The 3 MAIN PROBLEMS WITH THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF ELECTIONS
1) Money-everybody, even conservatives, knows this
2) Electronic Voting Machines=Hacked Elections.
People are in deep denial over this
3) "choose one" voting instead of ranked preference, instant runoff voting results in lack of real choice. People vote for the "electable" Dem or Rep candidate, rather than the 3rd party candidate they really believe in. This is perhaps the main reason for low voter turnout.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Saturday, August 22, 2015
EXECUTIVE PAY CONSEQUENCES
“Have you ever been in a store that seemed to be run on a skeleton crew, can't find anyone to ask a question, long lines at the cash register? Not to mention the value of experienced, helpful, motivated staff, rather than minimum wage kids. Have you been put on hold, while a recording said "we are experiencing an unusually high level of call volume".
Bullshit.
If it were truthful, that recording would say:
"we are experiencing an unusually high level of executive compensation and consequently are not hiring enough people to run the business properly".
There are thousands of businesses across America that need more sales people, customer service reps, technical people, clerks, etc. but instead of hiring enough people to staff the counters and floors, the execs are choosing to pad their own pockets and raise their own pay, give themselves perks and bonuses, and run the companies on a skeleton crew.
"Downsizing" was the euphemism fat cat execs used to fire people, make the poor slobs left work two jobs for the price of one, and stick the money in their own pockets.
if all the executives were sick for the day, the business would still go on. If the sales floor staff didn't show up, it's all over.
For every $1,000,000 some yacht owning private plane flying CEO chooses to enrich himself with, he could have hired 30 people at $33,000 per,”
“WORK HARD-GET SCREWED
In the 1950s, one of the most prosperous (financially) decades in America, the ratio of CEO pay to that of the average worker was 25-1. By 2001 it was around 300-1. Since then, workers' productivity has exploded, as has the ratio of CEO pay, now around 500-1.
The thanks people got for working hard and doing a great job?
*they got fired, (downsized)
*the people left got to do 2 jobs for 1 salary
*businesses sent as many jobs as they could overseas
*while executives raised their salaries through the roof
and shareholders got rich
What if CEOs were required by law to share the benefits. They can make as much as they want, but only 25 times what the average salary of their company is, including perks and benefits.
It was good enough under Eisenhower.”
Bullshit.
If it were truthful, that recording would say:
"we are experiencing an unusually high level of executive compensation and consequently are not hiring enough people to run the business properly".
There are thousands of businesses across America that need more sales people, customer service reps, technical people, clerks, etc. but instead of hiring enough people to staff the counters and floors, the execs are choosing to pad their own pockets and raise their own pay, give themselves perks and bonuses, and run the companies on a skeleton crew.
"Downsizing" was the euphemism fat cat execs used to fire people, make the poor slobs left work two jobs for the price of one, and stick the money in their own pockets.
if all the executives were sick for the day, the business would still go on. If the sales floor staff didn't show up, it's all over.
For every $1,000,000 some yacht owning private plane flying CEO chooses to enrich himself with, he could have hired 30 people at $33,000 per,”
“WORK HARD-GET SCREWED
In the 1950s, one of the most prosperous (financially) decades in America, the ratio of CEO pay to that of the average worker was 25-1. By 2001 it was around 300-1. Since then, workers' productivity has exploded, as has the ratio of CEO pay, now around 500-1.
The thanks people got for working hard and doing a great job?
*they got fired, (downsized)
*the people left got to do 2 jobs for 1 salary
*businesses sent as many jobs as they could overseas
*while executives raised their salaries through the roof
and shareholders got rich
What if CEOs were required by law to share the benefits. They can make as much as they want, but only 25 times what the average salary of their company is, including perks and benefits.
It was good enough under Eisenhower.”
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Proportional Wage Law
Whether you're the president of a corporation, or a janitor, you still only have 24 hours in a day.
One of the biggest problems in this country is income inequality, which has created a society where people don't even have time to spend with their kids. Income inequality impacts our lives in a thousand small, unpleasant ways, because prices tend to go up to what the market will bear, meaning what the more affluent can afford. Society is slowly falling apart, as the rich get richer, and the poor and middle class sink into quicksand.
I propose a PROPORTIONAL WAGE LAW-You can make as much as you want, as long as you create wealth for everybody. The highest paid person in a company can make up to 25 times what the lowest paid worker makes, including the janitor, including temp workers and subcontracted labor, including the value of all perks and benefits, not more than 25 times the lowest paid salary.
One of the biggest problems in this country is income inequality, which has created a society where people don't even have time to spend with their kids. Income inequality impacts our lives in a thousand small, unpleasant ways, because prices tend to go up to what the market will bear, meaning what the more affluent can afford. Society is slowly falling apart, as the rich get richer, and the poor and middle class sink into quicksand.
I propose a PROPORTIONAL WAGE LAW-You can make as much as you want, as long as you create wealth for everybody. The highest paid person in a company can make up to 25 times what the lowest paid worker makes, including the janitor, including temp workers and subcontracted labor, including the value of all perks and benefits, not more than 25 times the lowest paid salary.
Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
The next time you hear about how we are the wealthiest country, think of this example of statistics in action:
*if you put a millionaire and a homeless person in a room, their average income is $500,000/yr.
*If the next year the millionaire makes 2 million, and the homeless person, probably a Vietnam vet, is still living under a bridge, the average income has gone up to $1,000,000/yr.
*If the next year the homeless person dies, and the millionaire still makes 2 million, the average income has gone up to $2 million/yr.
The economy is doing great.
That's statistics in action.
*if you put a millionaire and a homeless person in a room, their average income is $500,000/yr.
*If the next year the millionaire makes 2 million, and the homeless person, probably a Vietnam vet, is still living under a bridge, the average income has gone up to $1,000,000/yr.
*If the next year the homeless person dies, and the millionaire still makes 2 million, the average income has gone up to $2 million/yr.
The economy is doing great.
That's statistics in action.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Here we go again-Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton and The Facade of Democracy
I love Bernie, but ask yourself, why is he forced to run as a Democrat?
Can you vote for who you REALLY want for President? Or Senator? No.
Remember the 2000 election, when Ralph Nader voters were vilified for "costing" Al Gore the election? The obvious lesson was that what is needed is ranked balloting, where you put 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd Choice, and if your first choice doesn't come in the top 2, your vote goes to next choice, etc. That's getting close to real democracy. So did ranked voting become an issue? No.
Whatever the issue: environment, economic justice, prisons, corporate rule, etc., the decisions are made by politicians who got in as a result of a corrupt and dysfunctional "electoral" system. The real truth is that we have
AUCTIONS, NOT ELECTIONS
The amazing thing is that things aren't worse.
And almost more amazing is that all the various political, environmental and economic organizations don't get it, that the fix is in, the system is rigged, and put some effort into creating an honest system.
Democrats are not more creative thinkers than Republicans. They both have their stock set of beliefs and policies, both on auto response most of the time. They both rarely look under the surface appearances of issues, rarely look deeply, rarely see the full complexity and inter-relationship of issues. They think the problem is bad leaders, rather than recognizing that the bad leaders are a product of a broken system.
There really are not that many died in the wool conservatives, but when you disenfranchise the left, have auctions not elections, and when necessary simply hack the vote, well, you get what we have now, plutocracy, a system in which the environment and the populace are simply something to exploit.
-------
Two obvious issues
*Districts so gerrymandered, that your vote hardly counts.
*Can you trust electronic voting, when so much evidence indicates that it is easily hacked (google it)
_________
Election day not a national holiday, elections on a workday=discriminates against workers
This tells you the truth right away
A) Who gets to vote?
1) Who gets to register
2) Who gets wiped off the rolls (florida 2000).
3) Drug laws as political repression-
if you wanted to find a way to take away the vote of tens of millions of Republicans, you would pass laws making beer and cigarettes illegal, serious crimes.
When, during the late 60s and 70s, the height of the culture and Vietnam wars, Republicans wanted to take away the votes of Democratic voters, especially blacks and hippies, they made pot and drugs illegal. It worked.
Ronald Reagan, Bush, and a host of Senators and Congressmen, would never have won if all those votes hadn't been taken away. We still are very much at the affect of those laws today.
4) Are there enough voting machines (ohio 2004)
B) Who do they get to vote for?
1) Winner take all=Lesser of two evils
In most cases third party candidates have no chance, people are afraid of throwing away their vote
i.e. Ralph Nader
2) Instant Runoff Voting, Proportional Representation=every vote counts
C) How honest is the vote count
1) Electronic voting machines = stolen elections
Paper ballots harder to steal an election
D) How is the process financed?
1) Campaign contributions =legal bribery
2) Corporate money allowed as "free speech"
No money=no chance to win=candidates sell out
E) How do we find out what the candidates have to say
1) Role of media
a) corporate owned
b) covers some candidates more than others, shuts out 3rd party candidates
c) sound bites, slogan advertising
F) Serious, serious gerrymandering of elections, to the point that your vote hardly makes a difference.
--------
There's a great book called Fixing Elections,by Steven Hill, which is as valid today as the day it was written.
https://www.google.com/search?q=fixing+elections+steven+hill+&aq=f&oq=fixing+elections+steven+hill+&sugexp=chrome,mod=0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
http://www.c-span.org/video/?171355-1/book-discussion-fixing-elections
Can you vote for who you REALLY want for President? Or Senator? No.
Remember the 2000 election, when Ralph Nader voters were vilified for "costing" Al Gore the election? The obvious lesson was that what is needed is ranked balloting, where you put 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd Choice, and if your first choice doesn't come in the top 2, your vote goes to next choice, etc. That's getting close to real democracy. So did ranked voting become an issue? No.
Whatever the issue: environment, economic justice, prisons, corporate rule, etc., the decisions are made by politicians who got in as a result of a corrupt and dysfunctional "electoral" system. The real truth is that we have
AUCTIONS, NOT ELECTIONS
The amazing thing is that things aren't worse.
And almost more amazing is that all the various political, environmental and economic organizations don't get it, that the fix is in, the system is rigged, and put some effort into creating an honest system.
Democrats are not more creative thinkers than Republicans. They both have their stock set of beliefs and policies, both on auto response most of the time. They both rarely look under the surface appearances of issues, rarely look deeply, rarely see the full complexity and inter-relationship of issues. They think the problem is bad leaders, rather than recognizing that the bad leaders are a product of a broken system.
There really are not that many died in the wool conservatives, but when you disenfranchise the left, have auctions not elections, and when necessary simply hack the vote, well, you get what we have now, plutocracy, a system in which the environment and the populace are simply something to exploit.
-------
Two obvious issues
*Districts so gerrymandered, that your vote hardly counts.
*Can you trust electronic voting, when so much evidence indicates that it is easily hacked (google it)
_________
Election day not a national holiday, elections on a workday=discriminates against workers
This tells you the truth right away
A) Who gets to vote?
1) Who gets to register
2) Who gets wiped off the rolls (florida 2000).
3) Drug laws as political repression-
if you wanted to find a way to take away the vote of tens of millions of Republicans, you would pass laws making beer and cigarettes illegal, serious crimes.
When, during the late 60s and 70s, the height of the culture and Vietnam wars, Republicans wanted to take away the votes of Democratic voters, especially blacks and hippies, they made pot and drugs illegal. It worked.
Ronald Reagan, Bush, and a host of Senators and Congressmen, would never have won if all those votes hadn't been taken away. We still are very much at the affect of those laws today.
4) Are there enough voting machines (ohio 2004)
B) Who do they get to vote for?
1) Winner take all=Lesser of two evils
In most cases third party candidates have no chance, people are afraid of throwing away their vote
i.e. Ralph Nader
2) Instant Runoff Voting, Proportional Representation=every vote counts
C) How honest is the vote count
1) Electronic voting machines = stolen elections
Paper ballots harder to steal an election
D) How is the process financed?
1) Campaign contributions =legal bribery
2) Corporate money allowed as "free speech"
No money=no chance to win=candidates sell out
E) How do we find out what the candidates have to say
1) Role of media
a) corporate owned
b) covers some candidates more than others, shuts out 3rd party candidates
c) sound bites, slogan advertising
F) Serious, serious gerrymandering of elections, to the point that your vote hardly makes a difference.
--------
There's a great book called Fixing Elections,by Steven Hill, which is as valid today as the day it was written.
https://www.google.com/search?q=fixing+elections+steven+hill+&aq=f&oq=fixing+elections+steven+hill+&sugexp=chrome,mod=0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
http://www.c-span.org/video/?171355-1/book-discussion-fixing-elections
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Manning, Snowden, Obama
Manning and Snowden most likely broke the laws on the books, but morally they upheld the basic principles the USA is based on. The people and practices they exposed undermine the soul of America.
In Nazi Germany, hiding jews was a crime. A few brave souls broke the law and hid jews. In slavery days in America hiding an escaped slave was against the law; a few brave souls upheld a higher law. Today we honor those people as heroes. Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg, and all the other whistleblowers are the true patriots, people who uphold the moral laws and basic principles of America.
For these reasons, President Obama must pardon them.
Tell the President that
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
In Nazi Germany, hiding jews was a crime. A few brave souls broke the law and hid jews. In slavery days in America hiding an escaped slave was against the law; a few brave souls upheld a higher law. Today we honor those people as heroes. Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg, and all the other whistleblowers are the true patriots, people who uphold the moral laws and basic principles of America.
For these reasons, President Obama must pardon them.
Tell the President that
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Personal and political
Petsitting in the Bay Area for month of July. Just got back from 2 months in Cambria, Big Sur and Monterey, mostly camping. I sleep so well in a tent, away from a lot of electronics, especially in Big Sur. It's so somatically rich. Lying on the ground looking up at redwoods during the day, going to bed more or less with the sun at night.
On a physical level, the best i ever felt was when i lived at Harbin, my tent right by a stream, full use of kitchen and showers and hot springs, leave for the winter, come back in the spring. And, while somatically rich, there's more to life, and i've learned and grown so much since those days.
Even in Big Sur this trip, it was great, and after a while i needed more societal interactions. Maybe some day i'll be ready to go out to pasture, but not yet.
---------------
On this trip i met a lot of homeless people. Not down and out San Francisco types, just regular folks who had lost their job or place or had a health issue, and were trying the best they could to keep their heads up in the face of difficult circumstances. A number of them had a real sense of community.
What i saw, in political terms, was what a sham the American dream has become for people who don't have skills, especially computer skills, at least in California. To think that someone, starting from zero, can a) get a job in the first place, especially if they don't even have money to pay their cell phone, and b) even if they get a job, how can they get a place making minimum wage, $8/hr, and apartments are $800 month and up, not to mention utilities, etc., is a joke. Anybody who can add 2 + 2 can do the math, and it doesn't add up. These are the people i met.
Anybody who says "fine, go someplace else", well, where's the money to get there, knowing nobody, where to stay, etc. In short, not so simple.
For myself, i don't have a place of my own, mostly because i seem to travel endlessly, haven't had much money, but do have skills, prospects and practices, more of an old fashioned drifter, although today that distinction seems to be getting lost. To some extent i could relate to what these folks were going through, on the other hand i felt a bit above it all, even though at times my bank account was down to $120 and i did get a bit nervous, but i always have miracles in my life. I've learned to expect and count on them and this time was no exception.
Still, i do have a strong sense of "there, but for the grace of god, go i". Every time i think of getting a place, i look at the rents, and i see the effects on me personally of a system that encourages exploitation. i have some advantages; educated, frugal, skills, good with money, white (let's tell the truth), strong spiritual grounding.
What about the people who don't have those going for them?
-----------------
So, personally, i'm in a great place petsitting, looking to get my own life together, and i expect i will... and i think about all the people who were pushed over the edge, they didn't fall over the edge, they were pushed, by a social/economic system that empowers greed and exploitation, an ethic of "i got mine, screw you", the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, I win, you lose, "the very thing that makes you rich makes me poor" (a song title from a Ry Cooder album)-------the greed of all the executives who downsized and moved jobs wherever they could pay desperate people almost nothing, just so they and the people at the top, the %.01 (it's really not 1%, it's the %.01 could add millions and tens of millions of dollars to their own pockets, while millions and tens of millions of blue collar folks lost everything. Sure, it's everybody's responsibility to make the best of whatever happens, and i don't deny that many people are just as much victims of themselves as of a corrupt and exploitive system, but i would at least like to see the system set up for average people, not just the smartest and most ambitious, to live a decent life, and it all comes down to the basic values of individuals and the society collectively, the most basic one being compassion for everyone. Instead, America, to a large extent, at least the laws governing money, functions on dog eat dog, i win, you lose, tough shit.
Especially as someone who has followed my calling as an artist, rather than maximizing my income, i see how, despite cute PBS programs, the underlying pressures in the society are for people to sacrifice their integrity and their dreams to the necessity of making MONEY, wasting their lives as wage slaves, often in useless and ecologically destructive ways, and then i see how the people who do that so often seem stressed and unhappy, hardly enough time for themselves to pee.
I always struggle with the fact that, in metaphysical terms, i really do believe in divine justice and that it's all perfect, and the struggles are to learn from, but when i meet and hang out with people i like and have good conversations with, people who, on one level, are getting fucked over by the system, it's a lot harder for me to be so philosophical about it.
----------------------------
I add three links from Barbara Ehrenreich, who has written compellingly and beautifully on this topic
http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/thislandistheirland.htm
http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/nickelanddimed.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Falling-Inner-Middle-Class/dp/0060973331
some more links
David Cay Johnston Perfectly legal
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/numbers-racket
http://www.nationalmemo.com/wages-fall-at-record-pace
I've done other posts on this blog on similar topics, just check the politics tag.
On a physical level, the best i ever felt was when i lived at Harbin, my tent right by a stream, full use of kitchen and showers and hot springs, leave for the winter, come back in the spring. And, while somatically rich, there's more to life, and i've learned and grown so much since those days.
Even in Big Sur this trip, it was great, and after a while i needed more societal interactions. Maybe some day i'll be ready to go out to pasture, but not yet.
---------------
On this trip i met a lot of homeless people. Not down and out San Francisco types, just regular folks who had lost their job or place or had a health issue, and were trying the best they could to keep their heads up in the face of difficult circumstances. A number of them had a real sense of community.
What i saw, in political terms, was what a sham the American dream has become for people who don't have skills, especially computer skills, at least in California. To think that someone, starting from zero, can a) get a job in the first place, especially if they don't even have money to pay their cell phone, and b) even if they get a job, how can they get a place making minimum wage, $8/hr, and apartments are $800 month and up, not to mention utilities, etc., is a joke. Anybody who can add 2 + 2 can do the math, and it doesn't add up. These are the people i met.
Anybody who says "fine, go someplace else", well, where's the money to get there, knowing nobody, where to stay, etc. In short, not so simple.
For myself, i don't have a place of my own, mostly because i seem to travel endlessly, haven't had much money, but do have skills, prospects and practices, more of an old fashioned drifter, although today that distinction seems to be getting lost. To some extent i could relate to what these folks were going through, on the other hand i felt a bit above it all, even though at times my bank account was down to $120 and i did get a bit nervous, but i always have miracles in my life. I've learned to expect and count on them and this time was no exception.
Still, i do have a strong sense of "there, but for the grace of god, go i". Every time i think of getting a place, i look at the rents, and i see the effects on me personally of a system that encourages exploitation. i have some advantages; educated, frugal, skills, good with money, white (let's tell the truth), strong spiritual grounding.
What about the people who don't have those going for them?
-----------------
So, personally, i'm in a great place petsitting, looking to get my own life together, and i expect i will... and i think about all the people who were pushed over the edge, they didn't fall over the edge, they were pushed, by a social/economic system that empowers greed and exploitation, an ethic of "i got mine, screw you", the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, I win, you lose, "the very thing that makes you rich makes me poor" (a song title from a Ry Cooder album)-------the greed of all the executives who downsized and moved jobs wherever they could pay desperate people almost nothing, just so they and the people at the top, the %.01 (it's really not 1%, it's the %.01 could add millions and tens of millions of dollars to their own pockets, while millions and tens of millions of blue collar folks lost everything. Sure, it's everybody's responsibility to make the best of whatever happens, and i don't deny that many people are just as much victims of themselves as of a corrupt and exploitive system, but i would at least like to see the system set up for average people, not just the smartest and most ambitious, to live a decent life, and it all comes down to the basic values of individuals and the society collectively, the most basic one being compassion for everyone. Instead, America, to a large extent, at least the laws governing money, functions on dog eat dog, i win, you lose, tough shit.
Especially as someone who has followed my calling as an artist, rather than maximizing my income, i see how, despite cute PBS programs, the underlying pressures in the society are for people to sacrifice their integrity and their dreams to the necessity of making MONEY, wasting their lives as wage slaves, often in useless and ecologically destructive ways, and then i see how the people who do that so often seem stressed and unhappy, hardly enough time for themselves to pee.
I always struggle with the fact that, in metaphysical terms, i really do believe in divine justice and that it's all perfect, and the struggles are to learn from, but when i meet and hang out with people i like and have good conversations with, people who, on one level, are getting fucked over by the system, it's a lot harder for me to be so philosophical about it.
----------------------------
I add three links from Barbara Ehrenreich, who has written compellingly and beautifully on this topic
http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/thislandistheirland.htm
http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/nickelanddimed.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Falling-Inner-Middle-Class/dp/0060973331
some more links
David Cay Johnston Perfectly legal
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/numbers-racket
http://www.nationalmemo.com/wages-fall-at-record-pace
I've done other posts on this blog on similar topics, just check the politics tag.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Simple statement of my politics
My politics are very simple.
I don't mind if some people have more than other people,
as long as everyone has enough,
especially enough time,
and
nature is honored,
humans are honored,
animals are honoredUltimately politics is an expression of a society's spiritual consciousness; the openness of it's heart, the clarity of it's thinking, and the values, beliefs and assumptions that the society holds.
All the laws, legal systems, tax codes, economic systems, everything, are the expression of the spiritual consciousness, the psyche, and the values, beliefs and assumptions of a society.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Public Transportation
A few years ago i tried living in San Diego. I very quickly found out, no car=no life. Here are some letters i sent to a public transportation group and the San Diego MTS bus system.
Dear Union Trib,
I ride the bus. I just got a brochure inviting me to take public transit to Padres games. Well, that's great, except that the last bus to my house leaves downtown at 6:42, doesn't go downtown on Saturday, and doesn't run at all on Sunday. It's no problem, if i want to walk home 4 miles from the nearest Trolley stop.
How much money is the economy of San Diego losing, because people can not get out to stores and ballgames. Drivers have a sense of entitlement that roads will be there, and no one questions that, yet public transit is viewed as some form of charity.
It's not; public transit is essential to the economy, yet this city funds it at starvation levels and the state plays mickey mouse games, while the air gets polluted and the roads clog up with traffic.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of public subsidies for sports stadiums are sold to the public, on the basis that they stimulate the economy, yet MTS was just forced to gut Sunday service, because they didn't have $7 million. The Padres would have 5,000 more people in the stands at every game, if people could get home. I'd go. That's economic stimulus.
I have a challenge for you; assign a reporter to try and live his life for a week using only public transit, see what it's like.
yours truly
jay d. bear
written March 2010
--------------------
be well,
jay
----------
Dear MoveSD
Dear Union Trib,
I ride the bus. I just got a brochure inviting me to take public transit to Padres games. Well, that's great, except that the last bus to my house leaves downtown at 6:42, doesn't go downtown on Saturday, and doesn't run at all on Sunday. It's no problem, if i want to walk home 4 miles from the nearest Trolley stop.
How much money is the economy of San Diego losing, because people can not get out to stores and ballgames. Drivers have a sense of entitlement that roads will be there, and no one questions that, yet public transit is viewed as some form of charity.
It's not; public transit is essential to the economy, yet this city funds it at starvation levels and the state plays mickey mouse games, while the air gets polluted and the roads clog up with traffic.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of public subsidies for sports stadiums are sold to the public, on the basis that they stimulate the economy, yet MTS was just forced to gut Sunday service, because they didn't have $7 million. The Padres would have 5,000 more people in the stands at every game, if people could get home. I'd go. That's economic stimulus.
I have a challenge for you; assign a reporter to try and live his life for a week using only public transit, see what it's like.
yours truly
jay d. bear
written March 2010
--------------------
DDear Mayor and City Council,
The roads are not safe.
One million San Diegans could accomplish the majority of their transit needs by riding a bicycle, if the roads were safe. They could buy a bicycle for $25 at a garage sale or thrift store, oil up the chain, put some air in the tires, and be good to go,
if the roads were safe.
Kids could bike to school (and get some exercise), people could run small errands, bike to work, etc.
if the roads were safe
The roads are not safe
I am specifically talking about surface roads, not freeways.
MTS has been forced to cut service, especially on evenings and Sundays. That means that there are a lot of jobs that people without a car can not apply for, because they can't get there, and that includes low income people who have trouble affording a car. I am speaking as someone who has worked a graveyard shift in a supermarket, who has been a janitor, a dishwasher, a security guard, all those low paying service jobs that need to be done.
San Diego would be God's gift to the bicycle, if the roads were safe. Great weather, long flat stretches, perfect for non polluting two wheelers, if the roads were safe.
The roads are not safe.
Also, just to mention all the drunk drivers on the roads when the bars close, and no public transit to keep them off the roads. Those bars and restaurants need a lot of service staff, people who could, perhaps, ride bicycles home if it was safe and not too far.
------
I live on a "quiet" street in Pt. Loma. My housemate's cat got killed by a speeding car. I was at a garage sale a few blocks away, told story to the guy, he said his dog was killed by a speeding car. This on "quiet", "side" streets. I have heard so many stories of bicyclists being hit by cars, and not just from people i've talked to. I've sat at coffeeshops and overheard people talking about being hit by cars.
Too many San Diegans are being terrorized by dangerous, speeding drivers who feel like they own the road.
I live about 4 miles from Old town transit center. If i thought i would survive the ride down Rosecrans, i could bicycle there and catch a trolley. However, i have no wish to die or be maimed for life. To tell you the truth, just crossing the street as a pedestrian can be quite an adventure, and i am a healthy, active man, not an old woman moving slow, like my 88yr old mother.
----------
I have not written you all just to bitch. Here are some specific proposals
1 A ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY FOR SPEEDING ON SURFACE STREETS
There are laws, speeding limits posted. Scofflaws ignore them. My understanding is that the role of the police department is to keep the public safe. What is more dangerous than unsafe driving?
2 Paint the bike lanes a solid color, i.e., not just a thin line, but a whole 3 foot wide paint job.
It's a band aid, but it would help. Of course the real solution is completely separate bicycle routes, but as a step in the right direction, a paint job would be much more visible and save lives.
3 Have the planning department study the feasibility of planning bicycle use as %25 of transit use. It's cheap, it's healthy, it's fun. San Diego has enough traffic congestion and air pollution, it's not like it needs more. The bicycle is the perfect solution for a lot of people, if it can be made safe.
------------
It's true that a lot of people haven't thought of bicycling as much as i am suggesting, but when it talk to my car driving friends (i don't drive), when they think about it a little, the answer they usually give is that it sounds good and they would do more riding, if the safe bicycle routes were there.
Thank you for your time and attention to these matters.
Yours Truly,
Jay D. Bear
---------------------------- The roads are not safe.
One million San Diegans could accomplish the majority of their transit needs by riding a bicycle, if the roads were safe. They could buy a bicycle for $25 at a garage sale or thrift store, oil up the chain, put some air in the tires, and be good to go,
if the roads were safe.
Kids could bike to school (and get some exercise), people could run small errands, bike to work, etc.
if the roads were safe
The roads are not safe
I am specifically talking about surface roads, not freeways.
MTS has been forced to cut service, especially on evenings and Sundays. That means that there are a lot of jobs that people without a car can not apply for, because they can't get there, and that includes low income people who have trouble affording a car. I am speaking as someone who has worked a graveyard shift in a supermarket, who has been a janitor, a dishwasher, a security guard, all those low paying service jobs that need to be done.
San Diego would be God's gift to the bicycle, if the roads were safe. Great weather, long flat stretches, perfect for non polluting two wheelers, if the roads were safe.
The roads are not safe.
Also, just to mention all the drunk drivers on the roads when the bars close, and no public transit to keep them off the roads. Those bars and restaurants need a lot of service staff, people who could, perhaps, ride bicycles home if it was safe and not too far.
------
I live on a "quiet" street in Pt. Loma. My housemate's cat got killed by a speeding car. I was at a garage sale a few blocks away, told story to the guy, he said his dog was killed by a speeding car. This on "quiet", "side" streets. I have heard so many stories of bicyclists being hit by cars, and not just from people i've talked to. I've sat at coffeeshops and overheard people talking about being hit by cars.
Too many San Diegans are being terrorized by dangerous, speeding drivers who feel like they own the road.
I live about 4 miles from Old town transit center. If i thought i would survive the ride down Rosecrans, i could bicycle there and catch a trolley. However, i have no wish to die or be maimed for life. To tell you the truth, just crossing the street as a pedestrian can be quite an adventure, and i am a healthy, active man, not an old woman moving slow, like my 88yr old mother.
----------
I have not written you all just to bitch. Here are some specific proposals
1 A ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY FOR SPEEDING ON SURFACE STREETS
There are laws, speeding limits posted. Scofflaws ignore them. My understanding is that the role of the police department is to keep the public safe. What is more dangerous than unsafe driving?
I am requesting that you, San Diego elected officials, especially you, Mr. Mayor, direct the San Diego Police Department to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards speeding and unsafe driving in general.
Immediately start a citywide campaign to issue tickets to anyone speeding on a surface street. People will slow down, the roads will get safer.
The traffic laws are in place for a reason. Shouldn't drivers be required to obey them?
This will have the additional benefit of putting some money in the city's coffers.Immediately start a citywide campaign to issue tickets to anyone speeding on a surface street. People will slow down, the roads will get safer.
The traffic laws are in place for a reason. Shouldn't drivers be required to obey them?
2 Paint the bike lanes a solid color, i.e., not just a thin line, but a whole 3 foot wide paint job.
It's a band aid, but it would help. Of course the real solution is completely separate bicycle routes, but as a step in the right direction, a paint job would be much more visible and save lives.
3 Have the planning department study the feasibility of planning bicycle use as %25 of transit use. It's cheap, it's healthy, it's fun. San Diego has enough traffic congestion and air pollution, it's not like it needs more. The bicycle is the perfect solution for a lot of people, if it can be made safe.
------------
It's true that a lot of people haven't thought of bicycling as much as i am suggesting, but when it talk to my car driving friends (i don't drive), when they think about it a little, the answer they usually give is that it sounds good and they would do more riding, if the safe bicycle routes were there.
Thank you for your time and attention to these matters.
Yours Truly,
Jay D. Bear
be well,
jay
----------
Dear MoveSD
I am putting my ideas in the form of an email. Please share them with the rest of the move staff
-------------
Strategy for Public Transportation
I live in two worlds here in San Diego. By birth and education, i am middle class, and my friends are middle class. On the other hand, as a musician i am poor and ride the bus, no car. Here's my take on what i see:
---The people i see on the bus (commuters excepted) seem %90 poor and low education. I doubt many are registered to vote. A lot of them don't speak English that well. As far as i can tell, there is almost no political power to be found in this group.
----My middle class friends, who are educated and politically empowered, are barely aware that public transportation exists, have no idea what it's like to ride, feel no connection with it whatsoever, no personal investment or motivation to make it better.
So where is the political will to provide a functional MTS going to come from, other than a few visionaries?
My answer, the business community.
The reason i am writing this is to say that, in my opinion,
MoveSD and other transportation groups would do well to do extensive, ongoing education and outreach to the Chamber of Commerce and the business community, making the following points;
* ACCESS How much money is business losing, because poorer people can not get to shops, restaurants, ballgames. Yes, low income people don't have as much money as the middle class, but there are a lot of them, and they do spend money. How many more seats would be filled in movie theatres, followed by a meal afterwards?
* EXTRA CASH TO SPEND If poorer people could save money by leaving their cars parked, they would have more money to spend at local business, and it would get spent.
* GAS PRICES As gas prices go up, even middle class people are going out less. If it's going to cost someone $20 in gas, just to go out for the day, they are less likely to go, and will have less money to spend. If they could safely, comfortably, conveniently get everywhere they wanted to go for a $5 day pass, local business would benefit.
* ACCESS TO JOBS-benefits both workers and employers
* EASIER, MORE COMFORTABLE COMMUTING this is more of a pitch to the middle class
-----------
* SPECIFIC PROPOSAL
* ONE CENT INCREASE IN SALES TAX, designated, legally reserved, for public trans. If the business community supported it, if middle class people got the idea that the benefits to SD's economy would benefit them, it would pass.
------
The other idea i got from last night is the huge need to form a coalition, a United Front, of every non-car transportation group in the city. Pedestrians, bicyclists, skateboarders, etc. Maybe a name like SANCOATS, san diego coalition of alternative transit supporters, or whatever.
--
be well,
jay
-------------
Strategy for Public Transportation
I live in two worlds here in San Diego. By birth and education, i am middle class, and my friends are middle class. On the other hand, as a musician i am poor and ride the bus, no car. Here's my take on what i see:
---The people i see on the bus (commuters excepted) seem %90 poor and low education. I doubt many are registered to vote. A lot of them don't speak English that well. As far as i can tell, there is almost no political power to be found in this group.
----My middle class friends, who are educated and politically empowered, are barely aware that public transportation exists, have no idea what it's like to ride, feel no connection with it whatsoever, no personal investment or motivation to make it better.
So where is the political will to provide a functional MTS going to come from, other than a few visionaries?
My answer, the business community.
The reason i am writing this is to say that, in my opinion,
MoveSD and other transportation groups would do well to do extensive, ongoing education and outreach to the Chamber of Commerce and the business community, making the following points;
* ACCESS How much money is business losing, because poorer people can not get to shops, restaurants, ballgames. Yes, low income people don't have as much money as the middle class, but there are a lot of them, and they do spend money. How many more seats would be filled in movie theatres, followed by a meal afterwards?
* EXTRA CASH TO SPEND If poorer people could save money by leaving their cars parked, they would have more money to spend at local business, and it would get spent.
* GAS PRICES As gas prices go up, even middle class people are going out less. If it's going to cost someone $20 in gas, just to go out for the day, they are less likely to go, and will have less money to spend. If they could safely, comfortably, conveniently get everywhere they wanted to go for a $5 day pass, local business would benefit.
* ACCESS TO JOBS-benefits both workers and employers
* EASIER, MORE COMFORTABLE COMMUTING this is more of a pitch to the middle class
-----------
* SPECIFIC PROPOSAL
* ONE CENT INCREASE IN SALES TAX, designated, legally reserved, for public trans. If the business community supported it, if middle class people got the idea that the benefits to SD's economy would benefit them, it would pass.
------
The other idea i got from last night is the huge need to form a coalition, a United Front, of every non-car transportation group in the city. Pedestrians, bicyclists, skateboarders, etc. Maybe a name like SANCOATS, san diego coalition of alternative transit supporters, or whatever.
--
be well,
jay
Sunday, December 9, 2012
i do not hate the rich, and i do not want a revolution
I want to clarify one point. I do not hate the rich, i have no problem with some people having more than others, even much more. i don't begrudge it to them, i'm not jealous, i don't think they're bad people just because they've got a lot of bucks. I've met a lot of nice people who have money.
What i do have a BIG problem with is cheating, rigging the game, taking advantage of your position of power to exploit people as much as possible, to pay people as little as you can and charge them as much as possible in rents and other costs, so that you can engorge your already bloated asset sheet, while people go homeless and lack the simple basics of life.
i believe in the old fashioned values of an honest day's work for an honest day's wage, and a system that treats everyone fairly. An honest day's wage means a living wage, a wage such that you can take care of your expenses and have something left over. I do not believe that is happening today, not just in wages, but in every facet of economic life. How can a millionaire pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than a factory worker. How can a landlord take depreciation allowance, while a house owner can't. Why do you pay sales tax on the purchase of a hammer , but not a stock market transaction.
It's cheating, pure and simple, legal cheating because of legal bribes to government officials in the form of "campaign finance contributions", so that loopholes are added to obscure provisions of bills, often at the last minute, under the cover of darkness.
In my opinion, it's only a small percentage of the super elite who engage in this deliberate corruption of the system. My understanding is that most people with large incomes are trust fund babies who get their checks, they leave it to the money managers, usually one or two people in each family, to handle the business. The end result is the same, a system designed for the rich to get richer by feeding off of the rest of society.
In simple terms,
The poor and the middle class are just so much hamburger for the top tenth of one percent
The system is rigged
Government is bribed
so what else is new?
-------------------------
and as for revolution
I want change, i want evolution, i want what i consider fairness and decency.
I do not want a revolution, i don't want chaos, i don't want bloodshed, i don't want a violent takeover of the government. I don't need punishment of those i consider to have been wrongdoers in this situation, i just want for things to get to where one can make a decent living doing honorable work, which i wish would include being an artist, which is who i am.
The average person, including me, can live with the fact that they're being exploited, so long as we can still get by. What concerns me is that ruling elites tend to get stupidly, arrogantly, blindly greedy, rather than just plain greedy, and take so much that the common people don't have enough to live on, as in the French revolution. No longer content with %90, they want it all, and then things falls apart. In many cases, the situation gets worse after a revolution than before. I don't want that.
Fox news and right wing folks talk about the radicals on the left. My opinion is that the people the plutocracy needs to fear are the tea party types with guns in their hand, because when it does finally get through their thick skulls that the plutocracy has, in effect, declared war on them, they will fight back in the way they understand, violence. Left wingers talk a lot, sign petitions and post on Facebook, but they're a bunch of peaceniks, myself included. For example, i really believe the old phrase "hatred does not cease by hatred, but by love alone". I don't think the tea party thinks that way.
I'm not saying any of this is going to happen, i don't want it to, i don't think it will. The reason i am posting this is just to make clear that i want positive change, not violent revolution.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
The End of the age of Materialism
The first three words of ECOnomy are ECO (Jim Bell). That's the central truth we all need to remember. Sustainable is not some hippy dippy feel good idea, it's the key to our survival. Just like any individual, the economies of the world have to live on the budget of what the earth will sustain.
The economies of America and the world are based on fantasy and denial. Whether the societies are capitalist, socialist, communist or whatever, ultimately they are all materialists.
There's only so long the illusion that we can loot and pollute the earth without any consequences can be maintained.
Resources are not infinite,
the ability of the environment to absorb poisons of various sorts without serious consequences to our own health and well being has been reached, including electromagnetic pollution, not to mention various other manifestations of fantasy thinking, such as GMOs and fracking.
We are living in what could be called The Age of Pollution, or perhaps the Age of the Two Experiments, biological and electro-magnetic.
1) The Biological pollution experiment-Starting with the beginning of factories, toxins were spewed out in all directions. Now there are toxic chemicals in almost every product on the market today, especially widespread use of poisons to grow food. That has gone into overdrive with the sudden shift into GMO usage, basically using the whole world as a testing lab, and the people in it as guinea pigs.
2) The Electromagnetic pollution experiment-living organisms, indeed the earth itself, are electromagnetic beings just as much as we are flesh and bone. Starting with the widespread introduction of electricity, power lines everywhere, now going into overdrive with computers, wifi, cellphones, cellphone towers. and all the rest of the electronics that modern life seems to revolve around, ubiquitous everywhere one goes, there is another worldwide experiment going on, an experiment in which the effects of all these devices are impacting every living being on the planet.
These are two big experiments.
We can no longer base our economies on the production and consumption of material goods. Particularly odious and destructive are disposability, and the conspicuous consumption and massive waste seen especially in the US and other wealthy countries.
Voluntary Simplicity and efficiency are the order of the day, but what about jobs?
One thing no one talks about when asking where will people work is that- how much income someone needs is directly dependent on prices, especially housing and food, and this is very much a function of the equality or inequality of a society, the degree of exploitation imposed by the haves on the have-nots.
How many hours do you have to work to pay your rent? In the US in the 50s, one could push a broom for $1/hr and rent a room for $10/month. You could pay rent with 10 hours work per month. Now the ratio is a lot more brutal. Who sets those prices. How do the laws of a country affect that? It's not so simple.
The simplest things people could do would be to
1) go vegetarian, even vegan
2) get out of their cars and on to a bicycle, walk or public transit
3) stop buying stuff not really needed
Sounds great, but how safe are the roads for bicycles, how much public transit is there? Can people get where they need to go and do what they need to do? That takes a different infrastructure.
What happens to all the people out of jobs because people stop buying? My view is that most jobs are unnecessary, especially when one calculates in the subsidized waste and inefficiency and consumerism so rampant today. However, those jobs feel very necessary to the people working them. Is America suddenly going to go to a 15 hour workweek, so that there is work for everyone? Will prices come down to adjust? It's not so simple.
It's one thing when disasters happen in isolated instances, but if it happens on a large scale?
What happens when rising oceans force people, including businesses, to move somewhere else?
What happens when storms and fires destroy homes and businesses?
What happens when various disasters happen as a result of fracking and other insane practices.
Etc. (too many things to list all
Where will people get money, how will they live?
1 What we work at, what jobs the economy is based on, must inevitably change, because right now jobs produce a lot of poisons, and this is simply not sustainable. Already cancer rates have skyrocketed, not to mention all sorts of other health problems that ultimately come down to a toxic environment. Not to mention global climate disruption, the oceans being fished out, loss of soil nutrition, ad infinitum.
2 The whole issue of wage and social inequality will make a huge difference in how much suffering this change entails
3 Voluntary simplicity and conscious consumption must be seen as the patriotic and socially useful choices they are, rather than as a bunch of granola munchers living weird lives.
How can we have good lives, doing useful and productive work that doesn't result in poisoning ourselves and the planet?
How do we transition as gracefully as possible to this new economic system?
The issue is not just the rich who own the companies and the governments and buy the laws. The issue is the attitude shared by so many people that, in effect, the earth is just something to eat. Translated, that means that if their job, which pays their rent and buys their food, if doing that job means toxic waste in a river, well, they just do it. Perhaps they would prefer not to, but they don't feel they have a choice. Truth be told, in many cases they may not apparently have much choice.
Many may not even think about it all.
So now we get into values and self esteem. So long as people peg their self esteem to how much they earn and spend, especially how much stuff they buy, well, big problem. This is especially true of men, who often have been taught that the way to prove how much of a man they are is spend, spend, spend.
And for women, they seem to like lots of nice things.
Does it make a difference how we live our personal material lives?
In an old article, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been a real warrior for the environment, said that personal choices by a few wouldn't do much in the larger scheme of things, that laws were needed. Statistically speaking he is correct, however in metaphysical terms i think he's wrong. I think of the story about a mother who brought her child to Gandhi and said "please tell him to stop eating sugar". Gandhi said come back in two weeks. When they came back, Gandhi said "Stop eating sugar". The woman asked why they had to wait two weeks, Gandhi said, 2 weeks ago i had not stopped eating sugar.
Always carrying a shopping bag, coffee cup, portable plate and silverware, takeout container with you; being very conscious how much water runs when washing dishes, indeed starting with whether a dish really needs to be washed or not, these are small things, and let's face it, there are people who can waste in a week what we can save in a year, but... in metaphysics there is the principle of "if you take one step towards god, god takes ten steps towards you". It's really all a lesson in consciousness, consciousness in the everyday details of our lives as a spiritual practice.
Ultimately, what has created these problems is a lack of consciousness and self responsibility, what will solve them is consciousness and self responsibility on a global scale. i realize that's a lot to ask, but there it is.
Every spiritual teaching says find fulfillment within, don't look without. Ultimately i take the view that this whole massive crisis, this upheaval, is for the purposes of spiritual growth, of teaching consciousness, in the everyday details of our lives. In a lot of teachings, there is the view that we are spiritual beings having a material experience, and that all that falls shall rise again, that nothing is created or destroyed, just transformed, speaking on a spiritual and energetic level. None of which excuses or condones the rape of the earth by a society that is living unconsciously. Well, we are about to become a lot more conscious on a mass level, so see the silver lining, which is that, at the end of however long this next period of upheaval lasts, which could be hundreds of years, humanity will have evolved to a new level.
The economies of America and the world are based on fantasy and denial. Whether the societies are capitalist, socialist, communist or whatever, ultimately they are all materialists.
There's only so long the illusion that we can loot and pollute the earth without any consequences can be maintained.
Resources are not infinite,
the ability of the environment to absorb poisons of various sorts without serious consequences to our own health and well being has been reached, including electromagnetic pollution, not to mention various other manifestations of fantasy thinking, such as GMOs and fracking.
We are living in what could be called The Age of Pollution, or perhaps the Age of the Two Experiments, biological and electro-magnetic.
1) The Biological pollution experiment-Starting with the beginning of factories, toxins were spewed out in all directions. Now there are toxic chemicals in almost every product on the market today, especially widespread use of poisons to grow food. That has gone into overdrive with the sudden shift into GMO usage, basically using the whole world as a testing lab, and the people in it as guinea pigs.
2) The Electromagnetic pollution experiment-living organisms, indeed the earth itself, are electromagnetic beings just as much as we are flesh and bone. Starting with the widespread introduction of electricity, power lines everywhere, now going into overdrive with computers, wifi, cellphones, cellphone towers. and all the rest of the electronics that modern life seems to revolve around, ubiquitous everywhere one goes, there is another worldwide experiment going on, an experiment in which the effects of all these devices are impacting every living being on the planet.
These are two big experiments.
We can no longer base our economies on the production and consumption of material goods. Particularly odious and destructive are disposability, and the conspicuous consumption and massive waste seen especially in the US and other wealthy countries.
Voluntary Simplicity and efficiency are the order of the day, but what about jobs?
One thing no one talks about when asking where will people work is that- how much income someone needs is directly dependent on prices, especially housing and food, and this is very much a function of the equality or inequality of a society, the degree of exploitation imposed by the haves on the have-nots.
How many hours do you have to work to pay your rent? In the US in the 50s, one could push a broom for $1/hr and rent a room for $10/month. You could pay rent with 10 hours work per month. Now the ratio is a lot more brutal. Who sets those prices. How do the laws of a country affect that? It's not so simple.
The simplest things people could do would be to
1) go vegetarian, even vegan
2) get out of their cars and on to a bicycle, walk or public transit
3) stop buying stuff not really needed
Sounds great, but how safe are the roads for bicycles, how much public transit is there? Can people get where they need to go and do what they need to do? That takes a different infrastructure.
What happens to all the people out of jobs because people stop buying? My view is that most jobs are unnecessary, especially when one calculates in the subsidized waste and inefficiency and consumerism so rampant today. However, those jobs feel very necessary to the people working them. Is America suddenly going to go to a 15 hour workweek, so that there is work for everyone? Will prices come down to adjust? It's not so simple.
It's one thing when disasters happen in isolated instances, but if it happens on a large scale?
What happens when rising oceans force people, including businesses, to move somewhere else?
What happens when storms and fires destroy homes and businesses?
What happens when various disasters happen as a result of fracking and other insane practices.
Etc. (too many things to list all
Where will people get money, how will they live?
1 What we work at, what jobs the economy is based on, must inevitably change, because right now jobs produce a lot of poisons, and this is simply not sustainable. Already cancer rates have skyrocketed, not to mention all sorts of other health problems that ultimately come down to a toxic environment. Not to mention global climate disruption, the oceans being fished out, loss of soil nutrition, ad infinitum.
2 The whole issue of wage and social inequality will make a huge difference in how much suffering this change entails
3 Voluntary simplicity and conscious consumption must be seen as the patriotic and socially useful choices they are, rather than as a bunch of granola munchers living weird lives.
How can we have good lives, doing useful and productive work that doesn't result in poisoning ourselves and the planet?
How do we transition as gracefully as possible to this new economic system?
The issue is not just the rich who own the companies and the governments and buy the laws. The issue is the attitude shared by so many people that, in effect, the earth is just something to eat. Translated, that means that if their job, which pays their rent and buys their food, if doing that job means toxic waste in a river, well, they just do it. Perhaps they would prefer not to, but they don't feel they have a choice. Truth be told, in many cases they may not apparently have much choice.
Many may not even think about it all.
So now we get into values and self esteem. So long as people peg their self esteem to how much they earn and spend, especially how much stuff they buy, well, big problem. This is especially true of men, who often have been taught that the way to prove how much of a man they are is spend, spend, spend.
And for women, they seem to like lots of nice things.
Does it make a difference how we live our personal material lives?
In an old article, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been a real warrior for the environment, said that personal choices by a few wouldn't do much in the larger scheme of things, that laws were needed. Statistically speaking he is correct, however in metaphysical terms i think he's wrong. I think of the story about a mother who brought her child to Gandhi and said "please tell him to stop eating sugar". Gandhi said come back in two weeks. When they came back, Gandhi said "Stop eating sugar". The woman asked why they had to wait two weeks, Gandhi said, 2 weeks ago i had not stopped eating sugar.
Always carrying a shopping bag, coffee cup, portable plate and silverware, takeout container with you; being very conscious how much water runs when washing dishes, indeed starting with whether a dish really needs to be washed or not, these are small things, and let's face it, there are people who can waste in a week what we can save in a year, but... in metaphysics there is the principle of "if you take one step towards god, god takes ten steps towards you". It's really all a lesson in consciousness, consciousness in the everyday details of our lives as a spiritual practice.
Ultimately, what has created these problems is a lack of consciousness and self responsibility, what will solve them is consciousness and self responsibility on a global scale. i realize that's a lot to ask, but there it is.
Every spiritual teaching says find fulfillment within, don't look without. Ultimately i take the view that this whole massive crisis, this upheaval, is for the purposes of spiritual growth, of teaching consciousness, in the everyday details of our lives. In a lot of teachings, there is the view that we are spiritual beings having a material experience, and that all that falls shall rise again, that nothing is created or destroyed, just transformed, speaking on a spiritual and energetic level. None of which excuses or condones the rape of the earth by a society that is living unconsciously. Well, we are about to become a lot more conscious on a mass level, so see the silver lining, which is that, at the end of however long this next period of upheaval lasts, which could be hundreds of years, humanity will have evolved to a new level.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Where are the jobs for the %47
there are lots of jobs that need doing,
companies have the money to hire people,
instead the execs are putting the money in their own pockets
One major gripe of the tea party and people sympathetic to their views is that %47 of the population are lazy parasites who don't want to work and are being supported by hard working people like tea party members.
explicitly the idea is-people don't want to work, they would rather get handouts
implicitly is the idea that these people could be working.
Have you ever been in a store that seemed to be run on a skeleton crew, can't find anyone to ask a question, long lines at the cash register? Not to mention the value of experienced, helpful, motivated staff, rather than minimum wage kids. Have you been put on hold, while a recording said "we are experiencing an unusually high level of call volume".
Bullshit.
If it were truthful, that recording would say:
"we are experiencing an unusually high level of executive compensation and consequently are not hiring enough people to run the business properly".
There are thousands of businesses across America that need more sales people, customer service reps, technical people, clerks, etc. but instead of hiring enough people to staff the counters and floors, the execs are choosing to pad their own pockets and raise their own pay, give themselves perks and bonuses, and run the companies on a skeleton crew.
"Downsizing" was the euphemism fat cat execs used to fire people, make the poor slobs left work two jobs for the price of one, and stick the money in their own pockets. What bullshit.
Think about it: if all the executives were sick for the day, the business would still go on. If the sales floor staff didn't show up, it's all over.
For every $1,000,000 some yacht owning private plane flying CEO chooses to enrich himself with, he could have hired 30 people at $33,000 per, and some of these greedy motherfuckers have pay and perks in the hundreds of millions of dollars, which would hire a lot of needed staff. Not that they should do it out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it's good business to be staffed at adequate levels (unless of course your yacht needs a new coat of paint).
So that's a lot of jobs that need to be done, aren't getting done, and could get done, but won't be done as long as the top execs can get away with it. My guess is that millions of jobs could be created immediately by redirecting business resources from executive pay to hiring needed workers.
As far as the %47 not wanting to work, that's simply not true. Maybe there is %10 of them that would slack off, but the rest want to work, they are looking for work, and they can't find work.
Let's go a little deeper.
If we look at the total number of hours of work in this country and ask how it is divided, we see that 120 hours of work can be 3 x 40hr jobs or 4 x 30hr jobs. In other words, there is more than enough work for everyone in the country, if the workweek were shorter. People could actually spend time with their families and have some time for themselves.
Could people make enough to live on? Now we get into the issues of how wages and prices get set, who sets them. The basic answer is that the owners have workers and renters by the balls and squeeze as hard as they can get away with. "I'm taking what they're giving cause i"m working for a living". If you're someone who believes the rich should have the right to charge whatever they can, perhaps you also believe that someone with a gun has the right to take whatever they want from you, because in a subtle way, you do have a gun to your head.
Also, let's not forget that the rich have owned and operated government for a long time, buying the senators and congressmen and laws that they want, so the whole system is rigged for them and against you.
I want to clarify one point. I do not hate the rich, i have no problem with some people having more than others, even much more. i don't begrudge it to them, i'm not jealous, i don't think they're bad people just because they've got a lot of bucks. I've met a lot of nice people who have money.
What i do have a BIG problem with is cheating, rigging the game, taking advantage of your position of power to pay people as little and charge them as much in rents and other costs as possible, so that you can engorge your already bloated asset sheet, while people go homeless and lack the simple basics of life.
i believe in the old fashioned value of an honest day's work for an honest day's wage. I do not believe that is happening today, not just in wages, but in every facet of economic life. How can a millionaire pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than a factory worker. How can a landlord take depreciation allowance, while a house owner can't. Ad infinitum.
It's cheating, pure and simple, legal cheating because of legal bribes to government officials in the form of "campaign finance contributions", so that loopholes are added to obscure provisions of bills, often at the last minute, under the cover of darkness.
Let's ask the moral question: is it right to short the workers' salaries in order to distribute earnings to shareholders who have done absolutely no work? I'm all for distributing earnings and dividends once you've paid a decent wage to the people who actually do the work, but to screw the workers in order to give the money to a bunch of people sitting on their asses? It's wrong.
As far as taxes go, this article gives a few numbers
http://www.alternet.org/economy/ten-numbers-rich-would-fudged
"3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.
The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world's Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that's $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.
Based on a historical stock market return of 6%, up to $750 billion of income is lost to the U.S. every year, resulting in a tax loss of about $260 billion." from article cited above.
If you're working for an hourly wage they withhold your taxes, in full, in advance,
if you are wealthy enough, you hire a creative accountant, take advantage of a thousand loopholes, pay almost nothing, and laugh all the way to the bank.
Why is is that you pay sales tax on a hammer, but not on a stock market transaction?
Why do landlords get to take depreciation allowance on the rental house, but you living in your own house don't?
There are pages and pages of examples, but this is a digression, and if you're a tea party type you're probably so busy thinking i'm a socialist that you've lost the main point, which is
there are lots of jobs that need doing,
companies have the money to hire people,
instead the execs are putting the money in their own pockets
companies have the money to hire people,
instead the execs are putting the money in their own pockets
One major gripe of the tea party and people sympathetic to their views is that %47 of the population are lazy parasites who don't want to work and are being supported by hard working people like tea party members.
explicitly the idea is-people don't want to work, they would rather get handouts
implicitly is the idea that these people could be working.
Have you ever been in a store that seemed to be run on a skeleton crew, can't find anyone to ask a question, long lines at the cash register? Not to mention the value of experienced, helpful, motivated staff, rather than minimum wage kids. Have you been put on hold, while a recording said "we are experiencing an unusually high level of call volume".
Bullshit.
If it were truthful, that recording would say:
"we are experiencing an unusually high level of executive compensation and consequently are not hiring enough people to run the business properly".
There are thousands of businesses across America that need more sales people, customer service reps, technical people, clerks, etc. but instead of hiring enough people to staff the counters and floors, the execs are choosing to pad their own pockets and raise their own pay, give themselves perks and bonuses, and run the companies on a skeleton crew.
"Downsizing" was the euphemism fat cat execs used to fire people, make the poor slobs left work two jobs for the price of one, and stick the money in their own pockets. What bullshit.
Think about it: if all the executives were sick for the day, the business would still go on. If the sales floor staff didn't show up, it's all over.
For every $1,000,000 some yacht owning private plane flying CEO chooses to enrich himself with, he could have hired 30 people at $33,000 per, and some of these greedy motherfuckers have pay and perks in the hundreds of millions of dollars, which would hire a lot of needed staff. Not that they should do it out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it's good business to be staffed at adequate levels (unless of course your yacht needs a new coat of paint).
So that's a lot of jobs that need to be done, aren't getting done, and could get done, but won't be done as long as the top execs can get away with it. My guess is that millions of jobs could be created immediately by redirecting business resources from executive pay to hiring needed workers.
As far as the %47 not wanting to work, that's simply not true. Maybe there is %10 of them that would slack off, but the rest want to work, they are looking for work, and they can't find work.
Let's go a little deeper.
If we look at the total number of hours of work in this country and ask how it is divided, we see that 120 hours of work can be 3 x 40hr jobs or 4 x 30hr jobs. In other words, there is more than enough work for everyone in the country, if the workweek were shorter. People could actually spend time with their families and have some time for themselves.
Could people make enough to live on? Now we get into the issues of how wages and prices get set, who sets them. The basic answer is that the owners have workers and renters by the balls and squeeze as hard as they can get away with. "I'm taking what they're giving cause i"m working for a living". If you're someone who believes the rich should have the right to charge whatever they can, perhaps you also believe that someone with a gun has the right to take whatever they want from you, because in a subtle way, you do have a gun to your head.
Also, let's not forget that the rich have owned and operated government for a long time, buying the senators and congressmen and laws that they want, so the whole system is rigged for them and against you.
I want to clarify one point. I do not hate the rich, i have no problem with some people having more than others, even much more. i don't begrudge it to them, i'm not jealous, i don't think they're bad people just because they've got a lot of bucks. I've met a lot of nice people who have money.
What i do have a BIG problem with is cheating, rigging the game, taking advantage of your position of power to pay people as little and charge them as much in rents and other costs as possible, so that you can engorge your already bloated asset sheet, while people go homeless and lack the simple basics of life.
i believe in the old fashioned value of an honest day's work for an honest day's wage. I do not believe that is happening today, not just in wages, but in every facet of economic life. How can a millionaire pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than a factory worker. How can a landlord take depreciation allowance, while a house owner can't. Ad infinitum.
It's cheating, pure and simple, legal cheating because of legal bribes to government officials in the form of "campaign finance contributions", so that loopholes are added to obscure provisions of bills, often at the last minute, under the cover of darkness.
Let's ask the moral question: is it right to short the workers' salaries in order to distribute earnings to shareholders who have done absolutely no work? I'm all for distributing earnings and dividends once you've paid a decent wage to the people who actually do the work, but to screw the workers in order to give the money to a bunch of people sitting on their asses? It's wrong.
As far as taxes go, this article gives a few numbers
http://www.alternet.org/economy/ten-numbers-rich-would-fudged
"3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.
The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world's Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that's $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.
Based on a historical stock market return of 6%, up to $750 billion of income is lost to the U.S. every year, resulting in a tax loss of about $260 billion." from article cited above.
If you're working for an hourly wage they withhold your taxes, in full, in advance,
if you are wealthy enough, you hire a creative accountant, take advantage of a thousand loopholes, pay almost nothing, and laugh all the way to the bank.
Why is is that you pay sales tax on a hammer, but not on a stock market transaction?
Why do landlords get to take depreciation allowance on the rental house, but you living in your own house don't?
There are pages and pages of examples, but this is a digression, and if you're a tea party type you're probably so busy thinking i'm a socialist that you've lost the main point, which is
there are lots of jobs that need doing,
companies have the money to hire people,
instead the execs are putting the money in their own pockets
Obama tax Proposals
Wrong focus. The problem isn't just low tax rates on the wealthy, it's that the rates don't get paid by anyone with the money to hire an accountant, especially not the rich, to the point where many rich people and corporations pay virtually nothing. Rates may not have to go up, but they do need to be paid in full, not made a mockery of. Then, if rate increases are necessary, by all means the wealthy should pay more, since they benefit more from the system.
Why get into a fight with Republicans over raising rates, when the effective approach would be to say "let's close all the loopholes". Who could argue with that? and, "let's not let the wealthy hide their money in overseas tax shelters", how could the Republican rank and file not understand cheating.
And if hardware store purchases are taxed, why not a tax on stock transactions, and other business dealings?
So many loopholes, exemptions, untaxed transations, hidden funds; why aren't Obama and the Democrats looking for revenue from these sources, which would provide massive revenue?
i am not necessarily against raising rates on the upper brackets, and i am certainly for the end of the Bush giveaways, but it's a joke to raise rates when the current ones aren't even being paid.
-----
This article gives a few numbers
http://www.alternet.org/economy/ten-numbers-rich-would-fudged
from article above
3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.
The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world's Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that's $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.
Based on a historical stock market return of 6%, up to $750 billion of income is lost to the U.S. every year, resulting in a tax loss of about $260 billion.
This website is worth looking at
http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=2
http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/775-the-rich-are-taxed-enough
following excerpt cut and pasted from transcript of above link
the question of fairness. Is the system, as it is now, at tax rates that exist now, in a
system that -- the one that we have, is it fair? Art Laffer.
Arthur Laffer:
Yeah. No, it's not. It's totally not. And let me use an example if I may, Warren Buffett.
He was sitting there asking my friends and I need to have higher tax rates, and I looked
at his letter to the New York Times, and he said he paid a little less than 7 million in
taxes, and he said his tax rate was 17.4 percent, which I did the math, hold back, I'm a
wiz, but I divided it. He had adjusted gross income of $40 million in that year.
I then went to Forbes. His wealth increased from 40 billion to 50 billion. I went to the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and what you found there is he gave 1.75 billion to
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, not counting his sons’ foundations or his
daughter's foundation. Now, as a definition of "income," to me income is what you
spend, what you give away, and your increase in your wealth. It s called the Simon
definition of income.
if you look at Warren Buffett,
his income that year was $12 billion, and he paid 7 million in taxes. That is a tax rate of
six 1/100th of 1 percent on his true income.
That is obnoxious. But it's not because of
any rates raising would change that tax. You've got to broaden the tax base by getting rid of all these exclusions, deductions, eliminations, and tax true income at low rates.
And that is what's fair. The guys who play the game, and you look at the Forbes 500 and you see all of them with their tax exemptions, look at all the 501c3s, all the loopholes.
That's what we've got to go after, not raising tax rates on the last three people who actually pay it.
General Electric made $44 billion from 2008 to 2010, but received over $4 billion in tax rebates! (Listen to more...)
Bank of America (BAC)
Forbes asked in 2010: "How did Bank of America not pay any taxes on $4.4 billion in income?" Bloomberg explains: its financial statements were “delusional” (Listen to more…)
Oil giant Exxon made $34 billion of net income in 2009, but paid no income taxes in the United States…(Listen to more)
Citigroup had 4 quarters of billion-dollar profits in 2010, but paid no taxes...(Listen to more)
Wells Fargo (WFC)
Wells Fargo purchased Wachovia and claimed a $19 billion tax credit, despite a record net income of $12.3 billion…(Listen to more)
HP's U.S. income tax rate was 4.3% in 2008 and 2.3% in 2009…
Verizon's 10.5% tax rate is "due to its...venture with Vodafone." Vodaphone has been the primary target in UK Uncut's protests…(Listen to more)
Chevron (CVX)
Of this year's taxes, just $200 million were paid in the U.S." That's a 1% tax rate…(Listen to more)
Boeing (BA)
Boeing paid no U.S. taxes on over $4 billion of income in 2010. In fact, they got $124 million back from the taxpayers…(Listen to more)
AIG helped individuals trying to shelter hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from federal taxes…(Listen to more)
Carnival (CCL)
Carnival Cruise Lines paid 1% in taxes on its $11.5 billion profit…
Koch Industries (private)
The government subsidies and tax-free benefits that accrue to the "libertarian" Koch brothers have been well documented…(Listen to more)
Why get into a fight with Republicans over raising rates, when the effective approach would be to say "let's close all the loopholes". Who could argue with that? and, "let's not let the wealthy hide their money in overseas tax shelters", how could the Republican rank and file not understand cheating.
And if hardware store purchases are taxed, why not a tax on stock transactions, and other business dealings?
So many loopholes, exemptions, untaxed transations, hidden funds; why aren't Obama and the Democrats looking for revenue from these sources, which would provide massive revenue?
i am not necessarily against raising rates on the upper brackets, and i am certainly for the end of the Bush giveaways, but it's a joke to raise rates when the current ones aren't even being paid.
-----
This article gives a few numbers
http://www.alternet.org/economy/ten-numbers-rich-would-fudged
from article above
3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.
The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world's Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that's $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.
Based on a historical stock market return of 6%, up to $750 billion of income is lost to the U.S. every year, resulting in a tax loss of about $260 billion.
This website is worth looking at
http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=2
http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/775-the-rich-are-taxed-enough
following excerpt cut and pasted from transcript of above link
the question of fairness. Is the system, as it is now, at tax rates that exist now, in a
system that -- the one that we have, is it fair? Art Laffer.
Arthur Laffer:
Yeah. No, it's not. It's totally not. And let me use an example if I may, Warren Buffett.
He was sitting there asking my friends and I need to have higher tax rates, and I looked
at his letter to the New York Times, and he said he paid a little less than 7 million in
taxes, and he said his tax rate was 17.4 percent, which I did the math, hold back, I'm a
wiz, but I divided it. He had adjusted gross income of $40 million in that year.
I then went to Forbes. His wealth increased from 40 billion to 50 billion. I went to the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and what you found there is he gave 1.75 billion to
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, not counting his sons’ foundations or his
daughter's foundation. Now, as a definition of "income," to me income is what you
spend, what you give away, and your increase in your wealth. It s called the Simon
definition of income.
if you look at Warren Buffett,
his income that year was $12 billion, and he paid 7 million in taxes. That is a tax rate of
six 1/100th of 1 percent on his true income.
That is obnoxious. But it's not because of
any rates raising would change that tax. You've got to broaden the tax base by getting rid of all these exclusions, deductions, eliminations, and tax true income at low rates.
And that is what's fair. The guys who play the game, and you look at the Forbes 500 and you see all of them with their tax exemptions, look at all the 501c3s, all the loopholes.
That's what we've got to go after, not raising tax rates on the last three people who actually pay it.
-----------------------
the following is a cut and paste from site below
definitely check this site out
http://payupnow.org/the following is a cut and paste from site below
definitely check this site out
General Electric made $44 billion from 2008 to 2010, but received over $4 billion in tax rebates! (Listen to more...)
Bank of America (BAC)
Forbes asked in 2010: "How did Bank of America not pay any taxes on $4.4 billion in income?" Bloomberg explains: its financial statements were “delusional” (Listen to more…)
Oil giant Exxon made $34 billion of net income in 2009, but paid no income taxes in the United States…(Listen to more)
Citigroup had 4 quarters of billion-dollar profits in 2010, but paid no taxes...(Listen to more)
Wells Fargo (WFC)
Wells Fargo purchased Wachovia and claimed a $19 billion tax credit, despite a record net income of $12.3 billion…(Listen to more)
HP's U.S. income tax rate was 4.3% in 2008 and 2.3% in 2009…
Verizon's 10.5% tax rate is "due to its...venture with Vodafone." Vodaphone has been the primary target in UK Uncut's protests…(Listen to more)
Chevron (CVX)
Of this year's taxes, just $200 million were paid in the U.S." That's a 1% tax rate…(Listen to more)
Boeing (BA)
Boeing paid no U.S. taxes on over $4 billion of income in 2010. In fact, they got $124 million back from the taxpayers…(Listen to more)
AIG helped individuals trying to shelter hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from federal taxes…(Listen to more)
Carnival (CCL)
Carnival Cruise Lines paid 1% in taxes on its $11.5 billion profit…
Koch Industries (private)
The government subsidies and tax-free benefits that accrue to the "libertarian" Koch brothers have been well documented…(Listen to more)
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
How to reclaim government-It's time
Why is it that business owns government, that so many laws and regulations benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else, and how can we change that?
And why is it that businesses seem to get away with doing whatever they want, regardless of the effects on the public? often, as Ralph Nader puts it, privatizing profits while socializing costs, meaning they get the profits while we pay the bills to clean up the messes they leave?
So many causes, so many issues, and underneath so many of the problems of America, 2 main roots:
1) the fact that we don't have elections, we have auctions.
2) Corporate Personhood is a licence for crime, an incentive for bad behaviour, a get out of jail free card (actually you never get charged, you get rewarded for crimes). Individual responsibility is the basis of morality and ethical behaviour, at the minimum not doing something you will be punished for. With Corporate Personhood, CEOs and other executives have protection from consequences, which encourages them to make decisions that will boost their own profits and salaries, even if people die.
1) if we removed the money from politics, totally, so that we didn't have a system of legalized bribery, in which those with the most money got what they wanted, and
2) Individuals were responsible for intentional violations of the law, and criminal negligence (of course there are normal mistakes, and this is not what i am talking about), then
the government, elected officials, would be a lot more likely to deal with issues on their merits, not just whose money they need.
Ok, everybody knows the problems, here's one important suggestion for a solution:
What if every separate group working on fixing all the problems formed a united front, came to the realization that there are underlying master causes that result in all the specific problems, realize that until the government is not bought and paid for by the highest bidder, and until the CEOs have personal responsibility for the havoc they wreak, that it's going to be a whole lot more difficult to create positive change (and it can still happen).
It like complaining about a crab apple tree producing crab apples. What do you expect. The system is totally corrupted, and until the rules of the game change, what do you expect. I get so frustrated by all the well meaning people who don't seem to understand this.
So what if Greenpeace and MoveOn and everybody else got on the same page and started a united campaign to talk money out of politics and end Corporate Personhood. It's time.
and as for the environment, global warming, pollution, etc, the key issue is that the costs are not factored into the price paid. Stuff is cheap only because the total costs, the costs of disposal, of pollution, the costs on human health, the costs when the earth and the oceans and the atomosphere get polluted and degraded, the costs are not included in the purchase price. As a society, America is in denial that stuff is very expensive, when all factors are included.
So, all costs need to be factored into purchase price, a very inconvenient truth indeed, which i believe is one intention of carbon taxes. So then we get into issues of factories closing, which brings up the whole issue of an economy founded on material production and consumption, which is inherently unsustainable.
And why is it that businesses seem to get away with doing whatever they want, regardless of the effects on the public? often, as Ralph Nader puts it, privatizing profits while socializing costs, meaning they get the profits while we pay the bills to clean up the messes they leave?
So many causes, so many issues, and underneath so many of the problems of America, 2 main roots:
1) the fact that we don't have elections, we have auctions.
2) Corporate Personhood is a licence for crime, an incentive for bad behaviour, a get out of jail free card (actually you never get charged, you get rewarded for crimes). Individual responsibility is the basis of morality and ethical behaviour, at the minimum not doing something you will be punished for. With Corporate Personhood, CEOs and other executives have protection from consequences, which encourages them to make decisions that will boost their own profits and salaries, even if people die.
1) if we removed the money from politics, totally, so that we didn't have a system of legalized bribery, in which those with the most money got what they wanted, and
2) Individuals were responsible for intentional violations of the law, and criminal negligence (of course there are normal mistakes, and this is not what i am talking about), then
the government, elected officials, would be a lot more likely to deal with issues on their merits, not just whose money they need.
Ok, everybody knows the problems, here's one important suggestion for a solution:
What if every separate group working on fixing all the problems formed a united front, came to the realization that there are underlying master causes that result in all the specific problems, realize that until the government is not bought and paid for by the highest bidder, and until the CEOs have personal responsibility for the havoc they wreak, that it's going to be a whole lot more difficult to create positive change (and it can still happen).
It like complaining about a crab apple tree producing crab apples. What do you expect. The system is totally corrupted, and until the rules of the game change, what do you expect. I get so frustrated by all the well meaning people who don't seem to understand this.
So what if Greenpeace and MoveOn and everybody else got on the same page and started a united campaign to talk money out of politics and end Corporate Personhood. It's time.
and as for the environment, global warming, pollution, etc, the key issue is that the costs are not factored into the price paid. Stuff is cheap only because the total costs, the costs of disposal, of pollution, the costs on human health, the costs when the earth and the oceans and the atomosphere get polluted and degraded, the costs are not included in the purchase price. As a society, America is in denial that stuff is very expensive, when all factors are included.
So, all costs need to be factored into purchase price, a very inconvenient truth indeed, which i believe is one intention of carbon taxes. So then we get into issues of factories closing, which brings up the whole issue of an economy founded on material production and consumption, which is inherently unsustainable.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Understanding the difference between Republicans and Democrats
To use an analogy from slavery days: there were "good" masters who made sure their slaves got enough to eat and did not work them to death, and there were bad masters who said fuck em, but neither of them questioned the institution of slavery.
Today, the Democrats are the "good" corporate capitalist party who think the wage slaves should at least have some semblance of a decent life. The Republicans are the corporate capitalist party that says we shouldn't waste money on people who aren't rich, but both parties totally accept the idea of corporate capitalist plutocracy.
You can tell this right away by the fact that election day is held on a workday and is not a national holiday, which makes it a lot harder for working people to find the time to vote.
Given the current system, which gives third parties almost no chance, the Democrats are clearly the superior choice, but it still sucks.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Metaphysics, Materialism and left wing politics
Two of the main threads in my life are metaphysics, especially how it can be used for my personal and spiritual growth, and politics, which has so much to do with creating (or destroying) the environment i live in every day . I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to reconcile my understanding of how they relate, and at this point i want to put out a few ideas.
For the most part i agree with the views of the left, but the energy is often just so hard to take. Victimhood, anger, blame, judgement, arrogance, condescension, hostility, and don't think that i haven't expressed, often and vehemently, all these energies myself. If i was a right winger or a businessman, no way i'm listening to people who are attacking me.
My view is that all this is coming from fear. At least in my own case, that's what i find.
The question, is this productive or counter productive. To meekly lie down and get used for a doormat, fuck that. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but ultimately, to squeak and to blame are different.
In my own personal growth work i have found that it is far more effective to focus on the positive results i do want than to endlessly fight against my flaws, to be positive, rather than negative against negativity, and that's getting results for me. I've been reading peace pilgrim's Steps toward inner peace, and i'm finding it inspiring. This is a woman who walked 25,000 miles in 28 years, starting when she was 45 years old, to deliver the message of Peace across america, and i believe that many of the seeds she sowed have bourne fruit.
It seems to me that those who have spiritual beliefs have greater power in the political arena, indeed in everything they do. Would Civil rights, or the abolition of slavery, or Gandhi have happened without this. It is so unfortunate that so many people have reacted to the problems with Christianity and it's hypocrisy and abuses that they have thrown the baby of spirituality out with the bathwater of the corrupt church, and yet, without a spiritual fountain of strength, people are often left feeling small and helpless against the large forces of selfishness and greedy exploitation shown by those in power, in contrast to the strength one draws from having a spiritual root for the power to flow into you.
Just to be clear, i'm talking of real spiritual grounding such as the Quakers or Gandhi had, not some empty lip service. This only comes from practice. Yes, there are plenty of people whose version of spirituality includes not getting their hands dirty with politics, but sooner or later everyone on the path will take what they have learned and apply it to the service of making the world a better place for everyone, not just themselves.
I really think that all of us who are against Corporate Personhood, against GMOs, against economic injustice, against environmental pollution and environmental racism, against repressive government surveillance, etc,----i think we need to start being for things, and most especially, our energy needs to shift from all the negativity to a more engaging view of those whose actions are creating problems as misguided, wounded and wrong, but not evil, not demonize them, nor hate them, and i think that true effectiveness comes from a spiritual perspective.
Somewhere it says "Hatred does not cease by hatred, but by love alone. This is an old law, ancient and inexhaustible". I'm starting to believe that applies just as much to politics as to personal relationships.
For the most part i agree with the views of the left, but the energy is often just so hard to take. Victimhood, anger, blame, judgement, arrogance, condescension, hostility, and don't think that i haven't expressed, often and vehemently, all these energies myself. If i was a right winger or a businessman, no way i'm listening to people who are attacking me.
My view is that all this is coming from fear. At least in my own case, that's what i find.
The question, is this productive or counter productive. To meekly lie down and get used for a doormat, fuck that. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but ultimately, to squeak and to blame are different.
In my own personal growth work i have found that it is far more effective to focus on the positive results i do want than to endlessly fight against my flaws, to be positive, rather than negative against negativity, and that's getting results for me. I've been reading peace pilgrim's Steps toward inner peace, and i'm finding it inspiring. This is a woman who walked 25,000 miles in 28 years, starting when she was 45 years old, to deliver the message of Peace across america, and i believe that many of the seeds she sowed have bourne fruit.
It seems to me that those who have spiritual beliefs have greater power in the political arena, indeed in everything they do. Would Civil rights, or the abolition of slavery, or Gandhi have happened without this. It is so unfortunate that so many people have reacted to the problems with Christianity and it's hypocrisy and abuses that they have thrown the baby of spirituality out with the bathwater of the corrupt church, and yet, without a spiritual fountain of strength, people are often left feeling small and helpless against the large forces of selfishness and greedy exploitation shown by those in power, in contrast to the strength one draws from having a spiritual root for the power to flow into you.
Just to be clear, i'm talking of real spiritual grounding such as the Quakers or Gandhi had, not some empty lip service. This only comes from practice. Yes, there are plenty of people whose version of spirituality includes not getting their hands dirty with politics, but sooner or later everyone on the path will take what they have learned and apply it to the service of making the world a better place for everyone, not just themselves.
I really think that all of us who are against Corporate Personhood, against GMOs, against economic injustice, against environmental pollution and environmental racism, against repressive government surveillance, etc,----i think we need to start being for things, and most especially, our energy needs to shift from all the negativity to a more engaging view of those whose actions are creating problems as misguided, wounded and wrong, but not evil, not demonize them, nor hate them, and i think that true effectiveness comes from a spiritual perspective.
Somewhere it says "Hatred does not cease by hatred, but by love alone. This is an old law, ancient and inexhaustible". I'm starting to believe that applies just as much to politics as to personal relationships.
My ideas on Christianity and the Bible
*for the most part i find the bible a very brutal, harsh and unkind book,
with perhaps %5-10 nuggets of inspired teaching.
*I think the Bible has very, very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus,
------------
Right at the beginning i would like to state that i revere Jesus as a great spiritual teacher, one of the greatest. Indeed, both Hindus and Buddhists, even Muslims, also revere him, they just don't believe he was the only one or the last one.
I am not writing this to deride or attack Christians, but to point out what seem to me to be great logical inconsistencies.
1 So many so called Christians seem much more concerned with who to hate than who to love.
This seems directly opposite to Christ's teachings.
They seem so angry about Gay Marriage and abortion. Hundreds of millions of children and adults are starving worldwide, indeed here in America, people lacking the basic necessities of life, yet there are no propositions put on state ballots to outlaw starvation and other sufferings.
Also, it's confusing to me how so much of the military is made up of followers of a man who said to turn the other cheek, and how so many Christians believe in War. The answer i come up with is that most so called Christians give lip service to Jesus, but in practice follow the old testament judgement, punishment and anger model.
Many people who consider themselves Christians seem very accepting of brutality and violence, even torture and genocide, whether it's war, football, movies or television. On the other hand, they seem to be very condemning of expressions of sex, intimacy and pleasure, as the incident at the Super Bowl a few years ago epitomized, where seeing Janet Jackson's breast was deeply shocking for many viewers, while the game itself, where large grown men try to hurt each other, was exciting and interesting.
I think that this has caused a great deal of stress and mental illness through the ages. People were and are taught to not accept their own sensual natures, to be at war with themselves, often living their whole lives in a state of dis-ease (this goes triple if you are gay).
Not a prescription for a healthy society.
I have met some very good, kind, loving people who are bible believers, but they seem to be the exception, not the rule.
2 Christians say that it's true because the Bible says so, and that one should just trust that authority without questioning, as well as trusting whatever their preacher says.
I can't help but contrast the Buddha's statement that one should not accept what he said blindly, but rather test whether it is of worth and use, with the Christian belief that one should not expose oneself to other beliefs because one might be swayed by the devil. Christianity doesn't seem to show much confidence in either the doctrines or the believers.
It seems to me that Christians are taught to not question their beliefs, to not think creatively. Instead, they are taught to unquestioningly, blindly obey authority, and they seem to carry this into every realm of life. Unfortunately, it seems to me that this is the root cause of authoritarian governments, and the big reason why politicians and other authority figures can lie and get away with it, because people have been trained to obey and not question authority. An unthinking, unquestioning populace seems to me a terrible basis for democracy.
Christianity says "believe and be saved", in contrast to the Eastern idea of experiencing truth through various practices. The Christian monastic tradition has some sense of this, and Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart and Theresa of Avila certainly experienced God, but how many contemporary Christians, especially evangelicals, have any idea at at that a Christian mystical tradition exists?
The Eastern traditions teach that man has a dual nature, higher and lower, that it is our task to get in touch with our higher nature, and that no matter how bad our deeds, it is like the sun hidden by dark clouds. In contrast, the biblical traditions teach that man is vile and depraved, original sin, and that we need mercy and forgiveness because we're so bad. Maybe that's true, i don't think so.
In addition, many Christians believe in eternal damnation, that is, spending all eternity being tortured, and believe that if they don't believe in the Bible, perhaps even go against it, they will be in eternal suffering. In effect, a gun is put to their heads and they are terrorized and coerced into not questioning, "believing", and of course these are the children of children of children who for many generations were similarly terrorized and brainwashed, told to give up critical thinking and using their own judgement, trained to just blindly obey.
It is very difficult for me to take seriously the statements and beliefs of people who have been terrorized into submission since earliest childhood, by people who were similarly terrorized into submission.
How difficult it must be, after years, indeed generations, of being threatened with the most horrible punishment for questioning what you have been told, to open your mind to a dispassionate evaluation of that dogma.
Take a look at a book entitled The Year Of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs
3 Most self identified Christians seem to have no idea of the history of how the Bible was put together, or what the teachings of the early church were. Some don't even know that the Catholic and Protestant bibles have a different number of books.
Many Christians seem woefully ignorant of some of the most important parts of their religion. Many don't seem to even know that the Bible was put together at the order of the Roman Emperor Constantine, and that the politics of which texts to include and which to exclude made American politics look like a day in the park.
How many bible believers know that Matthew and Luke were not written by Matthew and Luke, but by people writing in their names who had never seen Jesus.
How many people know that scholars generally consider that, in the early years after Jesus, there was a short manuscript containing the sayings of Jesus, and that this is the basis for much of the words of Jesus found in the bible. Scholars call this document "Q".
How many people know of the great diversity of very different Christian doctrines in the first 200 years after Christ, or that many early Christians believed in reincarnation?
see Lost Christianities
Take a look at the work of Bart Ehrman, for example
Misquoting Jesus, The Story behind who changed the words of the bible and why
How many people know that Yahweh, Jehovah in the Old Testament, was the war god of certain tribes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh_(Canaanite_deity)
There is even scholarly evidence that Jesus may have accepted homosexuality (see link below)
http://www.wouldjesusdiscriminate.org/biblical_evidence/gay_couple.html
Things are nowhere near as simple as many people who consider themselves christians believe.
4 The words of Jesus constitute about 2 per cent of the pages of the bible. In practice, i think that this is about how much so called "Christianity" has to do with Jesus.
The bibles i have seen are about 1300 pages. The old testament is about 1000 pages, about %70 of the bible, the New about 300 pages.
Of these, about 130 pages are the four gospels directly about Jesus, about %10 of the total bible.
If one takes a highlighter and highlights only the words of Jesus, they come to maybe 20-30 pages, or about %2 of the total words of the bible. I really don't understand why they call it Christianity when there is so little directly by Jesus and not much more directly about him.
It seems to me that most people who call themselves Christians should really call themselves Biblists, and perhaps even Old Testament Biblists. I realize that these people consider that the Bible is the word of God and their connection with Jesus.
Try this exercise:
Get a bible you don't mind marking up.
Take a highlighter, highlight all the times in the Old Testament the angry Jehovah is pissed off and threatening punishment,
then go through the new testament and highlight all the instances where people are found wanting, there are a number of those.
On the other hand, if you take a different color highlighter and highlight those spots where god is happy and pleased with people, not so many. Try it, don't just take my word for it.
Statistically speaking, the main message of the Bible seems to be that people are bad and deserve to be punished, especially they are bad and deserve to be punished for not obeying the authority of the Lord.
And what terrible, disproportionate punishment;
to be sent to a torture chamber for all eternity, with no second chance
I simply cannot believe that a loving "Father" would do this. For me, on this rock alone, the whole thing founders, loses credibility.
Just looking at the words of Jesus, what i see is him forgiving the woman taken in adultery, giving the Sermon on the Mount, practicing non-violence, telling Peter to put up his sword, saying "as you do to the least among them you do it unto me". The teachings contained in the words of Jesus are often totally opposite to what i see believed among Christians, especially conservative christians and fundamentalists. That's why i think they should call themselves Biblists, rather than christians. One of the things i find admirable about Christianity has been the message that no matter how bad your sins, God loves you, and many people, criminals, etc, have turned their lives around based on that, but that seems to be one of the few loving parts of the dogma.
My perception is that proselytizers often do a "bait and switch"; god loves you, but when you get a little farther into it, he'll send you to a torture chamber for all eternity if you don't obey him. I've read in a number of auto-biographies how children woke up with nightmares night after night after being scared by this horrible prospect.
God as the greatest terrorist of all
Based on all the research i have done, my belief is that the bible was compiled by the Roman Empire as a way to instill the concept of obedience to authority on the most visceral, deep rooted level, using the horrible threats of eternal torture as a way to terrorize and coerce people into believing, with the carrot of heaven to entice people. Let's not forget that there were many, many manuscripts around at the time the bible was compiled. The bible is a collection of only a few of those manuscripts, chosen by men who had a purpose behind which teachings were chosen for inclusion and which were excluded. My belief is that, on the whole, the manuscripts chosen for inclusion gave the message of FEAR AND OBEY, while more spiritual teachings of love and compassion were, for the most part, excluded.
I have met very few people who i would consider Christians. Mostly i have met biblists who called themselves Christians, a name to which i think they have as much right as Ronald Reagan would have had to call himself a Marxist, which is the opposite of who he was. It often seems that people who start by talking about Christ ultimately worship a book, a book put together by men for their own purposes.
I think that many of these people were so terrorized in childhood by the message that they would be tortured for all eternity, that they were coerced into accepting a text which, if titled more accurately, could be called People are Bad and You're Going to Be Punished Really Harshly.
I see this "people are bad and deserve punishment" attitude showing up in every political issue conservative christians get involved in; long prison sentences for often small offences, capital punishment, acceptance of torture as American policy, Wars, disdain for the poor and needy, etc. It's a very logical consequence of the message which statistically predominates in the bible, which is that people are bad and deserve punishment
In summary, for the most part i find the bible a very brutal, harsh and unkind book,
with maybe %5-10 nuggets of inspired teaching and
i think the bible has very, very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus
and yes, i have read large parts of it. Most of the pages i read were soaked in blood.
I think Jesus' name has been used as a cover for many beliefs which are completely opposite to what he taught. Church history shows that many times the name of Jesus has been used to justify all sorts of ugly, harsh, unloving, generally bad behaviour, such as burning people at the stake, torture, .....
Christianity teaches original sin, that we are essentially bad and need to be made good. In contrast, Hinduism teaches that we are all God incarnate, and our path is to remember that, while Buddhism teaches a similar idea that at our essence we all are all enlightened, yet have forgotten, in the dust and clouds of craving and aversion which obscure our true nature. That makes a huge difference in people's psychology.
Christianity teaches that if one only believes, they will be saved, while the Eastern Religions believe that no one can do your work for you, you have to do it yourself. Teachers are for guidance, support and inspiration, but ultimately you have to walk road the road yourself. This makes a lot more sense to me.
There are still some people who genuinely carry on in what seems to me the spirit of Christ, who think about what they read and pick the wheat from the chaff, and i'm all for that, for the spirit and teachings of an enlightened, loving Christ, instead of the image of an angry, punishing Jehovah so often presented as being Christianity.
The question for anyone who considers themselves a Christian:
if the Bible can not be trusted, how can you know Christ and live in a way that accords with his spirit and teachings.
Good Luck
with perhaps %5-10 nuggets of inspired teaching.
*I think the Bible has very, very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus,
------------
Right at the beginning i would like to state that i revere Jesus as a great spiritual teacher, one of the greatest. Indeed, both Hindus and Buddhists, even Muslims, also revere him, they just don't believe he was the only one or the last one.
I am not writing this to deride or attack Christians, but to point out what seem to me to be great logical inconsistencies.
1 So many so called Christians seem much more concerned with who to hate than who to love.
This seems directly opposite to Christ's teachings.
They seem so angry about Gay Marriage and abortion. Hundreds of millions of children and adults are starving worldwide, indeed here in America, people lacking the basic necessities of life, yet there are no propositions put on state ballots to outlaw starvation and other sufferings.
Also, it's confusing to me how so much of the military is made up of followers of a man who said to turn the other cheek, and how so many Christians believe in War. The answer i come up with is that most so called Christians give lip service to Jesus, but in practice follow the old testament judgement, punishment and anger model.
Many people who consider themselves Christians seem very accepting of brutality and violence, even torture and genocide, whether it's war, football, movies or television. On the other hand, they seem to be very condemning of expressions of sex, intimacy and pleasure, as the incident at the Super Bowl a few years ago epitomized, where seeing Janet Jackson's breast was deeply shocking for many viewers, while the game itself, where large grown men try to hurt each other, was exciting and interesting.
I think that this has caused a great deal of stress and mental illness through the ages. People were and are taught to not accept their own sensual natures, to be at war with themselves, often living their whole lives in a state of dis-ease (this goes triple if you are gay).
Not a prescription for a healthy society.
I have met some very good, kind, loving people who are bible believers, but they seem to be the exception, not the rule.
2 Christians say that it's true because the Bible says so, and that one should just trust that authority without questioning, as well as trusting whatever their preacher says.
I can't help but contrast the Buddha's statement that one should not accept what he said blindly, but rather test whether it is of worth and use, with the Christian belief that one should not expose oneself to other beliefs because one might be swayed by the devil. Christianity doesn't seem to show much confidence in either the doctrines or the believers.
It seems to me that Christians are taught to not question their beliefs, to not think creatively. Instead, they are taught to unquestioningly, blindly obey authority, and they seem to carry this into every realm of life. Unfortunately, it seems to me that this is the root cause of authoritarian governments, and the big reason why politicians and other authority figures can lie and get away with it, because people have been trained to obey and not question authority. An unthinking, unquestioning populace seems to me a terrible basis for democracy.
Christianity says "believe and be saved", in contrast to the Eastern idea of experiencing truth through various practices. The Christian monastic tradition has some sense of this, and Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart and Theresa of Avila certainly experienced God, but how many contemporary Christians, especially evangelicals, have any idea at at that a Christian mystical tradition exists?
The Eastern traditions teach that man has a dual nature, higher and lower, that it is our task to get in touch with our higher nature, and that no matter how bad our deeds, it is like the sun hidden by dark clouds. In contrast, the biblical traditions teach that man is vile and depraved, original sin, and that we need mercy and forgiveness because we're so bad. Maybe that's true, i don't think so.
In addition, many Christians believe in eternal damnation, that is, spending all eternity being tortured, and believe that if they don't believe in the Bible, perhaps even go against it, they will be in eternal suffering. In effect, a gun is put to their heads and they are terrorized and coerced into not questioning, "believing", and of course these are the children of children of children who for many generations were similarly terrorized and brainwashed, told to give up critical thinking and using their own judgement, trained to just blindly obey.
It is very difficult for me to take seriously the statements and beliefs of people who have been terrorized into submission since earliest childhood, by people who were similarly terrorized into submission.
How difficult it must be, after years, indeed generations, of being threatened with the most horrible punishment for questioning what you have been told, to open your mind to a dispassionate evaluation of that dogma.
Take a look at a book entitled The Year Of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs
3 Most self identified Christians seem to have no idea of the history of how the Bible was put together, or what the teachings of the early church were. Some don't even know that the Catholic and Protestant bibles have a different number of books.
Many Christians seem woefully ignorant of some of the most important parts of their religion. Many don't seem to even know that the Bible was put together at the order of the Roman Emperor Constantine, and that the politics of which texts to include and which to exclude made American politics look like a day in the park.
How many bible believers know that Matthew and Luke were not written by Matthew and Luke, but by people writing in their names who had never seen Jesus.
How many people know that scholars generally consider that, in the early years after Jesus, there was a short manuscript containing the sayings of Jesus, and that this is the basis for much of the words of Jesus found in the bible. Scholars call this document "Q".
How many people know of the great diversity of very different Christian doctrines in the first 200 years after Christ, or that many early Christians believed in reincarnation?
see Lost Christianities
Take a look at the work of Bart Ehrman, for example
Misquoting Jesus, The Story behind who changed the words of the bible and why
How many people know that Yahweh, Jehovah in the Old Testament, was the war god of certain tribes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh_(Canaanite_deity)
There is even scholarly evidence that Jesus may have accepted homosexuality (see link below)
http://www.wouldjesusdiscriminate.org/biblical_evidence/gay_couple.html
Things are nowhere near as simple as many people who consider themselves christians believe.
4 The words of Jesus constitute about 2 per cent of the pages of the bible. In practice, i think that this is about how much so called "Christianity" has to do with Jesus.
The bibles i have seen are about 1300 pages. The old testament is about 1000 pages, about %70 of the bible, the New about 300 pages.
Of these, about 130 pages are the four gospels directly about Jesus, about %10 of the total bible.
If one takes a highlighter and highlights only the words of Jesus, they come to maybe 20-30 pages, or about %2 of the total words of the bible. I really don't understand why they call it Christianity when there is so little directly by Jesus and not much more directly about him.
It seems to me that most people who call themselves Christians should really call themselves Biblists, and perhaps even Old Testament Biblists. I realize that these people consider that the Bible is the word of God and their connection with Jesus.
Try this exercise:
Get a bible you don't mind marking up.
Take a highlighter, highlight all the times in the Old Testament the angry Jehovah is pissed off and threatening punishment,
then go through the new testament and highlight all the instances where people are found wanting, there are a number of those.
On the other hand, if you take a different color highlighter and highlight those spots where god is happy and pleased with people, not so many. Try it, don't just take my word for it.
Statistically speaking, the main message of the Bible seems to be that people are bad and deserve to be punished, especially they are bad and deserve to be punished for not obeying the authority of the Lord.
And what terrible, disproportionate punishment;
to be sent to a torture chamber for all eternity, with no second chance
I simply cannot believe that a loving "Father" would do this. For me, on this rock alone, the whole thing founders, loses credibility.
Just looking at the words of Jesus, what i see is him forgiving the woman taken in adultery, giving the Sermon on the Mount, practicing non-violence, telling Peter to put up his sword, saying "as you do to the least among them you do it unto me". The teachings contained in the words of Jesus are often totally opposite to what i see believed among Christians, especially conservative christians and fundamentalists. That's why i think they should call themselves Biblists, rather than christians. One of the things i find admirable about Christianity has been the message that no matter how bad your sins, God loves you, and many people, criminals, etc, have turned their lives around based on that, but that seems to be one of the few loving parts of the dogma.
My perception is that proselytizers often do a "bait and switch"; god loves you, but when you get a little farther into it, he'll send you to a torture chamber for all eternity if you don't obey him. I've read in a number of auto-biographies how children woke up with nightmares night after night after being scared by this horrible prospect.
God as the greatest terrorist of all
Based on all the research i have done, my belief is that the bible was compiled by the Roman Empire as a way to instill the concept of obedience to authority on the most visceral, deep rooted level, using the horrible threats of eternal torture as a way to terrorize and coerce people into believing, with the carrot of heaven to entice people. Let's not forget that there were many, many manuscripts around at the time the bible was compiled. The bible is a collection of only a few of those manuscripts, chosen by men who had a purpose behind which teachings were chosen for inclusion and which were excluded. My belief is that, on the whole, the manuscripts chosen for inclusion gave the message of FEAR AND OBEY, while more spiritual teachings of love and compassion were, for the most part, excluded.
I have met very few people who i would consider Christians. Mostly i have met biblists who called themselves Christians, a name to which i think they have as much right as Ronald Reagan would have had to call himself a Marxist, which is the opposite of who he was. It often seems that people who start by talking about Christ ultimately worship a book, a book put together by men for their own purposes.
I think that many of these people were so terrorized in childhood by the message that they would be tortured for all eternity, that they were coerced into accepting a text which, if titled more accurately, could be called People are Bad and You're Going to Be Punished Really Harshly.
I see this "people are bad and deserve punishment" attitude showing up in every political issue conservative christians get involved in; long prison sentences for often small offences, capital punishment, acceptance of torture as American policy, Wars, disdain for the poor and needy, etc. It's a very logical consequence of the message which statistically predominates in the bible, which is that people are bad and deserve punishment
In summary, for the most part i find the bible a very brutal, harsh and unkind book,
with maybe %5-10 nuggets of inspired teaching and
i think the bible has very, very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus
and yes, i have read large parts of it. Most of the pages i read were soaked in blood.
I think Jesus' name has been used as a cover for many beliefs which are completely opposite to what he taught. Church history shows that many times the name of Jesus has been used to justify all sorts of ugly, harsh, unloving, generally bad behaviour, such as burning people at the stake, torture, .....
Christianity teaches original sin, that we are essentially bad and need to be made good. In contrast, Hinduism teaches that we are all God incarnate, and our path is to remember that, while Buddhism teaches a similar idea that at our essence we all are all enlightened, yet have forgotten, in the dust and clouds of craving and aversion which obscure our true nature. That makes a huge difference in people's psychology.
Christianity teaches that if one only believes, they will be saved, while the Eastern Religions believe that no one can do your work for you, you have to do it yourself. Teachers are for guidance, support and inspiration, but ultimately you have to walk road the road yourself. This makes a lot more sense to me.
There are still some people who genuinely carry on in what seems to me the spirit of Christ, who think about what they read and pick the wheat from the chaff, and i'm all for that, for the spirit and teachings of an enlightened, loving Christ, instead of the image of an angry, punishing Jehovah so often presented as being Christianity.
The question for anyone who considers themselves a Christian:
if the Bible can not be trusted, how can you know Christ and live in a way that accords with his spirit and teachings.
Good Luck
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