The irrelevancy of the current paradigm

We need a whole new government and no parties. Either people do what's right or they do not. Both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt understood the purpose of the government and the role of the aristocracy in America.

That's all gone now. America is completely without a moral compass. But, in the deepest reaches of most people's hearts is the idea that they matter and should be treated with dignity and respect as living beings. This is what is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

That our country has strayed so far from these principles and the powers that be have so enslaved the minds of the people so that they no longer know their own inherent worth except as a commodity is a society that is ripe for totalitarianism.

Thankfully, the whole thing is going to crash. We are facing a major depression, peak oil, and devastating changes in the climate. I suggest getting local and learning to grow your own food. Oh, and having tradeable skills is a major plus.

Christmas Wish 2007

It's been three years since I first posted this from a Christmas card I'd found in a previous year. It has ever and always been my wish. It is not just an idle hope to be wished for however, but a goal to be achieved. Now, more than ever, our times require a conscious effort to re-connect to each other and to the living world all around us. Then we will know the true magic of being alive.

Christmas Wish

I have a little vision
of the world.
It isn't much.
But in it, beauty shines
whenever earth
and people touch.
There's laughter,
and there's music,
and the trees
are standing tall,
and the creatures
whisper stories
of the One
who made us all.
And no one's lost
or hungry,
every life's
of equal worth,
and the angels
scatter snowflakes
like a dream of
peace on earth.

-J. Howard

Recession is ON

In UK's Telegraph article Morgan Stanley issues full US recession alert is this:

In a report "Recession Coming" released today, the bank's US team said the credit crunch had started to inflict serious damage on US companies.

I saw this coming 20 years ago. The credit card companies began handing out credit cards left and right and the advertising became downright aggressive. Impulse buying wasn't reserved for product placement in the stores anymore, now, it was in one's home on the TV. Ronco was one of the pioneers, if not THE pioneer, of selling directly from the TV. All you needed was a credit card and a telephone to call the 800 number to make the purchase.

Television programming was in the act too. There is a Chinese proverb about not showing people what they cannot have. But the credit card companies were determined to snare people in their trap of indentured servitude. So "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" did what it was intended to do. It dazzled people and whetted their appetites enticing them to use this easy-to-get credit card to purchase things they could not get otherwise.

When I thought about how this worked I knew it would eventually reach a point where the whole thing would crash. That I have lived to see it reach that point offers me no end of derisive pleasure.

Middle Class Angst, The Politics of Lemmings, Part II

By Stan Goff

Click the link for a very good example of what the Buddha meant by "skillful means." While I consider Christianity a kindergarten religion for teaching ethics because of its reliance on an external authority and can easily be co-opted by the unscrupulous, it does have embedded within it higher order teachings that can lead to greater spiritual awareness as evidenced in the article quoting Wendell Berry and Martin Luther King Jr.

Breaking the back of the public trust

Carolyn Baker has this article from the New York Times (free registration) about the disorganization and lack of funding for the Food and Drug Administration whose task is to ensure that our food won't make people sick and our medicinal drugs will help and not kill people.

The end of the article states:

Garret A. FitzGerald, a pharmacologist from the University of Pennsylvania and adviser to the authors, said the report was raising an alarm because “this is a crisis.” Dr. FitzGerald pointed to a series of food and drug scares that have demonstrated how little oversight the F.D.A. provides.

He blamed a “cabal of Congressional majorities and presidential administrations that has serially stripped the agency of assets.”

I am left wondering to what purpose this really serves. It does not seem that profit is the sole objective. There is something else, something deeper at work here. Something that feels like it is designed to break the backs of the people's spirit in a sadistic abuse of power.

There are many periods in history where the government or the people within it or even the king/emperor himself is seen as evil and have given rise to many stories in literature and film depicting it. Robin Hood is a classic case. As there are so many such stories it is clear that people do know the difference between good and bad government.

Unfortunately, when the problems are as systemic as they are it would seem that people must realize they are on their own and must do for themselves all they can at the local level.

The government is the betrayer of the public trust. As such, they are owed no allegiance.