The Cup Glowing in the Dark

The cup is glowing in the dark.

What an amazing thing.

I don't know if I'm hallucinating.

Or the cup is made with radium.

 

All I know is that I've been poisoned.

And the whole world is poisoned too.

And I am standing here making a libation

when I really don't know what to do.

I don't have any other tools.

 

We protest and march, Kayak and bark.

And the Powers ignore us on a good day.

Meanwhile the cup is glowing right in front of me.

and that glow isn't in a good way.

 

Will my skeleton glow when they lay me to my rest?

Will any pure places remain, where life can take refuge?

Do they really mean to contaminate everyone and everything?

are they really such fools?

Christopher H. Holte, 6/16/2015

Scaling up "the Jungle" -- Trashing Food Safety Laws

Ultimately food safety enforcement requires Point of Origin Laws. But at the moment we can't even enforce Country of Origin laws because of the power of the corrupt World Trade Organization Courts (WTC) and existing international regimes. If we continue to pass bad trade bills this will only get worse. The International of Giant Multinationals seem to be aiming at a regime of weak overall world government, strong but corrupt courts, and chaos at the State (national) level to maximize their own power and Influence. This should look familiar.

In the 19th Century Giant US companies used the same strategy on a national Scale. Powerful companies using States against one another, packing the courts, the Senate before we changed how it was elected and buying or owning officials of a weak United States Government so they could run their own baronies, oppress labor and ship cheap dangerous products around the country. This is the world of Upton Sinclair scaled up to International scale. If we pass the latest round of Trade Agreements we'll be agreeing to an International Jungle of Corrupt Conglomerate rule that would make muckrackers like Upton Sinclair scream from their graves. To read more about Upton Sinclair read:

The Jungle

http://www.online-literature.com/upton_sinclair/jungle/

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