Smoke

For my Brother it was his esophagus,

for my cousin it was his lungs.

For my sister in law it was her pancreas,

for my uncle it was his tongue.

They all went up in smoke.

 

For some of my relatives it wasn't smoking,

but going into black coal dark caves.

But others of my relatives grew the weed on their farms

And built fortunes on it's addictive charms.

We paid a price for those extractive fortunes.

For my Grandma it was heart lung failure,

She was a Lucky Strike babe.

And she came "a long way Baby" before the smoke killed her.

 

I watch my son, cough his lungs out every night.

And because he smokes, I know something isn't right.

If he'd gone to war I could rationalize "how brave."

But when he smokes out on my porch,

it's I who have to sweep up the cigarette butts.

After I remind him he's nuts.

I'm deathly afraid he'll go up in smoke,

Before I've taken my final toke.

 

Christopher H. Holte

Dedicated to that big leafed weed that has no good use other than poisoning things.

Say's Law is a Myth!

In the Book Adam's fallacy, the author, Duncan K. Foley mentions Say's law, defined within as

"that in the aggregate there cannot be chronic excess supply of labor" (boy is that "law" a laugh)

He then makes the even more true observation that the immediate effects of increases in labor productivity is to impose increased costs on labor!

Basically the book "Adam's Fallacy" refutes Say's law and a number of other mythic elements to classical economics!

Go Home To Die

Go home to die,

 

there is no place to find refuge.

So you might as well die at home.

Cancer awaits some of you.

A slow death from poisoned blood, the rest.

The radiation is in your blood and your chest.

There is no place to run.

 

Some of you will sicken and fail.

Some of your children will be monsters.

There is no point that you should cry and wail.

The radiation is in your tears and breast.

Life was always short

and the dance must go on.

 

We dance in our halls near the centers of power.

We dress in finery and put filters on our walls.

We light our homes with your misery

and heat our rooms with the fire of your suffering.

And we count the numbers from billing you

for lighting your homes with your own blood.

 

Christopher H. Holte 6/7/2015

Reference Youtube report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr6HpC3DIrE

Mitigating and Reversing Climate Change

Bernie writes:

“The scientific community has been extremely clear. Climate change is real. Climate change is man-made. And climate change is already causing severe damage in terms of drought, floods, forest fires, rising sea levels and extreme weather disturbances.” [http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-statement-on-climate-change-all-nighter]

And if we want to reverse it, we have to do a variety of things that are based on science. We can't do like the Republicans are doing.

“....virtually all of my Republican colleagues continue to ignore the scientific evidence and refuse to support legislation which will address this planetary crisis.” [climate-change-all-nighter]

Theodore Roosevelt would be spinning in his grave, except he was used to fighting corrupt members of his own party. Even so the GOP has spat on their own history both with their repudiation of respect for the environment, science and their repudiation of the concepts of Abraham Lincoln for becoming a vessel of the heirs of Jefferson Davis. But this is nothing new. TR faced the same quandary 100 years ago.

"Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." TR Quote

TR's battle is our battle, and reversing climate change is also conserving our environment and mitigating the effects of what is happening do to our poor stewardship of the environment. Reversing climate change doesn't have to be excessively expensive or a great torture. Because the other side of reversing climate change is to move into a sustainable economy that can:

“mov[e] us away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Doing that will not only help reverse climate change, but can, over a period of years, create millions of good-paying jobs.” [Statement]

It means investing in green energy; solar energy, wind and geothermal energy. It means mitigating the effects of climate change by installing water drainage, storage, conservation and recycling systems into our water use and supply systems. There is money to be made by kickbacks from the fossil fuel extraction.

This post furthers the agenda laid out in the post:

The Common Plank: [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-common-plank.html]

Further Reading on subject from Bernie:

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-statement-on-climate-change-all-nighter

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120760/senate-will-vote-sanders-climate-amendment-keystone

Theodore Roosevelt

http://todayinsci.com/R/Roosevelt_Theodore/RooseveltTheodore-ConservationFundamental.htm

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/08/roosevelt-to-dissolve-the-unholy-alliance-between-corrupt-business-and-corrupt-politics-is-the-first-task-of-the-statesmanship-of-the-day.html

The Common plank

I like Hillary. I like Bernie Sanders. I like Elizabeth Warren. I really don't give a hoot who is at the top of the ticket as long as there is an army of supporters, a movement, behind them. We have a list of priorities we need to fight for. The GOP have declared war on us. Their war to make Obama seem ineffectual is being effective because we've let ourselves delude ourselves that this is a war against Obama, against Black people, against some of us, and not a war against all of us. The GOP is warring on working people in this country and for the sake of domination by a narrow class of oligarchs. Yes we can delude ourselves that the issues are abortion, or gays getting married, or any of the other fake issues that have many Salt of the Earth folks worked up. But the Right Wing is after them too. But what I like the most are that we have a list of proposals! I especially like this version of the list because it is a list of concrete steps:

This is a follow on to the post Fielding Candidates: [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/04/fielding-candidates.html] and A Unified Plank: http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-unified-plank.html

Restoring Commonwealth requires Republican Corporations

As usual I find I get my examples for what to do from what the wealthy and connected are opposed to, and my examples for what not to do from their looting and depredations. I also get my models from history, from analyzing the ideas of the right. In an article called "The GOP and ALEC -- ALEC's war on the cities" The author notes:

"Few ideas are more powerful in U.S. politics than local control. The South rallied around states’ rights during the Civil War. Conservatives rage at the federal government for meddling in local matters." [http://inthesetimes.com/article/17928/the-gop-and-alecs-war-on-cities]

A writer named George Will has carried on about the Concept of "Subsidiarity" where specific power is delegated to the most local person for good reason.

"Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority." [See Post: Subsidiarity and Fascism]

The concept is well developed in Fascist literature, and also in more communitarian democratic literature. Elinor Ostrom also talked about the importance of keeping control over common properties local in her "8 principles of managing a commons." You would think, with all the talk from both left and right about concepts like Subsidiarity you'd think everyone would be on board.

Sadly, the Con Artist Grifters of the Right are after loot, respect and power; not the common good. And their model is still the "plantation" not democracy. In a plantation organization one person rules the plantation, and everyone works for or is directed by them. As I pointed out in my recent post "Constitutional Tyranny", the Southern States, organized as they were around plantations as extensions of the British Crown, and later as extensions of State Capitals, were organized around a hierarchical counterfeit of liberty that has come to be known as "libertarianism" in our time that reified the planters and amplified the power of hereditary wealth and connections. I quoted the historians David and Jeanne Heidler:

"Plantation agriculture kept the region rural; town meetings didn't occur because there were precious few towns. Instead, southerners relied on hierarchical relationships with planters at the top of a social structure too vertically linear to be described as even pyramidal. A mass of poor whites was at it's base, and slaves were completely under it."

For the right the State (starting with The County) is based on King-like Judges with lifetime tenure,

"County Courts with lifetime judges reflected the will of the upper class, and slavery made white unity and consensus imperative."

Counties that were like little kingdoms, and Sheriffs, and is a model that is excellent for ruling over a mass of poor and dispossessed. If Democracy is confined to easily rigged elections then Subsidiarity in a plantation mentality means that the power is with the local landlord -- the plantation owner and his supervisors. They are overseen by legislative and executive Councils who represent the plantation owners. Something similar has been the pattern for Banana Republics around the world. Change the term "Sheriff" or "County Executive" to "President", "El Caudillo" or "El Jefe" and you have the structure for any Oligarchic Republic from the USSR to Chile.

This plantation model was something the South loved. It was a strict hierarchy that was modeled on the Feudal model of old, which in turn was modeled on the Byzantine Military Model. Essentially a plantation is an army model planted on top of and controlling a base of slaves. Indeed when the Generals of the Union Army won the Civil War they found that model to be excellent and applied it to creating companies that made the plantation conceptual. A "President" who presides over a hierarchy of soldiers on top, yes, an army of slaves. This is a model that contrasts with that of Civility and Democratic Republicans. The Union may have won the war, but the Generals who fought it were converted to a plantation model of running their business. And this contrasts with the concept of Civility.

The US Right Wing Imposing this Atomized Liberty vision on the Country

Southern and Businessmen Caudillos are so comfortable with their model of a strictly authoritarian and oppressive public order that they call the alternative "collective" even when they are talking about the original model for Republics and Democracy -- the City, Town, Village Government. As the South Changes city people and townsmen aren't satisfied with hereditary judges and Governors. They want the real thing. And Democracy is "messy and has to be limited. Thus you get incongruities such as Abbot calling the exercise of Municipal Democracy "collectivism". Abbot claims:

“city-level bans on plastic bags, fracking and tree-cutting” ... “form a patchwork quilt of bans and rules and regulations,” Abbott said, “that are eroding the Texas model” and turning the state into California." [http://inthesetimes.com/article/17928/the-gop-and-alecs-war-on-cities]

Something he terms "collectivism" and thus he's pushing on the Texas legislature "pre-emptive" laws to prevent such a horrific possibility. Heaven help Texas if it should "turn into California."

"Texas legislators have responded with proposals to preempt local laws, including a bill that would prevent local governments from issuing any ordinance that “conflicts with or is more stringent than a state statute or rule.”" [http://inthesetimes.com/article/17928/the-gop-and-alecs-war-on-cities]

But it isn't just Texas doing this. The "Southernization" and "corporatism" of the North is proceeding apace. And pre-empting "subsidiarity" and local democracy has become their response to "wild" civility:

"Such bills blocking progressive laws are growing in popularity across the United States, especially in GOP-controlled legislatures. Last year, for example, when Oklahoma City debated raising its minimum wage to $10.10, the state legislature passed a law preventing cities from enacting wage increases." [http://inthesetimes.com/article/17928/the-gop-and-alecs-war-on-cities]

This is an assault on the concept of civility itself. And this battle. This battle for the soul of the United States is a battle between a future that resembles the past and one that builds on the past. It is a battle between the founding vision of "civility" and the counterfeit vision of authoritarian hierarchy. Between whether we embrace a founding vision of civility and common good or of libertarian "do what you will" individual freedom to be local tyrants over others. In one the people feel free because the only check on their own power to do as they please is the Sheriff and County Judge and of course, the local landlord or boss. In the other people participate in their own fate. And it only has to be nipped in the blood:

"Progressive muscle-flexing by urban America on the minimum wage, fracking and other key economic and environmental issues poses a serious challenge to the GOP’s program of obstruction in Congress. It also threatens the deep bias of our national politics toward red states and conservative ideology. That makes subverting the power of cities an urgent task for conservatives, even if it means becoming “meddling bureaucrats” themselves." [http://inthesetimes.com/article/17928/the-gop-and-alecs-war-on-cities]

A Corporate Model of Civility as "Collectivism" versus Caudillo-ism

I believe that what they really fear is not "collectivism" but that people will catch on to their "caudillo-ism" and resist. Plastic bag laws and other restrictions on public behavior can infringe on the "personal liberty" of people to do as they please no matter how crazy or short-sighted, but what they really represent is a growing sense of empowerment and a return of:

"Civic Virtue: corporate exercise involving church elders, town aldermen, even congressional delegations, all working in concert to advance the common interest." [http://inthesetimes.com/article/17928/the-gop-and-alecs-war-on-cities]

The fact is that we already have an alternative corporate model to the tyrannical, hierarchical caudillo model of corporate governance. And it is the Republican model. Why a party named "The Republican Party" would be obsessed with poisoning and reducing it's original version would escape me, except that that is the vision of the Party of Lincoln. The New England Town Hall, with it's direct Democratic forms, limited executive, enfranchised citizens and civic virtues was a model developed over time by people devoted to principles developed from classical times to the present in the face of tyranny. The Republicans, seduced by a different, militarized model fear it. They have to stop it.

Rather than conceding power to tyrannical corporations, gerrymandered districting and Senates and Houses that rabidly attack the very principles of Democracy. We need governments that replicate the principles of the constitution and not in cynical counterfeits of their forms. We should be pushing for a model of governance of our common systems that is networked, deconflicts powers for the common benefit and has bottom up representation. Yes, the executive should be "top down" but each level should have to stand election, and have citizen oversight. We shouldn't have standing armies standing on the necks of ordinary citizens, but local order. We shouldn't have giant companies that pay hundreds of millions to their CEOs while ignoring the pleas of householders for an extra day to pay. Instead our national companies should be run under Republican principles. At the same time we need giant organizations to govern and direct our national networks. These should be governed with a legislature from below and an executive that consults subdivisions. Privatizing public utilities grants their revenues to caudillos. Often for the foreseeable future.

These ought to be principles of good governance. It shouldn't be up to a cabal whether plastic bags are supplied free by companies or are taxed. The power of legislatures over purse, requirements and law is the power of good government and is a principle our ancestors fought for over a 500 year period. The antidote to excessive bureaucracy and top down dictatorship is neither in the Caudillo style government nor in Caudillo Corporations but in the vision of Democracy established, first in the North and later in the Constitution, there are three branches of government each independent and each limited with separation of powers. But it's not so easy.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand,” Frederick Douglass wrote. Injustice and wrongdoing will, as Douglass put it, “continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.” Cities are beginning to demand an end to our national political paralysis and to implement policies that most of us agree on. Conservatives are pushing back. The evidence suggests that the war between urban America and a political system radically rigged against it is just beginning." http://inthesetimes.com/article/17928/the-gop-and-alecs-war-on-cities

http://inthesetimes.com/article/17928/the-gop-and-alecs-war-on-cities

Their Families have a right to Mourn them

I mourn the death of my brother man,

Their families have the right to Mourn them.

...they didn't die in vain.

When I come to understand,

They shed the blood of sacrifice to erase a stain

and an evil spell, a dream,

we needed to wake up from.

That "all men are created equal"

means only some.

 

They arose to fight from beneath a stoney hierarchy

to emerge to run in wild abandon, shouting their rebel yell.

across green fields angry, spiteful and fell.

reaping death in waves across the open fields.

Against the stone of righteousness that awaited them.

Their blind bravery only proving,

that might doesn't make right,

and reality is not shaped by delusion.

They sought Glory,

But they found only pain

Poor and Rich, Masters and Slaves, died side by side.

But not for the same cause.

 

They proved that their vision of slavery as paradise

was an evil and a cruel illusion

for while they marched, the Union Army Camps,

were swelled by hordes of slaves who freed themselves,

as their chains lay neglected in the mud and blood,

of their masters lunatic war.

They rose, they fought, they died, they threw their weapons down.

And the conquering armies let them pick them up and go home.

 

Christopher H. Holte 5/25/2015

Further Reading

And the living honored the dead, by giving them a proper burial.

http://newsone.com/3117042/the-one-thing-african-americans-need-to-know-about-memorial-day/?omcamp=sf_N1TW