Baseline Scenario, October 30, 2009

Yesterday morning I testified to a Joint Economic Committee of Congress hearing (update: that link may be fragile; here’s the JEC general page). The session discussed the latest GDP numbers, the impact of the fiscal stimulus earlier this year, and whether we need further fiscal expansion of any kind.

I argued that a global recovery is underway and in the rest of the world will likely be stronger than the current official or private consensus forecast, but growth remains fragile in the United States because of problems in our financial sector. While our situation today is quite different in key regards from that of Japan in the 1990s, the Japanese experience strongly suggests that fiscal stimulus is not an effective substitute for confronting financial sector problems head on (e.g., lack of capital, distorted incentives, skewed power structure).

Paul Krugman: If a deficit falls in the forest …

Matt Yglesias makes a good point:

A lot of politicians and political operatives in DC are very impressed by polling that shows people concerned about the budget deficit. I think it would be really politically insane for people to take that too literally. If congress makes the deficit even bigger in a way that helps spur recovery, then come election day people will notice the recovery and be happy. If, by contrast, the labor market is still a disaster then people will be pissed off. It’s true that they might say they’re pissed off at the deficit, but the underlying source of anger is the objective bad conditions.

The Pluses and Minuses of Pelosi’s Package

Nancy Pelosi’s health care reform bill has much to commend it, and much to condemn it.

On the plus side, there’s a public option, with no opt out.

The insurance companies won’t be able to deny coverage for preexisting conditions or rescind policies once someone gets sick.

And it greatly expands Medicaid.

Higher Ed Slashed, Left Dripping in Red

The Chronicle of Higher Education released a survey of chief financial officers at four-year universities across the country and it is no treat; their outlook for this budget year (FY 2010) was gloomy, by next year? Even scarier. According to universities surveyed, 62% of officials expect the worst of financial pressures are still to come, with higher education budgets dripping in red ink, bitten by the recession looking forward.

This is despite the fact that universities have already slashed budgets, passed hair-raising tuition hikes, and in some cases chopped enrollment. At least 34 states already took the ax to public colleges and universities, reducing faculty and staff, coupled with steep tuition increases for the upcoming year.

Conservatives’ 25-year goal of ‘defunding the left’ revealed by ACORN controversy

When Michele Bachman crowed in September that the exposure of alleged illegal activity by the anti-poverty group ACORN was just the start of a campaign to "defund the left," she may have revealed more about current Republican strategy than she intended.

“Defunding the left is going to be so easy,” Bachmann told the audience at a conservative conference, “and it’s going to solve so many of our problems.”

Does Ben Bernanke Have The Facts Right On Banking?

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, has stayed carefully on the sidelines while a major argument has broken out among and around senior policymaking circles: Should our biggest banks be broken up, or can they be safely re-regulated into permanently good behavior? (See the recent competing answers from WSJ, FT, and the New Republic).

But the issues are too pressing and the stakes are too high for key economic policymakers to remain silent or not have an opinion. On Cape Cod last Friday, Mr. Bernanke appeared to lean towards the banking industry status quo, arguing that regulation would allow us to keep the benefits of large complex financial institutions.

Paul Krugman: The Defining Moment

O.K., folks, this is it. It’s the defining moment for health care reform.

Past efforts to give Americans what citizens of every other advanced nation already have — guaranteed access to essential care — have ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, usually dying in committee without ever making it to a vote.

But this time, broadly similar health-care bills have made it through multiple committees in both houses of Congress. And on Thursday, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, unveiled the legislation that she will send to the House floor, where it will almost surely pass. It’s not a perfect bill, by a long shot, but it’s a much stronger bill than almost anyone expected to emerge even a few weeks ago. And it would lead to near-universal coverage.

Former Wall Street Player Reveals the Inside World Behind Shady Bailouts to Bankers

By Joshua Holland and Nomi Prins, AlterNet
Posted on October 30, 2009, Printed on October 30, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143573/

A former managing director at Goldman Sachs and now a razor-sharp financial muckraker (and regular AlterNet contributor), Nomi Prins understands the labyrinthine world of Wall Street finance, with all its warts, as well as anyone.

In her new book, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses and Backroom Deals From Washington to Wall Street, Prins lays bare the whole fetid corpse of the burst mortgage bubble.

Pentagon officials won’t confirm Bush propaganda program ended

By Brad Jacobson
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 -- 9:36 am

Read Part I and Part II of this series.

The covert Bush administration program that used retired military analysts to generate favorable wartime news coverage may not have been terminated, Raw Story has found.

In interviews, Pentagon officials in charge of the press and community relations offices — which worked in partnership on the military analyst program — equivocated on the subject of whether the program has ended.

Right-wing blogs distort Frank's comments

October 28, 2009 12:26 pm ET — 88 Comments

Numerous right-wing websites, including the Fox Nation and the Drudge Report, have parroted a misleading headline posted on October 26 by Real Clear Politics and NewsBusters asserting that Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) stated, "We are trying on every front to increase the role of government." In fact, while specifically discussing financial regulation, Frank actually said, "[W]e are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area" [emphasis added].

Rove-Dean health care debate punctuated by name calling

By Ed Mahon | Centre Daily Times

Karl Rove and Howard Dean brought the national health care debate to Penn State on Tuesday night.

There was little agreement, but a good bit of name calling, during the event, which ranged in tone from heated to humorous.

"That's a made up statistic, Karl Rove. . . . For the first time tonight, I'm calling you on it," said Dean, a physician and the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. "You made that up."

Pelosi unveils House version of health care bill

By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled revised health care-overhaul legislation Thursday that includes a stronger government-operated insurance option than the one that the Senate plans to consider.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is pushing a government health insurance plan that would allow states to "opt out." Pelosi, D-Calif., is expected to support a public option with no such escape hatch. The revised measure she unveiled merges terms from three separate but similar bills that three committees in the House of Representatives passed earlier.

Lack of insurance may have figured in nearly 17,000 childhood deaths, study shows

Lack of health insurance might have led or contributed to nearly 17,000 deaths among hospitalized children in the United States in the span of less than two decades, according to research led by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

According to the Hopkins researchers, the study, to be published Oct. 30 in the Journal of Public Health, is one of the largest ever to look at the impact of insurance on the number of preventable deaths and the potential for saved lives among sick children in the United States.

Using more than 23 million hospital records from 37 states between 1988 and 2005, the Hopkins investigators compared the risk of death in children with insurance and in those without. Other factors being equal, researchers found that uninsured children in the study were 60 percent more likely to die in the hospital than those with insurance. When comparing death rates by underlying disease, the uninsured appeared to have increased risk of dying independent regardless of their medical condition, the study found. The findings only capture deaths during hospitalization and do not reflect deaths after discharge from the hospital, nor do they count children who died without ever being hospitalized, the researchers say, which means the real death toll of non-insurance could be even higher.

Is Obama Plotting to Shut Down the Internet?

— By Stephanie Mencimer | Tue October 27, 2009 8:15 PM PST

The world is full of a lot of conservative anti-Obama craziness these days—Glenn Beck, the Birther movement, etc. But anti-immigration activist William Gheen might take the prize as this week's most paranoid Obama critic. On Tuesday, Gheen circulated an email claiming that the Obama administration may intend to use the swine flu epidemic as an excuse to shut down the web and thus silence his critics. Gheen’s source for his claim? A small Reuters story about a recent GAO report suggesting the Department of Homeland Security doesn't have a backup plan should millions of bored Americans, home with swine flu, overload the Internet with too many games of XBlaster.

Lesson unlearned

By Henry CK Liu

October 29, 2009, is the 80th anniversary of the market crash in the United States that led to the Great Depression. Did the world learn the lesson of 1929?

Milton Friedman identified through exhaustive analysis of historical data the potential role of monetary policy in shaping the course of inflation and business cycles, with the counterfactual conclusion that the Great Depression of the 1930s could have been avoided with appropriate Federal Reserve monetary easing to counteract destructive market forces.

Thomas Frank: Obama Is Right About Fox News

But the criticism was clumsy.

Journalism has a special, hallowed place for stories of its practitioners' persecution. There is no higher claim to journalistic integrity than going to jail to protect a source. And the Newseum in Washington, D.C., establishes the profession's legitimacy with a memorial to fallen scribes, thus drawing an implicit connection between the murdered abolitionist editors of long ago and the struggling outfit that gave you this morning's page-one story about cute pets in Halloween costumes.

But no journalistic operation is better prepared to sing the tragedy of its own martyrdom than Fox News. To all the usual journalistic instincts it adds its grand narrative of Middle America's disrespectful treatment by the liberal elite. Persecution fantasy is Fox News's lifeblood; give it the faintest whiff of the real thing and look out for a gale-force hissy fit.

Elizabeth Warren for President

“Beyond monitoring how the government is mopping up after the financial crisis, Warren is pushing a proposal that could help prevent the next one: creating a Financial Product Safety Commission to protect consumers from abusive lenders. Mortgages and credit cards, she wrote in a 2007 journal article about the proposal, “should be subject to the same routine safety screening that now governs the sale of every toaster, washing machine, and child’s car seat.”

Commission Impossible

How the Angelides Commission can crack open the Wall Street scandal—if it dares.

By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009, at 12:24 PM ET

---

Commissions are often created to defer tough decisions; to forge a consensus around a hard solution to a genuine problem; and, rarely, actually to delve into underlying facts. The Angelides commission, officially chartered by Congress this summer as the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, has the chance to be that third kind of commission, gathering the missing empirical data on fundamental questions that can guide future decision-making.

We already know an awful lot more about what happened last year than we did in 1932, when the legendary Pecora commission was created to investigate the Wall Street crash. We know the fundamental violations of sound banking practice and regulatory failures that brought us to the precipice. Yet there are still critical areas that would benefit from the commission's detailed analysis: four structural issues that have not yet received adequate attention and one particular transaction that is still highly ambiguous.

Green Junk: Energy Star's Falling Standards

New agency rules may be at odds with legislation

Thursday October 22, 2009 8:11 a.m.
By Michelle Chen

As the market for energy efficient products booms, consumers are increasingly dependent on regulatory protections that help them separate green goods from green junk.

That was supposed to be the idea behind Energy Star, a federal program that certifies the energy efficiency of certain washing machines, DVD players refrigerators and other products and appliances. But the program has come under fire for slack standards that encourage manufacturers to greenwash their products. Now, lawmakers' reform efforts are reportedly running up against friction from the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy, and some wonder if the agencies are simply trying to do an end-run around congressional authority.

Our Economy Was a Scam and Now We're Dead Broke

By Joe Bageant, JoeBageant.com
Posted on October 27, 2009, Printed on October 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143521/

When Barack Obama took office it seemed to some of us that his first job was to get the national silverware out of the pawn shop. Or at least maintain the world's confidence that it was possible for us to get out of debt. America is dead broke, the easy credit, phantom "growth" economy has been exposed for what it was. A credit scam. Even Hillary Clinton and Obama's best efforts have not coaxed much more dough out of foreign friends. But at least we again have a few friends abroad.

So now we must jackleg ourselves back into something resembling a productive activity. No matter how you cut it, things will not be as much fun as shopping and speculative "investing" were.

Simple measures can yield big greenhouse gas cuts, scientists say

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- New technologies and policies that save energy, remove atmospheric carbon and limit greenhouse gas emissions are needed to fight global climate change – but face daunting technological, economic and political hurdles, a Michigan State University scientist said.

The good news: Basic actions taken by everyday people can yield fast savings at low cost, according to MSU Professor Thomas Dietz and colleagues.

Senate Dems to Obama: Um, a Little Help Here? Senate Dems to Obama: Um, a Little Help Here?

Jonathan Cohn

Jonathan Cohn

Senior Editor

view bio

• The Public Option Lives. Wow.
• Democrats Taking from the Poor?!
• Senate Dems to Obama: Um, a Little Help Here?

October 26, 2009 | 12:01 am

After a weekend of furious activity, Democratic leaders in the Senate think they are close to getting the votes they need in order to pass an "opt-out" version of the public option.

But they feel like President Obama could be doing more to help them, with one senior staffer telling TNR on Sunday that the leadership would like, but has yet to receive, a clear "signal" of support for their effort.

The Cover-Up Continues

The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration’s expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama’s cover-up.

We have had recent reminders of this dismaying retreat from Mr. Obama’s passionate campaign promises to make a break with Mr. Bush’s abuses of power, a shift that denies justice to the victims of wayward government policies and shields officials from accountability.

Paul Krugman: After Reform Passes

So, how well will health reform work after it passes?

There’s a part of me that can’t believe I’m asking that question. After all, serious health reform has long seemed like an impossible dream. And it could yet go all wrong.

But the teabaggers have come and gone, as have the cries of “death panels” and the demonstrations by Medicare recipients demanding that the government stay out of health care. And reform is still on track. Right now it looks highly likely that Congress will, indeed, send a health care bill to the president’s desk. Then what?

Financial Support for the Unemployed Dries Up at the Worst Possible Time

By Marianne Hill, Dollars and Sense
Posted on October 15, 2009, Printed on October 26, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143278/

Millions of workers have lost their jobs in the current recession. Employment is down 12 percent in manufacturing, 7 percent in professional and business services, and more than 5 percent overall in the private sector compared to last year. Over 5.6 million people have lost their jobs since last June. The ranks of the unemployed are continuing to grow; the unemployment rate in June hit 9.5 percent. Good thing that unemployment insurance provides income to help tide these workers over this rough patch, right? Not so fast.

The share of unemployed workers receiving benefits has gradually shrunk since the 1970s. In 1975, over half of unemployed workers received regular benefits. But in 2008, only 37 percent of the unemployed did; in some states the figure was less than 25 percent. And so-called “discouraged workers,” those who want but are not actively seeking employment, are not considered part of the labor force and so are not even included in these figures.

Right-Wing Extremist Group on Active Military Duty?

By Rob Waters, Southern Poverty Law Center
Posted on October 26, 2009, Printed on October 26, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143500/

Oath Keepers, the militia/“Patriot” extremist group made up of law enforcement officers, military personnel and veterans, has posted a photo on its site showing (it says) “an active duty Oath Keeper in Mosul, Iraq” wearing two Velcro-attached “tabs” or patches, one saying “Oath Keeper” and the other “Three percent.” The flag patch beneath them is also an insignia of the “Three Percenters,” an informal alliance of hard-line gun owners.

The Oath Keepers figured prominently in a recent special report by the Southern Poverty Law Center on the resurgence of the antigovernment militia movement. The report described the group as “a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival.” Oath Keepers is fully on board with all the standard right-wing conspiracy theories, as evidenced by its official list of 10 “Orders We Will Not Obey,” in which it vows to resist any government efforts to “disarm the American people” or turn cities into “giant concentration camps.”

US threats prompted Iran nuclear facility

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The administration of United States President Barack Obama claims that construction of a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Qom began before Tehran's decision to withdraw from a previous agreement to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in advance of such construction. But the November 2007 US intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear program tells a different story.

The Iranian decision to withdraw from the earlier agreement with the IAEA was prompted, moreover, by the campaign of threats to Iran's nuclear facilities mounted by the George W Bush administration in early 2007, as a reconstruction of the sequence of events shows.

Afghan insurgency given new life by their enemies

Paul McGeough
October 24, 2009 - 6:07PM

This is the full text of an address given last Thursday by Paul McGeough, the chief correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald, at a conference on the Afghanistan crisis which was organised by the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra

In their rush to congratulate President Hamid Karzai on buckling to a second Afghan presidential election this week, world leaders heaved a sigh of relief. But none bothered – at least, not in public – to canvas the part played by the international community in bringing Afghanistan to the brink.

That is what makes the 60-page assessment of the conflict by US General Stanley McChrystal a damning document, more because of who he is than what he actually has to say.

The Baseline Scenario What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it Patchwork Fixes, Conflicting Motives, And Other Things To Avoid

Improving the regulation of the financial sector is a prime topic of conversation amongst financial economists, and appropriately so. Most agree that massive failures of financial regulation were one, if not perhaps the largest, cause of the 2008 meltdown.

When the conversation turns to the specifics of what needs to be regulated, how regulation should work, and what agencies should be involved, the range of views is tremendous. There is agreement that some kind of prudent regulation is needed, as is investor and consumer protection, but that’s about it. Fueled by billions of dollars of lobbying and purchased research, everyone has their own idea. One super-regulator? Council of regulators? Control bankers compensation schemes? Exchange-trade them? The cacophony is deafening.

It's Fourth And Ten, And Obama Is Bringing Out The Punting Squad

By CarrieCann

Created Oct 25 2009 - 3:17pm

Obama was handed the football at the Democrats one yard line. The team outlined eight plays it needed to get a touchdown. Close Gitmo, repeal DADT, repeal DOMA, run a transparent government with no secret meetings, reform health care, bring our troops home from Iraq, and provide a stimulus to energize the economy and create much needed jobs.

The home team fans are in shock that we're not even close to a goal, and it's fourth and ten at the fifty yard line! This administration is preparing to punt as there is absolutely no possibility they will pull out a fourth and ten with their playbook.

Prognosis improves for public insurance

MOMENTUM SHIFT IS DRAMATIC
Top Democrats push option in health-care legislation

By Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 24, 2009

Democratic leaders in the Senate and House have concluded that a government-run insurance plan is the cheapest way to expand health coverage, and they sought Friday to rally support for the idea, prospects for which have gone in a few short weeks from bleak to bright.

The shift in momentum is so dramatic that many lawmakers now predict that President Obama will sign a final bill that includes some form of government-sponsored insurance for people who do not receive coverage through the workplace. Even Democrats with strong reservations about expanding government's role in the health-care system say they are reconsidering the approach in hopes of making low-cost plans broadly available.

Nouriel Roubini: Big Crash Coming

By Dave Nadig
On 3:00 am EDT, Friday October 23, 2009

Dr. Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics and international business at the Stern School of Business at NYU and chairman of RGE Monitor, is perhaps best known for his prescient predictions of the financial market collapse in 2005.

Dr. Roubini will be the keynote speaker at IndexUniverse’s upcoming “Inside Commodities” conference on Nov. 4 at the New York Stock Exchange. We sat down with Dr. Roubini ahead of the conference to take his temperature on global markets, the role of oiland gold and the impact of regulation.

If Lenders Say ‘The Dog Ate Your Mortgage’

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Published: October 24, 2009

FOR decades, when troubled homeowners and banks battled over delinquent mortgages, it wasn’t a contest. Homes went into foreclosure, and lenders took control of the property.

On top of that, courts rubber-stamped the array of foreclosure charges that lenders heaped onto borrowers and took banks at their word when the lenders said they owned the mortgage notes underlying troubled properties.

Stealthy wind turbines aim to disappear from radar screens

15:22 23 October 2009
by Colin Barras

For all their environmental appeal, wind turbines have few fans in the military or among air traffic controllers. Strange as it might seem, radar systems easily confuse the turbines' rotating blades with passing aircraft. Now a company has developed a "stealthy", radar-invisible blade that could see many more wind farms springing up across the UK and elsewhere.

The concern over wind turbines is delaying their deployment. According to the UK Government's Department of Energy and Climate Change, plans for over 5 gigawatts of wind power are currently stalled by aviators' objections .

How to turn pig poo into green power

STINKING lagoons of pig manure created by thousands of animals in giant hog farms can pollute rivers, poison groundwater and pump out clouds of methane and carbon dioxide. So finding alternative uses for the slurry - to generate electricity, say - makes a lot of sense. The problem was that no one has been certain which way of doing it makes the most electricity for the least greenhouse gas production.

Now a Danish team has analysed the various ways in which firms in that country treat pig manure and use it to generate electricity in systems such as anaerobic digesters or incinerators. In anaerobic digestion, bacteria break down waste material by warming it in an oxygen-free vessel, releasing methane which is used in gas turbines. Incinerators burn material to boil water and drive a steam turbine.

Beware a Times/Pentagon 'Virtual Coup' on Aghanistan

by Harvey Wasserman

Some military coups are still done the old-fashioned way. Tanks surround the capital, generals grab the radio station, the slaughter begins.

Here, the Declaration of Independence scorned King George III for elevating his army over our colonial legislatures. The Founders opposed a standing army. Our first Commander George Washington warned against military entanglements. So did Dwight Eisenhower nearly two centuries later. These "quaint" monuments to civilian rule form the core of our constitutional culture.

So when the Pentagon wants to trash inconvenient opposition and escalate yet another war, it seeks subtler means. For example: the "virtual coup" now being staged in league with the New York Times, aimed at plunging us catastrophically deeper into Afghanistan.

An Open Letter To Elie Wiesel

Dear Mr. Wiesel,

Your years of tireless campaigning for human rights and against anti-Semitism have earned our deepest respect. For this reason we have written the following letter in hope that you will reconsider your support of events sponsored by John Hagee's Christians United for Israel. We realize that the outward show of support for Jews and Israel, on display at Hagee's CUFI events, can be very enticing but there is another aspect of Christian Zionism which we believe runs strongly counter to Jewish and Israeli interests.

John Hagee teaches "theological racism," the idea that the destiny of peoples is based on their biblical genealogy. Hagee claims Jewish souls are different from those of gentiles and that, according to divine plan, Jews have no right to live anywhere on Earth but in Israel. Hagee's fellow Christian Zionists predict that a coming, divinely ordained paroxysm of anti-Semitic violence, a "second Holocaust," will be necessary to force all Jews to make aliyah. From the pulpit, pastor Hagee and his fellow Christian Zionists preach their theological racism that risks provoking such a catastrophe.

Friday, October 23, 2009 It is official, Fox fabricated the "denied access" story ...

By GottaLaff

My pal Larisa Alexandrovna got down to work after she got wind of this. And what work she did. Look what she found out (via TPMDC), in part:

Despite the facts, Fox and the glue-sniffing idiots who defend them spread word far and wide of the "Nixonian" (interesting how that term suddenly popped up everywhere and all at once, as though a memo had been issued) war against them and Obama's "enemy list" bullshit.

So in short, Fox fabricated a story to make themselves look like victims of a fabricated war on them being waged by the evil Commie Obama. [...]

Prosecutors Turn Tables on Student Journalists

By MONICA DAVEY

Published: October 24, 2009

EVANSTON, Ill. — For more than a decade, classes of students at Northwestern University’s journalism school have been scrutinizing the work of prosecutors and the police. The investigations into old crimes, as part of the Medill Innocence Project, have helped lead to the release of 11 inmates, the project’s director says, and an Illinois governor once cited those wrongful convictions as he announced he was commuting the sentences of everyone on death row.

But as the Medill Innocence Project is raising concerns about another case, that of a man convicted in a murder 31 years ago, a hearing has been scheduled next month in Cook County Circuit Court on an unusual request: Local prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students themselves.

Frank Rich: In Defense of the ‘Balloon Boy’ Dad

FOR a country desperate for good news, the now-deflated “balloon boy” spectacle would seem to be the perfect tonic. As Wolf Blitzer of CNN summed up the nation’s unrestrained joy upon learning that the imperiled boy had never been in any peril whatsoever: “All of us are so excited that little Falcon is fine.”

Then came even better news. After little Falcon revealed to Blitzer that his family “did this for the show,” we could all luxuriate in a warm bath of moral superiority. No matter what our own faults as parents, we could never top Richard Heene, who mercilessly exploited his child for fame and profit. Nor could we ever be as craven as the news media, especially cable television, which dumped a live broadcast of President Obama in New Orleans to track the supersized Jiffy Pop bag floating over Colorado.

Or such are the received lessons of this tale.

Essex man organizes volunteers to restore Back River

By Mary Gail Hare | The Baltimore Sun
October 25, 2009

Even a casual glance at the view from his front porch brings an understanding of why Jerry Ziemski has worked so tirelessly to restore Back River. Sunlight glistens on gentle waves lapping at tree-lined shores. Blue herons, ducks and an occasional eagle flutter by. Anglers drop their lines from piers and crabbers check their nets.

"I know this view is a dream for a lot of people, and I am lucky to have it," said Ziemski, 54, known to many of his Essex neighbors as Captain Jerry. "I stand on this porch, look out there and know all the cleanup work is worth it."