Defense Contractors Theft & Extortion

My email to Roskam:

I would like to note that as a taxpayer I am fed up with US government contractors getting away with:

HIGHWAY ROBBERY ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17contractor.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1213707612-4zVo371AEaukpimfCOaPHA&pagewanted=all)

, .... not to mention RAPE
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080421/houppert ( Dawn Leamon was raped by a KBR employee -btw, she is from Illinois)

, pillage and MURDER in Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/middleeast/08blackwater.html

Please, please support our troops by ensuring that they are given the resources to do the job _AND_Bring them home. KBR is extorting them/us for money and their safety, all the while being paid so much more than our own troops to do their job. The armed forces have lost all control to the military-industrial complex. This is sickening - it has to end. THis is payola for VP Cheney and his pals. No wonder they want to stay for 100 years -they have no accountability!! At least hold them accountable to earn our untold billions. STOP this crazyness.

With all sincerety,

L_Z_

Yesterday

Yesterday was the lowest of lows ( ok not THE lowest but you know what I mean) and a pretty good gratifying " high" .

(1) I got laid off yesterday from my job. Aargh and angst, more on that later....

(2) Obama cinched the dem nomination last night. That makes me very happy. Its something I've been waiting for for a long time.

Suburban Farming / Gardening

I REALLY want to do this. I need to put together a plan and get all my supplies together. ( So far I've read this book " Square Foot Gardening" and have decided to start with 2 4 ft x 4 ft boxes. Home Depot did not have all the kind of supplies I need for the soil so I'll have to expand my horizons. My cousin R is a great gardener.... I hope she can give me some tips to get going this spring ....

Not buying gas from Chevron

My email to Chevron:

Sent: Mon 4/07/08 12:50 PM
To: comment@chevron.com

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to let you know I will no longer be buying gas from Chevron since I learned today that you have appointed Jim Haynes to be your incoming corporate counsel. He has shredded the US Constitution and been an advocate for torture.
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002785

Sincerely,
L____Z____


Digging around, you can uncover lots of other reasons to do so also...

Update (4/8/08):

"It's a role that the Senate Armed Services Committee, overseen by Sen. Carl Levin and its ranking Republican member, Sen. John McCain, has been quietly but aggressively scrutinizing during a two-year investigation. Two sources familiar with the probe, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, say the panel's investigators have grilled a number of key players—including Special Forces operatives and FBI agents—who were never previously questioned. The panel notified the Pentagon in early February that it wanted to question Haynes. Before receiving any response, investigators learned on Feb. 25 that Haynes was leaving for Chevron in San Francisco. "How often does somebody like that give two weeks' notice and leave town?" said one government source familiar with the sequence of events."

Organ donation- selling kidneys

This is an interesting post and 10 min. video on Organ donation and presenting the option of selling kidneys, which is currently illegal. I don't know if this is the right solution, but I know that the waiting list is NOT going down, its going up - over 70,000 people... these people are suffering and dying way too early. Not fair.

Corporate Welfare

This is a good post on HuffPo about the Bear Sterns bailout:

" So, what are the answers? First, if the government is going to bail you out, then the government should be regulating you to make sure you're not going to need a bailout. I'm not a fan of over-regulation (but we're nowhere near that), but no regulation at all is just as dumb, if not dumber.

Second, shut the fuck up about bootstraps. If you're going to keep bailing out the largest companies in the world, you better be prepared to do the same for the average American when they run in to some trouble. Laissez-faire my ass. This is rank hypocrisy.

Third, you need balance, whether it's a hand up for the common guy or a regulation for big business. Too much of anything provides the wrong incentives, but too little leaves people hanging in the wind. We need some welfare and some regulation. Not too much, not too little.

Finally, when someone tells you about their ideology of free markets unfettered by any government intervention, they better not come crying home to mama when they need help from that same government they've been bashing for the last sixty years."

Follow the Money

Gee I wonder where all the Iraqi oil money is going? Rebuilding the country or swiss bank accounts for when the !*&$ hits the fan and we pull out?

Bush doesn't even know how much a gallon of gas is going to cost this summer, $4 !

3 trillion and counting RTWT.

Super Tuesday

It WILL be SUPER if my man Obama pulls out a good night! (credit to cartoonist Mort Gerberg)

I voted today. It felt like a holiday to vote for someone I really like. I wish everyone in the world had this privilege. I'll find out soon if the PC (precinct committeeman) thing worked out or not. I called people on my registered democrat list last night...my friend BW pointed me to this show on the PBS show "NOW" with David Brancaccio this past weekend. I think voters in DuPage County would find this really interesting. Watch it here:

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/405/video.html

Yeah for Amy!! you go girl!! (her part starts about 11 min. in)

Debt and Sacrifice

I just went through some expenses and a review of personal spending yesterday.I decided I'm going to save my refund for J's college fund, and start cutting back, make sure I have enough saved to give to my charities at the end of the year.... . Unpatriotic?, so be it.

sacrifice now or sacrifice later... (dailyKos by zic)-regarding the " tax rebate "
I agree. I want to yell : "America: Take Head Out of Sand"

Our federal government does know how to ask us to sacrifice, it just refuses to ask. Because if they don't ask, if they pretend it's not needed, If they don't disturb us too much, of the young just sit still a few days longer, they can take a little bit more to fill their emptiness. They can buy our complicity a few more days while they try and steal a bit more of the future away from our children.

If the rest of us are gonna get back some money -- it's a rebate, we've got it coming to us -- to spend now, and you know what? it's another part of the national debt that those young Americans are being asked to pay down the road. But just mabye it will jump the economy enough so that our theft of their future won't be noticed for a few more days.

Back when I was young ( early '20's) there used to be a political organization called Lead or Leave, lobbying for the middle-agers and old folks not to screw us over with the debt. This was in the pre-internet days so that fact that I even found out about it once to go to a meeting in San Diego was something. Well, the chickens are coming home to roost. I hope the Republican Gen-Xers receive the inheritance they were expecting from their wealthy parents. Now we all can pay for their free drugs and free rides on Metra too. Young people need to VOTE, there is no other way to get this balanced out. The politicians will give the benefits to the generation that votes in the largest numbers. That said, I'm not young anymore but that doesn't mean I'm not looking out for my daughter! I just wish more of the older generation had done the same for us. Debt clock link. Now the debt/GDP is at least 10% higher than it was in the early 90's, even though the economy has obviously grown over that time. Can't afford it.

New coins on the way?

Prof McCoy- War on Drugs + War on Terror

Today when I ran out for lunch, I heard most of a previous interview on the WBEZ Worldview. Jerome McDonnel was talking to a Prof. Alfred McCoy from the Univ Wisconsin about the heroin trade, and specifically how the CIA's actions to get warlord help in Laos during Vietnam helped set up the process whereby ~30% of the US soldiers ended up being hooked on heroin. He also spoke about how the same geopolitics in Afganistan (set up while the Russians were fighting the Taliban, and then after we started bombing in 2001- ) set it up so now they supply 90% of the world's supply- they have no other agricluture or cash crop.

FUBAR!! - The War against Drugs and War against Terror are at odds with each other it seems. The Prof was also advocating decriminalization of drugs to remove the higher-priced demand. That would change economics of the supply, and not make it so lucrative to grow drugs in the first place.

I did some googling and it he has also recently wrote a book on the History of CIA interrogation and torture practices. Here is a really interesting video interview with him from back in Feb 06 with DemocracyNow.Org. I wish I would have seen this earlier. I'm going to add his book to my reading list.

Extra reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Commissions_Act_of_2006
So now I'm not sure if the US Consitution guarantees habeus corpus or not?????

Christmas Materialism

I totally feel this way too... there are so many people I could send it to - including my very own beloved and somewhat spoiled (compared to me of course! ;~) daughter - its a constant struggle! I miss not being able buy what I want to buy as gifts,.... but then I don't want them sitting in a corner, never used, either. I just do not "feel the love" with Gift Cards. Receiving is OK depending on how "close" I am to that person, but I don't feel as good giving them either. I love love love Cary Tenis - a philosophic advice columnist I've been reading for years on Salon.com . He puts in a very good word for the kids' POV:

Where, I ask you, are they supposed to find the values that you are talking about? Sure, parents can try to teach them these things. But kids look at their parents, and then they look at the world, and they go, What the fuck? They see the toys spewing out of the world's vast maws of plastic-mold technology, they see the microchips doubling in speed and know that in a year they will be faster and faster still, and tinier and tinier still, and more feature-rich too. They see the new dresses and the new videos, and they know they'll be changing faster than they can change their own clothes. And then they look at their parents, who seem to be moving in black-and-white slo-mo. How can they feel anything but pity and scorn? How can they have any confidence that their parents will even survive the acceleration? In fact it must frighten them that their parents seem so ill-adapted to the world that parents themselves have created.

And then we come along and we say, "I'm knitting you a sweater and I want you to be grateful for it." And they think, Are you out of your head? Are you nuts? Do you have any idea what's going on in the world?
This sentence is particularly funny because I actually DID crochet C. a black scarf several years ago. It was crazy lopsided, completely uneven. It was made from 100% Alpaca yarn though ( from my friends Lisa & Miguel's company) and it was made with LOVE. I don't think he wears it though. When he wore it working outside he would have a black ring of fibers around his neck if it was wet or cold outside. Truly- its the thought that counted in this particular case! ;~)

on this topic... This article was in the Trib today too. "What would Jesus Buy?" The movie is coming out this week. (From the same guy who made "Super Size me").
Among some regular retail outlets and online ( I'll have to do something for J and my neices & nephew) - these are two places I'll also be shopping this year:
Heifer and Project Peanut Butter

Emerging Adulthood & Religion

This is a really good essay.
Getting a Life -The challenge of emerging adulthood, by Christian Smith -Christianity Today
I forwarded it in an email along with my comments to a few friends at church. When I was on church council we did spend time discussing a 5-year plan and how to help the church grow. So I definitely thought this was relevant to our smallest (!) demographic at our medium-sized church.

My email:
Hi All : I just had a chance to run across this article online http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/006/2.10.html (RTWT)and it really raised some very good "food for thought" so (even though I'm not on council anymore!) I thought I would pass it along....

" How does or should American Christianity speak to emerging adults as people and emerging adulthood as a cultural fact? How can the church faithfully speak the gospel to 18- to 30-year-olds? The answer is surely not for the church to fall all over itself to quickly reconstruct its message and practices to somehow become more "relevant" to emerging adults. But oblivious disregard for emerging adulthood and the larger meanings and challenges it raises for church and culture surely won't do either. For starters, American Christians—parents, pastors, seminary professors, counselors, educators, and more—can simply become better informed about the emerging adulthood phenomenon. Most people probably have at least a vague sense that something has changed on the road to full adulthood. But more clearly grasping the social forces generating emerging adulthood, its typical characteristics and concerns, and their implications for a faithful church will require sustained effort"
....

" Finally, in considering the challenge of emerging adulthood, another approach that will not do is to project sole blame onto emerging adults themselves or "the culture" as some amorphous Other. If anything, the challenge of emerging adulthood raises hard questions about the extent to which American Christians have bought into the values and commitments of the larger world. How different, really, are American Christians when it comes to assumptions and practices around personal autonomy, money, lifestyle consumerism, self-gratification, and relational commitments? I am not suggesting there are clear and easy answers here. But it is worth remembering that a church that is not much different from the larger culture is going to have little distinctive or helpful to offer that culture when it comes to issues such as those posed by emerging adulthood. By grappling with emerging adulthood, then, we face the opportunity not so much for criticizing and lamenting others as for some good, hard, self-critical reflection and discussion. "

I can only say from my experience that this 18-30 phase of life was an "epoch" of time for me personally (compared to the last 10 years) and it certainly felt that much longer because it was the FARTHEST distance I ever felt away from my faith ( It certainly didn't help that I was away from Holy Cross, away from my family, living in CA, financially strapped, starting a career, and dating & then married to a 'non-believer'... but that's another long story for a rainy day ;~) and boy am I glad that phase of my life is O-V-E-R. Yeah! thank you God!) But this article really rings true to me that this can be THE most challenging time of one's life as a Christian. And it raises the point I think that we can't really consider our evangelism/discipleship ministries "well-rounded" if we measure this by having a well-attended "successful" sunday school, high-school, or "adult-ed" program, when very often its the after-college transition time that falls through the cracks when the challenges of living as a Christian are absolutely the most challenging of all! Although a solid background in Sunday school/confirmation and friends in Youth Group will certainly help, THIS "emerging adulthood" era can make-or-break whether or not one EVER returns to church or a relationship with God ( and ergo.. instill those values and faith in your future kids and generations to come!). Anyway I just wanted to put this forward as something we should raise up and pray and think about in our growth plans/strategy. I know we can't be every church to every body, but I don't think that means either that we should focus on appealing mostly to married couples in their 30's with 2.3 kids and a minivan either ;~) My two cents...(and two more from experience!)

Burma

Email from Avaaz.org today:

French oil giant Total (which also owns ELF and FINA) and U.S.-based Chevron (which also owns Texaco, Caltex an Unocal) have been operating the Yadana natural gas pipeline in southern Burma since the early '90s.The junta takes in an estimated $450 million a year from the Yadana project alone--and uses that money to maintain its brutal control, while most people in Burma live in dire poverty. To keep their profits flowing, Chevron and Total lobby hard in the U.S. and Europe against government measures to support a democratic transition in Burma.For companies like this, it's all about the bottom line. We must show them that if they keep backing the Burmese dictatorship, they will lose their customers--by the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, even by the millions.

Here's Total's response from their website.

Ugh, I wish we didn't have to buy gas At ALL

Supercapitalism

This is an interesting article/book review on economics and politics. I like to read about these things from people (Tony Judt, NY Review of Books on Robert Riech's Supercapitalism) who make connections with historical circumstances of the past. I think this comes close:

"There are two overriding reasons to worry about the soul of the city, and to fear that it cannot be satisfactorily substituted with a story of indefinite economic growth, or even the creative destruction of the wrecking ball of capitalist innovation. The first reason is that this story is not very appealing. It leaves a lot of people out, both at home and abroad; it wreaks havoc with the natural environment; and its consequences are unattractive and uninspiring. Abundance (as Daniel Bell once observed) may be the American substitute for socialism; but as shared social objectives go, shopping remains something of an underachievement.

and

Fear is reemerging as an active ingredient of political life in Western democracies. Fear of terrorism, of course; but also, and perhaps more insidiously, fear of the uncontrollable speed of change, fear of the loss of employment, fear of losing ground to others in an increasingly unequal distribution of resources, fear of losing control of the circumstances and routines of one's daily life. And, perhaps above all, fear that it is not just we who can no longer shape our lives but that those in authority have lost control as well, to forces beyond their reach.

I'm starting to feel this dread more and more... I'm not optimistic. Change is on the way and I think our current system is set it up so that change will happen quickly, not gradually. And I'm not just talking about climate change, although that will probably be the main driver. I really need to think about if there is any way I can prepare...? I don't know.