How to Get Your Home Off the Water "Grid"

People are becoming more self-sufficient in terms of energy and food, but what about water? Here's some ideas.

February 9, 2009  |

 

The recent convergence of events has led many people to begin discussing economic and ecological sustainability and local production of food and energy. In the past two years, as the world witnessed financial, economic, political, geopolitical, social, and military turmoil, people have raised critical issues of "peak oil," globalization, and global food and energy crises, and begun to talk about possible solutions and to empower themselves and their communities.
Even large urban mainstream media such as the Los Angeles Times and New York Times have featured stories of people who have started community gardens, replaced lawns with "victory gardens" and raised chickens in their backyards, and established cooperatives for local networks of food producers, among others. While the food and agricultural issues have captured mainstream media's attention at a time food commodity prices soared manifold in 2007 and 2008, few people have yet to talk about water. 

What about water? What can people do to exert some control over water -- especially at a time when both water delivery and wastewater treatment have been centralized and controlled by either municipal utilities or private corporations? For the nervous communities and individual "survivalists" who are busily installing their own rooftop solar-power systems and growing their own vegetable gardens, what can they do about their water? How can communities survive and sustain themselves if their water and sewage utilities stop treating water because these utilities simply cannot obtain the essential chemicals and fossil fuel to operate their plants due to a variety of reasons? 

Water is the basis of agriculture and industry, and the foundation of sanitation. In essence, humanity can live without oil -- albeit more primitively -- but humanity cannot survive without water. Despite its importance, rarely has the issue of water been integrated into our discussions of food crises and economic crises, except when we briefly talk about global warming and extreme droughts that affect crop-growing regions. Without clean water, we cannot have healthy people and communities. 

In this time of uncertainties and chaos, how can individuals and communities help themselves to prepare their water systems so as to keep themselves alive and healthy? The first step is to design and plan for alternatives to the colossal, centralized chemical-intensive, fossil-fuel-intensive conventional water and wastewater systems. MORE

Bob Murphy on Christians and Anarchism

^{From:  Christian Libertarians}

Bob Murphy on Christians and Anarchism

Posted by: Doug Stuart | (2)

When Bob Murphy isn’t posing as a Progressive interviewer of allegedly neo-confederate authors, he’s busy writing his own books and articles. Murphy, a Christian and Austrian economist, blogged recently on his website, Free Advice, about Christian Anarchists. I’m posting it because it falls in line with much of what I’ve been dwelling on lately, and starts a discussion regarding the Christian’s beliefs about the State.
Quotable:

I actually think evangelical Christians are a ripe demographic for understanding the ideal of a Stateless society. God warned the Israelites not to submit to an earthly king, and His warnings were spot-on.

Murphy echoes here what Progressive Christian Tim Suttle says here in a response to my review of his book. Christians throughout history have largely been supportive of the State not many generations after Christ walked the earth. Indeed, as Murphy mentions, even Israel really wanted to be “like the other nations” and have a human ruler over them. Alternatively, those who have understood the nature of the State (which is altogether different from governance) have understood its evil nature, it’s tendency toward oppression, and its mechanism as a violent force.

As usual, it didn’t take long for a commenter on Murphy’s post to bring up Romans 13. And as soon as somebody else refuted it, the statist-defender accused the resister of twisting Scripture or making the Apostle Paul say something he didn’t say. Unfortunately, the problem cuts both ways. Paul could indeed be endorsing the State (I doubt he is), or Paul could be saying something deeper and more profound and important within a larger narrative of the book of Romans. It may be the statists who are making Paul say more than he did. But I’m not an expert on Romans 13. Lawrence Vance has posted here and here on Romans 13, and Norman spoke briefly on a New Testament Theology of the State at the Austrian Scholars Conference in 2011. Both will say more than I do and better than I could.

Read Murphy’s full article here.

Connections Between the Austrian School of Economics and Christian Faith

Connections Between the Austrian School of Economics and Christian Faith
A Personalist Approach By Paul A. Cleveland  |  Posted: Mon. September 1, 2003 
Also published in Journal of Markets & Morality


Introduction

One of the main problems of integrating Christian faith and economic analysis is that most economists approach the subject using an anthropology that is decidedly anti-Christian. While this is typically done without much forethought, economists typically reject out-of-hand any approach that deviates from the one that they deem to be integrally part of their study. Owing to the work of John Stuart Mill and his progeny, a utilitarian approach to the subject became dominant. While economic analysis must be grounded in the reality that the utility people find in goods plays a foundational role in our understanding of how economies function, what is not needed is the endorsement of utilitarianism. It is this endorsement that has led the profession to become largely mathematical and empirical. However, the Austrian School has resisted this tendency because scholars working in that tradition maintain an anthropology that is much more consistent with Christianity.

In this article, I will examine these issues in more detail. First, I will explore the implications of adopting a completely mathematical methodology in the study of economics. As will be demonstrated, this approach reduces human behavior to that of any other animal. Second, I will examine the approach of praxeology that has been taken by the Austrians. Unlike the positivistic method that is so common today, this approach has the benefit of maintaining real, human actors whose choices and activities cause economies to develop and change. Finally, I will consider some important additions that can be made to this approach by developing several personalist insights about the nature of self-determination. It is within this context that Christians can more thoroughly discuss how the people of a society might aspire to live together both freely and virtuously. 

The Problem of Modern Economic Methodology¹

There is embedded in the modern approach to economic analysis an underlying assumption that places it at odds with Christianity. The methodology used presupposes that each person is essentially a stimulus-response machine. Theoretically speaking, this assertion is borne out by the assumption that each person has a utility function that is imprinted on his being. While no assertion is made that the function is fixed or permanent, there is little discussion of its changing or of how it might change. In this way, the person’s choices, if they can be called “choices,” are merely the result of a mathematical calculation based upon the environmental constraints imposed. In essence, the person is viewed as a kind of computer who assesses his options based upon the objective prices that he happens to find in the marketplace.

This approach to economics developed out of naturalism. Naturalism itself became more and more a part of scientific pursuits during the Enlightenment. By “naturalism,” I follow C. S. Lewis and define it as the assumption that nothing exists but nature and that nature can only be understood in terms of how each part relates to every other part with nothing else remaining. “What the Naturalist believes is that the ultimate Fact, the thing you can’t go behind, is a vast process in space and time which is going on of its own accord. Inside that total system every particular event � happens because some other event has happened; in the long run, because the Total Event is happening.”² As applied to social sciences generally, and to economics specifically, naturalism includes mankind in the “Total Event” and, therefore, it assumes that human action arises from a natural cause-and-effect relationship. Richard Weaver captured the progression of naturalism in his book, Ideas Have Consequences. In it he wrote:

[Then came] psychological behaviorism, which denied not only freedom of the will but even such elementary means of direction as instinct. Because the scandalous nature of this theory is quickly apparent, it failed to win converts in such numbers as the others [(materialism, evolution, et cetera)]; yet it is only a logical extension of them and should in fairness be embraced by the upholders of material causation. Essentially, it is a reduction to absurdity of the line of reasoning that began when man bade a cheerful goodbye to the concept of transcendence.<sup>3

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The Big Suicide Loophole in Antidepressant Drug Safety Studies

by Peter R. Breggin, MD

On December 13, 2006 the FDA’s Psychopharmaceutical Drugs Advisory Committee (PDAC) is meeting in Silver Spring, Maryland to discuss antidepressant-induced suicidal behavior in adults. In 2004 the FDA held similar hearings on children and concluded that antidepressants do in fact cause suicide in humans under age eighteen. A warning has been placed in all antidepressant labels or package inserts.

Now the agency has given advanced notice of its new findings – antidepressants, all of them, according to the FDA, cause increased suicidality in young adults. Suicide occurs more than twice as much on antidepressants than on sugar pills in individuals under age 25.
First the agency admits that antidepressants cause suicidality in children. Now the agency admits the drugs cause the same disasters in young adults. Meanwhile, an independent review of all antidepressant trials submitted to the FDA has shown that the drugs are no better than placebo. America’s drug watchdog needs to come clean. It’s been approving depressants as antidepressants.

The Largest Loop Hole

But it gets worse. The primary data on suicidality has been generated in short-term controlled clinical trials planned by drug companies, carried out by drug company hacks, and evaluated by drug company employees at corporate headquarters. If that kind of carefully cultivated evaluation bears such bad fruit, imagine what the real data must show.

Since I first began working as a medical expert in product liability cases way back in the early 1990s, I’ve spent innumerable hours culling the sealed data contained within the files of companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly. Among other things, I long ago found evidence that Paxil and Prozac cause suicidality in adults. These discoveries then led to settlements in product liability suits brought against the two companies brought by surviving family members. I’ve also communicated my conclusions in books like Talking Back to Prozac and the Antidepressant Fact Book and in scientific articles but the primary data until recently remained sealed.


Drug-company-groomed data creates the biggest loophole in the FDA’s evaluations of drug safety. In May 2006 GSK published a 'Dear Healthcare Provider' letter admitting that Paxil causes suicidality in depressed adults, but even that data was diluted before it was processed. The real picture is even worse. MORE

Separating School & State: How To LiberateAmerican Families

 

Separating School & State: How To LiberateAmerican Families by Sheldon Richman

This is taken from Sheldon Richman's book, Separating School & State: How To Liberate American Families.  Chapter 3: Why There Are Public Schools 

Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it. - Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence

Why were the public schools ever established? Did the private sector fail to set up schools or set up too few of them? Were large segments of society barred from obtaining education? Was the education of poor quality? The answer to the last three questions is no. The public schools were not established to make up for any deficiency in people's ability to learn to read, write, do arithmetic, and acquire knowledge of other subjects. The government schools were set up for another purpose entirely.  

As Jack High and Jerome Ellig have written, "Private education was widely demanded in the late 18th and 19th centuries in Great Britain and America. The private supply of education was highly responsive to that demand, with the consequence that large numbers of children from all classes of society received several years of education." High and Ellig show that the government's involvement in education "displaced private education, sometimes deliberately stifling it [and] altered the kind of education that was offered, mainly to the detriment of the poorer working classes. "In colonial times through the early Republic period, when private schools were the rule, a great many people were educated, despite the relatively low living standards of the day. As the historian Robert Seybolt wrote: 

In the hands of private schoolmasters the curriculum expanded rapidly. Their schools were commercial ventures, and, consequently, competition was keen.... Popular demands, and the element of competition, forced them not only to add new courses of instruction, but constantly to improve their methods and technique of instruction.

Schooling in that early period was plentiful, innovative, and well within the reach of the common people.What effect did it have? High and Ellig note that 80 percent of New Yorkers leaving wills could sign their names. Other data show that from 1650 to 1 795, male literacy climbed from 60 to 90 percent; female literacy went from 30 to 45 percent. Between 1800 and 1840, literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to between 91 and 97 percent. And in the South during the same span, the rate grew from 50-60 percent to 81 percent . Indeed, Senator Edward M. Kennedy's office issued a paper not long ago stating that the literacy rate in Massachusetts has never been as high as it was before compulsory schooling was instituted. Before 1850, when Massachusetts became the first state in the United States to force children to go to school, literacy was at 98 percent. When Kennedy's office released the paper, it was 91 percent.  

According to Carl F. Kaestle, "Literacy was quite general in the middle reaches of society and above. The best generalization possible is that New York, like other American towns of the Revolutionary period, had a high literacy rate relative to other places in the world, and that literacy did not depend primarily upon the schools." Another indication of the high rate of literacy is book sales. Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense sold 120,000 copies in a colonial population of 3 million (counting the 20 percent who were slaves)the equivalent of 10 million copies today. In 1818, when the United States had a population of under 20 million, Noah Webster's Spelling Book sold over 5 million copies. Walter Scott's novels sold that many copies between 1813 and 1823, which would be the equivalent of selling 60 million copies in the United States today. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper sold millions of copies. John Taylor Gatto notes that Scott's and Cooper's books were not easy reading. European visitors to early nineteenth-century America - such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Pierre du Pont de Nemours marveled at how well educated the people were. MORE

Massive Cuts to Postal Service a Step Towards Privatization?

Murderous Reform: A Plan to Privatize Postal Profits at Public Expense

January 10, 2013

BY GRAY BRECHIN

The National Academy of Public Administration has released a “Work-in-Progress” report entitled "Restructuring the U.S. Postal System: The Case for a Hybrid Public-Private Postal System."  The Academy is now embarking on a study of this proposal, which would privatize a large portion of the country's postal system.  

The Academy's study is billed as an “Independent Review of a Thought Leader Proposal to Reform the U.S. Postal Service.”  Unfortunately, no study conducted by a four-man panel chaired by David M. Walker, the former President and CEO of the libertarian Peter G. Peterson Foundation, can seriously claim either the independence or non-partisan objectivity that the Academy itself boasts.   

It has been my experience over the past 30 years that "hybrid public-private partnerships" are often little more than a sedative euphemism for the private sector taking the profits while the public bears the costs.  Such is the case with this "reform,” which will, as is so often claimed in such instances, "unleash the power of market forces" by transferring the USPS profit centers to the private sector while saddling the public with the cost for "the last mile."  Meanwhile, the public is already being stripped of its assets in broad daylight while the media sleeps.

The proposal is predictably one-dimensional — as befits men who seemingly have little or no sense of the public service mission for which the Post Office was created 238 years ago under the direction of Benjamin Franklin.  Its purpose, then as now, was democracy and equality, not efficiency or profit. Thus, the report omits much. 

Nowhere in the proposal is there any mention of unions, let alone of living wages, so one can only presume that a primary means of reducing costs will be to drive down the income of those postal employees who remain after the USPS is radically downsized and diminished as proposed.

The report also simplistically states that "the root cause of the postal crisis is the historic change in how we communicate," omitting other forces now undermining it such as Congress itself.  Nor does it mention the invaluable artistic, historic, social, environmental, and commercial function of many post offices currently being thrown onto the market with virtually no oversight.  It neglects to say that a commercial real estate firm (CBRE) chaired by Senator Dianne Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, is profiting from the sale of properties paid for by taxpayers for well over a century. 

Finally, there is no serious discussion of alternatives characteristically described in such reports as “out of the box” for making the USPS solvent again, such as reviving the U.S. Postal Savings Bank and providing other public services currently available outside this country. That is because the self-proclaimed thought leaders who framed the report do not actually seek to save the Postal Service but to “reform” it virtually out of existence.

My studies of the New Deal have revealed an ethos of public service that seems entirely alien not only to the men who produced the Academy’s blueprint but to current postal management as well as to those in Congress who saddled the USPS with fiscal obligations seemingly designed to eliminate it as a competitor to private carriers, a goal long sought by those very carriers and by the libertarian think tanks they lavishly fund.

Several WPA-built structures here in California bear an inscription by the Roman poet Virgil: "THE NOBLEST MOTIVE IS THE PUBLIC GOOD."  The Academy’s preliminary report contains nothing noble or new.  Quite the contrary, it is yet more of the same demonstrably failed neoliberal experiment that has, over the past three decades, so disastrously despoiled the U.S. economy as it has demoralized our citizens.

Unleashing the power of market forces did not work so well in 1929 or in 2008, and it will not do so again as those very forces seek to finish off the public sector as a competitor once and for all. MORE

Over Forty Children Paralyzed by Vaccines in One Village

Posted by Dr Sircus on January 8, 2013

I am so glad (not!) that we have people like Bill Gates to make sure vaccines are funded for African children. I am not alone in that perspective but there are brave people like Christina England, a U.K. journalist and author who alone is reporting about the unspeakable harm that international vaccination programs bring to the children of the world.

Christina reports that:

On December 20, 2012, a vaccination tragedy hit the small village of Gouro, located in northern Chad, Africa. According to the newspaper La Voix, out of 500 children who received the new meningitis vaccine MenAfriVac, at least 40 of them between the ages of 7 and 18 have become paralyzed. Those children also suffered hallucinations and convulsions.

Since this report, the true extent of this tragedy is coming to light, as parents of these vaccinated children have reported yet more injuries. The authorities in the area are shaken, as citizens set fire to a sanitary administration vehicle in a demonstration of their frustration and anger at the government’s negligence.

At the end of her report England asks:

How can at least 40 children become paralyzed after receiving a vaccine, and no news organizations provide coverage of this disturbing situation? The media has gone completely silent. There appear to be no reports of this incident on any government website. The only available information, apart from this one newspaper report, appears to be buried on a small blog titled, “Le blog de Makaila,” which has been reporting regular updates on the situation.

Where are statements from the involved organizations – WHO, GAVI, PATH, UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Why has this vaccination program not been suspended? What are these organizations going to do about the atrocity that has happened in Gouro?

Emma is a little six-year-old girl who is suffering from severe vaccine damage that has been verified by several leading experts. Emma is totally paralyzed and unable to move any part of her body. She cannot speak and breathes with the aid of a small tube inserted through a tiny incision in her windpipe called a tracheotomy. (The picture above is Emma at around age two.)

England writes:

Instead of the help and compensation her family should be receiving, Emma has been stolen by the state and spends her days in what her mother describes as a “dreadful institution for the disabled.” Instead of the support Emma’s mother needs to come to terms with what has happened to her daughter, she has been accused of trying too hard to find answers and get the professional help that she believes her daughter needs.

I wrote in “Vaccine Damages Are No One’s Illusion” that India has seen three vaccine disasters in 2010, resulting in four deaths after the measles vaccine and six deaths after the HPV vaccine. Also, in 2010Poland became the only country to reject H1N1 vaccines.

Nine-year-old Hannah Poling is shown.
(AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, John Spink)

The first court award in a vaccine-autism claim was a big one. Hannah Poling will receive more than $1.5 million for her life care, lost earnings, and pain and suffering for the first year alone. In addition to the first year, the family will receive more than $500,000 per year to pay for Hannah’s care.

It is clear that vaccine damages can be life-long and cost a fortune to the family as well as the state. Medical officials still say there is nothing to worry about, but when we look under the hood of vaccine dangers and damages we find a completely different story.