Bad Poetry Cafe, Vol. 1

Sumo Buddha

No direction
Misconception
A thousand points of darkness
Downstream on a river of pure aggression
Minnows into sharkness
What is right and who is wrong
Fight the fight or go along
Its like Buddha in the Sumo ring
The roaring crowd
Is much more loud
Than the choir in his head can sing.

"Now here is life on the halfshell nut"
he says to himself as he's kicked in the gut
"Laid out languid or pinprickle fury-
these are my choices? (Don't call me Shirley)
Stinging bee and honeyed hive-
Its a study in contrasts just being alive"
Pinning his opponent with a peaceful piledriver
He says "You are alive
But I am aliver"

The Jobs Americans Don't Want To Do

How to Lose Your Soul by Not Using Your Hands

It was 8:45 AM, March of 2008. I was slumped into a convention chair on the holo-deck of the Washington DC Hilton, listening to a slight, scholarly lady talk about immigration policy. The morning's latte was dancing a slow waltz in my head with the ghosts of the previous evening's martinis. All around me dellow felegates from the National League of Cities' annual descent upon the nation's capitol sipped coffee or dozed under ten gallon hats as the lady, Tamar Jacoby, argued that Joe Farmer needs access to cheap foreign labor, i.e. illegal aliens.

Then she said something that pulled me up in my seat. Little alarms were going off in my brain, so I looked down on my notebook to see what righty had written. Ms. Jacoby had said:
"A large percentage of them work in dirty, demeaning, low paid jobs that native born Americans no longer want to do: busboys, chambermaids, farmhands, nurses' aides, sweatshop workers, on the assembly line, in meat packing plants."

I shook the martini ghosts out of my head and listened. She described an America that is older and more educated, and not willing to do "unskilled work". I look down on my own rough and misshapen hands. Hmmmm.

She goes on to make the case that the American of tomorrow will be heady and shiny, graduating with honors along with his friends and classmates, festooned all over with gold stars and blue ribbons, comparing their trophies for participation at the mall where they consume the proper products in languidly prowling packs, waiting for the day when they will be placed in a skilled, non demeaning positions of oblique responsibility. Obviously these uber-Americans will need unskilled, uneducated foreigners to clear the plates, harvest the corndogs and empty the chamberpots.

At first I thought I' was just offended by the idea of an underclass, a shadow segment of our society with a hungry belly that the rest of us rule because of their need to fill it.
But there's something more. We are also hurt by our own aversion to simple physical work.
This didn't really strike home to me until the recent "financial crisis" began to unwind. For years my wife has been asking me what it is Americans do, exactly. Most of us (If WalMart wages aren't sucking you into the underclass) seem to make a living providing services to other Americans. Chefs, CPAs and surgeons all charge each other enough to make a sweet living. "But if so few of us actually make anything," my wife asked "where does all the money come from?"
"I don't know." I replied "Maybe its the savings from all the illegal beef butchers and diaper changers."

It turns out some of our most skilled and educated financiers conspired to build a house of mirrors that crashed under the weight of its own reflections. What they did to the entire world should be criminal, but instead we have chosen to open our forgiving arms and wallets to these prodigals.

But the original prodigal son was contrite. Ours have flown back to Daddy unrepentant, in sleek private jets, sheepishly grinning fops with silk hankies who need a new stake after foolishly gambling away their ready cash. Of course Daddy is broke too, so the sharecoppers in the valley will have to pony up Junior's bailout because, after all, if he can't generously spread his money around how shall the little people survive?

Well I have news for the dandies of high finance. You are the little people. I know working people here in Kodiak who came from Mexico and Guatemala and the Phillipines who work their whole lives gutting fish and sorting mail who have more honor and nobility than a thousand bailout sucking CEOs. Their character is the true bedrock of our society, and it is built from dirty hands and sore backs.

And isn't true value created by the one who catches the fish, builds the car and invests in the factory? That's real capitalism. You work to make or do something and are paid a purchase price or wage. Then you take that money and risk it to make more. The emerging pseudo capitalism in which morbidly obese corporations are "too big to let them fail" neatly combines the worst aspects of Marxism and fascism. Corpogovernment will preserve our failing businesses like Lenin's waxy corpse for the good of the people. But what should we expect from a culture that no longer values the contributions of those who actually do something? Somehow we got it backwards. We seem to believe that money makes people and that character comes from strength.

You know it is ever true that the best of us, he kindest, those with real patience and generosity seem invariably to be those who have known real hardship and adversity. If you ask me every kid in America should have to work in the sweatshop before he gets his Gap t shirt. And every financial executive who gets a bailout should carry chamberpots for lettuce pickers.

News Flash- Bush Will Never Pardon Ted Stevens

"Bush" or the Justice Department that is made in his image, went after him in the first place

Scuttlebutt has always centered on a certain Native Corporation that Uncle Ted helped to get a no-bid contract to supply cell phones in Iraq. The phones were second hand Fisher-Price Big Bird models that would only connect you to Elmo, or some such. At any rate Phonegate added to a pile of embarrassing contractor scandals in Iraq, and it was one of the only ones in which Cheney wasn't involved. Add that to Stevens' "Don't pet me, I bite." charm, and we find a Republican Mr. Bush is quite happy to see the J-Dog clamp onto.. Bush let the beast off its leash in the first place.

So don't look for a Presidential pardon for Uncle Ted. W. has himself to worry about.

A complete look at the pillaging of both Iraq and the US taxpayer by contractors and their Congressional enablers, including Ted's Big Cell Phone Adventure:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PBZ/is_6_86/ai_n27084061?tag=rel.res1

The Sword Over Bristol Bay's Head

A corporation is a one eyed slobbering beast that will chase a dollar over a cliff. Sure, they have their uses, like the trolls in the Lord of the Rings. But you should not put them in charge of long term planning..

Case in point: the impending ruination of the vast watershed that feeds the Bristol Bay.

Alaskans failed to pass a referendum this year that would have simply required mines to not poison groundwater. As a result a lake of poisonous sludge held back by one of the earth's biggest dams will be poised at the headwaters of the Kvichak, keystone river of the Bristol Bay red salmon run, so that the Pebble Miners can dig one of the biggest holes in the world. (Click illustration at bottom)

Now the BLM has decided to open a million acres of the wide river drainage downstream, effectively tearing down the last fences that protect a run of fish that is perhaps the world's most fantastic renewable resource. Millions of pounds of the finest food imaginable comes back every year, unless we poison them, which, apparently, we will. (Click story below)

I grew up in California's Sacramento River valley. One hundred years ago they were where Bristol Bay is now. Mining moved in on a salmon run that filled the rivers. After a couple of dams and a whole lot of extraction the fish are down to a trickle. Today, after Herculean effort, the winter run of king salmon on the Sacramento river is finally coming out of single digits, at an expense to the taxpayer of forty thousand dollars per fish. (Click story below)

Ah, yes, the Iron Mountain Mine. Like Pebble, it was seen as an economic boon to the region. They dug deep into the rocky hills at the headwaters of the Keswick. Today, even as we speak, it is exuding a smoking acidy poison that defies description. It may never stop leaking out, not in human memory. The strange bacteria that survive there have been used by scientists to show that life might exist on other planets, where "life as we know it" could not.

Will we learn from the past, or just grunt, put our heads down, and follow that dollar?

http://www.adn.com/money/story/592844.html

http://www.earthjustice.org/library/references/sacbee_winter_run_salmon.pdf

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/mining/26996_damage12.shtml

Here's a chart of the area, courtesy of the Anchorage Daily News:


http://community.adn.com/mini_apps/assetDisplay/?ref=http://media.adn.com/smedia/2008/11/18/00/505-18BLM_BristolBay.graphic_large.prod_affiliate.7.gif&summ=&sec=171&width=528&height=568

Senator Elton Says It All

I was going to blog rhapsodic on how much Alaska's political circumstances have suffered since our Governor's recent tour throwing gravel encrusted slushballs at every one who is now in power in Washington DC.

But Alaska's State Senator Kim Elton has already written it, much better than I could. Link on the piece below for a thoughtful look at our new reality:

http://alaskareport.com/news1108/x61752_elton_different.htm

Crab Ratz Problems Well Known Before Implementation

Almost Five Years Ago---The Northern Fish Council Ignored Working Fishermen Then, Too

Here is the naively worded testimony I provided the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council in early 2004, before implementation of Crab Ratz. The fact that none of the socially destructive aspects of Crab Ratz have been addressed to this day is a sad commentary itself.

North Pacific Fisheries Management Council

Re: BUY BACK MY BACK

First of all, I would like to thank you, the North Pacific Fisheries Management council, for waking me up. I had been asleep, and the cold bucket of water that was your crab rationalization plan left me blinking, sputtering, and drenched in outrage.

Because, to me, the rationalization behind rationalization isn’t rational. As a guy who first crabbed in 1984, who has banged and shoveled many tons of salt water ice, hooked and pulled through thousands of buoy setups, pushed, tied and clambered over hundreds of stacks of pots, and dealt on a personal basis with processors, skippers and boat owners, I felt I might be in a position to point out certain errors in the plan’s most basic logical underpinnings.

To wit:
The awarding of permanent buying privileges to a limited number of processors is not justified. If the vessel buyback program is sufficient compensation for the overcapitalization of boat owners, then a similar one time buyback program should suffice for the overcapitalization of processors. To step into the arena of the giving and taking away of freedoms, rights and privileges in a free society should not be the job of the Council, only the management of fisheries. To award buyer’s privileges to these entities is, I think, best understood in terms of the stripping the right of everyone else to buy fish. To extend this thinking logically everyone in the industry should be frozen in place, from cannery workers to deckhands, skippers and owners. Is it the intent of the Council to create a permanent caste system? I don’t think it is, so the Council must reconsider this awarding of the market to an anointed few.

Since the days of the daring Dutchmen in what was then New Amsterdam, free trade has been the engine that powers America. To create Lords of Commerce in the fishing industry is to apply a medieval solution to a modern problem. The Justice Department has numerous reservations about Processor Shares and has predicted a sticky goo of lawsuits. I must concur.

The elimination of consideration for crew, and the minimal consideration offered to skippers is not justified. Every argument offered to support the awarding of shares to processors applies to skippers and crew, who pay, on average, 40% of a boats daily operating expenses plus the cost of their own equipment, and the investment of many hours of labor, for what is only a chance to make money. If they were wage earners, with the owners taking all the risk, making all the investment, and therefore taking all the profit, there would be no claim. But they aren’t. Fishing is a venture, undertaken by contractually linked businessmen, three quarters of which are skippers and crew. The Justice Department hasn’t studied this aspect of rationalization, but surely a similar sticky goo of lawsuits is lurking in the wings for this, too.

I’m an old man, nearly 43, and I thought the sight of me, bent over my cane as I shuffle painfully up the long stairways to attend the meetings might engender a sympathetic ear on the part of the Council. What I have come to learn is that the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council is not so much a forum of the minds as an advocacy platform. In its well meaning desire to defer to the wishes and concerns of the industry, the Council has formed policy based on the interests of those groups most forcefully represented in the hallways, at the breakfast tables, and in the seats of the Council itself.

I expected to find fire breathing dragons and evil wizards at work when I first began attending Council meetings. To my surprise I spoke to a continuous stream of pleasant, intelligent, engaging people who were doing nothing more or less than their jobs, which was to represent their own interests and those of their employers. Processors, well-informed, well-funded, and well represented on the Council, mounted an impressive campaign, and are now a driving force in the process. Fledgling Skipper/Crew groups like the Gulf Groundfish Fisherman’s Association, the Crewman’s Association and the swelling Deep Sea Fisherman’s Union will probably grow up too late to join the big boys on the field before the game is over.

Still, the potential for backlash is enormous. Every lawsuit, every protest, every disparate group with an axe to grind at the Council’s table has the potential to further slow a process that can be tracked by counting the rings in its trunk. I therefore suggest these two changes:

1. That the number of processors allowed to buy fish in Alaska not be limited. A simple buyback program, in which excess processors would be bought out by those remaining, would be better still.

2. That a “Buy Back My Back” program be implemented to compensate long term participants in the industry:
A long term participant is defined as a skipper or crewman who fulfils his/her full seasonal contractual obligations.
The fund would have two tiers: one for Skipper/Crew participants during the qualifying IFQ years, and one for ongoing participants in the rationalized fishery.

Qualifying participants in the first tier would be assigned one point for each of the IFQ qualifying years in which he fulfils his contractual obligation. Acknowledging that Skipper/Crew often move from boat to boat while requiring contractual fulfillment for qualification recognizes the fluid nature of skipper/crew employment dynamic, while also recognizing the importance of dependable professionals. Qualified participants would receive a one time payment, amount depending on number of points, funded in a way similar to the vessel buyback program. This purpose of this payment would be to enable excess Skipper/Crew to leave the industry, or for those wishing to remain to buy into the industry.

The second tier would be comprised of present day contracted skipper/crew. Upon fulfilling his seasonal contract, he would be signed off by the boat owner and would receive a yearly dividend. The creation of a subsidized health insurance program as an alternate to a dividend could best bring permanent long term benefits to the community of fishers.

Such a program would address issues of equitable distribution of the resource to all stakeholders in the industry as well as fostering a stable, professional pool of contractors for the industry. I strongly urge that these changes be seriously considered as you refine the alternatives for GOA Groundfish and implement the BSAI crab rationalization plan.

I’m sorry I won’t be able to join you for this meeting. I know you’ll miss me. Right now I smell so strongly of squid juice that the automatic doors at Safeway open 25 feet before I arrive. I therefore officially support the efforts of Mr. Kwatchka of the GGFA, Mr. Soma of the DSFU, and the testimony supplied by Mr. Branson of the Crewman’s Association.
Thank You, Terry Haines

Almost five years ago, and the same issues sit on the table while our fishing communities suffer.

The Red Faced State

Alaska Says: "No We Can't!"

It turns out Don Young is right. Alaskans are the dumbest people on the planet.

And Mr. Young is going back to Washington.

McCain/Palin also easily carried the state, even though the twitchy Mr. McCain often seemed more like a contestant on "Deal or No Deal" than potential commander in chief, especially when he opened the Sarah Palin briefcase. And Mrs. Palin, who seemed to be doing a fine job as governor, didn't seem very presidential lying on the canvas at the feet of the pixieish Katie Couric.

McCain/Palin employed the classic Republican 72 hour blitz strategy. Knowing that the opposition has little time to respond, the candidate saves the most outrageous and gut wrenching ads for the three days just before the election. But, to his credit, I think Annakin McCain was conflicted to the end, and seemed to hold back the worst dogs in his kennel. Mrs. Palin certainly chaffed at her restraints. Alaska's rogue diva whipped chanting and booing crowds into a foamy frenzied meringue that now amounts to a national fan club.

Mrs. Palin has come to to relish the roar of the crowds, and is less conflicted. She will come back to Wasilla not a lame duck, but a restless one.

Don Young's 72 hour blitz was more effective. "I know Alaska." the grizzled grump said, and I guess he's right. Bombing the voters with a last minute ad campaign that claimed Berkowitz would immediately institute a 190 percent tax increase and become Nancy Pelosi's butler, the old warhorse has cruised over the finish line buoyed by the flow of panicking sheep.

Mr. Young's problem is in two years he has to do it all over again. As he continues to channel hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions to DC lawyers, desperately challenging a sea of Justice Department evidence line by line, he has to be wondering if the contributions can keep up. He is no longer chairman of anything, and many Republicans resent the King of Earmarks for tarnishing the brand.

Maybe its right that Young and Stevens return to Washington to face their peers and the prosecutors and the press. But its not good for Alaska. The Senate majority leader has promised ethics hearings for Mr. Stevens, should he return, and even senior Republicans are predicting he would be booted out. In that case a special election will be held to replace him.

Now hang on.

I know Mrs. Palin can't appoint herself as Uncle Ted's successor, but surely she can run for it in the special election.

Senator Sarah?