That argument most often given in support of these privatisation efforts is cost-reduction: stating that costs will be lowered by forcing private corporations to compete with government in areas like prisons and education and forcing them to find more cost-effective or innovative means of managing responsibilities .

But, do we really want to strive for cost-reduction independent of the quality we are given? Are we willing to sacrifice transparency in areas as important as law and education, just so that we can save a few cents?

Luckily, the dilemma is actually simpler than my questions, and industry pundits, would lead you to believe. Often, privatisation does not reduce costs, nor does it create more efficiency within the system. We need merely to look at costs since 2000, as the Justice Policy’s “Gaming the System” report writes:

“Since  2000, private prisons have increased their share of the ‘market’ substantially: the number of people held in private federal facilities increased approximately 120 percent, while the number held in private state facilities increased approximately 33 percent. During this same period, the total number of people in prison increased less than 16 percent. Meanwhile, spending on corrections has increased 72 percent since 1997, to $74 billion in 2007.”

The first and largest private prison company in the US (Corrections Corporation of America) was founded in 1983 when the total US prison population was around 400,000 and the US population approximately (according to the US Census) 240,000,000 people (so 0.17% of the population).

Contrast these numbers with data from June 2009 when the US prison population was around 1,620,000 people compared with approximately 305,000,000 US citizens: 0.53% of the population. This means that the relative number of incarcerated Americans has more than tripled since the birth of private prisons.

Some sources dispute the official statistics I just cited, for instance the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London, and say that the current rate is actually 0.75%. This represents a 441% increase since 1983.  For comparison: Germany’s rate is about 0.08% and England’s 0.15%.

In terms of absolute numbers the US prison population increased 722% between 1970 and 2009.  It has increased 405% between 1983 and 2009. The prison industrial complex is just exacerbating the police state/mass incarceration problem by adding a financial incentive for depriving Americans of their freedom. It also provides a financial incentive to not rehabilitate prisoners.

The most glaring question is: why do governments keep granting control of things that effect us all (like law, rehabilitation, education, or our water, to mention only a few) to those who are sworn to serve the profit-margin?

The answer is saddeningly simple: because their increased profits allow them to lobby and finance politicians to help them increase their profits. This includes keeping relatively mundane things (like marijuana) illegal and pushing for harsher sentencing.

As most of us know, their profits are also not just taken from the pocket of the state, but are also inflated by prison labor, which they use to produce merchandise to be sold for pennies on the dollar. Not to mention often cutting costs in regard to quality (more inmates per cell, lower quality food, lower quality personnel/guards) to increase profits.

Things like the criminal justice system, or public schools, or the fire department, exist as mechanisms of cultural stability. They have a greater impact on how children in our society develop and how they see the world because these institutions can be used and accessed regardless of class or location.

Whether we agree these institutions should be decentralized, centralized, dynamically or government run, it doesn’t change the fact that the importance of their roles makes it imperative that they be transparent. But, the problem with competitive markets is that they demand the ability to get an advantage over competitors: keeping secrets.

Is it really smart to mix our necessities with competition, where the cheapest instead of the best product often dominates, and products are designed to break in order to force new purchases and increase profits (planned obsolescence)?

Until now this discussion has remained in the realm of social institutions. But, what about undeveloped land and resources (nature): mountains, streams, forests, even the water we drink? Should or can these be privately owned? In almost all nations they are or are being privatized. Since these are things which effect not only all of us, but future generations and other organisms, it seems adviseable to not be so quick to sell them off for short term profit.

What that means is a form of public ownership of non-developed land. When I write public ownership here I do not mean for it to be under the control of a bureaucrat, but instead subject to the informed choices of the people living there who will personally have to deal with the consequences of the choices.

If people never see the consequences of their decisions then they are far less responsible in making them. This is why putting private enterprise (often run by a board of directors who answer to stock holders), instead of people and communities, in control of vital social organs is dangerous.

The goal of a profit oriented institution is not to do the job as effectively as possible or to be creative or innovative in developing new techniques. But instead their job has been to cater to and help form the current political paradigm to ensure funding, while also cutting corners to ensure profits.

And they continue to cut corners because there is no transparency, and the politicians and officials they supported have no interest in investigating them. It is a self-reinforcing cycle powered by self-interest.

Are we really going to let this continue?

posted by Michael Thomas

Sources:

1. http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/gaming_the_system.pdf

2. http://bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2200

Offerman grew up on a farm in rural Illinois, where he learned a love of tools and craftsmanship that he’s developed throughout his life. As a struggling young actor in Chicago’s influential storefront theater scene, he built sets and props for local productions as a way to get a foot in the door, and also to supplement his meager income. Years later, after moving to Southern California to pursue film and television roles, he opened Offerman Woodshop, his own craft studio in Los Angeles.

And if all else fails, he can always fall back on showbiz, since his culturally iconic portrayal of America’s favorite meat-eating, gun-toting, property-rights-defending Parks Department employee has lately made Offerman a hot property in Hollywood. Along with his real-life wife (and Ron Swanson ex-wife), Megan Mullally, he appears in Somebody Up There Likes Me, an offbeat new indie comedy from Bob Byington, the writer and director of RSO and Harmony and Me. Offerman will also be featured (along with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis) in We’re the Millers, a comedy about an elaborate plot to smuggle a thousand pounds of pot across the Mexican border.

Given these high-profile appearances and his well-known love of bacon, we decided to tempt the man behind the mustache with a plate full of Maple Bacon Ganja Chocolate Chip Cookies, specially made in his honor by the author of our very own Official HIGH TIMES Cannabis Cookbook. Sitting down to sample one between photos, Offerman appeared to take great delight in fielding our questions.

Could you start by telling me a little more about the coffin-shaped stash box and Gandalf pipe you’ve brought?

First of all, this Maple Bacon Ganja Chocolate Chip Cookie is goddamn delicious. Was that the question? Because that’s my answer …

Okay, the coffin-shaped stash box is adorned with the visage of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, the High Epopt of the Church of the SubGenius—a faux religion based out of Dallas that’s been around since 1979. It’s really funny: Bob Dobbs preaches “Get slack and smoke frop,” which is weed. They just promote a weird, tea-head lifestyle. My friends and I were very into this church in college and theater school.

Years later, when I was making a coffee table for one of those friends and his wife, I knew that this particular friend was going to need some place to stash his weed. And since he loves all things macabre, I made a coffin-shaped box that fits neatly into a secret compartment underneath the table.

As for the pipe, if you enjoy smoking and you’re a fan of the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien, I think it’s only natural that you dream of making such a pipe. But first you must learn how to drill a hole through a thin, curved tube, which is very difficult. So when I finally discerned how I could achieve such a thing, I immediately did so.

Have you ever used marijuana while acting?

I tried it once when I first started smoking pot back in college. I thought: “Marijuana is amazing! The world is so beautiful—it’s going to be so cool when I get really high and then perform in this production of Man of La Mancha.” So I did it. And, you know, one of the things new initiates often say when they first smoke pot is, “I feel like everybody’s looking at me.”

Well, when you’re standing on a stage and people have paid money—they are indeed looking at you. It was quite unnerving. I got especially freaked out because I had a scene where Sancho Panza hit me upside the head with his guitar, and normally I would do this half back-handspring thing and make it look like I landed on my face. Now, I’m not sure exactly what I did on this particular occasion, but I jumped up and spun and flipped and managed to land squarely on my temple—in fact, I busted my head open. And I actually had three small roles in the play, so for the rest of the show, all three characters had a streak of blood running down their cheek. And that was the last time I tried smoking weed before going onstage.

Is marijuana ever a part of your creative process if you’re not performing?

When I use weed creatively, I’m much better at drawing or making something or playing music. But what I do for a living is mostly performing as an actor or writing, and for those things I need to have my faculties sharp. So I’d say that, indirectly, it’s very helpful. The doors that I open when I’m using marijuana profoundly affect the body of knowledge I have to draw from when I play characters or write about life situations.

Aside from Maple Bacon Ganja Chocolate Chip Cookies, do you have a favorite edible?

Well, I have to say that the heyday, the salad days, of my pot career was in my twenties and early thirties, and I wasn’t around a crowd that knew how to do much more than make brownies … but we definitely visited Xanadu once or twice under the influence of those brownies.

By and large, though, most of my marijuana career has involved joints and pipes and bongs. When I started out in my theater company, one of the guys had an eight-foot bong. And there was a rather Olympian competition that we would engage in trying to clear it: You had to stand on a coffee table and get somebody else to light it for you. Only at a young age—maybe 23 or 24—could a few of us actually clear an eight-foot rip. And then you would fall on the floor and smile for 11 hours.

How were you feeling on election night when Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana?

Fantastic. Civilization is very funny, I think: We started out as animals, and over time we’ve developed to a point where, slowly but surely, we’re trying to make everything cool for everybody. We just 15 minutes ago, relatively speaking, announced that it’s okay for black people to be treated the same as white people. We just came up with that. Of course, some of us are progressing faster than others. When it comes to marijuana, I think it’s ridiculous to live in a country that espouses freedom, liberty and equality, yet won’t follow through on a philosophy that says: “If it’s not hurting anybody or their property, you can do any goddamn thing you want.”

Do you have a favorite stoner comedy?

The Big Lebowski is just about my favorite movie—to me, it takes the stoner comedy to a more profound level. I find it just as funny completely straight.

What person, living or dead, would you most like to smoke herb with?

Oh, gosh … Thomas Jefferson comes to mind. I like a lot of his agrarian ideas, and I think it’s unfortunate that our nation has veered away from his suggestions. I’d love to take a walk on his back 40 and hear what he had to say over a nice bowl of hemp.

Do you have a favorite marijuana strain … something worthy of sharing with one of the Founding Fathers?

I’ve sampled a lot of amazing varieties, but I usually get told the name of it just before we smoke—and then by the time we’re done, it’s all I can do to remember the name of the guy who loaded the bowl, never mind the weed. So, basically, if we’re both here—wherever that is—whatever you’ve got is going to be just great with me.

Your co-star on Parks and Recreation, Amy Poehler, once performed at the HIGH TIMES Cannabis Cup, an event dedicated to naming the best weed in the world …

Yes, she speaks very highly of that experience.

Ever been to Amsterdam?

Just once. Or maybe twice [laughs] … they tell me I had a very good time. It was such a beautiful city, so picturesque on its own. But then you have a taste of some fine hash, and the canals grow even more gorgeous.

What’s the connection between marijuana and facial hair?

That’s an interesting question—one I have not considered before now. I certainly vastly prefer smoking a bowl with a beard to doing so while clean-shaven. I don’t know what it is on an elemental level, but a beard in general evokes hedonism. It’s a more lush personal grooming style. It’s more comfortable and cozy; it’s less sharp and angular and businesslike. For lack of a better phrase, I feel like a beard is more Hobbit-like, even though Hobbits themselves are clean-shaven. There’s something indulgent about a big, bushy beard that goes hand in hand with smoking long- bottom leaf out of your pipe.

Do you miss what you called the “dirt weed” that you enjoyed back in college, or are you into the more pristine modern buds here in Southern California?

Yes and yes [laughs]. I guess I didn’t know any better when I started smoking in the late ’80s. And anyway, it couldn’t have been that bad, because we got incredibly high.

My friend Joe, who got me started, did such a beautiful job—because, as we all know, it can take a while when you’re turning someone on for the first time for them to feel it. He sat me down with this pipe of his and said, “You’re going to cough, but you have to take these huge hits, and it’s going to take like four or five bowls.” He made me keep smoking until there was no question as to its efficacy. So yes, I’m fairly nostalgic for the stuff we used to get back then. I’m guessing it came from Mexico. I was once offered the chance to make a run down to Mexico to pick some up, but I declined.

Meanwhile, I’ve been astonished over the course of my 20-something years of pot smoking by the degree of improvement in the quality. And now, of course, I reside in a state where they’ve been perfecting their cultivation techniques for decades. When I first came to California in my twenties and ran into people who grew their own weed, I just didn’t know what to think. I felt like I had stepped through the looking glass. I thought: “This is just like that shit I read about in HIGH TIMES!”

Were you a regular reader?

The only periodical I’ve managed to stick with throughout my life is Fine Woodworking. That’s my jam, as they say. But my tribe back in college, we subscribed to HIGH TIMES, Fangoria and a handful of other fun, weirdo magazines. Each person would subscribe to one, and then we would share them all. And I can remember that we used to freak out at the centerfolds of unbelievable buds. And then it just blew my mind to move out to California and discover that it was all real! We always thought that it must have been the HIGH TIMES art department making them look so sticky and purple.

Also, more seriously, I grew up in a very conservative small town, and the fact that there could actually be a magazine like that was unfathomable to me.

Now that you’re going to be featured in HIGH TIMES, is there anything you’d like to say to those guys you used to share a subscription with?

This is a fucking honor. I’ve done magazine interviews before, but this is the first time I’ve frantically emailed 12 of my friends and said, “I’ve finally made it!” So yeah, I’d love to send a shout-out to my original early tribe, who took me under their resin-stained wings and taught me how to smoke out of an apple: Joey Java, Ragsdale, Pee-Pee, Hortatsos, Tatro, Prescher, Flanigan, Falcon-Smoker, Goliath and all the rest … Many of us went on to become Chicago’s Defiant Theatre and tickle dozens of people with our high-energy japers and ribaldry. I can honestly say that landing in HIGH TIMES was beyond our wildest dreams, so I think I can consider this the peak.

Thanks, pot!

Source.

Whenever he can, President Obama likes to poke fun at anyone who suggests that he’s a closet socialist because that’s what socialists do – they ridicule anyone who tries to “out” them. And yet, every policy he pursues takes a page right out of the socialist/Marxist playbook, and one of them is to ensure that the government controls all forms of education.

Right now, of course, there are thousands of private schools and institutions of higher learning in the U.S., so the government doesn’t control all education, per se. But left-wing career education bureaucrats in government, along with compliant socialists in the teachers unions, do indeed control the vast majority of primary public school education, and it is here where the Obama regime is consolidating its control through a Department of Education program known as Common Core State Standards .

‘Inappropriate overreach’

From the Common Core website:

The standards clearly communicate what is expected of students at each grade level. This will allow our teachers to be better equipped to know exactly what they need to help students learn and establish individualized benchmarks for them. The Common Core State Standards focus on core conceptual understandings and procedures starting in the early grades…

Essentially, what Common Core consists of is a standardized block of instruction on all the major subjects – Math, English and Language Arts – per standards that government bureaucrats devised. Initially, 45 states and the District of Columbia signed on, but as more states found out the curriculum is decidedly slanted to a particular point of view (socialism), a number of states are now working on legislation to bail out. And they are designed to allow controlling statists to get their claws into your kids as early on in their academic careers as possible.

New legislation introduced by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, would prohibit federal funds from being used to finance Common Core implementation around the country. He has also introduced criticized the CCSS, calling them an “inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children.”

He’s far from being alone in rejecting the CCSS. According to an assessment of the core by the Washington Policy Center, scores of education experts have also rejected them, saying one of the biggest problems with the program is that it will stifle classroom innovation, which comes primarily from individual states.

“Local control of public school curriculum and instruction has historically driven innovation and reform in education. A one-size-fits-all, centrally controlled curriculum for every K-12 subject threatens to close the door on educational innovation, freezing in place an unacceptable status quo and hindering efforts to develop academically rigorous curricula, assessments, and standards that meet the challenges that lie ahead,” says an assessment of CCSS by the center.

In addition to rejection of the standards by federal lawmakers, many states are considering or have introduced measures to repeal the standards.

SB403, introduced by Alabama state Sen. Scott Beason, “would prohibit the State Board of Education from adopting and the Department of Education from implementing the Common Core State Standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative,” says a summary. “The bill would also prohibit the State Board of Education, the Department of Education, and other state bodies from compiling or sharing data about students or teachers, except under limited circumstances.”

No state development or involvement

In Indiana, HB1427 states, “The state board may not continue to implement as standards for the state or direct the department to implement any common core standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative…The legislative council shall establish a legislative study committee to study issues relating to common core standards.”

Similar legislation has been introduced in Missouri as well.

The Obama Administration is claiming the standards were developed by the states but, according to Diane Ravitch, a former assistant U.S. secretary of education who was appointed to office by both Clinton and George H.W. Bush, that’s a bogus claim.

The standards “were developed by an organization called Achieve and the National Governors Association, both of which were generously funded by the Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states,” she writes in the Washington Post.

Author:  J. D. Heyes

Sources:

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://republicanstates.wordpress.com/tag/common-core/

http://people.howstuffworks.com/communism1.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpolicy.org

Trella Laughlin is an exception. For almost 20 years, Laughlin traveled the globe from Bosnia to Nicaragua and elsewhere, video-documenting human injustice for the the Foundation for a Compassionate Society and chronicling the efforts of men and women to right those wrongs.

For the past five years, Laughlin has spent hundreds of hours both here at home in Eureka Springsand in Austin, Tex., archiving and digitalizing the vast collection of videotapes of her shows held at the Austin History Center.

Revolution!

Laughlin was in El Salvador during the uprising of the Farabundo Mart’ National Liberation Front. The FMLN is a political party in El Salvador, formerly a revolutionary guerrilla organization that organized to overthrow the U.S.-backed military dictator who ruled the country. The FMLN is one of the two major political parties of the country.

“I interviewed women commandantes in the FMLN and taught them how to use video equipment to record their own grass-roots efforts and struggles toward liberation,” Laughlin said.

“I saw a mother who had walked hundreds of miles, with her baby in her arms, to participate. What hardships people go through to have dignity in their lives.”

Origins

Trella Laughlin was born in Mississippi and grew up in her grandmother’s boardinghouse in Jackson.

Laughlin said, “My first job was as a dental assistant in elementary school. Then I made donuts at Baylor, ran a bar, worked for a San Francisco newspaper, sold food freezer plans, worked in a sawmill, picked small green ‘tommy toes’ for anArkansas pickle factory, took the census in the Boston Mountains, taught college English and journalism, taught high school special education classes, worked in Head Start and cleaned the New Orleans Hotel for Barbara Scott.”

After graduate school at the University of Texas, Laughlin taught English literature for the University of Maryland through a program that offered classes abroad to U.S. military forces.

Laughlin described the enlisted military she worked with as “just ordinary folks trying to get a skill, a job, sent overseas by rich, old white men.”

But she said the officers were “elitist, racist, and mostly drunk.”

Travels and Agent Orange

Later, Laughlin played in an all-women’s country western band in Austin, then moved to the South Fork of the Little Red River in central Arkansas “to live in an Army mess tent without electricity or vehicle, trying to live simply with nature.”

This experiment ended when Laughlin and others were sprayed out of the valley by 2,4,5-T, a component of Agent Orange which Laughlin describes as “pushed on Arkansas farmers as a good way to clear hardwood forests for cattle pasture.”

Laughlin described the herbicide as highly toxic and added many of her friends who were exposed to it have since died from cancer.

“I had ovarian cancer myself,” she added.

Eventually, Laughlin settled back in Austin, teaching at Austin Community College.

Enter the KKK

“I taught Journalism, questioning, and ‘taking it to the streets,’” Laughlin said with a laugh. “I also joined an anti-racist group of white people who confronted the Ku Klux Klan. I got threatened, spit on, beat up, brakelines cut, my friends harassed by the FBI, phone tapped, mail opened, and house broken into.”

She said these experiences either help radicalize a person or frighten them away, and, in her case, it radicalized her.

Laughlin’s M.A. from Stanford University was in Communications and Journalism, but her training in video work came from classes she took at Austin Community Television in camera work, editing, special effects, lighting, audio and multi-cam production.

“I had many talented friends in public access TV who shared their skills with me,” she said.

The Show

“Let the People Speak” was the name of Laughlin’s weekly show, produced in Austin and shown there as well as in San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.

The show began in 1980, when Laughlin and other protesters, countering the Klan’s efforts to recruit across Texas, demonstrated at every Klan appearance.

Laughlin video-recorded and broadcast the results. “I saw my show as a way to give white people a chance to speak out against racism,” she said.

“At one event I accidentally got onto the wrong bus,” Laughlin said. “It was the Klan bus. They knew who I was, too. I felt like I was surrounded by mountain rattlers. There’s a certain risk that goes with being a ‘left’ journalist.”

Fifty years of tyranny

Laughlin was in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, the night before the Sandanista revolution.

The Sandanistas were a revolutionary group which overthrew the rule of the dictatorial Somoza regime, which had held power for 50 years, then went on to engage in a long struggle against the U.S.-backed Contras.

“The Somozas, backed by the U.S., had ruled the country for half a century,” Laughlin said. “When they were losing to the Sandanistas, the CIA sent a plane. Somoza had stolen millions from the World Health Organization and fled to Miami.

“He had actually pocketed money for medicine, for polio vaccines, and substituted red dye in the sugar cubes in place of the vaccine. There is a whole generation of people there of a certain age who suffer from having had polio as a result of that red dye.”

Laughlin also spent time filming in the Middle East.

“I saw Israeli settlements that had taken over the Palestinian land,” she said. “They looked like suburbs. they took all the water to water their golf courses and their yards, so it’s really hard to understand the Israeli side of things. I hate the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, but I do not understand why some of the same methods are being used against the Palestinians. I shot a lot of footage at that time, and I was afraid I couldn’t get it out, so I mailed the tapes to someone back in the U.S. as I traveled.”

The Foundation for a

Compassionate Society

In the mid-1980s, Laughlin met Genevieve Vaughan, a native Texan heiress who donated her millions for social change.

“She is an extraordinarily brilliant woman who puts her money where her mouth is,” Laughlin said.

Vaughan started the Foundation for a Compassionate Society, an assortment of women from all backgrounds and cultures whose mission was to carry out programs for social change in the U.S. and abroad, working with other people in progressive organizations.

Geneveive gave me a computer system whereby I can take the tapes and convert them digitally,” she said. “These broadcast tape are ¾”, an antiquated format. It’s all heavy as hell.”

Laughlin has been working the past half decade creating a website for “Let the People Speak,” so all her programs will be available online.

At home in the Ozarks, Laughlin ponders her future and says, “I need to raise money to finish digitizing all my tapes. Libraries don’t have any money for this. We have to spend billions on war, you know.”

While her vision is fixed on completing her life’s work which led her around the world as a documentarian, Laughlin still remains focused on the world around her.

“I am not fond of homophobia, or any kind of hatred. I keep an eye out for gay and lesbian rights in Eureka Springs and Arkansas. We have to struggle for justice every day.”

posted by Aaron Jackson

Source

Before MKL launched the civil rights movement, America was,de facto, an Apartheid society, divided at its core. America was equal only officially, but in reality it was a  divided and unequal social system where African-Americans were, at large, second class citizens. The message of Martin Luther King and his leadership within the Civil Rights movement were, in essence, revolutionary. But MLK wanted this deep, and much needed, transformation of  the United States social structure to be strictly non-violent. MLK’s peaceful revolution of the 1960s changed America forever, allowing for example the election of a black President in 2008, but in many ways the achievements and gains which were made by the civil rights movement have been reversed. At large, African-Americans and Latinos are still getting the crumbs from the table. Even if it is more settled than before the time of MLK, American cities are still segregated by racial and socio-economic divides. If you are an  African-American man in America between the age of 18 to 30, the chance that you will or have been through the US penal system is, today, more than 30 percent. More than 62 percent of America’s juggernaut prison system’s population is either African-American or Latino.

In many ways, it seems that half a century later, the victories of MLK and the civil rights movement were short lived. With a public education system in shamble, the opportunities  for the poor and minorities to advance and better their lives are melting away like snow under a bright sun. In term of wealth and income inequality, the gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent has increased many folds since the late 1960s, not decreased. MLK tried to give a voice to the oppressed, the people who were forgotten by the so called American dream. But today, the voiceless are still not heard and they are certainly not invited to have a seat at the same table than the powerful. Even so, the racial divide is more defuse, the class one is more extreme.

However, since the last few months of 2011, this sad state of affairs has taken a turn in the form of the birth of the US Occupy movement. Occupy draws a lot of its thematic and inspirations from the teaching of Dr. King. From the accent on non-violent protest, its oppositions to war and American imperialism, and especially its goal to redefine a society based on the principles of equality, fairness, sustainability and social justice. Martin Luther King knew all along that he had a target on his back, but the advantage of Occupy, in comparison with the civil rights movement, is that it is a horizontal movement with no clear define leadership. If MLK became a clear and easy mark  for the one opposed to social changes in 1968, a leaderless movement like Occupy is, on the other hand, impossible to kill. If a man can be killed, principles or ideas cannot.

Author: Gilbert Mercier

Source: newsjunkiepost.com

In a brief filed with the Court, the fifty doctors and two non-profit groups – Single Payer Action and It’s Our Economy – said that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate is unconstitutional.

The individual mandate is the provision of the ACA that requires Americans to purchase health insurance from private insurance companies if they do not otherwise have coverage.

The doctors are challenging the government’s claim that the individual mandate is necessary to reach Congress’ goal of universal coverage.

“The court should decide the constitutionality of the individual mandate based on the best available evidence,” said attorney Oliver Hall. “That’s why it is so important that these medical doctors provide the court with the information in their brief, which demonstrates that Congress can address the United States’ healthcare crisis by adopting a single payer system.”

“It is not necessary to force Americans to buy private health insurance to achieve universal coverage,” said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action. “There is a proven alternative that Congress didn’t seriously consider, and that alternative is a single payer national health insurance system.”

“Congress could have taken seriously evidence presented by these single payer medical doctors that a single payer system is the only way to both control costs and cover everyone,” Mokhiber said. “Instead, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), chair of the Senate Finance Committee which drafted the law that became the ACA, had two of those doctors – Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris – arrested and thrown in jail. Those doctors are now two of the 50 who have signed onto this brief challenging the Constitutionality of the ACA.”

“If the US Congress had considered an evidence-based approach to health reform instead of writing a bill that funnels more wealth to insurance companies that deny and restrict care, it would have been a no brainer to adopt a single payer health system much like our own Medicare,” said Dr. Margaret Flowers. “We are already spending enough on health care in this country to provide high quality universal comprehensive lifelong health care. All the data point to a single payer system as the only way to accomplish this and control health care costs.”

“People will have the greatest control of their own healthcare if the insurance industry is removed from between doctors and patients,” said Kevin Zeese of It’s Our Economy. “And, people will no longer be threatened with increased premiums, decreased coverage and financial ruin caused by a health crisis.”

Both Kevin Zeese and Dr. Margaret Flowers are organizers with the National Occupation of Washington, D.C. (nowdc.org).

Article Written by: Russell  Mokhiber

Source: News Junkie Post

If you know anything about the american farming system you will understand this video, if you understand anything about the american people, you will understand this video. If you live in america and feel that it is time to break free from whatever you think is holding you back… You will understand this video…

While this video might seem long at first glance, I highly recommend that you sit through it and learn something that will quite possibly open up a whole new life for you.

To your ultimate freedom!

Click here to view the embedded video.

We get something called linguistic alchemy, which DreamingBear does with an air of magic in this video clip.

He reminds us that our sole purpose here on this planet is to embody the fullest expression of ourselves, raw, real, magnificent. He shows that enlightenment is right here in this very moment as you and I breathe. That all is well, and that in the union of Love and Consciousness, we are One with the Universe. We are home, at last.

Source: Linguistic Alchemy

Artist: DreamingBear Baraka Kanaan

It will be one of the most delicious 8 minutes of your time. If your heart sings to this, check out his website for the wonders that this Nature’s Poet Laureat has created.

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If you enjoy this article please be sure to visit her personal blog as soon as you get a chance!

What is going to happen in 2012?

Have you found yourself or those around you asking this question lately? It seems harmless enough, but what if I told you that such a question is a massive mistake? And perhaps even dangerous?

Don’t get me wrong – I caught myself asking this after Obama signed off on the NDAA and basically nixed all our personal rights. However I find that as I begin to stumble down the rabbit hole of fear… around our economy and a failing US dollar… around a possible police state… around all the natural disasters that have become commonplace… I (and all of us) must remember one vital thing:

This year is marked with intense transition energy.

And energy is not good or bad. It simply is. What is done with it, where it’s directed and what it does, is up to us.

Transitioning also means that what came before must end, and what is coming must be created and built. Transitions always require destruction. They also require creation. And both require action if we want such destruction to serve us and such creation to reflect what we want.

So this is NOT a year where we can idly ask “What will happen?”

Because now more than ever, what will happen depends precisely on what we do, individually and collectively, right now. Transition energy means massive change, momentum and movement. Things will inevitably change this year, and change fast. How they change and to what end – isn’t a question, it’s a directive. Simply: It’s up to us.

I know a lot of people believe a lot of different things about what 2012 will bring. I have my own beliefs about it too. But in the end, whatever we hope or fear WILL NOT happen in a vacuum. It will be the result of our actions in the past, and especially the actions we take moving forward.

What is happening right now requires our participation.

This means that you are called to massive action this year. I am called to massive action this year. We, as a global tribe, must step forward with intention, direction and purpose, toward the kind of world that we want, and that we must choose.

I think the only way we can lose is to not do anything at all.

So please don’t make the mistake of believing that something has been written into the stars about this year, or that you are powerless.

The only thing I believe has been written into the stars is the marked energy of this time – and that energy directly empowers YOU.

In my opinion, the future is not fixed. The ENERGY of a time is what we can count on, and in the powerful transition energies of 2012, the worst thing we can do is passively watch what comes to pass. Because this is a year for action. This is a year for intention and choice and for stepping up for what we want and what we believe in.

This is a year for each of us individually and collectively to take responsibility for where we are as a culture, a planet and a people up until this point. Because more than ever before, we are in a time of enormous potential and definite change. But the direction of that change is up to us.

If We’re Willing to Step Up and Fight… What Will We Fight For?

This question is a potentially frightening one too. Because the energy of this year also includes the energy of “Us vs. Them.” My friend and colleague Michael Drew refers to it as The Pendulum. After researching the past several thousand years (which will be compellingly revealed in his upcoming book), he noticed that every 40 years, we swing from a “Me” culture to a “We” culture.

We swing from individualism, the worship of the guru, celebration of all that makes each of us unique… to a consciousness of the collective, a desire to stand together for something – and, unfortunately – against something.

At the height of the “We” upswing each 80 years, society begins claiming, “I’m okay… and you’re NOT okay.” There is a collective us, and also a them. These extreme upswings give us the Holocaust, the Witch Trials, the Inquisition… all of it. And we’re heading into another extreme upswing now.

I say all this to say that, yes, I want you to stand up and fight for what you believe in – for a better world, for what you desire and your right to live as you choose.

But that should not turn into “I know how to live… and you don’t. I’m right, you’re wrong. I must destroy you.” Because in the past, what began as a collective movement during times such as these – would always turn into some kind of war or massacre.

So how do we create change, for the better, in a year marked by massive transition and also extremely dangerous us vs. themenergy?

2012 Is About YOU. And It’s About LOVE.

I say we do it by rooting our energy and our action within our hearts. This means that what we do and how we participate is about serving the greater good through our own joy, happiness and passion. I’m not talking about collecting nice things – I’m talking about discovering what makes your soul sing and dance and do cartwheels. I’m saying that whenever you face a choice, realize that it will always boil down to the same choice: Will you move toward or because of love or toward/because of fear?

With every choice this year, choose to move toward love.

Because when you’re happy and when you come from a place of love, it’s really hard for anyone to control you. Because control must feed on fear.

Nazi Germany happened because Germany was already broken and suffering after WW1. Hitler had power because the people were downtrodden, scared and looking for someone to blame.

The Inquisition had power because plagues were killing off whole villages and people couldn’t understand why. They were scared, and needed someone to blame.

The pattern is always the same. The difference now? We must turn the tide away from fear and toward love. Don’t Occupy Wall Street. Occupy your HEART.

2012 will reflect ourselves back to us. Who you show up as is how this year will show up for you.

Yes, some believe it will usher in a Golden Age. I hope that is so. But it can’t happen without us. What is golden is what is in you. Use it.

Author: Jamie Mintun

Original Source: www.Jaimemintun.com