Category: politics

What’s a Progressive?

~ Chris Cocca ~ 8 Comments

A progressive isn’t simply a liberal.  Liberal as a political identity is so 20th-century, so pragmatic, so Roosevelt-Clintonian.  Liberals aren’t allowed to criticize each other apart from Democratic primaries, which all liberals vote in because liberals aren’t allowed to belong to other parties.  But progressives pop up in all kinds of parties.

Liberalism has become a way of doing politics.  It’s ceased being a real ethos or guiding light.  Progressivism, it seems to me, has much more to do with articulating equal rights and equal protection for all.

Rebuilding the Future of American Cities

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

America’s great cities were left in economic free fall, with concentrated poverty, unemployment, high crime rates, failing public schools and severely deteriorating physical infrastructure, including roads, mass transit and parks. Academics and policy makers agreed that cities were irrelevant to America’s economic future; they would become places for poor minorities who could not afford to move to the suburbs. Urban policy became code for social-welfare policy.

More at Atlantic.

Dear Delta Thermo Energy: We Hope So, Too

~ Chris Cocca ~ 5 Comments

If you search for Delta Thermo Energy’s website, this is what you’ll find:

Interestingly, that’s what DTE is basically also saying about the future site of their recently-approved and controversial Waste to Energy Plant:

Other details about the company on the web are sparing.  The LinkedIn profile is sparse, but we do learn that the CEO, Rob V. (Rob Van Naardan), used to work for a private equity firm. Mr. Van Naardan, if you’re reading this, I’d sincerely like to talk to you about emissions issues and I’d love to learn as much as possible about your process.  I’d also like to connect you and your company with the Air Quality Partnership of Lehigh Valley – Berks.  Given your committment to near-zero emissions, DTE and AQP likely have some interests in common.

My Thoughts on the Delta Thermo Deal and Last Night’s City Council Meeting and What I Said There

~ Chris Cocca ~ 4 Comments

I just got home from City Council.  I had to leave before the vote, but not before I waited 4 hours to share my thoughts with the public and with Council.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can learn about it here.  In the interest of time, I’m just going to post my thoughts as I shared them.  Some context:  you should know that there was a very large union presence at the meeting, so much so that before 7 PM the Council Chamber was packed out and people weren’t being let in.  It was at this point that some folks reached out to some local media, because it looked like the fairness, integrity (and possibly, legality) of the meeting was in jeopardy.  Thankfully, that got resolved (and the media was already there).  More context: the unions are strongly in support of the DTE project.  I’ve thought long and hard about it, and I’m not.

What I ended up saying, in a nutshell, around 11 PM:

  • I live in Allentown, work in Allentown and pay taxes in Allentown.
  • I work for the Air Quality Partnership of Lehigh Valley – Berks, but I also sit on the Justice and Advocacy Committee of the Lehigh County Conference of Churches.  In both capacities, labor issues are extremely important.   The Justice and Advocacy Committee deals with issues of worker justice, livable wages, economic disparity, and I’m sympathetic to those concerns.
  • I was able to have a conference all today with Peter Crownfield (of the Alliance for Sustainable Communities LV) and permitting official with DEP.  That official explained to us that DTE does NOT have an air quality permit from the Commonwealth (they’ve used vague language to intimate that they do).  They DO have an exemption that pertains to research and development, not a commercial facility.  (Here I affirmed what Peter already said).
  • I talked about my discomfort with this and other transparency issues in this process.  I said that unions know better than anyone that when Business isn’t transparent, Labor doesn’t win.  The environment doesn’t win, our communities don’t win, and our politicians [in this case] don’t win.
  • The Mayor (he’s strongly in favor of the project) said he thought it was a progressive solution.  I said “I’m having trouble reconciling that with the fact that I’ve seen nothing in this discussion that shows me there’s anything in place to incentivize our communities to waste less and reuse/recycle more.  Progressive movements nationally have said with one voice that reduction and reuse are the way forward, and there’s nothing here that makes me think this project will reward that over the next 35 years.  (It’s a 35 year commitment to 2012 technology.  After 10 years, there’s an opt-out option, but  that wold require the City to buy out DTE’s interest and/or facility.  That’s a lot of money we don’t have).
  • With respect to the gentleman from DTE who talked about one of the other bidders having just gone out of business as a sign that the City was right to chose DTE, I said that frankly, that makes me worry more about the utility of this project and its long term prospect for success.
  • I said that as City Council knows, the Pennsylvania Constitution makes some pretty progressive claims about the environment.  Clear air, clean water, and clean land (all germane to this discussion) are a right of all Pennsylvanians.  We need to be committed to a truly progressive way forward, and a deal that locks us in long-term to today’s technology (actually, three technologies that have never been used together in the way DTE proposes, and never put into a practice in a plant anywhere by DTE) negates the possibility of us moving forward in truly progressive ways.
  • 35 years ago, Bethlehem Steel would have paid a  lot of the salaries in this room and put chickens in every pot.  Whatever happened to Lehigh Structural Steel?  Anyone remember Hess’s?  Things change, and they change quickly and that’s truer now than ever.  We know that this kind of technology is changing all the time: entering into this deal on these terms prevents us from pursuing truly progressive technologies as they emerge.
  • Thank you for the time.

Romney’s Lebowski Problem

~ Chris Cocca ~ 6 Comments

This is from March, 2012.  I’m reposting it today because everyone seems to think Mitt Romney is going to save the world from Donald Trump.  Or something.

I had the blissful opportunity of enjoying exceptional hot wings, conversation, and bro time in Wayne, PA this week.  One of the insights that emerged from this time of fellowship is offered here for your consideration.

Mitt Romney is so unpalatable because there’s absolutely no reason for him to be running for president.  It’s great that he’s not an ideologue, but it would be nice if he had some ideology.  It’s not the incessant flip-flopping so much as what that says about his real motives for running.  He has no great beliefs and hence no great motives.  He’s running because he wants to be President, pure and simple. He’s running because he wants the Office of Ultimate Upward Mobility.  He’s running for power or prestige or from some deep-seated need to leave no opportunity untapped.

We’ve been saying things like this for a long time, but it wasn’t until this week that we’ve been able to put it in the most precise terms possible:


Say want you want about the tenets of Obama’s socialism, dude, but at least it’s an ethos.

Does anyone really believe anything this man says?

Everyone In the Government Works For or Has Worked For Monsanto

~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments

Yes, yes.  That sounds alarmist.  But given that we’ve been talking about the food supply today, and about the paper thin difference between a war between regime change in Iraq and regime change in Iran, I thought I should share this startling graphic.  If it’s true, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter who you vote for.  #buyorganic

Behold, the Venn diagram that explains these interlocking directorates.  Click to embiggen.

 

Mitt Romney Isn’t Reed Richards (But He Plays One On TV)

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

We were all over this back in June, but yes, Mitt Romney looks exactly like Reed Richards. I mention it now because because “Mitt Romney Reed Richards” has been a trending search term for the past few days.  In case you don’t know, this is why:

Also, The Daily Cocca comes up in tandem with a Eugene Mirman tweet on the Google Machine:

Eugene Mirman was one of the funniest comedians I ever saw on the old Conan show.  And he reminds us of this guy: