Bernie Sanders, FDR, and the Export-Import Bank

Senator Sanders followers love his attacks on Hillary Clinton. They love his promises of free things: free college educations, free medical care, and free money without working.

They love his alleged Socialism.

When asked who his hero is, Sanders said FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President-for-life from 1933 until he died in 1945.

Yet Sanders voted, along with Tea Party Republicans, against renewing the Export-Import Bank of the United States (ExIm). According to Sanders, ExIm is just corporate welfare. Sanders says the government should not own a bank that finances exports and provides jobs for American workers.

Um, might I point out that under Socialism, the government is supposed to own businesses, including banks? That pushing for state (as in California, or Oregon) owned banks is something that lefties and socialists have been pushing for recently?

The federal government actually makes money from ExIm. So it is not really a subsidy for corporations. It makes money from corporations. At the same time allowing businesses to make money exporting American products, creating jobs for U.S. workers.

But Senator Sanders (a certified member of the Establishment since 1980) gets confused easily. He calls this confusion "having principles." Is Socialism one of his principles or not? Don't ask, he'll wave his hands in the air, act indignant, and change the subject.

Did he ever retract the FDR is his hero statement? Let's take a good close look at that. Unlike Sanders, Roosevelt was a lifelong Democrat, though his uncle, President Teddy Roosevelt, was a Republican. FDR was not an independent.

And talk about Rich. FDR was born richer than Hillary and Bill will ever be.

And talk about militaristic. FDR was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913 when he was just 31 years old. His qualifications? He was from a rich and powerful family. On his mother's side, the Delano fortune came from running opium into China. His father was one of the Robber Barons in coal and railroads.

But FDR presided over the complex system of programs that came to be called the New Deal. In some ways it was socialist, but there was also a fascist element to it. In any case:

Franklin Roosevelt (by executive order, without help from Congress) created ExIm in 1934.

Sanders can't think straight. But he is one of America's longest reigning politicians because he is really, really good at making promises and at lying.

No serious American leftist could support Senator Sanders based on his actual voting record in Congress. He gives a good stump speech. It sounds like he is a leftist. It sounds like he is for the poor, impoverished, college-educated white male voters that fund and power his campaign.

But look at his votes at the beginning of the Great Recession, and you can see why it would be folly to make the man President. In 2008 things fell apart for a variety of reasons, not just because some banks were too big, too stupid, and too greedy.

The important thing for Government was arresting the downward spiral. Poor people and working people are the ones hurt worst by a downward spiral. A family with $100 million can lose 90% of it and not starve. But for most people losing a job will wipe out any savings or assets they have, and may scar them for life. And if things got as bad as during the Great Depression, masses of people would have been dying in the streets

The first thing FDR did when he took office in 1933 was rescue the banks. Why was Senator Sanders against rescuing the banks in 2008-2009? Because he doesn't like big banks. Like anyone much does. He was willing to let America go down the tubes just so he did not have to go on record as doing what his hero did, saving the banks. Same for the auto industry. And again, the bank-saving plan turned out to be sound, eventually earning the government more than it put in.

So why is Bernie such an idiot? You might speculate he took too many hallucinogens between when he arrived in Vermont in the 1960s, the son of a rich Brooklyn business owner, and when he emerged from the fog in 1980 to take his first decently-paid job as a politician.

I don't know about the origins of Bernie's mental and emotional disabilities, but I have an analogy that explains how his current personality operates. He is like a foody who goes into a party with a giant smorgasbord and notices some offending food. He waves his hands, twists his face into a parody of an insane person, declares everyone at the party unclean, and walks out.

But what particularly saddens me is all the leftists who have fallen for his BS. College students I can understand. They are typically privileged children of privileged parents, and he has promised them more privilege, not having to pay for college, not having to make any contribution to society, just reaping the rewards of high-paying jobs requiring college degrees.

But leftists and even progressives should know better. They should be able to check voting records and do a little bit of critical thinking. Instead most have just been caught up in the hatred Bernie peddles.

Bernie Sanders: Progressive, Socialist, or just Liberal?

Is Bernie Sanders a really a Socialist or just another Liberal?

I cannot point out too many times that people tend to see specific a word as representing a specific, real object. But we all have had the experience that one word can mean many things, and that specific things may have more than one name. Words of the day: socialist and progressive.

The Democratic Party Presidential debate in New Hampshire on February 4, 2016 provided lessons in both semantics and real politics. It was a long debate. Anyone who listened to it, or who reads the transcript, might reasonably select different points to emphasizing in reporting on it. Not surprisingly, Bernie advocates believe he won the debate, while Hillary advocates believe she won the debate.

I am not concerned with who "won" the debate. I am not registered in any political party, but I certainly have a political agenda. And I have priorities. I put the environment first, international peace and justice second, and American economic & legal justice third. But I have an opinion about just about every detail of politics, society and culture.

To me the debate was an important read on Bernie Sanders' foreign policy. Hillary Clinton is too hawkish for my taste, but of course she is much closer to mainstream sentiments than I am.

Bernie harps on Clinton's vote to attack Iraq (which was a war crime, if you use the Nuremberg criteria for war crimes). But Bernie's rabble rousing speeches always fail to mention his vote to attack Afghanistan (which was a war crime, if you use the Nuremberg criteria for war crimes). When pointed out, he changes the subject, as he did in the debate. When it is pointed out to his supporters, they usually go back to the Clinton Iraq vote.

In the debate there was a second part to the question. Both Hillary and Bernie were asked, by the moderators: what would you do about the U.S. troops currently in Iraq. Hillary gave a clear answer without hesitation: she would leave the troops there, subject to the situation changing. Bernie tried to evade answering, but when pinned down said, or I should say mumbled, that he would leave the troops there.

Bernie is also for fighting ISIS, preferably with other nation's armies. It is a hypocritical position for someone who claims he has been screaming for 50 years about American job losses. Isn't killing ISIS soldiers a paid job? Why should that skilled labor go to foreigners?

Forgive me if I wax sarcastic. It's the "I'm perfect," from Bernie, "He's perfect" from his chorus of followers chanting that has become irritating. But then I'm from California, in fact northern California, where a Bernie Bot seems to be lurking in every smoke-filled room. No, not tobacco.

In short, when pushed to comment, Bernie was just as hawkish as Hillary. Too hawkish for me.

I was surprised and pleased that Hillary finally started poking at Bernie's allegedly perfect Progressive credentials. I think earlier in the campaign she and her advisors assumed she would beat Bernie easily. She did not want to alienate his followers, as she will need their support in November. But his follows drank his kool-aid, not knowing, as he himself remembers, what a bad little boy he has been these past thirty years.

Hillary pointed out that he voted to deregulate derivatives. Bernie did not deny it, he just went on to change the subject. Bernie Bots would be all over Hillary if she did something like that. They would claim it is proof that she is just a pawn for Goldman Sachs. But in all the commentary I've read today (admittedly just a fraction of what there is), I have seen no Bernie Bot criticizing Bernie for that vote. Maybe Bernie Bots don't know what a financial derivative is.

The Democratic Party is no home for Socialists. I would say the Democratic Party is socialist-influenced. Sanders bought the socialist line in college (so did I). Now, in his dotage, apparently doing something about it is on his bucket list. Great. Do something about it, if you can. I personally favor mixed systems, though I would probably argue about what specifically should be socialized and what should be left to free markets. Also I favor worker ownership of business, not the centralized government bureaucratic ownership of business that Sanders favors. Though I might make an exception in some cases, like localities owning their own utility companies.

So hurray for Bernie, but I've had enough of old white socialist male domination in my lifetime (most of my friends were fellow leftist activists). I'd like to try old white female liberal domination for 4 years, especially since the alternative is Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

I have watched a lot of bullying done by Bernie supporters both on the Internet and in my local area. At the comments section of the New York Times, for instance, you would think 98% of the Democratic Party voters favor Bernie. I've found that if I even hint to many voters around here that Hillary might be the better candidate, suddenly they want to talk. The rabidness of the Bernie Bullies is not something they can turn off. Most people need that personality defect to maintain a leftist stance in America. But bullying does not a Democracy make.

Natural Gas Solution to Global Warming?

Can Technology Save us from an Environmental Apocalypse?

Yesterday I heard about something of a technological miracle. A company that makes alternative engines for transportation vehicles (a Green Investment, if you will), reported that the State of California has certified one of its natural gas engines as being cleaner than electric car engines. Westport Innovations is introducing the "ISL G Near Zero (NZ) NOx natural gas engine" for medium duty trucks and busses.

"The engine was certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Air Resources Board (ARB) in California that meet the 0.02 g/bhp-hr optional Near Zero NOx Emissions standards. . . Cummins Westport ISL G NZ exhaust emissions will be 90% lower than the current EPA NOx limit of 0.2 g/bhp-hr and also meet the 2017 EPA greenhouse gas emission requirements. CWI natural gas engines have met the 2010 EPA standard for particulate matter (0.01 g/bhp-hr) since 2001." [Westport ISL G press release]

Vehicles equipped with these engines will create less smog and greenhouse CO2 than electric vehicles. Why? Because electric vehicles must get their electricity from somewhere, and in California most electricity is produced from natural gas fired plants.

Natural gas is preferred to coal, for anyone wanting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because it has a lot of hydrogen in it. Petroleum gasses consist of molecules that have a chain of carbon atoms surrounded by hydrogen atoms. Burning hydrogen creates water. Burning carbon creates carbon dioxide. So burning coal, which is almost entirely carbon, produces more carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced than burning natural gas.

Most environmentalists, both of the ordinary citizen kind and paid non-profiteers, are very enthusiastic about solar energy (and wind). In theory solar energy produces no pollution of any kind. So in the ideal green world, solar panels capture energy, and electric automobiles and trucks would run on that energy. Most environmentalists advocate for moving to all solar and all electric vehicles as soon as possible, which would still take a while, given that solar currently creates only about 1% of U.S. electricity.

Of course the real world is more complicated than the imaginary utopias of environmentalists, or the imaginary utopias of climate change deniers.

While waiting for solar, let's think about the thesis of natural gas being better than coal. The first objection of environmentalists is that natural gas is cheaper than coal (the real reason coal plants are being abandoned in the U.S.) only because of fracking. Environmentalists hate fracking. They hate mountaintop removal for coal too. How does one fairly compare the side effects of natural gas extraction versus coal extraction? [a question I can't answer here]

You can see why environmentalists want to go straight to solar. But environmentalists are in denial about the complications of solar. The main active component of solar cells is silicon, but that has to be supported on some long lasting, strong material like aluminum or steel.

Producing a commercially usable solar cell requires separating silicon from silicon dioxide (sand or quartz) and extracting aluminum or iron from their ores. That involves huge amounts of energy, which comes from coal fired plants in China. It involves building massive plants to shape the raw silicon and steel into panels. Those plants are mainly in China, so the tons of panels have to be transported to the U.S. first by ship, then trucked to distribution centers. If they go on roofs it takes energy to life them up there. Even when installed they are not care-free. Cleaning them requires energy, and if they are covered with dust they produce no electricity. Also, they take up space that could be used for rooftop gardens.

Solar panels have high upfront costs. A single panel generates surprisingly little electricity. That is why it take years, perhaps two decades, for a panel to pay for itself compared to just buying electricity from a utility company.

That is no reason to not install more solar power. But it does bring us to the essence of the global warming problem: the size of the human population.

In The Martian the lead character says something like he is going to "science the hell out of the problem." I like science, I liked the movie, and I think we should science the hell out of the global warming problem. And other environmental problems like habitat destruction and lack of clean water. But the real solution involves the Secret Sauce.

Very few people want to talk about the Secret Sauce. I have noted that in the United States even the Green Party politicians don't want to talk about it, much less the Democrats.

The Secret Sauce is reducing the human population. Reducing it in California, in the United States, and in the World.

The science is available, but not the culture or technology, much less the political will. The science is birth control.

The governments of California and the United States encourage people to have children. They do that many ways, most notably through the income tax exemptions for children and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

We need a One Child Policy, to be in effect for about 3 generations until the human population has reached sustainable levels. 3 generations is 60 years, which should allow us to better understand what is really long-term sustainable for the Earth.

I believe in making such a policy as minimally coercive as possible. By eliminating tax credits for children, after the first child of a couple, we could probably get a good balance. Some religious crazies would probably insist on having more children than they should, but some couples (or singles) will have none, so it should balance out.

Our economic system would need some alterations as well, but then it needs alterations anyway. Average people could have a higher standard of living if there were less people competing for what little is left of the world.

Meanwhile, hurray for converting trucks from diesel to natural gas. Hurray for solar. But let's no be naive. The human population can be brought down gently and humanely, or Nature will bring it down in a crash. Talk about it. Ask politicians and environmental groups and churches about it. We are out of time. We we be far better off if we started a One Child Policy a generation ago. We have the tools, let's use them.

A Hot Shower before the Apocalypse

More to save on the electric bill than on California's water, I habitually have showered only twice a week for years. I can get away with that partly because I work at home. You can't smell me over the Internet.

I was brought up to bath or shower once a day, and I do enjoy a hot shower. I enjoy it especially when I think about how the Apocalypse could come any day. No, I am not expecting the return of Jesus. He said he would return during the lifetimes of his Apostles, and he didn't.

By Apocalypse I mean all the ways the civilized world as we know it could fall apart.

I am a child of the Atomic Era, so my earliest apocalyptic worries were about Atomic War. Apparently that came pretty close to happening several times both before I was born (in 1955) and on up until the end of the Cold War. It still could happen. Even a single atomic bomb going off in New York City, Washington, London, or perhaps Moscow could bring on a kind of lesser economic apocalypse that could turn hot showers into luxuries.

I live about a half mile from the San Andreas fault, so a major earthquake is a real possibility. That could bring on a local apocalypse, but would not effect people outside of California much.

Some people think storms will get worse due to global warming. But I see storms as just temporary apocalypse lite events. If it takes a long time to repair the electricity lines I would long for a hot shower.

Famine might leave us with hot showers, but hungry. It is hard for Americans to grasp how bad a famine could be. Most post Civil War hunger in America has been due to screwed up economic priorities, not due to an actual shortage of food. But look at the recent egg shortage. What would happen if the corn and wheat crops failed in a major way two years in a row? We don't have a lot of food in storage in the U.S. any more, not like we had during the Cold War. People would fight over food, with the relatively rich probably getting most of it.

I live in the country, but not in a food-producing region. My soil is lousy, it required fertilizer to produce anything edible. The only thing I typically have a surplus of is apples. Apple trees love it here. I know how hard it is go grow enough food on a small scale to do more than just supplement food that comes from professional large-scale agriculture. Don't kid yourself. A suburban backyard garden won't keep you from starving to death (if you can't get food from outside), it will just slow down the process. Assuming your water supply is even working.

But the most likely and scary form of apocalypse would be economic and social collapse. I don't see that coming until we have another bubble of some sort first. Even then if people have done some saving in the meantime and keep their heads, we might muddle through. My main concern as an analyst is the National Debt. It has become a balloon, and if interest rates rise enough, it will balloon so fast it could take down the government and economy.

Sometimes people just go nuts. Enough nutty people and the economy tanks, the government falls, and the next thing you know food does not get distributed, and neither does electricity, and so: the end of hot showers.

Or it could be a combination of things. Like when people walk out on a balcony with wood rot. Dry rotted wood can be surprisingly strong, but put enough weight on it, and at some point it reaches the snapping point.

A sudden jump in the rate of global warming, a tightening of world food supplies. A war in the Middle East spilling over into India or Europe. Too much debt. Too much political gridlock. Too many people unwilling to give up their oversized piece of the pie for the common good. A blight striking down grain crops, or perhaps knocking down a good proportion of the human population. Plans based on growth suddenly up in smoke, defaults on loans, low tax receipts, a default on the federal debt, Dr. Strangelove firing off a nuclear missile thinking that, somehow, will make things better.

Of course the Apocalypse might kill you, or me, but I enjoy thinking about surviving it.

Enjoy your next hot shower. It is not likely to be your last, but it could be.

Fixing Denti-Cal and children's teeth

Teeth are important. They can also be a source of problems, as almost everyone has personally experienced. Bad teeth can lead to a lifetime of pain and expense. Medical scientists believe tooth decay and gum problems often have bad secondary effects on health, including causing heart disease.

If makes sense to make sure that all children's teeth are kept healthy. The costs to themselves and society become far higher when problems are allowed to grow over time. That is the reason everyone should support Denti-Cal, the State of California's program to make sure that all children of California have access to professional dental care.

Unfortunately the program currently has some major flaws according to the L.A. Times [See Overdue for Checkups]. There is the usual problem of people failing to enroll. But even of those families enrolled, less than half of the kids see a dentist in any given year.

Even children with good (low sugar) diets who have been taught good dental hygiene practices may end up with tooth decay. Once a year check ups should be a minimal requirement.

There are two major variables to this problem: parents and dentists.

Parents can be encouraged to make sure their kids get dental appointments by requiring the once-per-year checkup in order to continue receiving state benefits themselves. That does not seem like much to add to the checklists of welfare counselors. It may not be a bad idea to require this of parents whether or not they receive welfare.

But apparently part of the problem is dentists who are used to charging their patients more than California will pay under this program.

According to the State Auditor's report, there are entire counties in the state where no dentists will take a Denti-Cal patient (child or adult). And of course such dentists are common enough in every county.

Dentists are licensed by the state. They are able to keep the prices they charge high because the state keeps unlicensed people from performing dentistry.

The solution is simple enough. Divide the population of the state by the number of Denti-Cal recipients. Require each dentist (or dental group) to accept Denti-Cal patients until they have reached this percentage. Dentists who are above the percentage would have the option to lower their percentage, if they wish.

It is possible that this rational plan could create a shortage of dentists, or force many dentists to work longer hours than is fair (because is would add so many patient-visits). In that case the State of California should expand its dental schools and offer scholarships to aspiring dentists if they are willing to work in areas (for some period of time) where there are known shortages of Denti-Cal providers.

Dentists are not licensed to mint money. They are licensed to perform a service for the public. If they do not serve the public, they should not be licensed.

This plan is easy, it is rational and it will be opposed by dentists who are in it just for the money. They will scream, they will pay lobbyists to defeat any such plan. Pass the plan, take away their licenses and let them rot like the teeth of children they neglect.

And once all is well with Denti-Cal, perhaps the other states can follow our example.

Feinstein and Brown Fuel Drug Corruption

There are many forms of political corruption, and some are worse than others. Ordinary corruption might be when an office holder, in return for some consideration, awards a government contract to a specific contractor. Or when a legislator includes a line or two of text in a bill that creates a tax break or regulatory loophole for a supporter's business.

Then there is systemic corruption, where the law itself is corrupted by a corrupt society, as in the racist laws the Democratic Party wrote and upheld from the time of its founding by Andrew Jackson until the laws were finally changed in the late 1960s.

Money from black market profiteering has an ancient role in corrupting governments. In the last century the key black market has been in illegal drugs. A vast framework of corrupt police and politicians have been fueled by drug money, including here in California.

You can tell which politicians are corrupt by their stands on efforts to legalize these drugs. We supposedly live in a democracy. People want drugs for fun, for energy, for relief from pain. Sure people injure themselves with meth and heroin and other drugs, but it is highly obvious that the bans on these drugs just make them highly profitable.

Most drug-associated crime is because the drugs are artificially expensive because of the costs of running a black market, evading law enforcement and fighting other groups for business. So besides the criminal enterprises that manufacturer and distribute the drugs, the main beneficiaries are political machines like the Democratic Party and Republican Party.

When a politician is against legalizing marijuana, he or she is just protecting the black market rackets of their racketeer friends, and their own "juice."

Lately the top two political figures in the State of California, Governor Jerry Brown and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, have spoken against legalizing marijuana (beyond the current legal status of "medical" marijuana.) Governor Brown asked "How many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation?" The kind of nation that can topple 3rd world governments at will, keep the wages for most workers artificially low, and make sure that every poor boy and girl can look forward to a life of selling illegal narcotics.

Diane Feinstein has been politically bullet-proof since most women in California decided to vote for Democratic Party female candidates without looking beyond the issue of reproductive rights. She recently came to Brown's rescue, saying "I saw a lot of where people began with marijuana and went on to hard drugs." Some people start as relatively harmless city council members and go on to become Senators, but does that mean we should abolish city councils?

The depths of Feinstein's corruption and misgovernance are difficult for the average Californian voter to fathom. Unfortunately, the corrupt two-party system in California means her only serious electoral opposition has been from Republican Senatorial candidates who are also anti-drug.

What distinguishes Feinstein is she has a voting record in Congress. She apparently hates animals. She was the co-sponsor in the Senate of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which makes anyone protesting cruelty to animals a terrorist.

She hates Palestinians, as shown by her constant, vocal support for U.S. taxpayer subsidies for Israeli ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Many California Democrats who think the U.S. wastes a lot of money on war would be surprised at how Feinstein has consistently supported inflating the homeland security and "defense" budgets.

Senator Feinstein's husband is Richard C. Blum, a capitalist, investment banker, and real-estate tycoon (he owns much of San Francisco). There we have at least the appearance of ordinary corruption. One of Blum's many holdings EG&G won a $600 million contract from the U.S. military. Because he is so wealthy he also controls or helps control a number of prestigious non-for-profit (but run by profiteers) groups, notably The Wilderness Society.

There is probably nothing to be done about Senator Feinstein except to wait for her to die from old age. However, California voters will likely have a chance to legalize marijuana in a future referendum.

Illegal drugs generate vast sums of money that corrupt society and our political structure. Because of black-market drugs sales in the U.S., Mexico has become a drug lord's playground. Did no one learn any lessons from the U.S. experiment with alcohol Prohibition?

When you hear a politician tell you marijuana should be illegal, remember they are on the take. When they ask to be re-elected, just say no.

Disclosure: I don't smoke marijuana (but I did when I was younger).

Gardening Within Mendocino

My wife and I are planning a move to a less remote area. Our realtor friend was here yesterday to discuss whether the house could be sold. There are a lot of issues with selling a remote rural home. The particular issue I'll discuss here is my peculiar landscaping and gardening style. It might not be attractive to potential buyers.

We came to the coastal area of southern Mendocino County, California in the early 1990s. At the time I had been active with Earth First! for about 5 years. The earth was already dying then, and it is dying faster now, and so when we bought a small piece of land (with the help of a mortgage company), I wanted to treat it in a manner consistent with my views. Which is not consistent with how most people, around here or anywhere, treat their land.

But let's go back even further, to a time when there were a lot less people (by about 50%) living on this earth, the 1960s. After 6 years of growing up on or near various Marine Corps bases, I was moved to suburban Florida. The lawns were mowed green grass. At my family's first home there were a few shrubs and 2 palmettos on either side of the driveway, but no trees. The second home had some nice trees: a hickory, an oak, a pine and a holly. But my mother was determined to grow some sort of grass species that did not like it there. Another, coarser grass wanted to grow, plus the usual weeds. For ten years at intervals I worked on the lawn project, pulling out undesirable grasses and weeds and raking up leaves (my older brother got the mowing job).

I cast a dim eye upon the entire Florida lawn project, and not just because of the mosquitoes, horseflies, deer flies and biting gnats. I cast a dim eye on a lot of stuff. Not as dim as my mother's famously dim eye, which was very conventional in its tastes and hatreds. But pretty dim. Why was the world watering and fertilizing grass, then cutting it, raking the cuttings up, and sending them away in the trash? Hadn't anybody read a biology book? Didn't they know that in nature you don't need bags of fertilizer to keep grass growing? But my mother's lawn was a precious symbol of middle-class respectability (she had grown up on a tenant farm). We had a grass lawn, but it was not to be played on. It was for looking at. And for weeding.

Nature has its cycles, its wheels within wheels. The land I now "own" is on the first ridge above the ocean. Almost certainly it was overgrown with redwoods and other large trees until the first logging took place sometime in the 1800s. Because it was a ridge, the soil was not thick, and the trees were not as big as the ones on the slopes below. But they were easy to cart to mills and then to San Francisco, and so they were cut. Then heavy rains eroded the soil. When the trees grew big enough, decades later, they were cut again. By then the soil would not sustain a redwood, so other species came to dominate: manzanita and madrone, bishop pine and rhododendra. Brush, not forest. Apparently there was a big fire in the 1950s, which was followed by more erosion.

So there I am, in 1995, with a parcel of land dominated by dying bishop pines (an at-risk species local to the area), covered with brush, and with only a couple of inches of mostly sandy soil in most places. Sucking up water from the septic lines there were some pretty big sequoia (the kind found around Yosemite) planted by the prior owners and there were a couple of coast redwoods, the bigger ones being less than a foot in diameter, and the smaller ones, also planted by the prior owners, stunted for lack of soil and water to mostly under two feet high.

People kindly made suggestions. The most common one was to buy a truckload or four of "good" soil and dump it on the land. Brilliant. Buy soil, which means ripping it up from somewhere and burning a bunch of petrol to place it somewhere else. That'll put a stop to global warming.

Instead, I started caring for the land, and under my care it has begun to heal. When a tree or shrub dies, which happens a lot since they grew up too close together and it usually does not rain between May and October, one of two things happens. It gets cut up for firewood, so that we don't have to burn propane of use electricity (much) for heat in winter. Or it gets left (perhaps after some chopping) to turn itself into mulch, which eventually turns into a tiny bit of soil. The mulch helps hold moisture in the soil. It furnishes nutrients. It is just what happens in a natural forest. If a dead tree is left standing, it attracts insects and then woodpeckers.

With regard to land care three kinds of people irritate me. I don't criticize them, but if they ask me why I don't do as they do, I explain my alternative practice. They rarely ask.

Burn Pile People. For some reason people in the country, including most people who move in from the suburbs or cities, love burn piles. They have the same appeal as fireworks. When a tree dies or just does something irritating like blocking the sun or an ocean view, it gets thrown in a burn pile. Sometimes people bulldoze brush (also known as rare California native plants) and small trees from a good sized area into a burn pile. Then they set it on fire. Construction scraps and garbage may to in to. Creating air that is as bad as you might find in Beijing or Mexico city. It gets the dead wood out of sight, but then they don't have mulch, so their soil gets thinner, with less organic matter. Burn pile people expect to dump bags of fertilizer on their land or haul in soil to get anything to grow. When those external inputs are turned into plant material, eventually they chop it down and burn it. It is a way of rural life.

English Garden People. I use English Garden in a general sense for a garden that is extremely orderly. I do find such gardens to be pretty: they are eye candy. But natural they are not. It does not matter to me if an English Garden is organic or heavy with pesticide: what you won't see is a decaying log or tree stump. I like decaying logs. I like lines that are not straight. I like wildflowers coming up in odd places. However, when I walk in an English Garden I just say "Those are pretty roses. What variety are they?" and the like. The better English Garden people don't say, if they see my garden, "why don't you move that decaying log?" They say "that pear tree seems to be doing really well!" I wish they would ask about the decaying logs, because I long to tell them how decaying logs are mini-ecosystems that support large numbers of species and, eventually, become the complex soil that makes my pears so wonderful.

Fire Hazard Paranoids. These are often also burn pile people. They are afraid their house will burn down if they leave a tree or shrub within a hundred yards of it. They look at my land and they say "But the fire hazard!" Now, as in most paranoia, it is true there is such a thing as fire, and there are forest fires (and brush fires), and occasionally a house burns down as a result. But of all the houses that have burnt down around here since I've been in the neighborhood, exactly zero have burned down because they caught fire from an external forest fire.

Your house is the fire hazard! There are three major sources of fire in a typical country home. There is the electrical system, the usual culprit. There is the gas (natural or propane). There is the woodstove or fireplace. I know of homes that have been destroyed by each of these. Another source of fire is vehicles: if you car or pickup or tractor catches on fire, there is a good chance your garage or barn is going to light up and take your house with it.

I'm not saying I pile up dry wood against my house. My house already consists of dry wood! I keep the area immediately around my house clear of dead brush, and I water the trees that shade my house, if necessary, to keep them green. Green trees can burn, but not easily.

So I have my ways. I don't use a chain saw, a lawn mower, or a weed whacker. I use my hands, my back, some simple tools, a wheelbarrow, and mulch. You might say that while I don't mind a good apple or pear or plum or snow pea, what I have spent nearly 20 years doing is growing mulch. It isn't for everyone.

And in another 25 years, this land will look great. Except I am likely selling it, and it will be up to the next person to decide how to treat it.

2014, A Crowded New Year

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of people living in the United States of America today is around 317.3 million. That is up 0.7%, or 2.2 million, in the year.

When the U.S. had genocided the natives and filled up the continent, in 1870, the population was 38 million. Today California alone has 38 million residents.

On a dollar basis the U.S. no longer produces enough food to feed its own population. This is a major historical change. For centuries we were one of the breadbaskets of the world. While we still export large quantities of grain, we import more than enough food to make us a net importer. There are many reasons for that, but the main reason is population growth.

America could be more self-sufficient in food production. We could forbid raising corn for ethanol production, but that would mean we would have to cut back on driving or import more oil from abroad. We could import water from Canada and grow food in the western deserts, but pumping water also takes energy and the cost of the infrastructure would probably dwarf the cost of conquering Canada.

Americans have never experienced a nationwide famine. During the Great Depression many went hungry because they could not afford food, so farmers had to cut back on production, but it was not a famine. During World War II there was rationing so we could feed the British, but again that was nothing like a famine.

In many ways American food production now more resembles a factory than a field. The bulk of crops are on constant intensive care. Water is sucked from where ever it can be found. Fertilizer is manufactured and applied by the trainload. Enough pesticides are pumped in to exterminate every bug that lived in this world in 1900: but 2014 bugs (insects, fungus, weeds, even rodents) have evolved to meet the challenge. Just trucking the food to market requires enough petroleum to suck oil fields dry. Even "organic" food requires fracked oil to get it to market.

Take away any aspect of this intensive care, and we will have food shortages, perhaps famine. Or we can do what the Brits did in World War II: confiscate (or buy) food in less economically fortunate nations (See Bengal Starvation).

At the same time the native flora and fauna of North America are largely in danger, with extinction a likelihood for many species. Farms, cities, and suburbs have crowded out wildlife.

Wouldn't it be easier to just stop breeding so much? [I'll leave the issue of immigration, both legal and illegal, to another day.]

We don't need authoritarian methods like forced sterilization or hard limits on the number of children a woman can birth. We need to take away incentives to have children; we need to reward those who have 2 or less children.

In addition to providing free birth control and abortions, we need to stop subsidizing families with children. First, take away the tax benefits of having children. Take away the welfare benefits too. These changes should be done in a reasonable way, not ex post facto. Eliminate the standard deductions for children after the first child. Starting with children born a year after the law is passed.

To get the human population in the U.S. and on earth back to a sustainable level culture can be more important than government. It is important for people to understand, from various sources that they can trust, that for the sake of themselves, their child, and the world:

One And Done

is the new social standard. And None And Done people should get a bonus, like a special tax deduction for women while they are in the fertile age category, and extra Social Security for childless men and women upon retirement.

Barbaric California Keeps Capital Punishment

Proposition 34, which would have abolished the death penalty in California if it had passed, received 5,550,896 Yes votes, or 47.8% of those who voted on the issue. No voters prevailed: 6,061,701, amounting to 52.2% of the vote.

Compare those results to the Barack Obama win in California: he received 7,262,836 votes to Mitt Romney's 4,580,933, or 59.8% to 37.7%. While neither Obama nor Romney made an issue of the death penalty, presumably most anti-death penalty voters were Obama voters, excepting the 78,123 who voted for Jill Stein, and the 49,981 who voted for Roseanne Barr, who both belong to parties (Green and Peace & Freedom, respectively) that oppose the death penalty. I point this out because it shows there must be a substantial portion of Democratic Party voters who are for the death penalty.

While the death penalty is the legal practice of barbarians (primitive, violent, uncivilized people), it is an ancient and comprehensible practice. None of us are too far removed from barbarism. I am tempted to approve of the death penalty if defined to my liking. I might impose it on war criminals, including the present and most past Presidents of the United States.

I see no reason to impose the death penalty on common murderers. War is the greatest crime of all. No American war criminal has ever suffered the death penalty (although U.S. soldiers many have been executed for refusing to obey orders), and only a few have ever been reprimanded.

In war, it is a war crime to kill a soldier who has surrendered or been captured. After World War II the U.S. executed hundreds of Japanese soldiers for this war crime, among others. It is a strange contradiction that the penalty for killing a prisoner of war (POW) involves the victors killing POWs. More notable is that the preponderance of evidence is that far more captured Japanese soldiers were killed by American soldiers during World War II than the other way around. At least partly this can be explained by the fact of U.S. victory; a lot more Japanese soldiers were captured than the reverse. No American soldier was prosecuted for war crimes resulting from World War II actions.

If a captured soldier, who may have already killed hundreds of his opponents in war, is sacrosanct, why is an ordinary California murderer subject to the death penalty? It is ass-backward thinking. It is barbarian thinking.

If you voted to retain the death penalty, you are a barbarian. I am not sure what would civilize you. Maybe you have some deep-seated anger, and need to work on replacing it with a greater understanding of humanity.

I thought California was a progressive state. We are not even qualified to join the European Union, which prohibits the death penalty. Even Turkey is considering abolishing the death penalty as part of the process of joining the European Union. But then Turkey has been civilized a few thousand years longer than California.

We think of radical Islamists who interpret Sharia as requiring the cutting off of thieve's hands as being barbarians (most interpretations of Islam do not subscribe to this). We think of England, or Great Britain, as civilized, but just two centuries ago petty thieves were sentenced to hanging there. Civilization is a process. It is also a balance, because there may be barbarians outside the gates. In California, the barbarians are already inside the gates. We need to civilize them, to help them understand that their primitive gods and culture are no good here.

Hopefully some day soon California will catch up and join the ranks of civilized governments. Canada abolished the capital punishment in 1976. They seem to be doing well without it. Perhaps some day the United States of America will become as civilized as Canada, Europe, Mexico and other nations that have abolished the death penalty. Meanwhile we are in bed with Saudi Arabia and China, as well as Pakistan and North Korea.



This article originally appeared as Barbarians Inside the Gates: California Keeps the Death Penalty at Mendoday.com.

Mexican-American War Timeline

Note: throughout the period covered, Native American Indian tribes did not accept the right of Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, or the United States to occupy their lands.

Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 sets the boundary between the United States and Spain at the Sabine River, the Red River, the Arkansas River, then the 42nd parallel west to the Pacific Ocean. Spain ceded Florida to the United States, and "The United States hereby cede to His Catholic Majesty, and renounce forever, all their rights, claims, and pretensions to the Territories lying West and South of the above described Line." [See text of Adams-Onis Treaty]
Mexico becomes independent of Spain, 1821. The new government encourages immigration to the Texas region, including by U.S. citizens.
1828. A Mexican government fact finding mission finds U.S. citizens are seizing land in Texas by fraud and by force and are suspected of plotting to annex Texas to the United States.
1836. Texas War of Independence. A Mexican army led by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna enters Texas to restore order. U.S. citizens form militias, and after suffering a string of military defeats, defeat the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. Captured and as a prisoner of war under duress, Santa Anna signed papers (Treaties of Velasco) promising to cease hostilities. Mexican troops were to relocate south of the Rio Grande, but this was not stated as an actual boundary of the Republic of Texas. The boundaries were to be established in a later treaty. Texas reneged on some of the provisions, and the government of Mexico refused to ratify the agreement, as it was beyond Santa Anna's authority and extracted under duress.
1837. The United States of America recognizes Texas as an independent nation. President Martin Van Buren turns down a formal request from Texas for annexation.
1842. Faced with bankruptcy, Texas again pursues annexation by the U.S., with the alternative of stronger ties with Great Britain. Mexican troops capture San Antonio, but later withdraw. The U.S. and Great Britain continue to haggle about where to draw the West Coast line between the U.S. and Canada.
October 18, 1842. U.S. Commodore Thomas Gatesby Jones seizes Monterey, California in Mexico. He had orders to "protect American interests" on the Pacific coast and thought that war between the U.S. and Mexico was imminent. Thirty hours later, receiving news that in fact the U.S. and Mexico were still at peace, Jones apologized and withdrew.
1844. Possible annexation of Texas is a major issue in the presidential election campaigns. An annexation treaty was signed on April 12, 1844, but because of the slavery issue (Texas practiced slavery), Congress does not pass its own bill for annexation until February 28, 1945. John Charles Fremont first enters California on a military exploration expedition.
November 1844. James K. Polk elected President. He and fellow expansionists plan to find a pretext to admit Texas to the union and buy or take New Mexico and California from Mexico.
October 1845. Thomas Larkin, U.S. consul in California, writes Polk that France and Britain have opened consulates there and were urging Mexico to send troops to counter the large influx of American adventurers in the region. Secretary of State Buchanan encourages Californians to revolt against Mexico, as Texas had. The commander of the U.S. Pacific Squadron is given orders to seize San Francisco if he were to "ascertain with certainty" that war had broken out.
July 1845. Brigadier General Zachary Taylor moves U.S. troops into Texas, and Polk insists the Rio Grande is to be the boundary with Mexico once Texas is annexed.
August 29, 1845. Polk orders General Taylor to regard any crossing of the Rio Grande by Mexican troops as an act of war. Taylor given permission to attack first, at his discretion, and take Matamoros on the south bank of the Rio Grande, but not to penetrate further into Mexico. But Taylor, cautious, advances only to Corpus Christi.
December 29, 1845. President Polk signs resolution of Congress admitting Texas to the United States.
1845-1846. The Mexican government repeatedly rejects offers to sell California and the land north of the Rio Grande to the United States.
January 13, 1846. Polk orders Taylor to advance to the Rio Grande and construct Fort Texas opposite Matamoros.
January 27, 1846. Fremont arrives in Monterey, telling Mexican authorities he just wants to resupply before marching north to the Oregon territory. Instead he fortifies Gavilian Peak (now Hawks Peak) and raises the American flag. When confronted with 200 Mexican troops, Fremont and his smaller force abandon their fort on March 9th.
March 1846. Taylor begins construction of Fort Texas on the Rio Grande.
April 12, 1846. Mexican General Pedro de Ampudia sends General Taylor a demand to withdraw his troops to the Nueces River.
Mid April, 1846. General Mariano Arista takes command of Mexican troops and informed Taylor that in his opinion, the war had begun. This was not authorized by the Mexican government, which enduring a civil war.
April 25, 1846. U.S. forces under Captain Seth Thornton clash with Mexican forces north of the Rio Grande; Mexicans win the battle.
April 28, 1846. Polk discusses with his Cabinet asking Congress to declare war.
May 8, 1846. Battle of Palo Alto.
May 8, 1846. John Slidell reports the failure of U.S. attempts to buy the desired lands. Polk says he is preparing to ask Congress to declare war.
May 9, 1846. Battle of Resaca de la Palma.
May 9, 1846. Morning. U.S. Cabinet votes to declare war with 1 dissent.
May 9, 1846. Bearing secret orders from Polk, Lieutenant Archibald H. Gillespie meets Fremont at Upper Klamath Lake. [The orders had been given in on October 30, 1845]
May 9, 1846. Evening. Dispatch from General Taylor handed to President Polk, reporting the Thornton disaster and declaring that hostilities had commenced.
May 11, 1846. Polk asks Congress to declare war on Mexico, stating "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil." Later that day House of Representatives passes declaration of war 174 to 14.
May 12, 1846. Senate, after a lengthier debate, approves war 40 to 2.
May 13, 1846. President Polk signs the Declaration of War with Mexico, making it official.
June 14, 1846. A few people in the small town of Sonoma declare California an independent republic (Bear Flag Republic). This is before news of the war arrived.
December 22, 1847. Abraham Lincoln, Whig Party congressman from Illinois, introduces his Spot Resolutions, challenging the idea that the war began when American blood was spilled on American soil.
February 2, 1848. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico cedes Texas and what later became the states of California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona and parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming to the United States.

Sources:

Walter R. Borneman, Polk, The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America, trade paperback edition, 2008, Random House, New York.
Wikipedia, used to double check and fill in some dates.

Obama Pisses on California Before Primary

Barack Obama may be the first sort-of black President of the United States, but his political heritage is not much different than the entire line of Presidents starting with real-estate speculator George Washington. Barack will be the only choice on the Democratic Party Presidential ballot line for the June 5 election. The total corruption and march-in-line behind the leader mentality of the party is shown by the lack of even token progressive and anti-war opposition.

Knowing the Democratic Party nomination is locked up, and wanting to appeal to right-wing voters, Barack Obama ordered widespread, unconstitutional raids on our perfectly legal medical marijuana purveyors. It's a funny thing, the way almost all media sources keep the Obama name out of the stories about the raids. It is always the Justice Department. Like Obama is not head of the government. Like he could not order the stormtroopers to go after other crimes. Are there no Islamic teenagers who might be entrapped by agents offering them a chance to play with government-supplied C-4? Are there no criminals violating Disney's copyrights needing to be rounded up and put in concentration camps?

It is not just his Reaganesque marijuana policy that mocks California's enlightened citizenry. There's his anti-gay marriage stand. His ongoing military attacks on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, plus anti-Iranian saber rattling. His promotion of the very men who created the mortgage derivatives and banking meltdown to be his top economic advisors. His failure to vigorously protect women's reproductive rights. His half-ass reformulation of the healthcare for profit system.

But what is a Democrat to do? It is too late to send Him a message by re-registering Green or No Political Preference (the new Decline to State, known everywhere else as independent). You can do that after the primary.

All you can do is vote for your favorite local candidates (up to and including Congress) and then not vote for Barack Obama. Barack does not give a damn how you feel about him, as long as he is the head of the corporate security state. He's going to be the next President. What not voting for Obama will do is show, when the votes are counted, that you care about California and your fellow Californians.

According to my readings of John Steinbeck, pretty many California citizens were smoking marijuana long before the 1960s rolled around. Since the 1960s California citizens have almost all been tolerant of their neighbors who choose to smoke. Sure, there are occasional problems with stoned citizens, but they pale compared to the problems of drunk citizens, and they don't seem to be significantly higher than the problems we encounter with perfectly sober citizens, either.

We Californians are a nation of individuals, but we do mostly share some cultural values, like respecting individual diversity. We have a disproportionate number of agnostics and atheists among us, and even our religious citizens tend more to humanist spirituality and ethical conduct than to memorize-the-text orthodoxy. We believe in evolution, and are evolving, but are ruled by people whose brain capacities froze at Middle Ages levels of memory and compute capabilities.

There are about 38 million of us. There were less than 4 million people living in the original 13 states at the time of the American Revolution, and that included slaves and Native Americans.

We should demand some respect from the rest of the states. If they do not respect our ways and our values, including ending marijuana prohibition, we should began the process of (hopefully without a civil war) leaving other United States and governing ourselves.

Because we can govern ourselves a lot better than the eastern states can govern us.

We don't need the national parties, either. Even if we stay in the Union, California citizens should have their own political parties, subject to our own corrupt bosses and political machines, rather than to the corrupt national bosses and machines.

Let's make that a goal: at least one California-centric party by 2014.

Week Unreviewed

The number of blog entries I mentally outlined and should have written really piled up this week:

An analysis of Barack Obama's state of the union address, probably compared to those of Democratic Party founder Andrew Jackson.

A victory over U.S. imperialism blog, since the Obama administration essentially admitted this week it can't subjugate Afghanistan forever, and will speed up its withdrawal of combat troops. Obama, the peace candidate, yet again. Mitt Romney making a fool of himself by saying he would stay in Afghanistan until the U.S. is bankrupt, or longer.

Why I am not supporting Norman Solomon in his bid to become a congressman representing the northern California coast.

A proposal to ban the use of drones in war, that is to make the use of drones for anything other than observations a war crime. Not that the U.S. or other imperial powers ever get tried for the innumerable (an exaggeration: obviously the number of war crimes committed by the U.S. could have been enumerated) war crimes they have, do, and will commit.

Why the new rural zones forest fire taxes in California are on a per structure basis. Because if they were on a acreage or potential value of losses basis, the timber corporations would have to pay them. Instead rural homeowners will have to pay them. Thanks, Wes Chesbro, timber company pawn.

How the U.S. government policy (often violated) of non-interference in foreign nations became a policy of constant interference in foreign nations, with a nod to Cordell Hull.

How the Obama administration decision to refuse to allow Somali-Americans to send funds back to relatives in Somalia amounts to a crime against humanity.

Why did I miss such stellar writing opportunities? A combination of work and distractions with the fact that on any given day only about 1000 people read my blog. Eliminate the other analysts and pros (CIA, FBI, homeland security, foreign agencies, comedians, political science guys, etc.) and the number probably falls to more like 500 ordinary citizens. The pros never click, it is against policy. It requires about 100,000 daily readers to make a minimal living as a blogger. If I had that many readers, I would probably write every day, and drop the other work I do.

But actually I had a good week. The Last Days of Christ the Vampire kindle edition is now available. My Biography of Andrew Jackson is starting to sell. David Cobb of MoveToAmend.org visited and spoke to a good sized crowd in Point Arena.

I might even get around to writing up some of the above ideas. Next week.

Chaos in California: Brown Vetoes Democratic Budget

It almost defies parody. It is like trying to do a parody of a nuclear disaster or of a mass murder.

The Democratic Party members in the California State Senate and Assembly put together a budget without Republican help. The Republicans wanted to help by pitching welfare babies in the street and closing the public school systems. Or maybe charging tuition to attend.

I don't like to say nice things about Democratic Party politicians in the legislature. They have mainly helped bring California to the brink of disaster. Yet since I complained in the past about budgets not being passed on time, I have to say: they got it together and passed the budget on time. It is not the budget some might like, but that is the fault of the business situation in the state. Demand is low; people are not working; tax revenue is not sufficient to give folks on disability and welfare a truly middle class lifestyle. Given that a bunch of people had to agree on the budget, even if they are all Democrats, it is miraculous they forged one, and on time.

But Jerry Brown vetoed it. He wants to extend some taxes that were put in as emergency fundraising measures during the late recession. He would use those taxes to either (depending on your point of view): pay off the all-powerful public employee unions or help the kids get a better education.

Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would have signed the budget, even though he was a Republican and not a single Republican elected official voted for it.

But not Jerry Brown. This is madness. This is not what people thought they would get when they voted for the guy last November.

Despite California's still high unemployment rate, the economy has been slowly recovering from the depths of the recession. Tax revenues should be up significantly in 2011 over 2010. Throwing the government into chaos is not going to help anyone right now. Muddling through is what is needed right now. Taxes should grow in 2012, too. Eventually we might restart the construction industry. Then the revenue would roll in and a lot of public service workers could be rehired. Soon workers would be sought after, new cars would roll off the lots, and we the taxpayers could even afford to give the disability fakers another $50 a month for their drug habits. Which adds to the colorfulness of California, brings in federal dollars, and makes it a tourist mecca.

But maybe this is what Brown planned all along. Maybe he really is one of those Earth First! type environmentalists who want the economy to collapse so people abandon California and let the Redwoods grow and the salmon run again.

Recall, anyone?

Writing about Andrew Jackson

I have not been posting as many blog entries as I might lately because I have been writing the Internet Biography of Andrew Jackson. President Jackson's life has been divided into web page sized chunks, beginning with his life as a child-soldier.

Today I posted Andrew Jackson for President, Act I. This was a crucial point in American history, as it marks the inception of the Democratic Party (not called that quite yet) and the modern two-party, one oligarchy system.

That puts me more than halfway through Andrew's life, but he does not become President until 1828, and of course his presidency will take up much of the biography.

Tomorrow on my to do list is writing up the draft results of the political redistricting process for California. That will be in my California Democracy blog.

Green Party Registration Drive

I received a mailer from the Green Party of California announcing a voter registration drive today. It was a good mailer with good points.

"Progressives and liberals and even the general public are realizing Democrats are not going to prioritize helping ordinary Americans - that their priorities continue to favor corporations and the wealthy."

"With more effective grassroots organizing" [the Green Party] "can raise sufficient funds to build the party's membership, increase our volunteer base and elect more candidates to office."

"We can even point out that it's possible for the Green Party to replace one of the two status quo parties - which is what happened when the Republican Party replaced the Whig Party in 1854-1856 (after first being preceded by the anti-slavery Liberty Party, which then merged into the Free Soil Party ain 1848, which then merged into the Republican Party in 1854)." [See also: A Brief History of the Republican Party]

"We can show voters our stance on a particular issue that they care about (such as health care, or jobs, or taxes, or the Iraq and Afghanistan wars) is one they should support at the polls."

I can be more forthright about registered Democrats. Both the Republican Party and Democratic Party are War Crimes Organizations. They are both political parties that have authorized the U.S. military, on numerous occasions, to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. In particular, the Democratic Party is the only party in the history of the world to use atomic weapons in war, and against civilian populations at that. If you are registered in the Democratic Party, you are a member of a war crimes organization. Don't deny it. Register Green, or at least become independent (in California, that means changing your registration status to "Decline to State").

To learn more about the Green Party of California go to: Green Party of California

Direct link for donations: Green Party of California Donations

To find links to other state parties, and Green Parties in other nations: Green Party of the United States

You have the right to vote for change, and to run for office. Change will not come floating on pretty rhetoric out of Chicago. It requires determination and persistence.

My personal Green Party writings

Sarah Palin: Sell California, Not Alaska

Speaking to a Tea Party rally at Barack Obama's pretend birthplace of Honolulu, Hawaii, Sarah Palin screeched, "Selling Alaska to pay off the national debt would be socialism! Barack Obama's plan to sell Alaska is un-American!"

Warming to her topic like arctic sea ice, Palin suggested that if the Democrats want to sell a state to pay off the national debt, it should be California. "We could pay off the entire national debt of $14 trillion dollars if we sold California to the Chinese. Plus socialist baby-murdering nature-lovers like Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein and Arnold Schwarzenegger would become ineligible to run for President. Let them see how they like Peking style socialism with its rapid economic growth, jobs, and lack of Christianity."

Questioned by a reporter from Foxy News Network, Palin denied she opposed selling Alaska because it would make her ineligible to become President. "This constant campaigning is not about me," she said. "America is becoming a second rate power because of socialist government programs like the interstate highway system, socialized senior services, and a government owned military system. I am campaigning to save America from Socialism."

The growing controversy about the Federal Reserve's now not-so-secret contingency plan to sell Alaska (known as "geographic easing") to the highest bidder is coming too late to be a major factor in the November election . The Obama Administration is apparently not entirely united behind the Alaska Plan. President Obama feels that selling Alaska would be a mark against him in the history books, but he has to weigh that against the possibility that he would also be blamed if America goes bankrupt.

People are saying that, anyway.

Organic Farming, Meat, and Mendocino County

Jan and I are thinking of moving to Seattle, at the request of Jan's son, my stepson Evan. On the other hand, he can't guarantee that he will stay in Seattle himself. I say this because it brings into question projects like Mendoday.com and California Democracy. I seem to be accumulating a large number of questions, although they still swirl about some pretty bedrock answers.

Last night I attended a forum at the Garcia Grange in Manchester, California, a tiny coastal hamlet a few miles north of Point Arena. The forum was sponsored by some Mendocino County organic farming groups, but the panel consisted of the four candidates for fifth district Supervisor. I am not neutral. I am volunteering on Dan Hamburg's campaign committee. The question before the forum was how could more small scale, organic farming be economically successful in Mendocino County. Also, how could we keep the money generated by economic activity in our county. Money tends to get drained out of our economy by the bigger players, who send it back to corporate headquarters, where ever that may be.

We talked about the need to get a slaugherhouse started in the county, preferably in the 5th district. There used to be one. Now, if a farmer (organic or not) wants to slaughter an animal, they have to transport it long distances, or do the slaughter under the regulatory radar. All four candidates, and the entire audience as far as I could tell, agreed that a local slaughterhouse would be a good thing.

This contrasts with the recent argument I had within the Green Party (specifically, within the California delegation to the Green Party of the United States). California's Green Party platform recommends that people "consider a vegan lifestyle." Vegans, for those of you who have not run into these annoying creatures, reject the idea that life is part of a cycle with death. They refuse to eat any animal products, including products that did not kill the animals like eggs, cheese, and even honey. They also won't use animal products; no leather shoes or clothing, etc. Some members of my delegation wanted to take the phrase from the California platform and insert it in the U.S. national Green Party platform. They also want to ban all scientific study of animals.

I put up a fuss, other members of the delegation joined me, and the "vegan" motion was defeated (if passed by us, it would then be considered by the entire national committee). But then the platform committee people started submitting a whole huge stack of revisions (our platform is way out of date). Less and less discussion happened with each proposal; the general attitude was to pass the new planks on to the full national committee, where they can be amended or rejected. Amidst this deluge the vegan plank appeared again, and the exact same people who had rejected it before, now passed it. They were tired of arguing.

Which reminds me of quaint historical phenomena. The Democratic Party, for instance, started having a racial civil rights plank way back when, during the New Deal if not earlier. But it was a sham. The Democratic Party was very dependendent on the South (former Confederate states), where African Americans were not allowed to vote, and all white people voted Democrat, thus assuring that between 1932 and 1969 all the presidents of the United States were Democrats except Dwight Eisenhower. The racist Democrats did not mind the civil rights plank to much because they controlled Congress; there was no possibility that it would be put into effect. President Lyndon Johnson finally forced enough Democrats in Congress to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to change things. It is often said that he did not run in 1968 because of internal Democrat opposition to the Vietnam War. But that was only a secondary reason. The main reason was the alienation of the white racist vote in the South. That is why George Wallace did so well in 1968 (he was a Democrat who sometimes ran as an independent).

The Green Party platforms, both California and National, contain many portions I don't agree with, but mainly it is a question of gray areas. People who write platform planks tend to specialize in those issues, and push for what the rest of us may consider extremes. Just for instance, we have an anti-fluoride plank, which is like having an anti-vitamin plank as far as I am concerned. But Greens tend to love vitamin supplements and hate toxins, and see fluoride as a toxin, not a mineral supplement.

How do I tell the local organic farmers, who are in tune with nature, that a bunch of urban vegans want to shut down their milk, poultry, and meat operations? So far I have not. I'll just keep fighting over the party plank when I get a chance. What is really funny is watching the California Greens chow down at a state convention. They eat meat, and the vegans usually stage a guilt-trip protest. Your are right, we should be vegans, pass the ham, please.

So why am I still in the Green Party? I've thought a lot about changing my registration status to Decline-to-State (Californian for independent) lately. In general the Green Party is right about social justice and the environement. But the real thread holding me to the party is its opposition to war (on the other side, pushing me out, is its nonviolence plank, which I would like to amend to support people's right to self-defense). The Democratic Party wants peace, supposedly, but always delivers war. Voting Green sends a message that I want to dismantle the entire U.S. military apparatus. I really do.

I remind myself that the real, basic problem is human overpopulation. It is a global problem, it is certainly a California problem, and it is getting to be a Mendocino County problem.

We don't have enough water in Mendocino County for our current level of population and agricultural production. We take too much out of our streams, which has hurt the salmon. We really need to only grow foods that can survive mostly from the winter rains. We grow a lot of fine grapes here, but the vines are planted too close together. We need to tear out about 1/2 the grapes so that the vines will need very little supplemental watering beyond the winter rains.

And what we don't need is nuclear power. We don't need iPads. We don't need the Congressmen from Mississippi, Texas and New York telling us what to do. We don't even need the fools in Sacramento telling us what to do. Maybe San Francisco needs all that, maybe Lost Angeles needs all that, but we don't.

Coffee, Tea, or Me?

My wife was aghast that, after her and all her (and my) friends working for years to talk to people about democracy issues (See CaliforniaDemocracy.org, Alliance for Democracy), someone with little apparent knowledge suggested coffee parties to counter tea parties and suddenly, if probably momentarily, is famous, via Facebook. A funny thing is most of our democracy activist friends also have facebook accounts, and try all sorts of ways to spread their ideas.

I think the tea parties are a good thing, even though some of the stances taken by tea party people don't agree with me. People should talk to each other, share ideas, and even argue. To the extent that coffee parties provide that for people who are not already politically engaged, they will also be a good thing.

Across the country, without a doubt, Democratic Party strategists and paid flunkies are getting ready to attend coffee parties the same way Republican paid staff have tried to capture the tea party movement. And vice-versa: if the coffee parties amount to anything, people will think they can capture the Democratic Party.

Sorry folk. The most basic lesson of American politics is that the Democratic Party belongs to the military-industrial complex. They created it, they own it, and they have the resources to maintain control of it. (See Brief History of the Democratic Party)

The other basic less of American politics is that the Republican Party belongs to the military-industrial complex. They re-created it for the Civil War, they own it, and they have the resources to maintain control of it. (See Brief History of the Republican Party)

Has anyone besides me noticed that both coffee and tea are imported? Where is the Americanism in either of them?

Wine and cheese parties, as effete as they may be, at least can be supplied with American products. Or beer and pretzels. Or root beer and hog's feet.

I'd like to see a California Party. I think the main problem with the Democrats and Republicans in California is that they are tied to national parties run from states that have almost nothing in common with California. States like Mississippi and Texas and Illinois.

California grows a lot of cool crops, but as far as I know, none of them is made into hot beverages. Are we doomed to oblivion because we have no California-specific hot beverages?

California does grow righteous strawberries, and we have a healthy dairy industry. Perhaps we should skip the hot beverage and go straight to strawberry yogurt. What it is lacking in caffeine, the Strawberry Yogurt Party might make up for in nutritional wholesomeness.

I really should get a Facebook page. But the idea of constantly hearing trivia from a myriad of Internet friends, well, that still repulses me. I hate feeds. I'd rather just get information when I go looking for it.

Commodore Perry, Japan, and Hypocrisy

Reading in detail about Commodore Perry's mission to Japan in 1853 and 1854, I could not help but be struck by the astonishing level of hypocrisy in the account. Perhaps this is because Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan was written by a minister, Francis L. Hawks, but more likely it simply and accurately reflects ruling class Amerian attitudes of that day.

The United States already had an extensive trade with China, and its whaling ships regularly operated in the seas around Japan. The U.S. had first been extended to the Pacific Ocean in the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. You'll recall that Napoleon Bonaparte claimed France owned extensive lands that were in fact the sovereign tribal lands of native American Indians. He sold this dubious title to the United States, led by slaver President Thomas Jefferson, for $15,000,000. The Oregon area was disputed by Spain, Russia, and Great Britain, but by1818 the U.S. had the upper hand and in 1846 the current border was settled by treaty, again without input from the Indians.

The war of aggression against Mexico starting in 1846 was largely designed by U.S. expansionists to get California and the port of San Francisco. American colonists moved rapidly into California, where their new government raised taxes on land just long enough to force most Mexican landholders to sell their holding.

Racism against the Asiatic peoples known as American Indians of course carried over to Euro-American attitudes towards Asians in China and Japan. But another matter that looms behind the Perry expedition is slavery. In the 1850s the U.S. nation practiced slavery, although slavery had been banned in the British Empire.

So if you believe the constant protestations by Perry and his gang that his expedition was about extending the "friendship" of the United States to the nation of Japan, you are naive.

The Japanese were not naive. They had already had considerable experience with the Christian and European meanings of friendship. They had closed off Japan to almost all intercourse with Europeans since the 1600s, in self-defense. Even their traditional trading partner, China, was allowed to trade only at the port of Nagasaki. The one European power the Japanese traded with was the Netherlands. But the Japanese government used the Dutch (also confined to Nagasaki) not so much for physical trade as to keep up on world events. When Perry came knocking at their door they knew about the United States, and they knew about the history of Europeans colonizing Asia. They also knew about many of the inventions of the West, like steam engines, although they had prohibited their actual importation. They had translators that read or spoke Dutch, Chinese, English, and probably other foreign languages. They knew the U.S. had successfully rebelled against Great Britain, and that Franklin Pierce was its President.

And they knew about the First Opium War. The government of China had made opium illegal for the obvious reasons. British (and also some American traders) had insisted on their right to profit from selling opium into China, and the British government defeated the Chinese in 1842, just ten years before the Perry expedition. In the aftermath of the Opium War the U.S. signed a rather one-sided treaty with China, one of the Unequal Treaties, the Treaty of Wanxia of 1844.

While protesting friendship on his mission to Japan (commanding a battle fleet capable of flattening Tokyo), Perry presents the U.S. treaty with China as a model of the sort of treaty the U.S. wants with China.

Even the summaries of the treaty sparring in the book can be tedious, but both sides knew what was really going on. The Japanese certainly knew about the imposition of the Unequal Treaties on China after the Opium War, and certainly had a copy of the treaty. Matthew Perry pretended the Japanese did not know, but he knew they knew. He kept threatening to send for more ships (with more cannon, and soldiers) if the Japanese would not make a treaty. The Japanese said they understood the need of the U.S. to take on coal (the petroleum of that era), water and food, and wanted to allow it at Nagasaki. Perry, representing American merchants and industrialists, wanted free trade, the right to trade anything anywhere. Politely, no one mentioned opium.

The Japanese were not in a position to defend themselves and their way of life, and knew it. They signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with the U.S., and soon signed similar treaties with the European powers. Within a decade the rulers of Japan had decided that to defend themselves they needed to rapidly modernize, at whatever cost to their traditional ways.

In the 1850's Japan looked to some Americans like the next California, a place that could be grabbed, where the native peoples could be put on reservations and left to die.

By 1900 the Japanese were ready to withstand an attack from the imperialist powers. They expanded their vision. They would eventually free all of Asia from colonial slavery to Germany, France, Russia, Britain, the U.S. and the Netherlands.

And that really angered the U.S. ruling class and its global allies.

Medical Insurance Death Spiral

Private medical insurance seems to be going into a death spiral. While Congress and state legislatures failed to act, Adam Smith's Invisible Hand decided to act on its own.

Even before the headlines came out, I got my family (Jan and my) medical insurance bill from "Anthem Blue Cross," which is really WellPoint once you break through the corporate unaccountability firewalls. It went up to $541 per month, from $408 per month, a 33% increase. It is a pretty minimal plan, far worse, for instance, than the one our local public school teachers have (I know from past service on the local school board for 8 years). We've had it around fifteen years, and it has never actually paid for anything, but it does limit how much we get reamed by medical service providers. In my case part of my increase may be because I recently had my 55th birthday.

Jan and I are fighting now about what to do. I am for dumping the insurance entirely, she wants to see if there is an even-higher deductible option. But she can't find out because it is a three day weekend.

The recession was the initial cause of the problem, apparently, but that does not mean that as the economy recovers rates will go back down.

Two things happened. With so many people unemployed, or trying to reduce their monthly budgets even if employed, many simply dropped their insurance. Of course, healthy people dropped; sick people did not. So there is a smaller pool of fools like me paying in to cover the sick people. In addition, many people already had the talk Jan and I had today, and already increased their deductibles. In the short run that just means WellPoint has less dollars coming in, without any significant decrease in immediate expense.

Of course the WellPoint management is not willing to forego profits for a year to break the downward cycle. In 2009 WellPoint made $2.7 billion in net income (profit for shareholders) on insurance premium revenues of $14 billion, per their January 27, 2010 press release.

But what about the future? You can depend on the politicians to do nothing. You can figure that numerous people like Jan and I are going to drop or diminish our coverage. WellPoint will increase their rates again as soon as possible. Then more people will drop out. At some point only the sick will no longer be subsidized by premiums from the well. WellPoint will take out 30% for profits and administrative costs, the maximum allowed by the state of California. So even the sick, as a group, will need to pay premiums 30% of their collective costs of care just to keep WellPoint in business.

I would not think WellPoint would be in business much longer; a few years at most. Except they have at least one other option: stop paying claims. Start rejecting claims for any and all reasons. Or, the more systemic equivalent, send out policy renewals redlining out most benefits. "For a claim to be valid, the patient must first see a doctor in our Paris, France office. Surgery is now classified as Acupuncture and is not covered if it requires sharp cutting instruments other than acupuncture needles."

In other words, a wise person would now plan for paying for your medicine as you go, unless you are a welfare bum on Medicaid or a senior citizen on Medicare. Expect nothing from the Democratic Party or the Republican Party except heartache.

Once enough of those of us who have tried working for a living, and failed, are on Medicaid, that system will collapse too. If not of itself, with the inability of the Federal Government to endlessly increase the national debt.

Of course, you could try to figure out a way to put me in charge. I would execute a few insurance company executives and owners. I would take pack all the payouts to stockholders WellPoint has made in the past ten years as fraudulent transfers, and use that money to get medical services started again. What would you do?