Honoring the Fallen

Complete column continued below from the Big Horn County News Nov 17, 2010---

Honoring our Fallen

The courage of those who leave home and family to serve in the armed forces cannot be questioned. We must honor and respect their sacrifice for all of us. But it’s both morally reprehensible and economically foolish to shed human blood outside our borders unless we have examined carefully, honestly, and rigorously why we are doing it. We have, as a nation, neglected that quest. The primary purpose of honoring our fallen and wounded veterans should be restored: to find and follow better ways to combat the evil that besets our nation, ways that are far less prone to bloodshed.

Note last week’s release from the bipartisan presidential deficit commission:

“The arithmetic is compelling. This debt is like a cancer that will truly destroy this country from within if we don’t fix it.”

Totally omitted in the conversation is the $3,000,000,000,000.00 tab on our last wars, and the cost ticks on. But it ticks differently; we are not paying as we go, thanks to Republican tax breaks. Previous wars were paid as we went, through tax increases and bonds that distributed the burden throughout the citizenry, in the present. But in our recent wars, the financial sacrifice is postponed to future generations, and the blood sacrifice occurs now. That means our families get a double whammy in America for our humongous war making and debt hiding. It is by far the biggest drain on our economy and society, present and future. And it remains unexamined in the commercial media, government, politics, and private sector.

The commission is right on the debt. But wrong to ignore the trillions tumbling down the debt hole. And also wrong to ignore the long history of nations seeking empire-style world wide military control. They all collapsed economically and socially from within, with huge drains of resources and bloodletting in military campaigns without.

It seems our government has joined Assyria, Babylon, Rome, and the Axis in blundering distortions to sell our last three wars to the families of our own nation. Our families are the ones who desire to honor our nation as we honor our dead. And it’s our family members who can call our nation to a higher honoring of our lost loved ones:

Open the closed conversational box about the true cost of war.

Demand the truth of why we are asked to shed blood.

Bring to light the researched alternatives to mortal combat in each theater.

See our families as the economic foundation for our nation.

Found our national security on our traditional values instead of on our control of the world’s energy resources.

Study the waging of peace instead of war to bring security and vitality back to our nation.

God help us avoid the tragedy of past nations seeking the empire solution to security and economic woes! And God will help us, as we link with families of unfriendly nations who share with us our distrust for our government. It takes only a little research to find that the Tea Party hatred of our government pales in the face of many foreigners’ view of our government. Only by linking with those families, in nations where our government is distrusted or outright hated, can we begin addressing the root cause of mortal conflict and terrorism in our world today: loss of the means of human survival. And that’s economics. What drives our ambitions as a nation into self-destruction policies? Excessive profit. Good capitalism gone sinister. Check out this web link from the alternative media:

http://www.alternet.org/story/148786/

That’s why Jesus talked and walked economics more than prayer. That’s why today, honoring our fallen means pursuing the many options to mortal combat, including economics.

Back in the 60’s, I remember when our national ignorance of options to combat this world’s evil was the focus of Dr. Martin Luther King’s last speeches and campaign against the Viet Nam war. He founded this focus firmly and directly on his faith in Jesus. So it was Jesus, Dr. King’s example and Lord, who pioneered and practiced God’s Way for nations in his advocacy of those suffering from war and its associated economic and health deprivations. This advocacy is implied or explicit in nearly all his miracles of healing, and it led politicians to designate him, God’s Son, as enemy combatant. They had Jesus crucified AD 33 for sedition, as documented in the Gospels, and in Roman history (see Josephus, primary secular historian of ancient Rome in 1^st century Palestine wars).

Economics for waging peace instead of war has been the focus of many of our most able and talented national leaders.

Column continued below

from “Honoring our Fallen” in the Big Horn County News Nov 17, 2010---

Leading the effort to fill the information gap on alternatives to current wars is the organization “Veterans for Peace.” Many veteran memorial services nation wide this month have included information gathered by this organization. Many members are Christian veterans, with a sound Biblical basis for their peace efforts. (http://www.veteransforpeace.org/).

I cannot understand why we have a blackout on this discussion in the main media, both from the religious and the scientific research facets. The NY Times posted an opinion regretting this neglect. Unfortunately, Obama has kept to his promise not to “question our national defense” in his economic policy proposals. Now this is weird. Though hated personally by most Republicans, every member of his deficit commission, Republican and Democrat, has fallen in line rubberstamping his decision.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/us/politics/29war.html?_r=1&nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1)

Unless we spare no resource to employ our best and brightest in the quest for the more powerful alternatives in defense of our national security, we are doomed to unending warfare that will only stop when our resources are exhausted. That would come quickly for us were the Chinese, holding title to much of our trillions indebtedness, to demand repayment on loans we our citizens should be holding. This information is readily available from many news outlets. Just search “national debt China”

It’s foolish to degenerate our fine military tradition into the world’s secret police, guiding bombs from Colorado to destroy households in Afghanistan in order to assassinate one citizen who hates America It’s far better to use the many proven alternatives. We can hold our heads high with the values of fairness and compassion that founded this nation as we daily continue to honor our veterans. After all, they are our American families.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/us/politics/29war.html?_r=1&nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1

I have on my shelf the complete speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King. Contact me if you would like to borrow some, or look them up on line. Here’s one:

http://www.mlkonline.net/vietnam.html

Senator Mark Hatfield, Republican of Oregon, is one among many of our national and Montana leaders who had the courage to pursue alternatives to the drumbeat of war to solve our problems

Now I'm not a pacifist, I'm not anti-military. I think there's a very legitimate, important role the military plays in our overall security. What I'm saying is until we see our national security made up of a number of components -- education, housing, diet, job opportunities, etc., etc. -- they're all part of our national security. But every president has been seduced into believing that you measure your national security by the megatons in your arsenal and ignore these people needs, the spiritual needs, and all the other parts that make up a total nation. I don't understand why that is so elusive in people's thinking.

(http://www.cdi.org/adm/1027/):

· See Nir Rosen’s new book, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World. An independent journalist, he has been covering the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. In this new book, he writes in length about Iraq, the U.S. occupation, the civil war, and how the war affected the broader Middle East, from Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. Rosen also writes about Afghanistan and his time unembedded with the Taliban, as well as the role of independent media and the failures of the U.S. press. Nir Rosen’s experience in Afghanistan parallels that of Greg Mortinson. See also his first book, Three Cups of Tea.

--
David Graber
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Small Potatoes and the Big Pumpkin

I cranked up my headgate and went over to my third cut to irrigate my new meadow early this summer, and watched with glee. A menacing wave of rising water flooded the abodes of prairie dogs that dared set up house in my elite acreage, where they should have known better than moving. They scampered and swam—those that survived the water eviction—back to the ground where they should have been satisfied. Some didn't make it. Serves them right.

Now I do try to take responsibility. I knew what I was doing to the prairie dog families when I opened the head gate, installed the canvas and cut the ditch. It was intentional, and I had nothing to hide. And I knew three years ago, when first I saw the encroachment into lush prairie dog housing far beyond ability to handle the consequences, that the bubble would burst, the flood of evictions would come, and it would be disastrous for these prairie dogs. I ignored their agony. But my land is small potatoes. So is the market economy that get's all the government, media and business news focus. Let's look at the big pumpkin.

Our American Family Economy. The people responsible for our national family economy—the big pumpkin ignored in our national media political discourse—have conspired to neglect the common good of families and their children's future in our country. But unlike me with my prairie dog families, these folks systematized fraud and predatory lending. The big pumpkin is rotten. They are doing everything they can to keep the focus off the big pumpkin. With the media's help, they keep our families' anger focused on small potatoes. The whole nation is deeply at risk.*

My grandkids are fascinated with the tiny potatoes from the less-fertile quadrant of our garden. I don't think they are worth the bother. But with salt and gravy, they aren't too bad. Grandma and I indulge their fantasies and help them scrape off the mud, boil and eat them with butter and gravy. We'll accommodate a few small potato obsessions.

But look what is happening to our country! It's not just over 30 million families evicted, it's the pervasive rot of the family economy. Eighty years ago, in the depression, one father could get one mule and 40 acres from the government. If the family lived on the farm and worked the land, they could get title to it. Forty acres was enough to feed a family back then. The mules are gone. So is the open land. It takes two wage earners for most families to barely survive in today's American economy. Health costs cause mortgage defaults, which cause transportation loss, which causes family income loss, which causes massive spending reductions. The last step, when the market economy suffers, is when the nation's media finally take note. Families can't colonize and farm the moon, so it's families that need bailout, not wall-street tycoons.

It's basic deprivation, personal frustration, social and political marginalization that plague our families. Even more, their personal initiative no longer suffices. And more yet, our PC talk radio and TV maintain the illusion that financial failure is the fault of those failing. Witness all the financial advice services and predatory loan consolidation marketing on TV and talk radio.

There is a group of people at our national economic head gate who have responsibility, just about as much as I do over my prairie dog families. These are the top 1% in wealth holdings, and income. Sure, the government takes our money in taxes. But that's small potatoes. It's the top % that takes our money in hidden profits and corporate monopolized pricing, gouging the rest of us.

C'mon Obama. Let them have their wedge issues with which they love to pickpocket the citizens of this country. Either get out of the way or deal with the real issues. I won't vote for a Demoblican, but I darn sure would not vote for a Republicrat, unless someone in politics takes seriously the hurting families of this great nation. And, in case you wonder, the tea parties, with all their obsession with small potatoes, has agreed on is one real pumpkin issue: the big wall street bailout was bad for the country.

THE FOLLOWING IS CONTINUED FROM THE BCHC NEWS

There is a point to having valid incentives so the wealthy of our nation can drive our economy with their business. There is a point to rewarding successful entrepreneurs at any level of wealth. But what we have now is way too much. The excessive redistribution of wealth through tax benefits, off-shore investment credits, exporting of jobs overseas, hedge fund marketing, all conducted behind closed doors with government collusion, has got to end. We have to get back to a conservative American value: money in peoples' pockets in proportion to their work for a living wage. That's what has powered our economy to its peak in the 70's.

As money is taken out of the 99% less rich, and concentrated more in the hands of the top 1%, the economy does not improve. We are at the end of a 30-year experiment with supply-side economics, with a perception that more wealth for the wealthy makes all of us better off. It's time to end wealth redistribution to the top.

It's bad news. But it does no patriotic good for our nation to skirt it. The big pumpkin, the American dream for families, is rotten. There is nothing left for a disastrously rising segment of our population who cannot keep food on the table. For reliable data on this coming increasing tragedy, check out a scholarly review of our economy by Stiglitz, Free Fall.

Who's responsible for securing the economic access of the American family? Whose neglect let the pumpkin rot? First, check out the media. It keeps our attention on small potatoes: unemployment, gays, immigration, anything the military-health-energy-banking/industrial complexes tell it to focus on.

Second, check up on our government. Didn't President Obama say "the buck stops here?" Yes, he speaks compassionate words, but he portrays the big players that cue the media content as suffering an unavoidable lapse in foresight. This is baloney. He, like the commercial dependent TV and radio sources, are owned.

Third, what about the party temporarily out of power, Republicans? They systematically stripped government regulation—read public oversight—of the mortgage industry, while they propagandized us into believing they were saving our country from our government. In international politics this propaganda is called sedition.

Fourth, What about the courts, the judicial branch? Look at two biggies from the Supreme court, on cue from their corporate connections: 1) Decades ago they found that corporate rights to privacy should be elevated to those of individual citizens. Thomas Jefferson turned over in his grave. And, 2) just this year, they found that this corporate privacy right to secrecy extends to funding for political candidates. Tom turned again. There goes our free elections tradition.

Where can we go? The various branches of "Tea Party?" They got one thing right: the wall street bailout was controlled by the bailees. But unfortunately, what appears to be a grass roots movement is really not. Their funding and agenda control are deeply imbedded in the biggest most right wing consortiums of the country. There's where the glee is. Sic the nation's families on gays, brankrupt families, immigrants and minorities. Use the tea party. It has worked in the past in our country; inflame the populous with small potatoes, to delay the inevitable as long as possible, and leach the most from us taxpayers.

How about the ones in charge of our national housing acreage? Do they know what they are doing? They don't want a moratorium on evictions, and the government colludes. They claim enough knowledge to know a legitimate eviction from one flawed with deception, and will only evict with legitimate mortgages defaulted. But can they honestly find a legitimate mortgage now defaulting to make an eviction process legally legit?

Irrationally, they also denied their wisdom to know their mortgage industry and pled ignorance. Obama had mercy; the mortage crisis "--was unforeseeable," and he granted their wish. The evictions continue.

We are focusing on the small potatoes of our market economy and instead or prioritizing our family economy. That's the big rotten pumpkin we aren't seeing.

Glee vs. benign neglect. I'll give them a break. At least I see no evidence of the glee I felt when I imagined those prairie dog families evicted and struggling through the rising tide to the fence, and dry grassy ground. It's a little different for the big pumpkins standing by the national mortgage industry headgate. They really just don't care, because their lizard brains are obscured by their focus on the small potatos of huge profits at the expense of others. They miss the big pumpkin mess of 30 million American families out of home, job, good schools, and a place in the American dream.

The midterm elections. The families of this nation will tolerate neither the Republicans who got us into this huge rotten pumpkin nor the Democrats who have refused to address the rotten flesh in the commercial market economy of the nation. This repudiates the Republicans, dams the Democrats, and fuels the various tea partiers' emotional fixation with small pumpkins. This pumpkin is too big. It's not small potatoes on the field of our national economy. We are, at root, a nation of families.

Now I'm just a musician. Not much of a farmer, definitely not an economist, But I do know my potatoes and pumpkins. Corporate funding of the media pushes small potato issues to keep our focus off real problems faced by real families of this nation. So I really have a problem voting. Know any politician or political party who takes seriously enough the real problems our nation should address, for example, 30 million families kicked out of their homes by mortgage default? Most of politicians and their corporate sidekicks are busy sidetracking as many citizens as possible. Elections are no longer about real issues. Our media, politicians, government and election campaign financiers have opted for trench warfare over small potatoes.

Another Small potato: I got the news again just today. Obama is going to raise our taxes. Well, it turns out the tax rate he's proposing, the one bandied about by the unbiased media, it's just for the folks well into six figure incomes. The rest get tax breaks, or it stays the same. And it turns out this tax increase for the wealthy remains well under the one President Reagan promoted and congress passed for the same bracket.

Small potato 3 I got a huge colorful postcard in the mail last week: "Stop the Real Estate Double Tax," referring to an initiative with huge funding from the National Association of Realtors. Here's the wedge issue: property taxes. Bet I know the zinger. With the deteriorating economy, these wealthy scavengers know more property will change hands. They don't want their cut of the coming exchange increases to be reduced with a tax, even though there is no such tax now. But with the current money crunch for government and corporations, they'll be fighting over every crumb. The big National Association of Realtors wants an edge.

Yes, as well meaning and as much as I agree with the conservatives on these small potatoes of gay marriage, prayer in schools, abortion, etc., they were initially selected and marketed for the purpose of sidetracking us away from the bigger issues, many of which are themselves the cause. It turns out we neglect attention to our pumpkins and the small potatoes just proliferate.

It's time to look at the big potatoes. It's not the market economy, constantly touted in the news.

In the 1920's the equivalent of hedge funds, tax breaks and loopholes, and a lassiez faire economy figured strongly in the rise of income among the wealthiest sector and the drop of income among middle and lower class citizens. It set the stage for the collapse. After Wall Street busted, responsible politicians took note. In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt created an alliance between the suffering middle class and a portion of people in the top 1%. Together they orchestrated economic reforms. Taxes were increased, peaking at 90% for the wealthiest bracket under the Republican Eisenhower administration. Loopholes were closed. Secret government/corporate collusion was revealed. Government created incentives for businesses to open jobs and put people to work with physical labor for living wages. People at the top had less disposable income. But all over the country, prosperity returned, and families could make a living again with one wage earner.

Now, it's 2010, and the wealthiest 1% have reached the 1923 mark, the second time in less than a century. At 23% of the total personal income of the nation, it's still growing. Unlike the early 30's, we got a hard knock on the door: the biggest baddest recession ever. But our politicians have not responded like Franklin Roosevelt and other progressives did after the 30's depression, paying attention to the plight of average and poorer families. They have forgotten that big boats need to rise in the tide of all the families of this nation gaining a living, not having to accept welfare.

Thirty years ago the median income male was making more real money (inflation is adjusted out), than the median income male today. Problems for real families are multiplied by the personal debt burden, the astronomical increase in health care and insurance, home foreclosures, and unexpected job loss. Yet the top 1% has no incentive from government or within the secretive economic system to loosen their hold. In spite of this, a growing number of the wealthiest Americans are joining forces with economists and middle class business people who are aware of the deep economic problems facing the human economy of this country, unlike the market economy. Look up Citizens for a Fair Economy.

Some critters just have trouble keeping in their place.

The neglected big pumpkin in our national discourse is the family economy. We don't pay attention. More than 30 million families of this nation have been evicted from their homes by the high water of the recession, especially the collapse of the mortgage sector. It isn't just loss of homes. It's health care costs, loss of jobs or pay cuts, and loss of the means to provide for one's family. The personal emotional costs to parents who go through this is compounded by our traditional national mantra: anyone can succeed. I can hear it: "Those who fail, do so by their own choice. They just need to honestly try."

With this imbedded in our thinking, our culture is still tuned in to reinforcing the guilt self-imposed by the many new desperately poor heads of families.

*Look these up:

"MERS mortagage fraud" search words on your web search engine. You will find two kinds of results: 1) from the mortgage industry, ads for MERS digital services to protect small investors and borrowers from fraud. 2) recent documentation of how MERS was set up for the very opposite: to facilitate fraudulent predatory lending, and protect large investors from the consequences. Read them, and let me know which is legit.

Stiglitz, Free Fall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. Just out this month, this book by a leading scholar of world economics should get any patriot's attention. Read the reviews on a web book source like Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

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David Graber

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org