Catherine (Sr. Mary) Leahy passed on with God into her new life about 3:45 this
Saturday morning. The nursing staff had checked her at 3:30 and she was resting
peacefully, when they checked again 15 minutes later, she had slipped away –
just the way she would have wanted to.
Her Vigil and Funeral Services are pending – possibly on Friday with burial on
Saturday or on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of the next week. I will email you
when they are finalized today or tomorrow.

update on my cousin

from an email:

As of this afternoon, Thursday, about 3 p.m., Mary (Catherine) is still with us
but just barely. She has steadily declined since you visited with her and now
she seems to be just waiting quietly within herself and seems calm and
peaceful. Her breathing is shallow and her heart beat weak so the end of her
present journey seems to be very near its end but we can’t be sure.

AC Transit Cuts

California’s new, um, governor ran on a platform of cutting taxes. Yay low taxes. We can all keep the money we would have paid to register our new Hummers. Yay. Um, but there’s a bit of a problem. No money left for everything. So we’ll cut public transportation. Only poor people don’t have cars and they don’t vote. Or they can take advantage of the new low car registration fees and buy themselves Hummers! It’s like having your own bus.

My girlfriend, though, is not happy about this as she is one of those carless types. Yes, one of the things that I like about San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley is that you don’t need a car to get around. Cola does not even have a driver’s liscence. Somehow, though, she knows more about car engines and how they work than I do. Anyway. The AC Transit Press Release thingee has a sample letter to send to the Governor and a link to find your local assembly member. Click on “find my district” on the left. Even if you are not a Californian, you can contact the governor. The smog from California’s cars warms the whole globe. Cutting public transit is penny wise and pound foolish. Less transit means more cars on the road. This means more air pollution, which means global enviromental catastrophe, higher rates of asthma, which increase public health costs, greater wear and tear on the roads, which inscreases road repair costs, and it creates difficulty for low income people or carless people getting to and from work, which increases the unemplyment rate, which increases public assitance costs. Really, the smartest economic choice for California would be to hike car registeration fees tremendously and make all public transit free while extending it’s reach and hours. This would cut pollution, cut traffic and make it easier for people to get to work. Every hour that somebody spends commuting is a non-monotized, zero-production work hour. It’s a tax on the worker and on the economy. So then the economy of California would rebound from the recession. Asthma rates would decline. The state would suddenly be awash in funds again. Maybe we could use them to fix the schools or fund the arts or something.
Here’s the Sample Letter:

MMDD, 2004
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

I am writing to urge you to exempt AC Transit from the ERAF shift you proposed in the May budget revision. 230,000 East Bay residents rely on AC Transit every day to get to school, work, retail and recreation sites and medical appointments. Many of these people have no other transportation alternatives. AC Transit provides essential service to our East Bay community.

Your proposal places a disproportionate amount of the burden of the statewide ERAF shift (9%) on the shoulders of Bay Area transit riders.

AC Transit has faced severe budget cuts over the past three years and has taken prudent measures to respond to the economic challenges. It has made significant reductions in expenditures and personnel, deferred capital expenditures and increased fares. AC Transit has already cut 10% of its service in response to the current budget crisis. The additional revenue reductions that you have proposed via an ERAF shift – $20 million for AC Transit – will result in further personnel layoffs and service reductions, decimating critical services by forcing the elimination of routes, many of which are essential for school children, senior citizens, and workers.

As a consequence of your proposal AC Transit would lose 8% of its budget and have to cut the equivalent of all of its weekend or all of its school service (AC Transit carries 60,000 school children daily).

I urge you to reconsider the burden you have placed on AC Transit and all of those who depend on AC Transit every day, and to continue to exempt transit districts from the ERAF shift.

Sincerely,
 
cc: Legislative Delegation:
Senator Liz Figueroa
Senator Don Perata
Senator Tom Torlakson
Assembly Member Joe Canciamilla
Assembly Member Wilma Chan
Assembly Member Ellen Corbett
Assembly Member John Dutra
Assembly Member Loni Hancock

update

I just wanted to note that the bay area voted overwhelmingly against the recall and did not vote for the governator, which might be why East Bay transit is facing disproportionate budget cuts. Just an aside.

Dirty Bombs, Dirty Tricks

The government just released some of the henious plot by Jose Padilla, US Citizen arrested and held extra-constitutionally for months, accused of being in al-Qaida. He was denied many constitutional rights and has yet to be charged. But, recall, we was accused of trying to build a dirty bomb. Today the feds said that he was giong to explode a dirty bomb made out of uranium. To which several nuclear scientists said, “oh no! not uranium! It might, um, not hurt anything at all.” One reported that he uses a brick of uranium as a door stop.

Yes, it’s radioactive. If you get a whole mess of uranium, you can start a chain reaction where it will all explode and create a huge of a mess and cause highly dangerous radioactive waste to go everywhere. That kind of device is called a nuclear bomb. If you just take some uranium and attach it to some dynamite to make a dirty bomb, well, it’s not so bad. The radioactive waves emitted from uranium won’t even penetrate your skin. You can stand around in the same room with it an not be harmed. Simply, it’s not dangerous unless you eat it or inhale it. that’s why using oodles of depleted uranium in warfare is dastardly, because it gets blown up into a fine dust which people breathe. And it’s why exploding a small amount of it in an urban area is kind of lame. It could be cleaned up by folks with protection from eating it or breathing it.
Also, spent fuel rods are dangerous to handle, dangerous to transport and would kill anyone who handled them in a dirty bomb plot. But once exploded with dynamite? Not so dangerous at all. Dirty bombs are interesting to al-Qaida only because they are scary to people. And why are they scary? Because the Bush administration, instead of preventing the populace from coming to harm by arming it with information, has decided to increase risks, play up fear and cause panic. But hey, any city big enough to merit a dirty bomb probably votes democrat anyone, so who cares, right?
It would be nice to see the Bush administration follow the law and respect the rights of Padilla. I mean, he’s a citizen, even. What’s up with the FBI and federal law enforcement anyway? Do they have no ability to back off when they have no case. Remember Wen Ho Lee, Los Almos lab guy who had his reputation smeared for months while they claimed he was spying for China. They finally had to give up when it turned out the only thing he was guilty of was being of the same race as the government of China. There’s defeinitely a spy-like connection there. Or not. And the latest? The FBI just arrested an installation artist who had some lab equipment in his house for an installation he was working of for Mass MoCA. It should be obvious by now that Steve Kurtz isn’t guilty of anyhting more than being an artist, but he and two others have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against them. There’s a defense fund set up to help the artists involved in this: http://www.caedefensefund.org/ and you can read some media accounts of it at: http://www.appliedautonomy.com/cae/, An AP story, Editorial in the Buffalo News, and The Washington Post.

Ding Dong Reagan’s Dead

The blogosphere reacts. Actually, that’s my girlfriend reacting, but she’s smart. But she leaves an important question unanswered:

What circle of hell has Reagan been sent to?

This requires some thought. How much did he know. Was he smart enough and present enough to understand his evil actions? Was he lightly dozing or unable to recall? Or was he activelty participating? (The structure of Hell) What levels are good canidates? I’ll create a handy guide, skipping levels which are totally unsuitable, such as “unbaptized infants”

Level Sub level sin Pro Con eternal punishment
Vestibule of Hell The neutral; uncommitted Reagan wasn’t all that aware. perhaps he was a neutral non-participant His talk wasn’t at all neutral. Also, I think he merrits more than the vestibule Stung by insects; running after banners
Circle 4 avarice (extreme greed) Chomsky described Reagan as “throwing a party for the rich.” He defunded social services while cutting taxes. Supporting reaigns of terror seem to be about more than just greed. And the punishment, while ironic is kind of light. Condemned to useless labor
Circle 7 Round 1 Violent against neighbors and fellow men: murderers, war makers, homicides Well, cutting social services to the point where mentally ill people are dying in the streets is really a form of structural violence. It’s also directly violent to attack Nicaragua and support genocide in Guatemala. He didn’t recall anything about the Iran/Contra thing. Maybe nobody bothered to tell him about it. Submerged in hot blood and Guarded by centaurs, who shoot any soul which attempts to rise
Circle 9 – Cocytus – Realm of Compound Fraud Round 2 Antenora Traitors to country Well, he was the worst president we ever had and he really screwed the majority of the people in the country. He appointed people to comissions who dismanteled those commissions, such as Clarence Thomas to the Equal Opportunity Commission which did not persue one claim under the Thomas tenure. Was his intense patriotism real or a sign of his extrme deviousness? Gripped by ice
Circle 9 – Cocytus – Realm of Compound Fraud Round 3 Judecca The Ultimate Destroyer Lots and lots of nukes. Was the world going to end? Didn’t actually bring about nuclear war. Lucifer’s three wings send forth freezing blasts of impotence, ignorance and hatred. Also, he chews three guys in his maw, including Judas.

Conclusion

I think Reagan is probably in Circle 7, but might be in 9.

Corporate Power

(Read previous post about corporations)

The Profit Motive

The purpose of a corporation is to make money and only to make money. In fact, they are legally obligated to make as much money as possible. And legally obligated to make said money in the short term. If a corporation fails to make as much money as possible, they can be sued by their stockholders who would argue that the corp had not done enough to increase the stockholders’ wealth. Corporation must always think of the short term financial interests of their stockholders first and everything else second.
This means that if they can figure out a way to make money, they must do it. For example: tobacco companies. They sell cigarettes to children in the third world. They park logo-decorated vans outside of elementary schools and tell kids that American kids smoke their brand. And they have to do it. If company X stopped doing that while all the other companies still did it, they could be sued by their shareholders. Tobacco companies have to lobby against laws designed to protect people from second hand smoke. They have to fight public health measures against them. Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs on earth. More so than heroin. And smoking-related deaths are a major problem around the world. Tobacco companies are shortening lives and hurting quality of life around the world. Yet the US government blocks any efforts to outlaw smoking in other countries. Even ones that really cannot afford the additional health costs brought about by smoking (life long smoking, starting from elementary school). Countries that try to create minimum smoking age laws are bullied by the Us government. Why? Because the tobacco industry has super-good lobbyists. They have to. It maximized profits. It’s the law.
Ok, now take an example of a company that produces 7 tons of dioxin every year. This is a fictitious example. (However, dioxin is an extremely common pollutant, produced ad a byproduct of many process, including burning diesel and bleaching paper. It’s also one of the most carcinogenic chemicals on earth and was a major “inactive” component of agent orange and currently lurks in Monsanto product Roundup.) Let’s say the dump all 7 tons into the San Francisco Bay. Right now, it is illegal to dump dioxin into the bay. (And in fact, most dioxin pollution in the bay is no longer from industrial dumping, but comes from things like folks burning dino-diesel in semi-trucks.) Let’s say it would cost $100 million to alter their production lines so they produce 75% less dioxin. Lets’ say it would cost $2 million to dispose of the dioxin in a legally allowable manner. Let’s say the fines for dumping dioxin in the bay are $3 million and 4 inspectors work in the entire Bay Area and only visited the factory once in the last two years. All these numbers are made up. So, on average, if the inspectors only come every other year, the fines for illegally dumping dioxin would be $1.5 million per year. And if they only produce dioxin on Tuesdays and the inspectors do not time their visits accordingly, the cost of dumping dioxin in the bay is $300,000 per year. That means, that it’s cheaper to pay on average $300,000 in fines for dumping carcinogenic toxins in the bay than disposing of it legally. That’s the behavior that would maximize short term profit for stockholders. That’s a cost of doing business. That’s what capitalism is all about. And they’ll lobby against higher fines with their vast wealth. And they’ll lobby against being mandated to install equipment to reduce dioxin. And they’ll hire a team of extremely good lawyers when people sue saying they’ve gotten cancer. So the only way to make them reduce output is if a concerned public hounds government with the same tenacity as the corporate lobbyists or if they threat of lawsuits becomes strong enough that they feel they can best protect their assets by taking action now to prevent future losses.
This is how the system has been legally and socially structured to work. Corporate structures limit financial liability. They also function to limit moral liability. It’s a bunch of people just doing their jobs. Who do you point at and say, “that’s a bad guy!”?? Chomsky says, in the movie The Corporation (I highly recommend this film), that the system is monstrous. Individuals in the system may be great people, but the system itself is evil. The system itself must be radically altered. Either the character of corporations must be entirely rethought, or they must be come much less powerful and forced to look at the interests of society. Because when the most powerful institutions in society are working against the interests of society, there is a huge problem.

What to do

Reducing corporate power! It’s the answer.

Revoking Charters

Recall that corporations are chartered in a particular state. If they keep violating the laws of that state, they can have their charter revoked. They cease to exist. However, this is like putting out spot fires. It’s a good idea to give regulatory agencies more teeth for sure. Our fictitious dioxin-producing company would be more likely to follow the law if they could be de-chartered for breaking it. But you still would have to challenge every corporation separately while the still lobbied against you and donated money to all politicians involved. In California, citizens cannot sue to revoke a charter. Only the attorney general (an elected position) can.

Ending Corporate Personhood

As I’ve said before, clearly corporations are not people. I mean, what if a real person was only concerned with making as much money as possible and saw hurting people and paying fines for breaking the law as just part of that quest. We’d say they were nuts. A sociopath, even. The legal “decision” giving corporations the rights of people must be overturned. I’ve put “decision” in quotes because no written decision exists. Before the Supreme Court was set to heart oral arguments in SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO., 118 U.S. 394 (1886), the chief justice just announced that the whole court agreed that corporations deserved the rights of people and didn’t want to hear arguments about it. And thus it became law in that once sentence. No public debate. No legal reasoning.

How to do it

In the past, the court has made decisions that were ultimately overturned. For example, the same court that decided that corporations deserved equal protection later decided (with only one dissenting vote) that African Americans did not. That decision was overturned in Brown vs The Board of Education. The Bauer decision, which said it was ok to make sodomy illegal was overturned last summer. Roe Vs. Wade is currently under attack and may be overturned. These fights seem to have some elements in common.

Activism

People were in the streets protesting against anti-sodomy laws. Protesting against Jim Crow and now protesting against abortion rights. Activism increases public awareness, gets attention, lets the other side know that you’re serious. The Montgomery Bus Boycott ended segregation on public transit. It was a court case and direct action. Both elements were needed.

Legal Action

there is now a huge mass of precedent saying corporations are people. That precedent must be challenged. A body of anti-corporate people arguments must be produced. This means getting think-tank-types: law students, professors, interested professionals, together to start writing stuff. It also means getting lawyers to start arguing stuff in courts. We need law students and some law professors to get on board. Labor Law is probably a good recruitment area.

Other Actions

I was surprised to see a note in The Corporation that two cities had passed ordinances saying they would not consider corporations people. This sounds like something Berkeley could get on board with. These ordinances may not have much legal power, but they have huge symbolic values. They show that people care about the issue and are engaged in government and politics. They show that voters care. Which can affect court appointments.

Obstacles

I think this is something that could happen and something that’s worth working on. However, right now corporations have way more resources than us and have more rights than us. They will fight this any way that they can. Heck, they have to. It will not be easy. But something must be done. Our system is unsustainable an cannot be fixed without radically changing the dominant institutions. Institutions that control resources must be publicly accountable. We cannot put essential life-sustaining resources in the hands of organizations that only look for short term-profits. It’s suicide. We can do this. We must do this.

Lyrics

The American Composers Forum is sponsoring a Christmas Carol Contest. They’re looking for music for choral groups, SATB (Sopranao, Alto, Tenor, Bass). Lyrics can have a winter or a Christmas theme and must either be public domain or have written permission of the author.

So I’m having a contest too. Write lyrics! I’m looking for mostly winter or Solstice themed, but feel free to submit Christmas lyrics too. One lucky person will have their lyrics set to music and submitted to this contest. Woot. Also, I will endeavor to find a performance of the work in another venue in the case that it doesn’t win the contest… You will receive a copy of the sheet music, a recording of whatever performance I can put together, all the benefits of being a lyracist, um, and other fun things, like, um, dinner.
The deadline for turning in the music is September, but obviously, I need lyrics well in advance of that. Send as many sets of words as you want. Thenk you

I am in Los Angeles

I came to visit my cousin. She is 86 years old, owing to her actually being my grandmother’s first cousin and my first cousin twice removed. She lives in a convent in Brentwood, as she is a nun. She is my sole remaining female relatives. How many relatives have I watched slowly die? I sat at my grandmothers’ bedsides. I sat at my mother’s. Now, at my cousin’s. She hasn’t eaten anything in three days and barely takes liquid. She nearly died a few weeks ago. She had an anti-biotic resistant infection in her blood. The nuns called my dad saying that they didn’t think she would live through the weekend, but then she did. My dad didn’t tell me, because I was so far away. I’ve been complaining about this to other people and not him, but actually, I’m not mad. You can’t undo the past. And I’m kind of glad I didn’t know.

It’s been nearly a year since I last came to see her. Last July or August I came by myself. Normally, I came every time with Christi. Now I’m here with my dad. She didn’t open her eyes to recognize me. I’m not sure if she was asleep or awake when I held her hand and talked to her about grad school. I can hear her voice so clearly in my head, being excited when I told her I was going away to school. But now she’s nearly mute. Sister Jeanne said that she can be more talkative around lunchtime.
I didn’t come over fall break or thanksgiving or winter break or spring break. Now, I’m finally here. And she. like everyone I love, will die or leave. I expect to be back here soon.

Corporate “People”

Our country is currently controlled by moneied interests who donate vast sums to both major parties. Corporate money now has greater voting power than humans in the United States. Legal systems have been set up that make this situation difficult to combat. This is a bit about how they work and where they’re vunerable

What is a Corporation? – Definitions

The Daytrader’s Glossary defines a corporation as a “form of business organization characterized by a state charter or articles of incorporation enabling certain rights separate from its owners. Common features of a corporation include limited liability of the owners, issuance of stock in evidence of ownership, election of directors and officers by vote of shareholders and taxation of the corporation separate to that of the owners.” Ok, so what that means is that a corporation is a type of buisiness organization with many owners. The corporation is considered a legally seperate entitiy from it’s owners. It is a thing that exists in the world, seperate from it’s owners. Corporations limit liability of the owners. What this means is that the owners are not personally responcible for the debts of the corporation. If the company runs out of money and owes many debts, the company can go bankrupt, but the owners are not responcible for the debt. So if Mitch and I own a corporation that owes $50,000 to Sophie, and the corporation only has $20,000 in assets, Mitch and I personally don’t owe the remaining $30,000 and too bad for Sophie.

Corporations issue stock. A stock is a share of ownership in the corporation. A person who owns one or more stocks (also called “shares”) is a stockholder. The percentage of the corporation owned by any stockholder is the number of shares owned divided by the total number of shares issued. Stockholders get to vote on resolutions and on the directors and officers of the corporation. One share is one vote (except in special cases, like the Google IPO). So if you own 50 shares, you get 50 votes. Corporations also, as a seperate legal entity have tax liability. The organization owes taxes, but since liability is seperated, the owners do not owe those taxes.
Corporations are chartered. This means that some state causes them to come into existance. People who want to start a corporation file paperwork in some state and pay some fees and then they have a corporation. The state could, at some point, decide to revoke the charter of a corporation and then it would cease to legally exist.
Ok, so corporations are collectively owned and the owners have no liability. They are chartered in some state. Under law, corporations exist as things in the world. what sort of things?

Corporations are People too

In 1886, the supreme court of the Unites States decided that corporations were legally people. There was a case about corporate taxation before them. SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO., 118 U.S. 394 (1886) And they decided that the 14th Amendment and Equal Protection applied to corporations, as they were legally people. An excellent explination what what this means and how it came about. This is called a “legal fiction.” So when corporations are in court, judges employ a fiction and pretend that corporations are people. This means that corporations, as people, get all the rights that people get. Free speech. The right to bear arms. Protections against unlawful search and seizure. The whole bill of rights and every other constitutional right too. All the rights that were written for actual, real-life, non-fictional people.
But corporations have limitted liability. You can’t send a corporation to jail, obviously. And the owners can’t lose more than their stock. So coporations are super-people. They have all the same rights that you and I do, plus they don’t get sick, fall and break their arm, go to jail, die of old age, or have any human frailties. The only bad things that can happen to corporations s that they can run out of money or they can have their charter revoked.

What does it mean for corporations to have human rights?

The idea that corporation deserve human rights, and, in fact, deserve more rights than humans is deeply troubling. One of the “rights” they have is freedom of speech. This means that a corporation can officially say whatever the heck it wants, just like a person can. Nike argued that this meant the have the right to lie about whether or not their shoes are made with sweatshop labor. It also means that corporations have the right to political speech, such as trying to influence the outcome of a poltical contest. Donating money to a politician is cirrently viewed as a type of “speech,” so corporations have the right to give money to candidates that they agree with. Many coporations have way more resources than individuals. This means, practically, they have more freedom of speech than us lowly humans. And they’re basically feudal. Corporations are heirachical. your boss tells you what to do. You, as an employee don’t get to elect leadership or have any influence in anything aside from worrying whether or not you’re going to get fired. Yeah, some employees own stock, but in their role as an employee they do not have any rights in influencing the direction of the corporation aside from what the corporation chooses to grant them. Which means that a textile company which employees 1000 people at minimum wage and 100 highly paid managers and who has 100 rich stockholders can use it’s wealth to lobby to have the minimum wage reduced. It can publish ads in newspapers saying the minimum wage is too high. It can give sums of money to politicians that want to elmininate minimum wage entirely. It can put posters on the walls telling emplyees that minimum wages are a bad idea and unions are evil. It can make them watch videos saying that. So there would exist a company where 200 people controlled the wealth generated by 1000 (or 1100) people and decide in what political direction the money should be thrown. The 1000 workers could all decide to vote in favor of minimum wage increases, but they proabbly don’t have much money to give to politicians, and the corporation does. A politician in favor of minimum wage increases would be at a financial disadvantage. And many the company gives equal sums to both major parties as long as they keep wages down. Then the workers can either vote Green or it doesn’t matter who they vote for, because the company, working against their interests, bought the major parties.

Corporations have too many rights

and they keep getting new ones all the time. All these weird trade organizations, like the WTO have secret ruling councils that periodically decide that corporations should have more and more rights. Ones that humans don’t get. As citizens, you and I can’t vote about the WTO. So we work for feudal institutions who are given extra rights by pseudo-government bodies made up of the same people who own the corporations. Oh, and your pension fund? It’s invested in those same corporations. The fund managers want the stock of the companies to go up. So they vote to lobby for lower wages. What this means is that your own retirement fund money is controlled by a financial manger who is activelly lobyying to lower your wages. You own money is being used as a weapon against you. when coporations have too many rights, we are serfs. The product of our labor is being sued to harm us. Our own prpoerty is a weapon against us. And our laws can be overtuned by super-national bodies, like the WTO, which we get absolutely no say in.

Things are bad, but we can undo them

The proplem is this stupid legal fiction. Corporations exist to make money for their owners. That’s not a person! First of all, people can’t own each other! What should happen is that SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO should be overturned. Stupid descisions have been overtunred before. The will of the people does influence the court. So step one is letting people know about this. Human people. And human people need to let their voices be heard, corporate personhood was a bad idea and needs to stop now.