Better Tomorrows

Today is more than the beginning of a new year. It’s the beginning of a new decade—the second decade of the 21^st century—and a time for making new resolutions (or renewing old ones) and for renewing hope and optimism for better prospects with which to shape better tomorrows.

28 years ago to the day, I resolved to quit smoking (tobacco). I fell off that wagon a couple of days later, then climbed back aboard it on January 10, 1982, and shook the tobacco monkey off my back for good.

27 years ago to the day, following an all-night New Years party, I watched daybreak through drooping eyelids and bleary eyes and the beginning of my last hangover, and resolved to kick my alcohol dependency for good. That resolution stuck on the first try.

If there’s a moral here, it’s that whenever you resolve to do something, do it with as much seriousness as you can muster. Be intelligent about your resolution; be realistic, as well. Apply passion and commitment liberally, and above all, don’t forget to congratulate yourself and give yourself a pat on the back every day that you successfully adhere to your resolution. These are tactics that have always worked for me, and there’s a good chance they’ll work for you, too.

So, what other thoughts do I have on this New Years day? Questions? Many. Answers? Few. Predictions for the country? Dire. Reminds me of a conversation between the Harper brothers:

Alan: Should I change?

Charlie: You should . . . but you probably won’t.

Best wishes for many better tomorrows, everyone. Happy New Year!

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Jane Hamsher is Right

Forcing taxpayers to send trillions to private insurers for junk insurance is just plain wrong.

Anyone who thinks that mandating payments to insurance companies is healthcare reform should get a mandate to do a stint in reform school.

This non-partisan message is right, too:

If the current healthcare bill becomes law, it will be a healthcare disaster for the citizens of this country.

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Shopocalypse Now

Once again, ‘tis the season in which I celebrate not celebrating Christmas. It’s a personal tradition, begun 20 years ago, that’s only gotten easier over time.

Distancing myself from Christmas wasn’t something that happened all at once, it happened in increments as I abandoned one destructive Christmas ritual after another until none remained. Call it “tapering off,” if you will.

You see, Christmas is a holiday tradition that no longer works for me, primarily because it’s touted as a religious tradition and there’s no room in my life—or in my philosophy—for religion. A second reason is that Christmas has devolved into a shopocalyptic spending frenzy that’s become a cash cow for corporations at the expense of everything else.

If shopping ‘til you drop, then working ‘til you drop to pay the tab is your thing, go for it. But count me out. I prefer to celebrate this holiday season in observance of my new tradition—blogging about how and why I kicked the old tradition.

Harry Kwanukkahmas!

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Winter Solstice

December 21^st: The winter solstice, shortest day of the year.

This is also my shortest post of the year. Serendipity? Or synchronicity?

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When Public Education Fails, Useful Idiots Proliferate

One of the drawbacks of lower tax revenues is that education is always among the first of public services to take the hit. As tax revenues decline, the quality of education goes down. School districts, deprived of essential operating funds, react by gutting curricula, laying off teachers, shortening the school year, expanding student-to-teacher ratios, and—in extreme cases—closing schools. The net results are a general dumbing-down of the population and a plentiful supply of useful idiots to provide the labor necessary for wealth creation.

Because most corporations don’t volunteer to fund public education (and usually vehemently object when it’s suggested that they do so), I can only assume that they want workers who are just smart enough to do the work, but not smart enough to ask questions or think independently.

This is yet another way corporations game a system they’ve been instrumental in contriving. Once again they reap all of the benefits without incurring any of the costs. But, with their sole raison d’être being to assure maximum profits for their investors, it’s probably foolish to expect corporations to act in contravention to those ideals.

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A World in Transition

An excerpt from the novel, Pipeline, by Peter Schechter:

“. . .. The Americans are shortsighted; they won’t see that a long-term dependency on Russia is a strategic trap. They can’t get beyond their big cars. Their crazy use of water. Of electricity. Spend, spend. Consume, consume. The United States is incapable of change. It survives on a mountain of overconsumption and debt. They can’t change their culture, so they will jump at any chance to keep things the way they are.”

[Note: Italics are mine]

We Americans are an arrogant lot for the most part. Enamored of our ingenuity and cleverness, our privilege, we blindly stumble toward the future without regard for the consequences of our actions or critical analysis of probable outcomes resulting from the choices we make. Short-term profits override the need for long-term survivability, and critical topics like sustainability, economic stability, species extinction, environmental degradation, climate change, infrastructure repair and replacement, resource depletion, food and water security, energy independence, healthcare reform, fair elections, and myriad others are backburnered because vested interests wish to maintain the status quo.

This short-sighted approach to the future by business and political leaders—they’re virtually one and the same—all but guarantees that the U.S. will continue down the road to third-world status. But that’s probably a good thing. We Americans have been resource hogs and energy spendthrifts for far too long. Getting knocked back a peg or two will do us all some good, and give each of us pause to consider where we, as a nation, are heading, and how we plan to get there.

“In the future, our children’s understanding of what we broadly call “energy” will differ greatly from our own. How we, as citizens, relate to what we use to drive our cars, fuel our factories, heat our homes, and brighten our computer screens will change radically over the next twenty-five years. America’s leaders face choices today that will decide whether tomorrow this transition will be traumatic and impoverishing or deliberate and enriching.” —Peter Schechter

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A Message Worth Repeating

Many thanks to mahakal, at Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, for posting this video. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t duplicate someone else’s efforts, but these are trying circumstances and perilous times, and the message contained therein is one that’s worth repeating, again and again, until the small-minded weasels who purport to be our leaders get a clue and actually lead instead of dictate.

See how simple life can be?

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Chew on this!

For every 100 Americans saying, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it, anymore,” there’s an arrogant, filthy-rich motherfucker saying, “I’m glad as hell, and I’m going to take as much as I can get.”

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Medical Marijuana: It IS “The Cure”

This is the cure that the government, the pharmaceutical industry, and the medical establishment don’t want you to know about. Certainly these groups are doing everything in their power to deny people access to the medicine that can cure them.

Watch the video Run from the Cure. In just under an hour, you can learn some startling truths about medical marijuana and the underlying “reefer madness” that keeps the gift of life out of people’s hands.

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The Law of the (Asphalt) Jungle

Too many people assume (wrongly, in my opinion) that laws are put in place to protect them. In practice and in reality, nothing could be farther from the truth. Laws do nothing to protect you from the actions of anyone who willfully or ignorantly violates the law.

Laws against murder do not prevent people from being murdered, laws against robbery do not prevent people from being robbed, laws against drunk driving do not prevent drunks from driving, nor does all manner of traffic laws prevent people from being involved in all manner of traffic incidents. In short, don’t count on laws to save your sorry ass.

The primary purposes of any man-made law are to protect those who have power from those who have none, and to provide a means for those in authority to apprehend and punish those who violate the law. Another function of law is as a revenue raising device, whereby governments and corporations extract money from ordinary citizens in the form of fines, permits, legal fees, taxes, etc. Each time legislators pass a new law, they create a new class of criminals, thus lending support to the ever-growing bureaucracy of the criminal justice system.

I raise the issue of laws because of an incident last Sunday evening in which two pedestrians were struck by a car as they started to cross S.E. Foster Road in a crosswalk. One young woman was killed outright, the other critically injured.

Elly Blue, an editor for the BikePortland blog, posted an article about this incident on Monday, and Jonathan Maus, BikePortland’s founder and editor-in-chief, followed up with another article on Friday. Together, those articles generated more than 100 comments (as of this writing) from interested readers. Sadly, a large percentage of those comments expressed the idea that lower speed limits, stricter laws, harsher punishments and better enforcement might somehow, magically, reduce or altogether eliminate serious injuries and fatalities in, on, or about our common transportation infrastructure.

Sorry to pop your bubble of self-delusion, but you’re dreaming if you think that laws do anything more than provide a means for dealing with a bad situation after the fact; laws have never been able to regulate personal behavior on a reliable basis. Regardless of legalities, rights-of-way, blame assessment and all the rest of it, expecting someone else to look out for your well being when you do not is suicidal under the best of circumstances. Abdicating responsibility for one’s safety to others is beyond comprehension.

Keep in mind that the laws of man can be (and often are) broken, but that natural laws—physical laws—cannot. If you’re on foot or on a bike and you tangle with a car or truck, you lose by default (I’m pretty sure that e=mc² has something to do with it).

Please, people, maintain a high level of situational awareness; pay attention to your surroundings and all that’s going on around you, and disabuse yourselves of the notion that laws are a good substitute for good sense.

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