If you're not speaking out, you're not paying attention

Today's story is a farm bill hammered out in secrecy and planned to be slipped into another bill and voted on without debate.  That, as I recall, is not how policy is supposed to be made in a democracy.  You can read here.
DesMoines Register

The question, to me, is whether I'm willing to take responsibility for knowing what's going on, for educating myself, and for doing something about it.  Emails to legislators work.  Social media helps spread information.  And unless I'm willing to make the effort to be aware and then spread the word, I have no right to complain.

It's hard work.  We can't possibly know all that's going on but we can pay attention to what other people reveal.  Then comes the harder work - getting educated.  Knowing the pros and cons and learning the questions to ask.  And next step is to start talking.  Bring up whatever concerns we encounter - whether they're the environmental risks of hydraulic fracturing, the unhealthy impact of mass production and chemicals on our food supply, the inextricable ties between policy makers and big business, the failure of our educational system and the destruction of the middle class. 

It's good work.  It's essential work.

Radical Term Limits - a simple solution

I interviewed Frances Moore Lappe tonight - an inspiring woman who, forty years ago, wrote "Diet For A Small Planet."  She's been advocating for a more sustainable food system, and a better, more sustainable world, ever since.  Her newest book is "Ecomind- Changing the Way We Think To Create the World We Want."

Hunger, poverty, climate change, war - it all boils down, she says, to the need for a "living democracy."  That means a system that actually is for the people and by the people.  And the way to achieve that, she says, is to get the money out of politics.

I've been thinking much the same thing, and my idea is simple:  Radical Term Limits.  Politics was never meant to be a career.  It was a public service.  Let's go back to that concept.  Here's how:  no one, absolutely no one, can hold political office for more than two terms at any level.  Two terms at a local office, two terms at a state level, two terms at a federal level.  Thank you very much for your service. Go home.  Someone else has to step up.  No multiple offices at any level. 

This has to be accompanied by strict transparency requirements for all donations, disclosure of all interests in any businesses, ironclad restrictions on lobbyists.  But radical term limits is the key.

We'd have to have a lot more people involved in government.  That means we'd better educate our population, because a lot of them are going to have to serve.  No one would be in office long and that would make buying politicians a poor investment.  No political insiders - the turnover is too great.

Job security wouldn't be a worry - there wouldn't be any.  Instead of serving their own wallets and career aspirations, politicians would represent the voters who elected them.  Otherwise, one term only.  And the two term limit would ensure that there would be a sense of urgency to accomplish something.

Radical term limits.  Spread the word.

Corporate America - Meet the New Boss

I don't consider myself a raving conspiracy theorist.  But recent events make me wonder if I should reconsider and become one.

The Occupy Movement's central theme is disgust with what corporations are doing.  They control health care. They control media.  They control finances and they control what we eat.  They control energy and they want to control the earth's water supply.

And the bottom line, for all of it, is profit.

I recently interviewed one of the authors of "Good Company", a book that studied the behaviors of the Fortune 100.   They established a list of criteria that studied them as employers, as producers and as stewards of the environment and communities.  And most of them scored no better than a D.

The good news is that the study also showed that those companies who scored better also were more profitable.  Consumers respond positively to good companies.  But most companies studied aim for a quick profit and chew up employees, communities, the environment and produce poor quality products while skirting regulations or break laws while building the cost of fines into the price of doing business.

While researching a story on the shortage of psychiatrists in my region, I found that insurance companies manipulate the market.  They collect profits while offering seemingly-sufficient panels of specialists.  But those panels are composed of doctors who don't accept new patients, who no longer accept their insurance, or who've been dead for years.  Other psychiatrists take only cash because they cannot spend the time filling out the reams of paperwork required by insurance companies.  Treatment centers have to fight with insurance companies to get continuing coverage for patients who still need care.

 Doctors are pressured to prescribe the newest medicines because they have a better profit margin.  Companies spend millions on ad campaigns to get you to ask your doctor for them.

And it's so "normal" we haven't even stopped to ask what the hell is going on. It's capitalism run amok - create the demand to satisfy the needs of an ever hungrier group of investors.  Maximize profit, minimize expense.  Taken to extremes, it means shortcuts.  Cheap labor.  Defective, insufficiently tested products raced to market.  Minimal care with maximum profit.

Thank you, Occupy Wall Street.  You're forcing a second look.  And the view is disturbing.

I Should Do Something --- but What?

I find myself, for the first time, thinking about protesting.  With each day's headlines, I wonder if I should make some sort of grand gesture, even if it's futile.The evidence that we're heading down a bad road continues to pile up and I am seeing no signs of an imminent change of course.

1.  During Republican debates, the audience cheers at the prospect of letting people die.  And executing people.

2.  The US supports the Arab Spring everywhere but in Palestine.

3.  General Electric paid no taxes in  2010.  In fact, we paid THEM to keep making profits.

4.  During the recession, the largest banks have made a massive profit; but Moody's is now downgrading them because of the possibility that if their speculative investments begin to crash, it's possible the US government won't bail them out.  And that could create the very bank crisis scenario the pundits are dreading.

5.  The London riots got front page, first block coverage for days on every news station.  Protesters occupying Wall Street are being ignored by most press outlets.  But not by the NYPD.

6.  Our president will not sacrifice his ambition to the greater good. He made it clear from day one he wanted two terms.  Now, when nothing has made much of an impact on the recession, he will continue to play it safe to ensure his campaign coffers are full for his re-election campaign.

7.   There is no press but the Internet.  Rick Perry didn't win the Florida primary.  Neither did Mitt Romney.  Or anyone else I'd ever heard of.  But I still can tell you nothing about the man who won because the nightly news (NBC, in this instance) simply mentioned what a stunning upset it was, then did another story on the two candidates they already had stories on:  Mitt and Rick.
  Nice, Lester Holt.  Are you executive producer when you're at that fancy desk?

8.  College students can't find jobs.  So they're racking up more students loans to stay in school, hoping things will improve in a year or two.

9.  8.8 million people worked part time in August because it's the only work they could find.  16.1 percent of American workers are underemployed.  31% of the workforce was underemployed at some point in 2009.

10.  Desperation for cash is a major part of the conversation as states consider hydraulic fracturing, the effects of which were illustrated so pointedly in "Gasland".

There is fast money to be made.  The long term environmental impacts may be far more expensive to deal with.  How much does it cost to import enough drinking water for an entire state?  Several states?

That's just ten items off the top of my head.  The actual list is far longer.  I haven't even mentioned our multiple wars, the fortunes being made by hired mercenaries, our unhealthy mass produced food, our continued discrimination against people who don't look like us.

It's feeling like last days of the Roman Empire to me.  And the thought that keeps crossing my mind is that I should just start walking.  Walk from New York to California and back to Washington.  Criss cross the country, bring a recorder and document what I find along the way.  I know I'm a speck in the ocean, but if I did it long enough, maybe it might get some notice.  Maybe it'll force a conversation.  Or maybe I'm mixing up political activism with Forrest Gump.


 

Maybe a hunger strike?  I suspect I would starve to death before any real change occurred.

And so I feel helpless.  For now.  But if there were enough people like me, who are tired of emotional toddlers running the world, maybe there is something we could accomplish together.

The UK Is Burning

I have been listening to the news from the UK and it is both terrifying and heartbreaking.  It is also ominous.

Terrifying because the thought of gangs of angry, destructive people roaming the cities in packs, destroying everything in their path, is one that makes me feel particularly powerless.  How do you reason with a pack?

Heartbreaking because the "authorities" whose authority is being rejected are reacting like disapproving parents.  I actually heard one government spokesman say, "If they'll go home and behave we'll talk to them."  Behave?  Up until now, they have.  And no one talks to them.  That's not how the game is played.  Power talks to dissent when it can no longer ignore it.

Heartbreaking because there has to be a reason this is happening.  People don't just suddenly explode into violence.  They burn, slowly and steadily, for a long time.  They simmer.  If the heat isn't turned down, they boil.  And at some point, they boil over or blow up.

I don't condone violence.  I don't argue that there's anything justified about the destruction, the looting, the theft.  But I know there has got to be a REASON.  I found a Londoner's blog today that offers a damned good guess at what's happening.  Everyday people have nothing to lose and that is dangerous.


Meet Penny Red.  And pay attention.  Don't think this is a strictly UK phenomenon, you great embarrassments in Washington.

Panic in the Streets

The Internet Changes Everything

Have you considered how completely different our lives are since the Internet? It's been brought home to me lately.

Most recently, my guy's new "album" is out. Well, it isn't really an album. It's an mp3 download. The music industry is quickly phasing out the last physical evidence of music recordings - the CD. Two years of hard work is now available (with some soulful backup work by yours truly) on the Internet for your downloading pleasure.



The entire music industry has been gutted by digital audio files because the big players didn't see it coming. Then Napster started giving music away for free. And the industry's been scrambling to figure out what to do ever since.

Anyone can be a rock star, at least in their minds. All you need is Garage Band or some other basic editing program and - ooooh - your music is out in the world. That's generally not a good thing, as some folks should keep their music in the garage where it belongs. But it's also opened opportunities for some truly talented people to be heard by a global audience.

My guy's been a professional musician his entire life and he's watched the industry expand, contract and then go cold like a dying star. He's feeling his way in this new world where anyone can knock on the door; only the truly talented get in.

My area of study these days is the publishing industry. That's changed a bit lately, hasn't it? Writers, for a decade or more, have found it easier to submit their work to agents and publishers. Agents and publishers have become more and more selective as their inboxes fill and crash. And then came the ebook.

My NPR affiliate has a no-ebooks policy. They won't talk about them. They don't think they're real books. It reminds me of the music industry's attitudes toward downloads. They'll be changing their minds soon because they'll have to.

I have an ebook. And it'll soon be a paperback. We're doing it backwards because nowadays we can.

At work? We all have computers and now we edit documents in a program that lets us all see each other's edits. We're phasing out paper, eliminating the need for thousands of square feet of storage space. And where are those documents stored? The cloud. The vast, nebulous, virtual digital warehouse. In other words, they don't really still exist. But they do.

It's a change in concept, in thinking. Just because you can't see it, touch it, taste it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's a transition to a virtual world. And when I think about where it could be going, I think it's time to write a scifi novel.

What do you think the world will be like in ten years?

Turning Tides

I've got the ocean on my mind lately. Spending a day on the shore will do that to you - that salt air and that constant low tidal rumble stay with you long after you've left. I live within a day's drive of the Northern Atlantic, but I still only get there once or twice each year and each visit is a cherished memory.

This year we stayed on Cape Cod and spent a simply perfect day on Martha's Vineyard. I love my mountains, but I'd leave them behind for a life by the sea in a heartbeat.

When I got home and turned my attention to my radio show, I found a feature story on a Maine woman who has made her living harvesting sea snails, known as periwinkles or "wrinkles", in a sleepy little northern town called Lubec. I've been to Lubec - it's not a tourist town by the sea, it's a working village where the people rely on the sea for their livelihoods. But according to the story I found, fishing is dying there. As one species after another is overfished, the economy crashes further and Lubec's people are struggling.

Julie Keene and her son got by harvesting periwinkles - not getting wealthy, but not starving. Then the rockweed which is essential to the periwinkles' habitat began to disappear.

Apparently rockweed, that bladder covered seaweed that proliferates along the rocky Atlantic coast, is valued by industry as an emulsifier. Commercial harvesters are cutting rockweed off the rocks, leaving a barren landscape of stubs and wiping out a unique habitat.

Julie Keene, a rough, independent woman, has traded her harvesting basket for a camera and has been photographing the devastation left by the commercial harvesters. She testified at the state capitol in hopes of convincing legislators to ban the harvesting of rockweed.

She's not alone. There's a coalition trying to raise awareness of the issue.

There is a pile of swirling garbage hundreds of miles across in the Pacific. There's another in the Atlantic. Industry is scalping the rocks for the plants that grow there. There are environmental emergencies all around us. And it feels too damned big to do anything about.

But Julie Keene is doing something. We can, too, even if it's only to learn more and spread the word.