Boston is an armed camp?

(Note: This posting has been expanded as of 5/10 to include some of the more interesting exchanges that have occurred because of it. Thanks to all for making this an interesting exchange)

Imagine my surprise a couple of days ago to be walking downtown with some friends and finding that the Common had become a Marine base. Well, not just a base, but a full fledged interactive recruiting experience where even junior can learn to be a mass murderer.


It seems the Marines were using public spaces around town to introduce the joys of military service to the young and hopeful. Something called Marine Week, which I learned from the side of a bus.

Right here at Marine week you could get a full introduction to the latest in Military hardware including a chance to walk through one of the biggest boondoggles of all times, the new Osprey. This hybrid plane, helicopter is one of the priciest pieces of hardware ever. And the noisiest. When a flock flew over me this morning, I figured that any enemy would hear them coming from many miles away.
My Friend Paul responded to this picture with this note:

40 years ago this month I stood next to Abbie Hoffman on a stage at the common in front of 20,000 people and sang "Let the sunshine in" as Claude in the Boston production of HAIR. At the time we really did believe we were ushering in a new world and the Age of Aquarius and we did. We just didn't realize what it looked like. Last weekend, my brother's oldest son, Colonel Jack Fitzgerald USMC landed his team from Camp LeJeune in their OSPREYS close to where I sang. All I can say is, "what a piece of work is man."

But still, you have to admit that this whole event provided a chance to introduce junior to one of the few careers that will be hiring over the next 20 years. Mom could even get a charming picture before the little tyke comes home with pieces missing.

This event wasn't even confined to Boston Common. Downtown by Sam Adams statue they had a howitzer emplacement. The thing was aimed vaguely at the Bunker Hill monument. I wonder what Sam would have thought about our imperial army recruiting to go off and put down insurrections around the world.

The biggest surprise for me, however, was to go behind Faneuil hall and find them providing real hands on weapon experiences to everyone. A few years ago such a display would cause the police to come out and preserve public order, except today everyone was cheerleading the storm troops.


The Marines were certainly getting their jollys off showing the pretty girls how to hoist one of these sniper guns that can kill people a quarter mile away. Just such good ol American fun.

In a wonderful reward for bothering to do this posting, an argument ensued. At least one reader got into the mood to defend the whole process of commandeering so much public space for recruiting

"Well, we do need an Army. I rather see recruiting than a draft wouldn't you?

Besides, for some people military service is a good thing: discipline, training, education"...Michael D

This caused me to fume a bit and respond ..."Thanks for your note. I couldn't disagree more.

Actually, I am a pacifist. I think one of the reasons we are sinking into the depths of the 2nd Depression is that we have bankrupted ourselves maintaining a military, which has been so grossly over funded in relation to our actual defense needs that it, and its blood sucking arms industry limpets, have drained our treasury dry.

I think that if we want to get out of our current situation, we have to cut back the military to a kind of police force. We cannot afford our imperial legions."

Mikey in DC then had to chime in to correct my mis conceptions of the place of limpets in the hierarchy of marine life....

"As a loyal minion of the military industrial complex, I feel obliged to correct you. We, of the national defense work force are NOT blood-sucking limpets. Limpets are harmless rock-dwelling mollusks. We are blood-sucking lampreys. The lamprey is a primitive parasitic vertebrate, with a toothed, funnel-like sucking mouth. While lampreys are well known for those species which bore into the flesh of other fish to suck their blood, these species make up the minority. In zoology, lampreys are often not considered to be true fish because of their vastly different morphology and physiology.

Thank you for your interest in Marine Biology.

Semper Fidelis. "

Over the next couple of days a number of interesting responses appeared in the group over the desirability of a draft. I have included a couple. The draft issue may be a third rail of progressivism. Some deny the utility or need for a draft in a "free" society, while others (Me included) believe the draft is one way of leveling the playing field for providing service to the our society.

Michael who had supported the recruitment responded first.

"I agree to a point. The military, in many aspects is over funded. However I have friends serving without appropriate equipment.

Unfortunately beginning with WW2 we became a super power. Alot of what our military does is rebuilding and mainaining order. I completely agree that invading other countries is crap, we still need to defend ourselves which sometimes helping to stabaluze other countries."

Evan in San Francisco is also a draft supporter " Both my wife and I are of the opinion that if we had a draft, we would be less likely to still be fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the middle class were forced to send their children into these wars for years on end, risking their coming home in boxes, or with their limbs blown off, or their brains baked, we think they would have a greater stake in peace. There is a story of a mother who, while looking at a picture of her daughter in uniform, holding gun. She was crying, saying if she had had the money, her daughter would be in school holding a book."

Reita felt the same way "

Actually, I'd rather see a draft. I worry about a democracy with an army composed of mercenaries (our private contractors) and our volunteer army composed largely of men and women with the poorest economic opportunities in our society. I think we'd have fewer wars if we all had to share the burden of sending our sons and daughters to war.

I agree that military service has offered discipline, training and education, but a national service corps could offer the same advantages without the terrible costs of modern warfare. Armies are almost anachronisms in todays' world with civilian men, women and children much more likely to die at their hands than an opposing army."

Michael doggedly defended his position "You assume that if there was a draft it would stop those in charge from rushing into war because so many would object. How'd that work out with Viet Nam?

I completely agree with your comment on private contractors. I don't like an army based on making money and the desire to kill or be in power.

I also agree that war has terrible costs and when it can be avoided it should be. Unfortunately it is sometimes necessary. If it wasn't for our military, we'd be speaking German or Japanese. What would Europe look like now if the US military hadn't intervened?

Does the national service corps offer college educations and technical and mechanical training? Does it offer pensions and insurance?

Of course it's horrible to have an imperialistic military just as much as it's horrible to have war, but like fireman and police, they are a necessary fact of life that should only be used in dire circumstances. War should be the absolutely last resort."

Paul came in with a third position. " PS The draft has had no visible effect on Israel's war policy. Yes there are soldiers who protest war but military service is still presented very effectively as supporting the community. Why are you convinced it would be any different here? In fact there is a very active anti Zionist community of Orthodox Jews that have been mostly ignored by the msm in both Israel and the US. Here is link to one of the most extreme anti-Zionists Jewish groups http://www.nkusa.org/activities/Speeches/2006Iran-ACohen.cfm Most American Jews have never heard of them!"

So I get to end this, for the moment.

The volunteer army we have is basically a set of mercenaries working at the behest of the corporate powers seeking to extend the American Empire. We pay them better than McDonalds and offer some education benefits. We basically fuck them over in health care and toss them on the streets with their PTSD considered pre-existing conditions. Though I think war is a stupid way of solving problems, that has never stopped us in the past. We live in fear of fighting the last war ( Nazis!!!! Japs!!! Gooks!!) and can't see that we have become the bad guys. We have been so blinded by the state of fear produced by our mass media and our oligarchy that we can no longer hold up our heads as a free people. We are mass murderers at a distance. We pay our poor and ignorant youth to go out to maim and kill those "who hate us for our freedom".

We are powerless to stop this travesty until such time as the system implodes from its own contradictions. That may be sooner than we think.

Please post all future comments below. Thanks.

Long Strange Trip

“Lately it appears to me, what a long strange trip its been.” Jerry Garcia

Here we have Greece going bankrupt, Europe grounded by a volcano, and a huge oil slick heading to Louisiana from the deep sea well that was going to regain American oil reserves. Meanwhile the head of Goldman Sachs admitting they profited from the housing meltdown, though still making sure their Republican stooges keep any regulations from happening. Oh yeah, and the stock Market has kept levitating for no apparent reason. I haven’t heard anybody who seems to know how people are going to maintain their purchasing power as unemployment continues to erode future propects. To top it off, South Park is blacked out for fear of enraging Muslims by poking fun at Mohammed.

Long Strange Trip indeed. I don’t know about you, but to me it is now appears that a lot of stuff is coming apart rather more rapidly than any of us like to think. However, for some reason, we all continue on as if nothing is happening. We each plan for our next vacation, and our next purchase, and the possibility of our retirement. We make all those day to day decisions but now there is this niggling sense that they may prove to be a total waste of time. I must admit, this momentum of the mundane is truly immense.

This post has been wandering in various directions of late, while circling the basic perception that a Bad Moons on the Rise. But I got away from why I originally wanted to do and keep getting bogged down in longer single issues. Basically the purpose was to share the wealth of ideas and information I keep stumbling on, out there in hopes that my friends would not be too surprised as the somewhat predictable crisis events unfold. There seemed a need for some kind of filtering of these prospects. Some of the posts I chose are uncomfortable for those of you who expect things to get back to normal. I believe they mostly share an underlying humanist critique of our tenuous reality which, in turn, provides a counterpoint to this age of Tea party bloggers and growing corporatist confabulation.

So getting back roots in this post, I would like to start with a little chest thumping for having flagged some a real stoys months before ity hit. Last summer in the second Eeyore posting, I was enraged by the NY Times failure to understand the complex computer manipulation of the stock market was being employed by Goldman and others. Go back to the first archive link and check it yourself. So, imagine my surprise when this Truthout article appeared in their posted digest yesterday, on Goldmans Frontrunning Stock Manipluations. Better late than never, I guess. But really, you would think supposed investigative folks would have started digging earlier.

OK, so now for the news.

Nice weather we’ve been having, dontcha think?

Anyone who has talked to me recently has realized that I am completely freaked out by this climate shift we just had in New England. Boom! We are in North Carolina. Everything is in bloom at the same moment. It is beyond strange, yet everyone is just so happy at the beautiful weather that they give me nothing but shit if I mention how frightening this really is. I will post a poem to that effect next time, but I want to try to submit it to publications first.

Then there is this continuing feeling of looming menace in the whole structure of the economy and the nation. Jim Kuntsler provides a wonderfully acidic job of recounting my concerns in this weeks post, A Still Moment. He may even go further than I do with his belief that our system is going down and won’t make it to the November election. He is one of those who tends to jump the gun. The momentum of the mundane will probably exceed his expectations, but who knows by how much.

I must admit, that I am personally and psychically experiencing is this weird internal balancing act arising from competing belief systems. On one hand I daily have to act normal, in accordance with my accepted deviance and make plans and decisions for the future. On the other, I am scared that that future Kuntsler describes is all to immediate. If that is so, panic is not to irrational a response.

Anyone else find themselves maintaining this balance? Or, Should I check myself in for rebalancing? What do you think?

Following the “normalcy “route of personal choices would mean that I have accepted the inevitability of oligarchic control of our economic and social futures. Following an “oh shit the sky is falling!” route puts me in tin foil cap territory. Pretty grim choice, isn’t it?

But don’t listen to me, I’m unbalanced. Instead, you might check out Bill Moyer’s interview with Simon Johnson last week. Johnson is not scared of some massive conspiracy. Rather, he sees the more frightening our collective learned helplessness in the face of the financial system’s sheer manufactured complexity. Our fear of losing our present wealth by messing with this complexity has become the main engine supporting the flowering of the oligarchy made up of those who gamed the system best.

It is a political, not an economic, question to figure out how to tame this beast. Yet the polis remains so scared (or is it lazy) of facing the costs of ending the complexity engine, it continues to pray at the manger where this rough beast was born. The church of the Free Market continues to be triumphant, Don't believe me? Then please check out Matt Taibi’s current screed The Lunatics who Made a Religion out of Greed. He cites the monumental stupidity of an economic system run by the precepts of Ayn Rand. Now I have to admit that I was a bit of a Rand fan at age of 14, along with the conservative push for "Liberty". It was good adolescent stuff to chew on, and in retrospect it was probably because it drove my good Democratic parents nuts.

For a government to embrace a policy based on such drivel seems to be the height of immaturity. But it has been the national dogma since the Regan years, which seems to be when we massively chose stupidity as a national ideal. If it is all coming apart, we have no one but ourselves to blame for not sliding off the gravy train earlier and making change when it was still possible. Another post from Reason Magazine takes off from the premise that America isn’t Coming Apart Fast Enough. I might tend to agree.

Keeping with the same theme, NPRs “This American Life” did a great program with Pro Publica last week called Inside Job, which explains how one hedge fund used the complex swaps and derivatives to screw a whole lot of investors. The show led to the producers commissioning the song, Betting Against the American Dream. Be sure to watch the recording of the song video at the link. It’s a scream for those of you with a really dark sense of humor.

With all the sense of breakdown and dissolution in the air, I note that Chris Hedges, with the New Secessionists, has turned a generous eye on national dissolution. As many of you know, this I perceive as the only positive way of cleaning up the American mess. Hedges heaps a lot of praise on the Second Vermont Republic movement. Of course good liberals look on this with aghast. I got no end of snide comments on the Cultural Confederacies posting last fall. The general critique of my proposal was, such a breakup would violate the Constitution and leave the people of color in the South at the hands of the racists. Maybe. It would also leave us up here in the north free of the governmental hegemony of the corporatist crazies and the Born Again whack jobs. A fair trade from my perspective.

The next leg of this Long Strange Trip promises to be interesting.

When the Times Are Out of Joint

It would be just like Eeyore to bask in the warmth of a gorgeous spring day and keep mumbling over and over, “This isn’t right. No. Not right at all”.

Not that it matters. Everyone else is delighting in the sunshine and the warm air, paying no mind to poor Eeyore glumly mumbling expressions of sadness.

Why this mumbling? Because April 4th should not be 80 degrees in northern New England and the trees should not be swelling with red buds and green shoots while patches of snow still linger in the mountain shadows.

Sure, April in New England is the time for crocus and daffodils, but not flowering trees and swelling buds. That is supposed to be a month off yet. Such verdant ruptures should be in early May not the beginning of April.

Spring should come at a stately pace, revealing each delight in its time. This cancerous profusion of growth takes the poetry out of the season, dumping it into one large tumbling drum of sensations.

So, Eeyore sulks in fear and sadness . Something is deeply wrong when mud season is skipped and the spring bursts force as if pumped from a firehose.

At the rate we are going, the gardens will be past before they are finally turned and the vegetables started. It will soon be too late for lettuce and peas. The heat of mid summer will be here by May, and the harvest will be burnt and shriveled by July. Time is out of joint!

One or two days warmth is fine, a reminder that Spring is a borning. But a week? Not hardly. If we are already wearing shorts at the beginning of April, what will June provide? 100 degrees in the shade?
That’s why Eeyore is afraid. I admit that it might seem churlish of me to even mention such fears. Such wonderful warmth immediately after winter seems a blessing to most.

And, I must admit, that for the moment, this is still a weather event. Yes, dear ones, I know the difference between climate and weather. Yet, there is something wrong here. Deeply wrong.

At least I’m not the only one. Jim Kuntsler seems to be on the same wave length in False Spring. Then he spins off into his rant on suburban sprawl, but does note that we can expect more ticks and pests soon. Everyone else, is blissfully basking in the sunshine. I do so hope they are not surprised.

In this space of growing gloom, I also came across this weeks column by Chris Hedges where he details how the Corptacracy managed the demonization of Ralph Nader. I admit to having felt some guilt for being a Nader partisan in 2000. After reading the article, I felt less guilt.

I admit that Nader may be a bit of an egotistical wanker, but he did have an important message about the corporate takeover. Gore might not have put us in Iraq, but if Barack is any guide, a lot of the bad Bush policies would have come about anyway. Gore was Clinton’s VP after all. When all is said and done, we project entirely too many of our hopes onto the candidates, and take too little responsibility for our own actions.

As a final note, regarding the last post, there was a decent turn out at the first meeting of the Common Security Club, and a bunch more people who want to come to the second.

Something is happening. Mr. Jones just doesn’t know what it is.

Finding a Direction for Now

Common Security Club

Sometimes social action requires a commitment within our own community, not just good works outside.

A couple of months ago I started some conversations with Rev Martha, at my UU church, about our mutual concern over impending economic and social crises, As part of this conversation, she mentioned that she was feeling that a number of people in the congregation were beginning to feel personal effects of theses big changes in their own lives. Maybe it isn’t the parishoners personally, but it could be something happening in the lives, of their children, or parents, or close friends. Things are falling apart fairly quickly now.

It will come as no surprise that I have, shall we say, a strong interest in current and future affairs, and have long expressed such concerns. So, I was most interested when, Martha sent to me a link to the Common Security Clubs,. It is a new non profit set up to broadcast and train people in organizing small , mutually supportive communities, or clubs.

There is however, a challenging twist to the ideas behind these clubs. They are being formed in response to what participants see as a rather scary future.

The founders of the idea (mostly from the Boston and San Francisco areas) believe we are entering a period of profound and wrenching change. They believe that the financial crisis will worsen in the coming year and our personal economic security and that of millions of our neighbors will further erode.

Moreover, the challenges facing our country are not part of a short-term economic recession, but part of a larger system failure in the economy.

Reading their stuff was like finding lost relatives. Like me, these people believe that some folks have been in a Depression for more than a year but it doesn’t make the news as much. We all believe that the initial effects of this Depression are being felt some places more heavily than others.

Unemployment and foreclosure has hit the African-American community twice as hard as the white community. When I was in Florida a few weeks ago, I was amazed at the sheer volume of Homes for Sale signs and the rows of closed restaurants. Then yesterday, it is announced that we have now hit the absolute lowest level of monthly new home sales since they started keeping records in the 60s.

Things are falling apart fast, but nobody likes to talk about it. Given the good times of the past 60 years, most of us have gotten out of practice participating in mutual aid and expanding our shared security locally. Common Security Clubs can be a means to strengthen these atrophied muscles.

We (using the "we" advisedly) believe that we need to prepare ourselves and our communities for immanent and fundamental changes while building a new economic model based on real wealth and economic activity, not phantom wealth and casino economics.

We are concerned that many people will face these challenges in isolation. Even those connected to extended families, religious congregations, unions and civic groups may be embarrassed or ashamed to reach out for assistance.

A Duke University study about social isolation found that in 2004, 25 percent of U.S. citizens said they had no one to confide in about personal troubles. This is twice the number of people who, 20 years earlier, had no one to turn to for this crucial support.

First, I know this will come as a bit of surprise to us good social citizens, but most people don’t like to talk about their money, or their family’s money. Its an intimate subject, not fit for polite company. So, as people loose their grip on the American dream, you might imagine that they tend to feel isolated and fearful at sharing their loss of status.

Given the good times of the past 60 years, most of us have gotten out of practice participating in mutual aid and expanding our shared security locally. Common Security Clubs can be a means to strengthen these atrophied muscles.

So, a few weeks ago, I went to their first facilitator training session downtown. Helping people to get together to create positive collective energy in the face of the coming hard times seemed like a fine way to spend my time and energy.

These Clubs provide a way for people to talk about personal economic and social stresses and relate them to larger political, class and economic forces that don’t often get talked out. People tend to blame themselves for their personal challenges rather than question a whole financial system that was perfected to get them in debt. The next step is to explore ways to turn our shared experiences into positive mutual support and appropriate social actions.

For this moment, I think these Common Security Clubs ( or mutual support marching and chowder societies; or whatever you want to call it) are a way to bring people together to face the economic crisis. Not only do we need one another to survive economic hardship, but we also need to break out of the social isolation that might accompany it. We need to learn how to use our energies at a local level to make changes in our lives and our community's lives which will create models of exchange, support and possibility that has not been seen for a while.

I will keep you posted.

End the cloture fiasco

I sent this letter to my Senator. I suggest you do the same.

Also added are some comments from Mikey. I agree with him completely so

they were just pasted in.

What do you think?

How could we get rid of the Senate as now constituted?

Dear Senator Kerry

I am writing to you in anger and disgust at the way the paralyzed US Senate has allowed itself to become the laughingstock of the democratic nations of the world. It is embarrassing for all of your constituents to see our Senate , theoretically ruled by a Democratic majority, strangled by ill considered and antiquated procedures. It must even be hard for you to realize that you have no personal ability in this environment to care for any of the people’s business. This state of permanent filibuster has to end.

As a long time supporter, who even spent time walking the streets of New Hampshire for you in 2004, I implore you to join with Senator Harken and others to demand a rules change which ends the paralysis of the cloture system.

If you in the Senate are unwilling to get rid of the right of filibuster then please, allow the filibuster to return in all its glory. Let the Republicans filibuster away on whatever irks them and let the American public view the spectacle on C-Span.

No one can reasonably argue that such a spectacle would actually get in the way of the Senate’s current business because you aren’t doing any business. The senate is doing nothing! You are paralyzed and collectively impotent. I urge you to work for real change and that means ending the current fiasco caused by the Senate’s cloture rules.

Sincerely yours,

+++++++++++

My heart is in violent agreement with everything you wrote, but a small insistent voice in my head keeps reminding me that the Senate is doing exactly what the framers of the Constitution intended. The function of the Senate is to resist change. As students of history, the founding fathers knew that most political change is for the worse, and legislative changes driven by the passions of the moment are the worst. It is remarkable that the system they devised 251 years ago still manages to creak along at all, but our real problem is that our Constitution is now fundamentally broken.

This is a painful thing for an American to conclude. After all, the Constitution is the focus of our civic loyalty and the essence of our national identity. We swear to preserve, protect and defend the ideas embodied in those musty scraps of parchment. But the stubborn truth is that a system designed for an 18th century agrarian society of small farmers and slave plantations is proving to be utterly dysfunctional for governance in a post-industrial world.

You have correctly identified the Senate as the most broken part of the Constitutional order. The Senators from Wyoming representing about 540,000 people have exactly as much voting power as the Senators from California representing about 37 million people. And the 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia, and many thousands more who live in our island territories, have no representation at all.

In an odd way, the Brits, having no formal written Constitution, are better off than us. Through an incremental Parliamentary creep, they have actually managed to implement fundamental change in the structure and function of the Hose of Lords. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords ]. We would need a Constitutional amendment to do anything like that.

One logical alternative would be to decouple the Senators from the states (which are mostly broken, dysfunctional entities as well, but that is a topic for another day.) For example, one Senator might be elected from each of the 94 Federal judicial districts, plus 6 appointed "at large" by the President. Longer terms (10-12 years?) might focus Senators more on legislative business and less on re-election cycles. Many countries with Parliamentary systems appoint their Senators ( distinguished elder political, cultural or economic leaders, or cronies of the Boss, depending on the local tradition) rather than electing them.

Don't bitch, organize! If the Senate is broken and dysfunctional, the Constitution provides a remedy. The present nationwide backlash of anger against the Senate as an institution provides a real opportunity to resurrect the long-neglected but increasingly urgent agenda of Constitutional reform.

State of the Union?

This is the State of the Union Speech I wish Obama would give.

Its time for somebody to tell the truth.

++++++++++++

I come before you tonight to report that The State of the Union is fragile and fraying.

It is my duty to report to you that our proud country has reached a moment which requires bold changes in the ways we do the public business, and we must recognize that these changes will demand both courage and sacrifice from everyone. For the past 30 years our government has embarked on an unsustainable course of action. We have sold off our industry, our birthrights and our future prosperity to a small group of private interests who, in turn have created a big lie. This lie says that government is the problem in our lives and that we would be happier if we trusted our futures to the efficiencies of the market system.

Sadly, this Congress has been complicit in that sale of the public’s trust. It ignored the people’s business while rushing to fulfill every wish of the financial and corporate interests. This betrayal of the public trust has been masked in a show of procedural shenanigans and political posturing which helped convince the public that government really is the problem.

This Congress’ and this President’s failure to fix our broken systems of health care, finance, education, military procurement and public safety is proof enough, that government as we now know it is the problem. We have continually repeated the sad show of political paralysis through a system of partisan Gridlock assisted by the undemocratic demand for legislative supermajorities. It is simply unacceptable today as we face deep and abiding challenges to our safety and our hope for future peace and prosperity to continue this disgraceful failure to live up to our responsibilities to govern.

We are mired in two wars entered because of the lies of the last administration. Trapped in these conflicts, we cannot exit because we fear our national honor will be damaged.

Our economy is held hostage to a bunch of banks too big to fail, and a bunch of bankers who are enjoying their role as well bonused masters of the universe. To add insult to injury, through your elected representatives, these financial services companies have conned you, my fellow Americans, into taking on a debt burden, for both yourselves and your country, which can never be paid off.

Our markets are swamped with millions of empty houses built in the wrong places for people who will never be able to afford their purchase price.

Our food supply may rapidly dwindle this spring as the effect of too much rain in the wrong places at the wrong times will be seen in the prices you pay at the supermarket. Our schools our failing, our towns and cities are laying off policemen, firewomen and teachers because they are going broke. Many people are one paycheck away from bankruptcy. Health care costs continue to rise despite all the hot air wasted here on complaints about their inflation. Our so called health care system is not the best in the world. According to the World Health Organization it is rated 32^nd, behind Bosnia.

Our children have been failed by our education system. Recent scores put them at the very bottom of the developed world.

We should be ashamed.

I charge you the honorable representatives of the American people with caving into the representatives of the insurance companies, the drug companies, the medical profiteers , the defense contractors, the bankers and the Junk food industry an the whole industry of government contractors who feed at the public’s expense. You have sold yourself to their lobbyists, (many of them our former colleagues) who daily swarm these sacred halls. Afraid to challenge their generous contributions we have all failed the people who entrust us to come here in their interest.

I include myself in this charge, because I too believed that ultimately the corporate interests were the public’s interests. But the time has come to end that illusion. The time has come to listen to the hopes and fears of those whose interests we are here to support.

In this world of wars and terrorist threats, plunging personal wealth, failing schools systems and congressional gridlock is it any wonder that we are all fearful of the coming changes in our lives and our children’s lives. Throughout history, in such times radical and painful change, people have embraced the politics of fear and hate over the politics of optimism and progress. 80 years ago, in a fateful choice, the Depression wracked Germans elected Hitler under his promise of new German prosperity. There are consequences of the politics of fear.

So, My fellow Americans, I appeal to you to listen to what I have to say tonight, not with your fears, but with your hopes. If you want this Congress, and this President, to look out for your interests, then you have to learn from the citizens of Massachusetts this week, who elected a new junior Senator, who I believe is an truly independent Republican. He was elected because he appealed to citizens who believe we, her in Washington, are not providing the responsible leadership they have the right to expect.

For my part, I accept the charge. I have not provided the leadership you expected. I have failed to fight for your needs in a vain hope of returning some sense of cooperation to this government. I had come to this vipers nest of a city thinking we had a mandate for change. I learned that mandates for change are only as long as a news cycle.

As we tried to engage you the congress in a discussion about changes we need we found out that the people’s will did not seem to count for those in this Congress whose constituents do not hold them to the same standards as they hold the greater institutions of government. I had not counted on the huge divisions between the good people in this house, whose definitions of public interest too often gets confused with your definitions of self interest. I truly believed that there could be bipartisan agreements on the key issues that divide us. I was mistaken

Every time we tried to do the people’s business, we learned of huge hidden price tags which were attached to any possible agreement. These were prices that are not to be discussed publicly because of the interests involved. Often we found that those prices were actually obscene private profit for those contracted to serve the people.

For instance, we found that our military is too highly trained to waste time doing cooking, washing and cleaners. No, instead we have to contract for Halliburton and other private vendors to do those menial tasks for the Army, at an obscene cost.

Can we control our money supply? No. We have to do what the Federal Reserve wants. Can we provide for basic health care services for our people? No we have to contract for private insurers. The growth in government that you so rightly resent is actually the growth in the private contractors who are supposedly bringing the efficiencies of free enterprise to the public.

As for fixing the economy, I also failed when it came to provide the leadership you deserve. I believed my Economic team when they said that we needed to keep bailing out the big financial monopolies or risk a second depression. I failed to understand the interests they serve.

The Congress and I are not alone in our failures of responsibility. All of us, as a people, have allowed ourselves to be seduced into a new definition of our role in the country’s life. We seem to have voluntarily given up our role as citizens, responsible for the force and future of this great country. Instead, we allowed ourselves to become mere consumers, dependent on the marketplace for our sense of happiness and possibilities. I believe that in our hearts we know this role has no future, but we don’t know how to change it. Instead we have gotten angry at our lot and angry at our elected representatives.

This anger has been building for a long time. We just haven’t heard it here in this protected bubble of the Washington Beltway establishment. A bubble, I might add, which can only be entered if you can pay a lot for admission.

Over the past year, As the Main Street economy imploded, people lost their belief in a better future for their children Without that belief, a crucial part of our collective dream is in danger. Maybe the vote in Massachusetts can remind us that there is real anger at the way we have been doing business here in Washington and that the citizens may want to take back their power.

I also suspect that we all feel a little guilty as we realize we had embraced an economic illusion of unending growth in our consumer culture. We have been seduced by the deeper lie that money is an end in itself, a joy in itself, rather than a means of measuring real wealth created from our work, our inventions, our thrift, our communities, and our collective hopes for a safe and compassionate future for ourselves, our children and our neighbors .

For the past two decades we have given up our real strength, shipped off our productive capacity to countries where the wealthy business owners can find cheaper labor. We bought into a lie that our investments in the rigged game of financial services rather than investment in technology and infrastructure would eventually pay for all the debts we have piled up. So now, when that lie of a dream fed by the big banks and insurance companies has been broken, we must find a way of making up for lost time. We need to help sponsor new ideas, technologies and visions which will create the real wealth of our future.

To do this, you the Congress must start living up to the trust invested in you.

It is time to give up the irreparable corruption of our campaign finance system.

It is time to recognize the special interests have taken control of all of our government, and threaten our economic survival if we don’t do their bidding. We can start resisting this control by repealing the laws that allow an essentially selfish organization, called a corporation, to be ruled an independent person by the courts.

Let me stop here a moment and answer those who say that our efforts to regulate and limit the power of the large corporations is anti business and will prevent business from creating badly needed jobs. To those critics, I ask: please tell me which of these corporations have been creating American jobs in the last year?

It is time to help restart our economy by providing real work and real jobs in things we know we need. We need a world class rail system which uses US made trains to run on US made rails. We need to help stabilize the glass and chemical industries that are moving off shore. We need to invest and nurture industries and services which will provide jobs and prosperity for our children and grandchildren. We need to stop supporting corporations who are sucking the public treasure dry to fatten their own wallets.

I propose tonight the creating of a new Partnership for America’s future. This partnership would bring together business, labor, entrepreneurs and educators along with our best schools and our best thinkers to help created new sustainable businesses which can be created and grow here at home. This Partnership would be an ongoing discussion and think tank with access to Government financing . It will become an integrated set of national incubators to help bring about new and expanding businesses and social enterprises. In turn, these enterprises will produce non financial service jobs with a real promise of future productive growth.

As for health care, we should all be ashamed. We need to restart that debate by recognizing that every special interest involved in profiting from the current system will quite simply lie about our loss of choices and our move to socialism. So lets hear the real truth. Although our drugs and our hospitals perform miracles for the well to do, overall, our American health care system is a laughing stock. In terms of every international measure our system is ranked about 32^nd in the world because our people are so unhealthy and so many go into bankruptcy seeking care.

Since this Congress does not want to provide the American people with the health care coverage it provides itself, instead, perhaps you in Congress should consider giving yourselves the average coverage the public enjoys. Of course that will mean that 50% of you will have to go without any or adequate coverage, but you would then be honestly representing your constituents.

While we are on health care, it is time to face up to the simple fact that so many of us are sick because we eat junk food produced with massive agricultural subsidies. I propose tonight that we end the subsidies we provide to the grain and meat industries who provide the junk food that is literally killing us. It should be a source of shame that farmers should joke about farming the government rather than providing the truly wholesome and nutritious crops which will sustainably nourish our nation.

Should we wish to subsidize any agriculture, let it be for family farms close to our cities where fruits, grains and vegetables can be provided with little shipping costs. This would provide true food security against future unforeseeable shocks.

Our education system has also become an international joke. We score last in the developed world in our national testing for literacy and math. Our teachers are scorned in society as losers who couldn’t make it in the business world. Some school boards around the country have given up science and history to meet the religious and social demands of their local voters. This is not a system that will help create the inventors, the builders, the organizers and the leaders of a new world. This is a system designed to perpetuate failure.

As part of our Partnership for America’s Future, let us figure out how to put the research and resources into education that we put into road subsidies and defense. It is time to recognize a simple fact, it is those people who teach our children, tend to our sick and elderly, guard our streets and insure our environment health. These people are the source of our wealth and security much more than the bankers and the financiers. Lets start rewarding our real heros.

So I come before you tonight to challenge you to give up the false hopes of a market driven recovery that will magically arise when government gets off your back. No government should be on your back, but it is up to you, the citizens of this country, to decide what you want to give up in order to lower your taxes while still providing the stability and security upon which you depend.

We have seen what a low tax, deregulated business environment can do. It has created economic, social and environmental challenges which are rapidly running out of control. It has produced a world in which over a third of the people in this country now carry a personal debt burden that they may never be able to pay off. can only be met by the good old American values of vision, thrift and industry.

Tonight, we must start resisting the quiet coup that has taken over this Congress and the elected representatives throughout America This coup was carried out by a small group of people who are acting as an unelected oligarchy. This oligarchy is composed of the owners and managers of the out of control investment firms financial institutions have purchased enough influence in these chambers to make their needs and desires greater than the American people. They have made the laws to their advantage and opened the purse strings of the Treasury to service their every desire.

In the past few days, the Supreme Court in the front row here has become complicit in that coup. It has ruled that we cannot make laws that limit the amount corporations spend on campaign advertising. In essence, they can use every trick in the book to hypnotize you into doing their bidding.

It is time to take our country back. And to do that, this Congress must start to stand up again for the needs of the American people. It can start doing that by rewriting the laws that make corporations an individual under the law. It can amend the national banking laws to bring back usury limits on loans and credit cards. This Congress can live up to its responsibility to care for the economic health of the people by taxing the great fortunes that have been made even greater by your bank bail outs and corporate largess.

This Congress can be remembered as a truly revolutionary body by beginning to act in the interests of the people, to forge a new vision of a peaceful prosperous America built on opportunity, hard work and sacrifice Or, it can be a Congress remembered for one which uses its power to transfer the people’s wealth to the oligarchs and the well to do.

It is time Congress to serve the American people once again. It is time to choose.

Brain Candy

HEADLINE!!!!

EEYORE APPROACH VINDICATED ACCORDING TO BBC

Now that I know that my curmudgeonly ways are not as dysfunctional as most people think, I feel so much better. I also feel less alone. That’s nice.

For a long time I thought I needed some Prozac to help steer my attention away from thoughts about our onrushing descent into a scary future. But its not medication I need, it’s the company. So, more and more I am reminded of the old Tom Paxton lines

Well, I've been around this land, just a-doin' the best I can,

Tryin' to find what I was meant to do,

And the faces that I see look as worried as can be,

And it looks like they are a-wonderin' too.

Yup, lots of folks are wonderin what is coming round. Though, I have to admit amazement at how many of them keep stoking the fires of good ol’ American optimism even as the wheels are coming off their individual lives so quickly. Which brings up an interesting question; when does optimism verge into denial? Is the current wisdom that we will get back to our glowing future as “growth” returns just a cruel lie, maintained by the media and the politicians in order to prevent mass panic? If so, then we need to be talking about real solutions for the future, not the wishfully imagined.

The way I figure it, we have a karmic duty to be mindful of the sufferings of others and do what we can to improve things. The problem is, in this overly complex, interrelated world of ours, how can we know if what we are doing is making things better or making things worse. Like, we are all going to be better if we can just go back to mass consumption and personal aggrandizement. The corollary to this seems to be wrapped up in the belief that we can invent technologies which will make life better and fix our social and environmental problems. After all, technology made our lives better in the past, cant we assume that it will make things better in the future. On the other hand, when I look at the damage that technology has done to our lives and our planet, I am tempted to think that Ned Ludd had a point.

These contradictions were brought home to me last week when I was given a wonderful opportunity to attend the ideas conference Pop Tech!, The location was the Camden Opera House in Camden Maine. My wife, who has been to TED, calls this kind of experience “brain candy”. And like most candy, you can get a major headache from consuming too much. But that’s another story.

Just being around this impressive bunch of brainy people was a major jolt to the neurons. It was especially intriguing because so much of the event was organized with an upbeat theme that new technology and social entrepreneurship would help us re-imagine America.

Admittedly, I had been re-imagining America in a different vein, so I bring forth my curmudgeon nature, and start talking to folks about the Cultural Confederacies idea. I had a bunch who seemed to think this was worth considering but I was brought up short whe some of the really bright people I presumed to engage asked: “Oh really? Have you read Juan Enriquez” book?” I then looked stupid for more than a minute. It turns out that I should have watched Enriquez’ presentation at Pop Tech 2006 before putting the idea out there. I urge you to watch it too.

Enriquez observes in his 06 book, Untied States of America, that divisions of larger countries into smaller countries is really the story of the 20^th century. Go look at how many countries lived under the English flag in 1909. It turns out that when populations within a nation become sufficiently self identifying and un-integrated, splits often occur, but not in the way that might seem most likely.

Part of his thesis is that most secessions are by the more economically viable portion of a state that is tired of supporting the poorer regions. When a population or region becomes convinced that the could be richer by themselves, they secede. (Guess how much of the blue state taxes get funneled to the Red states) Knowledge based economies can be much more efficient and allow these smaller nations easily compete with far larger nations. Shedding regions that don't 'pull their weight' becomes an increasingly attractive option. For more perspective see (Ode Review)

Now Enriquez concludes that we (America) is being driven apart by a minority on each side of the divide and that men of good will should be able to fix things. That sure was the hope of a bunch of us Obama supporters. Now I think our karmic task is to reimagine an America that might be fractured and hostile and dangerous and ask ourselves how we can provide a bridge from this reality to a better future rather than looking for the re-emergence of a prosperous path.

Most of the Pop! Tech participants were of the belief that simple technological systems would fix the problems. There were cheap hydrogen generators that used roof top photo cells. There were inventions like Styrofoam made from mushrooms and there were proofs that regrowing the rain forests to shelter sugar palms would provide all the sugar and energy we need. Really, these were all wonderful ideas. But ol’ Eeyore here just kept wondering how a bankrupt country with a population that expects its privilege to be unchallenged, is going to survive the next few years.

We can either choose some painful changes which might lead to a more humane future or we can fight against them, and accept the verdict of history. I think there are a lot of hints out of history, but the question is how to listen to them.

That was the great thing about being around so many really smart people for a few days. It was good to be reminded of the debt our ideas owe to their sources of knowledge and inspiration. Each of our personal journeys of the mind follows their own paths and comes upon our own references in the most surprising of ways.

Next week I want to explore some of the sources of the Confederacies concept and why such sources provided the context for imagining the good that could come from dis-uniting our states.