Tag: Government

My oh my, what an interesting week, and I don’t mean that in a good way.  From our trade deficit to our automakers on the brink of joining our domestic consumer electronics firms, things aren’t looking all that swell.  The latest indicators are showing, at least for November, what has been on everyone’s mind, the economy.  Some are saying, though that things will pick up, that the recession began a year ago and we’ll come through it by 2009.  We’ll see, when the average worker is able to stop worrying not just about making rent or that mortgage payment, but also putting food on the table, then I’ll agree.  Globally, like the United States, things for now look dim.  And like I said, the figures show it…which leads us to the Numbers!

Amazing, simply amazing.  For the past two days I’ve been watching these hearings on the automakers, and find myself more aghast than anything else.  Actually, it’s more than that.  I think I’ve had this almost sickening feeling, a feeling where anger is meshed in with a humiliation and sadness.  It isn’t just the automakers that has been the cause of this, but that they symbolize how far we’ve fallen.

If you’ll forgive the unfortunate Batman reference in the title, I must say that I’m glad our worst fears haven’t yet come to pass.  We’re at a major fork in the road, and there’s still a chance that we’ll prove to be a reality-based nation after all.  For the last 60-plus years, and especially over the past 8…we haven’t so much been ‘told’, as we’ve had it jammed down our throats relentlessly that food is just another commodity best left to international commodity traders and chemical companies.  Unsurprisingly, globalization as defined by those types in this area has proven to be a massive failure, as has everything else based upon their theories.

The simple fact is that our food system is completely broken.  We’re drive-thruing ourselves to ruin while trying to drown out the sounds of our destruction with the popping of Pringles…

If we intend to remain a “first-world” nation, we need to ensure we have the bare basics to begin with.  Like food, which comes from our soil…the health of which directly impacts the nutrients contained in same.  

It’s time we had people in positions of power in Washington who understood that, people like Jim Riddle.

Crossposted as always from La Vida Locavore, jump below the fold…

Today we conclude our small series on General Motors.  As you can probably tell by now, I favor helping out the company.  The company has history of market incompetence, it not only failed to meet various customer demands.  Adding to this, it designed its product line in such a way that made it at times more at the mercy of the price of petroleum than anything else.  Saying this, there are reasons to keep GM alive.

A little bit of shuffling in New Jersey’s state government leading up to next year’s elections.  New Jersey holds state elections in the “odd-numbered” years – in 2009 there will be a gubernatorial election with incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine (D-Hoboken) running for a second term, while all 80 seats in New Jersey’s General Assembly (the Lower House of the NJ State Legislature, currently controlled by Democrats 48-32) will be up for election.  Elections for seats in the Upper House (the NJ State Senate, currently controlled by Democrats 23-17) are held in years ending in 1, 3 and 7.  A “2-4-4 cycle” in order to reflect redistricting changes due to the Census.

In the midst of a recent certain other (heh…) important and closely-watched election, came news that Charles Kuperus, the head of New Jersey’s Department of Agriculture, has resigned the position he’s held for the past six years after originally being appointed by former Governor Jim McGreevey.

As someone who grew up in New Jersey, and was a resident as recently as two years ago…I’m sad to say that we lost a really good one here –

“Charlie has been taking the heat from many in the farm community who would rather be able to sell their land to developers, growing houses [rather] than crops,” Tittel said. “He has helped protect farming for the future.”

Crossposted from La Vida Locavore, more below the fold…

In our first installment, we introduced you to the current battle for the fate of General Motors. We highlighted why they share some if not all of the blame for their current situation.  We talked about the various sides involved in one way or another with the situation of GM.  Today we tackle the big question, what many deemed “unthinkable” previously, what bankruptcy would mean for General Motors and you.

Ralph Nader {center}

October 27, 1969

Ralph Nader set up a consumer organization with young lawyers and researchers {often called “Nader’s Raiders”} who produced systematic exposés of industrial hazards, pollution, unsafe products, and governmental neglect of consumer safety laws.

Nader is widely recognized as the founder of the consumer rights movement. He played a key role in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Freedom of Information Act, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

I’ve been doing a bit of research to understand the mission of Docudharma (gotta love that name!) and I happened on the wiki which gave the number one goal as to (paraphrasing) bring the power back to the people through the Congress, as a counterweight to the power of the Executive, which we can all agree has become excessive.

In that light, I’d like to harp on one of my pet “projects”, which happens to line up with the goals and objectives of the group who sponsors the website www.thirty-thousand.org.

Please follow me across the jump to get to the full (full?) flowering of this rant.

Maybe I’m nuts or unhinged or maybe I’m not. Perhaps its stress or the nerves acting up.  I need to lay off watching the news and politics.  Though something tells me I’m not gonna shake off this feeling I keep getting. Maybe some of you have felt this weird sense of dread too.

While in a discussion in yesterday’s essay We’re Not In Kansas Anymore  NLinStPaul asked me to expand my comments on the fact I believed that democracy cannot function the current cultural atmosphere and that we should hope that the oligarchs that run the joint can be wise.

To me this is an easy statement to make because democracy, as we have come to understand the term, is not a natural or common state of human culture. History and social science has shown us that most people inevitably follow authority and will follow authority. It also shows that power corrupts and that, in many ways, both the powerful and the weak cooperate in a kind of sado-masochistic scene (check out the Stanford Prison Experiment). People want and need norms and authority and will tend to gas Jews or torture prisoners if asked by the powerful to do so (see the Milgram Experiment). People will tend to conform to cultural views of reality even when it clashes with their own direct perception (see the Asch conformity experiments–you don’t even have to read about that to see how it has happened in this country particularly during the lead-up to the Iraq War).