Whom Do We Serve? (part two)

Years ago, my sister came up with the idea of a bumper sticker that would say just those four words. I wish that I had begun printing them then. Some ideas are so valuable that they need to be put into public consciousness and action immediately. The very act of asking this question brings far more to the table than many are willing to bring up, think about and share with others. These are the sorts of questions that are [pure gold in the realm of human evolution. If we refuse to think about these concepts, then we must be willing to relinquish the very freedoms that our founding fathers worked so hard to secure. The servitude that I am  bound to is due to my "business" with Wells Fargo Bank. Their recent re-finance of our debt will "save" two hundred dollars per month, but the time cost of that relief means that I will be paying Wells Fargo Bank an extra 10 thousand dollars, nearly half a year of the salary I collect for doing my job. I was so naive when the banks got their bailout after crashing the economy, I thought the gravy train was a one time thing. Sorry! The bank bail out continues and their freight is being paid by the few who were doing everything possible to stay afloat on the world-wide economic collapse that followed. In essence I was one of their "best customers". I have never been late on a single payment and whatever I had to do to meet my obligations, I did. It is a lasting sting, like an un-scratchable  itch, that I voluntarily entered into a social contract, I would domicile within the city limits of Green Bay, Wisconsin, serve my community, commit to a long-term relationship with neighbors, etc. I am but one of about 100 thousand people who are willing to live under the coal dust that blows through our neighborhoods, in an area where the fish can't be eaten safely, alongside petroleum tank farms and pipelines, coal piles and fly ash, we are actually paying the very real costs of all the toxic compounds in our environment, while faraway billionaires reap the benefits of our out-dated fossil energy system.

This view of the back of our rental shows another project in process. First I had to build a frame for the sun shade, next we are going to mount it over the upper porch which gets searing hot. My original plan was to utilize the solar collector behind the sun screen as an awning for the second floor, but it is way too heavy to lift up there with just a handful of friends. The solar panel was built in 1974 and has been providing 1/3 of the heat for the building for nearly ten years. This one piece of equipment has allowed me to pass fossil fuel savings on to dozens of renters who just want to feel warm in the winter. Some don't care if the heat comes directly from the Sun or from fossil energy. Those who do, like me, really love it.

On the bumper of a car, it relates directly to the fossil fuel addiction that requires us to serve people who frack, explore and "drill baby drill"! Not to mention the toxic emissions from refineries, waste land that is created, or the boom/bust economic effects of the fossil fuel industry. I have to state plainly that I have a problem with the word industry. Industry in my mind creates, fossil fuel exploitation can only, by its very nature, destroy. The only sensible possible future will use electric vehicles that are solar rechargeable.

I serve humanity generally by my teaching about biochar. When soils become healthier, so do the people who feed on the products of that soil. I once thought that buying an old quarry would be the best way to do organic agriculture, because all the soil in your beds would have to be created, so you would know the source of your compost, so you could keep it relatively clean. My soils, here in town contain lead, from the years that we were first using the automobile. Even after the petroleum distillers knew that the lead was poisonous, they fought to keep lead in gasoline un-regulated for several generations. I have to be aware of how much parent soil I add to my compost pile and the quality of the soil before I add it to food/flower beds. I do not want to introduce lead into the places I grow food and as long as I have control over what soil goes where, I can be especially careful not to add contaminated soils to my beds. Generations to come will benefit because I take the time to heal the soil, build it and enrich the native creatures who call the soil home. Serving these creatures pays back dividends that are undeniable, but hard for some to fathom. When the soil is healthier, the air is fresher, as the soil gets healthier, it holds more water, moderating temperature changes. The cascading feedback loops that are created between the soil and the organisms who inhabit it, create waste products that are literally food for plants. Serving the bottom of the food chain influences the health of the higher organisms who live around them.

If I had a dollar from every one of my pageviews, I could purchase a twenty acre parcel and begin to restore virtually all of it! Serving the future is the only hope we have. Those who claim that it is "too late" are just looking for an excuse to not put our money where our mouths are. Whom do you serve?

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.

How To Engage

There seems to be a disconnect between the tiny fraction of a percent of our population who nominate our candidates for office and the desires and wishes of those who get to vote for them. In Taiwan, this has led to continuing protests because in their country, at least, they still believe in democracy. In our attempts to move public discussion forward, we need to grapple with the fact that smaller and smaller numbers of people are guiding the earliest steps in the process of elections and constraining the debate about issues that have very real impacts on our lives. Much time and effort has been focused on cultivating the idea that voting for the lesser of two evils is a valid approach to elections. A closer look at many of our current representatives proves that even a lesser evil is still evil. The phrase, "They are all crooks.", nearly forms itself in our minds, because the ground work for that concept has been so successfully laid in our minds. But this is not true. We still have a choice between betting on candidates that are well-funded enough to "win" and those who some say have no chance at all. This issue has come up more since the recent elections in my country than it did before them, but when the discussion occurs is not as important as the fact that it does. We have allowed our system of government to be hijacked by the slimmest 1% of 1% who have the least interest in the daily life of "We the People" and a pathological preoccupation with what they believe is "good for us". These idiosyncratic ideas are frequently based on what has worked in the past. As the rest of us see daily, things that were serviceable in the past are typically either woefully inadequate to deal with our current situation or create bigger problems in the future.

We often feel the need to grapple with dozens of issues that are fallout from failed ideas and policies, however, what is really needed is to find ways to clarify the fact that we are really only talking about one issue. The planet, which we inhabit, is sacred. The human beings and creatures that we share the planet with are sacred as well. The Mother Earth rapists, bigots, fascists, nationalists, oppressors, extractors, food and water poisoners and air polluters are criminals. Those who burn thousands of gallons of diesel to plow the fields of our nation are out of touch with the land, those who commute an hour each way to work burning thousands of gallons of fuel each year are driving us literally to a dismal future and guaranteeing that sickness and death will be stalking future generations. This is truly only one issue, but the media will never allow us to be told so. Inspiring as discussions about sustainability can be, many cannot hear them, because the terrain of public discussion has been hammered out so thinly and annealed by the false discussions of things like "environment versus jobs". I have worked for decades to change the fallacies behind this lie, but big money interests cannot allow the truth to be known about this issue. Every single time that we enact laws which protect the environment, jobs are created. We do not lack for inspired ideas, technologies or the ability to make positive change in the world, what we are lacking is the will to do what is necessary.

This is why so many billionaires are beginning to come around to doing positive things for the environment rather than destructive ones. However, they are still operating at the margins. This year, 1,645 people made it into the Billionaire class worldwide. Less than twenty of them have made a serious commitment to work toward ecological integrity. It is notable that this tiny fraction of the one percent are not the ones nominating our candidates either. What is truly needed is a method of getting the oligarchs to understand that the future necessarily has to look different than the past. The millions who stood in support of the workers this black Friday are part of the wake up call that has gone out to them and the millions who are standing against police brutality are also helping to start real discussions. The #occupy movement has been trying to get these ideas addressed for several years now, but the media has turned a blind eye to them, telling us that they are just spoiled rich kids or that their aims are anarchistic. As long as the vast majority of the population is bearing the brunt of the fallout from the frivolity of the billionaires, our climate will continue to become even more destabilized than it is today. A current interactive wind map, detailing high level flows of the jet stream will put to rest the idea that human beings are not having an effect on climate. It took all of us working together, guided by the uberwealthy to bifurcate the polar vortex, but we have done it. We have done it by burning about half of the fossil energy laid down over billions of years within a brief hundred and fifty. The writing is on the wall and we need to aggressively demonstrate to those who do make the decisions about which way our culture will take into the future, that we want to be on the side of cleaner air, fresh water, climate stabilization and healthy food for all of the inhabitants of the planet.

A single stitch, in time, saves nine. Bringing healthy soil into a neighborhood that is sick can be a first step in reclaiming the lives of those who live there. Heling the millions of "busts" that have come down to us through the "boom times" of the past will take time, but without a great deal of love and concerted efforts to unmask the big lie, nothing will change. Power to the people! Right on!

 

 

The photo above is from one of the many sites transformed this past Spring, in and around the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Green Bay Garden Blitz established over one hundred garden beds for local citizens. In very real ways, this has changed the community for the better and for good. The discussions and relationships built by this and other processes is palpable, but it cannot heal our culture overnight. Grassroots change can only occur with the continuing efforts of a few who start the discussion. The idea of each one teaching one takes time to gain momentum, but we are at or near the tipping point that will exponentially change the debate for ever. Dig in wherever you are, be willing to get your hands dirty and to share these ideas with others, it may be our only hope to save lives and the ability of our species to thrive. There was an attempt to get the photo of the Earth from the Moon into every classroom in the state of Wisconsin. For a time, it looked like that would come to pass, but sadly, we have fallen short and although the image forces all of humanity to see proof that we are all inhabiting a sacred blue bauble floating in space, the insidious "business as usual", aided by the "just business", crowd has subverted even this image to sell us more products that we do not need and whose production taints the very oceans and land that make our planet capable of supporting life. Making real, and lasting, change is not for the faint of heart. ECO-Tours of Wisconsin has helped continue this discussion through educational tours, ECO-education and the reclaiming of many hundreds of acres. If not us, who? If not now, when? Donations of time, seeds, trees and money are always graciously accepted and deeply appreciated. We will never give up, the sanctity of our planet and all her creatures are too important to allow the insanity to continue. We will talk to out neighbors, build awareness with each human contact we find and demonstrate ways to heal the threadbare fabric of life.

Time Passages

Many may be familiar with Al Stewart's 1978 version of Time Passages whose haunting melody and enigmatic prose took many of us out of childhood and into a new time signature of life. These are the words.
It was late in December
The sky turned to snow
All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind
Go drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
Well, I'm not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on
Are the things that don't last
Well, it's just now
And then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There's something back here that you left behind
Oh, time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don't know why you should feel
That there's something to learn
It's just a game that you play

Well, the picture is changing
Now you're part of a crowd
They're laughing at something
And the music's loud
A gal comes towards you
You once used to know
You reach out your hand
But you're all alone
In these time passages
I know you're in there
You're just out of sight
Oh, time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

The haunting message that I took from this work was that my own time was not only finite, but largely fictional. The stories that we believe to be true, the ones we tell ourselves, have an awesome power to change our behavior, to literally shape our brains (some say sculpt) and to influence both perception and reality in profound ways.

I once met a woman who had a uniquely overpowered drive to "make something of herself". She had passed the bar, attained mulitple degrees, including doctorates in both psychology and economics. She had pushed herself so hard into a rarefied social and intellectual strata that she was nearly out of touch with virtually everyone she came in contact with. The string of letters after her name was sickeningly similar to the rest of our materialistic world, just a hodge-podge of gluttony and excess.

In her brain, she had sculpted a masterpiece of "I am not worthy of love", based solely on her father not being there for her. When we sat with that feeling and took the time to go through the process of discovery with her about where the feelings of inadequacy that controlled her for nearly her entire life, it came down to a single event. At six years old, she had come home with a piece of artwork (in adulthood she told herself that she was neither creative or artistic) that she made with all of her love and affection for her father. She knew that he would be at home when she got there, so she had verily flown to his side to show him her work, running single-mindedly to show him her labor of love. In her excitement, all she could think was how proud he would be of her. Instead, he had gotten a call just as she got in the door and he dismissed her, saying he was busy with an important call.

It was not that she was unstable or had a pathological condition, but in her own mind, she had gone through a portal into a created universe. Her world from that moment on was based on the fact that whatever she attempted would never be good enough for her father and as desperately as she desired his love and affection, she always felt that she either did not deserve it or that she needed to prove herself worthy of the love that she felt went missing that day. This example sounds like fiction until we look a little harder into our own lives and our own experiences. Inside each of our brains there is a six year old child (in some, even younger) telling us a version of reality that served us decades or lifetimes ago that is completely made up.
In the terms of the EST (Erhardt Seminar Training) people, who now call themselves Landmark Forum, each one of us is a racket running machine, incapable of being anything but. The lies we tell ourselves are designed to placate the ego, mediate our internal conflicts and prove to ourselves that even our most outlandish actions are defensible.

Really, who needs a half dozen degrees after all? Well, if you have to ask, this six year old child-lady for one. as she began to liberate her thinking about what was true about her life, she saw for the fist time that the endless arguments and heartfelt disagreements that she had with her father during the course of her life were not because of any fault or crisis of thought that she was having, but because her father had a deep respect for her. From her new perspective, she was able to understand that the main reason her father debated nearly every issue with such fury was because she was the one person who he felt was his intellectual equal. Anyone else would have been unable to hold up their end of the debate. In his actions, he was actually giving her the love that the six year old inside had craved, but in an even deeper and more meaningful way.

Needless to say, when this breakthrough in her own mind was made, a floodgate broke that released a lifetime of tears and frustration and her hardened and cynical shell that she had constructed to protect herself from hurt was ripped away, exposing the character of the child she had so perfectly denied existed inside her for so long. She had created myriad ways of ignoring the desire to bond with her father, instead focusing on pleasing and proving herself to the world. Ironically, none of it had worked. She came to her Landmark forum neurotic, unhappy and longing for satisfaction that had always eluded her.

I was in poverty when I experienced my own Landmark Forum. for the better part of two decades I had worked harder and harder to pull myself out of poverty, but each time my earnings crept up to that imaginary line, they would raise the earnings needed to break out. I had experienced homelessness, squatting (living in a home that did not belong to me) and dumpster diving to keep my body alive. I had raised one child to school age and another was still in diapers, but we (our family of four) lived on less than five hundred dollars a month. The story I told myself is that I was not worthy of more. When I look back on those years of strife and financial turmoil, they were part of the rackets I ran on my own self.

Somehow, I had created a reality in my own brain that was doubly vexing. not only did I not feel worthy of success, but I also told myself that breaking out of poverty would require a relinquishing of my deeply held values. My plight was living proof that to succeed in this world, one has to knuckle under to the oligarchy, sell out to the man and adopt the abusive principles of capitalism. The irony here is that when I did sell organic shirts that I silk screened with my own original art, they flew off the shelves. That business went under because my source for organic cotton shirts was dealt a crippling blow by the Republic of Texas that passed a law saying that organic cotton could not be grown in their state. This was more proof to me that doing the right thing carried penalties that were out of my control.

I also sold protest pins and buttons that made a profit of many thousands of dollars over the course of twenty years, but a dollar here and a dollar there never leaves enough to invest or build a business. After all, how many "Kill Your Television", "No Nukes"  and "Wearing Buttons Is Not Enough" buttons do we really need? Much like my used clothing store, that I had in my dorm room in college, making money always seemed easy. I never gouged my customers and the product seemed to sell itself, because I concentrated on quality at fair prices. I'm the same person that I was back then, but I have sculpted my brain in new ways that allow me to focus on making a better living without sacrificing my deeply held beliefs.

Often the stories that guide our lives have been made up by a child and we have to ask ourselves the serious question, "How long do we want to let the hurt child inside make all of our decisions for us?"

Living in the now involves not only bidding adieu to past and future, but vanquishing the limits placed upon our lives by prior experiences. Not an easy task, I admit, but nothing valuable comes easy. Letting go is far more complex than the words imply, but rest assured it can be done. Our inner world determines what we are capable of seeing around us and how we perceive the world can be changed over time. Investing in clarity of thought pays incalculable dividends. Along your path, try to always remember that the universe is unfolding as it should.

U.S. Medical Research Tops 100 Billion/year

It may not seem like much, but imagine what could be done with an extra dollar per day multiplied by every single man, woman and child across our great nation. The biggest fallacy in this funding storm is that we will learn something important for all of these dollars. I have personally designed and carried out research that led to important discoveries, but they languished, were never published and never was funding available to allow full-time commitment to studying the important information that had implications for health, welfare and quality of life issues that will be with us for generations. If I could have tailored my research to support the multinational drug companies, or showcased the beneficial impacts of corporate greed or deception, I might have made a career of continuing research. The problem, for me, was that in seeking truth, I ran headlong into the teeth of the corporate welfare machine. Researchers who attempt to take the high road are both scoffed at and most often never funded.

In the cases that I studied, I neglected to think through who might pay for the sort of information that I gathered. If I had done so, I would have understood that my lines of inquiry posed a threat to current beliefs and understanding that command our attention and circumscribe our imagination. Great fortunes and careers can be made if researchers tailor their lines of questioning, as well as the answers they seek to the predominant approach to "science, medicine, and health" that are currently serving the ultra-wealthy. Any attempt to redefine our concept of health, (physical, mental, emotional or spiritual) welfare, security, physical reality or our relationship with the planet will not receive the attention they deserve and those who wish to carry our research on ways to live better at lower cost are deemed subversives and their research never sees the light of day. If the rich and powerful corporate welfare recipients cannot make even more money, they will have none of the truth that comes out from even the most cursory investigation. however, if there is a proprietary "cure", a silver bullet shrouded in side-effects or a patentable device, they will pour as much money as necessary into the investigation just to "make sure" that it works.

Ideas as simple as food is medicine and medicine is food cannot find a funding source because there is no money to be made by corporados on carrots, broccoli or cabbage. The lion's share of these research dollars flow to places one might expect. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, you know them, the poster children for medical research. If those who produce the commercials can find a soft spot in our armor, they can begin their work, getting us to donate to their "cause". Frequently, we see the results of our hyper concern, but the underlying truth is covered up as surely as the causes of our maladies. The Livestrong campaign, as many know, used Lance Armstrong as their organization's "face". What better person to put on your anti-cancer campaign but a survivor of testicular cancer. Old one nut was dropped as the spokesperson for their campaign after his doping fiasco came to a head last year. Lance finally admitted that he did take both banned substances (which can be carcinogenic) as well as using blood doping to win the Tour de France repeatedly. The part that the news spent the least amount of time on, however, was the fact that the Livestrong campaign spend less than five cents of every dollar they raise on cancer research and aid to those who have the disease. The elaborate heart-string pulling ads, the cute yellow bracelets and the multi-million dollar ad campaign primarily funds the PR folks, the kickbacks to sponsors, the corporate welfare whores who are the primary culprits poisoning the world. The research that shows plainly the rise in cancers and the collateral increase in carcinogenic materials in our environment are blackballed before they ever see the light of day.

Learning to ask the right questions can take a lifetime and I certainly am not the best authority on this topic, but the trends seem to be far to clear for us to ignore. The rapidly escalating occurrence of gluten intolerance, allergies of all types and mental disorders stem from a common source, but research that threatens the status quo will never make it to the trade journals, never be "taken seriously" by the monied classes and even if we were to do the hard work of proving the fallacies of business as usual, there would never be enough political will to go against those who are the major funding sources of either the research or the political campaigns of our leaders. Even benevolent and compassionate folks who seek to improve the quality of life for others buy into the failed systems of ecological destruction, scientific mayhem and dislocation that flows from the tendrils of corporate greed machines. This is why the first green revolution failed. This is why missionaries nearly always fail. This is why unequal distribution of wealth gets increasingly worse, never allocating resources fairly, never assuring that quality of life increases are not tied to ecological destruction. The way we attack problems has not changed, so expecting outcomes to change by doing more of the same is tantamount to building castles in the sand. Basing our way of life upon lies can never lead us to a better place. Confronting truth, even when it is uncomfortable is the only way forward.

My entire health-care budget is barely a dollar per day. I buy and grow my own herbs, visit a chiropractor occasionally and do my best to avoid breathing, drinking or eating anything that causes negative health impacts. I occasionally have to look at what others put in their grocery carts, what they choose to do for a living and the activities that they deem to be "fun" and wonder why more people are not dying off more quickly. Approximately 85% of what is sold at most grocery stores is what I consider to be non-food items. Pure salt, pure sugar, (or a combination of both) processed with a long list of questionable or dangerous additives, etc. The research that we all need so desperately is not the stuff that giant corporations and institutions are willing to fund, quite the opposite, it is what they are unwilling to see, unwilling to admit and vehemently opposed to seeing. I know a handful of people who grew up near or had parents who worked at the nuclear generating stations along Lake Michigan's shore. They are all battling thyroid conditions and several have had cancers, but none of them think that the radiation had anything to do with their conditions. Research into these sorts of toxic hot spots would reveal much, but the cost to industry of this sort of truth could be their undoing. I'm sure that they would have us know that there will be none of that!

Crippling Political Debate By Design

As we see daily, the terms and phraseology that is used to "debate" issues is often more important than the content of the arguments. I have written a length about such legislative schemes before, but several examples have come and gone over the years that bear repeating. One of the first that I noticed was the Clean Water Act, which despite having a great name only codified levels of pollution that were acceptable or permissible. Even though we know that toxic and carcinogenic materials are still flowing into the nation's waters, virtually nothing is being done to stem the flow. The public was all for regulations and the wealthy elites that controlled the means of production of goods and services, our legislatures and the media were intransigent. They were adamant that any limits on their effluent would cripple their ability to fatten their wallets and have us pay for it with poisoned water. They were comfortable abusing us, so why would they want to change? The same scenario took place during debate on the Clean Air Act. Think of the wily child (industry) faced with his/her first roadblock to unbridled behavior (public opinion). Of course they would not want to have to do anything differently. Some remain obstinate, even though it has been shown that economic benefits can accrue from running a tighter ship that loses less toxic compounds to the environment, leading to increased profitability.  I understand that there was some resistance to having their freedom to pollute curtailed, but the tactics that were used assured that little progress would be made in the foreseeable future and that every opportunity for avoiding regulation would be tried, from re-defining the terms of the debate to outright refusal to comply. The lawyers had a heyday and the news was all too willing to play the part of mouthpiece for industry. It was plain to see on TV that the majority of those calling for an end to using the air and water as garbage dumps for industry were naive, idealistic hippies and yippies, ne'er do wells and those with too much time on their hands. I remember quite clearly because I was accused of being all sorts of vehemently spat out derogatory words. A favorite of mine was "do-gooder", as if that was a bad thing.

This says nothing about the scientifically proven hazardous products that remain on the market simply because the corporate elites that run our nation claim that said products are fun or necessary or "our right" to "enjoy". Coca-Cola comes to mind immediately.It isn't bad enough that pure, clear water, produced by the fine people at corporate headquarters is priced higher than their sugar-laden poison swill, but when the negative health affects of their drink are pointed out, there is always a new multi-million dollar advertizing campaign in the works to tell us how we cannot live without it. Every time the public gets an inkling to invest in shutting them down, and stock prices tumble, millions of investors turn tail and flee, leaving more shares available at bargain basement prices for our wealthy overlords to swoop in and pick up the pieces after our nervous desperation. In the stock market, unlike poker, our opponents don't even need a "tell", they see right through the rhetoric of public opinion, because many times they have manufactured it.

During the fights for clean air and water, regulators were left, like toothless dogs, nipping at the heels of industrialists. In the end, as often happens, the simplest and easiest (read cheapest) things were done to mask the deeper problems of toxic chemical contamination and we still have not addressed them in any meaningful way. What all of the insults, degradation and rhetoric are designed to do is make those who believe in the right to clean air and water (world class education for our children, healthcare or whatever the public wants) out to be socialists, communists or whatever colloquial term stands in for "people who do not matter". I remember, I was part of those other fights too.

When listing the hundreds of pieces of legislation that have come down the pike, not including the budgets laden with pork and add on rules that fly in the face of good sense, it is hard not to see the machinations of billionaires at work behind the scenes, the echoes and traces of capital guiding the debate, as well as the votes and pens of our "representatives" is in evidence. Wisconsin's Governor and legislature has gone as far as letting a minor player in the mining industry, one with a list of ecological atrocities as long as your arm, write the legislation that will guide state regulators who, try as they might, will no longer be able to reign in the assaults of toxic contamination wrought by that industry. In addition, frack-sand mining is completely un-regulated and requires no remediation because sand is not considered a mineral under Wisconsin's regulatory scheme. Anyone who has seen the scars left behind when removing subsoil knows that it will take hundreds of years to heal those kinds of wounds to the ecosystem.

The Patriot Act was one of these poor excuses for a law that we have become accustomed to. While undermining our freedoms, stripping away rights and spending billions that could never do anyone any good, or create anything worth having, our ruling elite assured that our lives would be thoroughly constrained and that nothing would/could be done about it. The stories we hear about terror plots being foiled from time to time, upon closer inspection, are most often entrapment schemes in which Federal Agents offer to provide a tiny slice of the lunatic fringe not only resources that were unavailable to them, or critical planning expertise so that pipe dreams seem to be coming to fruition. Then, the agents and their cohort of "law enforcement" friends swarm in and protect us from what? Some big talkers who had no resources, or even the hope of a plan, before the government's inside man started offering them explosives and expertise? It is a ruse of the highest caliber. Patriots would never have stood for exempting the federal government from so many checks and balances. The people who fought and died in battle to supposedly "save" America from all foes domestic and foreign would roll over in their graves if they saw what we have allowed our government to do to us.

I have written at length about No Child Left Behind, the laws that impose more testing (which never taught anyone anything) on an already staggering educational system. After the sustained assault of regulators on our educational system, the crippling effects of thirty years of meddling, it is amazing that any students learn anything. Now we have voucher schools in which teachers do not even have to have a degree to teach, yet we are willing to fund them just like public schools. With your tax dollars! The same public schools which are constrained in every respect by laws that have been passed over the years that dictate and mandate everything from how teachers are required to teach, how much of their time should be spent babysitting for the worst actors and what they need to do if they suspect any number of crimes have been committed by or against their students. Anyone who has followed the last thirty years of educational history in America has seen the slow erosion of quality that has come directly from teachers being overburdened with more and more requirements and regulations. The charter school subsidization has been both imagined and conjured up by well-heeled interests who still believe that separate is equal and that their children do not need to be mainstreamed with "those people". That is why the teaches had to be demonized, ridiculed and stripped of their rights to organize.

People who have enjoyed every sort of privilege have always sought to maintain their status, but in these times we have seen this become pathological. It is not that the tools of oppression, that have existed for generations, are not as lucrative as they once were.  The appetite for cash and power that comes with it is insatiable. In our system, the whims and desires of the 1% have never been sated by having enough. The uberwealthy have believed for years, and perhaps they will continue to believe, that the rest of us are sub-human and deserve their exploitation and the rhetoric that they control proves the fallacy. Recent work to bring the wealthy to heel has met rhetoric that labels the wealthiest corporate welfare whores as "makers" and the rest of us as "takers". The elderly, crippled, handicapped, destitute, disenfranchised and children, yeah, they are just out to bankrupt the bastions of industry, banking and information. WAKE THE FUCK UP! The richest people, worldwide, are the ones siphoning off potential earnings that could go to those people who slave their entire lives away making it possible for the wealthy to live in luxury.

Do I have to point out the fact that without the maids, the wait staff, the dry cleaners, the auto detailers and flight attendants, without the maintenance staff, the grocers and cops, without the teachers and military services to defend their wealth, these top dogs would have to get their own bones, clean up after themselves and make their own beds in the morning. We are the real makers and all the uber-wealthy seem to know how to do is take and guide the discussion away from how they might pay their fair share.

New Yorkers are finally getting behind a true patriot that is standing up to the uber-wealthy, asking for them to pay their fair share and it is making waves across the nation. I only hope that, in time, we will come to realize that giving them everything they want, all the time is just as bad for us as it is for them. Anyone who has raised a child knows that giving in always has unintended consequences. No one deserves to be ruled by a demanding child and that is exactly what the 1% have become. It is time to force them to grow up and develop a bit of compassion for the rest of us.

The Latest Lies From Wisconsin's Governor

Bear with me for a moment. I would like to apologize to readers from other parts of the country, and world. Your government agents may be less despicable than Scott Walker, but the shenanigans that he has brought to his office need to be seen clearly if we are to avoid losing the tiny grasp we have on the democratic process worldwide. I believe it was Napolean who said, "I study my enemies so that I might hate them more aptly." Those familiar with my writing probably understand that I do not advocate hatred or misunderstanding, but by learning as much as we can about the modus operandi of the people who would enslave us and benefit from our pain and suffering, we can begin to find ways to remove them from their powerful positions and take back some of the wealth and dignity that they have stolen from the general public, me and you, through their exploitation and deceit.

As we enter the fourth recall election season in Wisconsin's history, it is well to look back on the reasons for the prior recalls and what was at stake so that we can realize how important our actions are today. In the early days, the only elected officials that served four year terms were the State Senators and the Judiciary. Until 1926, when the offices of  Governor, Lieutenant Governor,  Attorneys General and other offices were increased to four years, the window of opportunity for recall was too small to make it an effective tool against most elected officials. All that is required to force a recall election is signatures from 25% of the voters who turned out for the last election for that office. The idea that this is easy is often touted by the officials who face recall, but in fact, in my experience as a community organizer, the vast majority of Wisconsin residents are typically unwilling to sign petitions that force capricious extra expenses on the government. Certainly the cost of a statewide recall campaign costs many millions of dollars, but in the recall of Governor Scott Walker, the public has deemed the damage caused by his policies to be greater than the cost of another election process.

Historically, there have been nearly a dozen attempts to garner enough signatures to force recalls, but only four have resulted in actual recall elections. The first, in 1932, against Otto Mueller for his opposition to a tax proposal made by the Governor failed in the ballot box by nearly a two to one vote. The two prior successful recalls were both in relatively recent history The 1996 removal of State Senator George Petak, over his double-cross of the voters on the issue of taxing Racine residents to help pay for the new Milwaukee Brewers Stadium. He had claimed to be against the tax during his campaign for office and supported it when he got in. Again, the recall was utilized to remove State senator Gary George, in 2003, just prior to his imprisonment on corruption charges. The people of Wisconsin have now embarked on a serious campaign against big money, the influence it has wielded over our current representatives and with the election of Governor Walker, there has been a groundswell of sentiment that wishes to have the right to know what an elected official will do before they are elected, rather than having to sit on the sidelines while the big dogs run the State House. Repeatedly, the shouts and cries have gone up around the State Capitol, here in Wisconsin, "This Is Our House!" and the people mean it!

To see and hear the heinous fallout that has come from the policies and pen of a single man is to know the ire that exists in Wisconsin right now. Just yesterday, it was revealed that with a single stroke of the Governor's pen, a loophole that had been closed, that allowed corporations to funnel their activities through shell corporations in other states that have no income tax, was reopened. This single change will take over 300 million dollars out of the state coffers in just the next two years. That is equivalent to 1/3 of the "savings" that Governor Walker has been touting. He says that he has cut the cost of state government and created jobs, but when we look around, we see a different story. Layoffs are in the news almost daily, and as the government programs are cut further, more and more citizens are being forced to live on less. Wisconsin leads (and that is a terrible word) the nation in job loss. We are dead last in job creation and as we look around the state, many of the standards that we have worked for decades to establish are being undermined and eviscerated. One of the most dramatic steps back occurred after the election of Governor Walker, but before he even took office. He pledged to cancel plans for high speed rail between Milwaukee and Madison. Thirty years of hard work had gone into the planning and enabling legislation that would lead to 21st century transportation in the most populous part of the state. Now, the congestion and danger that exist on the highways, as well as the cost in time, fuel and automobile purchase, maintenance and repair will continue to increase for those living in that corridor the foreseeable future.

We need affordable transit, not only in the urban south, but through the Fox River Valley as well. The most dangerous and deadly highway in the state runs through my neck of the woods and because of that, there have been groups trying to get a high speed rail option here for three decades. The current governor has proven to us by his actions that he not only does not care about our wishes, but that he has contempt for them. Rather than entering into any serious dialog, he has sequestered himself from the public and entertained no possibilities for listening to anyone who opposes his quest to turn Wisconsin citizens into tools for the production of increasing corporate power. We the people, must no longer stand by, while our environment is sacrificed, our children and elderly are abused and neglected, teachers vilified, and the voters of the state are spoken to in condescending ways or fed lies that are constantly "propped up" by more lies.

I offer this information as a call for everyone, worldwide, to stand for truth, demand responsibility from our elected officials and command respect from those who are supposedly leading us into the future. We cannot turn the clocks back to the age of Ozzie and Harriet anymore than we can affect the tides of history. We are embarking on a pilgrimage to one of two futures. One, appears to be more in harmony with nature, one another and able to support everyone at a higher standard of living at less cost. The other, I routinely call "business as usual" and involves more money flowing into ever-fewer hands and the power that comes with it keeping ever-greater numbers of us as wage slaves and in poverty. Stand for all that is right and good with the world, Lord and Lady know, we need to change the direction that we have been heading for the past few generations.

Look Who Is Using The Term Class Warfare!

Shame on the Republican shills for big oil, big energy and big media! In all the coverage of our President's new economic recovery plan, the lap dogs of the ultra wealthy have once again dominated the airwaves. Whoever owns this country, or whoever thinks they do, keep telling us their corporate line BS and expecting us to swallow it hook line and sinker. Well my friends, the American public just isn't that hungry. Class warfare has been going on in our country for generations. Just look back at the early attempts unions made in bringing humanity to the workplace. The American worker is still not treated much better than slaves. In some cases they are treated worse. At least slaves got three hots and a cot. After a long day of work for most employees, their paltry wages are still dwindling down to nothing as the costs of food, transportation and housing continue to outpace wages. The same plutocratic minority is in charge, the same dangerous workplaces exist and the same rampant disregard for the lives of those who create the wealth of our nation are looked upon with disdain and suspicion.

I work in a place where the wealthy elite come to play. I see it routinely. From concerts with two tiered distinctions between VIP seating and VVIP seats to the ordinary and bizarre distinctions between "going to see the game and having luxury boxes. Now how can we say there is not class warfare when the extraction of capital is practiced against the impoverished while the amazing majority of that extraction flows to fewer and fewer hands? For instance, as with the luxury boxes at our local football stadium, the five thousand dollar price per game equates to 71.5 regular seats. Don't you think that the fellow buying that sky bow knows that he is worth 71.5 times as much as the peons who are seated down below? Just as we denigrate the poor in the media, blame them for our country's economic woes and for their own lack of "education" paired with sexual and drug induced immorality, we have the nerve to make sweeping judgements about the entire class of poor people, just as we used to do with Italians, Poles and yes even the Hungarians. you know, I have a friend who is poor, and he's not like the others...

The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that started when the news covered an ignorant and duplicitous agent of industry who has floated to the top of the shit heap of young Republicans in the House of Representatives continues to nag at my sensibilities. For one, I have been on the lower end of the income scale all of my life. I maxed out near the end of Clinton's time as President at 32K. From there, it has been a long slow fade out. I work at least as hard, at least as long and at least as often as I did back then, but the rewards are less because capitalists find ways through any rules one might put in place to protect them from their bosses. They know what they want, more money, and have the talent of being able to work around any attempt to secure a better livelihood for their workers.

That being said, I have to qualify the statement with information that is also true and to some extent growing in the minds of a sliver within the corporate world. Some employers take a different tack altogether. Some workplaces, and they are mostly in the small is beautiful movement, mostly made up of folks who were disillusioned with their own status when trying to climb the corporate ladder. They have turned to the marketplace as producers with conscience and are attempting to give their workers a better lifestyle as well as better wages and benefits. Frequently these companies realize that their workers represent whole people with needs and families that are important to them. One company here in Green Bay wanted their workforce to be educated and therefore paid tuition for up to three credits per semester for anyone employed full time. Sadly, when the company was purchased by a multinational corporation, that was one of their first cost cutting measures. small business has a chance to do the right thing, but once you get a chance to play with the big boys, your focus changes.

Of course there is class warfare going on in our country, it has been with us for centuries. to deny it is to fly in the face of fact, but it is not contained in the recovery plan which has so recently been targeted by the Speaker of the House, no, the President is trying to reign in the top dogs who have not only fared the best in our economic collapse, but who have consolidated their wealth beyond comprehension. Of course the agents that they hired to raise holy hell in Washington are squawking about it. That's their job. If they only realized how beholden to the super rich they are, perhaps they would rebel against them as surely as we all must. for without the stranglehold the wealthy have over the rest of us, change would not only be possible, but unstoppable. Through the systematic separation of goods and services from sources of capital and the estrangement of our population centers from sources of income, we have marginalized greater numbers of people than ever before. After 9-11, we had a brief moment to reassess our decisions to live further and further from where we work, where we play and from those who really matter to us. Having neglected the opportunity to make sound decisions for the future, we have mostly relegated ourselves to focusing more and more of our time and  ever more effort to support the wealthy as opposed to the poor in our country, no, in fact, the world. We are being tormented by those who would use true words being applied to false subjects and subjecting truth to the ultimate crime, being rendered as falsehood in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In time, I hope we can all look back on this dark period in our history, see it for what it truly is, and guard against this sort of rhetoric and misunderstanding ever making their way into the minds of our leaders.

The top 10% of wage earners are still doing quite well and if they are not going to spend their money, then we need to find alternatives to getting the over 4 trillion dollars that they are holding hostage back into the economy. i understand that they are afraid of a black man being President, but taking their marbles and going home is simply not patriotic. Spouting lies and trying to scare the general public has been generally accepted as heinous enough to be considered terrorism. In this case, we need to seize their assets and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. I don't care if they hold public office or not, duly elected or not, those who inject fear and lies into public discourse are dangerous and need to be stopped. The media who claims to be even-handed in their coverage without even understanding the issues is even more dangerous and thanks to them, we have a situation in which truth or lies are less important than how stirred up we can get people. It is a sad day for democracy when the rich get whatever they want and the poor have to find their own way to cope, with little help for the government and none from their neighbors because they have fallen on hard times as well.


Corporate Welfare = Class Welfare

Making Waves in Turbulent Times

I waited until all the hoopla about 9-11 died down for a reason. The messages that I would like to share about that day are easily ignored by those who are single minded, "patriotic", still mourning and/or delusional about not just what happened ten ten years ago but our responses to it. Like an egg beater in the ocean, I have whirred, flailed about, writhed and done my best to stir up elements of truth in the ocean of deception that surrounds not only the myth of 9-11 but the wholesale mortgaging of basic human potential that has come about because of this discreet and unique event. The proliferation of memorializing and the term "never forget" assume that the truth of what went on that morning is known, understood and that we are "protected" from this sort of thing ever happening again. The fact that the hijackers were all on terrorist watch lists but yet were allowed to all board just four planes at virtually the same time begs the questions, "Why had this sort of attack not come sooner?" "What on Earth were our anti-terrorism experts thinking?" and "Why have all the other "failed attempts" to create havoc been conceived and carried out by what seem like inept High School students in comparison?" The fact that our own inept security establishment is to blame for the event never seems to have come up.
 There are those who, with various credible evidence, believe that the whole thing was staged for maximum political capital, social control and corporate greed. I'm not enamored with this position, but only because I would like to think that our leaders can be trusted to do their best.Without 9-11, we would have saved over a trillion dollars of money, billions of hours of human potential, wasted on "security" operations perpetrated on law abiding citizens, and hundreds of millions of opportunities for constructive endeavors would have presented themselves for those who are engaged in the new layer of security that we pass through daily. I have not yet run the numbers on the post 9-11 build up of security related systems, personnel and seemingly infinite reach of the police state into our lives, but my gut feeling is that the current economic malaise is, in large part, a result of our knee jerk reaction to fallout from 9-11.
Frequent and unrelenting reminders of our "dangerous" world serve a dual purpose. For the weak of heart, they incapacitate. Like a deer in headlights, they wax apoplectic, unable to think, reason or act. Those who maintain their composure and understand the dangers of buying into this fear and insecurity can easily be labeled conspiracy theorists, or at least unfeeling, callous, unpatriotic and cold. Without a groundswell of public opinion against suspension of habius corpus, invocation of the War Powers Act, or revisionist approaches to carving our history in the minds of a nation. Tools of subjugation have become evermore debilitating, evermore deftly wielded by our oppressors and evermore misunderstood by those who are controlled by them. We have not yet surfaced from the last wave than another tragedy washes over our sensibilities, brought to us in living color and the immediacy that the 24 hour news cycle demands. That is why the hows, whys and therefores are completely ignored by the media. They are not immediate enough to be seen by the camera. The depths and subtleties of events are glossed over for the sake of immediacy. Getting into too much detail on any subject might estrange viewers. Bring up difficult questions or cause folks to get involved in solving the problems that lead up to the catastrophes that are the stock and trade of the media.
What is needed in our time is a renaissance of citizenship that realizes that freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes, but the responsibilities that fall to those who are truly free are commensurate with that liberty. We cannot beat the drum of freedom and democracy if we simultaneously deny it to out own citizens. Vast outlays of capital that are designed to protect the ultra wealthy with funds raised off the backs of the working class amount to the same unjust political systems that we rebelled against in the Revolutionary War. If not for the elaborate tapestry of "current events" we might be able to see the tsunami that is rushing toward the American Dream. The fallout from the real estate boondoggle, the jobless recovery, the destabilization of climate are all rooted in the same wrenching schism. Without a committed minority devoted to telling the truth in this age of lies, we cannot hope to avoid cataclysm. I have recently become enamored with the natural history of the salmon. They go with the flow for seven years, waiting for nature to give them some mysterious signal. No one can say what the nature of the change is, but once they are 'turned on", they fight their way home to where they were born and will not stop until they either become bear or people food, procreate, or die trying. They may not understand the spiritual aspects of their laboring against all odds for the benefit of the next generation, but we can surely learn a lesson from their fighting against all odds to do what is necessary to assure their species survives into the future.

The Coruption of Capitalism

Dawn broke grey and terrible over Green Bay on the Day I had selected to depart for my 4,280 mile bike tour of the Great Lakes Ecosystem; April First, 1987. For a period of two years I had studied the complex interrelationship between the heavy hand of human activity and the specific, known insults that have been perpetrated upon the landscape and watershed of these critically threatened inland seas. When I was age seven, I had an epiphany that every cell of my being was hydrated by water from this ecosystem, that eventually the moisture of each breath would find it's way back into the system. The very same liquid that dripped off my toe, when dipped in the Fox River running through my backyard, could potentially make it's way back to the sea through the St. Lawrence River.
In an instant, I felt that my being extended through the whole watershed, and lapped at each and every shore of these Great bodies of water. In the moment of ecstasy that the experience engendered, I resolved to pedal my bicycle around the Great Lakes to help me to understand their full extent and complexity. At that time, the alewife invasion was reaching a climax and rafts of dead fish would wash up on the shore. Knowing that the system was out of whack, that my life would be dedicated to educating the common man about ecological benefits that accrue if we change our relationships with the earth, soils, air, fire water and spirit. Even as a child I struggled with the question of how to share a message of compassion for the planet in a culture based on wreaking ecological havoc. I knew I was setting myself up for a hard row to hoe, but my inner spirit took on the challenge anyway, fully expecting to be made a martyr for my understanding and insight. I have always seen my way through hard times and heavy weather with the same intent spirit. Recently, I heard a Scandinavian say, "There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." On that historic first day out,  I suited up and after a hearty breakfast at a locally owned breakfast place, rode out of town to the north and west into the teeth of a storm that started with sleet and massive flake snow and on through eighty miles of everything Mother Earth could throw at me. When I was coming toward my aunt's house ten hours later, in Marinette, the snow was deep enough that I could not see below my knees!
This approach to life in general is the polar opposite of the way we are running our American corporate society. Whereas I took out upon a beautiful adventure into the heart of a storm, our businesses today want to capitalize on the fact that they are victims, of a bad economy or because of a few bad decisions. Whatever their sob story, the sham way of doing business that led to this collapse cannot possibly help us to find a way forward. The shift that is coming is toward sustainability, not extraction. Supportive commitment to a dream, building strong foundations for sustainability.
My adventure began from a point of knowing with every part of my being that what I was about to see would break my heart, drive home the point that Mother Earth has been raped, poisoned and sterilized for senseless greed and with exquisite deceit. American business, the Goliath economic forces that have colluded with government to keep the rest of us in slavery need to cease and desist. corporate welfare, especially the military industrial complex simultaneously suck at the teat of workers, who are the most true patriots, carrying the weight of millions on their backs! Businesses need to suck it up and spend money that will assist in raising quality of life for all Americans and instituting services and centers for capital that allow sensitivity to the local needs, issues and skills that ultimately will be put to their highest use locally. separating sources of capital from either the workers or where they are able to purchase services only adds to the toxic load on the environment caused by transportation.
Living lightly on the planet requires buying local as much as possible and utilizing shared resources cooperatively. there are tens of thousands of co-ops in America, join one, have a say in how they operate, form your own, it it patriotic and can raise quality of lives of far more folks than corporate America ever has. 

Covering Inane Childminds and Liars

Our great media empires seem to have lost their position as the Fourth Estate. In days of old, the efforts of newspapermen were in search of truth, justice or exposing their polar opposites. Many times, the press was used to tease out salient points hidden behind the rhetoric and deception perpetrated on the public by powerful forces who work best cloaked in secrecy. somewhere along the line, perhaps with the advent of the twenty-four hour news cycle, truth and vetting sources, doing the actual work of news gathering, has fallen out of favor. more and more often, folks are not interested in finding out the truth about any issue but rather finding the newscaster who will tell them what they already know. Instead of getting information that we can use to make sound decisions that will benefit the most people, we get only the part of stories that overwhelm our ability to make sense of the "facts".

It is difficult to piece together a coherent view of most issues because of the abysmal coverage that we receive over our traditional media sources. Fragmentary pieces of information arrive, often without context or coherent logical structure so that the viewer (we get more and more of our information from video sources) is left to place the data in whatever inappropriate context they wish. For instance, the belief that the US gives vast amounts of wealth to virtually every other country, but needs to attend to our own business more lies on the mistaken belief that benefits isolationists and nationalists at the expense of the truth. We do give, where there is need, but the real crime is a free hand given to weapons dealers who destabilize vast areas of the globe and who are literally subsidized by the humanitarian efforts that are required once populations are terrorized. In areas that fall under the power and control of whatever warlord has decided to exert dominion over them, lawlessness and tragedy are sure to follow. The majority of our giving is not in the form of relief but rather in the subsidization of corporate interests who benefit from the pain and poverty of others.

I would like to inject a few numbers to keep this in perspective but I do not want to risk the possibility of losing the point in the numbers either. Suffice it to say that when there is a desperate need, we try to help, but often the root of the problem is totally ignored. sending food to a refugee camp is like the proverbial giving a man a fish. What is needed is resolving the problems, "teaching the people to fish". In most instances, the plight which we wish to deliver recipients of aid from cannot be addressed with money, rather it will take long-term education, resolving cultural issues and tearing down the destabilizing institutions that led to the inhumanity in the first place. Natural disasters are another story entirely. Looking at our own Gulf Coast, we have living proof that our ability to respond to need, even in our own country is woefully lacking. No amount of money can account for the outpouring of love and human effort that has gone into that region, yet vast areas are still uninhabitable, basically untouched for the past six years.

Any idiot seems to be able to stand up and spout bullshit and if there is a camera in the room they usually go unchallenged. Worse, folks will let the charade stand throughout the news cycle, adding importance and validity to their claims by the infinite proliferation of the images and audio that makes their lies seem true. When Nixon said, "I am not a crook", the truth of that statement was immediately questioned and fine lines were drawn to help us gain perspective on what that meant. He may have been a bigot, a paranoid son of a bitch, a pompous lying ass, but of course, he never "stole" anything. Sadly, the positions that he believed himself to be in were of his own creation. He actually was a crook who stole from the poor to give to the rich, just like our current slate of representatives. Without investigation and clarity about issues that affect our daily lives, democracy cannot stand. Without the gatekeepers of information providing us with truthful reporting, how can the public be expected to  hold our representatives to task, suss out where the truth lies or what direction will lead us to timely resolution of our difficult position? In lieu of good information, hearsay and innuendo rule the day. Worse than mere rumors, when we broadcast lies and half-truth, it leads the average person to think that what their eyes and ears are telling them are indeed fact. nothing could be further from the truth. 

First Harvest In Full Swing

The cornucopia is overflowing, abundance surrounds us and fills the larder. Simultaneously, our news programs are full of how shaky the economy is, how dangerous it is to be alive or how terrible someone else has it. My heart tells me that the rhetoric about the dire straights the super rich are in, and how quickly that will "trickle down" to us are overblown. The same suits that have skimmed off hundreds of billions of dollars for nothing more than shuffling paper are included in "talks" about how best to save their stake in the American Dream. White collar crime has never been more robust and certainly has not been more lucrative. The garden that I tend is pumping out produce that has a definite value. I invested early and consistently over time and now the rewards are flowing in. The thieves that put our economy on the ropes were siphoning off unearned income and wealth while putting nothing of value on the table.

 Banks, investors and loan officers are fond of saying that the needy company needs to put in their "pound of flesh", but their tails are so securely swaddled with our tax dollars that when they are on the brink of falling, we will rush in and save them. Nature itself is not too big to fail. If we deem any part of our economy as too big to fail, it ignores natural systems. When things grow exponentially, at a certain point, they must stop and begin to decay. Sad fact, fact nonetheless.
We share a planet, we are engaged in the exploitation of resources that come from the planet's crust. Increasingly, but sadly, not fast enough, we are utilizing both solar and wind to meet our "need" for electricity. Sustainability will demand of us as much inventiveness and creativity as met the needs of the industrial revolution. The next revolution will not look like most revolutions. Rather than destruction and mayhem, our next big shift will be to greener pastures, more agribusiness, local cooperatives and communities that are meeting their own needs rather than relying on high paid "experts" from far away. Economic power has been wielded over rural America for more than a century. Breaking the bonds that inhibit farmers from thinking for themselves, being good stewards of the land and keep them from fostering lasting positive environmental change in the nation will be hard. It may take a generation of education and complete revision of current agricultural policy. The bounty of Earth, when she is cared for, is almost beyond comprehension. It is time to begin acting like we know it. The miracles that keep us alive on Starship Earth need to be encouraged and upheld as the best model for human behavior. Give back, make no waste, store up calories during the fat times and conserve what you have earned by real work and attunement to Nature's Cycles.

The good that surrounds us and tips the balance away from chaos is not based on any intelligence or thought, but feeling. Each and every human on the planet needs to get clear about their own hearts. If anyone still needs proof that who we think we are is not who we are as much as what we feel is. We really need not distract our attention, the heart is the only hope we have for the future. That is why the Earth religions are gaining converts so quickly. Goddess is alive in our hearts and after the bad press that the male deities took over the past couple centuries, we cannot trust any man to not be infatuated by reason. Ultimately we must either choose what a wise friend of mine called Servoglobe, the penultimate Disneyesque technocrat's dream, or rediscover Gaia, the feminine and giving nature of ecology. We currently spend more on health care and get poorer outcomes than most of the rest of the world, yet next year I assure you, we will spend even more to be sicker. Just as our food sickens more and more people each year, but we will not question what we put in our mouths. Another sure bet is that there will be more soda commercials, and even worse diabetes. With the wealth of life sustaining potential all around us, the only thing that gets in the way of recreating Eden is the greed and self centered belief that we are in a competition for scant resources. Don't forget to integrate the concept of the cornucopia into your daily life, don't worry about what will come from being moved by your heart and always remember that none of this could have been bestowed upon us without love and hope borne on wings of abundance.

Homeless Children Deserve A Chance At Camp.

I normally don't get caught up in the media circus that is television "news", but the other day there was a special segment on homeless children, focusing on just one county in Florida. Needless to say, multiply that problem by thousands of counties nationwide, all hit by the same real estate collapse and the amount of heartbreak and stress that presents itself is beyond comprehension. Having worked at summer camps and in programs designed for latch key kids, I know what a single stable force amongst turmoil and desolation can make the difference between success and failure in life. Listening to the stories of homeless children eclipsed the deep love and protective feeling I have for the planet and perhaps even the Great Lakes Ecosystem.
Those who know me remember that I rode bicycle 4,280 miles (6,850Km) around all five Great Lakes, taking eighty days to rediscover my world in person. For years I studied he lakes in books and through research papers dedicated to their many environmental catastrophes, but in those two and one half months of travel, I learned a lifetime of lessons. That is why I want to share what I have learned about sustainability with the next generation and especially those who have prematurely had the weight of adult issues thrust upon them. I am willing to devote my entire working life to finding more and better opportunities to teach eco-ethics, sustainability theory and practices as well as an understanding of living in harmony with the planet as well as her creatures, including people as possible.
The closest estimation of cost is about $125 per day. That figure would allow staff to attend to all of the needs of children and provide enough trained guidance to know that the principles of sustainability are evidenced at all levels of their experience. From transport, whose carbon footprint is offset with our tree planting program, to solar and wind electricity generation, from aquaponic greenhouses providing vegetables and protein, to composting, vermicultue and free range chickens, virtually everywhere a student looked, they could see evidence of humans cooperating with nature exemplified. Two weeks at camp, can easily cost thousands, but we rely on many of our own programs, and long term support of committed individuals to offset capital investments that would be used to sustain the camp over the long haul. Blocks of eighty days ($10K) can be purchased to ensure that five children can attend out camp, each for two weeks. An investment in those five children attending our unique program would come with an additional ten day stay for the generous investor who wants to see our programs in action, or at your discretion, those days could cover ten additional days for a needy child's visit instead.

There is no shortage of children who can benefit from some time in the country, experiencing nature and having fun adventures in fresh air and all kinds of weather. especially in these times where the number of homeless children in America has doubled from one year ago, it is high tiome that we respond with an innovative program of training our most disadvantaged children what can be done with an eye to the future and the inspired actions toward sustainability. children of hardship often become future leaders and knowing that the goodness to help out exists especially when the chips are down, can make a world of difference in how they turn their lives, and our planet around.
Many of our actions are designed to make our immediate friends, family and environment better, through our unique programs, we allow exponential change to occur and spread it all around, into other communities, that the children return home to and into the future as they raise their own families into the future. The time has come to re-think education from the ground up. Living the future now is the only way to invite the next generation to accept the inevitable change that is needed to achieve sustainability in their lifetime.
Tony Saladino is a liflong environmentalist, shaman and permaculture enthusiast who has led the organization, ECO-Tours of Wisconsin for the last seven years and was formerly the local leader of Citizens for a Better Environment's Green Bay office. Prior experiences as nature guy for the City of Green Bay and for College Settlement Camps of Philadelphia make him an excellent choice for both outdoor guide,sustainability expert and guide for those interested in having both the highest standard of living possible, while assuring that mother Earth will not suffer in the process of providing you abundance.
Corporate rentals during the off season at our facility include leadership training and team building exercises and outdoor adventures to build cohesion between employees and management teams.
Reach us at (nine2zero) 884-triple two-four or write using snail mail to 1445 Porlier street, green Bay, Wisconsin 54301-3334. you can also make donations directly through paypal at: tnsaladino(number forty-two)@hotmail.com. You can also e-mail us at that address.
bless you for sharing this note around. If you cannot personally invest in giving a child this opportunity, let others know who can either consider a gift or share this opportunity with their friends.
bless you for taking the time to read this post, I know it was a little long.

Happy Tax Day America!

Today we can be happy that our responsibility as Federal taxpayers is either caught up for another year, or at least we have been granted an extension. I am always amazed at the lack of information that some of my largest employers seem to have about what they paid me last year. I must be wrong, but I thought that an important part of building a viable corporate entity was bookkeeping. What I am realizing more and more is that money is really less important to a corporation that that they utilize as much time as possible in doing whatever it is that the laws mandate. If they can wait through another weekend before it becomes possible for me to cash a check, or turn in my tax returns, they seem to be happiest. I'm not sure how it all works, but I know how much they owe me by the time I'm headed home from work. It seems that they can barely remember that I ever worked for them, until the govie says, hey, you have to send out tax documents. Whatever the case, it says the same thing to me, usually in bold, underlined and screaming font styles Bullshit!

The news occasionally offers the briefest mention of corporate inequality. GE paid no tax last year, or something equally illogical. When they cover it as news, they always seem to keep the context to themselves. What really gets left out however, is the types and nature of support for industry that the government (taxpayers) give to...

The truly odd part about corporate welfare is that the reasons for it remain mostly nebulous. For instance, Wisconsin recently enacted a corporate subsidy for businesses that locate in our state that supposedly "create jobs". No matter the wages, as long as they are in line with federally set minimums, corporations who locate in our state can be granted a period of no property tax, for the first year after breaking ground on new facilities and  100,000 tax credit per job "created". The first recipient of these favors was a company from Illinois, who was willing to fire all of their existing employees and offer to rehire those who crossed the border with them to the greener pastures of Wisconsin at entry level wages. So, how many jobs did that create? None, but for the tax man's part, "we" Wisconsin's citizens are supposed to feel like winners.

Let's see, across the border, in Illinois, we now have increased unemployment and dislocation of those who formerly had some level of security. Here in Wisconsin, we have created artificial demand for more development. I forget the actual job numbers that were supposed to be at stake, let's say it is 100 jobs just to make the math easier. 100 X 100,000, yeah, that's a million dollars, so the million that would have otherwise been taxes and entered into the state budget to provide building inspectors, waste removal, infrastructure improvements, oversight, etc. that all goes away. What we are left with is a company that will run off to whatever state offers them a sweeter deal than that! I am reminded of the woman who marries a man who she stole from a previous wife. when she had been the "other woman" the guy probably told her whatever drivel it took to get in her pants. Now, she's the one with his ring on her finger and she is sure that he will remain true to her forever. Are you insane? There is less loyalty in most corporations than any philanderer ever had. The real money to be made is in getting desperate saps to give you the milk without having to buy the cow.


It seems to me that the rise of the reactionary conservative agenda has been fostered by fundamentalist religious dogma and that the Calvinist beliefs that underlie most bigotry and hatred that these folks espouse have resulted in mind control of the worst sort. There are huge numbers of people who work in the cash only black market, or who barter and trade services to avoid taxation. As much as I would like to join them, and start to enjoy a bit or tax freedom, I also know that it is unfair to the majority when a small group step outside the system that is supposed to help us all. That is why corporate welfare is so upsetting. The folks who are supposed to be helping to build our country, growing the economy in the process are becoming more and more savvy in collecting the checks from good old Uncle Sam. We are now caught in the gravitational pull of a capitalistic black hole. We have deemed several industries as "too big to fail" and hell or high water, they will be bailed out. In spite of ethical violations, legal improprieties and long-term bad judgment, they will be saved, no matter the cost to taxpayers.  In fact, if they defile the air, water, soil, or create public health problems in their wake, we'll forget about that too, just to make sure that operating within our borders is a pleasant experience for them. This black hole extends far beyond the board rooms and back rooms of politics and government. It is patently obvious in the news, entertainment and can be seen in our proclivity with such diversions as war, political rhetoric and sports. These folks who have been sucking at the teat of government are the elephant in the room that people keep telling us is holding up the roof, when in fact it is becoming so bloated as to be threatening to blow out the floor!

People, this tax day, if you owed, rest assured that a good portion of your money will be spent making a rich person's life a little easier. If you got a return, be thankful because your poverty has been recognized and you never should have been loaning those bastards your money anyway. Corporations, or more accurately, corporate stewards, if your company paid taxes, thank you for being part of the American Dream, you are appreciated. If your company paid no tax, got tax breaks that made an otherwise losing proposition pay off, or were outright gifted money from the government, shame on you! As hard as most people work for their money, we should all be able to expect that both corporate leaders and government officials would respect the labor of our citizens enough to not steal from the poor to give to the rich. This Tax Day, take some time and give some serious thought to getting what you want out of the system that you support. The time has come to reclaim our democracy, to make it work for the vast majority of people rather than the few at the top. the freedoms that we enjoy are being eroded by government and industry. don't stand for more of the same. We voted for change, now it is time to take the necessary steps to show our leaders what we meant!
Get involved, stay involved. Lead, follow or get out of the way!

Don't tell me what to do!!

How do we illustrate the nature of the predicament that we find ourselves in? We have already been told to do a million things that either don't make sense or work at cross purposes. In anarchy, we are left to our own devices. Rather than having other people making decisions for us, we get to experience the total freedom that libertarians get all juiced about.  The other side of that equation is that we are held to higher standards of responsibility for our own actions. If we offend or burden others with our stupid behavior, they may decide to kill or maim us. Those who do not believe in revenge would be able to forgive, while those who feel that paybacks are times one hundred would be free to act on their anti-social urges.

In a perfect world, my peaceful and humanitarian beliefs would be reflected in the way our country behaves upon a world stage. The tax dollars that I pay to kill Afghans, Libyans, Palestinians and Pakistanis would not get spent in my name. I fully believe that we have the rights and power to make decisions that reflect our will and that our country, if it remains unresponsive to my wishes should have to relinquish it's access to my funds. I should not have to pay for schools or politicians that advance the myths of any religion, nor should I have to fund activities such as carrying out the death penalty. I should be allowed to grow any plant without fear of reappraisal, not be required to accept the threat of radioactive contamination, food borne chemicals or tainted air or water courtesy of any corporate or private entity.
 Whatever we might call our current system, it seems to work as a sieve, keeping the richest among us in amongst the cream, and allowing the vast majority to slip through the cracks. The people, whose wishes and beliefs this country was founded to express have been all but forgotten in our quest to commercialize everything under our dominion. Anarchy, like communism only have a chance at working in their purest form. When we deconstruct our current culture, there may be a few parts that could be serviceable, but the vast majority of our habits, beliefs and systems reflect an utter bankruptcy that need to be scrapped if we are to have a chance at helping the majority reach the American Dream.
First of all, we need to scrap the power and control issue. The male dominance BS is part of that vestige of a past age. next, we need to protect our children from being indoctrinated into religions that pit one against another and honor their own ability to make up their minds about morality and their own humanity. While we are at it, we should get the government out of the business of telling us what is good for us. we do need some level of understanding about what is bad for us, but protecting industry from paying for the damages that their behavior result in only make them weak and stupid.
Perhaps the thing to do is to "SPREAD ANARCHY", but not because someone says to, but because it is the right thing to do. I promise to play by the absence of rules and honor your right to behave the way you feel is right, as long as it won't limit my right to do what I feel is right. If we need to start over, we can only do it one way. The best starting point is knowing in advance where we want to be and what steps can take us there the quickest with the least dislocation and trauma for the greatest number of people.