A second, urgently needed Declaration of Independence for a new time

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Human Beings of the United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for humans to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

• That to secure these rights, humans institute governments among themselves, which derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

• That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
  
  Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
  
  
• Such has been the patient sufferance of the humans living in the nation born of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present United States, Inc. is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny of corporations over the humans in these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

• The Corporations have refused to suffer the passage of critical laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

• The Corporations have has forbidden governors and would-be human overseers to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till corporate lobbyists' can eviscerate them them entirely; and when unable to defeat such laws through outright bribery in campaign finance, have utterly neglected to attend to them.

• The Corporations have refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

• The Corporations have called together legislative and judicial bodies at places unusual, fantastically opulent and comfortable, and exceedingly distant from the media who might create public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into complete ignorance about their measures.

• The Corporations have improved their methods over the clumsy ones used by prior tyrants, for instead of dissolving representative houses repeatedly, the corporations permit them to exist, while drowning any authentic human representatives in campaign contributions, negative advertising, and phony "Astro-Turf" psuedo-grassroots campaigns, all designed to further invasions on the rights of the people.

• The Corporations have refused for a long time, to permit any but corporate vassals to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have been captured by the Corporations and used against the people at large; the state remaining thus exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

• The Corporations have endeavored to prevent the creation of unions by the human population of these states; for that purpose shipping entire factories overseas to destroy the livelihood of the humans here, while obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of work that would create jobs.

• The Corporations have obstructed the administration of justice, by a decades-long campaign to gut the independent judiciary and to appoint only those judges and justices who will not question the Corporation's capture of the judiciary powers.

• The Corporations have wielded campaign funds in the billions to make judges dependent on their will alone, for their ability to hold any tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

• The Corporations have erected a multitude of new "public-private partnerships," and sent hither swarms of semi-private police forces and prison companies to harass our people, and eat out their substance through public subsidies.

• The Corporations have kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of humans, by buying Congress.

• The Corporations have affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power through such criminal conspiracies in corporate form as Xe (formerly Blackwater) and other monstrosities.

• The Corporations have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws known as the World Trade Organization, devoted to the immiseration of humans and the enshrinement of corporate control throughout the world; giving their assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us and in thousands of bases overseas, turning actual Americans into corporate mercenaries:

• For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states (see, Xe/Blackwater, Halliburton/KBR, and the entire CIA):

• For cutting off our human right to travel to and meet with people in all parts of the world:

• For imposing taxes on us without our consent by ruthlessly and criminally evading taxes while demanding unceasing public subsidies:

• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury by turning the former Supreme Court into Supreme Court, Inc., hostile to all but corporate interests:

• For countenancing the practice transporting humans suspected of terrorism beyond seas to hell-holes like Bagram and Guantanamo be tried or not:

• For abolishing the free system of American laws throughout the nation, establishing therein an arbitrary government:

• For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

• For usurping the power of our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

The Corporations have abdicated government here, by declaring us second class citizens to themselves and waging war against us.

The Corporations have plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, destroyed our environment, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

The Corporations are at this time contracting for the funding, training, and equipping large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of a civilized nation. (See, bin-Ladin, Osama, & the CIA)

The Corporations have promoted the impoverishment of the people such that they fight against unions and become the executioners of their friends and brethren.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our corporate brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their boards of directors and CEOs to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common human kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the humans of these United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people, solemnly publish and declare, that we humans are, and of right ought to be free and independent of corporate control over our institutions; that we are absolved from all allegiance to absurd and abominable doctrine of corporate personhood, and that all political power residing in corporations, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent humans, we again have full power to govern ourselves as free peoples, free of interference from the fictional persons known as corporations, who must and shall be returned to their rightful status as legal conveniences for managing property only, with limited charters and without any of the rights of persons to participate in political affairs.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Clean out your old linens and head to Marion-Polk Food Share this Saturday!

Maybe the most-important nonprofit organization in Salem, Marion-Polk Food Share, has teamed up with Sunnyside Organics and Women Ending Hunger to bring us a plant sale this coming Saturday, July 9, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Go find those old sheets and fabric odds and ends you're saving for "someday" and turn them into something useful now by bringing them with you to the sale, where you'll not only see beautiful plants that are perfect for transplanting, you'll also be rewarded with a free 4" herb start.

A great Sunday experience: Thompson's Mills State Heritage Site

Image by Koocheekoo via FlickrI'm kinda partial to entertainments that you can walk or bike to from within Salem, but there are times I'll make an exception, such as the always amazing Oregon Garden. And this one. Here's what I wrote to a friend after our visit last Sunday to "Thompson's Mills," in what was (briefly) Boston, Oregon.

Went to above named state park yesterday just south of Tangent, Oregon (near the booming metropolis of Shedd, formerly Shedd's Station, named after the station built after the railroad bypassed Boston, causing most of the town to be moved about a mile west to straddle the tracks, leaving nothing but the Mills behind, necessarily unable to move while dependent on water power).

Fascinating tour of the world made by hand. Mill established in 1858, run to produce human food (flour from local wheat) until about 1940 or so (unclear date) then they shifted to making animal feed mixtures and pellets (which uses steam, I forgot to ask what they made steam with). They were processing soy at the end, when in 1986, they converted to making just electricity (100 kW) for 20 years under contract to Pacificorps. The state bought it in 2004 and has made it a park.

They employed 12 men at peak. They first electrified in 1906, when the owner put a generator on the mill so he could run power to his house. The land originally was bought for $50 and the water rights for $75, and those rights essentially made them kings of the valley and enemy of the neighbors during summer months of no rain. It had to have been a hellish place to work in some respects, pleasant at other times. I imagine they were all deaf as posts after a few years.

The millstones were from France, the machines from Chicago and Saginaw and such places. You get the idea that we will soon be looking at those machines the way the south sea natives looked at airplanes, wondering how they worked and what magic we could call on to get them to work again.

With some money, the mill could be rebuilt to work, but the state is selling the water rights to ensure more water for salmon in the Calapooia River, which I didn't even know salmon could reach, since it ties into the Willamette above Oregon City, and I didn't think salmon got above the falls there.

Anyway, next time you come down, you should come down to Salem and we can go see it. It's worth a trip.

Doubtless there is no amount of money you could pay to get the Amtrak Cascades to stop in Shedd -- too bad, it would make a great day trip if you could buy an Amtrak ticket, go up and down the valley and walk from Shedd to Thompson's Mills with your lunch.

Saturday is chore day -- need a tool? Why not borrow one?

Image by takomabibelot via FlickrSalem Public Library has taken the first step in this direction, offering the "Kill-a-Watt" home energy consumption devices for loan. Now it's time to ramp up the offerings.

Our Finite World -- another must-read post

Image by -Mandie- via Flickr"Gail the Actuary" writes some of the smartest, easiest-to-read, plain-English explanations of why we're in for a world of hurt in her blog, "Our Finite World," which is mainly about our collective failure to recognize that finite nature. Another must-read is here.

A momentary ray of sunshine or an aberration?

Image by sroemerm via FlickrFinally, some great news. We're going to stop subsidizing the insane process of turning 40% of America's corn crop into 3% of our motor fuel supply (while making the climate much worse off).

Not that we're going to stop doing the insanity, but at least we won't be both hanging ourselves AND paying a juicy subsidy to those selling us the rope.

Comment from Friends of the Earth, one of the few major enviro groups to beam onto the disaster that is ethanol early:

We scored a victory this afternoon! Senators voted by a margin of 73-27 to end a major giveaway for dirty corn ethanol.

This vote is major progress in our fight to end subsidies for environmentally harmful industries -- progress that the pundits, as well as the powerful biofuels and agribusiness lobbies, would have called impossible just two years ago. But Friends of the Earth has been working with a diverse coalition of environmental groups, fiscal conservatives, agricultural interests, food producers and anti-hunger advocates to amass congressional support for ending ethanol giveaways -- and today we won bipartisan support from every corner of the country except the Corn Belt.

You -- Friends of the Earth members and activists -- own a big piece of this victory. Over the past two years, nearly 30,000 Friends of the Earth activists have taken action to educate policymakers about the environmental costs of corn ethanol and to call on Congress to end these subsidies.

Today, our voices were heard -- and senators sent a decisive message that the days of the biofuels industry living high off the taxpayers' hog have come to a close.

There is still more work to do -- the House still needs to vote to end the ethanol giveaway -- but today, join me in celebrating this win for the public and the environment.

WORD: The only way forward is by rebuilding the middle class

Join with "Move to Amend" to plan July 4 Teach-In on Corporate Personhood

Image by takomabibelot via FlickrSalem's chapter of Move to Amend is meeting at Clockworks Cafe & Cultural Center tomorrow night (Wednesday, June 22) at 5:30 p.m. to help plan events for July 4, with the intent of helping educate people about the dire need to reclaim our democracy from the machines (corporations) that have taken over the exercise of most political power and who are marginalizing real people at a breathtaking speed.

In preparation for the meeting Wednesday at 5:30 at the Clockworks, I am sending along this link: http://movetoamend.org/July4

Its from the Move To Amend website - ideas for 4th of July action(s). I don't have the agenda ready just yet, but it will be dominated by discussion and perhaps break-out sessions to brainstorm about ways to educate the public about the current state of our 'democracy' on the anniversary of our nation's founding. The link above is filled with ideas.

See you Wednesday!

Kerry

Another giveaway to oppose, quick!

Yikes! Hundreds of teachers and librarians laid off in Salem, many more across the state. Meanwhile, the Lege is seriously considering pumping money into a for-profit School-o'-Matic dealie that would profit one particular legislator greatly?!

URGENT ACTION: Stop Matt Wingard’s Bill From Coming Back From The Dead

Today, after much public outcry, legislators stood up for Oregon students and narrowly voted down Rep. Matt Wingard’s pet bill--House Bill 2301, which would divert tax dollars away from our public schools to for-profit virtual school vendors. The bill would have been a boon to Wingard and Connections Academy, the for-profit online charter school corporation that pays him.

Wingard’s self-dealing on this bill drew strong criticism from many Oregonians, who were angry that this bill was negotiated behind closed doors, all for the financial benefit of one legislator. This opposition kept the bill from passing today.

But now, some legislators are feeling pressure to change their votes. The Oregon House is likely to bring back the bill for another vote, as early as tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

Click here to take action and tell legislators to vote no--AGAIN.

In a legislative session when critical bills can’t even get one vote in the House (BPA Ban, Tuition Equity, Foreclosure Protection), we’re seriously going to give Wingard a second vote on his self-dealing bill that would do real harm to our public schools that are already suffering? A second chance to line his own pockets with taxpayer dollars?

We’ve asked a lot of you in the past few weeks, and it’s made a big difference. With this important bill on the line, we need you to join us once again in telling our legislators to stand up for Oregon students and say NO to Matt Wingard’s self-serving bill—again.

Go here or call 1-800-332-2313 to be connected by phone.

A Summer Solstice Warning: for every person with a child or grandchild who will inherit our planet

Commentary: Slam on the brakes!

Reading all these price predictions by peaksters, I'm reminded of the Austrian economist Murray Rothbard who said, "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

We know that the media (government / business / religious leaders) are giving very little attention to Peak Oil, but I would like us to consider what we, the Peak Oil community, are not talking about:

We're not talking about slamming the brakes on fossil fuels.

Even as our contribution to creating Peak Oil awareness begins to see a little light (at least in some circles), I am concerned that we will be so worried about saving our own bacon or appearing to be rational that we will fail to take posterity into account. If we are to save just a little oil for our children, we need to just plain stop using oil (gas, coal).

"Conservation" doesn't capture the urgency of our existential moment in history. In fact, conservation is like a salve to assuage the conscience of well-meaning people who are stuck in “business as usual.” We can be conned into thinking that we are doing our part by swapping out incandescent light bulbs.

Why can't we just use less oil? If you are drowning, drowning slower isn't going to save your life.

If you are in the know (Peak Oil), it's not about telling others to slow down. We have to abandon the artifacts of the oil-based economy and retool.

It requires a fundamental shift. It's about transforming society from oil to ingenuity. We must slam on the brakes and turn about-face.

Nuclear power swirled down into the ocean in March and humanity's perceived energy options narrowed sharply. We are back to where our great-grandparents were their whole lives: figuring out from-one-day-to-the-next how to live within a solar budget. They did it (or we wouldn't be here having this conversation). We can do it too.

But we have to shift gears.

We are sliding down the back side of the peak, and just like with most mountains, the dark side is steeper than the sunny side. Will it be a soft or hard landing? Well... it depends:

If we have already used up too much of our natural resources, it will be a hard landing. (Time will tell.)

If we "conserve," I don't see how we can avoid a hard landing. Going slower sliding off the cliff is still sliding off the cliff.

We are aiming at the tail feathers of the goose that passed by here already a while ago. We need a word somewhere between conservation (voluntary) and deprivation (involuntary, Mother Nature's decision) - something to make it obvious that we aren't stuck promoting the same old baggage. The ship is going down. I repeat: we must jettison the artifacts of oil. If we hang onto them, they will sink us for good. (Some of Cortez' men loaded their pockets with gold as they were escaping the Aztecs. When a causeway collapsed, many of them sank like stones and drowned.)

What legacy are we leaving for our children? What robust assets will they have at their disposal to climb back out of the hole we put them into? Why are we postponing this radical change? By waiting even one day, we are willy nilly leaving the solution up to our children. But what advantage are we giving them by drilling for more oil, mining more coal, fracking more gas? We are handing them a polluted world, a mountain of debt, hobbled with depleted resource deposits, and blindfolding them - all the while talking seriously about the price of oil for the next year.

We aren't calling enough attention to carbon-based boondoggles ("shovel-ready" projects). Anyone who designs a system or artifact (highway, bridge, tunnel, airport, automobile, bus) that depends on imported oil is a traitor. After all, eight presidents in a row have proclaimed that imported oil is a threat to national security. Promoting a construction project to convey vehicles operating on mostly imported oil is now an act of treason.

I hear the question, "What percentage of our energy demand can be replaced by renewables?" There are two unchallenged assumptions that frame this question and illuminate our fossil-fuel mindset.

1. One good answer is none. "Replacement" suggests doing things the same way. We can't "replace" oil with sunshine any more than we were able to "replace" horses with high-speed 4-legged robots shaped like horses. We jettisoned horses and made devices with engines and wheels. Now we must jettison devices with engines and wheels that are 1% efficient, that weigh 2 tonnes to move 100 kg.

For example, what about biodiesel? Consider this thought exercise. Define inefficient = stupid. A car engine is 13% efficient (per RMI); the average car weighs about 4000 lbs (per DOE, DOT) and carries an average of less than 200 lbs; that's 5% efficient. So 13% (engine) * 5% (mass) = 0.65% < 1% efficient = stupid.

Now how do we get biodiesel? Photosynthesis can convert 3-6% of sunshine into soybean plants. Then we take the oily portion of the plant (you can't make oil out of the stems) so even assuming that it takes zero energy to harvest and process that plant material into oil, your net efficiency is <<1% = stupid. (Using 100 gal/acre/year, I estimated that 0.05% of the sun's energy is converted to soy biodiesel. I've heard of yields as high as 600 gal/acre/year for "next-generation" biofuels. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and we're at 0.3% efficient, still <<1%. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Now put that <<1% efficient biodiesel (stupid) into a car that is <1% efficient (stupid) and you get << 0.01% efficient. The result? Compound stupid."

2. Another answer is 100%. Built into the question (remember the question, "percentage of energy ... replaced by renewables") is the curious assumption that we have a choice. We don't.

Most of humanity lived within a solar budget until World War II.

As near as I can tell, we have no option but to return to 100% renewables, whatever that may look like. (I'm all ears if you think you have found something else.) With the incredible amount of knowledge and skills we have gained during the fossil fuel era, we are much more capable than our grandparents to take on the task. If we are to avoid becoming a dead branch on the evolutionary tree, we will switch to renewables now so we can leave something for our children to work with.

It's not "practical." We will face skepticism and ridicule. But those who embrace renewables now will be the sellers in the post-oil economy, and there will be plenty of buyers who postponed the inevitable shift.

Slam on the brakes! Save the oil!

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Ron Swenson, ASPO-USA Board of Directors (Note: Commentaries do not necessarily represent the position of ASPO-USA.)

Editorial Note: Ron Swenson's call to reconsider the tenor of our debate in its entirety is the full version of his excerpt originally found here in the third edition of “ASPO-USA Asks: What are we missing?" from early June 2011. The first two parts of that series are available here and here.