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Oops ! What did we forget?

are-staff — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 03:07:11 GMT

We American forgot that Freedom is a learning process.

The prerequisite to Freedom is Strength-also a learning process, also largely forgotten.

What do freedom and strength have in common? Strength is a practice, not an achievement. Freedom is a practice, not a Principle.

If we don't practice strength and freedom in our daily lives, then these words are just passing thoughts. Nice thoughts, marketable thoughts, but nothing more.

The practice of these ideas is physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. It is individual and interdependent at the same time. There is no getting around it. No shortcuts. You can't buy this practice on the Internet. Business can't sell us the practice of strength and freedom because it cannot be bought or sold-though that doesn't keep business from trying to sell us these qualities all day and every day. Our government can't give it to us, it can only protect it for us and from us once we have it. Our religion can't give it to us, but only point us in the general direction.

We have forgotten how to learn and practice these most basic concepts. It takes attention and work. Concentration. And there is no prize. The practice of strength and freedom is its own reward.

What does does the practice look like in an average, everyday life?

Lets Start Where We Are...

are-staff — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 02:03:27 GMT

I live in a city adjacent to Chicago.

It is certainly City; not half suburb and half city, nor a suburb trying to be a city. There are plenty-hundreds, I am sure-of small towns, bedroom communities, and mall-centered suburbs within fifty miles of where I live. These are really 'attached' to Chicago and the smaller towns that surround it. For all of these places, a car is an absolute requirement. Everything is done by car. Out there the average income level is is bit lower, as is the cost of living. This is where the big box malls begin, with fast food satellites always within visual range of wherever you happen to be.

Further out, there are hundreds more of old-fashioned small towns. This is farm country. But the farms are nearly all owned by big corporations. The people shop at Walmart and eat at Wendy's. The disaster continues.

Roughly, that's my America. Roughly, that yours too. Big cities, attached towns and suburbs, smaller towns and farm country.

Almost the whole country is, roughly, fat and helpless. Our government is getting pretty fat and helpless too. But not the corporations. They are sucking the life out of us and out of our government-the government that should be, and was designed to be- by Us and for Us; We the People.

So why the Mapquest tour from city to farm?

Because the first thing we need to do to rebuild a middle-class or blue collar life is to understand and get back our sense of independence. And we cannot do it by reading political books and blogs and watching TV. (Watching what goes on in Wisconsin could be helpful, though.) No. We have to put independence into action in our own lives. Political action? Later. Let's start with the LDS Preparedness Manual. Lets read it and make up our minds to take action right away.

This Manual is free for download. Soon it will be available at minimal cost through Amazon. I would recommend paying for it. The people who put it together and continue to work on it know better than most what we mean when we talk about Independence. They should be supported in their good work.

Why start at home with this book?

I began my website and this blog to find people who were interested in Energy Independence, but who also had limited funds. This grew out of my everyday work in the Solar Industry, as a designer and installer of solar electric and solar thermal systems.

In the process of learning about electricity in America-how it is financed, produced, and delivered-I learned that the most dangerous threat to our country is our fragile electric power system. It is a disaster waiting not so patiently to happen.

When the power goes out, will you be ready to suddenly have full, unqualified Independence? Because when the power goes out, you will have it.

The following will also happen;

There will be no heat for buildings or hot water, and limited or no natural gas supplies.
There will be no space cooling or refrigeration.
There will be no lighting, TV, garage openers, elevators, fire protection systems.
There will be no communications.
There will be an immediate run on all food, beverage, drug, hardware and liquor stores.
There will be a run on any place that sells guns or other weapons.
There will be no operating gas stations.
There will be no traffic controls.
There will be little or no police and fire services.
There will be few medical services other than major hospitals.
No one will know who is in charge, because there won't be anyone in charge.

Let's begin our blue collar reconstruction effort by starting to change our own helplessness in an emergency situation. Start with the worst. If we are really ready for what happens when the power goes out, no terrorist will ever get over on us. Not even the corporate terrorists in our own country.

The Plan
Water
Food
Power
Security
Communications

These are the minimum requirements for ourselves and our families, in an emergency or in everyday life.

Please pick up the LDS Preparedness Manual and skim it. Next time we will start on The Plan.

Hard Knocks College class of 1929

are-staff — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 22:43:42 GMT

My Grandfather used to tell me, when the subject of his rise to success came up in conversation, that first he went to school with the Nuns and then the priests at St. Pats, and then the College of Hard Knocks.

What did he learn at HKC?

1. Keep your mouth shut;
2. Be on time, leave on time;
3. Do your job-no more and no less;
4. Always look behind you;
5. Look again, just to be sure;
6. Someone else is always right behind you;
7. The steward and the boss are equal;
8. Keep your head down;
9. Keep your eyes and ears open:
10. Vote early and vote often; (in Chicago)

He learned these lessons during the Great Depression. When the nation recovered from that awful period, some new rules were created, and we emerged with what is loosely referred to as the American Social Contract. This was a deal between the corporate class, the government, and the blue collar class. It went like this;

If the business class followed the rules, they would be given fair and favorable treatment by the government, and be assured a reasonable profit on their investments. Our government would provide strict financial regulation, but not central control of the nation's economy. If the blue collar class put in an honest days work and stayed true to their employers, they could look forward to sending their kids to college, paying off their home, and retiring with some modest security and dignity.

And grandfather did just that. With the lessons learned at Hard Knocks, and the American Social Contract in place, grandfather worked hard, sent his kids to real Universities, paid off his house, and retired for a few years before he died. In our neighborhood, that was a success story with a happy ending. The social contract stayed in place and provided a clear and unambiguous path to the American Dream.

Those days are gone.

The regulations created in the 1930's to create a 'level playing field for all' and avoid another catastrophic financial crisis were slowly eroded if favor of commodity, service, and financial market deregulation. The people with money changed the rules over and over again in their favor, until, in recent years, the Corporate class gutted the economy, left the government powerless, and the blue collar class broke, deep in debt and nearly hopeless; which is where we are now.

Now the corporate class has two basic strategies. First, they are trying to dismantle the institutions that serve the working class. These are local school districts, sports programs, unions, social service organizations, small town and small city governments, small local businesses. These are the places we meet and talk. The other is economic shock therapy. This strategy calls for a series of political and economic shocks-like a debt ceiling shock-that creates an outrageous crisis. Historically this strategy has been uses for many years in other parts of the world. It has created hellish suffering and death, but made the rich much richer and much more in control of the government and working class. The most obvious sign that shock therapy is being used is political and economic confusion and dysfunction. Then comes the unbelievable shocks. Then the suffering as nearly all money and power shifts up.

The money class is trying this out in our country right now. In my old neighborhood we called people like this 'degenerates'.

Ok. They grabbed almost all our money and beat down our government. I covered some of this last week, but I wanted to summarize and bring it into the next context, which is,

" What do we do now? Where to we start?"

The answer: Education, pure and simple.

The College of Hard Knocks isn't around anymore. The American Social Contract is long gone. We are struggling against great odds to keep our schools open. But we have three undisputed facts going for us:

1. Knowledge is Power

2. The human race is self-taught

3. We now have the Internet

We don't need to learn how to run software companies, we just need to learn how to run our own neighborhoods in a way that provides freedom and the most basic security for all participants. There will be no help from the money class. But we have just enough to take back the power if we begin in earnest.

Next time, let's begin.

Where are they hiding? (not under a bag of money)

are-staff — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 02:52:55 GMT

I just started to look for them and found out they were missing.

The Blue Collar people;

the workers and their families, the people whose lives used to be centered around the school and the church, the union hall, the ball fields and the drive-ins. The blue collar people are the ones who hoped to work in the shop or the factory or in a building trade until they could send their kids to school and retire with a paid-off mortgage

My dad was an electrician. His friends were the police, on the fire department, or with the plumbers or carpenters local. There was a blue collar class in 1975 when I was starting to fix houses. They were there in 1981 when I was learning to be a carpenter. They were still around in '89 when I became a designer/builder and spent two weeks' pay for a Motorola bag phone.

Then things changed. Freidman Economics would give us everything. Suddenly greed was good. Everyone in the cities wanted a whole lot more for a whole lot less and the whole world saw it. Factories moved away, first by the hundreds then by the thousands. In my business, people from Poland and Romania and Mexico began to get much of the construction work because they worked for so much less. A contractor could have them do a job over twice and still be ahead for what he was paying. If it was right the first time, the contractor hit the jackpot.

People would talk all the time about how much they got for just a song. The banks and the building business went wild. Prices went off the charts. The waves of mostly unskilled but relentlessly willing imported labor kept rolling in, working for less and then less again just for a chance to stay in this promised land. Who could blame them?

The older guys started to leave the trades in disgust. The unions continued to fall apart. I don't really know what happened to the ones who worked the factories, but they are gone. They disappeared into the police force or the fire department if they were young enough and lucky. The rest just faded out.

Ross Perot warned us about the sucking sound of companies and jobs and taxes leaving the country. The jobs left fast, but people higher up got more and more and more.

In the late 90's the rich got cute and started to run a game on the rest of us, especially on the newer Americans. Ten years later the game fell apart. The ones on top that saw it coming and had grabbed everything they could hide by then. The foreclosures started and the country (us, not the higher ups) was broke. The Blue Collar wannabees, imported by the millions to make more money rich guys, the ones that were hoping to make a good life here in the promised land, were the first ones let go. You can see the few who are left standing around Home Depots all over the country every morning of every day of the year.

The ones that just came over and the ones that were already here have lost the lives and futures they dreamed of for their families. They have disappeared-even if they are still around somewhere- and they are not coming back to the emerging new corporate-owned America.

Now I suspect the class of people that we in this country called 'Blue Collar' will have to be recreated from scratch. A new Blue Collar class. We will get no help from from those who got rich in the last 50 years. We will have to figure it out for ourselves.

If we don't, our country will soon be just a very few professional rich guys with about 350 millions servants with no hope for anything.

And you can bet they will try to take all our freedom and turn it into cash, just like they took all the jobs and all the money.

But there is something they will have to do first.

Right now, the professional rich guys are systematically taking away our institutions which, taken together, are called 'Civil Society'. It sounds fancy and academic, but civil society is, for us, our schools and churches and clubs, local sports and theaters, small companies, shops, local governments and local unions. These are the places we meet and organize ourselves and talk to each other about what is really happening out there and to us, and what will probably happen to our children.

And what we can do about it if we act together.

The rich guys don't want us to have dangerous places like this. It is dangerous for them if we talk too much, figure out what they are doing, and decide to rebuild our own middle class. They could lose some of their money, or maybe even have to go back to work and make something or build something. We blue collars could be very dangerous if we suddenly decide to take back our power and rebuild our country.

I think I might have a pretty good idea how to get started, how to take back the power.

The Most Basic Energy Education

are-staff — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:06:00 GMT

Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form...
Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form

Mass  is Energy
Energy is Mass

So says the Heart of Wisdom Sutra
So says the Heart of Special Relativity

Feelings, thoughts, and impulses are likewise like this
Our passions give us form, Our forms inform our passions

Energy is the big talk now, Clean/Dirty Good/Bad Expensive/Cheap
Do we have any fundamental idea of what Energy might really be?

Is it light bulbs and toasters, or is it magic?
Where can I go to learn this fluid, this gas, this mind body spirit?

Is it Gatorade or Amphetamines or Love?
Should I talk to my school-aged children about this stuff?

Yes we want more of it, we all need more of it
but not the bad kind. Only the good kind.

Can we demand more from the Earth?
Can we squeeze more from the Sun?

What have we done with the Energy we've already had?
Countless deeds noble, or more, unaccountably gone bad?

Nothing is pure, nothing is defiled
Nothing can increase, nothing can decrease

I think they were trying to tell us something,
That we can't win and our earth can't lose

Hence, in Emptiness...No form, no feeling, no thought, no impulse

...no suffering (oh good!) and no end to suffering (oh no!)
..no old age and death, ( ho, good!)....     Its true it is magic, wonderful magical magic

and....No end to Old Age and Death...      and a barn full to the top , fresh cow manure jumping out

The boddisatvas lived this deepest wisdom with no hindrance in the mind,
No hindrance, therefore..............................................(guess what?)

THERE FORE .......NO FEAR !

The boddisatvas of past, present, and future
live this deepest wisdom and
Therefore......................................................................................Reach the most supreme enlightenment

No Fear. What a nice surprise. And to think, they knew it twenty five hundred years ago.
The most supreme enlightenment. Maybe there is more to this Energy stuff.

Hello Energy Bandits

are-staff — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:48:00 GMT

We're still in a real jam, and now we've got the right guy in the drivers seat.

But we did we get into this mess by following the guy in the White House who used to be George Bush?

No.

We got into this mess by following the guy right in front of us. We got into this jam by following our boss who was following his boss. Our local business and political leaders, our lawyers, and bankers, and our brother-in-law who got his MBA at Northwestern. From our neighborhoods to Washington. One in front of the other.

We thought they knew better about our energy, health care and education than we did. We thought they knew better about our money than we did. And we followed their lead. And they followed the guy ahead of them, all the way to the White House.

Now our leaders, local and distant, are scrambling to cover their butts.

Much to our chagrin, it turns out they were all for Clean Energy, they were all for Health care for All, they were all for Education for All.
We just didn't know it because they forgot to tell us. Or anyone else. All the way up from the precinct to the White House.

All our leaders were following the guy in front of them when we had a bad guy in the drivers seat.

Now we have a great guy in the White House. But our leaders are not following our president. They are following the guy right in front of them, just like they did before. Just like a bunch of kids.

Every parent knows that when our kid does something dumb it may be his fault, but it is our responsibility.

We, the last of the last followers, with a little help from some good people at the very top, have the responsiblity to lead the country out of this mess. Because the guy in the suit in front of us is headed back into the circle of small time leaders that got us here in the first place.

Here’s an Energy Tax that doesn’t show up on your electric or gas bill-but you pay it anyway.

are-staff — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:22:00 GMT

Senate debate over a major piece of global warming legislation will end tomorrow with a cloture vote and no substantive debate over amendments, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said last night. Reid asserted his authority over the stalled climate bill after Republican opponents repeatedly blocked action on the measure over the opening three days of the floor debate, culminating in yesterday's nine-hour reading of the bill. E&E News

A partisan fight over judicial nominations derailed yesterday’s expected Senate floor debate on global warming legislation when Republican leaders insisted on a full reading of the 492-page bill. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he effectively put a halt to the climate debate because Democratic leaders did not fulfill a pledge to confirm three of President Bush's judicial appointees before Memorial Day. E&E PM News

These bloodsucking Congressional Representatives kept the doors open, lights on, air conditioning running and their salaries pouring in, while their unwitting interns read a 492 page bill to a roomful of deaf ears. And this single event cost us hundreds of thousands –no- millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, the rich, money and resource sucking politicians know that we won’t notice and bet that we won’t do anything. And for this they always tend to be right. ….Why?

Because, compared with the national budget and other huge government numbers, these wasted American dollars are but a drop in an already cracked bucket. That is the logic of those in power, and as long as we want to remain enslaved, that remains our logic too.

So, you ask, what can we do? Do we march on Washington (ha, ha)?

Unlike our representatives in DC, we don’t have a license to steal. Most American’s can’t afford the time or money it takes to march on Washington or anywhere else. Most American’s like you or me have to stay at home and keep scraping and working our crappy little jobs so that we can pay those big power bills, and in turn, make richer those big politicians’ and their larger than life government budgets.

Millions of our hard-earned dollars, per minute, are flowing out of our neighborhoods and directly into the pockets of those thieves we call leaders. Oh, but it’s not all their fault. In fact, most of it is our fault. If we can’t get our fat butts out from under the even fatter big screen TV, than maybe we deserve it.

Right now, today, the word slave describes you. It describes you and me and everyone else who thinks our big media, big energy companies, big food companies and our elected and un-elected big government is working for our best interests. We give up our freedom every day, a little bit at a time,-and willingly, I might add- to those we say should be doing more to solve our problems.

It was a military man, not a Unitarian or revolutionary, who first warned this country against the dangers inherent in the military-industrial complex. That was Dwight Eisenhower. Did we listen?

About forty years ago, we sent about 50,000 of our kids to death. We elected Richard Nixon president. Did we learn? I guess we did. We learned to sell out. About forty years later we elected our current president, and, as a nation seem intent on sending fifty thousand of their kids to death.

Have we done anything about the early warning from Eisenhower?

Sure. We’ve been vigilantly watching cable TV sports and listening to a watered-down version of hip-hop on our Ipod’s. We’ve been making big companies richer, government officials richer, and selling our kids’ future to China -pretty cheap.

Sure. We’ve nearly wrecked our own economy and many others, and we continue to blame the whole world for our problems. And guess who did learn something, and did do something about Eisenhower’s early warning?

The military industrial complex.

In the last fifty years it has changed size and shape. It is much bigger and vastly more powerful than it was in the 1950’s when the general gave us that prescient heads up. And now the monster is so much smarter.

See, the thing Eisenhower tried to warn us about has become the multi-national food-energy-military and government complex. We will call this crew the NGMFs for short.

But, you may wonder, what could be more American than making a Profit? Big Company=Good Company=Big Profits, right?

That’s how a small problem gains momentum- a couple of hundred million people sitting on their hands for about forty or fifty years, waiting for the problem-makers to become the problem-solvers. Waiting for the equation to become the reality, economic and personal freedom, Profit=Choices=Freedom.

But in practice, freedom has become an increasing variety of bad options, reinventing and recreating themselves via an accelerating positive feedback loop. Cloaked in robes of patriotism, and sold cheap by those who told us that the bad options were our only options in the first place, we are buying a picture that we think resembles freedom but really captures an ongoing snapshot of indentured slavery, with the average American pushing the plow. And we think cows are stupid.

Pick up a book and a box of tools or pick up a bucket of extra-crispy chicken and a remote. The choice is yours. We cannot talk our way out of the problems America faces with the current administration, we can only work our way out. No marches, no demonstrations, just education and hard work.

We will never get a chance to gain true Freedom until distributed renewable energy and local food production are an integral part of the neighborhoods that we live. These are the critical elements that make up the foundation upon which everything good is built. In this effort, which will require a drastic change of thinking and strength of character, we are not even sure that we can uncover, within our own selves, a way to participate successfully in creating a new world order: Distributed Renewable Energy and Local Food Production=Local Profits=True Freedom.

We can choose to unlearn the notion that having lots of gas guzzling cars, eating fatty, un-healthy foods, and watching violent movies are what constitute the parcel and practice of American Freedom. Instead, it is our choice, exercised or not, to take action, that reveals to us the true nature of American Freedom.

Remember the general’s warning: This may be the last chance we have. Let’s not sell out again.

WHY SOLAR?

are-staff — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:34:00 GMT

You are going to buy solar panels and wind turbines for someone.

Shouldn’t that someone be you and your family? Every day I hear people complain about the ‘payback’ for solar power. They say: “If I save $500 in the first year -that means I have a fifty year Payback.” With logic like that, those geniuses deserve what they get. They can’t tell their kids they did the right thing or the smart thing. If Power Company executives and investors were as smart as the last genius we talked to, they would be living in slums and we would be burning twigs to cook our porridge.

-Do you think that centralized Wind and Solar power is going to save you? As the power companies acquire more solar, wind, and other renewable technologies, here is what you get to pay for;

Energy commodity costs
Delivery charges
Transmission fees
Distribution fees
System line losses
Government subsidies
Executive salaries
Company overhead
Employee benefit and retirement plans
Company bad investments
Company new investments
Tax benefits given to the power companies
Local taxes
State taxes
Federal taxes
Special assessments
Regular and unscheduled rate increases
…and they own the system and its value-you just get to pay for it.

In our new energy world, most of these costs will increase every year, some a little less frequently. All these costs apply to “regular” power-not just renewable energy and power. When you invest in your own system, you pay the initial cost and 6-7% interest on the investment. You also pay some maintenance costs, which are almost always less than $100/year.

In turn, you pay none of the other costs that I have listed above; no executive salaries, no bad investments, no taxes, no fees, and zero overhead and profit.

The value of your power production increases every year, as does your system’s value. And, you can tell your kids you did the right thing and the smart thing.

Economic war with the governmental-industrial complex

are-staff — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:32:00 GMT

We are in an economic war with the governmental-industrial complex-the one General Eisenhower warned us about so long ago. Oil, Energy, Power, Agriculture, Transportation and Government seek to control their economic future by controlling ours. And billions of people around the world would love to live right here. This is still the Promised Land.

If we don’t take over the future of our country, someone else certainly will.

If we don’t become competitive again, our kids-with or without degrees-will be working for the new Americans; in quick marts, convenience stores, and mini-malls, without hope or help.

Welcome

are-staff — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:00:05 GMT

Welcome to my blog. Please check back soon for new entries.