Happy Earth Day

It's been 39 years since the first Earth day in 1970.  Environmental awareness is the first step in taking action to make our planet a better place.  Where do we stand in light of Earth Day being recognized annually for almost forty years now?  Well, in some aspects things are definitely better, for example the Cuyahoga river hasn't caught on fire due to pollution since 1969.  In other aspects we are not any better.  Global Warming is a real issue that really has yet to be addressed, unfortunately very rich and very powerful entities stand in the way.  Sad to say, but it's hard to get as rich off of renewable energies like wind, solar, and geothermal.  One more piece of misfortune is that it seems the people at the top would prefer a larger profit margin today regardless of the cost to future generations.  On this Earth Day, I will be writing letters to my representatives in Washington and Lansing and asking them to get with the program and do something about the ever-looming problem of pollution in our nation.  If we really are what they say we are, the greatest nation on the planet, we should not back down from this challenge of finding renewable, clean, and safe forms of producing energy.  The world is not a perfect place, but we should never stop trying. Happy Earth Day.

Tax week has now come and past, and I have been seeing things about this teabagging going on this past Wednesday.  I'm not usually plugged into the fifty dollar a month glowing blue box news sources (cable news), but in a fit of boredom just the other night I was curious what the cable networks were saying about this.  In passing NPR and the BBC made mention of these events, but for the times I listened there was not a great deal of time spent on this issue, except for an essay piece by Jack Lessenberry about how though taxes were annoying to him, he was proud to pay them because most of that money went to things he enjoyed and believed people should have.  Like roads and police and books in our public schools and national defense.  But he did not really make a big hubub about the teabaggers themselves, just about what they were out in the streets about.  

The cable news was where this showdown was really intended to take place, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC and CBS don't care what happens in the streets of America. (Trust me, after being part of over 400,000 people marching on Washington, and having FOX tell me we were only about 1,000 strong, and CNN flinch when they reported the truth, change it a minute later to 'thousands' because FOX's story was different)  What they were interested in is whether or not they could effectively produce - in the sense of producing television - produce a movement.  MSNBC's Keith Olberman was all over it, mocking it and calling it a sham, in the mean time FOX was fairly and with balance telling everyone that they needed to be there, and that every one of their shows on tax day would be dedicated to showing how outraged everyone was with their taxes.  I did some looking, maybe not enough, but it looked like CNN took the sideline on this one... 

So the stage was set, the news networks had drawn their lines in the sand, their lead commentators faced off... Would the people turn out, would the "Mainstream Media" cover it?  I thought it was particularly funny, in a couple clips from FOX I was watching, they kept questioning if the "mainstream media" would cover it, like they weren't ranked number one in cable news... doesn't that make YOU mainstream?  Anyway, the numbers are out, the guesses totaled.  Nationwide the highest estimate from city and county officials totals 240,000 (remember thats nationwide)  and the largest was 20,000.  These statistics are from the Christian Science Monitor, the only newspaper i could find that would offer me real numbers.  Though I did find it laughable in my search reading from several conservative newspapers from around the nation that this was the largest movement seen in the nation in decades... Nonetheless they had their little party, sponsored by the industry leader in cable news, and they all cheered and patted themselves on the back.  As one conservative newspaper put it, the protests were "dominated by white conservatives and libertarians". 

Now for a little perspective... In March 2006, led by community organizers, 1.5 million protesters hit the streets around the nation to protest the conservative initiative to clamp down on immigration and build a ridiculous Stalin-esque wall between our nation and theirs.  In February 2003, the highest estimates of anti-war protesters pleading with George W Bush to not invade Iraq was 10 million.  In January 2007 between 100,000 and 400,000 people showed up in Washington DC to protest the announcement of the surge, a plan to send more troops into a war that was, and is failing.  To FOX's point these, and many other events were largely absent in the mass media, there was a Britney Spears bad hair day to cover instead.  

What does this all say?  First of all, FOX should no longer be allowed to use the name "NEWS" in their title, something more fitting like ' FOX current events and opinions' or 'FOX what we think news ought to be'.  I'm not saying there's much better about the other networks out there, any of you that listen to my ravings know that I'm not much a fan of anything corporate... Clearly though, you can't call yourself a news organization and then organize a nationwide series of protests to a government's policy.  That is where you cease to be a news agency and become part of a movement.  A news agency would be present at the rally, but would not have their top anchormen leading the charge...  

Second, it looks to me as though this teabag nonsense has gotten more press coverage in five days that the entire anti-war movement has gotten in the last six years.  There are more important things out there than your money in your billfold people.  I don't think that the majority of the public seems to care that 5000 or so Americans have been killed as well as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's in this needless and illegal war we are engaged in.... By the way for all you tax activists out there, upset because we're spending billions of dollars trying to save the economy at home, just a quick fun fact for you, the US military budget including all costs Iraq and Afghanistan is more than any stimulus type package we've seen so far... Thats okay with you, lets spend 700+ Billion dollars on killing and destroying a foreign land, but when it comes to rebuilding our own after the flawed system of the last thirty years is collapsing, thats when we're wasting money... I get it.

Last, I would like to welcome the white middle class, 'living cozy in my four bedroom, two story, two stall garage house - But I'm getting taxed too much' people into the fold of faithful social dissidents, I hope that someday we'll find an issue to hit the streets together in agreement on.  Until then, go back home, sit back down in front of your 46" LCD HDTV, keep ignoring the fact that your kid is popping prescription pills, and shut the fuck up.  Taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society.  It's a hassle yes, but one of those necessary evils.  I would much rather live in a nation with roads, police forces, public schools, fire departments, a national defense, and all the other wonderful things that our taxes buy us.  This is not to say that there is some wasteful spending that comes out of our government.  There is.  I recommend that you take issue with the things that you find wasteful, rather than the means to which both the useful and the wasteful are funded.  Thats like saying 'hey I don't like that my kid stays out too late every once in a while, I'm going to kill him'  rather the response should be to correct the disagreeable behavior.

Today's thoughts

It's been a bit since I've said much here... Not that I haven't had much to say, just haven't done it.  I was listening to one of my favorite radio shows last night in which they were talking about the political dirt being flung from the right, and how militant it has gotten lately.  The question was asked about whether or not it was too much, especially considering some of the things that came from the left over the last eight years.  

As many of you may know, I was not a fan of the Bush administration, I was not a fan of the systematic pulling back of constitutional rights, and the institutional promotion of bigotry and hatred that came down from on high, and I was, and still am not a fan of the two senseless illegal wars we are fighting over seas.  So far, the Obama administration has promoted diplomacy and dialogue between nations, as opposed to the Bush administration's provocation, and heavy handedness on similar issues.  Our current president has given back hope to the promise of science helping to make our world a better one to live in, been actively pursuing ways to better the economic situation, and been making amends to peoples and nations the Bush administration burned bridges with.  Obama has also made an effort to bring an end to the war in Iraq, setting a timetable for withdrawal of combat troops.

These efforts for peace and prosperity have been met by the right with dangerous rhetoric encouraging citizens to arm themselves, prepare for revolution, protest taxes, and one particular talking head even asked for President Obama to light him on fire, rather than do the things he was doing.  This nonsensical raving of lunatics, one would hope, would be limited to a fringe group of far right fanatics that no one in their right mind would pay any attention to.  Unfortunately, most of these inflammatory statements are coming from respected members of the mainstream Republican community, and here's where the problem lies...

During the Bush years, there were many rotten things said about Bush and his cronies, much of it deserved, some of it not.  The bulk, however, of the more militant and ridiculous things coming from the left came from fringe elements, not the mainstream.  Most Democrats and liberals brushed the majority of the nonsense aside, and tried to stay on point with factual and logical issues that deserved to be challenged. (say torture, spying on Americans, refusing rights to prisoners, wasteful government spending, tax cuts for the rich making the burden of the middle class worse, so on...)  

In any case, it comes down to this: During the last eight years, our country has gotten a little off course.  The economy is in shambles, and it seems the only people not struggling are the richest of the rich who George W Bush saw fit to give tax cuts and in the mean time the other 90 percent of us are struggling.  Our unemployment rate is the highest it's been since 1983 (Ronald Reagan, the guy who started this mess was president then by the way) We are involved in two pointless and bloody wars that are showing no signs of a real 'victory' anywhere in sight.  Our public school systems are crumbling.  Something has to be done about it.  President Obama is.  This is not to say that I agree with everything that is being done, but at least it's better than cutting taxes for the rich, investing billions in killing machines, tearing down civil liberties, and putting more emphasis on faith than science.  Hopefully four years from now we'll be better off than we are today, and hopefully we can come together to make this nation and this world a better place to live than what we've been given.