ANS -- How Generation X will save the world

Maybe Sara Robinson is writing again?  Here's a new piece by her, about the cycles of history, and how the Gen Xers are going to save us.
Find it here:  http://scholarsandrogues.com/2014/04/10/how-generation-x-will-save-the-world/
--Kim

How Generation X will save the world


What is Generation X? Maybe our last, best hope for change.

by Sara Robinson

You can't blame Gen X for having had eee-freaking-nuff of the whole generational identification thing.

Americans born between 1960 and 1980 (give or take a couple years on either end) have spent their lives squeezed in between two over-hyped cohorts who have consistently hogged the spotlight, the jobs, the money, the social concern, and all the other cultural goodies that matter. To the temporal north, there are the Boomers ­ idealistic, moralizing, hyper-creative visionaries who still can't entirely let go of their youthful golden years when they were so determined to Save The World. To the south, X looks down on the Millennials, the over-coddled, over-hyped, over-connected Indigo Children whose future is vanishing before their eyes ­ and who are now being held up at the next generation that just might Save The World.

Gen X just gets tired looking at both sets of overachievers. X doesn't want to save the world. It just wants a decent job with benefits, some health insurance, and a reasonable place to live. Now that it's hitting middle age, it wonders how it's going to get its kids through college, let alone scrape together enough money to retire. Also: it's not too keen on this whole generational thing in the first place. The Boomers may see themselves as some kind of epic history-changing wave, and the Millennials are permanently wired directly into their whole generation's collective consciousness via their online social networks; but X has always had to go it alone. The idea that there's some kind of coherent, unified group interest to be discerned from the arc of their lives so far is dismissed with a shrug. It's just some Boomer marketeer's sick way of making us look bad. Again. So what's new?

But that dismissive attitude just might be a mistake. Because these stories that we tell about the character and fate of generations are rooted in a far larger and more complicated historical story. And in this story, time and again at history's biggest crisis points, the generations that are most like Gen X have been the ones who've stepped in ­ quietly, competently, expertly, without much in the way of fuss or heroics, at exactly the right moment in time ­ and actually did save the world.

Let me explain.

Generation X In The Grand Scheme Of Things

Contrary to the suspicion of a lot of skeptical Xers, these generational identities ­ Boom, X, Millennial ­ weren't just conjured out of some deranged marketer's trend-addled head. They're actually artifacts of a much broader theory of change that was laid out by historian William Strauss and economist Neil Howe. In their 1991 book, Generations, they argued that American history (and English history before that) has been governed by a recurring 80- to 100-year cycle of Renewal, Awakening, Unraveling, and transformative Crisis ­ and that this four-phase cycle was driven by four distinct generational archetypes, whose unique characters, choices, priorities, and interactions each exert a strong tidal influence on how history unfolds. Briefly, these four archetypes are:

> A Civic generation (for example, the Millennials, and also their GI grandparents). Civic generations are raised to play as a team, sacrifice individual rights for the greater good of the collective, and self-organize quickly into effective tribes. These generations are children during an Unraveling, and are called to remake the entire world anew when the Crisis hits in their early adulthood. They usually rise heroically to the task, branding themselves forever after as history's golden children. After the crisis, they are the supremely confident midlife managers of the post-Crisis Renewal ­ a confidence that is shaken when their own Prophet children rebel against the world they made come the Awakening.

> An Artist generation (for example, the Silent retirees of today, and also the post-Millennial Homeland generation, which includes the kids now under the age of 15). Artists are the sheltered children of the Crisis, the conforming young adults of the Renewal, and the midlife enablers who open the doors to the next Awakening. They are sensitive, thoughtful, committed to justice and social improvement, and very invested in building and improving strong systems of every kind. Mad Men is, more than anything, the story of the Silent Generation in their grey-flannel-suited heyday. Bill Moyers and Martin Luther King revealed the Silents at their wonky, hopeful best; Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld showed them at their technocratic worst. The Artists put forward a powerful social critique that inspires their younger siblings to question the old order, and to affirm the rights of the individual against the smothering collectivism of the aging Civics.

> A Prophet generation (for example, the Boomers ­ but also the Missionary generation that produced FDR, Jane Addams, Winston Churchill; and the Transcendental Generation of Whitman, Lincoln, and Alcott before that). These generations, raised in the bright optimism of the Renewal, are visionary, idealistic, individualistic, and typically aggressively confrontational and uncompromising in their politics. In their youth, they always experiment with new religions, unconventional sexual arrangements, and drugs. More importantly: even as they begin actively dismantling the old social, political, and economic order brought about by their Civic parents ­ a task they will begin in young adulthood, and finish in late midlife ­ they also create original and compelling new visions for the world that will be shaped in the next Crisis.

> A Nomad generation (for example, Generation X, the Lost Generation of the early 20th Century, and the Gilded Generation of the mid-1800s). Nomads are the children of the Awakening ­ a time of huge social ferment and laissez-faire parenting. Since they (more than any other generation) pretty much raise themselves, they learn early to question big utopian visions and distrust authority (both parents and government). They enter adulthood during the Unraveling, when society's institutions are being actively torn apart by the two generations ahead of them. Immensely practical and deeply skeptical of institutions of any kind ­ because they come of age never seeing any of them function properly ­ Nomad generations prefer real results to high-flown theory, and tend to rely most heavily on themselves and a few close friends.

Nomad generations have produced our greatest novelists (including Hawthorne, Twain, and Hemingway) and also our greatest generals (Washington, Grant, Lee, Eisenhower, and Patton). They don't open frontiers – Prophet generations generally do that ­ but they're almost always the first ones to move out onto the new territory to create permanent settlements, build communities, raise families, and establish civilization where none existed before. Whether it's the American West or the World Wide Web, the first barns and schools and businesses in any new wilderness have historically raised by intrepid, self-sufficient Nomads.

A Coming Season of Change

In their 1997 book, The Fourth Turning (the most concise book to read if you want to understand more about this theory), Strauss and Howe explain that every 80 years or so, we come to a moment where a certain constellation of generational types stacks up in a way that's ideally suited to massive, long-range change on a scale that's possible at no other time. When it does, a Crisis era begins ­ an era in which a new order comes into being, transforming the entire world in a matter of 15 to 20 years. This moment can happen only when the generations line up just like so:

A Prophet generation ­ in this case, the Boomers ­ approaches elderhood. This cohort has spent 40 years dismantling the old system (in our case, the postwar world that rose out of the ashes of the Depression and WWII, which defined the last Crisis era), and sketching out the blueprints for what a new and better order might look like. They are are sure of their visions ­ and as age overtakes them, they become increasingly determined to launch one last crusade before they pass.

A Nomad generation ­ in this case, X ­ slouches into middle age. This group has lived their entire lives in a country where nothing has ever worked right ­ in fact, things have been breaking down year over year since they were born. Learning to survive in an environment of accelerating social and economic decay has made them intensely pragmatic realists who, more than any other generation, know how to kick ass, take names, and get things done. While the Boomers talk, Xers do. As they get older, they become increasingly determined to restore accountability, rebuild what they can, and leave something better for their kids. And to a greater degree than either of the other generations, they both understand what needs to be done, and possess the practical skills required to do it.

A Civic generation ­ in this case, the Millennials ­ arrives at adulthood. They have no allegiance to a dead past that has nothing to offer them;  all their hopes lie in a future that will not come to pass unless they are willing to fight for it with everything they have. They're not big on philosophy (and a bit too cavalier with rights and liberties, which is their dark side), and they're too young to have much in the way of skills; but with Prophets to guide them toward the goal and Nomads to offer them solid, trustworthy management, they'll self-organize and deliver in a way that the other two generations find absolutely incredible to watch.

This unique generational arrangement arrives only once in most people's lifetimes. And when it does, it creates a top-to-bottom national commitment in favor of massive, rapid change. Out of decades of fragmented politics, a solid consensus forms over what the true existential threat is, and what must be done to resolve it. We must rebel against England. We must abolish slavery. We must defeat fascism. We must end the oligarchy of the 1% and stop destroying the planet. The imperative becomes all-consuming: once the generations agree on the central problem, nothing will ever be the same. And we are approaching such a moment right now.

This constellation is so potent that you can even see it spangled across our mythic literature. The old Prophet, the canny and hard-bitten veteran, and the wide-eyed young hero figure in every great story of transformation. Merlin, Uther, and Arthur. Gandalf, Aragorn, and Frodo. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker. Our founding myths tell of old Ben Franklin, cunning midlifers George Washington and John Adams, and young firebrand Thomas Jefferson. Even those old WWII movies showed the spirit of FDR motivating the grizzled Old Sarge, and inspiring the new recruits under his wing.

No one of these cohorts can bring us through this on their own. They all need each other if we're going to succeed.

Why Gen X Matters

And this is why Gen X will save the world.  There are things that X brings to the party in quantities that neither of the other two groups can muster ­ things that are absolutely non-negotiable if we're going to pull through this dark season and move the world onto a better, more sustainable footing. We need Generation X because:

1. Gen X knows how to get things done.  Neil Howe notes that Boomers love to talk ­ in fact, they believe so strongly in the power of words that they think that if they say things just right, to the right people, in the right way, then the change will magically just follow. But, stubborn individualists that they are, they're not great when it comes to action ­ especially any action that requires teamwork on any kind of scale. Their track record bears this out: they've been trying to implement change for 40 years already. If they had the skills, they'd have done it by now.

The Millennials don't have this issue. They're already getting locked, loaded, and ready to roll. Their problem is aim. They understand the challenges and the stakes; but they're young and untried, and lack the wisdom and perspective that come with life experience. And they're still too young to reach the levers of power ­ levers that X is now finally just getting old enough to get a good, solid grip on.

As the current Crisis intensifies, X's job will be to translate those utopian Boomer visions into something that will actually work on the ground ­ and to make sure it all works right the first time, because there will be no second chances. Generation X is just now beginning to provide the calm, collected management that will take us through to the next America. And to implement all of this, they'll form an enduring partnership with the Millennials that ­ if the theory holds ­ will turn out to be the most satisfying and rewarding collaboration of their lives.

2. X understands risk. The Boomers were children and young adults during the fattest, richest season in human history. That's why they could take all those big cultural and political flyers back in the day: the country's stored-up layers of social and economic capital were so thick under their butts that they were virtually guaranteed a soft and easy landing, no matter what they did. The Millennials were raised in much tougher times, but have been carefully protected and sheltered by their Boomer and Xer helicopter parents (Nomad generations are, hands down, the most attentive parents of any of the four cohorts, in compensation for their own lack of parenting), who've done their best to keep them from taking big risks and experiencing consequences too harshly. As a result, they're not at their best in unfamiliar situations, and don't act without consulting endlessly with each other. And because of this, they're prone to dither.

Gen X, on the other hand, came of age in an era of jarring and dangerous contradictions. On one hand, all that lovely social capital that had once protected the Boomers' backsides was evaporating all around them (and their parents never were all that much help, either). On the other hand, at the same time, the personal price they paid for screw-ups just kept getting higher. Bad sexual choices meant herpes and AIDS. Drug experiments were sanctioned by increasingly draconian prohibitions. Three-strikes laws came into vogue just as they hit adulthood. Health insurance prices soared, discouraging physical risk-taking. Over the course of their lives, there have been smaller and smaller margins ­ and bigger and bigger penalties ­ for getting it wrong.

Ironically, one effect of this was to made X the biggest go-to-hell risk-takers on the scene. If everything damn thing you do is a risk, well, then, screw it ­ go big, or go home. Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse. This is the generation that gave us first-person shooters, action movies, rap music, extreme sports, and Sid Vicious: it's tended to embrace anything that's loud, dangerous, and scary. But, at the same time, this experience has made them canny assessors of risk ­ especially as they round the bend into middle age. They know in their aging bones ­ far better than the other generations ­ that some risks really are worth taking, and some sacrifices are absolutely worth making. And they're pretty good at figuring out which ones aren't worth the skin, too. When an Xer says, "I wouldn't do that…" the rest of us would do well to stop and hear her out.

3. X trusts their own ingenuity. An old sign in a hardware store in my hometown read: "We the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much for so long with so little that we are now qualified to anything with nothing."

This is where Generation X finds itself now. There's a good reason that young Xers loved both MacGyver and Indiana Jones (who was a member of the Lost Generation ­ the previous Nomad cohort). As Indy put it: "Plan? I don't have a plan. I'm making it up as I go along." A lifetime of making it up, making a go, and sheer making do have made this generation preternaturally resourceful. If the car breaks down or the computer crashes, a Boomer will reflect on the existential meaning of the event. A Millennial will text her friends for suggestions. But the odds are good that the person who finally opens up the hood, grabs a flashlight, and takes a screwdriver to the problem with be an Xer. The tougher things get, the more we're going to appreciate this about them.

4. X believes in competence and accountability. One of the things that always happens through the Awakening and Unraveling phases of the cycle is a slow erosion in institutional accountability. Both Artist and Prophet generations, each for their own reasons, aren't really big on holding people or organizations responsible for their actions, or ensuring that there are consequences for failure. The Silents and Boomers have been letting things slide for decades (probably starting with Richard Nixon's Watergate pardon), letting people get away with things that no functional society should tolerate ­ to the point where nobody in this country now seems to get what they deserve, no matter how good or bad their behavior might be.

A big piece of Generation X's vaunted cynicism is tied up in their resentment over what looks, to them, like a massive and wretched double standard. All their lives, they've been subjected to harsh judgments and punishments that nobody else in society had to bear. And what they learned from this was to hold each other and everybody else responsible for their own actions ­ a trait that's going to raise the overall level of accountability throughout American society as they age into more and more social control. Goldman Sachs may have gotten away with their dastardly deeds in 2008. Don't count on it going down that way again if we see another crash in 2020, when the Xers will own Congress. Slowly, over the next decade, we're going to see ever-greater calls for institutional competence, with real consequences for failure. Just like the Lost Generation's Harry Truman starting the redemption of public accountability in 1937 with the Pecora Commission, Gen X will soon be the ones most loudly insisting that we get serious again about actually rewarding success and punishing failure.

5. X isn't afraid to make the call. Boomers talk the problem to death. Millennials confer for hours. Xers weigh the risks and rewards, apply their ingenuity, and act ­ and don't waste much time looking back to see if they got it wrong. It is what it is, and they did what they had to do. And they're perfectly willing to live with the consequences, no matter what they turn out to be.

We're going to rely on them to do a lot of that in the years ahead.

Generation X's life so far has been rough, mean, and hard. So those of us now between 36 and 53 might be surprised to learn that, after all the crap we've endured, we're only just now coming up on our truest days of glory ­ the moment we will be remembered for by history. The Boomers are finally start letting go of the reins. And though we find the Millennials' willingness to trust authority frankly terrifying when we think about it, it won't actually be so bad when we realize that the authorities they're looking to are…us.

And for the very first time in our entire lives, we won't be facing the challenges alone. We'll be calling the shots, but the Boomers will be out front holding up the flag and the vision; and the Millennials will be marching solidly behind, covering our backs. It'll be unfamiliar and strange for a generation that's always done everything on its own. But it will also be the best time we are ever likely to know.

Sara Robinson, MS, APF is a consulting futurist and writer. She's been a Senior Editor at Alternet.org; a Senior Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future; and a longtime blogger covering change cycles and change resistance movements. Her work has been published by HuffPo, Alternet, Salon, The New Republic, New York Magazine, DailyKos, and many other places both online and off. She lives in Seattle, and can be reached at sara@sararobinson.net.

ANS -- Snowden: Whistleblower "Did Complain" to NSA Before Leaking Classified Documents

So, Snowden DID try to report this.....
Find it here:  http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/23038-snowden-whistleblower-qdid-complainq-to-nsa-before-leaking-classified-documents
--Kim

Snowden: Whistleblower "Did Complain" to NSA Before Leaking Classified Documents

By Kashmira Gander, The Independent

09 April 14

 

ormer US NSA contractor Edward Snowden has blasted allegations that he did not file a formal complaint to the agency before he disclosed thousands of classified government documents, it has been reported.

In a preview of an interview to be published in Vanity Fair, the whistleblower told reporters that: "The NSA at this point not only knows I raised complaints, but that there is evidence that I made my concerns known to the NSA.'s lawyers, because I did some of it through e-mail.

"I directly challenge the NSA to deny that I contacted NSA oversight and compliance bodies directly via e-mail and that I specifically expressed concerns about their suspect interpretation of the law, and I welcome members of Congress to request a written answer to this question [from the NSA]."

The May issue of the US magazine will also see Snowden respond to claims by US investigators that he is in possession of 1.7 million classified Government files. "I know exactly how many documents I have. Zero," he said.

The 30-year-old also said he counts himself as part of what he has dubbed the "post-terror generation" fighting to defend the American constitution, and showed his admiration for WikiLeaks "[running] toward the risks everyone else runs away from."

"No other publisher in the world is prepared to commit to protecting sources­even other journalists' sources­the way WikiLeaks is," he told Vanity Fair, while distancing himself from its founder Julian Assange - calling himself "pro-accountability" rather than "anti-secrecy".

"I've made many statements indicating both the importance of secrecy and spying, and my support for the working-level people at the N.S.A. and other agencies. It's the senior officials you have to watch out for," he told the publication.

Snowden, who fled the US for China and currently lives in Russia after he revealed extensive communication surveillance by the NSA, tackled rumours that he is an anti-US spy.

He explained that he purposefully used only his personal credit card while in Hong Kong to demonstrate to the US Government that he was entirely independent and self-funded.

"My hope was that avoiding ambiguity would prevent spy accusations and create more room for reasonable debate.

"Unfortunately, a few of the less responsible members of Congress embraced the spy charges for political reasons, as they still do to this day.

"But I don't think it was a bad idea, because even if they won't say it in public, intelligence-community officials are regularly confirming to journalists off the record that they know with a certainty that I am not an agent of any foreign government," he told journalists.

The preview of the lengthy piece comes after Edward Snowden and reporter Glenn Greenwald, who brought to light the whistleblower's leaks about mass US government surveillance last year, appeared together via video link on Saturday.

The pair gave evidence to Europe's Council of Europe in Strasbourg, where Snowden accused the NSA of spying on organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
 

ANS -- Stradivarius Violins Aren’t Better Than New Ones: Round Two

And now for something completely different....
this is about a set of scientific studies on the quality of violins.  the results are surprising.  Do you believe the test results, or the previously "known" thing?  There's a long video on the site -- I haven't watched it yet. 
Find it here:   http://networkedblogs.com/VHbMQ  
--Kim

Stradivarius Violins Aren't Better Than New Ones: Round Two

by Ed Yong

This June, Sotheby's will be auctioning off the Macdonald viola, created in 1719 by the legendary Italian violin-maker Antonio Stradivari. They're asking for a minimum bid of $45 million, which would make this viola the most expensive instrument ever sold.

This price tag may break records but Stradivari's instruments often fetch millions of dollars, due to both the cachet of the name and their reputed quality. Many people genuinely believe that they are superior to newly made violins and many scientists have tried to work out why.

But to Claudia Fritz from Sorbonne University, the search for Stradivari's secrets is a "perennially fruitless one"… because they don't exist. In two studies, she has shown that professional violinists can't tell the difference between the so-called "Old Italian" violins and newly made ones.

"Strads are amazing instruments. They have survived 300 years and are beautifully made," says Fritz. "I don't want to destroy the Strads but I want to show that their amazing properties aren't unique. You can find them in new violins as well. The new makers are doing a great job and are making amazing violins. They should be able to sell them with pride and recognition."

Here's a 28-minute documentary about the experiment.

In her first study, Fritz recruited 21 professional violinists from the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, ushered them into a dimly lit hotel room, and asked them to play six violins. Three were new; one had been made just days before. The others had been crafted by either Stradivari or Guaneri "del Gesu" in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

The violinists couldn't tell. When they tested pairs of the violins, they were just as likely to prefer the new or old ones. When they played all six instruments together, and had to choose which they would most like to take home, 62 percent picked a new violin. And the oldest Stradivarius­an instrument that is held in an institution and loaned to only the most gifted players­was the most frequently rejected one.

"Many people were convinced that as soon as you play an old violin, you can feel that it's old, it has been played a lot, and it has a special sound quality," Fritz told me at the time. "People who took part in the experiment said it was the experience of a lifetime when we told them the results."

John Soloninka was one of them, and he talked about his experiences in a comment on my write-up. "I expected to be able to tell the difference, but could not," he wrote. "Claudia sent me my comments about the instruments that I made while I was playing them, and it was hilarious how wrong my impressions were at the time!"

The study was published in 2012, and Fritz says that the reactions ranged from delight to anger. Critics were quick to point out the experiment's limitations­ see the comments here for a sampling. The violinists only tested six instruments, and they played them for just 20 minutes in a dry hotel room. That wouldn't do. To get the most out of the violins, the players needed hours­maybe weeks­of testing, and they needed to play in a concert hall. One distinguished violinist reportedly said, "You don't test a Ferrari in a parking lot."

Fair enough, thought Fritz. Let's go to a concert hall.

"We couldn't address all the issues in one study anyway," she says. "We needed the first one to attract attention, so we could do a better one. This time people were really happy to loan me some instruments."

This time, she worked with six Old Italian violins and six new ones. She recruited players of the highest calibre­10 soloists who were either internationally renowned or had won major international competitions. (Seven of them play old violins themselves.) And she assembled a seven-person team that included several scientists, a violin-maker, a soloist, an instrument dealer, and a string engineer. (Three of them own and play an Old Italian.)

The team laid all 12 violins out on a table and told the soloists to pick one that could hypothetically replace their own instrument for an upcoming tour. They had 50 minutes to play the violins as they wish, using their own bows, and they picked their top four. (The team polled several soloists before the experiment about the time they'd need to comfortably evaluate a dozen violins­the average estimate was 50 minutes.)

They ran this experiment in two Parisian venues­the home of a family of professional string players, and a 300-seat concert hall that's well-known for its acoustics. In the hall, the soloists could ask for a piano accompaniment or for feedback from a listener of their choice. They could even ask one of the team to play the violins so they could check the sound from elsewhere in the hall.

The team gave the violins four points every time they were chosen as a top pick, three points for second place, and so on; they deducted a point every time an instrument was rejected.


Violin rankings. The six new instruments are on the top; the six old ones are on the bottom. The left bars represent the scores in the house; hte right bars are the scores in the concert hall.

Although the soloists varied in their tastes, two new violins consistently scored the most points, with an old Stradivarius tailing in third place. Overall, the new violins collectively scored 35 points and the old ones scored 4­a six-fold difference.  Fritz writes, "We can find no plausible scoring system by which the old fare any better."

The concert hall made little difference either. Some violins rose in the ranks and others fell, but the new ones maintained their lead over the old. "There is certainly no evidence here to support the belief that Old Italian violins come into their own in concert halls whereas new ones fall behind," wrote Fritz.

In the final 12 minutes of the experiment, the team provided the soloists with three violins­their own, their top pick, and the best-rated instrument from the opposite age category. Their job was to rate each instrument according to six qualities: overall quality, articulation, timbre, playability, projection, and loudness. They rated the old and new violins similarly in terms of overall quality, but gave the new ones higher scores in all the other categories. The concert hall closed the gap slightly, but not enough to turn the tide in favour of the old.

Finally, the team asked the soloists to guess whether they were playing an old or new instrument. They were wrong half the time.

The results are very clear: Stradivarius violins, despite their reputation, inordinate price tags, and indisputable craftsmanship, are no better than the best modern ones.

Critics will undoubtedly cling to their beliefs, and reiterate that it takes ages to master an old instrument. But let us reiterate: ten violinists­among the best in the world­couldn't tell the difference between the old and new violins, and were more likely to prefer the new violins when allowed to play the instruments in a concert hall. When they were debriefed later, they said that the experiment was more than realistic enough for choosing a violin for a tour (although not for buying one).

Fritz has also done two more studies: one assessing the listeners' experience as the violins were played in an concert hall, and another analysing the physical properties of the instruments. Both sets of results will be published soon but­spoiler alert!­neither will support the superiority of the Old Italians.

"We should stop mentioning on the programme what soloists play because who cares?" she says. "That would allow young soloists to make a career without struggling to have a Strad on loan. If we judge players on how they play rather than what they play, that would be better."

Reference: Fritz, Curtin, Poitevineau, Borsarello, Wollman, Tao & Ghasarossian. 2014. Soloist evaluations of six Old Italian and six new violins. PNAS http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1323367111

ANS -- 15 things everyone would know if there were a liberal media

Here's an interesting article about what is missing from the Main Stream Media.  Go to the page for the video of Elizabeth Warren (our hero!)
Find it here:   http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/07/1229087/-15-things-everyone-would-know-if-there-were-a-liberal-media?detail=facebook   
---Kim



Wed Aug 07, 2013 at 05:02 AM PDT

15 things everyone would know if there were a liberal media

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Promoted from diaries by Susan Gardner.

Prince Riebus (and apparently many others) still thinks there's a liberal media.

While I share Prince's frustration with the media, as a liberal, I'd like to go on record and state that the media isn't focusing on issues I care about. They seem to be far more focused on entertainment and making money.

Don't believe me?



If you know anyone who still believes in a "liberal media," here's 15 things everyone would know if there really were a "liberal media" (inspired by Jeff Bezos' purchase of The Washington Post):

1. Where the jobs went.

Outsourcing (or offshoring) is a bigger contributor to unemployment in the U.S. than laziness.

Since 2000, U.S. multinationals have cut 2.9 million jobs here while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg as multinational corporations account for only about 20% of the labor force.

When was the last time you saw a front-page headline about outsourcing?



Source: Wall Street Journal via Think Progress.

2.  Upward wealth redistribution and/or inequality.

In 2010, 20% of the people held approximately 88% of the net worth in the U.S. The top 1% alone held 35% of all net worth.

The bottom 80% of people held only 12% of net worth in 2010. In 1983, the bottom 80% held 18% of net worth.

These statistics are not Democrat or Republican. They are widely available to reporters. Why aren't they discussed in the "liberal" media?



Source: Occupy Posters

3. ALEC.

If there was a corporate organization that drafted laws and then passed them on to legislators to implement, wouldn't you think the "liberal" media would report on them?

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is such an organization. Need legislation drafted? No need to go through a lobbyist to reach state legislatures anymore. Just contact ALEC. Among other things, ALEC is responsible for:

• Stand Your Ground laws
• Voter ID laws
• Right to Work laws
• Privatizing schools
• Health savings account bills which benefit health care companies
• Tobacco industry legislation

Many legislators don't even change the proposals handed to them by this group of corporations. They simply take the corporate bills and bring them to the legislative floor.

This is the primary reason for so much similar bad legislation in different states. 

Hello ... "liberal media" ... over here!!!

They're meeting in Chicago this weekend. Maybe the "liberal media" will send some reporters.

4. The number of people in prison. 

Which country in the world has the most people in prison?

You might think it would be China (with 1+ billion people and a restrictive government) or former Soviets still imprisoned in Russia.

Wrong. The United States has the most people in prison by far of any country in the world. With 5% of the world's population, we have 25% of the world's prisoners – 2.3 million criminals. China with a population 4 times our size is second with 1.6 million people in prison.

In 1972, 350,000 Americans were in imprisoned. In 2010, this number had grown to 2.3 million. Yet from 1988 – 2008, crime rates have declined by 25%.

Isn't anyone in the liberal media interested in why so many people are in prison when crime has dropped? WTF "liberal media"?



Source: Wikipedia/Justice Policy Institute Report.

5. The number of black people in prison.

In 2009, non-Hispanic blacks, while only 13.6% of the population, accounted for 39.4% of the total prison and jail population.

In 2011, according to FBI statistics, whites accounted for 69.2% of arrests.

Numbers like these suggest a racial bias in our justice system.

To me, this is a much bigger story than any single incident like Travyon Martin. Or, at the very least, why didn't the "liberal media" ever mention this while covering the Martin story?

6. U.S. health care costs are the highest in the world.

The expenditure per person in the U.S. is $8,233. Norway is second with $5,388.
Total amount of GDP spent on health care is also the highest of any country in the world at 17.6 percent. The next closest country is the Netherlands at 12%.

As a liberal, I'd like to ask why the market isn't bringing down costs. I'd think a "liberal" media might too.

7. Glass-Steagall.

Glass-Steagall separated risky financial investments from government backed deposits for 66 years.

The idea is simple. Banks were prohibited from using your federally insured savings to make risky investments.

Why is this a good idea?

Risky investments should be risky. If banks can use federally insured funds, there is no risk to them. If they win, they win. If they lose, we cover the cost.

Elizabeth Warren does a great job explaining this to the "liberal news" desk at CNBC:

[there is a video here that I couldn't copy]


8. Gerrymandering.

When was the last time you saw a front page headline about gerrymandering?

Before the 2010 election, conservatives launched a plan to win control of state legislatures before the census. The idea was to be in power when national congressional districts were redrawn in order to fix them so Republicans would win a majority of districts.

The Redistricting Majority Project was hugely successful. In 2012, Barack Obama was elected President by nearly 3.5 million votes. In Congressional races, Democrats drew nearly 1.4 million more votes than Republicans yet  Republicans won control of the House 234 seats to 201 seats.

How is this possible?

By pumping $30 million into state races to win the legislatures, Republicans redrew state maps in states such as Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, Florida and Ohio to place all of the Democrats into just a few districts.
In this manner, Democrats win heavily in a couple districts and lose the rest.

In North Carolina, the statewide vote was 51 percent Democrat and 49 percent Republican yet 9 Republicans won and only 4 Democrats.

Where is your coverage of this vote stealing, "liberal media"? You're willing to cover voter ID laws, why can't you cover real vote stealing?



Source: Mother Jones.

9. The number of bills blocked by Republicans in Congress.

The filibuster has been used a record number of time since Obama was elected President. From 2008-2012, 375 bills weren't even allowed to come to a vote in the Senate because Republicans threatened the filibuster.

In 2013, during the first 6 months, Congress has only passed 15 bills that were signed into law. This is 8 fewer than in the first 6 months of 2012 and 19 fewer than 2011.

Also, until the Senate recently threatened to reform the filibuster, the GOP had succeeded in holding up 79 of President Obama's picks to the U.S. Circuit Court and Courts of Appeal. They're blocking these appointments regardless of qualification.

Where's the coverage? Where are the reporters asking why nothing is getting done?

* crickets *

10. The Citizens' United Supreme Court decision

In a 2011 Hart poll, only 22% of those polled had actually heard of the Citizens' United decision before taking the survey.

If 77% believe that corporations have more control over our political process than people, why isn't the liberal media talking more about the Citizens' United decision?

11. Nixon's Southern Strategy.

The Southern Strategy is a strategy for gaining political power by exploiting the greatest number of ethnic prejudices. Kevin Philips, Republican and Nixon campaign strategist, speaking about this strategy in a 1970 interview with the New York Times:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that...but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

This strategy has been used since President Johnson and Democrats in Congress passed the Civil Rights Act to build the Republican party.

Examples of this strategy were evident as recently as 2008 and 2012 as Republicans took up their assault on Medicaid, Social Security, labor unions, and Obamacare – programs which, though they benefit more white seniors, retirees, women, and children, have been sold to many Americans as handouts to lazy, undeserving blacks and minorities.

Yet you never hear the "liberal media" (at least since the 1970 NY Times) talking about the use of this strategy. At least not like this:

"P (President) emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to." - H.R. Haldeman's diary, President Richard Nixon's White House Chief of Staff

12. Tax cuts primarily benefit the wealthy.

A progressive tax program is designed to tax people very little as they are starting out and progressively increase their rates as they do better.

Republican plans seem designed to do exactly the opposite: shift the tax burden off of the wealthy and onto working people.

Take the repeal of the estate tax. In Ohio this was recently repealed by Republicans. The benefit is only realized by people with estates larger than $338,000 (as the first $338k was exempt) and realized most by people with even wealthier estates.

This also explains why Republicans want to shift the system from income taxes to consumption taxes. Consumption taxes are paid most by those at the bottom as basic consumption remains the same regardless of income.

It also explains why capital gain taxes are so low. Income through capital gains is only taxed at 20% (increased from 15% in 2012) instead of at the rate of other income (closer to 35%).

It also explains why Republicans were so willing to let the payroll tax cut expire. The payroll tax cut benefited people who were getting paid, not those issuing the paychecks. How much fight did you see to save this tax cut?

While tax cuts are sold to us as benefiting everyone, they really benefit a select few at the very top.

If everyone knew who tax cuts really benefit, would so many people vote for them?

13. What's happening to the bees?

40-50% of commercial U.S. bee hives were lost this year to colony collapse disorder.

This seems like an odd one to include, why is this important?

The Agriculture Department says a quarter of the American diet depends on pollination by honeybees.

Dating from 2006, colony collapse disorder is a relatively new problem. More "liberal media" coverage might push the urgency of the issue.

Instead here's a typical media story about bees: Thousands of Bees Attack Texas Couple, Kill Horses.

14. The impact of temporary workers on our economy.

The number of temporary workers has grown by more than 50 percent since the recession ended to nearly 2.7 million.

If freelancers, contract workers, and consultants are included, the number is nearly 17 million workers not directly employed by the companies who hire them. This equals 12 percent of the workforce.

What's the impact of a "just in time" workforce on workers and our economy? How about that for a story "liberal media"?

15. Media consolidation

Six corporations - Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Viacom, Comcast, and CBS - control roughly 90% of the media in the U.S.

These companies are in business to make a profit.

This is why you'll find plenty of advertisements in the media. Entertainment? Check. Sports? Definitely. Weather? Yep.

You'll also find plenty of "if it bleeds, it leads" stories designed to hook you in. Vendors, witnesses recall Venice hit-and-run horror. Fort Hood trial turns bizarre as shooter grills witnesses.

There's also plenty of political bickering: Democrats said this, Republicans said that. We let you decide (but we never weigh in with any facts or fact-checking).

What won't you hear? You won't hear the "liberal media" discuss the corporate media.

What to make of this

If the media were "liberal," it would serve the public interest and shine a light on issues like the ones above.

More people would also have a better understanding of global warming, peak oil, population growth, political lobbying, government's role in a functioning economy, how much we spend on the military, and countless other issues.

What you're more likely to see in the media, however, are stories designed to get you to buy their paper, or watch their show, or listen to their radio station. If it bleeds, it leads. This is why the media is concerned with scandal, celebrities, gossip, and fear.

If anything, our news consists of paid advertisements and outlets too scared of offending anyone to publish much of substance. Investigative journalism is also expensive; entertainment is cheap.

The way this corporate media behaves may not be surprising. I apologize if you feel any of this is beating you over the head.

This Buzzfeed-style list wasn't intended to introduce this idea as new (others have done a much better job), but rather to highlight the sheer absurdity of a "liberal media" for an audience who may not see it.

One way to approach the topic is to simply ask: If we have a "liberal media," where are the liberal stories?

Originally posted to akadjian on Wed Aug 07, 2013 at 05:02 AM PDT.


Also republished by In Support of Labor and Unions and Daily Kos.

ANS -- Conservative Book Sales Plummeting

this is a short "book report" that tells us that sales of "conservative" political books are suddenly very low, but sales of paper books in general are up more than ebooks. 
Find it here:   http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/21/1286549/-Conservative-Book-Sales-Plummeting?detail=facebook #   
--Kim






Fri Mar 21, 2014 at 06:07 PM PDT

Conservative Book Sales Plummeting

by Eternal Hope Follow

The Conservative publishing industry has been experiencing a boom along with the rise of right-wing talk radio. But now, that has come to an end like anything which is assumed to grow forever and ever. Buzzfeed reports that conservative book sales have suddenly plummeted.

This pattern continues as you scan the works of recent and prospective Republican presidential candidates. According to one knowledgeable source, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker received an even larger advance than Pawlenty�s, and Bookscan has his 2013 book Unintimidated selling around 16,000 copies. Sen. Rand Paul�s latest, Government Bullies, has barely cracked 10,000 sold; and despite spending months in the 2012 GOP primaries, Rick Santorum�s book about the founding fathers, American Patriots, sold just 6,538 copies. Perhaps most surprising, Immigration Wars, co-authored by Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who consistently polls in the top tier of the Republican 2016 field, sold just 4,599 copies.

This has caused a lot of book publishers to lose money. Certain publishers like to advance prospective Presidential candidates a lot of money, hoping that they will cash in if their candidate wins the White House. But that is simply not viable anymore because people are simply not buying their books.

One of the problems is that the market has become saturated.

That of course isn�t the only problem afflicting the conservative publishing market. Borders bookstores, whose widespread placement in exurban malls and rural communities made them magnets for right-leaning customers, shut down in 2011. And the web has decimated the subscription-based �book clubs� that launched a slew of conservative best-sellers in the �90s and early 2000s.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of conservative publishers has made the economics of their genre much tougher, with an ever-increasing number of books competing for an audience that hasn�t grown much since the �90s. One agent compared conservative literature to Young Adult fiction, an unsexy niche genre that quietly pulled in respectable profits for years until the big houses took notice, and began entering into bidding wars for promising authors, and flooding the market in a frenzied attempt to find the next Twilight.

The next problem is demographics. A greater percentage of people in this country are Blacks, Latinos, and other minorities, meaning that at some point, our country will become a majority-minority nation. And a lot fewer younger people are right-wingers compared to their older peers, meaning that when older conservatives die, there will be fewer people to replace them with.

That brings up a question which the article didn't address -- are there similar declines in book sales across the board, or is this decline limited to Conservative book sales? The answer surprised us.

Hardcover book sales in the U.S. are up over 10% through the first eight months of 2013, according to the latest numbers from the Association of American Publishers. At the same time, adult ebook sales are only up 4.8%; all U.S. ebook sales, including children�s and religious ebooks, are down about 5%.

So, contrary to the perception that hard copy is going down the drain due to technology, it has been making a comeback. And nobody is exactly sure why. People are still up for a good book.

Originally posted to Stop the Police State! on Fri Mar 21, 2014 at 06:07 PM PDT.


Also republished by Readers and Book Lovers.

ANS -- TWO ARTICLES: Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'? AND The End of the World As We Know It? The rise of the post-carbon era

Here's some frank talk about the coming disaster.  And, a second article linked to in the first article.  The dates of these disasters are projected everywhere from 2011 to next century.  But several predictions were for the next five years.  It even mentions Thorium reactors.
Find them here:   http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists  
and here:  http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-the-rise-of-the-post-carbon-era/   
--Kim

Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?

Natural and social scientists develop new model of how 'perfect storm' of crises could unravel global system

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This Nasa Earth Observatory image shows a storm system circling around an area of extreme low pressure in 2010, which many scientists attribute to climate change. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:

"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."

Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both:

"... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels."

The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:

"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."

Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.

Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:

".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature."

Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that "with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites."

In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business as usual' despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how "historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)."

Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that:

"While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing."

However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation.

The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth:

"Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."

The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business - and consumers - to recognise that 'business as usual' cannot be sustained, and that policy and structural changes are required immediately.

Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies - by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance - have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a 'perfect storm' within about fifteen years. But these 'business as usual' forecasts could be very conservative.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

The End of the World As We Know It? The rise of the post-carbon era

In an exclusive new essay, political scientist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed presents a dramatic picture of the world we're about to leave behind, and the new possibilities ahead. He argues that the age of Carbon is coming to a close, and only a concerted effort can prevent an impending crisis on a global scale.

Arts & Culture, The Cutting Edge - Posted on Monday, September 20, 2010 0:30 - 90 Comments

Tags: climate change, peak oil, post carbon
 

By Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Only 500 generations ago, hunter-gatherers began cultivating crops and forming their tiny communities into social hierarchies. Around 15 to 20 generations ago, industrial capitalism erupted on a global scale.

In the last generation, the entire human species, along with virtually all other species and indeed the entire planet, have been thrown into a series of crises, which many believe threaten to converge in global catastrophe: global warming spiraling out of control; oil prices fluctuating wildly; food riots breaking out in the South; banks collapsing worldwide; the spectre of terror bombings in major cities; and the promise of 'endless war' to fight 'violent extremists' at home and abroad.

We are running out of time. Without urgent mitigating, preventive and transformative action, these global crises are likely to converge and mutually accelerate over the coming decades. By 2018, converging food, water and energy shortages could magnify the probability of conflict between major powers, civil wars, and cross-border conflicts. After 2020, this could result in political and economic catastrophes that would undermine state control and national infrastructures, potentially leading to social collapse.

Anthropogenic global warming alone illustrates the gravity of our predicament. Global average temperatures have already risen by 0.7C in the last 130 years. In 2007, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told the world that at current rates of increase of fossil fuel emissions, we were heading toward a rise in global average temperatures of around 6C by the end of this century, leading to mass extinctions on a virtually uninhabitable planet. The Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences has reported that current fossil fuel emissions are exceeding this worst-case scenario.

Many scientists concede that without drastic emissions reductions by 2020, we are on the path toward a 4C rise as early as mid-century, with catastrophic consequences, including the loss of the world's coral reefs; the disappearance of major mountain glaciers; the total loss of the Arctic summer sea-ice, most of the Greenland ice-sheet and the break-up of West Antarctica; acidification and overheating of the oceans; the collapse of the Amazon rainforest; and the loss of Arctic permafrost; to name just a few. Each of these ecosystem collapses could trigger an out-of-control runaway warming process. Worse, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley now project that we are actually on course to reach global temperatures of up to 8C within 90 years.

But our over-dependence on fossil fuels is also counterproductive even on its own terms. Increasing evidence demonstrates that peak oil is at hand. This is when world oil production reaches its maximum level at the point when half the world's reserves of cheap oil have been depleted, after which it becomes geophysically increasingly difficult to extract it. This means that passed the half-way point, world production can never reach its maximum level again, and thus continuously declines until reserves are depleted. Until 2004, world oil production had risen continuously but thereafter underwent a plateau all the way through to 2008. Then from July to August 2008, world oil production fell by almost one million barrels per day. It's still decreasing, even according to BP's Statistical Review 2010 (which every year pretends that peak oil won't happen for another 40 years) – in 2009 world oil production was 2.6 percent below that in 2008, and is now below 2004 levels.

Oil price volatility due to peak oil was a major factor that induced the 2008 economic recession. The collapse of the mortgage house of cards was triggered by the post-peak oil price shocks, which escalated costs of living and led to a cascade of debt-defaults. A study by US economist James Hamilton confirmed there would have been no recession without the oil price shocks. While the recession slumped demand, allowing oil prices to reduce, experts now warn of a coming oil supply crunch by around 2014. As climate change intensifies natural disasters – such as droughts in food-basket regions, floods in South Asia and the heatwave in Russia – and as the full impact of peak oil eventually hits, costs to national economies will rocket, while world food production declines.

Already, global warming has exacerbated droughts and led to declines in agricultural productivity over the last decade, including a 10-20 per cent drop in rice yields. The percentage of land stricken by drought doubled from 15 to 30 per cent between 1975 and 2000. If trends continue, by 2025, 1.8 billion people would be living in regions of water-scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be subject to water stress. By 2050, scientists project that world crop yields could fall as much as 20-40 per cent.

Maps released by scientists at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE), University of Wisconsin-Madison, show that the earth is "rapidly running out of fertile land" for further agricultural development. No wonder, then, that world agricultural land productivity between 1990 and 2007 was 1.2 per cent per year, nearly half compared to 1950-90 levels of 2.1 per cent. Similarly, world grain consumption exceeded production for seven of eight years prior to 2008.

Apart from climate change, the ecological cost of industrial methods is fast eroding the soil – in the US, for instance, 30 times faster than the natural rate. Former prairie lands have lost one half of their top soil over about a 100 years of farming – but it takes 500 years to replace just one-inch. Erosion is now reducing productivity by up to 65 per cent a year. The dependence of industrial agriculture on hydrocarbon energy sources – with ten calories of fossil fuel energy needed to produce just one calorie of food – means that the impact of peak oil after 2014 will hugely constrain future world agricultural production.

But oil is not the only problem. Numerous studies show that hydrocarbon resources will become increasingly depleted by mid-century, and by the end of this century will be so scarce as to be useless – although we do have enough to potentially tip us over into irreversible runaway global warming.

Former TOTAL geologist Jean Laharrere projects that world natural gas production will peak by around 2025. New technologies mean that unconventional forms of natural gas in the US might prolong this some decades, but only if future demand doesn't increase. The independent Energy Watch Group (EGW) in Berlin projects that world coal production will also peak in 2025, but the journal Science finds that this could occur "close to the year 2011." EGW also argues that world production of uranium for nuclear energy will peak in 2035. According to the Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group at Uppsala University, unconventional oil – such as oil shale and tar sands –will be incapable of averting peak oil. Greater attention has turned to thorium, which certainly holds greater promise than uranium, but as pointed out by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Washington DC, thorium still requires uranium to "kick-start" a nuclear chain reaction, and as yet no viable commercial reactors have been built despite decades of research.

The exponential expansion of modern industrial civilization over the last couple of centuries, and the liberal ideology of 'unlimited growth' that has accompanied it, has been tied indelibly to 1) the seemingly unlimited supply of energy provided by nature's fossil fuel reserves and 2) humankind's willingness to over-exploit our environment with no recognition of boundaries or constraints. But the 21st century is the age of irreversible hydrocarbon energy depletion – the implication being that industrial civilization, in its current form, cannot last beyond this century.

This means that this century signals not only the end of the carbon age, but the beginning of a new post-carbon era. Therefore, this century should be understood as an age of civilizational transition – the preceding crises are interlocking symptoms of a global political economy, ideology and value-system which is no longer sustainable, which is crumbling under its own weight, and which over the next few decades will be recognized as obsolete. The question that remains, of course, is what will take its place?

While we may not be able to stop various catastrophes and collapse-processes from occurring, we still retain an unprecedented opportunity to envisage an alternative vision for a new, sustainable and equitable form of post-carbon civilization.The imperative now is for communities, activists, scholars and policymakers to initiate dialogue on the contours of this vision, and pathways to it.

Any vision for 'another world', if it is to overcome the deep-rooted structural failures of our current business-as-usual model, will need to explore how we can develop new social, political and economic structures which encourage the following:

1. Widespread distribution of ownership of productive resources so that all members of society have a stake in agricultural, industrial and commercial productive enterprises, rather than a tiny minority monopolising resources for their own interests.
2. More decentralised politico-economic participation through self-managerial producer and consumer councils to facilitate participatory decision-making in economic enterprises.
3. Re-defining the meaning of economic growth to focus less on materially-focused GDP, and more on the capacity to deliver values such as health, education, well-being, longevity, political and cultural freedom.
4. Fostering a new, distributed renewable energy infrastructure based on successful models such as that of the borough of Woking in Surrey, UK.
5. Structural reform of the monetary, banking and financial system including abolition of interest, in particular the cessation of money-creation through government borrowing on compound interest.
6. Elimination of unrestricted lending system based on faulty quantitative risk-assessment models, with mechanisms to facilitate greater regulation of lending practices by bank depositors themselves.
7. Development of parallel grassroots participatory political structures that are both transnational and community-oriented, by which to facilitate community governance as well as greater popular involvement in mainstream political institutions.
8. Development of parallel grassroots participatory economic institutions that are both transnational and community-oriented, to facilitate emergence of alternative equitable media of exchange and loans between North and South.
9. Emergence of a 'post-materialist' scientific paradigm and worldview which recognizes that the cutting-edge insights of physics and biology undermine traditional, mechanistic conceptions of the natural order, pointing to a more holistic understanding of life and nature.
10. Emergence of a 'post-materialist' ethic recognizing that progressive values and ideals such as justice, compassion, and generosity are more conducive to the survival of the human species, and thus more in harmony with the natural order, than the conventional 'materialistic' behaviours associated with neoliberal consumerism.

Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in London. His latest book is A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization (Pluto, 2010).

ANS -- There are Co-Op Options for Healthcare, but Major Insurers Don’t Want You to Know

Here's a short article with not enough information -- but they explain why, I think.  If you don't read it all, read the last line. 
Find it here:  http://www.care2.com/causes/there-are-co-op-options-for-healthcare-but-major-insurers-dont-want-you-to-know.html   
--Kim

There are Co-Op Options for Healthcare, but Major Insurers Don't Want You to Know

• by Crystal Shepeard
• March 12, 2014
• 4:00 pm

 

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One of the primary goals of the Affordable Care Act was to make health insurance more affordable for the millions of Americans who had to get insurance on the individual market. The changes in the new law required plans to have better coverage and by requiring everyone to have insurance, spread the risk across a broader spectrum of people to help lower costs. While these changes would help more people be able to get health insurance, the architects of the bill knew that competition within the industry would be a necessary component to help ensure affordability.

During the contentious debate during the creation of the law, there was a big push to include a public option. The most popular idea was to have a 'Medicaid for all" type of program which would be one of the choices on the insurance exchange along with other private health insurance plans. In between the shouts of death panels and anti-government sentiment, there was little support for such a plan. Still, the Senate tried to create some form of competition and was able to come up with a compromise option.

A Consumer Oriented and Operated Plan, or Co-Op, is a non-profit health insurer designed to offer individuals and small businesses more affordable, consumer-friendly and high quality health insurance options. They are run by boards that are voted on by their members – the consumers. They are licensed by the state(s) in which they operate, and may operate locally, statewide, or in more than one state. Created specifically for the purpose of enhancing competition, they can offer insurance to individuals and small businesses. Beginning with the launch of open enrollment in October 2013, plans offered by co-ops were available as an often less expensive option for consumers in 23 states.

Often focused on smaller groups of people, co-ops can take many different forms. They can consist of farmers, freelancers or started by hospitals and healthcare providers. The provider networks are smaller, and in some cases the providers are salaried, helping to keep costs lowers. Co-ops also try different cost sharing plans, such as eliminating co-pays for doctor visits and rewarding providers that focus on preventative health.

However, many consumers still aren't aware of them.

Co-ops are offered both on and off the insurance exchanges, but their entrance into the market has been very difficult. Based on the input of commissioned insurance agents and actuarial experts, early drafts of the law included $10 billion dollars in grants. This would help fund startup costs, such as setting up administrative and provider networks, as well as ensure that the co-ops had the necessary solvency funding to handle claims as they built their membership networks. By the time the time open enrollment began, cuts in funding and rigid rules of operation severely reduced the number of co-ops originally planned.

All of which was orchestrated by the for-profit health insurance industry.

As word of the provision spread, the health insurance lobby worked overtime to water it down. Claiming it was unfair competition, they convinced Congress to convert the federal grants to loans and reduced them from the originally recommended amount. The loans are structured so that they must begin paying the startup loans within five years and the solvency loans within fifteen. The tight repayment schedule saddles them with a high burden to overcome in a market where they are already the underdog. Furthermore, the original $10 billion dollars recommended had been reduced to $2 billion by January 2013, making it impossible to fund all of the 40 planned co-ops.

Already hampered by the financial constraints at the national level, many had to face hurdles at the state level. With funding in place with federal loans, they still had to get additional funding from private sources prior to accepting members. As these were a new kind of insurer, state licensing requirements had to be created and were more stringent. Before open enrollment even came around, two co-ops had folded due to being unable to get state approval.

Nevertheless, 23 co-ops have been able to make it onto the market and are selling plans. The bumpy rollout of the Healthcare.gov website rollout slowed enrollment for them, which has hurt the bottom line. Provisions in the law prevents them from using federal loan money for marketing, nor are they allowed to participate in the large employer market.

In other words, they can't spend money to let consumers know they exist, or participate in the most lucrative insurance market.

As we enter into the final two weeks of open enrollment, co-ops are looking for innovative ways to get the word out about their existence. Some are going door to door, resorting to old fashioned street marketing. Some have gotten private funding for marketing costs. The federal agency in charge of overseeing the co-ops, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has relaxed some regulations in order to help. They can use some of the federal money to educate consumer about their companies, but cannot highlight specific plans. They are also allowed to have one-third of their policies in the large employer market.

Due to these obstacles, co-ops are still a long shot at being a true competitive force in the health insurance market. A recent report shows that at least nine are at risk of financial trouble. Still, preliminary evidence shows that when they are allowed to operate as they should, they can make a difference. In states where successful co-ops are running, costs of policies are averaging about 9 percent lower than states without. They are often the lower priced options on the exchange and have had a comparable share of policies as the other major insurers.

Sometimes the free market does work ­ which is exactly what for-profit health insurers are trying to stop.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/there-are-co-op-options-for-healthcare-but-major-insurers-dont-want-you-to-know.html#ixzz2vuIAXJX4