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Strategic planning points for Biodiversecity

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

In business as in politics, your tactics derive from your strategy. Strategy & tactics derive from your program. Program derives from your macro assessment. Macro assessment derives from your Critique or Analysis of the current situation, which arises from your basic worldview or philosophy. So it is with our need for strategic planning as we contemplate actually purchasing a chunk of land for sustainable urban agriculture here in Central Exposure, WI.

Here are a few strategic planning bullet points we expect to base our plans upon over the next couple few years.

1. Macroeconomic crisis. There is no basis for optimism about the macroeconomic environment. I said this in January, 2007 at a public forum and look, it still seems to be true today. Our macro economic outlook is for a deflationary double-dip recession (3-D recession).

This means that supplying local organically grown food from a small-scale urban ag. operation is going to be very challenging. The high end “foodie” market will continue to shrink, we believe. The low-income market is extremely cost conscious and this gives people marketing to this segment of the market very little pricing power. Everything must be done on a low-cost basis. Whether delivering organic food can be made affordable on a mass scale is an open question at this point. Few people seem interested in this question.

2. Peak oil problem. The global peak of oil production is probably already underway, or at best, within a half-decade. You can always follow the development of this on The Energy Bulletin yourself. Beyond the year 2015, just five years off, global oil production will be falling, and outside the OPEC countries, falling fairly fast.

Small local food producers should expect, as we do, the beginning of overt shortage of motor fuels around that time. We can’t predict what government will do in response, but given recent experience, we can expect that response to be a) too little, badly organized and b) too late, as shown for example in BP oil spill response. Small local food producers should expect themselves to be shoved aside by large corporate farms in their regions when it comes to the rationing of fuel supplies. Expect as we do a chaotic business environment.

3. Man-made global climate change. Most of our season’s production this summer has been ruined by too much rainfall in too short a time, falling on ground not well suited to excess rainfall in a veggie crop production scheme. We expect the man-made global warming to continue ramping up, leading to weather chaos which makes planning for crop production exceptionally tough.

We expect, as small-scale local food producers, to have to plan and spend excessively for both irrigation needs (for hot, dry summers brought by global warming’s regional effects) as well as drainage (for hot, wet summers brought by global warming’s regional effects). The land we have looked at for purchase was viewed with an eye on both these problems. Investment will be needed in both areas we’re sure.

4. Continued credit crisis. We expect the credit crunch or crisis to continue. Despite the massive bi-partisan bank bailouts endorsed by both G.W. Bush and Pres. Obama, banks are not lending out their cash, but instead are profiting from borrowing cheaply from the Fed and investing it in their proprietary trading schemes, bound to once again implode in the near future, exacerbating this crisis once again. We expect small-scale farmers and community needs including small-business job creation to be completely starved for credit going forward.

This means for us, we can never expect conventional bank loans nor small business loans via govt. as a source for capital. Everything will have to be paid out of current earnings. As small-scale producers we expect not to be alone in facing this challenge.

5. Continued unbelievable levels of unemployment. Not only are the Baby Boomers facing their suddenly becoming irrelevant in the labor market, but the 20-Something generation faces systemic, structural, persistent unemployment unlike anything previous generations of Americans have faced.

This means again that the high-end foodie market for boutique-style food offerings from small local food producers will remain constrained and not a high-growth area. This may mean, for small food producers, a need to try offering food at affordable prices. Given the chronic cash shortage many people are facing, various forms of barter — barter for food, barter for services needed by the food producers, and so on — may become increasingly important.

6. Class struggle intensifies. Since 1974 we’ve been studying and teaching the perpetual class struggle in America. In times of economic crisis, such as we expect chronically over the next decade, this struggle does not ease nor diminish, but intensifies.

For small-scale food producers, this means you should expect concerted effort by large agribusiness to continue driving you completely off the scene, out of business, and for government to generally take the side of large agribusiness. Small-scale producers who must depend on off-farm wage labor to support their farms should expect intensified workplace struggle, the driving down of your wages, the loss of pension benefits, loss of health-care benefits, and so on.

7. Crash and chaos scenarios increase in probability. Given America’s recent experience with large-scale crises, and the ongoing #fail mode we have seen with situations such as Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Oil spill, and other situations, we expect incidents such as these to increase. Since Central Wisconsin is not highly urbanized, large-scale incidents are not expected. However, chronic, ongoing crises such as hunger and chronic underemployment will remain in our forecast.

We will remain open to participating in various crisis-mitigation and mutual self-help type groups as time goes on. This participation will depend upon our assessment that participation is grass-roots democratic and not driven by or dominated by local ruling elite interests.

Posted in Ag, Biodiversity, Co-operation, Economics, Ecovillages, MicroEcoFarming, Peace, Peak Oil, Political Economy, Sustainability, ecology, globalization | No Comments »

Principles of a working-class local food movement

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

1st principle of a working-class local food movement: Mutual aid, self-help. Working poor people are full citizens, not “clients”. Hunger is not a social work problem but a structural flaw of capitalism. Workers facing food shortages must NOT be managed by strange religious cults such as the (homophobic, ultra-conservative) Salvation Army. Working poor people must manage their own food relief organizations democratically.

Principle #2: We drop the dogma/mantra that “cheap food isn’t good; good food isn’t cheap.” That’s like saying to your prospective market, “if you’re cheap (and by necessity we need to be cheap), you’re not good.” The first rule of Community Organizing Club is, Don’t Insult Your Community.

#3 principle: The struggle for nutritive, quality non-toxic non-lethal food is a class struggle. The organic movement stops being a petit-bourgeois (”little ruling class”) movement. Black activists have long pointed out that the poorest communities are like labs to test how much toxic… exposure poor people can take before higher mortality ensues. So it is with food.

4th principle: Solidarity, 4a. As long as I’ve been involved with small-scale farmers, most have been workers off the farm too. The Man doesn’t want small farmers succeeding; so, you have to work off-farm. Your status as a worker doesn’t end when you drive in that long driveway. Are there any purely “rural” or purely “urban” worker issues? I doubt it.
Principle 4: Solidarity, 4b. So, wearing your off-farm Teacher Hat, consider bringing a Teacher Union sign in support of MalWart workers trying to organize. Or wearing your Steelworkers’ hat from the paper mill that supports your farm, go support those teachers trying to hold their jobs. The Man is the only one who benefits from the false urban-rural/farmer-vs.-worker divides.

Principle #5: Co-operation, not competition. If the only way to thrive is cannibalizing someone else’s customer base, that takes fierce competitiveness, undermining the “solidarity” principle mentioned above. On the other hand, if you look the Rochdale co-op principles, these have stood the test of time. We think a working-class local food movement needs to be governed by these, not by the Univ. of Wisc.-Extension’s petit-bourgeois tiny ag-entrepreneur eating-his-neighbor’s lunch model. “Get big or get out,” still the model of ag schools and extension everywhere, must be rejected. Get appropriately-sized and stay in ag, by co-operating.

Principle #6: Job creation starts with ag. Your town likely has a “Community Development Agency” which is busy pursuing outmoded models of “creating jobs.” You need to remind them of the National Farmers’ Org. principle, all wealth starts from the earth: from farming, mining, logging, or fishing. Get your CDA to start a “value-added” producers’ co-op to start generating jobs & wealth.

Principle #7: Public institutions impacting agriculture belong to YOU, not the corporations. Institutions like public land-grant universities and University Extensions (or “co-op extension”) are still largely publicly-funded despite the stealth privatization going on as corporate money corrupts these systems. Form a watchdog group, call Bullshit on the corporate bullshit, get nasty if you see Monsanto and the genuine fascist corp. Bayer (remember Bayer/IG Farben of the Third Reich) start pushing their agendas in these public institutions.

Principle #8: Corporate foundation money belongs to YOU, the workers, NOT to the bourgeoisie (ruling class) who carefully dole it out to groups who will walk their corporate walk. I know this is a tough one for people to get their mind around, but corporations extract ALL of their wealth by exploiting it from the working class, as well as by selling products/services to workers wearing their “consumer” hats, usually at a great profit. This is the source of all foundation wealth. Don’t beg for it: demand it. It’s to feed people, not the bourgeois ego and craving for a legacy.

Principle #9: All agriculture is “urban agriculture.” Can you think of any aspect of agriculture that is NOT controlled by, governed by, steered by, very wealthy men in corporations and corporate/government, operating from urban centers? I can’t. Once you, the small “local” farmer, can identify your interests with a starving farmworker in a former rainforest village now turned to monoculture biomass energy production (e.g. Brasil), you’re well on your way to forging alliances that will return the power where it belongs: to workers.

#10 Grassroots democracy. Participate, don’t be a spectator. Anyone involved in small-scale organics, local food, urban agriculture, is up against a class of powerful people running powerful corporations who wish for the small-scale farmer to disappear, lose their assets, and become one of the working poor who keep these corporations going. It’s going to be a fight to regain democratic control over institutions long ago corrupted. It’s not going to be easy, it will be nasty at times, but really, what choice is there but to fight for grassroots democracy and local control over your world?

Bobby G

August 2010

Posted in Ag, Biodiversity, Co-operation, Economics, Ecovillages, MicroEcoFarming, Peace, Peak Oil, Political Economy, Sustainability, globalization, subcultures | 3 Comments »

Wisconsin Farm Bureau tries to block raw milk bill that would benefit small dairy

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

I see here where the Wisconsin Farm Bureau testified against Wisconsin’s raw milk bill (click highlighted text for story)

“(Melvin) Pittman, who chairs the Farm Bureau’s Dairy Committee and milks 75 cows near Plum City with his wife, Pat (said) ‘If a person becomes ill from drinking raw milk, it is not only unpasteurized milk that gets a bad image, but all milk and dairy products. Dairy farmers have invested millions of dollars promoting milk and dairy products, and we can’t afford to have an incident adversely affect consumption.’”

If only the Farm Bureau would show such great vigilance in protecting consumers, and those beef farmers who are trying to do the right thing, when not one or two people, but hundreds, are sickened by feedlot-evolved E. Coli 0157 h7 contamination or Salmonella contamination of tens of thousands of pounds of beef or pork in these enormous packing houses run by the new meat trust.

The film “Food Inc.” tried to expose some of these problems of widespread systemic contamination of our industrial food system. Yet the Farm Bureau leaders go out of their way to disparage this movie. Frankly, they seem to hate it, and the filmmakers, and the people who watched the film and were moved by it. Why is that, do you think? Is it because the Farm Bureau is reluctant to criticize the meat trust, while eagerly going after small-scale dairy farmers who are trying to earn a parity price for their product by offering raw milk (which is enjoying growing consumer demand) direct to consumers?

Certainly the Farm Bureau has always been on the side of large-scale agriculture and large-scale monopolistic food processing corporations. It appears that in the Wisconsin Raw Milk Bill debate, they are once again intent on preserving this legacy of diehard defense of Big Food Processing.

I for one am strongly urging our Wisc. representatives to pass this Raw Milk bill. As a tiny-scale organic grower, I certainly know that the Farm Bureau has never represented, nor will ever represent, people at the small end of farming. We need our own farmer-labor (consumer) united organizations to represent the little guys and gals in small-scale ag.

Bobby G
Middle Wisconsin,
USA Sector of The Global Corporate Economy

Posted in Ag, Biodiversity, Economics, MicroEcoFarming, Political Economy, Sustainability, ecology, globalization | No Comments »

“Sustainability” activity: a four-legged table with one leg missing?

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Here’s some questions to take into the upcoming Roundtables and other meetings on sustainability. Some of these are posed by this story on Colorado Springs’ severe budget cutting. Budget cutting this severe would most likely impact new programs such as sustainability planning first, so these questions aren’t merely hypotheticals.

Suddenly, the people who have been invisible all this time–the working poor–are made visible by virtue of their diminishing tax payments. Why isn’t the money flowing in to the public coffers so quickly any more?

Something is clearly missing. Missing not only from tax revenue totals, but from the whole “sustainability” movement, I would boldly assert. And I wonder, am I the only one noticing what’s clearly missing?

If you go and review your Natural Step conditions for a sustainable society–and Natural Step is said to be the gold standard–you’ll find this system condition, #4:

“people are not subject to conditions that systemically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.”

Yet, with this deep recession steadily eroding the living standards of working class people everywhere, it’s clear that people most assuredly ARE being subject to conditions systematically undermining our capacity to meet our needs.

You don’t hear much mention of this deepening crash of living standards of working people in the torrent of good news about “sustainability”–locally, nationally or globally for that matter. The prospect for millions upon millions of Americans returning to some sort of right livelihood in which they would like to be engaged is steadily slipping away from millions of us, but the literature is silent on this.

I’d number those millions of us now marginalized to a clearly unsustainable mode of life in the neighborhood of 60 million. Maybe add ten million more to that, I don’t have exact numbers, just a sense of what’s going on. I call this group of us the OtherAmerica: working poor, people without health coverage, children, many youth under 25.

Doesn’t some discussion of what’s happening over here in the OtherAmerica belong in Rountables, seminars, webinars, lectures, and planning meetings on “sustainability?” Who will raise these questions?

This capitalist system no longer has a need for OtherAmerica, neither as producers-workers, nor as consumers. They’re trying to stage-manage this “recovery” with only 80% of the population needing to participate to make it credible. For us in the working poor, sustainability is further away than it was a decade ago, when the esoteric sustainability discussions began among the professional class in academia, in urban design firms, in select sub-committees in city and county governments, and in big non-profit NGO think tanks.

Neither neoliberal nor conservative politicians have any plan to restore to us any measure of dignity, but instead I believe we’re in for a long period of a kind of warehousing, like the Prawns in District 9, a systematic undermining of our capacity to meet our needs. I dread to learn what sort of fate they have planned for us, but I’m sure it will be dreadful.

Neither the Administration’s neoliberal friends-of-bankers, nor the overtly fascist Tea Partiers, have the welfare and well-being of working-class Americans (or workers anywhere) at heart. In fact, during deep recessions, working poor people become a big target market for overt fascists masquerading as right-wing “populists.” You already see an upwelling of this tendency in full effect in the USA, in Europe, and globally.

Yet in this kind of environment, we’re being told by the professional classes that we’re moving full speed ahead toward “sustainability.” A kind of American-exceptionalism Natural Step where only the first three conditions matter. Will the meeting of those conditions be accomplished by a Green Technocracy, guided and led by the leaders of the local plutocracy, whoever these may be in each locality? William Domhoff explained the methodology needed to get at who your local plutocracy may be, in his classic of sociology, Who Rules America?

One important point seems to have been missed, in this headlong rush into a technocratic sustainable geekdom filled with LEED buildings and renewable gadgets all smart-gridded together into a seamless wonderland: The corporations are still behaving as corporations. That is, they are working full-time to slow down or prevent any meaningful progress toward real “sustainability.” Yes, despite the fact that National Public Radio now gladly advertises Monsanto’s commitment to “sustainble agriculture,” in fact, Monsanto is still part of the problem, the crisis of sustainability, not part of the solution.

“Corporations” are not just some kind of hard-working communities of dedicated people fulfilling a mission statement to the benefit of society. They’re a legal creation of the state, aimed at maintaining the power status of their largest shareholder-owners, the wealthiest members of society, affectionately known to Marxists as “the ruling class.” A class understanding of corporations and their peculiar power over us is missing from the sustainability literature.

Threats/Obstacles to Sustainability

As people settle in to the rountables, planning meetings, seminars, and sub-committee meetings, I would urge folks to keep these questions in mind:

Has the mortgage crisis really been solved? How could that be, when Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, quasi-public corporations, now carry the vast majority of mortgages as assets on their balance sheets as banks are bailing on holding them?

How much further will house prices continue to fall, in the face of steady, ongoing erosion of the employment base in this nation? If house prices do continue falling, perhaps as much as 30-40% as the editors of The Automatic Earth blog have suggested, how can we possibly avert an even deeper mortgage crisis?

What is to be done about the steady erosion of real wages–actual purchasing power–of increasingly large segments of the working class who remain employed? Won’t this erode the tax base for all levels of government, whether township, village, city, county, state or federal?

In our local food groups, why is the expression “cheap food isn’t good; good food isn’t cheap” still in use? What does this even say to working poor families whose spending habits have to be “cheap” out of necessity? What can be done to make fresh, healthy, organic food affordable to working poor people?

Why are things being done FOR the working poor–food pantry distributions and the like–rather than BY the working poor, on their own behalf? Why is there so little mutual aid, self-help, co-operative self-organization by the workers for the workers?

Are the neoliberal governors of troubled states such as Wisconsin’s Gov. Doyle really being honest about the depth of the budget crises that still lie ahead? If the bulk of the state budget crises are still on the future segment of the timeline, what will this do to the remainder of the economy? Until now, state employees and to some extent, municipal and county employees, could be counted on as stably employed citizens who could drive a consumer economy, since production stopped being “our thing” in the USA. What will happen to these top-tier workers and their way of life?

“Green jobs” are expected to replace only about 25% of the massive losses in employment since 12/07. What about the rest?

What impact will the peak of global oil production have upon a struggling economy barely able to stave off even worse losses in employment? Why have sustainability groups completely stopped talking about the question of peak oil?

Are we supposed to believe that the problem has gone away, that the predictions were all wrong of peak oil production having already occurred 2005-2006 (Laherre, Simmons, Pickens, Heinberg); to occur in 2010 (Petrobras); to occur in 2012 (Colin Campbell’s original estimate) or even, to occur in 2030 as the ever-optimistic IEA says?

Why is climate change denial politically incorrect, while peak oil denial is the new coolness?

And, finally, when is this problem going to be addressed in the sustainability movement: Tens of millions of us in the USA being “subject to conditions that systemically undermine our capacity to meet their needs.”

At the upcoming meeting, don’t put any your laptop or any heavy objects on that end of the table with the missing leg ,the 4th system condition. And be aware: the building where the meeting is being held is a four-pillar edifice, one pillar missing.

Bobby G.
Central Wisc. USA

Posted in Co-operation, Economics, Peak Oil, Political Economy, Sustainability, Uncategorized, globalization, subcultures | 4 Comments »

US invades South Florida

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

We happened to catch the nightly news, the one that features Katie Couric.

Watching the desert-khaki clad, machine-gun toting “Police” on maneuvers for “Super Bowl security” in Miami, I commented to my wife, “hey, it looks sort of like Baghdad or Kandahar, but without all the bombs going off.”

There were the heavy, armored troop-transport vehicles. The circling helicopters. The usual manhandling suspected “domestic terrorists” and throwing them on the ground, intimidating people in vehicles, all the stuff you’d expect at a Baghdad checkpoint. Without, of course, the up-close explosions and depleted uranium rounds thudding in the distance.

Not that I’d ever want to attend a Super Bowl game anyway. Or any other corporate spectacle these days, for that matter… But what if I wanted to attend a, for example,protest march? Would that be my lot, slammed to the ground, perhaps deafened ppermanently with high-decibel hearing-damage equipment such as police forces are ready to deploy in Vancouver against the Olympics protests?

This week, of course, all the heads of US security forces were in front of Congress whipping up the fear and anxiety level about an “imminent attack” from the usual people who terrorize us, including of course Mr. Bin Laden, now long dead.

It’s just too bad that all hints of a US movement for peace and in opposition to militarising every aspect of our “civilian” lives have now evaporated. It’s easier to accomplish that goal under a “liberal” administration instead of a hated “neo-con” administration, ever notice that?

Alas, we’ll have to rely on the workers, peasants, and slum dwellers in distant parts of our globalized world to do the heavy lifting in opposition to US militarism and imperialism. Much as the Haitians used to attempt to do, before being completely crushed in 1994 and 2004.

Bobby G
Central Wisc.
http://twitter.com/BioDiverseCity

Posted in Peace, Political Economy, globalization | No Comments »

Ended, Tree Sit to Stop Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Friday, January 29th, 2010
posted by norag

Tree Sit Ends, Sitters Vow Not Over Until Blasting Stops
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: 304-854-7372, news@climategroundzero.org
Note: For more info, see : www.climategroundzero.org, www.mountainjustice.org

January 29, 2010

PETTUS, WVa—After blocking Massey Energy’s operations on the Bee Tree Permit for nine days, Amber Nitchman, 19, and Eric Blevins, 28 descended from their respective trees. They had occupied the two oak trees—originally accompanied by a third tree sitter, David Aaron Smith, 23—to protest mountaintop removal and the blasting of Coal River Mountain. Upon descent, they were immediately arrested by West Virginia State Troopers. The sitters’ decision to leave the trees was made in light of the recent drop in temperature.

After a week of Massey security harassing the sitters with deafening sirens and air horns, acall-in pressure campaign was launched by Climate Ground Zero, Mountain Justice and other anti-mountaintop removal groups. The receipt of hundreds of calls from around the country led to an emergency meeting with Climate Ground Zero volunteers, the Raleigh County prosecutor and Governor Manchin. The meeting resulted in the moratorium and a call for aninvestigation of the abuse.

The tree sit represents Climate Ground Zero’s most sustained intervention in mountaintop removal mining operations since its campaign of nonviolent direct action began last February. Volunteers know that the fight is far from over and expect work to commence on the Bee Tree site immediately. However, they see this tree sit as a victory. “It halted blasting for nine days. I think they’ve wildly succeeded with their goals,” said Climate Ground Zero volunteer Mike Bowersox. In a final communication from her perch, Nitchman captured the group’s resolve. “Its not over until the blasting is stopped,” she said.

Posted in Economics, GeoEngineering, Political Economy, Sustainability, ecology, globalization | No Comments »

How America went from a nation of producers to consumers: Part V: The Reagan (Counter)Revolution begins race to the bottom

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Gil Scott-Heron again:

“What has happened is that, in the last 20 years, America has changed from a producer to a consumer; and all consumers know that when the producer names the tune, the consumer has got to dance. The way it is.

“We used to be a producer–very inflexible at that–and now we are consumers and finding it difficult to understand: Natural resources and minerals will change your world.” –Gil Scott-Heron, “B Movie,” ca. 1981.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56ipWM3DWe4&feature=related

I’m using Gil Scott-Heron’s words to anchor this piece because I always saw him as the voice of the voiceless, the underclass, the black workers and those who couldn’t get a job. And when the 1980s decade began, black workers and poor people in general were the canaries in the coal mine for what was going to befall the rest of the working class and what we called “the middle class” in those days.

Ronald Reagan became a larger-than-life figure for a lot of voters in this country who saw him as someone who could deal with the threat of the Soviet Union, with the Iranian revolution, take on the labor unions, stop inflation, cut taxes, curtail welfare spending, and usher in new prosperity, even if only for a quarter of the US population.

The election of Reagan caused some splits in the US labor movement, where in many cases, labor unions of the more conservative bent such as Teamsters and some of the construction trades actually endorsed Reagan. In order to grasp why some labor unions in the USA have tended toward the conservative side of the spectrum, you might go back a ways in history and consult writers of the real left, starting with Frederick Engels’ 1892 book The Condition of the Working Class in England. Engels, and later V.I. Lenin in Russia, spoke of an “aristocracy of labor” who more and more tended to side with the capitalists, even while occasionally getting into conflict with these capitalists.

It all had to do with the use of the super-profit that could be derived from the laboring people in the colonies (later, neocolonies), who worked at the very bottom of the wage-labor pyramid. With such extraordinary profit in hand, the theory goes, capital can sort of “bribe” the highest-paid sectors of its home labor force in the home country (England or the USA) to take its side in political matters. The most important of these political matters was the continued oppression and exploitation of foreign nations’ work forces. With the highest standard of living in the world somewhat assured, the higher tiers in the US labor movement (as well as professional workers and those not in unions) could usually be counted on to support wars of foreign intervention.

Domestically, the form that this kind of “super-profit” extraction and division of the labor force into an “aristocracy” and a highly-exploited general workforce took was in the division of white workers against African-American and Latino workers. Within the US labor market, the deep south and the southwest provided a source of such super-profit for capital for decades. The deep south also became a kind of foundry for the civil rights movement, a general uprising of southern black working people against the intolerable treatment that persisted since the first slaves arrived.

All this is to suggest some explanation for why Mr. Reagan, no friend of the working class, could nonetheless have gotten a lot of votes, and support, from the working class. White workers understood him to be out to slash spending on social welfare, seen as disproportionately supporting poor black working families. They thought his administration would lower their taxes and bring new prosperity. They thought this administration would stand tough against the communist threat arising from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Afghanistan.

So, a sector of labor was willing to throw their votes to Reagan, then watch for the next eight years as the producing, industrial sector of America’s economy was hollowed out and shipped overseas. They watched as de-regulation was introduced in a number of sectors of the economy, especially the financial sector, and where a large bubble would build up in the stock market, along with the savings and loan industry and other key sectors that would later come crashing down, starting in October, 1987.

Left economists often point out how big capital uses recessions to “rationalize production,” that is, to down-size manufacturing, introduce new automation techniques, shed less-profitable factories or entire divisions, and especially since the Carter years, these downturns have served as opportunities to move work abroad. The recession that began shortly after Reagan took office was a deep one, and left US organized labor in a greatly weakened condition.

The Reagan Recession introduced America to a new wave of homelessness among poor workers that had not been seen since the Great Depression era. In 1984-1985, I had been living and organizing in Philadelphia at a time when there were some 40,000-50,000 homeless working poor people living out on the streets, in full public view. This was the time when Bruce Springsteen was organizing benefit gigs for homeless groups, and when the issue of homelessness became a major issue in many large cities in the USA.

This recession began to raise the question both for capital and for labor: how far can you cut the standard of living of your domestic working class before their ability to be a consumer class is badly damaged and begins to feed into the growing recession? It is one thing to gain super-profits by opening hundreds of new factories in the maquiladora region of Mexico (just across the US border). It is another thing if this impoverishes so many US workers in the domestic market that they can no longer afford to drive retail sales onward and upward.

This tension between falling standard of living in the USA and the need for constant growth in the US gross domestic product was only temporarily resolved in the boom period of the Clinton-Gore years. It would come back to haunt the USA with the start of another recession just at the beginning of the GW Bush administration, and would take on an entrenched, scary scope with the recession that began in December, 2007. It turns out, you can’t just turn a nation of producers into one of consumers, if the consumers have not got the income to drive a healthy consumer economy. This is the pickle in which America finds itself today.

What of Reagan’s role as the liberator of those behind the “Iron Curtain” of the Soviet Bloc? “Mr. Gorbachev: tear down this wall” and look, a few years later, the wall came down. I don’t think Reagan liberated those people through his tough rhetoric and huge military spending. But Reagan certainly landed on the scene at the opportune time, when the Soviet Union had been struggling under 40-year history of maintaining an unsustainable bloc of countries hostile to the Russian homeland, trying to match the USA in war spending, and finally, making the historically fatal error of trying to invade and occupy Afghanistan. I think you can argue that as hollowed-out as the USA was becoming, the Soviet Union was even more hollowed-out in terms of its ability to sustain itself as a going concern.

The legacy of the collapse of the Soviet Union is still playing out today in many ways, in the Persian Gulf, in Afghanistan, Iran, as well as Latin America and Africa. With the disappearance of socialism as an economic system for most of the globe, the way was clear for global capitalism to take over, and take over it did, rapidly. In a way, this rapid takeover prepared the way for future economic crises to take on the sort of apocalyptic scale that our current global economic meltdown is taking.

Next: Part VI: Clinton/Gore, Bush, and Obama: Laying the Groundwork for Collapse.

Readings

Max Elbaum and Robert Seltzer, Theory of the Labour Aristocracy, Resistance Books, 1984. E-book available here.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2008.

Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution 1980-1989, Crown Forum, 2009.

V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, International Books, 1969.

Michael Round, Grounded: Reagan and the PATCO Crash, Routledge, 1999.

James B. Stewart, Den of Thieves, Touchstone Books, 1992.

Posted in Co-operation, Economics, Peace, Political Economy, Sustainability, globalization, subcultures | No Comments »

COP-enhagen

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Copenhagen’s climate change summit. #COP15 is the hashtag on Twitter.

Activists are calling it COP-enhagen, because of its eerie resemblance to the Battle in Seattle, Quebec City, Genoa, the G20, Republican Convention, etc. That is, COPs are in control, not the civil society electeds.

My conclusion is that Subcomandante Marcos was right on this point: “the police have replaced politics.” Ruling classes in any country, in any city, merely turn over the nasty job of bashing in youth activists’ heads to the police, wash their hands of any blood, and go on about their useless, fruitless meetings.

COP-enhangen has proven no different.

What it illlustrates to me is the need for municipalities, local govts., to wrench control over their police forces from the higher-up levels of govts. (e.g. federal, or WTO, or NAFTA, or whomever really rules). Control over police should be in place BEFORE these cities ever invite large gatherings where there is a possibility of mass protest.

This could pave a whole new avenue of struggle–local autonomy, autonomous zones, anti-authoritarian local govts. just trying to serve the people, etc.

Otherwise, these municipalities like Cope and Hang ‘Em just end up looking like fascist police depts. in the good old USA, who they’re so eager to not look like.

Just my comments from monitoring the situation chronically.

Peace

Bobby G
http://www.twittercom/biodiversecity

Posted in Economics, Peace, Political Economy, Sustainability, globalization, subcultures | No Comments »

Thanks to Automatic Earth, The Oil Drum

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Checking our webalizer stats, we note that by far the largest referrer to this blog is TheAutomaticEarth with quite a few referrals also coming from TheOilDrum blog, especially “The Campfire” segment. Just a quick thank you. We hope the content here rewards your deciding to click our link more than just once.

Posted in Co-operation, Economics, Peak Oil, Political Economy, Sustainability, globalization | No Comments »

550 WSAU Radio: Voice for climate-change denial in central Wisc.

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Who’s polluting your mental environment?

If you’re wondering how trends such as the new surge in climate change “skepticism” or denial among the general public in the USA gather strength and become categorized as “groundswells” of public opinion by the mainstream media, it helps to look at the opinion shapers among the public. Here in central Wisconsin we have a very big, very loud opinion-shaping corporation, Midwest Communications, which uses its flagship news/talk-radio station 550 AM/99.9 FM WSAU (Wausau WI) to get out the message.

What is the message? Well, its not one message, but a list of messages (”talking points”) that goes something like this:

1. Man-made global climate change or global warming is a hoax, a fraud, at times a crime against the taxpayers, perpetrated by the liberals, by Algore, Obama, and a left-wing conspiracy of scientists paidby leftist liberals and the UN to say the things that the IPCC said.

2. The peak oil theory is a hoax, a fraud, another liberal conspiracy to force the USA to go backward, away from the path of endless growth fueled by fossil fuel. The liberals are hiding the truth that there is plenty of oil just waiting to flood the market if only US corporations were allowed to “drill, baby drill.” Conservatives just can’t swallow that M. King Hubbert was dead-on, and US oil production peaked in 1970, and will never return to its prior glory days.

3. The Tea Party movement is the true voice of conservatism. Mainstream Republicans are not to be trusted or supported, unless they are locked in political combat with the Obama administration or the liberals, in which case it’s okay to support them, but only as long as they remain pure. Meanwhile, listen for the next “Tea Party” coming to your town.

4. Obama and his adminstration are, at times, far left, or socialist, or Marxist, or even “Bolshevik” or “communist” if you listen late enough in the evening to catch Michael Savage’s angry show.

5. Obama is not a US citizen, and cannot provide a “long form copy” of his birth certificate. Yes, the “birther” movement is alive and well on WSAU.

6. Evolution is not “settled science” (just as climate change isn’t either), and it’s “just a theory” and creationism ought to at least be included as an “alternative theory” in school curricula, according to morning conservative host Pat Snyder.

7. The USA was founded as a Christian country, and all these people trying to separate the Christian church from state are undermining our country’s foundations. The Constitution is full of references to God and how the USA is really a Christian state. Go read it yourself, you’ll see, maybe.

8. The illegals from Mexico should be treated as the criminals they are, according to the morning show and the majority of its callers, plus all the talk shows that follow the morning show, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and of course, Michael Savage (Mr. “Borders-Language-Culture” by his own description). The fact that these folks are economic refugees from a failed state makes no impression, and compassion is not the order of the day on the Right.

9. The only Christians worth listening to, by the way, are right-wing Christians. Liberal religious groups such as Interfaith Community for the Earth are not even on the map as far as the editorial board of WSAU is concerned. One has to feel sympathy for the liberal morning host, Tom King, when the topic of religion is breached. Whatever his beliefs may be, he doesn’t cough and sneeze them all over the microphone, and is frequently lectured by Mr. Snyder regarding his lack of true Right Christian faith.’

There are numerous other talking points, but these are the main ones of late. There is a kind of seamless, scripted unity among the talking points from Pat Snyder in the morning, thru Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, and Dennis Miller. A kind of corporate-oriented seamless unity. That is to say, those who own the globalized corporations would like it best if most Americans would share these beliefs.

Frequent guests on the morning talk show on WSAU (which has greatly increased its propagandizability radius with the addition of an FM transmitter in Rudolph near Wisc. Rapids) include Dr. Jerome Corsi (Mr. Swift-Boater, now advocating that Israel attack Iran immediately, if not sooner), members of “Americans for Prosperity” (founded by oil refining billionaire David H. Koch), frequent appearances by “pro-life” (but not anti-war) spokespeople (but never from reproductive freedom groups, NOW, NARAL, etc.), and occasionally Alex Jones of infowars.com. Judging from the line-up, I’d say that Tom King, their liberal co-host (who seems to play the role of making the station “fair and balanced” to fit the Fox News mold), has little input on guest selection.

Callers to the show are generally about 90% what you’d call conservative in opinion, and are generally in agreement with the conservative guests and with conservative co-host Pat Snyder. A considerable amount of fear-mongering ensues as the morning “Feedback” show winds its way through current events, the global warming hoax, the fact that Obama’s birth certificate has never been shown to the Right people, and so on. It’s an example of the “echo chamber” Balkanization of American civic life going on everywhere, 24/7. We don’t talk amongst ourselves now; we talk AT the other, we aim talk-darts at them, we talk past them, we talk over their head or under their knees, but we avoid genuine give-and-take in this new everyone-inside-the-box world.

You could say, if you don’t like this content, then just don’t tune in. Go listen to Wisconsin Public Radio or something. I listen to hear what local folks are thinking. Beyond the choice of content, also note that this is a station of record for things like school closings, and for fans of most of the sports teams in Wisconsin.

The morning show does allow some leaders of local not-for-profit and community groups to get the word out on their events and what their groups are doing. One wonders how the more liberal community groups must feel as their appearances are hosted by someone known to be hostile to their liberalism, and then to be on the playlist surrounded by such luminaries as Corsi and Limbaugh.

Advertisers need to advertise there, if they wish to reach that large market that the stations serve. Again, one wonders how they might feel as their adverts are sandwiched in among anti-immigrant rants by Michael Savage, or Rush Limbaugh calling Obama a socialist, or Pat Snyder ridiculing people who “believe in global warming”. (Oh, that’s right: 10. Morning host Snyder often calls global warming a “religion” so as to minimalize the issue to a point of being a matter of faith.) If you happen to know and do business with some of the local advertisers, maybe you can ask them how comfortable they are with this extremist-right message being associated with their products and services…

Without dragging out this blog entry any further, whatever part of the USA you happen to live, it’s worthwhile to know your local corporate propaganda outlet which reinforces these conservative messages. If you find your local Limbaugh or Glen Beck outlet, chances are the rest of the content is going to lean that’a way.

Then it won’t be so puzzling why large blocks of the population believe that climate change, peak oil, impoverishment of the working class, and similar issues are merely liberal “hoaxes.” The fact is that the public airwaves are bought-up by a small class of oligopolistic super-rich corporation owners who then resist what they see as the return of the commie “fairness doctrine” (a useless liberal reform if there ever was one). Fairness on radio? Don’t hold your breath.

Meanwhile, there are thousands of websites accurately covering Copenhagen, climate change, the science of carbon emissions, and everything you need to learn to be informed on this matter. Turn off your radio, start digging. Do your own due diligence. Question everybody, including me writing this blog.

B.G.

Posted in Economics, Peak Oil, Political Economy, Sustainability, ecology, globalization | No Comments »

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