Congressional Reform: Government of the People, By the People, For the People

FIX CONGRESS - END DEFICIT

"We just pass a law that says anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took three months and eight days  to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971... before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc.

Of  the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven took one year or less to become the law of the land ... all because of public  pressure.

This is one idea that really should be passed around.

Congressional Reform Act of 2011 

(or whenever we can push it through)

1. No  Tenure / No Pension.   A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social  Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move  to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow  into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the rest of us. It may not be used for any other  purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, as is required of all citizens.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI (Consumer Price Index) or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the citizens of the United States.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are immediately void. The people did not make these excessive contracts with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

Please pass this forward.

OCCUPY WALL STREET!

OCCUPY AMERICA!

OCCUPY YOUR CIVIL RIGHTS AND DUTIES!

OCCUPY YOUR HEART!

OCCUPY THE VOTING BOOTH!

 

How can you mend a broken heart? - Al Green

Good News for Musicians

My friend Barbara Hadenfeldt sent me this from the Huffington Post:
Want to keep your mind healthy and sharp throughout your life? Pick up an instrument. A new study found that musicians might have brains that function better than their peers well into old age. Bet you wish you stuck with those piano lessons after all.
Researchers tested the mental abilities of senior citizens and discovered that musicians performed better at a number of tests. In particular, musicians excelled at visual memory tasks. While musicians had similar verbal capabilities to non-musicians, the musicians’ ability to memorize new words was markedly better, too. Perhaps most importantly, the musicians’ IQ scores were higher overall than those who spent their lives listening to music rather than performing it.


The experience of musicians also played a role in how sharp their minds were. The younger the musicians began to play their instruments, the better their minds performed at the mental tasks. Additionally, the total number of years musicians played instruments throughout their life corresponded with how strong their brains remained years later.
The study also found that musicians who took the time to exercise between symphonies had even higher-functioning brain capabilities. This finding supports another recent study that reported people who walk regularly maintain healthier brains. With that in mind, perhaps joining a marching band now will make you the smartest person at the retirement home in the future.

Musicians Are Probably Smarter Than The Rest Of Us

Brain Science and Addiction

I heard this gentleman speak this morning on KPFA and located this article.

Gabor Maté shows we’re wired for addiction

Downtown Eastside physician Gabor Maté has a nifty way of measuring some of the financial costs of the war on drugs. In a recent interview with the Georgia Straight in an Oak Street coffee shop, Maté cited the example of a person who finances a $100-per-day cocaine habit by shoplifting. Maté noted that a drug addict must shoplift $1,000 worth of goods to generate a $100 return because of the discounted price that people pay addicts for stolen merchandise. Therefore, to feed a $3,000-per-month cocaine habit, an addict will have to steal $30,000 worth of merchandise.

“That’s the drug laws for you,” Maté said. “Who is paying for that?”

Last week, the Straight published an excerpt from Maté’s stunning new book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction (Knopf Canada, $34.95), a wide-ranging examination of the lives of addicts, the neurobiology of addiction, the war on drugs, and strategies for harm reduction and healing. He believes that most intravenous-drug addicts experienced either extreme neglect or hard-core physical or sexual abuse in their childhoods.

Maté’s central thesis is that addiction is occurring on a massive scale in western society because so many people have an inner emptiness caused by societal dislocation, including the destruction of traditional relationships within families and communities, and a lack of proper attunement in infancy. By “attunement”, he means a parent literally being “in tune” with the child’s emotional states, and being present in a way that ensures the infant feels understood, accepted, and mirrored. “Attunement is the real language of love, the conduit by which the pre-verbal child can realize that she is loved,” he writes in the book.

He pointed out in the interview that parents might fail to provide proper attunement even when they deeply love their child. This can occur because the parents are depressed, overworked, stressed, or dealing with crises that take them away from the child. And that’s when things can literally go a bit haywire in the infant’s brain, contributing to addiction later in life.

In his book, Maté cites child psychiatrist Daniel Siegel to suggest that poor attunement can interfere with the development of brain circuitry. This can lead to distorted levels of the brain’s endorphins, which soothe physical and emotional pain. Poor attunement can also result in fewer brain receptors of dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter that sends messages of incentives and rewards.

In the absence of a fully developed dopamine system, Maté said, a person is far more likely to crave stimulants—nicotine, caffeine, or drugs like cocaine—to provide incentives. Maté points out in his book that cocaine, which increases dopamine levels and triggers intense feelings of elation, wears off very quickly. This is why coke addicts seek an endless supply of the drug to repeat those feelings.

Maté also emphasized that infants are born with no physiological or emotional self-regulation. That’s because a lot of brain development occurs after birth, including in the cortex, which provides these controls. “If the parents are not there in an attuned, nonstressed way to regulate them, self-regulation never develops,” he said. “Then there is no impulse control. If they’re stressed to begin with, then they are going to go for anything to reduce the stress. One thing that addictions all do is they reduce stress momentarily.”

Maté offered a surprising response when asked how parents should deal with a drug-addicted daughter. “The first step is they’re going to have to be perfectly okay with their daughter using,” Maté replied. “They have to be perfectly okay with this. Say, ‘This is what’s happening.’ Not resist it or resent it. Not wish her to be different. Not work to make her different than the way she is. Because what this girl did not get in the first place was unconditional loving acceptance—not because they didn’t intend it, but because they couldn’t deliver it because of their own stuff.”

He added that if parents understood how deeply an addiction is ingrained in the brain, they would accept their child’s condition more easily. “The only thing they can do is create an atmosphere in which she would be encouraged to become more self-reflective,” Maté said. “And that can only happen when there is no judgement there, and there is no push to change.”

Maté’s book highlights how our “attachment to externals”—status, looks, work, achievement, alcohol, gambling, or drugs—is at the root of addiction. He believes that any full healing should be based on the concept of “sobriety”, which is a positive approach that recognizes the addiction, rather than on “abstinence”, which is merely avoiding the harmful substance. Maté advocates increasing one’s self-perception in a tone of “compassionate curiosity” rather than through self-punishment.

He said that if policymakers properly applied what has already been learned about brain biochemistry—including teaching parents the importance of attunement—80 to 90 percent of the addictive behaviour could be eliminated in Canada within two generations. And that would save a lot more money and create far greater peace of mind over the long term than continuing the war on drugs.

Closing Schools and Building Prisons: Not a Good Trend

Good folks,
It came to my attention today that some area schools are closing. This means hardship to the students now attending, to their families, and to the people working in those schools, and to the overcrowded classrooms that will have to accommodate those students. What is more important than the high quality education of our future citizenry?
I don't think that consumerism works as a way of life, or that the stock market numbers are the most important numbers. Or even that test scores are. Tests are flawed, skewed, and narrow, and don't recognize many types of intelligences and talents inherent in our species. These must be developed through education, and are essential to our survival as a species.
We make choices every day; let us all think about the ramifications of those choices. It is easier and more cost efficient to educate a child than to reform a criminal. Apples and oranges? Maybe, but they most certainly are all fruit, and we are in community together. Education and community values for the common good are a higher purpose.

The Green Kitchen

I have been looking for ways to reduce my energy usage, and pressure cookers are at the top of my list. They are highly efficient, safe, and easy to clean. I have been enjoying my Presto 8 quart stainless for several months. Vegetables done perfectly in less than 5 minutes, soups and stews that taste like they have been cooking all day are done in 20 minutes. Highly recommended.

Electromagnetic Pollution and Smart Meters

Brain cancers can take several decades to develop, so it might be many years before a measurable bump in cancer rates shows up ."The latency period we have (in our current research, Italics, mine) is far too short," says Dr. Siegal Sadetzki, a cancer researcher at Israel's Gertner Institute whose epidemiological studies have found some connections between cell-phone use and salivary-gland tumors. "And today, people are using the phone much more heavily.". "The latency period we have is far too short," says Dr. Siegal Sadetzki, a cancer researcher at Israel's Gertner Institute whose epidemiological studies have found some connections between cell-phone use and salivary-gland tumors. "And today, people are using the phone much more heavily."
It's true that cell-phone use has yet to be linked to cancer risk. "Scientifically speaking, we don't have the proof yet," says Sadetzki. "But as a public-health concern, I'm saying we definitely should adopt precautions."
Peer-reviewed results of international studies won’t be available until 2014.
That's a long time to wait for definitive data. The good news is that there are easy ways for those concerned about RF radiation to cut down on exposure. Using your cell phone's speaker or connecting a wired headset — while keeping the handset away from your body — drastically reduces RF exposure. (Bluetooth headsets help too, but they still emit some radiation.) And given the potentially more serious risks for children, who have thinner skulls than adults, parents might want to wait before handing teens their first phone — or at least ensure they use it mostly for texting.

Meanwhile, a start-up, Pong Research, is selling cell-phone cases that significantly reduce radiation exposure by channeling waves away from the head. Says Alfred Wong, Pong's chief scientist and a professor emeritus of physics at UCLA: "I think it's best to avoid as much of the risk as possible until the verdict is in."

Smart Meters use a much stronger signal than cell phones, and have only had to comply to microwave standards because the technology is so new. Adequate testing has not been done. People who have had Smart Meters installed on their home are guinea pigs for PG&E. These radiation devices give off energy with proven deleterious biophysical effects, causing tumors, impaired immune function, headaches, and in my case, a persistent buzzing in my ears which is very unnerving to a musician like myself. It is clear to me that there has been a change in the quality of my home environment since the installation of Smart Meters last spring. For starters, I want them removed from the city of Berkeley, replaced with non-transmitting meters, for a period of at least 20 years.