Throttled by the military-industrial complex

14 Apr

Ike got it right

And he saw it and called, yes in 1960 when he left the Presidency. But James Ledbetter informs us on Blogginheads.tv, that he was aware of the problem much earlier. Here’s an excerpt from a speech he gave in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

Will ever escape the grasp of this terrible logic, which continues to impoverish us?

The New Octopus

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Big Coal Kills a Town

13 Apr

Which is what Big Coal does. Kills mountains and towns and poisons the rivers and the skies.

Dan Barry of The New York Times tells the story of Lindytown West Virginia:

But the coal that helped to create Lindytown also destroyed it. Here was the church; here was its steeple; now it’s all gone, along with its people. Gone, too, are the surrounding mountaintops. To mine the soft rock that we burn to help power our light bulbs, our laptops, our way of life, heavy equipment has stripped away the trees, the soil, the rock — what coal companies call the “overburden.”

Now, the faint, mechanical beeps and grinds from above are all that disturb the Lindytown quiet, save for the occasional, seam-splintering blast.

Wouldn’t you know it, Massy Energy’s been at work.

 

 

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Wake up and smell the coffee

13 Apr

Coffee Party USA declares independence from the two-party system:

We the People hereby declare our Independence from the failed two party system and vow to chart a new path with representatives who will put our interests first and foremost.

 

Business with a Conscience: The B Corp

12 Apr

Many small corporations with a conscience, a so-called triple bottom line (profits, people and planet) get stripped of their conscience when bought out by a Big Corporation that’s only interested in short-term share-holder payout, and can be legally held to that goal. Writing in the NYTimes, Tina Rosenberg outlines a new type of corporate organization that can keep its conscience: the B Corp:

To become a certified B Corp, or benefit corporation, a business must pass an examination of how it treats its employees, the environment and the community. A non-profit organization called B Lab sets out the requirements and certifies businesses that meet the standard. The idea is that while any company can claim to be a good corporate citizen, a B Corp can prove it — something valuable for consumers and investors.

B Corps must also procure shareholders’ agreement for a revision of the bylaws to allow business decisions to consider the impact not only on shareholders, but also the workforce, community and the environment. Shareholders are allowed to sue if they feel the directors aren’t doing enough to take social responsibility into account.

The B Corp is backed in four states: Vermont, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia. Philadelphia gives tax breaks to B Corps. Currently there are 400 certified B Corps, but none that a publicly traded.

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Is the Progressive Moment Over?

12 Apr

Adam Serwer (The American Prospect) and Elli Lake (The Washington Times) have a discussion at blogginheads.tv. Did Obama scuttle progressives with a bait and switch?

Toward a Truth and Traditions Party?

12 Apr

By Charlie Keil

We’re considering a name change to the Truth and Traditions Party (TNT).

It’s all about the politics of truth, the facts, the observable evolutionary and devolutionary trends in Nature and in society. Notice Nature gets the big N and society the small s. “small is inevitable” says Rob Hopkins in The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience, which echoes Fritz Schumacher’s “small is beautiful” book (1973), which was in turn was built upon Leopold Kohr’s classic but still neglected text, The Breakdown of Nations (1957). The Kohr book points to Traditions and an anthropology of anarchism or relatively leaderless living which is how we humans co-evolved with Nature over 99% of our existence as humans (Humo ludens collaboratus). Post peak oil, peak water, peak everything, we are returning to our true human nature which has always been shaped by local traditions adapting us to very local conditions.

The Truth & Traditions Party aspires to explore “the way” or “path” of this transition from big to small as a practical matter of getting Big Corpstate off our backs.

  • from global to local
  • from alien-nation to local participation
  • from power-over to pleasure-in
  • from killing machinery to non-killing music-dance-dromena-ngoma
  • from war to peace
  • from famine to local food
  • from entropy to sacrament
  • from death trips to life affirmation
  • from corpstate values to family and kingroup tribal values
  • from monoculture to thousands of cultures, genuine diversity
  • from utilitarian to spiritual
  • from addiction-to-perfection to participatory-discrepancies
  • from structure to process
  • from hubris to humility
  • from hierarchy to equality
  • from false pasts/futures to present time

Severity of Fukushima on Par with Chernobyl

12 Apr

Will it break the scale? The New York Times reports:

But at a separate news conference, an official from the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that the radiation release from Fukushima could, in time, surpass levels seen in 1986.

“The radiation leak has not stopped completely, and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl,” said Junichi Matsumoto, a nuclear executive for the company.

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Who sustains the light?

11 Apr

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Sunday Links

10 Apr

The Atlantic: Japan Earthquake: One Month Later, 41 photos.

BBS:  “New York is a major loser and Reykjavik a winner from new forecasts of sea level rise in different regions.”

Knight Foundation: Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril, and Potential of Networks. A Webinar on 20 April at 2 PM EDT. Download full report (PDF). “Rapid advances in digital media and technology are changing how we connect to information and each other. The way we engage in public dialogue, coordinate, solve problems—all of it is shifting. New networks are emerging everywhere. It’s exciting—and frightening. What is this new network-centric world? What does it mean for community change?”

LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art: “New York graffiti legend Lee Quinones has organized a team of street artists to do a new mural on the exterior wall facing Temple Street. Scaffolding is up now, with a couple of images in progress, and work is expected to be completed next week, before the April 17 opening of the “Art in the Streets” exhibition at the Geffen.”

Discussion of David Brooks oped at Marginal Revolution: Brooks says Dems are unwilling to ask voters to pay for the programs they want. “Until they find a way to pay for the programs they support, they will not be serious players in this game. They will have no credible plans and will be in an angry but permanent retreat.”

Thom Hartman, at Common Dreams: “With or without a government shutdown, Republicans have already won the debate on our nation’s budget. Why? Because the corporate media is on their side. Make the wealthy pay their fair share.”

Green Blog: “According to Gore nuclear energy is not the answer to our problems because it’s dirty, too expensive, unsafe and that it poses a threat to world peace.”

Standing Watch

10 Apr

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