Obama & Geithner's trickle-down economics

President Obama’s plan to save our economy by saving the banks is the new version of trickle-down economics and moves us closer to a corporatocracy.

The US Government should support the growth of smaller, well-managed, solvent US banks and invest directly in citizens and services rather than expecting huge payments to goliath banks to trickle down to us tax-paying citizens.

By investing in the large insolvent banks right now the US Government states, with amazing clarity, that it values industry over citizens. For so long the US Government has made decisions based on the influence of industry lobbying and corporate-backed think tanks. The decision to buy banks’ bad assets represents this same approach. “We’ve got to save the banks to save the country.”

I just heard a bankers association spokesman comment on the displeasure of smaller, perfectly solvent banks about being lumped in with “the banks.” If all of these solvent, well-managed banks out there are doing fine, why don’t we offer them the opportunity to buy up the larger banks in chunks. These smaller well-managed banks would take over the assets of poorly managed larger banks. This would lead to growth of local and regional banks, creating a stronger, more competitive and, therefore, innovative playing field within the US banking industry. Local banks could lend to local businesses and local citizens.

It makes no sense for the largest banks, the ones that have become insolvent due to greed and poor management, to be in the room with legislators and the Administration planning the recovery. Guess what the result will be: Large banks get all the US Government money. Surprise!

And who will benefit from those US Government investments in large banks? The first people to benefit will be the executives of said large banks. Other bank employees and shareholders come next. After that, US citizens and businesses may benefit by being able to take out more loans from those banks. Yay! US Government funds get siphoned off by the large banking corporations and then make their way to us citizens as loans. Just what I need. More loans and more debt.

Einstein said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” And yet our big bankers are thinking up the solutions to the problems they created.

Let the big banks fail, auction off their bits and pieces to small local and regional US banks. Invest US Government money in services for the people. Become a government of the people, before the US becomes a complete corporatocracy.

Society Responding to Climate Change

In thinking about how we as a society need to respond to our warming climate problem, I mapped out a little matrix. This has been helpful for me in thinking about all the different actions and approaches needed to address climate change.

I've organized my thoughts around three main groups of actors, and three main goals:

Actors/Tools: Government, Corporations, Citizens

Goals: Reducing Consumer Waste, Cleaning Up Industrial Processes, Energy Efficiency

Most of the actions and approaches we could take can fall into one of the nine numbered quadrants in this table. For example, on the note of Reducing Consumer Waste, it is not just consumers who need to take action. Government and the Corporate world can both invest in policies and practices that support changes in consumer behaviors. A specific example: the city of Boston could invest in a substantial number of recycling bins around areas with heavy foot traffic and could invest in a marketing campaign to promote more recycling and less waste.

There are many more examples of actions and approaches to responding positively to climate change that fit into this matrix, and probably a few examples of things that don't. But generally, I find this matrix helpful for mapping out things we can do and how these three major bodies within society can work together and take responsibility.

5 Books that Shape My Perspectives

Five books that I have read have played an important role in shaping the frames through which I view the world.

These five books contain ideas that not only pique my interest about how the universe and human beings operate, but that shape how I understand what I see, and provide lessons about how I can best operate in the world I see. I will be clear in saying that I rarely understand what I see, and can rarely prove my understandings to be accurate, but at least I can identify some of the ideas that have shaped hwo I interpret what I see, the ideas that shape by perceptions.

These also happen to be the five books I most often recommend to the unfortunate people to whom I offer un-soliited reading and perceiving advice:

A General Theory of Love

The Power of Now

Non-Violent Communication

The Fifth Discipline

[I have only read four of the five books that have deeply effected how I see the universe. I haven't yet read the fifth book, and don't yet know what it is.]

Response to Sicko/High Cost of US Healthcare

People who argue that the cost of socialized universal medical care is too high ignore the high costs imposed on our economy and citizens by the US health care system.

The large health care expenses we pay in the US go to support a large, wealthy health insurance industry that, more than anything else, makes our system more complicated than it should be. The general role of a middle man in a supply chain is to extract as much profit as possible without adding any value or efficiency, a task that the US health insurance industry excels at.

Along with this primary cost to the citizenry of the US, there is a tremendous amount of money and energy lost to the transaction costs of hospitals and doctors trying to coordinate their care with health insurance agencies.

The current US system basically takes money from average citizens and people who are sick or hurt and gives it over to a superfluous industry that actually seeks to reduce the quality of healthcare in this country. All of this, of course, is sanctioned and encouraged by the US government.

Our system of healthcare is really a form of charity to the health insurance industry, not to mention the pharmaceutical industry. This is not surprising - our political system is set up such that the government is a service provider to for-profit industries. Industries pay government officials and agencies in various forms, and the government, in return, provides a sort of political road-paving service, smoothing the way for corporations and industries to seek profit with fewer barriers.

Light Myself On Fire

Pain exists in human beings as fire. A person can jump through a campfire after getting a running start and land on the other side without even being warmed by the flame. But sit right above, or in, the fire for 3 seconds and the heat will begin to burn the body immediately.

People's psyches seem to work in the same way...

If I move fast enough, keep myself busy enough, maintain constant movement, then I can avoid feeling the pain within me. However, if I allow myself to be still, I begin to feel the pain. It is initially felt as a discomfort with stillness itself - I feel antsy. If I make it through the initial antsyness, I become aware of discomfort. At this point, moving, getting away, making myself busy, seem like clear routes out of discomfort. Unfortunately, the discomfort does not evaporate. I just distract myself from it by moving. My attention moves to other places and I avoid thinking about the discomfort and feeling it.

But this leaves me in the position of always needing to move if I want to be comfortable. I can't sit still. I can't stand still. I can't even lie still. I need to move.

The other option, of course, is to step into the fire. By being still I can move into the discomfort. If I have the discipline to sit with the discomfort, I have a chance to stop avoiding. The discomfort seems painful at first. Perhaps too painful. But I am like a tree in the middle of a dense forest. The fire may come and blacken the bark, but what it really does is create opportunity for new and renewed growth. The trees need forest fires to occassionally clear away dead wood, clostrophobic brush and even disease.

By slowing my mind and focusing it on the sensations that rise to consciousness during stillness, I can step into the fire of my own pain. I can become aware of what I am feeling and what exists deep in my psche. The process can leave scars and has the potential to bring me down, not just clear away dead wood. But it is the only way to change my life from one of avoidance to one of engagement. Moving constantly to avoid discomfort exhausts me and leads to me to make decisions that are not fully conscious and that do not necessarily help me live a fulfilling life. I don't want to live a life of running from something deep inside myself. I don't want to live a life of avoidance.

I must step into the fire of my own deep discomfort and pain in order to create rich soil in which my spirit can thrive and my happiness can grow. The fire will hurt and may leave a scar, but it will allow me to strengthen my roots and grow to discover greater peace and happiness.

Nice

I've recently discovered something about kindness. It may not seem profound, but coming to understand it on a personal level seems to be slowly changing my interactions.

I have come to see two distinct types of kindness: that which aims to make oneself likeable, and that which is based on sincere caring. The two are not mutually exclulsive, but distinct differences exist between them.

The first type of kindness can come across as overly outgoing. Sometimes it is rooted in a fear of otehr people developing negative opinions about oneself. It can feel as if someone is saying "I want you to like me." This type of kindness can overflow with big smiles, and friendly remarks, niether of which I have anything against. "Like me" kindness, however, is often very superficial. Not like a forced friendly interaction with a person you know you don't like, but in another way. "Like me" kindness is about seeming kind and friendly, and as such can lead glossing over of real feelings. I know that when I'm kind in the "like me" sense, I have to cover up my feelings, and hide behind a smile.

Acting out of "like me" kindness can be a dis-service to me because it involves me not paying attention to and acknowledging how I'm feeling. Sometimes we're taught to be nice all the time, and "like me" kindness is a symptom. Being nice is not always what people want or need.

The second type of kindness is less smiley. Its roots lie in a sincere caring for other people's wellbeing. It doesn't require being super-friendly to everybody, but respecting people. A person who is not feeling well, is not happy in the current moment, can still be very kind. Kind acts are not rooted in a smile, but in intention. That doesn't exlclude smiling from this second type of kindness. The smiles are just a little bit different. They are not an attempt to gain good will, but the expression of real feelings of care and contentment.

I slowly came to see the difference between these two types of kindness after occasionally being exhausted by kindness, and from feeling phony. I was working too hard. Instead of just being me and being aware of how I was doing, I was trying to get people to like me by seeming happy and friendly. This required detaching myself from my real condition - not a healthy way of living. And kindness from deep caring is much more fullfilling, both on the giving and receiving end.

(Let it not be thought that I don't appreciate the power of a smile. In a fraction of a second, a smile from a random passerby can give me a great boost. I just think that the feelings behind a smile are very important. )

Deep Waters

Stillness and silence calm the waters of the heart and mind and let whatever feelings lie in the depths of one's self rise to the surface. The more the discomfort of stillness and silence, the greater the need for them. Without them the pain that noise and busyness obscures will control a person. Stillness and silence bring up awareness of pain. It may seem that they cause the hurt, but really they provide the chance to feel and deal with it. Only this process can lead to freedom from pain. The alternative is a numbed and scattered experience of life.