Article: Cancún and the new economics of climate change

Article: Cancún and the new economics of climate change

Education Policy?

... I posted this on the HuffingtonPost.Com site regarding the article: "How Will Republican Wins Affect Federal Education Policy?" You can read the article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/03/how-will-republican-wins-_n_778496.html

The part of this issue that is not being addressed is the demands of the DE regarding testing. Please look at what is going to be tested in 2011-it's appalling. If at best the testing only tests a small portion of what should be really taught in school - music, creativity, patterning, physical education, art, dance to name only a few. What the tests test in the fourth grade is read and math, that’s it. The whole experience of learning is more than those two subjects, lots more, yet the DE only test math and reading, it like testing for how pure water is by testing only for gas and oil. There is no reason to rely on these very limited areas for understanding how kids are getting along in school. I have no idea who creates these tests - I can bet it's probably some corporate hacks that have a big contract that has been greased by the political process, made simple by the politicians that passed the education bills that benefited these 'educators'. But that's just speculation on my part, but I wouldn't put it pass the political jerks that use every issue they can get their hands on to advance their own personal slant on the world. End of rant.

Article: Propose/Appraise Carbon Tax

Article: Propose/Appraise Carbon Tax

Article: Pittsburgh Bans Natural Gas Drilling

Article: Pittsburgh Bans Natural Gas Drilling

Article: Pachakuti: Indigenous perspectives, degrowth and ecosocialism

Article: Pachakuti: Indigenous perspectives, degrowth and ecosocialism

To enter this dialogue with respect, we need an introduction to this movement, which some call the “Pachakuti”, a term taken from the Quechua “pacha”, meaning time and space or the world, and “kuti”, meaning upheaval or revolution.

In its efforts to exert some political influence on solutions to the current world financial and climate crises the nascent international ecosocialist movement should direct some attention to a synthesis of the western ecosocialist discourse with the growing Latin American indigenous discourse that is making exciting progress, albeit in fits and starts, toward an international charter for the protection of the planet, Mother Earth, and all forms of life on it.

Article: Private equity sees "buckets of money" in water buys

Article: Private equity sees "buckets of money" in water buys

Article: Anglicans: We have to acknowledge and respond to population issues in order to care for life

Article: Anglicans: We have to acknowledge and respond to population issues in order to care for life

Article: What Is True Sustainability?

Article: What Is True Sustainability?

Stop Using Credit Cards Today - Why?

When this economy that we are all under, that is driven by the two percent that rule us, the middle class and the working class suffer when the wrong switches and levers are pulled that benefit those two percenters. The banks and 'investment bankers' that turned houses into short term profits for themselves and then had to have the 'government' - taxpayers, you and me pay them to stay in business, it left the middle and working class with fewer jobs and the real prospect of starvation.

That's because the sweat of hardworking people are nothing but wage laborers and our work has become another way to make profits from - and can be discarded at the whim of the corporate oligarchy that has developed in the U.S. and the world.

We have no say regarding how our economy is used and manipulated, the people that do, you and I don't see, because it happens in rooms with no numbers, in buildings that have no names by people who pull those switches and levers, the very people that got us into this mess in the first place.

They are the ones that pay the politicians and media mines to make sure you and I have no chance, no chance at all. It's the media that is the lap dog of these two percenters. It's not a 'liberal' media; it's a corporate media that wins big when the political campaign season comes around and who pays this corporate media, the multi-national banks, oil, pharmaceuticals, and mega mega corporations. It's all about profits for the billionaires and starvation for the working people of this country.

... and most of us buy this corrupt system. How stupid is that? Really stupid.

So for a start, here's one idea. Start paying for things that you buy - in cash. That effects banks in a big way, stop using credit cards as much as possible. By doing that simple act you and I can begin to transform this stupid system over night.

If you can’t do that, write more checks, just stay away from credit cards.

The Working Class Needs to Wake Up

It's time for us 'socialist liberals' to get back on the streets and take down these job killing trade pacts that the middle and right wing politicians keep getting passed. The Wall Street and multi-national merchants of crap have been shafting the middle class and the working class and I must not forget the really big boys - 'dirty oil'.

Look I'm old enough to see this country divided by what happened in the south in the sixties, getting people with a skin color other than white a place at the dinner was a big deal – because of that white southern’s decided to vote for what every came along that coded things like 'get rid of the education department of the federal government' and the likes of what Rand Paul said to get elected in of course another southern state. He’s the prime example of trash talking dinner deniers who how resides in the Senate of all places, racism is not dead in this country by a long shot as Paul proves the point. The south is still a race bating election winning place of no hope - it's going to take a hundred years to get those white, racists mad men out, if every. Another one now resides in the Senate; raise the confederate flag high and tall over Rand Paul's state.

And so the saga goes on and on.

I have no idea how to convince a white guy with a high school education that when he votes for Republican 'fiscal conservatives' he's voting against his own interests - other to tell him he's in the spot he's end not because of us 'liberals' but because of the right wing radicals that call themselves fiscal conservatives.

So as a white man that grew up in a working class family and reside in that class today, it's time for us to tell my people, they got screwed by the people they keep electing. Wise up and get your butt in gear and demand that the government trade pacts all get scrapped so we white dudes who know how to build things, make things have a chance to do just that, because we don’t have that chance now.

It's not about black, white, brown, yellow or pink - it's about jobs and the corporate politicians that get their marching orders from people like WalMart, Exxion, Shell, BP, that's right multi-national monsters like that that now run this country and wipe out working class jobs by the millions here in this country, to go to hell.

So it's really time to take back this country and our streets, the time is ... NOW.

Big 5 Corporate Owned Supreme Court Judges

Not even Harry Potter has encountered a more diabolical plot. Five corporate-friendly judges on the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for corporate spending in our elections with the Citizens United decision, undoing years of established law. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a “non-profit” corporation funded by some of the richest corporations here and abroad, has spent more than tens of millions of dollars funding inaccurate attack ads to persuade voters to elect right-wing extremist corporate-funded candidates, and the final tally of all their spending and the front groups they stealthily support is not even in yet. That’s why we call them the “Chamber of Secrets.”
... posted from Move to Amend - End corporate rule, legalize democarcy

Path of Sanity

There are many people of like concerns that are traveling on a path of sanity. Their individual concerns all add up to the making of a path of sanity. Each person or group know that there needs to be solutions to these concerns but what they might be are not foreshadowed for many reasons. I have many issues of concern and as I travel along this path I look forward and I see people that are farther along the path than I, look back some who are just getting started, but we are all on this path to sanity.

I think we need a spokes person, one who could speak to a larger crowed and tell them about our path. We need a person that we look up to, respect and would voice our needs, hopes that would foreshadow what our individual stories are in a compelling way.

I think that person is Van Jones and I think we should ask him to take on the task of telling others about our Path of Sanity.

We Need More Room

economics

The world economic system is in the process of being reinvented. It is taking place by people in sectors of the economy that don't know they are really on the cutting edge of that change.

They are questioning some of the most rooted ideas that have been around for hundreds of years. In the world of science people are questioning the existing incentive mechanisms, the open access to information, the ownership of intellectual property, does innovation drive technology or is it the other way round?

Was the industrial revolution a technology movement or a social movement? It appears that the industrial revolution was really a social movement that introduced, for example - the creation of a class of poor people, the idea of industrial jobs, capital flows. A social movement that created our existing economic model that we are all ruled by.

Here are a few more questions just for starters. Is there such a thing as venture capital philanthropy? Can our present economic system grow forever or are we faced with replacing growth with development?

The people of the world are facing massive change one way or the other, are we going to except the change that is happening without our understanding of what we are doing that is making this change or are we going to assess where we presently are and chart a new course. The course has to start with an economic system that is more democratic than the present one, for the ever expanding idea of growth is just not sustainable and the waste and sacking of the earth environment will only in the end reduce the human population in a way that is going to create massive dislocation and world wide die offs.

It's up to you.

Change world economic system as presently defined

Every ecological disaster over time is forgotten within our collective societal mindset. We who struggle in the global goo of corporate misadventures are confronted with this ever-ending struggle. But now and then there is a massive environmental pollution eruption that our collective mindset acknowledges and recognizes the massive repercussion that a disaster of great magnitude has done.

With this latest disaster, we have to press our concern; we are mandated to do something to fix the root cause that created this latest disaster. We need to offer a comprehensive solution and present that solution in a unifying way that we all can get behind.

The world economic system as presently defined - the ‘free market’ system has to change. It has to change because it is affecting the lively hoods of people and the planetary environment that supports people. We need an ecological economic system that includes the planetary environment that makes it possible for human to exist.

We need to totally restructure how humans exist and relate on this planet.

We need to create an economic system that supports human coexistence with all things natural to this planet. No artificial or incomplete answers for our complete and universal coexistence with this planet.

The root cause of this continuous escalation of destruction is the economic shortsighted dependence on many human endeavors that support and subsidize the existing economic system.

The changes that need to take place are the re-introduction of economic relationships that support and stabilize complete ecological sharing and rejuvenation.

Without an inclusive plan, we will continue to have more destructive ecological events of massive ecological destruction on a greater and greater scale.

We need to start now by using our unique collective worldwide communication technology to accomplish the goal of a totally inclusive planetary economy that begins to change the existing economic paradigm and shifts that paradigm in a totally new direction.

Where did the red cars go?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--oWwuzIutM

Where did the red cars go?

Los Angeles once had red cars
They tooled around LA everyday
They ran on electricity
From the north to south bay

They carried people from home
To places of fun and games
They carried people to work
From their towns of many names

These red cars ran on tracks
The tracks ran all over LA
They were great fun to ride
Because you could enjoy the day

Life was really great
The sky was blue
The air you could even breathe
And everyone loved it too

Life was good in LA
It was fun to live in such a town
People came from all over
To live and love and be a clown

The red cars one day vanished
The sky turned blue to brown
Gone like the sun had vanished
The reds cars could not be found

Does nature have rights? Should nature have rights?

Here's an ordinance that celdf.org is proposing for Pennsylvania.



An Ordinance by the Second Class Township of ________, _________ County, Pennsylvania, Acknowledging the Rights of Natural Communities and Ecosystems and Establishing a System of Enforcing and Protecting Those Rights

Against Corporations and Other Business Entities



Section 1. Name. The name of this Ordinance shall be “The Rights of Nature Ordinance.”



Section 2. Authority. This Ordinance is adopted and enacted pursuant to the authority granted to _______ Township by all relevant state and federal Constitutions and laws, including, but not limited to, the following:



The founding documents of the United States, which recognize that governments are created to secure and protect inalienable and fundamental rights;



The Constitution of the United States, Article IV, §4, which requires the United States to guarantee a Republican Form of Government;



The Constitution of Pennsylvania, Art. 1, § 2, which provides that all power is inherent in the people, and that all free governments are founded on the peoples’ authority and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness;



The Constitution of Pennsylvania, Art. 1, §27, which recognizes that Pennsylvanians are trustees of the natural world;



The general authority granted by the Constitution of Pennsylvania and the Second Class Township Code to make and adopt all such ordinances, bylaws, rules, and regulations as may be deemed expedient or necessary for the proper management, care, and control of _________ Township and its finances and the maintenance of the health, safety, peace, good government, and welfare of ________Township;



Pennsylvania Statutes, Tit. 53, Municipal and Quasi-Municipal Corporations, §66506, which authorizes _____________ Township to enact ordinances necessary for the proper management, care, and control of the Township and its finances and the maintenance of peace, good government, health, and welfare of the Township.





Section 3. Findings and General Purpose. The ________ Township Board of Supervisors recognizes that:



(1) Governments are created to secure and protect inalienable and fundamental rights;



(2) People and their communities are trustees of nature, and communities of nature and ecosystems form part of the natural trust;



(3) It is well-settled law that trustees are required to protect and preserve the trust,



(4) As trustees, people and communities are obligated to protect and preserve natural communities and ecosystems;



(5) Natural communities and ecosystems are currently being destroyed, degraded, and weakened by corporations and other business entities;



(6) Governments empower those corporations and other business entities through the bestowal of constitutional “rights” and powers upon them;



(7) The environmental regulatory system merely regulates how quickly natural communities and ecosystems will be destroyed and degraded;



(8) The environmental regulatory system has failed to protect and preserve natural communities and ecosystems because regulations focus solely on minimizing the adverse environmental impacts resulting from certain activities,



(9) The environmental regulatory system fails to protect and preserve natural communities and ecosystems because it treats those communities and systems as property;



(10) Creation and validation of the environmental regulatory system thus fails to satisfy the duties of humans and communities to be trustees of natural communities and ecosystems;



(11) Recognition by humans and communities that natural communities and ecosystems have fundamental and inalienable rights is necessary to satisfy the obligation and duty of people and communities as trustees;



(12) Creating a process for the legal enforcement of those fundamental and inalienable rights by people and communities is necessary to fulfill peoples’ role as trustees for natural communities and ecosystems.



Section 4. Specific Purpose. The specific purpose of this Ordinance is to acknowledge the inalienable, fundamental rights of nature, and establish an enforcement system whereby people and communities can protect and vindicate the rights of nature against actions taken by corporations and other business entities.



Section 5. Statement of Law. Natural communities and ecosystems possess inalienable and fundamental rights to exist and prosper, and no corporation or business entity – or persons acting in corporate or business capacities – shall deny those rights, or interfere with the vitality or functioning of those communities or ecosystems.



Section 6. Statement of Law. Every living creature within the Township of ____________possesses an inalienable and fundamental right to be an integral part of a community of nature and ecosystem, and no corporation or business entity shall deprive or deny living creatures that right.

Section 7. Statement of Law. The Township Board of Supervisors shall not make or enforce any law which shall abridge the rights of natural communities and ecosystems.



Section 8. Statement of Law. The enumeration in this Ordinance, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by natural communities, living creatures, and ecosystems within the Township of ___________________.



Section 9. Enforcement. When this Ordinance or the underlying rights recognized by this Ordinance are violated, it shall be the duty of the Board of Supervisors of the Township of _____________to file an enforcement action against any corporation, business entity, or persons acting in corporate or business capacities. Such action shall seek to protect, preserve, and vindicate the rights of nature as recognized by this Ordinance. Any natural person shall also have the authority to file an action in the appropriate judicial forum against any corporation, business entity, or persons acting in corporate or business capacities, which has violated, is violating, or threatens to violate, the rights of animals or ecosystems within ___________ Township as outlined by this Ordinance. Protecting, preserving, and vindicating the rights acknowledged in this Ordinance shall include seeking both punitive and compensatory damages against a corporation, business entity, and/or managers of those entities, under the authority of state and federal civil rights statutes.



Section 10. Enforcement. For purposes of the enforcement of the rights acknowledged in this Ordinance, natural communities and ecosystems shall be considered “persons” within 42 U.S.C. §1983 and other federal and state laws adopted to vindicate and enforce rights.



Section 11. Severability. The provisions of this Ordinance are severable. If any section, clause, sentence, part, or provision of the Ordinance shall be held illegal, invalid, or unconstitutional by any court of competent jurisdiction, such decision of the court shall not affect, impair, or invalidate any of the remaining sections, clauses, sentences, parts, or provisions of this Ordinance. It is hereby declared to be the intent of the Board of Supervisors of __________ Township that this Ordinance would have been adopted if such illegal, invalid, or unconstitutional section, clause, sentence, part, or provision had not been included herein.



Section 12. Effective Date. This Ordinance shall take effect five days after enactment by the Board of Supervisors of _________ Township.

source: http://www.celdf.org/Ordinances/RightsofNatureOrdinance/tabid/133/Default.aspx

I've started to cobble together a new WiserEarth group page called 'Paradigm Shift' A place for people to edit, ad and read how things need to be changed and maybe how to accomplish that change.

It's hard, there's so much to take into consideration. The are 46 major areas that WiserEarth had decided as areas of focus. These a major areas of concern. Finding common ground is very difficult. Connecting these various 'knowledge groups' in a larger context that might point to a paradigm shift is the task.

Here the group page address: http://www.wiserearth.org/group/GrandPlan

USDA to approve Monsanto's GE Alfaifa?

Vilsack is a hack for Monsanto, Vilsack runs the Ag department, it doesn't matter what we do, BO is best buds with Vilsack - 100 to 1. Monsanto has the whole national and international food chain in hand, even more so with BO working the world. The fix is in and we all voted for the jerk.

When he got rid of Van Jones I began to have my suspicions and if and when BO lets this one happen, I'm totally out of here. I was so pissed off then BO put that fox in the hen house (Vilsack) and if this happens I'm all for dumping BO and letting the corporate interests who are up front about their allegiance take over, the creeps like BO who smile at me and say everything will be OK, just trust me - no way. BO out in 4.

... as you can see, I'm really pissed. This guy is such a woos. He has to really show me some thing to change my mind.

http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2027 sign the thing, it might help, might is the operating word.

Mind of Knowledge

I’m seventy years old and have been fighting social justice, environmental, political and other categories of issues for fifty years, as I grew older allot of things began to come to order and with that order it became very pronounced that fighting issue after issue without a underlying premise to work from would only dictate the continuous defensive approach to all the issues that I’ve been involved in.

So what to do? What needs to be done? Was there, or is there a simple solution to my frustrated overview of all these issues?

Yes there is and it’s a very simple, yet massive solution – we need a new paradigm.

To get to that new paradigm we need to define what the old paradigm is, or in this case was and I would propose that the old one is what was promoted by Adam Smith so many, many years ago – that paradigm is referred to as ‘the invisible hand’.

In principle it says that what is good for the individual is good for the community.

The problem with that idea is in today’s world economy with the massive numbers of people that now inhabit this earth, the demands those individuals make on the community is overwhelming and because of those individual demands on water, energy, air, plants – the list is long and tangled, the old paradigm of the invisible hand no longer has any relevance to the problems of today.

That being said, I’ll move on to what I think the new paradigm might be.

It replaces the individual with the community and the needs of the community. But the definition of the word community is much broader than just being made up of individuals. Community in this case is defined as the whole, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, because understanding just the parts does not understand the connections, the starts the stops, the progression of how life develops and how life becomes, lives and dies.

The new paradigm is the continuous learning and understanding of the relationships of the secrets of coexistences between everything in the universe.

One might call it the mind of knowledge.

So I suggest we replace the invisible hand with the mind of knowledge.

This is a collective mind; it’s the mind of all things great and small. There are vast areas of knowledge in everything that exists in the universe. We as humans are put in the position of trying to figure out how it all works. That seems to be the human condition, yet as our condition expands in knowledge it now has become apparent that what we do with that knowledge and information is one, a problem or two, a benefit.

Presently it’s more of a problem than a benefit.

But that problem can be turned into a benefit, by what we all have joined in this thing that is called a wiser earth.

So lets all of us begin to define what the new paradigm is, what is the mind of knowledge?