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druidity33's Journal
I started re-reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the US and came across this passage i wanted to share:
"JP Morgan had started before the war, as the son of a banker who began selling stocks for the railroads for good commissions. During the Civil War he bought 5,000 rifles for $3.50 each from an army arsenal, and sold them to a general in the field for $22 each. The rifles were defective and would shoot off the thumbs of the soldiers using them. A congressional committee noted this in the small print of an obscure report, but a federal judge upheld the deal as the fulfillment of a valid legal contract. Morgan had escaped military service in the Civil War by paying $300 to a substitute. So did Jon D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Philip Armour, Jay Gould and James Mellon. Mellon's father had written to him that "a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable." It was the firm of Drexel, Morgan and Company that was given a US Government contract to float a bond issue of $260 million. The government could have sold the bonds directly; it chose to pay the bankers $5 million in commission. On January 2, 1889, as Gustavus Meyer reports: ... a circular marked "Private and Confidential" was issued by the three banking houses of Drexel, Morgan and Company, Brown Brothers & Company, and Kidder, Peabody & Company. The most painstaking care was exercised that this document should not find its way into the press or otherwise become public... Why this fear? Because the circular was an invitation... to the great railroad magnates to assemble at Morgan's house, No 219 Madison Avenue, there to form, in the phrase of the day, an iron-clad combination... a compact which would efface competition among certain railroads, and unite those interests in an agreement by which the people of the United States would be bled even more effectively than before. There was human cost to this financial story of ingenuity. That year, 1889, records of the Interstate Commerce Commission showed that 22,000 railroad workers were killed or injured. Does any of that sound familiar to you guys? Do things ever really change? This is my second time through People's History (first time was roughly 15 years ago) and i purchased a copy after i got a few pages into the Library one i had borrowed. It's an important work and i would urge anyone who hasn't read it to pick up a copy. It's fascinating, angering, inspiring, enlightening,... just a good read. BTW, i hope y'all appreciate that i typed that up... took me damn near an hour as i'm an awful typist....  according to this book and much recent scientific theory and analysis. A Managed landscape has somewhat different characteristics from what you probably mean by "inhabited". It is relatively well accepted theory that between 80-90% of the land (arable and NOT arable) was managed by the native occupants for thousands of years...By controlling where grasslands lay, fruit and nut trees were planted in abundance, actually changing the composition of the soil, Genetically Engineering into existence the plant Maize, managing and thinning herd animals...etc. Just because people aren't always there does not mean they don't "inhabit" the space/place. The "pristine wilderness" that the first settlers prattled on about was achieved as a direct result of European contagion. In the 50-100 years prior to major settlements, coinciding with the first contact of Europeans, diseases spread like WILDFIRE and decimated the population... again, and again, and again. Hence the "pristine wilderness" which was really the managed herds of Buffalo breeding like crazy and the groves and groves of "naturally occurring" fruit trees... the veritable Eden of the Americas was CREATED, not found.
Much of what we (European transplants, that is) would consider uninhabitable had been habited and tended by civilizations far more advanced and numerous than Western Historians have been willing to admit. New evidence suggests that there were over 250 million people here BC (Before Columbus), whereas prior estimates had topped out at 6 million or so. I can't recommend the book enough... 1491 - New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C Mann. An excellent read, written by a journalist but very well sourced and credited.  don't confuse them with Obama's. Do we expect that the US Congress will be obstructive to the new Administration? The MA legislature is FUCKED UP, don't blame it all on Patrick.
Actually, other than both being black men riding a wave of popular support to topple a disastrous Republication, all the while spreading the hope of "change"... i see few similarities. What i'm bothered by about Obama is that he has taken Health Care mandates "off the table". There is no successful Universal Health Care program in the world that does not have mandates. Universal care won't work without them. Now that he's stood up against them, he will be seen as a flip-flopper when he discovers they will be necessary.  re mandates?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/opinion/... =snip= "But while it’s easy to see how the Clinton plan could end up being eviscerated, it’s hard to see how the hole in the Obama plan can be repaired. Why? Because Mr. Obama’s campaigning on the health care issue has sabotaged his own prospects. You see, the Obama campaign has demonized the idea of mandates — most recently in a scare-tactics mailer sent to voters that bears a striking resemblance to the “Harry and Louise” ads run by the insurance lobby in 1993, ads that helped undermine our last chance at getting universal health care. If Mr. Obama gets to the White House and tries to achieve universal coverage, he’ll find that it can’t be done without mandates — but if he tries to institute mandates, the enemies of reform will use his own words against him." =snip= It's worth reading the whole thing. There's a rebuttal at TPM, and then a Krugman rebuttal to that as well. What i don't understand is why don't we have experts from other countries that have working models, come and work on the Plan with us? They could explain the intricacies and options to Congress and the public. If the process was as TRANSPARENT AND PUBLICLY VISIBLE as possible, how could anyone really argue with the end result? Right now, i take everything that HRC and BO say as a campaign promise, which means to me that they will do whatever they damn well please once they're in office regardless of what they said to get there. I've been trying to do more with community groups and local candidates lately... you know, this is hard for me to admit but one of the reasons i "trust" Edwards is that i can't help but think if i found out my wife had cancer i would be the best human being i could possibly be. And uphold myself to the most damning standards, no doubt. I can't imagine the pain and sacrifice they must be enduring on this campaign trail. That they choose to do this together despite the odds means to me they are COMMITTED to this cause. I don't feel the same sense of PERSONALNESS from the other 2.
As for his Senate record and bad votes... i can't forget them, but i believe as President he will have the power to shape the policy and the Democratic Agenda, whereas as a first term Senator beholden to Party and Politics his options and input/understanding was limited. With Kucinich out, i am now officially on the Edwards bandwagon... I still have hope for a solid Working class in this country. I still look forward to having my first Union card. I still believe one day we all WILL have medical coverage. I try to do the best with the information i have, using an open heart and an open mind. If that's not enough, i don't know what is... have you ever seen 3rd Degree Burns? Can you imagine being 80 or so years old and getting 3rd Degree Burns all over your inner thighs and crotch? Do you know how many skin grafting surgeries she had? Take a guess as to how many other people were burned but settled out of court? She was in the hospital for months and months. And the award wasn't for 6 million. It covered her medical expenses and legal fees with a few thousand left over for home health aides.
If you're gonna use the McDonalds case, do your fucking homework. Trial lawyers work on contingency. Which means they only get paid if their clients do. It is very rare for a case without merit to end in awards to the Plaintiff. All too often it is the other way around... the corporation screws the little guy. Someone has been feeding you lies and you've been eating it up. i'm glad i kept reading downthread. I would have posted a near identical response. I've been a veggie for 16 years and primarily because of the disgusting nature of the meat industry. Initially i only bought kosher meat, but i've been poor for a long time and the difficulties in finding a Kosher deli in and around Buffalo were tiresome without having a car. At the time, there were very few prepared vegetarian foods. I learned to cook and grow good veggies. I learned how to make Tofu and soymilk. I sent away for culture to create Tempeh. I owned The Farm cookbook and still have many dog-eared pages.
Now that i live in the "country" in MA, local farms offer grass fed beef, free range, happy cows. After 16 years though, my desire for meat is lessened to the extent that i don't think it's worth starting to eat it again. I've sampled deer, goat, and chicken in the past year... all from farmer/hunter friends in the area. Meh... i could take it or leave it. I'll stick with gardening and alternative protein sources. btw, a Kosher slaughterer is called a Shochet(?) and is actually a rabbi. They need to go to a special school and have MANY rules about how animals are killed. Blade is sharpened between each kill, cow cannot be in the same room as other cows, cow cannot see the blade as it's killed, if it takes more than one cut to kill then the cow isn't used, etc. As for the OP, i agree with nearly every point. Picking on the Primate point is silly b/c obviously the OP is wrong. On Nature and what is natural, well that's been a question for Philosophers for millenia... not really solvable. Akin to saying, "What is God?" Back to dinner and the inlaws... volunteer at a farm nearby! Start building cold-frames (i've grown winter Kale in 2 feet of snow)! Be a seed-saver! Know your local foragable greens! (dandelion, purslane, chickweed, early poke, etc) Find the nut trees in your area, compete with the squirrels (they're taking over the parks anyway)! Test your soil... plant berry bushes and fruit trees in abundance.
I've harvested beach plum, black cap raspberry, salmonberry, mulberry, blackberry, blueberry, strawberry, black walnut, elderberry, sour cherry... all in the wilds of Western Massachusetts. And the plants that grow naturally in their own domain are much more power packed with flavor and nutrients. Yeah, it's work. But it's fun work... and you get to know your local eco-systems real well. I'm compiling my own regional resource guide... it will be a years long project for me and my child (she's six now)... but she'll know plants and will get wilderness training, and she loves the heck out of picking wild berries and fruits. Not all food needs to come from the store. When i worked in NYC in the parks of upper Manhattan, i saw many edible/utile plants that could be used including hawthorne, blueberry, raspberry, and more. I'm not so sure about soil toxicity, but the berries tasted fine to me... what about rooftop gardens? It's always worth being around green growing things. It's good for health of the body and the soul. btw, i think USDA Organic label is a sham. Look for Oregon Tilth or other independent testing agency... |
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