Greed vs. Green

So, something really upset me today. In fact, I will admit that it angered me to the point of tears. Judge that how you may, but that is how betrayed I felt when I read that the House of Representatives has finally pushed out some paper to extend the payroll tax for you and me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that extra $30 bucks is appreciated considering the price of EVERYTHING is rising, but at what cost? Well, I shall tell you.

In passing this legislation in the House of Representatives, which now must be approved in the Senate and then pass by the hand of the Veto in the White House, the GOP leaders managed to tack onto the bill NOTHING that has to do with extending the payroll tax and everything to do with fucking the environment and further lining the pockets of Big Oil. Yep, that’s right. We get an extra $30 in pay, and the conservatives get a fast-tracked decision on their precious Keystone Pipeline; 60 days to be exact. (And, is it just me, or could Congress get a whole lot more done if they would deal with the issue at hand in a single, direct piece of legislation instead of wasting time with negotiations and slipping in addendums and caveats to appease those that put them into office by exploiting their greed?)

Now, I am not so blind as to think that this pipeline isn’t also supported by liberals, but I do know that getting a quick and sloppy ‘yes’ on a project that will devastate the ecosystem and grasslands of this country in exchange for the immediate creation of temporary jobs is not good policy. Now if Congress could pull its head out of its ass and really look at this pipeline and actually accept what scientists say as ‘fact’ (which is what we’ve all been taught that science determines, am I right?) and not just a bunch of lofty ‘what if’ scenarios, then they might agree that this is a messy quick-handed and short-lived fix to some really big problems that will still exist and persist even after they destroy the environment.

Not only does the pipeline feed our dependence on oil as an unsustainable energy source, it demonstrates to the rest of the world that we are willing to sacrifice our land, other natural resources, and the health of the surrounding population to fill our need for dead dinosaur energy that when burned eats away at the air we breath thus making this planet inhabitable for human life. MY HEAD IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE. Because their main motivating excuse for this horrible idea of transferring crude oil from the tar sands in Canada to the Gulf Coast through an underground pipeline is the creation of JOBS.

What makes this laughable is that nobody actually knows how many jobs this pipeline will actually create. And I’m sorry, have you been to any sort of manual labor site in America lately? The cheapest labor is immigrant labor, and as long as they are legal citizens then that is fine and dandy and can be considered gainful employment and count toward employment statistics, but come on…is that really the way things play out? Republicans are saying that this will create 200,000 jobs (and buy them summer homes), but according to a recent NPR article, “A recent State Department study said the construction workforce would be 5,000 to 6,000 workers. And once the construction phase ends, almost all of these jobs, however many are created, would go away.”

So we are willing to deepen our dependence on oil for energy even though we could be investing all of this time, money and energy on developing green technology and green jobs and actually climbing out of this hole as opposed to digging it deeper, for the temporary employment of 5,000-6,000 people. I have a better idea – we could train and employ those people to go into that same region and other farm areas of the Midwest and improve the irrigation systems that waste millions of gallons of fresh water in the United States every year because they are faulty, cheap, and unattended. I mean, since fresh water is also running out, unless we want to dispute that ‘fact’ along with observed changes in immigration patterns based on the availability of natural resources and massive climate change on a global scale? Or, we could employ 5,000-6,000 people to plant additional trees to absorb the carbon dioxide that is throwing off the balance of our atmospheric gasses that protect us from being burned to death by the sun, oh, and allow us to breath deeply (enjoy it now kids, because at this rate your grandchildren will be using oxygen tanks as soon as they exit the womb). Or, we could hire them to ransack the capital and oust all of our representatives so we can start anew. We CAN create jobs in other more progressive and productive ways, and we should. What we shouldn’t do is keep repeating a pattern of destructive behavior that we know will end in unimaginable consequences that will haunt us and forsake future generations. 

The Rebirth of the Feminist Manifesto

The following link is to an article in New York Magazine tracing the cultural emergence of the new vehicle for the modern feminist manifesto: the blogosphere. An interesting read with some great online feminist resources posted at the end:

http://nymag.com/news/features/feminist-blogs-2011-11/

A New Kind of Death Sentence

To me, there exists a proverbial line. This line is solid and it is bold, not one to be casually toed by antiquated systems of the past. So when I hear about my government’s House of Representatives (you know, those people we elect to best  REPRESENT our interests?) successfully passing HR 358, otherwise known as the "Protect Life Act," which is the bill that would allow hospitals to let women die rather than perform a life-saving abortion, you can imagine my surprise at the audacity of this minimally covered by the media move by my elected officials. The bill would not only deny pregnant women access to emergency treatment, but would also prohibit any insurance coverage for abortion services in addition to denying any information being provided about how she could pay for an abortion. The bill now awaits passage in the Senate.

It took me a moment to register the notion of this legislation and the fact that every single Republican in the House supported the measure, and 11 Democrats crossed the aisle to vote in favor of it. After the premise sank in, I did what any normal 27 year old woman would do – I checked my iPhone to make sure that I was still in the year 2011. After affirming my place in the space time continuum and a quick game of angry birds to channel the rising aggression, I cleared my throat, vaulted over urban dictionary acronyms landing on two feet in front of the imaginary field of gray haired men that constitutes the majority of Congress and spoke the only words that I could think of: WHAT THE FUCK!?

Yep. I have multiple degrees – one in English even, and that seemed to be the only statement capable of properly addressing the twisting internal turmoil resulting from this anachronistically blatant jab at the modern woman’s right to choose. So let me lay this scenario out for you: I can choose whether or not I want to carry a pregnancy to term (for now), but should I choose to carry the child and I suddenly take ill and the only life saving medical procedure available will result in the loss of said pregnancy – THEN I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO DIE? Repeat after me: WHAT THE FUCK!?

The logical and rational arguments against this bitter blow to women’s rights began to pound against my skull like a dry gin hangover. Angry and still legally able to think for myself (for now), I began to rant and rave about all of the moral implications of such a measure.

Now, I understand the war of political ideologies and the great conservative emphasis on “family values,” but did anyone stop to consider what this would do to a family if a mother was suddenly dead? What if she had other children? A family is suddenly rendered motherless, but with an additional child to add to the mix. Aside from the devastating emotional loss and overwhelming responsibility of single parenthood with a new born, a father will also have to contend with the loss of an additional income. And in this economy, he’ll probably lose his house and perhaps even his job since fathers in this country aren’t granted sabbatical when they have a new child. This may even lead to him drawing from government support to make ends meet, which only puts further strain on a system that those same conservatives are aiming to cut spending within as some kind of incentive to get people motivated to seek jobs in an economy devoid of them.

But what if there was no father? Then there is an orphan to be thrust into the dark sociological system of state care with grim prospects for life achievement and an increased likelihood of abuse and a childhood full of misguided psychological coping realistically resulting in a life of crime and years of dependency on a failing system of government supports. 

This is all assuming that the woman even makes it that far into her pregnancy - what if she is early on and the child can't be saved? Then both are left to die? Where is the sense in that? One caveat in the legislation that conservatives are pushing for would afford physicians the choice of whether they would perform a life saving abortion at this stage depending upon their moral views. Isn't that against the Hippocratic Oath? Screw that even, isn't that against international human rights?

In what way is this promoting family values and some biblical notion of anti-abortionism that will secure our place in the ever after? Is this really the aim of this conservative legislation? Do you really think this law will save someone’s soul? I really don’t think I am comfortable with those bought politicians who are supposed to be upholding the separation of church and state contending over whether or not my soul is doomed to the fiery pits of an assumed hell if I have to have an abortion in order to save my own life to continue to provide for the family I already have.

And how is it that insurance companies and politicians suddenly have decision making domain over my uterus? Oh that’s right! They’re all in on this together. If we for one moment presume to delude ourselves into believing that the government and insurance companies do not sit down and count their money together then we deserve the underhanded maneuverings that are unfolding to direct our lives.

For the only real change will arise within the discontented mass of people that are being pushed and prodded into a servitude to those who have all of the power and the money. You think this is about religious and political ideology? It is about power and control, and the power over a woman’s life through her reproductive organs is only bringing us one step closer to handing her ‘too-emotional to make a rational decision’ right to vote over to her husband and shoving her back into the home to bake cakes on valium and numbly forget her own voice. Are these the family values of yester-years that everyone is shouting about reviving? The illusion of 1950s bliss governs our current political paradigm, and the passage of this bill will have us lingering in the frozen state of back pedaling toward an American ideal that never really existed. Contact your congressman and complain…your life may just depend upon it: Contact Your Local Representative

Amanda Ruth 

First They Came for the Anthropologists - The Atlantic

First They Came for the Anthropologists - The Atlantic

Reboot The System

First, while legitimately making one, the Tea Partiers and the Wall Street protesters are missing the point!! It appears as if both sides are mocking what the other stands for instead of conceding that each has a valid point that all centers on the same thing: THE GOVERNMENT. Instead of their numbers and might together to achieve what they both ultimately want, reform, they choose instead to enter into the age-old ‘mine is bigger than yours’ contest. In doing so, they slander one another and ultimately will achieve nothing; sort of like Congress.

The Tea Partiers are made up of the mostly conservative of our society and the elderly. They have a genuine complaint, they paid money into a system that told them that money would be there and available when they reached retirement. Simply, they have paid a government that mismanaged the funds. That same institution is now in a 4^th quarter come from behind scramble as they try to keep their multi-trillion catastrophe in check. They need revenue to keep their financial obligations met, and they need it fast. A potential source of revenue is through the repayment of government student loans.

Like a bad ‘loan shark’ the government is now owed almost 1 trillion dollars… “Student loan debt has surpassed total credit card debt in the U.S. This year’s graduating class of college seniors had the highest average debt to date, and that total amount is projected to reach more than $1 trillion later this year.” Except, these students have now graduated into an economically suppressed world, how can they pay back what they cannot make? I accept that each of these individuals is responsible for their own credit management, and the government made no GURANTEES that there would be jobs when they graduated, but just by making these loans seems proof enough to me that they were confident there would be jobs so that these loans would be repaid right? What loan shark loans out a trillion dollars and doesn’t expect to be paid back? Not one who wants to stay in business long, or one who has a more epic plan.

It would take a very rich and powerful man (or in this case institution) to knowingly lend out 1 trillion dollars to his (or it’s) people with the foresight that they will not be able to pay it back. This scenario now sets the stage for a thrilling drama. In the loan shark world, these individuals would become the property of their debtor; their life is now in his hands. They do his bidding or lose a finger, a hand, a family member, or perhaps even their life if they dare refuse. Isn’t that what is going to happen to this new army of people emerging to have their economic life become forfeit to their government? The government now has at its disposal an educated mass of people to puppeteer the way they need them to move.

It might sound complicated or a bit farfetched, I’m sure, but the alternative is almost too scary to bear. If the United States government did loan out a trillion dollars without an almost certainty that its constituents would be able to seek gainful employment in order to repay them, why in the hell are they in charge of the checkbook? Isn’t that just fiscal irresponsibility to the trillionth degree? How does this whole situation not scream to every citizen of this country that it is time for new leadership? If it doesn’t then I blame our education that has also become a casualty of the current law makers.

Let’s pull together. Our numbers our great, and united behind one ideology, REBOOT THE SYSTEM, we could see a REAL change in how our society is represented and run!

Christina Dawn