Pink Salmon

Carnaval

2012-01-29T14:03:00.004-05:00

'Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt'
Coined by the Roman poet Juvenal in the first Century in his Satires lamenting the continuing slide of his former Roman Republic into dictatorship.

Finally, the meeting of the masters of the universe in Davos ends, allowing us the time we need to stock up the booze, get our moves down, our bangles and beads ready for tossing, and our bodies greased for the press of the flesh that is Carnaval.
Dispatches from the front have been so depressing:
“I’ve never been as scared as I am about the world,” Donald Tsang, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said yesterday in Davos, Switzerland. “Nobody’s immune. You need decisive action. You need to inspire confidence.”
By Simon Kennedy and Jana Randow - Jan 29, 2012 3:00 AM GMT-0500

"While Soros, whose new book, Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States, will be published in early February, is currently focused on Europe, he’s quick to claim that economic and social divisions in the U.S. will deepen, too. He sympathizes with the Occupy movement, which articulates a widespread disillusionment with capitalism that he shares. People “have reason to be frustrated and angry” at the cost of rescuing the banking system, a cost largely borne by taxpayers rather than shareholders or bondholders.

Occupy Wall Street “is an inchoate, leaderless manifestation of protest,” but it will grow. It has “put on the agenda issues that the institutional left has failed to put on the agenda for a quarter of a century.” He reaches for analysis, produced by the political blog ThinkProgress.org, that shows how the Occupy movement has pushed issues of unemployment up the agenda of major news organizations, including MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. It reveals that in one week in July of last year the word “debt” was mentioned more than 7,000 times on major U.S. TV news networks. By October, mentions of the word “debt” had dropped to 398 over the course of a week, while “occupy” was mentioned 1,278 times, “Wall Street” 2,378 times, and “jobs” 2,738 times. You can’t keep a financier away from his metrics.
As anger rises, riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable. “Yes, yes, yes,” he says, almost gleefully. The response to the unrest could be more damaging than the violence itself. “It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.” Newsweek

A deterioration of Europe's debt crisis is the first thing analysts name when asked about economic threats in 2012. And by most accounts it's almost certain that things are going to get worse.

"It's going to blow up," said Harry Clark, head of Clark Capital Management. "They aren't doing enough to stop the problem."
The question is, just how bad will things get? Clark thinks several of the southern European countries will leave the euro and return to their previous currencies.
He says that will lead to massive bank failures in both Europe and the United States and plunge Europe into a "deep recession by the end of the first quarter of 2012."
Scarily, those aren't even the most dire predictions. Some fear the euro could disappear altogether, with Europe reverting to the type of ultra-nationalism that plagued the continent in the run-up to WWII.
Steve Hargreaves @CNNMoney

Here is a Der Spiegel story of the frightening trend they see emerging in Europe. For those who won't read it, the turn to the right is on the wheels of fears of Islam, and foreign immigration.

Any of the Islam-o-phobia, or anti-immigrant rhetoric sound familiar? The American political maelstrom adds nothing to the discussion of how we might right the world. We either deny that we have problems (climate change, debt, or justice) or send up vague memories of glorious times past that can be "re-claimed".

Respondents to Common Dreams coverage of Occupy Davos (WEF) included these two examples I copy here as indicative of a problem:
Posted by Wilber1 Jan 25 2012 - 12:41am

"I support OWS, I wasn't saying to not take part in the movement. I am just being realistic. How many people right now want to replace the system vs. how many want to simply spread the wealth a little more evenly, maybe do something on the environment? Relatively moderate changes. The question is, if the system does stay in place in the short term, even in a more humane, moderate form, can it sustain itself in the long run? What does keeping the system in place mean for poorer countries, or the environment? How will all of this impact our largely bi-partisan, reactionary foreign policy? Other countries are growing independent and standing up the US.
I agree that the movement is world wide, but it is at the present time very ideologically diverse. We agree that the current system sucks. Do we agree what to replace it with? How many are even aware of possible alternatives? Lots of work left to do."

Posted by skeptimist Jan 24 2012 - 8:27pm

"I don't think you can "make capitalism better". It's a mechanism like a chainsaw - best you can do is try to control it. Same for socialism. However, the answer to your complaints is out there and it's been working for hundreds of years. Look up Hutterites."

This frustration, this inability to construct even the beginning of what the alternative might look like in "our world", handcuffs them even before the terrorists cops grab them. They need to study viable options. The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy begins with the following premise: "Perpetual economic growth is neither possible nor desirable. Growth, especially in wealthy nations, is already causing more problems than it solves. Recession isn't sustainable or healthy either. The positive, sustainable alternative is a steady state economy." Learn More >>
Sharable.net is documenting the pragmatic implementation of the new commons.
These are but two examples of a world in the process of changing the root causes of our global crisis. Start here.

Persons of the Year

2011-12-15T09:59:00.003-05:00

Persons of the Year-The Oligarchs

This was the year in which it was confirmed that corrupt politicians come in all flavors; ethnicities, colors, sexual orientations, and educational attainment levels. For anyone paying attention, the self interest of world leaders reached a level of such proportions that even the most docile acted up and out against them. It is yet to be determined if the activists have changed anything. The continued reliance on the processes of governance, without structural change, forebodes that where uprising happened, the net effect was to change the faces of the players, but not the game.

"Peanuts", first year psychology courses, ad-men and comedians all extol the truth of negative reinforcement, "don't care what you say about me, just say something". GM execs used to say of Nader, when he was busy critiquing the safety of their autos, he wasn't knocking the use of autos, (which claim 1 million lives annually), he was worried about them rolling over. Nader was occupying their space. He was critiquing them. He was not out advocating for something like public transportation.

As long as we validate the brutes, the greedy, the killers, by occupying their spaces, we insure that we are not contemplating what the alternative might look like.

No better evidence can be cited than the results of the COP 17 on global climate change that just ended in Durban, South Africa. There the players from all perspectives, pro-business, big oil, 350.org, or reps from the so-called 99%, pointed at "governments' policy" to increase, limit, change, control, or modify behavior by the imposition of rules. As if large third parties, can by the force, control the inclination of individuals to destroy their world. Evidence to the contrary abounds: speed limits, FDA's inability to regulate the food and drug industries, anti-smoking regulations, the SEC, are just the tip of a list, exclusively American, that would give credence to the observation that humankind is it's own worst enemy, and they are ungovernable.

Naomi Klein wrote a piece for the Nation that she discussed with Andrew Revkin here. "The piece begins with Klein’s conclusion, reached after she spent time at a conclave on climate sponsored by the libertarian Heartland Institute, that passionate corporate and conservative foes of curbs on greenhouse gases are right in asserting that a meaningful response to global warming would be a fatal blow to free markets and capitalism.

She challenges the environmental left to embrace this reality instead of implying that modest changes in lifestyle and shopping habits and the like can decarbonize human endeavors on a crowding planet."

These are statements well worth reading, within the context of seeing the world as left/right, corporate/individual, or as organized or randomized. What neither Andrew or Naomi can say, they do make their livings being pundits in mainstream media, is that the revolution, if you actually want it, is within our means. It is not dependent on powerful governments, or NGOs, or corporate reform.

What Gandhi knew, what MLK knew, was that margins are razor thin. The boycott is the easiest and most effective weapon for change. Outstanding examples are the refusal of American colonials to buy British goods after the passage of the Stamp Act (1765), the Chinese boycott of U.S. goods (1905) because of the poor treatment of Chinese in America, the refusal of Gandhi's followers to buy British-made goods in India, and the Arab League boycott (1948) of all companies dealing with the state of Israel.

The "market" and specific targets within it, cannot withstand a withdrawal of even 10% of their customer base. Here's a list of net margins.

Want to integrate a bus system, stop riding. Want to bring a consumer driven economy to its knees, stop buying. Want to change the global demand for carbon, stop driving. Don't appreciate one or another corporate policy, find out what they produce and stop buying it. Koch Industries is in the news a lot and produce many consumer goods. The Wonkette had some advice on the subject.

There are some very dedicated boycott organizers out there. Scan this site for inspiration. The point is to stop being driven by "their" agenda. That was the anti-message the OWS tried to deliver. The irony was that they validated (by occupying) Wall Street as the power center. What if all those college students prevailed on their institutions to stop dealing with the street? What if they implored their parents to move their money off "the street"? What if, like the example of these young Canadian delegates to COP 17, they turned their collective backs on the systems that oppress them?

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

Mahatma Gandhi.

Learning to count

2011-12-01T10:36:00.003-05:00

You go girl

It is not enough to simply shout or sign that the system is unfair and thus has to be reformed. It would help if protesters knew how it was unfair and could target their rage appropriately. Protesters must learn to count.

OWS, strikes by British government workers, Greek citizens demanding political reform, are all doomed if the participants don't know how to count. The most recent example of the so-called liberal media getting it wrong and misguiding their readers occurred in today's NYT op-ed by Nicholas Kristof. In his article he recounts the confessions of a former Chase banker who cooked the country. He then goes on to report the findings of the Bloomberg revelation that has minds whirring; "as Bloomberg Markets magazine published a terrific exposé based on lending records it pried out of the Federal Reserve in a lawsuit. It turns out that the Fed provided an astonishing sum to keep banks afloat — $7.8 trillion, equivalent to more than $25,000 per American.
The article estimated that banks earned up to $13 billion in profits by re-lending that money to businesses and consumers at higher rates. The Federal Reserve action isn’t a scandal, and arguably it’s a triumph. The Fed did everything imaginable to avert a financial catastrophe — and succeeded. The money was repaid."
There's the rub, "the money was repaid".

To understand why the money was not repaid you have to know about an important fundamental: This is the definition of the Bond Carry Trade:
For the bond market, this refers to a trade where you borrow and pay interest in order to buy something else that has higher interest. For example, with a positively sloped term structure (short rates lower than long rates), one might borrow at low short term rates and finance the purchase of long-term bonds. The carry return is the coupon on the bonds minus the interest costs of the short-term borrowing. Of course, if long-term interest rates unexpectedly rose (and long-term bond prices fell as a result), the carry trade could become unprofitable.

The second fundamental is to understand that the long tradition of the Fed NOT signaling what moves it was about to make re. interest rates kept the process of a free market capitalism alive and cost players money in that they had to hedge (protect themselves) if the Fed were to change interest rates. Now the fed has spoken and told the players that they will not raise rates for at least two years. The effect of this is to allow the banks (the major players) to borrow Fed money at virtually no interest rate and invest the same money in long term treasuries. That is what they are doing with the majority of the money, not lending it to business or home buyers. They then pocket the difference, firm up their balance sheets, and return the loan when they want to.

What was lost to the Fed was the opportunity costs. Money they might have made in their portfolio had they not given it to the bankers for free.

Opponents of bailouts complain that to help "main street" or home owners, is impossible because of "moral hazard", picking winners and losers, giving one group an unfair advantage. But that is just what the Fed has done.

Imagine the following scenario for example. You own a failing cupcake business. The Fed decides that your business is critical; you employ people, are in the stream of commerce, and anchor a block of retail shops. They decide to bail you out. They lend you let's say 3 mil at no cost which you promptly invest in 30 year government bonds yielding roughly 4%. You pocket the 120k annual cash flow, (money the Fed would have earned) keep your business running, and when all turns bright again, you repay the original 3 mil loan. That opportunity doesn't exist for you. That is what is, has, and continues to be the unfairness that those who are suffering the consequences of Fed policy haven't been able to articulate. Make no mistake. Central Banks all over the world have made up some of the losses (most still remain off the books) of their member banks and allowed the underlying failures on investments wiped out in the crisis to fester. So housing value remains low, which limits tax revenue, which breaks governments ability to function (Teachers are fired, tuitions rise, services are privatized). Pension trusts losses mount and therefore are unable to meet their obligations. Businesses can't get loans, there is no job creation, and the economy craters.

Not to worry. the Fed triumphed and they are being repaid.

Enough is enough

2011-11-11T10:16:00.005-05:00

Collee was an apple man. He grew them, picked and packed and shipped them himself from his several hundred acre orchard in the Shenandoah Valley. He brought Carrie and me an apple ladder and pointed toward a small grove where he kept his heirlooms; smokehouse, maiden's blush, and a variety of pippins. We strapped on pickers' vests, deep barrel chested leathers for collecting as you climb up into the trees. After we nearly toppled from the weight of it all we staggered back up to the farmhouse chomping on an apple that contained the nectar of the gods. I offered one to Collee and he refused: "I've had my last apple," he told us. "Every week for 60 years I've delivered apples to market. I would place a peck in the cab and eat as I drove. One day it occurred to me that I had eaten near a million apples. I surmised that that was all the apples God intended a man to eat. I quit then and there. Haven't had an apple since."

I brewed beer. English style ales. It is a relatively simple process, one you can learn, and was a great source of "real" beer in an era of PBR, Bud, and Corona piss. I never had a fail or any of the horror stories associated with brew your own. When we moved south I gave the works away. There were nothing but piss beers in Florida at the time, Sierra Nevada had to travel a great distance to get there, and so like Collee, I told myself I had had my last beer. Then we arrived in Maine. There is a vital micro brew industry here and it was easy to reconnect with a product. There are five breweries within 5 miles of where I live and we have visited them all. They make good beer.

I read an article in which a bar (Ebenezer's, Lovell, Maine) was mentioned as the best place in the country to sample Belgian beer. A perfect excuse for a day trip. We went and challenged the boss to tell me why my cost point was about to jump by a factor of three, and what all the fuss was about? He asked what our taste preferences were and when we told him we didn't appreciate fruit in our beer he offered that Coke nearly killed Belgian beer. The demand for sweet changed the brewers style in an attempt to keep up with the market BUT, there were many traditionalists that were making historic beers. The Trappists were the gold standard. This became one of those days. I'm sure this is old news to some of you, it brought us to our knees. We drank incredible beers and American crafters have learned the art.

I've done some research and I came upon this article which brought my attention to the economics of the enterprise. I am not moved to take on the cloth, but I appreciate the life lessons containing in the following quote:
"St. Sixtus brews just 60,000 cases of beer a year. The famous Westvleteren 12 sells for about $33 a case, the blond 6 is the cheapest at $23 for 24 bottles. That makes enough money to cover the costs of maintaining the abbey, where 28 monks work. There's also a little extra to help the needy. The brewery currently is running at maximum capacity. And the monks are not interested in raising prices or production, because that would require hiring more outside workers (they have three) and working with distributors."
An intentional community coming together, creating a great product, making enough money for themselves and those less fortunate, that is an ethic we can all learn from.

As we enter the gift giving season consider these other representative samples of great product being produced at other monasteries:
Trappist jams which distributes a variety of products from around the world.
Fruitcake, cheese, bourbon and fudge from Gethsemani Farms
Fruitcake, truffles, and honey
Simply divine cookies
Some of the world's finest liquors are crafted by monks.
and this story featured vinegar produced in the Hudson Valley

I am sure you can add others, please do, and any other examples of successful small scale commercial enterprises that suggest an alternative to business as usual.

Myth Busting

2011-10-28T15:05:00.002-04:00

Myth Busting

For the first 6000 years of human organization armed forces were required to enslave or indenture a workforce to break their bodies doing something they didn't want to do; Build a pyramid, a temple, an edifice that ennobled the "king" who managed to employ those forces. Now we have evolved to the point that thousands line up for the privilege of enslaving themselves. We have instituted a set of fundamental myths that reinforce the process of self enslavement: There is a protestant work ethic that purports to demonstrate a person's grace through the observation of their hard work. Thank you Martin Luther.
We have instilled in the culture a corruption of Spencer's observation of natural selection and reduced "survival of the fittest" to a mano-a-mano fight for life.
We have embedded "what do you do for a living" so deep into our language that our job is now synonymous with our human value and the lack of job implies death.
Compensation for labor is said to be proportionate to the value of the earner and, as if you didn't have millions of examples of that myth, the new data by-product of OWS is proof enough, that those who have the most, do the least.

Of course 6000 years of this has made us insane and thus we contradict ourselves. We worship at the feet of the lucky; the heirs, the attractive, the criminal, those who have done nothing to deserve the inordinate wealth they possess. We devalue the uncompensated work of the people that perform our most critical tasks; rearing our young, or being companions for our aged. When we try to reform these behaviors we deflect from the personal to the general and get caught in the impossibility of revolution. There is nothing wrong with Marx's foundation logic. He nailed the issues all those years ago. What confounds his intellectual heirs is that portion of human activity that seems to bred in the bone, or worse, is excited by behavior en-masse, our fears and demons.

The myth of scarcity has forced us into a hoarding behavior. If there is not enough to go around, I must ensure mine.
The myth of the rugged individual is actually getting some juice from the Republican campaigns. Thank you Ayn Rand. We are not going to march 7 billion people across a prairie and settle them in single family homes. We are linked to each other from the womb to the grave and its time to acknowledge that mutuality.
The myth that people will not perform critical tasks necessary for our survival is belied by the fact the majority of us take out the trash, mow the lawn, read the bedtime story and make the coffee. The way we compensate for those tasks that require special talents or for which people will not volunteer is upside down. Why the basketball player, who would do his/her job for nothing makes more than the garbage man is absurd. We should compensate inversely to the degree the person doesn't want to do the job or perform the service. I love it when on a snow day the announcement goes out, "all non critical employees" need not show up for work today. They should never show up. They should be paid to stay home and save us the fortune it costs us in infrastructure to support them.

First Principles:
To fill the policy vacuum being created by OWS lets begin at the beginning and establish a set of first principles upon which we can build a workable society.
My first principle is that people have choice and the behavior of others is, (with few exceptions) none of my business. Intentional communities can come together to articulate common objectives, distribute responsibility, and achieve their objectives. Self selection happens everyday in the lunchroom, the disco, the neighborhood, the place of worship. So be it. The tribe, the club, the gang are viable forms of small scale groups that have the ability to unify around common cause. They don't delegate or elect representatives. They assume direct responsibility for the preservation of their lives.
Let's start here. We can determine how we get to the bigger issues later. For now small groups inventory our stuff, our capacity, our talent, and see what we have and how we can exploit it, in common. Enough of the madness of go it alone.

notes for a constitution in process:
We have to come to terms with stuff and when it matters a lot what other people do. Take for example the Atlanta man who in the midst of a drought consumed 60 times what the average person uses and got caught. The city can roll him back. What of the person flying the private jet, or driving the Escalade, or killing the tuna. The idea that affordability, one's ability to pay, is the sole criteria for a person's consumption is so disrespectful of the context in which we live, that the behavior is going to have to be checked. How? That's the beginning of the process. That's what OWS is starting to contemplate. It took us centuries of unbridled capitalism to get us where we are today. To unravel is going to take time and thought.
The idea that a person can behave in such a way as to suffer a medical consequence of their indulgence is a classic example of the effect of us all having to pay. The victim of smoking or alcoholism, or speeding, or drug abuse, drags us into his health care system. He may be "able to pay" but the fact is he syphons capacity away as cruelly as the water abuser in Atlanta. I should not be asked to pay for his abuse. We live in a world of limited capacity IF we extract resources at irreplaceable rates with no consideration of conservation. We have to muzzle the pigs at the various troughs and limit the excesses of unbridled capitalism. When we agree on limits, we can proceed.

And Now?

2011-10-07T12:59:00.004-04:00

Occupy Wall Street reminds me of the occupation of the administration offices of Columbia U. and other universities across the globe in the late 60's. Net effect?; Nada. It seemed that what those protestors wanted 40 years ago was to change the occupants of the chairs, not fundamentally change the system. What was then, and is still required, is a fundamental change in the system. The system wherein Columbia U faculty is revealed to be co-conspirators in the financial collapse of 2008. See what the University intends to do about the problem here. For the forty ensuing years from the time of the protest and the revelations from the film "Inside Job", students were content to pay their money and earn the tickets they needed to be employed in the companies that perpetrated the greatest financial crisis in history. What they had protested for and won was greater inclusion in the system. They got it. Women and people of color now have equal opportunity to exploit and game a system in which they too can become members of the 1% club.

Many students from Columbia U are on the streets and participating in Occupy Wall Street. While celebrating the act up quality of these actions the fact is that they will come to naught unless protesters focus, and get very specific about who they are targeting. Wall Street is amorphous. It is at home in Greenwich, at work on K street, and their puppets are peppered all through Capitol Hill. Lap dogs are fighting any reform that might prevent the next collapse, any tax reform, and any remedial legislation. The extent of the spider web that is Wall Street extends to international banks, the IMF, and the World Bank, and the collusion of governments world wide. Nothing less than a world in evolution is going to change the foundations on which Wall Street thrives. Therefore protesters are going to have to get very strategic, If, and this is a big if, they really want to change any element of system that exploits them.

As long as the protesters understand the symbolic nature of their protest, and exploit the excessive police push back, they can gain the time they need, and the public forum in which some of them can specify what they demand in outcomes, and the policy changes that will correct the underlying problems they identify.

Maybe the single most horrible aspect of the collapse that has prompted this act-up is the foreclosure crisis.

Not only did Wall Street, (and here I use the terms to indicate the interlocking system of money men in allied agencies), create the systems that crashed on the backs of home owners, they continue to refuse to rectify the conspiracy they created, that is throwing people out of their homes. Let's demand that Fannie and Freddie reset the principle on the loans they control. We own them. We ought to demand they modify mortgages. The same energy that is being harnessed in protest on Wall Street should move to Washington in front of the responsible agencies. We can do this.

In terms of the pragmatics, what we can do to implement an outcome that will signal a change is gonna come, is the boycott. We vote with our pocketbooks. Let's see if there is any willingness to "sacrifice", do without the toys, that are manufactured by the companies represented on Wall Street. Let's begin with the hallowed. Don't like the fact that Apple off-shores the manufacture of all those devices that Steve Jobs created, Boycott Apple. That's what it is going to take. To get beyond the pettiness of personal gain we are going to have to accept our complicity in a system that while it is working to our advantage, is exploiting others. We've been here before. When it was revealed how and by whom, and at what wage rate our sport shoes were being made, we were asked to boycott in protest. We didn't. To protest is easy. To delay the purchase of an Iphone, or a pair of Nikes, that's an act of courage.

We are going to have to rethink what we mean by jobs. We are going to have to get beyond the myth of so called "free markets". We are going to have to stop adoring the rich, and being jealous of the less fortunate who get assistance in life support. We are going to have to fundamentally change a system that is extractive, that measures GDP in terms of the exploitation of nature, and that extends the worst aspects of capitalism to developing nations. We cannot count on politicians and organizers of any stripe that suggest what is needed is more inclusion, more of the same, more, so called, infrastructure development. Roads and bridges and cars got us here. They are not the way out.

Rotten to the Core

2011-09-06T11:30:00.005-04:00

The school year has begun. It reflects the triumph of the "reactors" to the cultural changes that were behaviors of the actors of the 60's. Nowhere is their impact more keenly seen than in the new "national core standards of education" that is being adopted around the country.

The curriculum doesn't reflect any accommodation to the real world implications of the universal accessibility of knowledge, cross border economic activity, environmental degradation, or full earth pressures on the capacity of the earth to sustain its ever rising population. It is as if the last 50 years of educational progress never happened. This curriculum guide would look familiar to any educator from the 60s. There is lip service paid to some diversity in the suggested readings that teachers might pull from, but the thrust, tone and temper of the core curriculum is red state, Kansas, conservative. It is a finger up the ass of the reformers who would have our children integrated, capable of speaking to others in their native tongue, aware of the moral and ethical responsibilities of being a passenger on spaceship earth, and sensitive to the gender, race, ethnicity, age, class, and specific history of their fellow human beings. It is a testimony to the persistence and perseverance of those for whom change is a threat. It is the perpetuation of the school as factory, with universal evaluations, and the denial of individuation of students in the process. It is a political and contemptuous document. It is a perfect representation of professionals caving to the mean spirits of the reactors.

Though we are constantly told that reactors hate the elite liberal establishment and that it is the dominance of those persons who have stolen their country from them, that provokes their ire. I believe the objects of the reactors' contempt are not so far afield; They hate their own. While they dwell in/on the over written, over studied, over analyzed, fin de siecle, what is most galling to them is that their own children continue to turn on them with a fury. (Footloose 2 is about to be released). I thought that was history you say. Can't we get past those persistence analyses of the culture wars? The fact is that those wars have never ended. Their children elected O'bama. Their parents reference back to Reagan, harboring a desire for a big daddy that will spray hose the protestors, and reaffirm the cowboy tradition,

The turn against status quo happens in waves. That is why it is so persistent. Whereas coastal inhabitants of big integrated cities were the hot beds of the breakout of counter culture, it is only recently that, let's find the appropriate symbol, earrings started to be worn by local postmen in Salina, or full sleeve tats are seen on the arms of the short order cooks in Wichita.

In 2004 Thomas Frank, What's The Matter With Kansas, got real smart and historical about the process of the conservatives effectively taking over a group of people who should, by all rights, loath them. And that was before the Tea Party, before Obama, before the financial crash that threatens the very ground they plow on. Now they are only more entrenched.

Liberals fear these people. They fear the push back. They accommodate them despite all the evidence that they have been rendered ineffectual. They tolerate their rights to have hair brained opinions, their pro any business activity, their anti science, anti compassion, anti democratic, venomous rhetoric. The Core Standards is evidence of the depth of the fear of alienating these radicals.

No one I speak to has read the Core Standards. "They" take the time to write them. We should take the time to read them. Here are written the specifics of how it is that we will condemn our children to a life of missed opportunity. It has been so refined to conform to the 'taste" of the reactors, certified by the professionals who vetted it, and passed the political stress test, that it insures our students will have no tools to effectively negotiate their world.

The debate re. the effectiveness of this curriculum, see comments in the NYT is joined by those persons on the front line of the impacts of these dicta. Teachers argue with administrators re. whether teachers will be hand-cuffed by these standards and how they will be evaluated.

No one challenges the content of the curriculum. The chapters on English language skills and how through them students will also touch on social studies through readings in non fiction are so moribund as to be hilarious. Take for example the reiteration of a curriculum component I suffered through all those years ago. "The ability to write logical arguments based on substantive claims, sound reasoning, and relevant evidence is a cornerstone of the writing standards, with opinion writing—a basic form of argument—extending down into the earliest grades."

Now I imagine two alternatives to this standard: 1. Crap detection. By subjecting students from the earliest years to media hype, exploitation, hyperbole, exaggeration, outright lies, false claims, bad data, and marketing ploys, students will learn how to recognize these propagandistic means of mind shaping and develop the tools to resist them, They will also study political speeches, legal arguments, and debate techniques that are designed to obfuscate the truth. or, conversely 2. they will study the techniques of the big lie, the exaggeration, the creation of bad data, the fallacious argument, and marketing technique. They will make them their own.

Of course reactors are victims of and perpetuators of the big lie so when you peruse the non prescriptive but suggestive reading list you see the continued veneration of the founding fathers, the Bard, and the mundane. So Twain is represented by Tom Sawyer not Huck and Orwell's reading suggestion is Politics and the English Language not How the Poor Die

A Prof at Va. Tech looked at the "standards of learning" from 2009 and formed the following opinion re. how they are so much self serving propaganda.

There are alternatives, effective parents are going to have to create them. All of the following examples fall neatly into a world of ideas that so gall the reactors.

Bucky Fuller used to give a talk to that began with his blowing up a balloon on which was printed a globe. He tossed it among the children and asked them to find the spot where they were from. He grounded them on earth, and suggested that they work from the grand to the particular when learning their sense of place. It begins an understanding of where am I and shifts away from the parochialism of state citizenship. Having established that we live on a water planet we might build an aquarium in every learning environment and in the process create a microcosm that requires sensitivity to the delicate nature of eco-balance. By placing learners in a position of care re. the health and welfare of this micro environment we establish a baseline of human responsibility. We drill down into this environment and allow students to examine the structural nature of this/their world. As they examine the building blocks of life forms they are introduced to the concept of their place in the continuum of life. As the living elements in their aquarium have adapted so too have the creatures on the earth and the myriad of those forms are identified at least in the largest categorical forms. Moving through an overview of the evolutionary process they come to terms with the "family of man". We have begun the examination of "who I am". As we have come to appreciate the variety of adaptation of the creatures in our pool, we can begin to appreciate the same adaptive practices on earth. We examine the flexibility and mutability of creatures in their struggle to survive. We observe the art and culture that are the building blocks of adaptation. We realize that individuals live within the context and frameworks of groups. Within those groups there is shared responsibility and by sharing, the greater good for all is obtained.

You can see how this evolves. It is but one alternative to the linear, hind-bound, curriculum of yesterday. I wouldn't even broach english as a subject.. I would teach form, style, and manner in the context of substantive content.

I would introduce "foreign" language at pre-school, and again, as I have said in this blog, I would pull my kids out of school, form a cluster of up to 10 others, hire a teacher set, and turn them loose.

Had Enough Yet?

2011-08-15T13:24:00.002-04:00

The systems of empire, totalitarianism, institutional slavery, indentured servitude, and the divine right of kings are concepts that have slipped into the trash bin of history.

We are at the threshold of yet another momentous change. It is hard to get your mind around it. There are many vested interests that are in the business of distraction in order to allow them to extract the last vestiges of what they have wrought. This weekend's Iowa nonsense and the media attention to it have the effect of exciting people of all the political spectrum into frenzies of irrelevant mind numbing excitation. The call to prayer, or the return to some imagined time in history when all was well cannot halt the inevitability of the end of an era.

What has quickened the process this time has been the global expansion of an economic system, desired by all, and demonstratively doomed to failure. The evidence is constant; the corpus, be it person, or company, (which have now morphed into the same "being") grows, (capital is drawn to capital), greed engorges the beast and it dies. The neo-liberal expansion of the multi-national corporation, the insatiable desire of the world's population to drive a car, and the most pernicious of all the elements in the drama, the expansion of debt as a "growth" lever all converge and the system collapses of its own weight.

The Economist publishes this world debt clock: 46 trillion and counting. This number is in current dollars and counts debt that we can see, obligations that are actually transparent. It does not take into consideration the debt obligations of say the entitlement obligations of future Americans, estimated to be 65 trillion dollars, to site just one example. We cannot cover this debt. It will be cancelled.

This is but an excerpt. The entire interview is on the WSJ website.

Disbelievers will have all the visual cues they need to reject the premise of this clip. Roubini has an accent and probably hair on his back. He is not a true American. Another darkie bringing the communist manifesto to light. Ironically China, the last great satan state, is closer to collapse after adopting the tenants of unbridled capitalism then it has ever been. It will not be able to sate the demands of the billions to drive that car.

For those with a sharp pencil and a keener understanding than I have are directed to the BIS. This is the world settlement clearing house that monitors debt and to the extent they can, the non transparent OTC derivatives that none of us understand. If you cruise around this site you will see that the value of derivatives (the instruments that precipitated the collapse of 2008) has actually increased to over 600 Trillion dollars in the last two years. You will also read that this is but the notational amount and their true asset value is only 20 some trillion. I don't understand it either. Here is what I know. They will all be settled or else. In the same way bond obligations, no matter how long they are kept off the books, will also be settled or else, default. In a rational world derivitives allowed a commodity producer to stabilize a price, say for a steer. A rancher owned a steer, an option was written of the future price of the steer, he delivered the steer, the option was cleared. What the geniuses who destroyed the world as you knew it did, was create a system of "Open Interest" which meant that persons could place side bets on the steer's price without any underlying interest in the steer. This is the easiest tell on the subject so if you have a problem here skip away. The impact will still effect you. You just won't know what hit you. And some of these bets, the poison ones placed on housing stock, already blew up and we are still paying off the gamblers. The argument is that if they default the world collapses. They will default, the world financial system will collapse.

Had enough yet?

We have to add in the problem of the underlying basis of the entire system, extractive economics. At exactly the same time that we are in a fiscal crisis, which is just a counting game, we have the all too real set of facts that the growth limits models of commodities that we extract from the earth to support all of this economic activity, predict that they are getting scarcer.

The following were excerpted from the NYT this weekend:

Can Jeremy Grantham Profit From Ecological Mayhem?

When prices go up and stay up, it’s not a bubble. Prices may always revert to the mean, but the mean can change; that’s a paradigm shift. As Grantham tells it, oil went first. For a century it steadily returned to about $16 a barrel in today’s currency, then in 1974 the mean shifted to about $35, and Grantham believes it has recently doubled again. Metals and nearly everything else — coal, corn, palm oil, soybeans, sugar, cotton — appear to be following suit. “From now on, price pressure and shortages of resources will be a permanent feature of our lives,” he argues. “The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.”

here is his conclusion “But it’s never absolutely too late,” Grantham said. “It’s never too late to do what we can,” which includes making a lot of money you can use to try to protect whatever and whoever matters to you — biodiversity, family, nation, everybody.

He’s an impassioned environmentalist not only for the usual reasons but also because he believes humanity’s vexed relationship with the planet is the great economic story of our time. “This commodities thing may turn out to be the most interesting call of my career,” he told me. “I have no doubt we’re going to have a bad hundred years. We have the resources to gracefully handle the transition, but we won’t. We apparently can’t.”

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Grantham doesn’t dwell on the potential for disaster on an unimaginable scale, but it looms behind his measured language. The world’s population is seven billion and counting. “Whether the stable population will be 1.5 billion or 5 billion,” he said to me, “the question is: How do we get there?”

This is probably the darkest article I have read in my lifetime. Not the least because of the value free way it is reported. Within the article and this consultant's "letter" to his clients is the understanding that in a zero sum game, the world may collapse but you can profit from it, and, with the gains, put your money to work to secure yourself. But more insidious is his understanding that a stable earth will only support half of its anticipated population. How we eradicate the surplus is the issue. Implying, we can allow them to starve, or more likely, given our history, is we unleash the holy war on them and simply kill them off. This is the behavior of those "vested interests" I alluded to at the top of this post.

There are options to consider that you might want to contemplate. Nothing like world revolution. How about an adjustment of a few basic destructive behaviors that might take the pressure off the world. End the fiscal derivitives market immediately.

End the concept of "growth" and change it to sustainable regardless of how that term has been abused

End the practice of planned obsolescence, and redundancy

Constrict advertising and marketing

End the practice of inflation

Educate, educate, educate, to the realities of the world

End the auto-cracy

It appears Elizabeth Warren is going to run for the senate from Mass. Pity.

Elizabeth Warren for President

2011-06-27T11:20:00.003-04:00

Under no circumstances am I going to support President Barack Obama for re-election. A short list of broken promises, failed policies, and outright lies iterate the reasons:
The escalation of war in Afghanistan, and Libya, while tolerating the horrors of Syria and Bahrain for expediency.
Guantanamo
Bank bailout while refusing to implement mortgage reform
Larry Summers, Rahm Emmanuel, William Daley
Cave in to health insurers and drug manufacturers
Support for ethanol
90 unfilled Judgeships, 50 of which haven't even been nominated
Re-up of the Patriot Act and extending FBI warrentless searches
Prosecution of medical marijuana
No support for same sex marriage
Little push back on Republican budget proposals
Acceptance of Bush Tax cuts
No push on Dream Act
Cave in on "for profit" college reform
No support for victims of Haiti, New Orleans, Joplin, Japan, Alabama, or recent flooding victims
Expansion of off-shore drilling
This is so depressing I'll stop here.

I will not be frightened by the prospect of whoever the Republican's nominate nor will I succumb to the argument that Obama is incrementally better than the alternative. In talking about this with others we always come up against the "who would you chose?" question coupled with the supposed impossibility of a third party movement. The last time we had this discussion the President was caving in on Elizabeth Warren and refusing to nominate her as his agency head for Financial Consumer Protection. Moveon.org has a fundraiser to support her while she fights for the implementation of the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

I say let's go all the way and push her, and Moveon to create an independent party that nominates her for President of the United States. (Rumors fly that she might try a senate run.) Read her resume here and visit her website here.
Mrs. Warren is from Oklahoma, and a champion of the middle class. I won't accept the opinion that those in the middle so outraged by the behavior of their government that they are in rebellion, will allow themselves to be co-opted by the cynical exploiters of their frustration. If they had a choice, an alternative, they could rally behind, a woman of Warren's character, what a coalition we could form.

I would go further and ask her to name her cabinet nominees as she ramps up her campaign. Sheila Baer for Sec of Treasury, Brooksley Born for Department of Commerce, Ralph Nadar, Dept of Labor, Bring back Colin Powell for Defense, and keep Chu at Energy. The point being that we would know what we were getting and not have persons like Summers thrown at us.

Jon Stewart expressed his disappointment with Obama on Fox the other day. He need look no further for an option than his guest from the Daily Show.

The Daily Show - Elizabeth Warren
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And in anticipation of the accusation that she lacks experience in foreign affairs; to the person, everyone on top of the subject knows that our most important foreign affair, is getting our economic house in order.

Commence

2011-06-13T15:48:00.003-04:00

This June every student will participate in some form of graduation or more precisely gradation; to arrange in grades or gradations; establish gradation in. That's what our students have been doing for however many years they have joined in the process. They have allowed themselves to be gradated in carefully calibrated beakers. They have absorbed the most critical component of their respective curricula, they have come together and agreed to participate in the ranking game.
The curriculum itself has always been perceived as but a means to the end. The practice of the curriculum contained little of inherent value but was set up as a way and means of developing obedience and conformity. The fact that battles are fought over what constitutes a core curriculum reveals how arbitrary it really is. One side wins, gender studies or evolution theory is thrown out. Another side wins and Thackeray is exchanged for Naguib Mahfouz.
Students have moved through a nationally agreed upon process whereby it will be determined who amongst them will win the prizes that were held out as the values they have worked so hard for. Or not.

Some of those prizes are now being re-evaluated:
The next, more exclusive level of on-going formal education is being examined from a cost/benefit perspective.
At a post graduation, material level, a single family house for example, once considered to be the great storehouse of wealth (the estate) has lost its primacy in the hierarchy of "things". A broad portfolio of blue chip equities has taken a hit as has prospect of retirement in comfort. Some of the more mundane prizes, the gourmet meal, the high priced wine, the flashy car are like pins in the lane, about to be knocked off as their underlying value is challenged, or realized to be unsustainable, going the way of the lynx wrap.
At a corporate level (the employer of the winners), the ability to maintain advantage is being challenged by a whole new set of players. The prospects are not good that business as usual, the curriculum in practice, will sustain them.
At the governmental level, the power centers from which the corporation and the prize winning individuals are protected, the process of sustaining themselves seems to be cracking as the numbers of losers and their ability to coordinate swell.

Not surprisingly, given the ends are being questioned, the means are being scrutinized. It is being observed that students are being stressed out in the "Race To Nowhere" as the documentary film of that name points out. Don't expect too much from this effort. The "deal" that has been struck by the parents who screen and then discuss this film is that; I won't make the changes by myself. Only if we all agree to stop the resume inflation, cheating, achievement by any means possible, will I relent. I am not going to put my child at a competitive disadvantage by doing the right thing.

No one questions the lesson plans. More math, more science = better rocketry, more fire power, more stealth, better spying technology, these are the core elements we need to "win the future". No world language, no geo-political reality, no deep cultural studies of others, no family practice, no diet and nutrition. We can't afford art, and physical exercise is reserved for the combatants. No peace studies, no alternatives to violence, and no alternative to so-called free market economics.

Paul stopped by to check and tune up the furnace system he installed two years ago. He came up from the basement slightly ashen. "Have you been aware of a bang when the furnace cycled on?" he asked. Yes, we thought it was normal. "Well it isn't normal. What has happened is that there is a leak at the gas fitting and when the ignition comes on it burns off that excess gas. I have to replace the ignitor." What he didn't say and that I could surmise was left un-repaired the house and its contents were at risk. Paul doesn't have an advanced degree. Paul inherited the business from his dad. Paul's value to me and the society is immeasurable.

Bet, Call

2011-05-23T09:30:00.003-04:00

You can bet the following paper, prepared by two military consultants to the Joint Chiefs, and published under the pseudonym "Y" was released with the chiefs' knowledge and permission. The forward was written by Anne-Marie Slaughter, former director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. It is fair to conclude that this paper has broad administration support.

Foreign Policy did a piece on the paper and referred to it as "the Pentagon's secret plan to slash its own budget".

Don't believe it. There is nothing secret about this push. The Pentagon has been fighting congress for years, trying unsuccessfully to limit the expansion of their budget, being forced to acquire weapons that satisfy a congressperson's need to bring home the pork. This must read transcript from a 1992 show on "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" proves the point.

Another discussion of the Y paper is far more cynical and provides a context for understanding the military's internecine branch competition.

All of the above discussions are by wonks with a history of commenting on military affairs. What jumped off the page for me was the extent to which the military accepts as real threats; the global social unrest, climate and environmental issues, and problems of developing meaningful work for the youth of the world. These concepts are not what we think of when we imagine what is being discussed in the Pentagon. That the Pentagon is willing to run around congress and try to agitate for a more relevant peace agenda and a budget to support it, can not be ignored by the rest of us. The following is the preface to the paper.

By Anne-Marie Slaughter

Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs

Princeton University

Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State, 2009-2011

The United States needs a national strategic narrative. We have a national security strategy, which sets forth four core national interests and outlines a number of dimensions of an overarching strategy to advance those interests in the 21st century world. But that is a document written by specialists for specialists. It does not answer a fundamental question that more and more Americans are asking. Where is the United States going in the world? How can we get there? What are the guiding stars that will illuminate the path along the way? We need a story with a beginning, middle, and projected happy ending that will transcend our political divisions,

orient us as a nation, and give us both a common direction and the confidence and commitment to get to our destination.

These questions require new answers because of the universal awareness that we are living through a time of rapid and universal change. The assumptions of the 20th century, of the U.S. as a bulwark first against fascism and then against communism, make little sense in a world in which World War II and its aftermath is as distant to young generations today as the War of 1870

was to the men who designed the United Nations and the international order in the late 1940s. Consider the description of the U.S. president as “the leader of the free world,” a phrase that encapsulated U.S. power and the structure of the global order for decades. Yet anyone under thirty today, a majority of the world’s population, likely has no idea what it means. Moreover, the U.S. is experiencing its latest round of “declinism,” the periodic certainty that we are losing all the things that have made us a great nation. In a National Journal poll conducted in 2010, 47% percent of Americans rated China’s economy as the world’s strongest economy, even though today the U.S. economy is still 2 ½ times larger than the Chinese economy with only 1/6 of the population. Our crumbling roads and bridges reflect a crumbling self-confidence. Our education reformers often seem to despair that we can ever educate new generations effectively for the 21st century economy. Our health care system lags increasingly behind that of other developed nations – even behind British National Health in terms of the respective overall health of the British and American populations.

Against this backdrop, Captain Porter’s and Colonel Mykleby’s “Y article” could not come at a more propitious time. In 1947 George Kennan published “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym X, so as not to reveal his identity as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer. The X article gave us an intellectual framework within which to understand the rise and eventual fall of the Soviet Union and a strategy to hasten that objective. Based on that foundation, the strategic narrative of the Cold War was that the United States was the leader of the free world against the communist world; that we would invest in containing the Soviet Union and limiting its expansion while building a dynamic economy and as just, and prosperous a society as possible. We often departed from that narrative in practice, as George Kennan was one of the first to recognize. But it was a narrative that fit the facts of the world we perceived well enough to create and maintain a loose bipartisan national consensus for forty years. Porter and Mykleby give us a non-partisan blueprint for understanding and reacting to the changes of the 21st century world. In one sentence, the strategic narrative of the United States in the 21st century is that we want to become the strongest competitor and most influential player in a deeply inter-connected global system, which requires that we invest less in defense and more in sustainable prosperity and the tools of effective global engagement.

At first reading, this sentence may not seem to mark much of a change. But look closer. The Y article narrative responds directly to five major transitions in the global system:

1) From control in a closed system to credible influence in an open system. The authors argue that Kennan’s strategy of containment was designed for a closed system, in which we assumed that we could control events through deterrence, defense, and dominance of the international system. The 21st century is an open system, in which unpredictable external events/phenomena are constantly disturbing and disrupting the system. In this world control is

impossible; the best we can do is to build credible influence – the ability to shape and guide global trends in the direction that serves our values and interests (prosperity and security) within an interdependent strategic ecosystem. In other words, the U.S. should stop trying to dominate and direct global events. The best we can do is to build our capital so that we can influence events as they arise.

2) From containment to sustainment. The move from control to credible influence as a fundamental strategic goal requires a shift from containment to sustainment (sustainability).

Instead of trying to contain others (the Soviet Union, terrorists, China, etc), we need to focus on sustaining ourselves in ways that build our strengths and underpin credible influence. That shift in turn means that the starting point for our strategy should be internal rather than external. The 2010 National Security Strategy did indeed focus on national renewal and global leadership, but this account makes an even stronger case for why we have to focus first and foremost on investing our resources domestically in those national resources that can be sustained, such as our youth and our natural resources (ranging from crops, livestock, and potable water to sources of energy and materials for industry). We can and must still engage internationally, of course, but only after a careful weighing of costs and benefits and with as many partners as possible. Credible influence also requires that we model the behavior we recommend for others, and that we pay close attention to the gap between our words and our deeds.

3) From deterrence and defense to civilian engagement and competition. Here in many ways is the hard nub of this narrative. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen has already said publicly that the U.S. deficit is our biggest national security threat. He and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have also given speeches and written articles calling for “demilitarizing American foreign policy” and investing more in the tools of civilian engagements – diplomacy and defense. As we modernize our military and cut spending the tools of 20th century warfare, we must also invest in a security complex that includes all domestic and foreign policy assets.

Our credibility also requires a willingness to compete with others. Instead of defeatism and protectionism, we must embrace competition as a way to make ourselves stronger and better (e.g. Ford today, now competing with Toyota on electric cars). A willingness to compete means a new narrative on trade and a new willingness to invest in the skills, education, energy sources, and

infrastructure necessary to make our products competitive.

4) From zero sum to positive sum global politics/economics. An interdependent world creates many converging interests and opportunities for positive-sum rather than zero-sum competition. The threats that come from interdependence (economic instability, global pandemics, global terrorist and criminal networks) also create common interests in countering those threats domestically and internationally. President Obama has often emphasized the

significance of moving toward positive sum politics. To take only one example, the rise of China as a major economic power has been overall very positive for the U.S. economy and the prosperity and stability of East Asia. The United States must be careful to guard our interests and those of our allies, but we miss great opportunities if we assume that the rise of some necessarily means the decline of others.

5) From national security to national prosperity and security. The piece closes with a call for a National Prosperity and Security Act to replace the National Security Act of 1947. The term “national security” only entered the foreign policy lexicon after 1947 to reflect the merger of defense and foreign affairs. Today our security lies as much or more in our prosperity as in our military capabilities. Our vocabulary, our institutions, and our assumptions must reflect that shift. “National security” has become a trump card, justifying military spending even as the domestic foundations of our national strength are crumbling. “National prosperity and security” reminds us where our true security begins. Foreign policy pundits have long called for an overhaul of NSC 68, the blueprint for the national security state that accompanied the grand strategy of containment. If we are truly to become the strongest competitor and most influential player in the

deeply interconnected world of the 21st century, then we need a new blueprint.

A narrative is a story. A national strategic narrative must be a story that all Americans can understand and identify within their own lives. America’s national story has always see-sawed between exceptionalism and universalism. We think that we are an exceptional nation, but a core part of that exceptionalism is a commitment to universal values – to the equality of all human beings not just within the borders of the United States, but around the world. We should thus embrace the rise of other nations when that rise is powered by expanded prosperity, opportunity, and dignity for their peoples. In such a world we do not need to see ourselves as the automatic

leader of any bloc of nations. We should be prepared instead to earn our influence through our ability to compete with other nations, the evident prosperity and well being of our people, and our ability to engage not just with states but with societies in all their richness and complexity. We do not want to be the sole superpower that billions of people around the world have learned to hate from fear of our military might. We seek instead to be the nation other nations listen to, rely on and emulate out of respect and admiration.

The Y article is the first step down that new path. It is written by two military men who have put their lives on the line in the defense of their country and who are non-partisan by profession and conviction. Their insights and ideas should spark a national conversation. All it takes is for politicians, pundits, journalists, business people, civic leaders, and engaged citizens across the country to read and respond.

The paper continues here.

These ideas are far too important to be narrowly debated by the beltway crowd. The authors have upped the ante, made a bet, and I for one am going to call. I am going to share this document with everyone I know. I am going to alert my representatives of its presence and my support of it, and I am going to find ways and means to disseminate this paper as widely as I can. I hope you will do the same.

The Truth will save you bucks

2011-05-10T11:57:00.002-04:00

Harold McGee was inducted into the James Beard hall of fame last night. For thirty years his book "On Food and Cooking" has been my go to guide when I wanted to know what was happening on the stove or in the oven. In addition to applying basic scientific understanding to the cooking process he is a great myth buster, and can save you a great deal of money if you heed his advice.

You will notice that I added his blog site to the roll on the right column of this page. I go there constantly.

One of his entries that I particularly appreciated was his discussion of the testing he did on cooking oils. When I could still watch the food channel I would cringe every time Mario would insist that you had to fry or saute in EVOO. It was clear what brand he was using and though I don't know that this was a product placement, it smelled of it. In any case the effect must have been to convince viewers that he knew what he was talking about, he was Mario. So McGee subjects a variety of cooking oils to the taster, smell, test as they are heated and concludes that his testers could not discern a difference between the oils he used. Something changes when you heat them and in fact olive oil scored poorly for taste when heated. Use olive oil for dressing and finishing food, not for cooking. There is more bad news re. olive oil. Most of the so-called EVOO isn't. This confirms an earlier test. In the course of the initial study Berio was consistently identified as an honest brand. Why pay more?

While on the subject of oil consider the idea that frying chicken at lower temps, 300 instead of 350 and up, is a preferred temp as it allows the interior moisture more time to dispel without burning the surface.
Here are some counter intuitive tips for deep frying.

The following article points up another frying practice that makes for better cooking:
"While European and Western cooks deep-fry with a single frying, the Chinese deep-fry in stages. After being marinated, foods are then deep-fried at a low temperature, maybe 290°F, and later finish-fried at a high temperature, 365°F to 385°F. This staged cooking increases crispness and color. Batters reduce surface moisture, and a dryer surface reduces initial boiling. In addition, batters add color, flavor, and texture to many deep-fat fried foods, with green tomatoes, eggplant, okra, and even ice cream being examples of foods that are battered before they are fried. A meunière is a thin, light breading, or flour dusting, often used on fish and popular in traditional French kitchens. But batters can also be thick, as in the case of double, triple, or breaded coatings used for fried fish and chicken." Mark F. Sohn enotes

David Chang changed many cooking practices for me. I had treated brining as a gimmick that never seemed to change the moisture content of turkey and so the concept was dismissed as ineffectual. Then Mr Chang suggested I brine my chicken wings in salt/sugar water for a few hours before I dried and deep fried them. You will taste the difference. The science is explained on this page from the Exploratorium in SF.
The contents of this page dispel another myth; searing meat retains its moisture. What happens when we heat meat in a pan is called the Maillard reaction. It is explained as the browning phenom that gives meat flavor as the heat caramelizes sugars on the meat's surface. You want this to happen but not because it retains moisture, it doesn't.

While we are on the subject of surface temperature lets dispel yet another myth; gas is a better heat source than electric. It might look cooler and the grates suggest real cooking is going on here but the fact is that gas is wasteful and in some cases unhealthy. Gas does not burn at 100 percent efficiency meaning that some noxious gases are released into the environment. It is no more accurate or controllable then an electric dial and the idea that it burns hotter is foolish as you don't want to use extreme high heat. High heat kills pans. I have praised the virtues of induction cooking and hope the price point drops as the stove tops and portables become more available.

Here is a truth that is so simple one wonders why anyone buys ersatz mayonnaise. Some will argue they can taste the difference between blender and hand whisked mayo. Harold, are you listening?

The Gods must be crazy.

2011-05-03T11:17:00.003-04:00

Back from NYC. Two weeks of rubbing shoulders with the band of others, stepping up to what's new for us on the culture beat. Airbnb works and it landed us in the upper west side, a block from Fishtag, a restaurant that has drawn a lot of controversy.
The disconnect between what the "highly educated" professional food critics had to say (uniformly poor), and the comments on yelp or chowhound (exalting praise), provoked me to visit the restaurant's web site. There, the menu appeared set up to promote the idea that wine pairing was essential. Forget that. I hold to my belief that most wine pairing is a fraud and I am not interested in boosting a restaurant's bottom line. However, the same menu set forth such interesting options that I couldn't resist the temptation to blow the big one here. My strategy, for a restaurant unknown and potentially expensive, is to start small and see where it goes from there. That means an early walk in, before the rush, and ordering an app or two and see what happens. If we like what we had, we press on to other dishes until we are sated. In this case, we were so impressed and well fed that we hurried back the next night to taste out more of the menu. I'll spare you the details. But I do want to say that a lifetime in some form or another of the food industry does prepare one to make an informed judgement. I "know" how hard it is to source an ingredient, suss out a flavor, and prepare a dish with care. Others with similar knowledge would hold opinions I would trust when making a decision about where to eat. If I were a restaurant reviewer I would inform my readers of my baseline tastes. There is a world of difference between someone who likes food rich and spicy, and one for whom a twist of pepper is sweat provoking. So if you know that I like my flavor deep and obvious and I write that I enjoyed the food, you can surmise the place delivered a rich dining experience.

What then to make of the critics who are paid to opine and seem so consistently to get it wrong. I am beginning to think that reviewers (as opposed to critics of whom there are far too few) are calling it in. Film, book, or restaurant reviews often contain such glaring errors that I wonder did they actually see, read, or eat the products they write of. In one review of Fishtag the writer described a dish I ate, as mussels, prepared and served in a disgusting lamb broth. The truth is the dish is served in a tomato base with a smookie dark pork flavor. Others criticized this same dish as a stretch, showing off by combining strange pairing, when in fact a fish/meat combo is as common as paella, All of this is to say that I think the pros' days are numbered. I trust and use the social media far more than any professional big name reviewer and I believe their papers will dump them sooner rather than later. Not a minute too soon for me.

We chased the pig around the city. After a visit to the Secret Garden in Central Park, Chuck, Mary, Carrie and I "dared" to walk the 20 blocks through east Harlem in search of the perfect pork torta. I had heard this sandwich might be made at Taco-Mix.

We had the name of the joint confused with the name of a sandwich and thus just trying to confirm we were where we wanted to be turned into a form of street opera. However the welcome was so warm and the food on display so appealing it didn't matter. It turned out we had the right place.

We snuggled in among the jammed locals, Chuck found a surface in the back and spread papers upon it, and we began the process of ordering, and getting help from others and staff in selecting what we might enjoy. It was a riot of food and smell, and seasoning, and cultural exchange. They got crazy white people pigging out, we got the best mex you can eat out of hand. No professional reviews. Here's what the yelpers have to say.

I saved ten thousand dollars this week by not flying to Japan to get a plate of Takoyaki, octopus dipped in batter and cooked in special cast iron trays made for the dish. Otafuku on ninth street does the job from this tiny slot, no tables, no pro reviews.

The Japanese American woman about to graduate NYU in econ was engaging as we waited our turns and she bemoaned the limits of a curriculum that denied her "no growth" models, or steady state economic options. We also agreed that this was a fantastic dish, she added, "as good as it gets in Japan".

The bomb exploded in Xi'an Famous Foods
I found that Bourdain and others have explored this place and the opinions are universal: It is fantastic. A new twist in seating arrangements is expressed in the form of a sign that signals that three nearby bars will accept you, food in hand, to sit and eat while having one of their drinks.

None of the above are coming to a storefront near you. But I think I know what will. Rice to Riches has the formula: A perfect comfort food, great profit margin, easily replicated graphics and style, and too cute by half. The place was packed. Which doesn't really tell you anything other than a lot of people like rice pudding. The myth of the truck driver somehow knows where to eat, or perusing a menu from the street is info that might tell you what to expect, are really false leads. Observing what people are eating in the sidewalk seats, or walking through a restaurant ostensibly to wash before dinner and seeing patrons plates is a far better strategy.

These are my opinions offered with the intention of sharing a process of how to improve your eating experience. The flaw in a system of user friendly opinions is that we are learning how easy it is to fake entries on social media to either create buzz or blow off a competitor. Opinion spam is becoming endemic but you can learn how to spot it. Finally, there is no substitute for face to face sharing.

for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee

2011-04-11T10:46:00.002-04:00

To read or listen to Charles Murray requires that you park everything you know and feel and believe, and give in to the "objectivity" of scientific inquiry. That was the case when he co-authored The Bell Curve, 1994, which argued for and was sustained as proof of the genetic inferiority of blacks, and thus a rationale for eliminating the welfare state; The welfare state encourages the creation of black babies, and thus the demise of the nation. I can't say that President Clinton was influenced by the ruckus created by the book. His welfare reform(1996) which threw single moms off the rolls, might just be a coincidence.

To accept the premise of The Bell Curve you have to believe that: You can enslave a people, free them but deny them access to education, jobs, and human services. Ghettoize them, deny them job opportunities, disgrace and humiliate them in the public media. Flood their communities with drugs, profile them for arrest, fail to represent them politically, and assassinate their leaders. and That none of the above explains why they may not be as "productive" as their white tormentors.

The Bell Curve is one of the foundations texts of the right. It is the thinking that informs the rhetoric of the idea that we are a welfare nation, and that we ought to dismantle it. In the interim Murray has authored other texts: "Challenging 'educational romanticism' he wrote Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality. His "four simple truths" are:
1. "Ability varies."
2. "Half of the children are below average."
3. "Too many people are going to college."
4. "America's future depends on how we educate the academically gifted." wiki

Now Mr. Murray is speaking in advance of a new book in which he posits the unhappy condition of white America. He spoke to his peers at the AEI on April fourth and c-span recorded it here:
Here are some of the highlights I took from the lecture:
American Exceptionalism ( I have been looking for a definition) is the "project" of a free people governing themselves without the interference of government. "The American exception is we are the only nation that does not try to maximize wealth or power. The only nation in which citizens are free from class bondage."

The four (four is a convenient number) virtues of these self governing people are: industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religion. As regards religion Murray admits that he is an agnostic. In his new book he is going to focus on the "working class" white, non-hispanic population, and a coda regarding the behavior of a new elite, (they are so rich they don't care about the rest of us anymore). What he has been graphing and pushing into statistical results are the following conclusions: Since 1960, working class white men are increasingly not working. He stopped his data collection before the great recession as to not skew for this anomaly. (the end of the American Industrial Age, throwing millions out of work, happened before 2008). Men are increasingly leaching off of their wives. Middle and upper middle class men are working harder than ever.

Marriage among working class white people is falling off and out of wedlock births is growing at an alarming rate among working class white women. Despite what you might guess, upper class whites are married. The consequences of this include the "fact" that single people don't provide social capital. they are selfish and don't volunteer. Among other things I heard was the "fact" that marriage civilizes men. He didn't choose to talk about honesty and well he might not for if you included un-indicted conspirators in the greatest theft in the history of humankind you might see an alarming rise in upper class white collar crime.

He got on a roll re. religion. Despite his own non-participation he observed that the secular states of Europe are about to implode owing to little more than their lack of church attendance and we would be well advised to take a lesson from their failures.

The conclusions he reached were summarized in the following statement: "the working class is making it difficult for their fellow citizens", and culminated in the conclusion at minute 41.55 of the tape, that they are "unsuited for citizenry in a free society." My jaw dropped. Not one reaction from the audience nor question from them regarding this statement. This is class war writ large. When handed the softball question from the former head of the AEI, "given what your prior work concludes, and aware that for political reasons you stopped short of including black and hispanic persons in your new study, nonetheless, did you do any work that included them?" "Well yes, that is Chapter 17. Surprisingly when you include blacks and hispanics the rates don't go up." They are off the hook. Or more accurately, the white working class are the new blacks.

All is not lost. There is hope. The Tea-Party has the answers. The same ones his libertarian brothers have been promoting for these many years. The question for me is, will the members of the so called tea party, who like to represent themselves as the white working class heart of the heartland, accept the premise that they are not fit for citizenship.

"The taste for the superfluous holds sway over a people who are still unacquainted with the necessary". Marquis Astolphe de Custine by way of Donna Leon.

March Madness

2011-03-28T13:46:00.003-04:00

March Madness
Every year I declare I'm not going to let the bug get me and despite my pledge I turn into a madman, yelling at the screen, missing meals, and rescheduling my life. I am not reacting to the madness that is exemplified by the conservative rally in Iowa. Some of the highlights reported by Jon Ward of The Huff Post, from Saturday's conservative rally for presidential hopefuls, in Iowa included: Herman Cain “We’ve got some altering and abolishing to do,” Cain said, referencing the Declaration of Independence. “The Founders got it right. It is within the power of the United States of America to alter stuff that we don’t like. We don’t like this radical socialism that’s being shoved down our throats.”
Talking to reporters afterwards, Cain also said he thinks the imposition of Islamic Sharia law is a legitimate threat in America and that he would not appoint any Muslims to any positions in his Cabinet if he were elected.

Michelle Bachmann: "She touted her introduction of a law to revoke the government's regulation of light bulbs, boasting: “I introduced the light bulb freedom of choice act!” The crowd roared at that one. Bachmann did not mention that the light bulb law was signed into law by former President Bush. Bachmann spent little time on the issue of moral values, but showed a deft touch in her handling of the issue. After railing for most of her remarks against big government meddling in people’s lives and hurting economic growth, Bachmann said that “it is families that are the solution and the ultimate building block for America." “Because no stimulus, no entitlement reform, no health care initiative, no education revamp can match the power of an intact two-parent family in driving economic growth, health and well being in the United States,” she said.
Bachmann noted that her parents divorced and said she understands “the difficulties that single parent families have. This is not to denigrate them in any way. ” She did not get into many specifics detailing how she would counter Obama’s policies, sticking to general principles. Bachmann was at her most populist near the end of her speech.
“The preservation of our nation is too important to entrust it to mere politicians,” she said. “The founders recognized that it could only be entrusted to the brain trust, and that’s the people of this nation.”
But Bachmann’s position on the role of religion in politics was somewhat contradictory. She sent positive and negative signals about whether religion is required for the nation to be moral. The Founders, she said, “understood it was our values that were the underpinning of this nation. John Adams wrote, it is only for a moral and religious nation, this constitution that we write, it is wholly unsuited for any other. ” But then Bachmann said that Adams’ quote was “not saying what kind of religion a person has to have, or if they have to be religious at all. What it is saying is that we cannot build a nation unless it is built upon a rock solid foundation. And America has that. It is the character and the values of our people. ” That statement would appear to be at odds with the belief expressed by many, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, that faith in God of some sort is needed for a nation to retain its “character and values.”
Bachmann left after her speech without answering questions from reporters.
Newt Gingrich: Newt Gingrich hosted a screening Friday night here in Des Moines of a movie he and his wife Callista made with conservative filmmaker David Bossie called "Rediscovering God in America." I watched the couple make brief remarks to introduce it, and then grabbed his book of the same name and read the introduction. The point of the book, and of the movie, is that America has been since its founding a religious nation with a national identity that recognizes faith in God as a cornerstone of its culture and its government. Some would say this means the U.S. is a "Christian nation." Gingrich's book stops short of that, and instead makes the case that America has been and should be a pluralistic nation that allows freedom of religion for most faiths (more on why not all faiths below). “For the Founders, it was abundantly clear. Religious liberty and freedom of religious expression would be indispensable supports for our democratic traditions of government and our pluralistic society. And so they have, for over two hundred years. It is important to recognize that the benefits of these supports accrue to people of not just one particular faith, but those of all faiths,” Gingrich writes.
Of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, Gingrich says “the phrase transcends any one faith or denomination and is inclusive. ”But there are some limits to religious freedom, he argues. A free country requires that its people be virtuous, and virtue is produced by what Gingrich calls “true religion.” “True religion” is defined in his book as “any religion that cultivates the virtues necessary to the protection of liberty.” “Implicit within this vision of the Founding Fathers is a pluralistic sensibility,” he writes. I asked Gingrich after his speech today whether Islam fit the definition of “true religion” as he defines it in his book. His answer was very short, and a bit inconclusive. “I think it’s a monotheism,” he said. “So it does?” I asked. He responded: “The point is the Founding Fathers believed that having a belief in God – this is a very wide range if you read what they say – is where they believe our rights come from.”
Another reporter asked whether some in the GOP were going too far in criticizing Islam and its connection to international terrorism. “I think that you can be anti-radical Islamist without being anti-Islam,” Gingrich said.

There is a lot to react to in that set of speeches. I left it to the pols to take up the slack. Robert Reich is one of the few insiders who is speaking out. He decries Maine's new Governor Lepage, and more evidence of the republican big lie. His last two posts suggest we need a fighter in the White House.

While that madness was playing out, I was concentrating on the truly astounding, the playoffs of the NCAA men's tourney.
Arguably, the best of the game is fought on courts in the middle. The same kids who astonish us every year with their talent are born, raised, and schooled in those reaches of our landscape that are the breeding ground for the radical right speak that dominated the Iowa gathering. As you watch the final four take note of the fans, the bands, and the cutaways to their home schools. They are not ignorant. They don't drool. And it is yet to be seen whether they can be scared into responding to the hysteria of the persons who would lead them.
The disconnect is mind boggling. Those stands are filled with thoughtful, concerned, people who are hurting. Why do "progressives" cede them to the right? The fact is there was no response to the hysterics of the Tea Baggers from professionals on the left. As for the so-called liberal media, it does a great job of not pressing any of these potential candidates on any of their outrageous claims or staked out positions. Radical is the name now given by the right to any press that reports or asks any question regarding their remarks or behavior.

What of the responsibility of the so called progressives to push back? There are signs of an awakening in Wisconsin. I don't trust it. It is too rifle shot an issue and one has to wonder if the rage will extend to support of grievances from the broader cultural agenda now under attack.
The middle comes up quick as you move off the coasts. During a recent election in which a gay rights bill was on a ballot, if you noted lawn signs in Portland, the city on the edge, you would have thought that passage of gay rights was a slam dunk. On a drive not two miles out of the town limits the yard signs changed and in fact the referendum went down. I don't think the so-called left really want to spend any quality time inn the middle. In the game of politics as social identity there is not much fun imagined by the cadres that would be required to actually sit down and speak to our neighbors in the middle. We don't gain their respect marching through their Precincts wearing bias on tee shirts or parachuting in to pass out leaflets and then hurrying out.

We have a President who holds political action hostage by claiming his is the voice of progress and we should accept his politics as our own, as the old saw suggests, "what's our option". I for one believe we have to create an option. I am not going to accept as a given the policies of war, and empire, and America for the rich. I don't believe there has ever been a better time to create a true progressive movement. It will require time in the middle.

We've spent most of our lives in the middle. When we moved to the Shenandoah Valley the first question the first person we met was, "Is Max going out for band or the orchestra"? The second question was what the J meant on Max's school application. When Charlie came to pull some wire we spent as much time bullshitting about our respective lives as we did getting the work done. We had kids in common, tough times, changing landscapes, and ironically the influx of people from the city, of which I was one, was a big topic. What locals wanted me to understand was that the familiarity and solidarity of their community was what they feared they were going to lose. They knew where everyone lived, and when someone might be snowed in, or in need of checking up on, they responded. They feared they would lose that intimacy. They wanted me to commit to them. I volunteered to coach midget basketball. Carrie taught pottery.
They did not fear my politics, my religious orientation, my big city ways. It was a constant source of amusement. There is a reason that most of the comics come from the middle. They would rather tell a joke than the truth, and they are good at it.
When my car needed repair, it was done. When the dogs needed shots it was done. When we had a serious medical need, it was satisfied. The details of such a life are for others to write. What I want to share is how much we had in common. The predicate was we weren't there to change them, nor they us. We grew together. I became a leader in the dem party. We got candidates elected. We were on the ground.

I find the theory of spatial harmony, the idea that when people sit next to each other they tend to harmonize their thinking, most exciting. Here is an excerpt from a book wherein corporations are picking up the data and incorporating it in their design of office space.

To be in a position to harmonize requires proximity. Everyone believed Virginia was going to go red in the last presidential election, and they cited race as the key issue. Obama won Va. The fact is that the next gen has taken race off the table. They have eaten at the same table with others and while not integrated are past the simplistic race based politics of their parents.
Now as the political season heats up again, we have an opportunity to harmonize with the people in the middle on an array of issues. If the only voices they hear, and the only people who will sit with them for any reasonable period of time come screaming from the right, then the future is a foregone conclusion. There is an alternative. Those who have roots in the middle have to go home again, sit around those family tables and discuss their collective futures. Young persons looking for opportunity would do themselves a great service by seeking out prospects to thrive where there is a vacancy they can fill. Seniors might consider affordable options for retirement where places are begging them to migrate. And, political organizers who mean it, who want change enough to live for it, might consider relocating. They would get a chance to see some great basketball.

Fat Tuesday

2011-03-10T13:07:00.004-05:00

In the run up to Mardi Gras the urge for cajun cooking gets extreme. I was craving red beans and rice. You don't make small quantities of red beans at home. Good beans require you add at least one smoked ham hock to the pot. That means you gonna cook up a mess. This is a good example of deferring to an institution to do the cooking unless you intend to feed a mob or eat red beans for a week. nola.com ran a column on the places to get the best red beans and rice in New Orleans. Popeyes made the top 5. It wasn't the first time someone had recommended them. So Monday, red bean day, we drove the 25 miles to the only Popeyes in the state of Maine. What was I thinking? What are the so-called experts thinking? For those who don't know, one is handed a covered foam cup in which two tablespoons of rice are placed over a red paste of something. I'll stop there.

By the time any chain opens the third store, I don't care what the product, it is not going to warrant the drive. Subway proudly announces it has more units than MickyD. That doesn't say a thing about the quality of the sandwich. And none can compare with the hands on, one off, of say this piece of work at the Num Pang Sandwich Shop.
To say that bigger is not better is to state the obvious. Why then the insatiable urge to grow? In business terms the enterprise trades off quality for profit. In the public sphere the world is far more complex. You will concur, after you read this, that it is obvious to say that the entrepreneurial spirit invades the bureaucracy. Unless you experience it however, you can't appreciate the scale of the behavior. Government agency heads read their budget projections with sweating palms. They fear a cut-back, celebrate an increase, and these numbers have little to do with the delivery of the service they are charged to perform. Bigger is just better. They sit at the cabinet table in ranked order of whose agency is bigger, how large the budget, how huge the staff. They often fund projects with an eye to "continuation of effort", the opportunity to continue the project, not with successful completion. It is how we got where we are.

The behavior of bureaucrats at the local level is no less insidious. Given that the school allocation is always the largest item in any municipal budget it is no wonder that here is where the heat is rising as we contemplate cutbacks. Teachers are front and center of this discussion; fire them, cut their pensions, curtail their ability to bargain. Very little attention is paid to a real budget buster, the building program. School buildings are mortgaged and thus amortized over the life of the instrument. A thirty year building bond appears on the budget in increments. It doesn't feel, or look so bad. Fact is, it is an enormous contributor to your total tax bill. And that bill is brought to you by the same gangsters that brought you the end of the world as you know it.

When we were in Virginia we lived through this way up close and personal. The arguments for shutting down the neighborhood school that had worked well for the previous 70 some years came down to consolidation is a good thing, it will improve the delivery of services because the new bigger school can deliver more, fill in the blanks. There was no empirical evidence to support those claims. It was accepted, not without a fight. The protesters lost. Ground was acquired from a friend of the board at a price that set a record for a land sale at that time. Architects and builders went at it and a shiny new school rose in a farm field and the old time school was abandoned.
Closer to home the same process has just repeated itself. This is what we lost:

After the memorial for the old school, the weeping grads that came back to praise it, and testify as to how they will miss it, blithely accepted the new reality.
This is what we got. Plus a bill for 14+ million dollars.

NEW SCHOOL’S FEATURES
• A prominent principal’s office with large windows overlooking the front entrance, which will be the only public entrance. It will have a closed vestibule with a key-card system for staff members and a two-way communication window to screen visitors.
• Classrooms clustered around four open, carpeted areas with skylights, where teachers can work with students one-on-one or in small groups. Classrooms are in two, two-story wings, with lower grades at ground level.
• Several single-user bathrooms in each classroom wing, meant to increase privacy, decrease the distance from classrooms and reduce the potential for students to misbehave in “gang” bathrooms.
• Various energy-saving and environmentally friendly features, including a roof drainage system planted with greenery, solar-powered hot water and a dual-fired heating system that will allow the school to burn oil or gas, whichever is cheaper.
• A teachers’ lounge and workroom – something Clifford lacks – and a health clinic with a bathroom that’s larger than the nurse’s room at Clifford.

The following is excerpted from an article In The Portland Press Herald:

A tour of the school reveals more features.Each hallway is lined with an occasional grooved tile that reflects the theme of the wing. For instance, the ocean wing has tiles with embedded fish scale patterns.Jenifer Richard, an interior designer from WBRC Architects, said children enjoy running their hands along walls, which is why each wing has special hand tiles.Richard said the other wings' themes are agriculture, forest and mountains.The floors also reflect wing themes. The Ocean Wing floor tiles resemble rippling water. Forest wing floors look like bark with spots of leaves on them.
Another article re the school budget process in rural Maine, contained the following:

If the transition goes smoothly, it will bode well for future building projects, school officials said. They're working on plans to replace or renovate several of Portland's 10 elementary schools, depending on availability of state funding.
They're also preparing to tackle the controversial subject of redistricting within the next few years, which could force residents to reconsider their definition of neighborhood schools.
"We need to communicate with parents and students to make sure this transition goes well," said Jaimey Caron, chairman of the School Committee's facilities subcommittee.
The article provoked the "humble farmer" to write the following letter to the editor:

Robert Karl Skoglund 02/28/2011 06:24 AM
Fifty or so years ago the people in St. George, Maine voted to go into a school administrative district with Thomaston. This is like sending a weekly check to a man who lives with your wife and raises your children.
You might well ask how intelligent Maine people could be suckered into such a con game.
The basic premise is something for nothing. It is absolutely impossible to fleece people unless they are convinced that they can get something for nothing.
Here’s how the school con works.
You, the taxpayer in Maine, give the State and Federal Government your tax dollars. Then, if you do exactly what the government tells you to do, they will give back to your school some of your money.
You smile and feel pretty good that you got all that free money from the government.
Here’s how the school con started.
Building contractors convince top officials in the education business that it’s cheaper to educate children in large central schools. For years Maine people have raised chickens in large, centrally located henhouses. The more chickens you can jam into your henhouse, the more money you can make. The grain bin is right by the door. It’s efficient. So folks very quickly bought the argument that it would be cheaper to educate kids in consolidated schools.
It was a good argument, but there was one hitch. No chicken farmer in his right mind would vote to spend the amount of money it was going to take to build those expensive gyms and playing fields. Because most anyone would ask, “What’s gymnasiums and football fields got to do with education?”
But the wonderful part about the whole deal was that the towns wouldn’t have to pay. The state was going to pick up the tab. So even the most frugal chicken farmer jumped right in. He was suckered, you see, with the promise of something for nothing.
His town sent his tax dollars to Augusta to pay for all the schools in Maine. But there wasn’t enough money to build and run schools in all the towns. Who would believe it?

Maine people who were very frugal, Maine people who would never in their right minds vote to replace their present excellent local school, voted to go into school administrative districts. They might attend church in a building that was built in 1850, but thought that their children couldn’t be properly educated unless it they were housed in a shiny new building. And they wanted to get their share of that money out of that big money barrel in Augusta before their sticky fingered neighbors in the next county got it.
It was cleverly done, wasn’t it? But like any con game, it had to work because most taxpayers can be convinced that you can get something for nothing. Forty years ago we had communities in Maine. When you lose your school, you lose your community. And when you farm out your child’s education by getting into a school administrative district that will “save you money” don’t be surprised to discover that you might be paying for that education twice.

The humble Farmer

Hidden Agendas

2011-02-22T12:24:00.003-05:00

The Baby Bomb with no BOOM.

If people are looking for parallels between what is happening in Wisconsin, soon coming to a state near you, and what is happening on the Arab street, they would be better served to look back 50 years, to the start of the Kennedy presidency. Then as now, the factor driving national events was demography, though that was not the official rationale for program development. Here's a quick official history from the History.com web site:
This Day In History
Mar 1, 1961:
Kennedy establishes Peace Corps

Newly elected President John F. Kennedy issues an executive order establishing the Peace Corps. It proved to be one of the most innovative and highly publicized Cold War programs set up by the United States.
During the course of his campaign for the presidency in 1960, Kennedy floated the idea that a new "army" should be created by the United States. This force would be made up of civilians who would volunteer their time and skills to travel to underdeveloped nations to assist them in any way they could.
To fulfill this plan, Kennedy issued an executive order on March 1, 1961 establishing the Peace Corps as a trial program. Kennedy sent a message to Congress asking for its support and made clear the significance of underdeveloped nations to the United States. The people of these nations were "struggling for economic and social progress." "Our own freedom," Kennedy continued, "and the future of freedom around the world, depend, in a very real sense, on their ability to build growing and independent nations where men can live in dignity, liberated from the bonds of hunger, ignorance, and poverty." Many in Congress, and the U.S. public, were skeptical about the program's costs and the effectiveness of American aid to what were perceived to be "backward" nations, but Kennedy's warning about the dangers in the underdeveloped world could not be ignored. Revolutions were breaking out around the globe and many of these conflicts—such as in Laos, the Congo, and elsewhere—were in danger of becoming Cold War battlefields. Several months later, Congress voted to make the Corps permanent.
During the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of Americans—especially young people—flocked to serve in dozens of nations, particularly in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Working side by side with the people of these nations, Peace Corps volunteers helped build sewer and water systems; constructed and taught in schools; assisted in developing new crops and agricultural methods to increase productivity; and participated in numerous other projects. Volunteers often faced privation and sometimes danger, and they were not always welcomed by foreign people suspicious of American motives. Overall, however, the program was judged a success in terms of helping to "win the hearts and minds" of people in the underdeveloped world. The program continues to function, and thousands of Americans each year are drawn to the humanitarian mission and sense of adventure that characterizes the Peace Corps.
A good synopsis of the official story, recently revisited in the eulogies for Sargent Shriver.

The truth of the matter is more complex. President Kennedy was shaken by his visits to Appalachia during the campaign. Poverty was becoming more visible and disheartening. The President and many others read Michael Harrington's, The Other America. Foundations were starting to fund programs to get at the problems, and the President's Committee of Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime had begun antipoverty initiatives.

Excerpts from an Oral History of the origins of the war on poverty are here.

But to appreciate the relevancy of then to now, I want to add to the context of what comes next. The War On Poverty, now so commonly maligned, was conceived of as a stabilizing force. You have to appreciate the fact that the civil rights movement was gaining a head of steam. Now here's the kicker. What the members of the Committee on JD told the President, was the prospect that millions of young Americans (the first time the baby boomers are perceived of as a problem) had been highly educated and there were few jobs for them. They projected an alliance of black and white youths coming together to channel their frustration in a revolutionary uprising. Sound familiar? The problem then became how to forge programs that might defuse this potential and the Peace Corp was the first of many. Job Corp, Vista, Head Start, Legal Aid, the list goes on, all were developed within this context. The primary objective might have been to bring solutions to the stated problem but always there was what developers of those programs referred to as "the hidden agenda". The Peace Corp was really an elite corp of highly educated persons that had to pass tests before they could join. The genius of the corp was that persons joined and accepted meager pay for the honor and self respect that came from doing good. As programs continued to come on stream there were intentional designs to employ persons from the "target" populations to staff them. When evaluations were conducted that questioned the
the effectiveness of any of these programs in achieving their stated objectives, the off the record analysis would include how many persons were employed in the service of the program. So a jobs program was itself a jobs program.

Here is Martin Wolf in the Financial Times seeing the Arab revolt in similar terms. He appreciates the underemployment of these young people as being the driver of current events.

My perspective is that there are never going to be enough "jobs" here or abroad to satisfy the wants of the unemployed. If we scaled up production of BMWs, to satisfy those so-called wants, the consequences would be to choke the world. At exactly the same moment anyone can see there is no shortage of work to be done. The cries for dignity and recognition coming from the Arab street are not going to be satisfied by low wage jobs or make work. What might have a chance of creating a sustainable future for these people is a work corp, whose mission is not the stabilization of horrific regimes, rather the alleviation of the meanness of the physical conditions that surround them. They might have an agenda that included land reform, water development, distributed health care, or social security for the aged. The indigenous workers would prioritize their societal needs, and could organize the corps to relieve them. Critical to any such development would be the world valuing this work in much the same way the Peace Corp is valued. Rather than trying to prop up the failed economics of labor intensity, the world needs to evolve a value system that places the good works of people before the crassness of material extraction and exploitation.

There was more than one "hidden agenda" in those heady days. The other great unsaid. That which drives most of the Republican push back against unions, the poor, and democrats in general, was the fact that those of us in community action "knew" that the overthrow of oligarchs was also on our agenda. The racist, the dispassionate, the exploiters, were all on the hit list of social activists who appreciated that moms who gathered in large numbers to enroll their children in Head Start for example, might also appreciate those numbers when election day rolled around. And so it was that in the vacuum left after white flight, the vast majority of cities in America were re-governed by Democrats, often of color. The persistence of their re-elections was attributable to the votes of the civil servants beholden to them for their jobs. So when Republicans fight job creation, or when John Boehner states that he doesn't care if federal jobs are lost as a result of his budget reforms, or Governors attempt to union bust, that is code for their not wanting voters added to the block that opposes them. The recruitment of middle class workers in their army of opposition is just madness. There is just too much evidence that the so-called tea-parties are being had. A recent addition to that observation comes from the hallowed business rag of the right. Forbes has a story here on the Koch brother s involvement in the Wisconsin battle.

It is still to be seen who will co-opt the change agents in the middle east. The true oligarchs have not left the oil fields, nor the armies that protect them.

People's Protest

2011-02-08T09:26:00.005-05:00

The following is an excerpt from a story that appeared in The Nation:
How to Build a Progressive Tea Party, by Johann Hari

Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind. Enraged citizens gather in every city, week after week—to demand the government finally regulate the behavior of corporations and the superrich, and force them to start paying taxes. The protesters shut down the shops and offices of the companies that have most aggressively ripped off the country. The swelling movement is made up of everyone from teenagers to pensioners. They surround branches of the banks that caused this crash and force them to close, with banners saying, You Caused This Crisis. Now YOU Pay.
Instead of the fake populism of the Tea Party, there is a movement based on real populism. It shows that there is an alternative to making the poor and the middle class pay for a crisis caused by the rich. It shifts the national conversation. Instead of letting the government cut our services and increase our taxes, the people demand that it cut the endless and lavish aid for the rich and make them pay the massive sums they dodge in taxes.
This may sound like a fantasy—but it has all happened. The name of this parallel universe is Britain. As recently as this past fall, people here were asking the same questions liberal Americans have been glumly contemplating: Why is everyone being so passive? Why are we letting ourselves be ripped off? Why are people staying in their homes watching their flat-screens while our politicians strip away services so they can fatten the superrich even more?
And then twelve ordinary citizens—a nurse, a firefighter, a student, a TV researcher and others—met in a pub in London one night and realized they were asking the wrong questions. “We had spent all this energy asking why it wasn’t happening,” says Tom Philips, a 23-year-old nurse who was there that night, “and then we suddenly said, That’s what everybody else is saying too. Why don’t we just do it? Why don’t we just start? If we do it, maybe everybody will stop asking why it isn’t happening and join in. It’s a bit like that Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams. We thought, If you build it, they will come.”
The story continues here.
An organization was created called UK Uncut. They maintains a web presence here.

UK Uncut from Fat Rat Films on Vimeo.

The following is a slide show concerning the tax shelter practices of some US corporations.
Slide Show: 8 Corporations That Owe You Money

If you're still not convinced read the report of the US Government Accountability Office re off shore tax avoidance.
Gather some friends, pick a tax dodger and get on the street!

Side Dish

2011-02-01T12:28:00.003-05:00

The rule in our house has been; Don't eat in restaurants food that you can prepare better at home. This rule used to be limited to steak joints, spaghetti mills, and salad bars. Who could have imagined that the rule could be extended to restaurants that serve dry cereal, PB and J, and now the latest in the single dish restaurants, soon to be on a corner near you. They come with names that are a variation of "Mac something", the name for any one of hundreds of new mac and cheese outlets. It would be too easy to ID the latest hot spot in NYC, so for some scope consider CHEESE-OLOGY in St.Lo. This store has franchise potential written all over it. I am sure they serve great mac and cheese, and the variations sound wonderful, but when I'm in St Louis, I'm going to be suckin ribs.

When Carrie and I found that we could read in bed from the light transmitted from our young bodies, alit with the afterglow of Kraft's original mac and cheese (in those days 4 boxes for a buck) we hauled out the Fannie Farmer and have been making variations ever since.

Our mac and cheese is baked, topped with bread crumbs, does not contain an egg, uses up cheese ends, employs meaty sized short cuts of pasta, and the preferred cheese is a yellow cheddar. Within this simple recipe there are some fabulous lessons that can be widely applied. First of all we build our dish on a béchamel, froggy for white sauce. The keys to white sauce are universal principles that can be widely applied: One tablespoon of flour will thicken one cup of liquid. A roux(roo) the combination of fat and flour that is the first step in the creation of the sauce, does not have to be brown to be flavorful. The way to avoid burning a roux is to saute some veggie bits in a pan, say onion, and sprinkle the flour on top, stir for a minute, and then add liquid, The liquid need not be hot, but you do want to whisk until creamy (if using a non-stick pot, use a plastic whisk). Simmer for 5 minutes or so to "cook" the flour. Add a handful of grated cheese, stir again. Add slightly undercooked macaroni, stir and pour out into greased casserole. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs, Bake at 400 for 15 minutes or until a peek reveals a bubbly dish you can't wait to eat. The above is devoid of specifics because they are so variable. I start with two TBLs of butter and two TBLs of flour over a 1/4 cup minced onion. You can use olive oil, bacon fat, schmaltz, your lipid of choice. Given I have two TBLs of flour I add two cups of milk. I could use stock, cream, half and half, or heavy cream, or any combination. Keep the proportions constant. Cook at a simmer, stir until thickened. Add 1/2 pound cooked pasta. There are as many variations for toppings or stir throughs as you can imagine. The menus of the restaurants are inspirational and nothing you can't do yourself. Ben's Chili Bowl in DC (Obama's fav) used to have a chili mac/cheese that you could order with extra grease. It is a miracle we are still alive.

There has been a game changer in this house. Thailand companies make fried and dried garlic, shallot, or red onion flakes. They come in 4 oz to 2 pound containers in Asian markets. I buy 8 oz jars for 3 bucks at my local supermarket. This is not garlic powder, nor is it a substitute for fresh . These products have a distinctive flavor that adds depth to many recipes. I sprinkle it on veg, stir it in scrambled eggs, use in salad, each variety has hundreds of uses, and I add it to my mac and cheese.

While we are on the subject of comfort food. The other morning, stirring in bed, anticipating Carrie's awakening, I knew I was in for another bowl of oatmeal. Her instincts were confirmed. Oatmeal has just been voted the healthiest breakfast one could eat. If I smother it in enough syrup, and raisins, and cinnamon, I can manage to get over the gluish feeling I have in my mouth. I was not looking forward to breakfast. And then the epiphany; why not savory?
We have settled on old fashioned rolled oats which we buy in the bulk bins in our local market. Two cups of salted water set to boil. Pour in one cup oats. Reduce heat. Cook for no more then ten minutes. Now Carrie adds milk to get the consistency she wants. It was then I jumped in with a handful of crumbled bacon, a heap of fried/dried shallots, a slather of olive oil, a crack of pepper, and topped it with a soft cooked egg. I look forward to my next bowl and another variation. Mark Bittman likes soy and scallions in his oatmeal.

Side dish:
What the hell does it mean to "win the future". We are so caught up in this competitive madness that we have lost the ability to distinguish between a football game, a foot race, and a national, what? We win the war? Is that what the masters of the universe are prepping us for. US v China in the race to what exactly? What does losing look like, smoldering embers? We breed that mentality in the schools. We grade students. We fail students. We grade them on curves. They are taught to compete. If we truly wanted them to learn we would inculcate them with curriculum until they got it. They would all win. We would have to figure out another way to determine who got into Harvard, and who went to jail. That would piss off aspiring parents who want their kids to win. And what does losing look like? What does it mean to be deemed a failure at 13? No one believes grading is a benign method to determine how they are progressing and not meant to be competitive. Save us all a lot of trouble and just kill the losers off. Or, teachers, and I know you are out there, refuse to grade them. Not by yourself, though that would be wonderful. In the faculty lounge today, agree among yourselves to just stop. That's something you can do. Stop grading kids!

All The Rage

2011-01-17T09:20:00.002-05:00

As the nation moves from mourning the loss of the victims of Tucson, to attempts to rectify the causes, we risk becoming mired in the maudlin, the kumbaya, the "both, and", the nonsense of feeling good. This impulse works to the advantage of the embedded powerful. No one asks or expects the banker, the soldier, the politician, to relinquish any part of the power or fortune they have obtained or protect in the name of civility. Only the victims of bankers, soldiers, and politicians are asked to tone it down. That is just as true here as it is in Tunisia, where after intolerable abuse became so apparent, the people rose up to throw the bastards out. They may get nothing for their trouble, but at least it will be a different set of bastards. The world watches and shudders at the prospect of what this might portend. What all the powerful fear is when people have had enough abuse they will rise up in rage against their oppressors.

Anyone new to the community organizing business, will ask his/her mentors why they can't effect change on issues that seem so apparent to the trainee. Those working on issues of joblessness, lack of services, legal or similar abuses are amazed at the quiet on the land regarding issues of such dire import. The wise, experienced teacher will ask their minions, "where is the rage?", knowing rage is the precondition for any meaningful change. Channeling rage into effective action is the most important tool in the change agent's kit.

People with experience in the south preceding the civil rights movement experienced the false civility of white oligarchs asking for and employing "courtesy" in the name of subjugating their "niggras", and the po-white trash that they employed. Southern hospitality was reserved for those who respected the time honored traditions of Gentry. Talking heads are starting to posit that all Americans want to be rich, they identify with their oppressors. That's the reason they tolerate the abuse. Until they don't.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, remembered this day for peaceful, non-violent demonstrations, was no stranger to rage and its uses. The Montgomery Bus Boycott worked because it was a no-compromise response to the years of abuse suffered by the black citizenry.

The rage, the reaction, to the assassination of Dr King, was one of the factors leading to the co-joining of his followers civil rights campaign with the anti-war protests, documented here. The coalition forces, previously dispersant, forced the end of the war in Vietnam, and implemented much of the civil rights reform.

What the timid on the left have to accept is their potential alliance with the out-rageous on the right. Who on the left supports the bank bailouts so vehemently protested by the tea party activists? Who on the left is not for reductions in health care costs, elimination of wasteful spending, or the reduction of profligate government? Cut the birther crazies, and racists out of the picture. Get beyond the diversion of a killer mad man. Realize why there is such unanimity amongst the powerful in their desire to quell anti-government rhetoric. They are starting to sense the possibilities of what an anti-status-quo coalition might look like.

At the same time we have to understand that there is often no middle way. Those who beg for diplomacy, or the search for compromise, reduce hard ball issues to a mediated center, insuring that neither side of an argument will be satisfied. And this is posited as a good thing.

There has to be an understanding that many problems cannot be settled by reaching for a middle ground. General Colin Powell means it when he argues that you don't wage war halfway. In an April 1, 2009 interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, Powell set out his doctrine: the Doctrine denotes the exhausting of all "political, economic, and diplomatic means," which, only if those means prove to be futile, should a nation resort to military force. Powell then expands upon the Doctrine, asserting that when a nation is engaging in war, every resource and tool should be used to achieve decisive force against the enemy, minimizing US casualties and ending the conflict quickly by forcing the weaker force to capitulate.

Bible readers are aware of King Solomon's Baby Decision (1 Kings 3:16-27):
King Solomon had to decide between two women as to which was the mother of a baby. Solomon said (1 Kings 3:25) to cut the living child into two halves and to give one half to each mother. When one woman said she would rather give up her claim than have the child killed, Solomon knew that she was the real mother.

Two enlightened leaders spoke truth to justice and were willing to threaten the end of the so called rule of law, when the issue demanded it. Who among us retains confidence in the court system to mete out justice. Pro-lifers are just as furious with a court they find out of touch as are those appalled with the Citizens United decision. The court smells it and members have hit the book speaking trail, with new fervor. Justices Scalia and Breyer are getting a lot of air time, convincing us of the reasonableness of the system, of the mediated way. They speak to different audiences but both speak to the virtue of incremental change, the self correcting process that is the system of laws. We should be glad to know that while they disagree they remain friends. They are civil. They have found a middle way. For those slaves that lived and died under the Constitutional 3/5 compromise there was no middle way. For those millions of women who never voted there was no middle way. For those disenfranchised that never owned land or the means of production there was no middle way. Those who find themselves in similar circumstances today should not rely on a self correcting mechanism that might make the world a better place for their children. They have a right to demand justice today. They have a right and a responsibility to be outraged at the inequities in the system.

They should not be quieted by the calls for civility. If anything they should get louder and more organized and less civil in their demands for a safer, cleaner, more just world.

That is the legacy of Dr. King.

All In

2010-12-26T12:38:00.003-05:00

What a week it has been:
Democrats, pundits, and the gay community are all cheering the legislative successes of the Christmas season.
The celebration marking the end of DADT arrived right on time. Answered prayers, a Christmas present, timed to correspond to the birthday of the Prince of Peace, gays, lesbians, bi's and tranies, have won the right to fight along side their straight brothers and sisters. Now that Spartan lance can be used to advance the forces of US military might the world around. (In the name of historical accuracy remember that Sparta waged war on Athens because it feared the spread of Athenian democracy.)

I say let's seize the day. When the forces of egalitarianism are on a roll, and the honor of being a soldier in arms has never been higher, let's organize to extend to those repeatedly denied, the opportunity to join the fight. I have never understood the arbitrary age of 18 as being the minimum acceptable for admission into the armed forces. In this age when any 10 year old possesses the hand eye coordination to dominate "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" the video game, it is obvious that represents a transferable skill for modern warfare, say drone missions. Let's stage a competition for those younger men and women who want to compete and the prize will be enlistment.

As a senior with so little life left to lose I think that it is a fitting and proper that my, most selfish gen, give back service for the gifts we have enjoyed. The best of us are tactical, and in many cases the health services available to us on mission exceed those in our local community. I want to be able to join.
I don't want to overlook the most egregious of the sins of recruitment omission. Our physically challenged brothers and sisters have proven their metal in Special Olympics and everyday feats of overcoming barriers to access. This is a military that fights with its minds and as long as a citizen is in his right mind I believe we can accommodate their desire to be treated as whole citizens. Dismembered Vets who are heard every night expressing a desire to return to their units abroad should be allowed.
Maybe no person deserves the right to re-up more than the abused Vietnam veteran. No one thanked him for his deployment at the time. This is his chance for redemption. We will respect him for his service.

Ironically, the only peace protest this week was conducted by Veterans for Peace

More at The Real News

This was the week in which Civil defense forces in Seoul, Korea ran drills shutting down the city and moving tens of thousands of citizens into bomb shelters. Their political leaders are heard to say they want to fight the complacency of the average citizen re the prospects for a confrontation with the North.
This was the week of the START treaty approval. I hope you got a chance to listen to a piece of the so-called debate. Naysayers were not going to allow Russians to limit our tactical nuclear war machine, our missiles on rails, or in any way inhibit the effectiveness and battle readiness of our nuclear warheads and their delivery systems. They won. Here is a summary of the treaty
The UK Guardian has an analysis of the numbers of nuclear weapons in the world and who has them.

While the START treaty was being debated Americans were told of the survivability of a nuclear war and, contrary to popular belief, we are instructed to stay home, hide in the basement and stay off the highways.

Wired Magazine published a piece ‘Regional’ Nuclear War Would Cause Worldwide Destruction that contains a realistic study of the consequences of a limited nuclear exchange.
Here is another conclusion from a study by the American Geophysical Union of the effects of a very limited nuclear exchange: Cooling from a limited nuclear exchange would create two to three consecutive "Years Without a Summer", and over a decade of significantly reduced crop yields. The authors anticipated that the smoke in the stratosphere would partially destroy Earth's protective stratospheric ozone layer as well, but did not model how large of an impact this would have. Clearly, even a limited nuclear exchange could trigger severe global climate change capable of causing economic chaos and widespread starvation.

We have something like a dry run in the aftermath of the "accident" at Chernobyl.

Nobody has a better take on this then Randy Newman

The Gift

2010-12-09T14:34:00.002-05:00

The grand guy is 5 today. The event occasions a lot of thought. C and I are starting to contemplate the final gift, the legacy we can leave the family.

We take all too seriously the probability that whatever cash we might have will be inflated away. That belief results in the avoidance of toys, and diversions as gifts. Coming off the Chanukah round and heading into the Christmas season it is hard to maintain some kind of reason in the face of the buying tide that engulfs us all. An idea becomes obvious; we can't fritter away what we have on junk.
We want to set a serious tone about values. We are trying to define wealth, imagine what it might consist of going forward, and endow the family with the ways and means to help secure their future.
The best gifts I received as a child (excluding the Rawlings PM7 baseball mitt) were those certificates, shares of stock, (1000 shares of USAir grandpa bought at $3, for my Bar Mitzvah) that sat undisturbed in the desk drawer and quietly accrued value until we sold them, at $33, to pay off college loans. We were lucky. The market has been a storehouse of wealth. I have no such confidence going forward. No shares for Westley.

The gold bugs have replaced paper for a hard currency. All well and good. But the fact is that for gold to be of value it must be exchanged for a consumable at the end of the day or it remains no more than a symbol. No bars for Westley. We could contribute to a college fund which of itself reinforces the horrible and disproportionate inflation that is tuition. No 529 for the boy.

We recently returned from a visit to the children during which time the family were guests at a friend's birthday party. We talked about it on the long drive home. We sense the pressure to engage the kids in a memorable experience. In this case it was a bowling party. They had a ball. Conversations with the parents during the party, getting to know them a bit, revealed that most of the 15 moms at the party are members of a reading group. The men were heard roaring and lying the way their dads did before them. They have figured out how to be together at times of no import. There is no evidence that they congregate to contemplate the big issues of the day. They appear to pursue their hopes and dreams within the privacy of their separate homes. Their fates are going to be determined independent of one another.

I have spent my entire life in pursuit of the promise of community. I have failed to find it. From the early shock of my high school fraternity deciding to black-ball my friend and my resignation because of it, to the ultimate, and finally acceptance of the truth that self interest trumps community every time. I wonder if this "truth" is one that is a by-product of wealth. As one acquires more money it seems the most obvious way to express it is to buy the house on the hill,"top out of sight", the furthest one can get away from ones neighbors. Clearly the owner doesn't believe that he will ever need them. One wonders how this will play if and when times get tough.

I think the family needs a fall back position. If this were a suggestion that they ought to form some kind of commune, get in front of the curve, I would be tolerated and dismissed as the unreconstructed 60's refuge that I am. But, what if the project was something more immediately practical, useful, and without the stigma of group grope?

My children contemplate vacation destinations. My son hunts with friends. My grandson attends day camp all during the summer. How would they respond to the idea that they build a camp for themselves. Not a second home, or a getaway but a camp in the woods shared by any and all of their friends who want a piece. Hopefully the place will never have to be more than a retreat. But if/then they have it. They will have learned to work together. They will have shared basic skills. Here's the deal.

Our gift to Westley, his parents, and their friends, is to match any amount that other friends and/or their parents are willing to put up to buy such a place. A hypothetical might be that Max/Rachel share this idea with 20 friends. 10 friends want to pursue it. They identify a 20 acre parcel in the near woods that is private and affordable. They split the price ten ways. Our check is in the mail

Happy Birthday

Leftovers

2010-11-30T14:43:00.003-05:00

We just finished our leftovers and with the last serving we swore; never again to turkey. I don't care how good you are at cooking turkey the fact is, if you weren't hyped to death to eat or serve this bird to fill out the Norman Rockwell "way it's supposed to be" image of Thanksgiving, you would never eat it. When was the last time you ate turkey other than a holiday? The sides are fabulous. Serve them around a great pic of a turkey that you can stand up as a centerpiece and let that satisfy the photo op.

Below are two leftovers, a food thought and a re-post of a current outrage. I include the latter as food for thought. Mine was not the only table around which political discussions got heated. In tens of thousands of households around the country, newly matriculated freshmen were home from their first semester of, say, social studies 101. Heretofore in these families the opinions of the "heads" of the table were for the most part the orientation of the family. In this particularly heady times, hot on the heels of an election, one can imagine that some opinion was served with the slice of turkey. You can also assume that it was met with a disagreement. Headstrong in their new found contrary perspective, the recent initiate into the "liberalizing" experience of higher ed shot back his/her countervailing point of view. See this summary of research that supports the proposition that attending college has the effect of increasing; tolerance of diversity, the desire to do public service, and identifying oneself as "liberal". The impact of this interruption of the tradition of "father knows best" is only getting larger as more and more students join the ranks. Despite the pundits' acceptance of the lie that we are a center right nation, the trend seems to be in place for a meaningful shift to the left. It will require lots of truth telling. Some of which got left on the table.

Carrie posted a pic of a rye bread I baked for Thanksgiving. Her readers wanted the recipe.

The preamble to making this bread the proper way is to be acquainted with Jim Lahey's method of making yeast breads. It is a no knead bread, with an overnight fermentation(24 hr) and the bread, when baked is placed in a cast iron dutch oven (your crueset will work fine) which has been preheated in a very hot (500degree) oven.

The size of the dutch oven determines the size of the loaf. I use a very large Staub.You will more likely have a Lodge or Crueset or lookalike. If yours is 6 quart stick with the following proportions. If you have a larger dutch oven, 9+ quarts, you can double the recipe. The water ratio is key. It is not fixed. Start with the following amounts and if you have loose flour add another 1/2 cup. What you want is a moist dough. Incorporate the caraway with the other dry ingredients and use another tablespoon to sprinkle over the loaf after it lands in the dutch oven. I don't double the yeast and don't quite double the salt. After your initial rising you are going to turn out a really moist dough. Use a dough scrapper to fold it over on itself, cover and allow a second rising ( an hour). I do this on a pizza peal, or use a cookie sheet, so that I can transfer it to my now very hot dutch oven without burning myself. It will flop. It will look wrong. It is ok. The loaf will form out to fit the oven. Sprinkle the surface with the rest of the caraway seeds. bake for 1/2 hour then remove the lid and reduce the heat to 400 for another 20-40 minutes. Don't burn the bread but don't remove too soon. This is a judgment call. The loaf is easy to remove from the oven using tongs. Hold the loaf in a tea towel, thunk the bottom listening for that hollow sound that says all is well. It usually requires more time or there will be moist spots in the center. You can slide the bread directly back into the oven for another 10 mins to finish. I often turn off heat and let it the bread cool therein. Pumpernickel raisin is next. Lehey goes nuts in his book knocking off amy's semolina raisin bread. I have a better recipe I will share with you later.

Ingredients:
2 1/4 c Bread Fl
3/4 c rye fl
1 1/4 t salt
1/2 t yeast
1 1/3 c warm water
2 T caraway seeds
Rye for dusting

(The bread pictured was double the above recipe)
This is the link to see the original posting which changed so many peoples minds about kneading. I kneaded for YEARS and was known for the second best bread around in my territory. All those wasted hours!! This is BETTER.

If you need any further encouragement Google Jim Lahey no knead bread and read some of the entries. End of Carrie's e-mail

In the spirit of calling out the liars the following is an excerpt from the blog Lynnrockets' Blast-Off
I would have posted the whole entry but the use of a cartoon of Newt in Nazi gear is a practice I don't support. The posting however goes into detail re. the German health care system and is worth reading.

"Gingrich vomited a diatribe on what a truly great nation Germany is and why the United States should emulate its policies. How’s that for “American exceptionalism” and patriotism? What would Gingrich and the Republicans have to say if a Democrat expressed that opinion? When one of the show’s hosts agreed with him and then questioned if whether Germany’s universal health care system should also be applauded, Gingrich started with the lies and misinformation.
To begin, he claimed that Germany has a private health care system which is run by over 350 private insurance companies with minimal government funding, supervision or regulatory authority. He then lied by saying that German citizens privately purchase their own health care insurance policies from these private insurers and that they can change their plans and providers whenever they choose. In essence, Gingrich stated that Germany’s health care system is even more privatized than the American system was prior to this year’s health care reform legislation. In the words of Stephen Colbert, Gingrich’s characterization of Germany’s health care system was devoid of “truthiness”.
The truth is, that Germany has Europe’s oldest universal health care system which dates back to 1883 with changes made thereafter. Currently 85% of the population is covered by a basic health insurance plan provided by statute, which provides a standard level of coverage. The remainder opt for private health insurance, which frequently offers additional benefits. According to the World Health Organization, Germany’s health care system is 77% government-funded and 23% privately funded. Additionally, the government partially reimburses the costs for low-wage workers, whose premiums are capped at a predetermined value. Higher wage earners pay a premium based on their salary. Those higher earners may also opt for private insurance, which is generally more expensive, but whose price may vary based on the individual’s health status.
Germany has a universal multi-payer system with two main types of health insurance, public and private."

A Call To, if not arms, Voices

2010-11-19T14:53:00.002-05:00

As an unreconstructed lefty, it is humiliating to see the inability of liberals to push back against the outrages of the right. The ease with which the inflamed right can push, denigrate, abuse, excoriate, and feign insult when anyone even gently pushes back reveals their knowledge of what it means to have a street fight with a "civil", over-educated, opponent, who can't and won't fight back. You can get away with anything.

The so-called left, intent on maintaining the appearance of dignity, taking the beating, and applying the balm of the moral high ground, pretends it doesn't hear the clarion call of its followers to get tough. It doesn't know how to get tough. It is what is implied when the right accuses the left of being timid regarding the conduct of war. The bully knows how to punch and run, to use the power of the mob, to resort to arms when reason fails them. The liberal response; become more like them. Fight a bigger war, wage war against your constituency. It wasn't long after Hillary accused the right of a giant conspiracy that President Clinton threw single moms off the welfare rolls. Obama escalates the war in Afghanistan and extends the time line. This administration pays off wall street, the insurance companies, and the banks. This administration refuses to fight for the rights of gays in the military, the office of consumer protection, or victims of foreclosure fraud.

We now have a president who invites the opposition to a "summit" and they refuse to attend. We have a president who apparently doesn't believe Sen. McConnell when the senator declares he is going after him. Rep. Paul Ryan, sent up as the Republican author of an economic alternative, recoils from Charlie Rose's attempt to forge a spirit of compromise by suggesting the Obama can't be worked with, he referred to Republicans as "the enemy" during the run up to the last election. This after The President of the United States is called a liar on the floor of the house, and a Nazi, communist, and traitor, in the streets and on the air. The President is looking for ways to work with them.

We have a press that reports the blather of the big lie; Soros was a Nazi, liberals run the media, the poor caused the financial crisis. The response? Jon Stewart hauls a million people to the mall for a be in and doesn't ask them to do anything.

Republicans, to the person voted against gender equity in pay yesterday. No one called them out. Nor do they get called out on their anti-unemployment insurance votes, their calls to repeal "Obamacare", or their threat to shut down the government if tax breaks for the rich aren't extended.

The problem was personified this morning when on c-span, Sarah Wartell, Center for American Progress, Executive Vice President, had to listen to a call-in calling her "a communist, a socialist, a person who doesn't get it." The caller then described seeing people rioting to get subsidized housing, and food stamps, while the rest of us work. They don't take care of their children, they should be made to work for their money...she went on. Ms Wartell's response, framed like a deer in the headlights, "we have to work harder to see to it that government programs are run more effectively". She can't and won't call this woman out as a racist for that would be playing the race card. She can't point out to this woman that the greatest welfare theft in the history of mankind happened to the benefit of the super rich, for that would be engaging in class warfare. She sits, mum. The caller wins the round.

Gingrich says he wants to roll the country back to 1932 and no one calls him out on it. The so-called strict constitutionalists argue against any program not specified in the document, and no one calls them out on it. Sarah Palin suggests that the ideology of the Obamas was forged when listening to anti-white harangues from the pulpit and no one calls her out on it.

The left may not want to get their hands dirty in the midst of this. What they are really missing is the affinity they would enjoy with those millions who don't like liars and bullies and would love to see someone knock them on their asses. That's what leadership is, taking on the fight that the average citizen watches from the sideline.

Election Day Lessons

2010-11-09T16:10:00.004-05:00

Moms can't catch a break. The following is an excerpt: From Erica Jong, WSJ Saturday Essay
"Our obsession with parenting is an avoidance strategy. It allows us to substitute our own small world for the world as a whole. But the entire planet is a child's home, and other adults are also mothers and fathers. We cannot separate our children from the ills that affect everyone, however hard we try. Aspiring to be perfect parents seems like a pathetic attempt to control what we can while ignoring problems that seem beyond our reach.

As we give up on ideals of community, we focus more and more on our individual children, perhaps not realizing that the community and the child cannot be separated."

The NYT blog response, if read by moms will drive them to distraction. Time better spent focusing on the job at hand. The facts, as witnessed in one tiny village on the Hudson, belie all of the summary statements made by those who write about parenting.

It happened that our kids' schedule conflict allowed us the privilege of child caring. It was election day. The prospect of a long day in a small hurricane was eased when Evelyn invited us to her home where moms were going to gather to staff the phones in a get out the vote pitch. Their children would play together as another coincidence had it that the schools were closed for a work day. No "avoidance" here.

Carrie and I are no strangers to phone banks and so we did our share. The attic was commandeered by the kids and one of us would drift up to check out the scene from time to time. The kids got on well. As moms came and went the conversation ebbed and flowed around the political issues of the day. I shared the perspective that it seemed moms were comfortable in their roles as moms. We had noted that all of the moms in this house had been seen picking up their children from school the day before, and that there was a great turnout and crazy fun had in the previous weekend halloween activities. (Cold Spring, NY is a mecca for over the top halloween celebration). Years earlier a new mom friend of ours howled with frustration; "I am tired of being the only mom in the tot lot!"

These moms are in the process. I heard all manner of civic, and social engagement. No "ignoring problems beyond their reach." They are bonding as a community. This scene was repeated around the country as new energy electrified the electorate. Moms are widely disparate and being manipulated in opposition to each other but that cynical strategy is not going to work. When the pols and the pundits fail to deliver a safe and secure future for their children, the moms are going to unite and create their own. They are going to clear the decks of people who presume to tell them there is A way. The truth is that nothing dramatic happened that day, And that is as it should be.

The Unsaid

2010-10-26T12:19:00.003-04:00

If you are going to participate in this democracy there are some facts you just have to know.

"Starve the Beast" is a policy strategy that when implemented, (tax cuts under President Bush for example), hopes to slash government by denying it money. A far more devastating form of the same policy is to create massive amounts of debt, generating the kind of fiscal crisis we now suffer, and limiting the governments ability to fund. Bush did both.
Grover Norquist, an architect of the Bush program, states his objectives: "Norquist favors dramatically reducing the size of the government. He has been noted for his widely quoted quip: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
He has also stated, "Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal. If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050". The Americans for Tax Reform mission statement is "The government's power to control one's life derives from its power to tax. We believe that power should be minimized."
Norquist is the author of the book Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives,published on March 11, 2008 by HarperCollins. He has variously served as a monthly "Politics" columnist and contributing editor to The American Spectator." The above is a wiki citation.

Ed Gilgore, a democratic strategist, wrote in 2004 an article that set out the policy as it was being adopted by then President Bush.

Paul Krugman revisited the issue this year and threw down the gauntlet to republicans to name just where they would make the cuts they demand.

What Krugman didn't say, and no dem will admit, is that they have lost the political battle. Here is their problem in a nutshell: Having chosen to go along, in the name of bi-partisanship; funding the Iraq and Afghan war off the books, approving drug benefits to Medicare, and most egregiously, funding the bankers bailout, the dems have sealed their fate. In addition to all of that activity under Bush, the democrats were not going to curtail their agenda when they gained control. Health care reform, school reform, engaging the world in nation building, funding alternative energy R/D, bailing out Fannie and Freddie, are some of the programs we have watched them implement. The effect of all of this is to grow the debt and the national outrage against it. The bank appears to be broken on their watch. They are going to pay.

What neither party was ready to imagine was the extent to which the national bankruptcy is not a function of public policy but rather the wholesale theft of our treasury. Dan Froomkin's piece on Harvard's Neiman Watchdog gets at just one element of the theft, the mortgage fraud. It is exactly at this point that most eyes are going to fall off the page and it is for just that reason that readers must press on. You haven't heard too much re. this fiasco, you haven't heard nearly enough.
Here is a Slate article on the passing through of billions of taxpayer dollars to foreign banks.
Here is a statement on the same subject from the right.
These articles address some of the trillions of dollars that have passed from taxpayers to vested interests. These articles don't address the negative wealth effect of the blowup on the average citizen. Trillions of dollars of assets have evaporated in the form of securities losses and house values. You've seen the pictures of the gutted houses in city after city. You don't live in a slum. This doesn't effect you. On your next drive note the number of for sale/lease signs in your neighborhood commercial district to get a since of the scope of the problem. This does affect you. The pic at the top of this post is but a segment of Domino's world headquarters. It is for rent.

This excerpt from Elizabeth Warren corrects some of the newspeak out there:
"Through it all, families never asked for a handout from anyone, especially Washington. They were left to go on their own, working harder, squeezing nickels, and taking care of themselves. But their economic boats have been taking on water for years, and now the crisis has swamped millions of middle class families.
The contrast with the big banks could not be sharper. While the middle class has been caught in an economic vise, the financial industry that was supposed to serve them has prospered at their expense. Consumer banking -- selling debt to middle class families -- has been a gold mine. Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts.
And when various forms of this creative banking triggered economic crisis, the banks went to Washington for a handout. All the while, top executives kept their jobs and retained their bonuses. Even though the tax dollars that supported the bailout came largely from middle class families -- from people already working hard to make ends meet -- the beneficiaries of those tax dollars are now lobbying Congress to preserve the rules that had let those huge banks feast off the middle class.
Pundits talk about "populist rage" as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class. But they have it wrong. Families understand with crystalline clarity that the rules they have played by are not the same rules that govern Wall Street. They understand that no American family is "too big to fail." They recognize that business models have shifted and that big banks are pulling out all the stops to squeeze families and boost revenues. They understand that their economic security is under assault and that leaving consumer debt effectively unregulated does not work.
Families are ready for change. According to polls, large majorities of Americans have welcomed the Obama Administration's proposal for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The CFPA would be answerable to consumers -- not to banks and not to Wall Street. The agency would have the power to end tricks-and-traps pricing and to start leveling the playing field so that consumers have the tools they need to compare prices and manage their money. The response of the big banks has been to swing into action against the Agency, fighting with all their lobbying might to keep business-as-usual. They are pulling out all the stops to kill the agency before it is born. And if those practices crush millions more families, who cares -- so long as the profits stay high and the bonuses keep coming.
America today has plenty of rich and super-rich. But it has far more families who did all the right things, but who still have no real security. Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety. Paying for a child's education and setting aside enough for a decent retirement have become distant dreams. Tens of millions of once-secure middle class families now live paycheck to paycheck, watching as their debts pile up and worrying about whether a pink slip or a bad diagnosis will send them hurtling over an economic cliff.
America without a strong middle class? Unthinkable, but the once-solid foundation is shaking."

These statements serve her interest, validating the agency she intends to create. What she can't do is claw back the money that was stolen. She suggests that we need to regulate to keep them from doing this again. There is no "again". It's done. There is no capital, there is only debt finance. All of the loans made since 2007 are on leveraged funds. Government funds. And lending institutions are not going to lend these monies if they fear the collapse of the dollar (in which the loans are denominated) or that interests rates will rise (which they must). The impact of all of this is that whichever party ascends to power they are powerless to offset the damage. The republicans have their wish, the beast is starved. Now the question is, how do you run the government, any level of government with no money? Here is the brit's solution. (FYI, Quango=quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation). A corporate state. We are heading in the same direction.

Books of Samuel

2010-10-22T11:01:00.002-04:00

We arrived at the Art Institute of Chicago about a half hour before opening and took the opportunity to stretch out on the benches in the park and catch some rays.

I hear a meek voice declare that this is not a request for money; "if you could just help me with my assignment that is all I am asking". I peek up to see an impish, cockeyed teen, dressed in piped jeans, purcell's, and a pork pie diddy-bop hat sitting jauntily atop his head. His name is Samuel. Too cute.

I tell him I'll trade, give him what he wants if he will answer some questions and sit awhile. He agrees. We are to fill in a 2/2 post-it note with a tragedy. I write Mel Brook's definition, "comedy is you fall in an open manhole, tragedy is I have a splinter". He accepts the note and explains that this is good as his prof is looking for irony. Carrie writes that if Romeo were gay, he would have never killed Tybalt and tragedy would have been avoided. It provokes no answer. He is to gather 98 more notes in the park.

I ask him where he is from and he informs me a suburb to the north. I'm just a visitor and assume he means north-side and he tells me no, further north and west, a ghetto. Whoa!
And which school are you attending? "SAIC the college attached to the Art Institute".

So you're poor? "Yeah, and worse, a Mexican".
How did you get here? "I worked since I was 8 years old, mornings before school, and weekends, because I knew then I wanted to be an artist. My dad is rarely home and when he is it's the shit, but mom didn't stop me. I started auditing art classes at my local community college when I was 12. I took the train here to the high school and took classes though I wasn't an official student. I had no friends I could talk to. My grandma was my best friend. I put together a portfolio of my work and applied for a scholarship here and I won it."

What kind of work do you do? "Collages mostly. My grandma, sitting in front of fields of flowers".
Do you know where you are from? "A village about 100 miles south of Mexico City. Grandma is going to take me back".

Have you seen the "It Get's Better" project? "No never heard of it."
Well it is testimony from people who have been bullied in school addressing how they survived and how things got better for them.

"Things already got better for me. I got a $140,000 dollar scholarship".

He tips his hat and moves on.

Waiting for Supermen

2010-10-04T10:37:00.004-04:00

Screeners of the new film documentary, "Waiting for Superman" have been told to bring towels. As if the audience had no idea of the state of public education in America. It is true that there are those who live at such a remove from troubled school districts that they may have never actually been in a central city school, those living in rural Montana for example, but the rest of us have either fled them for cause (Obama fesses up) or their cable has been cut for the last 50 years. I spoke on this blog in February to some of the issues.

Let's allow the possibility that what these kids haven't been getting is absolutely known to all of us and we have chosen to do nothing about it. People within the Washington D.C. metro area who are old enough will remember "massive resistance" and those that don't ought to read this link. It is a perfect example of a very public expression of an area of the country saying no to integration because they knew that children of color were under educated in sub par schools and whites were not going to be forced into those schools. They didn't pretend they didn't know what was going on. They had supported keeping those kids in their place. And white kids were not going to that place.

But let's get some perspective here. To make the leap from; we are keeping the black and brown folk down, to, we have a broken system. is the height of public manipulation. Let's get some facts on the table before we get caught up in the great public diversion away from our other problems:
There is not one vacant seat in any of the colleges and universities in America. Evidence includes a discussion group that identifies the acceptance rate at leading universities and includes a discussion of Cal Tech. Cal Tech applicants come from California public schools.
There are millions of highly qualified, educated persons, standing in unemployment lines.
The economic success of the BRICs is not because their schools are better than ours. They have a work force that will work for less.
We are not losing our ability to compete in the world because some inner city kid is being trampled.

Another set of behaviors, educational outcomes, is more interesting to me:
The people who implement all the current forms of "massive or passive resistance" are highly educated.
The persons who designed and built the killer drone unmanned aircraft are all Ph.D. engineers.
The persons who designed and implemented the ad campaign for "Sugar Smacks" were all college grads.
Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Kennedy to name but two, are law school grads who voted to extend to corporations the rights of individuals.
All of the bankers and insurance company executives that have brought the world as we knew it to an end are business school graduates.
The Unabomber is a Harvard Graduate.
The geniuses that destroyed the American auto industry were all graduate engineers.
The persons who are asking for your tax dollars to support a manned mission to Mars, to sustain the thread of life that will expire on Earth, are all graduates of schools of higher education.
The generals that brought you Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan are all graduates of West Point.
The software engineers that gave you the ability to reduce human existence to the banality of tweets are all highly educated.

After the current round of the education debate is over, refueled by the guilt instilled by the latest film documentary on the subject, I am going to be asked to divert my money away from some form of self indulgence to support the improvement of the educational circumstances of under-privileged kids in city school systems. I will "resist". What I am more than ready to do is give up meat to challenge the efficacy of American higher education. I want my money to be used to create a set of objectives for our graduates that includes ethics, morals, and a sense of responsibility to our fellow human beings on this planet. Moral college graduates will not tolerate the destruction of others. They will improve education.

A Pox on Both Your Houses

2010-09-24T09:54:00.006-04:00

The war against the poor is at once brutal, subtle, and rife with contradictions.

The life lessons that had the most effect on me came while I was in the field. None more profound than while on a recruitment tour for a new college my firm had bought and hoped to reform. The argument offered in our catalog was that essentially the administration of this new college has accepted the premises laid out in Donella Meadows publication, Limits To Growth.

If our new reality was that we were going to have to learn to do "more with less", then our curriculum was going to reflect a new set of studies, teaching methods, and evaluations. We imagined these reforms would afford our students a skill set that would serve them well in a world about to radically change.

For example we integrated studies, proposed team work as of the highest value, moved teaching staff from the front of the class to within the body of the learning community, and created courses that included problem solving, design and planning, even within the traditional humanities.

I brought my program to guidance counselors in high schools in MD, NY, and was satisfied with responses from students indicating they would apply. I had yet to meet with parents. I had family in Hartford, Ct and they agreed to host a gathering of prospective students in their home. On the given evening I greeted more than 50 parents and students in this suburban setting. The students were animated, asking tough questions, most of which centered on accreditation. (because of the changes we proposed, our accreditation was under review). There were a disproportionate number of lawyers in the group and this became apparent when the parents, having heard enough, rose up in revolt. Let me reduce it to one parent's statement that summarized the spirit in the room: "I am going to assume that all of your presumptions about the future are correct. More and more people are going to be chasing fewer and fewer resources. In such a scenario I am going to strongly advise my daughter to consider the Ivy league options she has available to her, and increase her competitive advantage." This statement was seconded by all of the parents in the room, and the generation gap widened during the course of the evening. The lesson for me was laid out in that room and learned: When the times get tough, the haves are going to hang on like crazy. These neighbors were friends of my relative, a Democrat, an elected official. This was the voice of the suburban left.

Program policies directed at the poor were traditionally premised on a belief that what had hampered the development of the poor was their lack of inclusion in an economic system that was otherwise sound. No matter the regime, if the political world view was that ours was a nation of plenty, though the methods might change as to how one might stimulate income gains, poverty could be eliminated by the poor gaining access to the system. Now we know that the push back that started with Reagan; rejection of affirmative action, welfare reform, emphasis on the language of so-called equal opportunity at the expense of equal outcomes, might have been embedded in the reality that middle class America was already trying to make do with less. Rather than assuming malignant intent to those who waged war on the poor from the right, it is more likely that they share with their brothers on the left, an awareness that the economy is indeed shrinking, the times are getting tougher, and self interest trumps goodwill every time.

There was something honest about the stated self interest of Dems in Ct. Not so the current harangue from the right that would have you believe that their interests are really not classist, they are concerned with the welfare of the nation. Their objection to the expansion of health care to the poor is to protect the budget. They are deficit hawks, or so they would have you believe. Their stance on immigration is really about homeland security and not a threat to their piece of an ever shrinking pie.

As the ranks of the poor are swelling the questions for us are: Has the forecast of limits been realized? What kind of curriculum do we want in place today? Do we have any responsibility to any of our neighbors? Is this a nation or a pack of dogs, fighting for what they fear is their last meal?

Freedom

2010-09-09T12:45:00.003-04:00

Freedom, Rights, Privilege

Phyllis Schlafly continues to head the Eagle Forum, a radical conservative "think tank" , that is part of the chorus of hard right reactionaries. One paragraph from their home page sets the tone:
"We oppose all encroachments against American sovereignty through United Nations treaties or conferences that try to impose global taxes, gun registration, energy restrictions, feminist goals, or regulation on our use of oceans."

At the 2010 Eagle Forum Collegians Summit, Chris Horner, was featured reading from his latest book,"Power Grab: How Obama's Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America". He throws a lot of language against the wall and waits to see what will stick. The freedom concept, and loss thereof, seems to get a lot of traction if the q/a part of the program is any indicator. It was in this forum that Ms Schlafly interrupted the proceedings to make the following point: "I use a 200 watt light bulb on my desk. I don't want to use those squiggly things that have no light. I can't hardly find a 200 watt light bulb in the stores anymore. I want the freedom to use the lightbulb I chose. I am losing my freedom".

It boils down to that. Of course within that silly example is the demand that she be allowed to burn whatever energy she wants and no socialist government agency is going to tell her she can't.

Carrie and I had a two hour drive the other day and we talked about this issue. This loss of freedom thing. We then proceeded to list freedoms we had lost.
I can't raise a pig in my backyard.
I can't drive 100 mph.
I can't water my lawn during a drought.
I can't walk my dog without a leash and I must pick up his poop.
I can't park a trailer, boat, or RV, in my driveway.
I can't buy a bottle of booze till I am 21.
I can't quit school till I am 16.
I can't dump my sewage in the gutter.
I can't run a business out of my garage.
I can't leave my children unsupervised.
I can't spray DDT in my garden.
I can't ride my bike on the sidewalk.
I can't grow marijuana.

I no longer can play music as loud as I want.
I can't let my lawn go to weed.
I am not allowed out of the ward if I have typhoid.
I can't wear cut offs to school.
I am not allowed to walk bottomless in public.
I can't cut down a tree in the park.
I can't dam the spring, or poison the well.

All of the above are freedoms I once had and were sacrificed for the common good. To those on the right, who give voice to a new "contract with America" the idea of common good does not extend to any limitations on their freedom. They are shredding the social contract that limits the rights of say a farmer to poison my food source, or exploit stoop labor, or butcher a "mad cow". They would drill for gas without consideration of the impact on ground water. They would manufacture a defective product and bear no responsibility for the consequences. They retain the right to exploit any and all resources regardless of the impact on the rest of us.

The most maddening element of this practice is that the exploiters are able to rally the very people they are going to singe in the name of protecting their freedoms.

I think the key to forming an opinion on all of this is to ask yourself not what freedoms you fear losing, but which freedoms you want your neighbor to have.

When is enough, enough?

2010-08-24T10:20:00.002-04:00

When is enough, enough?
Roman Abramovich, wiki here, gangster, thief, con-man, plutocrat and one of the wealthiest men in the world, has just had his boat, Eclipse, floated. It is notable as the largest private yacht in the world. A set of pics and description are here. It is made of steel. The weight of the boat, 13000 gross tonnes, when converted to pounds is 29,120,000 lbs. Fuel capacity is 8801 liters. ( 2325 gallons) It cruises at 25 knots an hour.
I was unable to obtain fuel consumption figures for the specific boat, but here is the rate for a charter boat half the size:
FUEL CONSUMPTION: 800 ltrs/hour (211 gallons).
GENERATOR CONSUMPTION: 2500 ltrs/day

The descriptions are really only best guesses, written by a salivating media, and the cost estimate is for the boat only, exclusive of furniture and toys. For a look inside another of these behemoths the WSJ recently published this video.

There is a decidedly mixed message within this video. While subtly mocking the $60k water faucet, the "nookie" chamber, or the walls lined with the hides of sting rays, the reporters appear to enjoy cavorting aboard, racing along the corridors and apparently wishing they could extend their stay. Nothing new about that. When boats float on "in the water" boat shows/sales the docks are flooded with on-lookers clawing aboard, wanting to know who owns what, and how much it costs. The owners know of the envy they provoke. Around the world in port after port owners have their yachts docked stern in, and proceed to dine in lavish excess while the proles stroll by and salivate. No fear of protest or a pitched grenade, owners know the poor eat each other.

Here is a list of other yachts that are the "top 100" in size.

We'll know later today if stories regarding the Florida candidate for senate, Jeff Greene, uses and abuses of his yacht sank his election bid.

We were living in Florida, just south of the Port Everglades cut on 9/11/01. Within an hour of the confirmation of the news of what had happened in NY and before we knew if the attack was limited, hundreds of yachts could be seen bobbing in the ocean. I called a boat builder I knew in the area and asked him what he knew, what was up? "They figure if this is it, their chances are better at sea then on shore, they're outta here." Says something about the character of the big boat owner.

We cannot suppose that all of this excess is without consequence. The argument that we have no right to dictate to any of these billionaires what they can or cannot do with their money is an argument WE cannot afford. By example we rarely restrict the scale of housing. If megabucks wants to build a McMansion he is generally free to do what he wants. However there are mitigating circumstances. When in the height of the drought that threatened to parch Atlanta in 2007, the county water authority placed restrictions on water consumption.

When it was discovered that a fat cat was consuming 440,000 gallons of water a month for his mansion the outrage and outcry resulting in forcing him to cut back. Public outrage reined in an excess that threatened the rest of us. This outrage is too rare. As tourists roam the "great houses" of the world they never ask how the wealth was obtained, how many backs were broken in the process of the erection of these monuments to excess.

There is no outrage at the overwhelming excesses of big boat owners. And the scale of their abuses. They are building the equivalent of private hotels that dwarf any of the so-called "great" houses.

One would hope, in a resource starved world, that we would shift the onus of responsibility where it belongs. We are barraged with stories of how marginal peasants, let's use Chiapus as an example, are deforesting the jungle. We blame them, not the end user who converts these exotic hardwoods into railings for his motor yacht.

Are we blind to the fact that having 30 million tons of steel processed for a private yacht is of enormous environmental impact. Do we really accept the idea that because a person can "afford" to burn fuel at the rate of gallons per mile it has no impact on the rest of us. These gluttons are eating our lunch and we don't pull the plate off the table. We stare like beggars at the banquet and validate their excess. We may have no political authority to curb them or rein them in, but we can abhor their behavior and let them know it. Maybe some of the rowdies at a Chelsea ( the team Abramovich just bought) soccer match might carry in a sign or two.

Roll Your Own

2010-08-12T11:37:00.004-04:00

A cruise through my local supermarket this morning revealed the following facts: Boneless beef sirloin steak, America's favorite, was on sale for 2.99 a pound, pork sirloin roast was 1.49, and split chicken breasts were .99 cents. For reference know that in the trade these are referred to as "prime cuts".

Across the aisle, in the ever growing sausage section, a survey revealed the following prices: Store brand Italian sausage was 3.19, "Gourmet" whatever that means, was 3.39, Jimmy Dean's Breakfast was 3.39, so called "all natural" was 5.99, and D'Artagnan's was 9.18 a pound. Different brands of sausage made from chicken all hovered around the 6 dollar price point. Specialty sausage, chorizo for example was 4.99 a pound.

Hebrew Nats were 5.80 a pound and franks you shouldn't even consider eating fell to as low as $1.29. A new item, uncured franks (no nitrites), sell for 6-7 dollars a pound.

Bottom line: The prime cuts are half the cost of whatever finally makes it into the sausage of your choice. You can be assured your commercial sausage contains no prime cuts.

The old joke re. the making of laws and sausage, you don't want to see it, still holds. The following was the most info I would share with you without totally grossing you out:
ABSTRACT:
"Spent layer chickens, an underutilized, inexpensive source of animal protein in the United States, were used to produce an acceptable all chicken frank following mechanical deboning of the chicken parts without pregrinding. The franks were subjected to shear tests and compared to two well-known commercial brands of chicken franks for overall acceptability by an untrained 59 member panel. The franks produced from mechanically deboned spent layer chickens (Lab franks) had greater resistance to shear than the two commercial brands and the panelists showed significantly greater preference for one of the commercial brands. Comments of the panelists indicated the texture of the lab-prepared franks was tougher than the two commercial brands. However, 12 members of the panel stated the lab-frank texture was tender. Collagen content of the spent layer franks was no higher than for the commercial brands. It is therefore concluded that the toughness could have been due to the nature of the myofibrillar proteins. Such toughness could be modified by tenderizing enzyme treatment of the raw material to produce varying degrees of frank softness or firmness depending on consumer preference".

Beef producers live with the daily fear that an incident of mad-cow entering the food chain is coming and the smart money is betting that it will be the result of bone material in beef that was "chipped off" and used for franks. That should be enough reason for you to consider making your own sausage.

You can go whole hog and buy sausage stuffing machines, casing, and learn to form sausage links while keeping the air out, or you can prepare your own recipe from prime cuts, control the additives by adding herbs and spices of your choice, add pure fat for flavor and mouth feel, and simply form a patty and fry or leave crumbled for pizza or pasta. The following is a site filled with recipes that you can adopt.

Here are my provisos. Use a food processor and make small batches that can be ground and mixed to a smooth paste. Always test a tiny bit in a hot pan to taste for seasoning.

For the truly food obsessed do the following. If you have a custom butcher shop, independent market, or slaughterhouse near by visit them and ask for caul fat. Here in Maine the way I obtained mine was to note a recipe on a restaurant menu that called for rabbit wrapped in caul. I called the chef and asked her to order an extra ten pounds for me. She did. I picked it up at the next lunch.

Caul fat is an inner organ lining the best of which comes from a pig. It is not greasy or smelly. In a ten pound box for example it will be squished together in a mass. Soak in a pan of water and start to separate the sheets. Lift a large sheet to a cutting board, and using a paring knife or scissors, cut 6 inch squares. (I pack what I don't use in small freezer bags). It won't be neat. It doesn't have to be. You can place a couple ounces of stuffing in the center, press to from a disk and fold the caul over. You can spread filling, tube like, across the caul and roll it like a frank. Fry over medium heat. The caul will melt away or leave just a trace of gorgeous netting. Once you have caul in your system you will discover a variety of uses. Here are pics of the ultimate chicken loaf.

Tomatoes

2010-08-02T10:24:00.010-04:00

Tis the season.

Tomatoes are in and I want to help to keep things simple. A good first principle is that canned tomatoes are for cooking and fresh tomatoes are to be eaten fresh. Most of us will simply cut or slice a fresh tomato and add it to a salad or sandwich. Here is a preparation that takes longer to write about then perform and will significantly improve your summer tomato pleasure.

Filleting a tomato. The pics are self explanatory. Here are some essentials. Just barely score the flesh. Immerse in boiling water for no more than a minute (you will notice the skin start to curl).

The point is not to cook the tomato. Plunge in a bowl of icy water. Remove center core. Peel.

Cut from the top to the bottom of the tomato at the point where the flesh is thickest. Err on the side of thicker. You can always remove excess with your fingers. Sometimes you will create a quarter piece or often the whole will remain intact.

These fillets are obviously dryer and thus better on bread, lack uggies which freak most kids and some adults, and can also be sliced and or diced for a variety of uses. Your salsa will improve at once.

Collect the uggies in a sieve and press and strain them for juice.

Here is a fabulous recipe: Under cook 1/2 pound of pasta by a minute. Save a half cup of cooking water. Heat retained 1/2 cup juice in saute pan, add pasta, swirl in hot water as needed to moisten, stir till absorbed (about a minute), turn out. Top with sliced fillets of tomato, oil, some shredded basil, a crack of black pepper or red flakes, a sprinkle of salt, serve 4.

A side dish: Roma style tomatoes are grown because they have thick flesh, a high meat to juice ratio and thus are perfect for cooking. There is no reason to grow your own given the producers do a great job of the whole process, including canning.
San Marzano "style" tomatoes are Roma type and unless labeled DOP are grown here. A lot of time and energy has been spent tasting different canned tomatoes and conclusions are reached that might have you going out and spending 5 bucks a can in the belief that an Italian San Marzano is a better tomato. If we were eating them from the can (we don't) the expense might be warranted. Given that, at least, we will smash a garlic clove, add a pepper flake, and cook our tomatoes in olive oil for at least 20 minutes I defy anyone to distinguish the difference in the source of the tomato once cooked. More important is to notice the amount of sodium added to the can. It varies widely and you don't need the extra salt. You can always add your own.
Consider how you want your canned tomatoes to perform and purchase the appropriate style. Crushed, sometimes labeled "kitchen ready" are the simplest for a basic sauce. Italians buy jars of "passata" for their sauce which are essentially crushed tomatoes passed through a sieve. You might want diced to hold up a little texture for a cooked TEX/MEX salsa, and whole tomatoes can stew with a chicken and hold up.
Many eschew tomato paste as something less then authentic. Big mistake. For years I couldn't discern what it was that smelled so rich emanating from the back of checkered tablecloth "Ity" restaurants. I couldn't duplicate that aroma and I knew it was key to a successful sauce. Roberto Donna of Galileo in D.C. finally clued me in. Caramelize a couple of tablespoons of paste in oil with garlic till just lightly brown and then proceed to add tomatoes etc. Ah the love.

World of Work

2010-07-12T12:29:00.002-04:00

You know a problem is getting "serious" when the NYT does a feature on its front page, American Dream Is Elusive for New Generation. The story is a profile of the agonies of 2008 Colgate grad Scott Nicholson, the unemployed millennium gen, solid son of the solidly middle class. The latest example of an economy gone bad. Comments attached to the piece
and the letters to the editor that followed, give him and his family a pretty swift ass kickin. He appears self indulgent and his family enable him.

No one in this story, or the related comments, challenges any of the basic premises underlying Scott's predicament. He must be thankful for any job offer. He must get out of the house. He might move to Europe where the job possibilities might be better. Scott must get better at becoming a wage slave to a system that doesn't need or want him.

During the same week Alternet picked up a story from Psychotherapy Networker / By Mary Sykes Wylie, appropriately titled: Has the American Dream Become our Nightmare?

That title could be thought to be the first of a set of fundamental questions that needs to be asked and answered. Other questions that we all have to ask include: How might Scott spend his days in ways that don't make the rest of our lives materially worse? What is it that we need, if anything, that Scott might help us acquire? How might Scott evaluate what he really needs? What are Scott's lifetime ambitions; where does he want to be, with whom, and how many of his ambitions involve money? Obviously none of the answers to these questions or even how to pose them were part of Scott's education.

Colgate senses the angst in their graduates. Their response in justifying $54.000 in annual costs to attend include assisting the host community by buying up buildings and placing University offices within them, publishing studies that demonstrate the Colgate grads do better salary-wise then many peers, and bringing back Alumna with a job to share their experiences as a demonstration of "you too can do it." In this case the alum is a vp at MTV.

What Colgate might do: They could rethink their curriculum in terms of 21st century reality. They could sponsor teach-ins on the most critical issues of the day. They could assist their students in conceiving of and moving into a world that was sustainable, ethical, and elegant. They could strengthen their career counseling department. To be effective they have to anticipate the world their graduates are going to enter. The university could provide transitional housing for grads while they determined their next moves. They could incubate entrepreneurial alternatives to traditional job searches. The university might provide goods and services: health care, senior activities, child care, food service, art activities, to their neighbors, enriching the entire community. Any number of grads might be part of the delivery mechanism. Most importantly the university is going to have to become the well spring of alternatives to a system that is so fundamentally broken.

The best example of what is required is exemplified by the award winning documentary film, TEE Shirt Travels, embedded here.

Filmed in Zambia, this film explores the unintended consequences of western do-gooders shipping second hand clothing to a nation in "need". In the process we wiped out their indigenous textile industry and created a nation of re-sellers. It is heartbreaking. And just when you think you can't stand it any more you have the testimony of the stated dream of an unbelievably hard working Zambian young man. His ambition is to have a car. We have shortened the distance between the continents. We have shortened the timeline of civilization.

Field Studies

2010-06-28T09:38:00.004-04:00

The garden is starting to yield. Parsley, basil, mint tops, and early lettuce have all been picked and the first lesson of gardening is in hand; you must be a brutal realist.

Pruning and Thinning. Salad greens are topped, flowers are dead headed, and herbs are pinched back every day. If you harvest early and often you increase your yield. So by eating more mint, I get more mint?! Yes. You delay bolting and the plant going to seed. It is counter-intuitive.
When sowing seeds there are two major schools: One lays out rows, drills holes for individual seeds and assumes they will all be vital. The other plants the entire seed packet, waits to see which seeds produce sprouts and then thins the row to the proper spacing. You lose half or more of your sprouts. You get more yield.
When growing fruit trees you learn to prune back, to thin, in order to increase quantity and quality of yield. You mean if I knock or pick off every other apricot on that tree I will get more apricots?! Oh yes, and fuller, more flavorful fruit and a tree that can bear the weight.
Dead heading, (removing drooping flowers and their seed stems), your petunia, pansy, geranium plants will increase their blooms and their blooming cycle.

All of the above require intense hand labor. Determine how much you want to work and plan the size of your garden accordingly. End of lesson one.

You will learn to kill. Is it killing if I don't see my prey? Carrie, a near Jainist, will turn her fingers green with the bodies of the dead aphids she strips from her roses.
Pest control often evolves in the following cycle: Squirrels are cute, they are part of the scheme of things, it's fun to have them in the garden. Lets get a HavaHart and move the critters out. Does the city allow air guns within its borders.

Gardening will turn your world view upside down. No matter the scale, be it a single pot or a plot, you will never bemoan another rain shower. You will monitor frost warnings. You will learn to be sensitive to direction of and intensity of sunshine. You will become attuned to the vagaries of nature. There are going to be far more complications to this process than you imagined. The easy acceptance of the concept "organic" is going to be challenged. You will understand failure in new and important ways. You are not in control of your environment despite your best efforts. When all else is failing you will spray with chemicals, or, you will retire from the field. You will come to understand that every crop you plant is the result of genetic modification. The horror stories and the resulting rampant fear of GMO's may or may not be warranted. The patenting of our food supply is terrifying.

A garden is never "vital" for our sustenance, that is our privilege. It can however become a classroom for understanding the larger forces at work in the world. That is the promise of school based garden curriculum elements. They stop way short of the kind of truth telling that our citizens need to learn to appreciate where their food comes from. You get no second chance in a crop field. It is not a classroom. End of lesson two.

Promises of the learning power of the garden that won't be fulfilled include your understanding of your connection to the earth. At best you have a patch, a highly controlled and defined space. It is no more a microcosm of the earth than a goldfish bowl is to the sea. Growing a successful tomato in no way informs your understand of how you are going to sustain yourself in November. Gardens are not agriculture and large scale gardens, despite our desire to believe, are not capable of feeding us. Some of us may be able to afford $40 a pound greens but in the scheme of things that is irrelevant. Thomas Jefferson had most of it right at Monticello and in his design of The University, The Academical Village. From the time of Plato's "groves of academe," gardens have been linked to the contemplative and scholarly life as well. Jefferson described the University as a set of buildings "arranged around an open square of grass and trees." The Pavilion Gardens provided both a place in which to study and a subject of study. Jefferson wrote that "such a plan would afford the quiet retirement so friendly to study." As I continue to harp on the University as the available model of how we might live in the real world visit the UVA web site and appreciate that faculty and students alike fight to stay within the Village.

The Class of 2010

2010-06-09T11:16:00.005-04:00

This blog space has intended to infill the gaps in the formal curriculum that you have just completed.
Prior posts have dealt with ancillary housing options, yet more shelter strategies, dorms as models of "real world" possibilities , economic survival options, and the ultimate in "sharing" programs.
I posted a short list of supplemental courses that I called "the art of crap detection" within this post.

All of the above pointed out that the most important lessons you were learning were informal; living in groups, being carless, the economies of scale, and that having access is more important than owning.
If you insist on leaving the "ideal world" you just inhabited, where you literally had it all, then consider the following my commencement address.

The decision you are going to make re. where to live is more important than your career choice. Typically, media stories will list cities that are attractive to recent grads and list the criteria supporting their choices. This story by Richard Florida goes so far as to cite that which is "important" to 20 somethings; bars, restaurants, and entertainment. (You are worth no more than your ability to consume). What everyone of the chosen cities have in common is that they are already what they are going to be. As a migrant to any one of them you are chasing a dream already realized by those who preceded you. You hope to become part of that which already exists. "I am moving to NYC cuz that's where the hipsters live". What you can't know, because your teachers like Richard Florida haven't a clue, is that you are about to participate in the "next biggest sucker syndrome". The person who is about to leave for someplace where she has a chance of actually carving out a living for herself, needs someone to whom she can sub-lease her too expensive 350 sq ft apartment. Don't be that person.

Its is going to take some backbone to resist the kind of marketing crap proffered by the merchants of cool so lets use some common sense.

The criteria that I would suggest you apply when considering where to live include: What is the total tax burden of the place you might live? What is the cost of auto; insurance, registration, and taxation? What are the rules regarding house sharing? What is the speed of the local ISP provider? What are the average utility costs? What is the fiscal status of the town, state in which you might reside? What is the cost to have a dental filling? What is the ratio of others to whom you might be attracted? Are there viable and independent media outlets? What are police practices regarding victimless crimes? Applying the above criteria would automatically rule out California.

The places that do qualify are invariably going to be the subject of bad news. You are going to hear about the abandoned, the broke and broken places that are the casualties of the economic collapse. This is exactly where I suggest you begin your quest. Only when a place is degraded enough does it become possible to have an opportunity for real growth. Consider that Georgetown, D.C., Harlem, NYC, The Mission, S.F., SoBe, and now the Design District in Miami, are examples of what were once neglected slums. Their reconstruction afforded their pioneers the opportunity for employment, new think, and identity. Now those very people couldn't afford to live in any one of these neighborhoods should they chose to move there today.

In a world where one can literally buy anything from anywhere and have it delivered, where the newest ideas are instantly available on the web, where affinity networks thrive, the pressure to be within the hip cores is unimportant.

The myth that there are "creative communities" belies the fact that the most significant wellsprings of art are often at a remove, giving the artist the space they need to create their own identities. Think Morgan Freeman, Clarksburg Ms., Dennis Hopper, Wilmington N.C., the crowd at Black Mountain, N.C. or Georgia O'Keeffe in Abiquiu, N.M.

More important than any of the shibboleths that are so indicative of mob think, absorb the most important principle you weren't taught during your college days, buy low! This is just as true in real estate as it is an adage in the stock market.

When a place has become cheap enough that you, or more importantly a group, can pool resources and actually gain a foothold, then you have a real opportunity. Exploit the social network you have developed, form a gang, and move somewhere. The wants and needs of that place and the opportunities will sort themselves out. This is exactly what happened in Hardwick Vt.

What a fabulous example of the success of people who went their own way. Other food oriented activities are located through Balle.

Get busy. There has rarely been more opportunity.

Never Again

2010-05-26T13:21:00.002-04:00

I don't want to see this picture ever again. Not this one, or any like it. As we in America inch ever closer to the maelstrom that has already destabilized many world capitals we have to insure that our children are safe from the excesses of "crowd control". As the truth about the damage that has been done to the economy that our children inherit becomes clearer to them, I full well expect that their scattered and relatively quiet reactions are going to bloom into full scale uprisings.

What is now confined to college campuses, where tuition increases and class closing seem to be the issues of the day, is going to migrate as more and more graduates carry debt and no job prospects into their future. Their plight will move off the cartoon pages and onto the front pages. And we, their parents and teachers, and friends, are going to ask them to do the heavy political action.

I have never understood the psychology of those who are given the guns and bayonets when they turn on their own. Simply following orders doesn't seem to do it. And I don't believe there is a great ideological divide between kids in uniforms and their brothers and sisters on the street. Yet it happens over and over. Kids are asked to pummel and shoot each other. In the name of law and order.

I think we have time to get in front of this curve. Every one of those kids in uniform has a parent, a guardian, a relative, a friend who knows them well enough to broach the subject. Every person who knows someone on the force, in the guard, or full time enlisted, ought to begin a campaign to sensitize them to the fact that they are not the handmaidens of the oligarchy. No one joined to protect the vested interests of the bankers against the citizenry. This is not an issue that will break down on party lines. People who are suffering at the hands of this regime ought to have the right to protest against it. They have the right to demand and effect change. And those sworn to protect and defend them must respect that solemn oath.

What to do, What to do?

2010-05-19T14:49:00.003-04:00

anonymous asks; what to do, what to do?

An excerpt from a recent post of Les Leopold:
The ultimate insanity of our current moment is that the richest investors and the largest bankers in the world just crashed our system, got bailed out by taxpayers, grew even larger, and now are back to earning record profits and bonuses. They caused the biggest jobs crisis since the Great Depression and drove the entire global economy into a ditch–and they could do it again any minute. And now they’re telling us to tighten our belts and act more responsibly? from:

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.

This from the NYT:
“This bailout wasn’t done to help the Greeks; it was done to help the French and German banks,” said Niall Ferguson, an economic historian at Harvard. “They’ve poured some water on the fire, but the fire has not gone out.”

"How to learn nothing from crisis" is a must read article by Doug Henwood

Hero watch: Al Gore just added a forth estate to his collection, a 9 million dollar ocean view estate in Montecito Ca.

The above are just some of the latest in the continuing saga that is the documentation of our current crisis that spurs cries of; "what to do, what to do?".

What I am going to suggest we all do is get smarter. We have to understand how some of the fundamentals work so that we can either exploit them to our personal advantage or demand that they be reformed.

We have to learn to follow the money. When you read that the IMF is putting up a trillion euros to support the EU you have to understand that 25% of those monies are your dollars. Once again the beneficiary of your generosity is not the people, but the banks who hold the notes on the paper that blew up.

We have to know what really drives the markets and how to play them. The Fed is handing the banks profits, leveraged on our money. The "carry trade" is the trade that banks can employ that has them borrow our money at 3/4% (today's rate) and then, in a no risk trade, buy a 30 year treasury that yields 4.23 on 95% leverage.
Why would they lend to you and me and tie their money up when they can reverse this trade on a second's notice. Hedge funds don't get quite the same deal, but close.

Why does this matter to you and me? The most obvious answer is that in order to generate bank profits and make them whole again, we are expanding our debt. Second, and trickier, is those same hedge funds that brought us the last disaster, are leveraging into all manner of asset classes with cheap money. Thus the stock market, gold, oil, wheat markets, rise. Ride the pony if you dare. Here is the key proviso. When the Fed announces its first rate change, of policy, or worse an actual rate change, (the beginning of unwinding the carry trade) those of us holding any security must sell, that second. It is going to be a race to the door and it will precipitate the next crash. For a nation of people whose response to the last crash was not to open their quarterly financial reports this is asking a lot. You might want to get in front of the curve and be in cash, I-Bonds, TIPS, or a laddered portfolio of short term bonds.

For those who don't think they invest, and live within the confines of their cash flow, they must learn to recognize the impacts of a public policy that may harm them. Arizonians just voted for an increase in their sales tax. People in Maine are being asked to do the same. Here in Maine it is couched within a bill that reduces income taxes and is thus argued as neutral. Wrong! A sales tax, and God help us a VAT tax is regressive. Even the average citizen can shelter or delay some tax consequences on their income. 401's are not as sophisticated as the tax avoidance schemes of the rich but they help. But there is no escaping a sales tax. It is regressive. We are being asked to shoulder the burden of debt relief, not those who profited from the debt creation. This issue is high on the agenda of Europeans who have surfaced the fact that the rich are not paying taxes, and they are demanding justice. It is what they are demonstrating about.

All of the markets are indicating there is no risk of inflation. Why would you invest money in a 30 year treasury at 4+% if interest rates were going to rise? The principle on that investment will disappear. Trust the markets? Skip three paragraphs.

If we do enter an era of inflation, then you are going to have to learn an entire new skill set. An early trial balloon was sent up in California with the printing of scrip as a cash substitute and it didn't work. It did work in Argentina. Of course they were smarter about how they designed the system and paid a premium to holders of their funny money. Argentina is but one example of how a citizenry acted to protect itself. Those with money moved it off shore and into other nations currency. The same is happening in Europe today. The flow of euros to dollars is one of the factors keeping our interest rates low. (Fear that the Chinese will devalue the Renminbi keeps it from becoming an international reserve currency).

Another survival skill is the ability to index. Persons holding or dealing in any commodity are creating indexes to hedge the value of their commodity against devaluations. Iron ore futures are just the latest. When Argentines demanded to get paid daily for their labor and then exchanged their wages into another currency or bought a commodity they needed with that money, they were effectively hedging the costs of those commodities. No one wants to hold anything being devalued.

The lesson to learn is not to enter into long term contracts that fix your remuneration without effective, unconditional COLA adjustments built in. And you must demand independent third party regulators to determine the actual rate of inflation, be you a Social Security beneficiary, teacher, cop, WalMart employee, or seemingly secure IT worker.

It may be time to consider tax boycotts. Counties are considering boycotting state revenues, while real estate tax boycotts are spreading. The key to any such activity is to appreciate the need for solidarity. When it finally becomes clear that the persons getting shafted by this kleptocracy are us, then we may find we have more in common with the disenfranchised than we could imagine. When showdowninamerica.org gets their act together to identify the bankers, and protest their actions, it is not enough for us to sit in front of the TV and murmur or write a check. If we are really concerned about what to do we have to begin to join those coalitions we can tolerate and actually get in line.

Learn a new language set. Come to terms with "walkaway, bankrupt, boycott, self interest, tax avoidance, yuan".

"Yes Magazine" has been promoting a set of alternative behaviors. Peruse their splash page and determine where and how you might find ways to act to resolve this morass.

Bill Moyers Redux

2010-05-12T09:24:00.003-04:00

Bill Moyer's final broadcast has aired. The complete transcript of that show and the blog for future reference is here. I excerpted his farewell editorial from that broadcast:

BILL MOYERS: "You've no doubt figured out my bias by now. I've hardly kept it a secret. In this regard, I take my cue from the late Edward R. Murrow, the Moses of broadcast news.

Ed Murrow told his generation of journalists bias is okay as long as you don't try to hide it. So here, one more time, is mine: plutocracy and democracy don't mix. Plutocracy, the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy.

Plutocracy is not an American word but it's become an American phenomenon. Back in the fall of 2005, the Wall Street giant Citigroup even coined a variation on it, plutonomy, an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer with government on their side. By the next spring, Citigroup decided the time had come to publicly "bang the drum on plutonomy."

And bang they did, with an "equity strategy" for their investors, entitled, "Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer." Here are some excerpts:

"Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper...[and] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years..."

"...the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the US-- the plutonomists in our parlance-- have benefited disproportionately from the recent productivity surge in the US...[and] from globalization and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor."

"...[and they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years. [Because] the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact."

And so they were, before the great collapse of 2008. And so they are, today, after the fall. While millions of people have lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings, the plutonomists are doing just fine. In some cases, even better, thanks to our bailout of the big banks which meant record profits and record bonuses for Wall Street.

Now why is this? Because over the past 30 years the plutocrats, or plutonomists — choose your poison — have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding. Remember that Citigroup reference to "market-friendly governments" on their side? It hasn't mattered which party has been in power — government has done Wall Street's bidding.

Don't blame the lobbyists, by the way; they are simply the mules of politics, delivering the drug of choice to a political class addicted to cash — what polite circles call "campaign contributions" and Tony Soprano would call "protection."

This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet. According to a study from the Pew Research Center last month, nine out of ten Americans give our national economy a negative rating. Eight out of ten report difficulty finding jobs in their communities, and seven out of ten say they experienced job-related or financial problems over the past year.

So it is that like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy.

Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs.

So along with Jim Hightower and Iowa's concerned citizens, and many of you, I am biased: democracy only works when we claim it as our own. "

I would add that as we watch Greece implode and their citizens' reaction to being asked to suffer the burden, and as this process spreads to the rest of Europe, you take the time to place Moyer's words in context and realize it is but a matter of time until such policies are implemented here.

Two Views

2010-04-30T13:17:00.003-04:00

Robert Irwin, the west coast artist most famous for his designs for the Central Garden at the Getty, said in an interview (Robert Irwin, "The State of the Real, Part 1," conversation with Jan Butterfield, Arts 46, no. 10 (June 1972), p. 48.) that he felt as if he was straddling a mountain; one leg placed him in "now time", the other in "real time." An example of what that meant to Irwin was the controversy that exploded when he "finished" the build out of the garden in 1997 and it was opened to the public. The public howled at what appeared to be the absence of plants, the lack of green, the barrenness of the landscape in "now time". Irwin had allowed for the garden to grow, to fill in, in the fullness of "real time", and now of course it is appreciated as one of the great gardens of the world.

We are burdened by two great calamities occurring in tandem. The links between the environmental and economic crisis are obvious when we have a "now time" event like the gulf oil spill threatening the shore line, and what are surely going to be the economic consequences of slowing down off-shore drilling.

What hinders resolution of either of the "real time" crisis, the profound problems of the environment or the world's economy, is the fact that the problems are even harder to imagine then Irwin's garden. It is hard for the average citizen to imagine the consequences of his/her acts. Even harder is imagining how invisible co2 emissions are warming the planet. The images that reinforce an "Inconvenient Truth" are either too removed; impacts are 50-100 years off, too remote; Greenland, or too special; polar bears, to have any profound impact on the way we live.

There is the attendant problem of denial when the implications are that one must change his or her behavior, exacerbated by "deniers" who supply an alternative reality. I learned not to jump to any quick conclusions about who those deniers might be. When I moved to Maine on a grant to work within the University of Southern Maine, I was asked from time to time to speak to groups of students. In every case I was forewarned NOT to be the bearer of bad news. Their faculty felt that the students couldn't take a nightmare scenario of environmental change.

We are learning that the effects of the economic crisis are more immediate. As troubling as the nightly "now time" news is, limited though it may be, a daily dose of evidence of job losses, foreclosures, and the failure of sovereign states, doesn't seem to have the impact on personal behavior that one might imagine. I believe that the same conspiracy of silence prevails among the chattering classes who fear that if the citizenry were aware of the depth of the "real time" problem, they would amplify the problem by say, saving, or scaling back their consumption. Their protest and rejection of the current regimes that brought them the end, if indeed it is the end, would be louder and uncontrollable. An example of a news organization at least trying to inform its public is evidenced by the BBC airing a story that all three of the parties running in the current election are underestimating how they would achieve fiscal responsibility by a factor of at least three. That is too say that each party's proposals to cut expenses and tax to raise revenues misses the mark by two thirds. Their burden of debt is not being addressed. The British will not have to face their real problems, yet.

If you are willing to dig a little deeper on matters of debt, toxic assets, and exposure you will find The International Monetary Fund is forecasting that global bank losses from the financial crisis will total $2.28 trillion, in 2010, a drop of $533 billion from an estimate made last October.

As this plays out on the world stage the NYT blog Economix asks if Europe can save itself? (answer no). By now you can see the similarities to those eco-issues that seem of another place, another time. They do not effect us.

And if we can't absorb the scale and meaning of the current crisis what of the potential of the next real crisis. This is even harder to imagine as the masters of the universe let us know in their congressional testimony. Included in that mind numbing exercise was a statement by one master that only the hedge fund guys know how it works, the "buy what the rating agencies endorse players" won't know. FYI that includes pension funds, trusts, endowments, states, the institutions we depend on to secure our lives.

An even larger example of what we can't get our heads around is the following: The WorldBank calculates that the world's GNP is roughly 60+ trillion dollars.

Now consider that the Bank for International Settlement, that keeps track of these things, calculates that the OTC Derivatives Market "Notional amounts of all types of OTC contracts rebounded somewhat to stand at $605 trillion at the end of June 2009, "

The value of these derivatives are ten times the world economy on any given day and they are not regulated. The potential for the next blow up is enormous. But I can't see it, I can't touch it, I still have a job, my house is still here, the cars run, the planes fly. Why worry? The nightly news reports the markets are up, consumer confidence is raising, home prices are stabilizing.

Sen. Alan Simpson got to the issue last night as he spoke about the new commission he co-chairs to deal with our national debt crisis:
"If we don't solve this problem, its not like we won't be here. We'll still be here. Its just that everything we know and love won't."

The Great Divide

2010-04-20T12:54:00.004-04:00

You can go home again. It just won't be the same. So it was discovered as we roamed our old neighborhood, the now "notorious" upper west side of Manhattan. In the day the neighborhood's notoriety came from being sketchy, slummy, and home to a disproportionate number of half-way houses. Columbia hadn't expanded beyond its gates and classic prewar 6 room apartments were divided and sub-divided into "affordable" housing for smaller families.

Notorious now for being described as a bastion of knee jerk liberalism by jerky journalists looking for an easy way to malign the city, the facts on the street are far more complex and interesting. Carrie and I chose Columbus Ave. for a northward stroll from 79th street. The avenue contains all of the trendy and smart shops and restaurants indicative of gentrification, with a particular emphasis on child related toys, clothes, and services. The numbered streets contain the mix of tenants that have been there forever with new families gaining a foothold. As we gazed further up the avenue it was shocking to see new towers standing in what had been the worst of the old hood. The store fronts of this project starting at 97th street contain a block long Whole Foods.

If you turn west on 100th street you enter the great divide. The block contains the 24th police precinct, a library, health center, church playground, and social service center. On the corner of Amsterdam Ave. is a new see thru condo project (apartments start at 1.5 million).

Behind the precinct, to the north, stands the Fredrick Douglass housing project. The original portion of the complex consists of 17 buildings — 5, 9, 12, 17, 18, and 20-stories tall — completed on May 31, 1958 on a 21.76-acre (88,100 m2) site. The development includes 2,054 apartments housing some 4,588 residents. The Frederick Douglass Addition, completed on June 30, 1965, is a 16-story building with 306 residents on .55-acre (2,200 m2) on Amsterdam Avenue between West 102nd and West 103rd Streets.[1]

I don't think there is anyplace where the economic conditions change as fast as they do in NYC. Standing in the middle of this class divide two officers in plain clothes from the 24th are shooting the breeze on the ramp leading into the precinct house. As we approach them with the intent of having one or two questions asked and answered, Dave starts profiling us to his friend. He's funny and clever. He tags us as: "coulda been rich but gave it up for causes, getting along well together, been married forever, probably once lived here and want to find out what's up". All of this is conveyed with a big warm smile, cracking up his friend, a community liaison officer named Phil. I am speechless, a rare condition. "Am I right, Am I right? Gottcha didn't I? And you are way left, liberal, well Ok, not too far left but left right?" I'm looking for pins or some other clues. We are both wearing slacks and light sweaters. "Me I'm in the center. Don't vote. Gave up on them. They're all crooks."

"Hi, I'm Will and this is Carrie, and we did want to get a scope of what has happened and figured you could name it. But what's with this won't vote thing?"

"So you voted, and now you are happy with Obama? Let me guess, Not so." I just got there sooner than you did."

A very special NY minute turns into over an hour of what's happened in the neighborhood, the city, the country. We meet the morning shift as they arrive for work Dave hauls them over to make a point or emphasize one of his. These guys, (the only woman we meet is in fact the captain of the precinct and she can't stay) are sharp, tough, and getting it done (the one murder in the precinct has them all crazy with why. There used to 38 a year on average). Suddenly there is a subject shift. Dave points down to Carrie's sneakers and asks her what she paid for them? Before she can answer he asks me and points down to his own year old no name tennis shoes. He turns us around to point out the woman walking down the street and sotto voce' suggests that her shoes cost hundreds. The small group mumbles their affirmations. We are in the shit now and Will rises to it.

I'll spare you the obvious opening salvos of class war and get to the quick of it. "Once again you guys have missed the target. You are going to lay the blame for the deterioration of this country on a poor black woman's back. That might play in Iowa, but here every day you have visible reminders of who's zoomin who and I don't see any perp walks. One, One of those bankers not 2 miles from here rips off more of your money than every so-called welfare queen in these projects, combined, and you don't raise your voice or cry for justice." Eddie joins the fray: "We have to enter the project for an investigation, enter one of their apartments, there it is, 47 inch TV, cell phone, boy friend with a beemer. Don't tell me they aren't ripping off the system."

"Ok Eddie, lets add it up. Let's take every one of the 5000 residents of these projects, give them all you said, what's it add up to? How about 100 thousand per person. That's 500 million dollars. One guy, one, former Lehman boss Dick Fuld, was paid $485m in salary, bonuses and options between 2000 and 2007. And he destroyed the company. And we are bailing him and his pals out. "

"Don't give me this "but, and" argument, what are you going to do to solve this problem?"

"Here's the problem. If these two parts of the city get any further apart, if the rich keep getting richer leaving these people in despair, and they act out, where are you going to be. History tells me that if the rich man tells you to suppress the poor you're gonna do it. You can't imagine that you have more in common with that poor woman then the guy in Wall Street. You have bought the myth that these poor, lazy, shiftless people are tearing you down. But let me point out the fact that millions of new poor, who thought they had it made, have joined their ranks this time, and they look like you. Are you going to put them down?"

I think we made a tiny inroad. As we left they were less a chorus and more a discussion.

It's Your Money

2010-03-18T12:16:00.002-04:00

We took a long weekend in NYC, (before the no-name storm), to eat some Chinese, see the Tim Burton show at the Modern, look for the breaking crocus buds in the park, and catch up with old friends. Dinner at their studio in the way east fifties included some folks who worked at the UN and were preparing for International Woman's Day. A lively conversation ensued in which the definitions of, and objectives of "development" were discussed. It was generally agreed that what we all required was a value shift. That simply having women join the elite crowd of those doing business as usual wasn't acceptable. At this table, as I am sure tables around the world, "Unacceptable" practices focused on the bonuses being distributed to the masters of the financial universe. The scale of this transfer of wealth was incomprehensible. From the article: "How about this. Currently, according to news reports, just 23 top investment banks, hedge funds and other Wall Street firms will get $140 billion in bonuses this year, a sum almost exactly equal to the estimated $142 billion in budget shortfalls for all 50 states in fiscal 2010. Or to put this another way, approximately 300,000 lucky rascals who fiddle with other people’s money on Wall Street are getting bonuses roughly equal to what 300 million Americans will lose for countless needed state services, or pay in the form of higher state taxes to cover state shortfalls. And these bonuses, please remember, are above regular salaries at these 23 Wall Street firms."

To add an international note to the scale of the taking consider the news that the cost to repair Haiti has come in at 11.5 billion.

We are all schooled in the excessive behavior of the wealthy and powerful. From David down we have read of the great, falling for the pretty young thing, building ridiculous palaces, squandering their nation's capital, venturing off on land grabs. Nothing seems to compare with the current excess, and the hubris that accompanies it, of those who mismanage the world's collective wealth, and get paid for their mistakes. They may have destroyed the world as we know it.

Dinner was concluded on notes of bafflement. The best guess as to how the world was going to solve this economic crisis was that we would inflate our way out of it. But no one could imagine what was in the minds of the men who took so much off the table.

We needed to walk off dinner. We were staying on the upper west side and we chose to walk cross town to catch an uptown train. We didn't map our route. It was governed by the pattern of red lights. Walk west, hit a light, turn north, hit another light, walk west again. In the course of this chicane we passed The NY Palace Hotel, The University Club, The Peninsula Hotel, and The Metropolitan Club. All haunts of the super rich. I paused outside the iron gates. "What was consistent to all of these places," I asked. And there they were. Double parked up and down the block: The limos, the town cars, the black pariahs. In a world in which any smart rap singer can acquire the house on the hill, drink the DP, get tickets to a Yankee's game, it is obvious that the last vestige of privilege is the ability to park where you want. This is the most exclusive club as civic employees have learned. No more will they be allowed to abuse their "official business", right to park placards, they toss on their dash-boards. Nothing pisses off the public more than to know parking rights are being abused. Seinfeld learned the hard way that wealth and fame just don't cut it when it comes to the ultimate perk. He was called out when his driver abused the privilege.

So that's it? That's what the hundreds of millions a year buys? That's all there is?

Not quite. The next morning our stroll to the station was interrupted by the screaming sirens of not one, but tens of cop cars preceding and following the blacked out GMC. We couldn't see in but the smart money was on Hillary. Clearly the ultimate perk isn't having the place to park, It's the motorcade.The ability to avoid red lights, stop traffic, and have the path cleared for you on your race to the next fundraiser.

Social Studies

2010-03-01T08:55:00.010-05:00

I wasn't prepared for my visit to Taos Pueblo. I had been schooled in all the proper cliches; cowboys and indians as a child, giving way to the tougher reality of Russell Means and the American Indian Movement as a radical younger man. I have experienced first hand the relative poverty of the Seminole in the swamps of the Everglades, and witnessed the growth of the casino culture that now permeates the tribes. I had my Native American education. While traveling in the Southwest I resisted the traditional expressions of Native culture, the "craft stores", the fry bread stands. It seemed all too scripted. I was more impressed with an installation in Santa Fe, "Art Without Reservation".

Here were new artists, drawing on their traditions but now clearly "modern" and integrated into mainstream culture.

I was talking to locals in Santa Fe, old friends, about this experience and they advised the trip to Taos. http://www.taospueblo.com/ I feared a Disney ride. "Stay away from the casino," they warned, the rest is the real deal. It's been occupied for 1000 years" For me the real deal was our guide, a 20 something college student on summer break and very secure in who he was. What he understood about the artists on display in Santa Fe was that their art was for us, the white guys with the money. They were about breaking through, crossing over, being respected on our terms. What he wanted Carrie and me to see, and touch, and taste was the core of his tradition. He wanted us to dip into Red Willow Creek, the stream that provides all the water for the Pueblo. He took us inside the jewelry studio of a wizened old craftsman, crafting the silver that the tribespeople wore. He feed us a "pickle" and sweet drink sold from a jug on a board spanned across two plaster buckets. "You are going to hear a ton of BS." he assured us "No one lives here anymore, everyone left for the creature comforts, that kind of thing." "Truth is people come and go. But they never leave the tribe." He showed how they powered everything they needed with propane. Told us they had been given exclusive rights to graze and harvest buffalo for a commercial meat market. He made sure we walked through the adobe buildings, "America's first condo", he joked, and then sped off in his pick-up at the end of his shift. It was complicated.

This from the wiki:
"The deep feeling of belonging to a community, summed up in their phrase, “we are in one nest,” has held the Taos people together. Both men and women are expected to offer their services or “community duties,” when needed. One should be cooperative and never allow their own desires to be destructive of the community’s interest. One of Taos’s strongest institutions is the family. Descent on both the father and the mother’s side of the family is equally recognized. Each primary family lives in a separate dwelling so when a couple gets married, they move to their own home. With relatives so near by, everyone is available to help care for the children. The elderly teach the young the values and traditions that have been handed down, which protects the integrity of the Taos culture."

It got more complicated when our friends suggested that we attend the annual corn dance in the Santo Domingo Pueblo. We were cautioned to appreciate the fact that what we were about to experience was not for our benefit. This was a centuries old tradition, not a pow-wow for consumption by gringos.

Hundreds of visitors sat on a berm on the edge of the plaza fronting the pueblo. Two elders walked carefully over the ground, I'm going to guess 4 acres, picking up small stones, anything that might impede the dancers. Then the sound, the roar of drums is heard. The drummers from one tribe enter the space. Then the babies appear. The children led by their elders, are adorned in tribal dress, some of their bodies are painted in adobe mud, and they are moving in the dance step they have mastered as young as three. Soon the plaza is filled with dancers, hundreds of family members, ranks and files, adorned with crowns, and bells, and rattles, and skins, all cued by the drums to move in an elaborate choreography, a thousand years in the making. Tribe yields the space to tribe (they have come from other pueblos) and the succession of dancers proceeds throughout the day. Suddenly it ends. We are not 4 feet from a row of dancers. A young man shape shifts before our eyes. He is back from the trance he has been in for the last hour and asks his buddy, "So I have to change and then we'll meet up, cool with you?"

The above is so not any piece of any curriculum I have been exposed to. This trip into the American reality is a must do for any and all of us and would be a critical "field trip" for me and my fellow students of any age. What is happening with Native American Studies to a great degree is concerned with the integration of the
Indian kids into the mainstream, or protecting their culture. Reforming the teaching of Thanksgiving seems to be a big issue.

What is not happening is the wider exposure to the life lessons to be learned by example, of the multigenerational "dance" and the meaning for the rest of us.

When a Native American professor out of Yale develops a revised curriculum unit in American History for implementation in a New Haven magnet school. I get interested.
It is troubling to say the least when you scan the curriculum at the school for which the course was prepared and find no evidence that it is present.

C.A. Bower, a professor of great influence for those of us concerned with environmental studies, has bemoaned the loss of tradition, in the name of neo-liberal transformative education.

The following is an excerpt from an article posted on his web site:

Title: Is Transformative Learning the Trojan Horse of Western Globalization?
Author: C. A. Bowers, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Oregon

It is important to acknowledge that the rise of liberal/Enlightenment ideas in the late
18th and 19th century led to basic improvements in the lives of the people of Western Europe who had been oppressed by feudal ideas and institutions—and by the authoritarian political systems that were equally resistant to change. The emphasis on the authority and power of critical reflection to overturn unjust traditions, the idea that change can lead to social progress, the view of the individual as having the power of self-determination, and the idea that new forms of knowledge will mitigate the ravages of the illness and the stultifying nature of work, led to important advances. But it also needs to be kept in mind that the widespread acceptance in the West of these ideas also coincided with the rise of the Industrial Revolution. And more importantly, these liberal ideas had no self-limiting principle. That is,the dominant motivation has been to achieve more and faster progress, more reliance on critical reflection (increasingly by experts promoting the development of new technologies and markets), more labor saving technologies (and now the elimination of the need for workers), newer drugs (and the control of the American Congress to ensure the growing dominance of the drug industry), and more self-determination—including self-determination in the construction of knowledge and values. The lack of any self-limiting principles, which made these liberal ideas even more problematic when they were merged with the market liberalism of John Locke, Adam Smith, and, later, Herbert Spencer, becomes especially evident when we consider the current drive to turn every aspect of the environmental and cultural commons into market opportunities—and to convert the entire world to a survival of the fittest business mentality.

What from the beginning of human history has been understood as the commons, and
which exists today in various state of viability in the diverse cultures of the world, is the only alternative to the way in which the West’s industrial culture is creating greater dependence upon Western style consumerism and technologies. The nature of the commons varies from culture to culture, and from bioregion to bioregion. What they have in common is that much of the culture’s symbolic patterns as well as the natural systems of the bioregion are available to the members of the community on a non-monetary basis. That is, they have not been enclosed—that is, privatized, commodified, monetized, incorporated into an industrial process, and so forth. This general account of the commons does not mean that all of the culturally diverse commons where entirely free of political systems that gave certain groups
special advantages—including the right to restrict the commons to the bare essentials for sustaining life, such as access to water, soil for growing small crops, animals, traditions of ceremonies, patterns of reciprocity, intergenerational knowledge of how to use medical plants, preparing food, and so forth. To make the point more directly, the commons should not be understood as always free of status systems and the unequal use of power. On the other hand, many of the cultural commons have been and still are characterized by local decision-making—an important phenomena that is now being undermined by the World Trade Organization and capitalistic forms of enclosure where decision about the use of the commons is now made by corporations and private owners who are unaffected by their decisions. The enclosure (privatization) of municipal water systems, as well as the corporate ownership and sale of supposedly “pure” bottled water, are examples of how the process of enclosing the commons also undermines local democracy.

What we experienced in Taos is a living example of an authentic commons in action. There are lessons to be learned there.

The Bell Tolls

2010-02-17T12:47:00.004-05:00

It's a Start

I could hear it in his voice, the angst was palpable. My son called to tell me that he had just registered his son in kindergarden. He is in the midst of a book launch, otherwise happy as he could be. This brought him down. "Nothing has changed." "Same concrete block building, same drab colors, same florescent lighting, and that same authoritarian voice instructing us that we had to take this event seriously, brought it all back home." He and millions of others are beginning the process of handing their children off to the state. My grandson is about to be segregated from people not his age. He is about to enter the company of 20-30 other children and told to be quiet. He will be told to suppress his natural curiosity about his sexual identity. He will be fed horrible things at lunch. He will be introduced to the first phases of a curriculum guaranteed to dull and deaden the natural process of his acquisition of knowledge.

He is being conditioned to become a productive citizen, able to "compete" in the world's race for power and wealth. In the process he will be bullied, insulted, and graded. He will learn to compete against his fellow students. He will pass or fail.

What's the problem? We all went through it. We survived. We did OK. These arguments for the system are the best we can do. Or we can point to the failure of all previous attempts at reform. Or suggest there are no alternatives. Or, when alternatives do pop up i.e. home schooling or charter schools, we see to it that they are state certified. The issue isn't that some of us survive the system. The issue is what would we be if we grew in a truly supportive system that placed students needs first? Who might we have become? Super teachers write on this subject. Here is one you might want to consider.
One of the cruelest events in this mean season is the annual public humiliation of parents waiting, camping, suffering whatever it takes, to get their child placed in one or another magnet school. And for most of those who fail to get their child in the "better" school? They passively accept their fate as second class citizens. Tax paying citizens, paying for schools their children can't attend. An argument against the value of magnet schools was posted by a teacher in the NYT recently.

The more fundamental questions that are rarely asked or discussed would challenge the entire enterprise. Coming out of WW2 scholars questioned the role of public education in the formulation of mind sets that could create such horrors.
We might ask the same of our current reality. We could begin questioning a system of world organization that has half of the occupants of the planet living in poverty. I believe that it is just such an awareness that motivates most parents to try to secure an edge for their children in what they perceive of as a cruel world.

Times are tough and getting tougher for college students. As the protests begin it is evident that students have accepted the efficacy of their educational institutions. It is more access that they are demanding. Not alternatives.

When students struck Columbia U. in 1968, I and others offered an alternative in the form of what became the University of the Street. A qualified success it did however lead to the establishment of The Open University in America. A short term version of the same process, the matching of students and teachers and letting them run is taking place now. By the time persons reach their majority they can and do create alternatives. It is with the children that we are so frightened. What if we are wrong? Will this decrease their chances to get into Yale? How will they be socialized?

I inhaled Ivan Illich. This radical (ultimately defrocked) priest authored Deschooling Society in 1974. His ideas are summarized here.

He called for "convivial education". A system very similar to the processes of an open university available to everyone. Young and older. His ideas continue to be discussed. An excerpt from the above; "The importance of convivial institutions is recognized in the sustaining of community - but social capital, because it is also linked to economic advancement, can be easily co-opted in the service of non-convivial activities (as the involvement of the World Bank in promoting the notion may suggest)".

He is also criticized for not being more specific about how we might implement alternatives.

Imagine. A group of say 10 parents decides to pull up to 20 students from the system. These same parents advertise for a pair of "teachers" who are going to become the primary guides in this newly formed learning community. In today's employment environment it should be easy to find qualified and willing candidates. The parents raise 100K. The parents acquire access to space throughout their community. They pool their resources: computers, books, AV equipment, tools, work sites for situational learning, food, vehicles, Parents are asked to participate to the extent they are comfortable. One fear the parents are going to have is that couldn't agree on what the knowledge base for their children might look like. They must come up with a set of objectives that governs them all. They must seize control of this process. They must take responsibility. There is no way around it. When they assemble their working document then they contract with the guides. The group meets regularly. They fine tune. They grow. Now imagine thousands of similar groups. They have 6 months to get organized before they hand over their kids.

A House For All Seasons

2010-02-09T13:43:00.002-05:00

Our shelter system thrives on instability. Developers, builders, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and bankers profit when the market for shelter is in churn. For those too young to remember there was once a process called "block busting".

Move a black family into a stable white middle class neighborhood, excite fear that property values are going to be adversely affected, and watch the neighborhood change its complexion. The opportunity that arises for persons of less sophistication to now move up and out of the ghetto sets the stage for a sub-prime housing debacle. Lenders prey on people desperate to own a piece of the American dream.

The system requires demand. Natural disasters are pre-conditions for renewed housing demand. As are relaxed immigration standards for persons of means, or relocation programs on the part of employers. Nothing was as beneficial to the building industry as divorce. During the turbulent years in the later half of the 20th century new home formations generated by divorce drove the industry.

Looking to externalities to describe contributing factors of our housing crisis will not lessen the impact of cultural shifts regarding our shelter. In fact, when was the last time anyone referred to housing as shelter? We have commodified shelter. Housing is now an investment. The fact that at any given time a house is calculated as either a good or bad investment points up the cultural shift away from shelter as a necessity, to housing as something that is to be traded.

The idea of house as a tradable commodity is built into the modern system of shelter supply. We promote "starter" homes without giving a second thought to the implications of the process the buyer commits to once having "started".

As long as the industry could suggest that the buying and selling of housing was a good investment, then trading up was a positive social behavior. Up had many connotations. Up might mean bigger, showier, the trophy house. Up might mean our family is growing and we need a bigger house. Up might mean near to or within a neighborhood that has status. Here's a fun forum re. Beverly Hills as an example.

No matter what the motivation, the move occasions the loss of fundamental family values: The wrenching of the kids from school, the abandoning of friends, shifting of commerce from one set of stores to another, and most importantly the atomization of the family.

The re- release of the film Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) is heralded as contemporary in the VSL announcement:
With its rerelease on DVD (available 2/23), Make Way for Tomorrow has another chance to be appreciated. The film’s Depression-era plot couldn’t be more timely: An elderly couple must move in with their children after losing their home to the bank. Separated and out of place, these grandparents not only disrupt the lives of their children and grandchildren—they’re miserable themselves. http://www.veryshortlist.com/vsl/daily.cfm/review/1469/DVD/tomorrow-is-today/?tp
The reuniting of the family in the above scenario is portrayed as a negative.

Like so many facets of the new economy that have blown up, the housing bubble burst could be a precursor to a reexamined set of premises. What if we explored the millennium old tradition of multi-generational dwelling, not as a burden that one has to escape but rather a support network that can be trusted. I remember the first time I heard the phrase "home place". My auto mechanic in the Shenandoah Valley and I were becoming friendlier and he wanted to cement the relationship with a long pull of brew on the porch of his home place up in the hills. Five generations had been born and raised there and it was never to be sold. It served as a home base in tough times. Family could settle in and await the next opportunity without going homeless or uprooting.

Circumstances are creating similar situations for people who thought they had "outgrown" extended family. Boomerang adults are moving back in with mom and pop, children are assuming responsibility for the senior care of their parents, and grandparents are becoming day care providers. These are not negative practices. The key to the success of these activities is not to stigmatize them. Not to allow the media or the industrial housing barons to determine what is right for us. Some enlightened professionals can see the writing on the wall, but have yet to come up with solutions. We needn't wait for them.

I have addressed the possibilities of granny flats in this space .

That is but one form of housing modification that would work. It turns out that larger, higher end housing stock is suffering a slower recovery and is probably headed for steeper price adjustments. This could be the exact moment to pool resources and buy the homestead, a "forever house". The housing would have to be modified. Modifications to an overbuilt suburban McMansion might include child proofing, sound proofing, increasing accessibility, creating privacy zones, and reconfiguring common spaces to pool resources like computing power or entertainment centers.

I don't think the highest hurdle to such reconfigurations is physical. I think that a great many of us are victims of cool. We would rather die then live in a suburban setting. If we are going to create sustainable, stable futures for ourselves we are going to have to get smart about space, money, and a restored set of family values. Richard Florida isn't going to write a book suggesting creative types should live in a suburb, but the Coastal Conservation League may provide an example of context. They propose retrofitting existing suburbs into livable places. Theirs is but one example of planners trying to save what's left of the landscape by building up what already exists on the grid. Now its up to designers and builders to retrofit the individual house on that grid to make it livable.

Class War

2010-02-01T08:55:00.004-05:00

These images and the accompanying stories pushed me over the top.

I have watched the nightly exhibition of meanness, racism, and insularity, on the part of the world's news teams portraying starving Haitians grasping for what might be their only chance for life. News people find examples of what can be characterized as struggling and "looting" and in so doing paint a picture implying this behavior is somehow endemic. They will sleep peacefully in the airport camps protected by armed soldiers.

The irony Of Clinton/Bush rallying the world to give to their charity to relieve the plight of the Haitian people cannot go unmentioned. Poor Haitians were the very people that Clinton had detained under freeways in Miami, while enforcing special rules that denied them refugee status in the 90's. Or irony turns to tragedy when you realize that Bush and his CIA organized the overthrow of the "populist" Aristede.

Clinton will be there when the dust settles. He will assist in the development of sweat shops and call it reconstruction. He will be there when contractors get wealthy rebuilding Port au Prince.

I remember when Clinton, reformed welfare and drove moms out of their houses into a low wage work force to satisfy the demands of a constituency that has been led to believe that their relative poverty is somehow related to a "welfare queen" driving a Cadillac.

In "What's the Matter With Kansas" Thomas Frank wondered how it was that middle class people from the heartland could be so distracted as to support politicians and their policies that weren't in their self interest. The BBC ran a recent column on the subject.

Marginally middle class people are given the straw dogs of illegal immigration, gay marriage, and a thick file of terrors they are to be afraid of. When they act up at town hall meetings or tea bag rallies you can hear the implicit classism expressing itself in their arguments against health reform. What a fabulous trick of manipulation. A rich lobbyist can get a modest middle American to vote against a set of reforms designed to assist him, by emphasizing that the cost of such reform is related to the extension of health services to the poor.

No people do a better job of ignoring their own self interests then Afro-Americans. It has to be the height of cynicism that has Russell Simmons, a man who sold the images and underwrote the scores for music that celebrated a gangsta lifestyle, promoted values enhanced by 'bling", degraded women, and became rich, now promoting "The Hip Hop Action Network." Russell Simmons exhorts us to be green in advertising promotions. We changed the world he argues, he will do it again. He wants to teach money management skills to people who don't have any money. He wants to sell them a Rush Card. There is still an ounce of flesh to be rendered.

There is a long tradition of identifying with one's oppressors. A particularly mean spirited program is a state sponsored lottery. Watch these games grow as state after state falls into arrears and attempts to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor who buy these tickets. If you examine the underlying structure of the lottery concept it is the perfect weapon in the war on the poor. Not only does it make them poorer, it validates the concept of extreme wealth. The only problem with extreme wealth is that I don't have it and if I can get lucky, well then I too can enjoy the bling.

A positive consequence of hip-hop, and R and B long before, was to break the cycle of humiliation masked in the so called tradition of politeness. No longer would one keep grievances quiet, suffering silently, while nodding respectfully to the holders of the stick. I believe the civil rights movement was enhanced, not by the troubadours of folk music, but by kick ass rock and rollers who crossed over and fused the races in common purpose.

We need a comparable set of tunes to underscore another movement. A social stigma is now being attached to class speech. No matter how egregious the abuse, one is not allowed to characterize corporate behavior as a war on the poor. Enron can freeze out Californians, banks can throw people out of their homes, pension funds can be raided, and jobs moved off shore, but woe be to the individual that points up these abuses or suggest there is a better way.

Just a glimpse of the reactionary voices that decry what they characterize as the rise of communism. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) argues we are running out of rich people.

No leftist could do as much damage in discrediting capitalism as the modern robber baron. He is so secure in his understanding of the nature of the passivity of his victims, that he can collect on his side bets (that people will be unable to finance their mortgages) leave people homeless, and earn a bonus to boot. When homeless women got it together enough to get on the bus and stand in the driveways of the bankers' Greenwich mansions and protest their behavior the press gave them short shrift. Who would have guessed they would become the theme of a fashion show.

What about the images from Milan fashion week were so alarming? There were no poor in the hall to humiliate. The rich show goer is party to the perpetual benign neglect that is the enabler of all the wars. Nothing new there. It is not that one insensitive fashion designer created this show.

I am alarmed by the "kids" who agreed to "model" these behaviors. These young models are not going to act up or out in defense of the homeless they personify. Blind to the possibility that their fates are financially insecure, lulled into a false sense of security by association with the rich and famous, they callously become the expression of disregard and coldness to the poor they objectify.

We need a value revolution and it may bud in the mind of Raj Patal. His new book, The Value of Nothing is highlighted in the following video:

SAFE

2010-01-20T11:10:00.007-05:00

At George Mason University I taught an undergraduate design studio titled Studies in Alternative Future Environments (SAFE), which I began each year with the suggestion that students might be well served by considering their academic goals: instead of working to determine what they wanted to do for a living, they could consider where they wanted to live.

We began with a framework borrowed from Ian McHarg's "Design with Nature.”

McHarq wrote that we must respect the underlying "nature" of the ground on which we live. In class, I suggested that a stable footing would increase the stability of student’s lives.

As we stare in shock and horror at the tragedy of Haiti, McHarg's work reminds me that if reconstruction is to be effective it must take into account the instability of the island.

It is too early to begin the discussion of "rebuilding" Haiti. Any energy that draws attention away from the stabilization of life there is energy misspent. But it has begun. Markers are being laid down and enormous amounts of money are starting to flow.

Discussions will be focused on the rebuilding of Port au Prince. There will be countervailing statements suggesting other approaches to the future of the Haitian people. Wyclef Jean campaigned for the evacuation of Port-au-Prince and the creation of tent cities in areas that could later be built into communities. Jean is pleading: "We need to migrate at least 2 million people," he said. "I give you my word, if I tell them to go, they will go. But they need somewhere to go. Help us work on these tents." Hopefully, wherever the survivors eventually take root, their helpers will consider the first principles of nature and locate them on stable ground.

We have had a spate of enormous disasters in the last decade and the world is trying to learn how best to respond. The Pakistan Earthquake of 2005 that killed 75,000 people and left millions homeless is the subject of an important study from The Feinstein International Center.

Within its pages are lessons regarding the critical importance of respect for the indigenous culture when attempting to provide aid. There is however no discussion of what I call "the persistence of place", the behavior of people rebuilding in the very places that have just experienced natural destruction. The evidence that the cataclysm will happen again goes unheeded. I think the concept is best exemplified by the arguments for rebuilding the ninth ward and other post Katrina zones of destruction. Occupants all along the coast argue that this is their home place and refuse to consider moving to other areas as a viable option. Worse, are the architects, builders, and developers who give in to this impulse and stage rebuilding exercises, exploiting them as laboratories for new green building, or arguing the moral high ground that they are being sensitive to the needs of the indigenous residents. This behavior and its effects are the subject of the book: The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Landscape By Harm J. De Blij
An important excerpt is here.

Consider the fact that Banda-Aech was destroyed in the recent Tsunami
and despite the horror of that experience the rebuilding goes on and the beaches are open again to tourists.

On Sunday, scientists released an imminent warning that conditions are building for another likely Tsunami in the area.

The Chinese government have no plans to relocate the millions of persons
displaced by the Sichuan Quake of May 2008. In fact stories are emerging about new beautiful bamboo homes, built on plots cleared of rubble.

Maybe the most troubling of all examples is the response to the most recent quake that destroyed L'Aquila, Italy. The residents have a 700 year history of devastation and yet they persist in returning to the area.

Or consider the aftermath of the latest hurricane to destroy Galveston.

I lived for 5 years on the barrier island between the ocean and the inland waterway in south Florida. No amount of argument could prevent the developers building despite repeated warnings that the next storm will be devastating for the hundreds of thousands of persons who believe that they somehow will escape the inevitable. Unlike the hapless Haitian, persons who live in hurricane alley, or along the San Andreas Fault, or other highly unstable landscapes, have choices. They could move to areas suitable for human habitation. Their lack of sound judgment results in catastrophe. It is a burden that the rest of us shouldn't have to bear.

One of the more profound voices arguing for an alternative is Charles B. Perrow
Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Yale University. A lecture appears on the MIT World web site.
The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters
About the Lecture: (It runs 1:33) "It’s time to trade in the Department of Homeland Security for a Department of Homeland Vulnerabilities," says Charles Perrow. At its peril, our nation “privileges terrorism over natural and industrial disasters.”

Let his be a lesson to all of us.

Crap Detection

2010-01-08T14:12:00.003-05:00

Recent college graduates fail to realize the promise of their education; a job.

Robert Galbraith / Reuters
Christine Chase, 24, searches for a job on her computer in her apartment in Campbell, Calif. Chase was laid off from her contractor job at AT&T in the Silicon Valley in August.

This problem is worldwide as this story will show.

Graduates scream foul when their degrees prove worthless. When this happens, you see educational institutions scramble to reform their product mix to appeal to new recruits. Then they are accused of being no more than Vocational Ed shops.

A feature in the NYT Saturday
addressed the issue and interestingly, had the audacity to suggest ten areas that look good to the writers, for job prospects in the future. The problem with these predictions is that they have no more chance of being accurate then the options that were offered 5 years ago to students who are now unemployed graduates.

The institutional response to students' demands for relevance results in one of the sorrier aspects of the process; the total abdication of any presumption that there is someone who actually knows more then the students about what it is that a student might need to know. Students may chose not to take philosophy courses but then where are they to learn ethics, values, or moral behavior?

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that economic collapse also affects the University and in tough times something has to give.

The Humanities always suffer in times like these. Courses that don't appear to have any market value are dropped. At UC Berkeley, a campus roiling in controversy, the very unpopular President Mark Yudoff commenting on students protesting raising fees, dropped classes, and reduction in admittance, said; "despite the outcry, I still don't have any money." There may be structural forces at work here. There always were for blacks, browns, and women. Now the crisis of the world's economy is being felt at the previously solid middle class level. In the words of Ananya Roy, also of Berkeley, "We have all become students of color now." If the conventional degree is proving worthless then what are students' alternatives ?

Harvard can afford to keep their wits about them and there is no pull back from their insistence on a core curriculum requirement or a new General Ed studies program. Theirs is a model of required study within the Humanities.

But for all of that, it is important to note that the Harvard graduates' record of integrity of late leaves a lot to be desired. Investigators were all over graduate Jeffery Skillings ( CEO, ENRON) for example, trying to draw out how he missed picking up ethics, or a conscience while a student. For those who might have missed it, the tapes documenting the behavior of that firm are here. It occurs to me that the unstated premise of the Business School curriculum is "how to get the suckers to part with their money".
Now we have a new set of graduates who have brought us the end of the world as we knew it.

If the best and the brightest are not being educated to be responsible leaders then it seems to me that the rest of us need a set of skills to survive them.

I am developing the following course offerings for non credit.

The Art of Crap Detection:
For academic applications consider a guide by Nathan P. Gilmour

For the more pragmatic needs of our students we have courses in:

They know nothing: experts who aren't and how to identify them.

Resistance: how to deflect the marketing strategies developed by the graduates of business schools.

NASA: Why you won't be selected to go and why you shouldn't pay for it.

Money: Folds neatly under the umbrella of Crap Detection.
No one knows a thing about how to invest for wealth.
Jobs: The myth of the nobility of work
Money Management:
Investing: How to read a 10K
What is a public stock company (what is shelf registration, what is dilution)?
How to cover your nut. What is your nut?
The truth about debt management. When is cash king? When to leverage up?

Effective consumerism: What's the better value; one 6.5 oz can Tuna @ 69 Cents, 12 oz can same brand tuna 1.60?

Group: Ending the myth of the rugged individual
Why sharing information is not cheating
How to give a dinner party

Reproduction: baby making, child care
Sexual behavior
Stimulant management
Urdu (a list of languages and the numbers who speak them)

We will keep you up to date on course development and how you can obtain lesson plans.

The Stock Market

2009-12-28T11:57:00.004-05:00

There is a new way to separate you from your money and lessen the quality of your life, and that is the new stock in a box appearing in your food market. Better than the instant bouillon cube which is no more than salt in foil, the new box is an apparent step up from Swanson's broth in a can. These products allow you to fool yourself into believing they are as good as homemade. They aren't.
I am old school and still believe that the simpler my food the better. For me nothing beats a golden broth consommé with maybe a tiny bit of veg floating on the surface. Nobody made it better than Jean Louis Palladin and when I asked him how it was that his was so much better than the competition he produced a tiny brown bottle. "My mother sends me this essence of burnt onion juice." he told me. "A few drops will flavor a quart of stock."

You can do this; make your own stock, and it is virtually free. Every time you peel and trim an onion, toss those peels and ends in the plastic bag you have ready in the freezer. So too the carrot peels, the lettuce trim, the fennel bottoms, the parsley stems, and the wing tips and back bones or whole carcass from your chicken. It is also a great idea to crush egg shells and save them in the bag. When making the stock the shells will form what is called a raft which will capture the scum on the surface.

(a parsley trick: trim off the stems, rinse the leafy bunch in water, place one or more bunches in your blender, pour in a cup or two of water, pulse. Strain the now green water (add to stock), place the now finely chopped parsley in a freezer bag, flatten, freeze, break off what you need when you need it.)

Brown the onion and chicken parts in the bottom of a stock pot, add quarts of water, a bay leaf or two, other herb, a clove, some pepper. Don't add salt yet. When you make your final soup you will be able to judge how much salt to add to taste. Bring to slow boil, reduce heat to simmer, forget it for an hour or more. Remove raft with a slotted spoon or simply pour stock through a strainer and save. Purists will want to remove the fat from the surface once it chills and sets. You can refine the stock more by straining again through a paper towel or simply leave the last inch of stock on the bottom of the pot where the unstrained solids will have collected. Store stock in pint or quart containers and freeze till needed.

To get the chicken parts for the stock will require a very sharp knife. I hope you got a sharpener for Christmas. If not get one. You can spend more money but this one does a great job.

Start with a good knife, you will need three in your life, a boning, a paring, an 8inch chef's.

This video will show you the basics of how to bone a chicken.

You could stop short of the whole boning process by just removing the wing tips, cutting out the back on two sides, and using these bones for stock. Or by making a small incision at the wish bone, inserting your fingers and pulling the breast away, you can bone the breast out of the chicken without a knife. The thighs will break off with a twist and tear. Another trick is to turn the separated leg over, skin side down and notice there is a whitish line where the thigh and drum might meet. It is exactly where they meet and if you slice atop that line you will separate them perfectly. Most of the time you will want to keep the bones within the legs and thighs for your recipes.
A starter soup might have you poach (20 minutes will do) the large pieces of chicken as you make the stock, and remove them to cool. Cook off some rice or noodles, dice a carrot, get a cup of frozen peas, shred some chicken. Place all in a pot, add stock, a bit of white wine, simmer, add a pinch of nutmeg, sprinkle with grated parmesan. Ahhhhh.

New Gang in Town

2009-12-15T09:50:00.004-05:00

I began my career in rural Appalachia struggling to help the working poor earn a living wage. Employers exploited workers, keeping them in line by using fear and intimidation. Community organizing was an obvious response. By coming together in an organization that approximated a gang, workers had a better chance to appeal for fairness.

The widely circulated AP story "Jobless professionals vie for holiday sales work" By CHRISTOPHER LEONARD and MAE ANDERSON, AP Business Writers put a face on the current unemployment crisis.
AP – In this photo taken Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009, Mara Proctor arranges merchandise at Sticks boutique in Kansas …

Mara, and the 6 million former professionals like her, are terribly alone. Having done everything the society asked of her, she finds herself discarded. Despite having ample cause for fury, her survival strategy is to get to work, any work will do.

I have a suggestion for Mara, form a gang. Not one of those groups who grope around trying to create a better resume or network, hoping against hope to find a way back into the system that just failed them. No, a real gang that pools their resources and begins with the premise that they do not want to get back to business as usual.

The first principle of the gang they should form is that society has failed them. They signed the social contract, but they got no security. They will take it as a truth that if you locate a problem that one person has, ten thousand others have the same problem. In some basic way, society has failed the majority of its citizens. The gang's job will be to identify and rectify those failures. This is Mara's opportunity. Mara should assess a set of needs that are common in her locale, and begin to solve those needs.

Let's get the ball rolling with a short list based on areas of opportunity that are fairly common, one of which Mara might want to exploit.
Programs are beginning to assist seniors in their transport needs.
Mara starts a car service, contracting with seniors, parents, and commuters.

Persons are struggling to eat right. Home chefs are but one new start-up.
Mara could do that or assist persons in their homes to rid their lives of junk food and teach the basics of healthy food prep to the entire family.

Schools are failing to provide the skill sets that Mara and her peers need to survive. Mara could tailor teaching sessions to the job skills required by specific corporations. Different then job training that is rarely specific, this concept begins with the employer and moves the training off site. States are starting to experiment with funded models that she might want to explore.

Mara might find a commercial building suffering a lack of tenants. This problem is only going to get worse. At the same time her state, and others, are going to suffer drastic budget cuts and education will not be immune. Mara proposes to the building owners and the existing tenants that what she wants to develop is a charter school, the organizing basis of which is that it is geared to provide real world office experience to its students.

This list is just suggestive. To develop any project Mara is going to need help. Enter the gang. For any of these suggestions to become a reality will require enormous amounts of energy. But it has to start with Mara and her gang, getting off their knees.

Who knows what she and her pals will come up with. The important thing is for her to form an alliance with a small group who share her motivation.
Maybe after a successful launch, her most ambitious project will be to replicate this process. "New Starts" might be their logo.

Salad Spinner

2009-12-09T10:28:00.005-05:00

Grand baby West is 4 today!

Last Friday, in the middle of his play day, he marched into the kitchen and asked if he could have the salad spinner. His dad passed it to him, West retired to the living room, and we could hear the whir of the spinner as it wound up and down. A peek around the corner revealed the little guy poised over the tool, head bent to see the interior. A minute later he returns to the kitchen, and places the spinner on the table around which we are seated. He can now see the spinner at eye level. So can we. What West has done is place his three favorite "Match-Box" cars in the spinner, locked down the lid, and pumped them up into a fair simulation of the Metrodrome, Wall of Death. We are mightily impressed.

Another little guy getting ready:

I ask West if he has a paddle ball. He rummages around the toy chest and produces one. I hold the rubber band 4 inches or so above the ball and ask him to watch closely. I slowly start to spin the ball and sure enough the ball rises to orbit around my finger. "Now look at my mouth West. Say centrifugal force." He does and runs to repeat to his father, "centrifugal force".

West will start kindergarten next September. When he does he will be locked into a space with a bunch of other 4 year olds, and one adult. Where did that madness come from? Bonnie Moen in her excellent paper; "Multi-age Education -- Time for a Change" sets out the history. Horace Mann imported the concept from Prussia in the 1840's and it has been the norm ever since. This practice interrupted thousands of years of successful multi-age education.

Later that day West was drawing on the side walk. We asked him what he was drawing. "The Planets" he said.

Cut the Crap

2009-12-04T13:51:00.007-05:00

It is the holiday season and the whole world watches to see if the American consumer will rise to her obligation to shop till she drops. Tapped out, frightened that she will lose her job, busted from the market crash and the loss of value of her home, she probably is going to spend less. This probability provoked a spate of articles on the subject. The NYT ran a blog debate in September; "Saving the World Without US Consumers"
Jewel Samad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Within the above is yet another article that suggests that the measures that we use to determine human and planetary well being are misguided. In other words there is more to the well being of the people of the world than just what they consume. The GNP or rate of growth as just a number belies the costs of the consequences of that activity.

James Surowiecki brings economic issues to the masses with his weekly column in NewYorker. This week his interest is the disparity between Chinese manufacturing and the relatively light consumption of the Chinese people. He makes an argument that they, and the rest of the world, would be a better place if they would just start buying more of what they produce.

He is not alone.The McKinsey Quarterly has published a series of articles on the subject that you can access here.

Neither of these articles address the impacts of increased consumption on the part of the Chinese. They are simply looked upon as a market.

Questions regarding the ethics of counting the economic activity of consumption without consideration of the consequences are not discussed.

Hazel Henderson has been writing about the horror of a system that would calculate the "value added" of say an earthquake from the perspective of the building activity that will follow as opposed to the negative impacts on the people who suffered from the disaster. What she and others want is a true cost accounting of economic activity. If you produce a hybrid car battery for a new Prius then someone is going to pay the cost of cleaning up the pollution created in the manufacturing process. That cost ought to be considered when we "value" the car.

The cost of environmental consequences is never on the books. Nor is the reality of the Limits to Growth.

You have probably read some form of 'how many planets it would take if everyone lived like we do". For balance read the following counter argument.

Behold there is another concept starting to gain some traction. Some economists are indeed considering the limits to unbridled economic activity and call for a Steady State.

It should be obvious that we can't achieve a steady state if we raise the standard of living of some people of the world without a balanced reduction by others. This is where the right has a hissy-fit. "That means we have less", they argue. And right they are.

Here's where Will begins. I want to name the crap we can do without. Stuff on which there is something like a consensus of its valuelessness. I am willing to trade my low value stuff for others ability to have more. I'll start my list with corn sugar. Less for me, more corn for tortillas where they are a staple. I will add fewer clothing garments, wearing what I own longer. I will eat less meat, eschew bottled water, and drop chips. I will not buy my grandson anything in a primary color this season, nor will I replace the aging Big Wheel. That's a start. It has implications for jobs. This is but a topics list of what should be a very long national discussion.

An idea whose time keeps coming, and coming

2009-11-23T09:14:00.009-05:00

This spring the Volvo Round the World maxi boat race sailed into Boston harbor. Their arrival was preceded by the Puma pop up store that was erected on the pier in a day.

Thousands of us clambered aboard, bought gear, partied, and became impressed with the possibilities of container architecture.

I had seen "Positions"the art installation village consisting of "galleries" assembled from around the world and then transported in containers, lined up along the beach, and forming an instant art's district on Miami Beach, but this project moved the possibility from art to reality.

LOT-EK has been experimenting with containers for some time. An earlier example of a project was their

container home.

Bob Vila's web site featured a story on home creation utilizing containers and concluded: "Perhaps the biggest barrier to increased production of container homes is the stigma that is attached to the ugly metal boxes left abandoned in urban shipping yards. Transformative thinking and a willingness to move outside of the box can bring this technology to the forefront of urban planning agendas everywhere."
Text by Mark Fuller

A Seattle based architecture firm Hybrid Seattle coined the term "cargotecture" to describe their development and their first structure has landed.
I also know that when talking to the principals of the firm they are at work on an infill concept that is so smart it is a wonder that it hasn't been implemented yet. They view dorment development plots, builders waiting for financing might be a reason for a plot to lay fallow, as sites for temporary villages of container homes. The portability of the containers would allow them to have a temporary location until such time as the underlying project was green lighted, and then would move to the next site. A much better use than surface parking or weed patches.

The AIA, and the City of Newark sponsored a world wide competition for a container based development for their city. The results are amazing.

The beat goes on. LOT-EK won a competition to build a new shopping mall on a NYC pier, an Italian firm built a jewel box and slowly the concept is winning acceptance. It is important to take away the reality that zoning and planning board rules that might inhibit creative housing solutions are responsive to political will. If you have the will, there is a way.

Maximizing the built environment

2009-11-18T10:42:00.001-05:00

A scenario:
Barbara is a single mom who got herself behind the eight ball. Her husband died from a sudden heart attack while jogging. They had no life insurance. To help her with cash flow she refinanced her modest three bedroom, two car garage home in middle America using an adjustable rate mortgage. The way it was explained to her, "when the affordable rate is about to adjust, we will refinance again, and the monthly payments will remain the same". The problem is that when the adjustable rate reset, there was no bank ready to refi her loan and now she was saddled with a mortgage that was breaking her.

Barbara works in human resources at a mid-sized utility company. After her debt service she barely has money left to feed her two kids, 3 and 5 years old.. She was very close to foreclosure when a group of three approached her office with a concept for a new small business (house retrofitting for conservation) that they imagined was allied with the utility, and that the utility might want to fund. This was beyond her pay grade and she pushed the proposal up the chain but kept the cover sheet of the proposal in her desk. Weeks later she called one of the principals out of curiosity. No the utility hadn't funded the venture but the group had secured some start up money and was plunging ahead. They were looking for space.

No one can ever trace the sparks that trigger creative energy. What Barbara blurted out was, "would you consider renting my house from me during the working day?" Meetings were had, problems discussed, and the resolution worked as follows: They split the debt service and utilities. For the start-up this was far cheaper than the office options they had explored and far more comfortable. The living room, dining room, kitchen, and one bedroom would be shared by the business while Barbara was at work. Barbara and the kids each maintained a private bedroom. The key to the success of the concept was the separation of stuff in the shared space. Barbara contacted the head of the architecture dept. of a nearby university and posted a want-ad for a design project. A short description was included and of course a student responded within days. In addition to a little money beyond materials what the student needed was a practicum for credit. For that the student required they document the process. No problem.

Barbara suggested the student set up shop in the garage. He did. And what he fabricated was a set of three modular storage cubes on wheels. During the work day they opened to include the work surfaces, and communication storage areas that were needed, and at the end of the day, were secured and rolled against a wall, out of Barbara and the kids' way.

The kicker was that when the project was finished, the student suggested that he could retrofit the garage and create an apartment for himself in the space. He did. You will be pleased to know that Barbara is secure in the house, the start-up has positive cash flow, and the city certified the garage as a legal ancillary space.