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