Harry Braun Goes Nuclear

Posted on 30. August 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on March 13, 2012

Independent write-in candidate Harry Braun went nuclear yesterday at the second nonpartisan presidential debates, hosted by Writeindependent.org. For a link to his reaction to the question of nuclear energy, visit here. I’m in the tiny box at the bottom, moderating the debate.

“I think somebody should be taken to court over this,” Braun stated, referring to the promotion of the nuclear business by our government, even in light of the fact that radioactivity is detrimental to our health.

He criticized Obama for his support of nuclear energy through 8 billion dollars of taxpayer money being earmarked for new, unproven reactors in Georgia. “He’s technically an idiot who doesn’t understand even the basics of any of this,” Braun stated emphatically.

I broke my straight face when JL Mealer suggested that we use our spent radioactive alloys to back our money.

“It already exists, we might as well use it,” Mealer suggested. “It uses the already spent metals and fuels…because we have to store it anyway…it can’t be stolen, can’t be counterfeited, and we’ll base certificates off of it…” he continued.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” I said amid laughter.

Harry was laughing too. Why not back our money with something no one wants? It is just as absurd as backing our money with something no one can eat or use or live on. Gold is cold company if you’re sick from radiation poisoning.

 

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I Want All Three

Posted on 29. August 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on February 27, 2012

Have you ever been faced with a choice of three flavors, and all of them sounded great? That is my feeling about the three candidates who debated this past Monday in the first of 10 debates Writeindependent.org will host for the upcoming presidential election. Here is the link, if you missed it on the home page (it’s the YouTube widget in the upper right-hand corner): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTZrtm2EIO0

To review the areas where each promotes novel ideas to our country’s problems:

Andre Barnett: Having served in the military for four years and lived overseas for nine years, Andre brings international experience and a keen understanding of foreign policy. He has worked alongside the FBI, CIA, NATO, and Blackwater, giving him unique insights into war and how to obtain peace.

Harry Braun: As a scientist concerned about global warming, Harry brings the solution of a solar/hydrogen economy to solve four problems at once: stave off global warming, stimulate the economy in many sectors, increase jobs, and decrease healthcare costs. By switching from oil, gas and coal to hydrogen generated through solar energy, we will eradicate air pollution, boost the economy with more jobs, and cut down on health costs by providing a cleaner, healthier environment.

JL Mealer: Inventor, car manufacturer, and contractor, suggests changing out our currency from Federal Reserve-backed dollars to United States government-backed dollars. Everyone, including the hedge fund managers who helped drive us into the recession, would then have to exchange their currency, flushing it out of the offshore tax havens, and bringing it back into our country to be used to create jobs in the private sector, so the government doesn’t have to fund public works projects that are only a bandaid short-term “solution.”

 

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Hearts and Minds

Posted on 29. August 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on February 26, 2012

I read an article today, front page of the LA Times, about how the Afghanistan situation might actually be worse now than before we went in to retaliate against the 9/11 attacks and Al Queda.

If we went in thinking we were going to win the hearts and minds of the people, then the verdict is: we have failed miserably. Are the Afghans better off than before we went in?

Who would have thought that wearing fatigues, armed with guns, and blowing up incendiary devices would make a positive impact on a country so steeped in its own culture and religious clashes?

It was a crazy idea: that “war” would bring “democracy”.

If our government had asked Americans prior to declaring war if WE wanted to go to war, the vote would have been a resounding “no!” We might have expected special ops to go in and find Osama Bin Laden, but we would be reluctant to start another Viet Nam, having learned our lesson the hard way.

So let’s stop thinking that war solves our problems, since it has been such a miserable failure, why don’t we?

But we ought not to just abandon Afghanistan, the way our “leader” thinks we should just pull out our troops. If we do that, we will be creating new problems. You can’t just go in and screw up a place and then leave it trashed. You have a responsibility to make amends over a long period of time. We owe it to the Afghans to make peace happen, and it won’t be done by wearing fatigues and guns slung over our shoulders.

I recommend that a different sort of unit be placed in Afghanistan: a peaceful group of people whose main function is to turn a desert into an oasis of sorts. It all starts with drip irrigation, and with a well-thought out plan for the women to take charge of the food supply while the men carry out the hard labor For a fraction of the cost of the war, we could really make a positive impact on the people, speaking their language and dealing directly with poverty.

I propose we send in people who are healers and teachers. Imagine that. How much farther would we have gotten with this kind of tactic to win hearts and minds, if we had started this way from the beginning?

I’m sure there are cynics out there who disagree. But prove to me that war is better than what I propose. Oh, that’s right: we won’t be able to prove it because we don’t have leaders who will try anything new.

 

 

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Values, Schmalues

Posted on 27. August 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on February 16, 2012

You’ve heard it from politicians for years: they run on values. Let’s examine these “values” they espouse.

Be conservative with your money. The last two administrations say they want to reign in spending, but look what has actually happened. We’re spending more on war than we can afford, with no end in sight. (See http://costofwar.com/en/)

Never raise taxes, and especially on the wealthy. Instead, let’s “borrow” from our children’s future. Make our children pay for our excesses.

Kids today are lazy. What happened to industriousness? Meanwhile, it’s okay to take money out of our economy in the way of Credit Default Swaps and bailouts when the banks cry “we’re broke!” (See http://www.policymic.com/articles/5787/millennials-it-s-time-for-some-generational-rage/related)

Privatize social security and Medicare. Let’s do to social security what they did in the banking industry: gamble our hard-earned tax dollars in private industry and when the market doesn’t do as well as we expected, have the government step in to bail out the situation, forcing us even more into this “socialized” system we’re trying to avoid.

Tax breaks for corporations. The wealthiest corporations find the cheapest labor overseas. Cheap labor means bigger profits, but also means a tax burden they shouldn’t have to pay. Take that burden away from the corporations, and what do they have? More time to spend money with their families (assuming corporations have children). Meanwhile, jobs have left the USA, the overseas workers live and work in deplorable conditions. Some values!

Win at all costs. I can’t lose this election, so I have to raise as much money as possible for my campaign. If I have to lie, cheat, make promises to the people who are propping me up, it’s all in the name of the game, right? Whatever happened to people who want to serve their country as a matter of civic responsibility?

War is hard and expensive, but we work with the military we have. What about peace? Who runs on peace these days?

The writing is on the wall, voters. If you want more of the same, keep the same congress we have now. Just remember whose “values” you’re voting for.

 

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Nationalism is Killing Us

Posted on 27. August 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on February 15, 2012

We live in an incredible time of technology and super fast commerce. Why is it, then, that we can’t solve the most basic of human problems: war posturing?

Any intelligent person can easily come to the conclusion that nuclear warfare does not make sense, because setting off a nuclear bomb anywhere sends radioactivity across the entire globe. It’s essentially shooting oneself in the foot. One may “win” the skirmish, but lose the health of the nation.

I love my homeland, but I’m not a nationalist. Nationalism might be the thing that is killing us when we assume we are so different from others. It isn’t enough to make the world flat by free trade agreements; that only serves to give the large companies a way to find the cheapest labor (racing to the bottom). It has to be tempered with social and environmental stewardship.

We live at an unprecedented time of sharing information that could end poverty. We have to teach people that there is enough to go around, because the only thing that stops us from ending poverty is fear of scarcity.

When people are afraid that they will run out, they hoard. Studies in recent times have shown that in places of starvation, there was enough food to go around except that some people hoarded supplies anticipating a calamity, so it did not reach others in need and it spoiled.

The first rule of food supply should be: share. The more you share, the more comes back to you.

It all starts with fear. What we see across the globe is that the top people fear losing “control” over the masses. People are not to be feared; they are peace-loving and equitable, for the most part. The few that want to exert control must come to terms with the fact that life is uncertainty and even in its uncertainty, life is beautiful.

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War is War is War

Posted on 27. August 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on February 14, 2012

Violence begets violence.

There are few people who really “get” me when it comes to war. Cindy Sheehan gets me. She writes eloquently about the problem in her blog, Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox. She has a no-tolerance attitude about war and violence as the things they really are: no solution for anything.

Cindy Sheehan lost a son in the Iraq war. She isn’t afraid to speak her mind, and in fact, has thrown her entire life into the project of uncovering lies and hypocrisy. She doesn’t fall neatly into any category, except that she lives in her own skin. It’s refreshing to meet or read about someone like her, because she knows a deeper truth: the gut-level kind of truth, that can spot bullshit a mile away.

If you ever realized how many of your opinions come from other what other people say, or television, or the news, you haven’t really lived in your own shoes. Read what Cindy writes, and you will know what it is like to be an authentic person who makes up her own mind, thank you very much. Plus, she’s a mover and a shaker. If something bothers her, she’s liable to get up and do something about it. That’s more than most of us ever do in our lifetimes.

Cindy, you’re one of my heroes. Keep up the good fight.

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Food

Posted on 27. August 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on February 13, 2012

I teach people how to grow food. That’s my “thing.” Right now, the peaches are fattening on my trees and when the neighbors walk by, they see the beauty of life and its affirmation.

People have a visceral recognition that growing food is the most basic stuff of life. Even when all hell is breaking loose, when there is nothing else, there is still hunger. For life to go on, there must be something to eat.

When my daughter was born, because of a false positive for staph infection, she ended up in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and I had to drag my poor anemic body over to where she was staying. Though there were several babies, I could tell her cry from all the others. She was calling for ME, because she was hungry, and I was her food.

Things are no different now. She could be with Daddy all afternoon and forget that she wants to nosh, but as soon as she sees me, she suddenly thinks of food.

Women with children have this same understanding, and they are probably laughing by now because it’s so true. Truth is the bond that makes us all realize we are human.

This connection to the power of food is why I am calling on my sisters to join me: will you please help me secure the future of our food supply, make the earth clean again, and promise our children the bounty that naturally comes from this soil when we care for it properly?

I will be writing about the soil and seeds in upcoming posts, because everyone needs to know where their food comes from and how it is grown to ensure our safety and posterity.

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Jeremy Rifkin Quote

Posted on 27. August 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on February 12, 2012

“People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”—Steve Jobs

To that end, I encourage you to envision a new future. When you envision it, you will become part of the process of making it happen.

Can a combination of technological innovation, global cooperation and strategic thinking take oil off the international chessboard of power politics and replace it with the ultimate energy carrier, lighter-than-air, and potentially non-polluting hydrogen?…

While the fossil-fuel era is entering its sunset years, a new energy regime is being born that has the potential to remake civilization along radical new lines…

The hydrogen economy makes possible a vast redistribution of electricity, with far-reaching consequences for society. Today’s centralized, top-down flow of energy, controlled by global oil companies and utilities, can become obsolete. In the new era, every human being with access to renewable energy sources could become a producer as well as a consumer—using so-called ‘distributed generation.’ When millions of end-users connect their fuel cells powered by renewables into local, regional and national publicly owned hydrogen energy webs (HEWs), they can begin to share energy—peer-to-peer—creating a new decentralized form of energy generation and use…

The hydrogen economy is within sight. How fast we get there will depend on how committed we are to weaning ourselves off of oil and the other fossil fuels.”

–Jeremy Rifkin, Author of The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World

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Sweeter Than Sugar

Posted on 22. August 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on February 11, 2012

I started using Stevia to sweeten my tea before most people even knew about the herb. I was enamored of the fact that stevia, in extract form, is almost 300 times sweeter than sugar yet zero calories, and that it did not increase the blood sugar levels, thus it could not contribute to diabetes or heart disease. Plus, it came from a plant rather than a laboratory.

At the time I started using stevia, Snapple was becoming “the” popular drink brand. I wanted to know if I could develop competition for Snapple by making a healthy, zero-calorie brand, sweetened by an herb that seemed only to have an upside.

The more research I did on stevia, the more disenchanted I became with our government. It seemed that at every turn, either the sugar lobby or the artificial sweetener lobby was interfering with this herb replacing chemicals, sugar, or high fructose corn syrup as the preferred sweetener.

With the strength of their lobbies, these industries got stevia banned from soft drinks. Lipton had already started to put tea sweetened with stevia in bottles and on the shelves, but due to lobbyists’ pressure, the FDA banned the tea and all of the stevia-sweetened product had been confiscated from stores.

With the help of the lobbyists, stevia was demoted to being called a “dietary supplement” and not a “sweetener.” Thus it is not sold next to Nutrasweet or aspartame or sugar, but in the food supplement aisle of your supermarket, health food or Whole Foods store.

Many countries around the world carry drinks sweetened with stevia, most notably diet Coke in Japan. I wondered why a large company like Coke would not be able to strong-arm its way into the US market with their popular drink.

Sure enough, Coke was working on a way to make stevia patented rather than use it in the way Celestial Seasonings, Lipton, and Sunrider International had been trying to sell it, but blocked by the FDA. It took them a while to figure out a way around the stevia-straightjacket of not being allowed into soft drinks. The way they did it was by calling it Truvia under a registered trademark, saying that it “the best part” of the stevia plant, plus “erythritol and natural flavors.” With all this fancy finagling, Coke can now call it their own product, and somehow it is okay to put it in soft drinks. Any drink with stevia in it, therefore squeaked through on this special concession that the FDA made for the company that makes Coke.

Proof once again that, if there is enough money behind a company, it can effectively block competition, using our government to write laws that favor the company but not necessarily the consumer (or any other company). Free market?

Sources:

http://truvia.com/about/qa/

http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/articles/stevia2.php

http://www.stevia.com/Stevia_Article/Frequently_asked_questions_FAQ/2269

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Alan Greenspan Was Wrong

Posted on 22. August 2013 by admin

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on February 10, 2012

People make mistakes. They sometimes admit it, as Alan Greenspan did when he figured out that when you deregulate the banking industry, the markets don’t just fall neatly into place accordingly.

What I want to know is: with the enormity of that error, how does Mr. Greenspan live with himself?

Thinking the banking industry will self-regulate is akin to putting a huge chocolate cake in front of a glutton. Just what kind of logic is that? It’s cognitive dissonance at its height.

Maybe now Greenspan waxes philosophical about how in a democratic society (presumably ours) there is no better paradigm than laissez faire capitalism. Did he forget that we do not live in a democracy (it’s a republic) and that our citizens frequently do not participate in their civic duties, such as voting?

If we did live in a truly democratic country, would the electorate be educated enough to decide how to handle monetary policy? For that, ironically, we would have to follow one of Greenspan’s ideas: to improve our primary and secondary education systems.

This is my way of tipping my hat to Greenspan: you were right about education.

But to say that free markets rein and capitalism works in a democracy is like living in a vacuum that ignores the corruption that is at the basis of humanity: power and money corrupt. Does corruption figure in to Greenspan’s theories?

First acknowledge human nature; then account for it. Responsibility starts with maturity, and maturity needs to be taught.

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