Pat Sarotte has a couple of concerns people in the Occupy movement should be aware of:
1. An article in Common Dreams delves into the motives behind the historic Irish Famine and the current global social deprivation plans of the New World Order, same as the Old New World Order. That article totally destroyed my good mood on this beautiful pre-spring day. Those of us who either Irish by birth or Irish only in celebration of St. Patrick need to respond and spread the word.
See the original article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/15-4
2. FYI to those of us who have reached advanced years and the rest of us who have plans to age eventually: AARP, advertising themselves es a senior citizens lobby, "will soon be holding a private, principals-only 'salon-style conversation' with a host of advocates of entitlement cuts."
Online objections plus massive public protests are in order to alert the public.
See the article at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/17/social-security-advocates-aarp_n_1355477.html
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Leafleting Downtown Royal Oak
We had a dozen people handing out leaflets in Royal Oak today. All four corners at 4th and main were covered, and one person spent considerable time on Washington, two blocks over. We had the full-page leaflet and the simpler 1/4 sheet handout, in two colors on white paper or B & W on yellow card stock, to pass out. Something over 500 of all types were distributed. Most people were either very mildly interested or politely disinterested. Some were very receptive. A few were sort of hostile to the whole idea, in a smug "I'm part of the 1%" sort of way.
Some people left early, with other things to do. Some showed up late, because that's just the way we do things. Most of us were dressed a little to heavily for the perfect, sunny weather. Those who were there at the end of our tour decided on the nearby National Coney Island for a very pleasant lunch.
My sense is that the effort was as successful as could be expected. In an election campaign, it's a rule of thumb that a given voter needs to see a candidate's name roughly seven times before they begin to think "this is a real candidate" for whom they might vote. I think something similar is at work here.
A random person in the street has probably heard of the Occupy movement, but they've never heard of Occupy in Royal Oak because, before today's two-hour leafleting, there's never been any noticeable public activity in Royal Oak. There are a few yard signs, and there have been meetings in the Coffee Beanery, but those are not noticeable like a bunch of people handing out leaflets. We are going to need a persistent public presence before people in general take us seriously.
The literature we handed out included several Occupy web sites. The ORO calendar (click on the link at the top right of occupyro.blogspot.com) has been updated with information on the next meetings for Occupy Metro Detroit and Occupy Royal Oak. We'll see if anyone who got a leaflet on St. Patrick's Day shows up.
Art Myatt
Some people left early, with other things to do. Some showed up late, because that's just the way we do things. Most of us were dressed a little to heavily for the perfect, sunny weather. Those who were there at the end of our tour decided on the nearby National Coney Island for a very pleasant lunch.
My sense is that the effort was as successful as could be expected. In an election campaign, it's a rule of thumb that a given voter needs to see a candidate's name roughly seven times before they begin to think "this is a real candidate" for whom they might vote. I think something similar is at work here.
A random person in the street has probably heard of the Occupy movement, but they've never heard of Occupy in Royal Oak because, before today's two-hour leafleting, there's never been any noticeable public activity in Royal Oak. There are a few yard signs, and there have been meetings in the Coffee Beanery, but those are not noticeable like a bunch of people handing out leaflets. We are going to need a persistent public presence before people in general take us seriously.
The literature we handed out included several Occupy web sites. The ORO calendar (click on the link at the top right of occupyro.blogspot.com) has been updated with information on the next meetings for Occupy Metro Detroit and Occupy Royal Oak. We'll see if anyone who got a leaflet on St. Patrick's Day shows up.
Art Myatt
Monday, March 12, 2012
Occupy Royal Oak Takes To The Streets
Occupy Metro Detroit / Royal Oak Occupy will be meeting downtown Royal Oak, Saturday, March 17th to distribute informational flyers about "who is the Occupy movement". Anyone who wants to
join us is more than welcome.
The Place: Corner Main and 4th Street
The Time: 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, maybe later weather permitting.
We'll be handing out a flyer with a list of policies that, if implemented, would go a long way toward restoring political power to the middle class and securing homes, jobs and education for everyone. On the list are public funding of elections and public universities, taxing capital gains at the same rate as other income, real universal health care, removing constitutional rights for corporations and similar reforms. Everything on this list could be done whether the economy is growing or contracting, though they would certainly be easier to do if the economy was growing.
Republicans and Democrats, instead of putting these things first, agree on insisting that economic growth comes first and everything else must be a lesser priority. The two parties may disagree on how to grow the economy, but nobody is supposed to question the goal. Since we have seen plenty of economic decline in the last decade, the middle class and indeed everyone not in the top 1% have gotten lots of austerity and very little reform.
The problem with this bi-partisan attitude is, the conditions that allowed economic growth since the beginnings of industrial society centuries ago have vanished.
Perhaps that's not the right expression. Saying those conditions have vanished makes it sound like some celestial event like a solar flare or meteor strike, something entirely beyond our control, just happened to us. It would be more accurate to say the conditions allowing expansion of our industrial society have been burned up, and we are the ones who have done the burning.
The industrial economy has grown for centuries by substituting machine power for human labor and animal power. The machines on which we are now dependent for heat, light, food, travel and all the other essentials require energy to function. Each machine requires very specific sources of energy to function - gasoline for most cars, diesel fuel for most big rigs, electricity for lights and computers, coal or nuclear or hydro power for most electrical generation, and so on.
Behind the machinery of the industrial economy is an assumption that the right type of energy for each machine will be indefinitely available, and affordable too. Oops. Over the last decade, it has become more and more apparent that the liquid fuels to run industrial transportation are not so available as we would like, and not nearly as cheap.
Pundits, politicians and economists have a variety of conflicting theories of why this is so, and a variety of conflicting ideas about how to fix it. The upsetting conclusion from many who have studied the subject of peak oil is, this is not a problem that can be fixed. Peak oil is simply a fact that we will have to accept, even if accepting it mean we must abandon our expectation of everlasting economic growth.
There was a time when it seemed the world was so large that unexplored and undeveloped lands offered limitless opportunity. With seven billion people on earth and no land that has not been studied by repeated satellite photography, we know neither the land nor the opportunities are limitless.
There was a time when the rivers and oceans seemed so large that they could easily absorb all our garbage and still supply us with all the fish we would ever need. Now, fish stocks are in a permanent state of collapse. Surface waters in the United States are so loaded with mercury and other industrial contaminants that regularly eating fish is inadvisable, as is drinking untreated water. The oceans near our shores are spotted with dead zones and toxic algae blooms.
There was a time that the atmosphere seemed so large that it could absorb our exhaust emissions indefinitely. Enough said; we all know it is not so.
When the air and the oceans and the fuels for industry seemed limitless, the basic theories about endless growth that economists use today were formulated. Today, economists and politicians who prescribe endless growth are simply wrong. they are proposing something that can't be done.
Wikipedia tells us, "Liebig's Law of the Minimum, often simply called Liebig's Law or the Law of the Minimum, is a principle developed in agricultural science by Carl Sprengel (1828) and later popularized by Justus von Liebig. It states that growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources available, but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor)."
The limiting factor for today's industrial economy is liquid fuels made from oil. We started with a finite amount of oil on the earth - perhaps 3 trillion barrels of oil in the ground. We have already burned one trillion.
Another trillion barrels is deeper, more inaccessible, and takes more effort to find and get out of the ground. Think of the difference between a simple derrick in Texas or Oklahoma that starts producing oil a year after construction starts, and a deep water platform that takes ten years and 500 million dollars to build before it produces anything. Then imagine the additional difficulties of a platform that is not in the Gulf of Mexico, but in the Arctic, coping with icebergs and other extra hazards.
The final trillion may be so inaccessible and so heavy and so contaminated and so scattered that it will never be extracted because extracting would cost more than it is worth.
Before 2002, the price of oil had been fairly stable around the 20-25 dollars per barrel range for a number of years. Before 2002, the supply available on the world market increased steadily to meet demand with stable and affordable prices.
Since 2002, the price of oil has doubled, and doubled again, and now with the price over $100 for some months, it seems to have started on its third doubling. The supply of oil increased at a declining rate until 2006, and has been basically flat since then. Following the financial crisis of 2008, the price temporarily collapsed to the 30-40 dollar per barrel range, and then steadily climbed back to its present position.
It's not clear how much the price of oil contributed to the crash in 2008. Certainly, prices as high as $140 per barrel drained a lot of purchasing power from the economy and did nothing to prevent the financial catastrophe. It is clear there is some price for oil that will break the economy, and current price trends are testing just what that level might be.
There is quite a lot more that could be said about oil and alternative sources for liquid fuels. The essential point is that at least 96% of our industrial transportation depends on liquid fuels. Conventional oil is the source for about 90% of these liquid fuels. The supply of conventional oil has begun a process of long-term decline.
If peak oil is indeed the limiting factor, then the long term prospects for growth of our energy-intensive economy are not good, no matter what kind of stimulus program is tried. We will have to create a new economy that is much less energy intensive and much more labor intensive. We will have to carry through on all the reforms to make our society more democratic and more egalitarian without waiting for or even expecting economic growth.
Art Myatt
join us is more than welcome.
The Place: Corner Main and 4th Street
The Time: 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, maybe later weather permitting.
We'll be handing out a flyer with a list of policies that, if implemented, would go a long way toward restoring political power to the middle class and securing homes, jobs and education for everyone. On the list are public funding of elections and public universities, taxing capital gains at the same rate as other income, real universal health care, removing constitutional rights for corporations and similar reforms. Everything on this list could be done whether the economy is growing or contracting, though they would certainly be easier to do if the economy was growing.
Republicans and Democrats, instead of putting these things first, agree on insisting that economic growth comes first and everything else must be a lesser priority. The two parties may disagree on how to grow the economy, but nobody is supposed to question the goal. Since we have seen plenty of economic decline in the last decade, the middle class and indeed everyone not in the top 1% have gotten lots of austerity and very little reform.
The problem with this bi-partisan attitude is, the conditions that allowed economic growth since the beginnings of industrial society centuries ago have vanished.
Perhaps that's not the right expression. Saying those conditions have vanished makes it sound like some celestial event like a solar flare or meteor strike, something entirely beyond our control, just happened to us. It would be more accurate to say the conditions allowing expansion of our industrial society have been burned up, and we are the ones who have done the burning.
The industrial economy has grown for centuries by substituting machine power for human labor and animal power. The machines on which we are now dependent for heat, light, food, travel and all the other essentials require energy to function. Each machine requires very specific sources of energy to function - gasoline for most cars, diesel fuel for most big rigs, electricity for lights and computers, coal or nuclear or hydro power for most electrical generation, and so on.
Behind the machinery of the industrial economy is an assumption that the right type of energy for each machine will be indefinitely available, and affordable too. Oops. Over the last decade, it has become more and more apparent that the liquid fuels to run industrial transportation are not so available as we would like, and not nearly as cheap.
Pundits, politicians and economists have a variety of conflicting theories of why this is so, and a variety of conflicting ideas about how to fix it. The upsetting conclusion from many who have studied the subject of peak oil is, this is not a problem that can be fixed. Peak oil is simply a fact that we will have to accept, even if accepting it mean we must abandon our expectation of everlasting economic growth.
There was a time when it seemed the world was so large that unexplored and undeveloped lands offered limitless opportunity. With seven billion people on earth and no land that has not been studied by repeated satellite photography, we know neither the land nor the opportunities are limitless.
There was a time when the rivers and oceans seemed so large that they could easily absorb all our garbage and still supply us with all the fish we would ever need. Now, fish stocks are in a permanent state of collapse. Surface waters in the United States are so loaded with mercury and other industrial contaminants that regularly eating fish is inadvisable, as is drinking untreated water. The oceans near our shores are spotted with dead zones and toxic algae blooms.
There was a time that the atmosphere seemed so large that it could absorb our exhaust emissions indefinitely. Enough said; we all know it is not so.
When the air and the oceans and the fuels for industry seemed limitless, the basic theories about endless growth that economists use today were formulated. Today, economists and politicians who prescribe endless growth are simply wrong. they are proposing something that can't be done.
Wikipedia tells us, "Liebig's Law of the Minimum, often simply called Liebig's Law or the Law of the Minimum, is a principle developed in agricultural science by Carl Sprengel (1828) and later popularized by Justus von Liebig. It states that growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources available, but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor)."
The limiting factor for today's industrial economy is liquid fuels made from oil. We started with a finite amount of oil on the earth - perhaps 3 trillion barrels of oil in the ground. We have already burned one trillion.
Another trillion barrels is deeper, more inaccessible, and takes more effort to find and get out of the ground. Think of the difference between a simple derrick in Texas or Oklahoma that starts producing oil a year after construction starts, and a deep water platform that takes ten years and 500 million dollars to build before it produces anything. Then imagine the additional difficulties of a platform that is not in the Gulf of Mexico, but in the Arctic, coping with icebergs and other extra hazards.
The final trillion may be so inaccessible and so heavy and so contaminated and so scattered that it will never be extracted because extracting would cost more than it is worth.
Before 2002, the price of oil had been fairly stable around the 20-25 dollars per barrel range for a number of years. Before 2002, the supply available on the world market increased steadily to meet demand with stable and affordable prices.
Since 2002, the price of oil has doubled, and doubled again, and now with the price over $100 for some months, it seems to have started on its third doubling. The supply of oil increased at a declining rate until 2006, and has been basically flat since then. Following the financial crisis of 2008, the price temporarily collapsed to the 30-40 dollar per barrel range, and then steadily climbed back to its present position.
It's not clear how much the price of oil contributed to the crash in 2008. Certainly, prices as high as $140 per barrel drained a lot of purchasing power from the economy and did nothing to prevent the financial catastrophe. It is clear there is some price for oil that will break the economy, and current price trends are testing just what that level might be.
There is quite a lot more that could be said about oil and alternative sources for liquid fuels. The essential point is that at least 96% of our industrial transportation depends on liquid fuels. Conventional oil is the source for about 90% of these liquid fuels. The supply of conventional oil has begun a process of long-term decline.
If peak oil is indeed the limiting factor, then the long term prospects for growth of our energy-intensive economy are not good, no matter what kind of stimulus program is tried. We will have to create a new economy that is much less energy intensive and much more labor intensive. We will have to carry through on all the reforms to make our society more democratic and more egalitarian without waiting for or even expecting economic growth.
Art Myatt
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