The invisible hand of the free market = absentee management.

Large segments of the G.O.P. reject climate science and even the theory of evolution, so why expect evidence to matter for the party’s economic views?

Gratitude is the heart's memory.

French Proverb

Tell #SuperCommittee to tackle deficit the right way. Save EPA, cut wasteful farm subsides. Sign @EWGFoodNews ltr: http://bit.ly/nQekgY

Republicans in Congress ran for office on job creation promises. But since taking office, they have been a complete failure

Around the world, more than 200 million women want to prevent pregnancy but lack contraception.

Whether the world population reaches 8 billion or 11 billion in this century depends on the choices we make today.

The world increases by nearly 80 million people each year - the numerical equivalent of adding another U.S. to the world every four years.

Regulations the Human Element to Capitalism

There are realities in the world:

It is Congress that makes the laws. We need to get a better Congress and filibuster proof Senate.

The fox is watching the hen house. You need a cop on the beat.

The elimination of glass stegal caused the financial collapse. Regulators at the Bureau of Land Management were literally partying with the mining/oil industry reps they were supposed to be policing.

Corporations push off downstream waste and expense of polluted rivers, streams, and Bays onto the tax payer and no one calculates the cost of reclamation into the offending parties’ bottom line.

Self regulation does not work in capitalism. Unregulated capitalism consumes itself and its resources as fast as it can.

Capitalism unregulated is just a math model. The faster it achieves a sale, and the more sales it makes -faster- is its mathematical goal. Clear cutting forests, blasting off mountain tops, overfishing all in an attempt to get the most for the least and the quickest to get to market and cash out.

Unregulated capitalism is a short term profit nightmare. Regulations are more than needed. Regulations are the human element to the purely math model of capitalism's supply and demand.

Do you feel me? Think long term and globally on a macro scale that requires sustainability in order to ensure a healthy survival for the entirety of mankind.

Anything less is eventually self destructive....disease unchecked by borders, famine, resource wars, poverty, crime, power struggles the haves versus the have nots..

History will repeat itself until we shake off the single minded "me" thinking of rugged individualism and start thinking we - you know as in We The People...

The worst corporate and civil rights abuses throughout history were enabled by government's/kingdom's failure to enforce law and maintain a level playing field. Which is why we need an uncorrupted cop on the beat?

So how do we un-corrupt government? By taking the money out - its simple remove the middleman and have citizens vote directly on policy by being able to self direct their tax dollars to the programs and departments they wish to support.

Government is just a huge redistribution system of our tax dollars. The powers that be are in the trenches trying to grab/steal whatever they can by coercing the representatives with the promise of or the withholding of campaign contributions. Eliminate campaign contributions - why not? In other words the system has to be cured.

How is government small enough to drown in a bathtub going to sue GE when it puts out a product that gives us cancer? I don't have the means to sue GE- do you? Class action suits - who's paying for them some law firm - even international firms don't have the bucks to go up against GE?

Who was going to reimburse all of our savings, 401k's, IRA's when Wall Street collapsed under the weight of AIG? Should all of those trillions of dollars from Mom and Pop investors, and worker bees just disappear in the collapse?

A multi generational effort of honest savings wiped out by the criminal activity of a few that's why Wall Street got bailed out. Would I have liked to see them all go down those crooks, and arrogant SOB's and stupid greedy single minded people? You bet. Would it have harmed more people and been counter productive - yep.

So its not so simple. What I absolutely abhor is ideology (religion and fanaticism). We have to cull the best ideas from all comers. Wholesale buy-ins to factions, parties, clubs, religions, theorists, schools of thought is another "big" problem. We need practical solutions to apply in a real world....on a problem by problem basis....not theories, and world views.

There is no panacea cure all party, politician, religion, cult, economic theory, school of thought about how things ought to be. There is how things are and what can be done to make them better. Public and private policy combined as well as science, labor, capital and sweat equity are the tools we have. And we need every one of them all in a country that boasts 300+ million people and a world now bulging at 7 Billion residents.

The only savior is practical reality and practical solutions to our everyday problems on a case by case basis that no school of thought, economic theory, party, faction, or religion is ever going to solve all on its own – anything less is a pipe dream.

The new earth arises as more and more people discover that their main purpose in life is to bring the light of consciousness into this world and to use whatever they do as a vehicle for consciousness

Eckhart Tolle

FACT: In the last ten years, the population of the United States has grown by 27 million people.

FACT: There are one million fewer private sector jobs in America today than there were ten years ago.

So much for job creation.

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

~ Aristotle

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

Buddha

Nice work George...

Bush turned Clinton's surplus into a $5 trillion deficit through outrageous tax cuts for the rich, two disastrous wars, and a financial crash that caused the Great Recession.

In 2001, President Clinton handed George Bush a projected 10-year budget surplus over $5 trillion.

Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.

Jean Anouilh

We are at this moment participating in one of the very greatest leaps of the human spirit.

Joseph Campbell

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

Alan Watts

The U.S. House just passed the TRAIN Act – aka “Dirty Air Death Bill” – that will cause more pollution, up to 139,500 premature deaths, and kill jobs. Tell the Senate to block this monstrosity: http://goo.gl/fFbmR

Living well is about good nutrition, decent homes, access to good quality services, stable communities, satisfying employment. Tim Jackson

Fixing the economy is only part of the battle. We also have to confront the convoluted logic of consumerism. The days of spending money we do not have on things we do not need to impress people we do not care about are over. Tim Jackson

Appalachian residents want strong enforcement of clean water protections, and the majority do not approve of mountaintop removal, according to poll results released just a few weeks ago.

This estimate does not include healthcare costs, loss of home values, and the need for water treatment.”

These costs include: increased road expenditures, operating mining-specific health and safety systems, supporting training and research and development for the industry, and various tax-breaks and subsidies.

Recent studies concluded that coal mining costs Kentucky and West Virginia taxpayers more than it brings into the state – a net loss of more than $100 million annually in Kentucky.

"Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for." Bob Marley -(Thanks Jola!)

Dan Burton, the second-ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee slammed Obama and argued that "the green thing is a scam"....But signed seven letters to the DOE seeking green projects for his State Indiana. (????)

Stop. Breathe. Allow yourself the luxury of doing nothing for a moment, or an hour, or even a day. It is in emptiness that inspiration will appear.

Carole Katchen

Mercury is a heavy metal that accumulates in the fish we eat and can negatively impact brain function- and coal-fired power plants are the main source of this toxin.

If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.

Because it is funded by the payroll tax and not the U.S. Treasury, Social Security has not contributed one nickel to our deficit.

When Social Security was developed, 50 percent of seniors lived in poverty. Today, that number is 10 percent -- still too high, but a testament to the success of Social Security.

The truth is that today, according to the Social Security Administration, Social Security has a $2.7 trillion surplus and can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 25 years.

Republicans have spent years demonizing Social Security. Their long-term goal is to end Social Security and convert it into a private account system which will enable Wall Street to make hundreds of billions in profits.

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.

Native American Proverb

Solar now employs more than 100,000 workers domestically, the Solar Foundation census found, a 6.8 percent growth from the same time last year."

Furthermore, prices continued to plummet as completed module prices dropped 12 percent in the second quarter. And the initial findings of another report, from the nonprofit Solar Foundation, concludes that the solar industry added 6,735 U.S. jobs between August 2010 and August 2011 ...

A report from the Solar Energy Industries Association finds that grid-connected photovoltaic installation in the U.S. grew 17 percent from the first to second quarter of 2011 and a whopping 69 percent from the second quarter of 2010.

"There is not a single country that has not increased its GDP quite a lot without increasing pollution quite a lot...." Soumya Dutta,India People's Science Forum.

In 2009, mountaintop removal coal mining had destroyed 352,000 acres and 135 mountains in West Virgina alone

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

Victor Hugo

A group of 44 Senators are holding hostage the nomination of our first consumer financial watchdog - so basically they don't want a consumer watchdog group - pretty much spells it out for you- right?

The political hopefuls "ALL" rail against government while breaking their necks to get a government job, receive a government pay check, and secure a ridiculously lucrative government pension - but yeah government is bad.

"If I cannot paint... There is no reason for me to draw breath." Vincent Van Gogh

“‘I believe that, with color, I can capture a more enduring truth. Something more in the nature of a dream, that has a truth of its own that may be different from what we experience every day." Vincent Van Gogh

The school of life offers some difficult courses, but it is in the difficult class that one learns the most.

~ Corrie ten Boom

The energy doesn’t end at the hands. I want such intensity that it feels like light is streaming from every finger.

~ Bob Fosse

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one."

~ Mother Teresa

Continued industry growth enhances our energy security and diversifies our domestic energy portfolio.

Solar power in the U.S. now exceeds 3,100 megawatts (MW), enough to power more than 630,000 homes.

The U.S. was a net exporter of solar products in 2010 by $2 billion. We were even a net exporter to China.

Since the beginning of 2010, the price of solar panels has dropped by 30%, and costs continue to fall making solar an even more viable choice for residential and business customers.

The U.S. solar industry grew by 69% in the past year, making it one of the fastest growing sectors in the U.S. economy.

The solar industry employs more than 100,000 Americans, more than twice as many as in 2009. They work at more than 5,000 companies, the vast majority being small businesses, in all 50 states.

National Solar Jobs Census 2011 report found:
* 100,237 jobs as of August 2011
* 6.8% growth from August 2010 to August 2011
* 6,735 new solar jobs created between August 2010 and August 2011

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate: he who loves finds the door open.

Rabindranath Tagore

The solar company Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last month, which media reports have depicted as the end of solar power...This is like saying there is no future for the internet because Netscape went out of business.

Can an online petition save a house from foreclosure? It did in Seattle. "I'm overjoyed, and thankful to the thousands who took action on Change.org to help me keep my home and business," Vera said. "The success of my campaign shows that homeowners can take power back from banks if we work together."

Dear @BarackObama – the New Deal needs to be #OffTheTable from the Super Congress – RT if you agree http://bit.ly/offthetble

The GOP: Preserving Life (Except the Uninsured)

"Working with the president on a bipartisan jobs-and-deficit-reduction plan makes him look like, well, a good president. And good presidents often get reelected." … Thanks Republicans I can't eat my American flag lapel pin.

Deadwood- Movie Review

Deadwood is an HBO series that came out in 2004 and ran for 36 Episodes. It wasn't enough. I highly recommend this series and even the way it ended wrapped it up nicely. Not like the Riches which just ends abruptly. The problem with Deadwood is that it is so well written and shot with such care and thought that you will plow through 36 1 hour episodes in a day and a half if you are not careful. Band of Brothers had the same impact on me. I couldn't get enough of Deadwood. The characters are dynamic, the plot twists, the scenery is stunning, there are surprises and quiet moments. It's bawdy, its brash, its vulgar, its awesome.

It is an absolute crime that they didn't keep this series going after just three years. It's about the real life mining town of Deadwood South Dakota and the series borrows from history to keep things authentic. But the writing only uses history as a jumping off point. It's sort of a jambalaya of history and creativity. The actors blew me away. Not big name Hollywood, people magazine crap but honest hard working actors laboring at their craft and trying to make a living.

The series is set in the 1870's and charts Deadwood's growth as an outpost gold mining town on Native American territory to a possible future statehood. All of the main characters are based on actual historical figures which makes for compelling writing as they blend actual historical events with well crafted fiction. Newspapers and diaries were consulted to blend the story line and then the writer David Milch applies his craft.

I don't know much about Milch but in a few interviews I was stunned at his depth intelligence, thoughtfulness and heart. And I look forward to exploring his other work.

Deadwood is a raucous affair of dancing girls, raw humanity, virtue mauled by reality and reality usurped by virtue. Real tension is created between the characters. Timothy Olyphant seethes as Seth Bullock the former sheriff and hardware store owner, Ian McShane is as in your face as a character can get, bombastic, brutal, candid, like a howitzer, loud, spitting profanity and action and yet his character isn't all just bombastic.

I had a tough time with the first few episodes the profanity was prolific but the writers either toned it down or I got used to it after a few episodes. Kim Dickens lends an air of femininity to a heavily brutal and victimized cast and Robin Weigert just kills it as Calamity Jane. Powers Booth brings the ice, cold hearted ways to the screen, and Paula Malcomson another actress I had not heard of fills the screen with strength, angst, venom, vigor, honesty and crassness as Trixie.

All in all a great series- get it from Net Flix. If you haven't been to Deadwood you are missing something truly raw, and human. Five outstanding stars!

My music wasn't written by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach or Schubert. It's written by God and me. They go "a one and a two and up." We start on the downbeat. Bam! And that's where we got them.

~ James Brown

The most effective way to strengthen Social Security for the next 75 years is to eliminate the cap on the payroll tax on income above $250,000....

Roughly 26 percent of all clean economy jobs lie in manufacturing establishments, compared to just 9 percent in the broader economy.

The clean economy offers more opportunities and better pay for low- and middle-skilled workers than the national economy as a whole.

Though modest in size, the clean energy and tech industries already employ more workers than the fossil fuel industry; some 2.7 million jobs spread across a diverse group of industries.

Overall, today’s clean economy establishments added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, expanding at an annual rate of 3.4 percent.

Taxpayers will hand out nearly $100 billion in tax breaks and loopholes to oil and gas companies in the coming decades.

Read more: http://ping.fm/wPc6i

Don’t let Congress sweep the #Murdoch scandal under the rug. Take action and demand an investigation: http://bit.ly/rsqpu1

Even with these job losses, the top five companies paid their senior executives a total of nearly $220 million in 2010.

Just in 2010 alone, the top five oil companies (the above four, plus ConocoPhillips) reduced their global workforce by a combined 4,400 employees, while making a combined $73 billion in profits.

'Give me a win?' Mr. Obama said, his voice rising as the crowd started cheering. 'Give me a break. That’s exactly why folks are fed up with Washington.'"

Despite generating $546 billion in profits between 2005 and 2010, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP combined to reduce their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees over that time

The global human population is expected to hit 7 billion by the end of October....

the United States imports 50% to 60% of its oil supply, and with prices averaging at least $80 to $90 per barrel, we’re sending approximately $1 billion every day to foreign oil providers.

These payments constitute the single biggest contribution to the country’s balance-of-payments deficit and so is a major source of the nation’s economic weakness.

oil’s share of the world total energy supply -- dropped to 35% in 2010 and was projected to continue declining to 32% in 2020 and 30% in 2035. In its place, natural gas and renewable sources of energy are expected to assume ever more prominent roles.

Beauty is everywhere, but one may see the beautiful view and the other sees a dirty window. You have the power within you to choose what you see, what you think and what you paint.

~ Leanne Cadden

A recent Brookings Institute report that found the clean-energy economy employs 2.7 million American workers across a diverse group of industries — greater than the number of people employed by the entire fossil-fuel industry —

clean tech has outperformed the national rate of job creation during the recession.

Colorado's wave of gas and oil drilling is resulting in spills at the rate of seven every five days — releasing more than 2 million gallons this year of diesel, oil, drilling wastewater and chemicals that contaminated land and water http://ping.fm/00C2t

every $1 billion of military spending costs anywhere between 3,200 and 11,700 jobs or more when compared to other ways of spending the money.

Dear Oil Industry Fuck Off!

Fantastic news - the oil industry's permit approval for oil rigs in the Gulf is down from pre-Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster levels. It's up from last years approval process, but since its not back to pre-Deepwater disaster levels the oil lobby is crying like stuck pigs to the Department of the Interior.

They of course are claiming they would have a positive impact on jobs if they were left to do business as usual and more people would be put back to work like helicopter pilots and oil rig workers. Keep in mind we are talking about 20 oil permits for drilling. I have a few things to say about all that so lets use the dirty energy sectors own language and talk about "affordable" energy and "multiplier" effects.

When it comes to pollution and its across the board devastation the region, contractors, builders, local fisherman, car dealerships, airlines, deep sea fishing industry, furniture, retail, retirement community, restaurants and motels would be better served by a healthy environment and robust tourism trade versus a few more helicopter pilots.

Sorry dirty energy sector - I know you are going to drag your heels, kicking and screaming into the 21st century but the byproduct of your last century technology and the "multiplier" effects of pollution and cancer have ramifications across the board including hyper inflating health care costs. That order of magnitude washes away the economic benefits of 11 workers per rig, and 2 helicopter pilots. Seriously the spin is overwhelming.

You need to see the handwriting on the wall and stop dragging your heels and get in front of the trend. Just because you are making money for a few people hand over fist doesn't mean what’s good for your old deregulated business model is good for the entire region or country. The iron clad monopoly of cars being only powered by oil is slowly but surely coming to an end as well as the death grip of nuclear, coal and oil for generating electricity.

Cheaper? Cheaper for who? The overall aggregate cost of healthcare and the drain on our economy? The overall aggregate cost of cleaning up your Superfund sites? The overall aggregate cost of storing your nuclear waste? The overall aggregate cost of your yearly tax payer funded subsidies? The status quo maintained is cheaper for who again do tell? Certainly not the tax payers.

To use the dirty energy sectors own language claiming the “administration is practicing its own form of selected industrial sabotage" is also called "governing". That's what governments are supposed to do. Unregulated capitalism destroys all the natural resources in its path, whether its mountains, forests or oceans for a quick buck and passes the damage they cause right back to the tax payer the way the system is set up now.

Well done but the cost is finally too high and your days are numbered. Not because the dirty energy sector or individual businesses are inherently evil but because they are short sighted, and grossly, narrowly, hyper focused on their own interest and bottom line to the exclusion of all else.

They don't see the macro economy as an integrated system and thus overfish, blow mountains to bits, pollute the water, air, and food and claim its not their responsibility - "we are only responsible to our share holders and profit margins" - great way to run a business if you can get away with it - lousy way to "govern" a country.

So while you complain you are not getting your own way anymore and the permit approval is up but not at the old levels - you revel for the umpteenth time you are only concerned about yourself. You don't give a rat’s ass about helicopter pilots or your oil rig workers or no one would have died in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

So guess what genius - your market sector is only one part of the overall economy - you are not going to get special treatment, and your tax subsidies are going to be taken away from you and hopefully directed to the more beneficial macro affordable, clean energy market.

When you don't count the pollution and destruction of your business practices in your bottom line - you are cooking the books. Dirty energy is not cheaper when you add in the resource wars going on in foreign countries, the death of our soldiers, the costs of the wars, the cost of the destruction of the oceans and the death of your employees.

Coal, nuclear and oil are only cheaper when we look the other way and tell Appalachia tough sorry for the contaminated water and cancer, sorry about the dead miners, gulf coast sorry for the gusher and the end of the billion dollar fishing and tourism industry and oopps sorry Japan for the meltdown and catastrophic loss and devastation.

There's no free lunch. We do not operate our separate industries in a vacuum and yes you are responsible for your actions, decisions, and down stream pollution and its affect on our health, quality of life and the impact on the other market sectors.

And yes governments job is to govern the country to the best benefit for ALL, insure a level playing field, and to police those who won't hold themselves responsible or accountable for the destruction and danger of their business models; including but not limited to the pharmaceutical industry, the pesticide industry, the tobacco industry, the agriculture industry, the financial industry, and the defense industry as well as the coal, oil and nuclear industry.

Wake up and straighten your act out. We have zero sympathy for you and your spin is complete and utter bullshit. Hell you don't even share royalties with the States that let you drill off their coasts. What a bunch of shit stains you are and I'm calling you out! Wah, wah we don't get our way anymore Texas cry babies.

The Census Bureau credits Social Security with keeping nearly 14 million seniors out of poverty in 2010.

Earth cannot escape heaven, flee it by going up, or flee it by going down; heaven still invades the earth, energizes it, makes it sacred.

Meister Eckhart

Think on This...
Depend more upon the intuitive forces from within and not harken so much to that of outside influences--but learn to listen to that still small voice from within... Reading 239-1

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth…not going all the way, and not starting.

Buddha

This is a world of action, and not for moping and groaning in.

~ Charles Dickens

Think on This...
Music should be a part of each soul's development.

Reading 2780-3

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Big Coal, Oil and Nuclear Cooking the Books, The Planet and You

When you factor in costs for solar and coal - you have to factor in downstream pollution and waste. Whether anybody likes it or not our world is a closed system what we put into it comes out. We absorb everything back into our bodies. The coal company ceo's like to take their downstream pollution off the books and don't account for it in any way or fashion as if it doesn't exist or that it is somehow someone else's responsibility or problem. How is the mercury in the fish we eat not their responsibility?

The cost of dirty energy, nuclear, coal and oil in wars, terrorism, pollution, cancer, health gets passed onto the tax payer, the health system and the thousands of people who can no longer farm the land or fish and drink the water. There is a real cost associated with the polluting industries. But the dirty energy sector has been enormously efficient of keeping that cost off their books. They are no better than the cigarette companies who somehow aren't responsible for the lung cancer their product causes. By passing their responsibility and cost of their waste and pollution and cancer back onto the macro-economic system at large - that's the rest of us both in the public and private sector – they are in affect cooking their books.

When you factor all of the real macro costs in solar energy is by far cheaper, more sustainable, healthy and peaceful. What kind of world do YOU think we should live in?

When they give you the "cheaper" argument in promoting last centuries technology versus the new emerging technologies ask them - cheaper for who?

If there's a book you want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

~ Toni Morrison

The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.

~ Anonymous

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Cicero

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing

Marc Chagall

Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored.

~ Alice Walker

Tell @Oprah: Stop your network from promoting tar sands lies in the name of women's rights! http://bit.ly/qkjJ2I #tarsands

We keep handing our money over to the rich, in the vain hope that they will give some of it back. That hasn't worked, and it won't work. - Alan Grayson

In the past ten years, we have crammed trillions of dollars into the pockets of Big Business, through bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies, no-bid government contracts, grants, cheap mining and drilling licenses, etc., etc. Do you know how many jobs in America the private sector has created during that time? Zero.

Actually, less than zero. There are around one million fewer private sector jobs today than there were ten years ago.

Obama chooses polluter cash over American lives. Tell @barackobama to reverse his decision now! @whitehouse

"As for my advice to kids today, they are worried too much about what kind of guitar they have. I tell them, as long as it got the strings on it, play it. The guitar does not play itself. You got to play it. But the most important thing is you have to treat people right, to get treated right.” -Willie "Sonny Boy" King

The U.S. had dropped to the fifth most competitive country in the world and now ranks behind Switzerland, Singapore, Sweden and Finland, in that order - lousy socialists!

It's time we ban political campaign ads from television, billboards and radio - that'll fix em!

Some estimates are that candidates and issue groups will spend as much as $5 billion to $7 billion in this election cycle, with direct mail firms, ad buyers, pollsters, producers and media companies pocketing a huge share of that dough

By the end of his term, 138 Reagan administra­tion officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigat­ions for official misconduct and/or criminal violations­

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

Buddha

Do your practice and all is coming.

Sri K. Pattabhi Jois

CREDO staff and activists arrested at White House protesting Keystone XL pipeline. Story and photos: http://bit.ly/oyBTvA

Take big oil subsidies for #hurricaneirene relief. I just signed. RT @roots_action http://bit.ly/qUNTGN

It also said that between $10 billion and $19 billion of what contractors billed and received was fraudulent. In fact, $360 million of our tax dollars went straight to . . . the Taliban.

The Commission on Wartime Contracting reported yesterday that between $31 billion and $62 billion of the tax money spent on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan has been wasted.