What's Killing the US Economy

(quotes from Nick Hanauer, billionaire, 2/8/15 in theatlantic.com)

"Profits once flowed to higher wages or increased investment. Now, they
enrich a small number of shareholders [super-rich shareholders]."

"..economic power has shifted from workers to owners over the
past 40 years..."

"A 3.6 trillion budget shortfall has left... public infrastructure in disrepair."

"Federal spending on...research and development has plummeted 40%..."

"...public university tuition, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled
in the past 30 years."

       "Where did all the money go?"

"...much of it went to stock buybacks -- more than 6.9 trillion dollars
went to stock buybacks since 2004 [alone]."

"In the past, this money flowed  through the broader economy in the
form of higher wages, and plant and equipment investment..."

"But, today these buybacks drain trillions of dollars of windfall profits
out of the real economy [the American people's economy] and into
a paper-asset bubble, inflating share prices [of the super-rich], while
producing nothing of tangible value [to the American Peoples lives,
well-being, incomes, future and infrastructure]."

[It should be added that the above chunk of the demise of US democracy is
occurring in China, India, Western Europe, Brazil-- anywhere that an
upper 1% are stealthily, illegitimately, taking money from Earth's evolved
natural resources--the Earth's lands, waters, other
natural resources, and from Earth's masses of diverse peoples.--
L.S. Heatherly]



Creative commons

New Years: Youth, Age, Life and Freedom

Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.
                                                                   --  Jean Jacques Rousseau
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest
love not freedom, but licence.
                                                                     -- John Milton
What is the nature of natural, innate, human freedom-- authentic
to our natural, human species? This is almost never asked nor answered.
To know, to have consciousness of, free human life and world; go to places
where there is abundant free forms of other social mammals, preceeding us.
For, we emerged from these freedoms, with these, are a part of these;
or we are diminished and perish.

You can identify human freedom by the company it keeps-- by abundant
free plants and the animals that preceeded our emergence from free
plants and animals. We come from the slow natural selection of freedoms,
interactive with, and dependent upon, many other species. Their
life and freedoms are a part of our life and freedoms.
                                                                           
What is the nature of natural, innate free plants and animals?
These can be identified by the free, unadulterated lands and
waters they keep to. You will not find them and their communities
in the city's land and water-scapes! City-life is conquered and ruled
by a quasi, human organism, engaged in the pursuit of elitist power;
rather than Earth's ecological growth in interactive, freedoms of many
ecological species of life, of which, our human being, lives
and freedoms are part.
                                                                          --  L.S. Heatherly

To be truly free, it takes more determination, courage, introspection,
and restrant than to be in shackles.
                                                                        --   Pietro Belluscb

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men [often unknowingly]
dread it [the real thing].
                                                                --   George Bernard Shaw

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.
                                                                       --  Victor Hugo

To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one
of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
                                                                  --   Henry Frederic Amiell
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit.
                                                                    --   George Santayana
Behold! I do not give lectures on a little charity.
When I give, I give myself.
                                                                      --   Walt Whitman

That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
                                                                  --  William Wordsworth



Copyright 2015  L.S. Heatherly

Garden of Being

            By  L.S. Heatherly
(dedicated to past Gardeners)

Unchased, now, one woman,
Unpursueing, now, one man,
Untilled, now, one garden.

One soul, believing no time is free,
Making its ancient rounds, diligently.
Yet, leaving more stones unturned.

One being, one citizen, of Earth's soil,
On watch over soil-life, sans toil,
Recovers something so faithfully earned:

Human culture-sproutings from Earth,
Once, our fate! An innate part of us;
Now, recovered birthright! So just!

Children, family, working, playing,
Rediscover their relatings in the maze
Of plant, blood, and human ways.

Yea, once -- before History's conquests --
Embraced, passed, equally, to all;
O vital part: of human being's call!

Fingers touch soil, water and air of Earth,
Souls' clutch growth, from seeds of their birth.



Copyright 2014   L.S. Heatherly

The Road Retaken

                    By L.S. Heatherly


How long this trace of road has wandered,
Dying, now, from lack of human reasons,
From sieges of growth, burrowings and seasons,
Is what the human mind first ponders.

And what became of the dream abandoned,
That rebelled, and took this path to somewhere,
Hoping for no trace of someone else having been,
For chance at grasping deeper self now here remanded?

And how long this dreamer's dream:
The resprouting of a life and soul?
How much of one being's lost ground retaken?
Is what the heart would have the mind could know.



from CH XI, Think Verse, Soul Lines, Ecopoetry
in THE LAST HUMAN SPRING
Copyright 2002 and 2009 L.S. Heatherly

Why Poets Write

           by    L.S. Heatherly

They say a picture's worth a thousand words.
If so; then why do poets write?

Do techno shots on paper, in movie, or Iphone screen
Lack what science and art imply they mean?

Is this magic show a seduction without end
To hide some lies on which we now depend?

Does the poet's eye of spirit-mind
Refute the eye of science-gadget mind?

Does this condensation of our speech
Reveal some truths that science cannot reach?

Will the poet eye rise-up to defy
The rampage-minds illusion that Picture's don't lie. ?

Will the spirit-eye go blind,
From the techno-eye, so prettily unkind?


from "CH XI: Think Verse, Soul Lines, Ecopoetry"
in the book, The LAST HUMAN SPRING PB, HB, and EBook
Copyright 2002 -- 2009 L.S. Heatherly

Billionaire, Nick Hanauer on Plutocracy

(quotes from a Paul Solomon interview, PBS News Hour, 7-28-14)

Nick Hanauer, billionaire, venture capitalist:

"A fundamental law of capitalism is, if workers don't have enough
money[, businesses, [then] don't have enough customers... "

"the average age of fast food workers is 28 years-old, earning poverty
wages; and tax payers have to make up the difference-- in the form of
more food stamps, medicaid and rent assistance."

"Ceo pay went up 1000% in the last 20 years [or something like that (30 yrs)],
and worker pay went up 5.7 %."

"this ridiculous idea that a worker on Wallstreet, securitizing imaginary assets,
or doing high-frequency trading, is worth 1000 times more than an
educator teaching our children, a worker growing our food, or workers
throwing themselves in harms way, [this huge gap in the valuation of
workers in poverty and super-rich workers] is nonsense.!"

Hanauer calls his view "middle-out" as oppsed to "trickle down" or
"bottom up" et.al. economics.

"We have run a 30-year experiment in what happens to an economy
when you structure it to benefit the few, at the expense of the many.
And I would argue that for most people that experiment hasn't gone
very well....

"Its simply nuts that we have allowed this [Plutocracy] to happen.!"

What a relief, what balm, to hear Hanauer and a small minority of
degreed experts come around to what Yours Truly has been thinking
for over 40 years!


L.S. Heatherly  2014  Creative Commons

Earth's Natural Human Society

Within the ecovillages (those surviving today or millenia ago),
the Earth-person, family and community live in an intimate
relationship, in a triecologic, organismic, psycho-social-
ontological-ecological union. This, in turn, is in an intimate
union within Earth's ecosphere.

Sharing rules as a lifeway and culture. People know what each
other are feeling and thinking, with less need for speaking.
There are no people digitally talking or digitally writing on screens.
People are in each others presence, on location in an Earth-
village or camp.  Its the realest, longest-running play of humanity.

'Civilization' fragments, adulterates, and alienizes this unity of
ecological, natural human being. Civilization fosters an
unprecedented intimacy inward -- the personal bio-ego-
self with itself, with other egoselves, as well as artificial
objects and phenomena-- while disrupting the other
intimacies with family, community, and local ecosystem.

The balance of all four of these Earth-human entities-
phenomena is essential to the growth, fulfillment, and
perpetuation of human life, spirit, society and soul.

It is from this disruption and destruction of long-running,
human intimacies, loves, carings, nurturings, fulfillments,
and bequeathments that 'civilization is found to be dis-
credited, illegitimate, and transgressive.

It is this revelation (as part of a deep human revelation)
exposing 'civilization's' disruption and dysfunction of
natural, Earth-human evolved (natural) mind, heart, soul,
human being, society, all living nature and their relationships,
that frees our human life-being force away from historical,
life-force (which has violated, divorced and seperated
from our human being-force) to rebond to Earth's living
nature's life-being force and its(hers) patiently evolved
(naturally selected, ecological world (field) of balanced,
harmonious, living beings.

It is, simply, to be with Earth's living beings; or not to be.
To be an Earthly, human being; or be an artificial, invasive,
quasi, un-belonging, alienized, cyborg-being.



(edited from CH I of The Last Human Spring 2002, 2009)
All rights reserved

Margaret Velma Arellano

                                       

                                            

     (pic: Margaret N of Phx)    Page first posted in mid 2011.

Margaret V. Arellano was born March 6th, 1956 in S.E. Phoenix AZ to Manual

and Mary (Medina) Arellano. Her father. Manuel, was from Texas; Mary (or Mary's parents), also, from Texas. She had about 8 sisters and 2 brothers; all were raised speaking both Spanish and English.

Falling off a teeter-totter at age 8, resulted in life-long epilepsy.
Her attempts to hold a job following 3 years of college were dashed by this

primary affliction.

With her older sisters all married, she tried marriage four times, encompassing
about a total of four-five years of married life altogether. Spurred partly by step-

father problems, Margaret briefly married a Native American man while still
attending high school. Her three subsequent, brief husbands were white.

Bubbling over with delight, Margaret came prancing across the hospital ward

floor to meet Heatherly, on or about, July 1st 1981. (She and all but one of

her sisters favored white boys.) They both were quite smitten by the meeting.

She was released after 3 days; but he located her thru an old phone number

about a year later. Following about 3 weekly visits to her apartment, he took

a studio apartment next to her one bedroom. LS and Margaret attempted

a romantic relationship that LS left fully unconsummated for over 15 years. Factors were her marriages, 2 lingering old flames, old buddies, her nature as a tomboy, as well as Heatherly's marriage to his mission for humanity. 

While living briefly in adjacent apartments, she was fresh out of a marriage,

and marriage minded;  while LS, simply, sought her as a long-term, girlfriend

and sister-cousin largely missing in his childhood and adulthood development. After two months mixed with needed growth, fulfillment, as well as, frustration;
he told her that their special, beautiful friendship should be saved and
cherished. And to that end, he would revert back to visiting her weekly instead
of daily. He had very quickly become her confidant. LS had become quickly popular with some of her family, attending family parties about once per month (siblings included an editor, lawyer, counselor, small business owner, police officer, et.al.). He attended a family softball game and was by acclamation, appointed pitcher owing to his accurate pitching of hit-able balls over the plate. They called him "scoop": (maybe) having the scoop on any subject!

Margaret was puzzled and frustrated by his reserve toward her; but he had grown up without a sister; hence, that was his nature with women-- he was slow with women and was never to move in with one.

She was short on communication skills. Two sisters told her: "He loves
you!". Heatherly's anthropological, psychological, sociocultural,
philosophical mind and heart had long needed affection, for and from,
a unique, special, girl like her. She added to his regeneration after earlier months
of decline in his general health and well-being. She, as well, strengthened
the ongoing, psychological-spiritual-ontological-ecological-philosophical
pathway of one original, maverick's deep, wide Earthly soul on a
"ground-breaking" literary mission for humankind's well-being and
humanity's conservation and restoration. Her heart, and soul had their
reasons, as well, for their special friendship. She sent some 90-100 cards and notes the first 7-8 years! These served as memory re-runs for LS after she was gone; along with 200 other memories.

Earnestly, LS plunged into probing and discovering the natures of this
unique young woman's mind, heart, life-world, development and soul.
Many times after the 1st year, he said "I could write a book about
this unique, struggling, triumphant, beautiful, female soul midst the
chaos called "the greatest nation on Earth."(updated description of her)
But he was carrying a long gestating book, now appoaching term.
It is no exaggeration to say that her entrance into his heart and

self-life-world (acknowledged in his book) was one key relationship
of midwifery for the deliverance of his major work, The Last Human
Spring.

After about 9 months, their housing units went up for sale.

Whereupon, LS located an apartment she liked and helped her

make the move; as well as four other times in her life. Like close

cousins, (sometimes sweethearts), they continued their special friendship based on errands in his old cars and various outings once every 3 weeks for many years. Later on, 6 -12 times per year. On the fly, he took many more

pics of her than anyone in his life. The early part of this 23 year

period, entailed her last 2 brief marriages. She was a bus person;

LS a good, old car-person. Of Heatherly's few girlfriends in life

Margaret was the rooted, deepest and longest in his heart and soul.

Both he and her were not the marrying kind; and after her marriages, she

came to accept this about her life as almost innate with her handicaps.

Pics are worth 1000s of words ; (top) LS and Margeret1993 at West Clear Creek;
(mid-left): Margaret (age 12?) at sisiter's Wedding; (lower left): Margaret glows in AZ desert sunset 1989; (mid-right): N of Phx in Starlight--eyes for LS! 1988! (bottom left): Margaret in cutoffs at W. Clear Creek 2001. (lower right): L.S Heatherly and Margaret 1984 AZ St. Fair