The National Hustle » History

Into the West

The Camo — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:55:47 +0000

Exec-produced by Steven Spielberg, TNT’s Into the West miniseries chronicles the story of two American families (one Native American, and one Caucasian) over the course of the 19th century. At times heartbreaking and at others powerfully jubilant, this miniseries effectively captures the spirit of a time and place that has simultaneously haunted and intrigued me for most of my life.

Efficiently traversing almost the entire 19th century, Into the West utilizes a fresh way of looking at topics and events that is at once entertaining and informative. Events embraced by the miniseries include the exploration of the West, the California gold rush, early Indian policies, Jayhawkers and guerrilla warfare in Civil War-era Kansas , the construction of the transcontinental railway and the ensuing Indian massacres. Although this is not an easy view (the subject matter is powerful and depressing) I highly recommend this miniseries and hope that you will make time to view it.Similar Posts:

Infrastructure and Institutions

Matt Andrus — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:00:19 +0000

While reading the introduction of Seth Jones‘ non-fiction In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan, I came across an interesting quote on infrastructure and institutions from Nobel-prize winning economist Amartya Sen, which I’d like to share:

“Political freedoms (in the form of free speech and elections) help to promote economic security. Social opportunities (in the form of education and health facilities) facilitate economic participation. Economic facilities (in the form of opportunities for participation in trade and production) can help to generate personal abundance as well as public resources for social facilities.”

You might find this either basic or esoteric, but it certainly deserves some thought. Although I think he was actually discussing nation-building, if there is a formula for what makes America such a prosporous nation, Sen’s idea has provided the most accurate and concise I’ve ever seen.

- Matt

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Carrying Capacity and Catastrophic Quakes

Matt Andrus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:35:07 +0000

Earlier this week, Sarah and I walked out to the bridge (Golden Gate, of course) and on our way back I looked at the City before me and started thinking about how dense a population sits on this 7-mile-by-7-mile square. I thought, “Since we in SF depend on resources to be brought in and wastes to be shipped out, if we were cut off from the world around us, how many people could reasonably subsist in the City?” Sarah indulged me and we agreed the number would be something south of the current one million inhabitants.

After a few quick Google searches, not surprisingly I found that there was a whole area of study out there ready to quench my curiosity, which can be roughly summarized as carrying capacity. Now I have to admit, I suppose I initially thought about San Francisco’s carrying capacity in light of the opinions that some day soon, “the big one” will shake the City so hard we are cut off from civilization for an extended period of time and/or the western-most half of California will slip into the ocean. For the record, I don’t find either option satisfactory. Unfortunately, I couldn’t track down much information on the carrying capacity of San Francisco.

What I did find, were some really cool resources over at PBS NOVA, called World in the Balance. It appears to track and analyze both current and historic world population growth, including fun graphs like Human Numbers Through Time and interviews from global population experts in Voices of Concern. I’m still reviewing the World in the Balance site, so I’d recommend checking it out on your own, but I have learned one thing so far: As of the writing of this post, other than you there are 6,811,060,305 people in the world. Don’t worry, Mom still thinks you’re very important.

- Matt

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Why We Fight by Eugene Jarecki

Matt Andrus — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 05:55:21 +0000

I came across an insightful documentary on KQED tonight and wanted to share it here. Why We Fight is not a new release (it has been out since 2005), but Eugene Jarecki did a great job in summarizing the fruition of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning about the burgeoning military-industrial complex. The documentary is 90 minutes long and should be required viewing for all those interested in American foreign policy.

- Matt

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Recessionary Origins

Matt Andrus — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:00:28 +0000

When we introduced you to “Inside the Meltdown” yesterday, the program brought you into the mess around 2007. The roots of the economy’s current struggles, however, run far deeper into the decade. After all, we didn’t get here over night.

With the help of Economist Alan Blinder and Academic Earth, here is a more comprehensive (albeit dry) accounting of the Origins of the Financial Mess.

- Matt

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Autobiography of a Nation: Dead and Buried

The Camo — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 05:41:39 +0000

Finally! I feel as though a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders. My attempt to educate my dear readers on the historical connotations in the recent (can I even say that any more?) economic stimulus bill will conclude and I can go on to much more interesting /controversial topics such as Twitter(?) and/or lighthouses.

But before I can go on, I want to impart my incredibly average sense of political, financial and social awareness into reviving the Civilian Conservation Corps, with a twist. As I mentioned in my overview of the program, this organization was formed to provide the masses of unemployed with jobs conserving our natural resources. Millions of man hours helped beautify national parks, prevent forest fires, and build bridges over Chorro Creek in San Luis Obispo, CA (thanks B, now make it rain in the donate box!)

Now lets bring this back to 2009. How many of us know how to dig a hole? Mix cement and properly set a fencepole? Even less likely… How many of us know how to put together one of those nice contemporary bookshelves from Ikea without having the particle board showing where it is supposed to be espresso (Is it coffee or furniture anyway)? Kind of what I thought. But what do we all know how to do with considerable expertise?

Spend more money than we make! Thanks to easy credit restrictions and free hot dog lunches on college campuses when you sign up for a credit card, the average American has 9 credit cards and owes over $7000 to the card issuers. Never one to be content with average, I have more than assisted in raising this average over the years, and would jump at an opportunity to be rid of the crippling, debilitating specter that is indebtedness; and I suspect many in similar situations would as well (Don’t worry about me dear readers, I rehabilitate frequently with Jameson’s neat and fantasy baseball).

So what does this have to do with natural resource conservation? Here is my proposal. Rather than send a debtor to Georgia (sorry, that is an American colonies joke, and not a slight at Ludacris’ home state) enroll them in a modern equivalent of the CCC. The federal government would pay off said debtor’s obligations at a certain monthly rate in return for the debtor providing forty hours of work per week on Public Works Adminstration projects such as desalinization or other conservation projects to be determined. The debtor would receive food, housing, and a monthly stipend. In addition, by enrolling in the program, the debtor would emerge from the program debt-free with no besmirching marks on their credit history.Similar Posts:

Autobiography of a Nation; Almost Concluded

The Camo — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:33:21 +0000

All right, so you have suffered through my obvious adulation for the New Deal, you have gotten an all too brief synopsis of two of the more prominent programs, done a bit of research on the PWA and CCC yourself, and you are waiting for the money shot, right? What is The Camo’s point? Well as a strong believer in the old maxim; we can learn from the past, I am going to utilize the example set forth by the PWA and CCC in the 1930’s and adapt them to help with our current economic crisis.

As a quick recap, the PWA was formed to distribute public funds to private organizations to complete public works projects such as schools, hospitals and affordable housing, all very noble pursuits, and probably needed today as well. But I am going to stick to FDR’s employment through conservation principle and focus our attention on another rapidly approaching catastrophe. Water, or the lack thereof. This is a problem that affects the entire U.S, especially the West. On Friday, California governor Arnold Schwarzenneger declared a state of emergency citing drier than normal conditions leading to an inability to meet water allocations for California farmers (I will be discussing this catastrophe soon). So how do we use a modern PWA to help create jobs and solve the water crisis?

Desalination Plants! By focusing tremendous resources at developing more efficient, less expensive methods of desalinization, we will be able to create lots of jobs in research & development, engineering, construction management, sales, purchasing, and numerous other white collar positions, as well put struggling contractors and their employees back to work. One of the shortcomings of existing desalinization technology is its reliance on energy. Consequently, we can focus enormous resources on developing more efficient methods of harnessing energy, again leading to a huge creation of jobs. I have included several links for you to continue you’re research on desalinization, and I recommend it, as it fascinating, and the technology is improving dramatically.

I sincerely apologize, dear readers, as I was going to attempt to wrap up this feature with this post, but I don’t want you to fall asleep on a Saturday night, so I will conclude the Autobiography of a Nation posts soon!<–>

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Autobiography of a Nation Episode Two: Revenge of the Seethe

The Camo — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:00:37 +0000

One of my favorite New Deal programs (after you have taken a 400 level class named “America in the Great Depression, you are entitled to have a favorite) has always been the Civilian Conservation Corps or CCC. Something about serving this great nation while helping build trails in national parks, planting over 5 billion trees, or improving our national power grid made me want to strap on some hiking boots, don a flannel shirt, grab some heavy tools and help rebuild America from the ground up. Lack of hand sanitizer, fear of blisters, and uncertain exposure to new episodes of Lost inevitably lead to disavowing myself from such romantic inclinations, but for over 3 million hearty souls during the Great Depression, the CCC provided rewarding work, three square meals, and a stipend of $30 per month.

Designed primarily to provide employment, the CCC grew into an immensely popular program, and more than any other New Deal program extended President Roosevelt’s personal philosophy of government intervention towards the Great Depression. Provide work, not welfare, and simultaneously improve the national infrastructure. The CCC was responsible for planting billions of trees to combat erosion stemming from the Great Dust Bowl, erecting over 3400 fire towers, and devoting more than 11 million man hours towards fighting fires. (For a more complete listing of accomplishments and completed projects, please click here)

In addition to the aforementioned stipend, the work camps established to house groups of up to 5,000 workers also made available vocational training and additional educational opportunities that over 90 percent of CCC workers took advantage of. In fact more than 40,000 workers were taught to read in the camps.

The CCC was one of the most popular New Deal programs established to fight the Great Depression, and even after being disbanded in 1942, the concept of the CCC survives on in numerous states that have adopted the principle of employment through conservation. In my next post (Matt advises not holding your breath as he claims my blog per week average is lower than Andruw Jones’ 2008 batting average, in a word; not prolific) I will conclude this fascinating look into the history of stimulus packages by providing two certain solutions to the 2009 financial crises.

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Autobiography of a Nation

The Camo — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:42:33 +0000

In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in the midst of the worst economic crisis since… (Oh wait, it was the Great Depression). Roosevelt moved quickly to establish a set of programs that he and his advisers deemed necessary to aid economic recovery of a struggling nation. Collectively, these programs became known as the “New Deal,” and gradually began to make inroads into the monetary crisis facing our nation at that time.

Today, we face a similarly dire economic climate, so what better time to examine the effectiveness of the “New Deal” programs, and see if some tenets of them might prove effective in the bleak fiscal circumstances we find today. Just so you are not disappointed with the truncated length of this entry, this will be part one in a mind-numbingly boring multi-segment study (Don’t worry I will get back to mocking things soon).

We will begin our study with the Public Works Administration or PWA. This was a massive organization that was entrusted with distributing $3.3 billion to private companies in order to complete public works projects. (A quick digression; $3.3 billion in 1933 was roughly 5.9% of the US GDP, and the Stimulus Package just signed in Denver at $787 billion is approximately 5.6% of our current GDP).

The PWA was formed to provide employment, stabilize federal purchasing power, improve public welfare and revive American industry. Almost 35,000 public works projects were completed during the PWA’s eight years of life, including construction of airports, dams, schools, hospitals, and over 25,000 affordable homes. During its heyday, the PWA provided over 2 million jobs to hardworking Americans and just as importantly (after all I am a public administration geek) helped develop a systematic protocol for distribution of funds to localities from a federal level.

So, what sorts of projects could we concentrate on with a huge influx of government money into private R&D firms; (and lets think beyond developing a PDA that is even more totally awesome than an I-Phone) efficient desalinization plants, more solar energy farms, improved hybrid technologies, miracle of miracles; develop a way to teach people in LA how to drive when there is one tenth of one percent of rain on the ground. Improved infrastructure would be great as well, but the Bonneville Dam (Important PWA project) of 2009 is not another dam or hospital, it is technology.

to be continued…

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