Wheelhouse

Senator Carl Levin’s Office Occupation

Wow! It’s October 17, 2007 and my last post was June 11, 2007. Where have I been?

I’d like to say I’ve been off planet on this really crazy adventure traveling through worm holes to distance cosmic outposts, but I was inn keeping at the Neahtawanta Inn. Not a good reason not to post, but better then just saying “I’m too busy”.

Now I’m getting ready for the 6th Great Lakes Bioneers Conference, one of the 19 sites around North America connected via satellite to the 18th Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA. Check out their web site of if you are near one of the Bioneers Conference sites consider attending.

We’ll see, I might just post from the conference.

The Truth About Recycling, an articled published by The Economist, the conservative business journal from Great Britain, on june 9th, 2007 concluded with “If done right, there is no doubt that recycling saves energy and raw materials, and reduces pollution. . . In the end, says Ms.Krebs, “waste is really a design flaw.”

Like the Climate Change debate, critics had been able to delay implementation of comprehensive recycling by putting out misleading information for years about how recycling doesn’t really work and may even be bad. The height of this ruse may have been when libertarians Penn and Teller took on the cause of trying to discredit recycling efforts in their show Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.

Seem it is time to stop the bullshit and get on with recycling that works.

I got lost in the empire for a bit. Living in the belly of the beast can be distracting if you pay too close attention to the horror show. Although, The Grand Traverse Bay Area is in a well insulated part of the empire’s belly. Gosh you’d hardly know there was a war in Iraq, global climate change, resource depletion, between one and two billion people (out of 6.5 billion) living on Earth in unbelievable poverty, no health insurance for 50+ million Americans and an industrial food system destroying the earth to produce toxic food.

The good news is . . . I’ll get back to you on that one. Any thoughts?

U. S. Representative Dave Camp is not our representative, this according to him. During a recent meeting with citizens about the war in Iraq he was quoted in the Record Eagle. “You guys are really not listening to the people,” Jim Coats told Camp. Camp responded: “I’m hired to try to reflect the views of the people I represent, but I’m also hired for my judgment.” Hired by whom? I thought we elected Representatives by voting? My mistake.

Looking into Mr. Camp’s Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions to his last “re-election” in 2006 may indicate who “hired” him. His total 2005-2006 PAC contributions were $851,771.00. The largest PAC contributions from: Finance/Insurance/RealEstate - $184,119, Health- $180,562, and Energy/Natural Resource - $91,798. Check out more about him at Open Secrets

Mr. Camp is the 42nd most wealthy member of the U.S. House of Representatives. What are the sectors invested in by Mr. Camp? Finance/Insurance/RealEstate - 43%, Health - 5%, Energy/Natural Resource - 4%. Who hired him?

April 11, 2007, Traverse City, MI

In solidarity with the Occupation Project, a group of Traverse City area peacemakers occupied Senator Carl Levin’s Office. The video clip is of shared reading the group did during the occupation. The video clip is on YouTube- here, or on VentingMedia.com - Here

Human caused warming of the earth will change the climate everywhere on the planet.

The latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) points out the current effects of climate change; no longer just projecting what will happen, but what is already happening in ever region of the planet. The latest report also predicts which regions will fare the worst and the ones that will “benefit” from climate change in the future.

I’m afraid the same power brokers that control our corporate-based government, the ones that brought us the 1.5 trillion dollar Iraq war that has killed 100’s of thousands of people, will see the “benefits” to climate change as a mandate to let the “free market” sort out the winners and losers. This will be their excuse to do nothing about climate change. After all, the regions that may see a short term “benefit” from climate change are the over-developed industrialized corporate-controled nations in the northern hemisphere. The losers are the developing regions in the tropical areas.

But isn’t this a market failure? The regions of the planet that are most responsible for climate change are the winners and the losers are the least responsible. If the market were sending correct signals, wouldn’t the destroyers of the climate suffer and make changes as a result of market feedback? Perhaps the “free market” doesn’t really work when it comes to planetary destruction. But who really cares . . . if you live in an industrial empire in the north. . .

The ones that have long been denying climate change, will now switch to, yes it’s happening, but look at the benefits!

I was abruptly transported in a gigantic fossil fuel consuming unit and ending up here.

The area surrounding this neighborhood contains vast malled zones connected by concrete roadways filled with fossil fuel transportation units.

Anyone recognize where I am?

I’ve been enjoying streams of music from various Internet Radio programs for several years and it’s great. I’ve heard so much music I would never have known about and reconnected to music I love that I hadn’t heard in years.

But this may all come to an end, from “Save Our Internet Radio”:

On March 1, 2007 the US Copyright Office stunned the Internet radio industry by releasing a ruling on performance royalty fees that are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the station’s revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

You can read more about it on the Save Our Internet Radio Blog. Please sign the online petition and contact you federal representatives now!

On Monday, March 5, Senator Jim Webb introduced Senate Bill 759 which seeks to limit the President’s ability to start a war with Iran without first coming before the Senate. Please urge your senators to support this effort. For more details see the article in the March 6, Washington Times - here.