next scheduled pay raise, but it won't help anybody, and nobody is going to applaud. Just get off the dime and spend the goddamn money already, and let's cross our fingers and hope that some of it does some good.

Aretha's Church Hat

Aretha Franklin sings at President Obama's Inauguration on January 20, 2009

Aretha Franklin had the honor of singing at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, and she made big-time news with her hat. The gray chapeau with the enormous bow outlined in Swarovski crystals was made by Luke Song of Mr. Song Millinery in Detroit.

When I first saw Aretha Franklin at the inauguration ceremony, all I could think of was that she was wearing an African-American lady's classic Sunday hat. A long time ago, the TV documentary show Sixty Minutes did one of its more light-hearted segments on the elaborate hats that many African-American women wear to church on Sundays. The hats were wonderful, and the broadcast was an education for a white, upstate New York Catholic kid who grew up in the black lace mantilla era of church going millinery or-- God forbid, the piece of Kleenex held down by a bobby pin when you had to go to church and didn't have a scarf or some other approved headgear to put on. Who knew there was such a thing as a church hat? In fact, CBS seems to have a thing about hats. In 2000, Sunday Morning did a piece on African American "hat queens." They also covered Queen Elizabeth's hats when she visited the USA in 2007.

Anyway, when I saw Aretha's hat, I knew for sure that this was a special day, even if Ellen DeGeneres later made fun of it. What does she know anyway? It was a gorgeous hat and perfect for the occasion. Apparently I wasn't the only person who thought so, because Mr. Song's telephone was ringing off the hook even before the swearing-in ceremony was over, although some people might not want to pay $500+ for the hat, assuming they could get one. They probably couldn't, because it was made espcially for Ms. Franklin, but I'm sure people will be wearing Aretha-hat knockoffs before you know it. In fact, Mr. Song will sell you one for $179.

I couldn't be bothered sitting through the agonizingly slow parade that followed the swearing-in and inaugural luncheon in the Statuary Hall at the Capitol (which took out two senators, Byrd and Kennedy, before it ended), but I didn't need to. Next to the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Obama replace Mr. Bush, Aretha's hat was a highpoint that couldn't be surpassed.

President Obama and the Hopes of the Nation

Today Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, and tomorrow morning he will start work with an almost immeasurable burden of the nation's hopes weighing on his shoulders. Right now, the New York Times has a fascinating interactive feature called "I hope so, too" (or at least, that's how it would read if the writers at the Times were still literate people) that distills into 29 categories the responses of 200 people from 14 states who were asked to name their greatest hopes for the Obama presidency . The feature allows readers to hear excerpts from the answers of the people who were interviewed and click on a button if they share the hopes that were expressed. In addition, there are already over 600 posted comments that state many other hopes not included in the feature.

I clicked on so many of the hopes in the feature that I lost count, but these ten were among the ones I shared:

1. Enact universal health care
2. Protect the environment
3. Improve the economy
4. Improve education
5. End the war in Iraq
6. Promote gay rights
7. Restore civil liberties
8. Close the prison at Guantanamo Bay
9. Increase government accountability
10. Restore the separation of church and state

There were other hopes expressed that I also share whole-heartedly (such as ending global poverty) and some that I definitely do not share (such as ending the right to abortion or keeping our troops deployed in the Middle East), but ten seems like a good number, so these are mine. However, it seems to me that the one hope that would make at least some of the hopes listed above possible is that the government should embrace bipartisanship in order to act in the best interests of the nation and the world. Unfortunately, given the entrenched behavior of politicans, I expect to read about the discovery of a universal cure for cancer before I read about concrete examples of politicians of both parties working together to accomplish important national goals.

In my experience, political behavior denotes self-interested action that is mainly directed at pleasing the interest groups that will keep the politician in office, whether it benefits the nation or not. Think of kowtowing to the corporations that give the politicians money. Think of pork barrel projects. Think of the military-industrial complex. Think of Henry Paulson giving $350 billion to his friends at U.S. banks and insurance companies without demanding any accountability. How do we get from these actions to enacting universal health care or rescuing the economy? Yes, I believe in separation of church and state, but even so it will take a lot of prayers to get the powers that be in our government to change the way they operate, and I am not optimistic.

A la famiglia! To the family! (With caveats)

Barack Obama and his family on November 4, 2008. Mrs. Obama's mother is seated to her right.

Right now there is a lot of speculation about how the Obama family unit will shape up when they finally occupy the White House on January 20, 2009. There is, of course, the momentous decision of what puppy to buy for the Obamas' two daughters, Sasha and Malia. Occupying nearly as much attention, however, is the question of whether Mrs. Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, will move into the White House, as well. At this point, it looks as if she will, although she isn't sure how long she will stay before returning to her own home in Chicago. But as of January 20, 2009, the First Family in the White House will be a multigenerational family, which reflects a growing trend in the United States.

When I was a kid, my Aunt Mary and her family lived in the same house as my maternal grandmother at 102 East Tenth Street, in Oswego, New York. My great grandmother, my great-aunt, and one of my great uncles lived next door on one side on the corner of East Tenth and Schuyler Streets, my grandmother's sister and two of her children lived next door on the other side on East Tenth Street, and one of my grandmother's brothers and his family lived directly behind her on Schuyler Street. My paternal grandmother lived on her own on Willow Street in Syracuse, but her home was the upstairs apartment in a house owned and occupied by one of her daughters and her family.

In those days, multigenerational families were common. It seemed as if most of the people I knew had a least one relative beyond the nuclear family living with them, although few of them lived in anything like the compound occupied by the Familos (of which my grandmother was a daughter) in the area of East Tenth and Schuyler Streets in Oswego. Between my grandmother's family and my Uncle Ed's (Aunt Mary's husband) family, nearly everyone in the neighborhood was a relative, and everyone was in and out of 102 East Tenth Street all day every day. This was pretty hard on my aunt, who heard an almost constant litany of "Mary, put on a pot of coffee!" or "Mary, Uncle Allie's staying for lunch!" or "Mary, your brother Pete and his family are on their way from Ohio!" She must have thought she was running a hotel in those days. And later, when my grandmother was ill with Parkinson's disease and housebound, Aunt Mary must have wondered why the relatives always showed up at mealtimes and almost never when they could have kept my grandmother company while my aunt went shopping or had a few hours out with her husband.

Over time, the phenomenon of the multigenerational family living under one roof faded away for the middle class. Children grew up and moved away from the old neighborhood, maybe even out of state, and their children did the same. And so-called "empty-nesters" often moved away, too, to retirement homes in Florida or Arizona. Family ties were stretched thin, and often people didn't see each other except at holdays or, unfortunately, funerals. Now the situation is changing again.

According to the 2000 Census, nearly four million (3.9 million) American households consist of three or more generations living together. In some cases, these are ethnic families, many of them Hispanic or Asian, in which multigenerational living arrangements are traditional. In some cases, they are families in which grown children have landed back in the parental household because of economic or marital problems (so-called "boomerang" children), or families in which the children grow up but don't leave the home. And some sad cases involve grandparents caring for their grandchildren because their own children are incapable or incarcerated. Now, however, we are seeing a new trend, families with children in which both parents have careers and at least one in-law lives with them.

Today, the New York Times ran an article suggesting (more subtly than I am stating it) that the new "in" accessory for two-career families is the live-in grandparent, who can share in the childcare, cooking and cleaning duties. According to the Times, this has required an adjustment in power relationships in order for the generations to live comfortably together in the modern world. Today, says the Times, mom is a working woman's best friend, and people aren't afraid to say so.

I think that's great. However, my concern is that the folks who are finding mom to be their best friend now must realize that someday their parents are going to cease being caregivers and need care themselves. You can't just say, "Gee, thanks for all you did. It's time to go to assisted living now." If Grandma is really a part of the family, then everyone needs to save up financially and emotionally for the next stage and accept it graciously. I am unmarried and childless. My life companion (his life, obviously) is a 6-pound Yorkshire terrier. My mother lived with me for the last five years of her life, and my only regret is that maybe I didn't do everything I could have to provide her with the best possible life, although I always found great satisfaction in Mom's reports that the other ladies in her bridge club envied her. Those years were not always easy for me, but I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world.

So, here's to the family, but don't forget about future responsibilities, folks, because they will be there before you know it, and you'd better be ready to step up.