I know many, including myself have been disappointed with the progress President Obama has made regarding Climate Change and how we talk about it.  And even though the Durban Climate talks were supposedly being held up by the US, in the end it was Canada that pulled out of the final agreement.  It is now all making sense.

Even though President Obama delayed the final decision on the Keystone pipeline,Republicans are continuing to draw a line in the sand refusing to pass the payroll tax extension.

But behind activists’ jubilation lurked a somber reality, an untold story with much wider implications. The broader fight to reform Alberta’s tar sands, the one which actually stood a chance of breaking America’s addiction to the continent’s most polluting road fuel, has been quietly abandoned over the past several years. For that we can thank the planet’s richest oil companies and their Canadian government allies, who’ve together waged a stealthy war against President Obama’s climate change ambitions.Their battle-plan is revealed in more 300 pages of personal emails obtained through a Freedom of Information request to the Alberta government. The story in the emails, reported for the first time here in Salon and The Tyee, Canada’s leading independent online news site, traces a year in the relationship of Michael Whatley, a GOP-connected oil industry lobbyist and his friend, Gary Mar, a smooth-talking and ambitious diplomat at the Canadian embassy in the Washington, DC.

The messages lay bare a sophisticated and stealthy public relations offensive, one designed to manipulate the U.S. political system; to deluge the media with messages favorable to the tar-sands industry; to sway key legislators at state and federal levels; and most importantly, to defeat any attempt to make the gasoline and diesel pumped everyday into U.S. vehicles less damaging to the climate. The goal of it all? “Defeat” Obama’s effort to reduce carbon consumption and keep America hooked on Canada’s $441 billion tar sands industry, no matter what the cost to our planet’s future.

Salon

Starting in 2009 there has been a concerted effort by the Canadian Government to influence fuel standards in the US.

Let that sink in.

So Whatley wasn’t taking any chances. With the support of the Alberta government, he said he would “defeat efforts” to develop fuel standards in “Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states” and fight anything similar at the national level. He pledged as well to “address potential efforts” to develop clean fuel legislation in “Washington, Oregon, Michigan, Minnesota and other states.”  Whatley also mused about “conducting a grassroots operation” in “target states” that would “generate significant opposition to discriminatory low carbon fuels standards.”

“Discriminatory low carbon fuel standards”

And so now we understand why Canada has pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol and why there is so much political pressure from Republicans to approve the Keystone pipeline.  This has nothing to do with job and nothing to do with ending our dependency on foreign oil.

Perhaps the reason Whatley was so confident in his ability to influence America’s political process, is that he was once deep inside it. Years earlier, Whatley served as attorney and senior policy advisor on George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign and transition team. And Whatley was later appointed chief of staff  to Senator Elizabeth Dole, a former cabinet secretary and the wife of GOP elder statesman Bob Dole.Then in the late 2000’s, Whatley’s firm created the Consumer Energy Alliance, a “grassroots” organization supported by such prominent tar sands producers as BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon, Shell and Norway’s Statoil. The group claims to be providing “a voice for consumers interested in vital public issues.”

Climate Change is the issue we face as a species that we must take most seriously.  Some believe  it is too little too late.

Countries around the globe agreed on Sunday to forge a new deal forcing all the biggest polluters for the first time to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. But critics said the plan was too timid to slow global warming.For a reduction plan to have a major impact, analysts say, the world’s largest emitter, China, needs to be weaned from coal-intensive power sources that are choking the planet with carbon dioxide (CO2) and developed countries must spend heavily to change the mix of sources from which they draw their energy.

But they see little political will to implement these costly plans and argue that the UN process showed, in two weeks of talks in Durban, that it is bloated, broken and largely incapable of effecting sweeping change.

and corrupt, they forget immoral, corrupt and evil, putting billions of dollars of profit before human lives, the lives of their children, grandchildren and generations to come.  And the famine to come, the loss of biodiversity, etc, amounts to genocide because this was knowingly done to prevent progress.

There are not enough words to express my anger and disgust.

Here is a link to the emails, if you can stomach them.  The first one has to do with carbon standards in the US.

Whatley’s pledge “to keep Lamar Alexander from offering an LCFS amendment” refers to the Tennessee Senator’s support at the time for low carbon fuel standard policies. Without a Republican sponsor, the measure will “die an ugly partisan death in the Senate,” he predicted.What Whatley doesn’t mention here is that his “grassroots” organization, the Consumer Energy Alliance, had launched an anti-fuel standard ad campaign in Alexander’s home state that August. The Alliance would later make a big deal of the Senator’s announcement, two weeks after this email, that he’d become undecided on the policy he once favored.

 

The path I find myself on is truly a gift and I know that since my weekend get away I will never be the same person because I finally learned what it meant to occupy my body, to understand what it means to be in your own skin, to be connected to your feelings rather spinning up here (imagine me pointing my finger at your cranium and circling it with my fingers).

We are taught to be all intellect, that this is where the good happens and that to strive for perfection, to strive for things outwardly, for stuff, for achievement, is a good thing.  We are a nation of narcissists who put things above people, profit above human beings and the bottom line above all else.

I am generalizing of course but it needs to be done to understand how we could have wound up where we are today and why something like Occupy Wall Street has hit home for so many.

The 1% controls so much and so many others are striving to join the club, to lift themselves up and become that elite.  And as we claw our way to become something we may not even want to be, we forget what it is to be human beings.  We are sacrificing so much for so little.

I went on a retreat called Lifting the Mask with a local nonprofit, Living Ubuntu.

Have you noticed that our culture is a bit obsessed with image and status? Where is the authenticity? What is the price we are paying to go along with these ridiculous standards?Many times I have seen the deep pain in people who no longer feel good enough just being who they are… or maybe they never did. Fearing they have failed in the competition to be attractive enough, rich enough, successful enough, popular enough, shame follows, and it can be unbearable.

Often we hide the truth about who we really are. Most of us learned early-on how to develop and wear whatever mask we needed to. To this day we still hide our feelings. We conceal our needs. We put a fake expression on. It shows up in acting like we like something when we don’t. It also shows up in becoming the expert performer when we just want to let down and “be”. It’s as if there is some external standard we are measured up against, and sometimes we don’t quite make it.

We all need a good social or adaptive self to get by with in this world. Yet some of us have forgotten, or never learned, how to just be who we really are. Sometimes it feels terrifying to be that vulnerable and let others know the truth… to reveal our genuine self. Tormented by a lack of permission within, and the fear deep down that we are unworthy of love just the way we are, we stay hidden. Surrounded by the abundant expectations of others, we mask our true feelings, thoughts, and desires.

We pay a price in lost spontaneity and pleasure. Sometimes life becomes a heavy burden, or just dreadfully lifeless and routine. And ultimately, we lose out on deep meaningful connections with others, and love, because no one really knows the real us.
Some of the topics we will cover at this retreat include:

The role of the body in masking and un-masking our genuine self.

Self-expression and the vulnerability that comes with it.

Recognizing inner messages that keep us stuck and what to do about them.

Bringing healing into areas of deep pain and shame.

Reaching out to others: resisting societal pressures and finding support for our genuine needs.

Does this sound familiar to you?  For many it is the reality of their lives, it what makes who I am all the more painful because I tend to be just who I am and I’ve found it makes others uncomfortable.  I am learning to ignore that.

But learning to occupy your own space, your body and being in touch with those feelings, the feeling of being your genuine self, what does that have to do with Occupy Wall Street?

So much you have no idea.

Think of the millions of people who have felt so beaten down, so traumatized by living paycheck to paycheck, on the streets, feeling that their lives are not worthy because they can’t provide for their families.  That is horror, trauma and real pain.  And we live in a society where many refuse to recognize this pain and see it merely as a failure of character on the part of those who haven’t made it.  They are flawed, they haven’t worked hard enough.

And this is where I think, how have we become so dead inside that we cannot feel for people who are in such need?

And the trauma for those who are in such need, how can they overcome such trauma.  The stress of getting by, day by day.  That is so hard on your body, it makes you sick, makes you so unwell.

We are a Country living in trauma.

And then, to think how the rest of the world lives, those who are even less fortunate then us.  Those who live in fear every waking moment of their lives, with constant war, famine, disease and genocide.

We are a planet hurting.

And I found myself so overwhelmed when I did get in touch with those feelings and I was in my body, where I had allowed myself to lift that mask.  It was difficult.  I had cried like I had never cried before in my life.  Having gone through personal trauma of childhood, difficult upbringing, etc.  I had finally realized what all those therapy sessions were about being in my body and it was, well, it was traumatic but such a relief.  I felt relief with that grief, that despair and the deep yearning to be connected to others.

As a people, we cannot occupy this planet until we can learn to occupy our own skin and occupy wall street is a good beginning because it is allowing all those voices who have gone unheard for so long a place to speak, to be heard.

And I understood.  It is not about demands, it is about the fact that we have gone so long with so many who have been held silent, been held back because speech has been dictated by your ability to purchase the air time.

No longer.

And I grieve, the deep profound loss that I feel for so many who have not learned and will not learn to feel for others, that even if they may not agree with what people have to say, that their voice is vital and important.  We all need to be heard.

We did a few exercises that were difficult, like looking through photos of people, many famous and well known and seeing how their smiling faces were accompanied by lifeless dead eyes, like nobody was home.  It was shocking to really look at people and see how void of feeling their eyes were, take a close look and see that so many of us are EMPTY and that we put forth a facade so that we can hide just how hollow we really are.

And then there were photos of people where their eyes matched their smiles, they exuded warmth and pain, but that it was okay, that they were okay with their pain, their sadness, it was just okay.

I urge you to learn more about what it means to be in your body, to learn what it means to be grounded, to recover from the trauma of everyday life.  I have already found so much for myself because of this.   And to learn about how so many of us have put off who we really are and what we really want.

I am becoming to understand Occupy wall street as something organic and will support it in the way I know how, that we need to hear each other more, hug each other more, care for each over more and change how we are living before it is too late.

We have one planet and I am not ready to grieve for her loss.  But the insatiable appetite for things, money and an endless supply of resources will make it harder for us to preserve her for future generations.

It is all connected, we must not only feel connected to our own bodies, to each other but to the very living things around us because with out them, without the air we breathe, the clean water and the very planet we depend on, we won’t have much to occupy at all.

Rachel Maddow is not Keith, she will never be Keith Olbermann.  She does tremendous work and I have to admit having been a fan of hers for a long time, before I became a fan of Mr. Olbermann.  It was in fact his championing of her that endeared him to me even more.

Maddow’s coverage of the Gulf Oil disaster was breathtaking in it’s depth and personal touches.  She did a tremendous job of calling out this administration for not doing more.  I loved the audacity of giving her own oval office speech of what she WANTED to hear from President Obama regarding this massive environmental catastrophe.   For me it was pitch perfect, maybe it’s a personality thing, maybe it’s a Smith College thing (She started her radio career in Northampton, MA) or maybe it’s just style issue.  But I believe that she has brought a new level of discourse to mainstream media since she started her show back in late 2008.

And she blogs, and reads some pretty good blogs when she does it.  Sure, she hasn’t posted over at Daily Kos herself, or here even.  But she pays attention and I believe she works a lot harder than many on air personalities when it comes to knowing what is happening in politics.  And she has Bernie Sanders on often, which makes this Liberal very happy, because we could use about 80 more of him in the Senate. . . .

I remember her great piece about the stimulus not being big enough, a lot of us worried about this.  She had an economist come on and asked him to “Talk her down”.  (She did that often on her radio show, yes, she could get a bit panicked, part of me LOVED that about her, because I get panicked too and David Bender would be there to us both down a bit).

Rachel often goes over the job numbers (remember the bikini graph?), the actual stimulative affect of tax cuts versus unemployment benefits and food stamps.  She puts out facts that a lot of people who need to hear them may not, but people like me need to hear again so that we can continue to talk to people and inform them about the reality of our situation.  Tax cuts don’t create jobs.

Am I upset that Keith is gone from MSNBC?  Yes.  Do I believe this bodes badly for our television media in general?  Yes, it’s been profit driven for far too long and short on facts.  But I do believe that Olbermann’s voice won’t been smothered indefinitely and I believe that in his absence we need to make sure to support other progressive voices that are STILL ON THE AIR.

One of my favorite segments of Maddow’s radio show was “Life during wartime”.  This simple phrase reminded me that we are a Country at war, something that every other media outlet seemed to want to forget.  We are at war and it is deeply affecting hundreds of thousands of Americans as we live our lives and yet, many go on as if nothing is happening.

That is a voice that is important, she continues to cover the wars, she continues to cover progressive issues, GLBT equality and other issues that other are simply not talking about.

If you are considering boycotting MSNBC because of Keith Olbermann, I’m going to ask you to reconsider and beg you to give Rachel Maddow a chance and if you’ve watched her before, I am going to ask you to give her another chance.  We need to support progressive voices that are still on the air.

That was renewed with mixed results late last year. The Act suffered the fate of many Democratic efforts to improve Government funded programs by too little funding in the right place and by taking away funding from the wrong places. Because the Child Nutrition Act was under Pay Go, they took money from the Food Stamp program which is being utilized like no time in our history since the Great Depression and moved that money to up funding for school lunches. But it wasn’t even enough to really change things for the better.

There was some funding for Farm to School programs, organics and even vegan school lunch programs, but it still left a lot to be desired by people like me who think our kids deserve a lot better when it comes to school lunches.

Oliver has done a great deal in his own Country to overhaul their school “dinner” program and felt the need to share that success here. I say, great! He introduced himself to a great audience last year with his show, Food Revolution and is attempting to spread it far and wide.

Jamie’s next undertaking is LAUSD, he’s hoping they will allow him into their school’s cafeterias and help them redo their lunch program.  But right now, they won’t have anything to do with it.  Last week he wrote an open letter to LAUSD parents hoping they could help him gain access to the district’s lunch rooms.  Nope.

Dear Parents,
Thank you for coming today. I need your support. Please write to the LAUSD board members (addresses below) to grant me access into the schools to see the food being fed to your children. Please try to do this in the next 24 hours.

I’m never going to get this done without you.

Please CC jamieskitchenla@live.com on these emails so I can track the great work you are doing.

Please make the subject of your e-mail “Let Jamie Oliver into LAUSD”.

Please pass this on to your friends and family and show your support on our Facebook page – “Food Revolution Los Angeles”. Your effort will make a difference.
Big Love,

Jamie Oliver

Parents wrote letters to no avail.  And this week, Jamie sent a truck and 57 tons of “sugar” to demonstrate how much sugar kids consume in LAUSD every week from the flavored milk the district serves.  Not a blink from district.

“L.A. is not on my side. They’ve got their fingers in their ears — la, la, la — they’re not having it. This city doesn’t care. I don’t want to winge about turnout… but maybe L.A. was a big mistake.”

Oliver, whose first American Food Revolutionshow, last year’s season one, was filmed in Huntington, West Virginia, said that he’s growing increasingly frustrated with how this incarnation of the project has been going. “The Food Revolution has been incredibly hard. To make it. To get access. I’m finding it really hard to tell the truth in this country.”

…

“I’ve never been so deflated in my whole career,” Oliver said as the sand finally stopped pouring into the bus and started to blow across the concrete parking lot, making the chef look not a little like a character misplaced from a Bertolucci film.

I’m sure part of the issue has to do with the cameras, but I think it’s an important part of the process because it lets other people see what is happening in cafeteria’s around the Country.   We need to see what our kids are eating.  And not just our kids, the kids who may get packed lunches, but the kids who don’t have that kind of luxury and who get the free lunches the school provides.

The reality is this, we are still in the midst of an economic downturn and Los Angeles County has a 13% unemployment rate and food banks are serving more people than ever.

A September report issued by the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank cited that nearly 300,000 Los Angeles County residents now receive monthly food assistance.

That’s an increase of about 20% compared to last year, and a nearly 50% increase over two years, according to the report.

So right now, LAUSD kids could use better food in the school lunches, right?  And Jamie Oliver demonstrated that he can provide that without costing the district that much more money.  Really his approach is quite simple, home made food, not processed.   Use real food.   Kids prefer it and it is better for them.  Ultimately, it’s better for the schools as well because when kids eat healthier it can also benefit them behaviorally and academically.

I am biased, I admit it, I’ve been a Jamie Oliver fan for years.  He’s got a big heart and I think he really wants to see kids eat healthier.  Some criticized his tactics in his last season of Food Revolution because of how blunt he was with parents, but the fact is, we are killing our kids.   Big business with big labels is pushing all the wrong kind of foods on our households because it is profitable.

This is not a mistake.  The consolidation of our food system has been going on for years now and our school lunches are just one of the many victims of this process, from the farm subsidy programs to the failure of the USDA to regulate what kind of food actually goes to our schools.

The least of our issues is Jamie Oliver who actually wants to revolutionize this system in our schools and capture it on film.  Of course he’s fighting a system, a lot of people in the slow food movement are fighting the same battle.  What boggles my mind is that more people aren’t out there making some noise and helping Jamie get the access he needs.

We cannot get caught up in the details and worry about the issues of perception.  Having witnessed what Jamie went through the first time through he took enough punishment for many of us about the slow food’s bad rap about being stuck up, wanting to tell people what to eat and knowing better for everyone.  That is not the case.

This is about life and death for some people and about just wanting better for our kids.  That all kids should have access to healthy food and options besides fried potatoes and fried potatoes as a vegetable.  This is political and it is about equality, that no matter who you are, what color or status or economic background you should have access to health, safe food and clean, safe drinking water.

The food revolution should be everyone’s revolution because it is more important than you may think.

Let Jamie know that you support the food revolution @jamie_oliver over at Twitter and let LAUSD know they are missing a huge opportunity to be part of the Food Revolution.  Sure, they are okay with corporate sponsorship on school property and advertising to kids but we can’t actually try to improve their school lunches.  (And yes, I get the argument that it could be disruptive to the schools, but so is crappy food fed to our kids).

Step up people.  Give this guy a chance.

And to Jamie, thanks for trying as hard as you do, I know your heart is in the right place and that you mean well, you’ve demonstrated time and again that you sincerely want to help people try to live better lives through learning about cooking and their connection to food, something I’ve yet to do myself.  Good on ya Mate, your a hero to this family!

It’s complicated story because it has to do with how we define the carrying capacity of the habitat and what benchmark is used in order to mark at what point this whale becomes endangered and depleted enough to intervene on its behalf.  The California Gray Whale Coalition is arguing that the 20,000 whales left deserve to not only be protected but that the agency has a responsibility to “prepare a conservation plan to restore the stock to its optimum sustainable population.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service seems to have no issue lowering the bar on what we decide as depleted, which is a very worrying for those concerned about biodiversity and endangered species.  At the rate we’re seeing species disappear and the further impact that human beings have on habitats, ecosystems, etc. then we will always have lower standards for measuring what it means for a species to be depleted.  It means sitting by and watching more and more species go the way of the blue fin tuna.

The petitioners say that the agency should have used the historical k–the capacity of the ecosystem to support a given population of whales when the species was at its maximum level of abundance before decimation by the whaling industry–as it has done in some status review and listing decisions, rather than on current estimates of k which are based on the way ecosystems are today.

While the agency has relied on historic levels of abundance to determine k for a few species, it has determined that in most cases it is impossible to determine the k prior to human exploitation and that its goal for conservation of a species is ‘equilibrium,’ thus, listing decisions must not be based on what ecosystems may have been able to support in the past.

The result, the Coalition argues, is that the gray whale can not reach its true optimum sustainable population because human activity will always reduce the k of an ecosystem through degradation and that ever smaller populations of the species will be accepted as the most that can be sustained.

Of course this is not just about the Gray Whale, this could happen to any species that needs some kind of protection and special help to restore its population.  Since the Gray Whale is one of the many species of whales that migrate past the California Coast, I take their protection even more seriously. I plan on going whale watching with my daughter Charlotte soon so we can catch the whales on their winter migration.

I have written about whaling, captivity and the other issues facing marine mammals because these animals aren’t just threatened by one thing.  And they have touched me personally from when I was just a little girl who wanted to be a marine biologist to the woman I am now who witnessed the heart wrenching death of a Pacific Gray Whale.   I wrote about the death of Lily the Gray Whale last May and it touched me a great deal.  I still remember running along the beach, trying to get to her as she laid in the surf, alone and I wondered if we could have helped her.

Of course we couldn’t have, it was not possible.  But we can help the species.

I asked Sue Arnold who heads up the California Gray Whale Coalition about what happens next and she sent me this:

One of the reasons for filing a depleted petition under the provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act was the fact that any decision by National Marine & Fisheries Agency can be challenged. The California Gray Whale Coalition fully expected NMFS to deny the petition. The Agency put every road block possible in the way of the petition.

Their first effort was to grant just 14 days for comments on the Coalition’s scientific petition which was some 14,000 words plus. After much lobbying by the Coalition and its political allies, NMFS granted an extension to Dec. 8. But the Agency would not provide a dedicated email instead insisting that the public use a complicated website which didnot allow more than 2,000 words and often was down.

The three scientific papers on which NMFS relied on denying the petition were not made available to the public in spite of a formal request by the Coalition. Although the Agency has discretion in terms of what information they provide in a Federal Register Notice, a recent official memo by Pres. Obama directed NMFS and other agencies dealing with science to be open, transparent and to fully inform the public.

The next step is to sue NMFS for failing to use the best available scientific data; for ignoring the documented evidence of a major decline in numbers as well as a significant decline in cow calf numbers. The predation by transient orcas has also been ignored. This predation, according to experts, is taking up to 35% of calves and juveniles annually, a completely unsustainable number.

At present, the Coalition is waiting on a decision by several public interest law firms as to whether they will sue on behalf of the Coalition.

In the meantime, NMFS scientists have advised the Coalition they believe this current migration will see the fifth consecutive season of very low cow calf numbers. The question NMFS refuses to answer is just how many seasons of very low cow calf numbers constitutes an emergency. Their efforts will be directed to more spin along the lines of ” the whales are adjusting to the carrying capacity ” and/or ” whales are giving birth off shore” and ” whales are finding alternative prey”. None of these assertions are backed by research or data proving once again that NMFS decisions are political and not scientific.

The management of the Gray Whale by NMFS is nothing short of a national scandal. Let’s hope the Coalition is successful in getting the support of a public interest law firm and prevailing in Court.

What can you do?  You can keep up to date at the California Gray Whale’s website, they provide up dates and ways you can intervene on behalf of the Pacific Gray whale.

These whales are amazingly friendly and warm.  How do we know?  Anyone who has visited the Gray whales in Baja have witnessed their curiosity and friendliness.  They introduce their calves to people in the small boats and allow these strangers to embrace their young, touching their faces and scratching their backs.  It’s not subtle, the mothers will push these baby whales right up to the boats, as if insisting everyone meet.  It’s a life changing event for some and something that I hope to get to experience one day.

Here is a video of the experience.

We have a responsibility to protect these animals and do what we can to help them.

“Welcome to the New Normal.”

Those words should be displayed at New York’s airports as a welcome to bedraggled travelers during the Northeast’s latest “snowpocalypse.” Why? Because the Big Apple’s much-lamented paralysis this week is a critical cautionary tale for everyone. As I show in my new newspaper column, the episode warns us about the kind of thing that’s likely coming to the rest of America as we now willfully mix three toxic problems.

Those toxic issues are climate change denial, the “conservatives’ anti-tax, budget-cutting religion” and plutocracy.  All of these are connected and on purpose. It’s all part of the bathtub scheme dreamed up by Grover Norquist.

When Government fails due to lack of funding it further puts people in the corner of seeing Government as incompetent and useless.  This is a win for the anti-Government party of no.  I don’t think Democrats ask Republicans who run for office during their campaigns this question enough, “Exactly why do you want to run something you so outwardly despise?”

Progressives see the flawed nature in our Government, the fact that it fails to work for most people, meaning the bottom 95%, is the reason we fight for tougher regulation, campaign finance reform, etc.  But the outcome of the last 30 years has brought us regulations that’s too complex for most people and perfect for people who can afford legions of lawyers.

This is not an accident.

So those things meant to help people, like plowing the streets during a blizzard can’t be counted on anymore. California is a great example of this painful breakdown. As we stare down more massive cuts in basic services, many things that people take for granted may not be as reliable.

This is not an accident.

Living in Southern California I sometimes torture myself with listening to local talk radio hosts John & Ken. They love trashing the State Government, it’s like breathing for them.  And they love quoting how California is the worst of everything, from taxation to what we spend per prisoner to how much teachers are paid compared to other States.  Of course there is no context for their Stats, such as cost of living or when it comes to taxes on Corporations, the many tax loopholes and credits the State gives businesses, which actually brings California to be about average when compared to all fifty States.

Of course the other numbers they leave out are my favorites, like California is 48th when it comes to number of State Workers per capita.   State Workers are spread pretty thin with a great deal of work on their plates.  It also feeds into this whole Government is inept and can’t be efficient meme.

And it’s not an accident.  Dismantling the greater good and right before our very eyes.

Education is going to be hard hit as well when we can least afford it and just as the reformers are on a rampage to disassemble public education, the great equalizer of our time.  Education is what allows anyone become something better.  Unions are not the issue (although they certainly haven’t helped their cause) and Charter schools are not the solution.

And lastly, the environment, the biggest thing to fail, where all these crisis won’t matter one bit if we can’t breathe, or have drinkable water (which 1 out of 5 human beings don’t have access to as it is, right now).

Of course I wish I had answers.  My continued frustration with the Obama Administration has a great deal to do with his inability to turn a mandate into some meaningful reform.  I understand that much was accomplished in the last two years but I do believe that more should have been done to help the economy first off, maybe even putting off health care reform in order to push through a much bigger stimulus package.

The middle is a lot bigger than either extreme and I believe that they don’t really care who gets shit done, they just want it done.  If we had spent more in order get to the economy going right out of the gate, things might be different.

I know it’s been said better and more intelligently (Krugman) and by so many others (better and much better know bloggers and journalists), but it’s one of those issues that can’t be written about enough.   It’s the shared good that makes our society worthwhile and the idea what we spend our money on shows how we prioritize our values. Dismantling this great good in the name of the tea party, austerity or conservatism not only destroys our very social fabric, it leaves our Country vulnerable to things that are going to be much worse in the next decade or two.

We have to demand that this stop.  What are you going to do in the new year to stop the destruction happening before our very eyes?

The last decade has seen the further decline of the middle class as massive amounts of wealth as transferred to the top 5%.  For many the last vestige of hope remained in their homes.  That too is crumbling, for many, due to no fault of their own.

And the feeble attempt by the Government to bail out these homeowners has been a failure compared to the massive bail out Wallstreet received and the big banks received from our Government.  There is just no comparison in fact.

Now, anyone here who reads regularly knows that HAMP, etc. has been ridiculously unsuccessful and Foreclosures are on the rise.

State attorneys general and regulators have been pushing banks to perform more loan modifications and the report shows these efforts have had mixed results.

Overall home retention actions taken by banks dropped by 17 percent compared to the second quarter, but most of that was due to decreases in the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), the Obama administration’s leading foreclosure prevention effort.

In the third quarter, HAMP loan modifications slid by almost 46 percent, according to the report.

Of course Republicans are arguing that HAMP is a huge failure and the program should be ended.  The issue isn’t the program (although it could have been a better program) but the banks dragging their feet for months now and the illegal activity involved with the foreclosure process that leaves many homeowners without any protection from their banks is unprecedented.  That is the issue, it is the greed by the banks to put the bottom line before keeping people in their homes.

This is, to me, this is the middle class.  Homeowners make up a huge part of the middle class, those who have invested a great deal in owning a home, putting down roots in a community and investing in an area.  I don’t think it should be seen as a time gone by, I don’t think it should be seen as something that has past because it is part of what makes people want to invest in the common good of their shared communities, those around them.  (And no, I’m not saying that renters do not want to invest in the community around them, this argument always sends my left eye twitching.)  . . .

But I have fallen into that idealistic bunch of people that believe the equity in a home is just one way a family can build some wealth, a middle class to upper middle class family can put money away each month as they pay their mortgage rather than paying someone else’s mortgage.  But ultimately this has been destroyed by the mortgage meltdown, the banking system failure and the absolutely dismal reaction by our Government to protect homeowners and the middle class.  This has been thirty years coming.

And I often hear people say, good.  Let home prices come down, they were too high, screw the boomers, screw the people who bought their houses for too much and let others get in on the market as those prices begin to decline.  This will give so many other people a chance to be homeowners.

And to that I say, why not just be a fucking Republican then?  This is where the downfall of millions is the only way that many can afford a home? (The let them fail mentality)  It’s just not how progressives should think.  It’s not how this progressive thinks and every time I would see that argument, I would shudder at the thought.  It merely allows that right wing meme of the have and have nots win rather than the ultimate issue come down to fair wages, more jobs in the US, and the idea that we have to actually make it where more people can afford to BUY HOMES.

These are people.  And so, today, the Wall Street Journal published a piece entitled, “Faces of the Home-Foreclosure Crisis“.  This is what we need to remember.  Every piece of paper has a face to it and every home has a story, a life and family.  Every family is part of a street, a cul-de-sac and a community.

So this is is what I ask of you.  If you’ve read this far, donate $5 to your local legal aid society.   They are doing the work to help keep families in their homes.   You can use Google or go to the link above.  That’s all I ask.

This is my first post here as I have been looking for a new home to write since I left Daily Kos and I wanted to start with this.   I will be sharing this at my local blog (which is pretty dead since my co-writers have either been elected to local office or have stopped writing) and the local alternatives are a bit too divisive for me (although I’ve been invited to write there).  And I will cross-post this at Calitics, my main source for all things California and political.