The Need for Community

Quest for Community was the book. I read it while getting my Masters in Government. I don’t remember the author but I do remember the premise.

The premise was that all political motivations come from a quest for community; at least, until the last thirty years anyway.

The backbone of the liberal democratic tradition that spawned the great social democracies of western civilization is community.

Human beings are by nature social beings. In fact, all primates share that trait. In fact, most animals also are social creatures.

The social community networks and structures are how human beings survive.

Communities exist for everything, from work relationships to economic ones.

These inter-relationships are what we call the social sciences.

Nihilism develops when human beings deny their social being. Individualism as an end itself negates social communities. The hermit is the most obvious example.

Today, politically, the libertarian and extreme right wing are adopting many anti-community, nihilistic attitudes and positions. These are coming from fear. Fear of different groups. Fear of the future. Fear.

Government is depicted as inherently bad. The individual is touted as the be all and end all of human endeavor. Anything that encourages social relationships is attacked as somehow socialistic or communistic.

These nihilistic trends run counter to the community desires of all people.

Americans are one of the loneliest people on earth. This is especially true of affluent Americans.

To be successful in America is to isolate yourself. If you have money you can own several cars, buy a house in a gated community, afford endless air conditioning, a private pool, a private yard, a private farm; everything is private. You also can afford a small family, 1.2 children at last census.

The digital revolution means private computers, high definition T.V.s and all sorts of electronic gadgets that people use ALONE. A digital T.V. means you can watch sports as if you were there. In fact, that is the point; you are “virtually” there. No crowds, you can watch it and be by yourself!!! Alone!

The rich find private schools for their few children. They have Nannies so they don’t even have to see or raise their children. They work all the time on their blackberries and laptops, or I-Pads, and don’t even have to see anyone. Email takes care of even talking to everyone.

Want to see this madness in action? Just get trapped in any traffic jam. You will witness one person per call amidst thousands of cars. You will see earplugs, people texting on cell phones, people listening to I-Tunes, and nobody even looking at anyone else. No human face to face contact.

Most commuters ignore public transportation. They would rather be in their private auto-box, in their own little world.

Today, the conservatives are pushing hard to maintain this world in spite of the negative and potentially catastophic environmental and economic ramifications. Radical conservatives point to “inefficient and failing” government at all levels as examples of community or collective action failing. They demonize community and deify the private individual.

Taxes are seen as collective manifestations of government failure. Any sharing of resources is attacked as Un-American.

So, America uses almost 30% of the world’s oil supplies with about 2% of the world’s people. The United States produces a fraction of oil, but uses most of it. Oil companies, greedy for profits, attack any attempt to move away from a fatal reliance on a diminishing oil supply. Meanwhile, the carbon footprint of the American citizen is the highest in the world.

This is all to feed the anti-community movement, the private, me first pathetic motivation of the desperately lonely American.

Alcoholism is at an all time high. Drug use is skyrocketing. Divorces are over 50% of marriages. The society is falling apart.

We are lonely, partly affluent (a diminishing number are while the rest THINK they are) and BORED. Americans are some of the unhappiest people on earth.

That’s right, bored and miserable. Have any of you every sat down to watch cable or satellite T.V., with hundreds of program choices and not found anything that isn’t boring. In third world countries, the array of T.V. choices would be a bounty of interest to most. To Americans, it is boring. Nothing excites us anymore.

The boredom and the loneliness are not coming from anything other than the lack of community and social contact in our lives. We get sick of our children and our spouse because they are sometimes the only ones we come in contact with for weeks!

Homeschooled children usually do well academically, but often are social misfits. As they mature, it is not unusual to see these bright children turn to drugs or crime. Certainly they are bored. They also don’t know how to relate to other human beings! But, more parents are pulling their children out of public and even charter schools to home school them. This further isolates the children of the affluent in cacoons of miserable lonliness.

The reason for all this misery? Lack of community.

The ache for community is obvious if any of you have ever taken the train. Trains, at least in the West, are museums on wheels. They are slow, inefficient and definitely not timely. However, they are one thing: interesting and have a community.

But is not the mechanic s of the train that is interesting. It is the community! It doesn’t take long before you are talking to total strangers, at first about why you are on a museum on wheels, than about family, home, your past, your children; etc. You find yourself talking to perfect strangers for hours on end.

This is different from air travel. Each seat is divided into threes (usually) and you can’t talk to the person behind or in front of you. So, you visit , between bouts of terror, but now very much. Usually everyone is alone with their blackberry or I-Pod, watching a movie or listening to music, or working; ALONE.

A train is way different. You can walk around on a train. You can move from car to car. They have a dining car, even a bar! You talk, you drink, and…..you live, you are part of a community!

No matter what the nihilistic crowd says, no matter how many billions they spend to keep us isolated from each other and line their pockets, people are still people. People need and yearn for community.

My wife grew up in a planned community in the mid-West. The community was organized around common meeting areas with no back yard fences. Everyone was encouraged to go outside in good and bad weather and visit with the neighbors. She talks about it all the time as a great way to grow up.

In my neighborhood, at least at first because the houses were mostly new, nobody had a fence. We had block parties, and all the kids played with each other. Housewives (there were such things because many moms stayed at home) visited with each other in the front or back yard, sitting at tables and sipping coffee for hours. They shared recipes, stories and lived each other troubles and triumphs.

Remember “I Love Lucy”? Two or three families were always together. The “Honeymooners”, same thing, Jackie Gleason was constantly with various neighbors. In fact, I cannot remember a plot when only the main character’s family was involved.

The difference from today? There were ommunites everywhere. People grew up together, matured together, and grew old together.

Nothing is more sad than the tragic isolation of seniors in American today. My father, for example is living in our home, my mother is gone, and his greatest “fear” is going to a rest home. So, he sits, with his dog, incredibly lonely. He doesn’t go to the Senior Citizens Hall, he does go to church once a week, with us, but that is it. Otherwise, unless we call or go by, he has his dog, his T.V., and his house; isolated and alone. And, the loneliness is killing him.

America is on the wrong track in many ways today. The most profound social error that exists is our rejection of community for isolation. The conservative movement is pushing this hard, in the mistaken belief that community is bad, that individualism is good.

Human beings are primates. Primates left alone, will simply wither and die.

We need community to thrive. We need it for happiness, for variety, for life itself.

That is why we need to rid ourselves of the automobile culture. That is why we need to get back on trains, buses or other public ways of getting around. That is why we need to build our communities with common areas, no fences, encouraging us to communicate with others. That is why we need to encourage public education, public parks, public not private everything.
Otherwise, we will have everything, except happiness.

CBS Funny?

Today, while watching CBS news I witnessed the main media's tone deafness regarding global warming and climate change.

As a witty end to the newscast, which by the way carried the news of a flash flood that blew away a 50 years old dam, CBS carried a comparison between last winter and this summer.

In both segments, the "odd" heat, and "odd" amounts of snow were pointed to in a jovial way as somehow examples of "people griping about the weather, but can't do anything about it".

I cringed as I watched it.

Everyday...every single day, there is more compelling evidence that CO 2 emissions are creating climate change that could render our future a living hell on earth.

There is more moisture in the atmosphere. There just is. This results in incredible downpours and huge snowfalls. These "freak storms" are just not freak. They are products of dramatic climate change.

Meanwhile, the major media continues to ignore global warming, or treat it like a "freak climate oddity" and write witty, funny pieces about it.

Nashville, Tennessee, Alabama, New Orleans, Shasta County, San Diego; the list goes on and on. Wildfires, huge rainfall totals that wash hundreds of houses away.

And don't forget the droughts in California, Arizona and other western states. Shasta Lake, the key lake in the Central Valley Project, filled this year for the first time in almost 20 years.

We are still considered to be in a drought condition. And this is only the beginning.

Meanwhile, thanks to CBS/NBC/Fox/ABC et al, people are propagandized that the climate catastrophe is somehow a cute, funny thing...just "mother nature being mother nature".

The polar ice cap will melt completely in the next 10 years. It may be gone in the summer next year!

I won't list the 99% scientific belief in global warming. I won't list the full court press that oil companies like BP are waging to convince us all that global warming is just cute, or funny.

So, we don't do anything. The energy bill fails in the Senate. There is no climate legislation. California is poised to vote for a proposition that will stop our efforts to act now to reduce CO 2 emissions until unemployment gets to levels we haven't seen in twenty years. Of course this is sponsored by oil companies.

Cute. It's really all cute.

In a few years this cute little "thing" will kill millions of human beings, animals, and just might poison the oceans. This little cute thing may end human civilization on the planet.

And tonight, with this calamity looking us right in the face, CBS does a piece on how funny the odd hot weather is, and how funny the huge eastern snow drifts were.

Of course, both seasons set records for precipitation and heat. 2009 was the hottest year in human recorded history..

And it is just starting.

And it is not funny.

Today I Spent Some Time

Today, after a nice (?) round of golf, I spend a very interesting hour talking with a very interesting person. I find out later, looking at his info, that he is a "tea party member".

He claimed to vote for Obama, but now is very critical of the President. I have a little problem with the first part of this.

Some personal criticisms were expressed.. I constantly reminded him of the lack of personal contact he had with the President. He didn't seem to mind these questions. Yet, he talked as if he knew Obama personally.

Personally? That implies a relationship that none of us has.

This points out the conservative criticisms of the President as if they somehow "know" the President. Huh???

That is ridiculous. None of us can possibly know the President personally.

Which points me to the observation of the ridiculous position the tea party has. They somehow know the President.. They know his mind. They know his motives.

I am a liberal. I never have professed to know the President. I would like to know him. I would like to have a couple beers with him. But, I don't know him.

So, how in the world can the "cons" "know him".

It is ridiculous. It is absurd.

Which sums up the cons position. Absurd, and ridiculous!

Another Con

Unbelievable. Now the cons have decided to vote against extending unemployment compensation. The reason is that people are shirking work to use up all their unemployment. These implies that people stay on unemployment willingly.

Remember the overwhelming numbers of unemployed workers are applying for work in mass numbers. Remember, the amount of unemployment compensation is minimal. People cannot pay their mortgages nor feed their families on unemployment compensation. Five people apply for every job opening.

Thousands show up for work. Job fairs are overwhelmed with applicants.

And still, the idiot cons argue that unemployment is encouraging unemployment? What?

These people are beyond belief.

The country may be lurching to the right but it is stupidly being led by Fox News and the Heritage Foundation. This "grass roots movement" is being fed by large corporate donations and funding.

The bottom line here is corporations are running the public debate in this country. The Republican Party is owned by the far right corporate class. Money is winning!

Today, right NOW, the top 500 companies in the United States are sitting on the highest amounts of cash and reserves in history. Do they consider investing in America?

No, they are sitting on their hands as America goes broke. Foreclosures are still raging, unemployment is still in double figures, and the rich corporations won't invest. Remember, one reason for their huge reserves is the federal stimulus, tax credits and tax cuts. Do they invest, like the con's favorite philosophy promises. No way. They sit and they wait because "We are not sure of the stability of the economy". This is another proof that "trickle down economics" doesn't work.

Of course, the real reason the corporations are not investing is they are waiting for the 2010 mid-term elections so they can help elect more Republicans who are in their wallets.

So WAKE UP AMERICA. Who got you into this mess? Who has always been the friend of corporate power? Who now votes against the unemployed and makes up a fiction that unemployment benefits actually encourage unemployment..

Anyone who has been on unemployment knows the truth. They know the agony and the depression being without work grinds into a person. People are not lazy who are unemployed. They are victims of the conservative free enterprise nonsense that has literally ruined the middle class and has destroyed our once vibrant economy.

Scientific Evidence

In the past long 40 years of conservative cutting government purposefully to "starve the beast", we have lived with the myth that cutting taxes somehow spurs investment and grows the economy.

In fact, the Laffer Curve, even went so far as to promise that by growing the economy, reduced taxes would actually INCREASE tax revenue because of the overall growth of the tax base.

The problem is it NEVER has happened. That is right, NEVER.

What does happen is a concentration of wealth in the few, and a rapid, seemingly unstoppable shrinkage of the middle class. The promised growth of the economy, we found out in 1990 and in 2008, has not happened; at least a healthy growth of the economy. Instead we have a toxic imbalance of the economy that is killing the middle class in the country.

Take President Obama's middle class tax cut, for example. This was piled on to the largest tax cut in our nation's history by George W. Bush. The result? A growing deficit and a job loss disaster.

It is time to tell these idiots that it doesn't work. It is so obvious that radical conservatives now control the Republican Party. Any chance for compromise has been lost.

We need to use the government to stimulate the economy with government jobs. I suggest nationalizing education for a start. That's right, the federal government does it. All state and local educational bureaucracies should be shuttered. And, the revenue deficits that almost every state now endures, could be avoided by shifting the task to the federal government (along with the appropriate tax revenue).

This, I would suggest, be fazed in over twenty years.

To have thousands of teachers laid of throughout the country is madness. The federal government should take on the task. I suggest upping taxes on petroleum companies (let's start with BP!).

I do suggest that all Americans begin asking themselves why they pay taxes. We have bought into the fallacy of tax cuts, which has served to destroy people and freedom.

The rich, led by B.P. and Wall Street are raping this country and we can stop it if we want.

But, for sure, this will not happen if we put the "Tea Party" in control. If we do that in 2010, we are done...

Democracy simply cannot take the inequities that have developed. The United States now is not even the top ten of equitable governments in the world. We are slowly sliding into fascism!

Selective Amnesia

I forgot almost a decade.

The conservatives and their clones are amazing. They were amazing when they were in power from 2000 to 2008 and now they amaze even more with their ability to lie and to deceive.

Just look at the amazing distortion of the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster. From 2000 to 2008 de-regulation was the unofficial policy of the U.S. Government. This disaster ranged from the financial markets to oil production and drilling.

"Drill Baby Drill" was a campaign slogan of Sarah Palin and John McCain. There are dozens of examples of big oil literally buying government regulators, just like Wall Street bought the S.E.C.

Then, in 2008 the wheels fell off the wagon. The inevitable distortion of competition wrecked millions of American's savings and made thousands homeless.

And in the Gulf, the inevitable occurred. A gusher of oil has soiled the ocean and the mess is just beginning. There is not a shadow of a doubt that the lack of regulation led to this disaster.

Meanwhile, the "cons" are trying every excuse from "It's an Act of God" to "It's the environmentalists fault" to cover their tracks.

And, just as a side note, the past six months as recently reported by NASA probably will be the warmest in human world history.

Of course, the cons are incredulous, pointing to the cold American winter and the recent mild spring in California.

The danger of this propaganda is that is so distorts reality that people actually believe it.

Historical examples of these kind of mass hallucinations are frightening. The most famous example was Hitler's (I don't mean to sound like Joe Beck) successful brainwashing during WWII that led an entire country to suicide. Germans swore they did not know of the Holocaust. At the end of the war, boys willingly ran into machine guns to protect the homeland, far after most countries would have surrendered. It took Hitler's suicide to finally end the madness.

Japan likewise followed the same tragic delusional course. When G.I.s invaded Okinawa they were faced with a civilian population that had been so deceived that many committed suicide rather than surrender. This led to the use of the Atomic Bomb to shock Japan's leadership out of their delusions. Only the threat of total destruction led the Emperor to finally stop the madness.

Mass delusions are an historical fact.

In America's west, we saw "Manifest Destiny" used to justify genocide of Native Americans. This included clubbing babies to death and starving women and children. Christian Americans took part in atrocities all in the name of spreading democracy from sea to shining sea. In retrospect the mass murder is reprehensible and an national shame. The Japanese used these atrocities to delude their people into so distrusting Americans that it took an Atomic Bomb to shock them into surrender.

Ironically, the growth of the "Indian Gaming Industry" has produced enormous wealth for some of the survivors of America's Holocaust, but only a fraction of a once robust population survive.

You can distort, you can lie, you can deceive, but history always seems to come back to haunt you!

The SAME mind-set that led America to exterminate Native Americans is at work today in conservatives denial of Global Warming and in their stubborn lies about dirty oil.

A myth must be maintained no matter what. The ends justify the means. Drill Baby Drill. Go Nuclear. It's the environmentalists fault. Oil shale is endless energy and is cheap. There is clean coal energy generation today. Liberals are using Global Warming for cheap political advantage. The planet might be warming but naturally, not by humans. B.P. is for green energy. Trust us!

You get the drift. Denials, lies and propaganda are being funded by big oil and corporations to cover their polluting and corruption tracks.

The cons have a vested interest in fooling us all so they can be returned to power. President Obama used a perfect analogy. "It like giving the keys back to the guy who drove you into the ditch".

In California Proposition 16 is being aggressively pushed by PG&E in about as blatant a self-interest campaign as we have seen. (That is saying quite a bit in California).

The line is that PG&E is trying to save taxpayers money that cities are throwing away on cheaper energy options for customers. Incredibly this tact is gaining traction and the proposition might pass! The truth is PG&E will keep their monopoly on their markets and a 2/3 vote requirement will make it virtually impossible to free people from higher energy bills.

And, sadly, municipal energy companies have proven to be much more ready to develop clean energy production, while PG& E is using oil, coal and natural gas; all dirty petroleum based. It is after all, Pacific Gas and Electric!

In short, PG&E propaganda is deluding Californians into voting exactly against their self interest and the environment.

Sound familiar? This is the same thing B.P. and Big Oil was able to do from 2000-2008, deceive the general population and America's leadership into a "trust us" mentality, fueled by millions in campaign contributions or outright bribes.

America Wake Up! Stop trusting corporations and big oil. Stop trusting conservatives who yell for smaller government and less regulation with the promise of economic growth.

Where is it? From 2000 to 2008 we saw the most massive de-regulation and tax cuts in years and what was the result?

The result was a grinding recession/depression, a oil slick in the Gulf killing wildlife and destroying the economy, and global warming that will ultimately kill millions and may end our way of life.

Wake up America!!!!

Witness California

Witness California.

If any of you out there want to continue the loon tune conservative approach, look at California.

Thirty years ago we got conned into Proposition 13. Housing values had shot up, and people were worried about property taxes wrecking them.

Unfortunately, the legislature misjudged the anger and did not vote for relief, so a lunatic fringe element (in those days) succeeded in passing Prop 13.

Prop 13 benefited a special interest (large apartment owners) and purportedly gave tax relief to homeowners. A part of it was a 2/3 requirement, that many thought unconstitutional at the time, to raise taxes. There was not such requirement to cut taxes however.

California led the "tax revolt" that propelled Ronald Reagan into the White House.

This was all based on a reaction to "big government spending" , welfare, and generally a revulsion to the aging New Deal.

Underlying it all was a healthy dose of racism, white males were still angry for the 1964 Voting Rights Act and even more angry about the Civil Rights Act. The Republican Party inherited the solid conservative Democratic South, and with Nixon's Southern Strategy, the Republicans have controlled the White House more than not over the past thirty years.

Unfortunately, the economic myths that this conservative movement was based on were not based on any facts. The idea that redistributing wealth from the small elite who always seem to do better to the rest of us, to build a strong middle class of consumers was attacked as somehow socialist.

In fact, of course, the large middle class that developed out of World War II and because of the New Deal, was at the core of the longest period of prosperity in American's history.

Back to California...Proposition 13 ushered in countless propositions and laws cutting state and local revenue for practically everything. Meanwhile, a host of propositions were based for a series of bonds, that build schools, libraries, roads, dams and the like. Of course, bonds are a convenient way of pushing paying for things onto the next generation of taxpayers.

Then, in 1999, Governor Davis, thinking that the dot com surge was solid, made the bad mistake of cutting taxes while obligating the state to new spending, especially in augmentations to public employee pensions. One area of stress in pensions was finally giving a break to public safety employees, who many times were so injured and damaged by a lifetime in dangerous work, that they failed to live to see their pensions, or if they did, had such high medical bills they could not survive economically.

So, cut taxes and raise spending was tried. And, remember, to raise taxes took a 2/3 vote (virtually unattainable) while cutting taxes took a simple majority.

And, both parties used the ruse it was okay to cut revenue while spending at least at a level rate from year to year, because "the growth in the economy" would make up for it (the infamous Laffer Curve).

Of course this might work (except it didn't) if the economy grows at a double digit rate. Of course, it didn't.

In 2007-2008 it all came crashing down. California had already been running a chronic budget deficit for the 1990s, but then a new body-building movie star Governor effectively recalled Governor Davis, with a promise to again CUT taxes by attacking the Vehicle License Fee.

This fee did two things: one, it dissuaded multiple car ownership as oil prices went up and supply is now obviously going down, which was an attempt to develop some kind of conservation in a state which had pioneered the automobile culture and two, it made up about 8 to 10 billion dollars of state and local government revenue.

But Arnold cut it, as promised, and right away the nagging state deficit became a annual crisis. That was until 2007-2008 when it became a calamity.

Now, the entire welfare program (welfare to work) program is offered up by Arnold and the cons to be cut. That is right, the entire thing! This benefits mostly children.

And, incredibly, the entire state metal health program is seriously being offered for elimination, which means thousands of mental health patients untreated and running loose on California streets! Meanwhile, the state university and college system has been decimated and public education has taken a twenty percent cut the last two years with more to come.

In short, California is a disaster.

And, guess what, the cons want more! What began as a "tax revolt" has not started to look like fascist anarchy.

It gets "better". The latest is a gem of a proposition offered by PG&E, a private power company, that if passed will require a 2/3 vote (sound familiar) of unincorporated areas and the parent city, if a city wants to annex PG&E areas into what is almost always cheaper city power areas.

PG&E is of course, oil and natural gas based, while cities and municipal energy companies are beginning to go green. PG&E is spending millions to basically kill green energy!

And, another proposition seeks to kill the state's global warming law by requiring it be suspended until unemployment falls below 5.5 percent (that has not happened in over twenty years. The sponsor of this? Oil companies of course.

This is the same oil industry that has kept California from passing an oil severance tax that virtually all the major oil producing states have already, even in such "liberal bastions" as Texas for example!

This, remember, is happening in a state that is flat broke, and is literally talking about closing prisons and selling them to get revenue. Anyone seen San Quentin?

So, if any of you out there care, witness California for how it shouldn't be done.

California has sacrificed its economy on the throne of tax cutters and far right conservatives who are basically in the hip pocket of big oil and incredibly rich people.

Where else would the two Republicans who are running for governor are both multi-billionaires, who are spending millions of dollars to become governor of a state that still will have a Democratic majority in the legislature?

And the reward will be to be governor of a state that most political scientists say is ungovernable!

Witness California!