Eulogy for Occupy?

Wired magazine has published an article that I think all Occupy supporters would benefit from reading:

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/12/a-eulogy-for-occupy/

Please post your comments on the subject below - especially if you have an idea as to how the Occupy movement should proceed.

Of course we can and should keep meeting, discussing political developments, books, videos and so on. But what is it the Occupy movement should do to avoid deserving this eulogy? Is there an Occupy Phase II, or will the next steps toward changing society from the bottom up go by another name?

"Right-to-work" Michigan

So the Michigan state legislature has passed, and the governor will sign, a "right-to-work" law. If there was ever a doubt about class war happening in Michigan, and who is willing to fight it, this action should should bury that doubt. The questions are, what should we do about it, and what can we do about it?

The only strength that unions have ever had is the willingness of their members to strike and the ability of leaders elected or unelected to organize community and political support for the objects of strikes. All the contracts, grievance procedures, guarantees of job security, cost-of-living adjustments, benefits and so on are based on the ability to strike when needed. If unions have lost this ability, the loss of everything else unions have accomplished follows.

If unions in Michigan - all of them, union members and staff alike - are willing to strike until the law is nullified, this battle will be won, and quickly. If they are not, then the "right to work" laws will stick, and unions will disintegrate. Protesting, lobbying and writing letters to the editor are not adequate. Planning to elect a different set of state legislators in 2014 is, in the immediate case, pie in the sky. By the time we get to the 2014 elections, after two years of "right-to-work," unions will be far weaker than they are today.

In short, I'm in favor of a general strike over this issue. If the unions of Michigan are not capable of calling a general strike over this issue, then we are stuck with a "right-to-work"  law and all of its consequences for some years.

That's my prediction. We'll see how it works out. Comments?

Art Myatt

Minutes of 11-17-2012 meeting

Here are the details of a few upcoming local events that were discussed at the November 17 meeting of Occupy Royal Oak. People at the meeting generally had the attitude of, "OK, the election's over and not much has changed. Now what?"

It's obvious that all the issues of inequality, corporate control of government, global warming and a declining economy that we had before the election weren't even addressed in the election, much less resolved. We're going to have to do something outside the electoral process to address them. We don't know what, just yet.

We've heard some rumors of a strike by Wal-mart workers over Thanksgiving weekend. Specifically, it will be over Wal-mart cutting the company's already small contribution to health care coverage and the simultaneous announcement that the company is forcing its workers to work on Thanksgiving Day. We don't know whether this will involve a few hundred Wal-mart workers nationwide, or tens of thousands.

In any case, we are not planning on shopping at Wal-mart, but we will be open to joining picket lines if some appear locally. It's impossible to tell if this will be an event or not. Otherwise:

= = =

For the Monday after Thanksgiving:

Monday, November 26, 2012, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Oakland County Executive Office Building Conference Center, 2100 Pontiac Lake Road, Building 41W, Waterford, MI 48328

Landowner Oil and Gas Leasing and Michigan Oil and Gas Industry Educational Meeting

At the May 8, 2012 auction sale of State of Michigan-owned mineral rights, 18,347 acres of state owned mineral rights were committed to leases in Oakland County. The increased interest in leasing mineral rights for oil and natural gas exploration can lead to a significant income opportunity for landowners. What are the environmental impacts of these activities? What is the State doing to safeguard the environment?

MSUE is sponsoring a public meeting for landowners to educate them on the following topics:
•Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality’s Role in Regulating the Michigan Oil and Gas Industry
•Oil and Gas Industry Perspective on Advances in Drilling Technology
•Understanding the Standard Oil and Gas Lease
•Legal Considerations in Oil and Gas Leasing

Registration fee is $10/person. ADVANCED REGISTRATION is highly recommended by Friday, November 23, 2012, but not required. To register, please contact the MSU Extension office at (248) 858-0887 or smithlin@oakgov.com. Specific questions about this meeting can be emailed to Bindu Bhakta at bhaktabi@anr.msu.edu.

Meeting Agenda:

Welcome and Introductions by Curtis Talley Jr., MSUE Farm Management Educator

The Department of Environmental (DEQ) Quality Role in Regulating the Michigan Oil and Gas Industry by Representative, Office of Oil, Gas, and Minerals, Michigan DEQ - Introduction to the Office of Oil, Gas, and Minerals; Michigan oil and gas well construction requirements; Hydraulic fracturing in Michigan - Environmental considerations and regulations

Oil and Gas Industry Perspective on Advances in Drilling Technology by Representative, Michigan Oil and Gas Association - Horizontal and vertical well construction techniques - Environmental safeguards; Can oil and gas production coincide with residential and recreation areas? What is the future for oil and gas production in Michigan?

Understanding the Standard Oil and Gas Lease by Curtis Talley Jr., MSUE Farm Management Educator - What does the language in the lease mean? - What are the long-term implications of the standard lease? - Why should I be concerned about the lease language when I am getting a bonus payment?

Legal Consideration in Oil & Gas Leasing by Larry Elkus, Attorney - Common pitfalls to avoid - Defining how the royalty is paid - Protecting groundwater quality in the lease - What can be negotiated in the lease?

Question and Answer Period 

For more information about this and other upcoming MSU Extension classes and activities, visit:  http://www.oakgov.com/msu/Pages/classes_activities/all_classes.aspx

For additional resources on this topic, visit the MSU Extension Oil and Gas Information web site at:  http://msue.anr.msu.edu/resources/oil_and_gas_development.

[end text of official announcement]

This looks like a meeting designed to get landowners to sign leases. I plan to be there with a leaflet pointing out some of the hazards of fracking. I will not be the only person showing up to oppose fracking.

= = =

The Wednesday after Thanksgiving:

Wednesday, November 28, 2012, 6:45 pm, Huntington Woods Library lower level
26415 Scotia Rd., Huntington Woods - south of 11 Mile Road, west of Woodward Ave.

Sponsored by the Huntington Woods Peace, Citizenship and Education Project
www.hwpeace.org

The Meaning of the November Election; Prospects for Real Change

We are delighted to have two distinguished guests who will discuss their views on what they believe might take place as a result of our last election.  Please join us.

Fran Shor, Professor of History, WSU, author of "Dying Empire U.S. Imperialism Global Resistance" &
Brad Roth, Professor Political Science and Law, WSU, author of "Sovereign Equality and Moral Disagreement"

A discussion will follow. 

= = =

Saturday, December 1, 10:00 - 12:00 am, Occupy Royal Oak meeting
Coffee Beanery, on Woodward (west side) in Berkley, south of 12 Mile Road

= = =

Thursday, Dec. 6th, 6:30-9:00pm
Sierra Club South East MI Group Monthly Program
Birmingham Unitarian Church, 38651 Woodward, Bloomfield Hills
(Just north of Lone Pine Rd; west side of Woodward Ave)

Annual Holiday Potluck Party, Slide Show & Silent Auction 

It’s that time of the year again, folks…time to party with your brother & sister Sierrans as we wind out 2012! There will be the usual feasting so please bring your most festive dish to pass along with those new and/or gently used items for our silent auction.  In addition, those of you willing to do so, please bring 10-15 digital images to share with the group from past adventures near and far. A fun time is guaranteed for all and we even make a little money for the group. Contact Julie Ann Wang (jawang1@comcast.net) for more information.

[end text from official announcement]

Monthly meetings are free and open to the public. You don't have to be a Sierra Club member to attend - though you shouldn't be surprised if someone asks you to join. Attending is one way for you to see if you want to join.

= = =

Friday, Dec, 7, 7-9 pm - Alliance to Halt Fermi 3 public meeting
Dearborn public Library, 16301 Michigan Avenue, Dearborn Mi
(Between Southfield & Greenfield)
Free parking and entrance at rear
suggested donation $5 or more

The Alliance to Halt Fermi 3 is opposed to DTE's expensive, wasteful and deadly decision to build another FERMI nuclear reactor in Monroe, MI. Please join us for a talk with nationally known author and activist, Harvey Wasserman. Harvey is the editor of NukeFree.org, and has been a leading anti-nuclear activist since the early 1970s.

Write info@athf3.org for more information.

= = =

Much later in December, the movie "Promised Land," a story about fracking in rural America, will open in 'select theaters.' From the previews, it's probably a movie we will like. We don't know what theaters in this area are sufficiently select, or when the movie will be more widely distributed. If you hear, let us know.

If you have an article you want published on the Occupy Royal Oak blog (http://occupyro.blogspot.com/), let me know. If you want to comment on any of the posts, please use the comment forms on the blog.

Thanks,

Art Myatt

Crisis Mode - the Fiscal Cliff

Now that the election is over, the "fiscal cliff" is a story we are going to be hearing a lot in the next couple of months. If elections actually served to discuss and decide policy, then we might have been hearing a lot about the fiscal cliff during the campaign season. Of course, we did not. Now, just days after the election, we are being told it is the main crisis the federal government must immediately grapple with. It's both an imaginary crisis and a real one.

It's imaginary because, if the Republicans and Democrats now holding federal office could agree on a federal budget - any budget, with any combination of higher or lower taxes and any level of deficit spending - the fiscal cliff would disappear the way a bad dream disappears when we wake up. The mindless across-the-board spending cuts that nobody seems to want exist only because Democrats and Republicans agreed on them. The "ceiling" on the national debt exists only because they voted to create a ceiling.

The national debt itself is as large as it is only because they agreed that one department of the federal government "owes" over 1/4 of it to a different department of the same government. That is, the "Social Security Trust Fund," which is $2.7 trillion of the national debt, means the Treasury Department "owes" $2.7 trillion to the Social Security Administration. And so it goes with other elements of the national debt.

The national debt was created in the first place only because the power to create new money was by law assigned to a consortium of private banks (the Federal Reserve Banks). If our elected officials actually wanted to start the federal government on a path of reducing the national debt, it is within their power - no constitutional amendments required - to dissolve the Federal Reserve and reclaim the power of creating the nation's money supply. 

If that were to be done, instead of the federal government borrowing money from the banks -  Bernanke's "Quantitative Easing" programs - the banks could borrow money from the federal government, and the banks could pay interest instead of collecting it.

In all these ways, the fiscal cliff is a fiction; an imaginary beast. It's just another form of the con games of high finance.

It's a real crisis only because these people - our elected officials - do not agree and will not agree on a federal budget. They are supposed to be making decisions for the general welfare and other purposes specified in the Constitution. When they proclaim the balanced budget is of primary importance and the needs of ordinary people who depend on services funded by that budget - Social Security, Medicare, environmental protections, civil rights, fair and honest courts and so on - are of secondary importance and can be cut in the name of a balanced budget, they are looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

A telescope does not actually bring you closer to the scene, but it seems as though it does. Properly used, it allows you to see details you otherwise could not. You might be able to identify a person by looking at them with a powerful telescope, when your unaided vision can't even say for sure if you are looking at a man, a woman or a child. The democratic process is supposed to be the telescope we train on government policies, so we can see what effects those policies have, and how they can be changed to improve the general welfare.

In a proper democratic process, everyone has a chance to speak about which policies the government should follow, everyone has a chance to vote on those policies, and everyone has a chance to be elected to implement those policies. Then the elected officials can be held accountable at the next election, when the people judge how well the policies and the elected officials have worked out. That's how democracy is supposed to work.

Of course, it's also possible to use a telescope in reverse. It makes the scene seem smaller and much more distant. If without the telescope you could see somebody gesturing, though you can't tell who it is, in the backwards telescope you can only see something moving. You may not be able to tell if it is a person, a big bird or just a flag flapping in the wind.

Looking through the wrong end of the telescope might be helpful for anyone trying to convince the public that "balancing the budget" is important, and people who need to buy food and fuel and all the other necessities of life are not. Repeating that the "fiscal cliff" is a crisis, politicians and the commercial news media are trying to convince us to look through the wrong end of the telescope with them. They are using democracy for purposes entirely at odds with the general welfare.

The "job creators" have been getting tax break after tax break for decades, with both Republican and Democratic administrations in power. This has somehow neither compelled nor inspired them to create decent jobs.

The new normal for the official unemployment rate is around 8%, and the official figure is that low only through a series of redefinitions of unemployment. There are many more statistics that tell us we have not regained prosperity by relying on "job creators."

Instead, real wages were stagnant for decades, followed by a steep decline starting about 5 years ago. The decline continues, and will get worse with the balanced budget austerity programs that are coming. Most ordinary people do not need to refer to statistics to know this is true, because we have experienced both the decline in real wages and the decline in wealth caused by the crash of the real estate market.

There was a time when increasing home values seemed to signal prosperity for all. That bubble burst a few years ago. Record low mortgage rates have been unable to restore home values to anything like their record highs.

Banks commonly delay foreclosing on homes in default, so they can lie about the value of the mortgages on their books. They also commonly withhold foreclosed homes from the market, so they can lie about the value of those homes. Both sorts of lie make their balance sheets look better than the reality. The strategy has a  name:  "Extend and Pretend."

Individuals considering buying a home estimate how much they can afford for a monthly mortgage payment. That sets the price range for houses they consider. If the record low mortgage rate ticks up, the payment for a given price will go up significantly. The price for every house on the market has to come down correspondingly, or housing sales drop significantly, or both. That means any slight increase from today's record low mortgage rates will lower home values generally. There is no prospect for recovery based on a robust housing market.

There is also no realistic prospect of long-term economic growth restoring the prosperity we might remember from the 1950s and 1960s. All the king's horses and all the king's men have been unable to get the real economy growing again. We seem to be stuck on the business as usual scenario sketched out forty years ago in "Limits to Growth":  depleted resources and a degraded environment causing a declining economy. In particular, it is causing the end of the American Empire, A.K.A "globalism."

Our elected leaders are telling us about the "fiscal cliff" to persuade us to go along with their plans for our austerity. If they can convince us their version of a crisis is real, perhaps we can be persuaded to go along with further erosion of our rights plus further erosion of our incomes, in the name of their definition of "national security."

The declining economy plus austerity means drastic declines in living standards for most of us, while the 1% are insulated from the worst effects and can even get richer by exploiting our increasing poverty. That's the meaning of austerity programs currently being forced on the people of Greece and Spain and elsewhere. One way or another, it seems, we will get an austerity program forced on us, unless we can resist it.

The Occupy movement is one form of resistance. Occupiers will support any other nonviolent form of resistance that promises to be effective. Any ideas?

Art Myatt

Social Security in 2012

Recently, a friend asked me about the chances of the Social Security system going bankrupt. The subject is not that complicated, but it is a political issue, and thus we have to get around a bodyguard of lies to approach the truth.

The system is financed by payroll taxes. It's likely that many people are not entirely aware of how much income the Social Security system has, since the amounts taken out of every employee's paycheck are less than half of what it takes in. The clearest description of how much the system collects comes from the Socisl Security Administration (SSA) website, http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/240/~/2012-social-security-tax-rate-and-maximum-taxable-earnings:

"For 2012, the maximum taxable earnings amount for Social Security (OASDI) taxes is $110,100. There is no limitation on taxable earnings for Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) taxes.

•Employee/Employer

•The Social Security tax rate for employees is 4.2 percent through the end of the year
•The Social Security tax rate for employers is 6.2 percent
•The Medicare tax rate is 1.45 percent for employees and employers

•Self-Employment

•The Social Security tax rate for self-employed is 10.4 percent through the end of the year. The Medicare tax rate is 2.9 percent for self-employed."

[end material from SSA website]

Social Security is not going broke. That's not even a possibility, so long as Social Security payroll taxes are being collected. Of course, if the entire economy crashes and there is no such thing as wages for any kind of job, then Social Security will be bankrupt along with everything and everybody else in a bankrupt society, economy & political system. Short of this catastrophe, Social Security will not go broke. There could be a political decision to end it or drastically reduce benefits, but that's a different question. So long as some people have paying jobs, the SSA can collect some payroll taxes and can pay some level of benefits.

Historically, Social Security has collected more than it paid out. Payroll tax collection began in 1937. The first payouts began in 1940. Since 1937, income to the SSA has generally exceeded its expenses. The surplus has been used to purchase interest-bearing bonds from the United States Treasury. Those treasury bonds are the entire "Social Security Trust Fund."

At the end of 2011, the trust fund contained $2.7 trillion worth of Treasury bonds, an increase of $69 billion from the end of 2010. The bonds are a promise to pay later - both the principal amount and accumulated interest. By the accounting standards of the federal government, this is part of the $16 trillion "national debt."

Nobody counts money stored in a vault to arrive at the $2.7 trillion figure. There is no money in the fund. There is only a series of promises from the federal Treasury. We might say the fund exists only "on paper," to the older generation already retired. We might say it exists only "as a string of ones and zeroes in a computer," to make more sense to several younger generations. In any case, the surplus for each year was actually spent by the federal government on whatever programs other than Social Security the government was paying for - war, highways, agricultural subsidies, whatever.

According to the most recent SSA study, the fund will continue to grow (on paper, or in their computer files) until 2021. In 2012, the fund will pay out only a fraction of the 4.4% interest that is due on the bonds, and the rest of the interest will be added to the fund. Thus the fund will continue growing until 2021, when the payout will finally be greater than the interest income. Still according to the SSA, the fund will be depleted around 2033. Then, payments coming in from payroll taxes will be sufficient to fund only 75% of benefits promised.

We can, for all practical purposes, ignore both the 2033 date and the 2021 date, because both of these dates are derived from a whole set of assumptions about economic growth, inflation, and so on. Just a few years back, the same methods said the fund would be exhausted in the 2040's, not in 2033. Conditions changed, invalidating earlier assumptions. One of the things that changed was a decision to reduce the "employee contribution" rate. Another thing that changed was the rate of employment, from the 2008 financial crisis. The most recent assumptions will also be proven invalid by events and political decisions. 

What we can take away from the SSA's financial report is this:  current Social Security tax collections currently do not quite cover Social Security payments. The Social Security cash cow stopped producing a surplus, and the Treasury actually has to begin, in the tiniest way, to pay off some of that $2.7 trillion "debt." From the point of view of Republican and Democratic managers of the budget, that's a big problem. For well over 60 years, the program produced a surplus. Now it does not. Instead there is a gap between current collections and payments.

That gap could easily be covered, and covered for the foreseeable future, by simply eliminating the "cap" on payroll tax collections. If people earning less than $110,100 per year can afford to pay 10.4% of their income for Social Security, then surely people earning more than that can also afford to pay the exact same percentage.

If the cap were eliminated, it would also be reasonable to eliminate, by the stroke of a pen, the imaginary $2.7 trillion "Trust Fund" and all the bullshit surrounding it. With or without the Trust Fund, current obligations of the Social Security system have to be paid out of current tax revenues, or financed by increasing debt. That's true now, and it has been true all along.

The "Trust Fund" is a fiction created by rules of accounting, because logically American taxpayers can neither borrow money from ourselves or owe it to ourselves. The purpose of this fiction has been an excuse to allow the surplus collected for Social Security to be spent on other priorities. Now that no longer works, so Republicans and Democrats now have a broad bi-partisan agreement that there is a huge problem with Social Security.

We could eliminate this particular fiction (about trillions of dollars we "owe" to ourselves), and by doing so, we would appear to reduce the national debt instantly by almost 17%. That begins to show how much of an illusion the entire national debt is, even though the government does owe some of it to entities outside the United States. The sleights of hand by which the Federal Reserve creates money and the other deceptions involved in the national debt do get complicated, and involve a lot more than the stability of Social Security.

Whether or not the Social Security system will be an effective guarantee against crushing poverty for the retired and the disabled is a purely political decision. Republicans and Democrats make up a lot of stories to justify their plans for our austerity. The "national debt crisis" and the "fiscal cliff" are only two of them. Don't get me going on their idea of "national security," which is security for the rich and powerful, but not so much for the rest of us.

Short of complete catastrophe, the Social Security system can continue indefinitely, and it will if we force our political "leaders" to continue it. If we don't, it will not continue. It's up to them, until it is up to us.

Full disclosure - I'm 68 and retired. My wife and I are living on Social Security payments and savings. It's an everyday reality for me, so I do the best I can to understand it.

Art Myatt

Occupy Royal Oak October Minutes

Time/Date    - 10:00 AM, Saturday , October 20, 2012
Place        - Coffee Beanery, 28557 Woodward Ave., Berkley, MI
Attending    - Art M,  Pat S and  Susie S

The first item for discussion centered on an article entitled “Binders Full of Women, and Two Women Bound” by Amy Goodman of Common Dreams. You can find the complete article at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/18-3. Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein and her running mate, Green Party vice president nominee Cheri Honkala, were shackled to chairs in a nearby New York police facility so that they would not be able to attend the presidential debate at Hofstra University. The debates are very closely controlled by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which EXCLUDES THIRD PARTY CANDIDATES.  

The CPD is a private corporation created by the Republican and Democratic parties, and no third party candidates are permitted to debate, even if, as in the case of the  Green Party this year, the candidates are “on the ballot in 38 states and available as write-ins for the rest.”

A very interesting article  summarizes a recently published book by Seumas Milne, which is entitled “The Revenge of History: the Battle for the 21st Century.” It can be found at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/19/new-world-order

Mr. Milne proposes that recent developments worldwide have signaled the “end of the New World Order.”  He writes that the New World Order, as introduced by George Bush Senior in 1990, is “based on uncontested US military power and western economic dominance.” Of course, many presidents and others have spoken of a New World Order, and meant different things by it, but this is the definition that Milne uses in this article.

Milne sees the US response to 9/11, and the crash of 2008 along with “the crisis of the western-dominated capitalist order it unleashed, [as] speeding up relative US decline.”  The rise of China and the tide of progressive change in Latin America have furthered the demise of the neoliberal agenda, though as Milne acknowledges, “multipolarity brings its own risks of conflict.”

The author writes that “in the aftermath of the crisis of the neoliberal order,  the need to reconstruct a broken economy on a more democratic, egalitarian and rational basis began to dictate the shape of a sustainable alternative.  Both the economic and ecological crisis demanded social ownership, public intervention and a shift of wealth and power. Real life was pushing in the direction of progressive solutions.”


In fact,  Iceland refused to bail out their banks: see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-tpjlHn3F8  


The movie The Promised Land with Matt Damon concerns the practice of fracking and its effects on a community in Pennsylvania, where it has become common (see the movie Gasland).

“The energy industry is worried that it will be presented in a critical light and is preparing possible responses, such as providing film reviewers with scientific studies, distributing leaflets to moviegoers and launching a "truth squad" initiative on Twitter and Facebook, the Journal said.” This quote is taken from the following link:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/energy-industry-targets-upcoming-matt-377022

An excellent website with a comprehensive collection of articles on energy follows:
http://www.energybulletin.net/

Our next meeting is scheduled for Saturday, November 3,  2012 at 10 a.m. at the Coffee Beanery (see address above).

Respectfully submitted,

Susie Schindler

Occupy Royal Oak August Minutes

Time/Date    - 10:00 AM, Saturday August 3, 2012
Place        - Coffee Beanery, 28557 Woodward Ave., Berkley, MI
Attending    - Art M,  Pat S,  Kimmie S. and  Susie S

The MI Emergency Manager Law Referendum will be on the ballot this November.  Proponents of the EM law say it is necessary to rescue struggling communities but critics maintain that it is a power grab by Lansing that crushes the democratic process. A good summary of the powers the EM law has can be found at standup4democracy.com

The Future of Food is a video that will be shown at the Hazel Park Library, on Wed. August 8, from 6  - 8 p.m. The library is located at 123 East Nine Mile Rd. in Hazel Park.  The video is free and open to the public.

The Future of Food looks at the impacts of GE food on our health and on society. We can learn where GE foods are to be found in our supermarkets, something that corporations like Monsanto do not want us to know. You can find more information at: foodandwaterwatch.org

Transition Ferndale meets next on Wed. August 15 at 7 p.m. The meeting is held at the Ferndale Public Library, located at 222 E. Nine Mile Rd. in Ferndale MI. A video entitled We’re Not Broke will be shown, with a discussion following. Admission is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

The movie tells the story of US corporations dodging billions of dollars in income tax, and how seven fed-up Americans take their frustrations to the streets, vowing to make the corporations pay their fair share. Learn more at the website: werenotbrokemovie.com

Occupy the Midwest Conference will take place in  Detroit from August 23-26, 2012. It will be hosted by Occupy Detroit. Most of the Conference will be located in the 5900 Activist Center at 5900 Michigan Ave. in Detroit.

The Conference will be an opportunity for Occupy Movements in the Midwest to network, share information and skills and participate in workshops.

To volunteer or host a workshop, please call Hans at (313) 333-7104. You can also visit the following site: occupythemidwest.org

On July 3, 2012, Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed the voter ID bills that fellow Republicans maintained were necessary to crack down on voter fraud. Critics viewed the laws as a means to disenfranchise minority groups. Snyder said he believed that the bills would have created confusion among absentee voters and in ongoing registration efforts.

Next scheduled meeting for ORO is: Saturday, August 25, 2012.at the Coffee Beanery,
28557 Woodward Ave, Berkley MI from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Susie Schindler

= = =

Time/Date    - 10:00 AM, Saturday August 25, 2012
Place        - Coffee Beanery, 28557 Woodward Ave., Berkley, MI
Attending    - Art M,  Pat S,  Kimmie S., Greg S and  Susie S

Pat brought up the issue of fair elections and had found two excellent articles on voter suppression by Brentin Mock.  The articles are: “How the Right is Building a ‘Poll Watcher’ Network for November” and “Voter Suppression Groups Plot a Million Person Army to Swarm Polls” They may be found on an excellent website called www.colorlines.com Thanks Pat for bringing this to our attention.

We agreed that we would like to see a class or some instruction given, on how to be a poll watcher. The rules on this can be found at: www.Michigan.gov/sos.  In the search line, you can type in: election challenger and poll watcher.  One of the articles you will find is: “ The Appointment, Rights and Duties of Election Challengers and Poll Watchers.”

Art thought that it would be best to first line up a person to instruct us in the necessary protocol, then line up a place for the meeting, perhaps a community center. After getting a date and time, we could get the word out to the public.

Art brought another excellent website to our attention, called www.EnergyBulletin.net . This site is a “clearinghouse for information regarding the peak in global energy supply.” They publish news and research concerning energy production, the implications of peak oil in all areas of our lives, and information on how to help people prepare for peak energy, such as “renewable energy information, alternative financial systems, low energy agriculture, and relocalization.”

On the www.EnergyBulletin.net  homepage, articles are listed by category: Resources, Regions, Authors, etc. Two authors brought to our attention by Art are Gene Logsdon and Kurt Cobb. Logsdon wrote an article on Tire Eating Cornstalks, in which he describes how corn stalks were developed to be strong enough to withstand high winds, but the tough stalks are destroying tractor tires, which ends up being very costly to farmers.

Kurt Cobb has written an article on “How Changing the Definition of Oil Has Deceived Both Policy Makers and the Public.” He shows how government, industry and media sources have been inflating the world oil production figures (!!), by including substances that are not oil and are not interchangeable with oil.

This site contains a wealth of information, from many authors and sources, as well as excellent book and film reviews. Thanks Art, for letting us know about this one!

Art also brought up the Enbridge oil spill, into the Kalamazoo River in MI, in July 2010. Two excellent articles can be found, one at www.huffingtonpost.com , entitled: “Michigan Pipeline Spill: Enbridge’s Neglect, Inaction to Blame, NTSB Finds.”  One quote from this article: “Enbridge didn’t realize the pipeline was gushing oil into  the Kalamazoo River and an enjoining creek for more than 17 hours, when a gas company employee worker pointed it out, and during that time Enbridge control center personnel pumped more oil into the ruptured line, investigators found.”

Another article may be found at www.dailykos.com  and is entitled: “Enbridge Bullies Michigan Residents while More Tar Sands Oil Spills onto Michigan Soil” by Lance Enderle. It was posted VERY RECENTLY, on August 21, 2012.

Pat has been researching the changing nature of the Occupy movement and has found some excellent websites to check out, one is: www.occupycafe.org  (“an open space for global conversation”) and the other is: www.interoccupy.net

The mission of www.occupycafe.org  is to expand the Occupy movement and to support the conversations it has ignited into the wider world. It states that “conversations that matter are one of the highest forms of ACTION.” To that end, it exists to “connect people to people, to share and listen. The more we share and hear our individual and collective needs, wants and visions, the more powerful our initiatives to create real change become.” This website is a rich source of news about Occupy, groups involved and forums that can be  joined to discuss the issues.

www.interoccupy.net  is “an interactive space for activists looking to organize for global and local social change.” IO Newswire gathers and posts information about “local, regional, national, global and project based organizing.” IO Hubs allow anyone to use “a set of organizing tools for coordinating large scale projects easily for greatest impact and reach.”

One item from IO that Pat brought to our attention is called “Stop TPP.” TPP stands for TransPacific Partnership. It is a “Free Trade Agreement that is currently being pushed by the US to 10 nations of the Pacific Rim” which would create a super-treaty that “would jeopardize the sovereignty of the nations involved by giving that power to large corporations like Wal-Mart, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Halliburton, Philip Morris, GE, GM, Apple.”

For more information, check out this site: www.stoptpp.org

Thanks Pat, for letting us know about these excellent websites.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 8,  2012 at 10 a.m. at the Coffee Beanery (see address above).

Respectfully submitted,

Susie Schindler

It's the Stupid Economy

Local, state and national governments should respect and protect our human rights. According to the Declaration of Independence, "... to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men ..."

Human rights are inseparable from democracy. That is, only a democratic government thrives with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and the like. Only a democratic government will encourage and support the individual's exercise of those rights. All men and women are equal only in a society that is democratic from top to bottom.

The preamble to the Constitution says, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That's also a pretty clear definition of the purposes of government.

As I read it, the Blessings of Liberty referred to in the Preamble are about the same as inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. The term that covers both today is human rights.

Speaking of the general welfare:  In part this means providing essential services:  police, fire, courts, roads, public schools, social security, access to health care, protection of the commons from pollution and misuse, and so on. What services are legitimately on this list, in a democratic society, must be determined democratically. So far, all the above mentioned services are on our society's list.

At least since James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid," Democratic and Republican politicians have acted as though guaranteeing growth in the private economy is a principal purpose of government. Sometimes they act as though it is the main function of government. How strange that the authors of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution forgot to mention it.

Economic growth is not the same thing as the general welfare, and it is certainly not the same as human rights. Too often, advocates of growth are willing and eager to trample human rights if exercise of those rights gets in their way.

All the essential functions of government need to carry on whether the private economy is expanding or contracting. It's certainly easier to provide for the general welfare if the private economy is prospering. Facilitating prosperity is generally a good thing, but ensuring growth for the private economy is not the primary function of government.

Our history includes long and short episodes of panic, crisis, depression and recession. During these periods, we the people need services like public schools, unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. During those times, we may well need them more than during periods of prosperity.

That brings us to today (summer 2012), with its issues of jobless "recovery" (AKA supposed "job creators" who have been unable to create jobs over decades of tax breaks), declining real wages, imminent financial defaults throughout the Eurozone and the threat of austerity programs everywhere. There are issues of environmental degradation, both acute and long-term. There are also long-term issues of resource depletion. Together these make it clear we cannot forever use more and more resources, so we cannot always have a growing economy.

It's far from clear where the natural limits to a growing economy are. Unfortunately, we are finding out about some of those limits by overshooting them, with results similar to a car running over a cliff.

Chernobyl and Fukushima are examples of one type of overshoot. There are many others:  the Dead Zone that was the worst feature of the Gulf of Mexico until BP's Macondo oil platform disaster; droughts and fires that can't be denied although their connection to global warming can be denied; and a depressingly long list of smaller and larger disasters.

From the peculiar viewpoint of economists, these disasters can be seen as adding to GDP. For the real economy, they are a dead loss. Corporations may shed workers to improve their profits and their stock prices, while in the real economy, workplaces are closed and jobs disappear. Keep doing this for decades, as the United States has done, and we'll get an economic crisis - which we have had since at least 2008.

Today's economic crisis is not the same as the Great Depression of the 1930's. Today's Greater Depression will not be fixed by the same policies that fixed the first Great Depression.

There are similarities, to be sure. To start the Great Depression, a big financial bubble originating in the stock markets was popped. To start our 21st Century version, a big financial bubble originating in mortgage financing was popped. In both cases, the crisis was used as an excuse to extend corporate control of government and society by those parties - Democrats and Republicans in the United States today; Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany then - who were in favor of corporate control in any case.

There are certainly similarities to the two eras, but there are huge differences as well. Then, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment, in spite of a Dust Bowl caused by a combination of unsustainable farming and drought, was not nearly as degraded as it is today.

Then, the crisis was primarily financial and political. Once the economy of the 1930s was sufficiently stimulated, prosperity returned and lasted for many decades. Now, in spite of a huge stimulus program, the recovery has not brought back prosperity. The mortgage crisis, instead of being resolved by letting bankrupt institutions go bankrupt, has been turned into a sovereign debt crisis that promises a continued recession.

In terms of resources, the world has changed a lot since 1930. Now, the world has roughly three times the population it did at the onset of the Great Depression. Peak oil is driving a frantic search for alternative fuels and an equally frantic search for oil in absurdly inaccessible and difficult regions of the earth. Global warming is bringing both flooding and drought, with more of each to come. Many ocean fish stocks have already collapsed and the ocean is becoming more acidic, meaning recovery is at best unlikely. There are lots of ways in which economic growth has already overshot natural limits.

The short story is, resources needed to grow the economy have largely been used up and are now in short supply. If and when the financial part of today's economic failures is fixed, we still cannot expect a peacefully growing economy. The industrial economy which always wants more is too stupid to work with declining resources. We can expect a declining economy for the foreseeable future.

What we do not want is a government that devalues human rights and disregards democracy in a series of desperate and possibly futile attempts to revive failed and failing economic institutions. Unfortunately, that is exactly what we have now. It is exactly what we are going to get, regardless of whether Obama or Romney is our next president, unless a strong mass movement of opposition can develop.

How can we resist disregard for our rights and dismantling of democracy? Any ideas, Occupiers? Comments are invited.

Art Myatt

The Future for Progressives

yes! magazine published an article by James Gustave Speth entitled "Building the New Economy: Ten Steps We Can Take Now." (No, that's not a typo. The magazine title comes in all lower-case, so in the interests of accuracy, it appears here in lower case.) You can read the article at http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/building-the-new-economy-ten-steps-we-can-take-now

With Speth's step 1, I have no argument. Our current political economy is indeed failing us socially, economically, environmentally, and politically. Speth's step 2 (progressive fusion) does not follow from step 1. There's an assumption that a set of progressive policies would correct the failure. If these policies would correct the failure, then progressive fusion makes a great deal of sense. If they would not, then progressive fusion is irrelevant, and so are steps 3-10.

What is lacking between step 1 and step 2 is an analysis of why the system is failing. Step 1 says only that the system of political economy needs to change. If we are all "progressives," then saying it needs to change in the direction of becoming more progressive is an idea we might like to believe. That does not make it right, or even close to right.

Let's step back and be explicit about what it means to be a progressive. The movement originated about a century ago. The Center for American Progress (CAP) says it "is known primarily for two major developments in American politics:

"One, political reforms crafted to break up the power of privileged interests, such as expanded suffrage, direct primaries, direct election of senators, and the initiative and referendum process

"Two, economic reforms structured to counterbalance the excessive power of business and to fight inequality measures such as the graduated income and inheritance taxes, the right to organize and other labor protections, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, old age and disability provisions, food and drug safety laws, and conservation measures"

[end quote from CAP]

These reforms were largely implemented by the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In combination with the outcome of WW II, they were successful in ending the Great Depression and initiating a period of prosperity that lasted for a number of decades.

One could argue that the oil shocks of the 1970s marked the beginnings of the failure of progressive policies. We might believe the financial crisis that interrupted the 2008 Presidential campaigns was the decisive turning point. We might look at the "free trade" mania of the 1990 that resulted in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and other implementation of "globalization" as critical mistakes.

Regardless of when we identify the beginnings of American economic and political decline, the first impulse of today's progressives is to think, "This is just like the Great Depression. We should fix it the same way we fixed the Great Depression."

That's just wrong. It's a natural thought, but it is wrong. Today's economic crisis is not the same as the Great Depression of the 1930's. This is the Greater Depression. This will last longer and be more severe than the last Great Depression, and it cannot be solved in the same way.

There are similarities, to be sure. To start the Great Depression, a big financial bubble originating in the stock markets was popped. To start our 21st Century version, a big financial bubble originating in mortgage financing was popped. In both cases, the crisis was used as an excuse to extend corporate control of government and society by those parties - Democrats and Republicans in the United States today; Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany then - who were in favor of corporate control in any case.

The similarities are overwhelmed by huge differences. In the 1930s, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment, in spite of the Dust Bowl caused by a combination of unsustainable farming and drought, was not nearly as degraded as it is today.

Then, the crisis was primarily financial and political. Once the economy of the 1930s was sufficiently stimulated, prosperity returned and lasted for many decades.

Now, in spite of a huge stimulus program, prosperity has not returned. Median real wages have continued declining. The mortgage crisis, instead of being resolved by letting bankrupt institutions go bankrupt, has been turned into a sovereign debt crisis. European countries are the first to admit contracting economies, but they won't be the last.

In terms of resources, the world has changed a lot since 1930. Now, the world has roughly three times the population it did at the onset of the Great Depression. Even if natural resources were not themselves depleted, this means that we now would have 1/3 of the resources per capita. In fact, we have much less than 1/3 of the resources per capita.

Peak oil is driving a frantic search for alternative fuels and for oil in absurdly inaccessible and difficult regions of the earth. Global warming is bringing both more flooding and more drought, with even more to come. Most ocean fish stocks have already collapsed and the ocean is becoming more acidic, meaning recovery is at best unlikely. There are lots of ways in which economic growth since the Great Depression has overshot natural limits.

The short story is, the resources needed to grow the economy have largely been used up and are now in short supply. Then, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment then was not threatened by the accumulation of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere driving both global warming and ocean acidification. It was not threatened by fallout from Chernobyl and Fukushima and all the potential meltdowns we still might experience. If and when the financial part of today's economic failures is fixed, we still cannot expect a peacefully growing economy.

Progressive solutions have been tried. They worked, to allow an expanding global economy to benefit both ordinary people as well as corporations. They won't work again, because the real economy is not capable of continued growth. For the foreseeable future, we are going to have a contracting global economy and, with the winding down of the American Empire, an American economy that contracts more rapidly than others.

It should be clear that corporations are now mostly opposed to the welfare of the general population. Wal-Mart has displaced local businesses (both retail and manufacturing) by promoting cheap labor in manufacturing overseas and less than living wages for the ordinary workers in its outlets. So many corporations have restored profits by laying off workers and closing plants that it is an accepted management strategy, and has been for decades in the former industrial heartland of America. It's commonplace to note that banks got bailed out while the rest of us did not, and the rest of us are supposed to pay for the bailout.

If we want to have a society that operates on principles of democracy, social justice and protecting the natural environment, we're going to have to figure out how we can do this in a contracting economy, and without making the false promise that our policies can restore the old kind of economic growth, or any economic growth at all.

We need to use democratic means to advance our values under conditions of economic contraction. To do that, we either have to break the corporate control of politics or hope for the self-destruction of that corporate control; or both. We need to overcome the military response to protest and dissent. We need to create an economy that works within boundaries set by the natural environment. That does not mean unlimited energy for everyone, or even comfort for everyone, but we need the large majority of the population to support long-term sustainability.

If and when we have worked all that out, I'm pretty sure we'll be so different from the progressives of 1890-1920 that we will no more be progressives than we will be abolitionists or suffragists or environmentalists. Whatever we will call ourselves, we will be living in a much warmer world with limited resources, diminished population and much less per capita energy consumption than we are now used to. I doubt we'll want to call it progress, though I hope it will be better than the numerous dystopias imagined in "Mad Max," "The Hunger Games" and so on.

Progressive fusion is a dead end. The progressive approach of the last century is no match for the issues of this century. We need realistic ways of responding to the issues of today. To repeat the main point:  These issues will not be solved by a resumption of economic growth, because the global economy has already grown past its natural limits.

Art Myatt

Occupy the Midwest

August 23rd to 26th, 2012

The Occupy the Midwest Conference will be taking place in Detroit, Michigan, hosted by Occupy Detroit.  Occupiers from around the Midwest will be meeting in Detroit for organizational meetings aimed at connecting Occupy movements for collaboration, networking, skill sharing, workshops, fellowship and entertainment. The majority of the gathering will be held in the 5900 Activist Center at 5900 Michigan Ave, with camping available on its adjacent open field on the lot next door. If you are interested in volunteering or hosting a workshop, call Hans at 313-333-7104 or visit www.occupythemidwest.org to submit a workshop/volunteer form.

LET'S BAN FRACKING IN MICHIGAN!

I hope everyone in Occupy Royal Oak will at least sign the petition to ban fracking in Michigan. Better yet, circulate the petition and get dozens or hundreds of signatures. The intent of this petition is to make banning fracking a ballot issue for the November general election. You can find details at http://www.letsbanfracking.org/. You can also find a coordinator for other regions of the state on the "volunteer" page of the website.

I believe getting the 300,000+ signatures required to put it on the ballot by July 9 is a long shot, but I think the effort will be worthwhile even if the numbers fall short. Gathering signatures is at a minimum a great way to talk to people about the issue and possibly get them more involved. And who knows - we may manage to put the issue on the ballot. If we do, I believe we can ban fracking here, just like they did in Vermont.

I'm a local coordinator for the petition drive. If you are willing to circulate the petition and live anywhere near Royal Oak, I'll be happy to get petitions to you. E-mail me (almyatt@yahoo.com), or call my cell (248-224-0623) or land line (248-548-6175). If you live closer to another coordinator, contact them.

Thanks,

Art Myatt

Take a Nap, or Have an Energy Bar

My apologies in advance for the length of this post. Articles that are short and to the point are preferable. Unfortunately, I'm just not a good enough writer to do this in a few hundred words. The subject is both complicated and important. I hope you'll find it worth reading through to the end.

Tom Weisskopf recently gave a presentation to Occupy Detroit on the subject of "THE SOURCES OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE." You can read the outline at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/tomweisskopf/files/detroit_talk.final.pdf. His comparison of today's Great Recession to the Great Depression of the 1930's is good, but he ignores the ways in which this economic crisis is fundamentally different. This is not the Great Depression 2.0.

There's nothing wrong with the policies that Weisskopf recommends. That is, they are not bad policies. However, while they brought prosperity after the Great Depression, they are not adequate for the purpose now. The resources to support another such conventional expansion of the economy no longer exist. Many of those resources have been burnt up, paved over, fished out, mined out, made extinct or turned into either literal desert or subdivisions, which some see as another type of desert.

In a very short term, these policies can produce growth and jobs. They will not again produce decades of prosperity. The foundations for that sort of prosperity are gone. Our industrial economy is dangerously dependent on sources of energy which are not reliable. Reviving or even simply continuing this energy-intensive economy increases problems of environmental degradation which are already making wilderness extinct and otherwise setting us up for crisis after crisis - floods, drought, famine and ultimately collapse. We will have to work out our own path through today's conditions, even if those conditions dictate abandoning the path of restoring economic growth.

The difference between then and now is in the environment in which the economy operates. At the time of the Great Depression, there were a little over 2 billion people on earth. The economy had plenty of room to grow in a conventional sense - simply, making and consuming more of everything. Today, there are a little over 7 billion people living on food from the same amount of arable land - or less once we subtract the acreage that has been paved over, flooded, or turned into desert.

Food that feeds the 7 billion now depends on fertilizers made from fossil fuel, processing and distribution powered by fossil fuel, and frequently irrigation driven by fossil fuel. The approximate result is that we burn 10 calories worth of fossil fuel to produce every calorie of food. That's wildly different from the food system in place during the Great Depression.

To see how different it is, look at these figures, taken from http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm:

1930
Total population: 122,775,046; farm population: 30,455,350; farmers 21% of labor force; Number of farms: 6,295,000; average acres: 157; irrigated acres: 14,633,252

Today, from the World Factbook:

Total population:  313,847,465 (July 2012 est.); labor force by occupation: farming, forestry, and fishing: 0.7%;

and from the Department of Agriculture:

There are ~ 2.1 million farms in the U.S. In 1997, the largest 46,000 accounted for 50% of sales of agricultural products. In 1997 there were about 55 million irrigated crop acres in the U.S.

In 1972, "The Limits to Growth" (LTG) showed that depletion of resources would cause the global economy to grow more slowly, then to stop growing altogether, and thereafter to decline. Most conventional economists imagine that the ideas of LTG have been refuted. Forty years later, the real world economy is tracking fairly closely with the LTG "business as usual" scenario, and we are forty years closer to the predicted decline. Perhaps reality is refuting the conventional idea that economic growth is always possible.

With the advent of peak oil, reality certainly is refuting the cornucopians of conventional economics. While economists were arguing that peak oil could not possibly be true, global production of conventional oil peaked in 2006, and has been declining since.

Peak oil is not about running out of oil. It never was about that. Peak oil is not about whether expensive substitutes can be produced from bitumen (tar sands), biomass (mostly corn  ethanol) or kerogen (oil shale). Of course, substitutes can be produced. But why would we need substitutes, except that conventional oil wells are depleting? Peak oil is about the peak production of conventional oil, and that peak happened in 2006 - which has a lot to do with the stubbornly high price for oil in the last decade.

Peak oil does not mean permanently rising oil prices, nor even permanently high oil prices. Prices are set by a dynamic between supply and demand. There is some price so high it will destroy the fossil fuel economy entirely. As that price is approached, instead of demand continuing regardless, some demand is destroyed, and the price of oil drops. In 2007 and 2008, neither the breaking bubble in real estate not the high price of oil was entirely responsible for the onset of the Great Recession. The oil and real estate markets are linked, and they worked together to cause the crisis.

There is also some price for oil so low that producers can't make money pumping oil out of the ground. That low price has not been reached yet, but with a further economic collapse of great severity, it could be.

Increasing depletion of resources - oil and many other resources as well - explains a declining global economy much better than purely economic observations such as increasing inequality and concentration of power. It is an explanation that conventional economists just do not see. If they could see it, then they could see a situation that can't be changed by adjusting taxes, interest rates and income distributions.

In short, conventional economists - Greenspan, Bernanke and the like in America and Europe - led us straight into today's economic crisis, denying every step of the way that such a crisis was to be expected. They, along with conventional politicians who rely on them for advice, have evidenced no ability to lead us out of the crisis. Neither major political party has a coherent reason for why the crisis occurred, or why it has not been fixed. They do have a mass of contradictory ideas, amounting to shifting the blame away from themselves even when they were the people in charge at the time.

Our ideas on the subject have to be better than those of conventional economists and partisan politicians, or we also will fail to understand the crisis. We will fail to see how the policies that led to it cannot fix it.

Herman Daily has published an excellent introduction to fundamental reasons for the failure of economists and political leaders. In http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-05-07/what-limiting-factor, Daly begins:

"In yesteryear’s empty world capital was the limiting factor in economic growth. But we now live in a full world.

Consider: What limits the annual fish catch — fishing boats (capital) or remaining fish in the sea (natural resources)? Clearly the latter. What limits barrels of crude oil extracted — drilling rigs and pumps (capital), or remaining accessible deposits of petroleum — or capacity of the atmosphere to absorb the CO2 from burning petroleum (both natural resources)? What limits production of cut timber — number of chain saws and lumber mills, or standing forests and their rate of growth? What limits irrigated agriculture — pumps and sprinklers, or aquifer recharge rates and river flow volumes? That should be enough to at least suggest that we live in a natural resource-constrained world, not a capital-constrained world."

[end excerpt from 'What is the limiting factor?']

Now, it may be that Daly's model of a "steady-state economy" is no more realistic than the conventional economists' model of a perfect "free-market economy." The economy of the real world is both dynamic and imperfect, neither steady nor free. It is subject to history, politics and the inadequate knowledge of managers. None the less, Daly's identification of the basic flaws in how conventional economists think the world should work is clear and accurate. It is the sort of thing we all should know, in order to inoculate ourselves against catching these seriously mistaken ideas, especially during another campaign season.

Daly's article is worth reading seriously, and the subject is one we all should discuss and study. Our political and economic leadership, Democratic and Republican, has been leading us from one failure to another. We need to replace them with people who have a better comprehension of the world and a better ability to provide for the general welfare in order to get a different result.

In today's conditions, a goal of reviving the economy which has already done so much to deplete the earth's resources and to degrade the environment makes no sense. We need instead a goal of creating a sustainable economy.

In the course of creating a sustainable economy, the fossil fuel economy will have to shrink - and fossil fuels supply about 85% of the energy our industrial economy produces and consumes. It follows that 85% of our economy will have to shrink instead of grow.

The financing system of creating debt owned by banks both central and private will have to give way to a more cooperative way of allocating resources both natural and human. The wars for oil and empire which waste so much of our capital and which lay waste to so much of the earth will need to be abandoned in favor of simple defense. Attacking preemptively any person or institution suspected of planning resistance needs to be abandoned on both moral and practical grounds.

Bringing back prosperity through economic growth is not a long-term possibility. It can appear to work in the short term, but that's all it can do. Stimulating economic growth, when economic growth has already done so much to destroy the environment, is the wrong thing to do. It's like prescribing a nap or an energy bar for a kid who is tired, when he needs to be diagnosed with leukemia. He may feel better in an hour or two, but the real problem will not be fixed.

Obama wants us to have an energy bar. Romney would prefer if we just took a nap. Both are treating us like children, and failing to understand or address the real issues. The two-party system does not provide political leadership. It provides an imitation of democracy that is supposed to make us unable to see the systematic failure of our elected leaders to provide for the general welfare.

Conserving resources and learning how to lead simpler and more local lives is possible. Reworking our sprawling cities into walkable neighborhoods where cars are not needed is possible. Reclaiming agricultural land nearly wrecked by continuous applications of fertilizer, insecticide and herbicide is possible. Building a society that values labor and provides work for all is possible.

We can't even begin to work on these possibilities while our efforts are directed toward reviving the old energy-intensive economy. Depletion of resources makes that a path straight toward a cliff. We have to stop heading for the cliff before we can hope to find a way around it.

Art Myatt

THE LOOMING OLIGARCHY

It’s not a new idea.  It actually goes back to our “democratic” beginnings: When the founding fathers created their basic documents; they didn’t consider indentures, women, Native Americans or persons who didn’t own property as worthy of having a voice in the important decisions which affected their lives.  Consequently it took decisions by future legislatures and courts to allow women, former slaves and other disenfranchised people to vote and to get children out of sweat shops.

In the early part of the twentieth century national (and local) governments passed laws and regulations which allowed the industrial and financial barons to control all the important means of production, transportation and distribution.  When that didn’t satisfy their greed, the economic rulers began to manipulate the financial markets and commodity exchanges.  Does “Black Friday” ring a bell?

When we finally began to recover from that, we ran into World War II.  After the pain and sacrifice, for those who didn’t get rich from the “war effort”, pent-up demand, the GI Bill and a growing population created a prosperous middle class.  Of course the 1% took credit for creating all these jobs.

The subsequent military conflicts (Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq) masked the growing control of our courts and legislatures by the military-industrial complex.  But their excesses paled alongside those of the financial wizards (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain), who were creating instruments so toxic; they bought insurance because they knew these instruments were bound to fail. Oh yeah, they sort of forgot to mention that to their buyers.  And that doesn’t count the many Ponzi schemes that the “regulators” were eventually forced to identify as such.   

This weakening of the regulatory oversight began during the Clinton watch.  But the two terms of George W. Bush accelerated its demise, in all areas: Financial, environmental and the ability of profit-making institutions to influence our elected officials.  This influence extends all levels from local governments to the Supreme Court.   You have heard of “Citizens United”.  I mean does anyone actually believe that a group of average citizens got together and petitioned the highest court in the land to allow the Koch brothers (and their ilk) to control our governing bodies.  In case you don’t understand it, that’s what the decision does.  It’s the ultimate expression of the “Golden Rule”: Whoever has the gold, rules.

Collective bargaining?  They’ve started at the local level with municipal employees, through legislation restricting their rights, or emergency manager laws that negate agreements.  And don’t be surprised when A.L.E.C. gets laws enacted which affect all collective bargaining.

And the “Tea Party” lemmings are complicit.  They actually believe that the 1% is going to allow them to partake in their spoils.  You may be allowed to mow their lawns, cook their food, or if you’re tough enough, guard their gated communities. 

Make no mistake, that’s where it’s headed.  When  the 1% controls 100% of this country’s wealth, they’ll hire Black water style protection and fly from point to point, while the rest of us drive on crumbling roads and bridges, drink polluted water and eat tainted food (when we can find any).

Sound far-fetched and apocalyptic? 

The presumptive GOP presidential candidate is a charter-member of that elite 1%, who would form the new oligarchy. Add a House and Supreme Court controlled by the religious right, a filibuster-paralyzed senate and you have a perfect storm.

Remember, all it takes for tyrants to take over, is for good men to do nothing.

Carmen Sarotte

May Day - International Workers Day 2012 at Detroit

To show support from Occupy Royal Oak, Greg, Susie, Pat, Denise, and Kimmie participated in May Day Event at Grand Circus Park, Detroit downtown, on May 1st, 2012. The actual march was not observed, however, a very festive and peaceful get-together (about 100-150 people) welcomed all of us. There were free food (donation based), live music, poem recitation, speeches, signing, etc. All was based on Free-Microphone based presentation, showing Occupy was all about inclusiveness. Hans was coordinating all sound department work. He was doing an excellent job.

In our background, of course, 10-15 the police officers (on foot or horse) were standing by for any action and watching over us. There was about 5 minute long shout back and forth between the police and part of us because the police did not want Occupy to set a tent on the lawn area in the park. Occupy did not put any tests up. We were also told that the police was planning to arrest people if the participants did not leave the site after the permitted time. We did not stay to the end of the event, but I did not hear any arrests were happening. This event was very peaceful, and after all, it was a celebration for all workers and 99%.

Greg presented his tent display idea to the group. He presented very well (proud moment!), and it was accepted as a great tool for those who lived in suburbs to show support to this important movement. We may not be creative like Greg, but we all can come up with new ideas, and I was sure that many people would have been inspired by him. Thank you so much, Greg!

One thing I would like to mention was a Native American Prayer. I believe his name was Yusif, who was a Palestinian refugee to come to US when he was young. He directed us Five Direction Native American Prayer to bless all of us. It was a spiritually purifying and uplifting moment for me.

The diversity is this country’s strength, and INCLUSIVENESS IS OCCUPY. We need to listen before argue, accept before reject, and feel the pain before close eyes. It may take time, but I believe in our good heart will find our way.

It was a cloudy day, May Day, but I see the faint ray of the light coming through when I left Grand Circus Park. It was a wonderful day.

Kimmie Shuck