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I hate self check out lanes with every thing I’m made of.  That is a job that someone doesn’t have because you are checking your own stuff out.  The automated cashier is telling me to have a nice day?  That is bullshit –> which is a phrase I have used while walking out the door without buying my cart full of stuff.

A large home supplies store recently had four self checking lanes open and one cocky employee announcing to all of us customers floundering at the self checkouts. “I got it all under control baby”  I asked miss “control baby” if someone was sent home early, and wages were lost because of those self checking lanes.  She pretended to be too busy to answer my question.

While touring Oregon, I noticed that every gas station had an attendant to pump your gas for you and the gas didn’t cost more.  It was to keep people working.  Did you know that at one time it was unheard of to pump your own gas?  How long will it be before people find out that at one time it was unheard of to check out your own stuff.  Maybe we’ll think about it while sitting in unemployment lines.  We’ll have automated nurses, police and loan officers.

Did you know that Monsanto (the same company that brought us agent orange) together with Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer controls almost all agriculture in the World?  They are like drug suppliers except they are in the seed business.  Ever wonder why the fruits and vegetables at grocery stores are so big and plump and colorful compared to the fruits and veggies at farmers markets?  Monsanto adds stuff, pesticides and they have created hybrid seeds that the farmers have to buy.  They have a contract. Small farmers have been successfully sued by Monsanto when they violate any terms of the contract.  Drug suppliers send out heavies that break your arms and Monsanto sends out heavies in the form of lawyers that break your family.

Independently owned farms are actually corporate farms as long as they use Monsanto seeds.  This is a fact of life in the US and we have grown accustomed to our giant red and yellow produce. Literature tells us to eat colorful food to be healthy.  Many Americans are wising up and going to farmers markets and food co-ops to avoid the pesticides and antibiotics and fungicides like Thiram that are added to Monsanto seeds to make stuff look better.  We have hospitals full of antibiotic resistant diseases and cancer.  Do you think there is any relation?

I had my own garden many years ago when I was pregnant with my son.  We had the good fortune of renting a little Wisconsin farmette that had been abandoned for many years after the owners died.  We washed the house and painted it.  We took the 10 year old cow crap that was in the barn and put a little clump at the bottom of every hole and put seeds and starter plants in the bottom.  It was a small town and people took pride in their gardens.  This garden was my first and my neighbors were full of wonderful advice.  I wrapped my tomato plants with newspaper to prevent pests, I picked off the little sucker growths, and I planted as they advised to make sure the tallness of the corn didn’t block out the sunlight to the lower plants.  We had a pear tree, an apple tree, and a concord grape vine.

I had a basement full of potatoes, giant red tomatoes, squash, peppers, melon and everything was huge and colorful.  My take on all of this is we buy the cow poop from organic ranchers and pay Wisconsin farm wives to teach us how to grow stuff.   Then we won’t need seeds with scary additives.

Meantime, I read an article in “Yes” magazine…

Monsanto has donated to Haiti some of their hybrid corn seeds.  These seeds are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram.  Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs).  Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them. The EPA also ruled that pesticides containing thiram must contain a special warning label. The EPA also barred marketing of the chemicals for many home garden products, based on the assumption that most gardeners do not have adequately protective clothing. Dress like an astronaut to do your gardening?

The concern of Haitian social movements is not just about chemical dangers and the possibility of future GMO imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local seeds for local consumption—otherwise known as food sovereignty. Monsanto’s arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to such a future.

Vía Campesina, the world’s largest confederation of farmers with member organizations in more than 60 countries, has called Monsanto one of the “principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples.” They claim that as Monsanto and other multinationals control an ever larger share of land and agriculture, they force small farmers out of their land and jobs.

In the United States –>The Center for Food Safety has led a four-year legal challenge against Monsanto that has just made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. After successful litigation against Monsanto and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for illegal promotion of Roundup Ready Alfalfa, the court heard the Center for Food Safety’s case on April 27 3010. The Supreme Court lifted a nationwide ban on the planting of genetically engineered alfalfa seeds, despite claims they might harm the environment.

Go to

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/beverly-bell-in-haiti/haitian-farmers-refuse-monsanto-hybrid-seeds

and

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/food-rebellions-7-steps-to-solving-the-food-crisis

and this entry by Jr Deputy Accountant where I stole this picture from

http://www.jrdeputyaccountant.com/2010/06/psst-any-victory-for-frankenscience.html

if you’d like to read the entire article and others like it.

Soldiers going off to wars to die for some cause.  What a strange world we have created.  We get feelings of pride and gratification or at least a feeling of safety from their sacrifices.  I wish we had a world where, no one ever has to endure the impending doom soldiers in war face everyday. I hate the idea of someone dying for my safety.  I wish extremists of every form would just bring it down a notch.  Go hug a baby or something.  Back off the medication or take more — or something.

Being good is insurance for when you’re dumb — Alexis Ohanian

“Don’t be Evil” — Google

I was trying to understand why Goldman Sachs is in so much trouble with the government.  I found an article in the New York Times at…

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/business/25goldman.html?emc=na

Mr. Levin said, referring to testimony given by Mr. Blankfein in January. “They were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that were a major part of the 2008 crisis. They bundled toxic and dubious mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit-rating agencies to label them as AAA safe securities, sold them to investors, magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system, and all too often betting against the financial instruments that they sold, and profiting at the expense of their clients.” 

They bet against what they sold!?  That is legal?! Is this what we are trying to stop in this financial regulations bill?  If America is a giant casino and we are the players, does Goldman Sachs (et al) own the casino?  Are you investor types out there OK with that?

The more I read about this the more confused I get.  I think, well they must not have understood the huge impact this betting would cause us out here in the trenches.  Then I think, no, they are amazingly intelligent people, they knew, they just didn’t care; and they never will.  We can’t ever expect the casino to do what is right for us, they will always do what makes them money.   We can’t even shake our pointy fingers at them because we have admired them this whole time for their wealth and power while they plotted our demise. Half of us still admire them,  and those are the ones arranging a filibuster right now in the senate.

So we need to pay attention to what our senators are paying attention to.

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfmP

eco-aqua-apocalyptic-phobia (the sudden, overwhelming sense that the world is coming to an end because every once-tranquil biosphere where land meets water has been developed or drilled or trashed).

Where do you go when trying to escape ecoaqua-Apocalyptic-phobia; the Gulf, the Arctic, where?

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I was in a conversation with a physician I work with the other night at the hospital.  He described me as “uber liberal” and decided I needed to be reformed and informed.  He started printing up things for me to read from his Fox network.

This Physician is very very afraid of our government running anything.  On the other hand,  if you leave the government out of our lives then you end up with a place — well –  Haiti is a graphic example of a  weak government.  Us worker bees need to be protected.  We are the ones out here in the trenches doing the work.  We don’t mind, we’re happy and have amazing respect for our founding fathers’ plan for checks and balances and equal rights.  They were a bit hypocritical about equal rights, writing and signing the constitution while their slaves tended to their farms, but, their ultimate plan was ingenious.

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The Physician and I are an example of check and balance.  His check is the need to be compensated for all the patients he fights hard to save.  Many of them are self abusers, over-eaters, smokers, alcoholics, prescription drug abusers.  They vary from uninsured, medicaid, Medicare as well as the insured.  Some try to sue him for an anomaly that is most often a result of their own self abuse.  The litigation involved is extremely expensive and is driving up healthcare costs.  Tort reform is his primary concern to improve our health care system.   I definitely get his point and I also am angry at the folks making a living out of being sick.

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My balance is the waitress with a kidney stone, the restaurant owner with chest pain, the guy that builds kayaks by hand with diabetes, the lady with a shop full of locally made art.   To them insurance is a gamble; those without are gambling they won’t need it,  those with individual insurance pay dearly for a catastrophic plan.  How can we remain innovative Americans if we can’t leave Wal-mart to try our hand at Tilapia farming or growing bamboo or opening a breakfast joint.  We aren’t really free as long as we are locked in to a job because we need the insurance?

Please don’t let Dupont, ExxonMobile, and Monsanto buy our next President.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post wrote…

In opening the floodgates for corporate money in election campaigns, the Supreme Court did not simply engage in a brazen power grab. It did so in an opinion stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.

It was unnecessary for the court to go so far when there were several less-radical grounds available. It was audacious to seize the opportunity to overrule precedents when the parties had not pressed this issue and the lower courts had not considered it. It was the height of activism to usurp the judgments of Congress and state legislatures about how best to prevent corruption of the political process.

Nina Totenberg of NPR wrote…

“It will undoubtedly help Republican candidates since corporations have generally supported Republican candidates more.”

Freedom of Speech

“Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt

I read an article in the New York Times about a lady named Marlane from the town of Eleanor West Virginia.  The town was named after Eleanor Roosevelt.  In the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency the government created towns with jobs for folks that lost their jobs and couldn’t feed their children. The government project was called the New Deal.  Obviously there was immense opposition to this blatantly socialist endeavor.  Some  commended the government for stepping up to the plate and addressing the needs of hungry Americans whose children had never tasted milk or flushed a toilet.

These are the initiating paragraphs of the article…

Early spring, in the Depression year of 1935. A poor girl from coal-mine country, a dark-haired girl of 4, rocks beside her mother and two sisters in a car moving through the rain-swept night. Soon they will join her father, a Great War veteran who pads his shoes with cardboard. He has been working for months on some distant government relief project.

When the car finally stops, the sleepy girl can see only a blur of mud and midnight. Not until morning does she take in this government project: a new American town, raised from a field by her father and other men with families caught in the stalled gears of a broken economy.

The girl is told: You’re home now, Marlane.

I had to read on and as I did I thought about how this would turn ugly in today’s America.   The Chicago Tribune and the New York Times were 1935 versions of Fox and MSNBC.  Then, like now, a lot of people didn’t like government interventions but there wasn’t a television to throw it in their face.  So the New Deal carried on and enriched some lives during the Roosevelt administration.

Some of it was disturbing.  The creation of all white communities, cod liver oil for all children, toys brought in government trucks for Christmas, and you could be evicted for not complying with the rules. According to Marlane, the rules were easy, and the home, the job, the milk, the indoor plumbing and the toys were gifts from the Roosevelts.

Jobless folks like Marlane’s parents probably did not vote, they were busy looking for a job.  Yet, the Roosevelts did everything they could think of in the time they had to create a better life for the jobless.  This upset many of the Americans who did vote.  They did not want to pay for what may have been considered the lazy and the uneducated.

There are politicians who really do want to help people.  Hard to know which  politicians are really trying to do good things for not-so-fortunate Americans.  If the the not-so-fortunate Americans get a job, a home, breath clean air, and obtain some health care,  the fortunate will not lose their fortunes?

Lately I’m thinking all political sides are ruled by corporations.  I think corporations love money and their money God creates hate and fear, which also happen to be the two key ingredients of war.

Television, which is a huge corporation, provides information.  TV is paid for by huge corporations that tell them what to tell us.  These same corporations have caused us to lose our jobs.   They told us to buy American, now they tell us it is a global economy.  I tried to buy American made products for Christmas.  I had to give everyone money — that is the only thing I could find that it is made here.  They tell us what to buy — and we do what we’re told.  Are we losing our drive, our moxy, our innovation?  Don’t be afraid of government, be afraid of corporations and television.

When I finished reading the article I wanted to comment on how well Dan Berry captured the town and Marlane’s frustrations.   Marlane loves her town and it’s history and the innovation it’s very existence represents.   I learned from the history that Dan Berry covered so well in his article.  I learned to care. Half the country cares Marlane.  The other half is watching TV and doing as they’re told.

To read the NYTimes article go to

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/25/us/25eleanor.html

No one would have followed Martin Luther King if he had said “I have a nightmare”, as mentioned by energy secretary Ed Miliband.

We need to unite in being good to this earth.  It has been so good to all of us.  I am  hopeful that the decision makers representing the world in Copenhagen are uniting in the dream — and not denying the nightmare.

We all know the nightmare –> So many pictures of people riding bikes in China through polluted air with face masks.  Stories of asthmatic children in the Bronx breathing diesel fumes.  Photos of decapitated mountains in West Virginia and the subsequent coal muck escaping in to small towns.  Growth was so big and so fast that sewage spilled in to drinking water in Florida.  Many fists pound many tables when you suggest that economic gains can be achieved through sustainable living that preserves this rare jewel we call Earth.

Polluters love muddling the facts, and making fun of the nightmarish scenarios.  Some scientists  actually feed the machine that is profiting currently.  The collaborative machine of industry, shipping, air flights, hospitals, manufacturers, and on and on are horrified by the idea of changing energy production and usage. We have evolved to need cheap stuff, more than we need liberty, freedom, water, food, shelter and coffee.

 

 

 

 

 

So lets describe the dream… Andrew Gilligan wrote an article for the telegraph.co.uk…“ Copenhagen is a city filled entirely with bicycles, stuffed with retrofitted, energy-efficient old buildings, and seems to embody the civilized pleasures of low-carbon living without any of the puritanism”.

Costa Rica produces 99% of its energy from renewable sources, reversed deforestation and is aiming to become a carbon-neutral country by 2021 by combining its ministries of energy and environment, and abolishing its army. Abolishing armies will probably never happen world wide, there will always be bad guys to fight.  We can dream though.  Other small island nations such as the Dominican Republic and Jamaica are also fairing well in levels of health and a very low footprint.

There is evidence that a student of Aristotle noticed and documented how human activities disrupted the climate back in 300 BC. Now, I’m not sure how anyone is sure about what was said in 300 BC, but, I am sure that my fifth grade teacher taught us (many years ago) how human activity disrupts the climate.

I wasn’t a student as long ago as Aristotle, but, science has recognized and studied the problem for long enough. My weekly reader explained the effects burning coal and petroleum has on the atmosphere. I was apparently dismayed by this information because I remember it vividly. I remember feeling worried.

In 1965 U.S. President Lyndon Johnson told Congress: “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through…a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

We know that this planet is pretty small as far as planets go and extremely unique as far as being inhabitable. Since we know good planets are hard to find, you would think the world would find that taking care of this one is much more important than pretty much anything else. Why then would senators boycott a meeting designed to protect the climate of our planet.

We heeded the advice of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher after she explained to the United Nations: “The problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level. It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay;” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1995.   They concluded that humans are causing global warming, saying: “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”

The world is finally deciding we need to do something and our senators are boycotting meetings. Why!!

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee tried to overcome a Republican boycott of a major climate bill. Only one Republican senator even showed up for the meeting, and he stayed just long enough to ask for a five-week delay and more study. (I won’t go as far back as Aristotle, but, it’s been studied) Senator Bernie Sanders lamented the obstruction tactics by what he called “the party of no.” The stalling strategy has so far blocked action on critical issues ranging from health care to global warming. The country, Sanders added, has gone from electing a new president one year ago whose uplifting promise was “yes we can” to the spectacle of a small but stubborn rump group of senators whose motto is “no we won’t.”

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/photos/gallery/?id=b862022d-95b1-4625-963d-34a3a69ac839

So in 2009 our President, along with the other – Group of Eight leaders agreed industrialized nations should cut emissions on average by 80 percent by 2050 and limit warming to a maximum of 2 Celsius above pre-industrial times. The 8 leaders went home to their various congresses and parliaments so we could get it together for our unique planet.

Our senators are so busy disliking our President that they are forgetting what their job is. I guess the citizens who vote for these senators are so busy disliking our President that they are ignoring scientific facts. I just want to jab my eyes out when I read about crap like this! What would happen to you or me if we didn’t go to work because we didn’t like our boss.  Come to think of it the American public is their boss and we should be outraged.