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Journal

   Monday, March 19, 2012 -- The six-month semi-anniversary of Occupy Wall Street was in focus on this morning's edition of "Democracy Now!" (Tune in at http://democracynow.org for an update on the refreshing nationwide Occupy movement that was kicked off last September 17 in New York City.


   Tuesday, January 24, 2012 -- A c
   Tuesday, January 24, 2012 -- A c
   Tuesday, January 24, 2012 -- A couple of nights ago, after a 47-day break, I started contributing to this Journal -- call it a blog if you like -- to help me and others decide whether I should run a third time in three years for state rep from the Third Berkshire District, run for some other public office, or not run, period.

    I wrote about Bill Moyers and his weekly "Moyers & Co." television show, seen in these parts on WGBY at 6 p.m. every Sunday, without noting that it's available any time on the Internet via http://www.moyers.com. I also mentioned the daily radio / TV / Internet show "Democracy Now!" without providing its domain name (http://democracynow.org) or an automatic link, or mentioning Amy Goodman's co-host, Juan Gonzalez, or noting that in Pittsfield one can listen to the show every weekday at 9 a.m. on WRPI-FM in Troy, N.Y. (especially when weather cooperates). Sorry for those omissions.

    Why such emphasis on two national shows, however well done and necessary, in an item on a possible candidacy for state representative? The answer is that democracy is lacking when all voters can do is choose among candidates for elective office without having sufficient information about the winners once they have begun serving, or the bodies in which they were elected to serve. The existence of a near-vacuum of information means that democracy is largely absent. This form of government should be called "electionocracy," especially when it pertains to legislative offices at the state level (and the national level).

    In our electionocracy, candidates for legislative office campaign for office using significant contributions from larger donors who effectively buy access to legislators and influence over the legislative process. The winners of the elections largely disappear from public view except at events or on occasions which they encourage the news media to report. As a result of this media-sanctioned disappearing act, laws are routinely enacted favoring the interests of large donors and organized interest groups at the expense of large majorities of people who are eligible to vote.

    I say "eligible to vote," rather than "voters," because significant percentages of potential voters don't bother registering to vote, let alone actually vote on a regular basis. Most of this non-participation in the democratic process comes from apathy on the part of citizens. Some of the apathy comes from satisfaction that the system serves them well enough without their participation, but much of the apathy is born of despair over a corrupt system and a refusal to dignify it by being part of it.

    This system is criminal -- in the sense that it's reprehensible or disgraceful. Logically, people or institutions whose actions or inaction maintain it are participants in or proponents of organized crime. It would be criminal under the law if elected lawmakers and governors and U.S. presidents used their offices to outlaw it.

   Tuesday, January 24, 2012 --

       "You can learn more of the truth about Washington and the
    world from one week of Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! than
    from a month of Sunday morning talk shows.
       "Make that a year of Sunday morning talk shows.
       "That's because Amy ... knows the critical questions for
    journalists is how close they are to the truth, not how close they
    are to power. Like I.F. Stone, she values the facts on the ground;
    unlike the Sunday beltway anchors, she refuses to take the
    official version of reality as the definition of news, or to engage in
    Washington's 'wink-wink' game by which both parties to an
    interview tacitly understand that the questions and answers will
    be framed to appear adversarial when in fact their purpose is to
    avoid revealing how power really works. ..."
 
    With those words from Bill Moyers' Forward to Amy Goodman's 2009 book, "Breaking the Sound Barrier," I'm resuming this Journal after more than a month away from it.

    The occasion is my official opening of an exploration of whether to run this year for state representative from the Third Berkshire District -- or any other office. It would be the third time for state rep after winning 45 percent of the vote against incumbent Democrat Christopher Speranzo in 2010 and coming in second to Tricia Farley-Bouvier by 192 votes (but ahead of independent Pam Malumphy and Republican Mark Jester) in last year's special election.

    It's 8:40 p.m. as I type this, and I'm about to watch the president's State of the Union address followed by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniel's response for the Republicans, and then responses by Jill Stein and Kent Mesplay, two candidates for the Green Party's presidential nomination.

    I opened this entry with an excerpt from Moyers because I just read his Forward this morning, two days after seeing his superlative "Moyers & Co." program Sunday evening, (every Sunday at 6 p.m. on WGY).

    The wretched excuse for new media we have in this country are a big reason our politics and our government are in such a rotten state, and Moyers and Goodman are two exemplary exceptions to the rule. That I hate being lied to, repeatedly and with little or no challenge by corporate lackeys on the networks and most newspapers, was a big motivator for my first and second campaigns, and may be enough to have me running a third time. True, Moyers and Goodman mostly cover national issues and events as opposed to state politics and government, but coverage of Massachusetts government and politics is so minimal in Pittsfield's news media that something -- or someone like me -- should fill the vacuum.

    Enough for now. Time to shut this machine down and turn on the telly.

   Thursday, December 8, 2011 -- A shoutout right here for "Democracy Now!," which is reporting all this week  from Durban, South Africa. The shows are getting in front of listeners and viewers something the New York Times, PBS, NPR and BBC all together are not getting out about the calamity of global heating and the roles this nation and other "advanced" nations are playing in it. Please do yourself and current and future generations a big favor and tune in to it online. (In this neck of the woods WRPI [91.5 FM] carries DN! every weekday at 9 a.m.)

   But as enlightening as this week's shows from Durban are, if your time is limited, please instead watch/read/listen to a special DN! broadcast, "Occupy Everywhere," on the possibilities of the Occupy movement. Sponsored by The Nation, the sparkling panel discussion stars filmmaker and author Michael Moore, Occupy Wall Street organizer Patrick Bruner, author and publisher Rinku Sen, author and journalist William Greider, and author/activist Naomi Klein.

   Here's a link to the DN! broadcast through Twitter. Oddly enough, I couldn't find it on The Nation's website, but here is the magazine's Occupy Wall Street web page.

   Three quotes:

   Naomi Klein: "This is the 'no kidding around' moment. So much riding on it, and we have to succeed. And that is thrilling, as well as terrifying. ... I think we are winning. We are starting to win."

   Michael Moore: "I've seen Occupies that are two people big. And this is where it's got to start. That's how it always starts."

   Moore:  "I mean, the women's suffrage movement, that started in this [New York] state in the 1840s. I mean, imagine the mountain that they had to climb. You know, people didn't sit around going, 'Oh, how are we going to get this amendment passed, because we can't vote?" I mean, seriously, no woman was ever going to be able to vote for their right to vote."

   But as enlightening as this week's shows from Durban are, if your time is limited, please instead watch/read/listen to a special DN! broadcast, "Occupy Everywhere," on the possibilities of the Occupy movement. Sponsored by The Nation, the sparkling panel discussion stars filmmaker and author Michael Moore, Occupy Wall Street organizer Patrick Bruner, author and publisher Rinku Sen, author and journalist William Greider, and author/activist Naomi Klein.    Here's a link to the DN! broadcast through Twitter. Oddly enough, I couldn't find it on The Nation's website, but here is the magazine's Occupy Wall Street web page.    Three quotes:    Naomi Klein: "This is the 'no kidding around' moment. So much riding on it, and we have to succeed. And that is thrilling, as well as terrifying. ... I think we are winning. We are starting to win."    Michael Moore: "I've seen Occupies that are two people big. And this is where it's got to start. That's how it always starts."    Moore:  "I mean, the women's suffrage movement, that started in this [New York] state in the 1840s. I mean, imagine the mountain that they had to climb. You know, people didn't sit around going, 'Oh, how are we going to get this amendment passed, because we can't vote?" I mean, seriously, no woman was ever going to be able to vote for their right to vote."
-   -   -
    Meanwhile, to follow Democracy Now! in Durban and elsewhere on Twitter, click here.
  Wednesday, December 7, 2011 -- Hello again. It's been awhile. Not for any shortage of meaty topics to explore, but because of time and other pressures.

   Headline on page B7 of today's Eagle: "'Permanent squeeze' seen: Report laments persistent fiscal woes facing municipalities." AP story from Boston says fiscal years 2010 and 2011 were the worst for Massachusetts municipalities since the ballot question Proposition 2 1/2 was adopted in 1980 limiting property tax increases. Read whole article here. It's based on a Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation news release, here.

   Get used to it, like global climate change and energy scrambles. All four news stories on page B1 are dedicated to one of these two topics. "[Lenox] Fighting a headwind," "Snow likely to fall tonight" (imagine that!), and "Town [Lee] eyes solar project." Even the one titled "Training set to prepare for troops' arrival: Health professionals brace for high demand with Iraq exit" is a energy story because the troops are coming home from an oil war.

   But don't expect our media to connect financial or economic nightmares here or abroad with anything to have to do with energy -- like the plateauing of oil availability worldwide and a consequent end to economic growth. That would be stepping away from avoidance and denial that are their hallmark. Which is why I found James Howard Kunstler's blog this week, titled "Suspended Civilization," which you can read here, so welcome, so refreshing.

   In part, it's about how the bailout of the big banks in 2008 amounted to not just $800 billion, as reported at the time, but $7.7 trillion, as Bloomberg News reported last week after using the Freedom of Information Act to get under official Federal Reserve figures. According to a Truthout news analysis by Thom Hartmann (see it here), the . . .

more later

  
  Wednesday, November 23, 2011 --  Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh sees a trumped-up case in the making by the Obama administration and Israel against Iran over its nuclear program. His interview on "Democracy Now!" about the matter, here, makes great reading and listening. It's based on a blog he did for The New Yorker magazine, "iran and the I.A.E.A," here. (The IAEA is the International Atomic Energy Agency.)


  Saturday, November 19, 2011 --  Some things just don't change. Or they change for awhile and then fall back to a previous condition or something like it. How about this assertion?

       “Wall Street owns the country…. Money rules…. Our laws
    are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and
    honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political
    speakers mislead us.”

 As you know from having read Bill Moyer's piece I noted the other day (just below), it's 121 years old. Moyers chose to begin "How Wall Street Occupied America" with it. Was Mary Elizabeth Lease wrong when she spoke those words about the Republican and Democratic parties circa 1890? To what extent is this an accurate assessment today? What's really going on in this country and the world? Are "the parties and the political leaders" lying to and misleading us? I think so.

   But they're doing it with the full compliance and participation of the corporate media from which we get so much of our information about things political, financial, economic and military. Some people call the media a filter. Media bosses are gatekeepers, consciously determining what gets printed or aired and how. They're there to protect a corrupt system they're an integral part of.

   Here are the next three paragraphs of Moyers' essay:

       "[Mary Elizabeth Lease] should see us now. John Boehner
    calls on the bankers, holds out his cup, and offers them
    total obeisance from the House majority if only they fill it.
    Barack Obama criticizes bankers as 'fat cats,' then invites
    them to dine at a pricey New York restaurant where the
    tasting menu runs to $195 a person.
       "That's now the norm. And they get away with it. The
    president has raised more money from employees of banks,
    hedge funds and private equity managers than any
    Republican candidate, including Mitt Romney. Inch by inch
    he has conceded ground to them while espousing populist
    rhetoric that his very actions betray.
       "Let's name this for what it is: hypocrisy made worse,
    the further perversion of democracy. Our politicians are
    little more than money launderers in the trafficking of
    power and policy -- fewer than six degrees of separation
    from the spirit and tactics of Tony Soprano."

   While in Boston last night, finding myself only a few blocks from the Occupy Boston encampment near South Station, I walked over with a friend and checked it out. We brought two containers of leftovers of Indian food from a Mass Alliance benefit near the State House. They were gratefully accepted but hardly necessary as the encampment had its own food operation going. I overheard someone say "chicken pot pie without the crust." I could have used some. It was about 8, a bit cold. It was dark in the camp. We stayed for only 20 minutes or so at the site, where tents and sleeping bags for perhaps 200 people were ready for occupiers to spend the night. A scuffle involving an occupier shouting profanities and three Boston policemen had broken out on a sidewalk on the perimeter; some of the Occupy Boston's own security people helped the three policemen resolve the situation. My friend personally complimented the three cops on their professionalism.

   What's going on at the "occupations" around the world is probably as varied as the number of occupations themselves. Most news coverage and commentary concerns physical settings, conflicts legal and otherwise, incoherencies, and dysfunctionality. Not much involves what has driven these people to take to streets and parks, bank lobbies and other places.


   Thursday, November 17, 2011 --  How to get a handle on Occupy? Among the many things worth reading about this fledgling movement and its causes is Bill Moyers' piece in the Nov. 21 issue of The Nation, "How Wall Street Occupied America" (adapted from a talk Moyers gave last month at a party celebrating the 40th anniversary of Public Citizen).
 
  Tuesday, November 8, 2011 --  Election day for municipal offices in Pittsfield. (I'm putting this together last night because in all likelihood I'll be too busy to do it today, Tuesday.) At some point I'll vote for Dan Bianchi for mayor, the candidate with a plan for Pittsfield. My wife will, too. That's two votes. I'll also vote for Nick Cacamo for at-large city councilor, Ozias "Chuck" Vincelette for Ward 4 city councilor, Terry Kinnas for school committee member, and maybe a few others. Let's hope for the best.

-   -   -
   A lovely column -- call it blog if you will -- by William Howard Kunstler, devoid of profanity for a change. It's titled "Critical State." Here are the first two paragraphs:
       Portents of winter and the toothless chatter of flag-draped
    traitors vies with a fog of lies spread by Koch Brother
    messenger boys, Reagan nostalgia hucksters, suck-ups
    in office, Murdoch empire servlings, Banker PR catamites,
    and Jesus terrorists to occupy the national mind-space
    with a narcotic Jell-O of half-formed wish fulfillment scams.
    The nation is hostage to a confederacy of racketeers.
    Banking. Big Pharma. The Higher Ed / Loan nexus. GMO
    agri-biz. Fast food. Mandatory motoring. You name it. What
    a disgrace we are, and the worst of us are the least to know
    that.
       This winter will be the Occupy Movement's Valley Forge.
    An uneasy quiet may settle across this land blanketed in
    frozen dishonesty while OWS goes to the ground. Wait until
    next summer when the Occupiers head for the nominating
    conventions. Chicago in 1968 was nothing compared to
    what might go down in Charlotte, NC (Democrats) and Tampa,
    FLA (Republicans) in 2012. These two giant, useless, political
    bucket shops need to be put out of business and something
    else has to take their place. Who will be the new breed of
    genuine patriots? It would be nice to suppose that something
    noble and intelligent might emerge from the current miasma,
    a reality-based third party. But history isn't so reassuring. ...
 
    For the rest of it, click here. Kunstler speculates that New York City's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is plotting a 2012 candidacy for president. If so, what better running mate than Kunstler himself? In other countries accomplished writers run for president. If a president can't arise from the Green Party because of our refusal to take corporate cash and the absence of self-funding multi-millionaires in our ranks, a Bloomberg/ Kunstler ticket sounds good to me.

   I haven't mentioned it until now, but Jill Stein, the Green-Rainbow Party's 2010 nominee for governor of Massachusetts, announced last month her candidacy for the Green Party's nomination for president of the United States. Here are her prepared remarks for the announcement


  Monday, November 7, 2011 --  How to Read the Berkshire Eagle: Part 1 (a new series):

   Today's Eagle has at least two things worth checking out: the editorial entitled "Disgraceful tax dodge" and Ruth Bass's column headlined "Those who stay home cast a negative vote." (Click on links to read them.) They're exemplary for what they leave out.

   In the editorial expressing outrage over large corporations that pay minimal if any taxes, two words leap out: "chicanery" and "found." The editorial implies that GE, Verizon and dozens of other giant tax dodgers employ "deception by artful subterfuge or sophistry: TRICKERY ... crafty, underhanded ingenuity to deceive or cheat" (definitions from Merriam-Webster). Why not define "subterfuge" too: "deception by artifice or stratagem in order to conceal, escape or evade." (Thanks again, M-W.)

   "Chicanery" is accurate, just barely. To me it connotes a one- or two-time occurrence of deception or cheating, not a decades-long system of massive swindling, not a way of corporate and political life. The word implies an action on a level playing field, possibly repeated. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

   "Found" is also accurate, as in the sentence "The corporation's ... tax attorneys found a variety of loopholes to squirm though that don't apply to or can't be found by the average small business or working person." GE and other corporations "find" those loopholes because they put the loopholes there. These giant companies spend incalculable millions in campaign contributions at all levels buying the two major political parties as well as office holders in the executive and legislative branches, and then incalculable millions more for lawyers, lobbyists, scientists and other professionals to follow up and have their corporate way. In every important way they own U.S. presidents, Congress, governors, state legislatures, and government agencies. If they complain mightily about "government" it's because always something remains in government that they haven't fixed to their liking, usually against the greater public interest.

   The corporate media, through which we citizens get upwards of 90 percent of our information, somehow don't delve into the nitty gritty of what's going on, in part because their owners' and managers' interests are aligned with the corporations that have corrupted government, and in part because many of their advertisers and "underwriters" are the same corporations corrupting the government.

   Some people have had enough, and -- refreshingly -- have taken to streets, parks and other public places. Many of them are young enough not to have heard they can't do what they appear, in fact, to be doing.

   Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, and other Occupy groups have hit the nail on the head. They're not going to take it anymore. But they're not just "mad as hell" like Harry Beals in the movie "Network" (see entry below for Oct. 30). They're in the process of taking effective action and taking their own sweet time doing it -- even if, physically, they'll be out in the cold this winter. (It's better than being figuratively out in the cold, isolated, discredited, muttering futilely to themselves.) The injustices the Occupiers are identifying are legion, making up a banal but evil system destroying the world. The corporate politicians aren't going to clean things up, the corporate media aren't going to help. So that leaves OWS & Co.

   Well, that editorial wasn't half bad after all, but I couldn't resist adding some context. Commentary here (much briefer) on Ruth Bass's column will have to wait for tomorrow.


   Thursday, November 3, 2011 -- McKibben, Chomsky and Brown are the family names of three people whose work can be useful to anyone trying the navigate the waters of the current state of the world -- filled as these waters are with persistent distractions in the form of lies of commission, lies of omission, spin, wishful thinking, denial, and other contributors to dysfunction.

   Down cellar last night babysitting a leaky boiler that was only following the laws of physics, I read some American history as interpreted by Bill McKibben in Chapter 3 of Eaarth. A point of his that leapt out concerns some reasoning in a founding document in favor of bigness:

       In "The Federalist No. 10," James Madison argued for a
    new constitution and a stronger federal government with
    this pivotal claim: if you make your nation big enough, you'll
    water down any "faction" and prevent the whole enterprise
    from going off half-cocked. If you have a small enough
    democracy, everyone can participate, and that's bad:
    (my underlining): "A society consisting of a small number
    of citizens, who assemble and administer the government
    in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs
    of faction. A common person or interest will, in almost
    every case, be felt by a majority of the whole."

    It may be occurring to increasing numbers of Americans these days, though, that the bigness Madison advocated will be the nemesis of the human species. Which may be some of the attraction of Occupy Wall Street and its echoes around the world. Everyone can participate in these encampments of democracy. No one is told to sit down and shut up, sit on the couch and take it from the corporate media because, after all, they must know what they're talking about -- about the economy, about the wars, about how different the Republicans and the Democrats are from each other -- it must be true, and, besides, they're the only big, corporate mass media we've got, and if we go corporate like both of the major political parties and all of the media maybe we can get some of that big money for ourselves.

   Madison, for all of his desire in 1787 for critical mass against dangerous factionalism, two years later drafted the First Amendment to the Constitution in large part by the popular demand of factions that otherwise weren't going to accept the new Constitution without sufficient civil liberties.

   Now in 2011, bigness having taken over so much and so many in the United States, scrappy debt-ridden young people have had enough, and an elderly Noam Chomsky, for one is delighted. Here he is speaking at Occupy Wall Street two days ago:

       The Occupy movement really is an exciting development.
    In fact, it's spectacular. It's unprecedented; there's never
    been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and
    associations that are being established at these remarkable
    events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead
    -- because victories don't come quickly-- this could turn out
    to be a very significant moment in American history.
       The fact that the demonstrations are unprecedented is
    quite appropriate. It is an unprecedented era -- not just this
    moment -- but actually since the 1970s. The 1970s began
    a major turning point in American history. For centuries,
    since the country began, it had been a developing society
    with ups and downs. But the general progress was toward
    wealth and industrialization and development -- even in
    dark and hope -- there was a pretty constant expectation
    that it's going to go on like this. That was true even in very
    dark times.
       . . .
       It’s quite different now. Now there’s kind of a pervasive sense
    of hopeless, or, I think, despair. I think it’s quite new in American
    history and it has an objective basis. In the 1930s unemployed
    “working people” could anticipate realistically that the jobs are
    going to come back. If you’re a worker in manufacturing today --
    and the unemployment level in manufacturing today is
    approximately like the Depression -- if current tendencies
    persist, then those jobs aren’t going to come back.

   For all of Chomsky's talk, click here.

   Between emptying out plastic vessels of warm boiler water into a pail, I also finished the disturbing Chapter 2, "Falling Water Tables and Shrinking Harvests," of Lester Brown's World on the Edge. Not only is fresh water disappearing in China, India and the United States, which together produce half the world's grain, water prospects are grim for Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Mexico. 

       Today more than half of the world's people live in countries
    with food bubbles. ... For some countries the bursting of the
    bubble may well be catastrophic. For the world as a whole,
    the near-simultaneous bursting of several national food
    bubbles as aquifers are depleted could create unmanageable
    food shortages.
       This situation poses an imminent threat to food security
    and political stability. We have a choice to make. We can
    continue with overpumping as usual and suffer the
    consequences. Or we can launch a worldwide effort to
    stabilize the aquifers by raising water productivity --
    patterning the campaign on the highly successful effort
    to raise grainland productivity that was launched a half-
    century ago.

   That's more than enough for today. I don't know how either McKibben's or Brown's book comes out but know that each has his collection of recipes for survival. So it's worth reading both books to the end.


  Monday, October 31, 2011 --  In part of a sentence on page 61 of my copy of Bill McKibben's Eaarth is a possible, partial explanation for some of our weather in the Berkshires these days:

      ... we live on a planet where warmer air holds more water
   vapor and hence we have bigger storms.

That could account for the amount of precipitation this weekend (as in recent months), the cold air from Canada causing it to be in the form of snow.

   I'm through Chapter 2 of McKibben and through Chapter 1 of Brown. (See yesterday's entry.)

-  -   -
   The occupations continue. Concerning the first one, Occupy Wall Street, or OWS, Ralph Nader asks where it's going and offers some suggestions in this column from CounterPunch. (Note: scroll down through some fundraising material to get to the column.)  Two paragraphs:

        But the mass media is a hungry beast. It needs to be fed
     regularly. Apart from the daily pressures of making sure the
     encampments are clean, that food and shelter are available,
     that relations with the police are quiet, that provocateurs
     are identified; the campers must anticipate possible police
     crackdowns, such as that occurred in Oakland, and find
     ways to respond.
        There are enough national polls showing broader support
     for the Occupy people than for the Tea Party people.
     Additional communities are installing their own Occupy
     sites right down to small towns like Niles, Michigan (pop.
     12,000) and Bethel, Alaska, where Diane McEachern is
     occupying the tundra. But, there is trouble ahead.


  Sunday, October 30, 2011 -- Bill McKibben begins Chapter 1 of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet this way:

      Imagine we live on a planet. Not our cozy, taken-for-granted
   earth, but a planet, a real one, with melting poles and dying
   forests and a heaving, corrosive sea, raked by winds, strafed
   by storms, scorched by heat. An inhospitable place.
      It's hard. For the ten-thousand years that constitute human
   civilization, we've existed in the sweetest of sweet spots. The
   temperature has barely budged; globally averaged, it's swung
   in the narrowest of ranges, between fifty-eight and sixty
   degrees Fahrenheit. ...

   Eaarth (with its extra "a") is McKibben's moniker for the punishing planet we're living on now, not just one our children and grandchildren will inherit someday. It's a planet in the process of momentous and momentum-carried change which we've inherited from generations of our forebears who were (first out of ignorance and then plain carelessness) inattentive to nature's requirements ...

   ... not to mention from us ... as in Pogo's 1970 admonition, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Everlasting thanks to Walt Kelly for that. Us being us humans.

   As it happens, this morning I chopped a month or so off the bottom of this Journal so it wouldn't crash. The last sentence remaining from what I kept, is this from the June 21 entry, from a column by James Carroll:

      When we stopped noticing Earth, we began to destroy it.

   Perhaps Carroll had just been reading Eaarth (which, after all, was a best-seller).

   Please, please, take Eaarth out of the library and start reading it, or fork out fifteen bucks for a traditional trade-paper copy, or do whatever one does to download it into some hand-held machine. You may already have done so -- unburdened from the demands of a political campaign -- and are far ahead of me. I have only completed the first chapter ...

   ... at which point I began the first chapter of Lester Brown's World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental Collapse, which begins:

       In the summer of 2010, record-high temperatures hit
    Moscow. At first it was just another heat wave, but the
    scorching heat that started in late June continued through
    mid-August. Western Russia was so hot and dry in early
    August that 300 or 400 new fires were starting every day.
    Millions of acres of forest burned. So did thousands of
    homes. Crops withered.

   Sounds like Texas or California or Georgia this year, doesn't it? Oh, but it couldn't affect Massachusetts, let alone Pittsfield, could it. Not us. We're sitting pretty.

   That's sarcasm, just above. We're not sitting pretty at all. Just sitting in the cross-hairs of some certain inconvenient natural change, most likely poked into action by human causes.

    McKibben's and Brown's books are among the required reading for a course at Bristol Community College, "Sustainability and Humankind: Life on a Tough New Planet." "I just barefacedly stole it," said Nancy Lee Wood, the professor who is teaching the course, of the subtitle she gave its title. Nancy is a great family friend and a past co-chair of the Green-Rainbow Party.

-     -     -
   I haven't made it to Occupy Wall Street (or Occupy Boston), and so have to rely on those who have been at one or more of the "occupations" for their assessments. One such is by author and former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges. Here it is. It's titled "Why the Elites Are in Trouble."

   Very loosely, elites who have abused their positions are in trouble because growing numbers of people have somehow become un-hypnotized by the media from which most people get their information. These occupiers -- mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings without jobs or in solidarity with others who can't make a living in today's shrinking economies -- are saying "Enough!" and will no longer sit down and shut up.

   These occupiers are doing their early 21st-century version of what Howard Beals, the crazed UBS news anchor in the 1972 movie "Network" did when he got people out there in formerly compliant viewerland to go to their windows, open them, lean out, and shout, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

   One difference being that today's occupiers are not a single elderly, isolated, well-off-but-compromised corporate news anchor near the end of his career; they're relatively young people by the thousands who are saddled with debt and don't see themselves as having any careers.

   By the way, Hedges doesn't mention Beals. He spends most of the piece talking with someone named Ketchup. Do read it, and then go check out an occupation yourself.

   I was reminded of "Occupy Boston" by a cub reporter at the Eagle named Laura Lofgren, roughly Ketchup's age, who wrote a personal article in Friday's edition titled "Seeking answers on Occupy's frontlines" before she left to visit Occupy Boston to tweet about it on Saturday and have her interviews from Occupy Boston on the Eagle's Facebook site.
     

  Wednesday, October 26, 2011 -- Government is less responsive to the needs of the vast majority of citizens than it should be and more solicitous of special interests in large part because government is effectively bought off by many of those special interests with large treasuries. "Money talks," as an Eagle editorial today put it in the case of long-overdue reform of public utility law.

   At best, the corporate media pay insufficient attention to this reality at the state and national levels. The report in Sunday's Eagle by two reporters of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (here's its website) helps shine a light on the influence of one aspect of this....  (to be continued)

-   -   -
   Briefly (to make up for verbosity and purple prose yesterday), here and here and here are three things worth reading in today's Eagle. Respectively, they are two letters by Tad Ames and Charles Cianfarini on PCB cleanup from the Housatonic River and its floodplain, and an editorial promoting reform of laws relating to public utilities.

   I agree with Ames's and Cianfarini's letters, titled "HRI seeks accountability, not revenge," and "Case made for complete remediation."

   The editorial, titled "Past time for action on utility law reform," is a step in the right direction.


   Tuesday, October 25, 2011 -- To loosely paraphrase a river-oriented character at the outset of another narrative: You don't know about the subject of today's entry without you have read an entry by the date of Monday, October 24, 2011, but that ain't no matter. If the Housatonic of this era ain't the Mississippi of Mark Twain's, volumes only imagined today may educate and enlighten millions yet unborn about the Housatonic and its neighbors over the last hundred hundred years and the next fifty. "Volumes" may be wrong in the age of Kindle and successors, as wrong as it may be to expect millions yet unborn to read ... anything.

   All of which is a wordy and pretentious way of saying: If you haven't read the entry just below, for Oct. 24, please do before reading more of this one.

   Tim Gray is a hero of mine if for no reason than having been able to write his letter to the editor of The Eagle that ran last Thursday. You can read it here. Headline: "Columnist, DEP, parrot GE stance." The columnist whose column the previous Sunday is former Eagle managing editor Clarence Fanto. Read the column in question here. Headline: "Emotions shouldn't rule cleanup."

   Fanto erected more straw men than exist on a typical Halloween trick-or-treat route. The "Emotions" column evoked the oratory of a politician who enunciates "There are those who say . . ." each time listing something hollow and unworthy and each time batting it down as easily as a costumed trickster could bat smash a soggy pumpkin. It's harder, though, to get away with in print.

   Did some GE hack lined up by Peter Larkin ghost that column? Or does Fanto actually believe that "the desire for revenge and retribution" is the prime motivator of environmentalists pursuing their lifelong calling. Per Fanto, "many area residents" want PCBs cleanup in and around the Housatonic to be as "massive and as costly to GE as possible."

   Because (and here's the "There are those who say ..." moment): "General Electric is the corporate villain many in the Berkshires love to hate."

   It's not that publicly-held corporations exist to maximize share value for their stockholders. It's not that they will spend millions of dollars in p.r., in the courts, and in campaign contributions to avoid paying tens or hundreds of millions in cleanups. It's not that for businesses that put their stockholders first the "environment" consists of regulators, taxers, labor unions, other employees, dissatisfied customers, and other threats to be co-opted or otherwise defeated. It's not that some entity has to pay for proper cleanup -- and GE happens to have the money and governments at any level no longer have it to spare anymore.

   No, it's about hatred. It's about emotions.
 
-   -   -
   Credit where it's due: Bravo to the Eagle and its owners for carrying a report across the top of Sunday's page 1 showing how large private utilities have had their way with state legislatures -- specifically the one in Boston -- to defeat efforts to start municipally-owned electric companies. Two reporters of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting have their bylines under the drab headline "Utilities lobby against local power." You may read their report here. Magnificent piece of research and writing.
   

   Monday, October 24, 2011 -- The most important matter to be addressed in the state representative's race just past and in the races for Pittsfield mayor and city councilors this coming Nov. 8 was and is the cluster of choices concerning "rest-of-the-river" PCBs cleanup from the Housatonic and its floodplain and in cleanup of PCBs upstream in Pittsfield including Silver Lake and the mound called Hill 78 near Allendale School.

   The forces aligned behind minimalist cleanup -- somehow labeled "environmentally benign" to the satisfaction of a significant minority of Pittsfielders and others -- are formidable. They include GE, The Berkshire Eagle, 1Berkshire, the Chamber of Commerce, many if not most residents of the Polo Acres development, and many who enjoy hunting and fishing. They also include the targets of GE money and power, like the Obama and Patrick administrations based in Washington and Boston, and various legislators at federal, state and local levels. They may also include people who rate the value of their GE stock above the future of humans (near and far) and our natural base. Considering the way corporate America's boards of directors interlock and function,, , ,

    . . . these forces include companies that are household names and other we've never heard of. It's quite an array, and they have a lot of conventional advantages. But I believe they don't have important truths on their side, or science.

   Thursday, October 20, 2011 -- Local Democrats are staging an "Occupy Park Square" today at 5, overlooking or disguising the uncomfortable fact that the Wall Street and Boston and everywhere "occupiers" are acting out of exasperation at President Obama's warmongering and
Wall Street-friendly ways. Essentially Berkshire Brigades is trying damage control designed to co-opt a budding movement.

   For one perspective, James Howard Kunstler's, click here. Apologies in advance for the profanity.

-   -   -
   Update on this morning's entry:

   I just read Planet Valenti's words on the special election and various comments underneath. Good stuff, although most of it written without knowledge or care about any issues local or otherwise. Find it here.

   (And don't the characterization of me as Mumbles Miller!)

-   -   -
   Congratulations to Tricia Farley-Bouvier and the forces behind her candidacy. (I think of them as forces within Pittsfield's community power structure committed to the status quo and -- like the forces at the State House, in Washington, and in Corporate America -- holding on to their own power via the Democratic and Republican parties.)

   And congratulations and humble, heartfelt thanks to everyone involved in our respectable showing. Bravo! Let's hear it for the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts and voters for its local candidate!

   Results of Tuesday's special election for state representative:

   Tricia Farley-Bouvier, Democrat, 1,940 votes (32.8%)
   Mark C. Miller, Green-Rainbow, 1,748 votes (29.5%)
   Pam Malumphy, unenrolled, 1,325 votes (22.4%)
   Mark Jester, Republican, 899 votes (15.1%)

    Eagle coverage yesterday here and today here, and Eagle editorial today here. Gazette coverage today here.

    Endless after-the-fact quarterbacking will be done on Tuesday night's results and the race that preceded them. The race is easily worth a case study or three for a political science or sociology or history course. I won't beat it to death here -- at least not now.

   Gotta go.


   Wednesday, October 19, 2011 -- Thank you! (More later today.)  


   Tuesday, October 18, 2011 -- Election Day.  


   Monday, October 17, 2011 -- At least five Pittsfield residents wrote letters to the editor supporting me that were not printed even though their letters were received before the newspaper's deadline. They were written and sent by Grier Horner, Dan Dillon, Joel Greenberg, Herbert West, and Doris Soman. Others may have done likewise only to see their letters unpublished, but those are the ones I know of.

   Grier's an artist, a retired Eagle editor and a longtime reporter. Dan is the former executive director of Berkshire United Way, among other distinctions. Joel, a lawyer, is a former state representative who served Pittsfield well. Herb, a self-described "grumpy codger," is a retired engineer with 30 years of service with GE. Doris is a boxer aficionado and an ardent single-payer health insurance advocate.

    Here's some of an email message from Grier, sent last night:

      "Mark, I was disappointed that the Eagle did not run my
      letter. It was sent at 11:45 a.m. October 13, and I have a
      record of that. ... My letter was short and they certainly
      could have jettisoned some other letter not as time
      sensitive, especially after pledging that they would run
      all sent in by that noon deadline.  Grier"

   My thanks to everyone who wrote a letter supporting me, whether it got printed or not.

-   -   -
   Headline in last Thursday's edition of the Berkshire Record:

   "White House tells EPA to go easy on GE cleanup plan: Administration's call to Boston office urges feds to use less aggressive, DEP approach."

   The  quiet and sure power of organized money amazes, but shouldn't. It's use can be a reliable tool, especially when exercised deftly behind the scenes. And that is just the way it is being exercised against the public interest and against the environment and a better, safer future for the Housatonic Valley.

   GE will spend millions of dollars to avoid spending tens or hundreds of millions in the best cleanup of PCBs from the Housatonic and its floodplain. The corporation has been doing just that, and with the right people in the right places.

   One of President Obama's closest economic advisers is Jeffrey Immelt, GE chairman and CEO. In turn, one of GE's most effective lobbyists and operatives at the Massachusetts level is Peter Larkin, the second-to-last state representative from this Third Berkshire District, who in 2005 abandoned this office (yes, the one I'm seeking) to take on just such clients as GE. Connect the dots.

   In the Berkshire Record article, David Scribner quotes Bruce Winn of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team: "Immelt has convinced President Obama to put pressure on the EPA to back off from a Housatonc River cleanup." The report said this was on the BEAT website. I couldn't find it, but perhaps you can, here.

   Also, see "River Wars," David Scribner's Sept. 27 piece in Red Crow News, a trustworthy new source of news and analysis in the Berkshires.

   I'm sorry I didn't get the above out earlier, but campaign preoccupations took my eye off that ball. My weekly copy of the Record languished unread on a kitchen counter until I picked it up this morning. The Record is on the newsstand at the South Street Mobil station and, I heard, at Guido's. It's not available online, but Red Crow News is.

   Oh, and before I get back to the campaign I should note a couple of individuals in the Record's page 1 photo of the peaceful but colorful demonstration that preceded last week's informational DEP meeting at Lenox Town Hall: the Green-Rainbow Party's Scott Laugenour of Lenox and Darlene Baisley of Lee. Scott's sign says "Join the Party for Clean Water." Darlene's says "Join the Party (Green-Rainbow) that Refuses GE Money." See photo here.

   (Truth be told, GE hasn't offered us any money, but we'd refuse it if they did!)

  
   Friday, October 14, 2011 -- I'm delighted to have received the endorsement of Clean Water Action this week. I'm looking forward to benefiting from CWA's expertise if elected, particularly as concerns "rest of the river" cleanup of PCBs from the Housatonic. Please read about Clean Water Action here.


   Monday, October 3, 2011 -- An email from Tim Gray of the Housatonic River Initiative came in this afternoon while I was preparing for tonight's debate at Berkshire Community College. Here's most of it:
   RESTORE THE RIVER

STOP THE STATE
from weakening the Clean-up of the Housatonic River

WE NEED YOUR VOICE!
Our goals are simple ...

 1. NO TOXIC WASTE DUMPS in the Berkshires

 2. MAXIMUM COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT in all stages of the clean-up

 3. Maximum REMOVAL of PCBs including Connecticut

 4. Openness to Explore Alternative Technologies

 5. Flexibility to Modify Clean-up Plans as needed

The Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection and Massachusetts Fish and Wildlife will be there to discuss their plan.

WHERE: Lenox Town Hall, 6 Walker St.
WHEN: Wednesday, October 12 @ 6:30 pm
Demonstration @ 5:30 (bring signs)

  Contact Tim Gray 312-243-3353 or
Phyllis Skaller for more information 413-274-6014

   Friday, September 30, 2011 -- I hadn't realized before seeing this story by Dan Ring in the Springfield Republican that the casinos-and-slots bill now in the state Senate would send 9 percent of the revenues from the one slots parlor to "a fund to develop race horses"! Another story by Ring, here, reports that the state Senate has amended the bill so it would disqualify Massachusetts state legislators from working for a casino or an applicant for a gambling license for a whole year from the time they leave office!

-   -   -
   “Carried Away: True Stories from Letter Carriers Across America” is the title of a book to celebrate these men and women all of us depend on. For promotional info about the book, click here. I met Kate Drury, one of its co-editors, at the standout Tuesday at the Federal Building, where about 25 carriers and others gathered to thank Congressman John Olver for
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