The Founding Fathers

The Founding fathers never wanted the Congress to become multi millionaire puppets for the oligarchs. They never dreamed of Gerrymandering districts, unlimited campaign spending and people spending their entire lives in Congress. Because each and every one of these changes alone is enough to kill democracy. Each one, one the face of it is at least suspect, if not treasonous. The level of intervention in daily life they wanted Congress to exert was able to be completed in a few moons during the time between Harvest and Spring planting. The earliest citizens of our great nation saw government service as a benevolent activity that was supposed to benefit the people generally. As in many democratic socialist systems all public workers know that the citizens are their ultimate employers.

Turning in their graves is an understatement of how badly they would feel about what our nation has become.

As much as we can find about the intent these men had, they knew from the start that by allowing majority to rule, not only the super-minority of a wealthy class, but "ordinary men", there would be a more even playing field for candidates and a more broad spectrum of representation of ideas. The entire age suffered from a great infatuation with knowledge and the spreading of that knowledge as part of building a new society of men. We need to redouble our efforts to let the ruling class know that this is our democracy, not theirs to be fed to us, like babies eating their first peas, but as men who can take responsibility for dealing with truth,  who gnaw it off the skeletal remains of the lies we have been told, who devour truth like hungry wolves, peeling back long ribbons of the fleshy meat of truth and gulp it down with reverence, because that is what humans do.

Follow the money to reveal the house of lies.

Strange Days Indeed

This solstice falls very close to midnight tonight. Not only will the Sun be at the lowest point on the horizon, but at least here in Green Bay, it will occur in the middle of the night. On this, the longest night near the time our ancestors used to call all bells. The Pacific ocean is currently warmer than we have recorded at any time since record-keeping began and the warm air has so much intensity that we, in the Upper Midwest are experiencing the warmest late fall ever. Midwinter here used to be the time when rivers turned hard, there were days on end where even the weak Sun could not raise the temperatures above zero during the days. We occasionally had temperatures far below zero. This year, we are wondering if the ground will even freeze solid.

The days have become strange in so many other ways as well, it is difficult to explain them all, or even list them. The citizens of the rest of the world, and some on our territory as well as wondering if we have collectively lost our minds. We seem to be completely delusional, running a slate of Teathuglican candidates that reflect all of the worst features of the ugly American. We have liars, cheaters, connivers, despicable hate mongers ala Hitler and both ignorant and foolhardy candidates running their mouths about things they know absolutely nothing about. In place of a fourth estate, the media and news outlets, who are wholly owned subsidiaries of the oligarchy continue to hold out the Two Minutes of Hate first mentioned by George Orwell in his futuristic novel, 1984.

Our educators are deemed "responsible" when students, calloused by abuse and neglect are unable to learn. Bullies are allowed to buy their way into seats of power, exerting more and more control over the daily lives of "free" citizens and there are never shortages of people to blame. Just pick any of the victims and lay the blame on them. We blame old people, young mothers, unions, anyone who works for the rest of us. The people who actually produce the least are even labeled "makers" while they call the rest of us "takers". Pay no attention to the fact that the elderly gave their lives to keep our way of life viable, ignore the fact that without young mothers, there would be no generation of young people willing to be abused by their bosses and while you are at it, brand those who put in an honest day of labor so that billionaires can hide fortunes in foreign banks. In addition to sowing seeds of hate throughout our society, Fascists continue to claim the immigrants are the problem, even though only a tiny fraction of us can trace our ancestry to native people. Even the fact that the world-wide recession (I still say it is a depression) has done more to curb immigration across our Southern border than anything that policing and/or militarism has accomplished.

The media giants have the power to point their cameras in any direction they choose, yet from the looks of what gets "reported", we are becoming less and less tolerant, under more and more threats and they also love to show us images of people who have lost their humanity in favor of their isolated existence, hiding in the glow of their telescreens.

Fossil carbon is almost never mentioned in popular media, nor is the solution to the build up of carbon in both the atmosphere and the world oceans. The fossil energy resources we are reaping today are like a giant solar charged battery, that took hundreds of millions of years to put by natural gas, oil and coal. We have been burning through that million year old carbon like drunken sailors since we first found it. some say that world coal reserves could last another four hundred years at the rate we are burning it, but it took millions of years to form. This is like writing checks for many thousands of dollars, every couple hours, while only adding a dollar per day to our accounts. The organic matter that took that carbon out of the air and sequestered it millions of years ago seems to not even be on our radar, or part of our awareness. We seem to have collectively forgotten basic physics. Like the fox from the folk tale, carrying a mouthful of food, we are seeing our reflection in the  still pool, but we try to snatch the food reflected in the water, leading to not only the loss of our meal, but getting cold and wet as well.

Chasing the dream has only led to our estrangement.

It seems like the popular myth/reality of the witch hunt has come back in full force. Everyone is seeking to blame someone else so fervently, so intently, that their own actions have become invisible to them. This solstice, we could all be served by allowing a bit of awareness in to our lives. The vast, vast majority of the human race is compassionate, helpful and cooperative. We know from research and experience that the easiest way to change children from loving, caring individuals into hateful tyrants and sociopaths is to abuse and neglect them, so why are we taking a path that leads to less and less good parenting and more and more stress for families? Well, our fictional belief in the "golden rule of business", screw the other guy before hew gets a chance to screw you, has become the mantra of the well to do. Since the rest of us are getting used to thinking that we are just temporarily inconvenienced billionaires,  we also think that by following the same route they did to amass their wealth, we will "make it" someday. The more desperate we become, the more we seem to cling to the lies that we have been told by those who abuse and neglect us.

In the novel 1984, the proles were told, WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. The book was written as a warning, not an instruction manual. The truth is that no peace ever grew out of the end of a gun, nor can it be created by the elimination of the results of human effort, investment and capital, with its inherent mantra that it be done for the good of others, and for ages to come. The "work" that the death and fear merchants are summed up pretty well as Ozzie Osbourne testified in 1970, with Black Sabbath with the tune WAR PIGS! War can never be anything but mayhem and destruction. The concept of buying money on time has virtually created a race of slaves. Ask yourself, are you more free today than you would be without "interest" being paid to guys in suits who create nothing but false demand for a future that never comes. In case anyone forgets. Slavery will forever be inhumane, even if the slaveholders were to be proven benevolent. Those who keep over ninety percent of the rest of us as their pets are the ones who need to be put down, not the old ladies whose "benefits" are cut, or the child made to drink sugar water while her mom is away at her job. I am in the class that has lost the war, but continues to pick winnable battles in a corrupt and failing system. Recognizing your own wage slavery and understanding that the class war has been won for decades. I continue to write these words to help others hear/see/smell/feel/ taste/grasp  the truth.  The most ignorant thing we can do is not recognize that every single person you meet knows things you will never know. If you have not yet done so, read 1984. When the spookiness starts to become apparent, realize that we now do not need wires to be "hooked up" any more. Nor can we disappear anymore into darkness.

The only way is up and out into the light. I have resolved in this year to become more pro active, discuss what can be done to affect positive change across the planet and don't want to leave folks with a truth bomb so devastating that they know not where to go, so here I will leave a nugget of bliss that can be reproduced and shared amongst your friends, family and co-workers, even if they be unpersons (sorry for the one last 1984 reference). To lighten the mood as "Where do you find a turtle with no arms or legs?" wait a moment and answer..."Right where you left him!" May all your days reflect the honest twists and turns of phrases, the condensed meaning of a thought expressively contained in the tiniest of vessels of words. Take these brief collections of words to heart: Love is Peace, Freedom a Birthright, Awareness is Everything. It only costs our attention to invest in making the world substantially better. All we have is our brief time on the planet...how many of us have lost loved ones this year?...We know the results of tearing things and people down. Perhaps this year, we could try the opposite approach.

Beautiful Eloquence "Syria"

I'm so tired of the blunt arrogance, the judgmental innuendo and hyperbolic vitriol that passes as speech in our country. It is as if we are a mob culture, waiting to swoop in and dispatch any person, group or organization willing to raise their heads, voices or fists in defense of liberty. Linguistic shortcomings aside, the attitudes being expressed through our major media outlets verge on the ill-considered, insane, inane and/or outright ignorant. Even the people who have been paying close attention and who have formulated decent mental constructs that are valid and supportable have to confront the fact that we are awash in morally bankrupt expectations, false definitions and twisted rhetoric designed by our ruling class to neuter any serious opposition.

Today, The Donald said on a nationally distributed interview that the U.S.of A. should take "zero" Syrian refugees. Put another notch on his gun for that! Here is a more apt rendering of the truth. Since it was our foreign policy that allowed the current regime to stay in power as long as it has, we have inadvertently sanctioned their regime and allowed them to commit such heinous atrocities against their own people that civil war has erupted. It has been going on for years. The escalation has been brought about because of emboldened forces that co-opted dissatisfaction of oppressed people, who have been systematically stripped of their dignity, hopes, dreams and humanity. Oh, and did I mention, we sold them weapons too. If one person is oppressed, that is too many. we need the resolve to not let it be by our hand. Powerful elites who practice cultural genocide seem to have become our responsibility, if only because we validate them further by taking them seriously or "negotiating" with them offering to trade and support them, especially and most pathetically with weapons. Those fleeing for their lives are our responsibility. Fully, our responsibility. Remember the time tested and true maxim, silence is complicity.

It seems that we have become so comfortable living with fists clenched and jaw set in our rugged and stoic, adrenaline saturated game face, that we forget to let those assaults, which define our days, pass, even when we interact with our loved ones, friends, family and associates. Staying healthy, is a lot like giving birth. Nature's way is always more about process than reaching a steady state. As in the birth process, the mother and baby both experience clench-release cycles. Blood flow and lymph would virtually stop without this rhythmic dance. The events taking place in "Syria" are truly a cultural infection. Perhaps the best thing for America would be to welcome all comers and show them that our way of life, a life of democracy, liberty and freedom are worth having across the planet.

The trouble that we run into quite quickly is that we have to grapple with the fact the same forces that are oppressing the rest of our brethren with weaponry, dictatorial regimes, and religious police are barely able to keep a lid on outright rebellion. Likewise our oligarchs are barely able to keep the lid on by imprisoning half the black male population, gearing up police departments with military hardware and locking down the population if and when catastrophes occur or protests break out. In some ways, our levels of sophistication nearly obscure the oppression. Media pundits report that we are free, even as they tell us that Bernie Sanders is in second place, following Hillary Clinton in the polls. Why? Because Hillary Clinton is the tool of the oligarchs. She has "proven" herself a staunch ally of those who oppress for profit. Pay no attention to the facts. Bernie Sanders leads in the first two states that will hold primaries. Our nation is practicing cultural genocide in our own way, asking other countries not to do so seems to be bad form in the age of oligarchs.

We are seeing in a microcosmic way in Syria what troubles beset any population that tries to hold on to power, rather than relinquishing that to the people. To stay healthy and strong, and to give birth to a new civilization, peaceful and compassionate, we must overthrow the oligarchs. not with weapons, but by walking away. Remember, anyone who has ever been a parent knows, that the best way to raise a bully is to attend to their tantrums and ignore them when they act with civility and decorum.

"Never negotiate with terrorists." used to mean something because we all agreed that terrorists were like children throwing tantrums. Now, we seem to pick our flavors, let them do the same, as long as they buy their weapons and national debt from us.

A Closer Look at America's Top .0001%

Forbes just released their annual report on the nation's four hundred top income "earners". The average income of this group is 1.38 Billion dollars, yes that is right. The numbers confirm that they are richer than ever. To get our heads around it, perhaps it would help to divide the income of just one of these ultra rich people by the four hundred million or so people in The United States of America. Looking at the numbers this way puts it in slightly better perspective. Let us say that each one of us, every man woman and child gave three dollars and fifty cents to one of these folks, then, to keep things straight, these folks made a line four hundred deep. Each one in turn would come to the front of the line and get their $3.50 and so on. They would collectively receive $1,400 from each man woman and child in America. Now I'm not provincial enough to not understand that most of these folks are involved in a worldwide network of exploitation (sorry to all the rich folks out there, I mean earnings), but to get a better picture of how much wealth these folks control, it helps to break the numbers down to what an average person can understand. I raised four children for the last twenty years on around 20K. If you look at the cost to our household alone of these very wealthy individuals, it would be about 1/4 of our income, siphoned off to support these levels of earnings for just those 400 wealthiest individuals.

I do not begrudge them their wealth, but I do detest the fact that they unduly influence public debate, political fortunes of our representatives and I certainly will not remain silent as their agendas are pushed through the Halls of Congress, The White House, or The Courts. I certainly do not want them to receive any sort of corporate welfare or subsidization of any kind. However, many of these fortunes are subsidized greatly and the extreme reach of government virtually assures that these people are rewarded at the expense of the rest of us. It is our hard work and as they say, our blood, sweat and tears that fund this level of luxury.

My children, if they want to "make something of themselves", will go into debt for the privilege, paying interest for years, so that the wealthy can play the system for all it is worth. If my children want to purchase a home, many of these people will get richer at their expense. If I or my children do not read labels carefully and remain ever-vigilant about the products that we buy, it assures that a large part of their purchases will flow to the pocketbooks of these billionaires. We will look a little closer at the numbers, but letting this sink in for a while will help to see some of the problems, and solutions that are necessary if we want to return to being a nation for, of and by the people.

Less than 2% of these 400 individuals are self-made women. Nearly ten percent of the top four hundred are female, but the vast majority of those women inherited their wealth. Once again, looking more closely at the numbers, the vast majority are older white men. I have tried to forgive as many of the mistakes that this "class" of people have made over the years as possible, but for their continued attempts to claim that climate change is fiction, for their continued fight against living wages for the rest of us, for their rape of the planet and her people and for the insensitivity to the levels of corporate welfare flooding into their coffers, I am not ready to forgive them. It seems that most of these individuals are either blind to their own responsibility or in denial about their complicity in many of our national problems, most of the environmental destruction and the lion's share of the human tragedies that are lived with day in and day out by the rest of us.

The wealth of the heirs of the Wal-mart fortune is a good case in point. Just one of the three stores that this company has built in my home town, (that continuously skims off money to be sent to Atlanta, never to return.) has received millions of dollars in subsidies. The local tax payers paid dearly for the "opportunity" to shop there. Not only was Wal-mart given seven years of tax exemption, (what small businessperson would not love to have that opportunity?) but the facility needed an intersection that cost over one million dollars to upgrade. The creek that used to flow past the area, supporting a wide variety of wildlife is now choked with boxes and bags, shopping carts and car piddle from the giant parking lot. Our city is not huge, only around 100,000 people, but this giant corporate entity thinks that building a fourth facility right in the heart of the city would help them to capture more wealth from our residents. The public is not interested in having them, but the monied interests weigh more heavily on state and local officials than the people who have to live here.

The most vile subsidy that we give the Wal-marts of the world, at least here in Wisconsin is that the poverty wages that they pay assure that publicly financed health care and food stamps are helping to keep their wage slaves alive. Millions more dollars, not going directly to the corporation, but paid by our citizens to prop up the economically unsustainable approach of the exploiters. Then, we can add in the dozens of locally owned and operated fabric stores, food stores, clothing stores, shoe stores, pharmacies, art supply stores, appliance stores, stationary shops, hardware stores and bike shops that have gone away since they came to town and you have a rough sketch of how they gobble up our quality of life while wresting more and more income from places that cannot afford a single penny more, for less. No one seems to like to look in the mirror anymore. We are the ones who have let this exploitation occur. We are the ones who feel threatened by our own poverty and we are ultimately the ones who line up for this sort of exploitation at the hands of the oligarchs.

It is my humble opinion that we need to understand that there has always been class warfare and the truth of the matter is, as Warren Buffet (who is always at or near the top of this list) himself has said, "My class, the rich are winning."

Chem. Warfare

As far back as the Eighties, many of us realized that we are all victims of chem. warfare, virtually all of the time. From Alar on apples to dioxins and furans, in the environment. Heck even banned pesticides are hanging around from back in the good old days before we had coined the terms mutagen and teratogen. Additionally over four hundred new chemicals are created each year and the regulations on them are similar to the way we treat human beings, innocent until proven guilty.  We collectively suck the fumes of agricultural and industrial warfare practiced by the ultra wealthy upon local populations. In the research that I did on my own location, I found that within just a few miles of my home, over 65 tons of hazardous metals, toxic compounds and poisons are released into the air annually, just from industrial sources. This does not include any thing designed to be spewed from mobile sources like automobiles, trucks and buses, nor are releases from small companies or home use of hazardous chemicals. Some may ask themselves who uses toxic chemicals at home? Well, one of my neighbors has a body shop in which he customizes cars for fun, another thinks his lawn needs to look like a green at an expensive golf course and yet a third loves to burn plastic to heat his garage. The chem. warfare pants that I used to sell in my clothing shop were Army issue, but the general public should demand to be treated at least as well as the expendable soldiers that are supposed to "protect" us.

Just because the concentrations are sub-lethal in the short term does not mean that they are safe. On the contrary, they are just as deadly and because of the small doses of many hundreds of chemicals that we get through our skin, our lungs and in our food, pining the damage on a single source or "attack" is impossible. We need to ask serious questions about our level of tolerance for these toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic agents that we are routinely exposed to. Cancer rates continue to increase, there has been a spike in several childhood diseases, each and every day we learn of ways that the current leaders allow us to be exploited. Just because we don't keel over and die on the spot, is not enough to prove safety. Even when we know that our jobs are killing us, as in the coal mining industry, the government subsidizes the destruction of families and "compensates" victim's families with black lung insurance. There has been a push in the arts community to teach young artists ways to avoid deadly contact with their materials and to try to reign in the hazards in and around art studios, but the fact is that many materials used for art remain dangerous to the people who use them. In iron work, welding, paint shops, pottery works, jewelry making and even pastels or other sorts of sculpture, fumes are most often vented out of the workshop where they contaminate the neighborhood.

Environmentalists have known for decades that dilution is not a solution to pollution, but our regulators and politicians, through consultation with the "regulated community" have seen fit to make up every sort of rule and excuse to allow continued poisoning of our neighborhoods. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions are dying right now, today from their poisoned environment. Who will avenge their deaths? When T. S. Elliot wrote that the world would end, not with a bang but a whimper. Perhaps he presaged our current plight. My regular readers know that this is not the end I will accept lying down. I have invested too much in making the world a better place, in raising exemplary children and reclaiming as much of the planet as possible so that future generations might enjoy the place after I am gone. Putting profits above people has always led to destruction and death. People places and entire cities have fallen victim to the fickle "markets" created by greedy people in faraway places.

We the people who have to pick up the pieces and carry on after the exploiters have left need to understand that corporate welfare is class warfare and that silence on this matter is complicity. We stand poised on the verge of another war. By every accounting the costs of war have never justified perpetrating violence against another. what I have spoken here in these few paragraphs is not meant to justify or lessen the heinous actions of a regime currently in power in Syria, nor is it meant to dissuade the rest of the world from taking those who authorized such barbarism to task for their actions, but what I do intend to do is to highlight the fact that we are doing the exact same thing to our own people around the planet. The ultra wealthy do not have to lay down the carpet of poison that produces their wealth, that is what their wage slaves are for. I beg the people of the planet to stand up and be represented, speak out in favor of another way and in each and every act bring clarity and focus to the art of living lightly on the Earth. We can stop the poisons that flow into our environment, but it will take diligence, creativity and commitment. We the people have these resources and the fickle expediency of amassing great wealth will buckle and crumble under the weight of public opinion if we all begin to stand together and say in unison, "No more!"

"Just Business"

These two words have been used as cover for so many sociopaths that their number seems nearly infinite. All manner of injustices can be covered with these two words. Many are most familiar with these two words from mafia movies. Right before the hit man caps his quarry, he tries to make clear that he feels no animosity. It is "just business". When the rivers of the world are contaminated with runoff or toxic compounds from agriculture or industry, municipal sewage facilities or emissions from power stations, that is "just business" as well.The banks say it when they foreclose, the local grocer says it when he gouges you for your food and those who collect the interest on student loans say it to struggling graduates who took out the loans in the hopes of bettering their station in life. It is hard to look into the world of commerce without seeing hordes of these exploiters chanting the mantra that their terrible behavior is "just business".

The paradigm that allows for this exploitation, this oppression and this dehumanizing aspect of commerce is what most of the peaceful loving people have been struggling with for decades, perhaps centuries. Those who have looked closely find that there are plenty of problems with the current system. Fining a way to a better place requires exploring territory that is both unfamiliar and a bit scary. If we are to get out from under the thumb of oligarchs, we must find a way to stop the flow of money to their hands. I have many friends who are "homesteaders". These folks believe in independence and work to produce as much of what they need as possible. I also have another cadre of friends who are "survivalists" or "preppers", who spend inordinate amounts of money and time planning for Armageddon. They are sure that the crash is near and they want to be able to live in isolation, but preparing for that they are willing to spend the lion's share of their income on well-established corporate entities that are laughing all the way to the bank. To them it is just business and truth be damned, they defend shutting the rest of the world out from their stockpiles with whatever resources they can muster.

First of all, we need to realize that there is no "away", we cannot escape the results of our actions, nor can we defend hurting others or the environment in the name of procurement, commerce or disposal of our wastes. The so-called green revolution that took place nearly three generations ago was "just business". The moral claim that Africa and Asia wanted to be just like us was perhaps fabricated by wealthy white men much better connected than most of us will ever be. What they were driven by was the smell of money, not compassion, not realistic ideas about feeding the world. There was certainly no consideration of what would be best for anyone but themselves. The more we exploit the world around us, the less time we have to look closely at the effects that occur in our wake. The two words that have given so many a free pass to foist harm on others are the opposite of what they imply. The green revolution, if it is to be of any value at all, can teach us that the driving force behind most business is unjust. The giant agribusiness corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, Du Pont, Allis Chalmers, etc. made billions of dollars as we (the USA) foisted "modern" agricultural practices across the globe. The "scientific" approach to food production continues to have grave costs that are borne by farmers and consumers worldwide because it is "just business".

Large areas of Minnesota and Wisconsin (two states that I know for sure have been proven to have this problem) have polluted groundwater as a result of mechanized agriculture, application of hazardous chemicals and reliance on industrialized methods, corporate welfare and deceptive advertizing for dangerous and unwise products. This perfect storm of abuse has all been defended as "just business". This problem exists in many other areas but research and detection is often "too costly" so it isn't that the government isn't interested, but ignoring the problem is, you guessed it, "just business". The "science" behind our technological approach to food production is partial at best. I have written extensively about the fallacy that led to the N,  P &K revolution. Around about the time that we "discovered" Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium, we had a cold war to win and our leaders thought that by feeding the world, we could win the war for minds. What the science of the time didn't tell us is that this was only a tiny sliver of reality. Healthy looking plants that are starved for nutrition became the rule worldwide by the application of synthetic fertilizer that shifted wealth from across the planet into the few corporations willing to line up for the corporate welfare being offered by well-meaning governmental and non-governmental agencies. Today, the other shoe is still dropping, but we justify the terrible outcomes as "just business". As more and more people learn the truth, some are beginning to see that it is a terrible shame.

The current "green revolution" is hard to see in context. Again the chemical companies and giant industrial, corporate welfare inspired agents sell Roundup-ready corn, a single strain of wheat across the entire globe and are working to patent nearly every potentially profitable seed imaginable. Soy has been deftly manipulated by Monsanto for instance, but rest assured they don't want to put organic and open pollinated seed producers out of their livelihoods, their suits and restraining orders are "just business". For those readers who may not know, pollen from Monsanto's genetically altered soy travels in clouds across the fields of folks who do not want it. If the seed is collected for food or next years crop, it can contain genetic information that is patented by Monsanto. To put this in perspective I like to remind people that if my mutt dog runs off and impregnates a prize-winning poodle down the block , I become responsible for the resulting pregnancy. There is no recourse for the farmers whose seeds have been tainted, in fact, there is a penalty and they can become liable for massive court costs, as well charges for "stealing" the patented genetic material that contaminated their fields. On the one hand there is a sea change taking place amongst the people. We realize that the planet has been raped, strafed, contaminated, and poisoned long enough, but the wealthiest among us are still claiming that they are exempt from having to change because it is just business.

Pristine wilderness has to go, "It's just business..." 

When Will The Dark Overlords Learn-Humanity?

Many of us concern ourselves with the challenges of making sure that we have enough for survival, to keep our homes, have enough to eat, and perhaps, if we are lucky, a trusted companion to procreate with or at least raise children with moral values, a sense of truth, justice and compassion. The exception seem to be the same flesh and blood as us, but their motives, tally sheets and focus is on unrelenting deceit, their imagined power and the lust after all things physical. Our culture, or lack of one seems to have spawned a cadre of individuals who believe in Calvinism, though they probably never heard that name for it. their justification for abusing their power and squandering vast fortunes is that they alone, are "best suited" for their station. somehow the justification for their lust for money and the material wealth that it represents. After all, in their way of viewing the world, poor people could have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps if they were good and god fearing, loyal and true to those in higher stations, or just not been so lazy, hedonistic and devilish. Since I was a child, I mulled over the possibility that there might be some truth in their perspective, but over the years have learned that the exceptions in this area disprove the rule.

Fortunately there are those kind souls who do no wrong, care for others, often those they do not even know and those who take it upon themselves to live true to the holy books. A special few give ceaselessly throughout the year, inspired by their heart's message rather than those given to justify greed, self-aggrandizement and hatred for those who are different. The humility that comes from knowing that we are all just one stock market crash away from homelessness leads to a deeper level of giving, one that actually feels the pain of those we help. I know that for a time, I was in the position of a single parent. it changed forever any thoughts I may have had about the hows, whys and reasons for the ever increasing number of them in our country.

Another thing that has always concerned me is the root word of humanity being human. I can surely cop to being human, but the activities that pass for humanity are terribly out of step with what I have understood humanity to be for nearly half a century. Greed, deceit and hatred are decidedly inhuman. Research shows that human beings are innately compassionate, kind and giving. Only through abuse and/or neglect can they be made selfish, greedy and abusive to others. Why can't we understand this and change our ways? The terrible truth behind such phrases as boys will be boys, the old ball and chain and she asked for it is that they have been designed to provide cover for unacceptable behavior. If we cannot fathom the true costs of our blatant disregard for human welfare, needs and honor each and every person as a manifestation of possibility, then we truly have gone wrong. The dark overlords know that they cannot trumpet the truth behind scientific research into humanity, because it would admit the fact that they are unprepared to lead. We have been spoon fed a complete fabrication, developed over a century ago by those who could not fathom many scientific facts. The concept of limited resources and the competition for them that necessarily follows is what allowed domination of "primitives" and violent extraction of resources paired with missionaries filled with zeal.

Even though we have learned that these practices are bad, we forget to jettison the philosophy that they were based on. We need to teach, from the early years up, about the mistakes we have made along the way. How else can we expect the next generation to do better? Assuming that we are around several more generations, would we not rather leave a bit of the Earth cleaner than we found it, more liveable than we have made it or better suited to fulfill the needs of our relations over the next few hundred years? I have been on an Odessey that defies my own ability to explain Remaking my house better suited to life. More spacious without changing the footprint. It has been transformed into the essential space for flow. Is that not what life is all about anyway? Flow? Humans may be uniquely suited to ask the question, Who am I? Sadly, all too often we follow that with "What have I done?". Those who hold the lion's share of the marbles in the World today have been hurt deeply, cheated and led astray by a work of centuries that would have everyone believe that we survive by teeth and claw, rather than cooperation and compassionate sharing of what we hold most dear. It is actually sad that for so many fear and ignorance lead them to treat one another so terribly and that, so often, their actions are designed to keep others at a distance rather than really opening up to hear about their hopes, dreams and needs.

In the Procession of the Equinoxes, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius coincides with the next hundred and fifty or so years. Just like in the olden days, there were those who carried the water, and those who used it. In the Age of Pisces, we became used to the way things had been for centuries, it was just the age. The time is now to forge a new mythology, build the basis of a culture that respects, nay follows the water carriers. Lord and Lady know there has been too much masculine posturing for humanity's good. A great factoid has been traveling around the internet, about hockey, I believe it sums up my feelings about living in a male dominated world where power and privilege flow from your sex organs. The athletic cup, or hard plastic protector of the groin was in common use in hockey for one hundred years before the helmet became common. When we begin to live in the Aquarian age, we will never have to ask why some of these things occurred, because it will be self-evident. The shift from mankind to humankind may take hundreds of years, but without substantive change now, rest assured the folks with all the marbles would rather not share.

Lowest Crime Rate in Forty Years

All "traditional" types of crime are on the wane. Things we think of when the word crime is mentioned, murder, rape, assault, theft and property crimes have not been this low since the sixties. I don't think that we can attribute this to the fact that all the criminals have been jailed. Quite the contrary, people who have perpetrated crimes against me have never even been arrested. Oddly enough, the crimes that I have been victimized by have subjected me to ridicule from police, disbelief, or at least they have given the police a good laugh. Questioning victims as if they were perpetrators makes one wonder if cops just get off on dealing with "bad guys", or if they just get so used to dealing with criminals, that it makes them treat everyone with disdain. If we look to a larger picture, it only makes sense that as people learn to survive on less, and the economic outlook for so many continues a downward slide, there would be higher levels of desperation and propensity to steal and rob. Not so, I guess, we see crime rates falling in all areas, and for all crimes according to the FBI.

The petty sorts of crimes that hurt just one victim at a time have been replaced by crimes that hurt us all. Corporate outlaws who absorb billions in tax money and continue to make bad business decisions top my list of evil deed doers, but we seem to be at a loss for what to do with these bad boys. Law enforcement has been trained to look for footprints in the snow, leading away from crime scenes, finger prints and physical evidence that ties perpetrators to crime scenes. Now, there is even the ability to "search" the net for traces of illicit activity. Even though we have sophisticated ways of finding ordinary criminals, there is a definite lag between what is actually taking place and our response to it. If a company can be classified as "too big to fail", they can lay off thousands, pay their figurehead leader millions, and take our tax money with impunity. This double standard allows the rich to undermine our democracy in a most unsettling way. In response to these heinous crimes, it seems that some police agencies have redoubled their efforts to prosecute people who have engaged in victimless crime, growing marijuana, or God forbid, smoking it. It is confusing to see the attention we pay to trivia, while letting gross abuse of power and theft on a grand scale pass unnoticed. Profiling Muslims has become "defensible", but corporate outlaws are overlooked because we all "want to be like them", rich.

Back in the seventies, there was a pay disparity between the top CEOs and the average workers of 44-1. This meant that it would take working stiffs an average of forty-four years to earn as much as the top person in their company would make in one year. This was basically a person's entire working career, to equal one person's pay for a single year! The reasoning behind this was that top earners were smarter, better educated, under more stress, and responsible for bigger decisions that would make or break their corporation. Even though forty-four times smarter sounds impossible, forty-four times as educated sounds illogical, forty-four times more stress seems improbable and forty-four times more responsible ignores the fact that "average"workers are the ones that actually make products or provide services for which the company is needed in the first place.

Today, this pay disparity has climbed to 360-1. This means that what the average wage earner makes in a year is made in less than a single day by top "wage" earners. To equal the pay of a CEO today, a "family" of workers would require eight generations of toil to "earn" the equivalent of a single year of effort by these super-humanly smart, ultra-educated, incredibly stressed out, and uniquely responsible individuals who are "top dogs" in the largest companies the world has ever seen. Even as their corporations crumble, it is said that they deserve their unreasonable compensation. At some point, will we see through this charade? How long will we allow this insanity to continue? Is screwing a billion people okay if we only steal a penny from each person? How about a dime? A dollar? What if we force them into bankruptcy? Will we ever classify wage slavery as slavery and outlaw it? Why do we continue to look the other way? How can we support a system of all men being created equal but yet reimburse some as if they are 360 people? In this age of technological advances, we must develop our awareness, our culture, and our laws to keep pace with the lightning speed of injustice.

Letting those who have led us down a path toward inequality, have a say in resolving the problems they have created, is like letting a fox into the hen house. This is commonly the way our government deals with important issues. In Wisconsin, when "public utilities" got caught stealing 64 million dollars from residential rate payers, the utilities themselves got to decide how to spend the court ordered forfeiture. Letting insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals and health care providers tell us what they want in a "health care bill" guarantees that their interests get priority while the general public continues to get fleeced. Similarly, when the banks and some insurance companies had gotten into trouble, playing the odds with borrowed money, we gave their terrible managers a get out of jail free card. Many were able to leave their crippled companies with severance packages that exceed the lifetime earnings of 90% of all Americans. I think that bad managers should be punished. Perhaps, if they had to bear responsibility for their stupidity, lack of judgment, larcenous ways, illegal gambling with money that belongs to others, or misrepresentation that only benefits themselves, their illegal and immoral actions would cease. Lying, cheating and stealing are bad, no matter who has done them. People who are worth billions should not be exempt from laws that govern the rest of us. As happy as I am that the crime rate has plummeted, I think that we need to look for injustice wherever it occurs.