Environmentalists Are So Low Energy…

Grasping at Windmills Asymmetric warfare is on in California’s wine country. She’s this place everybody wants a piece of. Sweet to drink, fine to sleep with and when you’re done owning her you’ll flip her and move on down the line. That’s life tangled in the vines. No broad brushing the truth here. The developers […]

Against the Grain

The Next Steps The current novel I am drafting is set in Napa County. Climate change, inequality and the health of of both the people and environment is under stress. Studying groundwater levels, fish extinction events, the alarming increase of childhood cancer rates (the highest in any county in California) has been painful to acknowledge. […]

So Long Small Time, Lonely at the Top

Neighborhoods of our Minds I listen to Marc Maron’s podcast WTF. Julia Louis-Dreyfus was on his April 20th episode. Veep is her now, Seinfeld her then, Second City was in the way back, and SNL was shoehorned in the credits as well. Marc and Julia talk of many things. What begins stiff soon gets […]

Crushing Fame Games

Scene from 2015 Valley Fire Lake County, California Plenty busy now and well along on my fourth novel. In this scene I am dealing with how money in politics is influencing the winegrowing region of Napa County. The billionaires in the region have an outsized influence over the valley. Preserving this wine growing wonder of […]

Lonely at the Top, Stupid at the Bottom

The main ultimate highest priority of one of our two political parties is tax cuts. Even though if you take the time to go read the polls you will discover that a vast swath of the people of the United States are concerned with a great many other priorities. Grover Norquist’s Club for Growth has […]

Finding Patagonia’s Better Nature

By all accounts what work a hearty new arrival might find Patagonia is less than none.

Fair/Free Trade Con Artistry

YOU ARE LOOKING AT A FAIR TRADER I’m going after James Kitfield today. He is a storied reporter, beltway veteran, and quintessential centrist. He holds all sorts of views I have no quarrel with, but on trade he’s off by a Moon shot, perhaps a crash landing on Mars. Look, the new world order, the […]

Surrender Your Bowling Shoes

Fashioning a New Path DeLong, Krugman and Stiglitz my touchstones all have been posting on free trade. Labors circumstances have been damaged. The economists penciled out positive economic growth, but none penciled in trade negotiators ripping labor a new one. I got people in my life, avid both-sides types, infinitely reminding me that Labor Unions […]

Fairer Trade… Looks Like This

Where the Ploys Are… “Income distribution characteristics” is a term to describe how a free trade agreement alters how and where money flows in an economy. It may be true that a new trade deal increases the total amount of money being exchanged between two trade partners, but it may also be true that more […]

The Lunch Bucket Card Carrying Men in My Family

Where the people live… in reality… they don’t live in trade deals