Global Localism

Millions of us have given up hope that U.S. Congress will actually address the important issues we face, among them are: 

• Eliminate control of our elected federal officials by the .01% wealthiest people in the U.S.
• Secure a living wage for working Americans
• Bring the “banksters” to justice and re-institute oversight and regulation of the banks 
• Establish a global system to represent and protect the interests of the people of the world against global corporations and banks.

Often it is the local and regional governments which actually work for their citizens’ best interests. They are closer to us and therefore somewhat responsive to us because we actually can talk with them - our mayors, council people, city / township managers and county officials.

Importantly, many cities and regions throughout the world work together to solve common problems. And, they have been doing so for years - without the interference of their national government legislators.

If you are upset with your federal government inaction and believe it is time to do something, then we have an idea for your consideration:

Let’s work together to get things done locally and regionally.

Now is the time for your community to join in.

Please watch Dr. Benjamin Barber's TED talk, “Why Mayors Should Rule the World” below (click on the image) 

“We’re the level of government closest to the majority of the world’s people. While nations talk, but too often drag their heels—cities act.” — New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg 

Please also read Dr. Richard Florida's The Atlantic Cities interview of Dr. Barber here: What If Mayors Ruled the World?

Where to start?

Consider attending: "CityLab: Urban Solutions to Global Challenges," 6-8 October 2013, New York City. 

If it's impossible for you to attend, please visit: EncoreBoomer Hometown.2 You can bet we will be reporting what happens.

Arianna Huffington's Courageous Move

Arianna Huffington's announcement that the Huffington Post will add three new sections including: “Impact”, “Good News” and “What is Working” is a courageous decision to move her media properties toward what the industry as a whole should be doing on a worldwide basis.

Instead of just making more gold doubloons for a tiny few .5%ers to store in their already bulging basement shelters, media should be actually participating in making our culture work for the vast majority of their readers, the 99%ers, by reporting “what people are doing to change and improve our sick cultures” and what is working throughout the world.

Surviving Your Hospital Stay

95-Year-Old Offers 10 Tips for Surviving Your U.S. Hospital Stay

Grosse Ile, MI - Take it from a proven hospital survivor – you need lots of help to survive your U.S. hospital stay.

Recently, Trula Ryan, 95, came home from her 85-day-stint at two metro Detroit hospitals. She is an uncontested survivor and can attest to the fact that the very best tip is, “Stay away from the hospital unless you have no other option and you absolutely must go.”

Following a trip to emergency and hip surgery, Ms. Ryan encountered nearly every medical complication, as well as nearly every prejudice which American culture can dish out on her bumpy road to recovery, including: “You’re 95, you know! What do you expect at your age!” And, Even if you survive breathing with a vent, nobody comes off of them and you will end up on a shelf and have no life anyway.” Plus, Is it really your decision to live or can’t your family just let you go?”

Still, she beat the odds and the naysayers. Today, she’s at home, enjoying watching her beloved Detroit Tigers and giving everyone she sees her trademarked, “Two Thumbs Up!”

Here are Trula’s 10 Tips for Surviving your hospital stay

1. Empower someone you trust and who loves you to be your patient advocate.
2. Each day, especially Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, at the beginning of every shift, your patient advocate must meet and be confident in your assigned nurse. Follow this practice until you leave the hospital.
3. Move to a room, as close to the nurses’ station as you can be. If the room is semi-private, ask for the bed closest to the entry door.
4. Make sure your patient advocate understands which medications your doctor has ordered for you as well as how much of each medication you are to receive.
5. Make absolutely certain that your patient advocate ensures that your nurse correctly administers your medications as your doctor has ordered.
6. Do not submit to any procedure unless you understand that your doctor has ordered it for you and you have agreed to have it done.
7. Closely observe the nursing team and make certain that they wash their hands and use clean gloves; do not use suction tubes which have fallen onto the floor or onto your bed; and maintain sterile technique when required, e.g. when changing a PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter) dressing.
8. Question everything and ask your questions in three different ways.
9. Ask what are the known side effects of every medication and procedure.
10. Research everything until you feel comfortable that you understand.

Perhaps, most importantly, says Trula, “Just never give up, no matter who says you can’t make it, because you can!”

Gary’s Question: How does Detroit’s bankruptcy affect YOU?

Recently my brother emailed a question to me. He asked: “How does Detroit’s bankruptcy affect you and the Encore Boomer Movement?”

I answered, “Detroit’s bankruptcy does not directly affect me or the Encore Boomer Movement.”

Still, it offers a unique opportunity to work with existing citizen groups and create new ones within the city to help them help others “redeploy” their resources and energy toward locally owned banks, credit unions and local businesses so that they rebuild their local government into one which represents their interests rather than those of the big international banks and other predatory capitalists (Republicans) / white collar criminals.

We have a lot to do and big money to overcome.

I have come to believe that we, the everyday people, have been the subjects of a long-lived and extremely well executed “mind meld” whereby those with the means to do so have for years successfully manipulated what we accept as the “American Way” into a money making tool which serves their interests alone at our collective loss. One example comes to mind. Remember the draft from the 60s and 70s? It was a big deal back then to serve your country by submitting yourself to the draft, i.e. be a real American and feed yourself to the “the man’s” war machine. As best that I can tell, the only people who benefited from the Vietnam War are the same people who today are “pulling the strings” of the U.S. House of Representatives… they are the 1%.

What do you think?

Congressional Republicans Ciphered Out!

After combing reams of Wiki- leaked NSA data, I’ve finally ciphered it out. The only possible explanation for the Congressional Republicans heartless, soulless “legislative activity” is that they really are not human beings. Rather, they are a heretofore undiscovered shape shifting crocodilian species.

Bees Shouldn't Do It!

It's been a mystery why bees have been dying throughout the U.S.

Observers have discovered that “worker bees have mysteriously flown off and never returned to their hives” — a phenomenon, they have dubbed, “Colony Collapse Disorder.”

This is a problem because a great deal of what we consume each day is the result of pollination services provided by the western honey bee.

Recent findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and cited in a Discover Magazine article, “Honey May Be Bees’ Best Medicine for Colony Collapse Disorder” by Breanna Draxler, may have solved the conundrum.

Regarding the problem, the article explains, “Scientists are stumped. Some blame malnutrition. Others point fingers at pathogens. Perhaps it’s pesticides. New research has identified a particular chemical in pollen that may finally provide an answer.”

The article continues by saying that researchers have identified that chemicals and insecticides which the bees encounter while making their nectar collecting rounds are killing them. Further, that a handful of chemicals can boost certain “detoxifying genes” which are the natural defenses of the bees but that bees which are “raised in commercial colonies don’t get enough of them.”

Why?

Well, “Wild bees are normally raised on honey, so there is no shortage of p-coumaric acid” (the stuff that helps the bees defend themselves) in their diets. “But commercial colonies raised for agricultural pollination aren’t so lucky. To cut costs, many bee keepers harvest and sell the honey their bees produce and instead feed the growing bee babies high fructose corn syrup or other sweeteners. While nutritionally comparable, the researchers say these sugars lack essential chemicals like p-coumaric acid.”

The solution? Bees shouldn’t do it! That is, they should not eat high fructose corn syrup... and YOU Shouldn't Either!

Go here for the story.

The Killing Must Stop

Bill Moyers & Company, 3 May 2013, Francine Wheeler and Peter Yarrow on Music’s Power in Social Movements. If you can't watch the complete interview, please go about :17 min in and listen to Francine Wheeler & Dar Williams sing "Family" by Pierce Pettis. 

Formula to End Worldwide Economic Woes

A beautiful tropical island…

+

Move all of the .01%ers there … 

+

With all their gold …

=

Economic recovery for the rest of the world!*

*Presented, with love, by the 99.9% ers.

Today, Akin to History, Anger is Building

Les Misérables - Do You Hear the People Sing

Let’s deal with the facts of everyday life here. How is your life today?

• Do you have enough money to pay your bills? 
• Are you employed in a job worthy of your experience and education? 
• Are you employed? 
• Do you have retirement savings? Your 401k?
• Do you have savings?
• Do you even have a checking account? 
• If you still have credit cards, how much interest are you paying… 32%? 
• Are you still being harassed by some third or fourth level collection company who bought you “debt” for a few fractions of a penny and The Man permits it?
• Has the price of the food you buy from Walmart gone up? 
• How about gas for you car? 
• If you still have a car, are you spending what little you have so you can pay for gasoline so you can get to your McDonald’s job? 
• Do you still have a home? 
• Or, like millions of Americans, does the bank, some speculator, or your city / township / village / county now own your home due to back taxes you can’t pay because it’s based on the pre-bust value of your home or because the bank repossessed it because you couldn’t pay your over-priced, high-interest-rate mortgage? 

I’ll bet you voted for President Obama because you believed he’d be able to help you.

Or, if you were fooled by the "conservative", tea party or republican b.s., you voted for the other guy because you buy the ancient “old-saw” line, “I’m better than those other people” and they are the reason I can’t have a decent job and a home like Mom and Dad’s.

If you are an old guy, I’ll bet you believed that Gulf of Tonkin story, too. Or, if you’re younger, you probably bought the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” line, as well.

Because we were so naive our government wasted TRILLIONS of our tax dollars killing millions of people, as well as thousands of our own, to say nothing of those thousand who suffer “normal” battle wounds, PTSD, agent orange induced health complications of zillion kinds – and, now, thousands more of our troops and countless innocent civilians who are suffering from unacknowledged “spent uranium" poisoning and another zillion health complications.

So, we elected this man we want to believe will help us. But, for a multitude of reasons he keeps running into roadblocks and can’t get the legislation through the worst, do nothing Congress in the history of our nation.

Regardless, most of the 99%ers are still suffering – only now it’s gotten even worse.

It's fast becoming bad enough for us to lose our faith in the guy we elected and come to the conclusion that he simply can’t or chooses not to make the difference to right the wrongs we have lived with for the past so many years. For us in Michigan, it’s been more than 10 years.

What happens now?

We believe in America. We fought for America. Still, we are people who believe we are a free people. Not one of us will knowingly accept slavery. 

While our blood boils and our anger has risen to unimagined heights — just like the characters depicted in Les Misérables — we will take a different path to right the wrongs. We have a plan.

TruthTeller App! Now here’s another reason for optimism!

TruthTeller, the Washington Post, Knight-News-Prototype-grant-funded service, which lets you know that you have just been fed a bunch of b.s. from some politician, could accidentally become the tool which saves American Predatory Capitalism from itself.

Given the nature of our culture and all the garbage which floats about in a gazillion commercials plus sales material of all kinds, masquerading for fact, a future “app” built upon this prototype, portends great things for our version of “Buyer Beware” Capitalism. 

A politician meets TruthTeller and Americans win!

On the good side, it could, at some future date, serve as a consumer’s personal firewall. Further, it could also help our elected officials stay the path and collect an honest paycheck by serving the public interest. Best of all (hopefully very soon) it could help protect us (naïve consumers) from the barrage of false advertising, public relations and general b.s. foisted upon us every second of every day by the Madison Ave. crowd.

That blinding blizzard of b.s., which Americans accept as “the norm”, would suddenly be subject to “fact check”. What a life changing, wonderful tool!

Bear with me for a second. 

Just think, one day you will walk into a grocery store, scan a product label with your smartphone and then hear an alarm go off telling you the “product” in your hand contains enough “whatevers” to instantly kill an elephant. How novel that would be!

Since our government has continuously failed to defend us citizens from the bevy of straight out life-threatening products, I look forward to the day when I am personally empowered to wield my own “firewall” against the evil tide which inundates us all.

Product makers and the “cut-a-deal-with-the-devil” selling machines which run our culture would be forced to sell truth, lest they be instantly exposed as lie-telling scumbags. Repercussions would be instantaneous because TODAY, we have social media which would instantly help make it known just who are and are not scumbags — that is, among friends — of course.

Brandishing the future TruthTelling app, I can see empowered consumers all over the place, unmasking attorneys, service providers, bankers, healthcare providers, etc. The list is endless and the resulting high quality services will be the best in the history of mankind!

The emerging new capitalistic society could rightfully proclaim: “Buyer Protected” rather than “Buyer Beware”. U.S capitalism cured and saved through technological advancement. Just in the nick of time!

About the TruthTeller Prototype

http://truthteller.washingtonpost.com/

And here http://truthteller.washingtonpost.com/about/

About the Knight Foundation

http://www.knightfoundation.org/

And here about the TruthTeller Prototype:

http://www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2013/1/29/debuting-truth-teller-washington-post-real-time-lie-detection-service-your-service-not-quite-yet/

Eleanor: The Radical Roosevelt by Peter Dreier — YES! Magazine

Peter Dreier's outstanding article touches on the multitude of reasons how and why Eleanor Roosevelt lived her life in service to humanity. Without her intelligence, dedication and perseverance, the people of the USA… the 99%ers… would still be wearing the shackles of Robber Baron slavery and begging for a slice of moldy bread.

Eleanor: The Radical Roosevelt by Peter Dreier — YES! Magazine

European Union Nations say YES To Robin Hood Tax

On 22 Jan 2013, 23 of 27 European Union nations agreed that 11 European countries – including the biggest economies Germany and France – can set up a Robin Hood Tax (financial transaction tax) to make the banks pay back the public for the financial crisis they created. The UK was the only big economy to abstain.

It’s estimated that the tax could raise $47.23 billion (£30 billion) a year.

Robin Hooders at the Senate

Obviously, the proof will be seen in the days ahead as to if the funds are raised and importantly, how they are used. Next, we need a Robin Hood tax passed in the UK and the USA.

Speaking of the USA, Robin Hooders lined the corridors of the Senate prior to JPMorgan Chase chairman, president and chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon’s “contrite” testimony. He was rerouted through a “back” door so as not to confront the Robin Hood contingent. Since his Senate testimony, JPMorgan Chase announced that Dimon’s annual compensation would be reduced from $23 million to $11.5 million due to an embarrassing trading loss at the bank last year, which eventually reached $6 billion.

Please checkout this video campaign and help the USA join with the rest of the western world in Sherwood Forest!