Brian’s Morning Newsletter for March 18th 2009

Good morning

This morning I want to talk about something that has been on my mind a lot lately,

tolerance

. tol⋅er⋅ance –noun

1.     a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one’s own; freedom from bigotry.

2.     a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one’s own.

3.     interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, etc., foreign to one’s own; a liberal, undogmatic viewpoint.

Some interesting reading here as well: http://www.tolerance.org/

Why is the idea of tolerance my topic this morning?

For starters, it was because of something I wrote in a BMN last week about how Americans would rather watch transvestite homosexuals ham it up on TV than learn about what is happening in the world and what we can do to help. Of course I don’t have anything against gays, the crack was supposed to be my observation of what I see when I’m in people’s homes doing my Wireless Internet installations. As far as I’m am willing to go with my own social tolerance

is apparently looking at a person with gaudy makeup and cross dresses as entertaining. I don’t judge people by what they wear, that would be silly and seriously futile, and I haven’t got time for that kind of behavior.

So yesterday again,  I’m at a trailer park in town, installing Internet in one of the trailers. Again, I try not to judge people by the things they wear or where they live. I am telling you about the trailer, which by the way was old, but well taken care of, with a clean yard, cleaner than ours even, because it is pretty obvious that in America, maybe everywhere in the world, there are a lot of people dwelling in trailers.  It is not my place as an installer to judge people by what they watch on television while they wait for me to hook up their Internet either. Yesterday however I couldn’t avoid being somewhat involved. The trailer was small and the television was large, and it was very loud.  Perhaps because of what was on, it seemed loud: Jerry Springer Oh my, I had no idea that show was still on, after all these years, but there it was, and I couldn’t get away from it. I was trapped for a time in the little space with the big loud TV.

If I was to understand why the two young mothers where entertained by Springer’s guest’s I really would need to get to know them. That wasn’t a possibility because obviously I was out of there as soon as possible, fleeing if you will, the caustic tone of the television. To me, the commercials were a soothing relief from the show, so you know Springer was grating on my nerves. So, am I being judgmental? Well, yes, I suppose, but you’ll be happy to know that I didn’t judge them and come up with a low opinion of their collective character. They may be a product of their environment. I feel for sorry for Americans, especially those day time TV watchers,  I don’t judge them.  So that’s where the story about the transvestites came from, I observed it on a client’s TV, or I made it up in my highly subjective imagination, your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, Kevin and I were in town after the bonfire last week, and decided to check out a couple of movies from Movie Gallery. I can pick some winners, you know this already, grin. case in point: Cyclops  Hmmm… Nell didn’t like it, but I had to give it a chance, because it starred Eric Roberts, Julia’s Hollywood exiled brother. A guy has to be a pretty good screwup to get exiled by Hollywood, that being the case with Eric Roberts, we give him the benefit of the doubt. I’ve followed Eric’s career which began well before his sister’s.  Anyway, Nell is right, the movie sucked, I didn’t care, I had my own problems that day, and was all messed up,  because of the gout last weekend, and napped right through the climatic conclusion. I remember snapping back to awareness for a second muttering, "Is it over?" Looking around the living room, I couldn’t help but notice everyone was gone. "I guess so," I thought to myself, dozing back off.

The highlight to the weekend movie watching was by far

Milk starring Sean Penn

  I don’t know if I need to tell you about Harvey Milk, the San Francisco gay rights politician.  Whether you are familiar with his work in the civil rights movement in this country in the 80s or not, Milk, is a must see. What becomes apparent to anybody open minded enough to look, is that the majority of outspoken people in America are much more hateful and morally judgmental than than us. By, us, of course I mean the underdogs. In this case,  the miscreants of society, people like myself who shake a fist at capitalists and say,

"We’re not going to take it anymore, we are going to find way to break the chains of financial slavery and learn and work to be free !"

So I say to you, "

Up yours, Whitey!

Here’s a good and wholesome plan:

Pay attention to something that is helpful. We need to stop blaming people we deem to be different as the cause of all our problems.

I say again, "Want to protest the war in the Middle East, ride a bicycle, take a train, don’t buy an SUV."

Brian Rodgers

 

—————  

 

 

 

Letters

 

our wind group has been trying to put some focus on local renewables efforts, and your new site is a perfect example of what we think is appropriate technology, so i added a link to your alt-energy/wind-power page from our Resources page.

 

we’re getting a lot of exposure these days, so you might see some increased traffic as a result.

 

hope that’s ok with you. if not, let me know and i’ll remove it.

file:///C:/z_Websites/NMCARE/1pages/resources.html#rurren

site’s looking way good, boss. keep it up.

 

thanks.

 

jc

 

================================

 

¡¡¡Radio Bemba Is In The House!!!

 

================================

 

Having  minister Dad’s in common, I know what you mean when you say that your Dad put a new spin on the ancient writings–I have found that in my lifetime of not much going to church, except when either my Dad,

Karan’s

Dad or yours was the preacher, the things I liked best about all of them was how they brought everything into modern day and helped us all understand a little better what the Bible teaches–maybe nothing for many, but, maybe something that "the Dads" try to share.  Love you, hope you continue to feel better.  Sue

 

——————–         

 

Hi Brian,

 

     Nice afternoon we had at Slim’s mill. Well Zach and I are sitting at home watching TV after a fine dinner when around 10PM the Gallinas fire dept. passes our house with all the lights on to get water from the hydrant. So I knew exactly what must be going on. I go outside to confirm what I already knew. They were on their way back to Slim’s with their second load of 3000 gal. of water. So of course I got in my car and drove over. It was a party and everyone was there. All of the Gallinas fire dept. State police and Slim. So I sat with Slim as these boys try to put out the 50 by 100 ft by 6 or 8 foot tall pile of slash. 6000 gal of water later it was still smoking but they had their fun and went home. You missed the highlight of the bonfire. I took a few pics don’t know if you can see the firefighters in the middle of the fire walking on those hot coals.

 

Jose

 

——————–     

 

Hi Brian,

 

As if you don’t have enough to do already I have a couple of suggestions for you. First I love the pictures but I always have to photoshop the ones you take inside. I am attaching one of the pictures you sent out this morning that I photoshoped. I increased the brightness by 60% and the contrast by 5%. I can see the details now. I don’t know how many readers you have have eye problems but it would be a kindness to brighten the darker ones up so we can actually see them.

 

Second I have been studying high altitude farming. The Inca’s extended their growing season by using canals around their fields and through them, the water acted as a heat sink and kept the plants growing for a longer period of time. The researchers didn’t have a figure in days on how long this extended the growing season but they are sure it was a significant bit of time. That idea triggered something else. Renewable food sources. I don’t know how you and Nell feel about fish. However it seems to me that the canals would also make a great fish farm.

 

Meanwhile here on the ranch we have finally gotten started on food production for the family. We have a pair of hogs that will be our breeders when they get older. We are working on the chicken pen/coop. The price of dairy calves is down around 30 bucks average. Dairies sell them off as soon as they can be bucket fed. The feed is expensive but still overall cheaper than buying a producing milk cow. I have 216 seedlings in a mini greenhouse. Jeff is putting up a wind generator to run the well pump. Eventually he wants to move one of the old windmills up here with a storage tank to supply water.

 

I have abandoned the ethanol production. I cannot see well enough to weld anymore and I am not sure my hands would be steady enough if I could. Most of the land here would not grow corn too rocky and no way to water it. At least not in the quantity I would need. Ethanol production has raised the price of corn so that its not that much cheaper than gasoline. In an ideal world I would do it anyway for the renewable resource factor. But Im old and crippled up and Ill take the best road I can.

 

I ran my pickup in a ditch. 10 foot across, 8 feet deep and V shaped. Totaled it. it was so old and had so many miles on it the blue book value depended on how much gas I had in the tank. 17 year old pickup with 319,000 miles on it.

 

Its been a long time coming but we are finally starting to get things going out here. Nell will tell you that mama taught us all so long ago, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Im not ready to start predicting doom and gloom but I am mama’s child after all and there is one thing I do predict; it will get worse before it gets better. Economically, ecologically, spiritually we have downhill momentum and its going to be some work to get that stopped and reversed.

 

One more thought about the fish farm kinda thing. It might prove to be a neat barter item if you two don’t care for fish.

 

I know so little really about what Nell likes as I was gone out of her life for the most part by the time she was 5 or 6.

 

Is the Memorial party going to happen this year? I don’t know when Uncle John Goodson and crew are coming to Kenton, Sometime in May is all I know. I have some hopes of getting there to see you all for the camp out.

 

So take care.

 

Kelly

 

—————-        

 

Thanks everyone

 

Brian

zoom

The
Clusterfuck
Nation
Chronicle

~ A commentary on the Flux of Events published every Monday ~

est. 2001

James Howard Kunstler’s

 

March 16, 2009
Side Trip

      While evermore appalling shenanigans within the AIG corporation preoccupied the US media last week, I made a side trip to the Republic of South Africa. The travails of that country are best summed up in this song by the late pop singer Lucky Dube, who was murdered in a botched carjacking a year and a half ago ("Remember Me").

Daddy where ever you are remember me
In whatever you do I love you
Daddy where ever you are remember me
In whatever you do I love you

You left for the city many years ago
Promised to come back
And take care of us
Many years have gone by now
Still no sign of you Daddy
Mother died of a heart attack
Many years ago when she heard
That you were married again
Now, I’m the only one left
In the family

Chorus:

Wandering up and down
The streets of Soweto
No place to call my home
I tried to find you
Many years ago
But the women you’ re married to
was no good at all

    I was in Johannesburg to give some talks at the invitation of an architecture firm, Osmand Lange, who had designed an outstanding New Urbanist project of some 35 acres in the otherwise Los Angeles-style illegible suburban sprawl north of the old central business district. The project, called Melrose Arch, was an ensemble of five-story buildings in a set of mixed-use, dense blocks rich with good public space — a rare thing in this otherwise ultra-fortified security state of gated estate houses, malls, business "parks," and freeways.
     In fact, in the car coming off the very long flight from North America, with what felt like a brain-pan full of screaming weevils produced by jet-lag, I kept on wondering if I had somehow landed in LA by mistake, so similar was the palm-studded terrain and most of the objects deployed on it. After a day or so of brain rehab, the differences became more apparent.
     I spent virtually all my time there in and around Johannesburg ("Joburg") a world-class-sized city of nearly four million (in a sprawling metro area of over seven million). The official race segregation called "apartheid" was dismantled starting in 1990 by then-President F.W. de Klerk after several decades of struggle and resistance. With the population of about 50 million at roughly 80 percent black African, nine percent white, and the rest mostly Indian and Malay, South Africa’s first full-suffrage national election in 1994 yielded government to the African National Congress party (ANC) led by the long-time political prisoner Nelson Mandela. The casual observer must assume that the choice for white South Africa at that time was between accommodation and suicide.
     A state of rather tense provisional accommodation has reigned since then. The most conspicuous feature visible to someone from the US was the huge numbers of black Africans everywhere, but especially those traipsing or waiting along the the secondary highways in a country with very poor public transit. It looked like some kind of refugee stream from a distant war zone, but I was assured that it was just the normal flow of daily life.
      Along the same lines, the numbers of black Africans employed in service jobs absolutely everywhere is also impressive. Every cafe, restaurant, and commercial venue was bursting with redundant labor. Where in the US, you might see ten employees in a given bistro, in South Africa there were thirty. Caretakers, maids, yard-men, pool-men, door-men, parking valets, waiters, cooks, attendants of every kind worked constantly in the background of the still-economically dominant white culture. Laws require the redundant hiring, and it must function as a safety valve of income. Among these black service workers were huge numbers of security guards posted everywhere, overseeing the non-human security apparatus of gates, checkpoints, and electronic entry portals that define the fortified white world.
      After apartheid fell, white business fled the large central business district of Joburg for the northern suburbs, establishing an alternative universe of drive-in offices, malls, and gated housing "estates" (what we call tract housing). Meanwhile, the skyscraper district — about the size of Denver’s — was abandoned for a while. Squatters moved into forty story towers, even after the elevators stopped working. Other buildings were just stripped of valuables like copper wire and fixtures. Now the downtown has been officially reinhabited and many of the former office towers have been refitted for apartments. But the elevators are still often broken and in 2007 a series of rolling electric blackouts made life miserable there. I had to wonder what the future of that place was, given how much it costs to really maintain a skyscraper over the long haul. My guess is that the decay must necessarily outpace the attempts at upkeep when these places are owned, in essence, by slumlords.
     On-the-ground downtown, the streets were so clogged with people hurrying in chaotic flows along the sidewalks that the place took on the character of an immense termite mound. I was in a car — what else? — and was told it was not a good idea to go exploring on foot there. Much of South Africa’s notorious crime — number one worldwide in rapes and assaults per capita and second in murders — takes place in the center city. There is plenty of friction, too, between South African black nationals and black refugees from places in crisis like Zimbabwe who sift down there by the millions and compete for income. But in the social hierarchy, the center-city dwellers enjoy advantages less available to the dusty township slumdwellers of distant Soweto, southwest of the city.
     Soweto was established first as a kind of barracks area for workers in the gold and diamond mines that run in a straight line for several hundred kilometers east-west across a geographic rift south of the city center. The topography is visible even from a car on the freeway, where the old gold-mine tailing heaps bigger than the pyramids of Egypt glisten in the sun along the rift line. Another feature that kind of defines the ambience of Soweto is the remains of the old cyanide factory — a chemical used in processing gold ore.
     Today, Soweto has grown to an aggregation of about one million people living in various low-rise conditions ranging from vast districts of cardboard shacks and tin-roof shanties to what have evolved into streets of middle-class houses and even a few mansions. Up until the fall of apartheid, the government severely limited the amount of retail amenities that could be established in Soweto, so the inhabitants had to travel ten miles at time to buy household goods. Probably the weirdest thing about the life of Johannesburg and its companion Soweto revolves around the abysmal lack of public transit.
      Every day the denizens of Soweto fan out northward to work by means of taxi-cab. A gigantic system of metered cabs and mini-vans, many in desperate disrepair, driven with infamous recklessness, serves the metro area’s poorest citizens. A colossal taxi "park" (parking lot in our lingo) near the freeway entrance to Soweto’s closest-in township dispatches all these vehicles to another massive taxi park in downtown Joburg, with van or taxi connections at each end to take commuters further. This exercise consumes around four hours of misery every day, in traffic that almost always turns Joburg’s freeways into yet another a taxi park twice a day. Returning to Soweto after a day’s work, some people have to make two or three additional taxi connections to get home through the sprawling townships. Many cannot afford this and the shoulders of the connector highways off the freeway in Soweto were filled in late afternoon with streams of people heading home on foot, some burdened with bundles, some carrying things on their heads.
     The sheer monetary expense of doing all this must be out of this world for people with not much to begin with. Somehow, the insanity of it has been established as "normal," and there were few signs that the government — now black-majority, after all — was planning to rectify the situation. There are plans to run a new subway line across town, but at this point it is conceived mainly as a connector to the main airport. The South African rail system — like America’s — is completely inadequate, and the mandatory motoring program so deeply ingrained — and associated with the extremes of security and fortification — that no workable consensus for getting beyond the current situation can be formed. Otherwise, the government was getting ready to host the World Cup of Soccer this summer and was preoccupied with directing its planning resources to that.
      The casual visitor can see a pretty clear gradient of social and economic hierarchy in the two parallel worlds of white and black South Africa. There is a cohort of educated urban blacks now established in business and the bureaucracy that obviously stand above those working in service jobs and those who are essentially bumpkins coming in from the countryside or the "bush" or from the failing nations to the north. Like any upper crust, the educated blacks in good jobs seal themselves off from the lower ranks — though politically, there is a pretense to identify with them. This black upper crust has only been in charge of things for a decade and a half. Obviously they have not yet been able to address problems like public transit yet, but it was unclear to me whether all the other categories of things there, from electric power to health services, were being managed capably.
     There are as many political factions among the black majority as there might be in any sizable nation. Friction between them sometimes leads to violence. Corruption is not on the level of the infamous "kleptocracies" straddling the equator, but it is far from unknown. Right now, the nation awaits a national election coming up in April and the near-certainty that Jacob Zuma will be elected the new president. His ascent is widely dreaded by the white minority, who broadly regard him as a thug.
     This white minority appears to carry on with the "normal" tasks of daily life not unlike what you would see in Europe and North America. But close to the surface you detect a resigned fatalism. Their old center has not held and things for them could fall apart at any time. The evacuations of whites that occurred with the shift to black-majority government in the 1990s have tailed down. I’m not even sure how conscious the whites are of their own base-line nervousness, though the multi-layered apparatus of security, with all the locks, gates, and video cameras speaks for itself.
     The combination of the fortification mentality with compulsory motoring has left Johannesburg with a conspicuous scarcity of shared civic space. It’s hard to beat the USA for this, but South Africa has managed to. The architects and developers who designed the Melrose Arch project tried to supply something that was otherwise non-existent in the country and they did a very good job. All the classes of the various races were present there — whites, blacks, and Asians — sitting in the outdoor cafes, often at mixed tables, while the virtually all-black service class puttered and watched in the background. The nicely-scaled main square felt like the only tranquil, open, safe public gathering place in the entire metroplex. The health club down the street where I dropped in three times in a week reflected the mix of races, too, as did the offices and business establishments.

     Melrose Arch was a brave experiment. Its development coincided time-wise with the more-or-less peaceful revolution out of minority rule starting in the 1990s. There have been some copycat wannabe spin-offs of it in other parts of the city, but nothing nearly as successful either as an economic venture or a civic amenity.

 

     On the whole, you got the feeling that all the multicolored upper crusts of South Africa were largely tuned-out to some larger forces gathering to shake up their world — in particular the energy crisis that has moved off center-stage temporarily while banks and national economies flounder everywhere. The energy crisis will return. South Africa has coal and nuclear power, but not enough generating capacity to stay very far ahead of an ongoing shortage of electric power. They have a pretty robust coal-to-liquids program for helping to fuel all the cars — but they also import a lot of regular oil and are at the mercy of oil states elsewhere in Africa who resent them. The white majority seems to ignore the fact that their future hangs by the rather flimsy threads that hold together the combined motoring-and-security systems that protect them. The story there is hardly over.

 

     On the way out, I had one of those experiences that bizarrely defines a place. I checked into the business-class lounge at the airport only to find that no toilet was available there. They just didn’t have any. I was sent outside down the concourse to find one. "It’s Africa," the old expression goes.

 

———————-

-

zoom

 

Paris, France

Where the Bailout Money is Really Going

By Bill Bonner

 

Pity the rich. Pity the CEOs. Pity the capitalists.

 

Poor Warren. He’s down to his last $25 billion. And Bill Gates can barely hold his head up; his pile has shrunk to barely $18 billion.

 

And do a Google search of "AIG outrage" and you will get 621,000 hits.

 

Alas, being rich isn’t as easy or as much fun as it used to be.

The rally paused yesterday. The Dow lost 7 points.

It could be over. More likely, it will run for a few months. Gradually, people will come to think that this is the real thing. They’ll begin to imagine that it is 2003 all over again. Of course, it’s not…this market has nothing in common with the Great Rebound of 2003-2007. (More below…)

 

Oil traded at $47 yesterday; it is slipping toward the $50 level. And the dollar is slipping around too – it is losing ground against the euro, now trading at $1.29/$. But it is mostly steady against gold, which seems to like the $900-$950 range…for now. We have a feeling it’s going to go much, much higher before all this is over.

See here.

AIG is today’s main story.

Everyone is appalled, outraged…or apoplectic about it. First, we under-reported the amount in bonuses paid out. The real amount is $450 million, says the

Wall Street Journal

…and one member of Congress charges that many bonuses were disguised as other things…and that the real total is more like $1 billion.

 

The average lumpenvoter has no idea how bailouts work. He was willing to believe that giving Wall Street hundreds of billions in taxpayer money would somehow make his house go up in price, but now that he sees how it really operates, he is ticked off about it. He may not understand macroeconomics, but he knows chicanery when he sees it.

 

Under pressure,

AIG revealed what it did with the bailout money.

It came as no shock to us to discover Goldman Sachs at the top of the list of recipients. Goldman’s main man was in the room with the feds – the only representative of Wall Street – when the decision was made to rescue AIG. What’s more, the feds’ main man at the time – Hank Paulson – also used to be the top honcho at Goldman. So the fix was in. The government gave money to AIG and AIG gave it to a long list of speculators – including Goldman.

 

This seems perfectly natural to us. If we’d been in on the fix we would have steered some of the loot our way. But the politicians are feigning shock and horror. Senator Grassley even said AIG management should "resign or commit suicide." He later calmed down and said he didn’t mean it.

 

But we would have simply edited his remarks, giving the schmucks at AIG a last chance to exit with honor: "Resign AND commit suicide, in that order."

 

Barney Frank added that "maybe it’s time to fire some people." Why not? The feds own 80% of the insurance giant now. Go ahead; fire all the people you want. That’s about the only pleasure a real capitalist has left to him. Reach out…and fire someone today!

 

Elsewhere in the news, the economy continues to deteriorate. Industrial production fell 1.4% in February. And credit card defaults are at a 20- year high.

 

Misters Smoot and Hawley seem to still be on the federal payroll. The news this morning is that they began a trade war with Mexico and the Mexicans have already retaliated. That’s all we know about it…

 

But back to the tribulations of the rich…

 

First, Mr. Market is downsizing fortunes – fast.

In the last 12 months, the average rich person has probably lost half his wealth.

Not only did he own millions worth of stocks and real estate…he was also among the privileged few to get into good deals on derivatives, SIVs, hedge funds and private equity. Many of those complicated and conflicted assets have been wiped out completely. Or, maybe he was unlucky enough to count Bernie Madoff as a friend.

 

Second, what Mr. Market doesn’t take, Mr. Politician is looking at. All over the world, plans are afoot to increase his taxes…and close down his tax havens. President Obama has already revealed his plans to soak the rich. Every other group will come out even…or better…from Obama’s tax proposals. But the rich are going to be saturated…marinated…soaked to the bone.

 

And third, the poor rich guy has become a pariah. He doesn’t get invited to charity events anymore – or even to join the guys after work for a beer. Europeans have always distrusted rich people. But in America, a rich man used to be respected – just because he was rich. People asked his opinion on politics…on fashion…on art. He was presumed to be an authority on all things and was generally treated with respect…even deference.

 

But now rich are seen as chumps, losers, incompetents and malefactors. Even Americans look at rich people and think they must be either stupid or corrupt.

 

"Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oubli , parce qu’ il a t proprement fait." said Balzac. Which has been paraphrased to

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."

Of course, he was referring to France, where it is has probably always been true. Money is dirty in France. But in America, money was supposed to be clean…innocent…honest and forthright. The richest man in town always sat in the front pew in church and stood for election to local office.

 

But come the depression and even the rich suffer. And unlike the starving urchins, unlucky widows and innocent orphans, no one cries a tear for the rich. Here at

The Daily Reckoning

we always take the side of the underdog…and always support the lost cause. So when we think of the rich…those darling people with their Italian suits…German cars…and Swiss bank accounts…our cheek gets a little moist. For we – and we alone – still admire and respect the rich. Of course, the rich are human beings too – just like the rest of us. And yes, dear reader…we still despise them as much as anyone else. When it comes to intelligence or moral rectitude, they are probably no better than the lower classes, though probably no worse. But we still admire and respect their money. Their money is no better either – but they have more of it.

 

zoom