Yesterday, I set upon the way myth is being used to create a new American political tool .  Today, I found this:

Unreal.

Intelligent Design? Constitutional rights? Conservatives on Campus? Military recruiters?

All of these are making headlines, and all have ties to what is happening on our college campuses. But there is so very much more that is at the core of higher education.

America has always been a land of myth and we all have our own personal stories of who we are and and where we've come from.  Normal stuff.

BUT, in the past five years we've now crossed a threshold of myth and stepped into an unreality where fact and fiction intertwine to create an America of stories where nothing is real, science is dead and the truth is relative.

Confused?  You should be.

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts' desire at last and the White House will be adorned with a downright moron. -- H.L. Mencken

Well, my Red State Reflections are reaching an end. The luggage is unpacked and I am back in my blue enclave in my blue county in my blue state, which is actually a bluish shade of purple with some moving toward red.

But this is not the end. This is the time to draw some Conclusions and make a plan of action.

Many within the Bush Administration as well as the current congressional leadership are philosophically and ideologically opposed to the very idea of public lands.  As we've discussed a number of times in my previous posts, these Right-Wing idealougues are intent on destroying anything and  everything that had to do with the New Deal or the establishment of our public lands system (Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park  Service, etc.).

However, faced with the fact that our public lands are an incredibly popular part of the American quality of life,  these folks have had to resort to a decietful and  dishonest (yes...imagine...) way to divest the American public of their natural inheritance.

The energy crisis has given them an easy key to do their work.

"If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people, it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering."

This is a quote from Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss, discussing media stories about mass murder, rapes, and mayhem in New Orleans. The full story is http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/
la-na-rumors27sep27,0,3794602.story?coll=la-home-nation">here.

Kansas and Nebraska are part of our bread basket. Our food security, heck, our lives, depend on these places, and how they grow and harvest our food.

But the security of that food is not a sure thing. So the story of our rural areas is a story about what we put on our tables. And it is a story about our environment, how we should live on this earth.

Before I talk about food in the next post, I want to mention agricultural pollution. Among the links I supplied to towns in earlier posts, you will find that the purity of rural life is at best questionnable.Norton, KS. and Phillipsburg are sited within a sea of hazardous waste sites.

Other rural towns are worse. As many as 41% of superfund sites are in rural areas. Yes, superfund sites scattered through the nation’s breadbasket - and in rural communities, including the People’s Republic of Vermont, which has 12 rural superfund sites.

So much for clean country air and pure country living.

Political Research Associates is an independent, nonprofit research center that exposes and challenges the Right and larger oppressive movements, institutions, and forces. PRA produces accurate applied research and useful analytic tools to inform and support progressive activism that promotes equality and justice.

Are we an ownership society, a nation of atomized individuals, self-made people? Or are our fates communal, linked to the land and to one another?

Katrina has exposed the ownership society for the evil canard that it is and shown what happens when we live by the philosophy: every one for herself.

And the Bible says we must live as a community, tied to the land and to one another, and it makes our fates dependent upon farmers.

Rural Policy? We don’ have no stinkin’ rural policy.

But we could have. And we need one.

In Parts I and II of this series, I discussed the severe population decline in northern Kansas. Odd to have perfectly good homes and communities standing empty while so many in this country live in terrible dangerous neighborhoods. Odd not to think of relocating the Katrina refugees to those empty homes and using the support money they are supposed to receive to revive these areas. The truth is that these towns are simply off our radar screen.

Part I of this story may be found here.

Yes, Kansas is withering - no typo in the title.

Remember the neutron bomb? It was supposed to kill people but leave buildings and other infrastructure intact. Well, lots of Kansas (and Nebraska) might as well have been hit by a neutron bomb. People gone. Houses empty.

The part of Kansas I will discuss here is along US 36 in Kansas.

When I was younger and still living under my parent's roof, there were plenty of times when my parents and I came into conflict about whether or not I had permission to do some thing or another. Sometimes, it felt like my parents would tell me "no" for what seemed like absolutely ridiculous reasons. And we've all heard the Great Parental Adage "Because I'm the parent, that's why!"

Thinking about the government, and how much power and pressure they have leveled against the rave scene over the past 10 years, it's pretty clear that they are acting just like parents. The youthful nature of the culture inspires a need and desire in local, state and federal governments to set boundaries. Restricting permissions gives the government the illusion that it can modulate and control its populace.

The background music for my Red States trip has been news related to Hurricane Katrina. On the outbound trip, the onslaught and growing information about the depth of the disaster. On the return, news of the administration’s attempts to grapple with the public anger over its treatment of the victims, thousands and thousands now homeless.

For me there was a special poignancy, because I was traveling through parts of this country that had empty homes galore to offer – Nebraska, which I discussed earlier, and Kansas. In fact, there are Kansas towns with so many empty houses and in such desperate need of repopulation they are offering free land in Atwood and in Washington, complete with photos of lots available.

I personally saw the sign at the Washington city limits advertising free lots.

I'm about as political animal as one will find but even I need to take a break sometimes before my head explodes.

Partly to keep myself grounded. And partly to restrain myself from clobbering knuckle-dragging anti-tax, anti-government doofusses who enjoy FDIC-insured bank accounts, public libraries, and Fannie Mae mortgages but want to punish poor and vulnerable folks who rely on safety net programs.

So what have I been doing lately?

Although we are far from total victory, our small, local coalition has just made a huge step in our fight against the industrialization of our land. On September 15th, Representative Tom Udall (D-NM) introduced a bill into the US House of Representatives to permanently protect the Valle Vidal from oil and gas development!!!!

One of America’s least known treasures is New Mexico’s Valle Vidal. The Valle Vidal is a 100,000-acre gem smack in the heart of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains northwest of Cimarron, New Mexico. It has been called a ‘reservoir of wildlife’ and justly so. The Valle hosts the largest elk herd in the state, sixty other species of mammals including black bear, turkey, bobcat and bison, nearly 200 species of birds and 33 kinds of reptiles and amphibians. Its verdant valleys are ringed by one of the largest stands of Bristlecone Pine in the nation. Pure strains of the Rio Grande cutthroat trout can be found in many of the waterways. Those fish were what first brought me to the Valle Vidal.

From Advisory.com (registration required):

Scientists at the National Institute of Health have begun “infusing” patients with sodium nitrite, the same compound used to preserve hotdogs, as a treatment for heart attacks, sickle cell anemia, brain aneurysms, and even cases of pulmonary hypertension in infants, the Associated Press reports.

Apparently, the new research suggests that nitrates cause blood vessels to dilate. The increased blood and oxygen flow can in turn protect heart, lung, and brain tissues from cell death.

Besides the obvious sardonic humor of watching obese Americans gorge themselves on hotdogs to stave off heart attacks, it's the last sentence that really interests me:

NIH researchers have filed for new patents on the use of the preservative and are looking to solicit major pharmaceutical companies to help develop it as a new therapy, though they note that the “government will pursue drug development on its own if necessary”.

The Gospel of Slavery: A Primer of Freedom was recently scanned and posted at Flickr.

The series of engraved illustrations and rhyme were originally published in 1864 by Abel C. Thomas, a Universalist minister and author active in Philadelphia. He published several works of juvenile literature together with his theological writings and religious disputation.

It is such a pleasure to have so much good workplace news after such a constant drumbeat of bad news. And I even report on some good guys who are fighting the good fight.

Maybe we are experiencing a cosmic shift . . . 'bout time.

The bad news is actually not so bad, andincludes one mixed story. Mixed news depending on whether you're an employer or employee. We went with the employees and put it here.

From the Greeley Tribune (registration required):

COLORADO SPRINGS -- The conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family plans to eliminate some of its programs and lay off employees to trim millions of dollars from next year's budget.

Focus spokesman Paul Hetrick said Thursday the changes will affect 79 employees who will be reassigned or laid off. The ministry has a staff equivalent to 1,342 full-time employees.

The ministry founded in 1977 by James Dobson will also not fill 83 open positions. The changes will begin to take effect Oct. 1, the start of Focus on the Family's 2006 fiscal year.

Please tell me this is the beginning of the end for Dobson and his intolerant band of hate-mongerers and religious hypocrites.

Five years ago, my friend Josh and I decided that we wanted to break into the raver community. It was the weekend of Halloween 2000 and we were determined to make it to a party -- any party. Without a car, we were entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers. But Josh managed to find us a ride and, as I smooshed into the backseat of a vehicle driven by people I didn't even know, I started to feel the first tingles of anticipation.

This is an exclusive opportunity to blog with Colorado State Representative Angie Paccione on her candidacy for Congress.

Mind your manners and ask your questions.

Unbossed EXCLUSIVE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 16, 2005
Gary Chandler, Campaign Spokesman
Gary[at]angie2006[dot]com
970-308-0986

(Ft. Collins, Colorado) — State Representative Angie Paccione today announced her candidacy for Congress from Colorado’s 4th Congressional District.

“The people of the 4th CD cannot endure another term of Marilyn Musgrave,” said Paccione. “She has grown too close to the special interests in Washington, leaving her out of touch with the people here at home, and distracted from the critical issues facing America and this state. She had an opportunity to make a difference in Washington, and she has failed.”

I’ve always been puzzled why so many people say they find what goes on in the workplace boring. It’s in the workplace where our prospects in life are determined - as individuals and communities. And work is just naturally full of drama. There’s the continual battle between supervision and workers to get/give more-less work, more-less pay. And just wait to someone aggrieved when their boss tells them they’re getting written up for taking the sick pay they were told they had “earned.”

Add to that the effrontery / cheek / chutzpah / brass of the Bush Administration in using Katrina as the excuse to rid themselves of workplace protections. Someday, I hope, the flimsy excuse: “The Hurricane made me do it.” will wear thin. Just about the same time as: “Give the work to Halliburton with a no-bid, no-oversight contract.” Now that would be something.

This is a follow up to yesterday’s post, Naming and Blaming the Beast.

How odd that for years Grover Norquist-ites have gotten away with calling government the beast and, as a result, destroying our public infrastructure and the lives of all who count on it.

Many of us live in states and even countries in which the philosophy of starving the beast rules our lives and our prospects. Who is the beast? The government.

But why the government? In a democracy, there is something so peculiar about seeing a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” as a beast. The government-as-beast-ites want to replace the vacuum left by the starved beast with individual liberty, but often what they mean is private enterprise - corporations.

I don't know what's worse: being without a computer all day or having to man the company booth at a business expo featuring Donald Trump.

Oh, the humanity!

^{From The Illustrated Daily Scribble.com}

Talk amongst yourselves...

When I wrote about the alacrity with which the Far Right seized on the disaster created by Hurricane Katrina as a money-making opportunity, I hadn't thought that one day later I'd be writing about a new way to wiggle out of the law and slither back to the 19th century. My bad. I was not sufficiently cynical / realistic.

This will make the suffragists and Shirley Chisholm from whom unbossed is descended and by whom it is inspried go nuts. But maybe that was the point.

I realize that many of you have discovered that the Internets™ is a cool new way to promote your campaign, issue or candidate. I agree, else I wouldn't be blogging about politics and public policy.

I think we'd also agree that progressive Democratic campaigns would do well to study the success of Dean for America's web-enabled grassroots movement.

Wow! We're two for two, so far.

Feeling smart, are ya? Basking in the glory of your 15 milliseconds of blog fame?

Don't get too confident in your newfound political genius because now it's time for a little Auntie Em style ass-kickin'.

Life is certainly easier when you pare down your responses from the universe of all possible choices. And that’s certainly what the Far Right has done. No matter what the event, the response is limited to: cut taxes, cut wages, privatize, and a few others not relevant to this story.

So if a major hurricane destroys large swaths of the Gulf Coast, what do you do? If you are a member of the Far Right, the correct answer is: Cut the wages of those who will do the rebuilding. Nothing said about ensuring there is no profiteering by the companies who will now have the freedom to pay minimal wages to those who will do the work.

What we heard on the radio before starting this trip almost made us cancel it. We weren’t so much worried about high gas prices as that there would not be any gas along the way, that we would be stranded in the Nebraska sand hills forever. As it turned out, there were no lines at the pumps, no places where we could not get gas, and the highest prices we paid were in Michigan when the trip started.

Once underway, it was all Hurricaine Katrina all the time. And all of it on NPR stations. It is hard to believe, but in all the Red States we traversed, NPR affiliates were often the only FM station we could tune in.

Rocky Mountain Institute is an entrepreneurial nonprofit organization that fosters the efficient and restorative use of resources to make the world secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining. We do this by inspiring business, civil society, and government to design integrative solutions that create true wealth.

RMI has some very interesting backgrounders and policy ideas on refugee settlements that apply quite well to FEMA's inept response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Nearly two years ago, I posted the following comment on a thread about joblessness at Daily Kos:

Subliminal meme for 2004

Looks like the NeoCons are gearing up in the Wurlitzer. Just in the last 2 weeks:

Q3 Labor Dept spin
David Kay
Marriage Protection Act
Mayor Streeter office bug
Schiavo case
Late-term abortion
Generalissmo Evangelical
Cuba travel ban veto threat
CIA's responsibility for bad intel
Wal-Mart immigration sweeps
Princess Di is a slut (okay, that's a freebie)

Not sure what to make of it? Is this a sign of a NeoCon binge in case it loses the WH or is this simply throwing red meat to enliven the radical right to shore up the base?

On our trip through Nebraska, we saw bison, antelope, elk, prairie dogs, birds, birds, birds, cattle. Every single one of them is owned, because all the land on which they live is owned. It is either in private hands or it is public land. The elk herds now in rutting season are owned, whether they realize it or not.

Welcome to the ownership society.

Hurricane Katrina reminds us that Mother Nature bats last. The Psalms speak of feeling God’s presence in the winds. In recent decades we have forgotten about nature. We have assumed we could control these forces. But there are a lot more believers in the power of the wind and rain, a lot more who now see nature as far less benign, far less easy to ignore.

In my prior piece in this series, when I mentioned that I was going to remote parts of Nebraska, I was told: “Why go there? There is nothing to see.

Oh, but that is so wrong. What I saw there was us, all of us - at Scott’s Bluff, Nebraska - the national monument, not the town just to the northeast.

I am part way through a few weeks of car travels that are taking me mostly through Red States. I am 1200 miles, as the freeways flow, from my starting point in the deepest of deep blue cities in a state that is mostly purple with a few red spots. So far, I have close to an extra 2000 miles on the car thanks to taking back roads and indirect routes to get where I am. For the next few days, I am in Colorado. Before that, it was Nebraska, and that’s the state I want to talk about here.

Unbossed reader Matt sent me a private email which he has graciously agreed to allow me to post. Though we don't agree on certain points I felt it was an important sentiment worth discussing more fully.

You wrote: " The harsh political reality: tagging Bush as a racist is a losing proposition."

The reason why people want to talk about racism in relation to Katrina is not because they want to tag Bush as a racist. Rather, Katrina provides pretty powerful prima facie evidence that racism is still a strong force in America today.

Continued after the jump.

I am utterly appalled at the gross incompetence of the Bush Administration's response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

DHS head Michael Chertoff's self-serving display on the Sunday morning news programs of blaming the victims and insinuating that local officials failed their communities was nothing less than vomit-inducing. Note to DHS: The mayors, parish presidents, et al., are hurricane victims too and have suffered deep losses of homes, family members, and friends. They are shell-shocked. That's why unaffected FEMA staff and National Guard troops are deployed in civil emergencies, dumbass.

It would be very easy to ascribe racist motives to the wholly inadequate and disorganized federal rescue and relief efforts considering the harrowing images that emerged from New Orleans featuring predominantly African American residents.

Don't let Bush and the NeoCon cabal off the hook that easily.

Unions have been big news this year, but missing were stories on public employees, where 30-40% are union members, and working conditions most under attack. Republican governors in Indiana, Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky have unilaterally eliminated public sector workers’ right to bargain collectively and rescinded their collective bargaining agreements and imposed inferior working conditions. Governors or legislatures in Iowa, Mississippi, and California are attempting to do the same. President Bush removed bargaining rights for Department of Homeland Security employees.

It's long been feared that the City of New Orleans would take a direct hit from a hurricane. What made it such a danger was not the prospect of hurricane force winds directly hitting a densely populated region -- that is disastrous in and of itself -- but that's not what made the New Orleans' scenario so frightening.

No, the unthinkable component was the risk of the levees breaking. In the last few days we've seen the results of the levee breaches. The consequences were widely known and inevitable -- if the levee at Lake Pontchartrain was breached, the city would fill with water until it was level with the lake. The pumps would be overwhelmed and break. The city would drown.

The disaster would be overwhelming, the devastation complete, the human suffering incomprehensible. These facts were all well established when the levees broke on Monday.

^Reuters

A man holding a baby uncovers the body of a dead man, suspected to have been sitting there for two days, outside the New Orleans Convention Center September 1, 2005. Several people among the thousands of stranded evacuees from Hurricane Katrina have died while waiting outside the building, with no sign of imminent help on the way. 01 Sep 2005 REUTERS/Rick Wilking

My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub. - Grover Norquist

An old man dies on the side of the road because Grover Norquist wants permanent tax cuts which have bankrupted the federal govenment's capacity to invest in adequate infrastructure to prevent, if not mitigate, catastrophic destruction in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

That's repugnant.

Labor Day is a good time to assess how American workers are doing.

The answer is "not very well". Because workers lack bargaining power as individuals, corporations have been able to hold down wages, make us fearful of losing our jobs, and keep more profits for themselves.

Among working Americans, poverty is up, wages are down.

^{Cartoon from BigMattress.com}

It seems oddly appropriate over the Labor Day holiday to examine the real effects of the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights (TABOR) on states' fiscal health, citizens' quality of life, and government budget-balancing on the backs of working Americans.

For the next few days, we'll investigate what TABOR is (and what it isn't), who supports TABOR and why, the national trend to promote TABOR and it's evil little sister TEL (Tax and Expenditure Limits), and ways for average citizens to fight back against well-funded anti-tax zealots.

Now, I will be the first to admit that TABOR is hardly a scintillating subject. Auntie Em is filled to the gills with fair-exchange coffee trying to stay awake while poring over tax policy white papers.

So let's look at this in a way in which we can all relate — your own personal income.