Its pretty crazy out there

I have had my nose to the grindstone, so to speak, lately but it seems like every time I look up our situation is worse. The USDA fired a woman in charge of the southeast region based on a story from FOX news and the guy who was able to destroy ACORN, a group that had been helping poor people, by using edited video tape to misrepresent the truth, meaning it was a lie. They apparently snipped a small part of the woman's speech to the NAACP in which she recounted her coming to awareness of her own racism and how it changed her viewpoint. The Dirty Rotten Liar News Corporation then made the false case that she was a racist which got her fired immediately. So a TV network can make up lies and get a government official fired without the government even looking into the accuracy of the charges? We are in trouble aren't we. The crazies out there are making up so many lies now one almost wants to come to the defense of the Democrats. Of course we know the Democrats are just playing their lame part in this corporate funded drama that in the end may have us all enslaved even more than we are today if folks don't wake up and begin challenging the corporate (Republican) lies much more aggressively. We are currently headed for another civil war which I would really like to see us all avoid. Its time to pull the plug on these troublemakers and get down to business on how we can rescue the world from the corporate behemoth.

I will be on the reservation at Pine Ridge for a couple weeks, I'm going to help the natives build a big barn with straw bale walls. If you are voting in the primary, please vote for the non-corporate candidate ...if there is one.

best wishes,

Peace Festival Fails to Bring Peace

I guess FOX news missed an opportunity with that headline, eh? Of course it is not news much like the rest of their program. I went to the Peace Festival knowing I would see a lot of people I know to let them know I was running for Governor again and to meet and hear Cindy Sheehan speak. Cindy is a mother who lost her son in Iraq, a high price to pay for the awareness of what our military industrial complex government is really like. She bemoaned the fact that she was again talking to the choir and told the small crowd of the usual suspects gathered there that protests on the weekends weren't going to change things, "while they(the MIC) take the weekends off to enjoy themselves." She said "we all have to take to the streets", and was clearly reaching the conclusion that change was going to require a full time effort by many people, probably many more than those who would now call themselves members of the Peace Movement. Challenging the military industrial complex and its puppet government of two parties in the streets, however, can get you hurt if you aren't careful. The closer one gets to interrupting business as usual the more brutal the state response.

Cindy told everyone she did not vote for Obama but for the Green Party candidate, Cynthia McKinney, but pointed out how challenges at the ballot box have not gone well either. She said "they tell us that change comes at the ballot box but that is not so." We are given few avenues to change the system because the system doesn't want to change despite all the evidence and signals that they are headed way the wrong direction. The Green Party can lead in the right direction if people will stop voting for the system and they will have to stop allowing the system to convince them its going to change, just in order to get their vote of course.

The Green Party is running in this race in a effort to win a ballot line, it only takes 50,000 votes. currently the major political parties represent corporate interests over that of the people who live int heir districts. These corporate interests fund the political process in this country which allows them undue control over it. Stopping this is difficult but the Gulf disaster is an example of the world we can expect if we don't. I think there is a collective intelligence that needs to be awakened. Our European relations use 43% of the energy we consume. You can't walk into a convenience store and see a whole wall of refrigeration for different colors of the same sugar water in any other country in the world. We are not suggesting austerity, we are only asking for an end to the gluttony.

It doesn't matter what religious or non-religious beliefs we have as long as we have good relations. It is a huge project to rebuild our economy from the ground up, from the community level up. It will require everyone in each community to join in such a project because the time may be coming when they will have no other good option. The Green Party can provide the kind of leadership we need but as was recently demonstrated it is not the leaders who are important for a movement, it is the followers who are most important. Once enough followers are doing what the leader does the leader disappears into the throng. This is how it should be.

Deep Pockets

Keeping this blog up to date has been difficult but as the campaign and the year progresses I expect to post much more often. I just signed up with the Campaign Corner, a progressive populist site. As a governor there are limits to the things I could get involved in but there are plenty of state issues to take care of. A primary interest of mine is limiting corporate power, empowering communities, food and energy security, but first we will have to fix our broken political system.

Bob Hope once said "No one party can fool all the people all the time. That's why we have two parties." I had never realized that Bob Hope so totally "got it" and these days I think more and more people are. We've been provided a good list of some elements of the mess we are in by progressives but we can hardly blame it all on Republicans. While the two parties may differ in many respects when it comes to campaign promises they begin to look a lot alike when it comes to the overall thrust of policy, which is to serve the interests of the mostly American based multi-national corporations who funded their rise to positions of power. If we look at who gave what to whom to get elected we find the same major corporations giving to both parties but favoring one or the other with more in the years they are the winners. Yes, Virginia, politicians are elected with money, more and more of it every cycle. The candidate who spends the most gets the most votes, its pretty big news when, rarely, that does not happen. Corporations with deep pockets, such as these multi-nationals, can buy our government with a very tiny percentage of what they rake in. How deep are those pockets?

Lets take BP, hmmm I believe that suggestion has been made, ...not a bad idea. BP is a good example, or bad example depending on how you want to look at it, of deep pockets. BP has oil reserves currently of 63 billion barrels of oil. At $60 per barrel, 63 billion barrels represents $3.78 trillion dollars. BP is currently spending $500 million per month on the spill, so in theory it would take 3780 years at that rate for the company to exhaust its reserve assets. If the price of oil were to rise to $120 per barrel, not unreasonable since it reached $147 two years ago, BP’s assets would not run out for 7562 years. Hard to fathom, isn't it? Our President is trying to convince us he has poked a hole in BP's assets with the $20 billion pay off promised by BP. Hardly. BP could pay out $20 billion every year for 189 years, about 7 generations, at current market prices. That sounds about right for how long the toxic effects on the gulf and its coasts will take to heal. If they stopped all oil spills now, that is. We know they are not likely to, there is way too much money to made off of it. So how much does our government cost?

In 1929 Congress capped its own size, in defiance of the constitution, at 435 people. Before that Congress grew with the census as the constitution requires. They used to represent an average of about 30-40 thousand constituents each, now its 700 thousand each. Then there is the millionaire's club, the Senate, another 100 people, the executive branch provides a couple more, so a total of only 537 elected people. I recommend you check out the numbers for yourself but with few hundred million a year BP can pretty much get anyone they want elected and any policy good for oil companies implemented. They also have a $9 billion per year contract supplying our military with oil. Is this the Republicans fault alone?

Our current President has fallen right in line not reversing a single Bush policy and Bush didn't reverse any Clinton policy either. This is the President's primary job, support the policies put in place by all that corporate money. Republican, Democrat, the only difference is their style not their substance. That is not so true for republicans and democrats, however, for these are mostly ordinary people who want much the same thing for their families and communities but as Bob Hope pointed out, they are also some of the people who are fooled from time to time.

pirates of the care

Well as usual we didn't get much chance to read the health care bill. No wonder, its a mile thick and as illegible as a dour corporate lawyer can make it. As usual there are a few spoons of sugar to help the medicine go down but this medicine isn't going to make anyone well, no sir, this is all about ...you guessed it, money, in the form of corporate profits that is. Yup, in the new health insurance law Congress passed, there is a mandate that all states must have an insurance market exchange operating by January 1, 2014. Further, on or before January 1, 2013, if the Secretary of Health and Human Services determines that a state will not have an exchange ready by January 1, 2014, the Secretary shall establish and operate the exchange for that state.

Even more significant, States cannot request a waiver to set up a different plan until 2017. There is no wiggle room, the law is the law. There is no opt-out language. This is a clear mandate that exchanges be established in every state by 2014. States are required to spend the time, money and resources to set up and operate the insurance exchange. They may choose to have one or two or more exchanges or set up regional exchanges. A single payer type plan or a public option with or without an exchange is not allowed. Thus, as things stand, states cannot experiment with any approach that is not based on the private insurance market exchange model until 2017, after they have set up an exchange or the federal government has set one up for them.

I guess they didn't like the Greens idea of everyone covering everyone in a way that profits everyone instead of just a few. They do resist pretty much any good idea. It seems to me they've well proven themselves irresponsible citizens, that's polite speak for crooks, and that they deserved to be put out of business. Instead we'll have big healthcare markets dominated by a few big companies with a lot of names. Kind of like buying a candy bar, you think there are a lot of choices but its usually only 3 companies products. We can expect much more of this now that the Supreme Court has allowed corporations to patent living organisms, yes they want to own all the seed, and eliminated all limits on how much they could spend on political campaign, yes they want to one all the politicians. Gosh, I thought they already owned Congress. Oh well, now that we have company owned electronic elections I hope you've all said your good-byes to decency and democracy. Those who called this plan socialism need to study the difference between socialism, corporatism and fascism, and perhaps eat their words. I'll provide the salt.

Green Tea Party

While I have a different view on many issues, I get the feeling that at a deep level we have very much the same concerns as tea party people. The Constitution is being trampled, the wealth of the nation is being wasted, the government is more and more intruding into our lives, education is a joke, the health care bill is unbelievably horrible, we're over-extended in mad wars, and the list goes on. At this level I think we are mostly in agreement. Where we part ways is when the enemy is identified as liberals, progressives, the poor, the addicted, the obese, the immigrant, the handicapped, the others who are different in almost any way. We all know where that brand of disgust leads and believe me we do not want to go there. Having elected Obama on a Tsunami of hope after the disaster of Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush, America is waking up but they're still pretty groggy and confused. Republican extremists are trying to exploit that confusion but I'm hoping they will soon see through that nonsense and realize it is the corporatist democratic and republican parties both that got us into this mess. One is as culpable as the other but we should look beyond them for the answers, beyond them to the industrialist bankers and their corporations that dominate our political system, which even includes the Supreme Court apparently as they concur with them that only money should rule. I am encouraged to see Americans getting off their couches and on their feet but it is a well informed citizenry that is required and if they continue to listen to the political pundits on TV, as has been proven, they will know less and less. I would very much like to sit down with you, drink some green tea, and talk about the future. I think we will need to take care of one another in order to get to the world we all want.

keep our mountains ...green

Hi All, this is something I support without reservation, keep our mountains green.

Tennessee Conservation Voters Applauds EPA's Order to Curb Mountaintop Removal Mining, Calls on Tennessee Legislature to Pass Bi-partisan Scenic Vistas Legislation

NASHVILLE- Tennessee Conservation Voters releases the following statement on the Environmental Protection Agency's order to ban moutaintop removal mining: Chris Ford, TCV Executive Director: "Today TCV and our member organizations and many partners throughout the state join our Appalachian brothers and sisters to gratefully celebrate the EPA's announcement by Administrator Lisa Jackson to significantly curb the senselessly destructive practive of Mountaintop Removal Mining in Appalachia." "Banning Mountaintop Remvoal Mining in Tennesee has been a top priority for Tennessee Conservation Voters, committed citizens and the faith community throughout our state for quite some time. I could not agree more with Administrator Jackson----our mountain people should not have to choose between their health, safety and job security. Sound economic development that is sustainable for future generations is the only reasonable solution to protect our mountain heritage and Tennessee way of life. Correcting the injustice visited among Appalachians for the benefit of the wealthy hundreds of miles away is long overdue. "On this Good Friday I am reminded of a scripture passage that exhorts us to let justice roll down like water----CLEAN WATER! We are grateful that many prayers have been answered, but diligent in our resolve to continue forward in our work for clean water, clean air, healthy living and economically strong communities in our mountain communities. Our organization now calls upon our Tennessee elected officials to codify these orders and pass the bipartisan Scenic Vistas legislation presently before the Tennessee House and Senate to stop this destructive practice in Tennessee before it spreads any further. Our future lies before us with endless possibilities for cleaner energy solutions---stand up and be counted as those who are demanding justice and healthy living for Appalachian Tennesseans." ###