#19 – Carol Ashley: Chris Martenson's "Crash Course"

/in , , , , , /by

Dick Bernard: On April 7, my friend John sent me an e-mail, as follows: “My son Joel sent this to me. It is fascinating and disturbing. http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/ You should check out this website and his seminar (several youtube videos embedded on the site). It touches on and brings together the topics of finance, national debt, inflation, peak oil, etc. It is in 20+ parts and takes over 3 hours, but it’s very worth it.”
Carol, whose comments follow, also watched the entire series, as have I and several others I know of. Carol lives in rural Minnesota near a town of perhaps 4000 residents. Following her comments, I add a few of mine. She and I wrote completely independent of each other: we didn’t know what the other had to say. Suffice to say, we think the series is worth your time. You can’t reach a conclusion about it without actually watching it all. Consider taking the time.
Carol Ashley:
No one wants to hear bad news. We had eight years of hearing more and more bad news. I often thought it couldn’t get worse, but it did. Now we just want to hope again. So Chris Mortensen’s Crash Course isn’t for the faint of heart.
When the housing bubble burst, you probably couldn’t help thinking of
the Great Depression. Christian’s of some persuasions were (and are) convinced that the end of the world is imminent. I, too, still think the
financial mess we are in is just the beginning of hard times. There are
a lot more forces coming together that make this a unique crisis and not nearly just a matter of a depression/recession. Martenson’s Crash Course outlines several reasons why, though he doesn’t include global climate change. Martenson makes sense of why by explaining the exponential factor and then showing how it works in various areas. His explanations are easy to understand and very basic. One of the things I’ve been most disgusted with in the constant news about the financial mess is that it seems to relate mostly to people who make a lot of money. Martenson is more about the very roots of economics, in the opinion of people who live much farther down the economic ladder.
Although Martenson gives a little hope at the end in thinking that our
quality of life could improve, he does not see the catastrophic
consequences for those who cannot save or plan for the coming crisis. So do I think there is no hope? I really have very little hope that people will see the light, or that they will work together, or that anything substantial will be done soon enough. I hope to be proven wrong.
America has been so focused on individualism (capitalism is good at
fostering the “pull yourself up by your bootstrap mentality) that I
wonder if people can work together. There are two things I see in my
community. One is that people despise those who can’t “make
it” even though they are among them in the broader sense of who has
wealth. They also despise the government and see no hope coming from that direction. On the other hand though, they also do think there is a lack of focus on community and some are actively working to build local resources in the form of promoting the local food movement.
One other thing I’d like to mention is that Martenson doesn’t bring in
politics per se. He appears to be on the right side of the political
divide. The coming economic disaster is one area where I see some
agreement in what some on the right and the left fear. Unfortunately,
without any sane discussion about the causes, one cannot sanely address solutions.
Martenson includes a self-assessment elsewhere on his website. One thing that struck me was in his section about safety. He asks if one has guns, knows how to use them and has addressed other safety issues, like the development of community with those who live nearby. Somehow, though I’ve had the same thoughts and I’ve heard others on the left express similar thoughts, it struck me as more of a right-wing manner of facing the issue. It is an expression of the extreme individualism in this country…the tendency to focus on taking care of self through one’s own means rather than coming together as a community to address concerns through sane government.
Personally, I think everyone in the country should listen to Martenson’s Crash Course.
Dick Bernard observations made before reading Carol’s: The “3 hours” part was a bit daunting, but I took on the task, initially watching the first 3 or 4 segments, then ultimately the rest. It was helpful that a coffee-time friend of mine, Steve, who I told about the course, actually watched the whole thing before I did, and was glad he did. Steve is a retired manager for a major corporation and not prone to take leaps based on limited or no data. I trusted his judgment. I have only a vague notion of Steve’s political orientation: we’re simply friends sharing a space for an hour or so each morning.
The Crash Course didn’t provide me with any new or unusual information, but I found it very useful. It is in easily digestable “bites”, and can be watched all at once, or over time. Martenson covers the bases of the present and possible future consequences, and does it in a non-partisan way. He teaches well. He presents information he thinks is important. The conclusions are left to the viewer.
No one knows for certain exactly what will happen in the future. But Martenson makes a persuasive case that the next 20 years will not resemble the past 20, and that the longer term is not going to be a time where the lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to over the last 20 years will return. There are too many “exponential curves” facing us, in population, energy use, etc., and if we factor in things like peak oil, climate change, global economic instability and such, and one is foolish to pretend that life can go on without very substantial changes in how we choose to live.
Succinctly, we all lived in the golden years. We, particularly those who come after us, are going to pay for our excess, and more than just in dollars.
Every day I see little ones, those from tiny newborns to teenager, and when I think of the future, I think about what’s ahead for them. My Dad lived about 20 years beyond my present age, so I might be around to see if Martenson’s predictions about the last 20 years are correct. But the present-day youngsters will be faced head-on with what we left behind, and they’ll just be in early adulthood when that 20 years comes.
I highly recommend watching the videos.
Final Notes from Dick after reading Carol’s: I was struck by how often Carol used the words “individualism” and “community” and their near relatives, like “together” or “local” to describe present and coming relationships in our own society. The community vs individual polarity is in itself a very complex yet very important topic for someone interested in writing about it.
Update June 3, 2009:  Note #34 published this date for more on this topic.

#13 – Bob Barkley: Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, Greens, and other Parties

/in , , /by

It has been said that Democrats pander to the whimsies, fancies, and naiveté of the people. They tend to call it ‘social justice’ or some such trendy label. It can be Pollyannaish, idealistic, and impractical.
On the other hand, it has been said that Republicans pander to the greed, avarice, and self-centeredness of people. They label it individual liberty, self-determination, rugged individualism, and such.
And then we have the Progressives, Libertarians, Greens, and possibly others, who all have legitimate perspectives (maybe even wiser ones) and similar stereotypical shortcomings. I have come to understand that a Progressive is a Liberal who not only supports dealing with many socio-economic issues by addressing them through public funds, but also addresses corporate and elitist exploitation that is a major root problem of many of these issues. Current Democratic leadership, for example, supports the former but apparently spurns the latter. Current Republican leadership supports neither. Possibly the 2008-09 financial crisis will wake up a majority of both groups.
Or, as P.J. O’Rourke observed: “The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then get elected and prove it.”
Jonathon Haidt, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, adds yet another dimension to the Republican/Democratic dynamic in his article, “What Makes People Vote Republican?” The first clue to his findings was this statement: “…when gut feelings are present, dispassionate reasoning is rare.” Then he adds, “The first rule of moral psychology: feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete.”
The way Haidt’s thesis works out, both Republicans and Democrats are made up of good people operating in different frameworks – different cultures – that neither quite understands about the other. Democrats tend to think that morality is quite simply about how we treat each other. It is quite individualistic. For Republicans, however, it is also about loyalty to the group, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. Haidt said he escaped his liberal partisan mindset when he “began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting and equally heartfelt visions of the good society.”
I found Haidt’s work very enlightening and helpful in overcoming my own liberal biases towards those with whom I steadfastly disagree.
In any case, none of these credos alone is healthy. And on the whole, none is helpful to a democratic society. However, there are elements of each that are useful. However, labeling one’s self an R, D, P, L, or a G, is probably not very wise, fair, or useful.
The following was recently (November, 2008) reported in the Washington Post: “Whatever the appropriate label, substantial majorities of the voters of 2008 want the war in Iraq to end as soon as possible. Large majorities favor affordable health insurance for everyone, a fairer distribution of wealth and income, and higher taxes on the rich. They want to preserve traditional Social Security. They want more effective government regulation of the financial sector. On social issues, the country that elected Obama is tolerant of homosexuality and legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, less so of same-sex marriage. A post-election survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic polling firm, showed that 51 percent said ‘the government should do more to solve problems.’” This last point by Greenberg brings to mind the closing thought in my short essay on Social Democracy which summarizes that topic with this: “…the bottom line role of government is to protect against excesses.” [Entry #2 at this site, April 2, 2009]. Of course, protecting against excesses and solving problems are not mutually exclusive it seems to me.
None of this sounds like it can be easily labeled. Consequently, it seems clear that Party labels are counterproductive. True patriots are loyal to this country’s principles rather than to a particular Party. It is clearly more important to know the difference between right and wrong, ethical and unethical, and good and evil, civility and rudeness or thoughtlessness, than between Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, or whatever. George Washington warned us about all of this right off the bat, and we immediately ignored him. Now, once again, we do so at our great peril.
Robert Barkley, Jr., Worthington, Ohio. Email at RBarkle@columbus.rr.com. Retired Executive Director, Ohio Education Association, served as Interim Executive Director, Maine Education Association, thirty-five year veteran of National Education Association and NEA affiliate staff work, long-term Consultant to the KnowledgeWorks Foundation of Cincinnati, Ohio [www.kwfdn.org], author of: Quality in Education: A Primer for Collaborative Visionary Educational Leaders, Leadership In Education: A Handbook for School Superintendents and Teacher Union Presidents, Principles and Actions: A Framework for Systemic Change (unpublished), and Progressive Thoughts from a Liberal Mind: Creating a More Perfect World (unpublished and available online upon request).
Note from the moderator: Speaking of Progressives, a correspondent from Madison WI noted, yesterday: “This is the celebration weekend for the 100th anniversary of the Progressive magazine founded by LeFollette here in WI.”

#11 – Dick Bernard: Swine Flu, Fear, Hype and Hysteria

/in , , , , , , /by

During 1918, my mother almost died in the WW I flu epidemic. I know because she wrote about it in her memories, thusly:
“I think one of the most traumatic experiences I had happened when I was about nine years old and got the World War I flu. Many people were very sick and some died. I had a very rough siege with that flu and remember when Dr. Salvage came out in some very cold winter weather, in the middle of the night, to keep me from bleeding to death. I don’t remember what he did but I had a very high fever and was bleeding from the nose and I spit out chunks of blood. I think they thought I was gone for sure. I recovered though and it took a long while for me to regain my strength. I can remember having some wild dreams and nightmares and must have been out of my head at least part of the time. .”
Esther Bernard, Jan. 1981, page 116 of Pioneers: The Busch and Berning families of LaMoure County North Dakota.
I was seven years old when I got hepatitis and had a very rough time with that. There was no simple way to handle yellow jaundice and it had to work out of the system. I think they give blood transfusions now. I had an upset stomach for several years after that which is probably why I had such a rough time with the 1918 flu
I thought of Mom’s recollection this morning with the breaking news about the Mexican Swine Flu fears. It became big news yesterday; today’s paper had much front page coverage, including a map of the United States which showed 8 cases in Ohio, 7 in California, 2 each in Texas, , Kansas and Ohio. “It’s not a time to panic,” the White House said”, while suggestions were about that we were at a time of possible epidemic, or global pandemic. 1918 came up, as did 1957 and 1968. I wasn’t around in 1918, but I don’t remember anything about 1957 or 1968 so the grim reaper must’ve passed us by. (By the winter of 1918 Mom’s family included her parents and six children. As best as I can tell, she is the only one who got sick with the flu. The 1918 pandemic apparently mainly impacted on young adults – people 20-40. My grandparents would have been in that general age range; neither got sick.)
I don’t know all the details about 1918 and the flu epidemic. I know my grandparents had telephone then; that Dr. Salvage was in a town 10 miles away, that roads were good enough for a car to get through to most farms IF they weren’t blocked with snow, or impassable due to mud.
I don’t know what Dr. Salvage had in his medical bag when he visited Mom; I don’t know if something in that bag helped her turn the corner, or if Mom just got lucky and slowly got better. It does appear, though, from the history she and her siblings recited that at her farm the grim reaper had picked her, and only her, for attention during that awful time period. And I know, too, that in that long ago time the odds of medicine making any difference at all were much lower than today: if you got sick, you either got better or you didn’t. Other than the phone and the newspapers and word of mouth, there were no other media to really fan up the fear, such as there is today.
So, today, lots of newsprint and air time is expended to emphasize the possibility of a dire threat from a flu that has so far affected 21 people in the entire United States. (As I write, the MSN home page has updated the number to 40). People are assessing who they know who’s been to Mexico recently. I took a couple across the driveway to the airport a month or so ago, as they were enroute to a two week vacation in Mexico. A good friend recently came back from a vacation in Mexico. Should I steer clear of them till the threat passes? Will I start to see people wearing masks in grocery stores? Should I buy a mask, or get in line for Tamiflu?
What I do know is that fear sells, and sells well; and fear can rapidly turn into hysteria. And there are many who benefit from the hype, selling fear and hysteria. Of course, fear and hysteria solve nothing, but are certain realities.
Is it useful to exercise prudence in these times? Absolutely. But making it into front page news at this stage?

#10 – Marion Brady: An affirmative response to Corporate America's big "RIGOR!" push

/in , , , /by

Note from Moderator: I’ve known Marion Brady since the mid-1990s when I joined a national Quality Education listserv. For many years, Marion has been a consistent and articulate spokesperson for substantive change in how young people are educated. He was a regular columnist for a major newspaper in his home state of Florida. Recently he sent to his mailing list a most interesting power point summarizing his case. It is about 12 minutes, and the link is below. Even more recently, the same power point has been posted on YouTube. That link is also noted. Following the Power Point and YouTube links is a letter he recently sent to the new U.S. Commissioner of Education, Arne Duncan. In that letter, shared with his permission, he well defines himself.
Marion Brady’s is a voice worth listening to, and worth sharing with the public education community in the United States.
http://www.marionbrady.com/Powerpoint/WhatIsMissing.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIi_EQsQFJI
Marion Brady:
To: Dr. Arne Duncan, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education
Sir:
Respectful of your busy schedule, I’ve pulled together in summary form and am enclosing a very broad-stroke “big picture” of where I believe the social institution [public education] that’s now your responsibility has been, is now, and appears to be heading.
I’m hoping my 77 years in education as, at various times, a student, middle school teacher, high school teacher, college professor, teacher educator, textbook author, county level administrator, professional book author, publisher consultant, contributor to academic journals, paid education columnist for Knight-Ridder/Tribune, visitor to schools across America and abroad, and partner in conversations with respected educators on every continent, will prompt you to bring to the enclosed a mind open to ideas lying outside Washington’s conventional wisdom on educational matters.
What prompts me to write is the current drive to nationalize standards and tests for school subjects. For reasons I believe the enclosures [see above power point for summary presentation] make clear, if that effort is successful, among its unintended consequences will be a gutting of the ability of schools, including charter schools, to innovate sufficiently to adapt to social change and prepare the young for what will surely be a complex, challenging, and dangerous future.
I’m copying the material to others outside the field of formal education. I’ve chosen these individuals because I respect their work and their obvious commitment to the public good, and because they have what working, experienced educators no longer have-a public voice.
I can be more specific about the reasons for my choices. For me (an author of three textbooks), Jon Stewart’s “history textbook,” America (Warner Books, 2004), did for American education what his confrontation with Jim
Cramer did for CNBC, albeit with considerably more subtlety. In President Clinton’s case, he and I share an admiration for the work of the late Carroll Quigley, a professor at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, whose explanation of the dynamics and dangers of the process he called “institutionalization” is currently being ignored in education policy, a fact America will come to regret. I “knew” Quigley through a student we shared in the early 1960s. One of the enclosures, taken from the introduction to a forthcoming book I was asked to write, summarizes that institutionalization process and its applicability to the last century of education in America.
I’ve no idea whether or not these people might be willing or able to help, but I’m hoping their appreciation of the centrality of public education to societal survival, combined with perhaps a better understanding of the current educational situation, will prompt them to give serious thought to the issue and act in ways that move us closer to the goal I’m sure we all share of improving public education.
Thank you for your attention.

#7 – Dick Bernard: Thoughts on Taxation and Taxes

/in , , /by

Since this is about taxes, the bottom line is at the end of this writing.
Today is Tax Day, April 15, 2009, the annual celebration of the loathing of taxes. This day there will be a new spin on an old theme: “Tea Parties”, apparently well organized and heavily publicized by certain media (thus, not spontaneous “breaking news”), and supposedly grassroots protests against the tyranny of “taxation [with] representation”, in the model of the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773.
It will make no difference to the angry orators and sign carriers today that U.S. taxes have always been enacted by representatives we imperfectly select. Those who dislike certain of their taxes will be doing a bit of street theatre today, and some probably even believe that some king from some foreign land is confiscating their goods.
(I have watched demonstrations for years, and been in some, and I’ll see how those in our area today compare with others I can remember). Almost without doubt, they will garner far more publicity than they warrant.
“Taxes” is a complicated issue, certainly not to be covered in a short essay.
In the end analysis, taxes are necessary and most everyone knows it. The pushing and shoving politically is around whether or not we should be asked to pay a little more, or a little less, and what our taxes will be used for. In my thinking, taxes are the dues we pay for living in a reasonably civilized society.
Every year I file taxes. This year was no different. This year was particularly interesting.
Monday, March 30, was our appointment with our tax man. I went in anticipating that we might owe as much as $4000 on federal and state. When we left, we were told we’d get a net refund of $21.
Odd how it is: We owed as much taxes walking in the door, as we did walking out, but not owing the $4000 made it seem like a refund. No, we haven’t rushed out and spent it – yet!
Earlier that same day, March 30, 2009, a guy had his mug shot on the front page of the Minneapolis paper. The headline was “Path from non-conformist cop to anti-tax adviser led to prison”. The guy hated taxes and will go to prison “for filing false tax returns and showing others illegal ways to avoid paying their taxes.”
The headline and story reminded me of the video someone gave me purporting to prove that the Internal Revenue Service is illegal, and that there thus can be no consequences for not paying taxes – they are, after all, “voluntary”. There’s even a “gotcha” sequence where a “reporter” makes a prominent politician squirm by demanding that he show the law where it says we have to pay taxes. The politician – a Republican if that makes any difference – looks like the deer in the headlights. It’s one of those “can’t win for losing” moments. The paraphrase: “Yes, you can go to jail for not paying taxes, , but I won’t show you where it says that taxation is legal.”
As previously stated, in my view, taxes are the dues we pay for living in a reasonably orderly society. There are lots of taxes I don’t like – I could get along without paying a substantial part of that one-third of my total tax bill that goes to “Defense”, for instance. But a society where each person could pick and choose what to pay for, and how much, would be a society in anarchy and chaos, and I’m not sure we’d relish that day. So, we choose to complain about what is, in effect, one of the essentials that makes our lives and the lives of others manageable. We have the best of all worlds: we can complain about it, without the accompanying responsibility to fix it.
So, how much taxes does the Bernard household pay? I’ve been interested in this bottom line for a number of years.
We are reasonably ordinary members of that massive class called “Middle”. We live pretty moderately.
When all the “pushing and shoving” of numbers was finished on March 30, about 7 ½% of our income went to Uncle Sam; and about 3 ½ % to our state. Our Federal and State tax burden was 11% of our gross income.
All things considered, I don’t consider that a terribly big dues.
Of course, there are all sorts of assorted tariffs and fees and even taxes that aren’t reflected in the federal and state numbers, including some purported taxes that are not taxes at all, like withholding for social security insurance and medicare premiums (that I paid for years, and now benefit from). On this tax day they’ll all be lumped in to one big crate, and by some magic by the end of the day it will seem that most of our money goes to taxes. That’s just how the game is played.
Bottom line: A whole lot of perfectly good tea bags will be wasted today. Some would want to decrease our tax burden from, say, 11% to 10%; others think our society (and ourselves) would benefit more if the tax bite was 12%. Great amounts of pious rhetoric will continue to be expended on all sides. Me? I wouldn’t miss the extra 1% – it could do a lot of good. My life wouldn’t be better with 1% extra in my pocket.

#5 – Dick Bernard: What will be left for our Grandchildren and their descendants? Do we think long or short-term, or not at all?

/1 Comment/in , , , , /by

Reader comment follows this post.
Today our Congresswoman is holding a town hall meeting quite certainly aimed at stopping something called “Cap and Trade” which, she says in a recent op ed, is a “tax [that] would require energy producers and businesses to pay to emit carbon emissions in the hope of reducing greenhouse gases.”
I plan to attend the meeting. [See postscript, which follows below, written April 10.]
The Congresswomans focus seems completely on the present: taxes, jobs, cost of gasoline, government regulation. There is nothing apparent in her remarks that exhibit concern for the future generations, those who will pay big time for our countries short-sightedness now and, indeed, in the past. We continue to live as if there is no tomorrow, and we seem to have forgotten that our kids, grandkids, their cohort worldwide, and their descendants after them, will have to live (and die) with what we have left them.
Below is my small contribution to the “cap and trade” conversation that I will, at minimum, leave with the Congresswoman.
My feelings of concern are elevated by the fact that earlier today I spent a couple of hours with a third grade grandson at his school. (Today they were having an international day, and my class hour was spent learning about China from a young woman who grew up in Beijing. It was very interesting.)
Here is my very brief summary of the history of energy in our country (and by extension the world.)
“Peaks”
? – Peak use of trees as source of fuel and light.
1847 – Peak Whale Oil* (for lamps and such).
1859 – Oil business begins in western Pennsylvania
U.S. population then was 10% of today
Early 1900s – Commercial production of horseless carriages
U.S. population was about one-fourth of today
Five present states were not yet in the Union
1927 – U.S. wells pump 75% of world’s oil supply**
No activity in Arabian peninsula.
2000s – Peak Oil passes – now its all “down hill”***
U.S. population exceeds 300,000,000
with about 250,000,000 motorized vehicles
Do we pay now, or do we pay later? In my mind, there is no doubt which should be chosen, unless we truly don’t care about those descendants springing from our generation.
Notes:
* – Penn State Professor Richard Alley of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change www.ipcc.ch  (from his talk to school kids at Augsburg Nobel Peace Prize Festival Minneapolis March 5, 2009. His informative talk is on YouTube.  See http://www.peacesites.org/educators/nobelfestival for a link to the talk.)
** – recollection after looking at a 1927 Encyclopedia Britannica in London late October, 2001.
*** – Major editorial in Minneapolis Star Tribune August 27, 2005.
Postscript after the Congresswoman’s session:
I attended the entire session which appeared to attract about 300 people. The main presenter was a representative of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an oil-company backed think tank. It was hard to ascertain the makeup of the crowd since proceedings were tightly controlled, including police presence. No signs were permitted, and only written questions were accepted – and only a few of those made the cut. The presentation was predictable, almost impossible to take notes, full of sarcasm and a good sized enemies list. It was devoid of proposed solutions. It was against, not for.
I left the session with some dominant thoughts:
1) I wouldn’t (and didn’t) change any of what I wrote prior to the meeting (see above).
2) “Global warming” and its impact may be impossible to tie down with precision, but the accumulation of evidence through science is not wise to ignore or dismiss or ridicule. Humankind may well be courting disaster through its own actions (and inactions) and, worse, these errors in judgment are not reversible by man. We had one chance to do it right. I think the advocates sounding the alarm about global climate change have a stronger argument, and the public is listening. People are not at all sure we are in routine times. Industry knows this. Big business is far more culpable than ordinary people for the problem since it has and had greater research capacity, but simple culpability (blaming) will not solve the problem. That’s for all of us.
3) Scarcity of elements essential to contemporary society like fossil fuels are easier to quantify and, thus, to use as warnings to the public.
4) As I was leaving the parking lot I got to thinking about desperately poor Haiti (which got a couple of sarcastic mentions from the speaker – and chuckles from some in the audience). Haiti was one of Christopher Columbus’ early stops about 1492. After its discovery, it was a treasure trove of natural resource, ripe for the picking. It was a source of great wealth for France. The Spanish first, then the French and finally we Americans, “raped, looted and pillaged” the Caribbean island into a corpse of its former self. A too-cold-to-live-in Haiti is where our developed countries are ultimately heading, in my opinion. Once our resources are gone, or too expensive to recover or purchase, we end. And this could happen sooner than later.
5) We are well advised to listen to, take seriously, and prepare for the worst case scenarios, especially as they relate to resource scarcity, especially fossil fuels.
6) We are also well advised to work hard and sacrifice now for a better than expected future. This is no time to give up.
A recommendation:
I would also urge readers to check http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/  and take the time to watch the entire “crash course” which requires 2-3 hours, in very manageable time segments of from a couple of minutes, to 15 or so. It comes highly recommended by a friend who is analytical, not partisan and not prone to overreaction. Check out the about page for the credentials of the author of the seminar then make your own decision.
Chris Martenson ultimately talks about 20 years out from now; the grandson I visited in school yesterday (one of many in my constellation) will be 29 then. It makes one think.

#4 – Dick Bernard: The 2009 Red River Flood as Messenger

/in , , , , , , /by

Just 250 miles northwest of where I type, a local crisis, a threatened flood in the Red River Valley, is occurring which pleads for a dialogue dealing with long term and global implications. The news focus will be on the immediate and the local (saving someone’s home, etc.). Once the crisis passes, and the damage assessed, most will return to business as usual…until the next local crisis, wherever that happens to occur.
As I write, Fargo-Moorhead and the Red River Valley are between crests of threatened devastating floods. It would appear, because of two separate crests, that the Valley may dodge a disastrous flood in 2009, only a dozen years after the huge floods of late April 1997 which came a month later in the spring. Heavy snow, plus an early thaw this year, and a very close call with high waters in late March, may have helped avert a greater disaster in coming days. Time will tell.
Some would say that this flood and other catastrophes are random acts of nature; others would say there is evidence of the consequence of global warming. Other culprits can be claimed to be urban development, farmers draining their fields, people living in places they shouldn’t live, dikes interfering with the normal course of high water, just plain bad weather – the previous record flood, after all, was in 1897…. Of course, someone wrote a letter to the editor of the Fargo paper that God was punishing a certain clinic in Fargo….
As instant events go, any individuals speculation is as good as anyone else’s. Most of us simply don’t have the needed “data”, or we simply pick and choose what it is we wish to believe. Fantasy works, for a while, anyway.
*
The 2009 flooding, which began about March 25, caused me to think back to three past events which are – in my mind at least – related to the news about Fargo-Moorhead and the Red River Valley.
1. In mid-August 2005, I completed a major revision of a family history of my mother’s side of the family. Included in the text was a new chapter on a treasure-trove of letters from 1905-06 found in the attic of the old North Dakota farm house where my mother grew up. The letters had come from my Grandparents kin and others in rural Wisconsin, mostly from Grandma’s six sisters. There were over 100 of them.
The letters were very interesting. One of the letters dated July 13, 1905, said “Sunday, Maggie and Ida had a horse for themselves to church and they met an automobile and she tied the horse to a rail fence but the horse dident move and Ann Miller was in with them and she was hollering let me out.” (p. 20)
The automobile they met was a curiosity, including to the horse. The comment reminds that even in our short history, cars are a new-fangled thing.
By 2005, the automobile had long been ubiquitous in our society; the weather has seemed to be changing markedly. Significant changes? Your choice.
I was printing the book, literally, when the August 27, 2005, Minneapolis Star Tribune had a long editorial entitled “Oil’s peak: The end may be nearer, it seems.” I decided to include the editorial as an insert with the book. I put a hand-written note on the margin of the editorial: “…and we can’t ignore Hurricane Katrina & possibilities that hurricanes and such might connect to Global warming.”
The day after I mailed the book, Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Louisiana coast.
“As we speak”, in 2009, stuff is still whirring around the internet about how dumb and shiftless those people in New Orleans were for living there in the first place, for not saving themselves when the hurricane was bearing down on them, and for not relying on their own resources for their recovery.
A similar narrative is unlikely about Fargo and the flood-prone Red River Valley. Indeed, the North Dakota and Minnesota officials have already asked for massive federal aid to repair and prepare for the next flood…. There is no serious thought about relocating Fargo-Moorhead to the east or to the west to mitigate against future flood problems.
*
2. On March 5, 2009, I attended the annual Nobel Peace Prize Festival at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Speaking to over 500 school kids that morning, Professor Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University packed a huge amount of content into eight entertaining and enlightening minutes. (His complete talk to the youngsters and a summary video of the Festival will be on YouTube soon.).
Professor Alley is one of a team of thousands of scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change http://www.ipcc.ch/, and who co-won, with Al Gore, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change.
Professor Alley’s message to the kids on the issue was succinct: he came, he said, from Pennsylvania, whose name means “Penn’s Woods”. He gave a little history lesson starting with a chart of the Mesa Verde settlement in southwest Colorado: human activity and population there were controlled entirely by available water. If there was water, there were people; no water, no people.
In early Pennsylvania, wood was the first reliable fuel; then it became Whale Oil for lamps. “Peak Whale Oil” came in 1847, he said.
The oil age really began when the first oil well was drilled in western Pennsylvania in 1859, only 150 years ago this year. Someone 75 years old has lived a “half-life” of this Fossil Fuel era. And we’ve passed the Peak, and the demand for energy guarantees a more rapid and uncertain downhill slope.
*
3. In October, 2001, we were staying at a bed and breakfast in London. In the hallway was a 1927 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. One day I looked at the section on petroleum. My recollection is that the Britannica said, that in that era the U.S. produced 75% of the worlds petroleum, and even though oil had been discovered and recovered in many places by then, the only major producer elsewhere was an oil field in Persia (now Iran). The Middle East countries? None of them appeared on the chart.
*
Times have changed, and circumstances as well. In 1859, the U.S. population was roughly one-tenth of today’s, and motor vehicles not even a dream. In 1905, there were only 45 states and roughly one-fourth of today’s population. Cars were a curiosity. Today we have over 300,000,000 people in our country alone, and there are over 800 motorized vehicles per 1000 population (2004 data).
We don’t have 150 years to get our act together. We may not even have ten. Our addiction is killing us.
Is climate change a myth, or an ominous trend? Are we running out of affordable fossil fuel? What do we do about our insatiable appetite for “fossil algae” (Oil)? What cause in the matter of climate change are we as humans? What are the consequences for those who follow us? It should matter to us.
How we answer those questions is our choice. Our descendants will experience the consequences.
To dismiss the Fargo-Moorhead floods, and other facts as being simply local events is to be short-sighted. We have to pay attention and act.

#3 – Dick Bernard: Binghamton NY April 3, 2009

/1 Comment/in , , , , , /by

Reader comment follows this post.
It wasn’t until late afternoon on Friday that I learned any details of the latest gun-related tragedy, this time in Binghamton NY. Thirteen dead, plus the shooter; four critically injured; possibly some cause and effect of the shooter having recently lost his job for some unknown reason; an apparent pre-meditated intention to kill as many as possible by blocking the door through which people might escape. It was all horrific.
As I write, Saturday morning, April 4, the facts are beginning to emerge: the shooter had two pistols on him, both registered firearms; he’s Vietnamese, apparently a U.S. citizen for decades; apparently knew well the place where he killed the thirteen people, most of them studying for citizenship…. The stories and analysis are just beginning.
Full disclosure: small arms were around me when I was growing up. Shooting gophers when they were pests on the North Dakota prairies was something I was accustomed to: their tails were worth a nickel, a lot of money to a kid, then. A bunch of us kids were playing with my Dad’s 22 calibre rifle when I was perhaps nine. It was hanging in the garage, and it was off-limits…. There was a bullet in the chamber; it went off; luckily nobody was killed (we were lucky). Dad and Mom never knew of that close call.
In the Army, I qualified as Expert with the M-1 Rifle. Thankfully I never had to use my skills. I have never owned a gun, or had an interest in purchasing one, and to the best of my recollection haven’t shot one since the Army days. There’s never been a gun in a home of mine. I have no issue against hunters and hunting in the traditional sense of that word: shotguns, regular rifles, licenses….
The national debate for years has gone far beyond the lines I describe above. We are an armed and very dangerous nation of far too many people armed to the teeth, wallowing in fear and resentment of this, that or the other.
Binghamton, April 3, 2009, could well be the tip of a very large iceberg.
I decided, last night, to check in on the two “poles” of our nation’s fascination/obsession with guns and other weapons to see how they were spinning Binghamton: the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign. www.nra.org and www.bradycampaign.org. As of 8 a.m. this morning, NRA does not have a word on what happened in Binghamton; as of last night, the Brady Campaign had commented. You can visit their website, and they can speak for themselves.
Even before the reports on Binghamton, I’ve seen scraps of information. One of the news reports I heard mentioned that in this country of 300,000,000, there are 250,000,000 firearms. The ban on assault weapons has apparently sun-setted; till yesterday afternoon there was no real interest in gun legislation…there are other bigger problems to deal with. Gun and ammunition sales are sky-rocketing in this country. We are awash in dangerous arms. The “Gun Lobby” is feared by politicians.
April 2, 2009 – a day before Binghamton – a New York Times editorial commented on a last minute federal regulation issued in December 2008 making concealed loaded guns legal in our national parks and wildlife refuges. “In December, ignoring proper procedure and the risk to public safety, the Bush administration rushed through regulations allowing people to carry concealed, loaded guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.” (The NRA website posted a commentary on that issue from a Joshua Tree, California, newspaper.) A Judge just threw out the rule, calling it “astoundingly flawed”. It remains to be seen if the court ruling will be appealed by the new administration.
And the top headline in yesterday’s Minneapolis paper, hours before Binghamton, was simple and stark: “Was this gun in the hand of Fong Lee when he was fatally shot by a Minneapolis police officer? Or was the weapon planted at the scene? One shooting. Two stories.”
Guns do make excellent partners for crime: A week or so ago Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking in Mexico, made news north of Mexico’s border when she observed that most of the weaponry in the current drug wars in Mexico came from U.S. sources; as did most of the demand for the illegal drugs which has precipitated the violence over drug territories in Mexico.
Those who revere gun rights will begin again reciting the mantra: “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people”, and the like. Of course, concealed hand guns make killing easier.
We love our guns, and other unhealthy things.

#2: Bob Barkley on Social Democracy

/in , , , /by

By Bob Barkley, March 2009
rbarkleATcolumbusDOTrrDOTcom
Last week I was participating in a discussion group called Socrates Café. It is normally an older set of folks. This time there was a young man present, the youngest and quietest of all in attendance. Toward the end of our time together someone thought to ask him what he thought. He simply asked, “What is social democracy? And what will it take to get there?” We were all taken with the question and discussed it briefly before parting ways until our next get-together.
But the question dogged me enough that I sought a more satisfactory answer than the ones we offered up that night. Following is what I have come up with.
Simply defined, as I understand it, social democracy is a democratic state that incorporates both capitalist and socialist practice and recognizes individual requirements and aspirations.
Or, in more detail, Wikipedia describes it as “a political ideology of the left or center-left that emerged in the late 19th century from the socialist movement and continues to exert influence worldwide. The concept of social democracy has changed throughout the decades since its inception. Historically, social democratic parties advocated socialism in the strict sense, achieved by class struggle. In the early 20th century, however, a number of socialist and labor parties rejected revolution and other traditional teachings of Marxism and went on to take more moderate positions, which came to characterize modern social democracy. These positions often include support for a democratic welfare state which incorporates elements of both socialism and capitalism, sometimes termed the mixed economy. This differs from traditional socialism, which aims to end the predominance of capitalism altogether. Social democrats aim to reform capitalism democratically through state regulation and the creation of programs that work to counteract or remove the social injustice and inefficiencies they see as inherent in capitalism.”
By its very nature, social democracy would be viewed by most people as “left” of where we find ourselves in the US at this early date in 2009. But it is neither socialism as traditionally thought of, nor is it communism which critics find to be a convenient label for it.
It is interesting that in Black’s Law Dictionary there is no definition of either social democracy or socialism. However, in its definition of “social contract or compact,” it mentions Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the Greek Sophists as all agreeing “for mutual protection, to surrender individual freedom of action,” and that “Government must therefore rest on the consent of the governed.” And Black’s further defines “democracy” as, “That form of government in which the sovereign power resides in and is exercised by the whole body of free citizens directly or indirectly through a system of representation, as distinguished from a monarchy, aristocracy, or oligarchy.”
All this sounds an awful lot like Lincoln’s, “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish….”
And, as one reads the list below, it is important to stress that balance is most always crucial to developing a political/economic system. In the end, social democracy is driven by a sense of community, which simply translates to “accepting that we all belong together.”
With that basis to guide me, and my own instincts, I was led to conclude that to be successful, social democracy anticipates at least the following:
1. Freedom in the broadest sense, though short of unconstrained individual license
2. Reasonable equity between owners of production and the workers as to who benefits from any enterprise’s success
3. Government transparency to the greatest extent practical with any questions leaning far toward full disclosure
4. Public education that is open, highly supported, theoretically well-conceived, which emphasizes teaching about the dynamics of forces operating beneath the political surface, teaching a broad range of fundamental values, and that recognizes that the primary purpose of education is the preservation and nurturing of a love of learning – out of which all other aims will be best served
5. Higher education that emphasizes deep thinking and liberal arts and away from being little more than a factory for the production of compliant, unquestioning, unthinking, corporate robots
6. Social justice
7. Reasonable but significant corporate regulation – including reversal of the Supreme Court decision that establishes rights to the corporation parallel to those of the individual citizen
8. The absence of special interests inordinate control and influence of government
9. Assuring all citizens of basic human needs such as reasonable housing, sustenance, and health care
10. Widely shared public service – such as all young people providing 2 years of such service (including both military and non-military community and national service)
11. Absolute separation of church and state – particularly the restraining of public policy influence of religious zealotry and extreme fundamentalism
12. Public financing of political campaigns and a system of responsible turnover in public office that assures both full access and limited opportunity for exploitation
13. Regulated and balanced media ownership and programming to avoid consolidated domination of the media
14. Our economy is now global, and our society must adjust to fit this changed and still changing world
15. State control of usury practices
16. Adoption of sensible standards regarding the compensation packages of corporate executives such as limiting them, through taxation policies, to 50 times that of a minimum-wage full-time worker
17. Protecting local commerce through reasonable tariffs and trade policies
18. Progressive taxation policies that allow for the sharing of wealth between the fortunate (the worth-more) and the less fortunate (the worth-less) while still allowing responsible accumulation of wealth (Both the “worth-more” and the “worth-less” are suffering from inordinate sense of entitlement.)
All that said, I was asked by one reviewer to describe what was the role of government in all of this. Right after receiving that question I read a short piece by economist Dr. Robert Costanza of the University of Vermont that quite serendipitously provided me the answer. http://www.commondreams.org./print/40015
Consequently, I would conclude this paper by adding that while much is implied throughout the preceding list, the bottom line role of government is to protect against excesses. This would mean protection from excess accumulation of wealth and power on one extreme and protection against excess poverty and hopelessness on the other. Government must facilitate a shared vision of society – of quality of life – and move responsibly to assure its development.
Robert Barkley, Jr., is the retired Executive Director of the Ohio Education Association and served as the Interim Executive Director, Maine Education Association. He is a former teacher and coach, and a thirty-five year veteran of NEA and NEA affiliate staff work. Currently he bills himself as a Counselor in Systemic Education Reform and has served most recently as a long-term Consultant to the KnowledgeWorks Foundation of Cincinnati, Ohio. He was the first teacher organization staff member to become an examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the premier business award in the US, which is administered by the US Department of Commerce. He is the author of two books: Quality in Education: A Primer for Collaborative Visionary Educational Leaders, and Leadership In Education: A Handbook for School Superintendents and Teacher Union Presidents. He lives Worthington, Ohio, a Columbus suburb, and may be reached at RBarkle@columbus.rr.com.

#1 – Dick Bernard: P&J#1940: Reflecting on "fear itself"

/2 Comments/in , , , , , , , , /by

This is the first posting on this blog.  The title “P&J#1940” holds meaning for me.  P&J#1 entered the internet world in late September, 2001; P&J#1940 was published March 25, 2009, and is a significant one for me. 

 

1940 is a significant number in my life. It is the year I was born in rural North Dakota, between the ending of the Great Depression and the U.S. entrance into WWII.  A friend says I’m part of the “Silent Generation” – too young for the Greatest Generation; too old for the Baby Boom Generation (1946-47 forward).

 

As I write this, March 24, 2009, the political and policy environment is flooded with conflicting messages.  Some see disaster ahead; some see hope; “experts” are in vocal disagreement with each other.  Many of the people I see every day seem oblivious to the dangers, deep in denial: As MAD magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman always said (and so far as I know, still says), there seems to remain a dominant attitude: “What, me worry?” 

 

It is not at all certain that anyone really knows for sure about where we’re headed.  We’re stuck with a likely harsh reality, disguised only by the fog of finely honed media spin from all sides.  Humans being humans, we tend to pick the piece of spin that fit our own bias.  Today that is very easy (and dangerous) to do.

 

I am not tempted to become like that hermit I met while on Army maneuvers in the Tarryall section of the Colorado Rockies in the spring of 1962.  He had lived in relative isolation, apparently for years, no car, no road, no electricity, trudging to the nearest town once a month to bring back provisions, among which was the previous months Denver Post, which he read one issue per day.  He was “current”, but always a month behind on the news, but living in the past was just fine with him.  I see him and his one-room mountain shack as I write.  It is tempting.  After all, there is that old saying, that old myth, that “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”.

 

That hermit lived in a different time.

 

In the din of today, it is very hard to be hopeful, much less to know what to do to keep hope alive in ourselves, much less others.

 

But it is self-defeating to give up, to succumb to fear itself; or, even worse, to think that this is going to be easy.  So I’ll take in what I can, and impact however I can, however useless my effort sometimes seems to be.

*

In recent months especially I have often thought of what my birth in rural ND in 1940 meant to me, then, and how it applies to me now.

 

From the moment I was born I was immersed in the background experiences of two families set back but not defeated by the reality of the Dirty Thirties.  Somehow they hung on and survived to raise me, the oldest son, and the oldest grandson – the first to be born into the families of my grandparents after the bad years.

 

One and one half years after I was born, six months after I had “met” my Dad’s brother, my Uncle Frank, in person for the first time, he went down with his ship, the USS Arizona, at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.  From then till September, 1945, WWII dominated everyone’s existence, including youngsters like myself, not old enough to comprehend all that was going on, but experiencing directly the effects.

 

In short, I may have been in a “silent” generation, but I was thoroughly marinated in others experiences in the years both preceding and following my birth.

 

Each of us have our own stories…and some of those stories match the reality of today – including times and events seemingly without hope, including conflicting opinions (including in our own minds) about how to cope. 

 

Several times in my own life I’ve had to muddle through things without a “map”.  It is part of life.

 

“Life” is what our country, including the so-called “experts”, is going through right now, and will be for, likely, a very long time. 

 

So, I choose to carry on trying to impact in whatever small way I can, wherever I can.

 

*

 

In the early months of 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke the immortal phrase “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrfirstinaugural.html.

 

In his own way, President Obama is doing what he can, in whatever ways he can, in the spirit of FDR, to keep our spirits up, in an environment that could turn out to be even worse than the Great Depression; and in the process he is having to make decisions for the country with no certainty that the decisions will be correct.  Somehow we need to walk beside him, with him, in his shoes.  Be critical, sure, but keep it in its proper perspective. 

 

We need to remember, though, that the President is only one among over 300,000,000 of us.  We owe our continuing efforts to ourselves, and to everyone else with whom we share this country and this planet, and to those who come after us.

 

We all can do something positive.

 

We must be realistic.  We must not give up.