Here’s an excerpt from Paul Krugman’s Common Dreams essay, “Wobbled by Wealth.” One of the saddest stories I tell in my book is that of Al Smith, the great reformist governor of New York, who gradually turned into a narrow-minded economic conservative and bitter critic of F.D.R. H. L. Mencken…
Yes, you could continue on your merry way, spending money on the wrong types of things for all the wrong reasons. We've all done this. But we don't have to keep doing things this way. To give you an assist, you can get some ideas and inspiration from New American Dream. It…
"The Church of Stop Shopping," eh? What is this church all about? I'm not sure yet. This "Church" got my renewed attention, thanks to a friend who sent me a link today. Among it's other activities, the Church is promoting a new movie ("The movie santa doesn't want you to see"). The title of the new movie? "What Would Jesus Buy?"
On Friday, November 16th, the Shopocalypse ends. It is on that date that Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping set out across America in two bio-diesel buses, confronting with their singing and preaching the shopping frenzy of America. Travel with our harmonizing activists, as they invade the Mall of America, cast spells on the front-door of Wal Mart headquarters in Bentonville, wind up a whirlwind in a tent revival in Texas and hurls them all the way to Disneyland and the final Day of Judgment: Christmas.Here's a bit of information about the church itself:
The first job of a church is to save souls. Pulling out of the advertising/debt/waste cycle of Consumerism is our idea of deliverance. Our soul-saving mission work is dramatic rituals and plays inside retail environments. As you will see from the interventions that I sketch out below, in instruction manual form – our missionaries are sometimes completely invisible to management’s eye. And then sometimes the chaos and broad strokes — Inappropriate Behavior! Amen! – is the whole point and carries our message best.
Today, the following Associated Press article was run on page-19 of my local newspaper (the St. Louis Post-Dispatch):
An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.
Across America, the picture is critically clear — the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.
The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperature, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.
“Is it a crisis? If we don’t do some decent water planning, it could be,” said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the American Water Works Association, based in Denver.
Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development.
The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.
“Unfortunately, there’s just not going to be any more cheap water,” said Randy Brown, utilities director for Pompano Beach, Fla.
Truly, this is a major story; our country is running out of a critically important resource. Combine that lack-of-water news, though with the equally unreported news that the world is running out of …
Well, not exactly, but the big picture is a disturbing one from the perspective of the millions of people criminally prosecuted every year for seeking to self-medicate using street drugs . If all of those mind altering street drugs are really "bad," then they should stay illegal. But maybe it's not so…