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!
______________
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. 

Question Authority - and oppose it

   
Who are the Agents of Authoritarianism?
The Law of Unintended (or concealed) Consequences

A phenomenon of great importance

Few people seem to recognize this "category", but it is part of the ethical "dark matter" which seems to permeate our positive moral universe.  We can see it everywhere, from drug prohibition (actually designed to maximize both criminal activity and the state police authority which supposedly "opposes" it) to our health care system, which is surely a disease and revenue producing system (actually designed to cause and perpetuate illnesses and unhealthy lifestyles), since doctors and other providers are now paid on the basis of how many "treatments" they provide, and thus have little or no incentive to actually make people healthier.  Indeed, that becomes a threat to their economic survival, which is compensated for by decreasing supply and increasing the monopoly power of the providers, thus leaving half or more of the population untreated or underserved. 

The very principle of "insurance" is  based on this.  Essentially, we are betting that bad things will happen.  And it is very difficult to prove causality when they actually do.  Thus, insurance is way more expensive for the prudent and safety-conscious than they would otherwise pay in a pool made up entirely of people like themselves. 

It used to be hard to get insurance if you are a "high risk" person with lots of claims.  The idea of compulsory insurance actually negates the very idea of insurance and risk-pooling, on a voluntary and market-regulated basis.  Instead, it becomes a government diktat which costs everyone two or three times more than an optimal distribution of the same resources and services would provide.  And so it goes with almost everything these days.

Public education is the most significant manifestation of this phenomenon.  I'm not talking about real public, community-based education.  I'm talking about our present system of vicious, coercive state monopolies utterly controlling a unified content of obedience, ignorance, and subservience, with some sort of lip service to "human rights" and "job training."  Our public education is so bad that many of us, when it was only 20% as bad as it is, today, despaired of ever fixing it, although we certainly had dozens of excellent plans and policies which could have transformed it into something approaching the "real public community-based" system. 

Site-based management (each school being autonomous and run by those on site, not a central bureaucracy), parent-teacher co-ops, neighborhood open schools where learning is available for everyone of all ages - these are just a few of the cogent and workable solutions which various groups and scholars have supported consistently for as long as there has been "public education."

The fact is, American public education is based on an earlier Prussian model, which derives from  the post-Napoleonic paranoia to create superstates with super armies to either be like Napoleon's Empire, or to be able to effectively counter and oppose it.  The educational arms race was on.  And it has never been more focussed than it is, today, with the competition between China and the US for global hegemony. 

The role of economists

Economists exist to sort these things out, and make the proper, scientific and rational determinations of  what our economy should and must provide, and how best to go about it.  Economists agree among themselves much more than the general public might suspect.  And we are not "socialists" or "free-marketeers" or even "pro-business."  We are SCIENTISTS - observers, researchers, predicters, truth-seekers, not dictators or "sycophants of the bourgeoisie," as Marx, himself a philosopher and economist, put it.  But of course we are.  Someone has to pay us, and it is, by definition, the bourgeoisie who control the money, jobs, and the rest of the economy. 

Another way to look at it is that economists are "engineers of the economy."  We're supposed to understand the nuts and bolts of how the economy works, so we can maintain it, and protect it from the many assaults, both foreign and domestic, which are launched against individual firms, sectors, or the economy as a whole. 

Perhaps we should pause a bit and consider the idea of "whole" and "parts".  Most people have heard of something being "more than the sum of its parts."  Yet, all the parts together must equal the whole.  That's a definition.  So, if more comes out of the "whole" than might have been predicted merely by looking at the parts, that is called "synergy" - created energy and power (wealth, influence, healthfulness - whatever we are dealing with).  It is something that entrepreneurs as well as social engineers accomplish regularly. 

The genius of the market (which hardly any leftists understand at all) is that it's all voluntary, and it coordinates all the disparate supplies and demands for goods and services.  YOU, the individual, decide what you want to do, what kind of education you want, what sort of transportation, food supply, health care system, retirement plan, etc.  And you get a fixed quantity of resources (called the "social product") - the earth itself, the free energy all around us, etc, plus the legacy of knowledge and techniques which is our common inheritance. 

When an oil or coal company moves in and strips out a billion dollars worth of oil or  coal, and maybe leaves the local community with a few hundred (now redundant) jobs and a mess of pollution, they have looted the "social product."  They have claimed our common heritage for their own.  And we agree with them - even "liberal Democrats", who trade off such pillage for a stay of execution for Social Security and Medicare. 

We need to rethink everything about "property", incomes policy, and what the rightful functions of a just and free state might be (if any).  Anarchists have long contended that it is the state, itself, which is the problem.  We don't need any "government" bigger than a rural county or urban neighborhood.  Anything else is likely to represent "capital" instead of people; war instead of peace, control instead of community. 

More family history - education

Further Confessions


"You can't live in the world as it ought to be.  You must live in the world as it is."

This statement, in various forms and contexts, is literally "the story of my life."  Like, I'm not the realist.  I'm not the one who has lived in grinding poverty in the streets and fields of Amerika all my life. 

But I have learned from it. 

Of course, most people have no idea.  They can't even imagine what it's like to be hungry (something I have admittedly never been - unless, of course, by choice); to have no home, no land, no friends, no "support group", no one who even cares if you live or die.  Or to be fighting against an implacable robot army, which kills indiscriminately and without warning or reason.  To have your land, your home, your business, your government humiliated and destroyed, replacing it with some sort of "democracy" controlled by the Zionists. 

Or to have a family which is so ingrown and reactionary that even one born and raised here has no idea what the hell they are doing except that it's some sort of faux monarchy or theocracy, and somehow, we're part of it. 

Such is the reality I inhabit.  I didn't choose it; I found it.  It was already there.  I didn't invent it.  Other "realities" I have inhabited include the World of Ayn Rand, which fictionalizes (satirizes) several major Montanans, as well as the Russian-Jewish aristocracy which controls so much of Amerika, today.  If you're familiar with the character of Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged, I know her well. I think she was modeled on my mother, who was Jean Arthur's cousin, and looked a lot like her - an actress very familiar to Ayn Rand. 

Just to give you an idea, both Jean and my mother, Vivian, had a favorite aunt, Palma Nelson.  Guess what she did?  She was the first licensed woman railroad engineer (train driver) in the country, and she worked for the NP out of Billings.  I have yet to see an NP museum which displays this fact, or anything about her, but I'm hoping I'll see it before I pass on.  We're all counting on Mr. Buffett to save us from The Octopus.

Here is another "reality" I occupy or share.
 
Perhaps I was autistic (we lived directly down-wind from the Anaconda Smelter in Great Falls, so who knows how much lead and mercury -and even uranium, polonium, etc. - I inhaled and ingested as a child?).  Or perhaps I had a mild form of Asperger's Syndrome.  I've certainly been a "social moron" all my life, having little or no idea why most people think and act as they do.  And this would prevent me from being in the honors math and science classes in high school, even though I tested at the highest levels in those subjects, and desperately wanted to be an astro-physicist until I actually arrived at college, when I changed my major to Economics with a minor in Philosophy.  By that time, I had developed severe blocks against learning math in a classroom.  The numbers were just not adding up. 

From the school's persepective, I was a very slow learner, basically unteachable, yet my first IQ test given in the 2nd grade recorded a score of 145 - well into the genius level.  I couldn't read at all until I was midway through the 2nd grade, and only did that by comparing a story (about dinosaurs) I already knew almost by heart with the printed text.  I also had an excellent 4th grade teacher who recognized my innate intelligence and potential.  It's interesting to reflect that both she and my second grade teacher were Jewish - Miss Green and Miss Amman (are there Jordanian Jews?  I think so!). 

Of course, I didn't know that I was "a slow learner" at the time, anymore than I knew I was a genius, and only found that score by getting a copy of my GFPS records in the early 1990's.  Having come from what was then called "a broken home" and family plagued by alcoholism and other addictions, I was always short on self-esteem.  But I was a "gifted underachiever," and once I learned to read, I spent several hours a day on my own researches, and always tested several grade levels above my own. 

As with Isaac Asimov, the public library was my salvation, along with comic books.  That library no longer exists, so any young person with similar "issues" will be SOL.  Of course, they were probably on the internet by the age of 6, so it really won't make much difference, except that they will be cyborgs while I was just a simple American farmer with delusions of grandeur.  Not too far from Luke Skywalker, actually.

My handicaps were poor handwriting, lack of physical coordination, and very poor social skills, so I was considered semi-retarded by most of my teachers.  And I never participated in sports, nor was I any sort of "team player."  I would have liked to skip a grade or two, as my father had in his one-room country school at Upper Highwood, but that was no longer "done".  And so, I continued to struggle along, wasting time being taught stuff I had already mastered years before, and being discouraged from pursuing other studies on my own. 

Fortunately, I usually had one or more peer friends who was on the same track, and when in high school, my friends were among the elites - both working class and professional - and they were all high achievers.  So, it was the books and discussions I shared with them which shaped my later development. And of course I was always part of the "landed aristocracy" as well as Masonic and other societies.  That was a time when a political campaign called "the Great Society" could actually flourish and win.  

All the more difficult, I suppose, for people I grew up with in Montana (family and friends/associates alike) to understand what I am doing, now.  Gone entirely from their view is the young man I was in California, handsome, popular, and even athletic.  Or the struggling writer and intellectual I became in Boulder, CO, or the esthete I would become in Missoula 3 years later.  In Great Falls, I have worked as a substitute teacher, cab driver, and perhaps best-known of all, a public-interest activist and 3-time candidate for local office (never getting more than 10% of the vote, against people who weren't even born here, and never went to college). 

So, you have to call me an abject failure in all worldly respects.  The world "as it ought to be" is of no interest to anyone.  We just want to play the same old games of "who do you know?" and "how much money do you have?"  Those determine everything.  And even if I know more people than I thought, apparently I don't know "the right people," although I still know many of the leading families and individuals in town (most of whom apparently have a very low opinion of me, by now). 

It always amazes me in these blogs and the comments to news stories just how few of these "bold and beautiful" civic leaders ever say anything at all.  Apparently they are all following Lincoln's maxim (or was it Mark Twain's?) that "It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."