Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a powerful op-ed in today's Washington Post, taking on the Obama administration's disappointing inaction on mountaintop removal coal mining so far:

Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environmental tragedy in American history. When will the Obama administration finally stop this Appalachian apocalypse?

If ever an issue deserved President Obama's promise of change, this is it. Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day -- the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly -- to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams....

They have demolished 500 mountains -- encompassing about a million acres -- buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region's air and water. On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra....

King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not -- obliterating the hemisphere's oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests.

As with the administration's approach to many issues, from the economy to climate change, Obama's campaign call for fundamental change has become a sad echo of itself now that he's actually assumed office:

Obama promised science-based policies that would save what remains of Appalachia, but last month senior administration officials finally weighed in with a mixture of strong words and weak action that broke hearts across the region. The modest measures federal bureaucrats promised amount to little more than a tepid pledge of better enforcement of existing laws....

[Yet] instead of acting to enforce these laws, administration officials indicated last month that they will allow more than 100 permits to go forward while they carefully review their regulatory options. If they act accordingly, the ruined landscapes of Appalachia will be Obama's legacy.

Kennedy lays out six steps necessary to end mountaintop removal coal mining. He then throws down a challenge to the President:

President Obama should go to Appalachia and see mountaintop removal. My father visited Appalachia in 1966 and was so horrified by strip mining -- then in its infancy -- that he made it a key priority of his political agenda. He complained that Appalachia, with our nation's richest natural resources, was home to America's poorest populations, its worst education system, and its highest illiteracy and unemployment rates. These statistics are even grimmer today as mining saps state wealth. In 1966, 46,000 West Virginia miners were collecting salaries and pensions and reinvesting in their communities. Mechanization has shrunk that number to fewer than 11,000. They extract more coal annually, but virtually all the profits leave the state for Wall Street.

The coal industry provides only 2 percent of the jobs in Central Appalachia. Wal-Mart employs more people than the coal companies in West Virginia. Last week a major study documented how coal imposes a net cost to Kentucky of more than $100 million per year. Coal is not an economic engine in the coalfields. It is an extraction engine.

To help stop mountaintop removal coal mining, join is at iLoveMountains.org.

Dan Balz has an interesting story in the Washington Post, which sharply illustrates the deep structural and demographic problems facing the Republican Party in the coming years:

For the past few months, political analysts and demographers have been poring over the results of the 2008 election and comparing them with presidential results from the past two decades. From whatever angle of their approach -- age, race, economic status, geography -- they have come to a remarkably similar conclusion. Almost all indicators are pressing the Republicans into minority status....

Democrats have won the popular vote in four of the past five elections, though in one case (2000) they did not end up in the White House. In years in which they have also won the electoral vote, Democrats have racked up sizable margins. Obama bested John McCain by 365 to 173, and Bill Clinton's two victories were in the same range. George W. Bush's two electoral-college victories were narrow; he won 271 votes in the disputed election of 2000 and 286 in his 2004 reelection.

What has brought this about? It's not just one thing -- it's everything. Start with the Democrats' success in the suburbs. Lang's formula is that demography and density have combined to help Democrats: They dominate not just the cities but also the urbanized suburbs that contain the largest share of the suburban population in America....

Increasingly, Republican strength outside the urban areas counts for less. "There's just not enough rural folks and small-city people left in America in the key states that determine the electoral college to offset that difference," Lang said. "You're out of people."

As many others have observed, Republican strength has retreated to the South. Such regionalism bodes ill for a national party.

Shifting racial demographics have also marooned the GOP:

Demographically, the forces at work have chipped away at what was once a GOP-leaning majority in the country. The most important is minorities' rising share of the vote. Whites accounted for 76 percent of the overall electorate last November, down from 85 percent in 1988.

In the last election, there were more than 2 million additional African American voters, about 2 million more Hispanic voters and about a million more Asian American voters. All are groups in which Obama increased the Democratic share of the vote over 2004. Frey estimated that minority voters in nine states made the difference in Obama's victory margin.

Republicans can't reverse the demographic trends; their only solution is to increase their share of the minority vote. Opposing Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's Supreme Court nominee, because of her pride in being a Latina won't help solve that problem.

Finally, a generational shift toward the left among younger voters casts a dark shadow on the GOP's national future:

Obama may appeal to younger voters, but their shift toward the Democrats predates his candidacy. "This really is not Obama," Keeter said. "Young voters were John Kerry's best age group. They were the Democratic candidates' best age group in the 2006 elections, and they were the best age group for other Democratic candidates in 2008."

Younger voters are more diverse demographically than older voters. In 2008, 62 percent were white, compared with 74 percent eight years earlier. Projections show young voters will become increasingly diverse. They are also less religious and more culturally liberal, two indicators of Democratic support.

GOP strategist Mike Murphy described this in Time magazine as a coming Republican ice age. Republicans will need a major shift to begin to reverse these trends. That could start if there is a backlash against Obama's governance -- and the president's agenda certainly will test the country's tolerance for a big dose of government. But Republicans will need to retool in other ways to make themselves more appealing to a changing population.

So long as the GOP remains tethered to the rhetoric of the past, and looks back with relentless nostalgia toward a president who served before most of today's college kids were even born, their prospects will remain dim.

What does 21st century conservatism look like? What will the Republican Party look like in an increasingly multicultural and socially progressive nation? That's the question the GOP needs to answer -- and the answer won't come from Gingrich or any of the other dinosaurs of an era that has long since passed.

But as Dan Balz points out, that debate has barely begun.

Via Decline and Fall of Western Civilization, this:

Fiscal stimulus is a band-aid. ... spending will not stimulate anything, and it has nothing to do with the causes of the crisis or with putting an end to it. ... A trillion dollars of fiscal stimulus today will not avoid catastrophe if the financial stabilisation fails. ...

Being realistic, however, even if we had this ideal situation in place tomorrow, a major recession – unlike anything most Americans alive today have ever seen – is unavoidable. Catastrophe is here and we will not escape it. But even the 18-to-24-months catastrophe we are in is not the worst outcome. The worst outcome would be a full repeat of the Great Depression. The worst of the Great Depression was not so much the initial economic collapse, as dramatic as that was, but its persistence for several years. ... All the numbers we have about employment, production, world trade, the financial system, etc. show that we are already in a catastrophe. The emergency is to avoid the persistence of the stagnation that occurred during the Depression. The emergency is to prevent most of the next decade from looking like 2008.

Gaius Marius continues:

All the showmanship over fiscal stimulus means little -- several more such stimuli will be attempted out of desperation, so whatever the first entails is not very critical. resolving the banking system is paramount, and it must entail wholesale restructuring -- and all the way up to senior debt to mitigate rising interest rates and the growing tail risk of a national bankruptcy -- and outright forgiveness of debts and contract nullification. moreover i would wager, as the indebtedness that is driving the delevering is so much greater as a percentage of income, that the devastation that will ensue without a radical financial system overhaul and resolution will make us forget about the 1930s entirely.

I'm less interested in change I can believe in than change that works. Charles Hugh Smith today quoted from Michael Grant's The Fall of the Roman Empire. The quote reminds me of the incredible insufficience of Obama's post-partisan, rewarmed centrist approach:

There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. His whole attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.

We need more than honesty. We need the force of will to do what needs to be done -- and the vision to see that the solutions needed are as radical as the problem itself.

This is a great post, taking the longue durée to our current economic crisis:

The Chinese have an expression...: 富不过三代 (fu bu guo san dai) Literally: Wealth does not pass three generations.

Meaning: It's rare the wealth of a family can last for three generations (the 2nd may see the value of hard work, the 3rd, forget it).

[Mish Note: The following example is based in the South African currency of the Rand, but that does not detract from the message.]

Year zero: First generation: Wealth creation

Starting capital: Zero. The family income generators (2 parents) are hard-working and manage to invest 10% of their after-tax income equating to R30/month into the South African stock market. (Yes, this was pre-Union, but we did say "equating to"). Remember this is the sixties and an income of R300 is a very decent monthly wage.

Year 45: Second generation: Wealth preservation

The parents ensured that their three children didn't have to experience hard times. The children attended decent enough schools and were fortunate enough to mix with similarly privileged friends. There is general unease in the family however, as the second generation gain independence.

The pressures of wanting to keep up with the lifestyles of their wealthier friends, coupled with an unfortunate down-turn in the economy, results in a halt in savings and as a result the R10.5m family wealth no longer enjoys any debit order increases. In addition, the capital base is required to maintain an income for the folks who have now retired.

Year 75: Third generation: Wealth destruction

The second generation finally inherit the family wealth and it is split three ways. By this time the R45,000/month comfortable family living has ballooned to R600,000/month as a result of inflation. Each family now only enjoys income from a capital base of R110m and, because they themselves are approaching retirement they opt to de-risk their portfolios, which results in the capital invested unfortunately realising a more sedate 3% real rate of return.

After a torturous revelation later on in life, one of the 3rd generation children decided to carve out a career as a financial advisor. She made the following insightful observations:

1. Her grandparents did a fantastic job of consistently placing 10% of their monthly income into an equity investment over a 45 year period.

2. As they had generated sufficient capital to live off the dividend income there from, her grandparents had stuck with their equity investment throughout their retirement.

3. Unfortunately, her parents had failed to adopt a savings ethic and they had relied optimistically on their inheritances to generate their own retirement income.

4. The 3rd generation children (herself included) failed to comprehend the importance of generating an income and as a result were unable to adopt a savings plan or meet their own costs.

Time to start again.

Mish continues:

Another interpretation of the expression involves the changing role of attitudes towards debt and asset accumulation over time. This is how I see it:

Few alive remember the great depression. Most boomers headed into retirement have seen rising asset prices all their lives. Those boomers thought they could live off their houses and/or investments in the stock market, expecting prices to rise forever, even though it was mathematically impossible for that to happen. Now, headed into retirement, boomers are realizing they are actually savings poor given that asset prices have crashed.

Moreover, children who have seen their parents wiped out in bankruptcy or foreclosed on are going to have a completely different attitude towards debt than their reckless parents did. Expect to see more frugality from parents and their children alike.

Three generations from now the lessons of today will have again been forgotten and the cycle will repeat.

Although it's a little bit gauche to quote so extensively from another blogger, Mish Shedlock's post is worth passing on in its (near) entirety. Those who are looking for a "return to normal" from the current economic downturn are in for a disappointing realization: the belt-tightening we are experiencing is the new normal. What we are experiencing is an event of such magnitude that it will be seered upon the minds of a generation, coloring their worldview and influencing the public discourse for decades to come.

The good news is that in fifty years, our children's grandchildren will be bemused by their grandparent's thrifty ways. But that's a long time off....

Did anyone else who pays estimated taxes get this notice from the IRS today?

In prior quarters, estimated tax payments have been made payable to "United States Treasury." Beginning with your first estimated tax payment for 2009, and continuing in perpetuity, please make your check directly to "Goldman Sachs" and mail to 85 Broad St. New York, NY 10004.

It seemed momentarily confusing until I read the news:

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner picked a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist as a top aide Tuesday, the same day he announced rules aimed at reducing the role of lobbyists in agency decisions.

Mark Patterson will serve as Geithner's chief of staff at Treasury, which oversees the government's $700 billion financial bailout program. Goldman Sachs received $10 billion of that money.

If the bailout vote taught Obama anything, it should be this: Just nationalize the banks and get it over with....

Alan Blinder, writing in the New York Times, observes that the current financial crisis was "largely a series of avoidable — yes, avoidable — human errors."

Six of those errors have been made conveniently shorter by Barry Ritholtz:

WILD DERIVATIVES In 1998, Brooksley E. Born, chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, tried to reign in derivatives. She was shouted down by Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, and Larry Summers.

SKY-HIGH LEVERAGE In 2004, the S.E.C. let securities firms raise their leverage from 12 to 1 to 33 to 1 and greater.

SUBPRIME SURGE From 2003 to 2007, subprime lending grew unsupervised by the Fed into a large, dangerous credit facility. Lending standards fell disgracefully, as dubious transactions became common.

FIDDLING ON FORECLOSURES This is one where I mostly disagree with professor Blinder’s conclusions. Home prices remian dangerously elevated; Foreclosures are driving prices back to a more normalized range. Until prives revert to historical metrics, real estate will stay weak, and the economy soft.

LETTING LEHMAN GO Its not that letting Lehman Brothers fail was such a terrible decision — it was that there was no undferstandable difference between LEH and Bear Stearns. The inconsistency was part of the problem. Add to it, the idiotic managment of LEH, who should have asked for an orderly dissolution assistance from the Fed.

TARP’S DETOUR The Troubled Asset Relief Program was an on-the-fly, no strategic planning, seat of the pants, inconsistent mess.

TARP a mess? Clearly Professor Blinder didn't have his hand stretched out far enough while the going was good.

Although the details are slim, thus far the broad outlines of President-Elect Obama's economic stimulus program are disappointing for those who believe that the economic crisis presents an opportunity to radically transform the way America uses and produces energy.

Building roads that lead to malls holding going-out-of-business sales, after all, isn't believable change -- its pork barrel spending and make-work, rather than economic transformation.

And the question of exactly how we're going to pay for a $1 trillion economic stimulus package without bankrupting ourselves or crashing the dollar is a question that no one in Washington seems to be giving any serious consideration.

(As a sidenote: if you're still wondering whether inflation or deflation is the place where we end up, just look at the extra zeros attached to most of the ideas emanating from Chicago and Washington these days. That's the future.)

Nonetheless, one good idea that Obama has proposed thus far (and I eagerly -- okay, not that eagerly -- await some more) is the mass retrofitting of schools and other public buildings for energy efficiency.

In the same spirit of incrementalism, we may wish to look to Germany for ideas on how to virtually eliminate the energy needs of newly-constructed public buildings:

The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.

And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses....

[S]chools in Frankfurt are built with the technique.

Moreover, its popularity is spreading. The European Commission is promoting passive-house building, and the European Parliament has proposed that new buildings meet passive-house standards by 2011.

The United States Army, long a presence in this part of Germany, is considering passive-house barracks....

In Germany the added construction costs of passive houses are modest and, because of their growing popularity and an ever larger array of attractive off-the-shelf components, are shrinking.

But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available in the United States. So the construction of passive houses in the United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price differential.

Although not a universal solution (passive buildings don't appear to be an ideal answer to energy efficiency needs in warmer climates, for example), nor a particularly radical one, it does seems that jump-starting an industrial need for sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems through public spending would be slightly more visionary than simply laying asphalt, with the added benefit of saving local governments money in the long run.

Here's an amazing read, from Big Picture.

It's a very detailed complaint filed with the SEC, in which the author correctly states that "Madoff Securities is the world's largest Ponzi Scheme."

When was the complaint written?

2005.

What did the SEC do in response?

Nothing.

When the history of this financial meltdown is finally written -- and it is not over yet, not by a long shot -- central to that story will be the role that the Bush administration's SEC played in allowing criminality to become the modus operandi of Wall Street.

George W. Bush likes to quip that Wall Street got drunk, and we got the hangover. It's a good quip, but let's not forget (to expand the metaphor a bit) that the SEC was the bartender, shouting over the din that the drinks were on the house.

It's been years since I've seen such a beautiful act of civil disobedience:

SALT LAKE CITY - An environmental activist tainted an auction of oil and gas drilling leases Friday by bidding up parcels of land by hundreds of thousands of dollars without any intention of paying for them, a federal official said.

The process was thrown into chaos and the bidding halted for a time before the sale of 132 parcels covering 164,000 acres was concluded.

"He's tainted the entire auction," said Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah....

The FBI was questioning a man who registered for the auction as Tim DeChristopher of Salt Lake City, said the bureau's Utah Energy Team Leader Terry Catlin.

Other bidders at the auction complained about DeChristopher as unfamiliar and bidding in an unconventional fashion, which raised suspicions, Catlin said.

DeChristopher is believed to have won the bidding on 13 parcels and driven up the price of several others. He said he successfully bid on more than $1.7 million in parcels.

"I tried to resist this sale any way I could," said the 27-year-old University of Utah economics student, who added that he only has enough money to pay for a few acres on which he bid.

Well done!

Probably a century too late, in actuality. But this sure looks like fun.

From my alma matter.