Vote for Joe

We launched on yet another tour Saturday.   We did a “round table” discussion at the Friends Roastery Coffee Shop in Salem, Ohio, that day.   Before the discussion, I told reporter Mary Ann Greier about a New York Times article I’d just read about the rising price of wheat and rice throughout the Third World nations.   In a vignette from the country of Haitti, the times noted that three-quarters of the populaiton earns less than $2 a day and the one business that is booming amidst the intense, sweeping hunger that has taken hold in that country is the selling of “patties made of mud,  oil and sugar.”   Although nutritionally terrible, Olwich Louis Jeune said he is eating them because:   “It makes your stomach quiet down.”   I told Ms. Greier that our administration would do everything imaginable to try to inspire Americans to cut back dramatically on their lifestyles, so the destitute of the world can have at least the basics in nutritional foods —  dirt not being one of them.

Dan Kremer, an organic farmer in Yorkshire, Ohio, just sent me something from the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.   It was titled: Eating Is A Moral Act.   One of the issues raised was: “Supporting fair wages and healthy working conditions for farmworkers.”   (On a research tour of the San Jauoquin Valley in California we learned about just the opposite, with many farmworkers making  extremely low wages  and working continually in  extreme heat amidst toxic herbacides and pesticides.)   Another NCRRLC issue: “People around the world have a right to food security.”   However, at a seminar in Bluffton, Ohio, I heard Bluffton College Economics Professor Jim  Harder explain that American corporate farms can grow at such high  volumes  these days,  and ship cheaply enough — that they can undercut subsistence farmers selling to local markets in, say,  Ecuador.  This isn’t about ‘America being able to compete with any country in the world,’ this is about nothing less than: a tremendous social justice travesty!      Note:   Dan Kremer left a corporate, urban lifestyle in Dayton for a “simple rural way of life” in Yorkshire, Ohio,  where he does everything in accordance with National Catholic Rural Life Conference  values.   For more on his farm/apostolate, see: www.eatfoodforlife.com   Note 2:   This weekend events to raise awareness about the crisis in Darfur will be conducted all over the country.   We have a detailed position paper on Darfur with suggestions of what can be done to help.   In addition, see www.tentsofhope.org

Time to weigh in on this house crisis thing… According to a Washington Post   article this week, the Bush Administration is “completing a plan to help thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure by helping them refinance into more-affordable mortgages backed by public money.”   If it was my administration, I would let the crisis run it’s course and in tandem promote: “house sharing.”     Don’t laugh.   During a campaign stop in Winona, Minnesota, we learned about that city’s House Share Program.   (They’ve set up a data-base to connect people who want to house share.)   With house sharing you share heated and lighted space, which significantly helps reduce global warming.   With house sharing you halve expenses, which frees up more money for: carbon offset projects, for the innercity poor, for those starving in the third world…   With house sharing, you start to reverse the environmental cancer of urban sprawl.   With house sharing, shared house responsibilities free up more time for civic volunteering.   With house sharing, you exponentially increase community building skills…   I could go on with this, but I think you get the common sense to point.   Note:   We have become so spoiled (read: gluttonous)  about our ‘space’ in this country; meanwhile billions of families worldwide live in spaces comparable to the size of our garages, or less.  

The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a story yesterday about a home in Shaker Heights which is being considered one of the “greenest new houses in the nation.”   The home features a cistern for rainwater collection, windows to maximize  solar input  and breeze flow, ultra-low flow shower heads, geothermal tubing for heating and cooling… While doing research in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I interviewed a man who had put in similar geothermal tubing.   His highest winter month heating bill the year before had been an amazing: $17.   In Manchester, Michigan, we talked with a college instructor who’s class designed an award winning “Zero Energy Home” using a series of  active and passive solar strategies…    During a campaign swing through Colorado, I  told the Valley Courier newspaper in that our administration would offer creative tax breaks and other incentives to inspire as much ‘greening’ of American homes as possible.   For more on this and other parts of our Energy Policy, see…  

Our family  walked about downtown Cleveland with a group of Catholic Workers as part of a contemporary version of the Stations of the Cross.   For instance, the First Station was in front of the Court House.   This station  is the one about Jesus being condemned to death — just as so   many are ‘condemned’ in a justice system that often favors the more well off.   And what about all those worldwide who are ‘condemned’ to a life of poverty, a life of political oppression… because the First World nations hold on so tightly to much of their resources?   Note:   On a west coast campaign swing, I told the LA Times   (Orange County edition) that we should “make war on social injustice and poverty.”