DEEP GREEN PERSPECTIVE

I live in Metro Nashville Council District One, on the northwest side of Nashville, about twenty minutes from downtown. We are at the end of a dead end road. I can walk out in my back yard naked. I can walk out in my front yard naked, as long as I keep an ear out for approaching vehicles. I’ve never had an embarrassing moment from this. Only the glow in the sky at night and the steady low rumble from a nearby interstate highway betray our proximity to a large population center. To our north and west, there is more, much more, of the same kind of back country. There are even creeks deep enough and clean enough to swim in, if you know where to go. The population is a mix of hip, urban refugees and the country people who have always been there. One of our aged neighbors was born in the house she lives in. She has never lived anywhere else.

To the east and south, it’s a different story. The first thing you find, heading south from our home, is a decidedly upscale neighborhood. The yards are full of signs for Howard Gentry’s mayoral campaign, because the neighborhood is almost entirely black. “The Black Brentwood,” I hear it’s called—but there is unease in this Eden. Joggers almost all seem to choose to exercise with a golf club or similar long, heavy object in one hand, and I don’t think it’s for weight training—it’s because, when you turn a corner in this “Black Brentwood,” you find yourself in another kind of neighborhood entirely, a neighborhood of rundown houses, of yards in which chained dogs have created packed, bare circles around their shabby doghouses, a neighborhood where the cars in the driveway are old and in need of bodywork and maybe have been there for quite a while. I never see joggers there, with or without golf clubs. There are big, open fields and shrubby woods along the lower reaches of White’s Creek just past this neighborhood, but they have “for sale” signs or “future home of blahblahblah church” signs prominently displayed. Further in towards town there are more shabby neighborhoods, and Clarksville Pike, which is a two-lane road up by us, widens out to eight lanes where it crosses the beginning of Trinity Lane. On Friday afternoons, Nation of Islam members walk out in traffic stopped at the light to sell newspapers. They never offer them to me.

Oh, by the way, our district also includes Metro Nashville’s main landfill, aka dump. And, just a mile or so south of us, developers simply flattened a hill in order to create a subdivision. But that’s in the Nashville urban services district, and our road is not.

So, it’s a very diverse district, with tractor-driving, cow herding country people at one end and urban blacks, rich and poor, at the other. The district has tended to elect blacks to council for many years. This year we find five candidates running for the seat; one is definitely white, three are definitely black, and one is running such a low-profile campaign that I have been unable to uncover any information about her. She’s not even in the phone book.

To be fair and random, I will discuss the candidates in alphabetical order. First off the block is Ken Jakes, who is the owner of Ellis Jakes Produce, an old-line Nashville produce wholesaler. He received mention on the Nashville Scene’s “Pith in the Wind” blog for giving away watermelons as a way to introduce himself to local voters. Writer Jeff Woods characterized this as “an act of political genius.” I just wish I’d known about it in time to run down to Clarksville Highway to meet the candidate and pick up my free watermelon! Pith in the Wind quoted him as saying, “I want to see honesty and integrity back in our council. They’re making allowances for fat-cat developers that they don’t allow for everyone else in Davidson County.” In an article in the Tennessean, Mr. Jakes sounds an eloquently populist note, saying, “I have had enough. I have had enough of the laws Metro government passes and enforces on the Nashville people. I am tired of the planning department making recommendations with total disregard for the people.” Based on these remarks, I wanted to find out more. Mr. Jakes does not have a website, unlike some candidates in this race, so I put in a phone call to him, and here’s what I found.

What seems to have specifically prompted his ire was witnessing what he considered a gross violation of the zoning law by Metro Council. When someone asks for a change in zoning for a parcel of land, they are supposed to have a specific plan for the land to submit along with the zoning request, including landscaping and a timetable for the project, but Metro has apparently granted Gaylord Entertainment a zoning change for a 100+ acre parcel near Opryland without a plan or a timetable. “It’s supposed to be available for public comment,” Ken complained. “How can the public comment on it if there’s no plan?”

He went on to say,“Gaylord is the best thing that ever happened to Donelson and one of the best things that ever happened to Nashville. I’m not anti-Gaylord, but Gaylord should not be above the law. A lot of people in this country think they’re above the law.” I decided not to get into national politics with the guy. Keep it local. Cowardly of me, perhaps. The line between discretion and cowardice is thin and cloudy….

We continued on the subject of the Nashville-Gaylord relationship. “Metro wants to float an $80M bond that will basically help Gaylord. I am opposed to that . We should not use tax dollars to finance private corporations.” Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

He continued, “I’m a business man, and I think we need to run Metro like a business. I mean there’s certain things, like Bordeaux Hospital, that are not going to make a profit and that’s alright. But in general, we should be behaving in ways that make good business sense.” When I asked him about the idea of widening Clarksville Highway, he said that without specifics, it would be hard to say. “I’m not anti-development, but I want whatever development happens to make sense.”

I was starting to feel like this was a guy I could live with as a council representative. I asked him if he was familiar with the concept of “Peak Oil.” He was not, but I explained it as simply as I could–the easy oil is gone and it’s going to get scarcer and more expensive from here and make everything else more expensive as it goes–”yeah, i think gas will go to 8$/gallon before it’s over—as far as switching metro vehicles to alternative fuels, I’m a businessman–give me facts and figures and I know how to decide.” Since I think that a lot of conservation decisions make very good economic sense, I felt more and more like this was a guy who would do some good on Metro Council.

So, I decided to try a sure-fire controversial issue—immigration, they call it. He stated his support for the English-first bill. “I feel annoyed when I get asked if I want to do my business in English or Spanish,” he admitted. “If people are here legally, fine, but they should learn our language. And we should crack down on the ones who are here illegally.” I am not one for telephone arguments, so I just let him know I disagreed with him and let it go at that, but since he’s probably going to read this, I’ll lay out what I think—for one thing, I think it’s easier to mull over written arguments than spoken ones, but, to the point, I see making accommodation for those who don’t speak English well enough to do business in it as no different from putting in wheelchair ramps. We need to make things accessible to the people who will use them, regardless of the language they speak or their ability to walk or climb stairs.

As for the many people who are in this country illegally, I think we need to acknowledge that they are refugees and that it is we who are making them a problem, not the other way ’round. People have been flooding out of Mexico and the rest of Central America because the ruling elites pushed NAFTA through and since then it has been destroying the social fabric of our country and theirs as it lines the pockets of their business leaders. The real solution to the immigration question is to make it possible for people to thrive economically in Mexico. As it stands, a major portion of Mexico’s foreign exchange comes from money orders sent home from America every Friday. I’m sure most of those folks would rather be home with their families. However, it benefits the elite to keep we the people poor, disorganized, and suspicious of each other, so don’t expect change from the Democrats either.

So that’s my report on Ken Jakes. Some positives, some negatives. At 48, he is the oldest candidate. I think his experience and practicality would be a good addition to Metro Council. So what if he’s a white guy? I know we’re the bane of the world, but there’s a place for everything and everybody….

Next for our consideration is William “Bug” Mason, who works in the advertising department of the Nashville Tennessean and is the son of a local minister. In a brief Tennessean interview, he championed the widening of Clarksville Highway, which immediately turned me off on him. He has a website which is peculiar in a number of ways. There’s a calendar page that reveals day after day and week after week with “no events scheduled.” When you click on the blog link, you find he has not written anything yet, which is probably a good thing, considering some of the garbled syntax on the rest of the site. “Due to his parent’s commitment to ministry at The Temple Church, and greater involvement in the community. (period)The family relocated just off Clarksville Highway from south Nashville.” is the worst example, but Dubya has proved that facility with the English language is not a bar to elective office in this country so I suppose I shouldn’t get too critical. He does call for quality, affordable daycare and 24 hour childcare, and he does point out that “a dollar should pass through our community seven times before it leaves,” so I will give him points for those suggestions. He also proposed a citizen advisory council that would meet with him quarterly for feedback, which is a good idea. Open community meetings would be even better.

But his statement, “Communities thrive when there is a presence of quality businesses within. It provides jobs to the residents in our district, while bringing valuable access and convenience to our community” is another bit of embarrassingly Bushworthy phrasing. I appreciate his call for more sidewalks, but I just have a hard time getting behind a guy who wants to widen the narrow road that’s a bar to further development in this area. I like my peace and quiet, thank you.

Next up on our list of options is Lonnell Matthews, who at 27 is the youngest candidate running. He’s also the most internet-savvy of the pack. His website is freer of grammatical errors than Mr. Mason’s, although his campaign calendar hasn’t been updated since March, (Or is it just that it’s a low-key campaign?) and he is the only District 1 candidate with a Myspace page, although I find his choice of music (Hail to the Chief) a bit pretentious. At least it doesn’t play automatically when you load the page! He has also collected a raft of endorsements, from both the Tennessee Business Council and the Tennessee Labor Council, as well as the Nashville Tennessean. He is the only candidate who has been endorsed by anybody.

He, like Mr. Mason, has a distinctly pro-development cast to his campaign pitch. “This area will be developed because of its close proximity to downtown, but it should be developed so it won’t deface the community,” he said in the Tennessean, as if there is a way to develop without defacing the natural world, without increasing traffic and pollution and noise.

One of his concerns is “The lack of housing developments that attract young professionals and their families.” He himself is just such a young professional, albeit without the family, but I wonder if he is aware of not just how rare he is but why? Is he aware of what links his other concerns—gangs, illegal handguns and dangerous drugs, single-parent households, lack of access to parks, lack of access to preventive or other health care, and lack of business diversity? This is all about the marginalizing of the lower middle class in America, and it is part of an overall strategy that is being implemented fairly anonymously and implacably by the ruling elite. I have been emailing back and forth with him on the development question, and here’s what he said:

“I think that you may have some misunderstanding about my point of view about development.  To me development does not just refer to buildings made of beams and bricks.  The word ‘development’, to me, is just as diverse as District 1.  In Scottsboro and Joelton, development means bringing enhancements to the community that will promote the rural character of those neighborhoods.  I want to build a nature center, that will promote outdoors & environmental activities, in Bells Bend Park.  Development could also be agricultural, as you have stated, and some should be.  Development can also mean converting the former Morny School to the new Joelton Community Center or other improvements to infrastructure such as:-more sidewalks in our neighborhoods-another fire hall & more EMS vehicles-better sewage systems-better mass transit.”

He was an honor student, and he seems to have some vision and some ability to listen.  He oughta be able to figure it out.

The last candidate I’ll mention is Andre Southall, a barbershop owner and former Metro Parks employee, who is offering to serve with a focus on education and increased involvement with youth. I don’t see many “Southall” signs in people’s yards, so I’m not sure how seriously to take his candidacy. He seems to be a public-spirited citizen who wants to help out, and if he’s got an extensive network of friends in this district, he may have a chance at the seat.

So, those are the choices. When I look at what they’re saying, I see them pretty much focused on the idea that the current paradigm is going to continue for the indefinite future. None of these guys are proposing serious alternatives, though I’m sure that several of them have the capacity to deal with the coming emergency as it develops. Maybe next time I’ll see if I can come up with someone who wants to run as an anti-development candidate. These elections are officially non-partisan, so we can’t just say “Green Party.” Me? I am not interested in running for public office. I’m just too private of a person.

I do want to learn how to help other people get elected, so I will be attending the Green Party’s Southeastern Regional Candidates’ School at the Ecovillage in Summertown, Tennessee on August 24-26. You can find out more about this and download a registration form by going to the website of the Tennessee Green Party, tn.greens.org, and clicking on the appropriate link.

music: Kate Wolf, “We’ve Only Got These Times We’re Livin’ In“

I have seen Michael Moore’s movie, Sicko, this week, and I have to disagree strongly with most reviewers of the film. It is not a comedy. It is a tragedy. I cried through large parts of it and sat in the theater until the credits were over and the ushers came in to clean up the seats, just trying to get my composure back enough so that I wouldn’t leave the movie house and go break out the windows at HCA. Bob Dylan’s dream of St. Augustine ran through my head–”I awoke in anger/so alone and terrified/I put my fingers against the glass/and bowed my head and cried.”

Moore’s film isn’t just about the power of the health care industry. He puts that power squarely in context, as one of the chief devices for keeping Americans in line. Caught in the pincers between the high cost of medical care and coverage and the high cost of education, most Americans need to run as gsdy as they can just to stay in place, and have no time to raise hell over the way the government treats them. Moore’s interview with Tony Benn, a former Labor MP (and one of the more radical figures in English politics, truth be told), cuts to the chase: Benn says that, in Europe, governments are afraid of their people, because people feel free enough to challenge the government if they are unhappy with things, while in the US, people are afraid of the government, because here in the land of the free, people stand to lose privileges if they protest the status quo. “How do you control people?” Benn asks, “Through fear and debt.”

This is illustrated, in a way, by a short take of Dubya interviewing a woman and finding out she works three jobs. He seems tickled and delighted, even innocent of what this means for the woman. “Uniquely american, isn’t it? ” he asks, rhetorically. “That’s fantastic!” All the running you can do to stay in place….

Moore’s solution is simple: provide guaranteed health care to all Americans, abolish private insurance companies, and regulate the pharmaceutical companies like public utilities. My own opinion is that he is being overly generous to the pharmaceutical companies—and I am surprised that he neglected the eldercare branch of the health industry, which specializes in sucking retirees dry so that they have nothing to leave their children, even if they’ve been healthy all their lives.

The part of the movie that had me crying hardest was the segment on individuals who have become ill after cleaning up the World Trade Center collapse. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people volunteered to go down into that mess, and were highly praised for it at the time—but Moore treats us to the spectacle of Governor Pataki of New York freely admitting that they are going to make it difficult for people to prove claims that their illness stems from their service to America and their fellow human beings.

But this is America, and the state religion is Economics. Whatever earns the most money is the highest good. Former insurance claim evaluator Linda Peeno states succinctly in her Congressional testimony that she got a big promotion and a six-figure salary for denying someone a life-saving operation that would have cost the company she worked for half a million dollars. The sad part is, she gave that testimony in 1996, and nothing has changed since—nope, wrong about that, things have gotten worse since then. More people are uninsured, and insurance costs more and covers less. Maximize those profits, guys.

Hillary Clinton, who gamely came out swinging for universal health coverage in the early 90’s, has been bought by the big money boys. Nowadays, when she says, “universal health care,” she seems to mean that the government will pick up the tab for anybody the insurance companies don’t want to touch. It’s weird to read her health care proposals—she gets all the facts about the insurance and pharmaceutical companies right, she just doesn’t admit the conclusion they point to—that a for-profit health care system is a for-profit system before it is a health care system, and that makes it part of the problem, not part of the solution. And that’s about how it is for all the “major” Democratic candidates. Sorry, Dennis Kucinich, the media will not take you seriously. Ever.

As I said, I cried through a lot of the section of the movie in which Moore takes 9-11 rescue workers to Cuba for medical treatment,. I cried as a sick, out-of-work woman who needs an inhaler that costs her $120 in the States finds that it is available to her in Cuba for—a nickel. Consider something Moore doesn’t mention in his movie: Cuba is famous all over the world for sending doctors to countries where they are needed, while the US is infamous all over the world for harassing third-world countries that violate US pharmaceutical patents and make their own drugs because they cannot afford to buy them from the US. As I reported a few months ago, big pharma commonly makes pills for pennies that it then sells for dollars. Who are the bloodsucking drug dealers?

Speaking of bloodsucking drug dealers, Bill Frist is now attempting to greenwash himself by shilling for “Onevote,” a worldwide antipoverty movement, while our “Democratic” governor, Phil Bredesen, is playing dumb about releasing poor innocent Philip Workman from death row. That’s the thing about the health care vampires—their private lives give them away. Phil, do you get your jollies from Workman’s suffering? That’s perverted! And Bill, you’re gonna have to do a lot more than give idealistic speeches an the occasional, well-publicized free heart operation to redeem yourself. I know, you can diagnose those Africans just by watching videos of them, but if you really want to turn over a new leaf, start advocating universal public health care here in the US.

One of Tony Benn’s points was that “if we can pay to blow people up in a war, we can pay for universal health care,” but here is a caveat for the US: we’re not actually paying for this war, not just yet. We’re borrowing money to fight it, and no matter how soon we come to our senses and quit trying to subdue Iraq, we’re going to be paying for Bush’s war for a long time. In fact, that may have been one of the secret reasons for the invasion: paying for the war will tie the hands of Bush’s successors, no matter how well-intentioned or even radical they may be. Even if we confiscate all the wealth of all the neocons and defense contractors who have gotten rich off this fiasco, there’ll still be money owed to the Chinese and the Saudis and all the other countries who are still willing to buy our paper. Just for the record, the Saudis have a better health care system than we do; the Chinese do not.

So, if part of the neocon secret agenda is to tie up the US economy so that social welfare spending is not possible, what’s the point? The point is that we, the people, are expendable as far as they are concerned. We can just die…less competition for the resources, y’know?

What job growth there has been in the US economy has been in the “service sector.” The proper name for those who work in the service sector is, “servants,” although that is conveniently ignored in this country. We don’t like thinking of ourselves as servants, but that’s how the elite sees us. Cannon fodder, best steered towards having strong backs and weak minds.

I’m not just badmouthing the Republicans here. The Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not going to alter the status quo on this issue, or any other. They are going to act as if forcing everybody to pay protection money to the insurance companies, even if you have to create a tax subsidy to do it, is universal health care. It’s time to hold their feet to the fire. If there’s any life left in our democracy, it’s time to challenge the ruling elite electorally. If they won’t challenge the health care monopoly let alone the defense department, maybe, just maybe we can replace them and turn this country around. Moore’s movie has the potential to bring together Americans of every political stripe under a common banner. I wish him success.

music: Terry Allen, “The Doll“

Meanwhile, the mess in Washington just gets uglier. Democrats shot themselves in the foot this week when Senator Ben Nelson, who is technically a Democrat, sided with the Republicans in a committee vote on whether to cut off funding for Dick Cheney’s office in retaliation for his continued stonewalling of any attempt at Congressional oversight. Nelson is widely considered to be the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. He helped get Sam (Muss)Alito on the Supreme Court, supported John Bolton’s nomination to the UN, and is against allowing women to have power over their own bodies in the matter of abortion. With Democrats like that, who needs Republicans?

The sad news is that this indicates that, since they can’t get it up for cutting off funds for Cheney or even slapping Alberto Gonzalez on the wrist for lying under oath, and the main reaction to Bush’s utterly self-serving commutation of Louis Libby’s sentence seems to have been mere dismay, we can expect more business-as-usual from the Demopublicans. Sure, there are a few subpoenas being issued here and there, but the Bush junta has got the Supremes and a big chunk of the federal judiciary in their back pocket, and somehow I don’t think they’re too worried about lawsuits.

The Democrats could have stopped all this a long time ago, but they didn’t argue with the stealing of the 2000 election, they didn’t argue with the invasion of Iraq as a response to 9-11, they didn’t argue with the appointment of highly partisan, activist judges to the Supreme and other courts, they played along with denying the relief of bankruptcy to people whose lives have been destroyed by medical debts, they didn’t argue with the stealing of the 2004 election, they temper their calls for a change in Iraq with an insistence that Iraq turn the majority of its oil reserves over to US corporations…the list goes on. Like crustaceans in a pot (and politicians and crustaceans have more in common than I even want to go into right now!), they have tried to play it cool while the water temperature around them slowly rises, and now it is just about too late to stop the Bush junta. And we’re all going to boil–not just a few overpaid, overweight Washington politicians.

The truth is, the Dems are complicit in Bush’s war crimes and domestic crimes because they want to be. They view competition for leadership of this country as competition for the spoils of power, not the privilege and duty of making sure the best outcome for the most people is the one that happens.

And the truth is, there is a rising perception in this country that, although the Democratic landslide of 2006 was intended as a mandate for change, those who were supposedly empowered by that landslide lack the political will to make those changes. It is my hope and prayer that this betrayal, predictable as it was, will not result in a deepening cynicism and a turning away from the political process, but that instead the energy of America’s anger with its elite leadership will be channelled into overturning that leadership and creating the democracy this country was intended to be in the first place. Already we have Cindy Sheehan promising to challenge Nancy Pelosi for her Congressional seat if Ms. Pelosi does not come out for impeachment of the lying scum who make up the Bush junta. We need hundreds, if not thousands, of Cindy Sheehans. It’s now or never.

Music: David Rovics, “Crashing Down,” “Waiting for the Fall”

The good news is that, so far, this hurricane season is a bust. Upper-atmosphere winds have picked up speed, and that keeps HH from forming. The bad news is, the weather has other ways to be extreme. In this country, we have been focussed on flooding in Texas, but England’s had the same problem, with much of its wheat crop rotting in the field. And of course, it snowed in Buenos Aires for the first time since 1918. How does that fit in with global warming? It fits in with the weather getting crazy, that’s how.

Meanwhile, there’s good news in a rising hue and cry over the framing of ethanol as an ecological fuel, with the unlikely trio of Fidel Castro, The Economist, and UN Environmental Program Director Achim Steiner all agreeing on the risk ethanol poses to the world food supply.

In the US, Rep. John Dingell, the Representative for the Big Three Automakers (and, to be fair, an longtime, outspoken advocate of universal health care), gets our Truth In Strange Places award this month for calling for a carbon tax that would add fifty cents a gallon to the price of gasoline. He also said that he didn’t expect his proposal to be adopted. He’s probably right. Congress is going to go on bending to the special interests until tidewater laps at the capital steps. And then it will be too late. So, enjoy this summer as much as you possibly can, folks. It’s probably never going to be this good again.

music: The Goddess Alchemy Project, “Secrets”

Solar Tribe, “Big Bang”

I appreciate the overall tone of that song, but I have to take its gallows references as a metaphor for the end of a dysfunctional identity–like being a member of the Bush/Cheney administration—not the termination of a human life. Scum that they are, I wish them no harm. When I hear the refrain, ” I’d like to see him dance.” I do not visualize Mr. Bush dancing at the end of a rope. I see him—and his wife, and all that whole sad, inhibited, psychotic crowd–dancing around a fire at a Rainbow Gathering, dancing long past midnight to raging drums and shakers and shrill flutes, their eyes unfocused, sweat pouring off their bodies, hair gone wild, ripples of ecstasy shimmering through their brains, having the time of their lives at last. I don’t want the Bush junta hung, folks. I want them, as the Firesign Theater calls it, “returned for regrooving.” Enough said.

This month’s “truth in strange places” award goes to Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, who is famous for calling global warming “a hoax.” He joined with Senators Jim Jeffords, Mary Landrieu, and David Vitter to pass a bill closing the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet Channel, an Army Corps of Engineers boondoggle that helped the flooding of New Orleans last summer and has been responsible for the erosion of thousands of acres of southern Louisiana wetlands. Thanks, Jim. Now, about the rest of your record…

And we give the “one step forward, one step back” award to both Japan and Norway. Japan has decided to withdraw its troops from Iraq, and Norway is undertaking the construction of a a world seed bank on the isolated and, so far, frozen island of Spitzbergen; but the two countries teamed up to soften the International Whaling Commission’s ban on commercial whaling. The Japanese got permission to expand the number of whales they catch for “scientific study”–and oh, their scientific studies are financed by selling the whale meat they just happen to harvest for $100 a pound. Thar she blows! And I mean it–that really blows!

And finally, we give the “my dog ate my homework” lame excuse award to the Bush administration and their leading defenders in Congress, who argued with a straight face for seizure of prescription drugs that individuals bring back from Canada on the grounds that they could be used to hide dangerous chemicals for terror attacks. If you or I insisted on something that ludicrous, we’d be candidates for prescription drugs, ourselves. But nooo, this is the government…..our tax dollars at work…good grief! Fortunately, even the Republican-dominated Senate wasn’t buying that level of looniness, and the bill failed.

John and Beth will be here with you next week. Good night!

music:

James McMurtry: See the Elephant

The Waterboys: Wind in the Wires