It's hard to know what to do in the current political and environmental environment. Scanned a piece today on Climate and Capitalism website. This piece was a reaction to a favorable review of Derrick Jensen's book Deep Green Resistance that ran on Canadian Dimension. Jensen seems to catch a lot of reactionary ink to his proposals to create change. I am pretty busy working the create change in many ways, so don't have lots of time to read Jensen (or to blog these days) but I get the impression that Jensen embraces a Luddite sensibility at times. Maybe also a monkey wrench mentality that is attractive, but may be a dead end politically. There is something about the monkey wrench mentality that I find both sexist and adolescent, which is not to say that I don't also find it attractive.

LEM Vista

Tuesday 27 December 2011, Olympia—This is the view from the Law Enforcement Memorial Vista point on Christmas eve, the 24th. A few of us Occupationists were there singing Christmas holiday carols.

In the foreground

These are also available on the OO website: occupyolympia.org/early-video-from-protest-this-morning-at-the-port-of-olympia

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/19105544

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/19106352

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efVszCEr8OY

Had a great conversation at Sizizis under the Jupiter full Moon early Thursday morning about how the socio-cultural-economic harms people, and leaves them hanging. Rampant fear, distrust, disease. The real trickle-downs from the predatory Wall Street style economic system.

The worst part is that the system is set-up so the big corporations actually have a "fiduciary responsibility" to cut throats in order to be most attractive to investors.

Maybe we would be better off eliminating the owner/investor class from our society, if people are not able to refrain from hurting each other, and killing each other, in their quest to accumulate wealth...

And thanks for the hot chocolate!

b

Wednesday, 9 November, 2011
In this photo, the full Moon is conjunct Jupiter.
Airplane crosses from SW to NE in the 7 or 8 o'clock position inside the halo.
There was ground fog in the park tonight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDoSL7I98bg

Educational Tabling about State Tax Policy with Pat Holm, at the People's Movement Assembly. The PMA was sponsored by the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace.

Saturday 22 October 2011

Dear Obama Administration and White House Staff,

Lately I have been thinking some about terrorism. It seems really Orwellian, because the USA is all up with nationalistic gung-hoism and jingoism against terrorism. But think about this. Maybe the USA is a terrorist!

Think about the terror wrought by Wall Street style predatory economics. People lacking job security, and in fear of losing their homes. Families are disrupted by a predatory system that "rewards" (with wealth) harmful behaviors like exporting jobs to exploit low-wage workers overseas.

Meanwhile, many suffer from violence and crime associated with and caused by inter-generational and other chronic poverty...

Maybe the economic system is the terrorist. Maybe those enforcing it, and keeping it in place, need to be prosecuted and held accountable for their behaviors.

I also thought of a similar and very related thought last week: the idea that the USA uses the State of Israel as a 'human shield' to protect its interests in, and control over, mineral resources (and geo-political and economic dominance.)

If there is any truth to this, then this policy would be exploitative, highly anti-Semitic, and the associated behaviors could be classified as those of a terrorist.

Sincerely,

Berd

(updated with additional comments)

(Update 2 below the fold: 11 October 2011 meeting video embedded, and also more information about the Citizen Commission. Meeting video is also available at the Tax Preferences website.)

(update 3: just want to note that the Commission's work is to work with JLARC—the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee, and to compare and rate, and recommend and suggest various tax exemptions to the legislature, for the purpose of representing the citizenry's preferences.)

Comments at Citizen Commission for Performance Measurement of Tax Preferences Hearing

These are my comments from the Citizen Commission for Performance Measurement of Tax Preferences on Tuesday. I will add a link to the meeting video when it becomes available.

Additional comments: "Hog Fuel" is industry jargon for slash that results from clearcuts. When I went to an earlier commission a few weeks ago, this was a big topic, with industry advocates pushing for the tax exemption. I had to listen for a while before figuring out this didn't have anything to do with heating barns for pigs.

Additionally, a few things I had thought about, but didn't manage to remember to testify on during the hearing include: 1) the possibility that, if we are really concerned about job creation, then ending the practice of clear-cutting forests might help. That might have to be coupled with a dose of de-technologization. Selective harvesting of carefully chosen trees. Coupling trees to horses to pull them out of the forest, for instance. Or owners being willing to lower their margin of take-home cash, so as to ensure a responsible employment and environmental ethic.

2) I also spoke about productivity and merit and disparity in wealth. What I didn't mention is the problem of profiting from activities which have no merit. This includes both legal and illegal activities (like narco-trafficking, for example. By some estimates this illicit economy might account for $1 trillion annually.)

There are legal activities with dubious merit. Take the petroleum industry as an example. Petroleum extraction has enabled technological advancement. But for whom. And at what cost? —The petroleum industry, and other industries it has enabled (like the global military industrial complex, for example) have done tremendous harm to human cultures and to the planet. Look at the decimation of tribal societies. The meaningless consumerism. The pollution of the water, of the land, and of the air of this planet Earth. There are other industries that are harmful too. Petro-chemicals are not alone.

p.s. I suggest that the petro-chemical industry be nationalized. No one person, or group (e.g. the investor-class) should profit from industries that are harmful to everyone.

Also, think about legalization and regulation of the drug trade, to reduce violence associated with the illicit market.

The Olympian has a story about the City doing soil testing for contamination under the pavement around City Hall.

What is the purpose and priority of remediating the soil under the pavement around City Hall?

Would a better expenditure be for the City to invest in local food production, and other sustainable long-term economic activity?

cross posting from Peace is Possible:

Against Oppression, Against Bullying

Some people have so much more wealth than others. (The wealthiest one percent control 90% of the nation's wealth!)

What is required in order to amass such wealth? Is this wealth the result of merit and hard work, or is it possible that some of this extreme wealth actually requires some form or another of... http://peacepotential.blogspot.com/2011/10/a...

It's easy to beat up on Keynsian economics in good times, but in a serious economic downturns, keynsian economics are the way up and out. The push and pull between keynsian economics and free market economics represent a scale and reasonable people will understand that both have their place in large-scale economic, real world applications. Unregulated free markets give you the mortgage crisis economic collapse. The answer? regulate the free market. Regulation does cut into profits. It also prevents rampant corruption in the free market that can create a long term economic downturn in exchange for short term bonus income. Regulate the free economy. It ain't rocket science. The second tool to create a relatively stable and honest "free" market is a steeply progressive tax schedule that makes short term profit-taking too difficult. It changes the dynamics of corruption, greed, temptation for folks with weak ethical constitutions if they know that the government is going to get the lion's share of their income if they throw out good sense and choose to enrich themselves at the expense of their businesses and the larger economy. Well, that's where we are these days and we are not getting out of the global economic slump without turning to Keynsian economic fixes. They are counter intuitive and they work. The deficits have to increase to get the economy growing again (this would be a good time to spur green economic growth - clean energy? energy independence?