How to break the gridlock - what Congress must do

Balanced Budgets or The End of the Republic

There are only two main factions in Congress - those who want "no new taxes" while demanding cuts in social and infrastructure spending, education, etc. and those who want only moderate replacements of tax base lost to the Neocons, while maintaining or increasing social spending, infrastructure, etc. 

Neither of these positions is rational or consistent with the political and economic "facts", yet they gridlock the country with their false dichotomy and "manufactured" information and analysis. 

So, here  is a strategy to stop this right here and now. 

Each party caucus will appoint a committee to construct A BALANCED BUDGET.  No voodoo economics.  No false and loaded assumptions.  Just the facts, ma'am.  How much do you want to spend on each and every part of federal spending?  And where is the money going to come from?  You must balance revenues and expenditures, prioritized to reflect the relative importance (or tax burden) of each item  - a rather simple idea which everyone used to believe in, but in the Age of Obama and Voodoo economics, everyone thinks it's all about pulling rabbits out of hats, or cranking up the printing presses so that we have 100% inflation in the past 12 years, while nominally "adjusting" Social Security and most other incomes by maybe 10%, with the banksters and foreign "investors" and racketeers pocketing the difference.  

When these two budgets are complete, an impartial "referee" committee will sort them out, and come up with some sort of real "compromise" or, better, synthesis which will prioritize each side's taxes and expenditures, and make them fit the facts. 

What we know for sure is that  neither caucus nor its plan will support the kind of military spending we have, today.  Nor the amount of police state and prison funding.  No one wants to pay for this stuff, yet both insist that they support it, and are more or less forced to do so.  Where is the gun at their heads?  Nearly every military officer and thinking soldier I've talked with agrees.  They don't want to be fighting asymmetrical wars.  They don't want to be killing kids and destroying other people's cities and infrastructure. But few understand that they can refuse to do this, and expose the massive fraud and corruption which supports these wars.  One who did understand and acted was Bradley Manning.  He should be a national hero, and for those of us with some remnant of justice and humanity, he is.

It's the CIA, NSA, DEA, Homeland  (In)security and other "black ops" which keep the pot boiling,  turning other peoples and nations against the United States.  It's the CIA which coordinates the Drone strikes - perhaps the most harmful and dangerous breach of international law which the US has ever practiced.  But those flying them are active duty military, and that should be illegal.
  
But even if it were, there is no more "legal" - it's just whatever the Executive and his staff says it is.   Obama is not the first President to do this, but he's done it more blatantly and comprehensively than any previous holder of that office.  In Reagan's day, they practiced "plausible deniability," thus shielding the President from blame.  There was always an Oliver North or some other "undersecretary" of something to take the fall, and then resigning or perhaps going through some sort of show trial to assure the public that this wouldn't be happening, again..  Now, we must give Obama credit for at least doing his murderous deeds openly and with full public scrutiny.  Isn't that what people want?  A strong and ruthless leader? 

People blame the Prison Guards Union for our massive prison system - 5 times greater, per capita, than any other country.  In Montana, they are represented by the AFT/SEIU, which is a very rich and powerful union, and the largest single contributor to the Democratic Party and its candidates.  But the military and quasi-military forces don't have unions.  Is there a Homeland Security Workers Union?  Perhaps, but I haven't heard of it.   No doubt, the SEIU covers the clerical, maintenance, and other HS employees.  

Is there a law which says that you can't belong to a union and have a security clearance?  It wouldn't surprise me if there were - a legacy of the McCarthy Era, but of course in those days, no government employees belonged to unions, except for a few police and fire-fighters.  The AFT goes back nearly that far, too, but the NEA wasn't even a union until the 1960's,  when the AFT first began calling strikes and thus competed with the NEA for membership and jurisdiction. 

The very reason for having private prisons is that they aren't unionized, hence "cheaper".  Some states have even turned their state prisons over to private companies, which insist that the states guarantee a high occupancy rate - to "save money," apparently.  It's totally insane. 

But the bottom line is that no one wants to pay for this stuff, and it is only by massive fraud and corruption in Congress and state legislatures, coordinated by ALEC, Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, et. al. that this can happen.  These elements must be defeated or neutralized if we are to once again have balanced budgets and governments which respect the people and the freedom and self-determination of other nations. 

If unions really are the problem (and my experience with teacher's unions tells me that they are at least partially responsible for going along with and enabling all sorts of bad practice in teaching and education), then they, too, need to be reformed.  The whole "labor" element needs to be reformed, whether it is a legitimate movement or just institutionalized gangsterism.  

I am not a labor organizer, but I know a few, and I understand their problems.  What is still in dispute is the ownership and control over the economy.  Labor has been bribed or tricked into giving up its claims of ownership and equal political status with "capital" in exchange for "health insurance" (which they have to pay for with lower cash wages) and "respect for seniority" which ensures that the entrenched senior leadership will not be threatened by young "upstarts" who may want more than just higher wages and benefits for themselves (and which, for the rest of us, have actually been declining in real terms for several decades, now).  If we're going to be free and civilized, workers and taxpayers need to have a much bigger say in how their labor and taxes are employed and for what purposes and whose profit.  How could it be otherwise?   

Property rights are key, but they are not the "rights" of corporations or of banks and other institutions which presently claim them.  The basic property right is life.  We all have the right to live, and the right to maintain ourselves in some sort of civilized condition.  If we're not in a civilized condition, then all the other rules and practices of governments and societies mean nothing, and we will not recognize nor obey them.  (Is a fetus a person, and does it have the right to live?  That is wholly different question, and the answer to it need have no effect on the lives and well-being of the living, or of those about to die). 

Have you tried to teach "civics" or "government" to teenagers recently?  I did that 20 years ago, and it still seemed possible.  But today?  In a world gone totally insane, when the necessity to "live within our means" and balance revenues and expenditures is seen as being quite impossible?  When 18 CIA-trained "terrorists" with box cutters can start two wars costing trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives - just to make sure the Neocons stay in power?  The kids understand, and what they understand most of all is that our country has gone crazy, and cares nothing for the survival of the present generation, let alone future ones who are still in school, today.  Apparently, our "leaders" have descended to the level of primitive gangsters whose method is to fight, punish, control, and put away anyone and everyone who is "different" or recognizes the common humanity of atheists, Muslims, Maoists, and Republicans. 

"If  you're not with us, you're against us."  That's what our previous President, George W. Bush, told us.  If you don't submit to total corporate domination, you will be sent to die or left to rot in prison, no matter if you've committed any real crimes or not.  Le loi, c'est moi.  I am the law, he told us.  I am the "decider."  Some Republican.  Some Republic. 

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Here's something I started a few months ago, which "adds value" to the above, and provides some more guides to what is important, and what isn't.

Protecting powerful interest-groups' budgets - is it still possible?

You can't "protect" powerful interest-groups' programs without massively raising taxes.  And that is what you have to do in order to discourage such programs, which are rarely better than 25% efficient, and often outright counterproductive, except for providing some stupid fat-ass with a job. 
Our government - the President, Congress, and just about everyone who owes their jobs to their political connections - keeps doing the same stupid stuff, over and over, again.  They claim our problem is lack of "stimulus" spending, or "too severe" cuts in the deficit, while such cuts are never prioritized or rationally applied to the programs or agencies which have the highest costs and lowest rates of social return - such as drones, the CIA, Homeland Security, bankster bailouts, etc., etc. 
Everyone's basic needs, as well as the larger social needs and investments, could be provided for probably a quarter of present federal spending.  The military is presently more than half.  And health care, which is normally about 5% or less of a nation's GDP, is approaching 20%.  So, there's 3/4 of spending, but the taxes to support them is half or less of what is needed to support them at these levels.  There are also massive subsidies to the nuclear and fossil fuel rackets ("mafia" is an accurate description of their methods and thinking) which could easily be eliminated entirely.  Indeed, it is imperative that we do so, and start taxing these "industries" to a level which approaches their social cost and damage to our lives and environment. 
We also spend far more, per capita, on education than our GDP peers, and yet get terrible results from our dumbed-down, politicized school systems and universities.  At the same time, we vastly underspend on other parts of the cultural infrastructure - public broadcasting, libraries, museums, community theater, music, and other organizations. 

But these are mere details in the larger scheme of things - simple administrative and organizational changes would easily correct these alleged "problems."  Obviously, they are mere smoke-screens or diversions from the real problems at hand - the fact that our government has been hijacked by FOG (the corporate Forces of Greed) and the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, including the Nuclear Mafia.  Until that is corrected, nothing else will make any difference.  And we must do it by public pressure and acclaim, since we have no free media, free elections, or any other pre-requisites for a Free Republic.

Real Health Care Reform & why we didn't get any

this was written nearly two years ago for my Tribune blog.  unfortunately, nothing has changed since that time....
 



Bait and Switch:  What would real "health care reform" look like? 

It's obvious that the present "health care reform" which Republicans are threatening to repeal was no reform at all.  It was a "health insurance" bailout, with further steps to assure that every health care dollar will be channeled through monopoly corporations which control nearly every member of Congress and the President of the United States. 

The one non-negotiable part of "health care reform" which would have actually made a difference was the so-called "public option" - Medicare for all who want it, but especially for those who can't afford private health insurance, or don't want it in any case, for whatever reasons.  (Did you know that many fundamentalist Christians refuse to buy insurance because they consider it "gambling"?  And many more don't want it because it's a bad deal for them, with huge co-payments, no choice of treatments, and because most licensed medical providers are simply extortionists - demanding money or proof of payment up front, or they simply let you die). 

What is wrong with our state and federal governments?  Why can't they simply and directly "reform" our health care system?  We've spent millions of man- and woman-hours, billions, nay, trillions of dollars creating, attacking, "reforming", and opposing the systems we have (this in addition to whatever resources have actually been spent in providing and paying for legitimate health care goods and services).  Yet, the system continues to collapse, public opposition to the existing corporate providers and their  agents in Congress and the White House continues to grow, and taxpayers continue to see half or more of our health care dollars wasted on corporate bail-outs, boondoggles, and outright fraud and malfeasance. 

Where and when will it stop?  Do we have to have a political revolution, a total economic collapse, and a totalitarian police state before we can provide people with a simple and fool-proof  health care system?  Why do we have to be the only country in the world which doesn't have one? 

Let's enumerate some of the many outright lies used to defend the present criminal establishment.

(1)  Most people are happy with the system we have - private "health insurance coverage" in which providers can charge whatever they like, and provide whatever products or services benefit themselves (the providers), while forcing patients to pay for them under penalty of law.  Under this system, being "insured" means that the bills are transferred to a private insurance company which has the means to fight unjust or exhorbitant charges in court, thus "negotiating" rates which are roughly 1/4 what an uninsured patient will be forced to pay - even if it means confiscating her pension funds, home, or other assets. 

(2)  No one likes or wants "government control" or a "government takeover" of our health care system.  No one wants to be protected by consumer protection laws, which state that no one can be forced to pay for unwanted or unneeded goods and services, and that prices must be fair and based on real costs to the providers, plus some reasonable rate of profit, not to exceed a mark-up of, say, 100%.  We all love our doctors and hospitals, and thus are more than happy to simply sign over everything we own and have worked for our entire lives whenever we have an accident or serious illness. 

(3)  We all hate Medicare and Medicaid, and wish to see them abolished as quickly as possible.  The same goes for Veteran's Hospitals, the Indian Health System, National Institutes of Health, municipal and county hospitals, clinics, etc.  All of these are "socialized medicine," and thus to be opposed at any and all costs.

Research and teaching hospitals run by major universities might be OK, since they're part of the "education system", and we all know that "education" is a good thing.  But, if you're like UCLA, you will tear down one of the largest (and best) hospitals in the country, and replace it with one which can only treat one-tenth as many patients - but in a much more healthful and comfortable "environment." 

(4) We must "let the markets work" - by requiring everyone "practicing medicine" to spend $100's of thousands of dollars attending a "medical school" which will only admit a handful of super academic achievers who promise not to do anything which might jeopardize the corporate profits of all the major healthcare providers and suppliers.  Any drugs or procedures which are not "approved" by the AMA, Hospital Associations, state regulatory or licensing agencies, the FDA, the DEA, and hundreds of other regulatory and enforcement agencies are prohibited.  This is what we mean by "letting the market work." 

Above all, there shall be no right to self-medication, or the right to choose among different medical theories or treatment philosophies. 

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Sound extreme, or like a parody?  Read it closely.  That is what we have, today, and what nearly everyone in Congress and other "leadership positions" likes and defends.  And in those few cases where they don't, the party machines bludgeon them into line.  "It's all about compromise," we're told.  But the principles of corporate rule and state-protected monopolies on everything are never compromised.  We are expected just to suffer and obey. 

The Democrats refused to even introduce a bill for Single Payer heathcare - Medicare for All, when they had a filibuster-proof majority in Congress as well as a sitting President.  Actually, there have been many such bills submitted over the years - most recently by John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, and other members of the so-called "progressive caucus" and their Senate counterparts.  But it was the so-called "Blue Dogs", led by our own Max Baucus and some other "conservative" Democrats who effectively vetoed any real health care reform.  After bailing out their insurance and pharmaceutical lobby patrons to the tune of $100's of billions per year, what incentive did they have to do anything for the people who voted for them? 

I have long marveled at the Montana Democratic Party's subservience to people like Baucus, Schwinden, and now Schweitzer and Tester, although the latter two at least pretended to support progressive and populist causes - including Single Payer Health Care - in their campaigns.  I don't believe that Baucus has ever represented himself as being anything but a tool of corporate interests, ranging from the banksters and drug cartels to the nuclear industry, logging, mining, and oil-coal cartels, and of course any and all warmongering and profiteering.  How he can even pretend to be "democratic" is beyond me - except that the Democrat tradition in Montana includes everyone from William Andrews Clark and Marcus Daley to Mike Mansfield, who ended his career on the payroll of Goldman, Sachs - the greatest banksters and clearing house for corporate criminals in recent history. 

Social Libertarianism

[Here's the existing first chapter for my book on Social Libertarianism , mostly written before 1998-- PHS]

         Manifesto
    Social Libertarianism: A New Synthesis for the 21st Century

               New Hope for providing Health care, Education, and Welfare

     Those who closely follow the arguments in favor of various reforms or changes in public policy might observe a certain irony in the fact that voters will not hear of changing public education from a single provider, monopolistic, socialistic system to a diverse, competitive, market-serving single payer ("voucher") system.  At the same time, they reject as "too socialistic," a wise, fair, and universal single payer system in medicine, such as Canada's, where costs are much lower, and services and customer satisfaction very much better than what all but the wealthiest people receive in the United States.  What is "too socialistic" in medicine is apparently "not socialistic enough" in education, even though the two services are equally vital and should be provided universally, equitably, and at an affordable cost. 
      One of the basic concepts of Social Libertarianism is "market socialism" -- a familiar concept to most economists and public policy experts.  It is practiced widely in other parts of the world -- especially Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and Asia.  Yet, most Americans have no idea that it is possible to use the market mechanism, careful definitions of property rights, and the price system in order to create policies and programs which satisfy social needs in an efficient, incentive-driven fashion.  Government no longer needs to be the problem.  Voluntary, community-based institutions can replace vast, centralized bureaucracies.  Worker and customer-owned cooperatives can replace elitist, power-and-profit driven corporations in the provision of public services, much as credit unions and food co-ops have replaced commercial banks and grocery chains for many discerning, community-minded consumers seeking quality products or services at an affordable price.  More importantly, such institutions provide a meaningful form of ownership and other rights to participate in the policies and practices of the providers. 
     The problem, it seems to me, is that the public no longer has good information about alternatives.  Instead, the corporate media continually brainwashes us with an elitist, right-wing, anti-welfare agenda.  More recently, a broader tendency towards mergers and monopolies has gone unchecked, threatening to take over or eliminate what is left of diversity and competition in public and non-commercial broadcasting as well as public education.  Even public universities, once the citadels of free inquiry, creative thinking, and free expression, have often become political pawns offering little more than professional training in which careers, future incomes, and "upwardly mobile" lifestyles have taken precedence over the quest for knowledge and the betterment of society as a whole. 
     "The Left" in general has been largely discredited in the public mind, along with the very idea of the welfare state, public health, and collective responsibility for other necessities of life and well-being.   Even such venerable institutions as public libraries, museums, symphony orchestras, and other parts of our cultural infrastructure have suffered drastic cuts in public support, including eliminating many of the incentives which private citizens once had to support them.  Only the police, prisons, "national security," the legal and other well-organized "professions", along with corporate subsidies, seem to have maintained a blank check on public funding, growing at rates which rival the spread of AIDS, poverty, and the distrust of government, itself.  Now, they are fighting desperately among themselves over a public budget "commons" which can only shrink with all the tax cuts and "entitlements" which leave little to supply the needs of anyone but the rich and powerful.
     "Market socialism" may sound like an oxymoron for those who think that "socialism" and "free enterprise" are mutually exclusive.  In fact, it is the logical synthesis of more than 200 years of sophisticated economic thinking.  It resembles the Swedish model, with high standards of living for even the poorest members of society, a progressive business community, and a much more egalitarian distribution of income and public largess.  It should no longer be a secret that a person earning $100,000 a year in the United States gets, on average, about $10,000 a year in tax-supported subsidies or benefits, while a person making $10,000 or less gets, on average, less than $5000 in benefits from the government/taxpayer.  Most government programs are regressive, meaning that everyone is taxed at what is close to a flat rate when we include social security, sales, value-added, and property taxes, while benefits (contracts, government payrolls, subsidies, medical payments, etc.) overwhelmingly end up in the pockets of the middle-to-wealthiest members of society, not the poor-to-low-income people.  It is the welfare of middle-class professionals and large corporate stockholders which is being served.  And that is why our version of the welfare state is bankrupt, even though it can't meet more than a fraction of the genuine human needs which it was supposed to provide for.
     In fact, we do not have a welfare state in the United States, nor have we ever had one.  There is no longer any clearly-articulated policy for progressive taxation and a more egalitarian distribution of income, like the Democrats and Progressives once maintained.  Even our best-known welfare institution, Social Security, is highly regressive, transferring wealth from the working poor to the wealthy retired.  Politically speaking, virtually nothing can be done about it.  In the case of Medicare and other government-support for high-wage, high tech medicine, our government pays more to subsidize the medical industry and professions than other governments spend (per capita, and as a percentage of GDP) to maintain a comprehensive national health service or insurance plan which covers everyone for all health care services.  And nearly every government welfare program is riddled with perverse incentives which exacerbate the problems, such as penalties against marriage and families, against working, and against home-based businesses.  It is virtually impossible, legally, to create cooperative day-care facilities or other community services staffed by parents or other clients.  Public schools closely mirror the socio-economic status of the neighborhood, perpetuating poverty and ignorance rather than helping to eliminate them. In nearly every case, we are presently subsidizing idleness, illness, and ignorance rather than productivity, wellness, and education. 
     Suffice to say that we desperately need to reform, recast, and most of all, rethink our welfare system so that it does its job in an affordable, incentive-driven fashion.  And this is just as true of education, health-care, and maintaining the cultural infrastructure as it is of social security, taxation, and the labor market.  I know of no one who believes that we presently have a good system, and one which should be maintained at any cost.  But every cry for reform is now interpreted as a demand for lower taxes by a wealthy, empowered minority.  Reform, itself, has been discredited.  Most of us would benefit from higher taxes to support better services and a better quality of life for everyone.  Means-testing for all government services would immediately liberate far more tax money to serve genuine human needs than any tax increase under the present system could possibly provide.  True reforms should give everyone a large incentive to work and produce more, perform public services, become better educated and more discerning cultural consumers, and improve our health outcomes by cleaner, healthier lifestyles and comprehensive strategies to implement preventive medicine, better, safer food, and a clean and healthful environment. 
     It costs a few dollars in education and training to prevent AIDS, but a million dollars or more to treat an AIDS patient and extend his or her life by a few years.  It costs less than a third as much to provide a year of appropriate post-secondary education or training as it costs to incarcerate a young person for a year.  Indeed, education is generally viewed as an investment, which provides a large return, rather than a welfare expenditure.  Yet, we continue to lavishly subsidize the prison industry and health-care providers rather than make investments in education, preventive medicine, and employment or job-training opportunities.   
     Why do we keep doing this?  Is it because people are making money by playing on our fears, weaknesses, and stupidity?  We are not taught to think that everyone deserves education and culture (or even a just society), yet we are certainly taught that criminals "deserve" to be locked up where they can only learn to become even better criminals.  We have created whole classes of "economic criminals" and the legal professions (including enforcement and corrections) that defend and prosecute them.  They have grown exponentially as governments increasingly regulate, prohibit, and control every aspect of our personal and working lives.  This is called "socialism," even though it is based on no known socialistic principles.  It more resembles fascism or a police state -- some kind of totalitarian/authoritarian system of the Right, not the Left.
     Even many public education advocates insist that everyone "deserves" free, universal, compulsory public education in giant, gang-ridden, factory-like schools, as chaotic and dangerous as the streets which surround them, while claiming it would be a grave injustice to pay a poor student's tuition at a better school -- even one which may be based on more progressive or humanistic principles.  By now, we should be wise enough to know that decentralization and choice in education -- i.e., market socialism -- can only create a myriad of new opportunities both for teaching and for learning, while preserving publicly-supported  and mandated education in perpetuity.   As monopoly state socialism is discredited everywhere else, some people still seem to think it can work in education.  It should be clear by now that the defenders of the status-quo are only protecting their immediate short-term career and economic interests.

     Market socialism represents a newer, more enlightened thinking which combines the humanistic, egalitarian, utilitarian philosophy of the progressive movement with an understanding of how people actually behave in the marketplace and the larger world.  We can only maintain the free market structure of people pursuing their own interest in a context of good information, good citizenship, diversity, choice, decentralization, and cooperation.  Social welfare is defined as the summation of individual welfares, rather than being in conflict with it. 
     It is this principle of "social welfare" combined with "consumer sovereignty" which makes possible a true "market socialism."  No one should have to rely on the charity of a faceless bureaucracy, as we do today for nearly any kind of government service.  But for those services deemed beneficial and essential, the government can and must subsidize the consumers so that they may purchase, at a reasonable and competitive price, whatever it is they need from those who are set up to provide it.
     Basically, it's the same principle as Food Stamps -- the one unquestionably beneficial and cost-effective government welfare program.  If you don't have a sufficient income to purchase a decent quality and quantity of food, the government will give you coupons (means-tested "vouchers") to purchase whatever you think you need from any approved provider.  The providers still take cash, and charge the same price whether you use a credit/debit card, cash, or Food Stamps.  This is one obvious criterion for an efficient system.  Why can't we have the same kind of programs for medicine and education? 
     Health care has been 2- or 3-tiered all along.  Those with good insurance or other "third-party payers" are charged far more than cash customers, or those receiving Medicare or charity will pay, and the quality of service often reflects one's economic status.  This is not an efficient or fair allocation of public resources - as indicated by the fact that the cost of medical care has been increasing far beyond the rate of inflation for reasons which cannot bear close scrutiny or informed criticism. 
     We already have an excellent model for a single-payer medical system in Canada.  Canadians choose their own doctors and hospitals, get whatever prescriptions or other products and services they need, and the government pays the reasonable and necessary costs, rather than providing a blank check for whatever the providers demand.  Every working person pays a tax (proportional to income, or progressive) which covers the total cost of the system.  Even if you're a foreigner paying cash, the cost of a service, prescription, or hospital stay is much less than it would be in the United States.  Consumer satisfaction with the system is nearly 100%.  Doctors and other medical providers may be paid somewhat less than ours, even though the overall standard of living is higher, but the average quality of health care, health statistics, and other measurements of how well the system is doing remains somewhat better than ours. 
     So why don't we do that, here?  There is no reason except politics and the effectiveness of the present medical cartel to maintain a system which benefits themselves.  This de-facto cartel includes doctors, the AMA, hospitals and hospital associations, regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical companies, medical schools, private insurance companies, and the like.  They are smart, rich, and powerful, and they have allowed nothing to happen so far which might reduce their wealth and power.  It is no secret that more than half of those who work for this cartel provide no health care.  In similar fashion, less than half the money now spent on public education goes to teacher's salaries and benefits.  All the rest goes to salesmen, contractors and suppliers, corporate profits, administration, and bureaucracies of one kind or another. 
     There is very little argument about what is wrong with our present institutions in medicine, education, or other public services.  The corrective measure, in every case, is a gradual and systematic move to implement a consistent program of market socialism in the provision of essential public services.  This may or may not involve "privatization," depending on how we understand it.  The idea is not to create more opportunities for corporate profits or other private gains, but to structure incentives and otherwise utilize market mechanisms to attain maximum efficiency, equity, and client satisfaction in the provision of essential public services.  If we are expected to be loyal, civic-minded supporters of our society and government, then we need a bigger stake in it.  Why are incentives supposed to be good for millionaire investors, but not for impoverished workers or consumers?  If government is nothing more than a conspiracy of the rich to protect their "property" from the rest of us, we've got a revolutionary situation at hand, and eventually, the vast majority will prevail whether by peaceful or other means. 
     The underlying principle of socialism -- a government which serves the long-term interests of the people, and distributes wealth and power accordingly -- is sound.  But so is the economic theory, developed over centuries, which explains how people behave in the real world, pursuing private wealth and personal security without much concern for others, or the future of the country as a whole or the global ecosystem.  By putting the two together, we can get twice the benefits from our taxes, and prove to the world that we Americans are truly the progressives and reformers who have the best government, and the best system for maintaining freedom, prosperity, and ecological sustainability.
     We are once again at that point in history when some are stridently predicting the end of the world, while others are building the foundations for a new millennium.  We need to comprehensively rethink government, its structure, missions, and programs.  It's primarily an educational rather than a political task.  We must all work together to improve the human condition, instead of denouncing every effort to promote the general welfare -- the constitutional mandate which needs to be addressed before we go any further down this pathway to oblivion. 

RW Emerson, GB Shaw, and Me

This is from the early 2000's - part of an attempt to more clearly define myself and my intellectual development. 

Savoring Emerson and Shaw

    For the past decade or more, I have been engaged in a unique and diligently pursued enterprise. I have tried to immerse myself in the minds of two men, who together span the 19th and first half of the 20th century. I was born in 1947, and that means that G. B. Shaw, like my own grandfather, was still alive (but very old) in the first few years of my own lifetime.
    My grandfather Stephens was born in 1865, so he and I were in synch for growing up in a period of post-war euphoria and paranoia which shared the characteristics of being punishing and moralistic, and not among the better periods in our history, from an ethical and esthetic point of view. His lifespan and Shaw's were very close. I've often had reason to think that the fact that my first 6 years were spent in his company had much to do with my subsequent affinities with 19th century thought and culture. My grandfather was an educated man and a devout Christian, more in the sense of living the example than preaching it - something of a rarity in frontier Montana in the 1890's.

    My interest in Emerson goes back to high school and college. Emerson was still the pre-eminent American thinker, and my grandparents' generation read his essays and understood them in the high school curriculum of their day. My father was an enthusiastic Thoreauvian in his own way, and Louisa May Alcott and Margaret Fuller were no doubt read and admired by my grandparents and/or their sisters. The political persuasion of the Stephens family was somewhere between Teddy Roosevelt and Jeanette Rankin Republicanism. My great-grandfather James Stephens had voted for Lincoln, and his father in-law knew the young Abe Lincoln personally. My grandparents were both Progressive and Prohibitionist, at a time when these parties fielded candidates or endorsed main-party candidates such as William Jennings Bryan or Robert LaFollette. My grandfather supported (and actively worked for) TR's break from the Republican Party, but like most Americans he was opposed to our entry into World War II right up until Pearl Harbor.  My grandmother Stephens was always outspoken against FDR and the New Deal - probably much more so than my grandfather, who rarely if ever made negative judgments about anyone.  

    My mother's aunt, Pearl Goodall, lived in Helena and knew Jeanette Rankin personally, and also worked hard for her election as the first woman in Congress, and in her anti-War causes generally. My grandmother Stephens liked Jeanette Rankin, but criticized her for her second vote against war in 1941, where it was politically inflammatory. Most Montanans had resented our participation in World War I, but we got on the bandwagon all the way in World War II, and continuing hatred of Asians was something I grew up with.  I can still remember being idignant as a student at UCLA when I was criticized for referring to China as "Communist China" - by other students of Chinese descent, of course. 
    According to our family history, Jeanette Rankin visited our family home on one occasion - probably when she was running for Congress the second time. My grandfather had been a state legislator for one term, and knew most of the prominent Republicans in the state, as well as the progressive Democrats. Montana Democrats were slow to embrace FDR's programs, and some, like Burton K. Wheeler, became political powers in their own right. Wheeler was LaFollette's running mate as a Progressive in one election (1924?).  Later, he became a leading Isolationist, but party pressure brought him around well before Pearl Harbor.  He also worked hard for a TVA-style federal dams program for the Missouri River, the fruit of which was Fort Peck and several other large dams in the Dakotas. 
    With this background, it is not such a stretch to imagine a rural Montanan being able to savor the writings and biographies of Emerson and Shaw. The first play by Shaw I remember seeing performed was “Arms and the Man,” which I saw at the age of 13 performed by a travelling company in our school. One of my friends in college enjoyed Shaw, and frequently quoted him. I saw a few more plays, learned about the Fabian movement, studied other figures in that milieu, and finally purchased the complete Holroyd biography - one of the great biographies of our time.
    An equally good (but shorter) biography of Emerson, Robert Richardson's Emerson  The Mind on Fire, appeared a few years ago, and I have read and selectively re-read from it constantly over the past two years. I have also had the good fortune to know a direct descendent of Emerson, and thus to get a better insight and flavor of some of the ideas and events in his life. The evolution of Emerson's work and ideas and their impact on the larger American and global culture is what interests me the most - mainly because I am sympathetic and thoroughly persuaded of the correctness of virtually all of his vision. The only real problem I can see is one of misdirected militancy - something which both Emerson and Shaw seemed to favor when real threats to human dignity and well-being were present. Both were missionaries for their view of progressive values and improvements in the quality of the human condition. Emerson was more of a universalist than Shaw, but both maintained a higher, idealistic kind of social vision.
    John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, Herzen's My Life and Thoughts, the work of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dickens, Hugo, and other towering figures of 19th century thought have further affirmed my affinities with the progressive element in every age and place. How can these ideas have failed to triumph, and now be in full retreat or ruins? It's an obsession which I have had for my entire life: why does what is true, good, and beautiful have to constantly struggle against what is cruel, insane, and ugly? Perhaps there is a Gaia Hypothesis for history as well as science: our culture is sick and self-destructive. We cannot continue to prevail with the population density, the technology, and the awareness (or lack of it) which our governments and other social institutions are now burdened. We are destroying the earth and everything good in it, and there are natural processes which will cause us to self-destruct before that happens.
    It is imperative that we somehow reverse this course, and begin to reaffirm the science and philosophy which can save us - what Emerson first called (before Nietzsche) "the joyful science" of realizing the full potential of the human species through the individual. All of nature is contained in a leaf, and a leaf is a microcosm of all nature. Most of all, our human bodies are part of nature, as is our material survival, along with that of every other species. Human interactions are also part of nature, while Mind or Soul or Spirit is above it.
    Emerson was the first explicit phenomenologist, so far as I can tell. All of material reality is phenomenological in the sense that it reflects the highest understandings of individual and universal consciousness. Jung, too, should pay a heavy debt to Emerson's pioneering synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophy and tradition.
    As a pacifist/isolationist (in the sense of the "Prime Directive" of not interfering, or allowing interference in other nation's affairs, and certainly not defending multi-national corporations' interests), I am particularly disturbed by the militancy expressed by both Emerson and Shaw, the latter having gone so far as to endorse Stalin, and the former to have championed John Brown. Violence in a noble cause was no problem for them - indeed, they were often leading the charge.
    Of course, they lived in the pre-nuclear age, and could not imagine a world in which one nation could destroy not only its enemies but itself in the process, and probably set human civilization and its evolution back thousands or millions of years. This is the factor we must correct for, and one of the very few of them from the highpoints of 19th century thought. Another involves cybernation and the nature of the modern techno-state, with numerous totalitarian strategies and technologies at its disposal.
    One major difference between Emerson and Shaw is their place in their respective societies. Emerson was born to his vocation, and a figure of unblemished grandeur and integrity. He was a full-time philosopher-theologian with intensive training in the classics, and an active participant in the main-stream intellectual and social movements of his time, from Abolitionism to Feminism, Transcendentalism to the natural sciences.
    Shaw, on the other hand, was always on the fringes of respectable society, writing music criticism, fiction, and finally his famous plays, while engaging in a prodigious amount of organizing and propagandizing for the radical Left. Both seemed to have been workaholics who spent their entire adult lives in the single-minded pursuit of an intellectual enterprise which others only dimly understood. Both were evangelists for a new way of thinking, and highly successful in changing the way millions of people live and think. Yet, neither was an academic philosopher nor much in favor of academic life in general. Both preferred to address the public directly, whether by Emerson's lectures and published Essays, or Shaw's plays and political rallies.

Eco-Logo-Nomos - or The Eco-Eco Test

The Eco-Eco Test

Ever since the early 1970's, having just emerged as a philosophy and economics graduate from UCLA, I've been fixated on the idea that in Economics and Ecology, it's the same "Eco".  That's where I get my "greateco" handle, and I've written extensively about the connections  between the two fields and how they are "parts of a common problem-solution nexus".  I didn't patent that, or anything, and it turns out that Ken Boulding, who was teaching there in Boulder, CO when I showed up there, had already written a seminal article on that very topic.  I heard Boulding lecture once, and introduced myself  afterwards, and bought the  book which contained this essay, but  I only read it recently - or at least, I only remember reading it recently. 

But when I was in Boulder, I offered the first course of lectures and discussions I'd ever done.  And it was called that:  "Eco-Logo-Nomos" - how economics and ecology work together. 
There are many schools of "environmental economics," now, and those ideas were in play long before I was born - especially in Thoreau and other Transcendental Romantiks.  It's Darwinism and Spencerism in Britain;  Nietzsche, Humboldt, and Goethe, perhaps, in the German-speaking world, and many Scandinavians, past and present, are part of this tradition. 

With the obviousness and near-universal agreement with these ideas, it continues to amaze me how the whole enlightened community can be bullied into acquiesence by a handful of "resource" corporations.  Didn't anybody see "Avatar"?  This is real.  This is happening, now, in Northern Alberta.  And we've been connected to it ever since my father worked as an "Indian Agent" in that very locale in the 1960's.  I'm supposed to even have some relatives there, among the indigenous Cree. 

Unfortunately, I destroyed a priceless archive of photos and his work there.  He was accused of producing pornography - for photographing Native women without clothes, or whatever - and was rousted by the Mounties and deported from Canada.  As a small boy, my father lived half a block from Charlie Russell, and he distributed a lot of prints of Russell's work to his Indian friends.  Anyone who knew my father knows that he wasn't into anything "for the money" or to exploit people. 

It reminds me of the woman artist who took a roll of film of her naked children playing or posing for some art work she was doing to a Fuji kiosk, and as a consequence, lost custody of her children and had to spend $175,000 on lawyer fees just to stay out of prison.  I hope Fuji reimbursed her, and if not, they should have. 

This is a rather oblique example of the "Eco-eco Test" (EET).  We can subject any law or regulation to the EET.  In many cases, it will be a matter of determining whether or not the law and its consequences are both ethical and practical.  And does it satisfy other basic criteria of social welfare like Pareto's "Optimality"?  Of course we do make interpersonal calculations of utility for any public policy.  Pareto assures us that a minority are not being made actually worse-off for the benefit of some privileged elite.  Not at all in force, so far as the modern "criminal justice system" is concerned.  They violate that principle every day, along with traditional bans on any kind of torture, administrative detention, or commercial exploitation (slavery). 

It is one of the ironies of Montana history that Jeanette Rankin, Montana's (and the nation's) first woman elected to Congress, who was basically a liberal socialist, feminist, probably lesbian, and otherwise far to the "left" of today's Democrats, actually ran and won as a Republican, and her brother, J. Wellington, was one of the most powerful men in Montana, using prison labor to run his vast ranches, which are still largely owned by the Galt family.  One wonders at the veracity of the Jeanette Rankin "re-enactment" video produced a few years ago.  Maybe the Galt family financed it. 

Why is it that no one running for office outside of the Green Party seems to have any awareness of the EET?  Just use simple input-output analysis.  Everything counts.  There aren't any "externalities."  That is why we use a "socialist" model, or other "holistic" thinking.  We have to think of the good (survival, prosperity, health, welfare, etc.) of the WHOLE, not just our particular "team", city, state, nation, or family.  That is why we have DEMOCRACY.  Everything counts, and no information can be excluded.  We're not a small gang or clique trying to control or exploit others. 

The Law - Authority or Science?

LAW - Authority or Science?    10-2-12

I'm constantly running into people and situations where their view of "the law" is one of "Authority."  The Law is what justifies and empowers Authority.  Therefore, it is a handmaiden of tyranny and rigid class structure.  It is part of the War and Conflict Machine, not Peace and Justice. 

The militarization and regimentation of American Society over the past 20 years is unprecedented in our history, and nearly any other history.  The Meiji Restoration in Japan is another (what we call, "the opening of Japan" with Commodore Perry telling the Emperor, "Open up to trade or we'll open fire").  Not a literal quote, but close enough to the truth.  We do this to countries all over the world, and then wonder why they hate us.  

Running a Free Republic is a lot different than running a multi-national Empire or commanding an invincible army which can destroy anything in its path.  Obviously, the Free Republic idea was discarded long ago, and we are now outlaws in the Empire we helped to create.  Such is the Dialectic of History (and yes, Hegel was a horrible person, but he may have been right about the mechanics of this Dialectic). 

"Our Side" (OS, the Green Libertarians) does not share this authoritarian view of law.  To us, law is about discovery.  It is creative science, testing and discarding hypotheses and theories as they prove to be wrong or obsolete.  The present legal system and thinking really hasn't changed since Greco-Roman times.  We have not incorporated any of the more recent findings in psychology or sociology (or even economics and political science - what was once called "political economy") into our "modern" and barbaric "criminal justice system"  (CJS).

This semantic shift is important.  It is no longer a system of Truth, Reason and Justice; rather, it serves the criminal element and those attempting to defend themselves or compete successfully in that corporate war of all against all.  There is little awareness of, or concern for, Justice.  It's all about getting paid off.  It is the jungle rules of individual bosses, gang leaders, or relatively democratic and egalitarian groups like unions or fraternal societies.  Even our so-called "social safety net" is run for anything but social purposes.  It, too, is the province of competing private interests, political machines, etc.  And they have little interest in working together for the common good.  It's all about one's status within the boss-dom hierarchy. 

So, let's start with defining our legal system more along the lines of a free and democratic Republic.  We all seem to prefer that sort of government, don't we?  We don't like to be used as pawns and victims.   What Gov Romney said about 47% of Americans seeing themselves as victims and not paying income tax turned out to be true.  As someone who has explored both the exalted heights and lowest dregs of American life, I agree with him.  I certainly see myself as a victim, although not specifically a victim of "big government".  It's more like I see myself as a victim of gangster capitalism, of which Mr. Romney is an integral part [and just to keep things in proportion, the Obama Machine even more so]. 

For that very reason, they should both be banned (or voluntarily withdraw) from running for President of the United States.  Mr. Obama should be in prison awaiting trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, not to mention crimes against unions, public education, the environment, and many other categories. We're at the point where we have to get it right this time - and every time.  No more room for dancing around the issues and blaming "the other guys."  We have to all agree and work together to implement a program of restoration and preservation, from the personal level to the global ecosystem, where all are interconnected and interdependent.  

We have no more resources to spend attacking and arms-racing with other countries which are poorer than we are, but  hungrier.  If the Brits and other imperialists were correct, this is the road to ruin - taking over and trying to loot, regiment, and control other nations and peoples.  It's nothing but trouble, and it causes a lot more "trouble" (losses of people, wealth, security of all kinds, etc.) than if we'd minded our own business.  And  it also leads to once-subject nations and peoples to finally get revenge, and take over the imperialist countries which long subjected them to tyranny and oppression. 

Mormons often seem to be "imperialistic".  They are a theocracy.  They are growing and proving themselves in all areas of human endeavor.  The one prize which has escaped them is the White House.  Indeed, they never would have thought to put one of their own there until the past few decades, when Marriott, Romney Senior, Thiokol, Word Perfect, and many other Utah names were major players in "creating the future" which is now. 

So, this has a lot to do with Mormonism, and the rights of minority faiths and belief-systems to prosper and succeed.  Mormons are truthful and responsible people, so if Mr. Romney actually believes and intends to carry out things like attacking Iran, increasing military spending by 30%, protecting the "personhood" of corporations, and otherwise following the Ryan agenda and its now (really) Voodoo Economics, he can't be president.  Of course, he also knows that it's only Congress which can do these things, and it is up to him to approve or veto it.  He is showing more and more sanity as the campaign progresses. 

This essay was fairly complete before the debate last night at the University of Denver.  Polls today show that Romney won the debate by 67% to Obama's 25% - apparently a mainstream polling organization which, according to accepted standards, is within a 4.5% margin of error.  (I don't know how many respondents actually understand the statistical methods behind such polls.  I flunked my college statistics course required for an econ degree.  I had to make it up, later, and I cheated.  In those days, we were supposed to memorize the formulas we used, and I wrote them on my hand or a crib sheet of some sort. Still, I knew how to work the problems, and thus "passed" in my own reckoning.  One of the texts we used was "How to lie with Statistics."). 

So, I don't put a lot of stock in such polls, and others show Obama leading in many "battleground states" - sometimes by a considerable margin.  These are the same states where past Republican operatives are alleged to have stolen the votes necessary for a Bush-Cheney victory in 2000 and 2004, and include Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida.  Ron Paul supporters have similar issues with the Republican Machine throughout the West, and in Maine and other more traditional American locales.  We don't all welcome the advance of the hi-tech urban gangster-fiefdoms, and the machine politics they practice.  But like everyone else, we have to deal with it. 

Obama is still somewhat under the direct control of the "fascist left", so he isn't going to do anything really stupid.  He's done more than enough already with his tough "war lord" I-can-kill-you stuff - now openly waged against American patriots.  On the plus side, he has made great capital out of Bibi's bullying.  To counter Israeli gangsterism, you need a lot more than Rev. Wright singing cum bay ya, or however you spell it, and Obama is one of the first to do so openly in quite some time. 

By ignoring our complaints and defending the drone war and other "NATO missions", Obama has demonstrated a singular lack of moral sensitivity, as well as simple humanity.  We know he's killing people needlessly, and destroying our Bill of Rights protections which we expected him to defend.  So, as Glen Ford of BAR famously said, Obama is "the more effective evil."  And that is why he is leading so substantially.  We're not going to get any good guys running for these offices for quite some time, so we may as well choose the most palatable of the lot.  If Mitt Romney can suddenly reinvent himself as a sane and prudent man who fears the wrath of a just God, he can win. 

Now, Gov. Romney's path is clear.  All he has to do is drop his military build-up proposals, quit taking a knee to Zionism, and actually be the American president we want and need.  He needs to affirm the limits of presidential power BEFORE we vote for him.  Those who voted for Clinton and Obama, thinking they were peace and environmental candidates, were severely disillusioned.  Perhaps we can be positively disillusioned with Romney, but I won't be one of those supporting his candidacy.  

I'm a Green, first, and a Libertarian, second, and even though many Mormons I know are one or both of these, Mr. Romney certainly is not.  He has made some good adjustments which give us hope.  But the vote should be reserved for more than hope - to actually affirm those who speak the truth, and who have a real track record of fighting injustice and oppression, and being a serious student of the public interest and what is needed to further it.  

I heard the Libertarian presidential candidate, Gov Johnson of New Mexico. on an NPR clip last week.  He's got the numbers right.  What we need this year is a balanced budget - even a little surplus.  He wants to cut military spending and Medicare by 43%, each.  That would raise about half of what is required.  The rest could be found in cutting all the corporate welfare and subsidies - a view shared by both Ralph Nader and Ron Paul.  I've long been a proponent of a balanced budget rule.  I don't know why it has to be a Constitutional Amendment.  Just do it, and establish that as a fundamental principle of good government, which it always has been.

The NPR segment made fun of Gov. Johnson for this, saying that he makes Ryan look like a big spender.  As indeed he is.  Cutting military spending by 43% is a bare minimum.  We'll still be spending more than twice as China, and we now spend more than all other countries, combined, only a couple of which can be considered adversaries in any way.  We need a balanced budget THIS YEAR, not 10 or 1000 years down the road, long after we are bankrupt and a province of China. 


As for Medicare, we only  need to prioritize it to save the 43%.  More than half of total (not just Medicare) health care expenditures go to expensive, "heroic" procedures and treatments which only prolong life by a few months.  And many other treatments and alternatives are either outlawed (like medical MJ and other folk and traditional medicines and remedies), or suppressed because the "official system" does not pay or support them.  

How about the economy?  According to the Green New Deal, we give everyone a job who wants one.  One of my ideas, which neither the Libertarians nor Greens thought worthy of adoption, is this:
We institute a "freedom tithe" on the richest members of society.  Each year, you will pay 10% of your net worth over $1 million.  In return, you will be buying and retiring federal Treasury Bills.  This will continue until the National Debt is reduced to $1 trillion or less, and a balanced budget amendment or other inviolable law is in place. 

The theory, here, is that since all of these billionaires are the beneficiaries of easy credit and other inflationary policies, and they have profited the most from them, it is up to them to fix it - in as painless a way as possible.  This is the rational, scientific way, consistent with universal principles of justice.  The rich can't simply say that they have a "right" to their wealth, and that the rest of us must live in poverty and misery to sustain them.  John Locke, the great codifier of property rights, also defended chattel slavery, and that's largely why we had so much of it in the United States.

Lobbying and TV advertising for political campaigns needs to be banned, entirely.  All campaigning and advertising will be restricted to statements of policy, the candidate's record on voting or supporting other legislation, etc., delivered in a standardized format and in debates and town meetings, in which all qualified candidates are allowed to participate on an equal basis. We simply cannot allow the wealthiest and least honest members of society to buy the elections, and ruin it for all the rest of us. 

According to Brian Kahn, the Simpson-Bowles proposal (vilified for its "deflationary" cutting of federal spending and increasing taxes) identified more than $1 trillion a year in corporate welfare, subsidies to rich people, and other pork which was of very low priority in a time of shrinking revenues and ballooning public sector needs.  A $100/tonne carbon tax would raise several hundred billions per year, while only adding $1/gallon tax to petroleum (of course, most countries already tax it $5/gal or more).   And it would create millions of jobs developing and building the technology to replace fossil fuels, the continuing consumption of which is destroying our climate and precipitating massive dislocations of ice packs, sea levels, and arable farmland.

The 43% cut in military spending (first year alone) is easily covered.  Get out of NATO, close all overseas bases, suspend all new weapons-development and building programs, and organize the vast resources thus freed to start producing for the American market with cooperative ownership and management by the present employees.  You all have your same jobs and incomes (or maybe reduced to some "industry average" so you don't have an unfair advantage).  Just figure out better things to do than designing weapons of mass or robotic destruction.  Have a bunch of meetings to choose your bosses and other leaders, and reorganize your facilities for public purposes, or to produce for the American market whatever goods and services we most need, and are now importing.  Or, if that is not  possible, just shut them down and prohibit their use for any military purposes. 

Johnson does understand real market economics.  And he realizes than you can't keep borrowing above your ability to repay without eventual collapse and bankruptcy.  We need to make things here, instead of making cheeseburgers for each other.  We need to clean up the environment, the food supply, the corporate media, and most of all, the various levels of government and the "criminal justice system." 

Here in Montana, it's all about coal, oil, gas pipelines, extra processing, the Bakken, etc.  Few know that the Norwegian State Oil Company as well as several different Chinese companies are the main developers of the Alberta Tar Sands.  The Keystone Pipeline is merely a means of transport to China.  All it will do for us is perhaps increase our consumption of Canadian (non-tar sands) oil, which is already quite large, and we run a balance of payments deficit with them.  It would be far easier and cheaper for them to  build a pipeline directly to the B.C coast.  Apparently, there are tribes and the BC government  which oppose it.  Among the richest fishing grounds in the world, the BC coast is far more valuable as habitat  and unspoiled wilderness, inhabited largely by indigenous peoples.   

So, is this a good reason, then, to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline?  A Green would say yes, a Libertarian might say no, and many Libertarians actually deny anthropogenic climate change.  But they don't deny marginal utility theory, or the "Laws of Bureaucracy" which say that the more centralized and politicized an organization is, the less it is capable of actually meeting any human needs, or otherwise benefiting the larger society. 

Because the Democrats and Republicans are owned and controlled by the "resource industries," the "military industrial complex" (plus schools and prisons) and otherwise represent "the establishment" almost exclusively, we only have a meaningful discussion going on amongst the small parties.  If we (the Greens, Libertarians, and Independents) control even 5% of the vote, we have a good chance of  "spoiling" someone's election, as Perrot did Bush I's, and Nader is alleged to have done with Gore-Lieberman (surely Lieberman's selection as Gore's running mate was an admission of defeat before the campaign ever started). 

The Greens are proud to have defeated Gore - if only because of his moral cowardice.  He was not a good Democrat, and he would not have made a good President.  Neither would John Kerry.  Chameleon-like, they change their spots regardless of the science or more sophisticated political analysis.  They are pure power politicians, who should have known better than to sell out for money or the social pressures of America's wealthiest families, AIPAC, ALEC, and other sinister and powerful influences. 

This essay began by distinguishing two opposing views of THE LAW, and why it is necessary reject authoritarianism in order to have a SCIENTIFIC, RATIONAL, OBJECTIVE legal system if we are to maintain a free Republic.  THE LAW is what protects us from government and private, corporate tyranny.  But it has been subverted  to do the opposite - to act as an instrument of oppression, suppression, repression of speech, religion, assembly, the press, and other communications. 

Now, we have the basis for defining the purpose of a positive legal system -  one designed to maximize social welfare, minimize conflicts, and other class hatreds.  It certainly is not based on blind Authority, which all must serve blindly.  Nor is it about personalities, parties, families, or factions.  It's about our survival as a nation.  We're closer  to the brink than most people are even capable of imagining.  And we need to take some drastic corrective actions soon.  Otherwise, there are factions in the military and the National Security State who are already in a position to do that.  If we don't act for our own preservation and future as a nation and people, then they will act in our stead.  Indeed, they are already doing so.  But we are not too far along that we can't reverse this process, and restore all power and force of law to the states and to the people, as our Constitution demands. 

"Too big to fail" isn't just an argument in favor of bailing out the Wall Street casinos or General Motors.  It also applies to empires and other giant multi-national organizations.  We have a United Nations.  U.S. leaders claim it has no authority over us, while small nations are ruined by its decisions or lack of them.  Clearly, large empires have failed, and are counterproductive in our global village of world-wide trade and other interaction.  We need to get rid of the institutions of organized murder and plunder.  And we need to reverse a lot of our dependency on technology, and on irreplaceable resources of minerals and fossil fuels. 

The Future is forever.  We must  return to a future focus, a sense of purpose which is wholesome and universal, not Amerika Uber Alles.  There are actually candidates and thinkers who are still defending "American exceptionalism" - much like Zionism - which says that we are God's Favorite, or "History is on our Side."  God gave us this land, but not at the expense of everyone we claim isn't "us."  There are no slaves and victims unless we create them.  It's time to re-think some of our class presuppositions.  Going to Harvard doesn't give us a "right to rule."  Neither does spending the most money in a Presidential election. 

Other countries do this correctly, including our brothers, the Brits.  They don't allow TV advertising for elections.  Just imagine how much that one simple change would accomplish.  The Prime Minister can spend a total of $150,000 in a national campaign.  And he can only become PM because he has led the Opposition beforehand.  He has to already have that kind of national leadership experience.  We have no such requirements in the U.S.  And thus, our "democracy" is mostly a sham.  Smoke and mirrors.  Rival gangs struggling to control the vote and the allocation of government jobs and powers to "the fittest" or the least ethical and visionary in their goals and methods.  Some system. 

How Col Richard Liebert routed Wal-Mart

Col. Richard Liebert, who is presently running for the state legislature - replacing another (Air Force) retired Colonel who successfully repealed Montana's Medical Cannabis Initiative, which was approved by the voters by a 60-40 margin, started the local group to oppose the construction of a second Wal-Mart Superstore (plus a Sam's Club) in Great Falls.  That's where I met him, and he went on to chair the Citizens for Clean Energy group which successfully defeated a coal-fired power plant partially owned by the City of Great Falls.  
Here is what I wrote about Wal-Mart and that campaign at the time:- March 6, 2006.  I hope that everyone who lives in this retired (Army) Colonel's district will vote for him.  He is also a cattle rancher and active in AERO and other environmental sustainability groups. 

Wal-Mart slaughtered in public hearing
3-06-06, Montana Green Bulletin

"You don't want to reject a Wal-Mart or other large corporations. The word might get out that Great Falls is anti-business, and they'll punish us by not opening any more stores or creating jobs, here."
That was the message in some of the testimony at a public hearing before the City Planning Advisory Board last Tuesday on the matter of opening another Wal-Mart Superstore on the opposite end of town.
Besides the 3 or 4 actual Wal-Mart employees who were allowed to wear us down with a two-hour inane and irrelevant "Power Point" presentation on the proposed new store, Dan Huestis (who sold them the land) and three other people testified in favor of it. Everyone else who testified (15-20 people) were strongly against it. We also turned in 400-plus signatures on petitions against the proposed new Wal-Mart.
As a consequence, the Board voted not to grant Wal-Mart a conditional use permit to begin construction. We anticipate several more rounds of legal and PR sparring before they finally decide that Great Falls isn't worth the trouble of putting another store here. 
Malmstrom AFB may prove to be the deciding factor, since development around the new store would impinge on the flight path of the main runway -- in case we ever get another flying mission, here. (The last one, a KC-135 refueling mission, was moved to Homestead AFB, Florida, after which Hurricane Andrew hit, and that base was closed. In effect, they "took a bullet" for Malmstrom).
In the meantime, we might be able to convince a majority of the business community, civic leaders, labor people, and others that not having Wal-Marts here will improve the business climate, increase the number of jobs, as well as the overall prosperity of our local community. Hopefully, we can get some people to invest in a locally owned co-op department store or mall, since rents in those which are owned out of state have become prohibitive. If local business people could reclaim even 50% of the local retail sector, it would do more for our local economy than any number of military bases and coal-fired generating plants.
Most people implicitly know that stores like Wal-Mart aren't good for us. Wal-Mart is headquartered in Arkansas. It sells mostly cheap Chinese imports. It may be marginally cheaper than other large stores, but we know it doesn't allow its workers to organize unions, and that it pays lower wages and benefits than its competitors. And it sucks something like 85% of every dollar spent, there, out of the local economy, never to be seen, again.
The negative economic impacts of Wal-Mart are so bad that the first thing its representatives do when attempting to open a new store is to convince local planning boards that they shouldn't consider the results of any sort of economic cost-benefit analysis. That's what Wal-Mart did here, and that's the main reason that the advisory board was persuaded to refuse them a permit. If they're trying to hide or suppress that information, it must be very negative, indeed.
The City of Bozeman actually commissioned a study which found that it would cost that community $36 million per year in lost jobs and sales for other businesses to put in a Wal-Mart superstore. Wal-Mart fought it, and eventually prevailed and built its Superstore. (We can well imagine some intellectual skullduggery on the part of Bozeman's "free market community" which has no interest in the viability of the local retail sector, and little sympathy for the rights of labor, either).
But Bozeman is growing rapidly and already much more affluent than Great Falls, so Wal-Mart's negative impact would be somewhat less noticeable to the professional class which dominates, there. These elites, who may or may not shop at Wal-Mart (but can often be found sneaking furtively about Sam's Club) often seem to be in favor of a low-wage economy for others, since they benefit from having to pay lower wages to their own employees. That is certainly the case in Great Falls, plus we have a considerable population brainwashed to think that if we had higher wages, we'd have to have higher prices for everything else, and that people would be less eligible for benefits like Medicaid and Food Stamps! I've actually heard this argument several times from people who were paid far less in their responsible jobs than they should have been, but instead of protesting, they had been persuaded to defend the system as it is in order to keep their jobs!
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In any case, we got a very interesting live demonstration of how Wal-Mart operates, and what sort of corporate (non-)citizen it is. It panders to the lowest common denominator of intelligence and taste, relies heavily on fraud and advertised "image" of a wholesome, all-American place, while acting to diminish and destroy virtually every American value and principle we can think of -- especially freedom of speech and association, local community self-determination, and the intrinsic dignity of productive work.

The simplest way to explain Wal-mart is to identify it with Chinese communism and American plantation slavery. If those are your kinds of economic and social institutions, then you should be very much in favor of Wal-Mart, and shop there often. Hopefully, we've already experienced "peak Wal-Mart", and we shall be witnessing its decline and dissolution, henceforth. At least we've established the principle that municipalities can take or leave any offers or applications from corporate takeovers of our local economy, and apply whatever taxes or restrictions we decide are in our own best interest. Our municipality is a corporation, too, and just as free as Wal-Mart to take its business elsewhere. If we don't want them, all we have to do is say, "No!" We don't even have to give a reason.
I polled the four city staff planners and eight Citizen's Advisory Board members at the hearing, to determine how many of them had seen the film, "Wal-Mart, the high cost of low prices." Not one of them had. Yet, the Advisory Board voted it down, mostly (if not entirely) on the basis of our testimony and the petitions we collected. News coverage, particularly TV, was ample but dismal in its content. Apparently, the reporters hadn't seen the film, or done any research on the issue, either.
It is vitally important in these grass-roots efforts to arrange for media coverage early. Jo Black, the Tribune business reporter, gave the movie some very good coverage early on, and no doubt contributed greatly to the large audiences for the film. However, the corporate vise seems to have been applied to her reporting of the hearing, since the strength and variety of the testimony against Wal-Mart was not accurately reflected in the stories. KRTV news actually said that the audience was more or less balanced between opponents and proponents, when in fact it was about 9-1 against Wal-Mart.
We've already got some very good alternative strategies working in Montana. Jeff Milchen of Bozeman-based ReclaimDemocracy.org http://reclaimdemocracy.org/ , and the American Independent Business Alliance <http://amiba.net> wrote the following:
"Those who have broader concerns about the concentration of power in the hands of giant corporations should consider where else our dollars could be going. As I argued in an article <http://tompaine.com/Archive/others/beyond_buying_blue.php> for TomPaine.com one year ago, "dispersing economic power among millions of small, independent businesses is one key to restraining corporate power and sustaining democracy."
Working toward that end, some 200 communities, organizations and businesses are participating this Saturday in "America Unchained," a campaign created by the American Independent Business Alliance (disclosure: I'm a co-founder). Unchained and the growing network of Independent Business Alliances seek to go beyond damage control to persuade people to keep their dollars recirculating in their local economy rather than sending them to distant corporate headquarters.
In my home of Montana, citizens of Plentywood, Malta and Glendive all recently decided they had no need to lure a big-box store or drive out of town to shop. Instead, they re-tooled the corporate model of pooling investments in order to build community-owned and operated department stores. These are true anti-Wal-Marts in many ways, promoting democracy, community stability and cohesiveness. All of the profit goes to the locals who invested in themselves and their neighbors."
Read more>> <http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051115/beyond_walmart.php>
*****
What can be done beyond a defensive battle to stop a big box store from opening in our community? here are a few examples.
* Ban or limit <http://www.newrules.org/retail/formula.html> the number of chains in your community.
* Ban subsidies <http://www.newrules.org/retail/news_slug.php?slugid=324> to big box stores.
* Limit the size <http://www.newrules.org/retail/size.html>and/or location <http://www.newrules.org/retail/neighbor.html> of retail development to ensure new stores benefit your community.
* Create an Independent Business Alliance <http://amiba.net> to help community-based business thrive.
* Explore worker-owned <http://clcr.org/index.php> businesses, co-ops <http://www.wisc.edu/coops/>, and community-owned department stores (contact us for more on this topic) as an alternative to absentee-owned chains.
* Deny claims to "corporate personhood " that allow corporations to challenge citizens' authority.
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/

Blame it on high school

Being Roundup Ready 


Blame it on high school

I recently acquired my own graduating Class of 1965 Great Falls High School yearbook,  "The Roundup" - reflecting our sports team name, The Bison.  We were definitely "Roundup Ready."  Except for me.  I only appeared in it as part of a blurry group picture of National Merit Scholarship Finalists - although I never even applied for any "scholarships," and thought it was insulting and degrading to do so - like hitch-hiking, which I also considered "begging."  I was a fair student, if I liked the teacher, but I was there to learn, not get "good grades" or "scholarships", which one might naturally assume has something to do with intelligent study rather than money, but that is not the case.  In short, I was a "rebel."  

My grandmother did pay for a senior picture from the Nebel Studio (having both studied German, we knew what "Nebel" meant), but I never submitted one to the Roundup, nor did I reserve a copy  for myself.  I'd had bad experiences with my sophomore and junior Roundups, with no more than 5-10 signatures of (mostly elementary school) friends and associates.  You see, I was not socially "well-adjusted."  I did not have a successful adolescence. In fact, I was not "well-adjusted" at all. 

I found the Roundup I recently purchased at an antique store, and since it was water-stained, as though it had been in a flood or something,  I only paid $8 (2012 dollars) for something which had cost something like $45 (1965 gold standard dollars, when the price of silver was $1.29/oz - now $30+).  In those days, you could buy a real $20 gold piece for $48-50, and silver coins were still in circulation at face value.  So, the depreciation on this  year book (and undamaged ones usually sell for about $20 today) was something like 99%.  The 45 silver dollars (or other silver coins) or $20 gold piece used to buy it would now be worth over $900.  Imagine a kid asking his parents for $900 to buy a high school yearbook!  

Only medical procedures (and some military contracts) have inflated that much.  I just read that the going price for infant circumcision is now $400-600 (in addition to other pediatric care), and I imagine it was $5-10 back in 1965.  My whole birth cost (doctor and hospital) was just over $100 in 1947.  The same amount of care, including 2-3 days in hospital (which was then routine) would now easily cost $15,000 most places.  

I've probably spent 10 hours or more perusing this yearbook which I had previously only glanced at in libraries or friends' houses.  I found that I knew hundreds of people, with a half-dozen or more being present "Facebook" friends and comrades-in-peace and justice.  If FB wasn't seen as a "Jewish" project, there would no doubt be many more.  

Last night, I  saw a very good episode of "Freaks and Geeks" from 2000 - one of the best accounts of teen-age life (this  looking back to the 1980's) ever made.  I've also recently seen several John Hughes teen films from the 1980's - Hughes having recently passed on.  "Pretty in Pink" is absolutely right-on as an account of class conflicts in high school, and it was this that made me an enemy of large "consolidated" high schools.  The Molly Ringwald character is very close to a female version of me, and I wonder if that wasn't intentional, although I don't know any of the film-makers or actors.  

I remember one girl, Tracy ----, daughter of one of the largest landowners in Cascade County, who I knew as a sophomore (and who went on the Norway Summer School trip in the summer of 1963, which subsequently defined our high school class "elite" - everyone who went mentioned it in their senior picture comments), and then disappeared from GFHS.  I also remember the sophomore boys in the locker room scheming about seducing her - the most prominent one being a Mormon of Greek descent.  I imagine that her father placed her in the local Catholic high school for that very reason, and I later heard that she died young as a drug addict. And this a person from the highest elites whom I wouldn't have dreamed of asking out or "fraternizing" with.  The one "date" I had in highschool (as a sophomore) was with the sister of my sister's best friend, and I never repeated that trauma. 

There was a huge Catholic-Protestant rivalry going on in those days, difficult to even visualize, today.  And there was also a class stratification in this mostly working-class and small business town which, if it exists today, is well-concealed and never talked about.  The rich people mostly departed long ago, or send their kids to private schools.  Central Catholic High School, which then had some 600 students in Great Falls, actually closed for more than 20 years, but has re-opened in this century, and now has more than 100 students, with high academic achievement.  

The strange thing about 1960's public school life for me was that I was both an aristocrat and leading role model, yet a total outcast in my own mind - hating school and nearly everyone in it.  This I now attribute to the fact that I was an "adult child of alcoholics", but I didn't learn about that syndrome or condition until I was in my 30's.  Although my family was prominent, the men were mostly alcoholics, while the women had married into the working class and remained responsible church-goers and conformists to the status quo, without any intellectual or cultural pretensions whatsoever.  They did maintain the puritanical, Protestant attitudes of blaming the victims, however, and whatever happened to me had to be my own fault, since I was obviously "gifted" and the favorite of our grandmother, who promoted me as the sole male Stephens of our generation, and thus in line to inherit a 1200 acre ranch along the lines of primogeniture and entail (which no one else had ever heard of, of course).  

I've often wondered how much our civic condition has to do with environmental factors in Great Falls.  We were home to large metal smelters and refineries for more than 70 years, which peaked during World War II and were still dominant in the 1960's.  The fact that I spent my first 6 years 30 miles downwind from Great Falls, in the foothills of the Highwood Mountains, is of little help, since we have determined that the heavy metals pollution might, if anything, be even worse there than in Black Eagle, where the Anaconda Smelter was located.  

Teenagers tend to form into gangs, which may be engaged in drug trafficking or some other predatory behavior, but are mostly concerned about controlling the sex lives of their sisters and other females in their territory.  And we know that heavy metal poisoning leads to all sorts of mindless, aggressive behavior, as well as autism, madness (the "mad hatters" used mercury compounds in their trade), etc. Surely there is more than an average amount of this in Great Falls, and those of us in my generation were especially susceptible to it. 

Unfortunately, the same veterans of war and heavy industry still control the school system and local politics, and if possible, they want to re-establish the rule of Heavy Metal and other fascist institutions - especially in the schools, libraries, and other parts of the "cultural infrastructure."  No doubt this has a lot to do with the fact that we were home to the first nuclear-armed Minuteman strategic missile base - Malmstrom - which  still exists a half-century later with the same mission.  

Russell the Revolutionary

Russell the Revolutionary

Charles Marion Russell.  Remember that guy?  His mother was a Bent, his great-uncle killed at Taos in the territorial transition following the Mexican War.  He had just been appointed Territorial Governor (the same position later held by Thomas Meagher in Montana) - "military governor" would be more accurate, or Gauleiter, if you want to to use the Nazi hierarchy as a model. 

The Bent's were as important to the development of the Southwest as, say, Pierre Chouteau or Manual Lisa were to the Upper Missouri.  And Fort Benton and the American Fur Company were basically just the "Northern Branch" of the same outfit based in St. Louis.   These were the first big Metis corporations, in which the company heads and employees were encouraged (and rewarded) for marrying into the indigenous tribes.  These were legitimate marriages between practicing Catholics.  And the names and companies and tribes still exist, and interact with each other along the same lines. 

Thomas Hart Benton was the first and greatest "Senator From Missouri," and a bloody imperialist to the core - John Charles Fremont was his son-in-law, and together, they are credited with securing the conquest of California, among other things.  It was for him that the American Fur Company (largely owned by John J. Astor, the man who endowed Central Park in NYC) named Fort Benton.  Earlier, there had been a succession of trading forts on the Upper Missouri, including one just downstream from Fort Benton, near Loma. 

So, the local "boosters" of economic development, whom Russell vociferously opposed, were none other than Russell, himself, his family and associates.  He was at the center of what future sustainability historians might see as a "revolutionary cell" - bent (no pun intended) on overthrowing the natural, sustainable, long-term regime - that of the Plains Indians.

But of course they didn't see it that way, and neither did the Plains Indians.  For Indians, just like us, there are "good guys" and "bad guys", and it doesn't matter what race or color you are.  The main difference was that the Indians lived artful, natural lives, while we "white people" are basically suicidal and poisoning ourselves in our own pollution. 

Charlie rebelled and immediately became a "man of the people" - ALL the people.   His family had owned slaves pre-Civil War, although Charlie wasn't born until the end of it, in 1865.  Russell is the guy who really "turned Indian."  Once he saw the process with his own eyes, he couldn't help but join the Resistance, and defend Native peoples with all his abilities and resources.  Think of the film "Avatar" - basically the same story in futuristic terms, and we know James Cameron is a big fan of Montana!  He named the nuclear sub in "The Abyss" for us. 

And that is why the local Great Falls business community has always hated Russell, and tried to suppress or otherwise get rid of his work.  It's worth a lot in oil money, so that's where most of it has gone - to the Oil Barons and the the museums they established.  The proverbial "supply and demand." 

I finally got a chance to see the current watercolors exhibit at the Russell Museum here in Great Falls.  I was attending the Silent Film Festival, which outlined some of Russell's connections with Hollywood.  Both were excellent shows.  Although I was already familiar with most of the works, there, I hadn't seen many of the borrowed ones "in the flesh", so to speak.  Half or more are in Great Falls or Helena permanently, and others borrowed from private collectors.  The other big contributor was the Amon Carter Museum, which purchased the Mint Collection in the 1950's.
  
Russell's last big commission was for Doheny, the Los Angeles oil man whose mansion later became the home of the American Film Institute.  There are watercolor sketches for that commission, including the transition from the Plains Indians to oil fields, and we are told that Russell was not happy about having to include the latter for this oil millionaire.  (Nancy no doubt said, "Shut up and paint the damn picture.  He's paid us a fortune.")

Some of us have been diligently following this process (the expropriation of the Russell Legacy by the Oil Junta from Texas, Oklahoma, and California), and attempting to alter it whenever the opportunity arises.  Since I practically grew up playing around Russell's home and studio, and the beginnings of the Museum which now exists, I claim some right to have an opinion on these issues. 

Unfortunately, that's just about all that I can have or do.  And few, if any, listen.  There aren't a lot of people who share a love for the work of CM Russell who also have an understanding of the history and politics behind his work - especially that pertaining to Native Americans and their plight and struggle. 

For many, he has simply become a brand name - a "profit center" for our local community so that even something as simple and important as the Russell Auction cannot withstand the pressures of dealers, local convention and tourist businesses, and the demands of political expediency in managing the affairs of the City of Great Falls.  Randy Gray, we should remember, was a long-time chairman of the Russell Museum board.  And many other prominent local people served on it - few with any distinction or credit to themselves.  Replacing these people with a "National Board" (which does include a few wealthier Montanans - basically, you have to buy your way on to it) has been disastrous - even while the bricks and mortar (and debts) pile up. 

Several important works from the collection have already been sold, as well as the works of other Western artists closely associated with the Russell Tradition.  Imagine Russell as one of the 5 best-known French Impressionists.  That was approximately his stature among the Western American painters and sculptors (and writers, film-makers, etc.), and it still is.  His work is our greatest treasure, and using and abusing it as has been done in recent years (clearly marked by the firing of Elizabeth Dear and dispersing the archives she assembled regarding the Catalog Raisonne) is simply another sign of the decline and impending destruction of our Satanic nuclear garrison town.