I have no illusions that the suggested interim remedy would ever be willingly adopted by anyone in power right now. And I make no claim that this is a rational solution that recognizes the "dead man welking" that is the world financial system. This suggestion is transitional to keep people in their homes by forcing the system to respond to the unruly expressed will of the people, if they orgnaize and make enough noise.

Dissident Voice
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/02/economic-disaster/ (http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/02/economic-disaster/)

Economic Disaster

Are You Next?

by Michael Collins / February 5th, 2009

The human costs of the U. S. financial crisis are coming into clear focus. Family members lose their jobs, then their homes, and the cascade of ruin begins in earnest. Health problems are ignored, anxiety and depression increase, and domestic violence is more common. Many are on the edge, anticipating their worst fears: losing their home or apartment then struggling to find the next meal. The biggest issues right now are about basic needs — food and shelter.

There’s a rational, reasonably immediate solution to a good part of the economic disaster. The banks won’t like it but you will. But first the sad facts.

There were 2.3 million default notices to homeowners in 2008, up 80% over 2007. It will be worse in 2009 with Option ARMs coming due (those favorites of Alan Greenspan).

Typically the nation’s economic leader, California, saw foreclosures increase by 160% in 2008. As a result three percent of California homes, 240,000 in all, became bank properties. These are the same banks that slithered up to the bar and demanded a double shot of the new elixir for failed financial institutions, federal bailouts. Put it on the tab.

To understand the full extent of the economic collapse, consider this. The current official unemployment rate is 7.2%. This includes those out of a job who have actively sought employment in the past four weeks. But this figure understates the level of economic distress. There are 1.9 million unemployed “marginally attached” workers not counted and 8.0 million underemployed workers seeking full time employment.

The total unemployed and under employed figure is 21 million U.S. workers.

Michigan, Florida, Ohio, and South Carolina are facing hard times similar to those in California. Your state is next. It’s a nationwide phenomenon.

Despite hundreds of billions in giveaways to the banks, there are no reports of a single U.S. citizen or family receiving a bailout from Washington to help them stay in their home.

What happens when you’re thrown out of your home or apartment and you have no job?

To begin with, you’re poor.

You can live on the street, move in with relatives, or seek to rent a home or an apartment. After a foreclosure, your credit rating will probably disqualify you from most opportunities at the outset. If you’re in a warmer climate, you can live in a tent city which began springing up across the country last September.

You can and will enter an entirely new world where you’re exposed to a variety of risks that will make it very difficult to put your life back together again. Crime, infectious diseases, underpayment for work, and increasing social isolation are routine.

You can become a crime victim. In your new world, that of the poor, you will find that you’re among the group with the majority of violent crime victims.

You can seek and receive occasional “subprime” medical care in hospital emergency rooms. But the days of serious attention to an ongoing condition, arthritis for example, are over for you.

You can watch your life melt away and your family suffer, all without the prospect of any real assistance. Homeless shelters are full in most places. Public health programs have been overflowing for years. The “welfare state” simply doesn’t exist. You’re screwed.

Wall Street welfare was supposed to save us from all of this according to the Bush-Cheney scam artists. Those two and their henchmen doubled the national debt in just a few short years of concentrated looting. Somehow, the most recent Wall Street donations were supposed to secure failed financial institutions and generate a stimulus for the economy. No deal.

To add insult to that injury, a $140 billion tax cut for banks was written “into law” by a Treasury Department bureaucrat, a move that everyone consulted said was clearly illegal. Nothing was done about it. In fact, a key congressional staffer explained it this way: “We’re all nervous about saying that this was illegal because of our fears about the marketplace.” (Nov. 10, 2008)

Crime pays. Deception pays.

But the money to pay working people isn’t there thanks to the financial manipulations that made the very wealthy even wealthier and left the rest with little to nothing in return. There is no room at this inn for people who need a helping hand.

When Do the People Collect?

California passed a law that cut into foreclosures by requiring that the banks actually give a reasonable notice of default prior to tossing families onto the street. This program had an impact for a few months but foreclosures bounced back and kept growing.

Representative Marcy Kaptur, (D-OH), responded to the economic collapse of Toledo, Ohio (11% unemployment) with a sensible idea. Foreclosures and evictions are a commonplace event. Kaptur tells citizens to stay put, don’t leave your home if a foreclosure notice is issued. “Produce the Paper” is the theme. Due to the complexity of many bad loans, it can be very difficult to figure out which bank actually holds the mortgage or to even find a true loan document. Without that information, there are legal challenges that can force banks to delay or forgo eviction.

Time for a Nationwide “Cramdown”

The easiest solution, the most immediate, is a cramdown. What’s that?

In bankruptcy court, a judge can take the total amount of a mortgage and divide it into two parts. The appraised home value becomes the “secured claim” and “the amount over the current appraised home value” becomes the “unsecured claim.” The unsecured amount is discarded. The secured amount, i.e., current appraised value, becomes the homeowner’s only debt. This debt can be amortized over the life of the loan. Thus monthly payments go down, people have a much better chance of staying in their homes, and they have some disposable income for essentials. (see here)

Congressional Democrats and President Obama are arguing over legislation that would give bankruptcy judges greater options for “cramdowns.” Both sides of the argument are out of touch with the accelerating harsh realities of the U.S. economy as experienced directly by the citizens.

There’s no court that needs to hear this case. The nationwide cramdown should be negotiated directly by the Obama administration, in behalf of all citizens and the remaining banks. Obama’s two financial system insiders, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and chief economic adviser Larry Summers, would all of sudden become the good cop/bad cop negotiators shoving the banks in a corner and forcing them so submit to the plan.

Cramdowns were mentioned in the campaign as one of several options to address the needs of homeowners. Obama can resist the idea and those in Congress can ignore the scope of action needed. But the people will bring them back to reality very soon, just as they did on the specific issue of having someone in the cabinet so rich and aloof that he forgets to pay $126,000 in income taxes.<

br />
Meeting the urgent need for people to have a home means less social and economic disruption. There would be an immediate stimulus with more money available to spend in the real economy. This stimulus program would put money back in the economy in months not years.

Now is the time.

END

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/02/economic-disaster/

As medical expenses are the number one reason for bankruptcy, and are related to home losses I figured the study the California Nurses created regarding single payer health care would fit in here as another practical solution, worth a look at the actual article, good graphics et al:

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1014&Itemid=1

Medicare-For-All Will Create 2.6 Million New Jobs, Say CA Nurses
Wednesday, 04 February 2009
CNA_study by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon

With the inaguration only two or three weeks behind us, pundits and politicians are already urging us to take our eyes off the health care football while they "fix" the economy. Promises to enact a universal national health care plan, only a few months old, are being forgotten or openly taken back due to supposed "economic necessities". But an authoritative study by the California Nurses Organization details the economic impact of enacting single payer Medicare-For-All national health care: 2.6 million new jobs, $100 billion annually in the pockets of employees, $317 billion to employers and $44 billion in tax revenues to hard-pressed local governments. The choice between enacting health care and saving the economy may be a false one. Fixing health care may be the best medicine for the economy.
Medicare-For-All Will Create 2.6 Million New Jobs, Say CA Nurses
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon

According to a study released January 14 by the California Nurses Association, adoptiing a single payer system of universal health care in the US would create 2.6 million new jobs, as many as the Bush economy destroyed in 2006, and boost the revenues of private employers by an annual $317 billion. A single payer health care system would put more than $100 billion in the pockets of employees and add $44 billion to state, local and federal budgets in badly needed tax revenues.

The CNA study details the economic benefits of healthcare to the overall economy, showing how changes in direct healthcare delivery affect all other significant sectors touched by healthcare, and how sweeping healthcare reform can help drive the nation's economic recovery.

"These dramatic new findings document for the first time that a single-payer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantially contribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economic recovery," said Geri Jenkins, RN, co-president of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, which sponsored the study.

The numbers of new jobs created by single payer health care alone dwarf anything yet proposed by the Obama administration or the “Buy America” add-ons to its stimulus bills, in addition to fulfilling the public expectation that Democrats enact a plan of universal and affordable health care for every American this year.

"Through direct and supplemental expenditures, healthcare is already a uniquely dominant force in the U.S. economy," said Don DeMoro, lead author of the study and director of the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, the NNOC/CNA research arm.

"However, so much more is possible. If we were to expand our present Medicare system to cover all Americans, the economic stimulus alone would create an immense engine that would help drive our national economy for decades to come," DeMoro said.cna_study02

Amid the hue and cry around the bailouts of Wall Street and the unfolding economic meltdown, discussion of universal health care promised by Democrats in the election just past appears to have taken a back seat. But the study demonstrates that the adoption of Medicare-For-All in the US may be a far more potent economic stimulus at a lower price than bailing out the greedheads of Wall Street.

more:

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1014&Itemid=1

Choppedliver, great stuff. The California Nurses Association is a model political action group. They've held the line with California fascism by superioir organizing and rapid response political action. When the guv tried to eviscerate the unions, the CNA was able to dispatch counter demonstrators and audience members to any anti union event with in minutes. Amazing.

Here are two solutions that may work to show that the drama queens and their histrionics about perpetual shortage and suffering represent nothing more than hot air to promote scarcity for their crappy schemes.

Potential Solutions for Feeding 80% of the Population

SPIN stands for S-mall P-lot IN-tensive
http://www.spinfarming.com/whatsSpin/
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v474/autorank/001/solspin.jpg

SPIN-Farming is a non-technical, easy-to-learn and inexpensive-to-implement vegetable farming system that makes it possible to earn significant income from land bases under an acre in size. Whether you are new to farming, or want to farm in a new way, SPIN can work for you because:

* Its precise revenue targeting formulas and organic-based techniques make it possible to gross $50,000+ from a half- acre.
* You don't need to own land. You can affordably rent or barter a small piece of land adequate in size for SPIN-Farming production.
* It works in either the city, country or small town.
* It fits into any lifestyle or life cycle.

SPIN is being practiced by first generation farmers because it removes the two big barriers to entry - land and capital - as well as by established farmers who want to diversify or downsize, as well as by part-time hobby farmers.

Vertical Farming
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v474/autorank/001/solverticaldesign.jpg
http://www.verticalfarm.com/Default.aspx

The Problem

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?

A Potential Solution: Farm Vertically

The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes, a wide variety of herbs, and other produce has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to accommodate another 3 billion people. An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be invented, employing cutting edge technologies. The Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate). Vertical farms, many stories high, will be situated in the heart of the world's urban centers. If successfully implemented, they offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (year-round crop production), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.

It took humans 10,000 years to learn how to grow most of the crops we now take for granted. Along the way, we despoiled most of the land we worked, often turning verdant, natural ecozones into semi-arid deserts. Within that same time frame, we evolved into an urban species, in which 60% of the human population now lives vertically in cities. This means that, for the majority, we humans are protected against the elements, yet we subject our food-bearing plants to the rigors of the great outdoors and can do no more than hope for a good weather year. However, more often than not now, due to a rapidly changing climate regime, that is not what follows. Massive floods, protracted droughts, class 4-5 hurricanes, and severe monsoons take their toll each year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops. Don't our harvestable plants deserve the same level of comfort and protection that we now enjoy? The time is at hand for us to learn how to safely grow our food inside environmentally controlled multistory buildings within urban centers. If we do not, then in just another 50 years, the next 3 billion people will surely go hungry, and the world will become a much more unpleasant place in which to live.

Advantages of Vertical Farming

Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres)
No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests
All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers
VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water
VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services
VF greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface
VF converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of
evapotranspiration
VF adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible
parts of plants and animals
VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.)
VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers
VF creates sustainable environments for urban centers
VF creates new employment opportunities
We cannot go to the moon, Mars, or beyond without first learning to farm indoors on
earth
VF may prove to be useful for integrating into refugee camps
VF offers the promise of measurable economic improvement for tropical and subtropical
LDCs. If this should prove to be the case, then VF may be a catalyst in helping to reduce or even reverse the population growth of LDCs as they adopt urban agriculture as a strategy for sustainable food production.
VF could reduce the incidence of armed conflict over natural resources, such as water
and land for agriculture

really interesting, Junius, I hope Mike chimes in on this one, could get lively...I'm bookmarking this thread...

Pulling this thread back up after reading this gem from Summers. If he's not in the Asshole Gallery he ought to be. Google searches as an economic indicator? And this guy was in charge at Harvard? Seriously? Larry, if someone has looked up "economic depression" they know the meaning. They don't do a search for it day after day... and by now everyone knows.

Summers: Economy has moved back from catastrophe (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6535085.html)

By JIM KUHNHENN Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated Press
July 17, 2009, 8:22PM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's top economic adviser has new cause for optimism. Back in January, Lawrence Summers said, Google searches for "economic depression" had increased by a factor of four. Today, the searches are back to pre-crisis levels.

For Summers, that is an economic indicator worth noting.

"If we were at the brink of catastrophe at the beginning of the year, we have walked some substantial distance back from the abyss," Summers said Friday.

Summer's upbeat tone, delivered in a speech to a Washington think tank, comes as the administration approaches its sixth month in office and as the public and members of Congress are becoming restless with Obama's economic policies. The administration is calling for patience to let its initiatives take hold.

Summers had other causes for optimism: The pace of economic contraction is slowing. Wall Street institutions that received government assistance are showing unexpectedly better earnings. On the other hand, unemployment climbing higher — at 9.5 percent now and expected to rise above 10 percent.

Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, said economic collapse looked all too real six months ago. "Fear was widespread and confidence was scarce," he said.

Now, he said, consumer sentiment has begun to improve. He conceded that unemployment is "substantially higher" and that job losses are greater than predicted last winter. Echoing Obama, he said he expected unemployment to rise in the coming months.

But he defended the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus, saying it was proceeding on schedule and that the peak of its impact on jobs is not expected until the end of 2010.

He said the improved health displayed by some large Wall Street firms would not have been possible without government infusions, guarantees and other programs provided by the government.

"There is no financial institution that would be reporting the kind of positive results that we have seen in the last quarter but for the extraordinary public support provided by the government," Summers said.

Speaking at The Peterson Institute for International Economics, Summer said that the ability of certain large banks to pay the Treasury back for large infusions of taxpayer money is a "positive and favorable sign."

"It's crucial to recognize that the increased health of financial firms is a positive indicator for the economy," he said.

Pulling this thread back up after reading this gem from Summers. If he's not in the Asshole Gallery he ought to be. Google searches as an economic indicator? And this guy was in charge at Harvard? Seriously? Larry, if someone has looked up "economic depression" they know the meaning. They don't do a search for it day after day... and by now everyone knows.

Summers: Economy has moved back from catastrophe (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6535085.html)

By JIM KUHNHENN Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated Press
July 17, 2009, 8:22PM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's top economic adviser has new cause for optimism. Back in January, Lawrence Summers said, Google searches for "economic depression" had increased by a factor of four. Today, the searches are back to pre-crisis levels.

For Summers, that is an economic indicator worth noting.

"If we were at the brink of catastrophe at the beginning of the year, we have walked some substantial distance back from the abyss," Summers said Friday.

Summer's upbeat tone, delivered in a speech to a Washington think tank, comes as the administration approaches its sixth month in office and as the public and members of Congress are becoming restless with Obama's economic policies. The administration is calling for patience to let its initiatives take hold.

Summers had other causes for optimism: The pace of economic contraction is slowing. Wall Street institutions that received government assistance are showing unexpectedly better earnings. On the other hand, unemployment climbing higher — at 9.5 percent now and expected to rise above 10 percent.

Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, said economic collapse looked all too real six months ago. "Fear was widespread and confidence was scarce," he said.

Now, he said, consumer sentiment has begun to improve. He conceded that unemployment is "substantially higher" and that job losses are greater than predicted last winter. Echoing Obama, he said he expected unemployment to rise in the coming months.

But he defended the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus, saying it was proceeding on schedule and that the peak of its impact on jobs is not expected until the end of 2010.

He said the improved health displayed by some large Wall Street firms would not have been possible without government infusions, guarantees and other programs provided by the government.

"There is no financial institution that would be reporting the kind of positive results that we have seen in the last quarter but for the extraordinary public support provided by the government," Summers said.

Speaking at The Peterson Institute for International Economics, Summer said that the ability of certain large banks to pay the Treasury back for large infusions of taxpayer money is a "positive and favorable sign."

"It's crucial to recognize that the increased health of financial firms is a positive indicator for the economy," he said.


He's such a shill. I'd love to have some psychoanalytical sessions with this guy. I want to know if he's so self-delusional that he's convinced himself to believe the shit that he says, or if he's aware of his distortions and shilling but things its "right" somehow, or if he is aware and, like a sociopath, simply doesn't care.

really interesting, Junius, I hope Mike chimes in on this one, could get lively...I'm bookmarking this thread...


No ideas how to approach this.

I feel like the astronomer who is continually asked to debunk astrology. Imagine if astrology were assumed to be the truth until and unless astronomers everywhere dropped everything they were doing and spent 24 hours a day refuting the claims of astrologers, the "winner" to be determined by the cheering or jeering of an ignorant mob?

Why is the burden not on those making the absurd and unsupported (and just laughably illogical and fanciful) claims?

The Spin thing is pretty obviously a joke - a commercial hustle - I hope it is obvious to people.

The second thing...


It took humans 10,000 years to learn how to grow most of the crops we now take for granted.

I mean, really. How could anyone take that statement seriously?


Along the way, we despoiled most of the land we worked, often turning verdant, natural ecozones into semi-arid deserts.

There are many places where the same crops are being grown the same way they have since forever, and no reason that can't continue. Where are there these massive tracts of land despoiled by agriculture?


Within that same time frame, we evolved into an urban species, in which 60% of the human population now lives vertically in cities.

We "evolved?" Please.


This means that, for the majority, we humans are protected against the elements, yet we subject our food-bearing plants to the rigors of the great outdoors and can do no more than hope for a good weather year.

Good grief. We could buy the plants overcoats and galoshes maybe. Plants living in the outdoors! OMG! What is to be done?


Massive floods, protracted droughts, class 4-5 hurricanes, and severe monsoons take their toll each year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops.

I don't know Mary. How am I supposed to take this seriously? First, all of the value in a crop is the harvesting and shipping and packing and storing. No "valuable crops are destroyed" on the farm by natural disasters. Absurd.

OK now I hope everyone is just rolling on the floor laughing when they read the next statement -

"Don't our harvestable plants deserve the same level of comfort and protection that we now enjoy?"


The time is at hand for us to learn how to safely grow our food inside environmentally controlled multistory buildings within urban centers. If we do not, then in just another 50 years, the next 3 billion people will surely go hungry, and the world will become a much more unpleasant place in which to live.

People are already going hungry, you fucking assholes. It is a political issue, not something that can be solved by the latest fad, the latest trendy techno-wizardry.

A serious issue is being trivialized and de-politicized by this sort of outrageous bullshit, and I think that discussing it and answering it at all gives it some sort of legitimacy that it does not deserve. Giving this stuff legitimacy is wrong and dangerous in so many ways.

Doesn't it all smack of some late night TV infomercial for people? Fuck, I don't know maybe the Ronco Ginseng knives are better that what "is available in stores" or then "conventional knives" and maybe "they" are keeping all of the good stuff from us, and without Ron Popeil making us aware of "amazing breakthroughs that make everything we thought we knew obsolete" we would just all be puppets with no control over our own lives.

Maybe I should get with the program and start my own sustainable farming green organic home business, so that I can realize amazing profits and save the planet and feed the world at the same time.

People are already going hungry, you fucking assholes. It is a political issue, not something that can be solved by the latest fad, the latest trendy techno-wizardry.

A serious issue is being trivialized and de-politicized by this sort of outrageous bullshit, and I think that discussing it and answering it at all gives it some sort of legitimacy that it does not deserve. Giving this stuff legitimacy is wrong and dangerous in so many ways.



It makes you want to scream, doesn't it? Not just on this issue, but EVERY issue. I get why some of the best choose to shut off their brains..whats the alternative? Scream for 50 more years? We're fucking nowhere Mike, and we're here on the goddamn internet arguing with shit-for-brains who'd piss down our throats and jackoff over our corpse if they could because we offend their delicate sensibilities.

I "see" what we're doing and why, but its like life doesn't fucking suck enough, that this has to suck balls on top of it. I don't "get" any of the fucks at PI -- I knew they're were gonna cuss me out virtually before I opened my mouth. And you can be damn sure they'd cuss you out in the blink of an eye if you really told them what you think and didn't couch it in pleasantries. What did they think they were signing up for when they decided to talk politics on the internet?

It burns like hell, and we're in the fucking wilderness. Start from scratch.

Fuck..fuck..fuck..fuck.fuck..fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

No, no Kid it is a good thing. A little miserable now, yes.

Just keep doing what you are doing. You are on fire. No one has ever been able to drive people out into the open the way you are right now, and that helps everyone get clarity. Just remember, they are the few and they have been blocking the many from participating.

I agree with Mike, Kid.

Keep doing what you're doing. You're clearcutting the (ahem) liberal left progressive forest.

Do you know, there's no way I could even hope to refer most of the people I know to the online political forums without them exclaiming a giant "WTF" and telling me to get stuffed?

You keep lighting firecrackers and as the smoke clears maybe we'll see that we're getting somewhere.

Uh-oh, there's no "hug" smiley here.

http://commontragedies.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/polar-bear-funny-dog-death-hug.jpg

The Spin thing is pretty obviously a joke - a commercial hustle - I hope it is obvious to people.

The second thing...


It took humans 10,000 years to learn how to grow most of the crops we now take for granted.

I mean, really. How could anyone take that statement seriously?


Along the way, we despoiled most of the land we worked, often turning verdant, natural ecozones into semi-arid deserts.

There are many places where the same crops are being grown the same way they have since forever, and no reason that can't continue. Where are there these massive tracts of land despoiled by agriculture?


Within that same time frame, we evolved into an urban species, in which 60% of the human population now lives vertically in cities.

We "evolved?" Please.


This means that, for the majority, we humans are protected against the elements, yet we subject our food-bearing plants to the rigors of the great outdoors and can do no more than hope for a good weather year.

Good grief. We could buy the plants overcoats and galoshes maybe. Plants living in the outdoors! OMG! What is to be done?


Massive floods, protracted droughts, class 4-5 hurricanes, and severe monsoons take their toll each year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops.

I don't know Mary. How am I supposed to take this seriously? First, all of the value in a crop is the harvesting and shipping and packing and storing. No "valuable crops are destroyed" on the farm by natural disasters. Absurd.

OK now I hope everyone is just rolling on the floor laughing when they read the next statement -

"Don't our harvestable plants deserve the same level of comfort and protection that we now enjoy?"


The time is at hand for us to learn how to safely grow our food inside environmentally controlled multistory buildings within urban centers. If we do not, then in just another 50 years, the next 3 billion people will surely go hungry, and the world will become a much more unpleasant place in which to live.

People are already going hungry, you fucking assholes. It is a political issue, not something that can be solved by the latest fad, the latest trendy techno-wizardry.

A serious issue is being trivialized and de-politicized by this sort of outrageous bullshit, and I think that discussing it and answering it at all gives it some sort of legitimacy that it does not deserve. Giving this stuff legitimacy is wrong and dangerous in so many ways.

Doesn't it all smack of some late night TV infomercial for people? Fuck, I don't know maybe the Ronco Ginseng knives are better that what "is available in stores" or then "conventional knives" and maybe "they" are keeping all of the good stuff from us, and without Ron Popeil making us aware of "amazing breakthroughs that make everything we thought we knew obsolete" we would just all be puppets with no control over our own lives.

Maybe I should get with the program and start my own sustainable farming green organic home business, so that I can realize amazing profits and save the planet and feed the world at the same time.



Hey Mike, I didn't post this, I just thought you might have something to say, you should be addressing Junius here! More "food" for thought at the Monthly Review, the whole issue this month is on this stuff.

Don't assume I agree with all there eithe! Peace :) Mary

really interesting, Junius, I hope Mike chimes in on this one, could get lively...I'm bookmarking this thread...


No ideas how to approach this.

I feel like the astronomer who is continually asked to debunk astrology. Imagine if astrology were assumed to be the truth until and unless astronomers everywhere dropped everything they were doing and spent 24 hours a day refuting the claims of astrologers, the "winner" to be determined by the cheering or jeering of an ignorant mob?

Why is the burden not on those making the absurd and unsupported (and just laughably illogical and fanciful) claims?


Just thought of you when I saw this, I say "interesting" when I'm pondering...

I agree with Mike, Kid.

Keep doing what you're doing. You're clearcutting the (ahem) liberal left progressive forest.

Do you know, there's no way I could even hope to refer most of the people I know to the online political forums without them exclaiming a giant "WTF" and telling me to get stuffed?

You keep lighting firecrackers and as the smoke clears maybe we'll see that we're getting somewhere.

Uh-oh, there's no "hug" smiley here.

http://commontragedies.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/polar-bear-funny-dog-death-hug.jpg


Ditto

That piece reminded me of "Bucky' Fuller in a way, technical solutions for what are actually political problems. His answer to the trashing of the planet was to move into space. What an asshole.

I agree with Mike, Kid.

Keep doing what you're doing. You're clearcutting the (ahem) liberal left progressive forest.

Do you know, there's no way I could even hope to refer most of the people I know to the online political forums without them exclaiming a giant "WTF" and telling me to get stuffed?

You keep lighting firecrackers and as the smoke clears maybe we'll see that we're getting somewhere.

Uh-oh, there's no "hug" smiley here.




I'm thinkin' that there's no way you could hope to refer most of the people you know to hug-smileys - or smileys of any kind - without them exclaiming a giant "WTF" and telling you to get stuffed.

http://www.txroadrunners.com/images/pics/Funny6/Garden_Grown_Smileys.jpg