Something about Toles..he can capture a moment like few others

One essential thought alluded to in this is the notion of fundamentalism… I see a large difference between fundamentals, as in basics, and the ~ism version; which makes the basics into the everything, and then creates dogmas around it. And of course, the actual basics get submerged if not fully lost in the welter of rules, self interest, rites and rituals established to “protect” the basics. Or… you may have heard the phrase “our way of life”.

Another nuance in this is the belief in some fundamentalist circles of Christianity that Armageddon is coming, and it wouldn’t be all that bad of an idea to sort of help it along….so we can get on with the business of the second coming….and having that millennium we have been promised…

If the notion of Millennium is unfamiliar it is, in short, a sort of Christian Utopia where everything finally is ruled by God, or/and Jesus and right prevails and wrong is punished. Absolutely and without any unjustice. It is truly Gods way or the highway. (Quite a conclusion to the free will experiment!).   One consequence is that there will be no Muslims or even Jews in that world since they would have been rendered moot since Jesus is back.  It is predicted to come about as Jesus puts an end to the Armageddon world wide war/blood bath and then sets up his rule/kingdom.

It is this Millennial paradigm that drives the “Right Wing” politically driven  Christians’  interest in Israel and the Middle East.  Be certain they do not care about the Jews except as necessary actors on the way to the Second Coming.

In my long ago experience in the Christian church and with this Christian paradigm even then, in the 70′s and 80′s – the period when the religious right, the “Moral Majority”, Focus on the Family and such were getting started, it was openly talked about that it would be a good thing to help precipitate this final Armageddon so we could get “this world order” over with, finally surface and destroy the anti-Christ and start this millennial period. It was not metaphorical in any way.  Quite literal actually.  And I think it is only more reified  now than ever.

The opening event of this epoch is the rapture. Earlier this year there was much abuzz about the prediction of the rapture you may recall….And it may seem strange that this would be the case… One reason for the tittering excitement was that those who hold this view actually are, in very real terms, looking for that moment…

Perhaps this is the most pernicious aspect of this cartoon, as reflection of this mindset.

Because they will have no consequence … real god-fearing jesus loving christians are going to get taken out of here … there is no reason to really be worried about anything done to the earth, no reason to be mindful much less actively concerned about injustice, proper use of resources, sustainability and etc. It doesn’t matter, we’re getting out of here anyway….

Lest you think I am kidding, or exaggerating… let me be explicit… This is not a fringe idea in this fringe group. It is central… and may help to explain otherwise inexplicable actions, statements, and policies.

For example the recent (faux) debt crisis…where the republicans, and especially the fundamentalist driven tea party faction, were openly willing, even wanting the government to fail…. It seems irrational that they would want this…even accounting for their own self interest. But/And much of it is driven by this level of unspoken belief/agenda.

That is why this cartoon is so brilliant… it captures all of this in current terms.

…. Appendix …..

A few stray thoughts:
This notion also informed the Bush administration at the highest levels. Including Bush himself. And was heard on a few “private” occasions to ponder that this destruction in Iraq and the Middle East wasn’t all that bad because it was going to happen anyway… referencing these Millennial ideas. You may recall his odd thoughts that he was an agent of god, doing gods will and all that. It was, in part, a reference to this underlying belief.

You may recall the high ranking general who in full dress uniform preached at a church that “… my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”  As the current saying is, this is dog whistle talk to christian fundamentalists and especially millennialists.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Boykin see notes on his comments)

And now, just before I send this I see a reference to this article! As if on cue!
A Christian Plot for Domination?

Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry aren’t just devout—both have deep ties to a fringe fundamentalist movement known as Dominionism, which says Christians should rule the world.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/14/dominionism-michele-bachmann-and-rick-perry-s-dangerous-religious-bond.html

We are faced with a government that has long ago lost its way in terms of being a system that derives it power from its founding/foundational ideas. The consent of the governed being one of the most fundamental. Another that our nation is constituted and functions according to the rule of law. While we retain the form of these propositions, it is evident to me it is no longer the case in practice. In many ways the state has become the adversary of the citizen. Not its servant. This is a serious shift, and one that will have repercussions. In fact it already has.

These propositions that we are so governed once formed the basis of our unique identity in the world. Even if they were imperfectly implemented still they were a guiding principle and served as reason for hope. Dr. ML King famously appealed to these ideals as reason for hope. Now, in these transitional times we are living in the hope is reduced to hoping that the system will not sentence you to maximum penalty. MLK, and the civil rights movement would not be able to function under the regimes that have since been instantiated in our country. The full transition to this new paradigm has not, even now, been completed. However it does not mean that it will not be. That Tim was prosecuted and sentenced under these conditions and for these reasons leads me to think the country has moved a little further down that path.

When a government is no longer informed by its underlying principles it finds itself under assault by those who still remember and believe in them. Assault, from the point of view of the government so assailed, by its most devoted citizens. But love from the point of view of the one driven by the government into acts of civil disobedience. As if we have entered into another inevitable reenactment of “King Lear”, the devoted one, the one who cares the most is scorned and rejected for the duplicitous praises of those who at root hate the “the King”, the government. These are those who want only what they can take and care nothing for the mayhem or death they deal in the taking. Who these actors are in our present story is well known.

Those who are willing to stand in the middle of this maelstrom; stand in the power and consequence of their principles and cry out “STOP” are today’s hero’s. Even knowing the irrational system, like King Lear, does not want to hear the truth; does not want to be confronted with the truth; and will in the end unleash its full fury on the unwanted truth teller, some still stand and take the brunt of the blow.

Like Tim.

I am impressed, and inspired, and challenged by his actions that began this journey and now by his statement that concludes this part of the journey. I hope that somehow a different and better outcome happens for Tim. Maybe deferral of the sentence, maybe early parole, maybe an overturn on appeal. But, as he says, he is not himself looking for that. He is looking not for Mercy, but for justice, and some sort of change in that now blinded system that still might, after all, be redeemed.

There is very much to be understood from what Tim wrote and delivered to the court. What happened here to Tim is a fractal example of what is happening in nearly all of our public institutions and societal structures. It is powerful on its own terms.
It is even more powerful as a reflection upon the state of our nation and its relationship to the citizenry. At all levels. Not just the national/federal. But also the state and local. In every circle of our society power and money are becoming, arguably have become, the governing principle. The proper and original intent of the relationship of the Citizen to the State is deteriorating. (This is not an original intent that the justices of our once vaunted Supreme Court, so enthrall to their pettifogged ideas of original intent would recognize.)

One reason the state, in this case the Federal Government, fights so hard to sustain so manifest an injustice is that to allow any breach of the extent system would be to admit that the system is rotten and in desperate need of reform – systemic change actually. This is not a truth the “king” is prepared to face just yet, even though it is apparent to anyone who cares to look.

I appreciate Tim for looking. Then acting. Then telling so forceably, so fearlessly what it is he saw, and what he sees.

I Do Not Want Mercy, I Want You To Join Me

Tim DeChristopher, who was sentenced today to two years in federal prison for disrupting a Bureau of Land Management auction in 2008, had an opportunity to address the court and the judge today immediately before his sentence was announced. This is what he said:
“… those who write the rules are those who profit from the status quo. If we want to change that status quo, we might have to work outside of those rules because the legal pathways available to us have been structured precisely to make sure we don’t make any substantial change.” (Portrait by Robert Shetterly – Used with Permission) http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org

Thank you for the opportunity to speak before the court.  When I first met Mr. Manross, the sentencing officer who prepared the presentence report, he explained that it was essentially his job to “get to know me.”  He said he had to get to know who I really was and why I did what I did in order to decide what kind of sentence was appropriate.  I was struck by the fact that he was the first person in this courthouse to call me by my first name, or even really look me in the eye.  I appreciate this opportunity to speak openly to you for the first time.  I’m not here asking for your mercy, but I am here asking that you know me.

Mr. Huber has leveled a lot of character attacks at me, many of which are contrary to Mr. Manross’s report.  While reading Mr Huber’s critiques of my character and my integrity, as well as his assumptions about my motivations, I was reminded that Mr Huber and I have never had a conversation.    Over the two and half years of this prosecution, he has never asked my any of the questions that he makes assumptions about in the government’s report.  Apparently, Mr. Huber has never considered it his job to get to know me, and yet he is quite willing to disregard the opinions of the one person who does see that as his job.

There are alternating characterizations that Mr Huber would like you to believe about me.  In one paragraph, the government claims I “played out the parts of accuser, jury, and judge as he determined the fate of the oil and gas lease auction and its intended participants that day.”   In the very next paragraph, they claim “It was not the defendant’s crimes that effected such a change.” Mr Huber would lead you to believe that I’m either a dangerous criminal who holds the oil and gas industry in the palm of my hand, or I’m just an incompetent child who didn’t affect the outcome of anything.  As evidenced by the continued back and forth of contradictory arguments in the government’s memorandum, they’re not quite sure which of those extreme caricatures I am, but they are certain that I am nothing in between.  Rather than the job of getting to know me, it seems Mr Huber prefers the job of fitting me into whatever extreme characterization is most politically expedient at the moment.

In nearly every paragraph, the government’s memorandum uses the words lie, lied, lying, liar.  It makes me want to thank whatever clerk edited out the words “pants on fire.”  Their report doesn’t mention the fact that at the auction in question, the first person who asked me what I was doing there was Agent Dan Love.  And I told him very clearly that I was there to stand in the way of an illegitimate auction that threatened my future.  I proceeded to answer all of his questions openly and honestly, and have done so to this day when speaking about that auction in any forum, including this courtroom.  The entire basis for the false statements charge that I was convicted of was the fact that I wrote my real name and address on a form that included the words “bona fide bidder.”  When I sat there on the witness stand, Mr Romney asked me if I ever had any intention of being a bona fide bidder.  I responded by asking Mr Romney to clarify what “bona fide bidder” meant in this context.  Mr Romney then withdrew the question and moved on to the next subject.  On that right there is the entire basis for the government’s repeated attacks on my integrity.  Ambition should be made of sterner stuff, your honor.

Mr Huber also makes grand assumptions about my level of respect for the rule of law.  The government claims a long prison sentence is necessary to counteract the political statements I’ve made and promote a respect for the law.  The only evidence provided for my lack of respect for the law is political statements that I’ve made in public forums.  Again, the government doesn’t mention my actions in regard to the drastic restrictions that were put upon my defense in this courtroom.  My political disagreements with the court about the proper role of a jury in the legal system are probably well known.  I’ve given several public speeches and interviews about how the jury system was established and how it has evolved to it’s current state.  Outside of this courtroom, I’ve made my views clear that I agree with the founding fathers that juries should be the conscience of the community and a defense against legislative tyranny.  I even went so far as to organize a book study group that read about the history of jury nullification.  Some of the participants in that book group later began passing out leaflets to the public about jury rights, as is their right.  Mr Huber was apparently so outraged by this that he made the slanderous accusations that I tried to taint the jury.  He didn’t specify the extra number of months that I should spend in prison for the heinous activity of holding a book group at the Unitarian Church and quoting Thomas Jefferson in public, but he says you should have “little tolerance for this behavior.”

But here is the important point that Mr Huber would rather ignore.  Despite my strong disagreements with the court about the Constitutional basis for the limits on my defense, while I was in this courtroom I respected the authority of the court.  Whether I agreed with them or not, I abided by the restrictions that you put on me and my legal team.  I never attempted to “taint” the jury, as Mr Huber claimed, by sharing any of the relevant facts about the auction in question that the court had decided were off limits.  I didn’t burst out and tell the jury that I successfully raised the down payment and offered it to the BLM.  I didn’t let the jury know that the auction was later reversed because it was illegitimate in the first place.  To this day I still think I should have had the right to do so, but disagreement with the law should not be confused with disrespect for the law.

My public statements about jury nullification were not the only political statements that Mr Huber thinks I should be punished for.  As the government’s memorandum points out, I have also made public statements about the value of civil disobedience in bringing the rule of law closer to our shared sense of justice.  In fact, I have openly and explicitly called for nonviolent civil disobedience against mountaintop removal coal mining in my home state of West Virginia.  Mountaintop removal is itself an illegal activity, which has always been in violation of the Clean Water Act, and it is an illegal activity that kills people.  A West Virginia state investigation found that Massey Energy had been cited with 62,923 violations of the law in the ten years preceding the disaster that killed 29 people last year.  The investigation also revealed that Massey paid for almost none of those violations because the company provided millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions that elected most of the appeals court judges in the state.  When I was growing up in West Virginia, my mother was one of many who pursued every legal avenue for making the coal industry follow the law.  She commented at hearings, wrote petitions and filed lawsuits, and many have continued to do ever since, to no avail.  I actually have great respect for the rule of law, because I see what happens when it doesn’t exist, as is the case with the fossil fuel industry.  Those crimes committed by Massey Energy led not only to the deaths of their own workers, but to the deaths of countless local residents, such as Joshua McCormick, who died of kidney cancer at age 22 because he was unlucky enough to live downstream from a coal mine.  When a corrupted government is no longer willing to uphold the rule of law, I advocate that citizens step up to that responsibility.

This is really the heart of what this case is about.  The rule of law is dependent upon a government that is willing to abide by the law.  Disrespect for the rule of law begins when the government believes itself and its corporate sponsors to be above the law.

Mr Huber claims that the seriousness of my offense was that I “obstructed lawful government proceedings.”  But the auction in question was not a lawful proceeding.  I know you’ve heard another case about some of the irregularities for which the auction was overturned.  But that case did not involve the BLM’s blatant violation of Secretarial Order 3226, which was a law that went into effect in 2001 and required the BLM to weigh the impacts on climate change for all its major decisions, particularly resource development.  A federal judge in Montana ruled last year that the BLM was in constant violation of this law throughout the Bush administration.  In all the proceedings and debates about this auction, no apologist for the government or the BLM has ever even tried to claim that the BLM followed this law.  In both the December 2008 auction and the creation of the Resource Management Plan on which this auction was based, the BLM did not even attempt to follow this law.

And this law is not a trivial regulation about crossing t’s or dotting i’s to make some government accountant’s job easier.  This law was put into effect to mitigate the impacts of catastrophic climate change and defend a livable future on this planet.  This law was about protecting the survival of young generations.  That’s kind of a big deal.  It’s a very big deal to me.  If the government is going to refuse to step up to that responsibility to defend a livable future, I believe that creates a moral imperative for me and other citizens.  My future, and the future of everyone I care about, is being traded for short term profits.  I take that very personally.  Until our leaders take seriously their responsibility to pass on a healthy and just world to the next generation, I will continue this fight.

The government has made the claim that there were legal alternatives to standing in the way of this auction.  Particularly, I could have filed a written protest against certain parcels.  The government does not mention, however, that two months prior to this auction, in October 2008, a Congressional report was released that looked into those protests.  The report, by the House committee on public lands, stated that it had become common practice for the BLM to take volunteers from the oil and gas industry to process those permits.  The oil industry was paying people specifically to volunteer for the industry that was supposed to be regulating it, and it was to those industry staff that I would have been appealing.  Moreover, this auction was just three months after the New York Times reported on a major scandal involving Department of the Interior regulators who were taking bribes of sex and drugs from the oil companies that they were supposed to be regulating.  In 2008, this was the condition of the rule of law, for which Mr Huber says I lacked respect.  Just as the legal avenues which people in West Virginia have been pursuing for 30 years, the legal avenues in this case were constructed precisely to protect the corporations who control the government.

The reality is not that I lack respect for the law; it’s that I have greater respect for justice.  Where there is a conflict between the law and the higher moral code that we all share, my loyalty is to that higher moral code.  I know Mr Huber disagrees with me on this.  He wrote that “The rule of law is the bedrock of our civilized society, not acts of ‘civil disobedience’ committed in the name of the cause of the day.”  That’s an especially ironic statement when he is representing the United States of America, a place where the rule of law was created through acts of civil disobedience.  Since those bedrock acts of civil disobedience by our founding fathers, the rule of law in this country has continued to grow closer to our shared higher moral code through the civil disobedience that drew attention to legalized injustice.  The authority of the government exists to the degree that the rule of law reflects the higher moral code of the citizens, and throughout American history, it has been civil disobedience that has bound them together.

This philosophical difference is serious enough that Mr Huber thinks I should be imprisoned to discourage the spread of this idea.  Much of the government’s memorandum focuses on the political statements that I’ve made in public.  But it hasn’t always been this way.  When Mr Huber was arguing that my defense should be limited, he addressed my views this way: “The public square is the proper stage for the defendant’s message, not criminal proceedings in federal court.”  But now that the jury is gone, Mr. Huber wants to take my message from the public square and make it a central part of these federal court proceedings.  I have no problem with that.  I’m just as willing to have those views on display as I’ve ever been.

The government’s memorandum states, “As opposed to preventing this particular defendant from committing further crimes, the sentence should be crafted ‘to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct’ by others.”  Their concern is not the danger that I present, but the danger presented by my ideas and words that might lead others to action.  Perhaps Mr Huber is right to be concerned.  He represents the United States Government.  His job is to protect those currently in power, and by extension, their corporate sponsors.  After months of no action after the auction, the way I found out about my indictment was the day before it happened, Pat Shea got a call from an Associated Press reporter who said, “I just wanted to let you know that tomorrow Tim is going to be indicted, and this is what the charges are going to be.”  That reporter had gotten that information two weeks earlier from an oil industry lobbyist.  Our request for disclosure of what role that lobbyist played in the US Attorney’s office was denied, but we know that she apparently holds sway and that the government feels the need to protect the industry’s interests.

The things that I’ve been publicly saying may indeed be threatening to that power structure. There have been several references to the speech I gave after the conviction, but I’ve only ever seen half of one sentence of that speech quoted.  In the government’s report, they actually had to add their own words to that one sentence to make it sound more threatening.   But the speech was about empowerment.  It was about recognizing our interconnectedness rather than viewing ourselves as isolated individuals.  The message of the speech was that when people stand together, they no longer have to be exploited by powerful corporations.  Alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in America, and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool.

But the sentencing guidelines don’t mention the need to protect corporations or politicians from ideas that threaten their control.  The guidelines say “protect the public.”  The question is whether the public is helped or harmed by my actions.  The easiest way to answer that question is with the direct impacts of my action.  As the oil executive stated in his testimony, the parcels I didn’t bid on averaged $12 per acre, but the ones I did bid on averaged $125.  Those are the prices paid for public property to the public trust.  The industry admits very openly that they were getting those parcels for an order of magnitude less than what they were worth.  Not only did those oil companies drive up the prices to $125 during the bidding, they were then given an opportunity to withdraw their bids once my actions were explained.  They kept the parcels, presumably because they knew they were still a good deal at $125.  The oil companies knew they were getting a steal from the American people, and now they’re crying because they had to pay a little closer to what those parcels were actually worth.  The government claims I should be held accountable for the steal the oil companies didn’t get.  The government’s report demands $600,000 worth of financial impacts for the amount which the oil industry wasn’t able to steal from the public.

That extra revenue for the public became almost irrelevant, though, once most of those parcels were revoked by Secretary Salazar.  Most of the parcels I won were later deemed inappropriate for drilling.  In other words, the highest and best value to the public for those particular lands was not for oil and gas drilling.  Had the auction gone off without a hitch, it would have been a loss for the public.  The fact that the auction was delayed, extra attention was brought to the process, and the parcels were ultimately revoked was a good thing for the public.

More generally, the question of whether civil disobedience is good for the public is a matter of perspective.  Civil disobedience is inherently an attempt at change.  Those in power, whom Mr Huber represents, are those for whom the status quo is working, so they always see civil disobedience as a bad thing.  The decision you are making today, your honor, is what segment of the public you are meant to protect.  Mr Huber clearly has cast his lot with that segment who wishes to preserve the status quo.  But the majority of the public is exploited by the status quo far more than they are benefited by it.  The young are the most obvious group who is exploited and condemned to an ugly future by letting the fossil fuel industry call the shots.  There is an overwhelming amount of scientific research, some of which you received as part of our proffer on the necessity defense, that reveals the catastrophic consequences which the young will have to deal with over the coming decades.

But just as real is the exploitation of the communities where fossil fuels are extracted.  As a native of West Virginia, I have seen from a young age that the exploitation of fossil fuels has always gone hand in hand with the exploitation of local people.  In West Virginia, we’ve been extracting coal longer than anyone else.  And after 150 years of making other people rich, West Virginia is almost dead last among the states in per capita income, education rates and life expectancy.  And it’s not an anomaly.  The areas with the richest fossil fuel resources, whether coal in West Virginia and Kentucky, or oil in Louisiana and Mississippi, are the areas with the lowest standards of living.  In part, this is a necessity of the industry.  The only way to convince someone to blow up their backyard or poison their water is to make sure they are so desperate that they have no other option.  But it is also the nature of the economic model.  Since fossil fuels are a limited resources, whoever controls access to that resource in the beginning gets to set all the terms.  They set the terms for their workers, for the local communities, and apparently even for the regulatory agencies.  A renewable energy economy is a threat to that model.  Since no one can control access to the sun or the wind, the wealth is more likely to flow to whoever does the work of harnessing that energy, and therefore to create a more distributed economic system, which leads to a more distributed political system.  It threatens the profits of the handful of corporations for whom the current system works, but our question is which segment of the public are you tasked with protecting.  I am here today because I have chosen to protect the people locked out of the system over the profits of the corporations running the system.  I say this not because I want your mercy, but because I want you to join me.

After this difference of political philosophies, the rest of the sentencing debate has been based on the financial loss from my actions.  The government has suggested a variety of numbers loosely associated with my actions, but as of yet has yet to establish any causality between my actions and any of those figures.  The most commonly discussed figure is perhaps the most easily debunked.  This is the figure of roughly $140,000, which is the amount the BLM originally spent to hold the December 2008 auction.  By definition, this number is the amount of money the BLM spent before I ever got involved.  The relevant question is what the BLM spent because of my actions, but apparently that question has yet to be asked.  The only logic that relates the $140,000 figure to my actions is if I caused the entire auction to be null and void and the BLM had to start from scratch to redo the entire auction.  But that of course is not the case.  First is the prosecution’s on-again-off-again argument that I didn’t have any impact on the auction being overturned.  More importantly, the BLM never did redo the auction because it was decided that many of those parcels should never have been auctioned in the first place.  Rather than this arbitrary figure of $140,000, it would have been easy to ask the BLM how much money they spent or will spend on redoing the auction.  But the government never asked this question, probably because they knew they wouldn’t like the answer.

The other number suggested in the government’s memorandum is the $166,000 that was the total price of the three parcels I won which were not invalidated.  Strangely, the government wants me to pay for these parcels, but has never offered to actually give them to me.  When I offered the BLM the money a couple weeks after the auction, they refused to take it.  Aside from that history, this figure is still not a valid financial loss from my actions.  When we wrote there was no loss from my actions, we actually meant that rather literally.  Those three parcels were not evaporated or blasted into space because of my actions, not was the oil underneath them sucked dry by my bid card.  They’re still there, and in fact the BLM has already issued public notice of their intent to re-auction those parcels in February of 2012.

The final figure suggested as a financial loss is the $600,000 that the oil company wasn’t able to steal from the public.  That completely unsubstantiated number is supposedly the extra amount the BLM received because of my actions.  This is when things get tricky.  The government’s report takes that $600,000 positive for the BLM and adds it to that roughly $300,000 negative for the BLM, and comes up with a $900,000 negative.  With math like that, it’s obvious that Mr Huber works for the federal government.

After most of those figures were disputed in the presentence  report, the government claimed in their most recent objection that I should be punished according to the intended financial impact that I intended to cause.  The government tries to assume my intentions and then claims, “This is consistent with the testimony that Mr. DeChristopher provided at trial, admitting that his intention was to cause financial harm to others with whom he disagreed.”  Now I didn’t get to say a whole lot at the trial, so it was pretty easy to look back through the transcripts.  The statement claimed by the government never happened.  There was nothing even close enough to make their statement a paraphrase or artistic license.  This statement in the government’s objection is a complete fiction.  Mr Huber’s inability to judge my intent is revealed in this case by the degree to which he underestimates my ambition.  The truth is that my intention, then as now, was to expose, embarrass and hold accountable the oil industry to the extent that it cuts into the $100 billion in annual profits that it makes through exploitation.  I actually intended for my actions to play a role in the wide variety of actions that steer the country toward a clean energy economy where those $100 billion in oil profits are completely eliminated.  When I read Mr Huber’s new logic, I was terrified to consider that my slightly unrealistic intention to have a $100 billion impact will fetch me several consecutive life sentences.  Luckily this reasoning is as unrealistic as it is silly.

A more serious look at my intentions is found in Mr Huber’s attempt to find contradictions in my statements.  Mr Huber points out that in public I acted proud of my actions and treated it like a success, while in our sentencing memorandum we claimed that my actions led to “no loss.”  On the one hand I think it was a success, and yet I claim it there was no loss.  Success, but no loss.  Mr Huber presents these ideas as mutually contradictory and obvious proof that I was either dishonest or backing down from my convictions.  But for success to be contradictory to no loss, there has to be another assumption.  One has to assume that my intent was to cause a loss.  But the only loss that I intended to cause was the loss of secrecy by which the government gave away public property for private profit.  As I actually stated in the trial, my intent was to shine a light on a corrupt process and get the government to take a second look at how this auction was conducted.  The success of that intent is not dependent on any loss.  I knew that if I was completely off base, and the government took that second look and decided that nothing was wrong with that auction, the cost of my action would be another day’s salary for the auctioneer and some minor costs of re-auctioning the parcels.  But if I was right about the irregularities of the auction, I knew that allowing the auction to proceed would mean the permanent loss of lands better suited for other purposes and the permanent loss of a safe climate.  The intent was to prevent loss, but again that is a matter of perspective.

Mr Huber wants you to weigh the loss for the corporations that expected to get public property for pennies on the dollar, but I believe the important factor is the loss to the public which I helped prevent.  Again, we come back to this philosophical difference.  From any perspective, this is a case about the right of citizens to challenge the government.  The US Attorney’s office makes clear that their interest is not only to punish me for doing so, but to discourage others from challenging the government, even when the government is acting inappropriately.  Their memorandum states, “To be sure, a federal prison term here will deter others from entering a path of criminal behavior.”  The certainty of this statement not only ignores the history of political prisoners, it ignores the severity of the present situation.  Those who are inspired to follow my actions are those who understand that we are on a path toward catastrophic consequences of climate change.  They know their future, and the future of their loved ones, is on the line.  And they know were are running out of time to turn things around.  The closer we get to that point where it’s too late, the less people have to lose by fighting back.  The power of the Justice Department is based on its ability to take things away from people.  The more that people feel that they have nothing to lose, the more that power begins to shrivel.  The people who are committed to fighting for a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today.  And neither will I.  I will continue to confront the system that threatens our future.  Given the destruction of our democratic institutions that once gave citizens access to power, my future will likely involve civil disobedience.  Nothing that happens here today will change that.  I don’t mean that in any sort of disrespectful way at all, but you don’t have that authority.   You have authority over my life, but not my principles.  Those are mine alone.

I’m not saying any of this to ask you for mercy, but to ask you to join me.  If you side with Mr Huber and believe that your role is to discourage citizens from holding their government accountable, then you should follow his recommendations and lock me away.  I certainly don’t want that.  I have no desire to go to prison, and any assertion that I want to be even a temporary martyr is false.  I want you to join me in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government.  I want you to join me in valuing this country’s rich history of nonviolent civil disobedience.  If you share those values but think my tactics are mistaken, you have the power to redirect them.  You can sentence me to a wide range of community service efforts that would point my commitment to a healthy and just world down a different path.  You can have me work with troubled teens, as I spent most of my career doing.  You can have me help disadvantaged communities or even just pull weeds for the BLM.  You can steer that commitment if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it.  This is not going away.   At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like.  In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like.  With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.  The choice you are making today is what side are you on.

I came across this passage this morning. And it has me pondering. Having been someone planted in one place for a long time, owner of homes, parent of children, traveler in business, but always returning to one place; Also world traveler but without focus more than learning, exposure, possibility.. And the question has been posing itself for sometime now: What now…

These are the days that must happen to you…

I think, but do not know, that what is next; that what must be done in order to serve the emerging consciousness and the life that is struggling to emerge from its toxic womb;
that it is going to require something of this nature and quality. Something about pressing into an entirely different paradigm.  A path that will run straight thru the center of my fears, my longings; fulfilled and otherwise, and then onto whatever it is that is sometimes called calling. I call it the center of my longing.

I think, but am not certain, that this poem is one of calling to live on the edge of ones calling, ones spirit. And if that is to be a traveler, a troubadour, then be that. And if to be part of this spot, this land, this community..then do that. Whether the travel is, inside or outside, or some mix of both, live on the edge of that calling.

Do not let questions that are too small, yet feel comfortable beguile from the knowing that is deeper in.  However comfortable.  However fearful.

The world, this emerging world, needs also travelers and troubadours to bring news from other worlds into other worlds. At the moment, that seems to be what I need to be preparing for. again.

“Both presidents deserve credit,” said Ari Fleischer, Bush’s press secretary

Yes. One for having the vision to create the mayhem under the false principle of Us/Them; of ‘if you are not with us you are against us’ and later, having failed in the mission of capturing the Evil Man, abandoned the mission claiming it never was important after all.   Like so much pain that Bush inflicted on the nation and the world, eventually leaving office , like some dark Mr Magoo  oblivious to the destruction left in his wake.  It was left to  Obama and his administration to stem the conflagration and ultimately completed the failed and abandoned mission.

What happens now is what is important.  Is there any chance that closing this bloody era of trillions of dollars and millions of people left in death, grief, and pain as a consequence of the failed policies of the various fundamentalists from each side.  Fundamentalism’s that each are pretenders to the claim of having “The Truth” and thus the sanction of their ‘god’ to kill and maim all those who do not…

Is there a chance that we might be quiet long enough to listen enough to learn enough of what it is that has been driving this falsely named “War on Terror”?

I wish.  I hope so.  I dont think so.

We do seem to be too busy cheering this great moment of death.  When we should be circumspect.   Our delight should be not that Bin Laden was killed, but for the chance that maybe we can move past this train wreck of the fundamentally flawed “War on Terror” into something that may actually accomplish something besides spawning more endless war.

I do not mean to say the killing was wrong, or even not necessary.  Maybe it was.  It probably was.  That major open wound of the epochal period of the Bush Doctrine needed to be finally sutured.

But it is not all that needs to happen.  Nor all that needed to happen.

If it happens to be the closing of that horrid chapter started by the silliness of our own foolish fundamentalists, and the beginning of closing down our toxic wars…If it happens to be the time when wisdom began to have a voice in how we conduct ourselves in these treacherous days… (Not just the wars, but more our social/civilization issues)…then it is a beginning.

If it happens to perpetuate more death, a rise of a new Islamic leader on one side, the escalation of the drones of death on the other…If sometime later we look back on this day as nothing more than the escalation of the battle of fundamentalists we will also look on this day as just another in a series of missed opportunities.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider–
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

~William Stafford

Our relationships depend upon such things as are found in this poem. The knowing, and the wanting to know the other person. The vigilance to be aware and knowing of those small betrayals that defend us from each other, and if left unknown, may break us. How important it is to be awake, if… awake we are. To maintain the heart and life of the relationship by being true to ourselves, in the context of being true to the relationship.
There must be better commentary on this poem and its depths. Perhaps to leave it just stand on its own should be sufficient. And it is. I wanted to add my amen to the thoughts told here as a way to assimilate them.

Some morning thoughts on Spiral Dynamics solicited on reading some posts from the SD community. And in particular this thought from D.Beck (citing C.Graves) “[we] are [able to] recalibrate our entire world when life conditions overwhelm the existing patterns”

This key thought about the way people organize and how they change the structures and basis of the organization is found in the general model of Spiral Dynamics. Largely a model that describes the adaptations of humans to new meta ‘life conditions’ as they emerge out of the existing structures of relationship and understanding of the world.

It is dynamic in the sense that it describes and predicts a Tao swing from a broadly individualistic center to a broadly group/community center – each movement incorporating the lessons of the prior modalities, but also in the movement, over time, creating new conundrums which emerge out of the new organization.

We humans do not remain at a functional static level of experience and/or existence. Always moving, testing, inquiring, searching for ways to meet the needs and longings of each of our multiple levels of awareness and physical needs. It is this compulsion that is the engine of the dynamo that is the human spirit. It is this ability to “to re calibrate our entire world when life conditions overwhelm the existing patterns” that makes humans so interesting. Even rising to the lofty place of “being the consciousness of the planet”, as James Lovelock put it recently.

It is spiral because the issues that are encountered by humans in this world are essentially the same, but have different inflections and details depending on the “life conditions” that are in force when they are engaged.  Similar in terms of being at similar places in the circle of life, but spiral as they are encountered at different levels. Levels distinguished by unique particulars of complexity and organization and paradigmatic context. (For example: The questions of needing food and shelter are similar for the tribal peoples of Africa living on the veldt as well as the modern urban apartment dweller. But the details and complexities of each system are very different requiring very different patterns, systems and knowledge’s to negotiate each context.)

These processes can be seen to function in individuals as well as more generally in large historical human development over centuries. In each domain, from the small to the large, the individual to the national, and even the global context, there are forces of creativity and a restlessness that are not capable, or willing to “leave well enough alone”.

As each of these centers of life undulate through the pursuit of meaning, understanding, “peak experience”, satisfaction they will be faced with the same questions over and over, but just from ever more complex levels. What is the pattern of organization as a community? What is the pattern of organization that is me as an individual? Always seeking to understand the underlying “I”. Sometimes it seems clear who that “I” is. And in that moment perhaps it becomes a little less clear who “We” are as a community. And visa versa. Sometimes it is clear who we are as a community. Think of times in western history when ones identity was folded into ones relationship to the church, or ones feudal lord. Or the current “individualistic” western meme contrasted with the more traditional community/group identity of Eastern frames of reference.

In these conditions/states the identity of the group is well established, and the inklings about who “I” am as an individual can be experienced as a radical act of protest. How does what “I know about it is in  our group/community: A sort of Group “I”,  now square up and incorporate with what I now know of “I” as a separate entity. How does “I” fit into the context of “Us”? And that sets off a new inquiry.

New in the sense that it is unsettled in the current context, and the ready answers of the past are insufficient to the present. Same question. Different Context, or Paradigm from which it is being asked. Later, that question will be more or less answered. And the patterns developed to engage the inquiry will begin to be insufficient to the now emerging question: Who are all these individuals in terms of the community…. And a new level of inquiry begins.

Same questions. Different starting point. The Tao of existence. The Tao of inquiry.

New. Old. Same. Different. Patterns within patterns.

In these transitions of growth from one clarity into a state of non-clarity on the way to a new clarity, there are, broadly speaking, two responses/reactions. These transition times are epochs of serious perturbation as people and groups have to make a decision whether to go forward into the unknown or remain in the thrall and comfort of the well known; if not worn out well known.

In these periods, and I suggest we are in such a period of turbulent transition now, these very opposite forces lay claim to the “truth”. The “middle” essentially vanishes into extreme polarities and points of view. Some saying “We must look forward to find the answer to our challenges”, as A.Lincoln put it in his day: “…As our times are new we must think anew, and disenthrall ourselves from the creeds of the past…”. Others unrelentingly holding out that the way it is is just fine, it just needs to be reformed. Maybe cleaned up. Maybe just try harder to do it and do it better. “If we would just quit being sinners, hold fast and true to the old and established ways (..The Founding Fathers The Old Time Religion.) and shape up everything will be ok”. And this polarity gives rise to what is called in the current environment the “conservative” or right wing position of fundamentalism, and the presumed contrary position of “liberals” or the “left wing” position of progressive. (Of course these are not the only poles of this dynamic. And indeed these political manifestations of the “dynamic” are not even the most important. But they do occupy a large amount of the conscious attention of the nation and the world.)

The Spiral Dynamic model now predicts an emergent condition that integrates the lessons/learnings from the entire past history of humankind’s questions and answer to the fundamental questions of “Who am I” and “Who are we”, “How do we/I survive?” “What is happening around me?”. The model suggests that the levels of experience with these questions has led through various modalities of organization of relationships. All necessary in their time. All no longer sufficient to contend with and encompass the challenges and needs of the present. Now, again, we are in a transition period from This to That. What “That” will be is as yet unclear. But some of the general qualities and outlines are coming clear.

Perhaps the most essential quality of the emerging meme is systemic integration of all that has come before. After all the fights and struggles, the wars and the killings; enlightenments and learnings, and whatever else it takes and will take to get thru this particular transition; eventually all of the past human experience will synthesize into a new, larger comprehension, more complete and complex organization. One large enough to contain the questions and breakdowns of the prior condition. One sufficient enough to be the basis for the next level of human endeavor.

Beck is gone, or going. And good riddance. But there is a strange meme attempting to equate Beck and Olbermann as being the same and functioning out of the same principles albeit on different ends of the political spectrum. I do not think this is a defensible position, as I try to articulate below.
I do think that our journalism and reporting these days is full of a false point-counterpoint labeling. As if just having someone from the right and someone from the left makes a balanced conversation. Or even one that will surface anything of value.
It is as if a journalist cannot make a point these days, even about the craziness of a Glenn Beck, without feeling the need to take cover from the charge of being prejudiced by finding a counter point on the presumed opposite side. This “need” to be “balanced” of course leads to all sorts of imbalance, not to mention insipid reporting.
My primary reaction to this article is the harm this level of false equivalence does to our national discourse.

To John Avlon/Daily Beast
Just read your piece ‘Glenn Beck: Farewell to a Fearmonger by John Avlon And I suppose you will get a lot of push back on what seems a strange and false equivalency between Beck and Olbermann. I’ll add mine.

Toward the end of your article you have the post cited below. If your intent was to capture a certain passion, emotional intensity between these two, (I ignore the Palin part as it doesn’t seem part of the point) then fair play… I suppose. Sort of. But you make a substantial error in the substance of the two men and what they actually did and stood for.
Without getting into the fray of right/left whose right/wrong, I do not think you could compile a commensurate list of fundamental errors and structural logical flaws made by Olbermann. He had his histrionics, and certainly his point of view. And of course the ego fights w O’reilly and Fox may not have been his high points. But they were not borne of a crazy and deranged unsupportable logic. Becks were (and are). You could not write a similar piece, as you did here of Beck, describing Olbermann. And when you cite Olbermann’s hi-lights reel, or call it lo-lights if you will, you will find a series of rather bold, out of the mainstream thinking, calls to clarity that you cannot legitimately call crazy. Call them something else, you may not have liked them, you may disagreed with them. But you did not watch them for the bozo crazy that you do Beck’s strange performances. He was quite literally fulfilling journalisms stated mission: to speak truth to power, and try to reveal what was hidden.
The substance of what was being said by Olbermann was debatable. That is, you could check facts, you could agree with a position or not. Beck’s? You said it well in your piece: “His chalkboards have become versions of the intricate strings connecting pins in the backyard shed of A Beautiful Mind.” All you can do with these rants is simply be amazed. Or mock them. Or ignore them as the gibberish they were.

We pay attention to Beck not because of what he says, but because of that slice of America that is taken in by him. And by turns we are amused, and horrified to think that this kind of crazy might actually gain some political power. Beck is manifestly logically wrong and wrong headed. Appealing to fear. As you say. A pretty powerful appeal to many it appears, at least for a time. (With Beck’s departure, it is likely just going dormant until the next event comes along that requires a projection of our own national dread upon a scapegoat…).

I have not read your book. And perhaps you deal with these substantial distinctions there. But I fear you do not. Either way, you don’t in this little paragraph. You make the serious error that is replete throughout journalism and reporting these days: the easy, and facile false equivalence. Picking out some superficial similarity between two positions, or in this case people, you proceed to ascribe similarities in other facets that are simply wrong and lead to wrong conclusions.

And you have done it here in this Beck/Olbermann conflation. I would love to get your response.

ps. An interesting question and inquiry is whether and how the “thesis” of Howard Beale was wrong or not? Is Beale more Beck or Olbermann? Maybe with a dash of Stewart?   I think there are some interesting lessons to be mined out of the film Network. Including how it is that we as Americans seem to need to have our news and analysis packaged and presented to us.   I think it holds some relevant perspectives on this conversation of what is news and/or truth and/or entertainment and how is it packaged. But that is for another post.

ref: A closing note: One year ago, when Wingnuts was published as the first BeastBook, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Keith Olbermann were put on the cover because they were the most public faces for the problem I was trying to describe—the return of the paranoid style in American politics and the cycle of incitement that was empowering the extremes while drowning out the vast vital center.

Nature seems so willing to be constrained by man’s buildings and bulwarks. Until it is not. And when the courses we set for nature are breached it is with devastating effect.

It makes me wonder about our petty, stupid, idiotic, fundamentalist politicians and people who will deny and debate the incontrovertible, mostly for petty human reasons. Reasons that, while nature rests biding her time, seem so important, seem to be the only things that are important. And while the daily life of world transforming financial systems, wars, and dogmatics, whirl away with little awareness of, and less care about the people whose lives are destroyed, or the Earth who bears the wounds.

Until the Earth stirs, then all of this is put into perspective and the natural order of things is restored. And we realize, however dimly, that we are subjects of our environment, not its masters. And that the Earth needs to be treated with respect. The seemingly invincible man-made buildings and institutions revealed to be merely functional. As if these are simply allowed to exist for a while until something like March 11th happens in Japan and all of it is subject to being swept away. A little humility seems to be called for as we absorb the magnitude of what has happened and what our response should be.

Each crisis presents an opportunity to learn humility. Humility that would cause some reflection about who we are and how we are in this world. Humility that will show us how we can become more congruent with our world. First with our environment, then the institutions and systems of mankind. Thus allow some rethinking about our relationship to the Earth and how to sustainably use her resources. And to each other. And our structures of ownership. And wealth. And life. And indeed all of our relations.

All of our systems are constructions of our thinking thus far. Whether we did the best we could or not, we have done what we have done. And we live with the consequences of our constructions as they are. What is being repeatedly told to us by nature’s events, and those created by man like the regime change in Egypt and the tumult in the Middle East as well as the recent battles in Wisconsin, is that the structure of our relationships with the Earth, our governmental systems and often each other are profoundly flawed and irretrievably broken.

Deep systemic thinking that pays attention to the entire system, the Whole System, will be necessary to address the cataclysms that have happened, and the ones that are in the making. If we are to survive, indeed thrive, we must absolutely abandon the creeds and certainties of the past and quite literally think anew.

Those who persist in unquestioningly perpetuating the unsustainable paradigms; whether political, social, financial or environmental, are condemning the world to continually experience this level of human misery and be constantly perplexed by it, while learning little from it.

I started this essay to express two thoughts. These events in Japan are mind-blowing, astonishing and breath taking, as seen in the video above. There is nothing that can be done by man when the forces of nature and the Earth are released upon us, other than to do the best one can to weather the moment. And so the thought about the need for humility in our dealings with the world and the need to recognize our place in the natural order of things came to mind.

The second thought was how we seem to be dealing with the issue of climate change in light of the extreme events in Japan. As amazing and earthshaking, and change inducing as this event is, how much more so when the full effects of global climate change start to assert themselves. As harsh as it sounds this earthquake and its aftermath will be small in comparison.

We simply cannot continue to allow our need to perpetuate the “way it is”. These man-made systems of how we apportion wealth, resources, life and our relationship to the Earth and environment have to be revisited.

The blinding dogmas of right wing fundamentalism, both religious as well as political, will not concede an inch to anything that challenges the premises of the paradigm, no matter the consequences. Consequences both predicted as well as currently being manifest. Now these consequences reveal plainly how inadequate the “solutions” implemented by these fundamentalists have been. Already the forces of the status quo are attempting to gain control of the message and are trying to minimize what has happened. The essential choice this cataclysmic moment is presenting to us is whether to continue with the status quo or evolve our thinking to develop a more sustainable environment for our future.

At a different level – the human level – in our country and in our political power centres, the profound principles of our Constitution are shredded in real time on a daily basis. Science is ignored when it is inconvenient and the resources we have are being re-apportioned to those political masters who already have more than enough by taking it from those who have, quite literally, not enough.

I think this unwillingness or inability to reflect on the structure of our systems and how they need to be changed and adapted for new realities will leave us continually astonished at each new event, as if it has never happened before. As if we are victims of unintended consequences and uncontrollable forces, when instead we are simply prisoners of our own belief systems.

The March 11 Japan earthquake should wake us up to the much larger consequences of the global climate change issue. And how that issue is being diverted from any real progress or change by foolish men and women at all levels of government around the world. Many of whom have something to gain by resisting change. But when these consequences come – as they most certainly will – will we be left crying out our astonishment, and wondering how this happened to us. Will we have no awareness or sense of irony that it is the consequence of ignoring the natural order of things.

Our human systems, need to be re-organized to take into account the larger system within which we live. What that means is of course complex. That it is complex and difficult does not excuse us from doing the work. Hopefully this tragic event in Japan will help us, as a world community of peoples, to start the conversations we know we must have and make the changes we already know must be made.

those who always know better
– fifty-two

doubting every step
– nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand
if it doesn’t take too long
– as high as forty-nine,

always good
because they can’t be otherwise
– four, well maybe five,

able to admire without envy
– eighteen,

suffering illusions
induced by fleeting youth
– sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly
– forty and four,

living in constant fear
of someone or something
– seventy-seven,

capable of happiness
– twenty-something tops,

harmless singly, savage in crowds
– half at least,

cruel
when forced by circumstances
– better not to know
even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact
– just a couple more
than wise before it,

taking only things from life
– thirty
(I wish I were wrong),

hunched in pain,
no flashlight in the dark
– eighty-three
sooner or later,

righteous
– thirty-five, which is a lot,

righteous
and understanding
– three,

worthy of compassion
– ninety-nine,

mortal
– a hundred out of a hundred.
Thus far this figure still remains unchanged.

That said, I have one substantial disagreement with this article. Sen. Sanders closes with this comment

“The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We’ve got to talk about shared sacrifice.”

I think we need to talk about participating in the country and in the society that created the context for them to exist and then to thrive.  It may be a sacrifice in some sense.  But in order for the right balance to be restored between the private/corporate sector and the nation within which it lives there needs to be a different and better way of thinking about what it means to be a citizen.  Corporate as well as individual.

There is a serious flaw in our “Pioneer Ethos” thinking, that “I did it all by myself and without the help of anyone”. It infuses every discussion about the notion of citizen vs community, or the role of government vs the role of the private sector.

In fact this is not true. The ability for any company, as well as individual, to thrive is profoundly predicated upon the context, or, the paradigm within which they were born and raised.  In the case of corporations this paradigm is the nation and the body of laws, customs and beliefs that define it.   Being an American company does indeed create an obligation to the community. We recognize this in the individual sphere by the high value we place on our families. Our families, our “blood” or those who gave us life, and then gave us all that was necessary to live, grow, and thrive. There are many layers of family. Immediate family, extended family, and then our community, our local family. All of which exists in even larger containers, such as towns, cities, and ultimately the nation that we are citizens of.

I assert that the framework of family, or more broadly, citizenship, applies to corporations as well. That the power of the corporations, as inflected in the laws passed by those politicians whom they have sponsored, has legally enabled them to bypass their responsibility to the country does not absolve them from this responsibility. [And of course it is the same politicians who continue to demand even more tax cuts, even less tax rates for their sponsors. Seemingly there is no limit to these demands. Seemingly there is no other issue salient to the country than this one if the agenda and proposals forwarded by the Republicans and some Democrats are any indication. Cut everything that does not directly benefit a corporation; from education, to labor, information networks, FDA and food safety, EPA and the environment and ad infinitum.]

Corporations like to invoke the fiction that they are themselves “Citizens” when it suits their purposes. Most recently in the Supreme Court case “Citizens United” where it was reasserted that corporations are just like any other person for the purpose of free speech and other “rights”.  On the other hand when it benefits them they will abandon this and assume the character of a multi national firm whose home is the world, and therefore is not subject to the laws of any particular country. And herein is the flaw that enables the dysfunctional disparity in corporate contributions detailed by Sen. Sanders below.

One of the operational principles governing our real-world relationships these days is the Privatization of Wealth and the benefits of wealth and the Socialization of the risks and costs incurred by the creation of that wealth and power.  Dramatically seen in the financial crisis, it is seen in lesser ways every single day. It is not a light statement to say this is the governing principle in far too much of our Corporate state.

Sen. Sanders calls on the corporations to Sacrifice. I say they need to function as a member of this society that they were birthed in; that they function as the “corporate citizen” they actually are and participate in the sustaining of their home and heritage. It will be a sacrifice of course, as it is for all the members of this “family” called America. But it is more than sacrifice, it is honoring the family from which you were birthed and which enabled the corporation to come into being and to thrive. If and as we have all of our citizens working together the problems we have to solve will actually be solvable. If we continue to have members of the society feel entitled to only take and receive the benefit of the community nothing will be able to be solved. Like parasites feeding on a host, the body will be weakened, and if nothing changes, die.

There are plenty of wealthy people and institutions that understand this, and they are calling for a very different set of laws to define our relationships in very different terms. And this problem must be addressed at the level of Law. It is not a matter of charity, moral obligation or simple good intentions that can create the context within which the corporations can properly function. We simply have to start asking different questions. Questions that will go to the heart of the right relationships between the government and corporations, or government and the private sector. There is a role for each. Until this balance is restored, or – in many instances – created for the first time we can expect that the current state of affairs will only perpetuate and eventually the host will die.

Article posted by Sen.Sanders

While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are avoiding U.S. taxes altogether.

With Congress returning to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations must do their share to help bring down our record-breaking deficit.

Sanders renewed his call for shared sacrifice after it was reported that General Electric and other major corporations paid no U.S. taxes after posting huge profits. Sanders said it is grossly unfair for congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income taxes.

Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders:

1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.

7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.

Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.

10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.

Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He also introduced legislation to impose a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion a year. The senator has said that spending cuts must be paired with new revenue so the federal budget is not balanced solely on the backs of working families.

“We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed,” Sanders said, “but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country. The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We’ve got to talk about shared sacrifice.”

There comes a time when rational discussion has been rejected by those who, however temporarily, hold the positions of power, the only thing left to do is mock them to their face. Even then they will be impervious to the meaning and portent of what is happening. But, maybe, unlikely, but maybe the derisive laughter will puzzle them enough to wonder what is happening.

With that wan hope in mind, I have to say this performance by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is priceless.

Link to Video

With sardonic humor, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) mocked today’s markup of legislation to overturn the scientific finding that fossil-fuel pollution is causing dangerous climate change. Markey, who championed climate legislation that passed the House of Representatives in 2009, protested the energy subcommittee’s consideration of the Upton-Inhofe bill to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules on climate pollution, including its endangerment finding:

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to a bill that overturns the scientific finding that pollution is harming our people and our planet.

However, I won’t physically rise, because I’m worried that Republicans will overturn the law of gravity, sending us floating about the room.

I won’t call for the sunlight of additional hearings, for fear that Republicans might excommunicate the finding that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Instead, I’ll embody Newton’s third law of motion and be an equal and opposing force against this attack on science and on laws that will reduce America’s importation of foreign oil.

This bill will live in the House while simultaneously being dead in the Senate. It will be a legislative Schrodinger’s cat killed by the quantum mechanics of the legislative process!

Arbitrary rejection of scientific fact will not cause us to rise from our seats today. But with this bill, pollution levels will rise. Oil imports will rise. Temperatures will rise.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time. That is, unless a rejection of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is somewhere in the chair’s amendment pile.

What the real agenda is

Toles captures perfectly, as he so often does, the real agenda of the republican party. It was established a long time ago by Norquist who stated quite clearly that he wanted to shrink government so much that it could be “drowned in a bath tub”.

This is a complex subject, and more so these days when the conversation is polarizing into unthinking positions. Obama is, interestingly in this environment, still attempting to hold the space for discussion, honest engagement of ideas, and compromise.

But the Republicans have proven repeatedly that compromise is not part of their vocabulary. And that “silly” notion certainly does not inform them in any meaningful way. They will take whatever is offered, not as a compromise, but as their due and then start the conversation of “what are you going to give up now.”.

This perfectly tailored cartoon simply exposes this perfectly.

Nothing is allowed to stand in the way of the agenda.
We saw it in the Gifford shooting: no conversation whatsoever is going to be allowed. There is no position that is acceptable except ours, and.. of course, our sponsor … the NRA.

It is seen in repeated instances through the saga that is the Financial Crisis. Including the notion that there be no consequence to the perpetrators, either individually, and especially institutionally. This while simultaneously attacking the Obama administration for laxity in oversight with absolutely no sense of the hypocrisy, some would say irony, that a) the causes for the financial collapse were all instituted under G.Bush, with some antecedents going all the way back to Clinton and Papa Bush Administrations. And b) that the essential problem was the lack of regulations and the further lack of enforcing the regulations that were actually on the books. Yet, among their first principle agenda is to eviscerate even the inadequate ones on the books.

Finally, by way of example, note how the Senate held all of the business of the government hostage to the absolute requirement that they get their precious tax cut extensions for the very wealthy. The story is to well known to detail in this post. But strange it is that while clamoring for Balanced Budgets and the like they persistently refuse to be aware of how Clinton managed the situation; How Bush, along with A.Greenspan dismantled the structures that were providing the very fiscal discipline that is so loudly proclaimed as the chief agenda item.

And how intransigent they remain to doing anything that would actually address the financial problems of America, preferring and content instead to play in the shallow end of the pool, splashing around with 10 or 100 million dollar programs that offend their delicate sensibilities and narrow fundamentalist beliefs (assuming that they even believe them – in most cases this faux outrage is to show the “base” that they care… A la’ Rove).

There is an Agenda. The Republicans have a Master they serve. It is troubling, but more sad, that it is not the American People, nor the good weal of the country. It is abundantly clear who they serve. Any more the Republican Party does not even feel the need to pretend. They serve the interests of power and extreme wealth.
This cartoon of Toles expresses one way they prove their fealty.

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

So I am going to leave this post up because I think it holds a few decent ideas.

The video that is no longer available showed two boys, one a larger, overweight kind of fellow the other a skinny, smart ass sort of a boy poking him in the chest and taunting him – I don’t recall with what words…something demeening and “normal”. But poking him and not letting up. This goes on for a little while, maybe 40-60 secs? and the other boy, Casey, reacts… picks up the kid who is abusing him (let me call him ‘little shit’, as an editorial aside) and slams him to the ground. Apparently as others reported breaking his ankle, or fracturing it or some damage. The little shit hobbled away so it was not overly damaged.

My comments in response to the video and others responses came out of Emily B. original question, which I address.

I am interested to know why and how this was taken down. I suppose it is around somewhere else on the I/net.

Saw this page referenced by Emily Bazalon of the Slate Political Gabfest (A wonderful person and sharp commentator btw…one of my favorite folks out here in internet land)  She cited this page and then asked if what this kid Casey did was satisfying or disturbing.
I replied in the comment section with this.  Thought to bring it forward to my main post, as I think the larger points are worth considering.

http://www.facebook.com/caseythepunisher

video here http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=157762297615657

As happens so often, what happens so often is misunderstood, or more likely not really paid attention to until somebody captures it on tape.  a la Rodney King.  This is not the first time this has happened.  To this kid (per the comments on the page) nor to kids who are the butt end of little shits like this one who was taunting the kid.    So the solution, if there is one, goes back to underlying causes: That is an extended discussion of course. More than this post can engage.

But is it remotely possible that this little shit of a kid who provoked this has a history of this level of abuse, but is found “innocent” all the time?  Apparently it happened here.  The big kid got suspended, the little shit got hurt.  The article does not indicate that he got any other consequence.

You know who this reminds of?  Mr GW Bush.  He was one of these abusive, privileged little shits who always got away with his petty tortures.  I remember reading a number of stories from people who had encountered him at Yale and other places describing personal experiences they had like this. Later you could see the same ‘little shit of a kid” in that noxious smugness and despicable little laugh of his.
Just remembered this example:
“…writer Tucker Carlson described Bush mimicking the woman’s final plea for her life. “‘Please,’ Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, ‘don’t kill me.’”"
And another:
It is this character evinced by this kid in seed form that shows up later in more consequential moments like Bush saying “…Bring it on…”  or “Mission Accomplished” or who has no compunction against introducing torture formally into our “justice” system.
Does that justify the kid getting his ass whipped by this kid?  Don’t know.  And like Gill above, I am glad for the big kid that more serious happened.  But the breakdown that led to this is somewhere else in the “system”.
To respond directly to Emily’s question

What do you guys think of this bullying video — disturbing or satisfyingly vengeful? — Emily

This is what I think. The choices she offered of  disturbing or satisfying are only at the surface level of reaction.   This syndrome is something to pay attention to.  Though it is unlikely that we as a society will or even can.  Especially at the level of the educational system which is under assault from so many angles, and stretched beyond its ability to cope with systemic issues like this.

Coda: While looking for the link I saw all the comments and posts from the FBook community.  Nearly all of them were some sort of hurray and way to go, you got the bastard good… As if they were themselves back in HS standing around a circle watching a fight.  Have to say it is for ignorance like this that I both loose respect for “my fellow americans” and really understand how it is that such a abuser and bully as G.Bush could be elevated to the presidency.   He is their kind of people.  And they are his.
And, to extend the point into the present: The same characteristics and qualities are seen in Palin, as well as others.  But to explicate that point is a different post altogether.

More specifically, including the specific one he resigned over: Crowley’s rather uncharacteristic straightforward comment on how Manning is being treated.   It cannot escape notice how stark the contrast is between his clarifying comment and Obama’s muddled comment about how he asked the DOD if it were true that Manning was being mistreated, and how … they said, amazingly enough…No. <insert sense of irony>.  And Obama, apparently, took their word on face value. “Nothing to see here folks, move along…” <insert real astonishment and bewilderment>

Beyond the particulars of the case, however,  it seems to me that again this provides another golden opportunity for looking at our institutions from a structural, systemic point of view.  Including the fact that classified information is often a cover up of embarrassing facts and has little to do w National Security.  As such the presumed constitutional foundation of the relationship of the citizen to the government is being broken at a fundamental level.   Which of course is manifest in so much of the otherwise inexplicable things that happen on a day to day basis in Washington.

If we are not being specifically lied to, we are certainly not being told the truth about what is going on about important things the citizenry should be informed about.  This is what I take to be the lasting consequence of whatever particular issue wikileaks leaks, and whatever Manning’s actual contribution turns out to be.

Wikileaks and all it is and portends is an opportunity for reflection and  reassessment.  Predictably it is being used as a opportunity for retrenchment of all the existing structures.

Reference : STATEMENT BY PHILIP J. CROWLEY The unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a serious crime under U.S. law…

http://1.usa.gov/eVrklb

It makes me wonder about our petty, stupid, idiotic, fundamentalist politicians and people who will deny and debate the incontrovertible, mostly for petty human reasons. Reasons that, while nature rests biding her time, seem so important, seem to be the only things that are important.  And the daily life of world transforming financial systems, and Wars, and dogmatics whirl away with little awareness of, and less care about, the people whose lives are destroyed, and the earth who bears the wounds.
Until the Earth stirs. And all of this is put into perspective, and the natural order of things is restored.  And we realize, however dimly, that we are subjects of our environment, not its masters.  And the earth needs to be treated with respect.  The seemingly invincible man made buildings and institutions revealed to be merely  functional.  As if these are simply allowed to exist for a while until something like March 11 happens in Japan and all of it is subject to being swept away.  A little humility seems to be called for as we absorb the magnitude of what has happened and what the response should be.

And not just this most recent event in Japan, but also not to forget Haiti. However forgettable Haiti is to a world that reacts, but does not respond to each next crisis.   The list of events like this that we have forgotten is long.  Katrina?

Each one being an opportunity to learn humility.  Humility that would cause some reflection about who we are and how we are in the world.  And how we could become more congruent with our world: First the environment.  And then the systems and institutions of humankind.

And thus allow some rethinking about our relationship to resources and to each other.  And ownership.  And wealth.  And life.  And each other.  And indeed All of our Relations.

All of our systems are the constructions of our thinking thus far.  Whether we did the best we could or not, we have done what we have done.  And we have the conditions and live with the consequences of them as they are.   What is being repeatedly told us by nature’s events like these as well as the only-human events like Egypt and the roilings in the middle east; and even the recent battles in Wisconsin, is that the systemic constructs we have created are profoundly flawed and irretrievably broken.

Deep systemic thinking that pays attention to the entire system, the Whole System, will be sufficient to address the cataclysms that have happened, and the ones that  are yet in the making.  If we would survive, indeed thrive, we must absolutely abandon the creeds and certainties of the past and quite literally  think anew.

Those who persist in unquestioningly perpetuating the unsustainable paradigms; whether political, social, financial, environmental…  are condeming the world to continually experience this level of human misery.  And to be continually perplexed by it, while learning little from it.

I started this essay to express two thoughts.  That these events in Japan are mind-blowing astonishing and breath taking. As seen in the video link I cite in the opening line.  There is nothing that can be done by man when the forces of nature and the earth are released other than to do the best one can to weather the moment.  Because the moment is happening, and it is not considerate of life or things or how it has been.  How it is after the event is what matters.  The landscape, literally, has changed.  So the thought about the need for humility in our dealings with the world and each other came to mind.

The second thought was how we seem to be dealing with the notion of Climate Change in light of the extremes events in Japan.   And as amazing and earthshaking, and change inducing as that event is and will be for some very long time to come, especially for the Japanese people; how much more so when the full effects of global climate change start to assert themselves.   As harsh as it sounds this earthquake and its aftermaths will be small in comparison.

And the conclusion I intended to draw from these two observations/points was that the idiotic, childish, and churlish manner in which we contend with this issue is amazing.  Just one point: we allow our need to perpetuate the “way it is” – the man-made systems of how we apportion wealth, resources, life, and our relationship to the earth and environment – to veto any change to that system.   The blinding dogmas of this right wing fundamentalism, both religious as well as political,  where the only principles that seem to matter are power and wealth for some, and Justice for a few.  These dogmas that will not admit of anything that challenges the premises of the paradigm, no matter the consequences. Consequences both predicted as well as currently being manifested. (Like the melting of Arctic ice cap).

At a different level – the human level – In our country and in our political/power centers the profound principles of our Constitution are shredded in real time on a daily basis, Science is ignored when it is inconvenient, and the resources we have are being re-apportioned to those political masters who already have more than enough by taking it from those who have, quite literally, not enough.

I think this unwillingness and/or inability to reflect on the structure of our systems and how they need to be changed and adapted for new realities will leave us continually astonished at each new event, as if it has never happened before.  As if we are victims of unintended consequences and uncontrollable forces, when instead we are simply prisoners of our belief systems.

I “publish” this little essay knowing that it is incomplete.  I started out to express one core thought I thought important: That the Japan earthquake should wake us up to the much larger consequences of the global climate change issue. And how that issue is aborted by foolish men and women, typically of a republican stripe: all who have something to gain at a personal provincial level by not being aware of what is happening.   And how that should utterly disqualify them from the conversation.   And how when these consequences come – as they most certainly will – will we be left screeching out our astonishment? And wondering how this happened to us?  With no sense of irony or awareness that it is the nature result of ignoring the natural order of things…. That our human systems need to be re-organized to take into account the larger system within which we live.    But to say that requires opening up other lines that need to be woven into the conversation…Lines that can only be alluded to not fully explicated in a little “essay” like this.

So later perhaps, a larger treatise will come of it.   It does strike me funny to remember that 1.5 hours ago I started this as a twitter post…

There are others. There seems to be a pattern emerging. Very disturbing. Seems to violate the standard of justice and constitutional grounding that was the promise of Obama’s history and principles.