How you gonna keep em down on the farm

Another article on how governmental actions are impacting farmers. I want you to pay particular attention to how they are being effected by the financial overhaul. As I had previously posted in regards to the stock market, the "hedges" and "options" are being eliminated that act as insurance policies for producers. This is really important and I hope my readers will make the effort to understand what it means.

I am not taking a position against what is happening, I just want people to understand that it is a fundamental change to our nation. The good side is that it eliminates the gambling of our economy, the bad news is that it eliminates the protection for some as it acts as an insurance policy.

Some endeavours, such as being a rancher or farmer, are filled with risk. Insurance should be like a savings account that is meant to be used when the risk occurs. What has happened is that instead of buying insurance, people sold risk to others. This is the same thing that options and puts do to your pension fund. The problem is that it leads to businesses and farmers and ranchers to taking more risk on because they feel they are covered. When our stock market failed and the housing market failed the system failed.

Eliminating and/or regulating these types of "hedges" is critical. The question is what is used to replace them as our system is based on them. The answer should be regulated insurance companies that are in the business of insurance rather than risky trading. The answer will be governmental savings accounts that act as insurance.

The terms that are used in the article may be foreign to some of the readers. Take the time and look up terms you don't know or ask me in the comment section and I will try and put it in simple everyday language. Be well.

A Rumbling in the Woods

Someone has something to say about Mayor Villaraigosa. And what of his e-mails, what have they read. Seems orchestrated these attacks on the mayor. I am neither a supporter or opponent; but, it seems orchestrated to take him and DWP out.

Farming

Interesting article from the Washington Post. During the Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Kagan was asked if congress could regulate what farmers grew. She dodged the question; but, knew that this had occurred during the depression.

Everyone is focusing on her failure to answer. The bigger question for me is why did that Senator ask her the question in the first place. Does he know something that we do not, like what is coming next?

LADWP in the news again.

DWP is being set up, it should be obvious. Last week their Chief Financial Officer resigned and tool a lower position. At the same time it was announced that audits were going to be conducted over their Service Request, Real Estate, Risk Management and Purchasing operations. Now it is being announced that the Council is reviewing DWP and wants citizen involvement in the reorganization.

What do you want to bet the audit comes out before the reorganization goes to the public and a few people at DWP stole money or took kickbacks. Every organization has a few miscreants. The big deal that was made on television about a couple of low level field personnel drinking on the job was aimed more at DWP than at the employees who did it. I have never worked for DWP and don't work for it now; but, I can see a smear campaign with a political agenda.

Most of the engineers at DWP believe green power is too expensive at present and didn't want to see the rate hikes. I have spoken to some of their people.

The answer is 42

Douglass Adams was the author of a series of books known as "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy (although there were four of them). In the books a supercomputer attempts to answer the question of the meaning of life, you know the answer is 42.

Well it is over 100 degrees out and rather than go out, I will sit here and write about that question. What is the purpose of life? Is it to be successful, to experience as much pleasure as possible, to have as many different experiences as possible, to help others, to "grow" spiritually? Those are all options that some people try, I don't think they are destinations in and of themselves.

We are sentient beings, our basic nature is awareness and emotion. Our awareness is fulfilled by learning. We learn through experience, observation and contemplation. As we are emotional beings we seek joy. We decide what we find joy in. Some find joy in pleasure, some in success, some in achievement, some in acquisition, joy can be associated with anything. When the joy is compulsive or obsessive it is a fetish.

In the end the best joy is joy shared. Seeking to hoard joy, to not share it is a form of narcissism. Christians are told not to hide their light; but, instead to share it. Buddha said, "Happiness never decreases by being shared". The focus of the spiritual is on sharing. The gnostics and mystery schools believe that the purpose of life is self-centered, not selfish. The difference is focusing on personal growth rather than shared growth.

I have had a couple of dozen friends and family die in the past six years or so. What they left behind is what they shared, the concern, love, confusion and the working through things. Life, to me, is about working through things with others. Sometimes others do not wish to work through things, that is the way life is. Relationship is about becoming closer by working things through, those things are negotiated, if forced there is no relationship, only duress.

So my answer is that life is about relationship. In our lives we have many relationships, each imperfect as we are imperfect. I would say our purpose is to find the best relationship that we can while having as many positive ones as we can with others.

We used to attempt to organize society around promoting positive personal relationships. We don't seem to do that anymore. We now organize society around the pursuit of selfish pleasures. That led us to where we are. Relationships are no longer valued as they were.

Throughout history the main driving force in people's lives was to develop close intimate relationships, the family was the center of people's lives rather than personal gain. That is what has changed, it really began coming apart in the 70s with the Woman's Rights movement. This is not about equal rights, it is about a tone that was set. I lived in those times and saw what happened.

During the 70s women were being told that having children and a family was slavery, they were told that they were second class citizens because they were kept out of the workforce. They were told that life was about being able to have a career. It was complete garbage. Equal pay makes sense, fairness makes sense, thinking that being a wife and mother was slavery was the lie.

When women entered the workforce in growing numbers the vast majority did not get careers, they got jobs. They lost their control over their time and the joy that comes with raising a family. Abortion became popular rather than motherhood. This is not about the woman's rights movement, it is about our changing perspective on what life is about. For the first time in history people began to decide that having a family was not worthwhile, not a thing to be sought.

They do surveys asking people what their priorities are and fewer and fewer are saying that there number one priority is having a family, it used to be the center of our lives. The alarming rate of teenage pregnancy is not about having a family, it is about having a baby rather than about the baby. Most of these young mothers are not married and don't get married.

We are perverting our nature, our human nature. We have turned from relationship to pleasure. Our societal focus ensures that we achieve neither. When you die you do not miss your playstation. Imagine dying without ever having had a sharing relationship, how lonely that would be. We cannot be satisfied without developing intimate relationships, emotional sharing.

In case you haven't noticed, I have been posting towards this point for the last week. What then is an intimate relationship, notice I did not say healthy. Healthy implies that we only deal with people who make US better, I am talking about a relationship focused on both parties, intimate. It can be assumed that consensual intimate relationships are by their very nature healthy.

Intimate relationships occur when both parties share their truth and their love. Each person's truth will be slightly different or vastly different. The internet provides an opportunity to share with all types of people; but, too often we see attacks on differences. The anonymity leads people to vent biases rather than seek understanding. It also seems to often that people act as if they were someone else, that "perfect" person who is never wrong.

If you have followed this blog for any amount of time, I hope you will understand that I am not attempting to "State the truth", I don't know the truth, I only know my truth, what I have learned and I usually write about things I am trying to figure out rather than things I "know". But, as we write our thoughts down they can appear to be statements of facts. It is the nature of writing opinions because it is a one way conversation, that is why I appreciate comments.

The best relationships are in person and have a give and take, questions and answers and opinions and thoughts and emotions, they involve an ever increasing understanding of one another. I think therefore I blog; but, the vast majority of my day involves interaction with numerous people. I am astounded at the variety of people I know and people around me are surprised.

There is one lady who is a friend of mine that used to work with me. We stay in contact and every now and then she will come to the office. She did not have a very high position and I do. She tells me that people are shocked that her and I are friends because of my position. Socially we are completely different; but, personally we just have fun discussing things. We shared our divorces pain as they occurred under similar circumstances and we shared our joys at each others endeavors. She is one of my most intimate friends and we never dated or wanted to, it wasn't about that it was about sharing similar interests. Because we are so different we share perspectives and understandings that we would not otherwise be exposed to, it is always exciting.

I think my brain stopped, it is still hot. I think I might just get something to eat. Be well and have a great week.

More Spy Lies

We now have a new story regarding the ten Russian spies. Now we are being told that Anna Chapman turned herself in. We are being told that a spy turned herself into the New York police saying she was a spy. Do you buy this garbage?

Spies don't turn themselves in, they skip the fricken country, they chew cyanide, they don't turn themselves in. I wonder what lie we will here to make this one true.

More on Gravity

This article, from the New York Times, discusses a scientist and his thoughts on gravity. I hope you read the article. I like his line at the end that scientists have know for quite awhile that gravity does not exist.

The cutting edge of science is again saying that matter and gravity do not exist. They claim that we are having a holographic experience. In essence they are attempting to prove that there is no reality, that reality is an illusion. Where do you go from there?

If there is no matter than the whole idea of evolution fails, lots of beliefs fail. String theory of quantum physics proposes that everything is one, connected. It is a scientific explanation of gnosticism. What impact will this have on thinking, on our world view.

I was speaking to a lady I work with today. I asked her if life sometimes seems surreal, she laughed and said how she had been thinking the same thing all weekend and wanted to talk to me about it, that is synchronicity. We talked about how things just don't make sense anymore.

I have many people talk to me about how the world has turned upside down and crazy. Everybody has a sense of this. Things were not always this way. Lets take a quick survey of some things.

We have seen more changes in the last two years than in the last 50 and with little, if any, debate. We watched congress pass the TARP bailout with members of congress being threatened with martial law. They were threatened with military force. We then saw the government takeover the banks, large insurance companies and the auto industry.

We hear endless drivel about global warming; but, we all know it is bunk. The BP oil spill, what a joke, ask any engineer if they could have capped that well. The housing bubble that nobody noticed until it collapsed. Do we not have any honest economists? We had farm workers and janitors buying $600,000 homes on $25,000 a year incomes.

Socially we are a complete mess. The biggest issue in churches is not what is going on around us it is whether or not they should have gay ministers or support gay marriage. The next biggest issue is all of the pedophile priests and the churches failure to act. Wife swapping is all the rage in classical suburban neighborhoods.

Lets look at the schools. Not a week goes by where some teacher, usually female, is not being arrested for sleeping with one of her 12 year old students. Our cultural icons are destroyed one by one. Mel Gibson's constantly getting in trouble for racist slurs, Tiger Woods needs to have 20 hookers at once, Lance Armstrong accused of using steroids, the Olson twins look like heroin junkies, America's sweetheart Sandra Bullock is cheated on in public. Do we have any examples of what used to be considered normal?

Day after day we are continually being told that everything is falling apart, nothing works and nobody can be trusted. Top it with scientists telling us that this is all just an illusion. The effect of all of this is to drive kids into virtual worlds where they kill virtual people all day or worse yet send them into the army where they can do it for real all day in Iraq.

For children to grow well, they need stability, that is the number one thing they need. If they feel they are in a stable environment, they feel able to push the boundaries and grow. Instead we live in an unstable world and kids retreat into a virtual stable environment.

What is the answer we are given for these times, drugs. When my divorce began a psychologist, not my therapist, saw me for ten minutes and wanted to put me on 140 milligrams of Effexor a day. I did not have a history of depression, I was getting divorced. Way too many people on mood altering drugs. I got over my depression; but, the drugs would have been for life. I didn't need drugs and neither do most people, they need to learn to live through difficulties.

There can be short periods of time when some drugs can be helpful. Giving a grieving mother a Valium a couple of times to help her to sleep is okay, putting her on them for life is not. We are drugging our children into zombies. Things didn't use to be like this.

We are destroying the gravity of life. "Things fall apart, the center will not hold". Children watch "reality shows" all day showing people hopping from bed to bed with no real commitments and less direction. We reward the people who destroyed our economy with million dollar bonuses while they laugh at people who try to make an honest living.

This is not a rant about what is going on in the world, it is an observation. My issue is what effect this is having on the people growing up. What will they believe in when we are quite methodically teaching them that you cannot trust anyone or anything and that everybody is self centered and corrupt?

Aside from the insanity, the problem is us. If we want stability we must promote stability. We must stop looking for shortcuts. Everyone wants to be a "player" who makes millions for doing little. We want all the cookies and are never satisfied. Our children text sexually explicit words to each other in school and post half naked pictures of themselves on the web while their parents attend swinger parties.

If we teach our children to win at any cost and that greed is good and that marriage commitments are not commitments, if we teach our children that it is okay to steal and cheat our neighbors, then it should be the end times. We cannot have a stable society built on corruption because it becomes our children. You cannot work in the porn industry and not have it effect your life.

Where is the societal gravity, where is the moral compass? Perhaps like in quantum physics, it is just imaginary, a perception. When we stop having the will, we stop having gravity. It is not the bankers, the jews, the catholics, the blacks, the illegal aliens, it is us. Who teaches their children manners or more importantly, that other people are as important as they are. If we don't teach our kids that, this is the type of society we get. It is the type of country and world we get too.