Come on, People! N1H1 is a Small Thing!

Come on, people! Let’s put some perspective on this over-blown, super-hyped N1H1 thing! Just look at some of these statistics I’ve come across recently and you may get my point.

• One in three Americans will contract cancer—a disease (under any name) that was almost unheard of at the time of this country’s founding.
• One in two children in this country are at all kinds of health risks (heart disease, diabetes, immune system compromise, etc.) because of obesity.
• One in three children in Michigan have type 2 diabetes—a far greater and costlier health risk than a couple weeks of aches and pains.
• One in eight children in Michigan will depend on food stamps this year.
• The vast majority of the food being pushed upon us is neither tested for health safety nor considered for true nutritive value.
• Monocrop cultures and petroleum-based soil and plant treatments have depleted the health of our soil to such a degree that the USDA says that the nutritive values (inherent vitamin and mineral content) of today’s fresh produce has one third of the value that they had in the 1950s.
• The majority of Americans experiencing overwhelming debt, home foreclosures, or who are filing for bankruptcy, do so because of insurmountable health care bills.
• One in 11 Americans will serve jail time!
• The average American will be involved in a lawsuit four times during his/her lifespan.
• 70% of the world’s lawyers are in the United States (which has 5% of the world’s population)!
• From 1979 to present the average household income of Americans has risen only 10% while the cost of a college education has gone up 230%!

When I graduated from Kalamazoo College in 1980 it was the most expensive school in Michigan at $7,200 per year. (It began at $4,200 in my freshman year in 1976.) (Thank you, Dad!) Now you can pay $40,419 per year (a 516% increase) so that you can (hopefully) secure an entry-level job at a salary of (hopefully) 10% more than thirty years ago. Great! Get into debt early so you are forever beholden to financial institutions and forever motivated by the fear of being foreclosed upon or of losing one’s job. Work 70 to 80 hours a week for a job for which you are salaried for 40 hours because if you don’t, “someone else will”—or because, if you sacrifice your job, you’ll risk financial disaster. Or, better yet, forego the “higher education” route, enter the workforce at age 16 or 18, only to find yourself held captive by a modern system of servitude which provides the lowest wages and worst benefits in the “developed” world.

Corporations have usurped the rights intended for We, the People; with their enormously deep pockets they have been able to elbow their way through the court and legislative systems to acquire the same “personhood” status that you and I share. Yet, corporations aren’t born, they don’t die (check the obituaries!), they aren’t citizens, they can’t vote or serve prison time or serve in the military, they don’t have to comply with compulsory school laws, they can’t get sick or suffer mental or physical trauma and disability, you can’t call one up and have a conversation with s/he/it; they aren’t human! And yet, corporations have obtained legal access to all of the rights and benefits entitled to us living, breathing humans under the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In fact, at present, they own and run our government, this country. (Just ask the well-intentioned, people-oriented Barack Obama.) Corporate lobbyists write and pay for the laws made in this country, their full-time staffs of lawyers and unlimited funds can and will bankrupt any individual (“competitor”) by dragging them through the legal system before any justice can ever be meted, and the executive branch is staffed with former (or current??) corporate executives who create, institute and execute policies that benefit who? Corporations! And notice how our presidents have enjoyed creating a state of perpetual war because it allows them the “right” to trump human rights, civil liberties, and individual constitutional rights, so that they can make a ton of money for themselves and their friends! Our country is messed up! This is not the country our Founding Fathers envisioned!

Corporations refuse to take responsibility for the health risks their polluting habits are presenting to our planet—to all life on this beautiful little planet—but they’ll whip up any and every advertising or scare campaign to get us to buy, buy, buy their useless, senseless, untested, and often (though debatably) harmful products and/or services. And they’ve learned this amazing trick: If they help write the laws in this country, they can create an officially authorized framework that supports and protects their “freedoms” while at the same time manages to allow them to be free from liability, blame, and responsibility for any harm that their products, policies, or services might cause—whether intentionally or unintentionally. A vaccination may kill or drastically alter your child’s life but it is illegal to sue a pharmaceutical company for damages or criminal charges. A corporation can go bankrupt, its executives go untouched and actually make money from the action, and yet the employee that retired after 35 years of dedicated labor can be left high and dry without pension or other contractually-promised retirement benefits.

The gap between the rich and the poor has been widening rapidly since 1980; the middle class is disappearing as more and more workers are falling below poverty lines. The average CEO in America makes more than 411 times as much as the average worker. Does this mean that the average CEO is 411 times smarter than the average worker? Does s/he work 411 times as hard as the average worker? Of course not! So, then, what makes the average CEO 411 times as valuable as the hourly-wage earning employee?

Over and over again our Founding Fathers saw the future pitfalls our country could take and, indeed, has taken: The dangers of having a standing army, the evils of a National Banking system, the dangers to democratic freedoms of overly rich, overly propertied families (an aristocracy), the dangers of allowing religions to infiltrate and/or mix with government, and, their number one fear: the power and influence of corporations and their monopolies.

My point is: N1H1 is such a small thing—a mosquito bite compared to the cancers eating away at industrialized “civilization.” So, get a grip and put your energy into the real issues: the causes underlying our disease-ridden society need our attention.

The Accepted Practices of Capitalism

(There can be no question or argument as to whether or not the following practices are in fact “accepted” because: 1) they occur every single day, 2) we allow them to go unquestioned, unchallenged, and unopposed, and 3) we pass them on—we teach them to our children.)

Murder

Rape

Pillage

Plunder

Piracy

Conquest

Slavery and enslavement

Genocide

Imperialism

Greed

Avarice

Hoarding

Force

Coercion

Domination

Lying

Deceit and deception

Withholding and concealment

Dishonesty

Misinformation

Inconsistent, pragmatic morality (amorality)

Self-serving morality

Selfishness

Ruthlessness

Denial

Dissociation

Callousness

Arrogance

Prejudice

Bias

Competitiveness/competition

Jingoism

Separation

Elitism

(Please feel free to add any that I have forgotten)

Michael Moore Is Getting Closer to the Truth

Michael Moore's latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, is his best effort to date. He continues to zero in on the core issues affecting America's decay and demise. I feel that Michael is doing a much better job at flowing back and forth from factual to anecdotal information. I am also always impressed by the before-unknown information he manages to bring to light. For example: corporations' "dead peasants" life insurance policies taken out on low level workers, without the knowledge of the insured, with benefits going solely, and quietly, to the corporations; the number (and names) of corporate banking executives (especially from Goldman Sachs) shuttling back and forth in and out of high level policy-affecting government offices; the friendly, modern, and open Cuban health care system willing to see and treat American heros that have been rejected by our own health care system; the bin Laden family members being whisked away--the only planes/passengers allowed to fly out of the U.S.--after the events of September 11, 2001; the 2001 Bush inaugural motorcade riot that was so effectively covered-up; the U.S.-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-world crime and prison statistics; etc. I am impressed with this film most of all for its willingness to take on and expose the abuses and corruption of the most powerful corporations and institution in the world: the banking financial center of Wall Street. That governments now serve as mere puppets to corporate interests is well established in the film but more time could certainly be devoted to it. Perhaps in his next film.

My admiration, enthusiasm, and inspiration, however, were dashed in the last scene of the film. In it, Michael is bravely wrapping a yellow and black "crime scene" ribbon around a building (assumedly on Wall Street). Over the scene his narration is waxing about his dream of a return to democracy. Then he asks for our help. I was crushed to realized that he will probably never get that help because the vast majority of Americans are stifled by the fear that comes with their own enslavement to the capitalist system. Their debt, job insecurity, health care expenses, retirement worries, and diminishing constitutional rights will prevent them from rising to the occasion (to help fight for a return to democracy). Plus, our exceedingly effective education system and corporate media mill has masterfully succeeded in numbing, dumbing, and distracting us from truth and reality. Sorry, Michael! Too many robot sheep out here to help you on your crusade. BUT: We wish you luck!