Monday, June 9, 2014

Photo of clouds of smoke from the fire close to Bend Oregon.   Photo credit to Freeacre's son


OBSERVING THE UP SIDE   from Murph

I’m writing this on Sunday, June 8.  This morning I read an article on Zerohedge that asserted that we spend too much time on the doom information rather than looking at the “fact” that economic data has some positive aspects.  http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-06-07/doom-gloom-sells

Now I will readily admit that I tend to look at the negative side much more than the positive side of the information I see on a daily basis.   I have noticed that I am seeing more articles and analysis’ claiming that things are getting better.  The central argument seems to revolve around government data on housing, employment, and GDP and a few other metrics.   These articles do not even broach the idea that maybe the data is manipulated to look positive and is in reality not positive at all.  It comes down to whether you put trust into government bureaucracy’s honesty in publicly reporting their findings.   I also recognize that in the popular press, doom sells, especially if there is blood involved.   I will also admit that not everything I look at is negative at all.   There are folks out there that are trying to make things better, even the popular press has some positive stuff that I believe actually is happening.  

However, in the MSM, there is a huge amount of information that is left out that is distinctively negative.   Any of us that read or listen to other than MSM information can compose long lists of very negative stuff going on that is not reported in the MSM, or very minimally, and almost always of very short duration.   The very real question, is how much of the information, both positive and negative, is factual.  

One of the advantages of getting old is having a lot of years to compare present and past events and consequences.   Even though I sometimes wish it weren’t true, situations do change, constantly.   We all have our perceptions on the past that we consider “better” than the changes we experience in the present.  I am not naïve enough to look at all changes as negative all of the time, even if I don’t like those changes.   As expressed in the previous post, I tend to look at the consequences inherent in those changes.   Examples; I do not like the consequences of poisoning the land with pollution and caustic chemicals despite whatever temporary advantages I experience from it being done.   In a longer time frame, it sure appears to me to be damaging and having catastrophic effects.   I can’t believe that there are no long lasting effects that are going to be catastrophic to humans and the biota of this planet in scattering depleted uranium over large areas of land.    Or, the indiscriminant use of herbicides and pesticides that ARE LONG LASTING, I emphasize long lasting, because despite the propaganda put out by the companies selling the stuff.  If any of you have read the information put out by Monsanto and Dow, to name only two of the biggies about putting these chemicals on the ground and into the food supply, you know what I mean.  The suppression of research and refusal to deal with long-term effects is astounding to me.   Oh hell, I forgot, the long term effects compared to short term profits means that long term loses almost every time.   Silly me.

On a positive outlook, most of the positive stuff, IMO, seems to be happening at local levels.   Our area does seem to be interested in home production of food.  IMO, this is a good thing.   We have been battling for 8 years now over ground and surface water contamination.  There are many conflicts of interests on this issue.   But one thing the community can agree on is that we do not want to contaminate the water.   The arguments center around how not to contaminate.   There are large amount of communities in the U.S. that are in the same bind.  In our case, the government bureaucracies have declared a problem that does not currently exist and on an emergency bases formed public policy that is, and has been for 8 years now, very detrimental to the community.   Property is not selling; jobs are near non existence and ALL because of these public policies.   All of this is coming from the Department of Environmental Quality (the DEQ state bureaucracy).  All of their public policy is based on very non scientific conclusions, a whole bunch of faulty assumptions and I suspect some greed thrown in and most definitely job protection, by their own admittance to me.   Despite there being really great folks in the area that we are very much friends with, if we had known about what was happening around this single issue, we would not have moved here.   The result of feeling pressured by circumstances to make a decision without sufficient time to find out about such issues.   We keep meeting more folks that were caught up in the same trap; lack of time, financial resources and reluctance to do due diligence before making a decision.  

Freeacre and myself have noticed a distinct escalation of complexity in our daily lives.  Not that we embrace this complexity, but that it is imposed on us by governmental forces and the financialization of everything.   We spend an enormous amount of time dealing with paperwork and getting the needed information to do so.   It didn’t used to be that way.   This complexity of compliance is an escalating problem that is distracting people from very pressing problems that need to be solved.   Most of these issues have fairly simple solutions, but hell no, lets make it so complex that folks have neither the time or ability to sort it all out.   I talked to a state representative a week ago that seemed to feel that 8-10 years of working on a problem was not unreasonable and should be expected, despite the damage it does.  

So yes, I find it difficult to see the up side on what is going on locally and the country as a whole.   In fact, it sure appears to me that our situation nationally and globally is deteriorating despite the happy talk that is showing up these days.