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The Senator from China
The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people too, have first amendment rights like people so can now contribute as much as they want to candidates of their choosing. The ruling also permits foreigners to contribute whatever they want to help us decide what’s best for us. This should be interesting. The people who will actually get all the money, the media, will love it. Think I’ll call Hugo Chavez today; see if he’ll back my run for governor. I might finally get some press attention. But I’m getting off track. “I yield my time to my esteemed colleague from China,” says our esteemed colleague from Boeing…
When are we gonna get it, that a government for sale to anybody is a really bad idea! I have promised to end government for sale in Oregon by Executive Order my first day in office. No contributions, no gifts, no favors, no bribes of any kind will be allowed to choose our elected representatives or influence their legislation. I don’t know if this will actually improve things but things can’t get any worse so why not try something new?
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THE TEA PARTY CROWD:
“I have several “tea bagger” friends, and they are funny. They are against big government but support the creation of the Homeland Security Department and the Transportation Security Administration for $62 billion annually.
They are against deficit spending but support the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, projected to cost $3 trillion.
They are against “Wall Street” and “Fat Cats” but they support the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which rescinded key protections within the Glass-Steagall Act, enabling the current financial crisis. They are also against the Federal Reserve (and are clueless as to its purpose) but complain about lack of lending.
They are strict constitutionalists, but they are in favor of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, suspending of habeas corpus, torture, extraordinary rendition, and other Bill of Rights abuses. They are against government control and intrusion, but they support the Patriot Act.
Tea-baggers are amazingly self-contradictory and they really don’t know what they are mad about.
There are no simple solutions to any of the issues we face. However, there are rational approaches that can work with a concerted effort. Sadly, ignorance always has a price.”
Dr. Steve Belovich, Richfield, OH.,
Letter to the editor, The Progressive, March 2010
Can’t add anything to this…
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Another excellent Illahee series lecture
Another excellent Illahee series lecture last night in PDX about peak oil and correlative topics. “All of the debts for society’s century-long industrial fiesta are coming due at the same time. We have no choice but to transition to a world no longer dependent on fossil fuels, a world made up of communities and economies that function within ecological bounds. How we manage this transition is the most important question of our time.”
The speaker, Richard Heinberg, heads up a think tank in Sonoma. Excellent resource: http://www.postcarbon.org/
He also spoke about the changes in farming practices. When oil is gone, and it will be very soon, so will be the way we produce and distribute food. Here’s a big part of the solution, the missing link to equipment and processes needed to do it successfully: http://www.mmfec.com/
The speaker even talked about community currencies as an alternative to hyper-inflated national currencies. We’re on the same page, for sure. Kinda felt good, having researchers of this quality validating what I’ve been saying on my blog here.
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A Free Press?
My buddy Dan Meek, the great public interest lawyer, sent my last blog (The 800 pound gorilla) out to 242 press outlets in Oregon. The subject was the most important issue facing the country. It was relevant, pertinent and topical; all the things a good press release should be, and well written too if I do say so myself. Not a single mention of it from any of the newspapers, radio or TV stations – and sent from a candidate for governor! Why no mention? It’s because we don’t have a free press in this country, not since the CIA infiltrated it in the 40’s. Google search Operation Mockingbird if you think I’m exaggerating.
“There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar weekly salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” John Swinton, former Chief of Staff for the New York Times.
John Swinton was one of New York’s best-loved newspapermen, called by his peers “The Dean of his Profession.” He made this statement when asked to give a toast before the New York Press club in 1953. It wasn’t reported in the press of course. It did come out in Senator Frank Church’s senate investigation in 1975 but few noticed. I did.
So while you’re reading about Chris Dudley missing another free throw or Allen Alley taking a stroll or Kitzhaber wearing jeans, take some time to do your homework before you let the press tell you who to vote for. Please.
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The government we deserve…
When we condemn congress we’re really just condemning ourselves. We have always had a government for sale to everything but the public interest. Lincoln above all understood this and we’ve been governed by executive orders ever since. The President can do anything his heart desires without the consent of congress, the courts, the constitution or even the people’s will. If we don’t like it we can impeach him but until then, he’s the Captain! Most states, Oregon included, grant their governors the “executive power.” The reason is obvious – every ship needs a Captain in time of trouble. If you don’t think Oregon and the rest of the country is in trouble you haven’t been paying attention.
I have made my intent clear, that if elected I will issue several executive orders my first day in office. Our legislature in Salem is as gridlocked by stubborn ideology as is the one in Washington, DC and therefore, useless. I intend to mostly ignore them and simply do what needs to be done. Here again is the list:
- Pardon all persons ever convicted of a consensual crime.
- Institute publicly funded elections and ban all contributions/gifts to office holders and candidates.
- Found a state bank to make low interest loans to develop Oregon’s infrastructure. http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/but_governor.php
- Institute single-payer legal.
- Fund engaging new interactive PC teaching courses on all subjects to improve learning, starting with math and civics.
- Re-empower juries to judge the law.
- Ban Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).
- Legalize Hemp.
- Eliminate all taxes and fees on businesses. (Businesses don’t pay taxes, they collect them).
That should fix things nicely. I think you deserve it, seriously.
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State of the Union?
“In a word, the state of the union is ANGRY! The question for the president and for BOTH parties to figure out is, at what?
Because we have a two-party system, the only choice people have if they don’t like what’s happening is to vote for the other guy, even if the other guy is largely responsible for what’s happening, and the guy that’s in there now is in there because of the other guy’s mistakes.
People are angry at deficits, largely run up by the irresponsibility of the Bush administration, and topped off by Obama. They’re angry that the bankers who got us in this mess are making millions while we lose our shirts, thanks mainly to deregulation promoted primarily by Republicans (but signed off on by Clinton). They’re angry about jobs, but there’d be a lot more of them if the stimulus package had been larger, which would have increased the deficit, which they’re angry about. They’re angry that Washington seems wholly beholden to special interests, so they’re going to vote for the party that loves special interests at least as much as the party in power now. They’re angry at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were started by the party they just voted out a year ago. They’re angry that Obama has accomplished so little of his agenda, so they’re going to vote for the party that has unanimously opposed every single aspect of it.”
Ed Stein
Ed pretty well sums things up. Gore Vidal said it too: “It makes no difference who you vote for — the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.” There is NO difference in the major parties!
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What are we waiting for???
Back in ’92, as a Chief Petitioner on an Oregon Initiative to close the Trojan Nuclear Plant, I published a full-page treatise in the New York Times and all Oregon newspapers calling for the U.S. to build a solar power infrastructure based on a McDonnell Douglas invention called a GenSet. Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque has been tinkering with it for years to make it slightly more efficient but we could have been installing these things 20 years ago to supply 100% of the nation’s power – at one-tenth the cost of the Middle East wars for oil. Our shuttered auto factories could have been mass-producing these things. Detroit would not have a 50% unemployment rate and we could have eliminated our biggest national security threat, the radioactive fuel pools at commercial nuclear plants.
Oil companies weren’t too keen on this renewable fuel idea since these GenSets can also produce hydrogen gas for our cars and trucks and to heat our homes. Thanks to our lobbyist-controlled government, the public interest doesn’t always coincide with private interest. You can read more on this in Chapters 21 & 22 of my autobiography. Click on the book cover on the right.
A national Apollo type program to create a solar/hydrogen infrastructure would save us from the impending and certain economic collapse of our currency and economy. Worth doing, eh!
It’s time to email your congressman. Send them these links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjUvxtwJ1OM&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95kmrb-5Ugw&feature=channel
http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2008/solargrid.html
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Government by Ponzi
The U.S. budget deficit for 2009 is $1,400,000,000,000. That’s not the budget, that’s the DEFICIT! $1.4 Trillion is $12,600 per family. The interest on this borrowing will cost another $2.8 Trillion over the life of a 30-year T-Bill. This year’s deficit alone will cost our kids and us $37,800; more than the average family earned in 2009. The 2010 deficit is going to be even bigger.
Is this nuts or what? Almost all the deficit spending went to military adventures and government employees. A tiny fraction was put into infrastructure capital, the remainder wasted, gone forever. Jesus.
Speaking of Jesus, we should follow his example and kick over the moneychanger’s table. Our moneychanger is the Federal Reserve; that privately owned franchise to legalize usury. Why are we paying interest on our own money! It’s unconstitutional of course but the constitution is whatever the judge says it is even when it says exactly the opposite! Judges, like the politicians who appoint them, watch the election returns. These elections are brought to us courtesy of the Republican and Democratic National Committees who dictate the candidates we’re allowed to choose between. This is no democracy. It’s a Ponzi scheme.
Yeah, but what can one person do about it? Well, you can vote for me. If elected I will establish (by executive order) a state bank to make 2% interest loans to develop and expand Oregon infrastructure projects and fund new sustainable manufactures. I will also (by executive order) ban political contributions (bribes) to office seekers and office holders. What can one person do?
Quite a bit actually, like this man: “The refusal of King George III to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators was probably the prime cause of the revolution.” Benjamin Franklin
Or this man: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies…if the American people ever allow private banks to control the currency…the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” Thomas Jefferson
Uh oh, we have both a private bank and a huge standing army.
Viva la revolución!
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Money made simple
So what’s with gold prices rising 40% in the past two years? Precious metal prices are an index of paper money’s real value. Paper money spent for expenses is 100% inflationary. Paper money invested into infrastructure capital isn’t. Why does government misdirect paper money? Republicans should know this better than anyone but they’re the worst perpetrators of squandering the nation’s credit on a permanent war economy. It’s great to love our military but it is an EXPENSE, a socialist make-work program that consumes half our industrial output annually. Is this any way to run our company? Yes, a very stupid, self-defeating one.
It isn’t like this is anything new. Two and a half centuries ago Volatire writes to the Controller-General, ”Sir, You think that we can increase the national wealth by printing paper money. This is not wealth but a sham for the real wealth of produce and manufacture. You have made ten times as much in paper notes as we have in real wealth in money and goods; you are ten times mad.” No sooner had he finished than he was conducted to the lock-up…
Paper money is a double-edged sword. In the hands of fools it will slice up our national wealth. Employed properly into real capital it will accurately reflect the new wealth created by labor. That isn’t so difficult to comprehend. Unless of course, you’re an economist.
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Jerry on KPOJ Podcast
Listen to the KPOJ morning podcast from December 9, 2009: Carl and Christine interview Jerry Wilson.
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