Ben Bernanke has added another 40 billion to the economy to help stimulate it proclaiming we need to borrow and spend to fix things. This is precisely the problem. We have borrowed and spent away our futures, only the money lenders have benefited from this debt slavery. The real solution is to save and share. Half of all Americans have credit issues, due to over borrowing and over spending. As a result new loans provided to them will bring interest rates of up to 25%. The banks will be will do cartwheels over these margins.

    Cutting out the middle man is the solution. Forced purchases of health care,...

Originally published at Transition Voice:

I was in my greenhouse the other day, watering some enormous tomato plants. These plants are massive---over my head and still going strong. They are planted in a raised bed, with about thirty of them shoulder-to-shoulder in close quarters. It’s literally a tomato jungle. They are lush, full, heavy with tomatoes and the pride of any gardener.

Enter my friend, who upon seeing this eye-candy, says “you can’t grow tomatoes like this. They will never survive.” After a pause to do a quick reality-check, I said, “What are you talking about? I AM growing tomatoes like...

La longue durée —the long run—was an expression made popular by the Annales School of French historians led by Fernand Braudel, who coined the phrase in 1958. The basic argument of this school is that the proper concern of historians should be the analysis of structures that lie at the base of contemporary events. Underneath short-term events such as individual cycles of economic boom and bust, said Braudel, we can discern the persistence of “old attitudes of thought and action, resistant frameworks dying hard, at times against all logic.” An important derivative of the Annales research is the work of the...

Friends, please support this uber-important Kickstarter campaign for compost-energy R&D at Highfields Center for Composting in Hardwick (the "town that food saved" according to VT Commons blogger Ben Hewitt's book). 

September 17, 2012

Dear Mr. President:

He's been in Afghanistan for two weeks, but I feel as though I've aged 10 years. This is my only son's sixth deployment in harm's way.

I was supposed to get together with friends Saturday night. But when I read that two more NATO troops were killed in Helmund Province in a green on blue attack, I cancelled my plans. Then I found out they were Brits. This morning I heard that four American troops were killed by Afghans in uniform. Another mother's son is dead. Not mine.

I don't understand why our troops are there. First we were told it was to destroy...

Three local organizations have joined together to help Vermonters save money by installing solar hot water systems. Sunward Systems is providing the solar collectors, EnergySmart of Vermont is installing the systems, and Washington Electric Co-op (WEC) is offering a discount to its members who go solar. All residents of Washington and Orange counties will receive $500 off an installed solar system. WEC members will receive an additional $250. The program...

In the word-cloud of current events, the phrase "parasitic financial system" billows up to a degree that suggests even so-called thinking persons begin to understand what's happening: that banking shenanigans are sucking the life out of advanced societies. That's why Matt Taibbi's metaphor of Goldman Sachs as "a Vampire Squid jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" remains so potent years after it was minted.

Of course the pervasive accounting fraud and routine swindling that drive the banking "industry" are abetted by the phantom government "policy" of the Federal Reserve, an institution that 99.999 percent...

In an unprecedented meeting with VaxChoiceVT coalition members, last week Tracy Dolan from the Vermont Department of Health acknowledged the Health Department’s awareness of our concerns regarding compelled speech on their self-proclaimed Religious and Philosophical Vaccine Exemption Form.

Dolan is the Deputy Commissioner of Health. A native of British Colombia and herself a mother of two, she indicated that...

Welcome to our 2012 Vermont Independence Party here at the Vermont Statehouse legislative chambers – “the people’s house.” 

We are here today to recognize the reality of our 21st century situation. We live in a time unique in human history, beset by deeply rooted global crises – climate change, Peak Oil, and a nation/Empire engaged in endless war and endless debt. The 20th century is history – and the 21st century will end up looking very little like today.

As Vermonters interested in both sustainability and self-determination, we recognize both the independence and...