The perfect flood – is it over?

The record flood of May, 2011, on the Little Horn, begs for an explanation. Why such a severe flood? I will try a simple one: almost 20 years of drought.

In the 1970's my son and I discovered fishing on the Big Horn. Our favorite place was the St. X bridge, with its wide gravel bars and sandy beaches extending into the water, and the steep place along the east side where larger rainbows lurked. We launched our homemade Cajun pirogue there, caught fish, and my children, young then, enjoyed splashing in the puddles across the wide riverbed.

Take a look next time you cross that bridge. The riverbed is constricted. Over the decades, grasses, then willow brush, and now even Russian olive and cottonwood crowd the river into half its former width.

At 10 p.m. on Saturday, my flashlight shining out my east door at Greenwood Farm revealed muddy turbulent water had risen four inches since 8 p.m., indicated by marks on the stake I planted in the yard that afternoon. I turned in and set the alarm for 1 a.m.. At midnight, I awoke in a sweat. In my dream I was swimming for life in a flood. Awake, still hearing rain, I grabbed my flashlight and went out to check the flood. Up another three inches, and muddy water was rushing in waves over the lane leading from our back door.

It was worrisome, but I was grateful for my family helping fill sandbags to protect our doors. I was even more grateful that our house had no crawl space, and our walls, made of waterproof concrete ten feet high, were plenty strong. I still had a sense of unease. When will the water stop rising? I made my way around the house, turned on lights, and saw flood waters almost encircling our house. A quick estimate said eight inches to go before water would reach the sandbags jammed against our outside doors.

At 2 a.m., the water level was exactly where it had been at midnight. At 4 a.m., it had dropped an inch. I was confident the worst was over.

At 10 a.m. Sunday morning, after dropping by four inches, I read the news on the computer. The Bureau of Land Management had shut down the flow in the Yellowtail Dam to around 3,000 cubic feet per second.

Many others in Big Horn County were not as fortunate, especially along the Little Horn.

I got out the old map of our farm and the nearby river, based on photos taken in the 70's. The back channel next to our house was once a significant part of the river. The island, now the headquarters of the Eagles Nest Lodge, was mostly a gravel bar. Now, Russian Olive has taken over everywhere, and I watched the water meandering slowly through that channel, still rushing madly across my yard and down my lane. It was obvious the river had lost much of its capacity to flow.

I began to understand. The habit of green things is to grow close to the water's edge. With the drought, the water's edge moved in on the river. The normal small floods added sediment to the green things along the shore, and those green things flourished into brush, then trees, then a strong riverbank. The broad river beds with open gravel bars we had in Big Horn County in the 70's are gone. With this pattern happening on our two major rivers in Big Horn County, the present crisis has become inevitable.

Did this record flood remove the brush blocking the river's flow? Did the snow in the high country lose most of its water content with this flood, or will there be another? Will the rains stop and warmer weather come at a gradual pace, allowing normal snow-melt and runoff? Is the water above Yellowtail Dam still rising?

At first, I thought maybe we've seen the end of the only perfect flood of 2011. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe these questions should motivate prayer, and prayer might lead to some action. This flood was enough.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Debunking Greed

I'm a graduate of a Christian college where professors were strong on altruism. In economics I learned Adam Smith's philosophy based on what we understood as greed. Being a rebel, I bought the idea. I used to enjoy debunking altruism in college bull sessions.

"Even that toasted black hen," I used say to a dedicated self-giving friend, "really was preserving her own genetic code in her chicks when she sat still in the face of a fast approaching prairie fire, and died instead of flying away." I was referring to the famous story of the farmer who kicked a lump of ashes, the burned body of a mother hen, and uncovered a nest of peeping unsinged baby chicks. Her singed wings were enough protection to save her young. They were her resurrected life. She really was following a self-serving motivation to give her life, so I argued.

So in college I agreed greed is good. It's still dominant 50 years later in our culture and business practices. But now, in the last ten years, this conventional understanding from Adam Smith's 1776 book, Wealth of Nations, is no longer accepted by many research minded economists. There has been an awesome change in economic philosophy at the most scholarly levels. This debunking of greed needs to trickle down.

My son told me to search on line for a ten-minute video entitled "What Motivates Us." It's easy to find. Using researched documentation, the cute animated cartoon convincingly demonstrates we aren't motivated as much by greed or even self interest as by factors such as purposeful mission, autonomy, preservation of our human family and community, and complex challenges.

Tasks involving these factors aren't enhanced by incentive pay or exorbitant CEO compensation. Inserting the greed incentive into the mix usually lowers accomplishment. Surprising, isn't it? When tasks are cognitively challenging, requiring teamwork and a sense of mission for the benefit of others, incentive pay actually reduces work quality and output. "Whoa," I thought when I first saw this short video, "I'm catching a case of cognitive dissonance."

Well, self-interest does have a place. I see it all over this back 40, our Greenwood Farm. Weeds compete with my Garrison grass and alfalfa for germination and root room. Goose couples compete with each other for prime nesting habitat. And everyone gains with the competition, except the weeds.

But we human managers of this ground have decided greed and self-interest, while clearly credible and powerful, are not our prime motivators. If we were interested in maximizing profit per acre, we would have been much better off buying a parcel of more productive soil. The ground itself cries out for another motivation. How can we resurrect the sterile soil here to best sustain life for human benefit again after years of declining production in conventional farming? Our thinking is not just for next year's profit, but sustainable benefits for the next 10 or 100 or more years. And for this, we are in step with others in Big Horn County.

So the best question is what to do with land that cannot facilitate a greed motivation. Will altruism work here? Who would work here with this motivation?

There are lots of such folks around. For example, check out the Wellknown Buffalo Center at Garryowen. Like us, this summer they are having a group of college students volunteering to get their hands dirty working to make idealism become reality. They are doing summer school with Crow language immersion, gardening, and traditional skills of the Apsaalooke. Ours are coming to learn from our small steps toward sustainable living here on the back 40. This summer will see them working on experimental "earthship" building construction, using discarded tires and rammed earth, helping with farming, learning with folks in Big Horn County.

Like the mother hen, our motivation is preservation and life for our family, the human family. We want our farming practices to look forward to the best ways of not just feeding human beings for survival, but living productive lives in respectful coexistence with others of our kind, with the land and with all creatures great and small. Our tasks are small and not a significant challenge to our economic culture of greed. But new economic research supports our efforts. Together we can chart a better way toward a stronger and more sustainable future for our nation and humankind.

Use this link for the video "what motivates us" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&playnext_from=TL&videos=qOyhHX6kxN4

A scholarly review of research on a similar vein:

Vailancourt Rosenau, Pauline (2006) "Is Economic Theory Wrong About Human Nature?," Journal of Economic and Social Policy: Vol.10: Iss. 2, Article 4.

Available at: http://epubs.scu.edu.au/jesp/vol10/iss2/4

This website is good on down-to-earth research-based information debunking popular politically correct ideas, this one on the myth that greed is good:

http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/GreedIsGood.htm

Here's some writing from the above website:

The two books by Adam Smith upon which our modern cultural value of greed is supposedly based:

Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations, 1776

Smith, Ibid: Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1790

A scholarly book on the subject, in reality it demonstrates that Adam Smith was not definitive regarding his analysis of self interest in economics as a contributor to democracy:

Kenneth Lux, Adam Smith's Mistake: How a Moral Philosopher Invented Economics and Ended Morality (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1990)

Scientific studies are proving that cooperation is a built-in human trait

Brain scans show why we love cooperating MakeThemAccountable.com

Last Updated: 2002-07-17 13:09:43 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Alison McCook

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New research reveals why people often cooperate with each other, even when it is not necessarily to their advantage to do so.

A group of researchers based at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, found that when a woman is involved in a situation where she is cooperating with someone else, she experiences activation in brain areas that are also activated by "rewards" such as food, money and drugs.

This indicates that our bodies may have been somehow programmed to "tag cooperation as rewarding," study author Dr. Gregory S. Berns told Reuters Health.

"Which is good, because it probably keeps the social fabric of society together," he added…

[The truth is, when you get past all the hate rhetoric, that millions of years of evolution have made us social beings. We lived in tribes for millions of years, and I assure you that members of a tribe didn't have a greed-is-good mentality. I'm no expert, but what I've read suggests that in a tribal environment generosity was admired and rewarded. And one didn't become a chief simply by being the strongest. An aspirant for chiefdom had to build coalitions of supporters, had to be willing to listen to the wisdom of the elders, and was most likely to become and remain chief if he was known as a brave hunter and warrior, but also as a generous person.]

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

Barak Mugabe

I posted below a longer version of the following as a letter to the editor of the Billings Gazette. The edited shorter version is available at the Gazette:

http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_2075134d-72ae-516c-ab0c-acb5d9987548.html

Following this letter on line are some 60 blog comments. Anyone can join in the fracas.

Barak Mugabe

First our guns

Then our land

I read these phrases on a sign above the manager's desk at a Billings business last week, one that markets wholesale to constructions companies and farmers. The sign was easily visible to me and the public from the sales lobby. It first struck me that this must represent a perspective of the management at this otherwise reputable business establishment. This business has served me and Greenwood Farm very well, so it is disappointing.

Let me correct the manager publicly, since these surprising and offensive phrases assaulted me in public.

1. Robert Mugabe is the brutal dictator of Zimbabwe. Barack Obama is the democratically elected president of the United States of America. To combine those names is deeply anti-American and slings mud on our nation's honor and values.

2. Our president, unlike Mugabe the tinhorn dictator of Zimbabwe, has neither done nor said nor promoted anything remotely like confiscating my Remington, Savage, or Winchester. The comparison is totally ludicrous, even though the NRA is famous for pushing any paranoia that will sell more guns, even guns for criminals.

3. Our federal government funds our Montana land's productivity. Without federal government subsidy for commodity production and other land use by farmers, most Montana farmers would be driven off their land. The President is strongly dedicated to protecting the family farm, in words and actions.

4. A strong majority of citizens of this nation elected the current president. They affirmed his African descent, along with 100 million or so other citizens born in the USA. The constant barrage questioning his citizenship and legitimacy is racist to the core.

This carefully deniable inflammatory language is what I encountered first from Ku Klux Klan and John Birch Society literature in Mississippi in the 60's. What's unprecedented and shocking in America now is mainline commercial media's pundits who encourage such language. This is tantamount to insurrection, with money media giants turning a blind eye.

I would be the first to say such speech is protected by the first amendment. But that doesn't make hate speech patriotic. Such attitudes are just a step away from flag burning, which also is protected speech, but is similarly anti-American.

I'm too old to be tolerant of such inflammatory speech and veiled personal attacks against our president, regardless of the party. I spent two years beginning 2001 as an American language specialist on the faculty of the foreign language department of XiHua University, near Chengdu in China. I can guarantee Chinese citizens were arrested and worse for using much milder language against their government leaders. That doesn't happen here, thank God. But pushing the limits on our 1^st amendment rights should not be the business of an otherwise reputable firm in Billings.

I like America, and I like the company where I do business. But I don't like anti-American speech couched in inflammatory false phrases attacking our president personally in my face when I shop there.

Maybe the minority extremists there would identify better with the hate-America agitators in the Middle East. There's plenty of oil pumped there, and plenty of work for people who do pipes and inflammatory propaganda on both sides of the conflagrations there.

--
David Graber


406 665-3373
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Dawn Breaks Only in Darkness

A recollection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Easter sermon at Dexter Avenue 2nd Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, 1964

Doctor King's sermon started by retelling the story of two of Jesus' disciples and their walk to Emmaus.

Two disciples, determined not to remain holed up in fear of being arrested in Jerusalem that first Easter, left the city and the Roman crackdown on political unrest stirred up by the crucifixion of Jesus. They walked on through the night of darkness and despair toward the town of Emmaus. Dawn was barely graying when another traveler joined them and listened to their tales of woe. They recounted to the seemingly uninformed traveler Jesus' false arrest, trial, torture and execution on the Roman cross. With emotion they explained their hopes dashed for themselves, their families and the nation, their fears, and their feeling of abandonment. Their darkness was impenetrable even though the traveler quoted scripture to challenge it.

As they neared Emmaus they invited the caring stranger to join them at a friend's house. Their guest was given bread to break to share a meal. That's when dawn broke in the darkness of their despair, and they saw it was Jesus, risen from the dead. Resurrection happened for them too, after all shreds of hope were dashed, and darkness was total.

In his sermon, Dr. King spoke of being in jail in Birmingham in 1963. While there for eleven days, he read newspaper accounts of an open letter criticizing the extremism of the civil rights movement, written and signed by important Christian leaders of the nation. They asked him to stop the movement, and save the nation and the Negro race from civil war and an immanent violent reaction of citizens and governments of the South. They criticized his leadership of aggressive sit-ins, public demonstrations and law violations because permits to parade were withheld.

"Jesus is risen," said Dr. King. He went on to proclaim that God's power is evidenced, even more than by a reviving Jesus' body, by healing the despair of the darkness Jesus and his followers faced. They despaired that God's power was weak against Satan, against the might of Rome and its Jewish collaborators. After Jesus had been dead and buried for three days, there seemed no question where true power lay. The Gospels are clear: the resurrection was powerful because it was so unexpected. All had lost all hope in God, as revealed by Jesus who had been executed.

It's in such darkness that God's resurrection dawns yet today. Dr. King explained the darkness of the despair he risked sharing with his Christian White brothers who opposed him. He didn't expect much from writing this letter.

But God brought a new dawn of resurrection for the downtrodden of America within a month of his release from jail. The laws of segregation were dealt a defeat in the US Supreme Court. God worked his way, after it appeared certain His way was defeated.
This is the time of year when we think of the love of God breaking forth into eternal dawn. We come to see that the most powerful forces in the universe are not those forces of military might but those forces of spiritual might. Dr. King quoted this great hymn of our Christian church:

When I survey the wondrous cross,
On which the prince of glory died,
My richest gains I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

I am not one to remember sermons. But this one had such a deep effect on my life I rehearsed it in my memory over the decades. I hoped to find it on line, with so many of Dr. King's sermons and speeches now posted. Instead I found there are hundreds of his speeches and sermons that, like this, were not recorded. The above is my brief recollection.

For events leading to my hearing this sermon, see "What Would MLK Say," the Big Horn County News archives on line, Spirit and Dust column, Feb 3, 2011. Also, look up "Letter from Birmingham Jail April 1963" for Dr. King's letter written at a time of despair over the failing civil rights movement. He repeatedly referred to this letter in his sermon that Easter Sunday Morning, 1964, "Dawn breaks only in darkness."

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034

406 665-3373
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

The Budget Battle, Common Sense and the Bible

Farmers of Big Horn County and across America are familiar with tough choices in tough times.

When weather turns bad and crops fail, farmers must decide where to cut expenses, when to borrow and how to wisely invest available resources in order to maximize future harvest.

In the endless debate about our national budget, the same wisdom should apply. Everyone agrees spending cuts are necessary—but which ones? To answer wisely, we should look at economics, not politics. Which investments and which cuts are best for all citizens and future generations?

However dire the budget, most farmers would prioritize investing in seed. Our national obligation to invest in children's health; education is no different. And it's a good investment. Studies show a return of 400-700% for every dollar spent on early childhood education. See this link: http://developingchild.harvard.edu/library/multimedia/interactive_features/five-numbers/

Many in Congress still hold to decreasing the tax burden on the wealthy as an investment in "job creators." The theory goes that the more money wealthier people can keep for themselves, the more jobs they will create to spread the wealth to the rest of us. Does this work for our children's future?
To answer that question we need a little foray into tax history, one that politicians and media pundits avoid. Our nation prospered under Eisenhower's 90% tax bracket for the wealthiest. Under Reagan, this tax averaged 50%. G. W. Bush cut taxes for the wealthiest to 35% and funded two wars off of the budget. He took office with a $236 billion budget surplus, remember? His tenure ended with a $415 billion deficit, not counting $150 billion borrowed from social security. And Obama? Like Republicans, he's not serious about the deficit.

The nation's wealthiest 400 now own as much of the nation's wealth as half of the entire population: over 150 million of us. Said another way, for every dollar each of the less-wealthy half of us own, the average one of the wealthiest 400 in America have half a million. When they complain that the tax burden is shifted toward the wealthy--i.e., the biggest percentage of tax income comes from the wealthiest--the reason is obvious: They make more money than the rest of us put together.

And one of the biggest cash cows, the Pentagon, is funded without question-- over $500 billion and increasing. A range of groups, including Cato Institute, Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Project for Defense Alternatives have detailed nearly $1 trillion in cuts that could be made to the Pentagon budget in the next ten years, yet congressional leaders in both parties including Tea Party activists are refusing to tackle Pentagon spending.

Instead they blame the poor. They protect tax breaks for the wealthy and then make a ruckus about a tiny fraction of our budget: WIC, Headstart, and other support for low income children. This way of doing almost nothing for the deficit is deceptive. And it's unwise to create new budget crises in millions of homes across America. Here's where the national budget debate needs our nation's moral foundation.

The Bible has more to say about money and "greed, which is idolatry (St. Paul, Col 3.5)," than any other moral issue. This is the very issue by which Jesus separates the nations destined for heaven from nations destined for hell, in Matthew 25: "Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire… for I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink. I was naked, and you did not clothe me. I was an alien and you did not welcome me. I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. … Inasmuch as you did not do it for the least of these my brethren, you did not do it for me."

The converse is promised in the book of Isaiah: "If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and …you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail (58:10).

Last year our farm spent more than it earned. But I'm still buying seed for the west field. Now that the soil's a little healthier, its time to grow some pasture. In a few years, some sheep, goats, or cows will have something good to munch, and the grandkids can have 4H projects. I'm investing in the future, for my children's children. Do our leaders have courage to do the same?

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." - Dr. Martin Luther King. April 4 was the 43rd anniversary of his assassination.

The following is the portion cut for the Big Horn County News "Back 40" column

All over the media are the personal attack words, "Obama had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a real discussion on government spending." Personal attacks are not even appropriate in our American civilization when they are legitimate. But this language, all over the media backed funded by Murdoch, the Koch brothers, etc., reeks of hypocrisy. These Republicans, and for that matter, Democrats as well, don't want to tackle the American wealth accumulating with the wealthiest 1%. So they don't talk about the Pentagon and associated excessive profits in the military/industrial complex Eisenhower warned about. Virtually every economic sector has its hands deep in taxpayer pockets, profits deeply connected to our defense, military and national security apparatus.

Those who now say "everything is on the table" will be keeping smoke and mirrors on the table too again. The mantra of blaming the poor is totally ludicrous. They continue putting out the propaganda that all we have to do to turn around the economy is stop spending taxpayer money on the most vulnerable of socie

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, is waging radical class warfare and ideological privatization schemes and selling it as a debt reduction plan. His newly released FY12 budget proposal, The Path to Prosperity, ought to have the subtitle: "A Windfall For the Already Prosperous."

America's richest 1 percent are getting about $1.5 trillion richer each year. Representative Ryan's tea party inspired budget numbers claim debt reduction. But look what happens. From start to finish, this budget is a smoke screen. Indeed, though Ryan's central claim is that his proposal will cut government spending by $5.8 trillion over the next decade, Joel Packer of the Commitee for Education Funding points out the reality: "For the overall budget over ten years it cuts outlays by $5.8 trillion below CBO baseline but it also cuts revenues by $4.2 trillion below CBO baseline, thus reducing the deficit over ten years by $1.65 trillion." So the richest 1 percent are getting richer each year by almost the amount his budget reduces the federal deficit in ten years.

Yet under the guise of debt reduction, the chairman of the House Budget Committee's budget proposal would take from the already poor, give to the already rich and attempt to achieve debt reduction not by cutting real costs, but by privatizing entitlement programs and shifting costs from the wealthy and corporations to struggling states, seniors, disabled, sick and low-income Americans. And the additional revenues necessary for serious debt reduction is glaringly absent, with proposals that would actually decrease tax-revenue from those most able to pay.

Studies also show that the richest 5 percent hold almost 64 percent of our wealth while and the bottom 80 percent of scrape by on just 12.8 percent of the pie.

Unmentioned in Congress, looming before us all are the two biggie budget busters left off the discretionary table: big business bailouts, especially banking and energy, and the taxpayer funded profits from our wars in the Middle East. The tax system stays in place. The nation's greedy corporations and insatiable wealthy are fattening themselves on the working poor. There's no trickle down. It's the opposite; the rich have been sucking the economic lifeblood from the middle class and poor for decades.

The Bush-Obama budget continues giving millionaires huge tax breaks while seniors and hard-working families pay more for health care and get less coverage. It still helps Wall Street-run health insurance companies make record-breaking profits and pay their CEOs outrageous sums to deny people the care they paid for and need. See Bloomberg.com news April 6:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-06/ryan-s-budget-proposal-would-aid-insurers-a-top-source-of-campaign-cash.h

The GOP's budget simply goes farther than the Democrats breaking America's most basic promise: That if you work hard and play by the rules, you can care for your family and retire with peace of mind. See Huffington Post on the Republican Budget Plan: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ethan-rome/republican-budget-plan-de_b_845256.html

As a country, we face difficult financial choices, but one thing that should not be on the table is to abandon the poor and vulnerable while subsidizing Wall Street and allowing more military spending. Should such big budget items really be considered non-discretionary?

Many Democrats and most Republicans, as well as the Koch brothers' funded Tea Party have it dangerously wrong. It seems the Christian faith is a schizophrenic practice for them. They uphold the adopted principle of greed for corporate and personal profits above civic responsibility to the most vulnerable of our society. But to me, my Republican-leaning parents, and many of my friends in Big Horn County, our faith connects with all of life, including politics.

At a time when billionaires are getting massive tax cuts and Wall Street profits are sky high, balancing the budget on the backs of those most vulnerable in America is simply wrong.

The poor are — once again — under attack, this time in the House budget bill, H.R. 1. The budget proposes cuts in the WIC program (which supports women, infants and children), in international food and health aid (18 million people would be immediately cut off from a much-needed food stream, and 4 million would lose access to malaria medicine) and in programs that aid farmers in underdeveloped countries. Food stamps are also being attacked, in the twisted "Welfare Reform 2011" bill. (There are other egregious maneuvers in H.R. 1, but I'm sticking to those related to food.)

These supposedly deficit-reducing cuts — they'd barely make a dent — will quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than are doing so now. And: The bill would increase defense spending.

For the following, see : The Bush Budget Deficit Death Spiral, by Robert Freeman, NYT

Lenders talk about a debtor's death spiral. It occurs when borrowers get so far in over their heads they begin borrowing money just to cover the interest payments on past borrowings. The borrowers have to do this to keep the lending flowing but they can no longer plausibly pay down the principal. As new debt compounds on old, bankruptcy becomes imminent. Further lending is foolhardy. Foreclosure is only a matter of time.

The U.S. is starting to look like it is entering just such a death spiral. It is foretold not simply by the large and growing deficits, nor by the fact that their carrying costs will rise quickly as interest rates rise. Rather, it is the fact that these trends are becoming irreversible, a structural part of the U.S. economy. This and information on actual deficits and surpluses quoted in the printed column is available:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1022-26.htm

157,000 kids up to age 5, who rely on Head Start for nutrition, education and other services could be cut (1. "House Bill Means Fewer Children in Head Start, Less Help for Students to Attend College, Less Job Training, and Less Funding for Clean Water," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 1, 2011 http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3405)

A big source of the problem is those who cultivate the creep of ignorance across our land. 60 minutes had a special segment last week on corporate tax rates. They cited several huge previously American corporations that have spurned US citizenship and opted out of the country. They abandoned their country. They settled down in a foreign country, where corporate profits are taxed at much lower rates. Since the wealthiest CEO's have kept their residency in America, they do not have the heavy tax rates on large personal vested wealth common in other nations. All this is legal. Is it moral?

Left out is the vital information that America, unlike virtually every other modern democracy, lacks a federal property tax on individually held vested wealth. Since paper profits are a huge portion of corporate profits, our nation has held corporations to an income tax rate not unlike that for individuals. Other nations, recognizing the declarable wealth holdings of corporations distributed to stock holders, tax the net worth of individuals.

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

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

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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