Warning to those who will heed

 By a Brit, but this could just as well be about America and the 1% vs. the rest of us:

Wracked from end to end by riots and looting, the country is now starting to admit the existence of the hidden faultlines that lie quivering beneath the humdrum everyday blandishments of society as we live it.

Underneath the surface chatter about police brutality and parental responsibility is a deeper fear, and a not unfounded one: that a social contract's been torn up. If you accept the possibility that there are many kinds of violence — not merely physical, but emotional, economic, financial, and social, to name just a few, then perhaps the social contract being offered by today's polities goes something like this:  "Some kinds of violence are more punishable than others. Blow up the financial system? Here's a state-subsidized bonus. Steal a video game? You're toast." (To be painfully clear, I don't think any form of violence is justifiable, excusable, or acceptable.)

There are many kinds of looting. There's looting your local superstore — and then there's, as Nobel Laureates Akerlof and Romer discussed in a paper now famous among geeks, there's looting a bank, a financial system, a corporation...or an entire economy. (Their paper might be crudely summed up in the pithy line: "The best way to rob a bank is to own one.")  The bedrock of an enlightened social contract is, crudely, that rent-seeking is punished, and creating enduring, lasting, shared wealth is rewarded and that those who seek to profit by extraction are chastened rather than lauded. Today's world of bailouts, golden parachutes, sky-high financial-sector salaries — while middle incomes stagnate — seems to be exactly the reverse.  Perhaps, then, our societies have reached a natural turning point of built-in self-limitation; and this self-limitation is causing a perfect storm to converge.

An enlightened social contract is not built on subsidies or "handouts" — whether to the impoverished, or to the pitiable welfare junkies formerly known as "the markets."  It's built on a calculus of harm and benefit not just accepted by a plurality of its citizens (versus a tiny Chalet-owning, caviar-gobbling minority at the top) — and also a calculus that can be said to meaningful in the sense that it results in real human prosperity.  Without such a bargain to set incentives and coordinate economic activity, even the mightiest, proudest societies will find themselves as bent old men on an endless plateau, searching for a lick of shelter as the typhoon bears down.

TV Turn-off Week! Signups start today @ Salem Public Library

Image by herzogbr via FlickrTV TURNOFF WEEK!

Once again, Salem Public Library is challenging area youth to give up TV and other screens for a week in order to earn a berth at the annual Great Library Camp-In.

The Library’s “No TV/Screen Week” is scheduled for Saturday, January 21-Friday, January 27. Children ages birth -18 are encouraged to make and keep a pledge to turn off their TV and other non-homework screens, filling their time instead with other activities – including reading. Pledges can be made online or at either library location beginning January 3, 2012.

Those who succeed in keeping the pledge are then invited, accompanied by a favorite adult, to enjoy the
“Rock ‘n’ Rhythm” Great Library Camp-In, 6:30 p.m. Friday, January 27 through 8 a.m. Saturday, January 28 top two floors of the Central Library, 585 Liberty St. SE.

Youth Services staff and volunteers will entertain campers and their families with crafts and activities, such as musical chairs, “Name That Tune” Jeopardy, creating one-of-a-kind musical instruments, face painting, and more from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

At 8 p.m., everyone will gather in the Loucks Auditorium for a snack and special performance by Eric Ode, storyteller and musician.

Lights out is at 10 p.m. and campers are served a light breakfast snack in the morning.

Pledges must be returned to the Library by Saturday, January 21 in order to come to the Camp-In. Reservations for the Camp-In are accepted beginning Tuesday, January 24 at the Youth Services Reference Desk in person, online, or by phone at 503-588-6088.

Great Stuff: Ex-cons run airport apiary

Two things Salem has in abundance:  released prisoners needing better skills for productive living and wasted, idle land at an airport.  Add the world's desperate need to restore pollinator populations, a dash of creativity and willingness to try something new and we could have something great!  Definitely an idea to steal!

 

The sweet smell of success is in the air at O'Hare International Airport with an unusual collaboration aimed at giving honeybees and their keepers a second chance.

Twenty-three beehives were installed on a vacant piece of property on the airport's east side this spring.

Tending to the hives are carefully screened former convicts enrolled with the nonprofit North Lawndale Employment Network.

The idea is “to create jobs for people who have a difficult time finding them,” said Brenda Palms Barber, executive director of NLEN and CEO of Sweet Beginnings. “There's a stigma and fear about hiring people who've served time in prison.”

Out of this problem grew Sweet Beginnings, an urban honey enterprise that employs people who have served time. Some work as beekeepers, others as landscapers or food processors.

“Bees don't distinguish between weeds and flowers,” Palms Barber said. “They see it all as a source of food and turn whatever they draw from into something sweet and good. That's what we do with these men and women. There is good in them as well.” . . .

Unhappy birthday

On my birthday last fall, Common Dreams posted this painful but all-too-accurate article about the corporate assault on public schools by David Sirota.  Excerpt:

"Let's hope the fiscal crisis doesn't get better too soon. It'll slow down reform." -- Tom Watkins, a consultant, summarizes the corporate education reform movement's current strategy to the Sunday New York Times.(Monkey Business Images via Shutterstock)

The Shock Doctrine, as articulated by journalist Naomi Klein, describes the process by which corporate interests use catastrophes as instruments to maximize their profit. Sometimes the events they use are natural (earthquakes), sometimes they are human-created (the 9/11 attacks) and sometimes they are a bit of both (hurricanes made stronger by human-intensified global climate change).   Regardless of the particular cataclysm, though, the Shock Doctrine suggests that in the aftermath of a calamity, there is always corporate method in the smoldering madness - a method based in Disaster Capitalism.

Though Klein's book provides much evidence of the Shock Doctrine, the Disaster Capitalists rarely come out and acknowledge their strategy.   That's why Watkins' outburst of candor, buried in this front-page New York Times article yesterday, is so important:  It shows that the recession and its corresponding shock to school budgets is being  used by corporations to maximize revenues, all under the gauzy banner of "reform." . . .

2011 in Solar Generation @ LOVESalem HQ

If I can make the magic happen, this will be a plot of the production from the solar electric panels installed at LOVESalem HQ just a few days before the winter solstice in 2010.  The plot runs from Solstice 10 to Solstice 11.

Daily Solar Electric Production (kWh)

Some of the statistics for the period 12/21/10 - 12/21/11:

	Lowest output day =	0.5	kWh
	Highest output day =	28	kWh
	Mean daily output =	11.2	kWh/day
	Median daily output =	9.15	kWh/day
2010-11	Solar Yr total production	4099	kWh
System Cap Installed		4338	w
Solar Year
12/21 - 3/21	Q1	488
3/21 - 6/21	Q2	1442
6/21 - 9/21	Q3	1699
9/21-12/21	Q4	465

In 2012, resolve to support full funding for legal aid

 Make it a resolution:  tell your elected reps at EVERY level that America desperately needs affordable legal aid services for the poor and middle class - the 99% - who are getting hammered, and who have no resources for responding when someone takes advantage of them illegally.

 LAW FOR REAL PEOPLE blog:    There are too many unmet needs for sure, but if we do not preserve a functioning legal aid system, there will be nothing there.  Like many other attorneys, I do a lot more pro bono work than I should reasonably do, mainly because it pains me to see people unable to get any help just because they are unable to afford a lawyer.  But as a society, we cannot expect attorneys in private practice to meet the needs of the poor any more than we expect doctors and dentists to meet all the health care needs of the poor with pro bono work.  . . .

     Oregon desperately needs a solid, stable, and AMPLE funding stream for civil legal representation, one that doesn't tank when interest rates fluctuate (the way the interest-on-lawyer-trust-accounts revenue stream has) or impose punitive filing fees on people unlucky enough to have a case arise when the state is slashing funding for legal services. 

     We need to recognize legal aid as a kind of community public health resource, like a free vaccination clinic -- because when we ignore the legal needs of the poor, they don't just magically disappear, they get worse and become far more difficult and expensive to deal with.  When society doesn't fund vaccines for the poor, it's not just the poor who suffer.  Same with civil law.  Sure we can shave a few bucks off the legal aid budget every year after year after year -- but then we wonder why we, to take just one example, have to spend so much more to try to educate kids who change schools five and six times in two years (because the parent's inability to defend themselves against an abusive debt collector caused wage garnishment and loss of housing, leading to a vicious downward spiral of unemployment and underemployment, which causes housing and food insecurity, which raises the likelihood of student failure, dropping out, and other social maladaptations).

     The bottom line:  Even if you think that you or anyone you love will never need good legal services through a publicly funded legal aid system, you are better off with an amply funded legal aid system, because your community will be far better off, and you will spend far less in taxes and social services. 

     Please, tell your elected representatives that you support full funding for legal aid programs in your community.

A big Salem highlight for 2011: KMUZ Community Radio

Congratulations to the hearty and determined band of community-minded stalwarts who insisted, despite some pretty substantial evidence, that they could make a community radio station go here in "greater Salem."  Here are the heroes now:

KMUZ Board members, left to right, front row first: Karen McFarlane Holman (Chief Visionary and President), Dangerous Dave Hammock (Chief Cook, Bottlewasher, and Treasurer), Jeanine ("Sparkplug") Renne, Coy Alexander, Vicki Darden, Bill Smaldone, Melanie Zermer (Secretary), and Tim Patterson.  Superimposed on Coy’s T-shirt: Max Lindholm. Photo by Co Ho Graphics.

KMUZ's low-power license and Turner tower location means that it's not always reliably available at  88.5 fm throughout Salem, but it's easy and rewarding to pick it up anywhere in the world via webstreaming at KMUZ.org.

 

On Memory

Image via WikipediaAs we think back over our so-called exit from Iraq (tens of thousands of mercenaries remaining behind, paid for by taxpayers who know own the largest "embassy" in history) and eventual departure (we can hope) from Afghanistan, and the crime that was somehow turned into a pretext for that invasion.

Less Work, More Living | Common Dreams

The Wealth We Make Ourselves

Earn less, spend less, emit and degrade less. That’s the formula.

The more time a person has, the better his or her quality of life, and the easier it is to live sustainably. A study by David Rosnick and Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that if the United States were to shift to the working patterns of Western European countries, where workers spend on average 255 fewer hours per year at their jobs, energy consumption would decline about 20 percent. New research I have conducted with Kyle Knight and Gene Rosa of Washington State University, looking at all industrialized countries over the last 50 years, finds that nations with shorter working hours have considerably smaller ecological and carbon footprints.

There’s also a small but growing body of studies that examine these questions at the household scale. A French study found that, after controlling for income, households with longer working hours increased their spending on housing (buying larger homes with more appliances), transport (longer hours reduced the use of public transportation), and hotels and restaurants.

A recent Swedish study found that when households reduce their working hours by 1 percent, their greenhouse gas emissions go down by 0.8 percent. One explanation is that when households spend more time earning money, they compensate in part by purchasing more goods and services, and buying them at later stages of processing (e.g., more prepared foods). People who have more time at home and less at work can engage in slower, less resource-intensive activities. They can hang their clothing on the line, rather than use an electric dryer. More important, they can switch to less energy-intensive but more time-consuming modes of transport (mass transit or carpool versus private auto, train versus airplane). They can garden and cook at home. They can meet more of their basic needs by making, fixing, doing, and providing things themselves.

Doing-it-yourself, or self-provisioning, is now on the rise, both because of a culture shift and because in hard times people have more time and less money.

Fwd: How to file a junk mail complaint

Now that the Christmas machine is winding down and ready to be put away for another year or two, here's a good post-Christmas task: turn off the junk-mail deluge.

Add Team@catalogchoice.org to your address book to make sure our email updates land in your inbox Member Tip: How to File a Complaint   Hi   Chief Justice Berger's majority opinion in Rowan v. Post Office states "a mailer's right to communicate must stop at the mailbox of an unreceptive addressee." While most companies heed Berger's advice and honor your first opt-out choice, some need to be told twice. We aim to make the process as easy as possible. Here is a quick reminder how to file a formal complaint through your Catalog Choice account if you are still receiving unwanted mail. Already submitted an opt-out to that company? The best place to start is on Your Choices page where we list all of your past requests. On this page, do a quick search to see if you've made an opt-out choice to the company for the same name and address. If your request was made more than 90 days ago, click on the Details button and then File a Complaint. If it is less than 90 days old or it is a new name or address, select New Request. Getting unwanted mail from a new company? Select Find Companies from the red navigation bar, do a quick search for the company and submit your opt-out. If the company is not listed in our service, suggest it and our staff will do the research to add it. Reward companies that respect your choice. When you are scanning Your Choices, take a note of the brands that no longer send you mail, but you still like their products. Let's show them that respecting your opt-out choice is good for their brand by visiting their website to see what is new. We provide a link to the company website on the Details page. Thanks for your ongoing participation and support. Together we are making a difference. Best, Catalog Choice Catalog Choice 1845 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94703 Privacy Policy