By Sarah (Steve) Mosko
Special to the Surf City Voice

If you are looking for a passionless primer on modern economics spouting platitudes about how western style capitalism, unregulated markets and globalization are fail proof and good for all, this book is not for you.

If, instead, your guts tell you something is seriously amiss when the gulf between the rich and the poor is ever widening and the health of the planet is on a steady decline, all while politicians bicker over policy nuances that have nothing to do with solving these immense realities, then you will find this book vital and loaded with truths.

The authors are Philip B. Smith, a recently deceased physicist-turned-economist who recognized that the discipline of economics lacks the value-free pursuit of truth ideally embraced by hard sciences, like physics or chemistry, and Manfred Max-Neef, a very much alive academic economist who, when confronted with poverty in the flesh, became a dissident of mainstream economics upon realizing that everything he’d been taught left him bereft of any real understanding of poverty and its solutions.

They joined forces in this mostly easy to digest book (I have never had an economics course) to expose how the predominant economic paradigm driving the world’s economies today is based on far less-than-lofty values – greed, competition and accumulation – values so universally sanctioned that no apology is deemed necessary even though it can be shown that wealth accumulated through such a system leads to immeasurable human injustices and environmental ills.

This paradigm fosters rapid economic expansion “at any cost” to people or the planet, and it is fed by the uncontrolled consumption of fossil fuels and a belief that consumerism is the path to happiness. It also concentrates power and wealth in the hands of a small minority.

Several “myths” underlying the economic system which have successfully evaded scrutiny are brought to light. Most fundamental is the notion that perpetually increasing economic growth and production are a necessity, and even possible, on a finite planet.  A case is made that such magical thinking is the root cause of global warming and depletion of natural resources including oil and gas, fresh water and biodiversity. The authors warn of the inevitable environmental crash in our future if a more sustainable economic system is not adopted.

Other myths debunked include the views that globalization is inevitable and the only route to development (recall that the United States did not follow such a model) and that competition and integration into the world economy are necessarily good for poor nations. We are reminded, for example, that the natural resources of poorer nations are very often plundered and their local industries destroyed by rich nations under the pretext of globalization, and that jobs are lost at home when competition prompts corporations to outsource overseas.

Furthermore, democracy takes a back seat to corporate power when international institutions like the World Trade Organization dictate laws and regulations that nations need follow which effectively enable corporations to “rule the world.”

Who has gained

An over-arching theme of this book is the de-humanization of mainstream economics, where the GNP (gross national product) is revered as the ultimate indicator of a nation’s wealth, when in reality the GNP has become detached from the real measures of a nation’s success and well-being: the health and economic security of its peoples and their freedom to act in pursuit of their own best interests. The authors stress that a shift to a humanized economy will necessitate that culturally approved values of greed, competition and accumulation be replaced by solidarity, cooperation and compassion.

The key premises upon which a humanized economy would need to be based are laid out. Among them are realizations that the purpose of the economy is to serve the needs of people and not the reverse, that the economy takes place within the biosphere so permanent growth is impossible, and that reverence for life trumps all other economic interests.

Although “Economics Unmasked” reached bookstore shelves just months before the Occupy and 99 Percent movements had names or affiliates, it’s fair to say they seem drawn from the same wellspring of moral outrage over the social and environmental injustices attributable to the prevailing economic model. The fundamental difference perhaps is that the book authors’ academic backgrounds and access to real world facts about mainstream economics enabled them to lay out a forceful imperative for and roadmap to a more moral economic paradigm whereas, accurate or not, Occupy and 99 Percent have been criticized for lacking clear messages and solutions.

Activists within these movements, as well as sympathetic onlookers, would no doubt benefit from reading this book to help them better articulate both their grievances with the status quo and proposals for change. And to those who might take offense at any criticism of capitalism, know that this book is in no way a blanket indictment of capitalism, just of its recent incarnation.

“Economics Unmasked” was published in 2011 in the United Kingdom by Green Books.

Award winning novelist Lois Tiller will discuss warrantless surveillance in cyberspace at the monthly meeting of the Green Party of Orange County this Sunday, April 3, at 2 p.m.
Tiller is a certified system engineer who advocates for electronic privacy protection and Net Neutrality. Her recently published suspense novel, “Fatal Exception,” explores the ethical ramifications of the possibly illegal partnerships between US security agencies, like the NSA and CIA, and private technology companies to mine used data and control Internet content.
Tiller’s presentation will include a simple overview of electronic snooping and she will identify important efforts underway to thwart warrantless surveillance in the USA. Her talk is intended to give a deeper understanding of the technical issues of the day, such as Facebook’s impact on democratization I the Middle, Google’s online censorship of content, as well as the ongoing battle in the US for Net Neutrality.
For more information about her novel see: http://www.fatalexceptionthriller.info . If you can share a ride of need a ride to the meeting, contact Bea Tiritilli: tiritilligreen@sbcglobal.net
The event will be held as part of the monthly meeting, which takes place at 15600 Sand Canyon Ave. in Irvine (about half-way between the 5 and 405 freeways).

Medical Charity Identifies Aid Workers Killed in Afghanistan

The International Assistance Mission has released the names of its medical aid workers who were killed in Afghanistan last week in an ambush. The attack against the Christian charity has been described as “the worst crime targeting the humanitarian community that has ever taken place in Afghanistan.” The dead included optomistrist Dr. Tom Little, sixty-one, of Delmar, New York; thirty-two-year-old Cheryl Beckett of Owensville, Ohio; Dan Terry, sixty-three, of Janesville, Wisconsin; forty-year-old Glen Lapp of Lancastger, Pennsylvania; twenty-five-year-old freelance videographer Brian Carderelli of Harrisonburg, Virginia; and the fifty-one-year-old dentist Thomas Grams of Durango, Colorado. The dead also included two Afghans named Mahram Ali and Jawed, Deniela Beyer of Germany, and Dr. Karen Woo of Britain. The International Assitance Mission has worked in Afghanistan since 1966. Up until last week, the group had lost just four international staff members.

From Democracy Now, Aug. 10, 2010

Have you ever seen
A seed fallen to earth
Not rise with a new life
Why should you doubt the rise
Of a seed named human.
- Rumi, 13th Century Afghanistan

By Mary Urashima

Special to the Surf City Voice

I see Tom Grams’ handsome face smiling back in photos taken in Afghanistan.  He retired his private dental practice in Durango, Colorado and began devoting his life to working with the underprivileged in remote places around the world: Guatemala, Nepal, India, and Afghanistan.  Since 2007, he had been working often in Afghanistan.

Thomas Grams with patients and students at Kabul school. Photo courtesy of Mary Urashima

I first met Tom via email in 2006 when he asked for help with a Pierre Fauchard Foundation grant to help establish a small dental clinic at a school I helped support in Kabul.  Tom had spent some time providing free dental care in the village of Wardak, but wanted to reach more Afghans.

The schoolmaster in Kabul wanted to make sure Tom knew the risks.  While our organization was predominantly Afghan, there were many Westerners working with the group both in Kabul and the U.S.

We employed female Afghan teachers and provided secular education for girls and boys together.

This—and the presence of Westerners—created a risk at times.  Some organizations had received “night letters”, which essentially threatened those who worked with “foreigners.”

Danger Warning

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a travel warning in mid 2006 that characterized the security threat to all American citizens in Afghanistan as critical.

“Unfortunately from last week till now the security is getting worse every day and lots of explosions in Kabul happen and lots of bad people are looking for US compounds to do explosions or other bad things,” wrote the Afghan schoolmaster in mid 2006. Continue Reading

Renown birder Sylvia Gallagher and photographer Jim Gallagher will be the guest speakers at a town forum hosted by the Bolsa Chica Land Trust. Sylvia’s birding classes are always in high demand, so this is an outstanding opportunity for birders and nature lovers to hear from Sylvia and Jim about the awesome avians that frequent the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Orange County.

7pm
September 23, 2010
at: Huntington Beach Public Library Room C/D
7111 Talbert Ave (at Goldenwest)

more info: Bolsa Chica Land Trust, 714-846-1001, www.bolsachicalandtrust.org

By Chris Hinyub
Special to the Surf City Voice

New data compiled by the Environmental Working Group shows that the majority of federal subsidy dollars granted to California farmers are being collected by the state’s largest agribusinesses. The new figures highlight the skewed priorities and rampant waste inherent in the USDA’s current subsidy program. In their own analysis of the numbers, the EWG calls for a more “intelligent and equitable strategy” to funding all areas of California’s diverse agricultural system.

Last year the top one percent of farm subsidy recipients in the state garnered a staggering $57 million in support, according to the latest update of the EWG Farm Subsidies database. That was an average of $453,000 per recipient. The lion’s share of this money went to cotton and rice growers. Compare this with the bottom 80 percent which received less than $1,400 a year on average.

California farmers who don’t grow cotton, rice, corn, livestock or wheat, receive little to no direct subsidy payments. Yet, almost half of California’s $36 billion a year farm revenue is generated outside the commodity crop market in the growing of fruits, vegetables and nuts – so called “specialty crops”. By comparison, rice and cotton accounted for less than three percent of market value of the state’s total agricultural output for 2008, the last year such statistics were available.

Nationally, 44 percent of federal crop subsidies went to cotton and rice farmers in 2009. Kari Hamerschlag, Senior Analyst at EWG, points out that “much of these subsidies came from programs that paid based on past production, whether or not cotton was still being grown.”

In fact, cotton acreage throughout the state has decreased dramatically since 2009 subsidy apportionment figures were cast. This means that unsustainable California agribusinesses are receiving a federal stipend while creating little (if any) revenue for the state.

In his analysis of the latest agricultural subsidy data, Hamerschlag writes, “The EWG Farm Subsidies database starkly reveals the imbalance, waste and skewed priorities of federal farm programs in California. It is a system that disproportionately benefits relatively few big growers of thirsty, chemical-dependent crops while failing to address the environmental challenges facing California agriculture.”

Specialty crop producers also rely on government support but through less-direct means. Some get their start through grants promoting water conservation, good land stewardship and overall farm sustainability.  Unfortunately, the disparity between commodity subsidy payments and agricultural conservation program funding is disproportionately impacting California.

“Nationally, EWG’s analysis found that the $13 billion paid out in 2009 in federal commodity subsidy payments and crop insurance premiums outpaced funding for agricultural conservation programs by more than 3-to-1,” writes Hamerschlag. “In California, the disparity was even greater: Subsidies outpaced conservation funding for agriculture by a more than 5-to-1 margin.”

California has the nation’s largest agricultural economy by far, but is surprisingly more resilient than other states to the effects of the ongoing “subsidy gap”, possibly owing to its rich diversity of agricultural goods.

Chris Hinyub writes for California Independent Voter Network, which originally published this story.

By Chris Hinyub
Special to the Surf City Voice

What is a “Public Health and Safety Approach to Drug Policy?” To find the answer, the California Endowment Center for Healthy Communities hosted a one day Conference last week. Organized by the Drug Policy Alliance and California Society of Addiction Medicine, guest speakers included physicians, therapists, administrators, policy makers and law enforcement officials.

Attendee, Alternet.org blogger and physician specializing in addiction medicine, “doctork”, chronicled the event in a recent post. Aside from calling into question the specious science backing marijuana prohibition, participants seemed to reach a consensus on conventional “abstinence-based” drug policy. Their conclusion: it’s an indefensible failure.

Most attendees looked toward a “harm reduction approach” to addiction treatment and policy enforcement which would encourage addicts to seek help without fear of a criminal label and the social stigmas derived from today’s draconian penal code.

Pete White, founder and Co-Director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, exposed (in a rather impassioned speech before delegates) what he believes to be the driving force behind continued official support for the failing War on Drugs – the “prison-industrial complex.”

Countering conventional “drug war propaganda” – that progress is being made on the front lines – White’s advocacy group maintains that the war has only escalated since its inception and victimized countless numbers of California citizens because of its counterproductive and unsustainable strategy (not to mention its “ignoble ends”).

Paraphrasing White, doctork relates:

“It is not unusual for an undercover police officer to say something like this to a homeless person in the ‘skid row’ areas of the city: ‘Hey, man, I got 20 dollars in my pocket, what have you got for me’? So, a homeless person goes to ‘get something’ for 20 dollars only to find himself in handcuffs upon return, now charged with possession with intent to sell, a much more serious offense which will also make it impossible for him to enter some kind of ‘diversion’ program.”

Such nefarious practices are fully supported by an industry that wants, according to White, “more privatized jails and prisons, more prisoners, more prison guards, more probation and parole officers, more, more, more… and whose lives they destroy in the process is of very little concern to any of them.”

Mr. Jakada Imani, Executive Director of Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, echoed White’s views, adding that the movement to round up people for minor drug possession creates a “second-class” of citizens who become “damned to a life of poverty and exclusion”. The negative socio-political consequences of such arrests far outweigh the potential good of current federal and state drug policies, Imani argued. In essence, popular enforcement actions “benefit only two groups of individuals: the ‘prison-industrial complex’ and the makers of tobacco and alcohol who would love to keep their ‘monopoly’ on the mind-altering substances in this country.”

Two speakers, Donald MacPherson and Kyle Kazan of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, offered their sentiments on the drug war from the unique perspective of police officers. It is their claim that most police departments support possession arrests (especially marijuana related ones) because they boost department funding. But, as MacPherson so poignantly stated, “You cannot arrest yourselves out of this problem… Rational drug policies must rest on four pillars of Science, Compassion, Health and Human Rights”. The concern is that law enforcement all too often makes its own drug policies, a task meant for addiction treatment professionals he said.

Several guests pointed to the drug policies of Vancouver and Portugal as exemplars of a much more rational approach to lessening the social ills that they perceive are attached to narcotics addiction.

MacPherson, former Drug Policy Coordinator of the City of Vancouver, explained how that city took to decriminalizing substance abuse including its institution of a supervised injection facility which has been a key factor in lowering needle-transmitted diseases.

Portugal has had astounding success with its now nine-year-old national harm reduction policy on drugs. Fatima Trigueiros, Senior Adviser to the Executive Board of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction in Portugal, pointed out that even though drug possession has been decriminalized across the board in her country, no “Armageddon” of exploding drug use and crime ensued.

Quite the contrary can be observed today. Since decriminalization, drug use in Portugal actually fell by ten percent. Though initially a wedge issue between left and right leaning factions in that Parliament, the new approach presently entertains the distinction of being one of the only policies supported by all parties of the government. The dire predictions by critics that Portugal would become a “drug tourist destination” never panned out and (as in Vancouver) the rates of diseases (including HIV) associated with injection drug use have declined.

As was to be expected, support for California’s fall ballot initiative to legalize the personal use of marijuana (Proposition 19) was expressed by the majority of California policy reformers in attendance. This was made clear when Dr. Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, made a heartfelt and passionate speech during the closing Plenary session. His call to end the “destructive and futile” drug war and support Prop 19 was met with unanimous and thunderous applause.

Doctork surmises the conference was a great success, writing:

“It underscored the pressing need for a scientific approach to the drug abuse problem, the central role that basic human rights should play in whatever is being done, with the law enforcement not as a ‘legislator’, but as a link in the chain of rational drug policies that are both scientifically sound and practically effective.”

Chris Hinyub writes for California Independent Voter Network where this article was originally published.

In a major event that is likely to change the dynamics of the upcoming election for city council, former councilmember and mayor Connie Boardman has announced at the 11th hour that she is running for city council, becoming the third member of a slate that also includes Joe Shaw and Blair Farley.

The following announcement is from the slates official website:http://teamhuntingtonbeach.com/index.php/page/C7/29/

Former Mayor Connie Boardman announced today that she was running for Huntington Beach City Council and was joining candidates Joe Shaw and Blair Farley to form Team Huntington Beach.

“I am running because I believe the current council is just not listening to the residents of Huntington Beach,” Boardman said. “Together with Blair Farley and Joe Shaw, we’ve created Team Huntington Beach to provide voters with a choice for real change.”

Boardman was spurred to run after the council’s recent decision to change the land use designation of a portion of Bolsa Chica from open space/parkland to residential. Boardman, like Farley and Shaw, believes the city needs to pay more attention to its neighborhoods and residents.

“The city has a deficit of parkland, yet the council just voted to turn five acres of it into housing in the most sensitive ecological area in the city,” Boardman said. “It’s no surprise there are four neighborhood groups currently suing the city. They aren’t listening.”

Boardman, a professor of biology at Cerritos College, served on the City Council from 2000-2004, and was mayor in 2003. She is currently the President of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust. Farley is IT Director at Mariners Church, and is the Chairman of the HB Planning Commission. Shaw is a small business owner who has served on three city commissions.

Connie Boardman enters the race for Huntington Beach City Council.

Aug. 5, 2010

Dear City Council members, City Administrator and City Clerk:

I respectfully would like to register my disagreement with and dismay over the policy of redacting city documents that are provided electronically to members of the public making a Public Records Act request. I am talking specifically about the city’s policy of redacting addresses from campaign or other filings/documents that under the PRA must be available, in full, to the public.

If the city has to give information to the public at the desk counter, then it makes sense that it would have to give that same information, including addresses, to the public when delivering requested and discloseable information via email or other online portal. I do remember the original reasoning behind this ill thought out policy: to prevent stalking, but there are other laws to prevent stalking and none of them overrides the Public Records Act as far as I know. In any case, it is also illogical to think that a true stalker could be outwitted because he/she could not get somebody’s address provided to them electronically. There are a myriad of other ways to get that information on the Internet and a stalker by nature would probably be determined enough to go to the office to get it anyway—and I have yet to receive redacted campaign disclosure documents at city hall.

Why make the public go through the added inconvenience? Why give the public incomplete information from altered documents online?

Researchers have valid reasons for checking addresses on campaign and other city documents, one of which is to help determine the legitimacy of a candidate’s qualifications for office. In the past I have protested this policy to the city attorney and she ruled that I be given the unredacted documents that I had requested (in the case of city charter review committee applicants). Therefore, I believe that the same policy must and should apply to any other legally legitimate request for information from the city, either at the city desk or through any online portal controlled by the city for the purpose of giving information to the public. It is not within the purview of the city council or other city officials to protect public officials from public exposure online that they are not entitled to offline. I am officially asking the city council and/or city clerk to reverse this policy immediately as a matter of legal principle and for the convenience of residents of Huntington Beach.

Please consider this an official Public Records Act request, which means that a timely response by the city is mandatory.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
John Earl
Editor
Surf City Voice
www.surfcityvoice.com