Good news, and bad. Good first: Sunshine in Corvallis! I walked out the front door this morning and was treated to a brilliant clear black sky accented with stars! Living in the Northwest, one has a tendency to forget that there's more to the sky than light and dark greys. Such a treat to see the snowy Cascades being back-lit by the dawn sun! Is this a harbinger of better days ahead? Our new (and dubious) record, set in March: 29 days of measurable precipitation. Susan and I came back from Mexico in late February to a 4" snow. That was the beginning of a remarkable string of rainy days. Let the good times roll!
Noam Chomsky, one of my favorites, has a new essay floating on the net: Libya and the World of Oil. Totally disgusting facts about how our addiction to oil (particularly oil from West Asia) has warped our foreign policies. Think about this when you start your car again.
Here's one that might need the attention of our friends in DC: "USAID
Administrator Rajiv Shah told Congress Thursday that Republican plans to cut funding for global health programs could kill at least 70,000 children abroad, according to ABC News. The proposed spending bill, HR1, could cut or eliminate funding for malaria control programs, tuberculosis treatments and food distribution, among other humanitarian aid programs. Shah said that cutting disaster relief 'would be, really, the most dramatic stepping back away from our humanitarian responsibilities around the world in decades.' Without immunizations and treatments for numerous diseases that affect children in third-world countries, Shah said, 'we estimate, and I believe these are very conservative estimates, that HR1 would lead to 70,000 kids dying.' Important to note: We're spending about $2,000,000,000 (two billion dollars) per day in Afghanistan. Plus many millions in Libya and Iraq. Are we pretty sure we've got our priorities in the right order here? Time for some calls and letters to our friends in DC? (The quote is from a TruthOut article).
Interesting statistics: One Wall Street exec made $4.9 billion last year. 25 top hedge fund managers made a combined $22.07 billion... and, at $50,000 per job per year, it would take the salaries of 441,000 American workers to match that sum. Are we in trouble? Ask the banksters.
Those guys held in cages for the last 10 years in eastern Cuba... they're to get fair and timely trials, beginning pretty soon. Call the Pentagon for details. Oh... ask about Brad Manning too. His trial should start before 2020, if he's lucky.
Nice to hear that our 'retiring'Corvallis school superintendent, Dawn Tarzian, won't be loafing for long. She moves to a new job as superintendent of Washougal School District in Washougal, Washington on July 1st. So she'll suck up a huge pension from Oregon while she earns a fat salary (and more pension credits) from another district. The double-dipping thing is incredibly bad in these times when over 15% of Americans are un- or under-employed. So... in my humble opinion, Dawn Tarzian is just another greedy public-sector PIG! Just another pig by any standards.
"It is by striving ceaselessly to change our emotions that we will succeed in changing our temperament." Mathieu Ricard
"Do not take lightly small good deads,
believing they can hardly help.
For drops of water, one by one,
In time can fill a giant pot." Patrul Rinpoche
Namaste,
Kirk
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