Pennywise and pound foolish

Shortcuts often lead to bigger problems. Something about the political scene from Madison to Washington these days reminds me of one of my Dad's old stories about being pennywise and pound foolish. In his case, the shortcut wasn't about easy money or political power, but a much more tantalizing goal: ice cream.

In the early 1930's pre-electricity Iowa, the only way to get to a tub of soft, cold ice cream was via a lengthy, hand-cranking workout. Wanting the ice cream without the work, Dad and his teenage brothers eyed the new Model T Ford, and wheels began to turn—literally.

Soon they had jacked up one back wheel and unbolted it from the hub. They cranked up the engine, and with Dad's little brother Willis holding down the clutch, they lashed the removable hand crank to the T's wheel hub, and then to the handle of the full ice cream bucket. Willis gently engaged the clutch and the idling engine easily turned the hub, which turned the engine crank, which turned the ice cream handle, which sent the boys into ecstatic cheers over their ingenuity.

Their cheers were premature. The carburetor began loading up and the motor chugged slower. It started missing, almost died, and Dad said to his little brother "Punch it!" They didn't want to unlash the hand crank from the hub to start it again—too much work.

The little brother dutifully punched the throttle and the hub suddenly accelerated. Sure enough, my Dad's grip on the ice cream mixer slipped and the mixer hit the ground, spilling the precious contents onto the dirt. The sisters erupted in laughter, and Grandpa watched, bemused, as Dad and his brothers slipped in the mess trying to rescue a few spoonfuls. Undaunted, the brothers coaxed their mother into making another gallon of mix, and were stubbornly about to try again when Grandpa stepped in, "Boys, you work harder to get out of work than you would have to work if you would just DO the work!"

Now that wasn't the end of the story. Other costly consequences of good technology applied to the wrong task were not foreseen. Repeated episodes of jacking up the model T rear wheel ultimately wore the spider gears in the differential. The axel broke loose inside the pumpkin and slipped out, the wheel rolled into the borrow pit, and the worn Model T smacked hard into the road giving occupants painful bruises. Saving a little work turned out to be harmful, wasteful and foolish.

We have a tradition in America of overcoming pound foolish mistakes. Fueled by a passion for justice and liberty, Americans rebelled against the British empire and won independence. Because of the courage of our most patriotic citizens, we abolished slavery, ended institutionalized racial oppression through the civil rights movement, and sent hundreds of corrupt bankers to prison after the Savings and Loans Wall Street scandal of the 80's.

The concept is enshrined in second verse of "America the Beautiful":

O beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern impassioned stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness!

America! America! God mend thine every flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law!

We must also remember that these visionaries faced firm opposition, even violent oppression and intimidation, from those threatened by the vision. To "mend thine every flaw" is an uncomfortable, even painful process. It certainly was uncomfortable for Bradley Manning, who valued American justice and liberty enough to serve in Iraq. His duties were sensitive: ferreting through the mass of war data accumulated in recordings of combat missions to determine targets to round up for questioning at Abu Ghraib prison. He did his job well. When obviously innocent people were mistreated, though, he pursued the errors. As his efforts to bring injustice to light were resisted, he began documenting his findings, and eventually released them to the public sphere.

Sadly, though, despite Obama's promises to offer protection to those who shed light on injustices, this whistleblower hasn't been protected. Like the Tories in 1776, slave marketers in 1880, and powerful politicians in the 60's-era South, our politicians today foment outrage against one who uncovers truth by labeling such actions unpatriotic. Manning's subsequent imprisonment on U.S. soil and possible execution now bear an uncanny resemblance to the way many at Abu Ghraib were treated, complete with solitary confinement, deprivation of clothing, and strip-searches. What a pitiful irony.

This tragedy is far beyond broken spider gears or spilled ice cream. The soul of our nation is at stake.

Note the following added sources and information links:

David House, 23, is an IT expert who works for the Bradley Manning Support Network. This excerpt is from his interview with the German newspaper, Spiegel On Line:

House: I cannot fathom living in a country that executes whistleblowers and I hope that many Americans and people in other countries see it in the same way. Apart from that, Bradley Manning deserves access to a speedy trial.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How realistic are the chances that those demands will be met?

House: The only way Bradley Manning is going to have a good outcome here is if there is growing international pressure on the US to take the option of executing a whistleblower off the table. We need the action of every citizen in the entire world who values the principles of government transparency.

For the full interview: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,750879,00.html

From The Guardian, of the UK, some 100 articles, this from yesterday, quoted here:

PJ Crowley, the official spokesman at the state department, has fallen on his sword after calling the treatment of Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the WikiLeaks files, "counterproductive and stupid".

The resignation followed Crowley's remarks to an MIT seminar last week about Manning's treatment in military prison.

Crowley had said: "What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defense."

For the complete article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/13/pj-crowley-resigns-bradley-manning-remarks

The International Commission for Labor Rights (ICLR) sent a notice to the Wisconsin Legislature, explaining that its attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers is illegal.

Anyone who has watched the events unfolding in Wisconsin and other states that are trying to remove collective bargaining rights from public workers has heard people protesting the loss of their "rights." (For more on the record turnout, see this story.) The ICLR explained to the legislature exactly what these rights are and why trying to take them away is illegal.

The ICLR is a New York-based nongovernmental organization that coordinates a pro bono network of labor lawyers and experts throughout the world. It investigates labor rights violations and issues reports and amicus briefs on issues of labor law.

The ICLR identified the right of "freedom of association" as a fundamental right and affirmed that the right to collective bargaining is an essential element of freedom of association. These rights, which have been recognized worldwide, provide a brake on unchecked corporate or state power.

In 1935, when Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the NLRA, or the Wagner Act), it recognized the direct relationship between the inequality of bargaining power of workers and corporations and the recurrent business depressions. That is, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners, the economy fell into depression. The law therefore recognized as policy of the United States the encouragement of collective bargaining.

While the NLRA covered US employees in private employment, the law protecting collective bargaining in both the public and private sectors has developed since 1935 to cover all workers "without distinction."

The above 6 paragraphs quoted from the complete article: http://messageboards.aol.com/aol/en_us/articles.php?boardId=38496&articleId=18599693&func=6&channel=News&filterRead=false&filterHidden=true&filterUnhidden=false

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

The Golden Rule

This week I could hear the barking in the quietness of our back 40 all the way from Wisconsin, "Stop big government spending! End the deficit! Cut benefits for public employees!" But they're looking up the wrong tree. Let's stop twisting reality and do something real for those suffering in the wreck of our economy.

From my childhood Sunday School in the 40's until now, the standard memory verse Jesus said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," has been twisted into: "Them that's got the gold make the rules." The original version has almost become a liberal conspiracy, virtually gone.

With 90 per cent of congress beholden to corporations instead of citizens, with a supreme court that gives legal privacy protection to public multinational corporations previously reserved by our Constitution to citizens, and with the escalating war against the poor in America led by Glenn Beck's Republicans and President Obama's "centrist" Democrats, we the people have been inspired by Tunisia, Egypt, and now Wisconsin. We know cutting the 15% "discretionary" spending is a drop in the bucket toward what's needed, and ignores the big problem.

The suffering on Main Street USA continues. Illegal mortgage foreclosures now made legal outstrip abortions, now in process of being made illegal. Families who worked to make end meets all their lives now find themselves laid off, unable to make health payments and house payments, and on the streets for the first time in their lives in their 60's.

Where'd the money go? Check the bailouts of Bush and Obama. Check the rising profits of the energy sector, health industry, insurance, and banking. Check a corporate ripoff and empire building system driven by war profiteering, cutthroat capitalism, and either silence or rabid distracting controversies from the media.

How'd it get taken from the people who need it, who earned it?

The Golden Rule is not all that got twisted in the last few decades. The words "tax" and "Big Government" have also been twisted, to facilitate the heist.

When we fill up at Dolly's we hardly notice the sticker on the pump, "Federal tax 20%, state tax 20 %" because it's transparent, public information, by law. It's collected and managed by the people we elect, beholden to us.

But there's another energy tax, in fact a tax all across our economy levied by a government beholden only to stockholders, along with rules and loopholes to benefit the few wealthiest. It's the government of the corporations in America, that not of the people, by the people, for the people. What part of each dollar I spend at the pump goes to them? It's not public information, and it varies from week to week, usually upward.

Remember High School Economics class? The bigger the economic sector, the more the regulations. When economic activity grows and wealth accumulates, regulations grow, too. Palen, Beck, Limbaugh and company forgot their lessons, and have fabricated a farce. It plays into the hands of the corporate governors of our government, the biggest taxers and spenders of our money.

That's why our founding fathers wrote our constitution. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Smith etc. knew government functions best when required by law to be governed by the people. With corporations now governing our government, we have progressively concentrated wealth making the greatest disparity between rich and poor this nation, or any modern nation, has known. This is class warfare in America, waged by the rich against the poor.

Now if the citizens of this nation had enough for reasonable survival, and if they didn't it was their own fault, we could ignore the mess. But that's not the case here, nor in the Middle East. So the poor are beginning to resist. We in America have a tradition those in the Middle East are now trying to emulate: government of, by, and for the people.

For God's sake, I hope Glenn Beck, Robert Koch, Rupert Murdoch, President Obama, Republicans, Democrats, Tea Partiers, and libertarians return to our best American values for government. I hope they all remember our Bill of Rights, the primary document of protection for the poor, is part of our Constitution.

Listen to the people; they run the micro economy that matters. Start with the farmers and ranchers of Big Horn County. They know the real Golden Rule.

Following is a continuation of the column in the BHC news March 2:

So the biggest problems in America are government spending and the deficit? That's both true and false, but mostly simply laughable because of who's deciding the rules and who benefits: not those of us caught up in the controversies between the tea party of the Republicans and the radical left of the democrats.

Oh for the days of Grandpa J.D. in Kansas, 1924! We can learn from those days, even though we can't revert to them. That's when we had a functioning micro economy in the energy sector, controlled by ordinary citizens. Refineries in small towns all over Kansas bought crude directly from citizens who had oil wells on their property. He and other citizens of Elyria in the 20's were not happy with the price of gas for their new model T's. Grandpa hammered together a lid and nailed it on top of the sideboards of his model T truck, loaded his fat shoats (pigs) under the lid, and tied a 300 gal. tank on top. He drove to Wichita, sold his pigs at the livestock auction, set the tank down on the bed and drove to the Chevron refinery to fill that tank with gas bought with the pig profit. He returned with the tank full, parked it at his gas station pump with the tall lever and the glass measuring tank, and connected the hoses. Word got out. Grandpa's station had the cheapest gas from McPherson to Newton.

So where's a micro-economy that operates like this? Try Communist China, one small bright spot in a land steeped in fear and propaganda. But their bosses wisely know that a billion people depend on a free micro-economy, unlike our country. I saw it in action. There are more private entrepreneurs in China per capita by far than in America. I had to learn to bargain for everything I bought. I was amazed to find such pervasive free enterprise Communist China. The difference was the size.

The growing macro market economy of China has not yet swallowed up the people's micro economy. It's still a huge slice of the country's GNP.

Of course, both neoliberals and neoconservatives would be laughed out of Pixian County, Sichuan, PRC, if they even dared promote their ideology, just like they would have been laughed out of Elyria, Kansas, USA, in the 20's, when the market economy was micro and belonged to the people.

All of it comes down to an idea repulsive to the writers of our constitution, and standard dogma today in America: that the rules for our marketplace should be written by and for a few elite with the largest property holdings. By writing governing regulations for trade and exchange in every economic sector that gives the most power to the fewest, the conservatives then believed, the majority will prosper. Wealth trickles down, so goes the theory went.

But it hasn't. Now we have state governments and the Middle East in crisis, believing a farce.

Maybe we should pry into how we got into this mess. If the following has any truth, then those barking about the big budget deficit found the wrong tree.

Americans in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois are waking up. They know the financial crisis facing our nation is contrived. All across the country, citizens are learning that the utopian dream of an unfettered market paves the way for big industry to game the system. Corporate fat cats have regulated the market to foster the biggest wealth redistribution any society has suffered at any time, with cash being funneled from most of us to the top 1%. The ones who scream loudest against big government are often the ones who know there is no such thing as an unregulated macro economy (if they remember their high school econ class). All big markets are regulated–the bigger the sector, the more the regulations. It's only questions of who does the regulating, for whose benefit. This is exploited by the right, and seldom acknowledged by the liberal left. It's the biggest lie believed in America today.

There was no clue in Walker's pre-election position statements. Only now, after the Koch/Murdoch clan had orchestrated bankrupting Wisconsin's state coffers, does the real Walker come forth. With an electorate mandate to govern, his utopian philosophy says democracy ended that November election day. Now his big government dogma roars forth with a united Republican majority. That's why the people, including many Republicans, have risen now by over a hundred thousand to protest at the Wisconsin state house. The people see through the sham conservatism at the core of the Republican and Tea Party folks as well as the sham of liberal Democrats, with its utopianism going bankrupt in America, Egypt, and around the world.

With corporate control of our elected government still escalating, even the Supreme Court gets into the act by transferring free speech rights to corporations, reserved in our constitution for individual citizens. Our biggest tax bill is erroneously considered legitimate profit in our socialist macro economy for those whose businesses are too big to fail. It exceeds what we pay our elected government every time we go to the gas pump, visit the local pharmacy, shop at the grocery store, or check out a new car.

Almost every big government regulation opposed on talk radio and "proven" bad for our economy has a hidden agenda. That agenda is to replace those transparent regulations, set in place originally by our honest elected representatives in government, with regulations written by representatives who could only win an election with corporate backing. Some 90% of congress, and majorities in state government as well, are similarly bought off by the corporate control of our elections. Without corporate sponsorship, winning is impossible. So it's not small government at all. It's the big government the anti-big-government buffoons want, secretly, for their benefit. What hypocrisy.

Stop the petty ludicrous national pastime with controversy and talking points, and get to the substance of real people's needs for an end to wasteful spending. Start with questioning budget items beyond the 15% that's supposedly "discretionary." Does that word mean the last two wars we're still fighting are not discretionary? Why not? Does that word mean the billions of $ subsidy of most sectors of our economy are off limits? What about foreign military aid to nations that would otherwise live more at peace with their neighbors? What about manufacturing for the military?

Our national choices are not made according to cost/benefit analyses for the people, but rather for the engaged corporate interests. So the big government rules are written by the closeted few, for the secret profit of the few, at the expense of the many, with the endorsement of both political parties and even the so-called grass roots libertarian tea party. The people of America better start being heard, not only in Wisconsin.

http://www.truth-out.org/news

OPINION | February 27, 2011
Op-Ed Columnist: Why Wouldn't the Tea Party Shut It Down?
By FRANK RICH
This battle, ostensibly over the deficit, is so much larger than the sum of its line-item parts.

OPINION | February 25, 2011
Op-Ed Columnist: Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Madison, Wis., is looking a lot like Baghdad in 2003, with government officials exploiting fiscal crises for fun and profit

OPINION | February 26, 2011
Op-Ed Columnist: Absorbing the Pain
By BOB HERBERT
At a gathering in Philadelphia this week, the deep pain of working Americans was readily apparent.

Bill Moyers: We must be exposed to truth even when it hurts.

http://www.alternet.org/world/149925/bill_moyers%3A_america_can%27t_deal_with_reality_--_we_must_be_exposed_to_the_truth%2C_even_if_it_hurts/

Democracy weakening in America?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/opinion/12herbert.html?emc=eta1

Danny Shechter, "Will Banksters Get Away With It?"

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/2011226131635826806.html#

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Egypt: What’s the Prognosis?

The real source of unrest in Egypt is not outside agitators or inside Muslim fundamentalists. It's suppressed dissent from those starving, falsely arrested and in prison, disappeared, tortured and murdered by the regime.

In a Fox news interview last Friday, Senator McCain warned our nation that insurrection against our allied governments in the Middle East may very well spread like a virus. "This, I would argue, is probably the most dangerous period of history in…our entire involvement in the Middle East, at least in modern times."

McCain is right: This is an extremely dangerous period in history.

McCain is also wrong: It's not like a virus, something that infects us quickly, needs symptomatic relief, then leaves in a week or two. That's Mubarak's misdiagnosis too.

It's more like a cancer. Mubarak is still applying his worn out quick fix with jail, police and his thugs, and the numbers of demonstrators grow. There's no longer an easy way to stop the unrest in Egypt. Relief of symptoms by forcing the evacuation of "Freedom Square" would be catastrophic.

The cancer should have been stopped decades ago. There were easier solutions then. Such preemptive ways to heal society are known in all major religions, from thousands of years ago.

Some 2,000 years ago a famous Chinese doctor, renowned as a physician and for his skill and knowledge of medicines and his ability to heal even the most deadly disease, was asked why he was so much better than his two brothers, who were also doctors. His answer:

My first brother heals sickness before it even develops. His methods are quiet. His science is an art form of diagnosis and treatment, preventing disease. He is known only within our village. My second brother deals with illnesses while they are beginning to emerge, preventing sickness from getting worse and out of control. His methods return the body to health without risky intervention. I deal with sicknesses when they have reached the level of disease and threaten the very life of the person. This requires numerous medicines, and skill and knowledge in their use.

It's true my name has become famous throughout the kingdom and I have been asked to be physician to the king. Yet my first brother has the knowledge to deal with sicknesses before they arise and my second brother is able to treat them at an early stage and prevent them getting worse. Though my fame has spread throughout the land, their knowledge is greater, and their accomplishments as physicians more important and powerful for healing

—(Adapted from The Tao of Peace by Wang Chen).

Our children remember 1993, when we picked up a book tossed on our front lawn full of warnings of Jewish encroachment in Montana. I read it. I remember that the core venom of hatred for Jews was shrouded in layers of fervent Christian faith and deep patriotism. I quickly discovered other Hardin families found a copy on their front lawn as well. Everyone I visited with saw through the patriotic Christian layers to the anti-Semitism.

It was worse in Billings. KKK fliers were distributed, the Jewish cemetery was desecrated, the home of a Native American family was painted with swastikas, and a brick was thrown through the window of a six-year-old boy who displayed a Menorah for Hanukkah.

Remember what the Billings Gazette did then? A full-page picture of a Menorah was posted voluntarily, so citizens could display it in their front windows all over town. Some 10,000 citizens responded by displaying a Menorah, identifying themselves with the hated ones.

The hatred was beaten back. The cancer threatening our communities was stopped by people who dared confront the hatred with God's power. The ideology did not spread.

As I watched and read the extremist rhetoric today claiming "all Muslims" are bent on total annihilation of Christians, it was almost beyond belief that our national media could successfully peddle such juvenile tit-for-tat, especially to the good citizens of Big Horn County. I'm reminded of my two grandsons' tit-for-tat, absolutely convinced the other was about to rob the gold dollar gift recently available at our banks, provided by an unnamed grandparent. I was also reminded of similar rhetoric against Jews and Blacks in those books on our lawns in 1993. Inflammatory fearful rhetoric is an easy tool for politicians and pundits here too.

This is the cancer nurtured by Mubarak to infect the thugs paid to beat, stab and shoot demonstrators. We in America now need to apply a more powerful antidote to the threat Senator McCain has erroneously compared to a virus. Let's try God's words, written by the Prophet Isaiah 3000 years ago:

Thus says the Lord: Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless, free the prisoner; then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly heal.

If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech, if you bestow your bread on the hungry and heal the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday.

—Isaiah 58:7, 9-10, adapted from The Common Lectionary for Feb 6, 2011

All over America we now share in the world's suffering. The world's cancerous epidemic of structural violence to suppress those marginalized into silence by drugs, poverty and prisons is here too. There are more people of dark skin now incarcerated, disenfranchised from voting and outside the functioning economy, than the number disenfranchised by slavery a decade before our civil war. Employment is rampant, and many more young families cannot find means to survive meaningfully in America. While arrests for illegal drug possession and sales are practically equal across racial lines, if one found guilty is a person of color, that one is ten times more likely to serve a long prison sentence.

Like in Egypt, here in America this is not a matter of political and religious prejudice. The cancer runs to the core of the human rights: access to a place of respect within the community regardless of race, economic status, or gender issues.

Associated with the cancer in America is the emotional framing label, "Big Government." Everyone says it's bad, and I agree. But note the hypocrisy of those with the loudest cries against big government: they want that government exerting it's power into our homes and close relationships, telling us who can get medical care, who we as adults can choose as our spouse for legal protection for our relationship with our significant other as adults, and lobbying for the government to restrict the reproductive rights of those outside the middle class.

These controversial problems in America occur because we still fail to address the injustices that have in the past turned into major unrest. Instead, like when Johnson's "war on poverty" died a premature death, we have become preoccupied with a war against the poor. We have economic gurus defending wealth redistribution, not from the top down, but from the rest of us up. Instead of a draft, which created a military demography of equality like in Egypt, we have a hundred thousand trapped outside the economy unless they sign up for military service. For the first time in America, almost none of our government officials placing our service people into harms way have sons or daughters sharing that risk. Inflamed by "death tax" rhetoric, we are creating a government and economy led by vested inherited wealth, totally against the economic principles clearly elucidated in the foundation of our nation (See Tom Payne).

So now in America, more people than ever before are suffering because of a big government gone awry under the auspices of big money. It's time to look at resources to help us understand this outside the media owned by government/corporate complexes.

On line, these resources are many. Haa'aretz, Al Jazeera, Alternet, Democracy Now, Consortium News, Sojourners Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, The Huffington Post, and many more. These get little corporate funding, and depend on concerned citizen contributions. They restore the function of the main commercial media before the equal time law was rescinded over a decade ago. Before then, investigative independent journalism was central to our free press tradition. Now it's virtually nonexistent, except outside the main commercial media.

Unrest, conflicting interests and resulting suppression are increasing problems worldwide, providing motivation for people driven to desperation by real or imagined fears to act upon those fears violently. That's why we may have an escalation of incidents like the recent one in Tucson. Fortunately, we have a wonderful precedent in this country of addressing potentially catastrophic conflict when confronted by major social changes, as in the civil rights era of the 60's. See my previous column, in the archives of the Big Horn County News http://www.bighorncountynews.com

or below for the complete column version of "What would MLK Say."

The best way to deal with this social pathology is to go to the root of the problem with real transparency, access to sustainable economy for families, and programs that address real problems of real families honestly and with the best appropriate technology. Dealing with our needs to grow and change as a nation when the needs affect the common citizens of our country is the time. We have done it before. Now, Egypt gives us a reason to do it again. Those who object, claiming our country is so much better than all the other nations, are following a route destructive of the values our founding fathers promoted. Let's not go backward as a nation to the values of King George and the Redcoats in 1776. Let's go forward.

So far, we have escalated building prisons and incarcerating the marginalized. Many criminologists know this is not

the best for our country. It's much better to have a fair economy, a fair health delivery program, a fair, healthy and transparent agriculture and food production enterprise, and a military under the control of the citizens of this country instead controlled by a humongous and powerful military industrial complex.

But in recent times the media has been largely stolen by interests that inflame, instill fear, and agitate us on agendas that sidetrack us to the real issues, the real cancer of oppression eating at the core of our nation and the world.

So Egyptians in Cairo, especially those with an anti-American rhetoric in the demonstrations, are a gift to us in America. Listen to them. We have in America the proven capacity to make major changes in our laws and the structure of our economy. We can see the evil, hear the evil, and set about to do what needs to be done.

How do we know which of the media pundits we should listen to? The Bible again is clear. "…For our warfare is not against flesh and blood." So wrote St. Paul, to the Ephesians caught in a similar religious/political civil conflict.

Whenever we hear a pundit or politician inciting us to hatred against a particular group of people, focusing on the identity of the group or individual as a terrible threat to our nation and worthy to be eliminated, let's forget it.

Whenever we hear of someone doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly among the world's peoples before God, let's follow that person.

It really is simple: those of us who are Christian, let's read the Gospels on what Jesus was like, what he did and said, and copy him. Or copy Paul as he told us to do, because he imitates Jesus. Those of us connected to another religion, I have a hunch this antidote against our plague of cancerous hatred is there too.

Organizations and religious groups connecting to this way of healing our nation and world are many. Search these on your browser:

Christian Peacemaker Teams

The Third Side (Harvard University)

Muslim Peacemaker Teams

American Friends Service Committee

Baptist Peace Fellowship

Sojourners Magazine

Southern Christian Leadership Council

Amity International

Over a thousand university peace studies departments worldwide

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

What would Martin Luther King say?

Our government likes to revise history. Jeh C. Johnson spoke recently at a Pentagon ceremony honoring the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on his birthday, a national holiday. He tried to debunk the fierce antiwar message of King, claiming King would understand that Obama's war in Afghanistan is different, more like the mission of the Good Samaritan of Jesus' Gospel according to Luke*. I wonder about this.

In 1962 I was a freshman at Hesston College in Kansas. An African-American safe-cracking felon was converted to Jesus by a Mennonite missionary in the Chicago ghetto. He desperately needed a roommate as a condition of admission, and staying out of prison. Transformed by the power of Jesus, he had convinced the parole board to let him leave Cook County Jail, the Alcatraz of the Midwest, to enter Christian ministry training. The Dean of Students told me it was difficult finding a student willing to room with "a Negro."

An Iowa farm boy, I wasn't easily intimidated. I agreed. He moved in. I quickly got my first impression. He awoke every morning at 5:00 to a prayer and exercise regime including 50 pushups, the last 10 with handclaps. He was several years my senior, the years he had spent incarcerated. We became friends.

One late January snowbound evening he had a request. "I'm a felon. I can't even get a license to drive, and you have a car. I'll pay your gas. Take me to Tabor College to hear this lecture." I grudgingly agreed. I never heard of the lecturer, an African American with a PhD. His topic was the US constitution and the laws of segregation. He was responding to the loud extremist rhetoric in America then that racial segregation was both constitutional and within the laws of God. I questioned my roommate, "Are you sure this PhD Negro isn't a fake?"

We crept and slid my Dad's 54 Studebaker to Hillsboro. I remember little of the lecture, as my farm boy mental capacity strained at the constitutional law vocabulary. My roommate was totally awed by the speaker, and insisted I come back stage to meet this man, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and shake his hand. I grudgingly agreed, my skepticism intact. I couldn't then grasp the passion of the moment.

Spring 1964 on Easter Sunday morning I awoke drenched with dew and covered with a wet blanket on a piney woods hillside in Southern Alabama. We four white boys had not found a freedom school or civil rights group the night before that would take us in. We knew Dr. King was going to deliver the Easter Sunday sermon at his father's church in Montgomery. We had settled for the night on the ground near a closed campground in Taladega National Forest.

A Junior at Goshen College, Indiana, I had become good friends with our guide in the segregated south, Eli Hochstedler. He was a student the previous year at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. He told stories of café and bus sit-ins, police harassment, and his friendship with Medgar Evers, the civil rights activist assassinated with two others and buried in a dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. With two other guys exploring similar persuasions, we packed our primitive gear into a Ford Falcon and spent spring break visiting freedom schools in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

We four unshaven college boys were immediately welcomed 15 minutes before starting time at the Dexter Avenue 2^nd Baptist Church in Montgomery. The church was packed, standing room only available. But the ushers marched us past rows of elegantly dressed congregants to the front row of the church where four little girls dressed in white with flowers in their hair obediently left their seats to make room for us. I was totally embarrassed. Martin Luther King, Sr., the pastor, Dr. King's father, preached hours, and finally Dr. King, Jr. was invited to the pulpit. He spoke 15 minutes; I timed it. The sermon remains etched in my memory like none other. The hand fans in the heat of that hot Easter Sunday are a distant 2nd.

Afterward my three college friends insisted on waiting in line to shake hands with Dr. King. I refused, explaining that I already shook his hand once. Exhausted, I took a nap in the back seat of our Falcon.

I still don't know why it took me so long to grasp this. Here on the back 40 I struggle to understand the interconnectedness of elements like c, h, o, p, k, n etc. with microbial funguses and bacteria, etc., to facilitate the sun's gift of life for all beings. But I should have understood more of the passion Jesus and King had that's so desperately needed in our world today for human life and security.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was one who facilitated the interconnectedness of all in the human race. He facilitated the Son's gift of life for all. But He was not Jesus. Like most of us, his personal morality fell far short of Jesus. Like St. Paul, he was striving to imitate Jesus. And imitating Jesus is the key. For centuries after Jesus died his followers were derisively called "little Christs" as they sought to imitate Jesus through acts that pundits mistakenly labeled as weakness, irrelevant to the evil they faced in their turbulent times.

Our modern times are turbulent, too. So where is Jesus now? Can we find Him among those needing food stamps because they have no living wage? Are Israeli citizens* really ministering to Him if they repair Palestinians' wells destroyed by settlers? Is He seen in those who lost access to health care because insurance discards them? Is He the alien given sanctuary illegally in our country? Is He the farmers and taxi drivers* incarcerated in Guantanamo? Does Jesus' experience with insurrection, chaos and terrorism in AD 30 have any relevance to America and its wars today?

Is the Pentagon spokesman Johnson correctly understanding what MLK would say? Can true moral strength for America come from killing evil people and breaking their access to basics of life? How sustainable is agriculture that cuts the fragile bonds in the plant roots between decaying funguses and pathogenic microbes?

It took me decades to start trying to figure this out, so I can't fault anyone for getting tired thinking about what MLK would say, let alone Jesus.

* Check out the following sources

Taayush has worked specifically on water issues between Palestinians and the Israeli occupation of Palestinians' land.

http://www.taayush.org/?p=1143

This website has links to Dr. King's speeches in the last years prior to his assassination:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/13/obama_official_mlk_supports_our_wars

UK article on Guantanamo innocents:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7092435.ece

The Pentagon speech by Jeh C. Johnson and comments are here in the official defense department news release:

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=62448

Israeli citizens have organized for peace with Palestinians, many of them joint efforts between Israelis and Palestinians. Most peace groups in Israel are allied with http://www.icahd.org

An important Christian-Jewish organization is Rabbis for Human Rights: http://www.rhr.israel.net

An organization working specifically with farm and water issues with Palestinians is http://www.taayush.org

Christian Peacemaker Teams is ministering in conflict zones all over the world, including the Middle East. http://www.cpt.org/

It's the contention of this columnist that these organizations are doing more than all the US military efforts to make us safe from terrorism, at less than 1% the cost.

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David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Medicine and the Total Person

American commercial medicine today neglects the most powerful healing tool gifted to humankind: the heart-mind connection (read The Heart Mind Connection, by Windsor Ting). Commercial medicine instead focuses on finding a specific biochemical mechanistic remedy for each separate pathological symptom. Ignoring this powerful, God-given tool seems a tragic mistake. Could it be that this is why there is so much dissatisfaction with our health care delivering industry?

A good friend of mine, who spends considerable time with terminally ill people, told me this story of how important the heart-mind connection is to the healing process:

I went to the hospital to visit my elderly friend, who was dying of terminal cancer. He was not expected to leave the hospital, with a life expectancy of a few weeks at best. I had just arrived when an older gentleman strode into his hospital room. He exuded confidence and care. I stepped aside in respect. He spoke loudly enough, so I could hear him quite clearly, to my consternation.

"I remember your pranks when we were kids," he began, "You were good-for-nothing then, and now look at you. You got yourself so sick you're about to die. Can't even hardly raise your eyes to look at me. Go ahead and die, you good-for-nothing, no one will miss you. The world is better without you."

There were a few seconds of shocked silence, and the sick one began gurgling. I didn't know what was happening. The gurgling turned into giggling, then laughter, and in seconds the sick one had lifted his arms, the visitor helped him sit up, and they were in each others arms laughing up a storm on his hospital bed. Neither could not stop laughing. There was no other conversation.

A nurse, hearing the commotion, came to investigate. Irritated, and concerned for the health of the frail cancer patient, she asked the old gentlemen to leave. He left with a smile after being with his friend for only a few minutes.

A few days later the terminally ill patient was discharged from the hospital. His cancer was in remission, and he lived years beyond his prognosis.

Health care providers have researched the heart-mind connection, and the unfortunately named "placebo" effect. It's one of the total-person wellness achievement practices gleaned from cultures other than modern European.

We have largely left the heart-mind connection, since we in America have married health delivery with commercial profiteering. Using technology to fix specific symptoms of debilitation reaps billions in profit for the owners of various drugs or devices. We call this system "fee-for-service", and it's pretty broken. Holistic care of the total person has been neglected, replaced by the practice of focusing on individual symptoms to which profit-making healing procedures are applied. Procedure-based health care is very expensive. So health insurance companies go to great lengths to limit the amount of this care it will pay for. This form of rationing further ratchets up the cost of care, as insurers pay a mint for the legal justification required to defend their denials of specific procedures. As medical inflation rates soar, across our nation, too many of our citizens can no longer afford reasonable health care. And even when we do have insurance, our doctors have less and less say in deciding how to care for us.

Sadly, this is the way the system has been designed for quite some time now. In the early '70's, government and health care promoters colluded to promote this highly profitable, procedure-based form of health care. Patient wellness took a back seat to the profit motive. Nixon's secret tapes reveal just that in his private conversations with CEO's of drug companies, hospital associations and health insurance companies. These tapes reveal that government conspired with commercial health interests to reduce health care delivery while increasing government bureaucracy and cash flows connected to compensation for procedures. Rather than paying for good health of the citizens, the government would pay for the amount of health care delivered—measured in numbers of tests, procedures, and prescriptions. Of course, this was not public information; it was a commercial secret, until the freedom-of-information act uncovered Nixon's secret tapes. Remember? It took a while before the legal hurdles of "national security interests" were overcome.

And ever since, as Americans have evolved from "citizens" to "consumers," health care delivery has moved away from compassion to profit. Price-gouging through the fee for service system increasingly reaps billions for the industry. Unfortunately, the health reforms of our politicians—Obama, honest Republicans (are there any?) and dishonest Democrats—leave untouched this greatest mistaken expense in the health care of our nation.

My friend who told me the story at the beginning of this column is not a politician. He is honest. And while he has been personally involved with the Apsáalooke teasing clan culture for decades, he did not know of its vast potential for healing. I'm not sure that anyone fully understands this healing phenomenon. But because it's free, and not subject to patent or license, it will probably never be formally studied. In the meantime, could it be that we're not getting our money's worth in this country when it comes to health care? Is it possible that when health care becomes an "industry"—particularly one that accounts for so much profit—we the people lose out? http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

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David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org