Why do people think it's "Jobs vs. The Environment"?

A child's view of economic development....

Being in my second childhood, I often look at things from a child's perspective, extending through college and my various youthful explorations thereafter.  And I can tell you, it's all starting to fit together.  As children, we tend to take everything for granted.  Whatever it is, it must be so.  Everything is new to us, so if it exists, it must work - at least for the grown-ups, who are responsible for everything.  

Adolescence is a time when we re-learn the nature of reality.  Suddenly, everything is about sex and money; who you know, who your family is, what school you go to, what church you belong to, what neighborhood you live in, etc.  Everything becomes problematical.  Even if you know who and where you are or want to be, how do you get there, or even maintain your present status?  And what if you don't like the exalted status of your family?  Can you trade it off for something else?  How do we do this?   What rules are we supposed to follow?  There are so many that we can't even know, let alone follow, them.

And after a lifetime of success (or failure, dispossession, broken relationships, illness, madness, or whatever), what should we think, now that we are "senior citizens" who have always been outspoken in our views and behavior?  Should we suddenly "retire" and go fishing, or play golf, bridge, gossip, baby-sit, volunteer, travel, or what?  What if we have no means (or desire) to do these things?  Then, we might simply go ahead with our work, since we were never paid for it, anyway, and now we at least get enough from Social Security to pay rent, buy food, and take advantage of health care programs. 

The latest project I'm contesting involves the placement of an industrial park in my home town of Great Falls - named, of course, for the Great Falls of the Missouri, which we have managed to almost totally obliterate and destroy by placing 5 hydro-electric dams and their silt-filled reservoirs directly behind them.  And the silt turns out to contain a lot of heavy metals, some of them quite valuable, from the Anaconda Copper smelter  (electrolytic refining center, using the cheap hydropower right next to it).  

An industrial park, within sight and smell of the two closest Falls, Giant Springs, and the world-renowned Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, was approved this week by the City Commission.  Only a few diehard environmentalists from the Missouri River Citizens bothered to protest.    Some  Fish, Wildlife and Parks (or maybe USFS, which runs the Lewis and Clark center - Giant Springs is a State Park) testified against it, and they probably got in trouble for doing so.  In any case, their testimony was totally disregarded. 
Jane Weber, now a Cascade County Commissioner (just re-elected), was the long-time Director of the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.  I wonder how much of this is directed at her?  She might very well assume that it would be a conflict of interest for her to either oppose or favor this proposal.  As for Democrats vs Republicans, and other "civic leaders" nearly all favor any sort of "economic development" over environmental, cultural, or historical preservation values.  Most people I know have simply given up, refusing to subject themselves to the hatred and contempt they get from politicians and union bosses, as well as their friends, clients, employers, or others for "opposing economic development."   

The Anaconda Smelter closed in 1981 (basically as a public service by Atlantic Richfield, which bought Anaconda, promising to double investment in the Montana facilities, and then closing them down).  So, nearly all signs of that vast facility which once employed 5000 highly-paid union workers are gone.  Reindustrialization is on the way, but local people are at odds about how we should go about this, and where it should be located.   

For the past 30 years, we've been trying to rehabilitate what was essentially a Superfund Site, with thousands of acres of real estate, including the town of Black Eagle, yards, farmland, parks, a golf course, along with the smelter property, itself, contaminated with various toxins and poisons to a depth of several feet, and now only covered by a thin layer of sod and fill-dirt.  The whole thing may have to be dug up and hauled away.

Meanwhile, the lack of a "shovel-ready industrial park" has been used as an excuse for the repeated failures of several generations of local "economic development" agencies to attract any large projects to Great Falls.  But nearly every project envisioned and promoted (like the now-defunct coal-fired "Highwood Generating Station") was totally unsuited to our past, our future, and the economy as a whole.  Another example is the proposed ethanol plant, which has been "ready to happen" since the late 1970's.  In fact, converting corn or small grains to alcohol does little or nothing to reduce our carbon footprint, global warming, and actually wastes a lot of farmland which should be used to produce food, or even restored to native grasses for ecologically sustainable meat production. 

I don't believe there is anyone in Great Falls who opposes sustainable economic development which is consistent (not in conflict) with existing businesses, cultural treasures, our unique landscape of the river, the Falls, and Giant Springs.  What we question, and simply cannot understand, is why the GFDA has repeatedly chosen sites and strategies are probably the least favorable to all these other values we treasure.  Especially when there are other sites readily available, and projects which require no such compromises with our quality of life and local economy.   Instead, they mix it all together as a "package deal."  We must take it or leave it, and if we leave it, it will be the fault of "the other party" if not environmentalists, peace activists, unions, etc. 

The biggest disappointment to me is the union leadership, which is almost invariably anti-environment and even anti-historical preservation, tourism, and the like.  The unionized working class totally ruled Great Falls for nearly a century.  Small shop owners and other family businesses were a real "middle class" which thrived, prospered, and generally led the good life like few other places in the world, largely because their customers and neighbors were highly-paid union workers.  As late as the 1960's, Montana was one of the top 5 states in personal income (now we are near the bottom, and have been for many years).  Every job in Great Falls down to clerks, food-servers, and bartenders was unionized.  The City ran many essential services, with the rest being closely regulated so they were considered to be the best jobs available, with great consumer service and among the lowest costs in the nation.  The workers were well-paid, everyone felt safe and secure, and you could trust businesses to treat you fairly and like a friend, instead of an adversary or victim.  What happened?  Could the transition to "a nuclear garrison town" have anything to do with this?  Many of us think so. 

We had a pride of place, not least of all because of the Smelter, the Falls, and Giant Springs, which we claimed was "the largest freshwater springs in the world" and was mentioned in the Lewis and Clark Journals.  It turns out, we're only the 5th biggest spring in North America, Florida actually having a much larger one, which I can't figure out because Florida doesn't have any mountains, and ours comes through the Madison Aquifer from the Little Belt mountains.

In my long monitoring of civic and economic affairs (often confused with "military affairs" in Great Falls, since it was a military operation - the Corps of Discovery- which established us as a US colony and future strategic missile base), I have come  to recognize some recurrent patterns and processes (or "dynamics" - changes over time) which seem to define our local political economy.  Let me describe a few of them which come to mind....

(1) The political discourse is deplorable.  It's like there are two sets of books - one used by the Chamber of Commerce, the GF Development Authority, City and County Commissions, etc, and a different one used to explain and justify their actions to the taxpayers and voters.  And the discrepancies between the two are devastating to any sort of long-term public policy or planning, as we are being told one thing while being led or forced to do the opposite. 

(2) Law and "regulation" has come to mean nothing more nor less than a transfer of power to lawyers and the state at the expense of the rest of us.  So, of course everyone is against it.  And worst of all, it would seem is "environmental regulation", which is taken to be a calculated attack on jobs and the local economy. 

(3) The statement "We need jobs, so we can't afford to  protect the environment" is endemic in our political discourse.  In similar fashion, local military contractors and profiteers keep telling us that war and more military spending is the way to prosperity.  For them, perhaps, but at the expense of everyone else, and ultimately it will ruin the country - if only by turning us into a garrison state at war with all the rest of the world. 

(4) Since we're thinking in military terms, perhaps we should acknowledge that we are a heartbeat away from having a literal "Military Governor" in Montana - the former head of the Montana National Guard is our new Lieutenant Governor - a demotion, to be sure, since he was already a General, right?  But so was Eisenhower, Grant, Washington, and a few others.  Surely they considered their roles as President to be more important, or was it merely a "retirement job"?  In any case, there are plenty of problems to solve, and people available to solve them.  It just takes doing and the much-vaunted "leadership" which seems to be in short supply these days. 

(5) Some people calling themselves "libertarians" are opposed to any sort of economic or environmental regulation - or at least they oppose the bureaucratic top-down command and control systems driven by political expediency (which would be my position, as well).  We consider such regulatory systems as "weapons",  just as the law, itself, is a weapon which, in Montana at least, is used indiscriminately on the just and unjust, alike. 

(6) Trying to get a lawyer to take a principled and rational stand on any issue is next to impossible.  They simply don't speak that language.  It's all about winning and "settlements" which avoid any public testimony, subpoena's, or juries who might not understand (or too well understand) the racket that is going on, here.  So, instead of working together to achieve a cleaner, healthier, and more functional society and economy, we waste a huge amount of talent and treasure fighting and trying to ruin each other - "the other party" or whatever scapegoats are at hand ("illegal aliens", welfare queens, gays portrayed as "pedophiles", radical environmentalists, peace activists, labor unions, teacher's unions, liberals, socialists, etc.). 

(7) Meanwhile, the real criminals are carefully protected by the state and its institutions, with their own expansion or "growth rates" the real object of public policy - not growth in incomes or quality of life for everyone.  It's  all a zero-sum game - the rich can only get richer, they believe, by making the poor, poorer, and by lowering taxes and other expenses which - they forget - fuels the predatory state which they control.  Apparently, they've forgotten what they do, or how they got there.  (Actually, groups like ALEC are quite sophisticated about this - they support police and prison-guard unions, for example, because they are necessary for the police-prison state which ALEC was created to establish). 

And so it goes.  ALEC leaders  have again taken control of the Montana Legislature.  While Steve Bullock is still Attorney General, perhaps he could launch an investigation against ALEC which would identify who in Montana has been associated with it, and what their agendas and resulting legislation and policy decisions have accomplished?  After a decade of following this organization and its many critics, I'm convinced that nearly every harmful, destructive policy enacted over the past 30 years is attributable to it, and to its kindred Heritage Foundation and several other "think tanks".  Although most people think ALEC is "libertarian," it is not.  In fact, it takes the opposite of the libertarian position on nearly every issue.  Even the Cato Institute, which is also financed by the Koch brothers, rarely agrees with ALEC's "model legislation", and of course Cato is diverse and represents a number of different libertarian thinkers.  As far as I can tell, the Koch's only recently began to fund and cooperate with ALEC, which was originally envisioned as a defense and "law and order" group extending prison sentences, and protecting its alcohol, guns, and tobacco clients from the ruinous competition from cannabis and cocaine.  Other major causes include the "health insurance" racket, pharmaceutical cartels, agribusiness, etc., etc.  As well as opposition to organized labor, environmental protection, and any mechanisms to combat global warming or climate change, which ALEC denies is human-caused, entirely.  Unlike Cato, ALEC is rigidly doctrinaire.  They have set positions on every issue, and they rigorously condition legislators, judges, etc. to follow it. 

So, that's what we're really up against.  Whether an industrial park is built next to Giant Springs and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center means nothing - especially if they can "prove", as they apparently have, that no pollution will escape, and the Madison Aquifer will not be affected.  That is how they've framed the debate, and since we no  longer have a free press or any open discussion of the alternatives, that's what we're stuck with.  

The Dream of Pembina: A Montana Saga

Montana's Exceptionalism, Or,
Ultra-Montanism in Theory and Practice


From Stephen Vincent Benet's "Western Star"

"That sun-dance has been blotted from the map.
Call as you will, those dancers will not come
To tear their breasts upon the bloody strap,
Mute-visaged, to the passion of a drum,
For some strange empire, nor the painted ghosts
Speak from the smoke and summon up the hosts."

One thing I learned from Joe Howard's "Strange Empire" is that Louis Riel was an "Ultra-montanist" (literally, "beyond the mountains" or present human experience - viz., utopian).  When I looked that up in Wikipedia, I found that it was understood to be an extreme form of Papal Infallibility, and the supremacy of the Papacy over all of the Church (not to mention the planet).  Obviously, Riel was a driven man, thoroughly influenced by his seminary teachers and his own fervant faith.  So, call that a good thing.

And of course he is counted among our greatest intellectual and spiritual forefathers in Montana - teacher,  revolutionary, and prophet.  This was his "wilderness period" between his two revolutionary insurgencies against the tyranny of the British Empire.  This was where he married and had children.  Montana, we find, was his real spiritual home. 

================

Half a century ago, when I first began reflecting on Montana's place in the U.S. and the world, I noticed that only Montana resembled the whole United States in its geographical profile. 

Although we were definitely a "Northern State", many have written about Montana's strong Southern - even Secessionist - tendencies.  One of the first big gold strikes was at Confederate Gulch in what is now Meagher County.  Helena was heavily settled by ex-Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, as was the Bitterroot and several other parts of Montana. 

Great Falls became virtually a segregated town after about 1920, and right up to the 1960's, we're told.  There has always been a substantial Black population here, and both Belt and Cascade count Black women among their founders.  Fort Shaw was home to the "Buffalo Soldiers", and named for the Union Colonel Shaw, played by Matthew Broderick in the film, "Glory."  Yet, a perusal of my GFHS Roundups from the early 1960's show a total of two black students, and about the same number of Native Americans, out of the dozens or hundreds who lived here.  Many more went to Central Catholic High School (now the public alternative - VoTech high school and adult education center) with less than 1/4  the student population of Great Falls High.   Many Catholics also attended the public schools as circumstances or interests changed.  (There was no CM Russell High School, yet). 

When I arrived at a large urban, cosmopolitan university, I found that my own prejudices were quite extreme, although I didn't have any racist ideology to go with them, and soon found myself identifying with the "underclass" of whatever race or background.  Children don't really "get" racism (or any other bigotry or xenophobia), unless it's beaten into their heads by adult parents, teachers, or other role models.  Custer was the "bad guy" in our family, and we always had an interest in leftist or "radical" thinking of whatever kind.  But it was always open and critical, never dogmatic or "conspiratorial."

One of the first serious pieces I wrote for a daily newspaper (the Missoulian) was about the possibility of Montana withdrawing from the United States, and either joining Canada, or forming a new nation out of adjoining Northern Rockies states and Provinces.  Little did I know in those days that this was precisely Louis Riel's vision for Pembina - a Metis, Catholic Republic which would maintain the culture and sovereignty of the various French-Canadian tribes and their less-"developed" and "integrated" counterparts to the West.  That piece was never published, but the Missoulian editors assured me they discussed it, and found it very interesting. 

It would be another 30 years before I finally read Joseph Kinsey Howard's "Strange Empire," which is a real history of the Metis and the Dream of Pembina, and its tragic final outcome with Louis Riel being hanged for treason.  But that dream is very much alive, and there are hundreds of local people, not all of them visibly Metis or Native American, who still believe in and serve this "Empire."  I've often wondered at the title, and suspected that it was added posthumously to Howard's work.  Riel's vision was neither Strange nor an Empire, but merely one of hundreds of Jesuit-inspired Republics formed to protect the land and cultures of indigenous peoples.  But further research (like reading the cover page) identified the source as Stephen Vincent Benet's "Western Star"

"That sun-dance has been blotted from the map.
Call as you will, those dancers will not come
To tear their breasts upon the bloody strap,
Mute-visaged, to the passion of a drum,
For some strange empire, nor the painted ghosts
Speak from the smoke and summon up the hosts."

After their initial defeat, Riel and many of his followers fled to Montana, where there was a large Metis community in Big Springs (Lewistown) and  Fort Benton.  Riel settled in as a teacher at St. Peter's Mission near Cascade, where he taught for a couple of years.  It was Gabriel Dumont who organized the continued resistance, and came to St. Peter's to ask Riel to rejoin them.  The history of these campaigns and the tremendous suffering inflicted on the "rebellious" French and Cree-speaking Metis is the  substance of "Strange Empire."  Following the second defeat and Riel's surrender and martyrdom, Dumont and his followers took refuge in the Teton Canyon, where their descendents still live in the Choteau area (Howard had a cabin and wrote "Strange Empire" there) as well as Lewistown ("Big Springs"), Rocky Boy's Reservation, and throughout Eastern Montana.

Joseph Kinsey Howard was employed by the Great Falls Tribune (then entirely local and independent, owned by the Warden family) in the 1930's and '40's, and probably the greatest journalist-historian-activist Montana ever produced.  I always marvel at how people like him, without even a high school diploma, and working more than full-time as Managing Editor of the Leader, the afternoon paper published by the Tribune, could still write such great books and contribute to many of the leading intellectual magazines on the East Coast, as well as organizing conferences and educational programs throughout the state.  Would that I had done the same, rather than chasing the false promise of a degree from a "leading university" like UCLA.

Like the younger Wallace Stegner, Howard was born in Canada, and moved to Great Falls as a boy.  In fact, their careers are strikingly similar, except that Stegner ended up running the Creative Writing program at Stanford, thus gaining a much wider following among writers and academic historians and other purveyors of the culture of the West. 

***********

Montana is a mythic land.  Like California, we were a creation of Romantic visionaries long before we actually became an English-speaking "state."  Indeed, one might well ask if Montana, like Oz, has ever "been civilized."  Huck Finn, as Leslie Fiedler liked to point out, was supposed to have fled to Montana after the events in Twain's book were over, and he "grew up."  He might have taken the steamboat to Fort Benton, like my great-grandfather Jim Stephens, and worked for I.G. Baker & Company, which owned the ranches on Highwood Creek which are now Katzenberger's and Harris's.  In between, the Katzenberger as well as the Halmes ranch (later John Hoyt's "Jolly Roger") were owned by an Anaconda Smelter superintendant named O'Grady. 

The original Howell Harris of the 1880's raised cattle both at Highwood and in Canada, to feed the Mounties at the newly-built Fort MacLeod, and the "Whoop-up Trail" (notorious for its illegal "trade whiskey") was also used to ship supplies to Calgary and Fort MacLeod before the railroads reached Western Canada in the same year they came to Helena - 1883.  That marked the end of the steam boat traffic, since rail was cheaper, faster, and a whole lot safer for passengers as well as freight.  

Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kinsey_Howard

http://books.google.com/books/about/Strange_Empire.html?id=6pae2d_28GYC

ALEC is the cause of our "national malaise"

How ALEC subverts democracy and representative government
 
The following essay was first published on 3/3/2011 3:08 PM MST, after the last Legislative Session was over.   Maybe it will be of some use to our present Legislature.  Please forward and share widely - especially with those in Helena. 


ALEC and the Rise of the Corporate Police State

by Paul Stephens

For the past 40 years, the "law and order", "tough on crime" Drug Warriors and their corporate sponsors have hi-jacked our government.  The "War on Terror" has replaced the Cold War as an excuse to support a vast military-industrial complex which is not only killing and impoverishing millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions elsewhere, but is killing the earth, itself. 

People often wonder:  How could this have happened?  Who is behind it all?  And what do these people believe - or believe in, if anything?  Is it all just corporate group-think?  Are they being bribed or coerced to support this mass destruction of our public institutions, the environment, and our very minds and souls?  Do they understand the consequences of what they are advocating and proposing?

More to the point (since it is lawyers and legislators who are actually carrying out this agenda), do they understand that they are discrediting the Rule of Law (independent judiciary) as well as democracy and representative government, itself?   It seems unlikely.  They think they are promoting business and economic development through "Jeffersonian Federalism."  And most of them have been spoon-fed a lot of plausible lies by an organization called ALEC - the American Legislative Exchange Council.  


If you don't know what ALEC is, you should spend some time finding out. Here's a good place to start.  "Creating a Right-Wing Nation, State by State" by Joshua Holland

http://www.alternet.org/story/28259/creating_a_right-wing_nation,_state_by_state

Unlike, say, the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute, which have similar origins and corporate sponsorships, ALEC doesn't care about ideas or whether or not its policies and programs are valid, moral, realistic, or even legal.  They write their own laws.  That is the main function of ALEC - to rewrite state and federal law on behalf of the prison and police-state lobbies, the "resource industries", the drug cartels, the "insurance" rackets, and most of all, the military-industrial complex of Disaster Capitalism. 

How do they do this?  They organize and "train" state legislators to submit and defend "model legislation" prepared by ALEC.  These are designed to benefit corporate interests and other entrenched power-blocs - especially military contractors, telecommunications (thanks to Conrad Burns, whose Senate committee gave away $80 billion worth of the people's airwaves in the Telecommunications Act of 1996), insurance companies, large banks and brokerage houses (which are now the same thing since repeal of Glass-Stegal - a major ALEC victory), the "pharmaceutical industry", and the destroyers of the global ecosystem.  Even such unlikely "partners" as Wal-Mart and Monsanto are now major ALEC sponsors. 

At the same time, ALEC and its member-legislators are working tirelessly to discredit organized labor, environmentalists, peace and justice policies, and almost all forms of social welfare services, Social Security, Medicare, etc.  Of course, they can't come out and openly advocate this.  They do it by claiming these programs are insolvent, wasteful, corrupt, etc.  Therefore, they ought to be "privatized" so that ALEC's corporate sponsors can take a rake-off from the tax-payer's dollars. 

Did you know that JP Morgan "manages" some 36 states' Food Stamp programs?  I believe Montana is one of them.  A year or so ago, there was a story, soon buried, that Northrop Corporation (!) was suing the state because they had submitted a lower bid, but the contract was given to Morgan (or whoever it was), instead.  [Apparently, they won the suit.  Grumman-Northrop, an aerospace company, is the present holder of this contract.] The bid?  More than $30 million out of $120 million actually spent on this program.   (These are figures from 3 years or more ago - now probably much higher). 

I get food stamps (SNAP card), and it was a regular MT state employee who interviewed me and determined my eligibility.  So, what exactly does Grumman-Northrop do for its $30 million rakeoff?  Nothing but the software and perhaps contracting out the debit cards which have replaced the old paper food stamps, which cost virtually nothing to print and distribute. 

Someone pointed out that the more the states spends on SNAP, the more JP Morgan and its competitors make!  They have the incentive, now, to keep expanding the program, and apparently this is accepted as a simple "cost of doing business" with the state officials.  The more that these corporate "contractors" get out of the welfare budgets, the less is left for those who need and receive the benefits.  What a good deal for us!

Apparently, nearly all Republicans (and maybe 1/3 of the Democrats) are completely cool with this kind of "privatization" program.  In fact, the Democrats support it even more, as they have done with contracting out Medicaid and other welfare services. After all, isn't the government a kind of mafia which steals from the poor to make the rich ever richer?  The evidence is clear that it is.  And what can I, as a poor citizen legislator trying to "create jobs," do about it?  We must respect our betters, and do whatever they tell us to do, right? 

Although I haven't checked it out, I'd willing to bet that the 36 states utilizing similar "outside contractors" under similar terms have all been participating in ALEC's "model legislation" program.  Gov. Walker of Wisconsin is obviously doing something similar, too.  Notice that he didn't want to get rid of the Police and Fireman's unions (which, along with Prison Guards unions - the MEA/MFT in Montana - support ALEC), but all the other public employee's unions are to be eliminated.  That would be difficult in Montana, since public employees unions are very powerful, here.  (I have another article in the pipeline which explains why these "Marxist" unions support massive environmental assaults and degradation). 

ALEC now claims fully one-third of all state legislators as dues-paying members.  ALEC used to be free - indeed, they paid legislators with all sorts of freebies, trips, seminars, and junkets just to sign up.  But that looked suspicious.  Apparently, ALEC re-organized sometime after 2002, to conform with other "legitimate" lobbying and "political action" groups. 

Despite its claims of "bi-partisanship" and "Jeffersonian Federalism," ALEC is a creation of the Neocons.  "De-regulation," "free trade," "supply-side economics," "globalization"  (Bush Sr.'s "New World Order"), ever-more military spending, "the War on Terror," "counter-insurgency", "the War on Drugs", and above all, ever-greater concentrations of economic and political power in fewer and fewer hands. 

ALEC opposes any and all "good government" initiatives.  It does not want government programs to succeed.  It is constantly on a mission to prove the Reagan Dictum that "government is the problem, not the solution."  As our public institutions and the Rule of Law collapse under this onslaught, there is a constantly-increasing demand for "security forces", corporate health care and rehab services, prisons and secure hospitals and treatment facilities, prescription drugs, and of course ever-more production of fossil fuels and nuclear power.  We are experiencing the classic run-up to a permanent war-disaster economy, culminating in a military dictatorship. 

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. 

========
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. 

============

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.