http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/12/29/People-of-Hawaii-Pass-Resolution-Against-Forced-Vaccination.aspx
People of Hawaii Pass Resolution Against Forced Vaccination
Posted by: Dr. Mercola
December 29 2009
Department of Health officials in Hawaii were overruled by County of Hawaii directors supporting a resolution favoring First Amendment constitutional rights and vaccination exemptions for everyone demanding them.
The nearly unanimous vote demonstrated the power of local community activists to rebuke "top down" policies advancing "mandatory" vaccinations during declared emergencies.
The Resolution urges State and Federal legislators in Hawaii "to amend vaccine laws to include medical, religious, and philosophical exemptions from any vaccine program," including those declared urgent by health officials.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
It's Time to Get to Work Fixing Our Economic and Political Problems
It's Time to Get to Work Fixing Our Economic and Political Problems
By Doug Kreeger, AlterNet
December 29, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144841/
In Monday’s New York Times, Paul Krugman paints an appraisal of the American economy over the last decade. Krugman attempts to coin a term to describe the 2000s as a time of no economic movement. He writes that from an economic point of view, he would "... suggest that we call the decade past the Big Zero. It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true."
These odd times demand that we start to understand exactly where we are and what course of action is essential to make progress on the morass we find ourselves in. As we talk with people in our communities, we discover that most do not have a clue about what the future holds. I am also convinced that even the so-called experts do not either. That does not limit the speculation and the fingers pointing at everyone and every institution. Everybody is looking for the villains to blame for this mess. I am reminded of a maxim I copied down years ago: The chance of solving a problem declines, the closer one gets to finding out who was the cause of the problem.
As we look to find the answers for our ills, it is time that we stop shooting from the hip, stop simply looking for the people to blame, stop promising "hope.” The best way to solve problems is to ask questions. This is a time for all of us to really seek solutions by totally understanding how we got into this mess. This is not so that we can throw stones at those responsible in the proverbial public square, but so we can discover which of those factors are still present and preventing us from progress. It is time for every institution to reevaluate its practices in the most honest and open manner so that we do not let our bad history repeat itself.
To provide an example of honest inquiry, I can also look back, as Krugman has, to evaluate this decade and what went stale with our economy. We live in a very different world than we did 10 years ago. Companies throughout the world jumped on the Chinese bandwagon and gave them the tools to become the dominant economic force in today’s world. (When was the last time you picked up a product that did not say "Made in China"?)
Now, I do not know if that is a bad thing, but I suspect that the future well-being of this country cannot be met if we no longer produce anything but ideas and consumers. What made our economy robust before was that we had great centers of commerce based on the manufacturing and efficient transportation of goods. Over time, the means of transportation changed dramatically, and we were no longer limited to creating products locally. The means of production were handed to corporations that built factories in the cheapest locations in order to stock big box stores with low-price goods, thereby offering low wages to workers. Jobs disappeared in the United States into this new world economic order. We became an over-consuming, debt-ridden nation.
In order to move forward, it is time for us to stop looking to our political leaders for all the answers. We must encourage them to start being honest about what they know and don’t know. We need to stop using legislative hearings for the purpose of scoring votes and appeasing campaign donors. We need to assess our leaders based on their ability to ask the right questions. We can then judge their competence based on the decisions they make; decisions guided by proper inquiry and well-thought-out solutions.
Many of us had such hope for the new administration that we were lulled into thinking that real change was possible within the structure of Washington politics. We fell prey to thinking new processes were in place to finally overcome the obstructionist system that gives the minority control over the majority’s future. Legislative manipulation trumps working for the common good. The end result is a stalemate caused by a voting bloc that is only concerned with the next election.
It is time for everyone at every level of government to look at the past and the present and make sure they understand the consequences if we do not come up with real solutions to the issues facing us. We also need something we lost long ago -- patience. Because we live in a 24-hour news cycle, we have grown to expect that all our problems can be fixed right away. We live in a world that often demands “next day air” when real change comes incrementally. The key is having a clear mission and understanding what direction we need to go in. Yes, compromise is essential, but selling out is not an option. We need to stand up to what we believe to be real facts and be honest with each other about what needs to be done to move us forward. We did not get into this mess overnight, nor will we have all the answers right away.
The public must be vigilant and informed so we can play our proper roles in making those in power accountable to us the people. We need to provide ways to reach the public in as honest and direct a way as possible without propaganda machines blurring the truth.
We need to ask the right questions and use our democratic institutions as they were intended. It is time that we make sure those in power genuinely chart a future that honestly serves the people through meaningful solutions. Right now it feels like we’re all going down the same road in different directions. It’s time to stop, ask questions, weigh the options and move in a direction that serves the public’s interest.
Douglas Kreeger is the former CEO of Air America Radio.
By Doug Kreeger, AlterNet
December 29, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144841/
In Monday’s New York Times, Paul Krugman paints an appraisal of the American economy over the last decade. Krugman attempts to coin a term to describe the 2000s as a time of no economic movement. He writes that from an economic point of view, he would "... suggest that we call the decade past the Big Zero. It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true."
These odd times demand that we start to understand exactly where we are and what course of action is essential to make progress on the morass we find ourselves in. As we talk with people in our communities, we discover that most do not have a clue about what the future holds. I am also convinced that even the so-called experts do not either. That does not limit the speculation and the fingers pointing at everyone and every institution. Everybody is looking for the villains to blame for this mess. I am reminded of a maxim I copied down years ago: The chance of solving a problem declines, the closer one gets to finding out who was the cause of the problem.
As we look to find the answers for our ills, it is time that we stop shooting from the hip, stop simply looking for the people to blame, stop promising "hope.” The best way to solve problems is to ask questions. This is a time for all of us to really seek solutions by totally understanding how we got into this mess. This is not so that we can throw stones at those responsible in the proverbial public square, but so we can discover which of those factors are still present and preventing us from progress. It is time for every institution to reevaluate its practices in the most honest and open manner so that we do not let our bad history repeat itself.
To provide an example of honest inquiry, I can also look back, as Krugman has, to evaluate this decade and what went stale with our economy. We live in a very different world than we did 10 years ago. Companies throughout the world jumped on the Chinese bandwagon and gave them the tools to become the dominant economic force in today’s world. (When was the last time you picked up a product that did not say "Made in China"?)
Now, I do not know if that is a bad thing, but I suspect that the future well-being of this country cannot be met if we no longer produce anything but ideas and consumers. What made our economy robust before was that we had great centers of commerce based on the manufacturing and efficient transportation of goods. Over time, the means of transportation changed dramatically, and we were no longer limited to creating products locally. The means of production were handed to corporations that built factories in the cheapest locations in order to stock big box stores with low-price goods, thereby offering low wages to workers. Jobs disappeared in the United States into this new world economic order. We became an over-consuming, debt-ridden nation.
In order to move forward, it is time for us to stop looking to our political leaders for all the answers. We must encourage them to start being honest about what they know and don’t know. We need to stop using legislative hearings for the purpose of scoring votes and appeasing campaign donors. We need to assess our leaders based on their ability to ask the right questions. We can then judge their competence based on the decisions they make; decisions guided by proper inquiry and well-thought-out solutions.
Many of us had such hope for the new administration that we were lulled into thinking that real change was possible within the structure of Washington politics. We fell prey to thinking new processes were in place to finally overcome the obstructionist system that gives the minority control over the majority’s future. Legislative manipulation trumps working for the common good. The end result is a stalemate caused by a voting bloc that is only concerned with the next election.
It is time for everyone at every level of government to look at the past and the present and make sure they understand the consequences if we do not come up with real solutions to the issues facing us. We also need something we lost long ago -- patience. Because we live in a 24-hour news cycle, we have grown to expect that all our problems can be fixed right away. We live in a world that often demands “next day air” when real change comes incrementally. The key is having a clear mission and understanding what direction we need to go in. Yes, compromise is essential, but selling out is not an option. We need to stand up to what we believe to be real facts and be honest with each other about what needs to be done to move us forward. We did not get into this mess overnight, nor will we have all the answers right away.
The public must be vigilant and informed so we can play our proper roles in making those in power accountable to us the people. We need to provide ways to reach the public in as honest and direct a way as possible without propaganda machines blurring the truth.
We need to ask the right questions and use our democratic institutions as they were intended. It is time that we make sure those in power genuinely chart a future that honestly serves the people through meaningful solutions. Right now it feels like we’re all going down the same road in different directions. It’s time to stop, ask questions, weigh the options and move in a direction that serves the public’s interest.
Douglas Kreeger is the former CEO of Air America Radio.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Grassroots Rising
One note: the world is cooling, not warming so we need carbon to try to prevent an ice age.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/26-0
December 26, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Beyond the Darkest Hours, Grassroots Rising
by Ronnie Cummins
Winter in America 2009. Passing through the darkest period of the winter solstice, shrouded by the gloom and doom of climate destruction, war, and economic depression, making our way around the broken promises of "change we can believe in," we nonetheless find ourselves celebrating life and the redemptive power of a global grassroots revolution. In the wake of the failure of the Copenhagen Climate conference, and the "business as usual" insanity of Obama and the governing elite, millions of us are terminally fed up and fired up for action.
A critical mass of food and farm activists, North and South, are becoming aware that the second decade of the 21st Century likely marks the end of the road for chemical, energy, and water-intensive food and agriculture. And, as the energy, climate, and economic crises converge, a growing corps of climate activists understand that we are witnessing the beginning of the end for fossil fuel-based industry and transportation, energy-intensive housing and suburban sprawl, and a "profit-at-any-cost" economy based upon over-consumption, war, and commercial conquest.
As the winter of discontent turns, it's time to bury our illusions and prepare for the battle of our lives. As the Director of the Organic Consumers Association, I invite you to join us on the organic road, the Via Organica, as we struggle to dismantle the old system and rebuild the new, starting with our local households, communities, and regions. You can sign up for our newsletter at:.
Beyond the Darkest Days
Is This What Democracy Looks Like?
In 2009, indentured politicians, bought and sold by the corporate elite, crushed our hopes for peace and prosperity by spending trillions of our tax dollars on war, Wall Street, and corporate welfare. As a critical mass now understand, these trillions could and should have gone toward financing organic transitions, public health, and a Green New Deal. Given the fact that just over a year ago we drove the warmongers and corporate criminals of the Bush Administration out of office, and replaced them with a new set of so-called liberal Democrats, we should already be well on our way to changing course, averting economic meltdown and climate catastrophe. Instead Obama and his pompous cohorts have disillusioned an entire generation and stabbed the living Earth in the back. Riding on a Death Train full-throttle toward the abyss, it matters little whether the Commander in Chief is an outright fascist, like Bush, or merely a coward and a fraud, like Obama. Circumstances leave us no choice but to organize a mutiny and stop the Death Train.
Will We Survive the Climate Crisis?
World leaders abandoned the UN climate talks in Copenhagen without a binding agreement to reduce the threat of deadly greenhouse gases. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere, compounded by an excess of methane (from factory farms and rotting garbage) and nitrous oxide (from chemical fertilizers) already exceeds the dangerous tipping point of 350 parts per million (ppm). We're currently at 387ppm. Even if we are able to reduce CO2 to 350ppm, we will still experience a 2.7 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature by 2100, making life on the planet difficult, but still possible.
If we continue with business as usual, in 2100 the level will be 965ppm CO2 (+ 8.6 F). If the world acts on proposals for CO2 reduction confirmed in Copenhagen, in 2100 the level will be 770ppm CO2 (+ 7 F). That's the best-case scenario right now, a seven degree Fahrenheit average temperature rise, which some predict could come as early as 2060, in time for you or your children to experience Climate Hell first-hand. Unless we reverse global warming, the Earth, which is expected to have nine billion people in 2050, will have a carrying capacity for only one billion. This means billions will die.
If it's hard for you to imagine what life might be like as sea levels rise, droughts and floods become ever more common, crop failure becomes routine, the world's forests burn, glacier-fed rivers dry up, and a quarter of the planet's mammals go extinct, read this terrifying short story, "Diary of an Interesting Year."
Global Warming: An Organic Future, or No Future
One way or another, either planned or through necessity, humanity will return to organic and traditional agriculture, because it is the only farming system that can supply the world with sufficient quantities of healthy food in the emerging era of global warming, erratic weather, declining fossil fuels, and water scarcity. There is no other way.
In 2009, the Organic Consumers Association spent a good part of our efforts focusing on the connection between global warming and industrial agriculture and the promise of organic agriculture to mitigate and reverse climate change by:
1) Drastically reducing the global industrialized food system's 44-57% share of global greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide) and 2) Sequestering billions of tons of CO2 in the soil.
If we convert the world's 3.5 billion acres of farmland to organic, we can sequester 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, removing excess CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil, where it belongs. If we also organically manage most of the world's 11 billion acres of pastures, rangelands, and forests we can potentially sequester 100% of greenhouse gas emissions. This long-term process of organic transition will buy us the time to reduce fossil fuel use by 90% and retrofit our economy, transportation, and housing to renewable, clean energy.
Organic Transitions: Taking on the Fertilizer, Garbage and Sludge Industries
Why is there so much carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere and not enough carbon organic matter in the soil? Corporate agribusiness, industrial forestry, the garbage and sewage industry and agricultural biotechnology have literally killed the climate stabilizing, carbon sink capacity of the Earth's living soil. Industrial agriculture and forestry have eroded and depleted the soil food web, annihilating soil microorganisms and destroying plants, trees, and soil's natural capacity to clean the atmosphere and sequester CO2. This climate-disrupting ecocide is a direct result of the suicidal use of billions of pounds of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, soil destroying pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, insecticidal GMO crops, factory farm waste, and toxic sewage sludge--instead of feeding the soil and maintaining soil vitality (and its ability to sequester carbon) with organic compost and fertilizers and cover crops. In 2010 OCA and our allies will begin to expose this deadly chemical and GMO attack on the planet's soil food web and make genuine certified organic fertilizer and compost the norm, rather than just the green alternative.
In the US, we throw away, as food waste, 40% of all of our food each year. Production of that wasted food accounts for more than one-quarter of the US's total annual freshwater consumption and equates to 300 million barrels of oil. Even worse, this enormous volume of non-composted food waste rotting in landfills emits tremendous amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 20-70 times more damaging than C02.
In the U.S. today about 80 gallons of water per day per person is flushed or dumped down the drain into our vast and ill-designed sewage system, much of it being valuable potable water flushed down the toilet. In the sewage or wastewater stream, this household sewage (unfortunately, in most households, already carrying toxic chemicals from non-organic body care, home cleaning products and pharmaceutical drugs) is mixed with hospital and industrial toxins and pathogens, pharmaceuticals, street storm water run-off and chemical lawn and farm run-off as it enters into the so-called "sewage treatment" plant. After nominal "treatment" this wastewater is sent downstream for the next community to chemically treat it and declare it "safe," while billions of pounds of toxic sludge are left behind.
Instead of isolating and containing America's toxic sewage sludge as hazardous waste--which is what it is--industry and city governments save money by renaming this toxic sludge "biosolids" and spreading it on non-organic farms (and backyard gardens and public lands) across the country. One of the most outrageous practices is the sale (in garden supply stores) or giveaway (to schools and backyard gardeners) of toxic sewage sludge as "organic fertilizer" or "organic compost."
The EPA has aided and abetted this hazardous practice for several decades by claiming that the toxic chemical poisons, heavy metals, pathogens, hormone disruptors, pesticides, and pharmaceutical drug residues routinely contained in sewage sludge are diluted to "acceptable levels." In 1998, the Organic Consumers Association and the organic community successfully fought to keep toxic sewage sludge out of national organic standards, but we now need to ban sewage sludge on non-organic farms (and all land applications) as well.
In the organic future, valuable organic matter in the waste stream will neither be wasted nor mixed with other garbage or toxins. It will be separated at the source, at homes and businesses, mixed with animal manures and green wastes in a central location, and made into valuable organic compost (natural fertilizer or food for the soil). This organic compost can then be supplied to organic and transition-to-organic farms, backyard gardens, lawns, and other land use applications. This is the only way we can eliminate the two billion pounds of chemical fertilizers applied to non-organic farms every year in the U.S. Nitrate fertilizers (banned in organic production) contaminate the atmosphere, kill the soil, and destabilize the climate with nitrous oxide. Moreover chemical fertilizers pollute city tap water and kill fish and marine life, creating hundreds of massive "dead zones" in the oceans.
Zero waste recycling and the creation of an abundant, affordable supply of organic compost is an essential part of our organic future. This means taking apart the profit at any cost garbage industry and the toxic sewage sludge cartel.
The High Costs of So-Called Cheap Food
Over the past 65 years, chemical agriculture, factory farms, and now genetic engineering have devastated public health, wrecked the environment, and destabilized the climate. The U.S. public now spends $2.4 trillion dollars a year on health care, $800 billion of which is directly attributable to consuming chemical-laden, nutritionally deficient processed food.
In only 15 years unregulated and unlabeled genetically engineered foods and crops (GMOs) have been planted on millions of acres of farm land. These GM crops are planted on soil which is then repeatedly doused with toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers. GMO corn, cotton, canola and soy are currently laced into 80% of (non-organic) supermarket foods and restaurant items. The bodies of the majority of American adults and children are bloated and contaminated with so-called agricultural commodities: high fructose corn syrup, derived from GMO corn, trans-fats (GMO cotton, canola and soy oil), and meat and dairy foods derived from factory farmed animals fed and reared on GMOs and pesticide-tainted grains, antibiotics, hormones, and slaughterhouse waste.
As a direct result of chemical and GMO agriculture, most American consumers are ill-fed and disease-prone.
Overall, U.S. diet-related diseases cause an estimated 580,000 deaths every year.
* OBESITY. In the U.S. nearly 100 million people are seriously and dangerously overweight. Obesity kills thousands and costs taxpayers and employers $147 billion annually.
* HEART DISEASE. In 2010, heart disease will kill hundreds of thousands (in 2006, 831,272 people died of cardiovascular disease) which costs the US $503 billion.
* DIABETES. The number of people with diabetes in the US is expected to increase from 23.7 million to 44.1 million in the next 25 years. The cost of treating diabetes is expected to triple in that time from $113 billion per year to $336 billion per year.
* CANCER. Cancer has reached epidemic proportions, with 48% of men and 38% of women now stricken during their lifetimes. 35% percent of cancers are diet related. Diet-related cancers now out-pace smoking-related cancers (30% are smoking related).
* FOOD POISONING. The U.S. industrial, factory farm food system is responsible for 76 million cases of food-poisoning reported every year that result in over 300,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. Food poisoning costs are substantial, estimated at up to $22 billion each year.
* ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE. In part because of the routine overuse of antibiotics on factory farms - in the US, animals consume 70% of the antibiotics - more than 63,000 people die in the US each year from hospital-acquired infections resistant to at least one antibiotic. This financial costs of this public health emergency are up to $5 billion dollars a year.
In 2007 over $2.2 trillion was spent on health care in the US.
After poisoning us with cheap food and destroying the environment, Big Food Inc. turns us over to Big Pharma and the Industrial Health Complex to repair the damage, or rather to keep us alive long enough to extract maximum profits. But from the warped perspective of the for-profit health insurance industry, overweight and diseased people aren't very profitable. That's why health insurance corporations spend $350 billion per year trying to avoid coverage and deny claims. The vast, paper-pushing bureaucracy the for-profit insurance industry has created to help them avoid providing services soaks up 31% of all health care spending!
If we shifted the 31% of health care spending taken up by the administrative costs of the for-profit health insurance industry to a single-payer, universal health care system, we could cover the uninsured without increasing total health-care spending. The Organic Consumers Association supports single-payer, universal health care, with a focus on preventive health, diet, nutrition and stress-reduction.
However:
IF PRESIDENT OBAMA SIGNS A BILL THAT TAKES AWAY OUR HEALTH RIGHTS, THAT FORCES AMERICANS TO BUY OVERPRICED, INADEQUATE COVERAGE FROM THE FOR-PROFIT HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY, OCA WILL LAUNCH A BOYCOTT!
Forced health insurance is not health care reform, it's corporate welfare and it is a direct result of the nearly one billion dollars that the health care industry is projected to have spent to lobby and bribe the politicians who voted for the bill.
Not only does the for-profit health insurance industry spend 31 cents of every health insurance dollar pushing paper and avoiding claims, but the for-profit "health" system has become almost as deadly as the chemical and GMO food and farming system. Medical malpractice kills as many as 98,000 people in hospitals every year. Another 300,000 people are injured due to medical errors.
Pharmaceuticals are even more dangerous than medical malpractice:
More than 50 percent of all drugs have serious adverse reactions that are discovered only after the drugs have entered the market (e.g., they are not detected during pre-market testing) - making us all unwitting guinea pigs. About 2,270,000 patients per year incur hospital costs as a result of adverse drug reactions.
Another 4,300,000 visit other health care providers (physicians, hospital outpatient departments and emergency rooms) as a result of adverse drug reactions.
Approximately 230,000 die each year as a result of an adverse drug reaction (105,000 using drugs as directed and 125,000 as a result of mistakes). This is the third leading cause of death in the United States.
The total annual health care costs as a consequence of adverse drug reactions exceeds a staggering $200 billion - an amount equal to what is spent on Medicaid every year and almost half of what is spent on Medicare. Reforming our health care system is literally a matter of life or death.
Eventually, we have to stop arguing over who's going to pay for out-of-control health care costs and restore public health! The real solution to our health care crisis is to stop subsidizing chemical and GMO food and farming, along with the destruction of our environment and our climate, and make the long overdue transition to organics. Then, under universal health care or Medicare for All, we can shift from health care that treats sickness caused by unhealthy food and an unhealthy environment and lifestyle to holistic health care that promotes wellness.
Ronnie Cummins is National Director of the Organic Consumers Association.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/26-0
December 26, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Beyond the Darkest Hours, Grassroots Rising
by Ronnie Cummins
Winter in America 2009. Passing through the darkest period of the winter solstice, shrouded by the gloom and doom of climate destruction, war, and economic depression, making our way around the broken promises of "change we can believe in," we nonetheless find ourselves celebrating life and the redemptive power of a global grassroots revolution. In the wake of the failure of the Copenhagen Climate conference, and the "business as usual" insanity of Obama and the governing elite, millions of us are terminally fed up and fired up for action.
A critical mass of food and farm activists, North and South, are becoming aware that the second decade of the 21st Century likely marks the end of the road for chemical, energy, and water-intensive food and agriculture. And, as the energy, climate, and economic crises converge, a growing corps of climate activists understand that we are witnessing the beginning of the end for fossil fuel-based industry and transportation, energy-intensive housing and suburban sprawl, and a "profit-at-any-cost" economy based upon over-consumption, war, and commercial conquest.
As the winter of discontent turns, it's time to bury our illusions and prepare for the battle of our lives. As the Director of the Organic Consumers Association, I invite you to join us on the organic road, the Via Organica, as we struggle to dismantle the old system and rebuild the new, starting with our local households, communities, and regions. You can sign up for our newsletter at:
Beyond the Darkest Days
Is This What Democracy Looks Like?
In 2009, indentured politicians, bought and sold by the corporate elite, crushed our hopes for peace and prosperity by spending trillions of our tax dollars on war, Wall Street, and corporate welfare. As a critical mass now understand, these trillions could and should have gone toward financing organic transitions, public health, and a Green New Deal. Given the fact that just over a year ago we drove the warmongers and corporate criminals of the Bush Administration out of office, and replaced them with a new set of so-called liberal Democrats, we should already be well on our way to changing course, averting economic meltdown and climate catastrophe. Instead Obama and his pompous cohorts have disillusioned an entire generation and stabbed the living Earth in the back. Riding on a Death Train full-throttle toward the abyss, it matters little whether the Commander in Chief is an outright fascist, like Bush, or merely a coward and a fraud, like Obama. Circumstances leave us no choice but to organize a mutiny and stop the Death Train.
Will We Survive the Climate Crisis?
World leaders abandoned the UN climate talks in Copenhagen without a binding agreement to reduce the threat of deadly greenhouse gases. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere, compounded by an excess of methane (from factory farms and rotting garbage) and nitrous oxide (from chemical fertilizers) already exceeds the dangerous tipping point of 350 parts per million (ppm). We're currently at 387ppm. Even if we are able to reduce CO2 to 350ppm, we will still experience a 2.7 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature by 2100, making life on the planet difficult, but still possible.
If we continue with business as usual, in 2100 the level will be 965ppm CO2 (+ 8.6 F). If the world acts on proposals for CO2 reduction confirmed in Copenhagen, in 2100 the level will be 770ppm CO2 (+ 7 F). That's the best-case scenario right now, a seven degree Fahrenheit average temperature rise, which some predict could come as early as 2060, in time for you or your children to experience Climate Hell first-hand. Unless we reverse global warming, the Earth, which is expected to have nine billion people in 2050, will have a carrying capacity for only one billion. This means billions will die.
If it's hard for you to imagine what life might be like as sea levels rise, droughts and floods become ever more common, crop failure becomes routine, the world's forests burn, glacier-fed rivers dry up, and a quarter of the planet's mammals go extinct, read this terrifying short story, "Diary of an Interesting Year."
Global Warming: An Organic Future, or No Future
One way or another, either planned or through necessity, humanity will return to organic and traditional agriculture, because it is the only farming system that can supply the world with sufficient quantities of healthy food in the emerging era of global warming, erratic weather, declining fossil fuels, and water scarcity. There is no other way.
In 2009, the Organic Consumers Association spent a good part of our efforts focusing on the connection between global warming and industrial agriculture and the promise of organic agriculture to mitigate and reverse climate change by:
1) Drastically reducing the global industrialized food system's 44-57% share of global greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide) and 2) Sequestering billions of tons of CO2 in the soil.
If we convert the world's 3.5 billion acres of farmland to organic, we can sequester 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, removing excess CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil, where it belongs. If we also organically manage most of the world's 11 billion acres of pastures, rangelands, and forests we can potentially sequester 100% of greenhouse gas emissions. This long-term process of organic transition will buy us the time to reduce fossil fuel use by 90% and retrofit our economy, transportation, and housing to renewable, clean energy.
Organic Transitions: Taking on the Fertilizer, Garbage and Sludge Industries
Why is there so much carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere and not enough carbon organic matter in the soil? Corporate agribusiness, industrial forestry, the garbage and sewage industry and agricultural biotechnology have literally killed the climate stabilizing, carbon sink capacity of the Earth's living soil. Industrial agriculture and forestry have eroded and depleted the soil food web, annihilating soil microorganisms and destroying plants, trees, and soil's natural capacity to clean the atmosphere and sequester CO2. This climate-disrupting ecocide is a direct result of the suicidal use of billions of pounds of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, soil destroying pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, insecticidal GMO crops, factory farm waste, and toxic sewage sludge--instead of feeding the soil and maintaining soil vitality (and its ability to sequester carbon) with organic compost and fertilizers and cover crops. In 2010 OCA and our allies will begin to expose this deadly chemical and GMO attack on the planet's soil food web and make genuine certified organic fertilizer and compost the norm, rather than just the green alternative.
In the US, we throw away, as food waste, 40% of all of our food each year. Production of that wasted food accounts for more than one-quarter of the US's total annual freshwater consumption and equates to 300 million barrels of oil. Even worse, this enormous volume of non-composted food waste rotting in landfills emits tremendous amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 20-70 times more damaging than C02.
In the U.S. today about 80 gallons of water per day per person is flushed or dumped down the drain into our vast and ill-designed sewage system, much of it being valuable potable water flushed down the toilet. In the sewage or wastewater stream, this household sewage (unfortunately, in most households, already carrying toxic chemicals from non-organic body care, home cleaning products and pharmaceutical drugs) is mixed with hospital and industrial toxins and pathogens, pharmaceuticals, street storm water run-off and chemical lawn and farm run-off as it enters into the so-called "sewage treatment" plant. After nominal "treatment" this wastewater is sent downstream for the next community to chemically treat it and declare it "safe," while billions of pounds of toxic sludge are left behind.
Instead of isolating and containing America's toxic sewage sludge as hazardous waste--which is what it is--industry and city governments save money by renaming this toxic sludge "biosolids" and spreading it on non-organic farms (and backyard gardens and public lands) across the country. One of the most outrageous practices is the sale (in garden supply stores) or giveaway (to schools and backyard gardeners) of toxic sewage sludge as "organic fertilizer" or "organic compost."
The EPA has aided and abetted this hazardous practice for several decades by claiming that the toxic chemical poisons, heavy metals, pathogens, hormone disruptors, pesticides, and pharmaceutical drug residues routinely contained in sewage sludge are diluted to "acceptable levels." In 1998, the Organic Consumers Association and the organic community successfully fought to keep toxic sewage sludge out of national organic standards, but we now need to ban sewage sludge on non-organic farms (and all land applications) as well.
In the organic future, valuable organic matter in the waste stream will neither be wasted nor mixed with other garbage or toxins. It will be separated at the source, at homes and businesses, mixed with animal manures and green wastes in a central location, and made into valuable organic compost (natural fertilizer or food for the soil). This organic compost can then be supplied to organic and transition-to-organic farms, backyard gardens, lawns, and other land use applications. This is the only way we can eliminate the two billion pounds of chemical fertilizers applied to non-organic farms every year in the U.S. Nitrate fertilizers (banned in organic production) contaminate the atmosphere, kill the soil, and destabilize the climate with nitrous oxide. Moreover chemical fertilizers pollute city tap water and kill fish and marine life, creating hundreds of massive "dead zones" in the oceans.
Zero waste recycling and the creation of an abundant, affordable supply of organic compost is an essential part of our organic future. This means taking apart the profit at any cost garbage industry and the toxic sewage sludge cartel.
The High Costs of So-Called Cheap Food
Over the past 65 years, chemical agriculture, factory farms, and now genetic engineering have devastated public health, wrecked the environment, and destabilized the climate. The U.S. public now spends $2.4 trillion dollars a year on health care, $800 billion of which is directly attributable to consuming chemical-laden, nutritionally deficient processed food.
In only 15 years unregulated and unlabeled genetically engineered foods and crops (GMOs) have been planted on millions of acres of farm land. These GM crops are planted on soil which is then repeatedly doused with toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers. GMO corn, cotton, canola and soy are currently laced into 80% of (non-organic) supermarket foods and restaurant items. The bodies of the majority of American adults and children are bloated and contaminated with so-called agricultural commodities: high fructose corn syrup, derived from GMO corn, trans-fats (GMO cotton, canola and soy oil), and meat and dairy foods derived from factory farmed animals fed and reared on GMOs and pesticide-tainted grains, antibiotics, hormones, and slaughterhouse waste.
As a direct result of chemical and GMO agriculture, most American consumers are ill-fed and disease-prone.
Overall, U.S. diet-related diseases cause an estimated 580,000 deaths every year.
* OBESITY. In the U.S. nearly 100 million people are seriously and dangerously overweight. Obesity kills thousands and costs taxpayers and employers $147 billion annually.
* HEART DISEASE. In 2010, heart disease will kill hundreds of thousands (in 2006, 831,272 people died of cardiovascular disease) which costs the US $503 billion.
* DIABETES. The number of people with diabetes in the US is expected to increase from 23.7 million to 44.1 million in the next 25 years. The cost of treating diabetes is expected to triple in that time from $113 billion per year to $336 billion per year.
* CANCER. Cancer has reached epidemic proportions, with 48% of men and 38% of women now stricken during their lifetimes. 35% percent of cancers are diet related. Diet-related cancers now out-pace smoking-related cancers (30% are smoking related).
* FOOD POISONING. The U.S. industrial, factory farm food system is responsible for 76 million cases of food-poisoning reported every year that result in over 300,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. Food poisoning costs are substantial, estimated at up to $22 billion each year.
* ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE. In part because of the routine overuse of antibiotics on factory farms - in the US, animals consume 70% of the antibiotics - more than 63,000 people die in the US each year from hospital-acquired infections resistant to at least one antibiotic. This financial costs of this public health emergency are up to $5 billion dollars a year.
In 2007 over $2.2 trillion was spent on health care in the US.
After poisoning us with cheap food and destroying the environment, Big Food Inc. turns us over to Big Pharma and the Industrial Health Complex to repair the damage, or rather to keep us alive long enough to extract maximum profits. But from the warped perspective of the for-profit health insurance industry, overweight and diseased people aren't very profitable. That's why health insurance corporations spend $350 billion per year trying to avoid coverage and deny claims. The vast, paper-pushing bureaucracy the for-profit insurance industry has created to help them avoid providing services soaks up 31% of all health care spending!
If we shifted the 31% of health care spending taken up by the administrative costs of the for-profit health insurance industry to a single-payer, universal health care system, we could cover the uninsured without increasing total health-care spending. The Organic Consumers Association supports single-payer, universal health care, with a focus on preventive health, diet, nutrition and stress-reduction.
However:
IF PRESIDENT OBAMA SIGNS A BILL THAT TAKES AWAY OUR HEALTH RIGHTS, THAT FORCES AMERICANS TO BUY OVERPRICED, INADEQUATE COVERAGE FROM THE FOR-PROFIT HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY, OCA WILL LAUNCH A BOYCOTT!
Forced health insurance is not health care reform, it's corporate welfare and it is a direct result of the nearly one billion dollars that the health care industry is projected to have spent to lobby and bribe the politicians who voted for the bill.
Not only does the for-profit health insurance industry spend 31 cents of every health insurance dollar pushing paper and avoiding claims, but the for-profit "health" system has become almost as deadly as the chemical and GMO food and farming system. Medical malpractice kills as many as 98,000 people in hospitals every year. Another 300,000 people are injured due to medical errors.
Pharmaceuticals are even more dangerous than medical malpractice:
More than 50 percent of all drugs have serious adverse reactions that are discovered only after the drugs have entered the market (e.g., they are not detected during pre-market testing) - making us all unwitting guinea pigs. About 2,270,000 patients per year incur hospital costs as a result of adverse drug reactions.
Another 4,300,000 visit other health care providers (physicians, hospital outpatient departments and emergency rooms) as a result of adverse drug reactions.
Approximately 230,000 die each year as a result of an adverse drug reaction (105,000 using drugs as directed and 125,000 as a result of mistakes). This is the third leading cause of death in the United States.
The total annual health care costs as a consequence of adverse drug reactions exceeds a staggering $200 billion - an amount equal to what is spent on Medicaid every year and almost half of what is spent on Medicare. Reforming our health care system is literally a matter of life or death.
Eventually, we have to stop arguing over who's going to pay for out-of-control health care costs and restore public health! The real solution to our health care crisis is to stop subsidizing chemical and GMO food and farming, along with the destruction of our environment and our climate, and make the long overdue transition to organics. Then, under universal health care or Medicare for All, we can shift from health care that treats sickness caused by unhealthy food and an unhealthy environment and lifestyle to holistic health care that promotes wellness.
Ronnie Cummins is National Director of the Organic Consumers Association.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Time to get our hands dirty
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Time-to-get-our-hands-dirt-by-Ross-Levin-091221-540.html
December 22, 2009
By Ross Levin
Originally posted at Daily Kos. Crossposted to Docudharma, Congress Matters, and Progressive Electorate.
Have we become too comfortable, sitting behind our keyboards and silently typing away our anger? Has the progressive movement embraced the wonderful technology of the internet at the expense of real world activism and organizing?
I'm afraid this might be so. And it's time to turn that around. On Bill Moyer's Journal this past Friday, economist Robert Kuttner brought up a striking fact that is missing from nearly all of the plethora of analyses - ranging from Obamapologist to Obama hater to everything in between - that I've seen of this presidency:
ROBERT KUTTNER: The other thing that's missing, if you compare him with Roosevelt or LBJ or Lincoln, the other thing that's missing is a social movement. In all of these great periods of transformation, you had social movements doing a complicated dance with the president, where sometimes they were working with him, sometimes they were beating up on him. That certainly describes the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson. It describes the abolitionists and Lincoln. It describes the labor movement and Roosevelt. Where's the movement?
Especially at Daily Kos, the Netroots is stellar at fundraising. As Casual Wednesday points out, "The Netroots Rock!"
We do an amazing job of raising funds. Remember what we did for Rob Miller in South Carolina. And how about Alan Grayson? Don't forget, there are 433 other races going on just for the House. How much can you give?
However, for some reason that money does not translate into the change we all desire so much. I mean, whether you're a huge fan of Obama and glossy photo diaries or you check Glenn Greenwald's and Matt Taibbi's blogs like I do, you're here, and there's a very good chance you desire significant social and political change in this country. And for all of our yelling louder and all of our fund-raising, that change seems to be eluding us. I cannot deny that improvements are being made by this Congress and Obama. However, we are getting piecemeal change instead of fundamental change.
Perhaps the more telling piece of Casual Wednesday's diary is the next paragraph:
On the other hand, all of your yelling on the blogs will not necessarily translate to votes. If you really care about building solid Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and in your towns and cities, then go out and volunteer for campaigns. Make calls. Canvass. Use your talents and write letters to the editor. GOTV. Most campaigns would be happy to have the help.
Blogging is great - I'm here doing it right now, after all! But it is not the end all, be all of politics, even in this modern age. We need to start translating our online enthusiasm into offline action a lot more effectively, or we will continue to be frustrated. If nothing else, it can be a very cathartic experience to go out and shout on the street (or talk quietly in a board room or whatever other form your action takes) for what you believe in.
In fact, I believe that part of the reason the stress levels are running so high in the progressive blogosphere is related to this lack of tangible action. In an explanation of why there has not been any kind of large social movement recently, psychologist Bruce E. Levine says (this is a bit of pop psychology, but is an interesting point nonetheless):
The U.S. population is increasingly broken by the social isolation created by corporate-governmental policies. A 2006 American Sociological Review study ("Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades") reported that, in 2004, 25 percent of Americans did not have a single confidant. (In 1985, 10 percent of Americans reported not having a single confidant.) Sociologist Robert Putnam, in his 2000 book, Bowling Alone, describes how social connectedness is disappearing in virtually every aspect of U.S. life. For example, there has been a significant decrease in face-to-face contact with neighbors and friends due to suburbanization, commuting, electronic entertainment, time and money pressures and other variables created by governmental-corporate policies. And union activities and other formal or informal ways that people give each other the support necessary to resist oppression have also decreased.
Don't get me wrong, I know that plenty of bloggers go out and canvass and phone bank and do plenty of other wonderful things. But I'm not talking about taking your own initiative and getting involved with an existing campaign. The Netroots needs to adjust its overarching approach to politics. Instead of propping up existing political organizations, we must become our own - we must become able to take ourselves from the computer to the streets without anyone's help. Groups like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee have done well to create a kind of independent progressive political structure in electoral politics. But we still need to rely less on online petitions and online fund-raising.
As kos himself mentioned in his book Taking on the System, Ron Paul's presidential campaign offered a good example of this. From a relatively small base of online supporters, a campaign was created that ended up being competitive in the Republican primary. Paul did not win any states, but he came in second or third in 27 states, got 35 delegates to the Republican convention (which means he came in fourth - ahead of both Fred Thompson and Rudy Guiliani), raised almost $35 million, and got over one million votes total. On the presidential level, this doesn't translate into victory, but 99% of this came from the grassroots level, which is what makes it impressive. The Paulites were able to use online tools like Meetup and Yahoo Groups and forums to create real world activism.
Progressive ideas seem to have a broader appeal than Paul's quasi-libertarian ideology, and progressives seem to have a larger online presence than Paul's supporters. Yet during the 2008 campaign Paulites were more successful in organizing independently in order to turn online support into offline activism. Granted, the Obama campaign was an incredible example of this type of organizing, but this goes back to one of the fundamental problems I'm talking about - we as progressives are now forced to rely on Organizing for America instead of having a group of that size and type that is independent of the president and establishment Democrats.
---------------------------
So what's the advantage of being independent? Why not rely on the people with money and titles in Washington to organize nationally?
Something to notice is that Kuttner said "social movements," not "political movements." A lot of change comes not from organizing to be politically effective, but from creating a massive demand for change from outside the political arena.
On Saturday gjohnsit had a wonderful diary about such a movement, called "The Army of the Amazons." The wives of miners rose up in 1921 in Kansas and, since the legislature wouldn't meet the demands of the people, changed the law without the help of the government:
A few small marches were held in the coming days, but the Army of the Amazons was mostly over. The marchers had reached 63 mines during that week, most of the mines were shut down for at least a day.
Howat, from jail, said the sending of troops was a "final and conclusive admission of Governor Allen and his industrial court, that the industrial court law, passed for the purpose of bringing about industrial peace by holding the threat of jail over labor, has miserably failed."
These women, rather than relying on politicians, knew how to create change through their own actions. In my very humble opinion, the progressive movement must embrace social movements like this in order to be more effective. Not that we don't already do this, to a certain extent, but it must become more widespread. In short, instead of supporting politicians, we must support policies. I went to a protest of the Afghanistan war escalation a few weeks ago, and there were probably only about fifty people there. That would be fine if I was a small town, but it was downtown Philadelphia!
---------------------------
For those of you who are skeptical of what I'm saying because I'm not a huge fan of Obama's and I was protesting the escalation, and now I'm saying we need more push back against Washington, hear me out. I am not saying this so that we can have some kind of continual opposition to the president; that would be ridiculous. Like Robert Kuttner said, social movements need to kind of "dance" with the president. Martin Luther King met with Lyndon Johnson and supported him when it made sense for civil rights, but he also organized people against government policies and made it possible for Congress and Johnson to create the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
We cannot be afraid to get our hands dirty and, yes, possibly piss some people off. Perhaps RLMiller said this better than I can:
I'm slowly coming to appreciate the virtue of clarity of people that I might have previously labeled extremists, and been frustrated with their extremism. When the extremism springs from a profound, immovable, and true principle, it gains moral authority. The best historical example of this is the abolitionism movement.
The health care movement lost 90% of that authority when it lost the insistence on single payer, and the rest of it with the public option. What's left of the bill now may be a good thing, as some famous names tell me, or it may be a bad thing, as some other famous names tell me, but it's no longer about Right and Wrong.
I'm not saying we need to be "extremists" or completely uncompromising in everything we do, yet at some point we must recognize that what we are currently doing is not working. We do not have as much power as we rightfully should, given our numbers and the huge amount of Americans that don't necessarily identify as progressive but still agree with us on many issues. Again, I'm emphasizing the point that we need to be both well organized and independent from existing political structures that have their own interests.
And do not confuse what I am saying with calls for a third party. I am saying that we must organize independent of any political party or existing political structures. With respect to health care, maybe this means a real movement for single payer (and not just signing Dennis Kucinich's petitions...) after the national health care bill is passed. With respect to climate change, this can already be seen to a certain extent through ongoing civil disobedience, political organizations, and other parts of the movement. I am saying that I would like this mindset of loyalty to a set of policies rather than a party or politician to take hold, and I would like the progressive movement to act on that mindset.
---------------------------
A friend of mine named Hugh, who is a union organizer, is fond of saying that the only real way to build support for any kind of campaign is going out onto the street and knocking on people's doors and getting to know people and going to church with them and just generally going out into the community. I believe that there is a lack of this, at least in an organized way, from the progressive Netroots.
And, according to Robert Kuttner, this is a reason to worry.
ROBERT KUTTNER: One way or another, there is going to be a social movement. Because so many people are hurting, and so many people are feeling correctly that Wall Street is getting too much and Main Street is getting too little. And if it's not a progressive social movement that articulates the frustration and the reform program, you know that the right wing is going to do it. And that, I think, is what ought to be scaring us silly.
Even if many in the tea party movement are bigots, that movement is harnessing a political frustration in this country. It is emerging across the ideological board, and we as progressives would be wise to take note of it - ideally through the kind of independent social and political movement I described. In the words of Cassiodorus,
The teabaggers understand the power of obstruction better than the progressives -- if anyone in this era is going to take to heart Mario Savio's famous incantation about how "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious--makes you so sick at heart--that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part," it will probably be some reactionary fool.
We cannot let that happen. It is time for progressives and our ilk to really get our hands dirty. We must go out into our communities and win people over and change things for ourselves. We can no longer entrust politicians and other leaders to do this for us; we must lead ourselves.
December 22, 2009
By Ross Levin
Originally posted at Daily Kos. Crossposted to Docudharma, Congress Matters, and Progressive Electorate.
Have we become too comfortable, sitting behind our keyboards and silently typing away our anger? Has the progressive movement embraced the wonderful technology of the internet at the expense of real world activism and organizing?
I'm afraid this might be so. And it's time to turn that around. On Bill Moyer's Journal this past Friday, economist Robert Kuttner brought up a striking fact that is missing from nearly all of the plethora of analyses - ranging from Obamapologist to Obama hater to everything in between - that I've seen of this presidency:
ROBERT KUTTNER: The other thing that's missing, if you compare him with Roosevelt or LBJ or Lincoln, the other thing that's missing is a social movement. In all of these great periods of transformation, you had social movements doing a complicated dance with the president, where sometimes they were working with him, sometimes they were beating up on him. That certainly describes the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson. It describes the abolitionists and Lincoln. It describes the labor movement and Roosevelt. Where's the movement?
Especially at Daily Kos, the Netroots is stellar at fundraising. As Casual Wednesday points out, "The Netroots Rock!"
We do an amazing job of raising funds. Remember what we did for Rob Miller in South Carolina. And how about Alan Grayson? Don't forget, there are 433 other races going on just for the House. How much can you give?
However, for some reason that money does not translate into the change we all desire so much. I mean, whether you're a huge fan of Obama and glossy photo diaries or you check Glenn Greenwald's and Matt Taibbi's blogs like I do, you're here, and there's a very good chance you desire significant social and political change in this country. And for all of our yelling louder and all of our fund-raising, that change seems to be eluding us. I cannot deny that improvements are being made by this Congress and Obama. However, we are getting piecemeal change instead of fundamental change.
Perhaps the more telling piece of Casual Wednesday's diary is the next paragraph:
On the other hand, all of your yelling on the blogs will not necessarily translate to votes. If you really care about building solid Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and in your towns and cities, then go out and volunteer for campaigns. Make calls. Canvass. Use your talents and write letters to the editor. GOTV. Most campaigns would be happy to have the help.
Blogging is great - I'm here doing it right now, after all! But it is not the end all, be all of politics, even in this modern age. We need to start translating our online enthusiasm into offline action a lot more effectively, or we will continue to be frustrated. If nothing else, it can be a very cathartic experience to go out and shout on the street (or talk quietly in a board room or whatever other form your action takes) for what you believe in.
In fact, I believe that part of the reason the stress levels are running so high in the progressive blogosphere is related to this lack of tangible action. In an explanation of why there has not been any kind of large social movement recently, psychologist Bruce E. Levine says (this is a bit of pop psychology, but is an interesting point nonetheless):
The U.S. population is increasingly broken by the social isolation created by corporate-governmental policies. A 2006 American Sociological Review study ("Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades") reported that, in 2004, 25 percent of Americans did not have a single confidant. (In 1985, 10 percent of Americans reported not having a single confidant.) Sociologist Robert Putnam, in his 2000 book, Bowling Alone, describes how social connectedness is disappearing in virtually every aspect of U.S. life. For example, there has been a significant decrease in face-to-face contact with neighbors and friends due to suburbanization, commuting, electronic entertainment, time and money pressures and other variables created by governmental-corporate policies. And union activities and other formal or informal ways that people give each other the support necessary to resist oppression have also decreased.
Don't get me wrong, I know that plenty of bloggers go out and canvass and phone bank and do plenty of other wonderful things. But I'm not talking about taking your own initiative and getting involved with an existing campaign. The Netroots needs to adjust its overarching approach to politics. Instead of propping up existing political organizations, we must become our own - we must become able to take ourselves from the computer to the streets without anyone's help. Groups like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee have done well to create a kind of independent progressive political structure in electoral politics. But we still need to rely less on online petitions and online fund-raising.
As kos himself mentioned in his book Taking on the System, Ron Paul's presidential campaign offered a good example of this. From a relatively small base of online supporters, a campaign was created that ended up being competitive in the Republican primary. Paul did not win any states, but he came in second or third in 27 states, got 35 delegates to the Republican convention (which means he came in fourth - ahead of both Fred Thompson and Rudy Guiliani), raised almost $35 million, and got over one million votes total. On the presidential level, this doesn't translate into victory, but 99% of this came from the grassroots level, which is what makes it impressive. The Paulites were able to use online tools like Meetup and Yahoo Groups and forums to create real world activism.
Progressive ideas seem to have a broader appeal than Paul's quasi-libertarian ideology, and progressives seem to have a larger online presence than Paul's supporters. Yet during the 2008 campaign Paulites were more successful in organizing independently in order to turn online support into offline activism. Granted, the Obama campaign was an incredible example of this type of organizing, but this goes back to one of the fundamental problems I'm talking about - we as progressives are now forced to rely on Organizing for America instead of having a group of that size and type that is independent of the president and establishment Democrats.
---------------------------
So what's the advantage of being independent? Why not rely on the people with money and titles in Washington to organize nationally?
Something to notice is that Kuttner said "social movements," not "political movements." A lot of change comes not from organizing to be politically effective, but from creating a massive demand for change from outside the political arena.
On Saturday gjohnsit had a wonderful diary about such a movement, called "The Army of the Amazons." The wives of miners rose up in 1921 in Kansas and, since the legislature wouldn't meet the demands of the people, changed the law without the help of the government:
A few small marches were held in the coming days, but the Army of the Amazons was mostly over. The marchers had reached 63 mines during that week, most of the mines were shut down for at least a day.
Howat, from jail, said the sending of troops was a "final and conclusive admission of Governor Allen and his industrial court, that the industrial court law, passed for the purpose of bringing about industrial peace by holding the threat of jail over labor, has miserably failed."
These women, rather than relying on politicians, knew how to create change through their own actions. In my very humble opinion, the progressive movement must embrace social movements like this in order to be more effective. Not that we don't already do this, to a certain extent, but it must become more widespread. In short, instead of supporting politicians, we must support policies. I went to a protest of the Afghanistan war escalation a few weeks ago, and there were probably only about fifty people there. That would be fine if I was a small town, but it was downtown Philadelphia!
---------------------------
For those of you who are skeptical of what I'm saying because I'm not a huge fan of Obama's and I was protesting the escalation, and now I'm saying we need more push back against Washington, hear me out. I am not saying this so that we can have some kind of continual opposition to the president; that would be ridiculous. Like Robert Kuttner said, social movements need to kind of "dance" with the president. Martin Luther King met with Lyndon Johnson and supported him when it made sense for civil rights, but he also organized people against government policies and made it possible for Congress and Johnson to create the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
We cannot be afraid to get our hands dirty and, yes, possibly piss some people off. Perhaps RLMiller said this better than I can:
I'm slowly coming to appreciate the virtue of clarity of people that I might have previously labeled extremists, and been frustrated with their extremism. When the extremism springs from a profound, immovable, and true principle, it gains moral authority. The best historical example of this is the abolitionism movement.
The health care movement lost 90% of that authority when it lost the insistence on single payer, and the rest of it with the public option. What's left of the bill now may be a good thing, as some famous names tell me, or it may be a bad thing, as some other famous names tell me, but it's no longer about Right and Wrong.
I'm not saying we need to be "extremists" or completely uncompromising in everything we do, yet at some point we must recognize that what we are currently doing is not working. We do not have as much power as we rightfully should, given our numbers and the huge amount of Americans that don't necessarily identify as progressive but still agree with us on many issues. Again, I'm emphasizing the point that we need to be both well organized and independent from existing political structures that have their own interests.
And do not confuse what I am saying with calls for a third party. I am saying that we must organize independent of any political party or existing political structures. With respect to health care, maybe this means a real movement for single payer (and not just signing Dennis Kucinich's petitions...) after the national health care bill is passed. With respect to climate change, this can already be seen to a certain extent through ongoing civil disobedience, political organizations, and other parts of the movement. I am saying that I would like this mindset of loyalty to a set of policies rather than a party or politician to take hold, and I would like the progressive movement to act on that mindset.
---------------------------
A friend of mine named Hugh, who is a union organizer, is fond of saying that the only real way to build support for any kind of campaign is going out onto the street and knocking on people's doors and getting to know people and going to church with them and just generally going out into the community. I believe that there is a lack of this, at least in an organized way, from the progressive Netroots.
And, according to Robert Kuttner, this is a reason to worry.
ROBERT KUTTNER: One way or another, there is going to be a social movement. Because so many people are hurting, and so many people are feeling correctly that Wall Street is getting too much and Main Street is getting too little. And if it's not a progressive social movement that articulates the frustration and the reform program, you know that the right wing is going to do it. And that, I think, is what ought to be scaring us silly.
Even if many in the tea party movement are bigots, that movement is harnessing a political frustration in this country. It is emerging across the ideological board, and we as progressives would be wise to take note of it - ideally through the kind of independent social and political movement I described. In the words of Cassiodorus,
The teabaggers understand the power of obstruction better than the progressives -- if anyone in this era is going to take to heart Mario Savio's famous incantation about how "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious--makes you so sick at heart--that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part," it will probably be some reactionary fool.
We cannot let that happen. It is time for progressives and our ilk to really get our hands dirty. We must go out into our communities and win people over and change things for ourselves. We can no longer entrust politicians and other leaders to do this for us; we must lead ourselves.
Non-violently, Establish Earth Rights for Everyone
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Non-violently-Establish-E-by-Radh-Achuthan-091221-252.html
December 21, 2009
Non-violently, Establish Earth Rights for Everyone.
By Radh Achuthan
Dear Friends,
HOLIDAY GREETINGS, AND WISHES FOR A HAPPY NEW YEAR IN 2010.
There are good tidings:
Bolsa Familia (President Lula Da Silva) lifted 27 million people in Brazil out of poverty, (Newsweek, Dec 9, 09, p15), helping thereby about 1% of the global 2.6 billion people who lived on less than $2 per head per day under a political economy pursued and celebrated by the WB, the WTO and the IMF.
Bolsa Familia has worked to re-establish Trust amongst the people in governance, thereby making a major contribution to human social and mental health.
The Brazilian program was unhindered by the financial meltdown of the global (Wall Street, Bond Street, Shanghai, Dalal Street) economy managed by the 'Blood Bankers' and their cohorts (Jim Henry, 2003), modern day Pharaohs who make up5% of the global population 'owning' about80% of planetary land and resources!
They seek to wage wars (and President Obama, a 'peace-award' recipient recently 'certified' the necessity under ethical eschatology for a "just war" in Afghanistan), with implied assurances to control holdings belonging to other elites while simultaneously helping mature his claim (conditioned as the general population is to sense of security in the promise of violence), fora second term in office.
To wage wars the monopolists utilize employees, new emigres, serfs, slaves, (captive members of the various middle- classes who have to seek employment, given that their endemic land and resource rights are unacknowledged, in-accessible, and rendered 'illegal'), to battle one another on behalf of the 5%.
In retrospect, Nature that is local to our planet has succeeded in creating human beings (who, when born, live for a while and then die), by providing them and other species sustenance directly from its bosom, the biosphere.
Nature's ability for such manifestations is believed to come from God, or the Darwinian hypothesis, or the hypothesis of earlier success of either of the former two elsewhere, transferred here through Elohim.
In social arrangements, what has the 'global-middle-class' accomplished but to ensure that the bankers and their cohorts are kept satisfied in their goal to hold land and resources common to all unto themselves, through wars justified by lies or reason, assigned to be waged by the people?
As poverty is the source of most social problems, it is time to consider in public, or in silence, how to collect "land -value rent" from the 5% while "Earth Rights" are established for everyone, non-violently, (Gandhi, King), so that human beings may move on with their birthright freedoms.
The window of opportunity from the 2008 financial collapse is still open.
Otherwise, despite the pretense of democracy with a right to cast a vote every now and then,(1776), the people will continue to live in slavery and the promise of an abundant, responsible, creative experience to guide each of us forward will remain unrealized; and that need not be!
With Best Wishes,
Radh Achuthan
December 21, 2009
Non-violently, Establish Earth Rights for Everyone.
By Radh Achuthan
Dear Friends,
HOLIDAY GREETINGS, AND WISHES FOR A HAPPY NEW YEAR IN 2010.
There are good tidings:
Bolsa Familia (President Lula Da Silva) lifted 27 million people in Brazil out of poverty, (Newsweek, Dec 9, 09, p15), helping thereby about 1% of the global 2.6 billion people who lived on less than $2 per head per day under a political economy pursued and celebrated by the WB, the WTO and the IMF.
Bolsa Familia has worked to re-establish Trust amongst the people in governance, thereby making a major contribution to human social and mental health.
The Brazilian program was unhindered by the financial meltdown of the global (Wall Street, Bond Street, Shanghai, Dalal Street) economy managed by the 'Blood Bankers' and their cohorts (Jim Henry, 2003), modern day Pharaohs who make up5% of the global population 'owning' about80% of planetary land and resources!
They seek to wage wars (and President Obama, a 'peace-award' recipient recently 'certified' the necessity under ethical eschatology for a "just war" in Afghanistan), with implied assurances to control holdings belonging to other elites while simultaneously helping mature his claim (conditioned as the general population is to sense of security in the promise of violence), fora second term in office.
To wage wars the monopolists utilize employees, new emigres, serfs, slaves, (captive members of the various middle- classes who have to seek employment, given that their endemic land and resource rights are unacknowledged, in-accessible, and rendered 'illegal'), to battle one another on behalf of the 5%.
In retrospect, Nature that is local to our planet has succeeded in creating human beings (who, when born, live for a while and then die), by providing them and other species sustenance directly from its bosom, the biosphere.
Nature's ability for such manifestations is believed to come from God, or the Darwinian hypothesis, or the hypothesis of earlier success of either of the former two elsewhere, transferred here through Elohim.
In social arrangements, what has the 'global-middle-class' accomplished but to ensure that the bankers and their cohorts are kept satisfied in their goal to hold land and resources common to all unto themselves, through wars justified by lies or reason, assigned to be waged by the people?
As poverty is the source of most social problems, it is time to consider in public, or in silence, how to collect "land -value rent" from the 5% while "Earth Rights" are established for everyone, non-violently, (Gandhi, King), so that human beings may move on with their birthright freedoms.
The window of opportunity from the 2008 financial collapse is still open.
Otherwise, despite the pretense of democracy with a right to cast a vote every now and then,(1776), the people will continue to live in slavery and the promise of an abundant, responsible, creative experience to guide each of us forward will remain unrealized; and that need not be!
With Best Wishes,
Radh Achuthan
STOP the Political Bribery, Blackmail and Prostitution!
Go to this URL for more important information! http://goooh.com/home.aspx
http://www.wgntv.com/news/middaynews/wgntv-midday-fix-tim-cox,0,5067351.story
What do you call it when a Senator from Louisiana (Landrieu) sells her health care vote for $300 million and then brags about the deal? What term comes to mind when a Senator from Nebraska is threatened by his party that a military base in his state will be closed if he does not vote how he is told? What about when that very same Senator changes his mind and agrees to support the legislation in exchange for an agreement that the other 49 states will pay for the entire cost of Medicaid expansion in his state? Bribery, blackmail, and prostitution are the terms I think of. It saddens me to think what our government has become, that these are the adjectives we must use to describe the behavior of our elected officials.
How much longer can we allow this madness to continue? Lest anyone think for even one second this behavior is confined to the Democrats, let me remind you that the Republicans were doing the exact same thing between 2000 and 2006 when they were in charge. Take a moment and refresh your memory on the 1,000 page $1.2 trillion prescription drug bill the Republicans pushed through at 3 a.m. in 2003 in order to buy votes for the 2004 election. The Republicans complain they do not have enough time to read new bills. They whine about Saturday night votes. Have they really forgotten they did the exact same thing when they were in power?
Let me add hypocrite to the above list of adjectives. Consider the time wasted debating steroids in baseball when everybody who was paying attention knew the collapse of Fannie and Freddie was imminent. Recall that the Republicans did nothing during their reign to secure our borders, fix the tax code, or improve the high school graduation rate. It is time to ask those hell-bent on “fixing” the Republican Party to admit the problem is much, much bigger than the politicians of the other party. It is time to begin anew!
Top ways to get our candidates into office:
- Allow candidates to define their own platform; parties should not tell a representative of the people how to vote
- Separate the money from the politicians
- Hold elected leaders accountable
- Term Limits: fire the career politicians
http://www.wgntv.com/news/middaynews/wgntv-midday-fix-tim-cox,0,5067351.story
What do you call it when a Senator from Louisiana (Landrieu) sells her health care vote for $300 million and then brags about the deal? What term comes to mind when a Senator from Nebraska is threatened by his party that a military base in his state will be closed if he does not vote how he is told? What about when that very same Senator changes his mind and agrees to support the legislation in exchange for an agreement that the other 49 states will pay for the entire cost of Medicaid expansion in his state? Bribery, blackmail, and prostitution are the terms I think of. It saddens me to think what our government has become, that these are the adjectives we must use to describe the behavior of our elected officials.
How much longer can we allow this madness to continue? Lest anyone think for even one second this behavior is confined to the Democrats, let me remind you that the Republicans were doing the exact same thing between 2000 and 2006 when they were in charge. Take a moment and refresh your memory on the 1,000 page $1.2 trillion prescription drug bill the Republicans pushed through at 3 a.m. in 2003 in order to buy votes for the 2004 election. The Republicans complain they do not have enough time to read new bills. They whine about Saturday night votes. Have they really forgotten they did the exact same thing when they were in power?
Let me add hypocrite to the above list of adjectives. Consider the time wasted debating steroids in baseball when everybody who was paying attention knew the collapse of Fannie and Freddie was imminent. Recall that the Republicans did nothing during their reign to secure our borders, fix the tax code, or improve the high school graduation rate. It is time to ask those hell-bent on “fixing” the Republican Party to admit the problem is much, much bigger than the politicians of the other party. It is time to begin anew!
Top ways to get our candidates into office:
- Allow candidates to define their own platform; parties should not tell a representative of the people how to vote
- Separate the money from the politicians
- Hold elected leaders accountable
- Term Limits: fire the career politicians
Sunday, December 20, 2009
10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who've Been Screwing You
10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who've Been Screwing You
By Scott Thill, AlterNet
December 20, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144679/
The New Year is nearly here, and so much has happened. Wait, what's that? Nothing major at all has happened, you say? Oh right, we've been stuck in neutral since dumping the toxic trash of the Republican Bush administration and embracing Democratic promises of hope and change, neither of which have blossomed.
A year of our collective life has flown by and our global culture is still rife with schemers, screw jobs and sorry excuses for solutions. And we just sit back and take it, year after year. But no more. When you make that hefty list of New Year's resolutions, drop some of these bombs. Then duck. You'll get your change faster than you can say, "Teabag this!"
1. Mortgage underwater? Just walk away from it. Even academia says it's OK. Move to the city and rent.
"Homeowners should be walking away in droves," University of Arizona law school professor Brent T. White told the Los Angeles Times. "But they aren't. And it's not because the financial costs of foreclosure outweigh the benefits. One can have a good credit rating again -- meaning above 660 -- within two years after a foreclosure."
In a scholarly paper called "Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis," White tells cash-jacked homeowners that they can return the screw.
We've been championing that course for years, with reports on walkaways and trashouts, as well as violent homeowner blowback. Hell, we called the Great Recession before most did, and we're still calling it another Great Depression in the making. So trust us. And if not us, then take it from the professor, who will soon be joined by a chorus of similarly credentialed whistleblowers as the financial crap truly hits the fan in the years to come. Go ahead, move back to the city and rent. You'll end up there anyway when your suburb runs out of water and malls.
2. Unplug your cable. The easiest way to kill the so-called news networks is to cut them off at their enablers. Don't like the hate spewed by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp nutjobs? Pull your cable bill's plug, or shut down your satellite. Tired of the way that Reality TV, in entertainment and otherwise, has replaced reality itself? Withdraw life support.
First, there's no holy reason you shouldn't be able to subscribe to a channel package of your own choosing. Listen to the voice of wisdom: "It is regrettable that the cable companies continue to balk at offering channels on an a la carte basis and instead continue to raise the price of their bundled offering[s]." You know who delivered that dose of media sense? John McCain. Yeah, it's that bad.
Plus, you don't need old-school TV anymore. In our digital age, you can go online for your news and entertainment, even if you can no longer tell the difference between the two. How? Streaming video sites like YouTube and more, or better yet torrents, which are the future now. Looking to watch your favorite episode of The Colbert Report right now? You can already do that online. Can you do it through your cable network? Exactly. Looking to watch something you can't screen anywhere online? There's a torrent for that. Like Napster's file-sharing platform before it, the BitTorrent protocol houses the people's media library, dedicated not just to pimping out the same crap seen on network and cable, but work you have never seen before, often stunning artistry left for dead by the side of the mainstream. Not anymore. Trust us, you do not need your cable. Murdoch and other old-media asshats will hate you for unsubscribing. Most importantly, you won't miss 80 percent of the shit you watched when it's gone.
3. Kill your landline. Chances are, your carrier is a privacy sellout you're already paying double. What's that you say, you're on a package deal that gives you a landline, a cell account and a cable subscription? Why? If you have a cell account, you don't need a landline, so they're just jacking you for money. And didn't we already discuss how you should unplug your cable? Nowadays, there are easier ways to chat up your pals, from Twitter and Facebook to Apple's iChat, with lets users talk face-to-face for free, riding the internet, which is probably already controlled by your copper, wireless or fiber-optic carrier. Plus, there's always email and other online options. Bottom line? Landlines are just ways to chain your wallet to the wall.
4. Reacquire your wealth. The easiest way for the Federal Reserve, led by Time Magazine's ludicrous Person of the Year Ben Bernanke, to pick your pocket is through your accounts and investments, which can be liquidated in the blink of a discount window's eye. Withdraw any extra cash you have, close whatever extra accounts you have, and take it somewhere besides Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase or another bailout addict. Better yet, keep it on the sidelines. The Fed hates that and so do the markets, which have nothing to do with you anyway. That game is above your head, and rigged outright. You either play with the house, or you play your conscience. Right now, your conscience should be worrying about another economic clusterfuck. Plus, the banks left standing after the financial crashes of the last few years are fatter than ever, and are still hoarding cash instead of lending it.
“It’s insanity that the too-big-to-fail institutions are even bigger today than they were,” Vermont's independent Senator Bernie Sanders told Bloomberg. “God forbid we have another financial crisis.”
God forbid? These banks have gotten bigger specifically to survive the next crisis they have already priced into the market. Thanks to Congress, the Fed and the last two administrations, they've got your cash sitting in their vaults, whistling while they wait. Take it out.
5. Pacify your portfolio. Whether through your job or your own efforts, chances are you probably own a retirement or investment portfolio. And if you haven't checked it out recently, chances are it's probably still poisoned by hyperleveraged funds or other financial stratagems, invested in oil, housing, malls, SUVs or some other shady Ponzi scheme. Get out now, unless you want to be a dick about it. Sure, commodities like oil and food are hot, but they're infested by speculators, to whom they are just playthings designed for maximum profit. Remember when oil was at $145 per barrel in 2008? The last year of the Bush administration's rule? Captain obvious.
If you want to take part in that hosing, fine; just try not to cry aloud about Bush, Obama, the Fed or climate change on the way to the bank. The easiest way to make change in capitalism gone awry is by manipulating your money. Think the fossil-fuel industry is bullshit? Make sure your retirement isn't invested in a mutual fund featuring Exxon or worse. Put your money in solar stocks, or other forward-looking investments, if you must fund anything. In capitalism, you are what you pay for, not what you say about what you pay for. No matter how nice it may be.
6. Take credit. If you have more than two credit cards, you're simply asking for trouble. And not just because credit tempts people into buying crap they don't need at prices they shouldn't pay. Do banks responsible for privatizing your profits to pay off their considerable losses really deserve more of your money? Even in a recession they're cleaning house; from scoring over $38 billion in corrupt overdraft fees in 2009 to dragging their well-heeled feet on foreclosure modifications, banks aren't done squeezing an already compromised public out of its last pennies. You can stop them by cutting off the money, and you'll be doing yourself a disciplined favor. No extra credit? Great, no extra crap.
For the cards you must keep, pay them off by any means necessary, and then pay them off monthly. That pisses the credit card companies off to no end.
7. Avoid CDs and DVDs: At least, stuff that isn't in collectible form. There is still a place for material goods in our mounting environmental chaos, but it is shrinking fast. Kind of like our natural resources. As we discussed in the cable section, you can get anything you want these days online, and if you can't, whoever is stopping you from being able to do so deserves their fate. Plus, discs are wasteful. And obsolete. And they know it.
From the plastic, and therefore oil, it takes to make their cases to the reams of paper, and therefore trees and water, it takes to make their press and product packaging, CDs and DVDs are the easiest fat to axe. Which is why in the last decade CD sales have dropped precipitously, as online sales have caught up. Might as well seal the deal by never buying another disc again. Here's how the media arrangement for the future works: Some entity sends whatever you want to watch wirelessly to your phone, computer and TV. Everything else is just wasted resources, money and time, no matter what the industry says. You can speed up that evolution by forcing the industry's hand. If you don't, it will squeeze cash from a disc's stone until you make it stop. While we're on this subject....
8. Stop buying bottled water, factory-farmed beef and new cars, especially hybrids. The first offense is a bailout for the oil industry, the second is a climate-change massacre, and the third is a waste of your time and money. The electric cars will be here soon. If you can walk or use public transportation until then, please do so. That is, if you really need a car at all. Most of us don't. Have to drive miles to work? Consider how much money it costs you every month to get paid, and add that to the probably less impressive paycheck you could get from a gig closer to home, perhaps within walking distance. Our climate crisis demands that we kill as many emissions as we possibly can to keep the planet from overheating. Who knows? A few more degrees and we could be looking at everything from sea-rise catastrophe to the outright extinction of the human race, thanks to a species-killing dose of hydrogen sulfide. Don't go blank on me, now. Extinction events have happened before, and can easily happen again.
One helpful way to stop them from happening is to decrease the amount of methane farted out by hordes of bovine prisoners herded into Cow-schwitzes across America and beyond. If you think carbon dioxide is a killer, it's nothing compared to methane, which is increasing annually as the ice melts away and the sea coughs its stored poison into the sky. Throw in the heresy of using oil to make plastic bottles to store the same water that's no more pristine than what's already in your tap, and you have the hat trick from hell. If you can do only one thing on this admittedly ambitious list, do this one....or, uh, these three things. Instant impact.
9. Do not watch whiny bitches. Especially so you can tell us how whiny they are; trust us, we already know. Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and other compromised gossips ranting about everything from Tiger Woods to Barack Hussein Obama are a waste of everyone's time, except of course the people who pay them to spout their nonsense. And those who watch it to confirm their already mindless prejudices and political objectives.
Those unhinged jackasses are exactly what the hardy souls at Media Matters are for. If you ignore them, they really will go away, at least for you. Which is what matters, in the end. Is there really room in your busy mind for their doltish nattering? When you read a story about how Bill O'Reilly cut some poor sap's mike, you're learning too much about something you already know too much about. Much better to occupy your time with solutions to the proliferating problems that are coming your way, from probable economic misery to promised environmental devastation. Don't worry, if something legally actionable happens, you'll hear about it. Until then, spend your time reading and ranting about more important matters. Like your sex life.
10. Start or join a third party. "You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left?" the self-destructive man in Richard Linklater's animated mind-wiper Waking Life asked. Sure, he doused himself in gasoline and set himself afire, after dryly joking "Let my own lack of a voice be heard." But still. Beyond the propaganda of fear promoted by the Bush administration or the hope promised by the Obama administration, what has become exquisitely clear is that our country is actually run by a single party comprised of political animals assembling on the fence. And they will do whatever they can to stay in power, regardless of whether or not it is madness.
"As someone who voted to repeal Glass-Steagall, maybe that was a mistake," Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer said of the law that kept investment and lending banks separate, a dissolution that has led directly to our current econopocalypse. The Glass-Steagall Act's repeal happened under the watch of President Bill Clinton, whose administration worked together with Republicans and Wall Street criminals to torpedo financial regulation. Sure, the guy who wanted to succeed him, Al Gore, is a climate-change visionary. But his running mate? Right, the same fence-hopping Joe Lieberman who just eviscerated health care reform's public option. With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?
The two-party system you have today is already a three-party system. It houses a well-meaning minority, middle-way sellouts and batshit loonies. Someone needs to babysit all those kids. Why not you? Let the fence-squatters have their pity parties. Eventually, they will be whittled down to their core essence, which is nothing more than compromise stained by self-possession. Worried about leaving your party? Don't be.
By Scott Thill, AlterNet
December 20, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144679/
The New Year is nearly here, and so much has happened. Wait, what's that? Nothing major at all has happened, you say? Oh right, we've been stuck in neutral since dumping the toxic trash of the Republican Bush administration and embracing Democratic promises of hope and change, neither of which have blossomed.
A year of our collective life has flown by and our global culture is still rife with schemers, screw jobs and sorry excuses for solutions. And we just sit back and take it, year after year. But no more. When you make that hefty list of New Year's resolutions, drop some of these bombs. Then duck. You'll get your change faster than you can say, "Teabag this!"
1. Mortgage underwater? Just walk away from it. Even academia says it's OK. Move to the city and rent.
"Homeowners should be walking away in droves," University of Arizona law school professor Brent T. White told the Los Angeles Times. "But they aren't. And it's not because the financial costs of foreclosure outweigh the benefits. One can have a good credit rating again -- meaning above 660 -- within two years after a foreclosure."
In a scholarly paper called "Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis," White tells cash-jacked homeowners that they can return the screw.
We've been championing that course for years, with reports on walkaways and trashouts, as well as violent homeowner blowback. Hell, we called the Great Recession before most did, and we're still calling it another Great Depression in the making. So trust us. And if not us, then take it from the professor, who will soon be joined by a chorus of similarly credentialed whistleblowers as the financial crap truly hits the fan in the years to come. Go ahead, move back to the city and rent. You'll end up there anyway when your suburb runs out of water and malls.
2. Unplug your cable. The easiest way to kill the so-called news networks is to cut them off at their enablers. Don't like the hate spewed by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp nutjobs? Pull your cable bill's plug, or shut down your satellite. Tired of the way that Reality TV, in entertainment and otherwise, has replaced reality itself? Withdraw life support.
First, there's no holy reason you shouldn't be able to subscribe to a channel package of your own choosing. Listen to the voice of wisdom: "It is regrettable that the cable companies continue to balk at offering channels on an a la carte basis and instead continue to raise the price of their bundled offering[s]." You know who delivered that dose of media sense? John McCain. Yeah, it's that bad.
Plus, you don't need old-school TV anymore. In our digital age, you can go online for your news and entertainment, even if you can no longer tell the difference between the two. How? Streaming video sites like YouTube and more, or better yet torrents, which are the future now. Looking to watch your favorite episode of The Colbert Report right now? You can already do that online. Can you do it through your cable network? Exactly. Looking to watch something you can't screen anywhere online? There's a torrent for that. Like Napster's file-sharing platform before it, the BitTorrent protocol houses the people's media library, dedicated not just to pimping out the same crap seen on network and cable, but work you have never seen before, often stunning artistry left for dead by the side of the mainstream. Not anymore. Trust us, you do not need your cable. Murdoch and other old-media asshats will hate you for unsubscribing. Most importantly, you won't miss 80 percent of the shit you watched when it's gone.
3. Kill your landline. Chances are, your carrier is a privacy sellout you're already paying double. What's that you say, you're on a package deal that gives you a landline, a cell account and a cable subscription? Why? If you have a cell account, you don't need a landline, so they're just jacking you for money. And didn't we already discuss how you should unplug your cable? Nowadays, there are easier ways to chat up your pals, from Twitter and Facebook to Apple's iChat, with lets users talk face-to-face for free, riding the internet, which is probably already controlled by your copper, wireless or fiber-optic carrier. Plus, there's always email and other online options. Bottom line? Landlines are just ways to chain your wallet to the wall.
4. Reacquire your wealth. The easiest way for the Federal Reserve, led by Time Magazine's ludicrous Person of the Year Ben Bernanke, to pick your pocket is through your accounts and investments, which can be liquidated in the blink of a discount window's eye. Withdraw any extra cash you have, close whatever extra accounts you have, and take it somewhere besides Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase or another bailout addict. Better yet, keep it on the sidelines. The Fed hates that and so do the markets, which have nothing to do with you anyway. That game is above your head, and rigged outright. You either play with the house, or you play your conscience. Right now, your conscience should be worrying about another economic clusterfuck. Plus, the banks left standing after the financial crashes of the last few years are fatter than ever, and are still hoarding cash instead of lending it.
“It’s insanity that the too-big-to-fail institutions are even bigger today than they were,” Vermont's independent Senator Bernie Sanders told Bloomberg. “God forbid we have another financial crisis.”
God forbid? These banks have gotten bigger specifically to survive the next crisis they have already priced into the market. Thanks to Congress, the Fed and the last two administrations, they've got your cash sitting in their vaults, whistling while they wait. Take it out.
5. Pacify your portfolio. Whether through your job or your own efforts, chances are you probably own a retirement or investment portfolio. And if you haven't checked it out recently, chances are it's probably still poisoned by hyperleveraged funds or other financial stratagems, invested in oil, housing, malls, SUVs or some other shady Ponzi scheme. Get out now, unless you want to be a dick about it. Sure, commodities like oil and food are hot, but they're infested by speculators, to whom they are just playthings designed for maximum profit. Remember when oil was at $145 per barrel in 2008? The last year of the Bush administration's rule? Captain obvious.
If you want to take part in that hosing, fine; just try not to cry aloud about Bush, Obama, the Fed or climate change on the way to the bank. The easiest way to make change in capitalism gone awry is by manipulating your money. Think the fossil-fuel industry is bullshit? Make sure your retirement isn't invested in a mutual fund featuring Exxon or worse. Put your money in solar stocks, or other forward-looking investments, if you must fund anything. In capitalism, you are what you pay for, not what you say about what you pay for. No matter how nice it may be.
6. Take credit. If you have more than two credit cards, you're simply asking for trouble. And not just because credit tempts people into buying crap they don't need at prices they shouldn't pay. Do banks responsible for privatizing your profits to pay off their considerable losses really deserve more of your money? Even in a recession they're cleaning house; from scoring over $38 billion in corrupt overdraft fees in 2009 to dragging their well-heeled feet on foreclosure modifications, banks aren't done squeezing an already compromised public out of its last pennies. You can stop them by cutting off the money, and you'll be doing yourself a disciplined favor. No extra credit? Great, no extra crap.
For the cards you must keep, pay them off by any means necessary, and then pay them off monthly. That pisses the credit card companies off to no end.
7. Avoid CDs and DVDs: At least, stuff that isn't in collectible form. There is still a place for material goods in our mounting environmental chaos, but it is shrinking fast. Kind of like our natural resources. As we discussed in the cable section, you can get anything you want these days online, and if you can't, whoever is stopping you from being able to do so deserves their fate. Plus, discs are wasteful. And obsolete. And they know it.
From the plastic, and therefore oil, it takes to make their cases to the reams of paper, and therefore trees and water, it takes to make their press and product packaging, CDs and DVDs are the easiest fat to axe. Which is why in the last decade CD sales have dropped precipitously, as online sales have caught up. Might as well seal the deal by never buying another disc again. Here's how the media arrangement for the future works: Some entity sends whatever you want to watch wirelessly to your phone, computer and TV. Everything else is just wasted resources, money and time, no matter what the industry says. You can speed up that evolution by forcing the industry's hand. If you don't, it will squeeze cash from a disc's stone until you make it stop. While we're on this subject....
8. Stop buying bottled water, factory-farmed beef and new cars, especially hybrids. The first offense is a bailout for the oil industry, the second is a climate-change massacre, and the third is a waste of your time and money. The electric cars will be here soon. If you can walk or use public transportation until then, please do so. That is, if you really need a car at all. Most of us don't. Have to drive miles to work? Consider how much money it costs you every month to get paid, and add that to the probably less impressive paycheck you could get from a gig closer to home, perhaps within walking distance. Our climate crisis demands that we kill as many emissions as we possibly can to keep the planet from overheating. Who knows? A few more degrees and we could be looking at everything from sea-rise catastrophe to the outright extinction of the human race, thanks to a species-killing dose of hydrogen sulfide. Don't go blank on me, now. Extinction events have happened before, and can easily happen again.
One helpful way to stop them from happening is to decrease the amount of methane farted out by hordes of bovine prisoners herded into Cow-schwitzes across America and beyond. If you think carbon dioxide is a killer, it's nothing compared to methane, which is increasing annually as the ice melts away and the sea coughs its stored poison into the sky. Throw in the heresy of using oil to make plastic bottles to store the same water that's no more pristine than what's already in your tap, and you have the hat trick from hell. If you can do only one thing on this admittedly ambitious list, do this one....or, uh, these three things. Instant impact.
9. Do not watch whiny bitches. Especially so you can tell us how whiny they are; trust us, we already know. Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and other compromised gossips ranting about everything from Tiger Woods to Barack Hussein Obama are a waste of everyone's time, except of course the people who pay them to spout their nonsense. And those who watch it to confirm their already mindless prejudices and political objectives.
Those unhinged jackasses are exactly what the hardy souls at Media Matters are for. If you ignore them, they really will go away, at least for you. Which is what matters, in the end. Is there really room in your busy mind for their doltish nattering? When you read a story about how Bill O'Reilly cut some poor sap's mike, you're learning too much about something you already know too much about. Much better to occupy your time with solutions to the proliferating problems that are coming your way, from probable economic misery to promised environmental devastation. Don't worry, if something legally actionable happens, you'll hear about it. Until then, spend your time reading and ranting about more important matters. Like your sex life.
10. Start or join a third party. "You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left?" the self-destructive man in Richard Linklater's animated mind-wiper Waking Life asked. Sure, he doused himself in gasoline and set himself afire, after dryly joking "Let my own lack of a voice be heard." But still. Beyond the propaganda of fear promoted by the Bush administration or the hope promised by the Obama administration, what has become exquisitely clear is that our country is actually run by a single party comprised of political animals assembling on the fence. And they will do whatever they can to stay in power, regardless of whether or not it is madness.
"As someone who voted to repeal Glass-Steagall, maybe that was a mistake," Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer said of the law that kept investment and lending banks separate, a dissolution that has led directly to our current econopocalypse. The Glass-Steagall Act's repeal happened under the watch of President Bill Clinton, whose administration worked together with Republicans and Wall Street criminals to torpedo financial regulation. Sure, the guy who wanted to succeed him, Al Gore, is a climate-change visionary. But his running mate? Right, the same fence-hopping Joe Lieberman who just eviscerated health care reform's public option. With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?
The two-party system you have today is already a three-party system. It houses a well-meaning minority, middle-way sellouts and batshit loonies. Someone needs to babysit all those kids. Why not you? Let the fence-squatters have their pity parties. Eventually, they will be whittled down to their core essence, which is nothing more than compromise stained by self-possession. Worried about leaving your party? Don't be.
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