If Not Now, When? If Not Us, Who?

If I have not written about enough reasons to be suspect of remaining idle, trusting our leaders to consider our interests before making bad decisions or to re-think our positions on a variety of issues, you can bet that I will continue to do so over the coming years. There is no shortage of truth that needs to be injected into public discourse. We have been sold a bill of goods on so many issues, utterly devoid of truth or substance that if we were to go to court, we would qualify for damages.

I have been writing in this forum for several years now and plan to continue as long as possible, but the financial stress of doing so can be frustrating and disillusioning. When well-heeled idiots get up on their soap box and extoll the virtues of weaponry, or the financial bail out of dead end industries, that give cover to criminals of the highest order, it is easy to just be quiet and turn our other cheek. Somne even choose to shut their mouths and take the crap that we are led to believe. they say the you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

My writing seeks to point out some of the inalienable wrongs that have been perpetrated against human beings by our current power brokers, the uber-wealthy and the politically well-connected. The Idle No More groups that are protesting worldwide need our support. Indigenous peoples across the globe have a very serious claim to have protections for the world that we all depend on for our sustenance as well as the people who have lived here for millennea. Without getting up off the couch, there can be no change. May the coming year allow you the time to get active in making the world that we all know needs to exist be taken back from those who have controlled the tiller of the ship of state for far too long. Without us, the Earth and her people will continue the death spiral toward un-sustainability.

The Heart Box

I have had a propensity throughout my life that borders on the miraculous. Things find me. Objects. Many of these things are of little use, but others are extremely useful and frequently border on the mystical. For instance, when I lived in downtown Green Bay, the driveway used to change phase at lead\st twice during each winter, from relatively firm frozen dirt to mud and back again when it either dried out or froze thoroughly. About the same time, I discovered an old hippie commune that I spent time at when I was a child, was being torn down. They had a spring house that was getting buried under fill dirt and so I rescued enough stone slabs from the foundation to pave the driveway.

When I felt the need to make movies, a camera and editing equipment came to me.

When I was a child, we used to do scavenger hunts through the neighborhood, asking for simple things like a rubber band or paper clip. These events always found me to be the first one back with all my items, relishing my good fortune. As one finds relatively quickly, the abundance that can come with this sort of luck is both a blessing and a curse. I kept every stainless steel toaster that came my way for several years. Toaster ovens, toasters and electric rotisserie units seemed to be attracted to me and I covered a wall with them, making quirky retro art of them.

Recently, however, I'm finding that this abundance is worthless if not shared. Like with the electric appliance art, without giving it all away, these objects hold no intrinsic value. For many years, I found silverware. For over a decade before that it was rubber baby doll parts. When I first got to Green Bay, I was amazed at the number of single shoes that I would find, just laying in the street. I often wondered what event, or events led up to someone deciding to jettison just one shoe from their life on a random city street.

Two consecutive years in a row, on Memorial Day Weekend, I found sleeping bags in the same spot along the highway. And several times, while walking, I have found dollars, or fives, once even a twenty. Dumb luck you may say, but when you live a blessed life as I have you know that something larger than mere luck is at work. I have found white gold rings, which were eventually stolen from me, my own lost wedding ring (actually a friend found that one, in one of his garden beds that I had helped him till up the previous fall.) A tiny key fob with only two keys on it in a pile of rocks we had made on the shore of Lake Michigan. I have found two boats, three bikes, two guitars and countless tools, food and materials, just left to rot, blown away or otherwise left for trash. Useful things that have enriched both my life and the lives of countless others.

I do not lack much, except cash, but these things that come to me are either made immediately useful of they go into what I call the heart box. You may have a heart box yourself, but if you do not, I encourage you to start one. These things that go into one are your gifts or blessings. Things that have come to you, often unsolicited that come in abundance but only have value when given away. I'm not talking about cobbing every lighter that you ever touch so that you can have a lighter stash and give them away and the point is not to go buy a bunch of useless crap that you can give away. If you pay attention, there are things that you can share all around and nearly at every turn if you allow yourself to "see" and look for opportunities to share. I love to make wine, but if I were to drink as much as I make, not only my life would be negatively impacted, but so too the lives of those I come in contact with. Sharing my abundance allows me to do what I like to do and enrich the lives of others who in turn may not have had the resources to make their own wine.

Remember, no abundance has inherent value, until it is given away.

A Little Something For Holier Days

A Message by George Carlin:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways ,but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

If you don't share this with anyone....Who cares?

George Carlin

Looks Good From Far, But Far From Good

Who are the people who wield the cameras? Are they all mindless schmucks? It seems that the folks who are recording the images and soundscapes that inform our collective attention are either completely devoid of morals/ethics or are entirely motivated by greed. If it isn't vitriolic, invasive or prurient, it certainly isn't chosen by the editors to see the light of day, much less the overly produced shock imagery of the media as it exists today. With a tiny sliver of humanity, those on the ground floor of media-making, the camera people alone, could wield substantial power over the media's unethical twisting of imagery that i contend is equivalent to domestic terrorism. We all know the adage, X% of all statistics are made up on the spot. The lower number you substitute for X, the more you want the listener to consider your "truthiness" in a positive light, often making the point that you would never do the making up of numbers on the fly. The higher number you substitute for X, the less viable you want your listeners to think the numbers are. My problem is that I often use existing figures from reputable sources, but the hostile, hyper-mediated culture that we exist within makes my calculations seem impossible.

For instance, who has not seen relatives scarred for life in a foreign conflict that was ill-conceived and useless, except for corporate welfare for dubious corporations? One third of families have at least one member in the military. most people who speak plainly on their return from war explain that there are no good ones and that if you are not a mental case before you go (and it helps) you will be one when you get home. Why then do we continue to hear stories that somehow our "freedom" depends on doing that to them? My own family bears several scars of war and I can tell you plainly, we are perpetrating crimes against humanity each and every time that we glorify aggression. Every single dollar that we spend on defense is perpetrating destruction, of property, of lives, of our own economic interests around the globe. Power and control issues need to be taken on wherever we find them. This is 100% about giving massive government help to economic structures that, on their own, would collapse. We are funding the powerful at the expense of the weak.

In my personal experience, the first strike close to my heart, was the loss of a neighbor's son. I saw him outside, playing basketball and hanging out, riding his bike and playing board games. He never came back from Vietnam and his parents got a flag, the one that draped his coffin. In that war, we fought against people who had brought education, sanitation and health care to the impoverished people of the region. We poisoned vast acreages, forever, sterilized fields, firebombed whole villages, etc. We also snuffed out a vibrant life and forever handicapped a family, pruning off an entire family tree. When my mother married a vet, she did not know that he was addicted to the pain meds that he associated with his deliverance from the front lines. Let me tell you, the worst thing you can do with a pedophile is to send them to a place where conscience is a liability. Closer still to home, my brother has described his whole life "like living in boot camp." My eldest daughter has married a military man as well. Since the suspension of the draft, there is less corruption down at the draft board, but the bite that the military has taken out of society continues to be disproportionately out of the fabric of the poorest classes. The more dismal you make a person's life and the less vibrant their options, the more desperate for security people become. Even playing the lottery of death or dismemberment seems worth it when you look at the imagery that we are fed on a daily basis.

To appreciate the desperation fully, you need to imagine that there is a world out here that is full to overflowing. We have so much abundance that we throw away about 40% of our food supply in these United States of America, yet people go to bed hungry every night. We spend more on health care, than any other country (18% of GDP. the next closest spends 12%) and have worse outcomes than any other developed nation. Yet, we are told by our illustrious media that health care reform will cost "more". We are asked to turn our heads and cough while insurance companies are emptying our pocketbooks. That's not scarier than Obamacare? The mileage that the right has gotten out of the threat of "death panels" is only sickening when you realize that right now, today, there are rooms where non-doctors are deciding reimbursement rates for every kind and type of procedure and what they will and will not allow people to "have". People are dying each and every day because they have been denied coverage or have gotten the wrong treatments, simply because insurance would not pay for what people really needed.

The real world America has nearly 100,000 public schools. The average school year is 180 days. Even if we had one school shooting per year, there would be a one in eight million chance that your child's school would be the site of the attack. Within that statistic lies another, if twenty out of several hundred children got killed, the chances would increase exponentially. One chance, perhaps, in one hundred million. Now, there are companies selling "bulletproof backpacks". Only three hundred dollars or so can allow parents to rest easier when they send their children into harm's way. Please, people, let's try for one moment to get our collective head out of the sand. The facts will not lie, let's try to look at them! Let's try to get a grasp of the situation. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) is lobbying the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to classify motorcycle use as an epidemic, because of avoidable costs that are posed to our health care system by motorcyclists. Several hundred thousand people die in car crashes each year. Less than one percent of those deaths are people who were on two wheels, yet the motorcyclists are the problem. It seems that we are again having a hard time understanding the reality of our situation.

Interpreting data can be tricky, but for one minute consider the consequences of a myth, so firmly held by many motorcyclists as to be considered dogma. they even make bumper stickers and t-shirts that say: "Loud Pipes Save Lives". Many, most noteworthy, Harley owners subscribe to the belief that the roar of un-muffled explosions within the motor, somehow makes them more noticeable on the highway, or in traffic. In the jurisdiction I live, if you can hear music coming from a car more than fifty feet away, it is considered a ticket-able offense. I have heard Harleys from well over five hundred feet away, but no "crime" has taken place. Add to this the flinch factor when the same idiot blows by a blue haired old woman on the highway at eighty and you have potential for disaster. The damage done to both the rider's hearing and that of those around them in traffic costs society billions per year in lost hearing alone, yet the "liberty" of the idiot dishing out the damage is considered sacrosanct. I once again call Bullshit!

When we look from afar, like Disneyland, there is definitely a complete picture being created for us to sit back and watch. However, unlike an audience who has cued up and waited in line for entry, expecting a show, we think what we see is real. We often forget that the bill of goods that we are being sold as consumers of media, has been massaged to show us only what the producers, and ultimately the shareholders of media conglomerates want us to see. Clearchannel has helped put our local theater on the ropes and continues to pummel them into submission which in turn requires that I drive hundreds of miles each week to work in a distant market, plying a craft that my family has participated in for three generations. The wealth continues to concentrate in the highest echelons of our economic system, but somehow, because I'm a member of a union, I am vilified in the media. When we come in close and get a long look deep into the eyes of the beast who controls our very discussion points and vocabulary on these and other subjects, seeing the fires stoked by greed and fed with our children's future, it is both mesmerizing and stupefying that we continue to be taken in by their lie factory. I'm sorry to those of you who tire of me saying it, but lies need to be constantly propped up, but truth stands alone. When we start to see behind the mask of media, no amount of made up statistics can take away the scars and depravity that we see underneath. Whether of not demons can be tamed remains to be seen, but their time has got to come to a swift end if we are to reclaim any part of the American dream that was worth saving.

Orders of Magnitude

In a culture where nearly one fourth of the population is functionally illiterate, it may be a tall order to expect people to begin to understand mathematics. However what has been passing for news this week requires a bit of soul searching and perhaps a deeper understanding of what has actually taken place. I want to start by saying that it is a tragedy when twenty children are gunned down. It is terrible and sad that anyone feels the need to kill off their family, teachers and students. We can rest assured that these sorts of attacks are not new and that although extremely rare, they will become more common as greater numbers of people are forced to live under greater and greater stress. This is not to say that there are probably some things we can do to help, but Lord and Lady bless those who think that any one measure would stop these sorts of attacks. Human beings have proven to be resourceful even when they are crazy.

Right off the top, I have to say that the society that we live in has serious power and control issues. In the case of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting, we do not have power over the forces of insanity, nor can we control weapons that have made their way into the hands of unstable individuals. Many feel that their guns are tools that are for protection. I took the time to look into how guns "make us safer" and found that, in fact, gun owners are four times more likely to be killed with a firearm than unarmed individuals. Even in our relatively small town of 100,000 souls, there have been multiple events in which ostensibly "trained" gunmen (police) have unloaded multiple weapons in the heat of the moment and twenty, thirty, forty rounds later, perhaps one round hit it's mark. We have even had incidents in which innocent bystanders were killed, but the suspect who was being fired upon was barely injured. I'm hoping that we would consider the police a sort of well-organized militia but just because someone straps iron to their belt each day cannot make anyone safer when the lead starts to fly.

That said, there are over four thousand children who die each and every day because of filthy water. I do not want to sound one bit callous or unfeeling. In fact, it is the opposite. Perhaps I care too much. as the daily death toll mounts, we have to understand that these are orders of magnitude greater tragedies than the twenty odd individuals who died in this most recent shooting. One order of magnitude greater tragedy would be 260, two orders of magnitude would be 2,600. Hmmmmm, still, we are barely half of the daily death rate from dirty water. To get our minds around the numbers, perhaps we should think about the number of children who die each month from contaminated water...120,000. We could add on a third order of magnitude to the school shootings and we would be at 26,000 and the number of dead children would still be less than a quarter of the monthly death rate from an absolutely, 100% preventable cause of death.

I don't know if we will ever be able to fathom or correct the sort of self-loathing that is required to "cure" the particular sort of mental illness that leads people to kill innocent individuals. I don't know if we will ever decide as a culture that human life is worth caring for. I do know that what the news coverage has done is to terrorize us further and keep the truth of far worse crimes against humanity out of the news and off our airwaves. I also know that without perspective, the world is just an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colorful patterns, sans meaning, sans relationship to reality, sans understanding.

Negotiating the "Fiscal Cliff"

We have come to the end of a long-standing stalemate. Problems that have haunted us for many years have been put on the back burner of United States politics for years. In a massive concession to the ultra wealthy, we have put off changes in the tax code that could have raised hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars. i have used the analogy before, but it is so appropriate in helping to understand our current "crisis", that it bears repeating. Like the child who has won all the marbles, the uber-rich just want to go home, taking with them the ability of the rest of us to ever play again. The right wing political leaders in our country are standing shoulder to shoulder with the ruffians who would sacrifice the majority for the sake of their own wealth, power and prestige.

In spite of the fact that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the non-partisan office that determines the consequences of policies and legislation that congress impose on the American public, has calculated an inevitable risk of another slight recession, or a slower recovery than there would be if the "fiscal cliff" could be avoided, the longer term prospects are better if we do go over the "cliff" than if we do not. Virtually nothing has been said about this in the mainstream media. Instead, the gloom and doom stories that do make it onto our airwaves are designed to instill fear and undermine confidence in not only our elected officials, but the economy and the very fabric of our culture. The wealthiest classes, who stand to lose a tiny bit of their wealth if their taxes were to go up are screaming bloody murder about the danger that the cliff poses to our way of life. (their way of living)

There is a cost to living in a free society. The last time we pulled ourselves out of depression, tax rates were up around 90% for the most wealthy individuals. Somehow, they still found ways to ride around in chauffeur driven limousines, live high on the hog and wield their immense power in the halls of government. Currently, many of the most wealthy don't even work for their money, instead they invest in the companies of others and only take a portion of the profits through interest and dividends. these forms if income are treated completely differently than pay for work. Whereas I pay about thirty percent of my earnings in tax, the beneficiaries of this non-work related income only have to pay fifteen percent. This is even more heinous because of two compounding factors. corporate welfare that flows to corporations who then pass on increased profitability to their investors and the ability of the ultra-wealthy to spend top dollar on tax attorneys who can make sure that every loophole is exploited. Add to this the fact that  there are many tax havens for investment income, including states with no income taxes and offshore accounts that are completely invisible to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and you can see the perfect storm that has been brewing for decades.

Those who refuse to pay any share at all into the system that they exploit for amassing their unimaginable wealth are both traitors and thieves who pick the pockets of those least able to defend themselves. They simultaneously have their minions sweep up any scraps left after their feasting on the steaks and caviar, sucking at the marrow bones of our society and fleecing the markets for the lion's share of the wealth that our country has to offer.

If we had the power to determine the terms of the discussion, a completely different story would emerge. Instead of living under the threat of "going off the fiscal cliff", we would be able to see an end to the unfair treatment of the wealthiest classes. Those who peddle fear, hate and anger for their personal enrichment would be called our as the lazy cheats that they are, and the "benevolent" philanthropists could be seen as the exploiters that they really are. The point has been made very well by others, paying far greater attention than I, that the true philanthropists are the wait staff, the maids, nannies, the line cooks, chefs, the dry cleaners and the lowly service sector workers, the migrant workers, etc. who give their entire lives so that the wealthy can live their lives of ease.

Allowing the continued exploitation of the lowest classes for the enrichment of the wealthy must not continue. We are standing up, but the revolution is not being televised. People around the world are not willing to continue taking the shitty end of the stick. The time has come to wrest power form those who would keep us down, stop negotiating with those who make all the decisions and to force them to pay their fair share of the costs of our civil society. There are hand holds all the way down and if we are careful, attentive and thoughtful about where we want to end up, the climb down from where we find ourselves will present a welcome challenge that will serve to make us a better country. The only reason that we find ourselves in trouble today is because we have allowed the ship of state to be overtaken by pirates.

Michigan Legislates Slave State

The irony is not lost that one of the states with the most robust economic recovery and such a strong union history would come under attack by the so-called job creators. Union workers have figured so heavily in the last century of Michigan life that their impact on the state will be felt for centuries to come. Auto workers alone not only figured into the rise of Detroit, making it a name known around the world, but they also contributed to the clearing out of the city because their wages allowed them to eventually move away. When white flight took place, many of the auto workers had made enough money during their careers to "start over" in their retirement, further north, boosting local economic activity up-state. Millions of workers, spending billions of dollars created more jobs for realtors, local grocers, a host of service sector employment, boat dealerships and marinas, outdoor gear, home improvement and hardware stores, health care services, etc. Now the state has passed laws making Michigan a "right to work" state. This race to the bottom will surely undermine whatever progress has been made in the workplace as a result of organized labor.

Those who have the money never want to work with unions. I have worked for several employers who have explicitly stated that if I ever told anyone, especially other workers, about my rate of pay, that I would be fired immediately. Time Warner Cable was one of the worst. They gave me only two pay raises during the many years that I worked for them. They had absolutely no interest in the welfare of my family. They did not care one whit that I could not afford to subscribe to their "service" on the wages that they paid. They did not care that I had to feed my family by dumpster jumping. When I found out that the only reason they had given me a raise is because federal law increased the mandatory minimum wage, I quit. My second raise took place under somewhat shady circumstances, nearly doubling my take-home pay. Forcing them into finding another worker to replace me gave me individual bargaining power that the other workers did not have. This is the opposite of trade unionism. The boss's boss was unhappy about having to pay so much, but he was in a difficult position. In my long and storied history with that company, I had sacrificed greatly for both the quality of our productions and cared for the company's equipment as if it were my own. Most workers on minimum wage have no interest in protecting the interests of the corporate overlords, or putting in the extra effort to turn mediocrity into exemplary service.

Unions, on the other hand, codify professional service. In return for decent wages, union workers know that they will be expected to provide excellent service, protect the means of production (even though it is owned by someone else) and commit to making the company, or corporation as profitable as possible. This synergy makes the boss happy because they do not have to worry about sub-par performance, subterfuge, ineptitude or monkey wrenching. Union workers can only demand increased wages or better working conditions if they commit to protecting the employers interests as well. Powerful elites have effectively changed the debate. Just as the names of other laws have no relationship to what they actually do, "right to work" legislation takes away more rights than it gives. The right to organize is undermined and the wealthy are given a huge handout in the form of unorganized workers.

If I think back to my time in television production, with Time Warner, I had to work doubly hard on many occasions because the minimum wage workers were either  too drunk, too hung over, too distracted, unaware, sick or just plain unable to do the work. People without skills or aptitude for certain jobs really don't have any bargaining power in the relationship between themselves and capital (their bosses). In my case, it would have taken more than two disinterested slackers to do the work that I was capable of and willing to do, but I am in a very tiny minority and my boss knew it. Still, when my pay doubled and the rest of the crew only made a few more cents each hour, I felt like I had betrayed them. Whether we admit it or not, none of us would have employment if we were not worth more to our employers than what they have to pay us. The disparity between what we are able to produce, and what the corporation has to pay us is, in large part, their profit margin. The only way to ask the wealthy to part with more of their profit is to give them something in return. Unions have always understood this give and take.

There are those who claim that increased wages and better working conditions will put their interests out of the discussion, but this has never been the case. There has never been any serious study that showed decreasing corporate profits resulting from improving working conditions, wages or more stringent environmental protections. In fact, when monetary considerations or better working conditions are provided, productivity of workers increases. The "right to work" only means that the ability of unions to organize will be undermined further. this is a slap in the face to those who built this country, a race to the bottom that we cannot afford and a huge subsidy of corporations paid for by the working poor. The same corporate interests that tried to buy the Presidential Election have gotten their way in Michigan and the public is outraged. The same sort of protests that continue to take place in the Wisconsin Capital are ongoing in Michigan as well. This revolution is not being televised, not for lack of interest, not for lack of ability, but because the monied interests just do not care.

The craziest thing happenned today...

I reviewed one of my posts, out of curiosity and found that my account had either been hacked or commandeered by some commercial interest bent on using my readership as an advertizing base. Either that or the people I had linked to had the sad experience of being hacked. I will try to keep my links as free from advertizing as possible and I'm working to find out what may have gone wrong to allow such activities to occur. Please forgive the crazy link, but I think that was the only post with a problem. There are many to check, so I've got my work cut out for me...