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Off the Top of My Head

Is It Really Necessary To Discuss Jeffrey Epstein Ad Infinitum?

by John Lawrence, August 20, 2019

The American media is consumed with Jeffrey Epstein. They've talked about him for days. Meanwhile, this pushes all other news of any consequence out of the picture. It is not hard to understand why. The mainstream media news exists so that advertisers can sell products during numerous commercials. In fact there is more time devoted to commercials than so-called news. So the producers of "news" are mostly concerned about what type of news will bring the maximum number of eyeballs to their screens. This type of news, of course, is the news that is most titillating and scandalous. Enter Jeffrey Epstein, the perfect candidate for filling up "news" time for days if not weeks. Then we also had the plane crash of Dale Earnhardt Jr. which occupied the news for a few days also. There were also a few other isolated plane crashes for which, fortunately, there was some video footage.

Meanwhile, news that is of great concern or should be of great concern is hardly mentioned. The news that is actually presented is pablum, news designed so that viewers don't have to actually think, news that is escapist and voyeuristic, news designed to get viewers to buy the sponsors' products. If you want any actual news, you have to tune into one of the foreign media channels although you won't find any news there that is actually critical of the countries that are providing these channels. Most other news though is far more authentic than anything found on American commercial media. American news is not exactly "fake" news. That is a misnomer. It is news that is inconsequential relative to anything that really affects the American people. The fact that Jeffrey Epstein liked to have sex with underage albeit sexually mature girls is of no consequence to whether or not the US will go to war with Iran or whether or not the economy will go into recession or whether or not climate change will inundate major American cities. These are real issues.

Of course mass murders are purveyed relentlessly. This is one reason why they are being perpetuated. It seems that every white nationalist wants to get in on the act and garner his 15 minutes of fame. 15 minutes may be an understatement. They should not show the faces or mention the names of the mass murderers so that they don't get famous. Hate speech at social media sites should be taken down. Should their be censorship of hate speech? You betcha. These websites are where these guys congregate and egg each other on. So what does the mass media convey after one of these increasingly common attacks? Any discussion of gun control? Nah, that's too wonky, too intellectual, too political. What we get instead is the fact that there are so many good people in the world who are leaving lots of teddy bears and other remembrances at the murder site. We get interviews with bystanders and onlookers who state that "they couldn't believe that something like this could happen here." We get pablum. I know that there are good people in the world. I don't have to be told that. There is no discussion of mental illness or how the IRA puts profits above people or how the politicians know that after the furor dies down they won't have to pass any gun control legislation nor do they intend to do so.

It may be cynical, but it's true that the only thing that might shift the gun control debate is the fact that Michael Bloomberg has the assets to lobby Congress that rival the NRA's. The Guardian reports:

Guns are big(ish) business. Gun and ammunition manufacturers will have revenues of $13.3bn and profits of $1bn in 2017, according to IBISWorld. Gun and ammunition stores this year will have revenues of $85.bn and profits of $256m....

There are, however, problems on the horizon for the NRA. For one, the gun control lobby is growing. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety is threatening to spend more than $25m in 2018 races. Americans for Responsible Solutions, a gun control political action committee set up by Gabrielle Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman whose career was ended when she was shot along with 18 others in an Arizona suburb, spent $13.4m in 2016

So, of couse it's all about lobbying and profits. If the gun control groups can put more money in politicians' pockets than can the NRA, then maybe gun control legislation will be passed. It's pretty cynical, but then that's the way Congress operates. Profits and lobbying determine outcomes in the American political system. It is not predicated on doing the right thing for the American people, but only on what increases profits. I know, there are many Americans who are "good people". It's just that profits over people is how the system operates.

Sanders Unveils Plan to End Cash Bail, Ban Private Prisons, and 'Fundamentally Transform' US Criminal Justice System

Published on Sunday, August 18, 2019

by Common Dreams

"If we stand together, we can eliminate private prisons and detention centers. No more profiteering from locking people up."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

47 Comments

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, speaks during a town hall at the Aratani Theater in Los Angeles on July 25, 2019. (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

Decrying America's status as the "world's leading jailer," Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday released a comprehensive plan to confront the crisis of mass incarceration, end the criminalization of poverty, and dramatically overhaul the U.S. criminal justice system.

"We have a criminal justice system that is racist and broken, and working together we're going to fundamentally transform it," said Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

The platform, which Sanders unveiled at an event in Columbia, South Carolina on Sunday, condemns America's "overly-punitive approach to public safety" and urges investments "to rebuild the communities that mass incarceration continues to decimate."

"We have over two million people in jail and prison, more than any other nation on earth, and they are disproportionately African-American, Latino, and Native American," Sanders wrote in an email to supporters on Sunday. "We spend $80 billion a year keeping people behind bars, money which could be used for education, job creation, and affordable housing."

"We spent, and I want everybody to hear this, $80 billion a year in tax dollars at the local, state, and federal level to lock up fellow Americans... It might be a better idea to take some of that $80 billion and start investing in our young people." @BernieSanders pic.twitter.com/KyEv2q9hsf

— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) August 18, 2019

To remedy this dysfunctional and devastating system, Sanders' platform—detailed on his website—calls for:

• A ban on private prisons as part of a broader effort to "end profiteering in our criminal justice system";
• An end to cash bail, which traps poor Americans in a cycle of debt;
• Halting excessive sentencing "with the goal of cutting the incarcerated population in half";
• Transformation of policing by ensuring oversight and accountability for law enforcement, banning use of facial recognition software by law enforcement, and ending "programs that provide military equipment to local police";
• Abolishing the death penalty;
• Legalization of marijuana and erasure of past marijuana convictions; and
• An end to the criminalization of addiction by funding adequate treatment for those addicted to opioids.

"If we stand together, we can eliminate private prisons and detention centers. No more profiteering from locking people up," Sanders said during his speech in South Carolina.

"If we stand together we can end the disastrous 'war on drugs,'" the senator added. "If we stand together we can end cash bail. No more keeping people in jail because they're too poor. If we stand together we can enact real police department reform and prosecute police brutality. If we stand together, there is nothing, nothing, nothing that we cannot accomplish."

Watch the speech:

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What is Our Reality?

Dear friends,

Ernest Holmes taught that “our word is the announcement of Reality” and that if we really knew this we would do “what Jesus did and more.” Most of us are not seeking to be a healer or a messiah; we simply want peace and plenty for all. We must begin with our own life, the only place we can begin; therefore, our word needs to be an announcement of our own Reality; affirmative and bold, first person, present tense.

The only person who needs convincing is us. That is why we remove all mental obstacles, such as old resentments, unforgiveness, suppressed rage and fear. We work on our own mind, telling ourselves the spiritual truth so that our natural knowing can become our dominant thoughts. There is a level of consciousness where we are completely untroubled, perfectly intact as potential and at peace. It is our spiritual DNA. Having been covered over with human, worldly limiting ideas, our job is to reveal that Self, to think from that place.

Seen in this light we realize the profound significance of Holmes statement “there is nothing to be healed, but something to be revealed.” The revealing begins in mind. It is noteworthy that every spiritual practice, such as meditation, contemplation, declarative prayer, affirmation, is done by the individual. We may meditate in a group, but the experience is solitary. Everything we seek exists within the field of potential; the ground of our Being. We call it out effortlessly with our own self-awareness. It automatically responds to our word and corresponds, becoming visible as our Reality.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspiritiuallivingbakersfield.com

Also see www.californiafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

To the Mayor and City Council: You have to Do Something About the Homeless Crisis

by John Lawrence, August19, 2019

What's happening with the homeless in San Diego is not fair to them, and it's not fair to the tourists and residents that have to put up with it. You outlaw people sleeping it vehicles. Yet it's OK to live in tents on public sidewalks. As an Uber driver I picked up a lady who lives in a luxury high rise at Broadway and Pacific Highway. She regrets moving downtown because she can't walk her dog at night without being verbally assaulted by some homeless person or stepping in some poop. Uber navigates me sometimes through the worst homeless areas at 17th and Imperial so tourists are treated to the sight of people and their belongings sprawled all over the streets in "America's Finest City" supposedly.

Here, in my humble opinion, is what you need to do:

1) Set up one or more public campgrounds where the homeless as well as others can pitch their tents.

2) Provide minimal amenities such as sanitation facilities including port-a-potties, portable showers, lockers and security. You had a place like this in Balboa park. From the San Diego Union, October 2017:

"The first city-sanctioned homeless encampment is scheduled to open Monday in a public works yard near Balboa Park with tents, security, food, showers, restrooms and social services for more than 200 people, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and other officials announced Wednesday.

"Speaking at the city operations yard that will be used for the camp area, Faulconer said the site will be short-lived, with a plan to begin moving people out after the first of three large industrial tents to temporarily house homeless people opens later this year."

You were on the right track and then you blew it by making it temporary. Nobody wants to live in "three large industrial tents."

3) Provide transit passes so that they can get from wherever the campgrounds are located to downtown homeless services.

4) Allow pets.

5) Very low cost solution compared to actual housing.

6) Pass an ordinance making it illegal to sleep on public streets and sidewalks.

Homelessness is becoming a culture embedded in American society. Until this culture is changed, it is becoming a permanent part of American cities, a way of life. As far as drug use, it seems to be happening with impunity on public streets so it's a wash whether or not it would be happening at public campgrounds. Until this street culture is eradicated, HOT teams would have to be in the business of transporting homeless people to the campgrounds  because they would probably prefer public sidewalks. After all that's what they're used to, and that's a part of the culture that's being embedded in society.

Forget about "shelters." You only need shelters in case of very inclement weather which we have little of in San Diego. Also don't worry about San Diego becoming a "homeless magnet." The improvement in the city's ambiance if the areas around 16th and 17th streets were cleaned up would be a guiding light for other cities to do the same, and it would promote the city as a tourist destination as in fact, "America's Finest City.".

Sincerely,

John Lawrence

 

The U.S. Culture of Violence is Killing Us All

Published on

Wednesday, August 07, 2019

by

Common Dreams

The U.S. has the most guns per capita and the weakest gun control laws of any developed country.

 

 

by 

César Chelala

 28 Comments

Nearly 40,000 Americans who died of gun-related injuries in 2017 represent a 19 percent increase from 2012 and the highest annual total since the mid-1990s. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The two recent mass shooting incidents in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in which more than 30 people were killed and dozens injured, are one more manifestation of a culture of violence that threatens not only people’s lives but also our future as a civilized society.

Although violent incidents occur in other countries, they are not as frequent — or as deadly — as in the United States, which has the highest homicide-by-firearms rate among the world’s most developed nations. Civilians in America own over 300 million guns, making Americans the most heavily armed people in the world on a per capita basis. As a contrast, the police own approximately one million guns.

The U.S. has the most guns per capita and the weakest gun control laws of any developed country. It is estimated that at least 30 percent of American adults own a gun, and an additional 11 percent lives with someone who does. Nearly 48 percent of U.S. adults grew up in a household with guns. Nearly two-thirds of Americans who own guns own more than one. 

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been unrelenting in its efforts to influence lawmakers.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been unrelenting in its efforts to influence lawmakers. Although the majority of Americans say that gun laws should be more restrictive than what they are today lawmakers, to a large extent, are deaf to these demands.

To make matters even worse for gun control advocates, landmark Supreme Court rulings in 2008 and 2010 dramatically curtailed the authority of state and local governments to limit gun ownership. In a banal show of macho posturing, almost half of the 50 states in the U.S. have adopted laws that allow gun owners to carry their guns openly in most public places.

Although self-defense is often cited to justify the people’s right to bear arms, research has shown that a gun kept in a home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household or a friend than an intruder. The number of teenagers who die from gunshot wounds in the U.S. is greater than those who died from all other causes combined.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017 saw more gun deaths in the U.S. than in any previous year in decades. Nearly 40,000 Americans who died of gun-related injuries in 2017 represent a 19 percent increase from 2012 and the highest annual total since the mid-1990s.

Although many Americans claim that guns are necessary for security, experiences such as in Japan and Australia show that this is not true. In Japan, which has adopted very strict gun-control laws and where –unlike in the U.S. - people who purchase guns have several background checks that include mental health, drug use, and a relative or a colleague’s perception of the applicant. A result of these policies is that there were 10 fatalities for a population of 128 million. Australia, which implemented a program against the use of firearms in 1996, saw the fatalities reduced by 40 percent.

Americans are exposed to violence since they are children. It is estimated that when a child becomes an adult he will have seen 16,000 assassinations and 200,000 acts of violence in television. Children tend to imitate what they see on television and in the movies, and see violence as the normal way of solving conflicts.

Andrew Exum, who was a soldier in Iraq and in Afghanistan, wrote about his dismay when, on returning to the U.S., he noticed the number of billboards on the side of the highways, advertising guns. “And not just guns –these were not .30-06 hunting rifles or shotguns, but rather, the kind of tactical firearms, including assault rifles that I had carried in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why in the world, I thought then, would anyone have a need for such weapons?”

Arno Michaelis, a former white supremacist turned anti-hate activist, called on President Donald Trump to stop using fear to motivate people to commit violent acts. He also said that the government needs to take ownership of guns more seriously, saying that there need to be federal laws in place to “stop people who are unbalanced from obtaining assault rifles.” Michaelis also blames Trump for using a kind of rhetoric that increases the possibility for this kind of incidents to take place.

Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude goes one step further in its criticism of the situation. As he commented to a reporter on MSNBC, “America is not unique in its sins as a country. We are not unique in our evils, to be honest with you. I think where we may be singular is our refusal to acknowledge them—and the legends and myths we tell about our inherent goodness to hide and cover and conceal so we can maintain a kind of willful ignorance that protects our innocence.”

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We Are Born to Love

Dear friends,

Are you as surprised as I am with how abhorrently people behave? I am never shocked at the good things people do; the great service they offer to others; the kindness and compassion they show. But the haters and the liars? They shock me because there is no reason for it. There is no good to come from lying about someone who has trusted you. There is no positive outcome from hate. There must be some serious unresolved trauma in these individuals for them to get so far off the natural path of humanity.

And that is where my own compassion must arise. We are born to love. Our most natural state is peace. The origin of our very body is pure love and intelligence, and they are still actively working to maintain the integrity of our physical self. But our thoughts and actions can interfere with the process of maintaining wholeness. If we are full of negativity, fear or anger, our highest self is, in effect, put to sleep. We are then operating from ego and that is where the trouble starts.

When we are faced with people who rant and rage at the slightest perception of loss, as spiritually aware people we must affirm: their higher self is emerging in this moment; they are dropping their fears and the mind is restored to peace and bliss. Part of my spiritual practice (a large part) is knowing the Truth about others, even when they are behaving badly. If not me, then who? If not now, then when? If not Truth, then what?

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspirituallivingbakersfield.com

See also www.californiafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

Climate Change is Threatening the World's Food Supply

by John Lawrence, August 17, 2019

A new United Nations report details how climate change is making it more difficult for people to be able to feed themselves especially in poorer parts of the world. As diets tend towards more beef, beef cows are replacing land previously used for growing crops. Raising beef uses ten times more resources than poultry, dairy, eggs or pork. Besides that cows belch and fart methane. According to a New York Times article: "Since 1961 methane emissions from ruminant livestock, which includes cows as well as sheep, buffalo and goats, have significantly increased, according to the report. And each year, the amount of forested land that is cleared — much of that propelled by demand for pasture land for cattle — releases the emissions equivalent of driving 600 million cars."

Fortunately, there are now some alternatives to the beef cow which deliver the same meaty product sans cow - Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat. Some smart people have figured out how to create a burger which tastes like a hamburger without running a lot of fodder through a cow. Both are plant based products which look, taste and feel like the real thing. If these products become widespread, the beef cow could be eliminated from the planet, and this would reduce carbon emissions. It would also free up many acres of land on which crops could be raised that would more efficiently feed people.

Both burgers are vegan, halal and kosher. It's unclear at this time whether or not the ingredients are organic and non-GMO. Soy is one of the main agricultural products that is genetically modified so that it can be sprayed with glyphosate (Monsanto's Roundup). cnet reports: "The Impossible Burger contains mostly organic ingredients, while the Beyond Burger doesn't. The Beyond Burger is strictly non-GMO, whereas Impossible Foods recently faced backlash about using genetically modified ingredients that contain the pesticide glyphosate." Well then, how can it be mostly organic, and how can the Beyond Burger that's non-GMO not be?

The New York Times article continues: "Barring action on a sweeping scale, the report said, climate change will accelerate the danger of severe food shortages. As a warming atmosphere intensifies the world’s droughts, flooding, heat waves, wildfires and other weather patterns, it is speeding up the rate of soil loss and land degradation, the report concludes." Already people are migrating all over the world as they face food shortages and eventual starvation.

“You’re sort of reaching a breaking point with land itself and its ability to grow food and sustain us,” said Aditi Sen, a senior policy adviser on climate change at Oxfam America, an antipoverty advocacy organization.

The report said that activities such as draining wetlands — as has happened in Indonesia and Malaysia to create palm oil plantations, for example — is particularly damaging. When drained, peatlands, which store between 530 and 694 billion tons of carbon dioxide globally, release that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas, trapping the sun’s heat and warming the planet. Every 2.5 acres of peatlands release the carbon dioxide equivalent of burning 6,000 gallons of gasoline.

And the emission of carbon dioxide continues long after the peatlands are drained. Of the five gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions that are released each year from deforestation and other land-use changes, “One gigaton comes from the ongoing degradation of peatlands that are already drained,” said Tim Searchinger, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, who is familiar with the report. (By comparison, the fossil fuel industry emitted about 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide last year, according to the institute.)

Citizens of planet earth take notice. Unless you change the ways you're conducting business, planet earth is not going to be able to sustain you. Consumer oriented lifestyles must be replaced by lifestyles that are more sustainable. Plant based alternatives to beef are a step in the right direction. More birth control would be another to reduce the population. Conversion to renewable energy on a large scale would be the third. Airplanes and the military are large greenhouse gas emitters. All these steps and more must be undertaken if humanity is to survive on planet earth. Humanity is under threat of extinction from just 120 years of industrialization and fossil fuel development. It is time to change course or the earth will cease to be habitable. Whoever thought that the automobile and the airplane were good things?

Global Temps Continue to Soar Upward as NOAA Confirms July 2019 Was Hottest Month Since Records Began in 1880

Published on Thursday, August 15, 2019

by Common Dreams

"We are seeing record after record after record."

by Julia Conley, staff writer

 

27 Comments

NOAA revealed Thursday that July 2019 was the hottest month on record since the U.S. government began recording temperature date in the lat 19th century. (Photo: Lukas Schulze/Getty Images)

As climate scientists raise alarm over hotter and hotter global temperatures, a top U.S. weather agency reported on Thursday that July 2019 was the hottest month the planet has ever experienced since the government began recording global temperatures nearly 140 years ago.

NOAA's monthly Global Climate Report revealed that last month the average worldwide temperature was 1.71 degrees Fahrenheit above the average temperature observed in the 20th century.

JUST IN: July 2019 now ranks #1 as the warmest month on record, according to the monthly Global Climate Report from @NOAANCEIclimate https://t.co/gzv7jcCDDX #StateOfClimate pic.twitter.com/aNSyYtAsRa

— NOAA (@NOAA) August 15, 2019

Last month—the hottest July on record since temperature data was first recorded—broke the previous record set in July 2016.

July's average global temperature represents a continuation of a pattern that began more than 30 years ago; last month was the 415th consecutive month when the world was warmer than average. Last month, NOAA reported that June 2019 was the hottest June on record.

The trend seen year-round over the past three decades has been coupled with a pattern observed over an even longer period of time; July 2019 was the 43rd July in a row with above-average temperatures.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) warned on Twitter that the trends scientists are observing represent a "new normal under climate change," which won't change unless the U.S. takes "bold action to confront the climate crisis."

July was the hottest month in human history, surpassing a record set in July 2016.

2015 through 2018 have also been the four warmest years on record — the new normal under climate change.

The U.S. must take bold action to confront the climate crisis. https://t.co/jyhL7Nlcw3

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) August 14, 2019

Khanna is a staunch supporter of decisive climate action like the Green New Deal, which would replace the United States' fossil fuel industry, one of the world's biggest contributers to the climate crisis, with a renewable energy economy.

The high global temperatures last month were reflected in news stories about extreme heatwaves throughout Europe and wildfires in Greenland.

An annotated map of the world showing notable climate events that occurred around the world in July 2019. (Image: NOAA)

Scientists also recorded record-low levels of sea ice in the coldest parts of the world. In the Arctic in July, ice was recorded as being 19.8 percent lower than average.

"We are seeing record after record after record," Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University, told Grist this week.

"It looks like the worst case scenario put forward by the IPCC could be an underestimate because we are seeing ice melting now that we expected 30 to 40 years from now," he added. "It's alarming because it's very fast-paced and the consequences are hard to predict."

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Only 21 Days to Change

Dear friends,

It has been said it takes 21 days to change any habitual behavior. That is only three little weeks. Doesn’t that seem like too little time to change anything? However, most of us would forget the plan in day three. If we were to stick to it for the entire 21 days, we might be shocked at the results. Today I am proposing that we take up the challenge and make no negative judgments for 21 days! That means no complaining, no blaming or shaming. Imagine if the whole world was involved; we might come to the realization of how powerful we are, which would lead us to creative solutions to the issues we are now complaining about!

We give up our happiness every time we blame someone else for our condition. We abandon our creativity when our mind is churned up with resentment. We destroy all possibility of joy as we bring down others. We need to ask ourselves why we feel so entitled to heap negativity on those around us. Who do we think we are? If we were really honest we would answer; I must think I am worthless and powerless to behave this way.

We all know that a wounded animal can be dangerous. Wounded people who have done nothing to heal their inner imbalance can be dangerous as well. They lash out with the intention to hurt; to make someone else feel as bad as they do. But with some spiritual courage, some intention to elevate our thoughts, we can begin to experience the natural joy that lies under our fear. The very things we say “they” are taking from us remain within us, awaiting our attention. How can we ever make contact if we are so busy complaining and judging?

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspirituallivingbakersfield.com

See also www.californiafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

Lake Hopatcong, NJ Already Showing Effects of Global Warming

by John Lawrence, August 16, 2019

Extreme climate change has arrived in America. That was the headline in the Washington Post on August 13, 2019:

LAKE HOPATCONG, N.J. — Before climate change thawed the winters of New Jersey, this lake hosted boisterous wintertime carnivals. As many as 15,000 skaters took part, and automobile owners would drive onto the thick ice. Thousands watched as local hockey clubs battled one another and the Skate Sailing Association of America held competitions, including one in 1926 that featured 21 iceboats on blades that sailed over a three-mile course.

In those days before widespread refrigeration, workers flocked here to harvest ice. They would carve blocks as much as two feet thick, float them to giant ice houses, sprinkle them with sawdust and load them onto rail cars bound for ice boxes in New York City and beyond.

"These winters do not exist anymore," says Marty Kane, a lawyer and head of the Lake Hopatcong Foundation.

That’s because a century of climbing temperatures has changed the character of the Garden State. The massive ice industry and skate sailing association are but black-and-white photographs at the local museum. And even the hardy souls who still try to take part in ice fishing contests here have had to cancel 11 of the past dozen competitions for fear of straying onto perilously thin ice and tumbling into the frigid water.

New Jersey may seem an unlikely place to measure climate change, but it is one of the fastest-warming states in the nation. Its average temperature has climbed by close to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1895 — double the average for the Lower 48 states.

Lake Hopatcong is the largest freshwater body in New Jersey about 4 square miles  in area.  It was developed by damming and flooding of two ponds, known as the Great Pond and Little Pond, and the Musconetcong River, its natural outlet. As kids we used to go there to Bertrand Island, an amusement park that was located on a peninsula in the lake. It closed in 1983. A stone marker in the shadow of a community pool house is the only hint that Bertrand Island Amusement Park ever existed. Small SUVs and compact luxury cars sit in driveways where children and teens once waited to ride the Wildcat, the Whip and the Aeroplane Swing 90 years ago. You could take your girlfriend through the Tunnel of Love.

“The amusement park helped put the lake on the map as a resort,” said Martin Kane of the Lake Hopatcong Historical Museum. “You always had amusements at the lake, but never in a large format — in what we would call a modern-day amusement park.”

Now some of the beaches are closed due to toxic algae bloom. It's impossible to swim or drive a boat through the water. However, 2 days ago NJ.com reported that "It’s now safe to swim at 6 Lake Hopatcong beaches as DEP lifts toxic algae warning for part of state’s largest lake."

It turns out that my home state and county is a harbinger of global climate change having already reached the 2° Celsius limit that spells disaster when it's reached world wide. Right now only some hot spots have attained that limit which the Paris Accords warned would presage disaster.

Over the past two decades, the 2 degrees Celsius number has emerged as a critical threshold for global warming. In the 2015 Paris accord, international leaders agreed that the world should act urgently to keep the Earth’s average temperature increases “well below” 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 to avoid a host of catastrophic changes.

The potential consequences are daunting. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that if Earth heats up by an average of 2 degrees Celsius, virtually all the world’s coral reefs will die; retreating ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica could unleash massive sea level rise; and summertime Arctic sea ice, a shield against further warming, would begin to disappear.

New Jersey and nearby Rhode Island are the fastest warming of the Lower 48 states. Lakes don't freeze as often, snow melts more quickly, and insects and pests don't die as they once did in the harsher cold. Rhode Island is the first state in the Lower 48 whose average temperature rise has eclipsed 2 degrees Celsius. In Lake Hopatcong, thinning ice let loose waves of aquatic weeds that ordinarily die in the cold. This year, a new blow: Following one of the warmest springs of the past century, harmful bacteria known as blue-green algae bloomed in the lake just as the tourist season was taking off in June. Recently it has been reported that dogs have died as a result of drinking water where there are toxic algae blooms.

Republicans are rock-solid in Sussex County, outnumbering Democrats by more than two-to-one. Trump carried the county by nearly 30 points. So it's ironic that the state's largest lake, which sits on the border of Sussex and Morris counties is already experiencing the effects of climate change while Trump supporters, most of whom are climate change deniers, are totally oblivious. C'est la vie!

In Wars and Weapons We Trust: Military Strength Is America's National Religion

Published on Tuesday, August 13, 2019

by TomDispatch

What happened to "blessed are the peacemakers"?

by William Astore

 

1 Comments

America's twenty-first-century wars have been coming home in many ways, including in the increasingly worshipful attitudes of so many Americans (especially those in the seats of power in Washington, D.C.) toward the Pentagon and the U.S. military. (Image: Catland/Getty Images)

When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I looked to the heavens: to God and Christianity (as arbitrated by the Catholic Church) and to the soaring warbirds of the U.S. military, which I believed kept us safe. To my mind then, they were classic manifestations of American technological superiority over the godless Communists.

With all its scandals, especially when it came to priestly sexual abuse, I lost my faith in the Catholic Church. Indeed, I would later learn that there had been a predatory priest in my own parish when I was young, a grim man who made me uneasy at the time, though back then I couldn’t have told you why. As for those warbirds, like so many Americans, I thrilled to their roar at air shows, but never gave any real thought to the bombs they were dropping in Vietnam and elsewhere, to the lives they were ending, to the destruction they were causing. Nor, at that age, did I ever consider their enormous cost in dollars or just how much Americans collectively sacrificed to have “top cover,” whether of the warplane or godly kind

There were good and devoted priests in my Catholic diocese. There were good and devoted public servants in the U.S. military. Admittedly, I never seriously considered the priesthood, but I did sign up for the Air Force, surprising myself by serving in it for 20 years. Still, both institutions were then, and remain, deeply flawed. Both seek, in a phrase the Air Force has long used, “global reach, global power.” Both remain hierarchies that regularly promote true believers to positions of authority. Both demand ultimate obedience. Both sweep their sins under the rug. Neither can pass an audit. Both are characterized by secrecy. Both seem remarkably immune to serious efforts at reform. And both, above all, know how to preserve their own power, even as they posture and proselytize about serving a higher one.

However, let me not focus here on the one “holy catholic and apostolic church,” words taken from the “profession of faith” I recited during Mass each week in my youth. I’d prefer to focus instead on that other American holy church, the U.S. military, with all its wars and weapons, its worshipers and wingmen, together with its vision of global dominance that just happens to include end-of-world scenarios as apocalyptic as those of any imaginable church of true believers. I’m referring, of course, to our country’s staggeringly large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, just now being updated -- the term seems to be “modernized” -- to the tune of something like $1.7 trillion over the decades to come.

A Profession of Twenty-First-Century All-American Faith

“Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value” is a telling phrase linked to Joe Biden. And in those same terms, there’s no question what the American government values most: its military, to the tune of almost $1.5 trillion over the next two years (although the real number may well exceed $2 trillion). Republicans and Democrats agree on little these days, except support for spending on that military, its weaponry, its wars to come, and related national security state outlays.

In that context, I’ve been wondering what kind of “profession of faith” we might have to recite, if there were the equivalent of Mass for what has increasingly become our military church. What would it look like? Whom and what would we say we believed in? As a lapsed Catholic with a lot of practice in my youth professing my faith in the Church, as well as a retired military officer and historian, I have a few ideas about what such a “profession” might look like:

* We believe in wars. We may no longer believe in formal declarations of war (not since December 1941 has Congress made one in our name), but that sure hasn’t stopped us from waging them. From Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan to Iraq, the Cold War to the War on Terror, and so many military interventions in between, including Grenada, Panama, and Somalia, Americans are always fighting somewhere as if we saw great utility in thumbing our noses at the Prince of Peace. (That’s Jesus Christ, if I remember my Catholic catechism correctly.)

* We believe in weaponry, the more expensive the better. The underperforming F-35 stealth fighter may cost $1.45 trillion over its lifetime. An updated nuclear triad (land-based missiles, nuclear submarines, and strategic bombers) may cost that already mentioned $1.7 trillion. New (and malfunctioning) aircraft carriers cost us more than $10 billion each. And all such weaponry requests get funded, with few questions asked, despite a history of their redundancy, ridiculously high price, regular cost overruns, and mediocre performance. Meanwhile, Americans squabble bitterly over a few hundred million dollars for the arts and humanities.

* We believe in weapons of mass destruction. We believe in them so strongly that we’re jealous of anyone nibbling at our near monopoly. As a result, we work overtime to ensure that infidels and atheists (that is, the Iranians and North Koreans, among others) don’t get them. In historical terms, no country has devoted more research or money to deadly nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry than the United States. In that sense, we’ve truly put our money where our mouths are (and where a devastating future might be).

* We believe with missionary zeal in our military and seek to establish our “faith” everywhere. Hence, our global network of perhaps 800 overseas military bases. We don’t hesitate to deploy our elite missionaries, our equivalent to the Jesuits, the Special Operations forces to more than 130 countries annually. Similarly, the foundation for what we like to call foreign assistance is often military training and foreign military sales. Our present supreme leader, Pope Trump I, boasts of military sales across the globe, most notably to the infidel Saudis. Even when Congress makes what, until recently, was the rarest of attempts to rein in this deadly trade in arms, Pope Trump vetoes it. His rationale: weapons and profits should rule all.

* We believe in our college of cardinals, otherwise known as America’s generals and admirals. We sometimes appoint them (or anoint them?) to the highest positions in the land. While Trump’s generals -- Michael Flynn, James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, and John Kelly -- have fallen from grace at the White House, America’s generals and admirals continue to rule globally. They inhabit proconsul-like positions in sweeping geographical commands that (at least theoretically) cover the planet and similarly lead commands aimed at dominating the digital-computer realm and special operations. One of them will head a new force meant to dominate space through time eternal. A “strategic” command (the successor to the Strategic Air Command, or SAC, so memorably satirized in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove) continues to ensure that, at some future moment, the U.S. will be able to commit mass genocide by quite literally destroying the world with nuclear weapons. Indeed, Pope Trump recently boasted that he could end America’s Afghan War in a week, apparently through the mass nuclear genocide of (his figure) 10 million Afghans. Even as he then blandly dismissed the idea of wiping that country “off the face of the earth,” he openly reflected the more private megalomania of those military professionals funded by the rest of us to think about “the unthinkable.” In sum, everything is -- theoretically at least -- under the thumbs of our unelected college of cardinals. Their overblown term for it is “full-spectrum dominance,” which, in translation, means they grant themselves god-like powers over our lives and that of our planet (though the largely undefeated enemies in their various wars don’t seem to have acknowledged this reality).

 

* We believe that freedom comes through obedience. Those who break ranks from our militarized church and protest, like Chelsea Manning, are treated as heretics and literally tortured.

* We believe military spending brings wealth andjobs galore, even when it measurably doesn’t. Military production is both increasingly automated and increasingly outsourced, leading to far fewer good-paying American jobs compared to spending on education, infrastructure repairs of and improvements in roads, bridges, levees, and the like, or just about anything else for that matter.

* We believe, and our most senior leaders profess to believe, that our military represents the very best of us, that we have the “finest” one in human history.

* We believe in planning for a future marked by endless wars, whether against terrorism or “godless” states like China and Russia, which means our military church must be forever strengthened in the cause of winning ultimate victory.

* Finally, we believe our religion is the one true faith. (Just as I used to be taught that the Catholic Church was the one true church and that salvation outside it was unattainable.) More pacific “religions” are dismissed as weak, misguided, and exploitative. Consider, for example, the denunciation of NATO countries that refuse to spend more money on their militaries. Such a path to the future is heretical; therefore, they must be punished.

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

Keep in mind that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, or so I was taught as a boy anyway. One might say that the beginning of U.S. militarism is simply fear, whether of terrorists, immigrants, Muslims, Communists, or other enemies of the moment. If Americans continue to be wracked with such fears, they’ll undoubtedly continue to profess their faith in the military as our country’s noblest protectors, too.

Where does such a profession of faith in wars and weapons end? Is there even a terminus of any sort other than destruction?

Those of us who endured war games and hair-trigger nuclear alerts during the Cold War have long had apocalyptic fears of such endings in the back of our minds. Under Donald Trump, they’ve come back with a vengeance. Unlike many Christians, I don’t envision Christ returning to pick up the irradiated Elect after a nuclear version of Armageddon. But that, of course, is a true worst-case scenario. A more likely ending is a slow-motion collapse of America’s imperial empire and the church of the military that goes with it, the resulting chaos possibly leading to a Second Coming, not of Christ but of medieval levels of meanness and misery.

Or, maybe, just maybe, we might start anew by questioning our militarized profession of faith. We might begin to realize that our warrior-church isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We might begin to seek meaning and salvation not through wars and weaponry, not through generals and their admirers, not through impossible dreams of total dominance, but through compassion and a desire for global justice.

I confess that I long ago turned my back on the Catholic Church of my youth, but I haven’t turned my back on Christianity and the wisdom it can offer. For what does it profit a country if it gains the whole world yet loses its soul? (In our case, of course, it might be more appropriate to say: For what does it profit a country if it gains nothing from its wars and military mindset yet loses its soul?) The more we Americans profess our faith in warriors, weapons, and wars, the more we endanger our nation’s collective soul. There’s a reason, after all, that Jesus placed the peacemakers, not the warriors, among the children of God.

© 2019 TomDispatch.com

Be Happy Now

Dear friends,

HH the Dalai Lama has suggested we adopt this phrase; “we human beings" when speaking about our shared issues. Rather than seeing the world as “us and them” he feels we could improve conditions more rapidly if we saw our natural equality as humans. We all want the same thing, to find happiness and to avoid suffering. That is the essence of every decision we make. The mistake we make is in the trying to find anything. Our capacity for happiness depends on our awareness that it is a spiritual quality innate in us and is revealed by our moment by moment decisions. We can feel happiness right now!

In that sense, we create happiness and in the process, avoid suffering. Can we do it in times of great change and chaos? Why not? Why not be happy anyway? Do you really believe that happiness means you don’t care? Do you think happiness lacks compassion for those who are suffering? Are you unconsciously waiting for the whole world to change before you claim your happiness?

Happiness and social activism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, HH the Dalai Lama has said “happy people don’t cause problems. They solve them.” Moreover, research has proven that a happy mind is a healthy mind and a healthy mind creates health in the body. The earth/body is not healthy right now because of the lack of happiness in “we human beings.” In our ignorance we have created suffering by the decisions we have made that were largely based on a superstitious model of the universe and our place in it. We all want peace and plenty for “we human beings.” Can we be happy while we want it? Can happiness help us be more active in the creating of a world that works for everyone? Let’s put it to the test. Be happy now.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspirituallivingbakersfield.com

Also see www.californiafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

Movie, "The Hunt," Loaded with Gun Violence. That's Why It Wasn't Released After 3 Mass Shootings.

by John Lawrence, August 13, 2019

Hollywood movies are getting more and more violent. In particular they are filled with gun violence. Is there a connection between this aspect of American culture and what is happening in real life? One might think so. Universal Pictures has pulled the release of The Hunt, which was scheduled to come out September 27. In a statement on the movie’s website, the studio said that this is not “the right time” for the film to be released, especially considering the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Marketing for the film had already been suspended due to the gun violence depicted in it.

The movie is about two groups of people: the liberals and the deplorables. Does this ring a bell? The liberals set out to hunt down and kill the deplorables. It is set in a world where “liberal elites” hunt Trump voter types for sport, having selected their prey based on the horrible opinions the targets shared on social media.This is all depicted as completely normal, even sporting. It normalizes violence, in particular gun violence.Such a treat to see people gunned down for the sport of it. It is really, really enjoyable. We can laugh as another one bites the dust, especially all those Trump voters.

However, in the movie the Trump voters take out their revenge on the "liberal elites" as well so both sides get to cheer when one of their opposite number gets gunned down. Is it any wonder there are mass shootings? Reality imitating culture? Gun violence in movies and in real life is totally normal? It gives the media something to convey which will raise their ratings. If it bleeds it leads, and the more blood the better. Meanwhile, nothing of importance concerning America or the world gets talked about. The Romans distracted their populace with bread and circuses. American culture distracts its constituents with blood and circuses.

Take any action movie. The guns in it are a whole lot bigger and more destructive than AK-47s. By comparison AK-47s seem like BB guns. You can't watch an American TV show or movie without gun violence being portrayed in it. That's why I mainly go to foreign produced movies. They are still capable of telling a story and formulating a plot line instead of relying on pyrotechnics to amuse and titillate the audience. "The Hunt" will probably be released at a later date in between the mass shootings if such a convenient time can be guessed at. They've spent too much money making it not to release it so that the American audience can be treated to another movie emphasizing gun violence.

The movie, Hobbs and Shaw is also incredibly violent, but it was released anyway amidst the mass shootings. Vox reported:

While the current iteration of Bond films, as well as other contenders to the action franchise throne like Mission: Impossible, frequently become mired in their own self-importance, Fast and Furious manages to float perpetually above such petty concerns as “plot” and “consequences.” Rather than giving a toss about elevating the action genre through serious themes, angsty heroes, and trope subversion, The Fast and The Furious instead consistently focuses on found family, homoerotic male bonding, and blowing shit up. What else, these films perpetually ask, do you really need?

Yes, what else do you need other than a lot of guns and "blowing shit up"?

Warnings of 'Dire Humanitarian Impact' as Trump Finalizes Rule to Punish Immigrants for Using Public Benefits

Published on Monday, August 12, 2019

by Common Dreams

"Trump's public charge rule is a xenophobic and classist attack on immigrants."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

1 Comments

Thousands of advocates, activists, and community members flooded the streets at Foley Square in New York City on July 12, 2019. (Photo: Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The Trump administration on Monday finalized a rule that could deny permanent residency—or "green cards"—to immigrants who have received public benefits such as food stamps and housing assistance, a move rights groups condemned as an attack on low-income families that could have "a dire humanitarian impact."

"This latest racially-motivated policy is a painful reminder that behind Donald Trump's bluster, bureaucrats like Stephen Miller will stop at nothing to attack immigrants and destroy our legal immigration system."
—Marielena Hincapié, National Immigration Law Center

 

According to CBS News, the long-anticipated policy "would require caseworkers to consider the use of government housing, food, and medical assistance such as the widely-used Section 8 housing vouchers, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Medicare's Part D prescription drug coverage" when examining permanent residency applications.

The 837-page rule (pdf), CBS reported, "would subject immigrant households who fall below certain income thresholds to the 'public charge' test—which would also consider how well applicants speak, read, and write English. Under the proposed rule, any diagnosed medical condition that requires extensive medical treatment would also 'weigh heavily' in evaluations by caseworkers."

Immigrant rights groups that denounced the plan when it was first unveiled in September raised alarm on Monday and vowed to take legal action against the Trump administration to stop the rule, which is now set to take effect in 62 days.

Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, called the regulation "a cruel new step toward weaponizing programs that are intended to help people by making them, instead, a means of separating families and sending immigrants and communities of color one message: you are not welcome here."

"This latest racially-motivated policy is a painful reminder that behind [President] Donald Trump's bluster, bureaucrats like [top adviser] Stephen Miller will stop at nothing to attack immigrants and destroy our legal immigration system," Hincapié said in a statement. "It will have a dire humanitarian impact, forcing some families to forego critical life-saving healthcare and nutrition. The damage will be felt for decades to come."

BREAKING: the Trump admin just finalized its "public charge" rule—a race motivated wealth test on immigrant families seeking a healthy, stable future in the US. If this goes into effect, it would have a devastating impact on millions.

We WILL fight back. Stay tuned for updates. https://t.co/o0ONPqPBLu

— National Immigration Law Center (@NILC) August 12, 2019

Advocacy organizations and legal experts have warned that the Trump administration's rule—which the New York Times described as a "top priority" of Miller—could force low-income immigrants to choose between vital public assistance programs and the security of permanent residency.

As The Associated Press reported, rights groups are also "concerned the rules give too broad an authority to decide whether someone is likely to need public assistance at any time, giving immigration officials the ability to deny legal status to more people."

On Twitter, the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) called the policy a "bald-faced attack on immigrant families" and vowed to resist.

"Trump's public charge rule is a xenophobic and classist attack on immigrants," said NYIC. "It won't go into effect until October 15, and we'll keep fighting it so all immigrants can lead healthy and safe lives."

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We Are All in This Together

Dear friends,

Usually I do not write Living Consciously on the weekend but so many friends are saying they feel hopeless, afraid and helpless during these trying times, I felt the need to address those concerns. It is not a simple thing, for sure. On the one hand, old systems are crumbling and falling into chaos. On the other hand, new ideas are trying to break through our collective consciousness.

When systems break down due to their un-workability, there is that phase between the old and the new that is fraught with uncertainty. We are in that phase right now. The old is fighting to stay in charge, causing the tumult. At the same time there is much to be optimistic about. Young people the world over are pushing for the change. They are refusing to accept the old ways. They are coming up with innovative solutions to our man-made problems.

Those of us who have been around a while need to support them, stand with them and be available to mentor and learn at the same time. This is not the time to hide our light or retreat into apathy. The change will not come without participation. That means voting, staying informed, holding to our spiritual practice and being together in community. Speak the Vision of a world that works for everyone. Insist on it, Believe in it. Make it real. We are all in this together.

Emerson at age 30 wrote: “the lover of Nature dreaming through the wood would never awaken to thought if the scream of an eagle, the cries of a crow or a curlew near his head, did not break the continuity.”

Those of us who have lived in relative privilege would be unaware of the extreme injustices in our society if it were not for the screams of the oppressed, the telling of the secrets, the abuse revealed, the corruption made visible. We are living in the time of transformation from a world that belonged to a very few, into one that honors and supports all living beings. This is a time that is fraught with danger and potent with possibility. 

Those who would oppress, will fight to the death to stay in power. The rest of us need to insist on positive change. We do it through or local efforts, our participation in the solutions, our spiritual declarations. If we do not say it out loud, it will not come to pass. Declare: “This world is a place of peace and plenty for all. We live in harmony and cooperation. Our joy is in diversity. We love each other. We care for each other. We see the highest and best in one another. We call forth our unbounded potential.”

The late futurist, Barbara Marx Hubbard, once said that we humans exist today because millions of years ago, Bacteria learned to cooperate. Well, if a single celled organism can do it, I think we ought to be able to emulate their achievement. 

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspiritualllivingbakersfield.com

www.californiafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

The Search for a Comprehensive Immigration Plan

by John Lawrence, August 12, 2019

A reasonable comprehensive immigration plan would consist of 3 parts: 1) who and how many to let into the country legally; 2) what to do with illegals who are already residing in the US and 3) border security. It might be a good idea to look at the immigration policies of other countries to see how they do it since some other countries seem to be more rational than the US when it comes to immigration and a whole lot else. Switzerland, for example, only lets in people they need in the labor force. Canada has 4 classes of people: 1) close members of families already living in Canada; 2) skilled workers and businessmen (^i.e. those with money); 3) refugees and 4) people accepted for humanitarian reasons.

Elizabeth Warren's immigration package is largely a reaction to Trump's policies. She would just be more humane about treating illegals. Her policy says nothing about border protection. Cory Booker has a similar plan eliminating criminal prosecution for illegal immigrants. Again his plan says nothing about border security. It's all about a reaction to Trump's inhumane treatment of illegals. While these ideas offer more humane treatment for illegal border crossers, they say nothing about border security or preventing illegal border crossings in the first place. They would also be more lenient on persons who had put down roots here even though they crossed illegally. This is probably a good idea. If a person or family has established itself here, has a job or jobs and especially have had children born here, then they should be given some kind of legal status if not full citizenship. A green card, a work permit, a visa or some temporary legal status makes sense.

The most important question to ask, however, is why is the border like a sieve? Why is it that so many can cross illegally in the first place? If they couldn't cross illegally in the first place, then all the arguments about detention centers go away. Here's my take on this phenomenon of a sieve like border. The border could be made absolutely secure if the resources were devoted to securing it. Why aren't they? Because the military budget (which doesn't contain border security) is sucking all the economic air out of the room. You would think that the primary responsibility of the military would be to protect our borders, but the military has no responsibility at all to protect our borders. In fact they are forbidden supposedly by the Posse Comitatus Act from protecting our borders. How ridiculous! I'm not saying they should be shooting illegal border crossers. I'm saying that a good percentage of the military and military-industrial complex budget should be devoted to protecting out borders.

What would gold plated border protection look like? The military has the most advanced electronic surveillance systems in the world. So use those satellites, computers, cameras and radars to electronically surveil the border. Assign beefed up manpower as necessary to protect the border. US Customs and Border Protection should be powered up both in terms of budget and manpower while the military should be proportionately scaled down. The Department of Homeland Security budget of approximately $50 billion is pathetically small compared to the military budget which approaches $1 trillion. So who are the leaders of our country trying to fool? The truth is that a gold plated border protection system which would reduce illegal entries to zero could be had for probably one tenth of the military budget. So what is more important - protecting our borders or engaging in wars of choice around the world which so far have produced negative results in every war since WW II. We hear about 5G and Artificial Intelligence. Why not apply those technologies to border protection.

I'm for letting the Dreamers stay and not forcing family separation. I'm also for gold plated border security and a system of legal immigration similar to the Canadians. The Democrats better get on board with border protection because, if they leave this subject to the Republicans, they'll lose. If they appear to be for open borders, they lose. So don't be just a reaction to Trump. Innovate with your own ideas and make it clear you want both a humane and a rational immigration policy. Their ideas of devoting more economic support to Central American countries to alleviate the suffering of people there, which has largely been created by American policies of the past, is also a necessary step and a good one.

Leading Civil Rights Lawyer Shows 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler’s Early Rhetoric and Policies

Published on Friday, August 09, 2019

by Common Dreams

The author, Burt Neuborne, is one of America’s top civil liberties lawyers, and questions whether federal government can contain Trump and GOP power grabs.

by Steven Rosenfeld

 19 Comments

We’re used to thinking of Hitler’s Third Reich as the incomparably evil tyranny that it undoubtedly was. But Hitler didn’t take power by force. He used a set of rhetorical tropes codified in Trump’s bedside reading that persuaded enough Germans to welcome Hitler as a populist leader. (Photo: photolibrarian/Flickr/cc)

A new book by one of the nation’s foremost civil liberties lawyers powerfully describes how America’s constitutional checks and balances are being pushed to the brink by a president who is consciously following Adolf Hitler’s extremist propaganda and policy template from the early 1930s—when the Nazis took power in Germany.

In When at Times the Mob Is Swayed: A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Our Republic, Burt Neuborne mostly focuses on how America’s constitutional foundation in 2019—an unrepresentative Congress, the Electoral College and a right-wing Supreme Court majority—is not positioned to withstand Trump’s extreme polarization and GOP power grabs. However, its second chapter, “Why the Sudden Concern About Fixing the Brakes?,” extensively details Trump’s mimicry of Hitler’s pre-war rhetoric and strategies.

Neuborne doesn’t make this comparison lightly. His 55-year career began by challenging the constitutionality of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. He became the ACLU’s national legal director in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. He was founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School in the 1990s. He has been part of more than 200 Supreme Court cases and Holocaust reparation litigation.

“Why does an ignorant, narcissistic buffoon like Trump trigger such anxiety? Why do so many Americans feel it existentially (not just politically) important to resist our forty-fifth president?” he writes. “Partly it’s just aesthetics. Trump is such a coarse and appalling man that it’s hard to stomach his presence in Abraham Lincoln’s house. But that’s not enough to explain the intensity of my dread. LBJ was coarse. Gerald Ford and George W. Bush were dumb as rocks. Richard Nixon was an anti-Semite. Bill Clinton’s mistreatment of women dishonored his office. Ronald Reagan was a dangerous ideologue. I opposed each of them when they appeared to exceed their constitutional powers. But I never felt a sense of existential dread. I never sensed that the very existence of a tolerant democracy was in play.”

A younger Trump, according to his first wife’s divorce filings, kept and studied a book translating and annotating Adolf Hitler’s pre-World War II speeches in a locked bedside cabinet, Neuborne noted. The English edition of My New Order, published in 1941, also had analyses of the speeches’ impact on his era’s press and politics. “Ugly and appalling as they are, those speeches are masterpieces of demagogic manipulation,” Neuborne says.

“Watching Trump work his crowds, though, I see a dangerously manipulative narcissist unleashing the demagogic spells that he learned from studying Hitler’s speeches—spells that he cannot control and that are capable of eroding the fabric of American democracy,” Neuborne says. “You see, we’ve seen what these rhetorical techniques can do. Much of Trump’s rhetoric—as a candidate and in office—mirrors the strategies, even the language, used by Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s to erode German democracy.”

Many Americans may seize or condemn Neuborne’s analysis, which has more than 20 major points of comparison. The author repeatedly says his goal is not “equating” the men—as “it trivializes Hitler’s obscene crimes to compare them to Trump’s often pathetic foibles.”

Indeed, the book has a larger frame: whether federal checks and balances—Congress, the Supreme Court, the Electoral College—can contain the havoc that Trump thrives on and the Republican Party at large has embraced. But the Trump-Hitler compilation is a stunning warning, because, as many Holocaust survivors have said, few Germans or Europeans expected what unfolded in the years after Hitler amassed power.

Here’s how Neuborne introduces this section. Many recent presidents have been awful, “But then there was Donald Trump, the only president in recent American history to openly despise the twin ideals—individual dignity and fundamental equality—upon which the contemporary United States is built. When you confront the reality of a president like Trump, the state of both sets of brakes—internal [constitutional] and external [public resistance]—become hugely important because Donald Trump’s political train runs on the most potent and dangerous fuel of all: a steady diet of fear, greed, loathing, lies, and envy. It’s a toxic mixture that has destroyed democracies before, and can do so again.

“Give Trump credit,” he continues. “He did his homework well and became the twenty-first-century master of divisive rhetoric. We’re used to thinking of Hitler’s Third Reich as the incomparably evil tyranny that it undoubtedly was. But Hitler didn’t take power by force. He used a set of rhetorical tropes codified in Trump’s bedside reading that persuaded enough Germans to welcome Hitler as a populist leader. The Nazis did not overthrow the Weimar Republic. It fell into their hands as the fruit of Hitler’s satanic ability to mesmerize enough Germans to trade their birthright for a pottage of scapegoating, short-term economic gain, xenophobia, and racism. It could happen here.”

Ideas Produce Forms and Experience

Dear friends,

There is a way of being in the world that allows us to experience it all and yet, not become mired in it.  It has to do with training the mind to see everything as temporary, transient and nothing more than a construct of mind (ours and everyone else’s.) It is not an easy path but can be cultivated with simply being appreciative of what is right in front of us. Celebrate the Temporary was the title of a book in the ‘80’s.  It is a profound practice and one that helps us to see through the appearance to the essence of it, which is always an idea acting as cause.

We have learned that ideas produce forms and experience. Therefore a change of ideas will bring about change in our immediate experience. Right now, humanity is struggling to embrace a new idea of its Source. The old religions do not include science and that is why they are outdated. As a people, we have created the world we live in based on our beliefs about God and the universe and our place in it. We have limited our own possibilities due to the superstitious nature of religious doctrine. How can we ever achieve peace and cooperation if we think of some as “outside” the love of God, or less than us?

Personally I have attended many, many interfaith meetings. They never produce anything other than a professed respect for the right to believe what we choose. But that is the problem. It is the beliefs themselves that are the Cause of war, violence, racism, sexism, homophobia, the destruction of our biosphere. Sure, we respect the right to believe what you want. But we do not have to respect the lies themselves. In fact, we need to open our minds to the possibility that we have been thinking too small to create the vision of a world that works for everyone.

Affirm: “I am not fooled by appearances. I see through them to the mighty power of possibility. Where there is hate, I see love. Where there is ignorance, I see wisdom. Where there is lack, I see plenty. Where there is separation, I see equality. I am available to new ideas about everything!”

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes  www.centerforspirituallivingbakersfield.com

Check out www.caliorniafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

Some Thoughts on Evolution

by John Lawrence, August 10, 2019

A more evolved being is to human beings what human beings are to cats. That's it in a nutshell. We know a cat can't do algebra or calculus, but the human mind is capable. Logic would tell us by extrapolation that there might be possibly a more evolved being, whether they exist right now somewhere in the universe or nor, whether human beings could evolve into them or not, whose mind was capable of things which are utterly impossible for human beings to comprehend just as a cat can't possibly comprehend higher math.

Clever Hans was a hose that his owner supposedly had trained to do math. Apparently Hans could add, subtract, multiply and divide. The horse would tap his foot four times, for example, when his owner asked him to add 2 plus 2.The horse was even able to understand German! He belonged to a man called Herr Wilhelm von Osten. Von Osten was a teacher who taught math at a school. He was an amateur horse trainer. Von Osten took his amazing horse around the country demonstrating that he had been able to teach the horse math. Scientists became interested in Clever Hans. The psychologist Carl Stumpf got a group of people together to study what was happening. His assistant Oskar Pfungst was the main investigator. It was discovered that the horse could sense when the owner wanted him to stop tapping as long as he had eye contact with the owner. The conclusion was that the horse didn't really understand math!

So what would a more highly evolved human mind be capable of? Clairvoyance, precognition - extra sensory perception (ESP) in general. Perhaps some humans have already had a mutation in their genes which gives them some of these powers. Edgar Cayce was the most documented psychic of the 20th century. For more than 40 years of his adult life, Cayce gave psychic "readings" to thousands of seekers while in an unconscious state, diagnosing illnesses and revealing lives lived in the past and prophecies yet to come.

Later in life, Cayce would find that he had the ability to put himself into a sleep-like state by lying down on a couch, closing his eyes, and folding his hands over his stomach. In this state of relaxation and meditation, he was able to place his mind in contact with all time and space — the universal consciousness, also known as the super-conscious mind. From there, he could respond to questions as broad as, "What are the secrets of the universe?" and "What is my purpose in life?" to as specific as, "What can I do to help my arthritis?" and "How were the pyramids of Egypt built?" His responses to these questions came to be called "readings," and their insights offer practical help and advice to individuals even today. Cayce accurately diagnosed many peoples' medical problems and either referred them to a doctor or advised a cure. He didn't need to be in the same room with them. He only needed to know their address.

So maybe Cayce had a gene flip that enabled him to have a "universal consciousness." If this mutation spread throughout the human race, we might assume that humans will have evolved to a higher being in the same way that certain gene changes spread among the higher apes which allowed them to evolve from apehood into humans.

The book, "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain," details much of the research the Russians have done on this subject of paranormal and parapsychological events. The authors present six new chapters of post-Cold War activities. They offer evidence indicating that the Russians have been successful in harnessing psychic energy and show how Russian scientists advised Pentagon officials on controlling the thoughts of David Koresh during the 1993 Waco, Texas standoff. Well, let's ask the psychics how we get rid of war and get universal peace and prosperity. Or how do we solve global warming? That would be really an accomplishment for "universal consciousness."

So while there are individuals capable of harnessing psychic abilities, these abilities have not spread into the gene pool of the whole human race just as, I suppose, that the gene for language was manifested at first only in a few individuals before it spread to encompass the whole human race. It might even be possible for a cat or a horse to evolve into a hypercat or hyperhorse that was capable of doing math. Evidently some hyperevolute humans exist or have existed (Cayce died in 1945 although there is still an institute bearing his name). At the present time most humans simply are incapable of answering questions like "What happens after I die?," What is the ultimate fate of the universe?," What existed before the universe came into being?," and so forth and so on just as a cat is incapable of doing calculus.

Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China

by Ellen Brown, truthdig, August 7, 2019

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Andy Wong/ AP)

When the Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week, commentators were asking why. According to official data, the economy was rebounding, unemployment was below 4% and gross domestic product growth was above 3%. If anything, by the Fed’s own reasoning, it should have been raising rates.

Market pundits explained that we’re in a trade war and a currency war. Other central banks were cutting their rates, and the Fed had to follow suit in order to prevent the dollar from becoming overvalued relative to other currencies. The theory is that a cheaper dollar will make American products more attractive in foreign markets, helping our manufacturing and labor bases.

Over the weekend, President Trump followed the rate cuts by threatening to impose, on Sept. 1, a new 10% tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese products. China responded by suspending imports of U.S. agricultural products by state-owned companies and letting the value of the yuan drop. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 770 points, its worst day in 2019. The war was on.

The problem with a currency war is that it is a war without winners. This was demonstrated in the beggar-thy-neighbor policies of the 1930s, which only deepened the Great Depression. As economist Michael Hudson observed in a June interview with journalist Bonnie Faulkner, making American products cheaper abroad will do little for the American economy, because we no longer have a competitive manufacturing base or products to sell. Today’s workers are largely in the service industries—cab drivers, hospital workers, insurance agents and the like. A cheaper dollar abroad just makes consumer goods at Walmart and imported raw materials for U.S. businesses more expensive.

What is mainly devalued when a currency is devalued, Hudson says, is the price of the country’s labor and the working conditions of its laborers. The reason American workers cannot compete with foreign workers is not that the dollar is overvalued. It is due to their higher costs of housing, education, medical services and transportation. In competitor countries, these costs are typically subsidized by the government.

America’s chief competitor in the trade war is obviously China, which subsidizes not just worker costs but the costs of its businesses. The government owns 80% of the banks, which make loans on favorable terms to domestic businesses, especially state-owned businesses. If the businesses cannot repay the loans, neither the banks nor the businesses are typically put into bankruptcy, since that would mean losing jobs and factories. The nonperforming loans are just carried on the books or written off. No private creditors are hurt, since the creditor is the government and the loans were created on the banks’ books in the first place (following standard banking practice globally). As observed by Jeff Spross in a May 2018 Reuters article titled “Chinese Banks Are Big. Too Big?”:

[B]ecause the Chinese government owns most of the banks, and it prints the currency, it can technically keep those banks alive and lending forever. …

It may sound weird to say that China’s banks will never collapse, no matter how absurd their lending positions get. But banking systems are just about the flow of money.

Spross quoted former bank CEO Richard Vague, chair of The Governor’s Woods Foundation, who explained, “China has committed itself to a high level of growth. And growth, very simply, is contingent on financing.” Beijing will “come in and fix the profitability, fix the capital, fix the bad debt, of the state-owned banks … by any number of means that you and I would not see happen in the United States.”

Political and labor unrest is a major problem in China. Spross wrote that the government keeps everyone happy by keeping economic growth high and spreading the proceeds to the citizenry. About two-thirds of Chinese debt is owed just by the corporations, which are also largely state-owned. Corporate lending is thus a roundabout form of government-financed industrial policy—a policy financed not through taxes but through the unique privilege of banks to create money on their books.

China thinks this is a better banking model than the private Western system focused on short-term profits for private shareholders. But U.S. policymakers consider China’s subsidies to its businesses and workers to be “unfair trade practices.” They want China to forgo state subsidization and its other protectionist policies in order to level the playing field. But Beijing contends that the demanded reforms amount to “economic regime change.” As Hudson puts it: “This is the fight that Trump has against China. He wants to tell it to let the banks run China and have a free market. He says that China has grown rich over the last fifty years by unfair means, with government help and public enterprise. In effect, he wants the Chinese to be as threatened and insecure as American workers. They should get rid of their public transportation. They should get rid of their subsidies. They should let a lot of their companies go bankrupt so that Americans can buy them. They should have the same kind of free market that has wrecked the US economy. [Emphasis added.]”

Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan, writing on Aug. 1 in Foreign Affairs (the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations), call it “an emerging contest of models.”

An Economic Cold War

To understand what is happening here, it is useful to review some history. The free market model hollowed out America’s manufacturing base beginning in the Thatcher/Reagan era of the 1970s and ’80s, when neoliberal economic policies took hold. Meanwhile, emerging Asian economies, led by Japan, were exploding on the scene with a new economic model called “state-guided market capitalism.” The state determined the priorities and commissioned the work, then hired private enterprise to carry it out. The model overcame the defects of the communist system, which put ownership and control in the hands of the state.

The Japanese state-guided market system was effective and efficient—so effective that it was regarded as an existential threat to the neoliberal model of debt-based money and “free markets” promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to author William Engdahl in “A Century of War,” by the end of the 1980s, Japan was considered the leading economic and banking power in the world. Its state-guided model was also proving to be highly successful in South Korea and the other “Asian Tiger” economies. When the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the Cold War, Japan proposed its model to the former communist countries, and many began looking to it and to South Korea’s example as viable alternatives to the U.S. free-market system. State-guided capitalism provided for the general welfare without destroying capitalist incentive. Engdahl wrote:

The Tiger economies were a major embarrassment to the IMF free-market model. Their very success in blending private enterprise with a strong state economic role was a threat to the IMF free-market agenda. So long as the Tigers appeared to succeed with a model based on a strong state role, the former communist states and others could argue against taking the extreme IMF course. In east Asia during the 1980s, economic growth rates of 7-8 per cent per year, rising social security, universal education and a high worker productivity were all backed by state guidance and planning, albeit in a market economy — an Asian form of benevolent paternalism.

Just as the U.S. had engaged in a Cold War to destroy the Soviet communist model, so Western financial interests set out to destroy this emerging Asian threat. It was defused when Western neoliberal economists persuaded Japan and the Asian Tigers to adopt a free-market system and open their economies and companies to foreign investors. Western speculators then took down the vulnerable countries one by one in the “Asian crisis” of 1997-8. China alone was left as an economic threat to the Western neoliberal model, and it is this existential threat that is the target of the trade and currency wars today.

If You Can’t Beat Them …

In their Aug. 1 Foreign Affairs article titled “Competition without Catastrophe,” Campbell and Sullivan write that the temptation is to compare these economic trade wars with the Cold War with Russia; but the analogy is inapt:

China today is a peer competitor that is more formidable economically, more sophisticated diplomatically, and more flexible ideologically than the Soviet Union ever was. And unlike the Soviet Union, China is deeply integrated into the world and intertwined with the U.S. economy.

Unlike the Soviet communist system, the Chinese system cannot be expected to “crumble under its own weight.” The U.S. cannot expect, and should not even want, to destroy China, Campbell and Sullivan say. Rather, we should aim for a state of “coexistence on terms favorable to U.S. interests and values.”

The implication is that China, being too strong to be knocked out of the game as the Soviet Union was, needs to be coerced or cajoled into adopting the neoliberal model and abandoning state support of its industries and ownership of its banks. But the Chinese system, while obviously not perfect, has an impressive track record for sustaining long-term growth and development. While the U.S. manufacturing base was being hollowed out under the free-market model, China was systematically building up its own manufacturing base and investing heavily in infrastructure and emerging technologies, and it was doing this with credit generated by its state-owned banks. Rather than trying to destroy China’s economic system, it might be more “favorable to U.S. interests and values” for us to adopt its more effective industrial and banking practices.

We cannot win a currency war through the use of competitive currency devaluations that trigger a “race to the bottom,” and we cannot win a trade war by installing competitive trade barriers that simply cut us off from the benefits of cooperative trade. More favorable to our interests and values than warring with our trading partners would be to cooperate in sharing solutions, including banking and credit solutions. The Chinese have proven the effectiveness of their public banking system in supporting their industries and their workers. Rather than seeing it as an existential threat, we could thank them for test-driving the model and take a spin in it ourselves.

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Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute, and author of 13 books including her latest, "Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age."  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com

Jobs, the Environment, and a Planet in Crisis

Published on Tuesday, August 06, 2019

by TomDispatch

Unions vs. Environmentalists or Unions and Environmentalists?

by Aviva Chomsky

 

3 Comments

Despite challenges from parts of both the labor and the environmental movements, which its sponsors had undoubtedly hoped would be among its strongest supporters, Markey and Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal resolution has gone a remarkably long way toward putting a genuine discussion of what an effective and just climate policy might look like in the public arena for the first time. (Photo: Emelia Gold)

When it comes to heat, extreme weather, wildfires, and melting glaciers, the planet is now in what the media increasingly refers to as "record" territory, as climate change's momentum outpaces predictions. In such a situation, in a country whose president and administration seem hell-bent on doing everything they conceivably can to make matters worse, the Green New Deal (GND) seems to offer at least a modest opening to a path forward.

You know, the resolution introduced this February in the House of Representatives by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Edward Markey (D-MA). Unsurprisingly, the proposal has been roundly attacked by the right. But it's stirred up some controversy on the left as well. You might imagine that labor unions and environmental organizations would be wholeheartedly for a massive federal investment in good jobs and a just transition away from fossil fuels. But does organized labor actually support or oppose the Green New Deal? What about environmental organizations? If you're not even sure how to answer such questions, you're not alone.

That 14-page resolution calls for "a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era." Its purpose: to reduce U.S. carbon emissions to net zero within a decade, while guaranteeing significant numbers of new jobs and social welfare to American workers. Read it and you'll find that it actually attempts to overcome historical divisions between the American labor and environmental movements by linking a call for good jobs and worker protection to obvious and much-needed environmental goals.

In the process, the GND proposal goes impressively far beyond the modest goals of the Paris Climate Accords and other international agreements. It supports specific, enforceable targets for bringing climate change under control, while drawing clear connections between social, labor, and environmental rights. Acknowledging in blunt terms the urgency of making systemic change on a rapidly warming planet, it calls for the kind of national mobilization Americans haven't experienced since the end of the Second World War. Described that way, it sounds like something both the labor and environmental movements would naturally support without a second thought. There is, however, both a history of mistrust and real disagreement over issues, which both movements are now grappling with. And the media is doing its part by exaggerating labor's opposition to the proposal, while ignoring what environmental organizations have to say.

One Green New Deal controversy focuses on the future role of fossil fuels in that plan. A number of environmental organizations believe that such energy sources have no place in our future, that they need to stay in the ground, period. They cite climate science and the urgent need to move rapidly and drastically to eliminate carbon emissions as the basis for such a conclusion. As it happens, the Green New Deal avoids directly challenging the fossil-fuel industry. In fact, it doesn't even use the term "fossil fuels."

From another perspective, some unions hope that new technologies like carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) will make those fuels more efficient and far cleaner. If the addition of carbon to the atmosphere could be reduced significantly or offset in some fashion, while humanity still burned natural gas, oil, or even coal, they say, jobs in those sectors could be preserved. And the unions have other concerns as well. They tend, for instance, to look skeptically on the GND's promises of a "just transition" for displaced fossil-fuel workers like coal miners, given the devastation that has fallen on workers and their communities when industries have shut down in the past. They also fear that, without accompanying trade protections, polluting industries will simply export their emissions rather than reduce them.

Being more of a statement of purpose than an elaborated plan, the Green New Deal is short on both detail and answers when it comes to such issues. The actual roadmap to achieving its goals, the proposal states, "must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses." Both unions and environmental organizations are already mobilizing to make sure their voices are part of the process.

The right wing was quick to mockingly publicize the Green New Deal not just as thoroughly unrealistic but as utterly un-American. Under the circumstances, perhaps it's not surprising that a recent poll found 69% of Republicans but only 36% of Democrats had heard "a lot" about it. Similarly, 80% of Republicans already "strongly opposed" it, while only 46% of Democrats strongly supported it. And 40% of those polled said that they had heard "mostly negative" things about it, while only 14% had heard "mostly positive" things. One reason for this disparity: Fox News has devoted more time to the topic than any other television news outlet. And President Trump naturally pitched in, tweeting that the GND would eliminate "Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military." Such claims, however fantastical, have already spread widely. But even the mainstream media has tended to play up the negative.

Both right-wing and mainstream media outlets have promoted the idea that unions are in firm opposition to the Green New Deal, frequently exaggerating and distorting the nature of what opposition there is. As for the concerns of environmentalists, readers would largely have to follow radical online publications or search out the websites of green organizations.

I Am In Ascension Mode

Dear friends,

When the caterpillar is in the cocoon, being acted upon by the forces of Nature, he has nothing to say about his condition. Even so, he is in a state of ascension from one mode of living to another. He will literally be lifted off the ground as a creature who crawls into the rarefied air of a Being who flies and is beautiful. Our own soul is like that furry creature, forever being acted upon by the higher Intelligence. It is called inherent potential attempting to be revealed.

The difference between us and the caterpillar is our ability to say No to the power within that wants to make all things new in our life. “But wait! (we cry) I want everything to stay the same. Isn’t this just fine? I mean, sure, I struggle down here on the ground, but it’s what I know. I’m good at it!  The not-yet-known is scary, so no thank you. Stop nudging me from within to do more, be more, take a risk. I do just fine in the familiar conditions I have lived with for a long time.”

Humans are the only sentient Beings who can say no to God, and we do it all the time. We resist change, carry grudges, refuse to forgive, malign others, hold on to our supply in fear of lack. These are the traits of a lost soul. But it is all changeable. Our inherent potential is never diminished by our fears and misplaced faith. It is always intact and ready to ascend to higher levels of living.

Try this: “I am in ascension mode. I give permission to the forces of Spirit to take me into higher levels of prosperity, love, vitality and joy. I am ready to fly!”

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspirituallivingbakersfield.com

See also www.californiafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

Pirate Equity Firms Destroy Good Paying Jobs While Making Wall Street Investors Rich

by John Lawrence, August 8, 2019

How it works: Fund managers with Wall Street connections can borrow unlimited sums of money to buy out all the shares of some company, usually a retail company like Toys R Us. They then strip the company of its assets and load it up with debt. They then take the company into bankruptcy firing all the employees. Result: millions of good paying middle class jobs are eliminated. Fund managers and their investors become rich.

From United for Respect:

Debbie Mizen lives in Youngstown, Ohio, and began working at Toys “R” Us in 1987. She was a single mother when she started working and was able to care for her three children on her modest salary. Debbie was an assistant manager for the last 12 years of her career, although she knew she was earning less than male supervisors in the same position. In June 2018, she lost a job she loved when Toys “R” Us liquidated and closed over 800 stores across the country. Debbie found out that her store was closing on same day as her mother’s funeral and was devastated. Since her store closed, she has faced unemployment. When her unemployment checks ran out, she had to take a job in a grocery store collecting grocery deliveries for customers while earning half of what she did at Toys “R” Us. She is turning 67 this year.

Pirate Equity is ruining millions of lives, making fund managers rich and driving (among other factors) the economic divide between the 1% and the 99%. In the last decade pirate equity has led to 1.3 million job losses - mainly in retail jobs. 10 out of the 14 largest retail chain bankruptcies since 2012 were at private equity-acquired chains. Then the Wall Street executives use the carried interest loophole and offshore bank accounts to escape from paying taxes. A wave of high-profile retail bankruptcies in the last few years — including household names like RadioShack, Toys “R” Us, Sports Authority, Payless ShoeSource, Sears, and Kmart — have impacted retailers owned by Wall Street.

Hostess Twinkies is another example of a company that was taken over by pirate equity which then fired thousands of workers. I delved into this in a 2012 article in the San Diego Free Press (Twinkies’ Twisted Tale: Junk Food Devoured By Junk Bonds):

All the late night talk shows laughed it up over the supposed demise of Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, Wonder Bread etc as the news came out that Hostess Brands was going bankrupt. But delve beneath the surface and you will find something more akin to a Shakespearean tragedy than talk show banter.

It’s a tale involving two unions, one private equity fund, two hedge funds and a whole cast of former CEOs. There is sacrifice, greed and betrayal. 18,000 workers will be losing their jobs while some vulture capitalists will be walking away with millions. Another vulture capitalist will itself have been devoured in the process.

The simple fact is that the financialization of the US has led to a total disrespect for workers and workers' rights. Workers have been turned into serfs, their jobs turned into playthings for the rich with unlimited capital at their disposal. And we're all supposed to accept this because this is the inevitable outcome of capitalism. Well, not so fast there. Other countries practice a variant of capitalism (jee whiz, you mean there's more than one?) that does not exploit workers, but instead creates meaningful jobs for workers. Well, let's see what could those countries be? Well certainly, some of the European countries look out for their workers, Germany, for example. Unions are strong and workers sit on corporate boards, have a say in the running of the company.

No, it is the American variant of capitalism, not capitalism itself, that has run amok. American capitalism is destroying jobs; it has already destroyed most of the unions which were the countervailing force to the narcissistic and solipsistic demands of the capital markets.

The New York Times wrote:

Deals like Hostess have helped make the men running the six largest publicly traded private equity firms collectively the highest-earning executives of any major American industry, according to a joint study that The Times conducted with Equilar, a board and executive data provider. The study covered thousands of publicly traded companies; privately held corporations do not report such data.

On average, the heads of private equity firms earn about 10 times as much as the heads of banks. Take Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group for example. Last year he earned $799,838,742. Then in second place was Leon Black of Apollo Global Management. He earned $799,838,742. Part of his earnings, no doubt, came from his sale of Hostess Twinkies.

And then there is Mitt Romney, a Presidential candidate no less, who exploited workers with his company Bain Capital. Rolling Stone reported (Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital): "How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill"

And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a “turnaround specialist,” a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It’s almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.

But the sheer incompetence of the press corps is nothing compared with the total ignorance of the American people when it comes to electing a President. Example #1: Donald Trump, a bloviating, pompous, bait-and-switch, snake oil salesman that the American people elected instead of a competent, experienced, somewhat boring diplomat. So maybe the American people deserve what they get. The Republicans certainly think so. If they can lie their way into positions of power and delude the American people as to their true motives, well, in their mind, that proves that they really do deserve all the riches they can accumulate by any means necessary. Elizabeth Warren to the rescue?

WATCH: To Combat Hate and Gun Violence, Ocasio-Cortez Urges US to 'Go Deep' and 'Love Bigger' to Break Grip of White Supremacy

Published on Wednesday, August 07, 2019

by Common Dreams

"We will always be here and hold space for you to come back," AOC said directly to those now mired in racist ideologies. "We will love you back. You are not too far gone."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

1 Comments

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks during a vigil for the victims of the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio in Grand Army Plaza on August 5, 2019 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In now viral footage of remarks from a Monday night vigil for victims of mass shootings in Texas and Ohio this past weekend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appealed directly to the growing number of Americans who are "falling into the grips of white supremacy" in an effort to combat divisiveness and hatred with a message of love.

"What I have to say to the young men and increasingly some of the young women in this country... that find themselves getting radicalized in a funnel of vitriol towards Latinos, towards immigrants, towards African Americans, towards all people black, towards all people Jewish, towards all people of different faiths, what I have to say to you is, come back," said Ocasio-Cortez. "Because there is a mother waiting for you. I know it."

"I know there's a teacher waiting for you, saying, 'What happened to my kid? What happened to my friend?'" the New York congresswoman continued. "And we will always be here and hold space for you to come back. We will love you back. You are not too far gone."

Ocasio-Cortez's speech spread quickly online, with nearly two million people viewing the clip since it was posted Tuesday.

The New York Democrat also spoke bluntly about President Donald Trump's hate-filled rhetoric, saying there is no reason to ask whether the president is a racist.

"When we allude to people as an invasion, as an infestation, we are directly pulling from the language of white supremacy," said Ocasio-Cortez. "So I don't want to hear the question, 'Is this president racist?' anymore. He is."

Watch:

‘I don’t want to hear the question ‘is this president racist?’ anymore. He is.’ — @AOC held nothing back while condemning Trump for using the language of white supremacy pic.twitter.com/3rWCkdYq6n

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 6, 2019

Ocasio-Cortez's direct confrontation of the threat of white supremacy in the United States contrasted sharply with the message of Fox News host and Trump favorite Tucker Carlson, who said Tuesday night that white supremacy is a "hoax," a "conspiracy theory," and "actually not a real problem in America."

"This is a hoax, just like the Russia hoax," Carlson said just days after a white supremacist gunman opened fire in an El Paso Walmart, killing 22 people. "It's a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power. That's exactly what's going on."

During the vigil in Brooklyn Monday, Ocasio-Cortez said the United States needs to "go deep" to solve the nation's gun violence crisis.

"This is not just about assault weapons," said the congresswoman. "This is about gun violence in all of our communities. So whether it's from misogyny or whether it's from racism, you're not more of a man with a gun. You're not more of a man if you are capable of violence."

"You are not stronger if you tear another life down. We have to make sure we address that in our culture," she continued. "Fixing this is about fixing the laws, but it's about addressing our culture. We're gonna have to go deep. We need to go deep. Because it's not just those that have succumbed to hate that have to change. We need to learn to love bigger, to bring them back."

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The Myth of the Rugged Individual

by Robert Reich

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

The American dream promises that anyone can make it if they work hard enough and play by the rules. Anyone can make it by pulling themselves up by their “bootstraps.” 

Baloney.

The truth is: In America today, your life chances depend largely on how you started – where you grew up and how much your parents earned.

Everything else – whether you attend college, your chances of landing a well-paying job, even your health – hinges on this start. 

So as inequality of income and wealth has widened – especially along the lines of race and gender – American children born into poverty have less chance of making it. While 90% of children born in 1940 grew up to earn more than their parents, today only half of all American adults earn more than their parents did. 

And children born to the top 10 percent of earners are typically on track to make three times more income as adults than the children of the bottom 10 percent.

The phrase “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps” itself is rubbish. Its origins date back to an 18th-century fairy tale, and the phrase was originally intended as a metaphor for an impossible feat of strength. 

Other countries understand that the family you’re born into as well as the social safety nets and social springboards you have access to play large roles. 

Children born poor in Canada, Denmark, or the United Kingdom – nations without America’s degree of inequality, nations which provide strong social safety nets and public investments – have a greater chance of economic success than children born poor in America. 

Individuals in those countries are blamed less for their personal failures and credited less for personal successes. 

So, why is America still perpetuating the fallacy of the self-made individual? Because those in power want you to believe it. If everyone thinks they’re on their own, it’s easier for the powerful to dismantle unions, unravel safety nets, and slash taxes for the wealthy. 

It’s in their interest to keep the American Dream deeply rooted in our psyche – the assumption that you determine your destiny. So we don’t demand reforms that are necessary – paid family and medical leave, for example, or early childhood education, accessible childcare, and policies that lift every family out of poverty.

Let’s stop perpetuating this myth of the self-made individual. And let’s start rebuilding the American dream by creating opportunities for all, not just those who are already wealthy, privileged, and well-connected. 

Trump, Tax Cuts and Terrorism

Why do Republicans enable right-wing extremism?

by Paul Krugman, New York Times, August 5, 2019

President Trump, flanked by Vice President Mike Pence, spoke Monday about the weekend’s mass shootings.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Why has the Republican Party become a systematic enabler of terrorism?

Don’t pretend to be shocked. Just look at G.O.P. responses to the massacre in El Paso. They have ranged from the ludicrous (blame video games!) to the almost honest (who would have expected Ted Cruz, of all people, to speak out against white supremacy?). But as far as I can tell, not one prominent Republican has even hinted at the obvious link between Donald Trump’s repeated incitements to violence and the upsurge in hate crimes.

So the party remains in lock step behind a man who has arguably done more to promote racial violence than any American since Nathan Bedford Forrest, who helped found the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization if there ever was one — and who was recently honored by the Republican governor of Tennessee.

Anyway, the party’s complicity started long before Trump came on the scene. More than a decade ago, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning about a surge of right-wing extremism. The report was prescient, to say the least. But when congressional Republicans learned about it, they went on a rampage, demanding the resignation of Janet Napolitano, who headed the agency, and insisted that even using the term “right-wing extremism” was unacceptable.

This backlash was effective: Homeland Security drastically scaled back its efforts to monitor and head off what was already becoming a major threat. In effect, Republicans bullied law enforcement into creating a safe space for potential terrorists, as long as their violent impulses were motivated by the right kind of hatred.

But why did they do that? Is the G.O.P. now a party of white nationalists?

No, not exactly. No doubt some members of Congress, and a significant number of Trump administration officials, very much including the tweeter in chief, really are white supremacists. And a much larger fraction — almost surely bigger than anyone wants to admit — are racists. (Recently released tapes of conversations between Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon reveal that the modern G.O.P.’s patron saint was, in fact, a crude racist who called Africans “monkeys.”)

But racism isn’t what drives the Republican establishment, and my guess is that a majority of the party’s elected officials find it a little bit repugnant — just not repugnant enough to induce them to repudiate its political exploitation. And their exploitation of racism has led them inexorably to where they are today: de facto enablers of a wave of white supremacist terrorism.

The central story of U.S. politics since the 1970s is the takeover of the Republican Party by economic radicals, determined to slash taxes for the wealthy while undermining the social safety net.

With the arguable exception of George H.W. Bush, every Republican president since 1980 has pushed through tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the 1 percent while trying to defund and/or privatize key social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.

This agenda is, however, unpopular. Most voters believe that the rich should pay more, not less, in taxes, and want spending on social programs to rise, not fall.

So how do Republicans win elections? By appealing to racial animus. This is such an obvious fact of American political life that you have to be willfully blind not to see it.

For a long time, the G.O.P. establishment was able to keep this game under control. It would campaign using implicit appeals to racial hostility (welfare queens! Willie Horton!) but turn postelection to privatization and tax cuts.

But for some reason this bait-and-switch started getting less effective in the 2000s. Maybe it was the reality of America’s growing racial diversity; maybe it was the fact that American society as a whole was becoming less racist, leaving the hard-core racists feeling isolated and frustrated. And the election of our first black president really kicked hatred into overdrive.

The result is that there are more and more angry white people out there willing to commit mayhem — and able to do so because those same Republicans have blocked any effective control over sales of assault weapons.

A different, better G.O.P. might have been willing to acknowledge the growing threat and supported a crackdown on violent right-wing extremism, comparable to the F.B.I.’s successful campaign against the modern K.K.K. in the 1960s. A lot of innocent victims would be alive today if Republicans had done so.

But they didn’t, because admitting that right-wing extremism was a threat, or even a phrase law enforcement should be allowed to use, might have threatened the party’s exploitation of racial hostility to achieve its economic goals.

In effect, then, the Republican Party decided that a few massacres were an acceptable price to pay in return for tax cuts. I wish that were hyperbole, but the continuing refusal of G.O.P. figures to criticize Trump even after El Paso shows that it’s the literal truth.

So as I said at the beginning, the G.O.P. has become a systematic enabler of terrorism. Why? Follow the money.

 

Share Your Optimism with Those in Fear

Dear friends,

Yes, it is a real challenge to stay optimistic in these times. Now is when we need to feel the depth of our conviction; a transformation is taking place. Ultimately it will lead to a new beginning for humanity. We must hold to our belief in the Presence of a perfect intelligence and love in every one of us. We refuse to fall into the trap of blame; rather we know that everything that is happening now has been unconsciously allowed to be by our collective consciousness. We denied the symptoms of a dis-eased culture for too long. It has reared its head and we are experiencing the effects of a Cause known as Ignorance.

But it is not too late to turn it all around. When a dis-ese is revealed we are in the Power place. It is what is hidden that causes the trouble. Whether it is in us due to unresolved issues from childhood or if it is rage for a people who have been mistreated in the worst way, if we refuse to see it, it has a life of its own. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of Humanity. We must hold to the Truth: we are in the most potent time in human history. This is the turning point. Our thoughts right now are more important than ever. We cannot afford to generate more hate, more anger, more fear. We absolutely must use our intelligence and love to affirm the best in people; to call it forth in ourselves; to share our optimism with those in fear.

Our current trouble has been revealed to be healed. Keep above he fray. Know the truth. Believe in us.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspirituallivingbakersfield.com

See also www.calfiorniafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

China and the US: Cohesiveness VS Divisiveness

by John Lawrence, August 7, 2019

Obama famously said, "We are not the blue states of America and the red states of America. We are the United States of America." I'm sorry Mr. Obama, but you are wrong, wrong, wrong. We are the Disunited States of America. China, on the other hand, moves forward seemingly with one unified agenda and with one voice. Maybe that's because they're a one party state. Maybe that's because they've cultivated and nurtured a unified people. Maybe because they're followers of Confucius. Maybe it's because they don't tolerate any dissension. I don't know. All I know is whatever they're doing, it's working. Meanwhile, the US political system is in gridlock.

Many of the problems inherent in the US today are solvable if the country and its leaders spoke with one mind. But the two party system has created a broad chasm and has led to gridlock. Take immigration policy for example. There is just no agreement because each party has its own agenda. There is no unification. There is such a thing as a rational immigration party on which a majority of the people could agree. But the leaders of the Republican party don't want a rational immigration policy. They want to leave the whole subject of immigration up in the air so they can make political hay out of it. It serves their interests not to solve the problem of immigration.

As one element of immigration policy that both parties could agree upon, let's take border security. Most people would agree that a secure border is desirable. A secure border is certainly possible with not even state of the art technology. The border could be secured with the technology found in most present day cars - radars and cameras. So why aren't they doing it? Answer is simple: there's no money in it. It would seem that the primary responsibility of the military would be to protect the nation's borders. However, the Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law signed on June 18, 1878, by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The purpose of the act – in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807 – is to limit the powers of the federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. It has been interpreted as removing the Army and Air Force from any responsibility of protecting US borders, but my interpretation is that this was not the original intent of the act.

The military doesn't want to be involved with protecting the borders because it could be done so cheaply and with a very limited (but substantially increased) number of personnel. No the military is about multibillion dollar aircraft carriers and multibillion dollar airplanes. The USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier costs more than $13 billion and that's just to build it, not to maintain it. Here's an example of how the US and China do business. Each has developed an advanced aircraft with similar capabilities. The American F-22 production was axed because of its high cost - US$62 billion for the whole project, which equates to US $339 million per aircraft. The Chinese J-20's research and development cost was estimated to be more than 30 billion yuan (US$4.4 billion), with a cost per aircraft of US$100-110 million. So the US accomplished its goal of spending multiples of billions of dollars and then scrapping the airplane. China's costs were much cheaper and they actually have an advanced airplane at their disposal.

So border security would be a trivially expensive problem to solve if the military actually did their job and protected the borders but .. it's not their job, man. Their job is to spend billions and billions of dollars on advanced weaponry whether or not it is ever fully functional. Meanwhile, Republicans have a political football they can toss around and work up the racists. Solving the immigration problem would deprive them of that.

So freedom has produced gridlock and Chinese philosophy has produced a society that moves forward with more or less one voice and one agenda. One of Confucius' teachings was a variant of the Golden Rule, sometimes called the "Silver Rule" owing to its negative form: "What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others." Confucius's moral system was based upon empathy and understanding others, rather than divinely ordained rules. Confucius asserts that virtue is a mean between extremes. For example, the properly generous person gives the right amount—not too much and not too little. While the Chinese have adopted a superior variant of capitalism, they remain politically a one party system, a one philosophy system. They have free elections at the local level, and then those leaders select the leaders at the next higher level and so on. The US political system had gotten us to the point where no problem is solvable not because it's inherently unsolvable but because our political leaders in one party, namely the Republican party, are in a position to block any solutions, and it is in their political interests to do so.

Freedom has culminated in gridlock, and an unlimited Second Amendment has culminated in mass shootings. I don't think China would tolerate these outcomes. Instead they are moving ahead with their Belt and Road Initiative peacefully building infrastructure throughout the world at the same time that the US is trying to control the world with its outsized military and the threat of sanctions. The US threatens a country's economic development by the use of sanctions; China is ameliorating economic development by building infrastructure around the world. Which country has the more humane policies?

Some Factual Gun Statistics – Part 2 of A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence In The US And Europe

January 9, 2013 by Source

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Editor’s note: Originally published on Jan. 8, the San Diego Free Press is republishing this three-part series in honor of the one year anniversary of the Newtown school shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

Continued from Part 1

Photo:Wikipedia

In almost every measurable statistic whether it be gun ownership, gun homicide rate or total firearm-related deaths including suicides and accidents, the US leads the world in deadly gun violence. Although statistics show that a firearm in the household is more likely to be used on a family member than an intruder, the NRA promotes gun ownership as a means of self-protection and as a crime deterrent.

Britain has a much stricter gun control culture with relatively few guns in households. You couldn´t get a more murder free society than Britain or Japan which has banned practically all guns. In contrast, America has as many firearms as there are people – a situation made irreversibly dangerous knowing that guns have at least a 100-year life cycle.

While the original primary motivation for an armed populace under the 2^nd Amendment was to defend against tyrants and invaders, America´s last 60 years of an accelerating gun ownership dynamic –legal and illegal – is  now perceived and promoted as an absolute necessity to defend ourselves against outrageous, multiple crime subcultures and misfits. The fact that there are so many guns out there seems to justify the rationale that even more guns are necessary in an ever expanding feedback loop. If it is correct that the size of the national gun collection is directly related and proportional to gun violence levels in the U.S., then, as the total number of guns in the hands of the American people continues to grow, so will the level of gun violence.

In 2010, roughly 70% of US homicides were by gun whereas in Britain including Northern Ireland only 9% were by gun. In the US in 2012 the total firearm-related death rate including both suicides and homicides was 10.2 per 100,000; in France the comparative figure was 3.0;  in Britain, 0.25 . So the US firearms-related death rate was about 40 times that of Britain!

The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world – at 89 guns for every 100 Americans compared to 6 in Britain, 31 for Canada and Norway. And the gun murder figures themselves are equally astounding. While there were 9,960 U.S. gun homicides in 2010, there were only 58 in Britain. Britain´s population is one-fifth of the US population. When adjusted for this, British gun murders are equivalent to 290 US gun murders.

Thus, versus Britain, the US had 34 times more gun homicides. In 2010, there were  total of only 1,164 EU-17 gun homicides vs. 9,960 U.S. gun homicides making the U.S. homicide rate higher by a factor of 11 on an equivalent population basis. In the years 2010 and 2011, homicides by guns as a percentage of total homicides were about 28% in the EU-17 vs. 70% in the US.  In 2011 there were 12,664 murders in the US. Of those, 8,583 were caused by firearms. In 2012, there were over 500 gun murders in Chicago alone – almost half the total of the EU-17 countries. Contrary to propaganda by the NRA, these figures show that smaller levels of gun possession lead to smaller numbers of gun homicides.

Obviously, European social and cultural factors play a major role along with much more restrictive, broadly accepted gun controls. In fact, Britain’s strict gun controls led to record low gun homicides in 2011 and to its lowest intentional (gun and non/gun) homicide level ever.

Statistics show that when there is a gun in a home, that gun is more likely to be used on a member of the household than on an intruder. Indeed, Adam Lanza´s mother´s legally purchased semi-automatic guns were first used on her before they were used on 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and later on Adam Lanza himself. Approximately 30,000 people every year die from gunshot wounds – the second leading cause of death from injury after motor vehicle crashes. This includes but is not limited to gun murders. Only a small number of these deaths are due to accidents.

There are far more suicides than there are homicides. Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend or acquaintance than to kill an intruder, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Guns on the street or in the house make us less safe. According to the FBI, for every justifiable handgun homicide, there are more than 50 handgun murders.

The correlation of gun availability and violence is an unending chicken and egg debate. Is the U.S. dilemma of extreme levels of violent crime due mostly to easy gun availability and an exceptionally high ownership level or to other intractable societal factors? For example, England and Norway had achieved low gun homicide rates even prior to having strict gun controls.

Clearly, many confounding societal mechanisms – mental illness, uncensored violent TV films and video games, racial divides, alcohol/drug abuse, self-destruction, income inequality, jealousy, anger, physical abuse, youth gangs in urban cities – all are contributing root causes of gun injuries and homicide rates – much more so in America than in Europe.

Sweden censors movies more harshly for violence than it does for sex although if you really want to see the cut scenes you can request a private showing. In the US movies are only rated for sexual content. According to current regulations, the Swedish film censoring agency can censor any film which depicts events “in such a manner and in such a context as to have a brutalizing effect” and is judged to have “explicit or protracted scenes of severe violence to people or animals or depicts sexual violence or coercion or presents children in pornographic situations.” Evidently, no violence or horror is too graphic that children shouldn’t be able to see it in the U.S.

The day after the mass murders in Newtown I [John] passed a movie billboard featuring a man aiming down the sights of a rifle. The name of the movie: “Killing Them Softly.” You’d think out of decency and respect for what had just happened they would have taken the billboard down, but violence sells obviously and no time out from money making is ever taken including the money making from selling guns whose sales rose rapidly immediately following the Sandy Hook killings.

The popular TV show Crime Scene Investigation features cops solving grisly murders depicted graphically. It has spawned a host of other spin-offs: CSI: Miami, CSI: NY etc. Shoot-em-ups and cops and robbers shows are staples on TV and in the movies.

Video games are almost entirely dramas in which a shooter blows the bad guys away. A Connecticut town is burning violent video games, CDs and DVDs in the wake of the Newtown shootings. A dumpster is being provided where folks can turn them in. Los Angeles recently had a successful gun buyback which netted 2,037 firearms including 75 assault rifles. The irony is that LA gun stores are selling that many guns in a single day!

A similar gun buyback in San Diego netted 360 more guns than the buyback a year ago. If the American people really want to get rid of violent weapons and media, they should replicate these efforts in every town and city throughout the country. In addition to legislation banning the sales of assault weapons and high capacity gun clips, there should be legislation defining a new movie and TV rating code which takes depictions of violence and particularly gun violence into account.

If Americans really want to get rid of gun violence and change the gun culture, they need to step up to the plate and start demanding these kinds of limitations on cultural violence on a local level. Support Mayors Against Illegal Guns, for example, and Demand a Plan to End Gun Violence. What is more important – that Americans be able to play with their favorite toys or that needless murders of innocent children and adults be prevented? And as far as hunting goes, is the pleasure derived from shooting innocent animals worth the misery caused by the loss of innocent children? Expanding our global vision a bit, today in Africa elephants and rhinoceros are being illegally slaughtered to the point of extinction with assault rifles just for their tusks which are worth a lot of money in Asia.

Switzerland’s low gun homicide rate seems a contradiction upon first glance. Here’s a country with one of the highest gun ownership levels in Europe that also has a relatively low gun homicide rate! Same applies to Norway.

In contrast, Britain has exceptionally low gun ownership levels and gun homicide rates. The Swiss, Norwegian and even Canadian firearms experience refutes the belief that very low gun homicide rates are due to strict controls on ownership levels of firearms … while British and most other EU country experience confirms that belief. However, even Switzerland has half the gun ownership rate and Norway, a third that of the US which has the highest gun ownership rate of any country in the world. Furthermore, Switzerland and Norway, while having high gun ownership rates, also have extensive training, certification requirements and strict gun controls … and are not permeated by violent cultural values.

But despite all the certification and training it is always possible for a deranged person determined to carry out a mass murder to do it. On January 3, 2013 a gunman murdered 3 people in the Swiss town of Daillon. Scotland’s Dunblane massacre in March 1996, in which 16 children and one adult were shot dead by Thomas Hamilton who walked into a school armed with a range of handguns and opened fire, resulted in the banning of all cartridge ammunition handguns, with the exception of .22 calibre single-shot weapons, in Britain.

One month after Dunblane, Australia experienced its worse mass murder in a Tasmanian seaside resort, where a gunman killed 35 and wounded 23, Prime Minister John Howard tightened gun control legislation and implemented a mass buyback of about one-fifth of all the firearms in circulation. Australia has not had a mass shooting ever since.

What happened in Scotland and Australia was that a mass murder was followed by a tightening of gun laws. The Australian government bought back more than 630,000 weapons, and the British government took tens of thousands of guns off the streets with a similar program. This makes the buyback programs in LA and San Diego pale by comparison.

The result was less gun violence in general which is a good thing although a determined mass murderer could probably do the same thing again despite increased gun control. This is the lesson I [John] draw from what happened in Scotland and Australia and now in Switzerland where these acts of mass murder are really an anomaly in terms of the overall level of gun violence which is really low. The lesson for the U.S. is the same. Increased gun control may not prevent the next mass murder although it should make it less likely, but it should decrease total gun violence in general.

Spain enforces strict controls over firearms. Their constitution clearly states: “The State shall have exclusive competence over … the regime for the production, trading, holding, and use of weapons.”  In Finland, citizens must have a valid reason for a gun license such as hunting, recreation, or gun exhibitions. An amendment to the 1997 Scotland Firearms Act banned private possession of all modern pistols, even for competitive sporting purposes. Small bore rifles are not limited. Many types of rifles, shotguns, and black powder pistols and long arms may be privately owned. Luxembourg has a complete ban on guns.

In the Netherlands, assault rifles, silencers, and short-barreled shotguns as well as any kind of high capacity magazine are banned for civilian possession unless authorized by the Minister of Justice. Our neighbor, Canada, has no constitutional right to bear arms. Gun ownership is strictly regulated and certain gun models are prohibited by the Firearms Act. Canada’s crime rate is lower than that of the U.S.

Despite the Supreme Court interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment which gives American citizens the right to bear arms, that right does not necessarily preclude strict gun controls including a mandate for training, certification and other precautionary measures. In fact, some states have rather restrictive firearms laws including assault weapon bans. However, many state firearms laws are less restrictive than federal firearms laws.

Complicating harmonization and reciprocity of gun control regulations among all 50 states is the fact that firearm owners are subject to the laws of the state they are in. Also, in the Supreme Court vs. Printz  case, the Supreme Court held that state and local police departments are not obligated to enforce federal gun law. The Supreme Court decision in McDonald vs. City of Chicago merely says that the protections of the 2^nd Amendment apply to state and local governments. Although we have a broad hodgepodge of gun laws regulating the sale, possession, and use of firearms among the 50 states, 44 states have a provision in their state constitutions that is similar to the US 2^nd Amendment.

The Red/Blue split among states is likely to engender a similar split when it comes to gun control laws with the northern and west coastal states having more restrictive laws and the southern states being less restrictive.

Continued in Part 3 – Some WHY Questions

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We Have Studied Every Mass Shooting Since 1966. Here’s What We’ve Learned About the Shooters

Published on Monday, August 05, 2019

by Los Angeles Times

Instead of simply rehearsing for the inevitable, we need to use that data to drive effective prevention strategies.

by Jillian Peterson, James Densley

 

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Family members of 13-year-old Gilroy shooting victim Keyla Salazar console each other before a San Jose vigil. (Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

In the last week, more than 30 people have died in three separate mass shootings in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. We believe that analyzing and understanding data about who commits such massacres can help prevent more lives being lost.

For two years, we’ve been studying the life histories of mass shooters in the United States for a project funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. We’ve built a database dating back to 1966 of every mass shooter who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces, and places of worship since 1999. We’ve interviewed incarcerated perpetrators and their families, shooting survivors and first responders. We’ve read media and social media, manifestos, suicide notes, trial transcripts and medical records.

Our goal has been to find new, data-driven pathways for preventing such shootings. Although we haven’t found that mass shooters are all alike, our data do reveal four commonalities among the perpetrators of nearly all the mass shootings we studied.

First, the vast majority of mass shooters in our study experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age. The nature of their exposure included parental suicide, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and/or severe bullying. The trauma was often a precursor to mental health concerns, including depression, anxiety, thought disorders or suicidality.

Second, practically every mass shooter we studied had reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting. They often had become angry and despondent because of a specific grievance. For workplace shooters, a change in job status was frequently the trigger. For shooters in other contexts, relationship rejection or loss often played a role. Such crises were, in many cases, communicated to others through a marked change in behavior, an expression of suicidal thoughts or plans, or specific threats of violence.

Third, most of the shooters had studied the actions of other shooters and sought validation for their motives. People in crisis have always existed. But in the age of 24-hour rolling news and social media, there are scripts to follow that promise notoriety in death. Societal fear and fascination with mass shootings partly drives the motivation to commit them. Hence, as we have seen in the last week, mass shootings tend to come in clusters. They are socially contagious. Perpetrators study other perpetrators and model their acts after previous shootings. Many are radicalized online in their search for validation from others that their will to murder is justified.

 

Fourth, the shooters all had the means to carry out their plans. Once someone decides life is no longer worth living and that murdering others would be a proper revenge, only means and opportunity stand in the way of another mass shooting. Is an appropriate shooting site accessible? Can the would-be shooter obtain firearms? In 80% of school shootings, perpetrators got their weapons from family members, according to our data. Workplace shooters tended to use handguns they legally owned. Other public shooters were more likely to acquire them illegally.

So what do these commonalities tell us about how to prevent future shootings?

One step needs to be depriving potential shooters of the means to carry out their plans. Potential shooting sites can be made less accessible with visible security measures such as metal detectors and police officers. And weapons need to be better controlled, through age restrictions, permit-to-purchase licensing, universal background checks, safe storage campaigns and red-flag laws — measures that help control firearm access for vulnerable individuals or people in crisis.

Another step is to try to make it more difficult for potential perpetrators to find validation for their planned actions. Media campaigns like #nonotoriety are helping starve perpetrators of the oxygen of publicity, and technology companies are increasingly being held accountable for facilitating mass violence. But we all can slow the spread of mass shootings by changing how we consume, produce, and distribute violent content on media and social media. Don’t like or share violent content. Don’t read or share killers’ manifestos and other hate screeds posted on the internet. We also need to study our current approaches. For example, do lockdown and active shooter drills help children prepare for the worst or hand potential shooters the script for mass violence by normalizing or rehearsing it?

We also need to, as a society, be more proactive. Most mass public shooters are suicidal, and their crises are often well known to others before the shooting occurs. The vast majority of mass shooters leak their plans ahead of time. People who see or sense something is wrong, however, may not always say something to someone owing to the absence of clear reporting protocols or fear of overreaction and unduly labeling a person as a potential threat. Proactive violence prevention starts with schools, colleges, churches and employers initiating conversations about mental health and establishing systems for identifying individuals in crisis, reporting concerns and reaching out — not with punitive measures but with resources and long-term intervention. Everyone should be trained to recognize the signs of a crisis.

Proactivity needs to extend also to the traumas in early life that are common to so many mass shooters. Those early exposures to violence need addressing when they happen with ready access to social services and high-quality, affordable mental health treatment in the community. School counselors and social workers, employee wellness programs, projects that teach resilience and social emotional learning, and policies and practices that decrease the stigma around mental illness will not just help prevent mass shootings, but will also help promote the social and emotional success of all Americans.

Our data show that mass shooters have much in common. Instead of simply rehearsing for the inevitable, we need to use that data to drive effective prevention strategies.

© 2019 Los Angeles Times

Let's Contribute to the Well-Being of Mother Earth

Dear friends,

Planet Earth is the Garden of Eden. It is a system of incredible beauty, order and perfect function. The interdependence of species is stunning in its complexity. Like a great orchestra playing a symphony, all the parts are joined together in a shared effort to reproduce Life moment by moment. There is one species, however, that from sheer arrogance, has thought itself separate from the whole. In a misguided understanding of ‘dominion', that species has caused a terrible rift in the perfectly organized field of Life.

Arrogance will always lead to trouble. Spiritual arrogance is the worst, due to the assumption that there is a cosmic power supporting our actions. Humans assumed that dominion meant they could do anything they chose to do to Nature. That would include women and children since women had long been considered creatures, not full humans. The same was said of people of color.

We have come a long way in understanding our place in the grand design. The rise of women and minorities to positions of authority is a good thing. It is essential that all humans be included in the governance of our environment. We are in a place of great turmoil right now as the old ways are being challenged. Those who held the reins are not happy, threatened by the inclusion of those they felt to be inferior. This will pass. We will prevail, but in the meantime, the Garden is suffering.  Let’s give some serious consideration to how we contribute to the well being of our Mother.

Affirm: “I am naturally led to consume and purchase from the awareness that my actions are either part of the problem or leading to the solution.”

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspirituallivingbakersfield.com

Check out www.californiafreepress.net

Why Isn't Hate Group Website Taken Down?

by John Lawrence

The creator of the website 8chan is where all the haters and white supremacists post their manifestos. Even the creator of the site who doesn't own it any more wants it taken down. It exemplifies the problem that social media is bringing to the fore which is is there a limit to free speech? Should some types of speech, namely hate speech, be banned? The US is stuck with two freedoms which are increasingly problematical: free speech and right to own a gun, any gun. These two "freedoms" should not be absolute as most societies would concur. Hate speech on social media should not be tolerated. Is this censorship? You betcha. Should ownership of an assault rifle like the AK-47 be banned? You betcha although the gun nuts would disagree. They don't want any limits on gun ownership nor do they want any limits on their free hate speech.

The US Constitution is coming up against limits which are actually destroying the country unless those limits are acknowledged and action taken. The US Constitution is reaching its limits of usefulness and should be revised like many other countries have done without creating a crisis. Gun control is essential unless the US wants to have a mass murder a day or more than one a day. Gun ownership needs to be cracked down on. There are too many angry men out there with toxic agendas. Their "cells" need to be taken down. They are as evil as Ku Klux Klan cells or any other terrorist cell or organization. The web needs to be monitored and hate sites taken down, but is Facebook doing this? Facebook can't be trusted because they are a private entity not really beholden to the government. Their objective is to make as much money as possible for their shareholders, and taking down a site eliminates all the money they would be making from that site.

TPM reported:

The founder of the site 8chan, where a shooter may have posted a racist, anti-immigrant screed before killing 20 people at a Walmart in El Paso, called for the messaging board to be shut down on Sunday.

Fredrick Brennan, who created the site in 2013, told the New York Times that the current owner of the unmoderated, often hate-filled chat site needs to shutter it.

“Shut the site down,” Brennan said. “It’s not doing the world any good. It’s a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there.”

“And you know what? It’s a negative to them, too,” he added. “They just don’t realize it.”

Investigators believe that Patrick Crusius, the suspected gunman, may be behind a hate-filled manifesto that was posted on 8chan shortly before he allegedly began shooting up the Walmart.

8chan was also where the New Zealand mosque shooter and the San Diego synagogue shooter posted their plans for violence earlier this year.

I speculate that China wouldn't hesitate to take down hate oriented websites. There's no absolute right of free speech there, and the government has the last word, not some private corporation. They wouldn't stand for it one minute, and the perpetrator of hate speech would be in jail no fooling around with protecting his or her rights. So how many hate filled websites will go up in the next election mainly targeting Democrats? Should a website which espouses "Lock Her Up" be tolerated? Be legal? There is no government censorship in America so anything goes no matter how untrue, no matter how hateful, no matter how far removed from the issues. And can anyone anywhere in the world contribute to Facebook posts. In particular who is in charge of distinguishing whether or not a Russian entity would put up an ad or a post like "Lock Her Up" or "Send Her Back" or whether it was put up by an American? Does it make any difference? Is Facebook policing this? I don't think so. So it's the wild west and anyone anywhere in the world is free to join in.

Some ‘Why?’ Questions – Part 3 of a Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence in the US and Europe

JANUARY 10, 2013 BY SOURCE

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From the San Diego Free Press

 

Continued from Part 2 

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

WHY does America’s weakly regulated gun culture vs. that in Europe correlate to out-of-sight gun homicide rates in the U.S.? One WHY answer is that there are higher levels of U.S. criminality compared to England, Switzerland, Norway, and other EU countries … illustrated by the number of U.S. citizens in prison per 100,000 population of  750 ± vs. 100 ± in the EU! (see European Institute for Crime Prevention & Control, “International Statistics on Crime and Justice,” 2010).

Our sub-cultures of violent and less violent crime justify for many Americans the constitutional argument of self-defense, thus allowing high cartridge capacity, semi-automatic firearms of all sorts to roll off gun manufacturers’ production lines. We are at a crossroads … where it’s not only the high gun ownership level that contributes to high homicide rates but also the high level of crime and military-style killings by the emotionally unbalanced (as occurred in Newtown) that motivate more people to acquire guns for self-defense.

“Since there are so many guns, we need more guns.”  This NRA promoted endless feedback loop only opens up more opportunities for homicidal maniacs to go on indiscriminate shooting sprees …  killing children, adolescents and adults. In the end, what it all seems to come down to is that we are by nature a violent nation … and have always been so.

Studies by the National Institute of Justice conclude that greater gun availability increases the rates of murder and felony gun use, but does NOT appear to affect the general U.S. violence level. In other words, the fact the U.S. is a violent society does not have so much to do with guns. The fact that our violent crime is so DEADLY has much to do with guns … e.g., resort to AR-15s!

Research I [Frank] have examined makes a case that homicides are tied to the willingness and ability to resort to violence as an attacker or defender, not just to the mere existence of firearms. Studies show that our already horrendously high U.S. total gun homicide rates would be even higher it weren’t for right-to-concealed-carry state laws allowing individuals properly licensed to carry firearms for protection against crime. In right-to-carry states, studies reveal that violent crime rates compared to other states are approximately 25% lower, murder rates 50% lower, and robbery rates 50% lower.

I [John] disagree with Frank on this. I think the proliferation and super-saturation of the populace with guns leads to the settling of disputes by a resorting to gun violence much more likely. Disputes are settled in a variety of ways – some civilized, some uncivilized. Even the old-fashioned fistfight rarely left anyone dead.

Today a gunfight will usually ensue instead of a fistfight if one of the participants has a gun handy. In China on the same day as the Newtown mass murders, a deranged man entered a school and injured 20 childen with a knife. They all survived. The outcome was completely different in Newtown.

Control of guns to reduce our tendency to violence remains critical. But complex social factors already noted cannot be brushed aside as they are also a powerful cause of violence. Why does Switzerland or Norway, for example, have such low absolute levels of violent crime and gun homicides despite being among the most armed household nations in the world?  Solving our violence dilemma lies in the social, cultural and psychological determinants of violence as much as it does in the widespread ownership of guns. The enemy is US and the battlefield is mostly in the urban areas.

Another WHY answer most people sense is that America has gone nuts producing and selling semi-automatic pistols and rifles that release dozens of bullets in seconds. Some rifles on the open market are capable of firing 100 bullets in a second. Military-style assault weapons are really great for our soldiers in Afghanistan … but insane as everyday household defense products for the general public.

Here’s where guns are indeed the major precipitator of a culture of violence. I [Frank] can’t believe that General Wingate, founder of the NRA, had in mind a population armed with such deadly automatic, big-cartridge weaponry that can be purchased almost at will by the teenager, the novice, the mentally ill and the emotionally unstable. As pointed out, when guns are used, they are almost always used for murder or suicide … this particularly applies to automatic weapons.

Another WHY answer explaining Europe’s very low intentional homicide, gun homicide, and crime rates is that guns are generally viewed in Europe as anathema after so many centuries of human killing. That is why European countries do not see ownership of firearms as a constitutional right … as embraced in our 2^nd Amendment. It is also because European countries have updated their Constitutions much more recently than has the U.S. Although the U.S. is a newer country than any country in the EU-17, it has an older Constitution than any of them.

In Europe, one hears little of the facile pro-gun arguments that “gun control disarms law-abiding citizens” that one hears in the U.S. Controls are in place and enforced to limit the availability of firearms manufactured or obtained illegally. Strict selling, permit, and safety training regulations are constantly being improved. England and Switzerland are two of the safest places to be although each has an entirely different approach to gun control.

I [John] think that gun ownership should only be allowed if the gun purchaser has completed a very thorough training program and has been certified as qualified to possess a gun. I think this training should be as rigorous and as expensive as that required to become a private pilot, for example. While you see gun ownership to be pretty widespread among Swiss and Israeli males for the purpose of defending their respective countries, it’s only after being thoroughly trained and certified by those countries.

As it is, in the U.S. unlike Europe there are extremely lax controls over gun usage  An owner can pick up a gun and use it whenever or wherever he damn well pleases. And no training or certification is required. I also think that shooting ranges should keep track of people using their facilities, do a quick computer database background check and report any suspicious behavior. Most mass murderers have utilized shooting ranges.

Although Norway has generally a low level of gun violence and free access to mental health care, it had its first mass murder last year perpetrated by Anders Breivik. In this otherwise peaceful country, Breivik perpetrated the largest mass murder in history killing 69 people. Norway still was not protected from a determined mass murderer who obtained his weapons, ammunition and explosives legally. Perhaps the relatively high availability of guns in Norway compared to other European countries played a part. Breivik played violent video games, but had no previous criminal or psychiatric record. However, this event was a total anomaly in Norway, not so in America where mass murders are becoming commonplace.

Another WHY answer is how the original meaning of the 2^nd Amendment has evolved and changed. The 2^nd Amendment is one long sentence with some key phrases that are a lawyer´s hell or paradise … depending on which side he or she is on. It says:

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

State courts and the Supreme Court have generally upheld the right of citizens to keep and bear arms for individual protection against harm doers. This does not prevent a Supreme Court – perhaps with a Democratic majority – to rule in favor of a very narrow and limited interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment concerning, for example, the kinds of weapons and ammunition cartridges that can be sold to individuals for self-defense. Going further and repealing the 2^nd Amendment may someday be possible but highly unlikely given the 300 million guns now in the system and past Supreme Court decisions. Amending the 2^nd Amendment to get tighter control of weapons sales rather than killing it completely may hold more promise.

However, states and municipalities can implement gun control and then dare the Supreme Court and the Justice Department to prevent them from doing it just as states have legalized marijuana in conflict with Federal law. When it comes down to it, the U.S. is still a democracy and eventually the people will get what they want.

The problem is that at the present time what the people seem to want is more guns. How many more mass murders of innocents must we have before the U.S. gun culture will be truly chastened? Perhaps it will be when there are a majority of women and mothers in Congress many of whom will have lost children to gun violence.

It is of little wonder the NRA and other pro-gun lobbying groups tenaciously support the 2^ndAmendment on the basis that guns are the best deterrent of crime against individuals … under their facile philosophy: “As guns increase, we are safer. As guns decrease, there are more murders.”  But the NRA after all is simply more of a lobbyist for gun manufacturers than anything else.

So, argues the NRA president, “arm the school teachers and guards!” Of course maniac killer(s) can always go for these people first with the advantage of planning, surprise, and initiative. I [Frank] hope this article effectively argues the utter falsehood and incredibly dangerous social implications of this kind of thinking.

When you put it all together it seems to me (John) that the availability and proliferation of guns, particularly assault rifles with high capacity clips, is the main reason why the US has such a large amount of gun violence compared to other societies. A secondary reason is a violent culture as the amount of gun violence on TV, movies and video games desensitizes and accustoms the public and especially sensitive minds to the fact that gun violence is “normal.”

What one sees and hears and experiences on a daily basis comes to be seen as a mundane and inevitable part of life. A tertiary reason is the fact that a significant portion of our population has mental health issues. Another issue is desperation and poverty. Neighborhoods in which there is a lot of poverty have greater levels of gun violence.

Guns need to be taken off the streets and out of households. Buyback programs have been massive in other countries and not just tokenism as they have so far amounted to in the U.S. In Britain and Australia after mass murders there, gun laws were strengthened and tightened. The result has been that not only have there been no more mass murders, but the everyday mundane use of guns to kill people one at a time has been greatly reduced.

While I believe that no amount of gun control will prevent a determined mass murderer, we know from historical precedent that prudent gun control laws can and will, in general, reduce the amount of gun violence both homicides and suicides.

There needs to be an effort to rate movies and TV programs in terms of their violence, and not just their sexual, content. While we supposedly protect young people from sex in the media, we don’t protect them from violence in the media. As for mental health, it needs to be free on demand as, hopefully, it will be under the Affordable Care Act.

As I [John] wrote recently in the San Diego Free Press:

Terrorists have only been able to kill 17 people in the US since 9/11, but 88,000 Americans have died in gun violence from 2003 to 2010. Britain, which has very strict gun laws, had 41 gun murders in 2010 while the US had around 10,000. 6,626 Americans have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. About 3000 died in the tragedy of 9/11. The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far is around $4 trillion.

At the same time no money has been spent on the war on gun violence in the US in which about the same number of people die every year from gun homicides as the total of those who died on 9/11 plus those who have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. About 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence when you add in suicides. Does this make any sense? As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.”

The bottom line is gun ownership should be a privilege and not a right.

A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence In The US And Europe (Part 1)

JANUARY 8, 2013 BY SOURCE

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From the San Diego Free Press

 

Editor’s note: Originally published on Jan. 8, the San Diego Free Press is republishing this three-part series in honor of the one year anniversary of the Newtown school shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

While US gun crime and all crime levels are slowly but almost imperceptibly declining, they still remain relatively astronomically high compared with Europe. In this article, we compare US and European levels of gun violence and gun control to see if we can make any sense of the gun debate in the wake of the increasing frequency of mass murders as well as the almost mundane everyday killings in urban areas like Chicago and Detroit. Frank is an ex-pat who has lived in Europe for over 30 years. John has lived in San Diego for over 40 years.

It’s time to get serious on prohibiting gun acquisition or possession by people with a history of mental illness and by high risk groups such as felons, drug addicts or alcoholics. It’s time to get serious on limiting civilian gun sales to one shot at a time pistols and rifles with cartridge or chamber capacities of no more than six bullets. It’s time to get serious on conducting thorough criminal and mental health background checks and having waiting periods for high risk people and first-time buyers seeking gun permits. 

Complicating matters, in my (John’s) view, is that most mass murderers have no prior record of mental illness nor have they obtained their guns illegally. The main problem, we believe, is that so many legal and illegal guns are out there, particularly powerful high bullet capacity semi-automatic weapons and assault type pistols and rifles, that only an all-out effort to get them off the street and out of households is going to do any good. It’s the easy availability and sheer number of guns that creates our unique climate of gun violence.

Part 1 – The 2^nd Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms           

Unlike Europe, America’s 2^nd Amendment has given constitutional support to a culture where the gun is designed, worshiped, and elevated to a sacred, very efficient killing status.

While our nation has had a somewhat constant, but international-wise very high, level of homicide violence, gun proliferation has enabled a greater portion of that violence to become deadly in sharp contrast to Europe. Pro-gun advocates like to say that violent crime rates are far higher in Europe as a result of restrictive gun controls. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Clearly, the original intent of the 2^nd Amendment was to create a militia of citizens to protect the country from foreign invaders, especially the British who had just been beaten in the War of Independence and would have had another try at it in the War of 1812. The militia concept took the place of a standing army.

The English Bill of Rights of 1689, which predates our Bill of Rights by 100 years, codified an ancient self-protection right with the words, …  “subjects who are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.”  This gave birth to the English common law right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, but the vague wording is a far cry from the absolute wording of our 2^nd Amendment: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

In the 18^th century, the Swiss “citizens militia” model was cited in support of passage of the 2^ndAmendment to our Constitution on the rights of citizens to keep and bear firearms. Since its founding in 1291, Switzerland has allowed and even required its citizens to arm as a defense against Europe’s despots. For centuries a well-armed Swiss populace has kept its independence by defeating the mighty armies of European monarchs. The Swiss learned early that tyrannical invading foreign forces kill more people than do criminals or the deranged. The Swiss militia took the place of a standing army as did American citizen militias in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries.

Thomas Jefferson was the first to suggest we should not have a standing army and wrote a series of letters in 1787 urging James Madison and others to write this into the Constitution. The idea was that, instead of a standing army, every able-bodied man in the nation should be required to be a member of a local militia, under local control, with a gun in his house. If the nation were invaded, word would come down to the local level and every man in the country would take arms and constitute a de facto army (following the Swiss model).

Militias were clearly meant by the Founding Fathers to take the place of a standing army. However, a permanently standing US army was established in WWII. As such, it took the place of militias making them unnecessary and also to a certain extent making the basic intention of the 2^nd Amendment superfluous.

In 1791, US Representative Andrew Jackson acknowledged the Swiss influence on the right to bear arms when he said: “The inhabitants of Switzerland emancipated themselves by the establishment of a militia which finally delivered them from the tyranny of the lords.” Similarly, the right to bear arms as part of a “well regulated militia”  formed the original basis for our 2^nd Amendment. General Wingate, founder of the NRA, heaped praise on the Swiss militia model as being the ideal model for securing the country’s security.

First came a legal challenge in Aymette v. State (1840) where the court held that, “citizens have an unqualified right to keep and bear arms.” The court held this right is not just for those individuals who are members of the militia.

Then came the vague, poorly arrived at and seeming contradictory decision in U.S. v. Miller (1939) where the court held that the 2nd Amendment “protects the right to bear arms only if the arms in question are those that would be useful as part of a civilian militia.”

Finally, Justice Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) held that the 2^nd Amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in the militia.”

Then came a landmark case McDonald v. Chicago (2010) where the Supreme Court held the right to “keep and bear arms” under the 2^nd Amendment applies also to the states. The District of Columbia v. Heller ruling was vague on the scope of gun rights in regard to states.

However, under the banner of linking “freedom” to personal armed “readiness,” the NRA has long adopted the position that efforts to restrict gun sales – whether semi-automatics, AR-15s, AK-47s, machine guns, or hunting rifles – are an “assault” on our constitutional rights under the 2^ndAmendment. In truth, the 2^nd Amendment does NOT sanction the individual right to semi-automatic and automatic firearms.

Further, the NRA propagandizes that inadequate gun control laws have nothing to do with the epidemic of gun-related killings. “People kill, not guns”´  is the NRA’s motto … rather than “People kill with guns.” According to the NRA, the way to make people safer is MORE semi-automatic guns and better background checks on society´s psychiatrically disabled.

GunPolicy.org

In Europe today, there is no absolute right to own a gun. The British strictly control the possession of most types of arms for the common good. Criminals, children, and the mentally ill are not allowed to be armed. The UK Firearm Acts of 1968 and 1998 setrigid requirements for a firearms certificate. Firearms such as rifles and shotguns as well as ammunition must be stored and locked securely – preferably in specially manufactured firearms cabinets. This is to prevent to the extent possible any “unauthorized” person from taking or using them. An “unauthorized” person is someone who does not have a firearm or shotgun certificate.

Ad hoc inspections control this regulation, including regulations regarding carrying a gun on the street. Violations result in serious fines plus up to six months in prison (and possible loss of firearm certification). Center-fire, self-loading, and pump action rifles are banned as well as automatic weapons. Gun rights and strict rules have culturally evolved to a point where today Britain has one of the lowest gun ownership levels and gun homicide rates in the world. Further, this has not resulted in high non-gun homicides or a high violent crime culture as purist anti-gun control believers like to say.

Switzerland also has no constitutional guarantee of an individual´s right to bear arms. The national legislature could ban gun ownership anytime if it wished. But today Switzerland is a heavily armed nation (but at half the rate of gun ownership as the US). This reflects a centuries old Swiss culture of having arms to resist possible invaders or despotic tyrants, for example, Hitler in WWII.

The country’s high gun ownership level comes with a very low gun homicide rate compared to the US. All males at 18 must join the military and can take their military assault weapon home with them when they leave the army. Thus, up to 500,000 military assault weapons (or approximately 6 guns per 100 population) are estimated to be in Swiss households today. These weapons must be locked up and ammunition is kept in central arsenals. However, there is a movement afoot to relocate these military weapons out of the home and into depots.

The government supplies bullets for shooting festivals. Canton police may issue special permits for civilians to own assault rifles – typically as licensed collectors – and such weapons may not be fired in full automatic mode. While gun ownership laws have tightened on handguns and non-military weapons, it is still relatively easy to get a hand gun. But, it is illegal to carry guns in public.

Switzerland has many guns but few murders … thanks to strict gun control laws and a popular recreational shooting culture. The country hosts some of the largest rifle shooting events in the world. Swiss households use firearms mainly as a peaceful, sport-shooting family occupation at contest festivals where eating, drinking, socializing abound. Shooting-range festivals have come to be recognized as a wholesome community activity. Well-enforced rules apply to permits, safety training, and gun/ammunition handling. Ammunition sold at ranges must be used there. Males 20 to 42 must keep their rifles and pistols at home. This culture fosters gun safety. Over time, these social attitudes have helped to keep Swiss total gun and non-gun homicide rates far below those of the U.S.!

Continued in Part 2: Some Factual Gun Statistics (Tomorrow)

Guns, Angry People and Mass Murders: The Cycle Continues Until We Stop It

OCTOBER 20, 2015 BY JOHN LAWRENCE

Reposted from the San Diego Free Press

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By John Lawrence

We live in a sick society where little kids play violent video games, you can’t flip through the channels on a TV without seeing drawn handguns, and hunters use automatic weapons to kill innocent animals. It’s a culture of violence in movies and TV, a culture of violence in video games and a culture of violence in terms of unending wars and people blown to smithereens every night on the nightly news.

It was disheartening to me to see a few days after the horrific mass murder at Umpqua Community College, pro gun demonstrators protesting the American President as he landed there to give comfort to the families who had lost loved ones. Where were the anti gun protesters? Where were the ones who protested the taking of innocent lives by sick minds who are bolstered every day of their lives by a sick culture, a culture which glorifies and celebrates gun violence. It’s ubiquitous. It’s celebrated and it’s done in order to make money from “entertainment.”

That’s right. We’re entertained by people killing each other with guns. Is there an action movie in which there are no guns? I don’t think so. How many video games don’t involve the player or shooter not pulling a trigger. We train them up young with hand/eye coordination. Then we send them to schools in which there is no recess so that their energy and anger builds to the point that they feel justified in blowing people away for no justifiable reason.

Let’s face it folks. We’re more in danger from Americans with sick minds blowing children away than we are from terrorists. Yet we spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year defending ourselves from terrorists and hardly anything defending ourselves from ourselves.  As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.”

Why wasn’t the FBI monitoring websites for the “involuntarily celibate”? These are the websites that Elliot Roger and Christopher Harper-Mercer telegraphed their intentions on. Why wasn’t the FBI tracking them? And why are violent young men, who willingly state online their murderous intentions, allowed to purchase guns regardless of the fact that they’ve never before been convicted of a crime?

In a recent post on Love-shy.com, a forum for the dateless and sexless, a man wrote, “I am seriously thinking about just getting a gun and shooting everything up. I fantasize about it everyday … that’s how fucked up my mind is.” The truly “fucked up” thing is that this isn’t another newly discovered online posting from Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who went on a shooting rampage in Isla Vista, killing six people. These are just the words of yet another angry man on the internet expressing rage at society — especially women — over his own celibacy.

President Obama should have had a hundred anti-gun demonstrators waiting for him when he got off that helicopter in Roseburg. Instead he was met by a bunch of yahoos who all they can think about is their freakin guns. These people are a bunch of angry a-holes who have nothing better to do than to be worried about their guns right after 10 people from their own community, Roseburg, have just been rubbed out, their young lives lost forever, in a hail of bullets. Their answer is to arm everyone?

Preachers in pulpits are now carrying guns. Principals in schools are now carrying guns. Anger and guns. They now characterize American society. Oregon is one of seven states with provisions, either from state legislation or court rulings, that allow the carrying of concealed weapons on public postsecondary campuses. How friggin convenient for Harper-Mercer!

Photo by nordique 

Do I have to detail all the tragedies perpetrated by sick individuals who not only had possession of but were even encouraged by their parents to possess guns? There was Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook who fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. Surely he was affected by a culture of violence which makes it seem “routine” to off people. President Obama has said that mass killing of Americans by Americans has become routine. “Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine, the conversation in the aftermath of it … We have become numb to this,” he complained. During his presidency, President Barack Obama has had to deliver statements on gun violence 15 times.

No longer can we “wonder at the gunman’s motives” or think this is a”rare occurence.” It’s routine, folks; it’s happening every day. Get ready for the next one. Your children could be next. In fact it already happened just 8 days after the shootings in Roseburg. Gunmen opened fire on campuses in Texas and Arizona. Copycats? Perhaps. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold got the ball rolling at Columbine. They paved the way for the others. That’s their legacy. They were first.

The others: Dylan Roof, who killed 9 people at a black church in Charleston, SC; Elliot Rodger, who killed 6 people in Isla Vista, CA; Aaron Alexis, a Navy contractor and former Navy enlisted man, who killed 12 people in Washington, DC; John Zawahri, who killed 5 people in Santa Monica, CA; Radcliffe Haughton, a 45-year-old former Marine, who killed 3 people in Brookfield, WI; Wade Michael Page, an Army veteran, who killed 6 people at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, WI; James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 58 others in Aurora, CO; One L. Goh, who killed 7 in Oakland, CA; Scott Dekraai, who killed 8 in Seal Beach, CA; Jared Lee Loughner, who killed 6 in Tucson, AZ including the attempted killing of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords; Omar S. Thornton, who killed 8 in Manchester, CT; Amy Bishop, a neurobiologist and assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who killed 3; Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, who killed 13 and injured 32 at Fort Hood, TX; Jiverly Voong, who killed 13 in Binghamton, NY; Steven Kazmierczak,who killed 5 in a geology class at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL; Robert Hawkins,who killed 8 at a shopping center in Omaha, NE; Seung-hui Cho ,who killed 32 on the Virginia Tech campus; Sulejman Talovic, who killed 5 at a Salt Lake City shopping mall …. And the list goes on.

A rather long sentence, isn’t it, the preceding? Many of the perpetrators were students, many were former Marines or Army vets.

They all had grudges; they all had violent uncontrollable anger. They all had access to guns. They all purchased their guns legally. They all had Intermittent Explosive Disorder.

According to Wikipedia: “Intermittent explosive disorder (sometimes abbreviated as IED [what an apt acronym!]) is a behavioral disorder characterized by explosive outbursts of anger, often to the point of rage, that are disproportionate to the situation at hand…” There is no need to probe these people’s minds any further, to ask ad nauseum “what was the gunman’s motive.” They were all sick and they all had legally purchased arsenals at their disposal. They all planned their killing sprees. Most of them telegraphed their intentions on social media. Some were even cheered on.

Can we learn nothing from other countries which have strict gun control and far fewer gun deaths than the US? Why is there even a debate as to whether more guns or less guns is the solution?

Does the FBI even read the Washington Post, which had a really informative article: “Incels, 4chan and the Beta Uprising: making sense of one of the Internet’s most-reviled subcultures”? Incels are INvoluntarily CELibateS by the way. Maybe society should just get them all girlfriends or sex workers. It might just solve a lot of problems.

The following is from the website, dailymail.com in the UK:

Chris Harper-Mercer wrote the anonymous message on bulletin board 4chan: ‘Don’t go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest’ 9 hours before the killing began. It was written at 1.19 AM yesterday morning and the first shots were fired at Umpqua Community College at 10.38 AM.

Under the disturbing message, many users encouraged the person to go ahead with their threat and even advised the poster on the best ways to kill people. One user wrote: ‘I suggest you enter a classroom and tell people that you will take them as hostages. Make everyone get in one corner and then open fire.

‘Make sure that there is no way that someone can disarm you as it is possible. I suggest you carry a knife on your belt as last resort if someone is holding your gun.’ While another user wrote: ‘You might want to target a girls school which is safer because there are no beta males throwing themselves for their rescue. ‘Do not use a shotgun. I would suggest a powerful assault rifle and a pistol or 2x pistols. Possibly the type of pistols who have 15+ ammo.’ ‘If you are suicidal and hate people, then do it. If not then stay away from what will ruin your life,’ another user wrote.

A user wrote: ‘In this very clearly hypothetical situation you actually shoot people in your high school or college, try to aim for s***** people at least. Spare the kind fools, humdrum druggies, and churchies and go for he whom really terrorises the populous: Chads and Stacies who have scorned many and yourself. The post continued: ‘You’ll do the world a favour by purging part of the population that only exists to consume resources and act for themselves.’  In 2013, 18-year-old student Neil Allan Macinnis shot dead two women at a Virginia college – before the killing he posted on 4chan asking users to ‘wish him luck.’ 

Some of the posters on the site even tried to contact the FBI tip line. Evidently, they were asleep at the switch. I guess they’re only interested in foreign terrorists, not domestic ones. They better wake up that this is a phenomenon that is not going away. Prevention is the only alternative at this point in a nation that is locked and loaded and ready to pull the trigger over the slightest grievance especially at schools and on campuses.

How many remember San Diego’s own mass shooting on campus in 1996? Next year will be the twentieth anniversary of the killing that took the lives of three San Diego State professors.

Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

The San Diego State University shootingwas a school shooting that occurred at the San Diego State University (SDSU) engineering building on August 15, 1996 in San Diego, CA. Three professors were killed by master’s degree student Frederick Martin Davidson. Three months later, a copycat threat flier was sent, with threats against professors and racial insults.

Davidson, the three faculty members, and three other engineering students assembled in the classroom shortly before 2:00 p.m. The three students were there to support Davidson, and to witness a Master’s thesis defense. Liang stood, formally introduced Davidson, stated the purpose of the meeting, and sat back down. Davidson then handed Liang a printout of an e-mail, from a prospective employer who was interested in hiring Davidson, that stated that his future employment with the company hinged on a successful Master’s thesis defense.

Without time for comment from Liang, and without saying anything himself, Davidson turned to the first aid box on the wall, removed a 9 mm handgun, and immediately started firing. He hit Liang first, killing him while he was still seated at the faculty table. Lowrey and Lyrintzis were also hit. However, Lowrey tried to escape out the only main access door to the room. There were other doors in the room, but only one door led out to the hallway, and other parts of the third floor of the Engineering building.

Davidson was between the main door and the faculty table, and shot Lowrey several times; he died on the floor in the main doorway. Lyrintzis fled from the main door and Davidson, into an adjoining classroom, and hid under a table. After killing Lowrey, Davidson reloaded another magazine into the handgun, and pursued Lyrintzis into the other room. There, he shot and killed Lyrintzis while the latter was still under the desk. Overall, Davidson fired 23 rounds, with 16 rounds hitting the professors.

The three students attending the thesis defense were not shot, and escaped without injury. One of the students made it out through the main doorway, and notified the third-floor students and faculty to evacuate. Davidson later commented that he was not angry at the students, and had no intention of killing them.

After the shooting, Davidson himself called 911. Police arrived to find Davidson in the third-floor hallway still holding the handgun. He was reportedly sobbing and begging for police to kill him. He soon surrendered to police without further incident. Davidson had intended to kill himself after the shootings, but could not due to “pure cowardice”. Davidson had left a murder-suicide note in the hallway for the police to find, detailing the location of evidence and computer files in his house.

Guns and angry people. To say they have no impulse control would be an erroneous statement. They had to purchase guns in the first place, laying the groundwork for future misdeeds. They had to work up a head of steam about some real or perceived mistreatment or grievance, and, finally, they had to load up the guns and take them to the killing field. At any point in time along the way, they could have turned back. They not only had a preconceived plan; they probably fantasized about it for months.

Many Americans are so obsessed with the Second Amendment that they can’t even imagine that other societies might be doing things differently with much better outcomes. See A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence in the US and Europe in 3 parts by Frank Thomas and myself for alternatives to the violence and gun-ridden society of Amerika and for some alternatives that actually work, that is if we can give up our love affair with guns.

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John Lawrence

John Lawrence graduated from Georgia Tech, Stanford and University of California at San Diego. While at UCSD, he was one of the original writer/workers on the San Diego Free Press in the late 1960s. He founded the San Diego Jazz Society in 1984 which had grants from the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and presented both local and nationally known jazz artists. John received a Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego chapter, 2014 award. His website is Social Choice and Beyond which exemplifies his interest in Economic Democracy. His book is East West Synthesis. He also blogs at Will Blog For Food. He can be reached at j.c.lawrence@cox.net.

How to Pay for It All: An Option the Candidates Missed

Posted on July 10, 2019 by Ellen Brown

from Web of Debt blog

The Democratic Party has clearly swung to the progressive left, with candidates in the first round of presidential debates coming up with one program after another to help the poor, the disadvantaged and the struggling middle class. Proposals ranged from a Universal Basic Income to Medicare for All to a Green New Deal to student debt forgiveness and free college tuition. The problem, as Stuart Varney observed on FOX Business, was that no one had a viable way to pay for it all without raising taxes or taking from other programs, a hard sell to voters. If robbing Peter to pay Paul is the only alternative, the proposals will go the way of Trump’s trillion dollar infrastructure bill for lack of funding.

Fortunately there is another alternative, one that no one seems to be talking about – at least no one on the presidential candidates’ stage. In Japan, it is a hot topic; and in China, it is evidently taken for granted: the government can generate the money it needs simply by creating it on the books of its own banks. Leaders in China and Japan recognize that stimulating the economy is not a zero-sum game in which funds are just shuffled from one pot to another. To grow the economy and increase GDP, demand (money) must go up along with supply. New money needs to be added to the system; and that is what China and Japan have been doing, very successfully.

Before the 2008-09 global banking crisis, China’s GDP increased by an average of 10% per year for 30 years. The money supply increased right along with it, created on the books of its state-owned banks. Japan under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been following suit, with massive economic stimulus funded by correspondingly massive purchases of the government’s debt by its central bank, using money simply created with computer keystrokes.

All of this has occurred without driving up prices, the dire result predicted by US economists who subscribe to classical monetarist theory. In the 20 years from 1998 to 2018, China’s M2 money supply grew from just over 10 trillion yuan to 180 trillion yuan ($26T), an 18-fold increase. Yet it closed 2018 with a consumer inflation rate that was under 2%. Price stability has been maintained because China’s Gross Domestic Product has grown at nearly the same fast clip, by a factor of 13 over 20 years.

In Japan, the massive stimulus programs called “Abenomics” have been funded through its central bank. The Bank of Japan has now “monetized” nearly 50% of the government’s debt, turning it into new money by purchasing it with yen created on the bank’s books. If the US Fed did that, it would own $11 trillion in US government bonds, four times what it holds now. Yet Japan’s M2 money supply has not even doubled in 20 years, while the US money supply has grown by 300%; and Japan’s inflation rate remains stubbornly below the BOJ’s 2% target. Abe’s stimulus programs have not driven up prices. In fact deflation remains a greater concern than inflation in Japan, despite unprecedented debt monetization by its central bank.     

China’s Economy: A Giant Ponzi Scheme or a New Economic Model? 

Critics have long called China’s economy a Ponzi scheme, doomed to collapse in the end; and for 40 years China has continued to prove the critics wrong. According to a June 2019 report by the Congressional Research Service:

Since opening up to foreign trade and investment and implementing free-market reforms in 1979, China has been among the world’s fastest-growing economies, with real annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging 9.5% through 2018, a pace described by the World Bank as “the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history.” Such growth has enabled China, on average, to double its GDP every eight years and helped raise an estimated 800 million people out of poverty. China has become the world’s largest economy (on a purchasing power parity basis), manufacturer, merchandise trader, and holder of foreign exchange reserves.

This massive growth has been funded with credit created on the books of China’s banks, most of which are state-owned. Even in the US, course, most money today is created on the books of banks. That is what our money supply is – bank credit. What is different about the Chinese model is that the Chinese government can and does intervene to direct where the credit goes. In a July 2018 article titled “China Invents a Different Way to Run an Economy,” Noah Smith suggests that China’s novel approach to macroeconomic stabilization by regulating bank credit represents a new economic model, one that may hold valuable lessons for developed economies. He writes:

Many economists would see this approach as hopelessly ad hoc, haphazard, and interventionist — not the kind of thing any developed country would want to rely on. And yet, it seems to have carried China successfully through several crises, while always averting the catastrophic financial crash that outside observers have been warning about for years.

Abenomics, Helicopter Money and Modern Monetary Theory

Noah Smith has also written about Japan’s unique model. After Prime Minister Abe crushed his opponents in October 2017, Smith wrote on Bloomberg News, “Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party has figured out a novel and interesting way to stay in power—govern pragmatically, focus on the economy and give people what they want.” He said everyone who wanted a job had one; small and midsize businesses were doing well; and the BOJ’s unprecedented program of monetary easing had provided easy credit for corporate restructuring without generating inflation. Abe had also vowed to make both preschool and college free.

Like China’s economic model, Abenomics has been called a Ponzi scheme, funded by central bank-created “free” money. But whatever it is called, the strategy has been working for the economy. Even the once-dubious International Monetary Fund has declaredAbenomics a success.

The Bank of Japan’s massive bond-buying program has also been called “helicopter money” — a policy in which the central bank directly finances government spending by underwriting bonds – and it has been compared to Modern Monetary Theory, which similarly posits that the government can spend money into existence with central bank funding. As Nathan Lewis wrote in Forbes in February 2019:

In practice, something like “MMT” has reached a new level of sophistication these days, exemplified by Japan. . . . The Bank of Japan now holds government bonds amounting to more than 100% of GDP. In other words, the government has managed to finance itself “with the printing press” to the amount of about 100% of GDP, with no inflationary consequences. [Emphasis added.]

Japanese officials have resisted comparisons with both helicopter money and MMT, arguing that Japanese law does not allow the government to sell its bonds directly to the central bank. As in the US, the government’s bonds must be sold on the open market, a limitation that also prevents the US government from directly monetizing its debt. But as Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Kikuo Iwata observed in a 2013 Reuters article, where the bonds are sold does not matter. What is important is that the central bank has agreed to buy them, and it is here that US banking law diverges from the laws of both Japan and China.

Central Banking Asia-style

When the US Treasury sells bonds on the open market, it can only hope the Fed will buy them. Any attempt by the president or the legislature to influence Fed policy is considered a gross interference with the sacrosanct independence of the central bank.

In theory, the central banks of China and Japan are also independent. Both are members of the Bank for International Settlements, which stresses the importance of maintaining the stability of the currency and the independence of the central bank; and both countries revised their banking laws in the 1990s to better reflect those policies. But their banking laws still differ in significant ways from those of the US.

In Japan, the Bank of Japan is legally free to set interest rates, but it must cooperate closely with the Ministry of Finance in setting policy. Article 4 of the 1997 Bank of Japan Act says:

The Bank of Japan shall, taking into account the fact that currency and monetary control is a component of overall economic policy, always maintain close contact with the government and exchange views sufficiently, so that its currency and monetary control and the basic stance of the government’s economic policy shall be mutually compatible.

Unlike in the US, Prime Minister Abe can negotiate with the head of the central bank to buy the government’s bonds, ensuring that the debt is in fact turned into new money that will stimulate domestic economic growth; and he is completely within his legal rights in doing it.

The leverage of China’s central government over its central bank is even stronger than the Japanese prime minister’s. The 1995 Law of the People’s Republic of China on the People’s Bank of China states:

The People’s Bank of China shall, under the leadership of the State Council, formulate and implement monetary policies, guard against and eliminate financial risks, and maintain financial stability.

The State Council has final decision-making power on such things as the annual money supply, interest rates and exchange rates; and it has used this power to stabilize the economy by directing and regulating the issuance of bank credit, the new Chinese macroeconomic model that Noah Smith says holds important lessons for us.

The successful six-year run of Abenomics, along with China’s decades of unprecedented economic growth, have proven that governments can indeed monetize their debts, expanding the money supply and stimulating the economy, without driving up consumer prices. The monetarist theories of US policymakers are obsolete and need to be discarded.

“Kyouryoku,” the Japanese word for cooperation, is composed of characters that mean “together strength” – “stronger by working together.” This is a recognized principle in Asian culture and it is an approach we would do well to adopt. What US presidential candidates from both parties should talk about is how to modify the law so that Congress, the Administration and the central bank can work together in setting monetary policy, following the approaches successfully modeled in China and Japan.

________________________________________

First posted under another title at TruthDig.com. Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder and chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books, including Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age (June 2019), Web of Debt, and The Public Bank Solution.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

The Netherlands' Health Care System Could Be a Model for the US

But There is a Role for Private Insurance as Well

 

by Frank Thomas, August 2, 2019

 

I agree that Sanders reform plan [Medicare for All] which puts most insurers out of business is not acceptable by a large segment of the population. I like the Dutch Basic Plan reform plan that replaced the division between public and private health insurance by one universal social health insurance. But that one universal insurance keeps insurers in business. It does so under a central Oversight competitive mechanism that manages effectively and efficiently Basic Plan quality, price, per coverage, provider costs  - resulting in a much lower cost per capita for good coverage than the U.S sky high capita cost for less coverage. (see TABLE 1)   

 

Under the Dutch Basic Plan a medical procedure will cost almost exactly the same anywhere in the country. In America, the insured in any state is hit with 3,6,9 or more different prices for the same medical procedure.  Why? Many things are insanely wrong. A fundamental one is that the insurers are running the system with one primary goal - maximum profits for shareholders. And they are selling policy covrages that vary all over the place in concert with wildly varying out-of-pocket costs for premiums and deductibles. Systemically, there's simply LITTLE to NO standardization of coverage, prices, costs and quality in our failing, egregiously humanly unfair healthcare system only the top 20% can afford with decent coverage. It is drowning and fragmented with too many insurers and giant monopolist firms that are dictating our system of social health care for their own profit benefit first and the insured second. Hospitals and doctors also largely operate as profit-making entities. This is in sharp contrast to the Dutch universal healthcare system which is driven by "central oversight and managed competition."  

 

This leads me to the question:

 

Why Can't Sanders and U.S. Healthcare Reformers Come Up With a Version of the Netherlands' Basic Plan of Universal Healthcare Plan for All That Doesn't Put Most Insurers Out of Business, But Does Provide Better Healthcare at a Much Lower Cost for All?

 

In 2006, the Netherlands transformed its government healthcare insurance system into one Basic Plan of universal social health insurance where "government managed competition" was introduced among private insurers as the driving force in the healthcare system. All living or working adults must be covered by the Basic Plan healthcare insurance. Coverage is required regardless of ability to pay. For low income people, the government subsidizes the Basic Plan individual premium up to 70% of the fixed monthly premium charge which is reset every year, 

 

The mandatory Basic Plan is sold by private non-profit insurance firms. Hospitals are also non-profit entities. Of all the competing insurer firms, six insurers handle about 90% of the Basic Plan for all of Holland's 18 million people. The medical services and medicines covered by the Basic Plan are centrally controlled and approved. They apply uniformly for all of Holland's 18 million people. Upgrades to the Basic Plan are mostly entirely in the hands of the insurers, Government oversight management of the Basic Plan extends importantly to quality, coverage, insurer price, and provider costs (e.g., hospitals,doctors). 

 

The medical services and medicines covered by the Basic Plan are exactly the same for everybody. This generates enormous cost efficiencies (e.g., in purchasing, and provider costs) and stimulates improvements in quality care at reasonable cost. Monthly premiums vary less than +-6% among competing insurers. Today, the Basic Plan monthly premium is euro 120,00 ($ 136.00) for every individual, except children under age 18 who are not charged for Basic Plan coverage. The yearly deductible for everyone is euro 375,00 ($ 425.00).  Links below provide in-depth explanations/critical analyses of Holland's outstanding mandatory Basic Plan universal healthcare.

 

(https://transferwise.com/us/blog/healthcare-system-in-the-netherlands)  

 

See: Health Systems in Transition - vol 18.  No. 2  2016:   "Netherlands- Health System Review," by Madelon Kroneman, Wienke Boerma, et al. 

 

Healthcare performance measurement reports generally give the Netherlands' universal healthcare system high rankings. Of course, problems arise and are emerging in the future with many, many more older people, but the Dutch pragmatically confront and come together to solve them in a timely fashion together to solve them. 

 

TABLE 1                   UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE COMPARISON CHART - 2017

 

	Type	% of GDP	Per Capita Cost
Australia	2-tier	9.6%	$ 4,798
Canada	single	10.6%	$4,752.00
France	2-tier	11.0%	$4,600.00
Germany	mandate	11.3%	$5,550.00
Netherlands	mandate	13.3%	$5,691.00
Switzerland	mandate	12.4%	$7,919.00
UK	single	9.7%	$ 4,193
US	private	18.0%	$9,892.00

 

Sources: 

  https://www.statista.com/statistics/576000/total-health-expenditure-as-share-of-gdp-in-the-netherlands

             

  https://www.statista.com/statistics/575988/total-health-expenditure-per-capita-in-the-netherlands

 

ADDENDUM I

The Dutch total healthcare system is operated according to four basic related healthcare Acts: the 2006 Health Insurance Act, the Long-Term Act, the Social Support Act, and the Youth Act. The Health Insurance Act is the Dutch comprehensive Basic Healthcare Insurance package required for All and administered by private insurers.

I believe a credible variation to Sanders’ Medicare for All without insurers is a Medicare Basic Healthcare Option” (MBHO) for All. This would be a standard healthcare package contractually competed for by insurers, sold to the public and administered by private insurers. I see this approach, or some variation thereof, as a potential credible alternative to Sanders’ Medicare for All without insurers. The MBHO insurance plan is similar to the Dutch mandatory Basic Plan for All with one Big exception – it’s optional. It would be a marked improvement on Obama’s healthcare plan option which has been made worse by the Trump Administration’s changes. Despite that and other obvious weaknesses in Obamacare, millions of Americans are very thankful Obama’s plan is alive and doing well.

The Dutch Basic Healthcare Plan for ALL, a ‘radical reform’ that took place with passage of the 2006 Health Insurance Act, has following key policy principles:

• Access to quality, affordable Basic healthcare has no preconditions.

• Standardization of a Basic coverage package is government set and required for All for comprehensive short-term medical services, hospital care and prescribed medications - vastly improving efficiency, quality and lowering system administrative costs.

• Focuses healthcare policy on managed competition given the inherently imperfectly competitive nature of healthcare markets

• The Health Insurance Act entitles all residents to a comprehensive Basic standard health insurance package at a standard premium/deductible cost – implemented by private, competitive health insurers and healthcare providers where quality, price, coverage are government oversight-controlled.

• Insurance firms offering the Basic plan are not-for-profit cooperatives; profits made on the standard Basic plan are allocated to the reserves or they are returned in the form of stable, if not lower, premiums. Hospitals are also generally non-profit entities.

The Dutch hospital market has gotten increasingly concentrated through mergers the past few decades. Competition can lead to much-improved efficiencies, quality and accessibility if adequate alternatives are available to consumers and/or insurers. But studies have shown that on-going, unstoppable hospital consolidation enhances hospitals’ market power. That can undermine the objective of introducing more competition into the market. That’s why Dutch government policy focuses on regulating the hospital market and insurers, while also simultaneously introducing incentives for competition between providers and insurers.

In conclusion, I don’t see why a practical scale variation of the Dutch (or Canadian) universal public-private healthcare models cannot be achieved in our country by MEDICARE BASIC HEALTHCARE OPTION. If structured well, over time such a plan could potentially vastly improve our comparatively exceptionally inefficient, costly, poor coverage, non-standard healthcare system.

This Medicare Basic Healthcare Option (MBHO) would encompass following key policies:

• A Basic standard optional insurance plan for All with no preconditions. The standard coverage package would be defined and set by Medicare.

• Upgrades ‘not covered by the Basic Option would be the primary responsibility of insurers with oversight control by Medicare.

• A standard national premium structure would be set for the Basic Option that is adjusted on a regional basis up or down by an average income and/or cost-of-living index.

• The standard premium for low income people would be subsidized by Medicare.

• Medicare would be the chief purchasing agent and awarder of regional contracts to providers/insurers who meet MBHO provisions on access, price, quality, medical services, hospital care, prescribed medications available to All who choose the Basic Option.

It’s incredible how talented and advanced our nation is in its medical research, in our precision-reaching of a planet millions of miles away, in our landing of a missile within one meter of the target thousands of miles away.

BUT, here we are … unable to come together on a quality, cost-effective, affordable Basic healthcare system for all our citizens! The Netherlands’ standard Basic Plan system for All is simple, with good coverage at a reasonable annual premium cost for every individual age 18 and above of $1,630 (euro 1,440) and the deductible is $435 (euro 385). This compares to a much higher U.S. average individual insurance cost … and for less coverage. Also there are no co-pays in the Netherlands on the Basic plan while they are considerable in the US.

I think Sanders’ single-payer Medicare Plan without insurers is the right thing given our deeply sick, complex, for-profit healthcare system. Unfortunately, this ideal solution appears to be politically impossible. Apparently it’s too big a step; there’s simply much resistance by many people who do not want their healthcare insurance plan changed. If the U.S. healthcare insurers and hospitals were mainly non-profit entities as is the case in the Netherlands, this resistance might disappear. Perhaps in this situation, Biden’s solution to seriously repair Obamacare is a credible first step - providing substantive changes are indeed made along lines, for example, of incorporating some of the best parts of Holland’s radically reformed 2006 standard Basic healthcare system.

Potentially considerable cost and quality improvements from a Medicare Basic Healthcare Option that standardizes quality, coverage and affordable prices for All. This would encourage more and more people of all income levels to eventually go for the Medicare Basic Healthcare Option. This in turn will expand opportunities to further improve provider purchase costs, coverage and quality. It’s important to note that Holland’s universal Basic Healthcare plan package covers at least 80% of all possible short-term medical services and prescription drugs needed for people of all income levels and health conditions. Upgrades like physical therapy or cosmetic surgery can be purchased direct from insurers at an adjusted premium.

The U.S. battle is between Sanders’ universal single-payer solution without the high profit-making insurers and Biden’s serious repair solution to Obamacare working in cooperation with insurers and local communities in establishing a national standard Medicare Basic Healthcare Option. Even Canada’s so-called single-payer system works well with insurers who come up with market prices for good coverages that don’t vary wildly among provinces at a very competitive premium-deductible cost per individual or family that’s one-half the cost of a typical U.S. insurer.

We are buried in a brutally polarized political system – that’s demonstrating an outright deplorable incompetence in creating and playing politics with an insanely costly, poor standard coverage, super complex national healthcare system. The system is shamefully the most costly for less coverage compared to European systems and systems of economically advanced nations like Japan and Australia.

We could learn a lot from the quality, comprehensive medical coverage and affordability of the Netherlands’ standard Basic healthcare insurance package required for ALL … and generally approved by all citizens. I would say the same about Germany’s or UK’s, or Canada’s healthcare systems or any of the Scandinavian country systems. We Americans think we know it all … but we don’t, especially when it comes to the development and management of humanly fundamental social protection legislation for all Americans. 

ADDENDUM II

ATTENTION : KAMALA HARRIS

I applaud your attempt to put forward a Medicare Option Plan that includes the insurers. Joe Biden is doing the same thing when he says significantly improve the Affordable Healthcare Plan, called Obamacare.

BUT, as I note in detail in describing the Dutch universal non-optional Basic Plan that an variation to that plan, like your and Biden’s options WILL NOT WORK unless following conditions are met.

• The much needed scale of standardization in our complex national healthcare system will not be achieved without Medicare first defining one standard embracive coverage package that applies to all applicants and insurers. A transparent standard benefits package that insures comprehensive coverage - and profoundly simplifies the system. Insurers must accept that coverage package. They and providers (e.g., hospitals) deal with a single set of rules and billing procedures. A big plus with such a system in the Netherlands is that insurers and hospitals act largely as non-profit entities. This will be difficult in the states where healthcare for maximum corporate insurer profits is deeply imbedded. Even non-profit insurer firms in the U.S. have exorbitant salaries.

• The individual monthly insurance premium and annual deductible costs should also be standard nationwide (or at least regionally). In the Netherlands, the premium and deductible costs for an individual 18 or older under the Basic Universal Plan are at reasonably affordable levels of $136 monthly and $435 annually, respectfully. And that’s for excellent coverage with no co-pays or playing the profit maximizing games of setting limits or exclusions under the standard Basic Plan for all.

• The government should subsidize the premium cost up to, say, 70% (as does the Netherlands) depending on gross income levels below $35,000 per year. This could be funded by a small federal tax of +- 0.015% on everyone’s annually reported adjusted gross income.

• Medicare should NOT accept insurers whose executive salaries are sky high – a perversely greedy condition that pervades every inch of our healthcare system (but NOT in Europe).

• Insurers cannot retroactively revoke insurance based on errors in applying for the Medicare Option plan. Obama’s Affordable Care Act had an individual mandate - as does the Netherlands’ Basic Plan - that no-one can be rejected for plan coverage in any way, including a history of prior sickness. Not surprisingly, Trump’s administration has established numerous loopholes that undermine the insurance protections of Obamacare.

• Our U.S. current private healthcare insurance system is primarily employment based and covers two-thirds of the population. Many people are happy with this but it comes with limits and exclusions regarding coverage and co-pays. And, most importantly, there is no standardization. So the premium and deductible out-of pocket costs still end up being extremely high vs. European plans. This problem and the insurer/provider being in business for maximum profit must be resolved in a clever way if a quality, affordable U.S. Medicare Option plan is ever to work successfully.

The potential purchasing and administrative cost economies where insurance firms play a role with central government oversight and control of a standard quality, pricing, coverage package are enormous – as proven by the Dutch, Swiss, and German systems. And unlike our Medicare Advantage health plans – where private insurers overbill Medicare in the hundreds of millions annually for sick patients who are not so sick or have reported medical conditions that cannot be proven - the profoundly simple, transparent EU healthcare systems don’t have such problems.

Perhaps you and Joe Biden could merge the best of each other’s ideas and the brains of experts to significantly reform an Obamacare Option. This would include re-installing the provisions Trump’s Administration has taken away. Actions that constrain access to Obamacare and make it more expensive.

For a Medicare Option alternative, we should adopt in a constructive way the standard plan conditions and operating rules noted above that work so well in providing better coverage at a much lower cost in Canada and European countries with populations of 10 million to 70 million. Greatly reducing plan complexity, increasing plan standardization, scale purchasing of drugs and medicines, and equipment will deliver massive cost efficiencies and better healthcare coverage.

If we can’t take this first step as a precursor for a much, much broader public acceptance of a universal basic plan centrally controlled by Medicare, then we will likely remain a 3^rd world country when it comes to comprehensive, quality basic healthcare at an affordable cost for the average American.

Where Your Tax Dollars Really Go

by Robert Reich

• Wednesday, July 31, 2019

  Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress claim that America spends too much on things like food stamps, welfare, and foreign aid. 

  But let’s look at how the government actually spends your federal tax dollars each year. We’re going to look at what’s known as the “discretionary budget,” which has to be reappropriated by Congress each year.

  Start with foreign aid, the conservatives’ favorite boogeyman. It’s $29 billion a year. That may sound like a lot but it’s only 2 percent of all discretionary spending. Add all spending on international affairs, it’s 4 percent.

  What about science and technology, including NASA, the National Science Foundation, and research in clean energy, which conservatives love to hate?Just 3 percent.

  The environment and natural resources – money for clean air, safe drinking water and protecting public lands? Another 3 percent.

  Roads, bridges, highways, airports, all transportation funding: Another 3 percent.

  Community and regional development: 2 percent.

  Law enforcement, the Department of Justice, the entire federal court system: 5 percent

  The Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and rural health clinics: 5 percent.

  Food stamps, energy assistance, child care, other income security: Just 6 percent.

  Education and workforce training gets just 7 percent.

  Veterans benefits account for 7 percent of the budget as well.

  All other government services–including Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce–account for only 1 percent of the discretionary budget.

  But that’s only 46 percent. The remaining 54 percent of annual spending is on the military, which is more spent on the military than the next 7 nations combined. It’s huge. It’s about the only really big thing the federal government does.

  You may be thinking, but what about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act? 

  By law, these programs are mandatory spending, which don’t require Congress to approve funding every year. Americans have paid into Social Security and Medicare over their entire working lives.

  Yet they’re still vulnerable. In fact, if Trump and Republicans in Congress aren’t going to cut discretionary spending – especially on the military – the only places they can look to make way for more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  

  That’s been their goal all along. 

  Know where the money is really going. And know what they have in mind. 

Spirituality Ain’t for Sissies

Dear friends,

Emerson:  “Summer will have its flies. If we walk in the woods we must feed mosquitoes. If we go fishing we must expect a wet coat.”

Yes, our goals are within reach. Yes, we can help co-create the full actualization of them. Yes, we can use our mind very specifically to bring about a desired effect. But can we deal with what comes with the manifestation? Lottery winners are often broke in a short time because they are unprepared for what comes with great wealth. There are investment counselors, accountants, lawyers, tax experts to assist, but it can be too much for someone who has never had real money. They unconsciously get rid of its burden as fast as possible.

Fame is another outcome that can seriously throw people off balance. The loss of privacy is a blow to the psyche. The instantaneous criticism that seems to accompany one’s every move must be emotionally debilitating. But fame also affords one entrance into the realm of privilege and elegance. People want to give to the famous, but there is danger in assuming one has somehow become special. The rarefied air of Fame must be balanced with a healthy dose of good sense. Fame is fleeting. Life is real.

Spiritual practices, such as meditation have wonderful benefits, but like summer with its flies, deeply exploring one’s own psyche can dislodge old emotions that temporarily wreak havoc with us. Suppressed anger might arise, surprising us and causing riffs in our relationships. In fact, just the fact that we have become spiritually motivated can threaten friendships. The upside is personal growth and increased well-being. But it doesn’t come without a few mosquito bites. As a fellow minister once said “spirituality ain’t for sissies.” It takes a real wholehearted commitment and a kind of easy fearlessness, but the results are worth the temporary discomfort.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspirituallivingbakersield.com

Also see www.californiafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

The Solution to Multiple Application Fees for Renters

by John Lawrence, August 3, 2019

Tyrone Poole was taking a course to become a firefighter in Portland, Oregon. Then his luck turned bad. He fell, had a bad leg injury and ended up in the hospital. He couldn't pay his hospital bills, was evicted from his apartment and had nowhere to go upon being discharged from the hospital.

Oregonlive.com takes up the story:

He couch-surfed for a while. But his friends grew tired of taking care of him. One night, around 10 p.m., a friend told Poole he could no longer stay.

"I grabbed all my stuff and left,'" Poole said. "I was carrying my entire life with me on crutches."

He hobbled a few miles toward a MAX station, each step like walking on glass. By the time he arrived, he could barely stand. He laid down and vomited.

A police officer found him, Poole said, and assumed he'd been drinking. Poole explained his injury, and the cop offered him a ride.

"He would have taken me anywhere," Poole said. "But there were no more places."

The officer drove Poole to the YWCA close to midnight. Poole said the workers weren't happy -- there's a shelter protocol, and everyone else was asleep -- but they pulled out a semi-broken cot and set it up in the gym.

"It was the lowest moment of my entire life," Poole said. "Even the homeless shelter is telling me I shouldn't be there."

From there it was an endless round of applying for apartment rentals. Although the YWCA gave him a voucher for one year's rent in return for working at the Y, Poole couldn't find an apartment. At each one he applied, he had to pay an application fee. For four months the applications were all denied.

Poole tried to tell managers he had a year of guaranteed rent. But they saw his drawbacks: Poole had been evicted while in the hospital. His car and his storage unit had been repossessed. His credit was bad. And because his doctors had yet to clear him for work, he had no income.

Poole knew some property managers take chances, but there was no way to find out who would accept him without applying. Each application cost about $20.

Poole thought there must be a better way. People with bad credit are just throwing their money down a rathole if their credit is bad, and this is the primary criterion a landlord uses to decide whether to rent to someone. You can't discriminate on the grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, national origin or anything else, but you can discriminate on the grounds of poor credit. So a landlord will accept an application along with an application fee from anyone knowing that he will likely not rent to that person. It gets even worse. In El Cajon, where I live, the current rate for an application fee is $25.00 per adult living in the apartment. It is often the case that there is a third adult involved, a mother or a mother-in-law, for example, to help pay the rent . The application must be run on each adult so that is $75.00 upfront in application fees.

Poole's idea was to create an app whereby renters would submit their information and a one time fee.  Then the app would match them with criteria from multiple landlords. So that's how the website oneApp was born. Prospective renters could find out immediately which landlords would find their application acceptable and go from there. Poole was lucky that the Portland Economic Development Commission was shifting its focus to black entrepreneurs. He had an idea, but no coding skills, no capital and no business experience. Nevertheless, he impressed the right people and his venture was funded.

In Portland nearly half the city’s residents are renters and the average rent grew by 4.6 percent last year. The median rent price for an apartment in Portland is now $1,879 a month, according to a Zillow analysis. Tyrone has a contract with the City of Portland to provide the services which expedite poor rental applicants in finding an apartment. A one time rental fee of $35.00 matches them with available apartments and the $35.00 is refunded by the landlord on move-in.

Street Roots reported:

The data and information OneApp collects on its apartment listings, including rents and screening criteria, as well as basic demographics on prospective tenants could be a boon to policymakers and housing advocates. Currently, information on Oregon and even Portland’s rental inventory is spotty. Peterson said OneApp has already aggregated a list of nearly 100 different screening criteria landlords and property managers use when evaluating tenants. “You can start to break each category into its own,” he said, such as how many past evictions a particular property management company will consider. The website could also provide data on the average credit score or the average debt that a tenant has and compare it to their income. That data, he said, could help the Portland Housing Bureau, elected officials and policymakers “understand how the market of renters match up with the market of available units.”

The City of Portland has a contract with Tyrone to provide oneApp services to the City of Portland. You can access them from the  website of the Portland Housing Bureau. He is also branching out to other cities. Why not San Diego and LA?

ATTENTION : KAMALA HARRIS

by Frank Thomas

ADDENDUM II. August 2, 2019

I applaud your attempt to put forward a Medicare Option Plan that includes the insurers. Joe Biden is doing the same thing when he says significantly improve the Affordable Healthcare Plan, called Obamacare.

BUT, as I note in detail in describing the Dutch universal non-optional Basic Plan that an variation to that plan, like your and Biden’s options WILL NOT WORK unless following conditions are met:

 

• The much needed scale of standardization in our complex national healthcare system will not be achieved without Medicare first defining one standard embracive coverage package that applies to all applicants and insurers. A transparent standard benefits package that insures comprehensive coverage - and profoundly simplifies the system. Insurers must accept that coverage package. They and providers (e.g., hospitals) deal with a single set of rules and billing procedures. A big plus with such a system in the Netherlands is that insurers and hospitals act largely as non-profit entities. This will be difficult in the states where healthcare for maximum corporate insurer profits is deeply imbedded. Even non-profit insurer firms in the U.S. have exorbitant salaries.

• The individual monthly insurance premium and annual deductible costs should also be standard nationwide (or at least regionally). In the Netherlands, the premium and deductible costs for an individual 18 or older under the Basic Universal Plan are at reasonably affordable levels of $136 monthly and $435 annually, respectfully. And that’s for excellent coverage with no co-pays or playing the profit maximizing games of setting limits or exclusions under the standard Basic Plan for all.

• The government should subsidize the premium cost up to, say, 70% (as does the Netherlands) depending on gross income levels below $35,000 per year. This could be funded by a small federal tax of +- 0.015% on everyone’s annually reported adjusted gross income.

• Medicare should NOT accept insurers whose executive salaries are sky high – a perversely greedy condition that pervades every inch of our healthcare system (but NOT in Europe).

• Insurers cannot retroactively revoke insurance based on errors in applying for the Medicare Option plan. Obama’s Affordable Care Act had an individual mandate - as does the Netherlands’ Basic Plan - that no-one can be rejected for plan coverage in any way, including a history of prior sickness. Not surprisingly, Trump’s administration has established numerous loopholes that undermine the insurance protections of Obamacare.

• Our U.S. current private healthcare insurance system is primarily employment based and covers two-thirds of the population. Many people are happy with this but it comes with limits and exclusions regarding coverage and co-pays. And, most importantly, there is no standardization. So the premium and deductible out-of pocket costs still end up being extremely high vs. European plans. This problem and the insurer/provider being in business for maximum profit must be resolved in a clever way if a quality, affordable U.S. Medicare Option plan is ever to work successfully.

The potential purchasing and administrative cost economies where insurance firms play a role with central government oversight and control of a standard quality, pricing, coverage package are enormous – as proven by the Dutch, Swiss, and German systems. And unlike our Medicare Advantage health plans – where private insurers overbill Medicare in the hundreds of millions annually for sick patients who are not so sick or have reported medical conditions that cannot be proven - the profoundly simple, transparent EU healthcare systems don’t have such problems.

Perhaps you and Joe Biden could merge the best of each other’s ideas and the brains of experts to significantly reform an Obamacare Option. This would include re-installing the provisions Trump’s Administration has taken away. Actions that constrain access to Obamacare and make it more expensive.

For a Medicare Option alternative, we should adopt in a constructive way the standard plan conditions and operating rules noted above that work so well in providing better coverage at a much lower cost in Canada and European countries with populations of 10 million to 70 million. Greatly reducing plan complexity, increasing plan standardization, scale purchasing of drugs and medicines, and equipment will deliver massive cost efficiencies and better healthcare coverage.

If we can’t take this first step as a precursor for a much, much broader public acceptance of a universal basic plan centrally controlled by Medicare, then we will likely remain a 3^rd world country when it comes to comprehensive, quality basic healthcare at an affordable cost for the average American.

Frank Thomas

August 2, 2019

The Netherlands

On Being You

Dear friends,

There is something special about being with a friend who knew you when you were young. In couples who have been married for many decades, there is that bond of mutual perception. You just know when they look at each other they see that young face behind the wrinkles….or is it within them? A friend from elementary school may have developed different views of life than we have. They may have political opinions that are disturbing to us. But when they remind us of how we played together in the sand box, there is only a feeling of unity.

We are the same regardless of the ideas that have become our version of reality. There is still that Being of light and optimism, forever eager to believe in life again. I think that is why class reunions are so popular. Perhaps someone will know us. Perhaps we will feel open and free again. Perhaps we will see our real self, reflected in our friends eyes.

Modern New Thought spirituality is rather like a reunion of the mind and the soul. It is often described as “coming home.” There is, in each of us, innate knowing, a natural awareness of our own Spirit. When we encounter ideas that speak the language of the soul, we are quickened into remembrance. We see ourselves at the beginning of this lifetime, ready to be seen and known for who we really are. We may have been talked out of it, taught a different story, made to forget. But one day we walk into a New Thought Center or read a book about our True Self and we begin to see who we have been the whole time. The soul is never changed by events. It is forever intact and ready to be revealed. It simply needs us to recognize it; to say, I know you, you’re the one I have been searching for all this time. Let’s play!

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspiritualliving.com

Also check out www.californiafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

How Did the Democrats Do?

by John Lawrence, August 2, 2019

After listening to the debates and the post-debates for 2 nights in a row, here's my takeaway. Joe Biden should not be the Democrats' nominee for President. He has been consistently slow-witted. There's no "fire in the belly." He cannot even finish some of his sentences so he says "my time is up." Others whose time is up at least finish their sentences. Joe's time is past. His baggage is weighing him down. Obama's baggage is weighing him down. Times have changed. The same could be said for Kamala Harris after Tulsi Gabbard's attack on her. Her role as California's Attorney General has mixed reviews. But the real drawback for Harris is her Medicare for All plan which is so convoluted, it will never fly as a salable item to American voters. On the other hand I don't like Bernie's plan either because it doesn't let "people keep their present insurance if they like the plan they're on." Similar to Obama's famous words about insurance.

The real deal here is "Medicare for All Who Want It," as espoused by Hickenlooper, Buttigieg and others. It shouldn't be too hard to implement. Rather than raise everybody's taxes as Bernie suggests, pay for it the same way Medicare is paid for now - by taking the premiums out of individual pay checks. I have Medicare and the premiums are just taken out of my social security check each month. Why can't the same be done for those who are still working? Instead of the premium being sent off to a private insurance company, their employers could just send it to Medicare. I understand some unions have contracts where the employer pays a good percentage of their premiums. No problem. The employer just sends the premiums - both the employee's share and the employer's share - to Medicare instead of the private insurance company for those that want Medicare. For those who don't the premiums are still sent to the same private insurance company they're sent to now. What's the problem?

Tulsi also was the only one that brought up the bloated military budget and the waste of money and lives that US military policy portends. Of course the moderators cut her short on this. They don't want to lose their sponsors. And why didn't Yang suggest that his $1000 a month for every American adult UBI come straight out of the military budget? Or why not get it by taxing Amazon which is currently driving retail stores and the workers thereof out of business while paying zero taxes. Tulsi was not only critical of the military budget and the endless wars, but she brought up an important point which also got short shrift. The Trump administration is funding the very terrorists that conducted 9/11! Al Qaeda and ISIS are being funded by the US in Syria because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." This is ridiculous. The US does not care whose side it's on as long as they can beef up the military budget and create more ongoing wars. For this reason I contributed to Tulsi's campaign because I want to see her on the debate stage in September.

I contributed to Jay Inslee's campaign as well because I want him on the debate stage again. His single issue is climate change and he rightly says that it is the most important issue for the next hopefully Democratic administration.

Here's the deal (as Biden would say): The Democratic team of nominees for President and Vice President should consist of one man and one woman, one African American and one white. Elizabeth Warren is the strongest candidate on many levels. She is equivocating on ending private insurance, but in order to sell Medicare for All, you have to sell it as Medicare for All Who Want It, and fight it out with private insurance companies on the grounds of premiums, co-pays and deductibles. As time goes on more and more people will opt in to Medicare if they have the chance although they might be reluctant to at first, and they don't want to be forced to and they don't want their taxes to go up to pay for it. Why isn't this clear to the Democratic nominees? Elizabeth needs to part with Bernie on this. There's still time. Republicans will take away the Dems best issue if they try to force everyone into Medicare. It's just not salable to the American people. Medicare for All Who Want It is.

OK, so who would be Warren's running mate - a black man ideally. Cory Booker, of course. Booker shined at the second debate. He and Warren would make a good team. Even though I like Kamala, I can't think of a good running mate for her who would be a white man. Bernie, possibly, but Bernie's too doctrinaire on his Medicare for All plan. Perhaps Jay Inslee and Kamala would make a good team, but I don't think Kamala has the depth of experience to be President. I see her more as Vice Presidential material.

Is there a middle road on Medicare-for-all? Kamala Harris thinks so

.     BY PAIGE WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM with Paulina Firozi from the Washington Post THE PROGNOSIS Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) speaks at the 25th Essence Festival in New Orleans. (Gerald Herbert/AP) Is there a way to do Medicare-for-all without wiping out the country's private insurance system? Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) says there is. Here's her solution: Let people keep private plans, but have the government help pay for it. Harris aims to reach universal health coverage by expanding Medicare to everyone, but through private plans that are paid by the government to administer medical benefits. Harris released her proposal yesterday, adding to the proliferating pile of health policy proposals from the Democratic candidates, who are preparing for their second debate tonight and Wednesday. The 2020 presidential candidate has finally clarified where she stands on the perplexing issue, after months of confusing statements about whether or not she'd eliminate commercial health insurance. In the past, Harris signed onto the sweeping Medicare-for-all bill envisioned by her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who wants the federal government to directly cover the health expenses of all Americans. Democratic presidential hopefuls Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris speak during the Democratic primary debate in June. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) But what Harris is proposing now isn’t quite Medicare-for-all. It’s more like Medicare Advantage-for-all, a popular alternative version of Medicare that currently covers about 1 in 3 seniors. In Medicare Advantage, private plans bid for the rights to sponsor Medicare plans, in contrast to traditional Medicare, in which doctors and hospitals directly bill the federal government. The program is basically Republicans’ favorite flavor of Medicare, because it so heavily involves the private sector. So using Medicare Advantage as a starting point for health reform could be smart politics for Harris, especially if she eventually finds herself in the general election. Expanding coverage via private means is a more comfortable idea for many Americans. It certainly is for Tom Scully, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under GOP President George W. Bush, who called the idea a “brilliant masterstroke.” “There’s a hell of a big difference between Medicare-for-all and Medicare Advantage-for-all,” Scully told me. “I think [Harris] was brilliant to figure that out.” In her plan, laid out via a Medium post, Harris wants to give people the option of either enrolling in traditional Medicare or buying a Medicare Advantage-type plan while tacking on more benefits, such as mental health care. She’d let people immediately start buying into traditional Medicare and over a 10-year period would phase in privately run Medicare plans to cover newborns, the uninsured and, eventually, everyone who currently has workplace or Obamacare coverage. The approach allows Harris to embrace the most popular parts of Medicare-for-all — its generous set of medical benefits — while dodging its most controversial aspect of eliminating private health coverage. Harris had wavered on that question for months, on two separate occasions appearing to advocate banning private plans and each time walking back those remarks. “Essentially, we would allow private insurance to offer a plan in the Medicare system, but they will be subject to strict requirements to ensure it lowers costs and expands services,” Harris wrote. “If they want to play by our rules, they can be in the system. If not, they have to get out.” Andy Slavitt, who headed CMS under President Barack Obama, called her plan “an effort to balance idealism and pragmatism.” “The use of Medicare Advantage is a clever approach to getting there,” he told me. Indeed, Harris’s plan could be viewed as a middle ground between the dramatic health insurance overhaul suggested by Sanders and the incremental approach of a government-financed “public option” backed by former vice president Joe Biden. If you’re watching the debate, stay tuned for potential clashes between Biden and Harris on the subject when they share the stage Wednesday night. Harris’s rivals were already jumping all over her yesterday, slamming her for trying to have the best of both worlds and charging that it would instead lead to the worst of both worlds. “This new, have-it-every-which-way approach pushes the extremely challenging implementation of the Medicare for All part of this plan ten years into the future, meaning it would not occur on the watch of even a two-term administration,” said Biden spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield. “The result? A Bernie Sanders-lite Medicare for All and a refusal to be straight with the American middle class, who would have a large tax increase forced on them with this plan,” she added. Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir told Politico that Harris's plan “introduces more corporate greed and more profiteering within Medicare.” And the health-care industry, which has formally banded together to fight Medicare-for-all-like proposals, appears no more open to Harris’s proposal than to what Sanders or Biden have suggested. The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a coalition that includes the major trade groups for health insurers, hospitals and other players, released a statement calling it a “one-size-fits-all government-run system.” “No matter how candidates try to thread the needle, Medicare for all, Medicare ‘buy-in’ and the ‘public option’ would all lead to the same harmful consequences — including unaffordable tax increases, the elimination of consumer choice, threats to patients’ access to their doctors and treatments and a diminished quality of care,” Lauren Crawford Shaver, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. Today the coalition is launching a six-figure ad campaign that includes digital ads in Detroit and Washington, and this national television ad: Harris’s proposal is too new for there to be polling data on it. But a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation underscores how Americans seem to prefer step-by-step approaches to getting everyone covered versus a system-wide transformation that might cost them their own coverage. Nearly two-third of respondents said they favor a public option that would compete with private plans and be available to all Americans. Just over half of respondents said they favor a national Medicare-for-all plan, slightly down from 56 percent who expressed support in April.

The Great Flood

JUL 29, 2019OPINION|TD ORIGINALS

by Chris Hedges

 

Mr. Fish / Truthdig

In 2017, Chris Hedges wrote about American society’s refusal to confront climate change and sea rise. Now, in a month when a hurricane flooded parts of Louisiana and other states and when the Mississippi and some other rivers were at menacing levels, Truthdig reposts that Sept. 10, 2017, column. A new article by Hedges will appear Aug. 12 after he returns from vacation.

How many times will we rebuild Florida’s cities, Houston, coastal New Jersey, New Orleans and other population centers ravaged by storms lethally intensified by global warming? At what point, surveying the devastation and knowing more is inevitable, will we walk away, leaving behind vast coastal dead zones? Will we retreat even further into magical thinking to cope with the fury we have unleashed from the natural world? Or will we respond rationally and radically alter our relationship to this earth that gives us life?

Civilizations over the past 6,000 years have unfailingly squandered their futures through acts of colossal stupidity and hubris. We are probably not an exception. The physical ruins of these empires, including the Mesopotamian, Roman, Mayan and Indus, litter the earth. They elevated, during acute distress, inept and corrupt leaders who channeled anger, fear and dwindling resources into self-defeating wars and vast building projects. The ruling oligarchs, driven by greed and hedonism, retreated into privileged compounds—the Forbidden City, Versailles—and hoarded wealth as their populations endured mounting misery and poverty. The worse it got, the more the people lied to themselves and the more they wanted to be lied to. Reality was too painful to confront. They retreated into what anthropologists call “crisis cults,” which promised the return of the lost world through magical beliefs.

“The most significant characteristic of modern civilization is the sacrifice of the future for the present,” philosopher and psychologist William James wrote, “and all the power of science has been prostituted to this purpose.”

We are entering this final phase of civilization, one in which we are slashing the budgets of the very agencies that are vital to prepare for the devastation ahead—the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, along with programs at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration dealing with climate change. Hurricane after hurricane, monster storm after monster storm, flood after flood, wildfire after wildfire, drought after drought will gradually cripple the empire, draining its wealth and resources and creating swathes of territory defined by lawlessness and squalor.

These dead zones will obliterate not only commercial and residential life but also military assets. As Jeff Goodell points out in “The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World,” “The Pentagon manages a global real estate portfolio that includes over 555,000 facilities and 28 million acres of land—virtually all of it will be impacted by climate change in some way.”

As this column is being written, three key military facilities in Florida are evacuated: the Miami-area headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in the Caribbean and Latin America; the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, in charge of operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia; and the Naval Air Station in Key West. There will soon come a day when obliteration of infrastructure will prohibit military operations from returning. Add to the list of endangered military installations Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle, the U.S. missile base in the Marshall Islands, the U.S. naval base on Diego Garcia and numerous other military sites in coastal areas and it becomes painfully clear that the existential peril facing the empire is not in the Middle East but in the seas and the skies. There are 128 U.S. military installations at risk from rising sea levels, including Navy, Air Force, Marine and Army facilities in Virginia. Giant vertical rulers dot the highway outside the Norfolk naval base to allow motorists to determine if the water is too deep to drive through. In two decades, maybe less, the main road to the base will be impassable at high tide daily.

Cities across the globe, including London, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, Lagos, Copenhagen, New Orleans, San Francisco, Savannah, Ga., and New York, will become modern-day versions of Atlantis, along with countries such as Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands and large parts of New Zealand and Australia. There are 90 coastal cities in the U.S. that endure chronic flooding, a number that is expected to double in the next two decades. National economies will go into tailspins as wider and wider parts of the globe suffer catastrophic systems breakdown. Central authority and basic services will increasingly be nonexistent. Hundreds of millions of people, desperate for food, water and security, will become climate refugees. Nuclear power plants, including Turkey Point, which is on the edge of Biscayne Bay south of Miami, will face meltdowns, such as the accident that occurred in the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan after it was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami. These plants will spew radioactive waste into the sea and air. Exacerbated by disintegration of the polar ice caps, the catastrophes will be too overwhelming to manage. We will enter what James Howard Kunstler calls “the long emergency.” When that happens, our experiment in civilization might approach an end.

“The amount of real estate at risk in New York is mind-boggling: 72,000 buildings worth over $129 billion stand in flood zones today, with thousands more buildings at risk with each foot of sea-level rise,” writes Goodell. “In addition, New York has a lot of industrial waterfront, where toxic materials and poor communities live in close proximity, as well as a huge amount of underground infrastructure—subways, tunnels, electrical systems. Finally, New York is a sea-level-rise hot spot. Because of changes in ocean dynamics, as well as the fact that the ground beneath the city is sinking as the continent recovers from the last ice age, seas are now rising about 50 percent faster in the New York area than the global average.”

A society in crisis flees to the reassuring embrace of con artists and charlatans. Critics who ring alarm bells are condemned as pessimists who offer no “hope,” the drug that keeps a doomed population passive. The current administration—which removed Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan from the White House website as soon as Donald Trump took office—and the Republican Party are filled with happy climate deniers. They have adopted a response to climate change similar to that of the Virginia Legislature: ban discussion of climate change and replace the term with the less ominous “recurrent flooding.” This denial of reality—one also employed by those who assure us we can adapt—is driven by fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries that along with the rich and corporations fund the political campaigns of elected officials. They fear that a rational, effective response to climate change will impede profits. Our corporate media, dependent on advertising dollars, contributes to the conspiracy of silence. It ignores the patterns and effects of climate change, focusing instead on feel-good stories about heroic rescues or dramatic coverage of flooded city centers and storm refugee caravans fleeing up the coast of Florida.

Droughts, floods, famines and disease will eventually see the collapse of social cohesion in large parts of the globe, including U.S. coastal areas. The insecurity, hunger and desperation among the dispossessed of the earth will give rise to ad hoc militias, crime and increased acts of terrorism. The Pentagon report “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States Security” is blunt. “Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,” it grimly concludes.

But as Goodell points out, “In today’s political climate, open discussion of the security risks of climate change is viewed as practically treasonous.” When in 2014 then-Secretary of State John Kerry called climate change “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction” and compared it to the effects of terrorism, epidemics and poverty, the right-wing trolls, from John McCain to Newt Gingrich, went into a frenzy. Gingrich called for Kerry’s resignation because “a delusional secretary of state is dangerous to our safety.”

James Woolsey, the former head of the CIA, wrote in a climate change report for the Pentagon titled “The Age of Consequences: The Foreign-Policy National Security Implications of Global Climate Change”:

If Americans have difficulty reaching a reasonable compromise on immigration legislation today, consider what such a debate would be like if we were struggling to resettle millions of our own citizens—driven by high water from the Gulf of Mexico, South Florida, and much of the East Coast reaching nearly to New England—even as we witnessed the northward migration of large populations from Latin America and the Caribbean. Such migration will likely be one of the Western Hemisphere’s early social consequences of climate change and sea level rise of these orders of magnitude. Issues deriving from inundation of a large amount of our own territory, together with migration towards our borders by millions of our hungry and thirsty southern neighbors, are likely to dominate U.S. security and humanitarian concerns. Globally as well, populations will migrate from increasingly hot and dry climates to more temperate ones.

We will react like most patients with a terminal disease as they struggle to confront their imminent mortality. The gradual diminishing of space, perception and strength will weaken our capacity to absorb reality. The end will be too horrible to contemplate.

The tangible signs of our demise will be obvious, but this will only accelerate our retreat into delusional thinking. We will believe ever more fervently that the secular gods of science and technology will save us.

As Goodell writes, “People will notice higher tides that roll in more and more frequently. Water will pool longer in streets and parking lots. Trees will turn brown and die as they suck up salt water.” We will retreat to higher ground, cover our roofs with solar panels, finally stop using plastic and go vegan, but it will be too late. As Goodell writes, “even in rich neighborhoods, abandoned houses will linger like ghosts, filling with feral cats and other refugees looking for their own higher ground.” The water will continue to rise. “It will have a metallic sheen and will smell bad,” Goodell writes. “Kids will get strange rashes and fevers. More people will leave [low areas]. Seawalls will crumble. In a few decades, low-lying neighborhoods will be knee-deep. Wooden houses will collapse into a sea of soda bottles, laundry detergent jugs, and plastic toothbrushes. Human bones, floated out of caskets, will be a common sight. Treasure hunters will kayak in, using small robotic submersibles to search for coins and jewelry. Modern office buildings and condo towers will lean as salt water corrodes the concrete foundations and eats away at the structural beams. Fish will school in the classrooms. Oysters will grow on submerged light poles. Religious leaders will blame sinners for the drowning of the city.”

The damage suffered by Houston, Tampa and Miami is not an anomaly. It is the beginning of the end. Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

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Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister. He has written 12 books, including the New York Times best-seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco. His other books include "Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt," (2015) “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” (2008) and the best-selling “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2008). His latest book is "America: The Farewell Tour" (2018). His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and has sold over 400,000 copies. He writes a weekly column for the website Truthdig and hosts a show, "On Contact," on RT America.

Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries during his work for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Hedges was part of a New York Times team of reporters awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. 

Hedges speaks Arabic, French and Spanish and studied classics, including ancient Greek and Latin, at Harvard University. 

Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto. He currently teaches a class through Princeton University at a state prison in New Jersey in which half of the students are Princeton undergraduates and half are prisoners.

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IN THIS ARTICLE:

#barack obama #climate change #donald trump #economy #floods #florida#government #hurricanes #James Howard Kunstler #james woolsey #Jeff Goodell#migration #military #military bases #nuclear plants #opinion #pentagon #storms#td originals #trump administration #weather

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Live in the Moment

Dear friends,

It is wonderful that Fred Rogers is being honored and recognized for his gentle way of talking with children about important things, such as kindness and compassion and self respect. Those are the same things we teach children in our Centers for Spiritual Living. Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister but he never taught theology. Kids don’t need theology. They need to know how to navigate this world and remain in love with life and eager to participate in it.

So do we. Spirituality must be relatable to our experience or it is just theory. What I love most about New Thought is how invested we are in helping each other stay current. Dwelling in the past does not usually reap many rewards. We learn from it but we move forward. Day dreaming about the future has its place, if done with intention and real vision. For the most part, our lives need our immediate attention, right now, here and here again. What is important now in this moment? What can I bring to it that is helpful?

When I see those old politicians turning their backs on the suffering they have assisted in causing, I wish Fred Rogers could sit them down and have a talk with them. Seriously. They seem to have lost the soul that is forever young and always eager to bring more love into the world. Where and how did they get so far from themselves? In Emerson’s essay on the Oversoul, he writes beautifully of the soul and how it could shine through the façade of self we have created, if we allowed it to have its way. It is virtue, love, and genius; everything we could ever need to be real Fred Rogers grown-ups navigating this world in compassion and self-respect, helping to make it a better place for everyone.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspiritualivingbakersfield.com

Also see www.californiafreepress.net

Off the Top of My Head

China Alleviating Poverty at Greatest Rate

by John Lawrence, July 30, 2019

Between 1981 and 2008, the proportion of China's population living on less than $1.25/day is estimated to have fallen from 85% to 13.1%, meaning that roughly 600 million people were taken out of poverty. According to Wikipedia:

Since the start of far-reaching economic reforms in the late 1970s, growth has fueled a remarkable increase in per-capita income, helping to lift more people out of poverty than anywhere else in the world: China's per capita income has increased fivefold between 1990 and 2000, from $200 to $1,000. Between 2000 and 2010, per capita income also rose by the same rate, from $1,000 to $5,000, moving China into the ranks of middle-income countries. Between 1990 and 2005, China's progress accounted for more than three-quarters of global poverty reduction and a big factor in why the world reached the UN millennium development of dividing extreme poverty by two. This incredible success was delivered by a combination of a rapidly expanding labour market, driven by a protracted period of economic growth, and a series of government transfers such as an urban subsidy, and the introduction of a rural pension.

China must be doing something right. Its infrastructure is far superior to that of the US. China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI)is famous as an extension of their domestic infrastructure investments, but Russia is also investing heavily in infrastructure. Both countries need to do it in order to improve the future for their respective populations, and both Governments have avoided the Western development model of going heavily into debt in order to pay for creating and maintaining infrastructure. Both are, in fact, exceptionally low-debt Governments.

According to the “Global Debt Clock” at Economist, China has a public debt/GDP of 17.7%, and Russia’s is 8.0%. For comparison, America’s is 93.6%. The United States isn’t going into public debt in order to finance building or maintenance of infrastructure, but instead to finance expansions of its military, which is already (and by far) the world’s largest (in terms of its costs, but not of its numbers of troops).

While the US spends money on its military, some of which is sinking under the seas (see article by Chris Hedges "The Great Flood"), China is eradicating poverty in its own country and helping with its BRI all over the world, in Africa in particular. China’s most significant railway projects in East Africa are the diesel-powered Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway built in Kenya, and the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway, which is the first electrified railway of its kind in Africa. Both railway projects, costing $3.4 billion for Ethiopia and $3.2 billion for Kenya, are standard gauge railway projects paid for by Chinese loans. The two-year-old light-rail system in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, was financed by China as well to the tune of $475 million. 

While the US tries to control the world and to reshape it in its own image by means of its gargantuan military and weaponized dollar, the rest of the world led by China is concentrating on infrastructure development and eradicating poverty. In America poverty and homelessness are increasing as the rich get richer and the poor poorer. The idea that many Americans might be living on less than $2 a day once sounded almost impossible; that was supposed to be what poverty meant in the developing world, not a rich nation like the United States. But in a wildly influential 2013 study, two sociologists upended that assumption: Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer showed that by 2011, there were 1.6 million U.S. households with children that, for at least part of the year, had cash incomes that put them below the $2 per person mark. The number had risen from 636,000 in 1996—a 152.9 percent increase.

The US is spending enormous sums on its military while China is peacefully engaged in the economic development of the rest of the world. What's wrong with this picture? Is the American empire headed for the scrapheap of history just as many empires of the past including the Roman empire have been? If the US gets involved in a Green New Deal even a World Wide Green New Deal, maybe it can pull itself out of the present morass, forestall climate change and reduce homelessness in its empire. Then it could peacefully compete with China not in terms of advanced weapons systems but in terms of how much economic development and eradication of poverty it can bring to its own country and the rest of the world. Otherwise, China will be the world's preeminent empire by 2050.

The Cheapest Way to Save the Planet Grows Like a Weed

Posted on July 25, 2019 by Ellen Brown, Web of Debt blog

Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the cheapest and most efficient way to tackle the climate crisis. So states a July 4 article in The Guardian, citing a new analysis published in the journal Science. The author explains:

As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.

For skeptics who reject the global warming thesis, reforestation also addresses the critical problems of mass species extinction and environmental pollution, which are well documented. A 2012 study from the University of Michigan found that loss of biodiversity impacts ecosystems as much as climate change and pollution. Forests shelter plant and animal life in their diverse forms, and trees remove air pollution by the interception of particulate matter on plant surfaces and the absorption of gaseous pollutants through the leaves. Continue reading →

Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | Tagged: biodiversity, carbon sequestration, Green New Deal, hemp, pollution, public banking, reforestationo | 7 Comments

SHOULD DEMOCRATS PURSUE ANOTHER RESOLUTION TO IMPEACH TRUMP FOR HIS UNCONSTITUTIONAL CONDUCT?

by Frank Thomas

Robert Reich in a New Video, “The Real Reason To Impeach Trump” is saying the president is not above the law and should be impeached for his unconstitutional conduct. The basis for impeachment is thus not political. It’s about whether enforcing our constitution is important for its own sake, like for example, our constitutional provision of checks and balances which Reich thinks Trump is violating. Before responding to this idea, some background highlights might be helpful.  

BACKGROUND

Volume 1 of Mueller's report goes into well-documented detail how the Russians infiltrated our voting systems in 2016. Mueller said on TV yesterday they have been invading our voting systems for some time and are doing so right now. Volume 2 of the report also goes into well- documented detail how and when Trump, his lawyer, his associates, his son were willingly in contact with the Russians during the election campaign  to exchange data, strategy and damaging information that would help Trump defeat Hillary.  

Live before TC cameras, Mueller gave a not unimportant repeat question and answer explanation of key statements/conclusions in his report. Democrats wanted to hear the conclusions out of Mueller's mouth. That began with the first question: "The president has repeatedly said that your report concludes that there has been no 'obstruction of justice' and that he completely and totally is said to be innocent of any crimes. But that is not what your report says, is that correct? Mueller: "Correct. That's not what the report says." 

Another question: "Based on the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) ruling, a president cannot be indicted for a crime - despite your finding evidence of obstruction of justice. But after his presidency, Trump can be indicted. The reason you didn't indict president Trump was because of the OLC ruling, correct?  Mueller: "That's Correct." Mueller then later said: "Without the OLC ruling, Trump  would have been indicted." Then in his afternoon testimony, Mueller moderated that statement: "We have made no conclusion over the question of whether the president has committed a crime."

In his TV testimony, Mueller confirmed his report of the numerous contacts Trump and others working for him had with the Russians. He agreed that the president and his team welcomed the Russian interference and lied about it. After Trump's presidency, Mueller said he could be indicted on obstruction of justice in the court system. He didn't legally pursue testimony directly with Trump - something Trump refused to do - because it would have taken too much time to drag it through the courts.  

 So Mueller's investigative actions were restricted. He was bound by a DOJ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) ruling that a sitting president cannot be indicted for a crime. His assigned task was to inform  the Congress whether the Russians had invaded our voting system. Mueller stated clearly yesterday that his exhaustive report does not exonerate Trump for any possible crimes dealing with the Russians. Mueller did say he would have indicted Trump if not for the OLC decision. But he later watered down that statement. To repeat, Mueller's report gives much evidence on when and how Trump and his associates were in contact with the Russians to share information over the 2016 presidential elections. 

 But Mueller made it clear that investigating and pursuing whether obstruction of justice was committed by Trump sufficient for impeachment was NOT his assignment. The constitutional responsibility lies solely with the actions of three groups:  House members act as the prosecutors; Senate members act as the jurors; the Chief Justice presides. These are the checks and balances set by the Founding Fathers. Constitutionally, the House has the sole power to impeach; the Senate the sole power to try all impeachments. The Fathers  explicitly rejected making a Senate impeachment conviction appealable to the federal judiciary.   

The Democrats now have 235 House members, enough to vote and impeach Trump with no Republican support. However, conviction and removal by the Senate requires a two-thirds Senate majority vote or 67 Senate votes  Thus, 20 Republicans and all Democrats and Independents would have to vote against Trump. The Senate now has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and 2 Independents. So the two-thirds Senate majority vote needed to impeach and remove Trump is not going to happen. In fact, this has never happened. For this to happen, public sentiment would have to shift dramatically against Trump. And even then, it would be a long, brutally divisive legal process.

REICH's VIEW 

Reich reminds us that Trump is not above the law. As noted, The Framers established three branches of government - the President, the Congress, the Judiciary -  as a check-and-balance mechanism against each other, i.e., to constitutionally prevent one branch, like Trump's presidency, from trying to usurp, ignore or thwart the distribution of powers of other branches. Reich says Trump "appears to be" usurping the powers of the other branches. This constitutes a violation of our constitution; that in turn calls for the House to undertake an impeachment investigation and present evidence to the Senate.

I think Pelosi is caught between inflicting pain on Trump versus inflicting pain on Congress and the President in the ballot box. The House overwhelmingly killed a recent resolution to impeach Trump by 332 Republican and Democrat votes against and 95 Democrat votes for. My problem is the public wants to talk about healthcare, the climate crisis, infrastructure/education investments, a $15.00 minimum hourly worker wage, etc. Pelosi is struggling with going down the path of impeachment at this stage because it's so divisive, time consuming and NOT yet by far sufficiently supported by politicians of both parties and the general public . 

In Pelosi's mind we get one chance to impeach, it must be strong. She's aware Mueller's report does not exonerate Trump from obstruction of justice. But the impeachment process must play out slowly in the courts to get it right. Reich is inadvertently taking inadequate cognizance of the gap we have in knowing precisely what should be unlawful presidential behavior and what is lawful behavior. He unconsciously admits that gap with his conclusion noted previously:  

"Trump 'appears to be' usurping the powers of the other branches." 

I agree with Pelosi's careful legal approach. The country must get rid of this mentally disturbed, hate mongering, brutally divisive president. If the daily public conversation turns preponderantly to an intensified, new investigation of the president, I think Trump's chances for re-election will dangerously increase. The average American wants to hear concrete “doable tomorrow” solutions to our serious societal problems.

The Master Distractor will make fools of the Democrats if they don't focus effectively and pragmatically on constructive solutions/actions to our nation's problems – healthcare for all, a $15 minimum wage, investments in education, infrastructure, the climate crisis … and how to finance them without exploding deficits and national debt as Trump and his Administration are doing on a grand scale with wild spending and tax cuts going mainly to the top 5% and corporations.

I'm not saying quiet investigations should not be continued regarding Robert Reich’s idea of building a case that Trump is usurping our constitutional ‘check-and-balances’ – which, even if such a case is not successful, is morally justifiable. But I think that course is justifiable only if – and that’s a very big IF – low key, quiet on-going legal investigations provide clear, overwhelming legal grounds/evidence of unconstitutional conduct by Trump.

Intensifying the impeachment process and diverting much attention to it also feeds the media’s love for drama. This seems a fool's path to simply shame Trump during one of the most critical, if not the most critical, presidential election(s) in our history. Especially knowing it’s unlikely the House and certainly not the Senate will approve an impeachment process. It risks opening the door wider for Trump to win a presidential second term.

Frank Thomas
The Netherlands
July 30, 2019

It is Time for Us All to Speak our Truth

Dear friends,

Some of our Center for Spiritual Living Ministers are joining with other spiritual leaders at the Texas border today to stand up for human rights and dignity. Those of us who are unable to accompany them will be standing with them in consciousness. There is nothing political about spiritually motivated social activism. To ignore how innocent children are being treated would be as evil as the acts against them. The blatant denial of human rights is a spiritual issue, having its roots in patriarchal religions.

There is an old saying “if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” There is truth in that statement.   When we are wishy washy about things, we often are drawn to the loudest voice, not necessarily the wisest. It is easy to use ‘mob psychology’ to sway the masses.  Those of us who stand for the rights of all people must make our voices heard above the fray. We need to write, speak, march, engage in dialogues with diverse groups and of course, vote.

Spirituality, or the concept of our innate equality and our shared Source, has to be more than theory. It is a practice and that practice is more than daily meditation and prayer. It is about how we are in the world. Do we remain silent when others are suffering? Do we offer a differing point of view or are we afraid of being controversial? It is time for us all to speak our Truth and stand for liberty and justice for all. “We are the World! We are the children.”

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.centerforspirituallivingbakersfield.com

Check out www.californiafreepress.net