Now THIS is what I call Acting Locally!

John Kaiahua (left) and Justin Berrell loaded a wagon with kale that had
been harvested from Kaiahua’s JJ Farms in Raytown.

Award-winning veteran KC Star business reporter Victoria Sizemore Long has turned her investigative and research skills to the subject of urban gardening here in the metro in the feature story on the front page of the business section today.

I have mentioned before that I am a proponent of the “slow food” movement that gains a little ground every time there is another food scare.

We “eat what we kill” literally. (Yeah, yeah, the tooth – I know.) Now that the farmers markets are open, we are buying our fresh produce from them, and we will be the beneficiaries of the largess of a couple of relatives who have “truck gardens” up in the northern tier counties. I will be scarce for a week or so in late summer/early fall and go north to can and freeze a lot of the veggies and fruits that we will eat next winter.

(Who knew I was riding a wave of a trend?)

Here in the city, I walk past community gardens that have sprung up on vacant lots on a daily basis. These gardens are positive for the community on so many levels. First of all, the blight and trash of inner city vacant lots have been replaced with vibrant community gardens.

In areas beset by social ills, they are a bright spot. They foster social interaction and they provide a common purpose. Neighbors work together. And in the end of it all, everyone gets a few nutritious meals, some strengthened community connections and a sense of accomplishment.

Ms. Sizemore Long really did her homework on this one. She interviewed people all over the city and dug into the issue. I am not going to rewrite her wonderful piece, go read it. I am however, going to excerpt this part, which I found particularly heartening:

“In the last 10 years we have seen a real spurt of growth,” said Katherine Kelly, who, with Daniel Dermitzel, founded the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture in Kansas City, Kan. And the trend has picked up in the last few years, Kelly said.

Passionate farmers eager to nurture other urban growers, Kelly and Dermitzel created the center in 2004 to promote community-based small-scale entrepreneurial farming in the area. They have a vision of city farming that includes:

•Small community-based farms scattered throughout the area, providing fresh and healthy food to city residents.

•New opportunities for people who would like to farm and generate an income doing so.

•Urban design that turns unused, vacant and unsightly spaces to productive use and treats small-scale agriculture as an integral part of a beautiful, lively and healthy neighborhood.

That vision seems to be taking shape.

Eating locally is just a good idea. It is good for the local economy – family farms have been struggling for decades, and if niche marketing can be applied to solving some of those problems, then that is another plus.

Eating locally reduces your carbon footprint, too. All that processed food has to be shipped. As the article makes clear, what kind of sense does it make for us, living in the breadbasket of the nation, to be at the end of a 1500 mile food-chain from Florida or California?

[Full disclosure - Vickie Long and I are friends. In fact - I owe her lunch. A favorable post is in no way an attempt to resolve that debt.]

Checks & Balances are not just “Academic”

And they aren't "quaint" either. They are integral to what makes us, well, America. I am sick of my birthright being sacrificed on the altar of the "Global War on Terror™." You should be to, if your citizenship is American. And if you aren't smart enough to get properly pissed off about this, stay the hell out of my way. If you aren't in, at least don't be a hindrance to those of us who want liberty restored.

When John Conyers ordered the GAO report on signing statements, I got tingly. I’m weird that way, but you already knew that. Well, it is out. I have not had a chance to read the actual report yet (I will be doing that and following up soon) but I have read the Washington Post article about it.

For example, Congress directed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to relocate its checkpoints around Tucson every seven days to improve efforts to combat illegal immigration. But the agency took the law as an "advisory provision" that was "not always consistent with CBP's mission requirements." Instead, the agency periodically shut down its checkpoints for short periods of time, believing that would comply with congressional demands.

Frustrated by the Pentagon's broad budget submissions for the "global war on terrorism," Congress demanded in its 2006 military spending law that the Defense Department break down its 2007 budget request to show the detailed costs of global military operations, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The department ignored the order. While the Pentagon did break out the costs of operations in the Balkans and at Guantanamo Bay, it did not detail expenditures in other operations.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also ignored Congress's demand that it submit an expenditure plan for housing assistance and alternatives to the approaches that failed after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA told the GAO that it does not normally produce such plans.

In all those instances, presidential signing statements had asserted that congressional demands were encroaching on Bush's prerogatives to control executive branch employees as he sees fit and to receive effective services from his employees. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Congress should not be surprised that the administration carried out the recommendations of the signing statements, although he cautioned that he could not know whether the agencies took action because of the statements.

Okay - I am not even going to address the absurdity of closing a checkpoint to increase the effectiveness of the strategy. Or that the Pentagon uses a bookkeeping system so effed up as to be unauditable. And if I go down the Katrina path one more time, I'm liable to set my locks alight. I'll just stick to the article, which you have to read to the end to get the point.

The findings are significant because they confirm that the Bush administration has sought to marginalize the peoples representatives. This means that they sought to marginalize you – when they embarked down that path – in the naked power grab that has amounted to an imperial presidency.

Bruce Fein, a conservative Constitutional lawyer who served on an American Bar Association panel that excoriated the use of signing statements in a report last year said that the report could be used as a basis for legal action against the Bush administration. "At least it makes clear the signing statements aren't solely for staking out a legal position, with the president just saying, 'I don't have to do these things, but I will,' " Fein said. "In fact they are not doing some of these things. You can't just vaporize it as an academic question."

Legal action against BushCrimCo? I’m game.

Diane Silver has more, Here and Here.

Of Strafing Runs and Pyrrhic Victories

Last spring I started noticing a trend in the news reports coming out of Iraq. Air strikes were – are – being used with increasing frequency. Well, I was right to notice. As of the end of May, the United States had already dropped more bombs than they did in all of 2006, according to an AP story by Charles Hanley dated 05 June:

"U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago. … And it appears to be accomplished by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.

"In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press."

Using air strikes against a counter-insurgency is a very serious act – it is a desperate last move of an army that is losing. It sure ain’t a stand-up fight. I would go so far as to argue that the reliance on air power is evidence of the failure of the s(pl)urge.

First of all, it indicates that our forces are facing an adversary that is increasing in effectiveness, and that is developing both strategic and tactical acumen. It speaks to the ability of the insurgents as a fighting force, at least to the locals.

The pitched battles will always go to the Americans, because the Americans can call in the Air Strikes. But that they are increasingly necessary in order for the Americans to not lose the battle, represents overwhelming psychological victory.

Air strikes always kill far more civilians than targeted fighters, and this serves to enrage the local populace. This has the net effect of increasing the sympathies of the locals to the insurgent fighters that were the targets of the aerial assault. Air strikes also kill indiscriminately and they destroy vital civilian infrastructure.

Psychologically, it is a boon to the insurgency – the United States is a bunch of cowards who only dare fight from five miles high, dropping bombs indiscriminately, on innocents as well as insurgents. Morally, it turns the United States into a Goliath that must be fought, and must be slain.

This is the stuff that martyrs are made of, and we are intervening in a culture with a long, strong and proud tradition of martyrdom. Just the folks whose resolve needs a good strengthening.

[Crossposted from WTWC]