Category Archives: politics

Feed the soil…

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…and the rest will follow. (hat tip to organic farmers’ group)

Here we are, 2012, and still rediscovering what wisdom has been known forever…nature can do a bang up job when we cooperate with her instead of fighting against her…

The cover crops angle is the missing link that nourishes the soil while preventing erosion.  As the article states, it puts back nutrients that create that rich compost responsible for holding the soil together, holding water when droughts hit, and feeding the worms, which add their own version of rich casings (fertilizer).  (A side story–someone told me of a woman who detested worms and requested a chemical fertilizer be applied to kill all the worms in her yard.  I kid you not.)  Also, the article doesn’t mention the beneficial microbes that eat e.coli –which helps keep it in check.

 

Native American Heritage Month

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From Turtle Talk--a guest post by Bridget Mary McCormick.

Turtle Talk also has a link up to an obit of Betty Binns Fletcher–a woman to admire.

In the article, she stated that she had a hard time getting hired as an attorney after graduation because of the prejudice in law firms.  Yeah, well, I wish I could say that it has changed, but it’s still there…at least if you’re an assistant.  I took paralegal courses and got A’s.  However, when I and a couple of classmates went to look for a job afterward…nothing.  There were several attorney’s assistants taking the course–all of them blond and in their twenties and high school graduates.  The classmates that couldn’t get a job?  In our forties.  And two of us had Bachelor of Arts degrees.  You can draw your own conclusions.

Also on the blog is this link to a case of a non-Indian mother who gave birth to a child of a Cherokee father, who did not assert his parental rights…at first…but after finding out the child was to be adopted, he filed a case to block it.  It’s ridiculous that this dragged out for two years while the child was becoming attached to the adoptive parents–the father had indicated he did not want her to be adopted by strangers at four months of age–at that point, he should have been custody of the child.  This would have made her life so much more easier than to drag it out.

The father was not abusive, according to the document (I only read to page 26), and other than his initial reluctance, he stepped up and that should have been considered a positive for this little girl.  I mean, the details are scant about the people involved in the case, but something that leaped out at me was  the implication that it was a negative against the father because the father was going to be aided by his parents in caring for the child–the Native Americans raise children differently than Europeans–the entire tribe looks after the little ones.  At least, that is the traditional way…not sure if they still adhere to this, but it wouldn’t be abnormal for the father’s parents to help raise the little girl.  What is seen as a negative by white folks (assuming that the professionals involved were white folks) is seen as positive by the Native American culture.  Lastly, there is the elephant in the room of whether the adoptive parents were Christian and the Native American father practiced traditional tribal spirituality.  The Mormons used this angle to kidnap Native American children from their parents and adopt them legally.

 

 

Albany Pro-Fracking Rally

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“Advocates” of the poisonous fracking practice were bused into Albany, NY.

In the book, Not in Our Backyards! by Nicholas Freudenberg (1984), the author notes the long history of corporate owners pitting unions (workers) against environmentalists.  Some union members saw the environmentalists as elitists.  They feared job loss if the company picked up and moved their jobs to another area or another country that would be more “friendly”.  This fear was not unfounded, as many companies did just that.  The threat was very real.

From this article, that blackmail is still at work–forcing people to choose having income or taking a risk with theirs and their family’s health.  It’s only after a tragedy occurs that they realize they gained a little at first, but lost their precious health or livestock or poisoned their land or water forever.

Artists Against Fracking website here. Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon beg Gov. Cuomo not to rush into allowing fracking.

Oh, and let’s not forget the resulting earthquakes linked to fracking…nobody seems to want to address that issue.

From Ohio. And Texas.

Here’s a good article from Bloomberg summarizing it.

It is stunning that energy companies who violate the rules over and over again, and again, are  allowed to continue.  Why?

Oh, and this just adds to the total picture of unethical behavior and lack of accountability.  And this stuff has been going on since the beginning of the oil industry—so why isn’t something done to correct it?

Expanding the Debate

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DN! has again allowed ALL presidential candidates a forum to express their reasons for wanting to be president.  I couldn’t listen to the entire debate, as I’m out of time, but this is what I’ve listened to:

Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein’s arrest should send chills down one’s spine.  It is absolutely stunning that a person with a legitimate claim as a candidate for political office is arrested for trying to assert the right to debate.  And being handcuffed to a chair for eight hours??

As she said, this would not have happened if the League of Women Voters were still running the debates.

To shut them out is weak, in my opinion.  If you’re a strong candidate, allowing others in is not going to phase you.  What are they afraid of?  Legitimizing the Green Party? or Justice Party?

Having to actually answer questions that many Americans want answered?

I would say all of the above.  A robust debate helps the marketplace of ideas, but informed voters tend to start asking questions that most politicians would rather not answer.

On to the debate–

Dr. Stein and President Obama touch on keeping jobs here, giving tax breaks to those companies that keep or create jobs here.  In the place I grew up in, they were giving tax breaks out the wazoo to companies, at the peril of schools, which suddenly lost the tax base to keep schools running with adequate teaching staff, supplies, etc.  And what did these companies do when the mood struck?  Left for Mexico, China, etc.  Personally, I think when a company gets tax breaks like this, and then packs up and leaves, they should be made to pay back every last cent they took away in tax relief… plus interest.

Thompson *cough* apologizes

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(Just a little clarification to my post on watching Hotel Rwanda and Schindler’s List–I didn’t mean that I don’t recommend the movies, but rather, I don’t recommend watching them both on a weekend. They’re both very well done, but graphically depict the dark side. )

Tommy Thompson’s son has tried to remove the boot from his mouth, but failed miserably.  The President deserves an apology.  And no, Thompson’s son is not suffering more than anyone else.

Social Security going up by 1.7 percent

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…your grocery bill, gas bill, etc. will go up by 25 percent…/snark

Link.

See, this is what I don’t get–they were just saying not two months ago that this was one of the worst droughts on record and our grocery bills were going to be severely affected–but this article states that food prices have pretty much stayed the same.

Ahem.

Like I’ve noted in my personal grocery bills, I’ve seen several items jump $1 or $2 per item in a month’s time, which really adds up if you’re on a restricted budget, as folks on S.S. are.  They know that every time there’s a S.S. increase, it isn’t enough, and the prices will go up accordingly.  (No, I’m not on S.S. or disability.)

I’ve done a quick search of several articles, and they all insist, via the Consumer Price Index that grocery prices have remained the same.

I looked up the table they publish:  http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid11av.pdf for the 2010-2011 price list…and somebody ain’t telling the truth, here…

You have to scroll down to get specifics, and looking at something that most poor folks purchase: ground beef went up 11%.  Eleven freaking percent in one year!  White bread 5%; Cereal 3%; Bacon 13%; Fresh Fish and Seafood 8%; Eggs 9% Milk 9%; Potatoes 12%; Coffee 14%;  Butter 14%; Peanut Butter 6%….and non-food:  fuel oil 30%; water and sewage 5%; motor fuel 26% and on…

(note that medical care only went up 3%…well, now, the oil companies aren’t getting nearly as much attention from the politicos as the medical community’s medical costs increases…hmmm…twenty-six percent should garner a little more attention, dontcha think?)

But they’ll give you a 1% increase…

…so you can try to make that can of dog food go a little further…after all, the top 1% need those tax breaks so they can…feed and house their horses…and  John McCain needs another house…

 

Whitley County tea party billboard

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<sigh> from people who claim environmentalists are scary, scary people….

….the Whitley County *cough* Patriots put up billboards that implicitly compare Barack Obama as a terrorist who needs to be “taken out”.

Link here:  http://www.wsbt.com/news/wsbt-tea-partiers-forced-to-move-controversial-antiobama-billboard-20121016,0,4031528.story

All that’s missing is the bulls-eye that Sarah Palin had painted on Gabby Giffords’ head…

 

Weekend

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I checked out videos of Hotel Rwanda and Schindler’s List from the library for the weekend.

Yeah, it’s not something I would recommend…pretty depressing.

I go round and round about what pushes people to treat another human being as “cockroaches” (Rwanda) or “vermin” (Nazi Germany).

I used to think of it like psychiatry has promoted–these folks were abused as children, therefore, they acted out their anger.  But then I realized that there are many people who are abused who do not go on to hurt others–they go on to be good parents, wives/husbands, citizens, etc.

So, then I go back to the start and ask again why some folks grow up to be bullies and others don’t?

I mean, in Schindler’s List, Goeth, a high raking officer, was clearly mentally ill by being torn between loving his Jewish maid, whom he said he wanted to grow old with, but beating her because she was a Jewish “bitch”.  He randomly would shoot people for no reason at all.  He had a Jewish woman engineer shot because she was telling him that the concrete foundation they had poured for a building was not level and it needed to be re-poured.  After she was shot, he  told them to tear up the foundation and redo it like she said.  Just craziness.

But none of what happened in Rwanda and Nazi Germany could have been possible without people going along with it.  People who fed their hatred and jealousy and fear.  People who loved having power over others.

I’m reminded of the Native American story of the Grandfather and the grandson.  The grandson had told his grandfather that he had two wolves inside him:  one was dark that was mean, hateful, selfish, greedy; and the other was Light that was kind, loving, compassionate, and generous.  He asked his grandfather which wolf would win, and the grandfather replied, “Whichever one you feed.”