The Automatic Earth - Tribute: June 26, 2010 (6min.)

[LargoWinch]

To the great work of Ilargi, Stoneleigh and iTulip for sharing the same values.

Runtime: 6min.

Automaticearth.blogspot.com

[Rajiv]

Re: The Automatic Earth - Tribute: June 26, 2010 (6min.)

Yes a great piece indeed. Thank you for posting it -- two more items that deserve mention rhat were linked by Ilargi

Recession as big as Texas pummels rural parts of America

By RICHARD PARKER

WIMBERLEY, Texas — The grass in the pasture stands tall. Throughout the spring, bluebonnets, Indian paint brushes and black-eyed Susans waved from the roadside. The Blanco River runs clear and full now, and the tourists return to the town square. A wet winter and cold spring have broken the grip of a two-year drought in Texas.

But this plenty camouflages a drought of another sort: the economic one. Texas was slow to be swept up by the Great Recession. But now its pain has come home to big cities and small towns, as the lagging effects of the recession batter the ranchers, storekeepers and families who all withstood — until now.

While Washington's fury is directed toward the Gulf oil pill, it has largely lost sight of the recession. Yet Congress continues to weigh financial reform, and it would do well to remember the human cost of the Great Recession, triggered by the titans of Wall Street but borne heavily by everyday people.

Since the crisis began and through the first quarter of this year, more than $2 trillion in mutual funds have been wiped out, 4.5 million homes have gone into foreclosure and 6.8 million jobs have been lost.

With its art, eclectic character and natural beauty ours is one of the best little towns in the nation to visit; it says so right in the pages of The New York Times and Travel Holiday Magazine.

But for those of us who live here, a quiet crisis whispers of impending poverty. A merchant confides he can't take another year like the last two. A Mexican stonemason tells me that a single project tided his family through winter. A Realtor relays that all over town, people who never took a mortgage they couldn't afford are looking to give up, sell out and move on.

The alternative is tallied and cataloged at the stately 102-year old, brick-and-limestone county courthouse over in San Marcos. Jack Hays, for whom this county was named, was a living legend for his exploits as a Texas Ranger, namely for fighting the Comanche.

Today, people are losing their homes not to raiding parties but to banks. There were 157 up for auction in April alone. For 15 withering months there have been 100 or more, according to the San Marcos Daily Record. It cites George Roddy, whose company dutifully counts all of them: "This foreclosure storm is far from over."

The list carries the names of familiar ranches, springs and creeks. Yet the tale of Hays County is, sadly, more emblematic than unique in the vast landscape that stretches westward beyond the Hudson and the Potomac. Up in Austin, $6.5 billion in real estate value has been wiped out as if by a tornado. The resultant cuts in money for teachers, cops and services in the city are likely just around the corner.
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and Live from Planet Norte

America's totalitarian democracy and the politics of plunder, or, life is a titty tuck and a Dodge truck

By Joe Bageant
Winchester, Virginia

Starting with the Homeland Security probe at Washington's Reagan Airport, arrival back in the United States resembles an alien abduction to a planet of bright lights, strange beings and incomprehensible behavior. The featureless mysophobic landscape of DC's Virginia suburbs seems to indicate that homogeneity and sterility are the native religions. Especially after spending eight months in Mexico's pungent atmosphere of funky, sensual open air markets, rotting vegetation, smoking street food grills, sweat, agave nectar and ghost orchids.

The uniformity on Planet Norte is striking. Each person is a unit, installed in life support boxes in the suburbs and cities; all are fed, clothed by the same closed-loop corporate industrial system. Everywhere you look, inhabitants are plugged in at the brainstem to screens downloading their state approved daily consciousness updates. iPods, Blackberries, notebook computers, monitors in cubicles, and the ubiquitous TV screens in lobbies, bars, waiting rooms, even in taxicabs, mentally knead the public brain and condition its reactions to non-Americaness. Which may be defined as anything that does not come from of Washington, DC, Microsoft or Wal-Mart.

For such a big country, the "American experience" is extremely narrow and provincial, leaving its people with approximately the same comprehension of the outside world as an oyster bed. Yet there is that relentless busyness of Nortenians. That sort of constant movement that indicates all parties are busy-busy-busy, but offers no clue as to just what they are busy at.

We can be sure however, that it has to do with consuming. Everything in America has to do with consuming. So much so that we find not the slightest embarrassment in calling ourselves "the consumer society." Which is probably just as well, since calling ourselves something such as "the just society" might have been aiming a bit too high? Especially for a nation that never did find enough popular support to pass any of the 200 anti-lynching bills brought before its Congress (even Franklin Roosevelt refused to back them).

On the other hand, there is no disputing that we do reduce all things to consumption. Or acquiring money for consumption. Or paying on the debt for past consumption. It keeps things simple, and stamps them as authentically American.

For example, now faced with what may be the biggest ecological disaster in human history, I'm hearing average Americans up here talk of the Gulf oil "spill" (when they speak of it at all -- TV gives the illusion those outside the Gulf region give a shit), in terms of its effect on: (A) the price of seafood; and (B) jobs in tourism and fishing. Only trolls stunted by generations of inbred American style capitalism could do such a thing: reduce a massive ocean dead zone to the cost of a shrimp cocktail or a car payment.

Meanwhile, even as capitalism shows every sign of collapsing upon them under the weight of its sheer non-sustainability, Norteamericanos wait like patient, not-too-bright children for its "recovery." Recovery, of course, is that time when they can once again run through the malls and outlet stores, the car lots and the fried chicken palaces eating, grabbing and consuming. No doubt, something resembling a recovery will be staged for their benefit, thereby goosing their pocketbooks at least one more time before the rest of the world forecloses on the country.
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[vinoveri]

Re: The Automatic Earth - Tribute: June 26, 2010 (6min.)

Boy, I had thought I was recovering (albeit slowly) from my doomer pathology.
Perusing their website has set me back a bit.

[Kadriana]

Re: The Automatic Earth - Tribute: June 26, 2010 (6min.)

My husband and I have been working on the learning curve part. I grew several heirloom vegetables this year, adding to our fruit tree/bush collection and will have enough solar panels to run our house soon. I've gotten pretty decent at canning and just made a batch of strawberry jam. At worst, we save money.

[Rajiv]

Re: The Automatic Earth - Tribute: June 26, 2010 (6min.)

My husband and I have been working on the learning curve part.

That is great -- also for you to experiment with - Growing Potatoes - Planting Potatoes - in old tires

Part -1

Part -2

Part -3

Part - 4

Nutritive Value of potatoes

As you can see that adjusted for moisture content, potatoes have the same amount of protein as wheat, and the protein quality is better than milk. So it is a very good source of nutrition.

Growing potatoes in old tires

How To Grow Potatoes in Tire Towers

A new use for old tires

A stack of four tires appears to yield 25 lbs of potatoes

[jpatter666]

Re: The Automatic Earth - Tribute: June 26, 2010 (6min.)

Awesome, I'm going to try this next year. Thanks!