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Thursday, January 17, 2008

A Stimulus Package

Well. Fed Chairman Mr. Bernanke, was on Capitol Hill this morning, discussing the options for a “stimulus package.” It seems everyone is already agreed that $100 billion is shortly going to come streaming off the printing presses, all that remains is to divvy up the spoils. Tax cuts, tax rebates, food stamp increase, and extended unemployment insurance coverage are all on the table.

Mr. Bernanke seems nervous, and stresses the need for speed. This is $100 billion to boost consumption. Obviously the best place to put it is in the hands of people who will spend it immediately. Generally speaking the poorer the recipient, the faster the stimulation flows into the system. But I would say that.

If it works, then perhaps Mr. Bernanke will consider a more permanent “stimulus” in the form of universal health care and a sharp increase in the minimum wage.

Instead of diverting hundreds of billions of dollars into unnecessary wars of choice, and hundreds of millions into incarcerating the poor, a more enlightened administration might consider an extensive program of infrastructure re-design to accommodate our new healthy lifestyles. More walking, more bicycles, more local production and consumption, significantly less use of fossil fuels.

The redesign of the suburbs to encompass more viable communities with work, food, water and power all locally available. The construction of efficient rail and canal transportation. And some decent schools. There is an almost unending list. Many of these projects have been waiting for years for funding to be available, everything else is already in place.

If this situation leads to a rethink of the whole stimulus game, then we might restore something meaningful to the term “civilization”.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Yunus on Tour

Microcredit pioneer Dr. Yunus is traveling around the United States.

Tour dates.

He is promoting his new book which I hope to review later. In this audio Dr Yunus describes his work.

Microcredit, for which Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, is a brilliant achievement, and one for which Yunus has already attained an enduring legacy.

If present growth rates are maintained, this development will have a very significant effect, altering the whole story of humanity. Whether this, in itself will be sufficient to realign our species with the global biosphere upon which all life depends, remains to be seen. But if we do make it to a point of population stasis, and then commence an orderly and voluntary decline in numbers, microcredit will have been one of the main innovations that made that possible. It is hard to conceive of a future in which Yunus’s achievement will not be revered by hundreds of millions, and with good reason. The eradication of poverty remains within reach, and many of us will live long enough to see it happen.

Audacious and Excellent. Strongly recommended.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Bipartisanship

After decades of strong arming the Democratic party, going back at least as far as President Reagan in 1980, some Republicans, looking at a the potential of a severe reversal, are now calling for a bi-partisan cabinet, or a government of national unity.

With fewer and fewer people aligning themselves with either party, and the extent of the Republican betrayal of the American worker now becoming apparent to all This can only be seen as a last gasp attempt by the right wing to hold the country to the far right course that has served them so well for decades.

We already have two parties who slavishly follow a corporate agenda at the expense of the common people. Under the guise of “free trade” millions of good union manufacturing jobs have been transferred overseas. Both parties, taking much of their income from defense and pharmaceutical industries, have defended and extended the war machine, and fiercely defend the massive profits taken from the most expensive health care system in the world.

For decades, both parties have exploited the “Cold War” to unite the country in the face of an imaginary enemy. Now that the evil empire has been dismantled, both parties cling to the boogeyman bin Laden, and the myth of international terrorism in the hope of scaring people silly enough to support their massive theft and exploitation, and oppression of much of the rest of the world.

The fact is that more people die in traffic accidents in one day, than succumb to terrorist attacks in a year. More people die every year falling down stairs than as a result of terrorist attacks. SO terrorism is clearly not a big enough problem for people to check their common sense at the door. And there remains the problem of 911. What actually happened that day? No thinking person can continue to believe the official government conspiracy theory. There has still been no explanation for the total destruction of a 42 story building that day. It seems that there is no fabrication that will fit this event into the tale of 19 knife-wielding supermen, which has already been stretched beyond the fantastic in the story told by the bi-partisan 911 Commission.

The problems now faced by the Republicans and the Democrats, is that it is too easy for people to access alternative views to those expressed on the corporate media. The propaganda matrix is crumbling at the edges. The extent of environmental damage is too great to hide from all but the completely brain dead. The real crisis we face has nothing to do with Muslim extremists.