I still can’t get over it – they gave the coveted Nobel Peace Prize to an American politician, based mostly on campaign speeches, which were indeed inspiring, but still, campaign speeches, filled with what were empty promises.

Aren’t all campaign speeches filled with empty promises? Yes they are. Don’t struggle with this.

Do you think the Nobel Prize Committee based their award on something more substantial? Why do you think this? Are you having trouble with dates? Obama had not been in office for 100 days. What had he done for world peace in that time?

Shortly after he received the highest award for peace, he ordered troops to Afghanistan.

Bullshit I say. Give the Nobel Peace Prize to anyone you want. It’s worthless now. Unless they decide to give it to Gandhi posthumously.

I will not leave. How can I surrender my country to insane ghouls and watch from a safe distance as it dies.

– Ilya Klishin

Russians are so much like Americans, in so many ways. One of these is whining, although I give Russians the win on this. I’m pretty sure my pal Pelyevin would agree. But for those who don’t know Russia, it’s not like you think. We love the whiney Russians.

The difference is Americans don’t leave, don’t find ways around unjust laws if they stay. Americans just whine. And do nothing.

My message to both is “it’s your fucking country! You made it this way, or you let it get this way. ”

What I say has no effect. Nothing will have an effect except the inevitable landslide – the Fall of the Roman Empire.

And I think Canada will arise victorious out of it all. That’s where everybody is headed. They have opened their doors unlike any other country for decades.

The headlines came quickly after President Obama concluded the deficit-debt deal with the Republicans Sunday evening. There were few shades of gray. The New York Times editorial was titled “To Escape Chaos, a Terrible Deal: Democrats won almost nothing they wanted except avoiding default.”
It was truly, as the Times pointed out, “a political environment laced with lunacy.” But don’t blame it all on the Republican “mad dogs” on Capitol Hill playing chicken with the economic plight of the American people and its wobbling economy. It was President Obama who surrendered.
In one of the most inept episodes of Presidential-Congressional relations, Mr. Obama managed to give the Republicans more than they expected and leave the Democrats with less than the Republicans offered. The Republicans never expected Mr. Obama to give in entirely on tax increases on the wealthy, on the reviled oil industry giants and other corporate tax escapees. The Republicans even agreed to $800 billion in new revenue over ten years. Obama fumbled the ball day after day, and with the August 2 debt ceiling deadline looming, he fell to the extortionists. Unlike Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush II, who routinely expected and got debt ceilings raised without conditions.
President Obama’s disaster began months ago when he agreed to tie raising the debt ceiling to a grand bargain with the Republicans regarding deficits and revenues instead of demanding a debt ceiling raise while he was caving on extending Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. That immediately gave the “fanatic” Republicans a veto power over the “establishment” Republicans in Congress. And fanatics don’t blink. Especially those fanatics who, elected last year, say they don’t care about being re-elected.
So Obama accepted about $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, got no revenue producing tax increases and therefore made it nearly impossible to create a public works jobs program to uplift a sliding economy.
With economic indicators registering more trouble in recent days for American workers, Mr. Obama has no cards left. Interest rates cannot be driven any lower by the Federal Reserve. He didn’t get even a renewal of the extension of unemployment benefits. Consumer spending – 2/3rds of the economy, is stagnant. Without consumer demand, new investment is sluggish. Unemployment is rising, and without jobs, workers can’t increase their consumer spending. State, local and federal government spending cannot increase under the yoke of the just agreed-upon cuts. The weaker dollar may increase exports a little, but the U.S. still has a continuing massive trade deficit, especially with China. Europe’s financial problems will curb orders of U.S. goods and services.
So what can Mr. Obama do? He can propose a public works program, paid for by the tax increases on the wealthy and the corporations. Both are getting richer. The large corporations are reporting very good second quarter profits further disconnecting their affluence from that of their workers and labor in general. He could, if he wanted, make a very strong case for repairing America’s infrastructure and bring the soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan, as a majority of the American people and the most mayors of our cities desire.
First, however, he has to take the offensive by showing that the bulk of the deficits since 2002 were caused by the Bush tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy, and Bush’s two wars. Obama also has to hold the Republicans accountable for their hostage-taking of the American economy so they cannot impede public works proposals in an election year.
Amazingly, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he was quick to compromise from the get-go. Consequently, he painted himself into a corner. So, since he is not a leader, maybe he can become a pleader.
Given that non-financial companies are sitting on two trillion dollars of inert cash and other liquid assets, maybe he can appeal to these companies to disgorge ten percent in immediate special dividends to their long-parched shareholders who are, after all, their owners. Loosening the executive locks on this hoard of money would provide $200 billion for more likely spending in the market place. Companies like Apple, Google, Cisco, Intel and Microsoft alone are sitting on well over $200 billion cash. To these coddled, indentured U.S. companies he can invoke President John F. Kennedy’s challenge–“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
Second, he can plead with those very profitable corporations that have benefited from the government bailout, or pay little or no federal income taxes, to voluntarily contribute to a public works fund.
Companies like GE, Verizon, Exxon Mobil, Boeing, IBM, Wells Fargo, DuPont, American Electric Power, FedEx, Honeywell, Yahoo, United Technologies as a group made $171 billion in U.S. profits over three years and paid zero federal income tax with a $2.5 billion negative advantage. And that, says Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, is “just the tip of an iceberg of widespread corporate tax avoidance.”
Is such pleading just Pollyannaish? Maybe. But it will resonate with the American people’s sense of injustice. Those feelings of indignation can reverberate and cause members of Congress to start remembering who sent them to Washington. Last I heard, corporations don’t have a single vote.

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Tell your friends to visit http://www.nader.org/ and sign up for Ralph Nader’s weekly column.

In the Public Interest
Ray Anderson: Enlightened CEO and Environmentalist
By Ralph Nader
8.12.2011

He took his position as the founder and CEO of Interface, the world’s largest modular carpet manufacturing firm, and made environmental history that is extending into many sustainability commitments for the industrial managers he educated.

The loss of Ray Anderson at age 77 took from our country the greatest CEO, the greatest engineer, the greatest hands-on educator of industry making peace with the planet, of them all.

In 1994, Mr. Anderson had what he called his “epiphanal moment” when he read Paul Hawken’s book–The Ecology of Commerce. That is when he gathered his colleagues and set his company on a mission to reach zero pollution by 2020 “by focusing on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and closed-loop recycling.” Interface is more than halfway there reducing expenses and increasing sales and profits in the process. He liked to call himself a “radical industrialist” or a “recovering plunderer of the Earth.”

In 2000 he relinquished the day-to-day running of the company to Dan Hendrix so he could become the synergistic advocate around the country and the world for what he called a “zero footprint.” That is, going beyond the sustainable “to restorative” “to put back more than we take and do good to the earth, not just no harm, through the power of example.”

Years ago I heard him speak in Washington. He sounded like a very precise and enlightened industrial engineering professor, except he was also meeting a payroll and outcompeting his competitors. In 1998 he agreed to sign on to our widely supported petition to USDA and DEA to remove industrial hemp from the DEA’s restrictions and allow our farmers to grow this very versatile plant for energy, food, clothing, paper and many other uses including carpets. Mr. Anderson promised that his company would buy more hemp for its products–industrial hemp can legally be imported from Canada and China–but is not permitted to be grown in the United States. “We have experimented with hemp in carpets and fabrics,” he said, “and it is a very good fiber for both, however supply is very limited because of laws against hemp growing.”

Ray Anderson was authentic. He intensely disliked corporate “greenwashing,” which he defined as “letting words get ahead of deeds purely for economic or personal gain.” At Interface (located in Atlanta), he significantly advanced John Elkington’s concept of the “triple bottom line”–economic, social and environmental which come together into one bottom line (economic) as a better way to make a bigger profit.

Take note of his approach–he starts with a set of deep ethical values, translates them into industrial processes that do not damage the Earth and then bends the corporate behavior to those two predicates.

Asked two years ago what he wants from the government, he replied “a carbon tax… taxing bad things instead of good things, so that an honest market can then work. Today it’s a dishonest market, just stumbling around ignoring the externalities.”

In his first book Mid-Course Correction, he refers people to page 172 to meet “Tomorrow’s Child,” as his reply to the question of what motivates him? Posterity, “tomorrow’s child” includes his five grandchildren.

Hundreds of thousands of engineers should read his book Business Lessons from a Radical Industrialist. As a renaissance engineer with his feet on the ground, Mr. Anderson set the standards for professionalism which starts with prevention of damage and ends with restoration. He motivated those in his company and leaders in other companies with his inspirational imagery. He talked of climbing the seven faces of “Mount Sustainability.” “Every foothold gained,” he declared, “begins with a self-questioning analysis of our process and materials and the determination to achieve even better results with less, and ultimately, no impact on our environment.”

Here are the Seven Fronts on “Mount Sustainability”:

Eliminate Waste: Eliminate all forms of waste in every area of business;
Benign Emissions: Eliminate toxic substances from products, vehicles and facilities;
Renewable Energy: Operate facilities with renewable energy sources–solar, wind, landfill gas, biomass and low impact hydroelectric;
Resource-Efficient Transportation: Transport people and products efficiently to reduce waste and emissions;
Sensitize Stakeholders: Create a culture that integrates sustainability principles and improves peoples’ lives and livelihoods; and
Redesign Commerce: Create a new business model that demonstrates and supports the value of sustainability-based commerce.

While Anderson spoke from details, he moved to inspiration and philosophy. He would say to hard-bitten industrialists and idealistic students: “You, too, have influence. You have the power of one. Your organization has influence, too–the collective influence of one and one and one. Knowledge, deep (not superficial) knowledge, getting well up that curve, comes first. Doing (taking action) must follow–in your personal lives and at work. Knowledge and action are critical. They give credibility and validity to your examples and to your influence, which can spread and grow without limit.”

He even got top executives at Walmart to listen and move.

Ray Anderson’s greatness came from the expansion of his vision from year to year. He was a learner par excellence–from books, from the people at Interface, from academics, and from advisors like David Suzuki and Amory Lovins. In his last book he wrote: “[we] are all part of the continuum of humanity and the web of life in general. We will have lived our brief span and either helped or hurt that continuum, that web, and the Earth that sustains all life. Which will it be? It’s your call.”

Ray Anderson’s legacy lights the way for the future of the world’s productive and living environment.

To his wife Pat, his children and grandchildren go our sorrows and sympathies imbued with a deep appreciation of Ray Anderson’s magnificence that touched all who followed and extended his embracing humanity.

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I feel like it’s their bedroom, and that I am intruding. There is a new couple sleeping in my wretched underpass skate spot.

Almost every morning I hit one of my favorite spots for skate abs (always thinking of new, saleable names for skating) – an underpass to I95, highly desirable because it is covered. It’s actually more desirable for houseless than skaters.  There is always broken glass, somebody’s bean plate spattered all over, cracks, fissures – a tetanus dream!

They’re an elderly couple.  Actually, I don’t wake them – they are already up, doing their morning toilet. He sets out a bucket for her to sit on, and I think she holds a small mirror in her lap (unfortunately, I can’t study her. She might take it wrong).

He has some nice chocolate pin-stripe dress slacks.  And he wears an undershirt, under his shirt.

I am always being quiet for sleeping people.  I must get up at the wrong time. Tiptoeing through my APT.  And now, cracking quiet ollies in the far corner of a metropolitan underpass.  shhhhh…

But then the Santarian roosters start to crow.  You can’t drown those beasts out with a pneumatic drill.

The only right you have is the right to choose. You always had it. No one gave it to you. No one can take it away. The freedom to choose is in-born, inalienable. Some people might call this free will.
But that confuses the issue. People don’t associate their political freedoms, or even personal freedoms with free will, the freedom to choose.
If I said the Bill of Rights is bullshit, the United States Constitution is bullshit, people would be indignant. They would say that people died to give us those rights. I would say, poor stupid bastards. Their deaths didn’t give me anything I didn’t already had. They died to prove their belief in themselves, their belief in the freedom to choose. And they proved it mostly to themselves.

Because it’s only ever a personal thing – between you and yourself, or you and your God.

Jesus didn’t choose to die. He chose to speak his truth. Death was the consequence only. The message of Jesus was not martyrdom. It was freedom. And the Cross is the cost.

6.9 million people die. world sleeps. Santa brings toys to the good little girls and boys.

Cheekie welcomes our newest contributer Laura Shetley to our team! In her first post, Laura profiles a young organization called Falling Whistles. Last week, I attended a presentation by Falling Whistles at my school. I had never heard of the organization before press for the event started circulating, so I decided to check out the website. It brought tears to my eyes. Falling Whistles evolved … Read More

via Cheekie

Ira Glass. your best friend. apparently.

you trust him, right?

he has along infomercial on NPR these days. fucking clever, that one! he tells us the 9 out of 10 public radio  listeners do not contribute to public radio.

then he goes balls out funny! he makes this stunning comparison between the financial model of listener support for public radio, and the operations budget of public radio. but see, he makes it totally funny!

he calls the local phone service, and proposes to them that they give American Public Radio 10 phone accounts for the price of only 1. and they say “no”. and then there’s this dialog.

finally, once we got the point, he admonishes us for being so irresponsibly negligent in our duty to support the one, the only, PUBLIC RADIO corporation in our country.

this is usually called moralistic, guilt trip, horse shit, in Iowa, where I was born an (partly) raised.

my only point is, “public” radio is yet another one of those illusions we’re not aware of. it can in no way be something like a non-partisan, unmitigated, “true” source of objective reporting, without opinion. instead, it’s the sleep-gun of the Orwellian Knights of mono-(a-)theism.  I mean, sorry, but there’s only ONE station. that, lads and lassies, would be suspect in any true leftists book.  how to you enact checks and balances on a machine that is the sole machine that does what that machine does?

and, the funniest thing to me was, after his Ross Perot-like infomercial, there was a sponsorship tag, citing Walmart Foundation as the sponsor for this morning’s Morning Edition.

So, Ira, is APR, or NPR, or whatever it is, really listener-supported?

silent night, holy night

all is calm, all is bright

at the top of the world  a blue-black dome

reflected in the kakel-dach