Saturday, March 1, 2014

Dear Mr. President:

I am sure that you are well aware of the importance of the upcoming election. It presents an unprecedented opportunity to break the grip of those forces which are retrograde to our evolution, who have blocked, and rolled back many of our efforts to expand government of, for, and by the people.

Elections are the one opportunity for the people to let their voice be heard.    They are the moment for action. The action is the vote.

I ask the individuals I encounter if they are registered voters. Almost half of them are not. A large percentage of those who are do not vote regularly. The Bipartisan Research Center places the voter turnout in 2012 election cycle at 57.5% of the eligible voters.

The question is how can we reach those who are not voting. I know that we have registration and “get out the vote” campaigns. But in 2012 42% of the eligible voters were not involved enough to bother to vote.

And yet, those with whom I talk, even the majority of those non-voters, are aware of and have real concern for the suffering of individuals. They have a sensitivity of the heart for suffering and inequality. Most people have a relative or close friend whose family has and is suffering from unemployment, lost pensions, homes, lack of health care, etcetera.

I think the weakness in our approach to these citizens is that we speak to them about policy, about budgets, costs and technical details of legislation and economics, and about personalities. This stuff is very boring to most people.

What the people care about has to do with dignity, with their rights, with equality. When I chat with these folks, I encourage them to vote for their dignity and equality, I suggest that when they vote they listen to what their heart tells them, that the vote be cast, not against anything and certainly not for a personality, but for those programs and those individuals in whom they can see the heart at work for the advancement of equality, the relief of suffering, the generation of beauty, the care for our children. I am sure you know these things.

I think that by appealing to our brothers and sisters hearts, they may be encouraged to vote. I think that if you talk to us about the things that matter we can we ignite that spark of fire that that we know lies in the breast of every human being into some kind of a blaze.

This is the path out of the morass of egoism and illusion and into a greater manifestation of Democracy.
Lots of love
-tom

Servitude Circa 2014

February 6, 20114

Dear Mr. President:

You are aware of the House Committee Report on Education. The report was really old news. My data on this particular manifestation of servitude which goes by the euphuism of adjunct teachers comes through my daughter. My daughter had to give up her quest for a PhD with only the dissertation still to do. Overwhelming student debt and the servitude wage she was paid for adjunct teaching at the University, forced her to find a job.

She did secure a "decent job" i.e. free person's work that pays a living wage in turn for the labor worked, at McGraw Hill as an editor. Like so many of the other Owners/Managers, the Owners/Managers of the McGraw Hill Plantation, or Corporation as they are now styled, instituted the profit enhancement practice called "outsourcing"  i.e. moving "decent jobs" to a place where they could obtain servitude rather than employees.

It is interesting to note, that the big change that has occurred in our Nation since the Emancipation Proclamation is that rather than shipping the slaves to this country, the Owners/Managers ship the work to where they can maintain slaves, i.e. "pay" them the least possible amount to maintain their physical ability to do whatever the work is.

In addition to the new slave trade called outsourcing, the fact that we are locally "maintaining" our teachers, whose work cannot be outsourced, as appendages in subordinate capacities of servitude, and the  resistance to a national minimum wage of $10.10, indicates that certain vestiges of the Owner/Slave mentality are still well entrenched in this Nation.

A little hard data: When the amount of wages that my daughter is paid for teaching English to 5, 30 student classes, is divided by the number of hours that are essential to do the job in a decent way, she earns $8.00/hr. This level of servitude carries no health benefits, sick or vacation time. She drives 140 miles a week to 3 different colleges.

Teachers who are exposing young hearts and minds to the Principles, like Equality, upon which our Nation rests are the absolute essential cog in the wheels of any nation that wants to be a Democracy. I think that you understand this, and I wonder how we can move this issue to the front of the line of issues.

Education is not a business, especially not a "for profit" business. It is an absolute essential right of any human being, the cornerstone upon which this nation was built and without which this nation will not stand.

-tom

Start With The Children

Dear Mr. President:

In the State of the Union message you talked about how to approach the problems of our economy. I wonder if we realize that our children are our economy. It is our children without whom we have neither future nor economy.

I was grateful for the focus on high-quality pre-K for every 4-year-old. This is probably the most important thing we could do to ensure a future of equality for all.

Two issues with this proposal need serious consideration. First, an adequate amount food essential for a young child’s growth. Vast numbers of the four year olds who will show up at the pre-K schools do not get enough food to eat.

Food is fuel for our children. Take the $4 billion a year from the bloated fossil fuel industries and invest it in food/fuel for our hungry future, our children. Veto the Farm Bill if it reaches your desk with the insane $8 billion cuts to the FS program. It is irrational to start a pre-K program for four year olds and to eliminate the fuel that large numbers of them need to run on.

The other issue is that “reaching more kids” means more teachers. More qualified teachers is probably the most significant problem we face in building our future. Our educational systems which drive the entire economy are in a deplorable state. We have millions of children who need to be educated. We have maybe one teacher for every couple hundred children. Many of these teachers are woefully under educated themselves and lack any real understanding of what children are, how they grow, what the need.

To make the envisioned pre-K program work, we need to recruit, educate and pay many thousands of teachers. This will be hard because the position of teacher has been denigrated to a point where only the most heart driven individuals will choose a discounted, third class job.

You have spoken to the need to produce individuals for our technological industries. The place to start such a program is to resurrect the teaching profession to point of respectability. The ignorance which fails to understand the essential role that teachers fill in shaping the consciousness of our children is a major source of our problems.

I guess what I am trying to say is that our children are Humanities’ first priority. Children need fuel/guidance or food/teachers, teachers that understand what “Teacher” means and signifies.

Fix this and the rest will follow.

-tom

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Dear Mr. President;

I have always resonated to your enunciation, a clarion call to many, that we need to have Change That Matters!

The other day, while perusing a New York Times map graphic that showed the huge number of people living in poverty in various sections of just United State, I had a sudden realization of how stupid poverty is. It is simply irrational. There is no REASON for poverty to exist on the planet. It exists because of the lack of REASON.

I have written and published an article, much too long for a letter to you,  “Ignoromics: The Economics of Ignorance” in Thoughtline which is a monthly journal of commentary. While this article focuses mainly on economics, it explores the causes for the lack of reason which in general infect the programs and policies which drive all of our institutions and guarantees their historical and ongoing failure to generate change that matters, change that will meet the evolutionary objective of creating a planet of beauty, freedom, and equality.

For a very long time social theories concerning human rights, government, and economics, even scientific facts about the planet—It was only 500 years ago that we “knew” that the Earth was the center of the Solar System.—have been proclaimed by individuals whose conception of Reality was/is that we live on a one dimensional planet of dense physical matter surrounded by a not so dense, but physical never the less, atmosphere. This was—still is even by the majority in the scientific community!—the dominating conception of reality.

This vision which actually denies the existence of Reality, generates defacto systems like the Divine Right of Kings and the “fact” that the planet and everything on or in it, including all those human beings who are of lesser value than the rulers, is the “property” of those who occupy the top of the Hierarchy. Slavery is actually a built in cornerstone of this vision.

Change that truly matters will come about only when we replace this childish, ignorant, irrational, delusional, vision of reality with an adult understanding of the synthesis of the multidimensional cosmos in which we live.

We can address this kind of change best through the education of our sisters and brothers and especially our children, not to be employable, but to be educated and introduced to their true nature and the facts of Reality.

Lots of love

-tom 

Dear Mr. President

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Dear Mr. President.

For you, yours and all the rest of Humanity, I am not wishing but insisting, that we have a wonderful and happy 2014. It's time! I think we have earned it. Enough with the irrational. Time for a little Pure Reason, wouldn't you think?

It is along this line of Reason that I write you today. As Bucky Fuller could clearly see, it is pretty much Humanity's destiny to eventually live off of the dense physical plane of the Planet. So, a tiny step in that direction, the eventual appearance of "Drones" in the skies, was unavoidable.

You are perhaps a bit tired of hearing about Drones. Heaven knows that the Congress is full of such beings who do not work but do a lot of buzzing around and are able to fertilize various irrational pieces of legislation. And of course there those which fly around from time to time blowing up some bad people and the unfortunate individuals who happen to be hanging around. Typical example, by the way, of how irrationality seems to guide our ingenuity and imaginations to come up with stuff to first kill people and only then to make applications that will actually help.

Refreshingly, I read in this morning's New York times  a lengthy article on drones that says the Federal Aviation Administration is authorizing test sites for the commercial applications of drones. A big Hallelujah is appropriate for this decision which is tending toward a rational use of resources to benefit the Common Good, something seldom present in the present actions of Capitalism.

However, I saw nothing in the article that speaks to the People's interest in the creation and use of these machines. Their use will do away with a multitude of tasks that people presently do, thus eliminating the contributions, what we call taxes, that each employed person makes to the Common Good, contributions that support the health and welfare of the People. They will be using the People's energy and air space to do their tasks. They will require the creation of whole State and Federal departments to license and regulate their comings and goings, and what they can and cannot carry, or deliver, or do, plus a whole bunch of other stuff that we can only guess at just now.

Exclusivity has always been irrational. It does not exist except in an illusion. We really, if we are going to be rational about this, we really need to start figuring out how we are going to include these human created machines in the complex of our interrelated existence. As I mentioned in an earlier note to you, We need to figure out how they will make a contribution to the Common Good in which they operate.

2014 is going to be a very interesting year. I feel a growing awareness in the people regarding the irrationality of "business as usual."  Big changes are coming. Expect a great year, hard, but great!

lots of love

-tom

Dear Mr. President

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

As I watched and read your eulogy of Nelson Mandela, I strange feeling came over me. I realized that I was crying and that I was feeling proud to be an American, proud that my President was standing there in that stadium saying the things that you were saying about Nelson Mandela and by extension Humanity because Nelson Mandela, like those before him whom you named, was first and foremost simply a man, a human being. He was a living example of what it means to be a  human being, of what anyone of us can be regardless of our place on the planet.

It was so refreshing to hear you extend the principles upon which our country was founded, and is still based, to all of humanity, to the One Humanity. By doing this you aligned and identified us with all people in the world who strive for what we have, freedom, liberty, justice, and the opportunity, as you put it, to work hard and to achieve a decent living for one's family.

This speech signaled to the world a major shift in the direction of our vision. We know that it was not the first time that you have so signaled, or that such a speech has been made by one of our previous Presidents or great leaders. However, as we have seen, over the past 55 years in particular, such signals have to be given over and over for there are still many who consciously resist, and many others who are simply heart blind and deaf to the expansion of the concept of Democracy and the appreciation of our indivisibility both from each other and the Planet.

I think that through making this speech, you helped release the energy that was Nelson Mandela, the energy that made of him a messenger, a forerunner, a way shower, and hero into the hearts and minds of many, many of our sisters and brothers. Watch for the results.

I thank you for that.

lots of love

-tom   

Dear Mr. President

Thursday, December 05, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you for your talk of December 4. It was wonderful.  I hope to see/hear many more such talks over the next months.

The 2014 election cycle is presenting us with an enormous opportunity to bring balance back into our systems. Balance means that the system is supporting the Common Good and the General Welfare as opposed to the insane kind of distribution we have at present.

At the breakfast table the other morning, Mary and I who have a relatively secure middle class retirement income because we worked for Los Angeles County whose retirement system is sound, and because we have decent Social Security incomes as well as Medicare, were talking about the impact of robotics on employment and how it is and will continue to be putting people out of work. There are lots of good sides to this, such as freeing individuals from tedious and repetitive labor, and not so good sides, such as how are these people going to make a living?

The employment issue can be largely solved by adding many millions of teachers and support staff to the educational systems, many millions of doctors and support staff to the health systems, and many other human relation roles that machines cannot do. Humans caring about and for each other seems kind of natural, doesn't it?

The loss of jobs to robotics, however, does affect  FICA and income to the Government from tax on wages. There is no reason corporations who "own" these huge manufacturing and distribution systems should benefit from not having to pay humans wages and support the Common Good which consumes their products.

An Idea surfaced: Each robotic device that replaces a human worker should be taxed at some level and made to contribute to the FICA system. The "owners" do not have to pay actual wages, but are still responsible for income tax and FICA for each worker replaced by a robotic device. Why Not?

lots of love

-tom