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Folks, a weekly email post from Ralph Nader, the patriot who’s been blowing the whistle on how the corporations have been taking away the citizens’ sovereignty, livelihood, health, liberty, and dreams ever since our American experiment began. – Larry Ely

Attention Deficit Democracy

A society not alert to signs of its own decay, because its ideology is a continuing myth of progress, separates itself from reality and envelops illusion.

One yardstick by which to measure the decay in our country’s political, economic, and cultural life, is the answer to this question: Do the forces of power, which have demonstrably failed, become stronger after their widely perceived damage is common knowledge?

Economic decay is all around.  Poverty, unemployment, foreclosures, job export, consumer debt, pension attrition, and crumbling infrastructure are well documented.  The self-destruction of the Wall Street financial giants, with their looting and draining of trillions of other people’s money, have been headlines for two years.  During and after their gigantic taxpayer bailouts from Washington, DC, the banks, et al, are still the most powerful force in determining the nature of proposed corrective legislation.

Continue reading America In Decay Due to Its Own Ideological Blindness – Nader
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Arundhati Roy:

…So the first message I would have to peace activists is — I don’t know what that means, anyway. What does “peace” mean? You know, we may not need peace in this unjust society, because that’s a way of accepting injustice, you know? So what you need is people who are prepared to resist, but not just on a weekend, not peace but not just on the weekend. In countries like India, now just saying, “OK, we’ll march on Saturday, and maybe they’ll stop the war in Iraq.” But in countries like India, now people are really paying with their lives, with their freedom, with everything. I mean, it’s resistance with consequences now. You know, it cannot be — it cannot be something that has no consequences. You know? It may not have, but you’ve got to understand that in order to change something, you’ve got to take some risks now. You’ve got to come out and lay those dreams on the line now, because things have come to a very, very bad place there.

Full article here.

Continue reading “What does `peace’ mean?” Arundhati Roy on “Gandhians With Guns”

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It was probably around thirty years ago that I went to a basement apartment near Harvard Square for a presentation by two people visiting from Auroville, a religious community and ecovillage near Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, India.  The man and woman talked about their work planting trees and reforesting the area.  They showed slides, focusing on a method they derived by trial and error to provide water for their saplings by molding bunds, small catchment basins just downslope from the tree to gather rainwater so that it could soak down into the roots.  They talked about following erosion gullies upslope to where they began and using stones and pebbles to stop the erosion at the source.  They said that after more than a decade of work, the weather had noticeably changed in the region and the seasonal rains had returned.

How did we get into this mess?

A little bit at a time and because everybody does it.

We get out of it just

that same way.

4/23/01  John Berry, in conversation  

Continue reading How to Heal the World
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   The phone rang yesterday morning a little before 10. The first thing I heard on picking up the receiver was a low din of voices, so I asked, rhetorically, if this was a personal call. It was “Phyllis” calling to ask if I would renew my $40 membership to WGBY-TV in Springfield.

   I asked her if WGBY rebroadcasts the debates of candidates for statewide office that originate on WGBH-TV in Boston.

  She said that WGBH and WGBY are sister stations. She may have been calling from the Boston area because she said she didn’t know whether “you in Western Massachusetts” or “you in the Springfield area” got to see those debates.

  I mentioned that WGBH and WGBY are beneficiaries of the WGBH Educational Foundation, and she seemed to agree. But she was principally concerned with getting me to renew at the $40 level or higher with WGBY.

  I told her I didn’t think I could renew because the last time Jill Stein ran for governor as the Green-Rainbow Party’s nominee, in 2002, she was excluded by the “Consortium,” of which WGBH is a part, from participating in the gubernatorial debates. That was the year Republican Mitt Romney was elected governor, garnering 50 percent of the vote to Democrat Shannon O’Brien’s 45 percent. Stein finished third in a field of five with 76,530 votes, or about 3.5 percent.

Continue reading Call from WGBY

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This goes back to December, but some points about organizing in the current political environment may be worth thinking about. I like the way the author frames the healthcare debate: it’s important to keep in mind that, been as we stick to our convictions, we’ve all created our own stories, and that whichever we subscribe to probably doesn’t tell the whole story (e.g., Obama is neither the socialist messiah nor a latter-day Borgia).

Continue reading “Two immanent realities”

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“Take care of your people and your people will take care of the business and its customers.”

Bill Marriott and his son are examples of very successful big businessmen.   I did not always agree with their politics, but I did observe the wisdom of the words above that were regularly imparted on their management team, of which I was a part for over twenty years.  My belief in the necessity of a strong public sector is grounded in a similar belief:  if society fairly funds and administers a quality social infrastructure for its people, then the businesses and other institutions that rely on a healthy and  enterprising people will be lifted and will thrive.

Continue reading A business-world case for a strong public sector

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Cross-posted at GreenChange.org, part of the Green Change Blog Action Day

From internal feuds and co-optation of the Tea Party movement to copycat “movements” like the Coffee Party, or Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s silly yearning for a “Tea Party of the radical center“, it is clear that the tax day teabags have made their mark on the United States.

Taking a good look at the pictures from the April 15, 2009 Tea “coming out” Party, I can’t help but think that many of the grievances are valid and even accurate criticisms of the US federal government today (e.g. “Stop Spending $$$ Our Grandkids’ Future” or “Obama’s Hockey Stick” showing exponentially rising federal debt). Of course, the pictures also make it clear that jumping into bed with the Tea Partiers could make for a nasty relationship. “Taxes Kill Freedom”, “Taxation Is Just Piracy With Paperwork”, “Taxes Destroy Ambition”, and lots of mistaking corporatist Obama as a socialist.

So what exactly is this political moment? And what is the role of the Greens?  

Continue reading Green Tea Party for People, Peace & the Planet
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VOWS TO CONTINUE THE FIGHT AS CRISIS ACCELERATES.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 23 March, 2010

Contact: Daryl Sprague, 617-459-0784

LEXINGTON, Massachusetts – Jill Stein, Green-Rainbow Party candidate for governor, described the health care bill passed by Congress Sunday as lobbyists’ legislation which offers few benefits at staggering cost. She warned Massachusetts residents to brace for skyrocketing prices and an accelerating health care meltdown, and vowed to renew her push for “real solutions.”

Here are her remarks, made in a speech to supporters during a teleconference Tuesday morning:

“The health reform passed on Sunday is not the solution the American people have been looking for, but rather a triumph of business-as-usual. It will bankrupt individuals and local governments by forcing them to buy the expensive policies in a health-care system designed to exploit instead of to serve. Starting today, we begin the real battle to move beyond this costly non-solution and replace it with the health care system America needs.

Continue reading Stein Says Insurance Industry the Real Winner in Health Reform Bill
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