So, an environmentalist, a venture capitalist, a farmer, a politician, a scientist and a general were together in a room…..

That probably sounds like the lead-in to a joke doesn’t it?. You probably expected some punch line about the conflict between these players or a clash of thinking based on how differently they see the world. Well guess what. There is a topic that could be and is being discussed today by exactly this set of people – and the best part is that they all agree about it! They are even all excited about it.

If you are someone like me who likes the idea of consensus and unifying causes – this is about as good as it gets!

I know, its about time I named this amazingly harmonious topic. Its “Biofuels.” Basically the “big idea” here is that plants are amazingly efficient and low cost machines that capture energy from the sun and turn it into forms of energy that we can use. Food is a very familiar form of that energy, but plants can also make fuel that can substitute for the energy we get today from oil and coal and natural gas.

The really cool part is that when fuels generated by these little solar power machines are burned, the carbon dioxide that is in the exhaust is “carbon neutral” in terms of global warming. What the plant did to store the solar energy was to grab some carbon dioxide out of the air, combine it chemically with water and release some oxygen. When we burn it the oxygen gets added back to the carbon and CO2 goes back into the air. The difference from fossil fuels is that we haven’t added more to the system. It is a wash.

Honestly it’s a little more complex than that and I’ll get into that later, but where we could be headed with biofuels is very exciting because it is one solution to many of the most troubling problems we face on this planet. There is also the potential for that harmonious “room” to get ugly – which I hope doesn’t happen, but I’ll talk about that at the end of this blog.

Imagine if we could be supplying 10%, 20%, 30% or even more of even just our transportation fuels from plants we grow here in the US. Right now we are sending about $250 Billion a year to other countries to buy oil. You don’t have to be an economist to realize that keeping any significant percentage of that money inside our own economy would have a huge positive impact.

Then think about the Energy Security, or better yet, “Energy Independence” advantages. Right now when sketchy regimes in Nigeria or Sudan or Chad or Iran or Venezuela decide that they want to flex their muscles, they can get by with it because they have the ability to tweak a “developed world” that is highly dependent on the one thing they have – oil. Small-time despots can “wag the dog” because the major economies of the world are increasingly competing for the oil energy that is ironically concentrated in places controlled by these bad actors (actually it probably works the other way – we may be, as President Bush said, “addicted to oil,” but having oil riches seems to be just as corrosive a problem for the “pushers” as for the “users.”)

Think about it – if biofuels were a significant part of the mix, Ahmadinejad might not be able to divide the Security Council over Iran's nuclear agenda. Sudan might not be able to continue it’s genocides because of China’s need for its oil. Hugo Chavez might not be able to buy regional influence with cheap oil while his people languish in poverty.

Now take the National Security side a little further. The real center of radical Islamic Jihadism it still in South Asia – Pakistan and Afghanistan. We have taken our eyes off that ball because of the distraction of Iraq, but that is where the cauldron simmers the most intensely. The actual fuel burning under that cauldron is oil – oil by way of the money that is spent to gas-up our SUV-laden transportation fleet that then flows to corrupt regimes of the Middle East and some of which then makes its way to the radicals. Those radicals hate the governments of the region as much as they hate us, but they are more than happy to take some of the oil money that can flow through like-minded or even naïve people in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere. This isn’t something that is going to change quickly, but in something as frustrating as the Struggle for Civilization (my alternative metaphor for the “War on Terror”) wouldn’t it be nice to go to the pump and think, “at least I’m buying this ethanol from some guy in the Midwest, not some guy in the Middle East!”

But lets think about something that may be even more important in the long run – the environment. Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gasses that really do seem to have us on the way to climate changes that are not going to be pretty. They also are not so good for air quality. My son just came back from China and described how horrible the air is there because of coal usage. Go to the Central Valley of California sometime and you might think that West LA isn’t so bad after all. Bio-fuels can really help on both the global warming and the emissions front. These are very real advantages of biofuels of any type and the question is only one of degrees.

Finally, think about the advantages for rural America. It isn’t any stretch to say that the US has been unusually blessed in terms of having abundant land where you can grow things and a heck of a lot of it where the clouds do all the irrigation for you during the part of the year where you have the sun and heat to be productive. This is not true in many parts of the world – at least not to the degree that it is here.

Now, a trip to your local shopping mall will be sufficient to convince you that we Americans are not a nation that doesn’t get enough food. The problem is quite the opposite. We can produce food so cheaply and abundantly that we pay farmers not to farm and then we also pay the enormous health care costs of an obese population. We have been a mode where agricultural production needs to be limited and subsidized at the same time.

This paradigm could change quickly in a bio-energy economy. If we can shift to the mode where productive agricultural land is a valuable resource for food, feed, fiber, AND fuel, the days of subsidies and declining rural communities could be a thing of the past.

Now, you might be thinking that I haven’t explained why the scientist and the venture capitalist in my joke-that-wasn’t-a-joke are so happy to be in that hypothetical “room”.

Here is why. Part of this story is going to be about developing cool technology and part of it will be about business opportunities of all types. Remember I said its all a bit more complex than “plants capture energy and we get fuel?” The complexity is how efficiently that gets done. “Bio-fuel” gets a bad rap in certain circles because up to now the main story in the US has been ethanol from corn and that isn’t all that pretty because of political shenanigans and the fact that corn is not an energy crop. Don’t get me wrong – corn is an amazing crop – It’s just not as good an energy crop as others will be.

People probably only domesticated corn from a Northern Mexican plant called teosinte in the past 10 thousand years and you wouldn’t even recognize the plant if you saw it. The native American’s “genetically engineered” it into a respectable crop by selecting strongly for characteristics that favored its use for humans. The whole Aztec empire was enabled by this crop. From the mid 1800s until the 1930s, corn yields were pretty flat at around 25-30 bushels/acre. Then for the last 75 years we have been applying one technology after another (hybrids, fertilizers, pesticides, sophisticated breeding, seed treatments, biotech traits, sophisticated equipment…) and steadily increased average yields up to 180 bushels/acre and 300+ bushels on the best land. We now produce 5 times as much corn as in 1930 on much less farmland and with a tiny fraction of the workforce. Corn makes a great story about what technology and innovation can do to improve the energy capture of plants – it shows why we are not crazy to think about adding fuel to what we get from the land. Its just that corn has been optimized for getting food ingredients and for feeding animals.

The problem is that today if you make the calculation (as you should) of how much fossil fuel goes into the growing of the crop (fertilizer, pesticide, tillage, harvesting…) vs how much clean energy is generated, for corn ethanol you get a number like 1.3 or maybe 1.8. Yea, that’s better than nothing, but it isn’t the answer to our problems. In Brazil they produce a huge part of their fuel from sugar cane with an efficiency of 8-12 – that’s the tropics, but we could get into that range too.

It’s unfortunate that corn-based ethanol has been the figurehead for bio-fuels in the US. It might be an ok start, but the real answer is “cellulosic” or “lingo-cellulosic” biofuels. That just means biofuels that come from things like wood or straw or a variety of grasses. When plants capture energy from the sun they put it into various things. In corn a bunch of it is starch. In real energy crops it goes into cellulose. They are both made of the same basic building blocks – sugars – but it has been easier for us to turn the starch into sugar and then into ethanol because we know how to make the enzymes to do that really cheaply.

Our technology companies are on track to bring down the cost of the enzymes and the pre-preparation for using cellulose. With corn you get a couple of tons of “bio-fuel” per acre. There are energy crops today like switchgrass that routinely capture 5-10 tons/acre as cellulose and other crops like Miscanthus or energy cane that could feasibly be in the range of 40-50 tons/acre is we put our mind to it like we did with corn. At that point we are talking about serious potential to accomplish all the good things I’ve been talking about.

So here is the end of the blog and where I need to talk about how that amazingly harmonious “room” of diverse interests could end up arguing the way they have on so many other topics – topics that probably matter a lot less than this one.

It comes down to economics. If you are going to build a bio-refinery to produce fuel (and a host of valuable by-products that we haven’t even mentioned here), its going to be a really expensive investment because there are major efficiencies of scale. That’s just the nature of engineering stuff. So we are talking multiple hundreds of millions of dollars for each plant. If you do that, you would really like to have guaranteed access to lots of really high yielding bio-fuel crops located as close as possible to the plant. More yield/acre is better. Otherwise you spend a great deal of your “green” energy potential just gathering and transporting your bio-energy crop. Growing a high yield bio-fuel crop is also smart because it takes less land so there is less competition with food production. Its also going to be the best for the farmer who wants to make a living growing the stuff. On top of that, lots of the leading bio-fuel crop candidates do a great job of sequestering even more CO2 around their root systems.

Essentially, what you want is intensive, local production. That is what economics dictate. That’s also what you do if you really want bio-fuels to be able to solve all those problems that got everyone together in the “room” in the first place.

But this need to do things intensively is where the spirit of agreement could fall apart. Some people from the environmental side tend to jump to the conclusion that all intensive agricultural production is automatically bad for the environment. You are already hearing some voices like Bank Sarasin in Switzerland warning that this might mean more use of biotechnology (which in the thinking of Euro-precautionists is automatically scary even though their own scientists keep telling them it isn’t). The truth is that intensive production CAN be done without harming the environment and frequently biotechnology will be one of the tools that allows you to do that.

Large scale cellulosic bio-fuel refineries are a few years out so we have time to talk through this intensity and technology issue. We have time to define Good Environmental Practices for energy crops and set up systems to certify that they are being used. We have time to develop partnering arrangements between farmers and refiners because they will both need each other and we don’t want the sort of uneven leverage that exists with agricultural markets today. I think we have to do this because there is so much at stake.

So what is the “punch line?” about the diverse parties “in a room?” Let’s hope the answer is “they ultimately worked together to bring about some really positive change for mankind and for the world.” No, its not a funny line, it’s a dream worth pursuing.

A Modest Proposal for an Apartisan Strategy

The least attractive thing about politics for most people is what happens when it gets strongly partisan. Even dedicated partisans dislike partisanship on the part of their opponents. Still, it has been argued that the formation of parties is a completely necessary element of any representative political system. Judging by history it is hard to argue with this point.

The formation of a party is not automatically ban, but when you step back and look at how they actually function, its not very pretty.

For now just consider the party system in the US. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires that parties form, but they did almost immediately and periods of extreme partisanship have always been part of our political landscape.

What do I mean by “partisanship?” Things like this:

Ideological constriction:

What can start out as a common-ground of ideas and approaches that unite a party can also become a pressure to suppress a diversity of ideas to present a unified front. People talk about “Big Tents” and “Rainbow Coalitions” because it is obvious that there are not only two dominant lines of thinking across a wide range of issues. That sounds good, but when you see vote after vote where there is little or no overlap between parties, it is clear that party loyalty is trumping personal conviction. In fact, when everyone in one party votes the same way on some law or resolution that is clearly not that black-and-white, you can be sure that there is some sort of “arm twisting”, “deal making” or “threatened party discipline” going on in the background.

Party Hyper-Loyalism:

I’m sure no politician would admit to being more loyal to their party than to the nation as a whole, but sometimes you have to be suspicious that they are losing perspective in that regard. When you see very important issues like national security, war policy, social security, immigration or health care being exploited for political gain it is unsettling. The truth is that by using a little distortion or mis-information about what your opponent thinks or would do, these emotionally charged and controversial issues become very powerful tools to advance a party cause. Of course what is lost is the opportunity to do something constructive or positive about the issue – but seems to be something that a true partisan can easily rationalize.

Fiscal Irresponsibility:

Whenever a single party is in control of both the legislative and executive functions, spending balloons. It doesn’t matter which party it is, the result is the same and the pattern has been repeated over and over again. Its not that there is all that much fiscal restraint when the power is divided, but it tends to be less extreme.

Campaign Cost Inflation and Degradation:

When partisan purposes prevail, ideals of one-man-one-vote or regional sovereignty are thrown out the window and money will flow wherever needed to advance the national party agenda. Since I live in the 50th congressional district that attracted national attention and money in the off-cycle election to replace our crooked congressman, I got to experience this first hand. I don’t watch television so I avoided some of the externally funded barrage, but I got multiple “personal phone calls” from party luminaries. I also got a daily avalanche of outrageously misleading and distorted glossy fliers in my mail. It was all about 90% negative, 3% accurate and 0% helpful in understanding what sort of candidate I was choosing. It successfully disgusted the moderates and let the election go to the candidate that was best able to stir up a base using fear. Unfortunately, this is not that unusual. In the partisan frenzy of an election, honesty and constructive governmental policy formation don’t even have a chance – and then we wonder why people are disillusioned about politics.

Is there an alternative? I think there is. Although it would be far from easy because of the gritty and expensive realities of our system, what we need to do is to elect a handful of actually independent congressmen and senators (Even better, one actually independent President). Because majorities are usually small, even a few people dedicated to disrupting partisanship could be highly influential. They could break filibusters. They could block or carry veto over-rides. They could help make majorities in close votes. They are like (and would probably represent) the “swing voters” of the broader population. This is what splinter parties have figured out in parliamentary governments.

By independent I certainly mean someone who is specifically not a member of either major party, but it could also be a member of such a party who has the luxury of being in a district where constituents will support them even against the wrath of their own party. These people would probably have a great diversity of ideas and agendas, but the thing that they would share is the desire to be “Apolitical” (pronounced with a soft “A”). The idea is NOT to create another party, just a loose alliance of players dedicated to these principles:

Ø Voting on the strengths or weaknesses of the legislation only – not on what some party leadership is demanding
Ø Refraining from negative campaigning even in the face of such attacks
Ø Attempting to present as balanced an argument as possible and refraining from intentional distortion of the facts or of an opponent’s positions
Ø Seeking functional compromises that will advance the needs of the nation as a whole

Note that there are no ideologies in this list (except for apartisanship). There is no assumption that this group would vote together on any given topic.

It would also be desirable to add a few more principles:
Ø Refraining from the practice of “earmarking” when funding for pet projects and other “pork” are slipped into un-related legislation (and if their numbers are sufficient, voting against bills of this nature as much as possible)
Ø Not accepting PAC or other monies from out of district entities except for those from grass-roots based organizations that support the general goal of apartisanship (this is a compromise necessary to make this approach feasible – at least at the beginning)

I don’t want you to think that I under-estimate the difficulty of pulling this off. The system is well designed and tuned to favor incumbents most and members of a major party second. The public pays little enough attention to political things and though such limited sources (television, talk radio…) that it is extraordinarily difficult for any alternative voice to be heard. Great personal wealth or celebrity can sometimes overcome the bias of the system, but that can also back-fire. Sometimes there are unusual special elections where things can change (e.g. the one that gave us the “Governator” – the jury is still out on his performance, but he was at least somewhat more centrist than the options that we get through the normal system).

That is why I favor the idea of a national organization that could counter-act the targeted funding power of existing parties for selected races where apartisans would have a shot. I could be wrong, and I would like to hear from any readers on the question, but I believe that there are a fair number of latently politically active people out there who would be mobilized by this sort of option.

The goal is not to move every office holder or even that large a proportion of office holders to apartisanship. It’s a much more modest agenda to have enough elected players outside of the partisan world to limit the excesses of a system that will inevitably be dominated by traditional parties.

If words matter, are we well served by calling it a “War against Terror?” As many have pointed out, “terror” is a tactic, not an ideology or an actual enemy. Still I think that there is a bigger problem with calling our current global struggle a “war” and I’m going to argue that it would be better to talk and think about it as a “Struggle for Civilization.”

Think about other campaigns we have called wars: “The War on Poverty”, “The War on Drugs” even “The War to End All Wars.” These haven’t been very successful on the whole. Think about “The Cold War.” Some would say that we “won” that one, but not without creating some longer term problems in the process.

When you get a nation into the mindset of being in a war, several things come into play:

To be at “War” you need to have something to destroy – some tangible enemy some place. Our very real enemies today could be anywhere – in the suburbs of England or Detroit or remote parts of Pakistan, but we are fighting the “war” in the deserts of Iraq.

In times of “War”, dissent becomes “non-patriotic” – we have gotten into a very sticky situation in Iraq and need to work together to figure out how to proceed, but the partisans can’t resist using our problems as ways to bash each other.

In the execution of a “War” principles get compromised. When you think “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” you get democracies doing the things we did in the Cold War – cozying up to dictators (Saddam…) or funneling money and arms to groups that don’t share any of your ultimate aims (Bin Laden…). The same sort of thing is happening now.

When at “War”, ideals fall by the wayside. Centuries of development of ideas about justice and international law can be swept aside because of the extraordinary situation.

Until the “War” is finished, constructive steps are postponed. Wars that actually end can at least have their “Marshal Plan,” but this one may not end for a very long time if at all.

So if the mindset driven by the language of a “War against Terror” favors destructive measures, over-simplifications, the suppression of dissent, compromised values, questionable allies and postponement of positive activities, is there an alternative? Is war our only option?

“But,” you may argue, “this isn’t a war because we asked for it – this whole thing is driven by a very real enemy that absolutely considers itself at war with the nations and societies of the Western world.” I would agree entirely with the severity of the threat. What we are dealing with today is a warped Jihad that defines every infidel and even most Muslims as enemies deserving death. It is arguably one of the most nihilistic ideologies in history and has the perverse power to attract followers willing both to die and to do unspeakable things to their fellow man in the process. It also has the unsettling ability to gain recruits not only from Islamic states but from seemingly “integrated” members of the Muslim Diaspora. Even more disturbing, it has the power to turn even recent converts who grew up in our culture.

It is not surprising that people considering this threat would ask, “what response could there be that isn’t a war?”

There is no doubt that violence will be a major part of the landscape for some time. If we think of ourselves as being in a crucial “struggle” that will sometimes be our only option. But a “struggle” can be broader – it can be to build something. There is a lyric in the musical, “RENT” that says, “the opposite of war isn’t peace, its creation.” There is some truth to that.

To highlight what we are “struggling for” consider living in Afghanistan under the Taliban because that is the vision of our enemies. Our various world civilizations (only one of which is the “West” – See Samuel Huntington’s excellent book The “Clash of Civilizations”) are far from perfect as they continue to progress unevenly. Still, they have attributes worth struggling to maintain and improve. We are all better off to the extent that people around the world have the freedom to believe and express their ideas and faith.

When the sexes and races are treated equitably our societies flourish.

When there are opportunities for education and economic success, more and more people can be freed from ignorance and want.

When science and other forms of learning are enabled the human condition can be improved.

When the arts are valued, and when travel and communication are enabled, our lives are enriched.

When forms of government spread power more broadly, when national sovereignties are respected and when the environment is cherished, humanity can thrive.

These are the sort of things about our civilizations for which we are struggling because they would not exist if our enemies had it their way.The radical Islamist critique of civilization sees only the bad things about our cultures. Some of those issues of morality are real, but the positive trends described above are hard-won accomplishments of centuries of “civilizing” that we want to keep and build upon.I

don’t believe that radical Islamists can ever prevail as such, but if we back-track on good aspects of our civilization because of living in a "War" mindset, we hand them a kind of victory that they don’t deserve. If we really believe that our ideals are worth fighting for then we need to continue to operate by them even as we struggle.

Words can matter if they to guide our mindset and actions.

Borders, Markets and Common Sense

In all the recent debate about "immigration reform" there is one thing that seems to be the "elephant in the room" that doesn’t get mentioned: the fact that there is a multi-billion dollar market that is the engine behind this whole phenomenon. Here in the US we have a tremendous and diverse demand for relatively cheap labor and in Mexico and Central America there is an abundant supply of people who would like to provide that labor. This situation has not changed for decades but our political system has been unable to get its act together to create a legal and regulatory framework to legitimize this thriving market.

Now just because you have a demand and a supply doesn’t automatically mean that you want the market to exist. There are obviously strong market forces around drugs and prostitution and we don't really want to put those on a legitimate footing (except of course in Nevada). Of course it is abundantly clear that it is very very hard to shut down a robust market like that for drugs or sex. But if there are the conditions to foster a market and its not a bad thing, doesn’t it make sense to try to make it function well?

Now clearly some people think of "illegal immigration" as a bad thing, but that is because we have always tended to mix together completely different but sometimes overlapping activities. Maybe if we can talk about them separately we could make some progress.

Seasonal Labor:

The agricultural sector and to a lesser extent the construction industry have very significant needs for labor during certain peak periods of the year. It is really difficult to supply this labor from any local population because the supply of people isn't adequate and besides there are not that many people interested (or able) to do the picking, pruning, hoeing, hod carrying or whatever that is needed. This very real labor demand fits extremely well with an individual who really wants to live in his/her home country but who can greatly enhance the family income by spending part of the year as a "migrant" worker. The fact that we bogged down this sub-market in the divisive politics of immigration is really dumb, but its also morally reprehensible that we all depend for our excellent, low cost food supply on a system that forces these highly legitimate market participants to risk death so sneak into the country and feed us. We are also in the business of disrupting their family lives by making the risk of going home and back so high. We should solve this one by itself and get a guest worker program going that protects the workers from the abuses of the old Brucero program and yet which isn't something that can be gamed for other goals on the part of the worker. Anyone who thinks this is "taking jobs away from Americans" hasn't spent a day in the field and probably couldn't anyway.

Domestic Services:

When anti-immigration spokespeople talk about "cracking down on employers" I often wonder where they live and whether their neighbors are like mine here in Southern California where the thriving market for "immigrant" labor is for suburban homeowners. We have nannies, house cleaners, gardeners and day laborers who essentially make our lifestyles possible. You can argue that the double wage earner family, commuter, single family dwelling society isn't good if you like, but does it really make sense to make felons out of some huge proportion of our taxpayer base (often ironically including anti-immigration politicians like Peter Wilson)? Now in these categories you have a little stronger argument that immigrant/guest workers depress the wages for these jobs and make them unattractive for citizens. I think it is highly unlikely that you could ever fill all these roles without outside labor, but do we really want to do that experiment? Now, because these jobs are not mainly seasonal and because they often involve long-term and friendly relationships this sector is not as clearly suited to a guest worker program designed to attract people intent on remaining citizens of their own countries. It could work that way, but inevitably people will be long-term US employees and desire to live here with a full family etc and to integrate into our society and even become citizens. The trick is that we can't have it both ways and avoid a moral and political quagmire. Either we have to tell vast numbers of ordinary (and also many rich) Americans that they have to pay a great deal more to maintain their life style or we have to try to craft a system that has a place for this part of the labor market. Remember, we are talking about everything from the aged widow who hires a gardener to the Yuppie couple that has six employees who make their fast-paced life possible (BTW they are probably also financially contributing Republicans...)

Minimum and Low Wage Jobs: There is not a single American citizen today who does not enjoy lower cost restaurant food, hotel accommodations, construction, or retail shopping because of immigrant labor. Yes, the wages in those industries are lower because of the supply of labor from South of the border and thus unattractive for many American citizens. Now if people really want to "clamp down" on undocumented workers this is the place where it would be easiest and in some cases politically possible to do it. You can do enforcement activities against large companies fairly efficiently without the drawbacks of going after Joe Citizen. I just think we have to ask ourselves if we want to pay for it in higher prices. Of course now we have the best of both worlds because we can get people who have no hope of citizenship to live here and be part of this illegal market and take all the risk. Once again, there is no moral defense for this situation, particularly when it goes on for decades. These are the jobs that have served as the entrance mechanism for generations of US immigrants whose children and grandchildren then moved into being lawyers and doctors and artists and business people and computer programmers and all the other, easier and more lucrative or fulfilling careers. Nations around the world that have tried to shut-off this process have run into big problems. Like it or not, we cannot pretend that there are not extremely powerful market forces driving this part of the market. We could feasibly shut this part down, but we better know what we are talking about in terms of economic impact before we do it.

Criminal Enterprises:

There is one last sub-market functioning as part of the "immigration" scene that is also quite powerful on an economic level but clearly one that we don't want. Part of it is about that hugely powerful market for drugs. We've got the demand and the supply is going to come. We try to shut it down and a very ugly part of humanity comes in to get around the system and get the vast sums of money that are at stake. Part of the criminal market is also an artifact of our failure to do anything rational for a very long time. The Coyotes that "help" the people who participate in our more rational labor markets (Seasonal, Domestic Services, Low Wage) get around our fences and border patrols and vigilantes extract high prices and give no guarantees in the deadly game. The lowlifes that provide the prostitutes for lonely migrants also flourish in our lack-of-a -solution environment.

These are the strong markets that are driving this situation going forward. We need, as a society, to talk rationally about how we want to regulate and manage these markets. Pretending that they don't exist, as we have been on a political level, is NOT WORKING!!! Then, as a separate issue we have to wrestle with the moral, practical and political question of what to do about the millions of people that have become integrated into our society over decades because we have never rationally dealt with these questions before. That is certainly a thorny question, but it is really quite distinct from how we decide to acknowledge and deal with powerful and largely legitimate market forces that just keep going even when someone doesn’t need an issue to "rally the base" for a mid-term election.

So what am I recommending? Break this debate down into its logically distinct segments and act on them. Don’t fail to do the right thing about seasonal labor because of an argument about “amnesty” for someone who has been living here for 20 years. Don’t keep failing to do ANYTHING except to build fences, drive people to die in the dessert, enjoy cheap products and services and then pretend that this all has something to do with National Security.

Why the heck am I starting a Blog? I'm a little surprised that I am. By nature I'm what you might call "anti-trendy", even "contrarian," so why would I join the overstocked realm of bloggers? I guess it comes from a lack of other good options. I have figured out, belatedly, that I care a lot about questions of politics but probably like most of my contemporaries who came through the Watergate era (yea, I'm 51) I'm pretty jaded about the regular partisan political scene. I haven't found any other palatable way to engage - so here I am - writing off into cyberspace.

I think I have always wanted to vote FOR some candidate that I believed in, but I can't remember an election where I wasn't just voting AGAINST some option that was worse than the other. I used to think I was apathetic, but in fact I'm not - I'm just put off by the realities of how politics tend to work and I'm guessing that is the case for many other people.

Here is my "Savage Theory of Politics:"

• People are mostly focused on living their own lives - on their family, their work, their interests
• What most people want from their government is preservation of the conditions that allow them to do the above with minimal disruption
• Unless there is some big problem, most people are not that focused on political issues
• Thus, politics tend to be driven by the much smaller proportion of the population that has strong beliefs and is highly motivated to engage the process
• Particularly with our primary system, the candidates that can do well at a time when only the most politically active voters are engaged end up being relatively unattractive to the more moderate folk who then might or might not even engage in the actual election
• Thus politics tend to be dominated by extremists for whom things are "black and white" or by those who have figured out that there are financial or power gains to be had by gaming the system

This isn't a good situation, but frankly when have you heard about someone being "passionately moderate?" Well, maybe more of us should be and that is what I am going to try to do.

The truth is that "The World is Gray." Very few issues are really "Black and White." The world is probably better off because there are highly motivated, "true believers" who do see in black and white because they stir things up, but there is a great need for people who can weigh the arguments from the strident voices and come to practical compromise positions that can really work. Sometimes our political process gets there, but not as often or as efficiently as one would hope.

Just look at the "Immigration Reform" argument that is raging today. Here is an issue that we have failed to rationally and morally address for decades. It is getting lots of attention now and lots of really stupid things are being said, but chances are it will just slip back into non-action once the mid-term elections are over. Thats just one of many issues that cry out for solutions that need to come from the "center", not the extremes.

So here goes an effort to start a conversation from a passionately moderate position. If it is just an outlet for one frustrated person it will clearly be meaningless. My hope would be to have ideas challenged and refined by discussion with others. So this is an experiment to see if that is the way that things work in the world today. Its a little strange to be addressing this to ... I don't know, but I look forward to the possibility of meeting you anyway!

Steve Savage, a passionate moderate