Waking up and getting responsible to our nation

The announcement of a probable credit downgrade for the nation ought to be arousing folks in DC. That is assuming that what has been going on is not a methodical takedown of the nation as part of some big takeover of the nation by a few of the ultra-wealthy. Ignoring that hopefully paranoidish view, it then suggests that the nation needs to get busy and do something about the problem.

America needs to get all its people back into the productive mode. Waiting for corporations to provide the jobs clearly is not working at all; the corporations are ruled by the bottom line and that often means they have the work done offshore as they can do it cheaper there, and so the task of getting all American back into being productive, is not being fulfilled; expecting to give tax breaks for corporations and then magically that translate into American jobs has not worked and can't be expected to work, because the corporate "law" that demands they only do what makes the most profit for themselves. And any CEO deciding otherwise will probably get the boot from the shareholders, unfortunately an inherent weakness in our system.

We need to act as a nation on this matter. Think as a nation, not as a pack of isolated businesses all grabbing for a bigger piece of the increasingly non-existent pie. That is part of American government's duty ... government is not there just to provide for the common defense, but also to enable the nation to function as a thriving whole.

So, how to get the mode of America to shift from the current mode of being a big gambler's game that increasingly piles all the wealth up into the hands of a few expert gamblers that play the system - who are not necessarily guided by responsibility for the system of human and natural resources that enables that wealth to happen.

Clearly, that which makes the most money for someone, is not at all necessarily the same thing as what best meets all the customer's needs. It might be; but not inherently be. In this case, the customer is the American people, rich and poor alike.

Even the health system has grown to be guided by what makes the most profit for the health industries, and competition opportunities is heavily blocked by what effectively is business territories, some of which are even backed by government enforcers, a real mess in places. There are health modes that are being completely ignored because they do not make the big money for the health businesses already in place. And the current health systems states are merely one example of what has happened to our country.

We are a fairly intelligent people. And we are increasingly able to access a bigger set of knowledge, via the internet and our computers and smart phones. So we have lots of potential. Figuring out what to constructively do with that knowledge for the betterment of us all as a nation, is a bit harder, of course.

Lots of us have been conditioned to be "employees." That means we depend on others to provide work for us. We are not conditioned to look into what constitutes a worthwhile and potentially profitable endeavor that could become a business. Look around, there are lots of things that need doing, that are not getting done.

Some of those things could start getting done as volunteer work by the under-employed. That would both add to the resource base of the nation, and increase our human skills too. And once the activity works up enough steam, perhaps it could shift into a paying concern for all involved.

I have already many times described the potential system of home-sited educational-manufacturing workstations, and it has been ignored; but I put it out there once again, as a way to become price-competitive in the world once again.

Is there any chance that the partisan congress critters will come up with a solution for all Americans - that supposedly they represent? How about requiring each of them to take some exam, to show their individual competency for solving our nation's problems? Getting elected by the best hoo-rah cheerleaders may not be the same thing as picking competent folks to be at the decision table. So the likely happening is that it all will default into whatever power-hungry folks are pulling some strings. And with a nation with enough nukes to kill all life on the planet, do we dare let that happen? We have a responsibility to the world, even if not for our own selves. Probably what they would say is that they are boss and that is all that counts. Start another war or two, expand the ones ongoing, create more financial destitution, and the population will be too distracted to complain any more. Where has history seen such before? Supposedly America's design prevents that from happening.

President Obama seems to be doing his best as a lawyer representing the American people, but has been forced into the mode of cutting the losses. He has little power given to fix the problems, and his efforts are constantly under attack by those who are experts in attack, not experts in helpfulness. Somehow the population stares at all that as if it were some soap opera on their TV set, not real; switch channels and it will all go away.

We need to wake up a bit, do some clear headed observation of what is going on around us near and far, and get responsible. We are here as caretakers, not as predators.

Mean and tough vs responsible aware solving problems

Looking at a Sierra Club email I just received, asking people to sign a petition to stop the creation of an oil pipeline from the tar sands of Canada to Houston Texas, it points out that we ought to be creating jobs for clean energy here in the US and not importing either that oil nor the billions we send each year to the oil rich nations in the middle east.

It is a hard decision for me. A better solution seems to me is to get the nation into a major mode of focusing on efficient economical transportation for America - and that is not at all limited to making electric cars and high speed trains - and focus on wind and solar energy gathering and efficient appropriate uses (eg solar cooking ovens are quite efficient and usable much of the time but not always, and could be built into houses), creating productive jobs for Americans at home. (Of course my own solutions to the energy, toxic wastes, and even living space construction, via the KESTS to GEO transportation structure concept, would have already prevented many of the problems; but powerful conventional business and politics intent on staying in total control are still heavily suppressing all that, so it is not an option - I did my best to help, by providing the conceptual keys to solutions others missed.)

The realities of the situation I see, looking around this desert town is not much different from other places in the nation I have seen: the neighbors and townspeople will not accept not having their big muscle SUVs and trucks in which to go get groceries in style; and moving those tons of metal around that way costs lots of petrochemical energy, mostly the money gets sent to the countries in the middle east, where they build fantastic cities with the money while we just burn the corresponding petrochemical fuel up here and nothing left to show for it but more CO2 to breathe. Is that very wise, or even wise in the slightest?

In other words, we apparently are simply not smart enough to figure it all out and deal with it responsibly. We are tough and a bit mean; that is about it. What can I say.

We wait for giant wealthy corporations to give us jobs doing whatever those folks think will make them the most profit, nevermind what we as a nation need for prosperity. This is flag-waving Free Enterprise, apparently. Sure, we don't want a dictator telling us what to do. That is just not at all the only other option of how to get things done. Are we not educated, have brains?

Thus we are stuck with the need to focus on getting oil from Canada neighbors tar sands ripping up the environment there, or else continuing to send all those billions to the mid east so we can continue to strut around in our gargantuan wheels. And to power our industry and much of our electricity needs too.

I wonder if there is a way to use our marvelous communication systems of TV and internet to make people aware of what their individual actions are causing to the big picture, and offer options for moving towards far more wholesome solutions and ultimately a better lifestyle. Most likely those whose success is assumed to be derived from being mean and tough - and the women who worship those mean & tough guys with their big wheels - would ignore such options, but among them might be a few who are of a more responsible nature. Would have to make it interesting, and in places even involve competitive games to keep their interest, perhaps. Although I would prefer it all be done with full comprehension of all involved - that means all Americans, homeless and billionaires alike - with the common intent to solve the problems for all of us, that the standard of living would rise in the country; but in my 70+ years I have learned a bit of the reality of "human nature" so I realize that is mere fantasy.

But civilization has not advanced and solved its problems and prospered by not going for solutions, intermittent that that progress is.

I wonder just how bad the situation will get before it finally gets people's attention, and the women to realize that their mean & tough men are not getting life fixed at all. Will it be here like in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Checknia? Will they have to fling around all those nukes and warcraft in frenzy, making one heck of a mess, before we get around to thinking of getting responsible?

Well, maybe another cup of coffee will help my viewpoint later. I have a nice new roof over my head keeping the rain off, thankfully.

More grumps about what is happening re health reform

I’m still thinking about what is happening re health reform. And the continuing uproar by the “opposition” is what is getting my attention now. Even though it is a long long way, from ways for enabling better health economically. Getting a little say-so in the matter of health, does seem to have been accomplished, on paper anyway.

Anyway … what my pattern-seeking back-of-the-mind has frequently come up with lately, is that by enabling health insurance for workers even if they are not working, or if they change jobs, this has deprived the employers of a powerful leverage for getting workers to endure unjust conditions on the job, just to keep their health insurance for themselves and their family. In other words, it deprives those who would be essentially slavemasters, of one of their threats against their slaves … er, employees. Thus they would have to improve working conditions and increase pay, to have people continue working for them.

From this train of thought, I sometimes drift into the generalizations, imagining that there are a couple of mindsets involved; using archaic terms, one is that of the peasant and the other of the lord. Terms of Medieval territorial fifedom days. Nowadays some might call it the sheeple and the elite. Or grunts and bosses. A two class system; not so much losers and winners, but the downtrodden and the bullies. Workers and manager-owners. America carved up into two pieces thereby. And the manager-owner class having their staked out territories, each with their pitiful horde of workers. The bully-mentality spends its life beating its way up the hierarchical pyramid, focused on getting others to do their bidding; thus reaching that plush life of the owner-manager class, hobnobbing among the Upper Class, and attracting the best looking women with whom to breed. Yes, lots of incentive to take that road. But the bully mentality may have genetic roots, extending back into the murky battles among the bulls for exclusive mating rights, not striving to protect the herd, but instead striving to injure the other male. This sociobiological force still lurks heavily amongst humanity. It often gets shined up and fancy suit put on and trained in the ettiquete of proper eating and Roberts Rules, and somehow having acquired college degrees to pretend they are people of knowledge and wisdom. But their words are used to do battle, to put down the other person, instead of to build mutually supportive projects.

Not that the grunt class does not have its bullies, too. But am not exploring that here now.

So in light of the furor over health insurance reform beginnings, it could be seen as anger by the owner-manager class of being deprived of one of their whips to drive the sheeple to work harder. Maybe even more because it would seem like the manager-owner class is being given orders by the sheeple class: how denigrating. How could the sheeple class know how to rule, how dare they try?

Backing off from the circus one level higher, it looks like the owner-manager bully class most of all enjoys a good fight, a team fight. Yay team, what exciting fun, get to show our stuff. Otherwise life would be just a dull grow up, breed and die, how boring to them. Got to spice it up with strife. And the Democrats put up a good sporting fight and won a round in the stadium; and that deserves a bit of respect, a more worthy opponent in the big game to them.

And if I shift to one more notch higher in the Big Picture, it seems that the craving for Drama is playing out. Not just among the boys, but amongst the girls, too. How exciting.

I wonder where the sense of responsibility is going to come back into the picture. The responsibility we have of taking care of our world that nourishes us and our loved ones. The responsibility to craft our mutual civilization with our finest wisdom, that we have a much finer world to live in and enjoy.
But instead now, it seems more of just grab, root and growl, to get the most for the least effort. The Creator typically lets it play out, see how worthy the new creations are. Sometimes thay last for tens of millions of years, like the dinos did. Or the cockroaches, been going for 250 million years and still going strong, despite the latest pesticides that mankind sprays on them, ending back up in the people’s food supply too, poisoning us humans too, in our tunnel vision of the overall consequences of our actions. So Homo Sapiens might just be a flash in the pan, a few 10’s of thousands of years or less, the way we are going. We have just too many powerful tools of civilization to not utilize them with sufficient caution and responsibility, lest we take ourselves out along with lots of other species. Even though they have crafted themselves to powerfully direct the activities of others in group effort, the bullies just are not built right to lead humanity in the correct directions. And more despairingly, I suspect that a higher education of the present kind, is not going to convert the bully minds into responsible compassionate minds nearly often enough.

Shrinking the vision level way down again, the struggle to care for the health of all Americans, whether they are working at the moment or not, whether they are on one team or the other team, seems both a compassionate step forward and a wise step forward, since a healthier workforce – and in the larger picture that includes the owner-managers too – surely ought to be able to accomplish more and better deeds. And then hopefully we can next focus a bit on that which purportedly provides better health, an industry that too long has been led by the bottom line instead of the best end result; even corrupting the paths of science toward only that which makes the most profit for the least effort; instead of the most effective body-mind-spirit health product for the best effort.