Some people want a council to negotiate the best direction while others want a king to tell them so they don't have to worry. Republicans here want a King while Democrats elected a negotiator (Obama). But negotiation needs agreement and good faith on both sides. Republicans are preparing for war including arming themselves (2nd amendment and calling the Attorney General of the US up on Contempt of Congress charges over 2nd amendment fears) but when I suggest on group lists that a tit for tat system is appropriate with liberals arming themselves and returning the taunts to the other side, people over here freak out. I have been banned from the NYTimes comments sites because of my commenting about the need for liberals to arm themselves and have "liberal" gun ranges with appropriate targets. It's always important to maintain balance and work for harmony. Now I said this to make a point, not because I believe anyone should have guns. I don't own one and I prefer gun laws that keeps the crazies and the young from playing with them for sexual reasons. But the richest man in Congress is the chairman of the committee who has called for the contempt charge and he has been convicted of illegal possession of concealed weapons.
The only answer is for liberals to go to the Republican Convention to protest and be armed in a state that allows people to shoot people if they feel threatened. It seems that the "chickens" are in distress down South here. Point of note: Our educational system hasn't failed but it has been under attack from the religious schools and the private sector for the past fifty years. I got a wonderful education and my daughter did as well. But my grandson's education in a religious school cost him more than a college education and then his parents pay taxes for public schools as well. In this environment that makes normally rational people a little cuckoo. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of D & N Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 12:07 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America [1] I agree Ray, but not to the denial of BAI and the help it can offer those who need it. I refer again to the experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba in the 70's (http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100) which helped the people there i.e. "For four years Dauphin was a place where anyone living below the poverty line could receive monthly cheques to boost their income, no questions asked. Single mothers could afford to put their kids through school and low-income families weren't scrambling to pay the rent each month. For Amy Richardson, it meant she could afford to buy her children books for school. Richardson joined the program in 1977, just after her husband had gone on disability leave from his job. At the time, she was struggling to raise her three youngest children on $1.50 haircuts she gave in her living room beauty parlour. The $1,200 per year she received in monthly increments was a welcome supplement, in a time when the poverty line was $2,100 a year. "The extra money meant that I was also able to give my kids something I wouldn't ordinarily be able to, like taking them to a show or some small luxury like that," said Richardson, now 84, who spoke to The Dominion by phone from Dauphin. ..." But, since the educational systems of this and your country have failed the general populace (due to a perverted government will), most people will feel lost. An education including the arts would have offered thought processes and outlets no longer available to the average student that is now simply prepared to be a wage-slave for the rest of his or her life.This, would then appear to be a burgeoning opening for 'arts' teachers and a re-education chance for all those lost years and lost souls. Perhaps a new cottage industry to take advantage of these BAI payments with local schools as meeting places and a rebirth of artistic endeavour. Just attempting to stay on the positive side here. D. On 22/06/2012 7:50 AM, Ray Harrell wrote: I do not agree. I believe payment for work is a better option. For evidence I sight the idle rich and the problems that people have living on interest and government payments for mineral rights. Everyone needs to feel that their life has purpose beyond mere survival and consumption. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 10:06 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America [1] I agree, but I doubt that the Harpers of this world would. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Arthur Cordell <mailto:[email protected]> To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' <mailto:[email protected]> ; 'Keith Hudson' <mailto:[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 9:58 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America [1] So now may be the time to consider some form of basic annual income. A BAI may be cheaper in the long run than creating jobs that are really not needed. arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 7:38 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; Keith Hudson Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America [1] Since I was the guy who started the 'gloomy America' discussion, perhaps I'd better say a little more. IMHO, it's not something at the demand end that promotes growth and development, it happens at the supply or really technological end. Consider the enormous impact that the development of steam power, electrical energy power and the growth of the factory system have had. Consider the growth of railroads, highways and air transport and their capacity to enable billions of people to improve their lives. Consider the energy developments needed to make such things possible. Even events that have not obviously been growth promoting have had an impact -- yea, we've done it, we've landed on the moon! I don't think the mobile phone has had much of an impact because it's little more than an add on to what was already there. I would agree that we've reached something of a hiatus now and we seem to be going in a reverse direction. When I began working in the Canadian public service some fifty-odd years ago, there were no computers and there was no internet, but there were plenty of young women to type memos and plenty of young guys to take them to where they were supposed to go. All those girls and guys are gone now. And you see technology being intruded into the lives of the working class wherever you look. I'm not saying we're totally stuck, but we do seem to have reached a point where redistribution, not growth, has become the primary interest of business and government. Over the past few decades, I attended many meeting in which the objective was not how to make things more abundant -- growth -- but how particularly groups such as the oil industry might get a larger share of the pie. If what Giroux is saying is that what's important now is how to collude, press your case, and get more out of the system, I would agree with him. The growth of the lobby industry demonstrates this. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION <mailto:[email protected]> ; [email protected] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 3:14 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America [1] Mike, The paradox is that the most popular consumer product ever -- the mobile phone -- and also spreading among the world's poor as well as the rich -- is also turning out to be the most impenetrable by advertisers. If it was ever true that ". . . centralized commercial institutions . . . tell most of the stories that shape the lives of the American public", Henry Giroux (Galbraith revisited) is no longer correct. But it was never true anyway. If an economy looks as though it's demand-led it can only be so if there happens to be something tempting at the supply end. No matter how much cash and credit governments and banks throw at the general public, unless new status-friendly products are in sight the economy stalls. The world may beat a path to Emerson's better mouse-trap, but the thing has to be invented first. Keith At 18:45 21/06/2012, Mike wrote: Following up to my own post (mea culpa) where I quoted Henry Giroux thus: For the first time in modern history, centralized commercial institutions that extend from traditional broadcast culture to the new interactive screen cultures - rather than parents, churches or schools - tell most of the stories that shape the lives of the American public. I commented mds> ...any corporation that's playing in [the $700 billion] price mds> range will be prepared to spend a $100 million or so on salaries, mds> bribes, support for favored educational or other institutions -- mds> in general for subversion of the public interest wherever that mds> kind of return can be anticipated (hoped for?) in the short- or mds> medium-term future. Here's a piece on "stealth lobbying". http://truth-out.org/news/item/9889-exposed-the-other-alecs-corporate-playbo ok Clearly, the corporate playbook in the statehouses extends far beyond the tentacles of ALEC, which is but a small part of a vast, complex network of nonprofits. The multilayered, dynamic system of corporate representatives mingling with state legislators and public officials in a network of quasi-governmental nonprofits, allows the small number of people who are part of the interlocking directorate to wield a huge amount of power in shaping public policy. Under the guise of conducting educational activities, the stealth lobbyists of the "other ALECs" reduce the choice of citizens to which version of the corporate agenda to accept. Will citizens, then, continue to accept such a scheme? Time will tell. Not precisely congruent with telling "most of the stories that shape the lives of the American public" but parallel. The same arborization of intentional, coordinated corporate/big-business agenda and viewpoint, fed from the same financial wells and using the same ingenuous techniques of persuasion (if not more aggressive ones) permeates media, penetrates public and post-secondary education and tilts the "the stories that shape [our] lives". In YADATROT [2], those ingenuous stories essentially mask out much of what meaningful work, meaningful career or just availability of adequately-paid and adequately-respected jobs and replace the masked-out portions with a Disneyland version of reality to which we are expected to aspire. Critical thinking, actually seeing "what is on the end of your fork" is anathema to the Disney-fied version of your life and aspirations. The above-cited article reflects the propagation of the corporate Disneyland stage set into local and state products of the legislative process. As the author writes: Will citizens, then, continue to accept such a scheme? Time will tell. - Mike [1] Jeez, the "Gloomy America" subject is getting a lot of mileage. Are we having fun yet? [2] Yet Another Desperate Attempt To Remain On Topic -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ <http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A 0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0> ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/> _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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