How about assigning our taxes?

My long distance provider, CREDO, has customers vote each year on which environmental and social organizations the company profits are donated to. We can vote by organization, by percent.

Wouldn't it be a great idea if we could do the same with our taxes? There could be an additional page at the end of our tax form, listing the various things our government spends money on, and each of us could assign our money by percentage.

I could see a list that includes: transportation, education, infrastructure, public safety, consumer protection, environmental protection, parks, forests and beaches, and war.

When faced with the choices, seeing things like the gulf oil spill, the Wall Street meltdown and our seemingly endless involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, where might each of us put our check marks?

I suspect that many of us, myself included, would opt for spending the money to make things better at home: create jobs, clean up our water supplies, fix our roads, educate our kids and keep up our national parks.

When forced to think about it, we see that there is only so much money and that something is going to get short changed. We'd have to vote our priorities.

Then, how many people would vote to send the lion's share of our national wealth to the middle east to try to, well, what exactly are we trying to do?

I'm guessing that the military's share would be much smaller.

Israel/Palestine and a thought-provoking short film

The Israel/Palestine issue has polarized our communities, and the emotions run high and usually in black and white. I saw a short film recently that shed some light on the people behind the headlines.

On the Road To Tel Aviv opens with a bunch of ordinary folks on a bus. A suicide bomber boards and blows the bus up. Next, a playful scene with a young couple in bed. She has to get back to the university, and her boyfriend is driving her to the bus.

She boards a small shuttle bus, and as the boyfriend starts to leave, he sees a young Muslim woman in thick layers of clothes and carrying a big carpet bag get on the bus. He's concerned and tries go get the girl to disembark. At the same time, a middle aged mother with two daughters catches what's going on, and she panics. Soon everyone gets off the bus except the Muslim woman, who is sitting, silently staring straight ahead.

An argument ensues, and the middle aged woman becomes hysterical, demanding the driver search the Muslim. He refuses, and one of the passengers is a soldier with a rifle. There is a scuffle over the rifle, and finally the driver says he isn't searching anyone, and he is an Arab and has been driving for 30 years, has a family and doesn't want to die either. He assures everyone that there is no terrorist on board, and slowly, reluctantly, they all board again.

As the bus is about to leave, a pregnant woman wants on the full bus, so the girlfriend gives up her seat and walks away with the boyfriend. The bus pulls away, and the film ends with the young couple walking up to a regular city bus.

We expect something to blow up, but it doesn't. Maybe one of the busses will, maybe not. Maybe the mother was just hysterical, maybe just reacting to the recent bombings. Maybe the young Muslim woman was an innocent girl feeling intimidated, or perhaps she had explosives in her bag. We don't know what's behind the exterior of these people, and the point is that neither do each other.

How do ordinary people go about the ordinary things of daily life with all the fear, uncertainty and inability to trust the person sitting next to them? Do we become hysterical or stoic, brash or frightened?

The film gave the audience a taste of the range of feelings of these people, and the uncertainty, but it couldn't bring it all the way home to a country where no one thinks twice about getting on a bus.

There is no black and white here. There are many shades of grey, and it is very complicated.

The campaigns from hell

I'm tempted not to vote. Admittedly, mud slinging political campaigns are nothing new, but, and maybe I'm just getting more sensitive to it, it seems that it has become nastier and more continual. I don't know what annoys me the most, the primary campaign for the Republican nomination for Governor or out local Democratic campaign for assembly.

The Republican contest seems to be about who is not far right enough. Any detour from the unthinking Fox News position is seen as degenerate, and the two front runners slam each other hourly.

At our local assembly race, it seems the only things these people haven't accused each other of is poisoning pigeons in the park and having sex with small animals.

The rest of the races and issues are just as bad, and quite frankly, I'm sick of the whole lot of them. No real problems are going to be fixed because they aren't even being discussed. Perhaps it is because these candidates haven't a clue about the nature of the real problems or their possible solutions.

Protesters and the need for personal meaning

The confrontation between Israel and the activists attempting to bring supplies to Gaza is, at least, a complex mix of international diplomacy, national security and public relations. It certainly isn't a black and white, simplistic issue, in spite of the sign-carrying protesters that have sprung up almost everywhere.

I'm not against activists gathering with marches and signs. It works well to stop pesticide spraying near the local school, getting your local polluted stream cleaned up, getting the state to provide funds for education or fire protection and even, although much less effective, to protest a nine-year-long war, where the decision makers are thousands of miles away.

People who are passionate about the Israel/Palestine issue, people who probably have never been there nor personally know anyone living in those areas, and yet turn out for every protest march, are a different group, and I have to reconsider their motivations.

One idea I've come up with, and it may only be one of several factors, is that everyone has a need to find meaning in his or her life. Some find it in religion, their careers or their families. I suspect that some people, lacking other sources of meaning, find it by becoming passionate protesters, whether their moral and ethical high has much to do with the realities of the situation or not.

amanita poisoning and natural selection

An antidote for amanita mushroom (death cap) poisoning, known for some time in Europe, is now being tried successfully by Dominican Hospital. On the surface, this is a good thing, but things are not always how they appear.

People actually pick these mushrooms, confusing them with editable types. This is rather like confusing a redwood tree with a manzanita. Since almost everyone knows that there are toxic mushrooms, particularly anyone who goes mushroom picking, you might think they would avoid anything they were suspicious of. Apparently not. Then, they don't just nibble, but make a meal of these before finding out if there are bad effects.

Now, remember Darwin's natural selection, the process by which individuals most fit survive to pass on their genes. “Most fit” for an antelope means being able to run fast, for a hawk, having good eye sight and for a human, being intelligent. So, people who do really stupid things don't survive, thus they don't pass on genes for stupidity. However, if we take idiots, cure them of the idiotic things they do to themselves, well, there goes the gene pool.

People who climb mountains in a snow storm, do skateboard tricks without a helmet, drive too fast on narrow, dirt, mountain roads, play Russian Roulette, pick fights with heavily armed toughs in a bar or pick unknown mushrooms are saying loud and clear, “I'm too damn dumb to live.”

Drilling and environmental protection: the pendulum swings.

The pendulum swings, always back and forth, never stopping in the center, and so the ramifications of the Gulf oil spill will play out.

Environmental damage has led to restrictions on drilling, off our coasts, north, west and east. Then, with the middle east situation, a new push for energy independence and more competition for petroleum products, the "drill baby, drill" mantra is again being heard.

Now, with this horrible spill, the voices for more drilling will be all but silenced for a time. However, with demand for oil rising even faster than the world's population, prices will go up while supplies become limited. The oil producing countries of the middle east, growing less enamored of the US due to our policy of making friends with them by making war on them, will be happy to sell to growing Asian economies, hungry to develop and to put their newly affluent people behind the wheel of autos.

So, in a very few years, collective memory being all too short, Americans will forget this spill and the call for drilling will again be loud and clear. And since the pendulum keeps swinging, another spill will start the cycle over again.

The reality is that until we develop alternative sources of energy well enough to end our dependence of fossil fuels, the pressure to drill will continue. Given a choice between drilling in ecologically sensitive areas and taking millions of cars off the roads, Americans will conveniently forget what is happening in the Gulf.

So, what can we do? Accountability is the key. When we allow an oil company to drill, there must be stipulations, rigid controls. We need further research into safety, with our government and the oil companies engaged in the best engineering and science. Once best practices are codified, these would be the law of the land regarding any new drilling, constantly updated as new knowledge is gained.

Would this be 100% effective? Nothing is 100%, but done right, we could raise the bar to very nearly 100%. When our river levies that are built to 25 or 50 year flood standards fail, we usually upgrade to 100 year protection, which all but prevents any further failure. The same type of thinking should apply to drilling, even though this would be done by a public and private mandated team effort.

immigraton and perception

The new Arizona immigration law, along with the protests against it, has just increased the polarization of the immigration issue. Concerns about the negative effects of illegal immigration on one side, and about immigrants' rights on the other are adding fuel to this growing fire. What is the reality of the situation?

From a societal perspective, perception is reality, literally, not metaphorically. Unlike observer independent reality, such as rocks, trees, elements and stars, things that would still exist even without humans, social reality is observer dependent, but is none the less real, as in national borders, elected offices, corporations, marriage and money.

Does illegal immigration pose a serious threat, a mild threat or none at all? That's a matter of perception. Does Arizona's law constitute a major assault on the rights of Latinos, a minor assault or none at all? That's also a matter of perception, and who and where you are influences your perception. The non-Latino in a border community has a different experience than a recent immigrant.

The central problem is that immigration has become something that is perceived to be an important issue, an emotional issue, an area of concern to many people. Areas of deep concern need to be addressed, and solutions offered, before they grow deeper and more polarized. Frustrated, angry people tend to make bad decisions. Think of the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Nazis in Germany. Our constitution probably prevents something that radical from happening here, but even lesser reactions can be disastrous.

There is no shortage of talking heads who will agitate for anger and retaliation on both sides. If reasonable people don't solve this problem, unreasonable people will step forward to do so. A vocal candidate will undoubtedly come forward with immigrant bashing a central plank in his or her platform. We've had our war on terror, war on drugs and war on poverty. Perhaps we'll have our war on immigrants. Some people are already advocating that.

I imagine that most people see some immigration as non threatening, even, I suspect, a small amount of illegal immigration. At some point many see it as a cultural or economic threat. One person crossing the border has a face, is an impoverished, desperate person seeking a better life for himself and his family. A half million of these are a faceless invasion. And that is the reality of perception.

Recent events have raised a red flag, and if these issues aren't addressed, more people, currently neutral on this issue will start to become polarized. The end result will be a protracted conflict and is not going to be pretty.