Tag Archives: economics

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Heaven’s HotHouse Humor

It’s not true
that Original Taoist Laotse
did not say
Laughter in response to his teachings
was his outcome indicator of deepest nature-spirit-mystery
comprehension.

It’s not true
that laughter could be disassociated from
agapic bliss
or erotic love.

It’s not true
that laughter can feel any distinction
worthy of a label difference
between erotic bodies and agapic minds,
nor did Laotse.

Where the body’s erotic love and economic terrors lead,
the political mind goes with and as and for and from.

Where mind’s agapic love
and political fears and angers merge,
eco-normic body value-transfers,
willingness to invest and divest,
go with and as and for and from.

How could erotic Yang historical-political nature
ever become separated from Yin’s spiritual-eco-normic agape?
except for decomposing laughter’s cosmic heath insurance issues
and promise of deeply discounted reassurance rates.

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Dillen’s Continuing DMV Adventures

I wrote a sad but true urban legend called “Dillen and the DMV” last week.
Here follows an update.

Background Review:

One of my health care employees, Dillen, has wicked ADD, borderline intelligence, not qualifying for disability supports, which are few
and those few minimal at best anyway,
but also challenged by things like getting to work on the right day at the right time,
challenged by processing verbal communications,
whether written or spoken more slowly than Business As Usual pace and pattern would permit,
challenged with struggles to establish and maintain healthy positive social relationships,
much more challenged by intimacy,
so often settling for companionship that does not foster mutually therapeutic co-mentoring,
challenged by his felt urgency for speed while driving,
challenged by States Attorneys who persuade him it’s OK to accept guilty as charged
for driving 45 in a 35 mph zone on his way to work,
never mind that so were all the cars in front of and behind him,
not to worry that this will inevitably result in a 3-month suspension of his license
because he can get a Work Permit,
except, oops,
never mind,
the DMV will not give Work Permits to suspended drivers
with more than three moving violations,
encouraged by State Prosecutors to go right ahead,
send in that Work Permit application
with his $100 nonrefundable fee
because the DMV is really all about punishing DUIs,
of which Dillen has none
because he doesn’t drink
because, in part, he knows it is bad for his mental health,
especially his chronic issues with depression.

In “Dillen and the DMV” I write to the DMV Commissioner,
the Chief States Attorney, and the Attorney General
about this series of unfortunate events.

Update:

I hear back from the DMV.
This letter patiently reviews Dillen’s multiple infractions.
Two involve having others in his car with marijuana or concomitant paraphernalia,
(why not just “supplies” or “equipment”?)

“Marge, did you order the paraphernalia for the copier machine yet?”
Word choices in the public sector often distract me.

but Dillen was not charged with driving stoned,
because he wasn’t.
He was the designated driver for his “friends”
who did not have their Medical Marijuana cards on them.

Then there was the time he might have been going 35 or 40 and hit black ice,
totaled his car
which ended upside down,
for which the local police felt they must issue some form of moving violation,
after all, we do have those towing charges
and the need for all those emergency folks to stand out in the freezing ice storm,
and there are these two drug-related violations on his driving record
so he was probably stoned anyway, right?

And then there was this time,
when Dillen was pulled over
ostensibly for speeding,
but really this was about driving on a suspended license
without a Work Permit
which he didn’t have because
(1) DMV didn’t have a current address to send him his notice,
so he didn’t know he was driving on a suspended license, and
(2) no one had told him,
including the Police Officer who pulled him over,
there is this Work Permit thing
which would have covered his butt
on this particular adventure in high speed suburban crime.

However, this letter from the DMV Director of Programs leaves out some details,
as does my summary.
Then the Program Director reassures Dillen and I of her concern for Dillen’s mess,
which someone else might have called unemployment
and yet another round of couch-surfing homelessness,
but CT’s pesky State Statutes wouldn’t allow her to refund his application fee,
and, besides,
the application form says right on there that it won’t be refunded
even if the application is rejected

Apparently for reasons that remain in the shadow of the public eye.
My two page letter was too subtle for government comprehension
of our own collective abuse and neglect.
She confirms the DMV does have explicit standards for rejecting applications,
including more than three moving violations,
but fails to apologize for designing her Program’s communication plan
to be sure that disproportionately young urban minority low-income males
with mental health and self-medication issues
would be fleeced of their last $100
ripped out of their hungry pockets
to apply for a Work or Education Permit
that State Statutes prohibit her,
so sadly,
from handing out like mother’s milk to a starving baby.

She also does not speculate about why State Prosecutors Dillen has met
are all apparently unaware of stipulated public, but effectively private, criteria for rejecting
pricey applications.

She also fails to mention what she might do to correct this situation
of not providing transparent public information
in a way that allows respected residents of the State of CT
to make a fully informed decision about wasting their money
by further investing in the future miserable outcomes
of shoddy DMV Programs.

She also does not explain where we,
the tax-payers of CT,
were when concerns about the need for job security,
especially for those in hard-to-employ populations,
where we were when needs for food and housing,
healthy wants for continuing education and training,
including the need for continuing education and training,
including the need for reasonable transportation,
even in the winter,
where we all were when these were not being weighted sufficiently against risks,
allowing licensed drivers with complex histories
to continue on their journey
the best they can.

Personally, I know Dillen responds much better to a warm hug,
a patient smile,
and expressed appreciation for continuing to improve,
and encouragement to continue with work
and sticking with a healthy daily routine,
which does not include speeding,
even if everyone around him is racing to nowhere good.

Yesterday I was mesmerized for several hours by a TV series
“Underground”
about the Railroad prior to the U.S. Civil War.
A champion anti-slavery attorney
confesses to his Northern wife,
as a younger attorney he used to settle estates,
including estates of slave-holders,
which sometimes led to the awkwardness of arranging for resale of people,
families,
often resulting in the tearing of children from their mothers’ arms,
and other similar heinous crimes against nature
and mental health.

For some reason
I kept thinking about that clerk at DMV,
reading Work Permit applications,
after depositing the enclosed nonrefundable $100,
looking at the high security publicly invisible list of reasons not to help
depressed people living mostly in their cars
have a modestly better chance at life,
as if what is a right for him or her
on his or her way to work and home again,
is a too luxurious privilege for a fragile at-risk criminal population,
enslaved by their need to self-propel their freedom futures.

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Breastplates of Righteousness

My mind is as fascinated with investments and divestments
as my body is attracted to healthy and beautiful vestments,

and haunted by prospects of naked loss of home
and self-identity.

My vested interests emerge issues and concerns about nutrition,
as opposed to empty calories.
Nutrition, whether economic or political,
pursues ecologically systemic complexity.
Nutrition can be consumed and produced by a healthy cooperative ecosystem,
while a highly disturbed and dissonant absence of balance
harmony
grace
perpetuates internal-external competitions.

We would all prefer,
regardless of cultural color of our vestments,
avoiding empty caloric pseudo-values
without healthy merit
as effectively,
confluently,
peacefully,
cooperatively as possible
through clear polypathic discernment,
well-vested,
ecopolitically co-arising, compelling
temporally harmonious Tao-abundant wealth
of a nondual co-arising mindbody

Whether the mind of an ant
or human,
the soul of a river
or forest,
or the spirit of Earth’s Time as dynamic operatic space
as my mind invests and divests Her ecopolitical history,
Her/His healthy beautiful vested body,
haunted by prospects of Earth’s naked loss,
our homeless absence of cooperative self-identity.

Earth’s co-empathic mind,
fascinating investments producing ego-divestments,
where nature’s nutrition cultivates spiritual-mental health,
left righteousness.

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Two Flaws Make Us Bright

A Fundamentalist Flaw assumes too great a divide
between Left and Right hemispheric cultures.

Left’s deduction gestalt is all about separating human nature
(Ego’s experiential nature)
from Earth’s sacred nature of transcendent truth/beauty,
which is much more of a Right Brain experience
of all Nature,
including home (eco) within this specific EgoIdentity.

LeftBrain, with Right too recessive for healthy sustainable balance,
creates a transcendent unknowable but all-powerful Creator God
who fills spiritually male elite teachers
and messiahs
prophets and rulers of Righteous Men
(and the occasional woman).
This is also the land of static fundamentalist religious Tradition,
coming down from the sky above
into the divinely inspired heart and mind of elite human natures,
and lesser natures too,
but not so much,
more just everyday competitive secular ecopolitical BusinessAsUsual,
for us regular struggling folk.

A Radical Flaw is the reverse face of LeftBrain dominant enculturation.
This is the culture of the RightBrain’s nondual co-arising empathic trust
and mutually-immune assumptions
of active-synaptic distrust;
autonomic regenerative resources
of positive love/health v. negative pathologies of immunity,
antipathy for toxins.
RightBrain is all about radical extremes of internal changes
in body chemistry messages and harmonies and dissonance,
and temporal storage within long-term memory.
Chemistry songs of full-octave harmonic dance within as without.

RightBrain is non-languaged God-Chemistry.
Here the sacred divine godhead of capital-integrity
is profoundly panentheistic.
God is so radically who Ego is that RightBrain makes no distinction
between sensory perception of memory and purpose
in Earth’s ecology
and the Ego’s co-empathic ecopolitical trust
in truth/beauty theological identity.
EcoPolitical Teleology and GodTheology
are integratively evolutioning becoming health/wealth abundant,
fertile,
ecologically regenerative.
If life right now
(RightBrain has no past or future tense awareness)
looks and smells divine,
then we are nondually recreating God,
because we are richly radically co-present healthy meaning.

Taoist wu wei,
like Systems Theory Tipping Points
between two appositional coarising dipolarities,
like Buckminster Fuller’s rudder guiding
Great Septum-Divide of universal LeftBrain egocentrist fundamentalism,
and integral-unitarian RightBrain’s nondual radicalism
is our Golden Rule/Ratio,
Left Polynomials = Right NotNotPolynomials,
(0)-ecopolitical sum and sacred-soul harmonic bicameral medicine balance.

As we learn to balance LeftBrain’s Fundamentalist Flaw
with RightBrain’s Radical Flaw,
we learn to see and hear and smell and feel and know
that our fundamental trust is in belonging
within Earth’s ecopolitically-purposed nature
as we long for fulfillment
within Earth’s sacred integrative potential.

Two notnot dipolar Flaws
to make each of us polypathically healthy
and divinely bright.

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Dillen and the DMV

TO: CT Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner, Chief States Attorney, Attorney General

FROM: Dillen Dye’s Employer

8/16/16

RE: Some apparent non-compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act; common courtesy, civil respect; freely accessible pursuit of health, happiness, and prosperity

I don’t know where the States Attorney Officers and the administrators of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) were hiding when the Americans With Disabilities Act issued regulations protecting us from things like bullying, intimidation, failure to disclose information, discriminating to the disadvantage of those who have more than their fair share of disadvantages pursuing those values our Constitution explicitly mentions as meriting our mutual protection.

One of my employees now has a five year troubled history with Officers of Other People’s Peace and the DMV. The latest episode is a denial of his application for a Work Permit, submitted with a nonrefundable $100 application fee, which he can ill afford, especially given this denial requesting the great privilege of driving himself to work during the duration of his currently suspended driver’s license.

How his license became suspended is a long and troubling history of miscommunication between DMV and State Attorneys who seem to assume it is their job to represent the healthiest interests of everyone in the State except the one resident they are currently fleecing, but also troubles between Dillen’s hyper-deficited mind and right foot.

A quick skim of the American With Disabilities Act might cause reasonable people to take the position that Dillen should either receive the Work Permit that the State Attorney told him he would get if he would simply bother to apply, or have his application fee refunded. After all it does seem difficult to justify he received fair value for his $100 investment in a public system that has at best ignored, and at worst messed with, his private system, getting through each day and night without further suicidal ideation.

This past May, the State’s Prosecuting Attorney was a surprisingly happy young person, probably not all that long a member of the Bar, and it was getting late in the afternoon on a perfectly lovely late Friday afternoon. She came close to begging Dillen to pay a bargain basement reduced moving violation fee of just $400 if he would just agree to cancel his date with the apparently beleaguered, and perhaps not in such a great mood, judge. In fact, if he would sign up for a guilty as charged notice going to the DMV, so they could suspend his license yet again, but not to worry because they would surely jump out of their collective skins to give him a free pass to drive to work and school whenever he needed, because after all we are all good people and we want those good things to be happening in your life, if he would sign up for this line of bullshit right now, she would knock off another $100 because she could see he was such a cooperative kinda guy and wouldn’t it be nice to get out of here and enjoy the rest of his day, if not maybe quite so much his life?

She didn’t mention any problem about now having 7 violations on his DMV record so investing $100 in the Worker Permit application would be delusional, at best. She didn’t mention that AfricanAmerican 20-year-old Dillen, driving a beat-up looking van in a rather lavishly comfortable ecopolitical environment, had cars in front of him and behind him also going 45 mph, but apparently he was the only one unaware he was driving on a suspended license, because, after all, how could the DMV send him a notice through the mail that would actually get to him—although email would have most certainly worked—due to his nomadic ways.

So, yes, Dillen has more than three moving violations, but probably would not, if he had been told, upon his first Suspension, that he could apply for a Work Permit to drive despite Suspension. This was news to him, as he was about to begin his third Suspension, although he has yet to receive his first Suspension Notice.

Apparently no one, except perhaps the person whose digital signature appears at the bottom of the Denial?, knows about this three strikes and you are out of a $100 non-refundable application fee. He saw no notice specifying possible reasons for denial. Nothing in red, or even black, ink saying: WARNING, If you have four or more moving violations do not waste your money!

Yesterday, Dillen had an appointment with yet another State Attorney. This, a few hours before receiving the denial notice from DMV. When Dillen told him that he was waiting to hear back from DMV about his application for a Work Permit, this Attorney too was remarkably sanguine, saying something like “Look, you have no DUI on your record, we want to get you on the road for work and school.” So they continued his case, hoping this latest Suspension would be over, license restored, and Dillen could move on, put this self-propelling mess behind him.

Dillen, State Attorneys, and I are all surprised and disappointed to learn of this covert restriction on issuing Work Permits. And I am his employer. Or was, but now that he has no way to get to work or pay his rent, I suppose my reaction was supposed to be: Well, who’s next?  I believe you should give him his permit or at least refund his extorted application fee. What utter stupidity to increase homelessness and risks of serious mental health issues when we could simply issue more Work Permits!

Not to blow this out of all reasonable proportion, but to add larger and longer perspective, this denial of Dillen’s application for a Work Permit is only the latest episode in his five-year troubled history with driving safely and responsibly as part of his moving into independent adulthood profile. Dillen’s level of sensory-neural challenges and his motivation to live a reasonably accommodated life, without intimidating-bullying Police Officers and inscrutable labyrinthine DMV communication issues, and fee extortions that could not possibly pass any discriminatory effect legal challenge, are concerns we might all approach with better implemented concern and integrity.

Other than that, I hope you are having a blessed day.

Warmly,

Gerald Dillenbeck

 

 

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Officers of the Peace

TO: Police Officer Training Schools

FROM: Parents EcoPolitical Cooperative for Healthy Climates

Thank you for listening to our mutual concern about escalating violence between our multicultural children
and your multigenerational health and safety vocation.

We have a few communication suggestions
that our kids have taught us over the years
about more civil responses
and authoritatively kind welcoming conjectures
and shared concerns about not-so-civilly uncooperative behaviors.

We would like to share our orthopraxis of active peacemaking
through less violent communications.

It is so important to begin and end each day and relationship
mentoring please and thank you.
Also remember to reward You’re Welcome
as always, in our shared civil lives.

We find that when we have chased a speeding stoned-out son or daughter down,
it helps to begin with
“Thank you so much for stopping.”
With a genuine smile, if at all possible.

This generally provokes shock and awe about our unusual restraint.
Within this pocket of silence
we recommend planting a kind, but quick, follow-up
“Would you please be kind enough to show me your license
to drive your mindbody vehicle in this way
at this speed
in this ecopolitical environment
of health risks and opportunities?”

Usually, our kids are only too happy to share their documentation,
such as it has become, to date.
When this is the case,
please do not forget to respond with gratitude,
“Thank you so much for your cooperation.”

If our young offenders fail to respond with
“You’re welcome”
Please do remind them that their mothers might have taught them
with more gratitude for civil public lives and roles
of responsible authority.

To remember “You’re welcome” is everything
From economics of beginning faith
to politics of ending with multicultural grace.

Sometimes translated as
Aloha
Namaste
Peace
but never Whatever…!
You’re Welcome is our mantra of cooperative ecopolitical civic lives.

You’re welcome
because we know you’re doing the best you can,
bless your competitive little egocentric heart.

You’re welcome
because we’re all on this road together,
racing through lives
screaming for a more civil pace,
we are diversely enculturing mentors of welcome,
Namaste.

If not,
then try to recall, as we do, when Police Officers
might have been known as Officers of Peace.

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Said Hillary to Donald

Words have consequences,
said rhetorical behaviorist Hillary to Donald,
we would no more cooperatively elect a Donald Trump as President
than we would compete to win Donald Duck for Empire Builder.

Words mean things,
said linguistic behaviorist Anat
to her fellow Economist Collective,
and the absence of words means something too.
We’re not sure what
but I place my bet
on more contenting ecopolitics.

Light consequenced water,
we know this from our history of science books
but this is difficult to see
how exactly this could be
without sufficient silence to recall
what dipolar co-arising energies lie in wait
within this shared enlightenment,
progenitor of stardust
ecopoliticizing
ecologizing harmonic fertile planets
with their wet offspring.

To paraphrase Joanna Macy,
Active economics is not more wishful thinking.
Active ecopolitical words and praxis do not wait for issues
to be resurrected and remembered
by the Donald Ducks
or by some other self-serving would-be savior.

Active Hope wakes up in life’s ecological beauty
wonder
sabbath
on whose silently exquisite behalf
we can act as light.

To the Hillaries:
Follow the light,
not so much the butch rhetoric.

To the Donalds:
Follow your truth with beauty loves,
not so much your prized pathologies.

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Toward Improved Conservative EcoPolitical Stamina

Note to Grover Norquist
and others with corporate political non-responsibility persuasions:

When you were 21 you “decided that nobody learned anything about politics after the age of 21.”

A few financially well-greased years later, as a professional lobbyist,
you decided if you could, you would “drown government in a bath tub.”

Which would presumably take out the government lobbyists as well,
but, never mind,
apparently you had already figured this out by the time you were 21,
deciding to feed from the hand you would drown if you only could
without inconveniencing yourself, of course.

After all, that’s what being a conservative is all about in the U.S.,
conserving personal conveniences,
queer feelings of self-reliant entitlement,
by not willing to vulnerably empathize with non-elite players,
unlikely to move or shake any money tree in your back yard.

About this drowning of government.
Would that especially include,
in fact would it necessarily first, and most primarily, include
all forms of self-governance with power-relational responsibilities
and opportunities and risks?
I mean, do you have children,
or did you have kids,
or have you ever met any kids,
or do you by chance remember being under the age of 21,
before you knew everything there is to know about self-governance?

As a parent, hoping to help adolescents move toward healthy self-governance,
does this seem like the kind of accountability and responsible behavior
that you didn’t worry so much about for your kids,
and maybe your younger neighbors and friends?
Because, after all,
presumably they would magically become just like you at 21,
and already know everything there is to know about how to self-govern
your mind
and your over-paid mouth
and your under-exercised potentially cooperative feet and hands,
trying to at least do no harm to yourself
your family
future generations
Earth
our economy
our political health as a self-governing Nation of accountability
learning how to behave within a democratically intended healthy economy
of multicultural inclusion and freedom.

Freedom to explore vocations in the public (government) sector,
like teaching
and public health and safety and security positions
without worrying about becoming another all-wise you,
because the rest of us poor public-sector slobs are still working on our cooperative WinWin gaming strategies
toward ecopolitical self-governing multicultural climatic health,
rather than the pathology of advocating public drownings
and put-downings
of those who are presumably doing the best we can
despite the self-aggrandizing behaviors of corporate conservative lobbyists,
who hear “freedom of democracy”
every time they speak behind closed doors
“freedom toward plutocracy.”

Other than that,
I have no doubt you’re doing the best you can,
bless your drowning heart.

 

 

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Wealth Without Walls

We pursue endless climate sabbaths,
I perhaps best and worst of all,
holidays of verdant forests floating within
oceans of atmospheric tides sucking and spewing nutrient flowing matters,
slow-dancing ecopolitical issues reincarnating history
of Earth’s love of Time Herself,
rich bubbling pastures for fertile economies
of harmonically choreographed dress rehearsals,
moving from today’s creation curtain back toward First Act
preparing already our next great transition,
another season of ecopolitical regenerate life
in Promising Lands and Prophetic Seas.

Economy, like Sabbath,
epiphanies a cooperatively normed word
and competitively abnormal climate function
for any sustainable ecosystem
including bio-networking human-nature-systems

To act economically, we practice ecopolitical health.
Practice, practice, practice makes further economic climates.

My economy,
running through my days and nights,
weeks and calendar-scheduled months,
me performing with cooperative intent
internally as externally,
organically bilateral,
binomial in as out reflecting in,
bisexual Yang-form power with Yin-flow fluid function strength,
interacting as peacefully as possible,
listening deeply for my own arrogant egocentric injustices
to myself and others,
excesses of shutting-you-out power,
most vulnerably over-exercised on those I live with
and work with each day.

My competing economic-political behavior feels like struggling against
some other competitive economic force,
stronger and thereby darkly compelling,
while my cooperative ecopolitical evolution feels struggle within
my own extended family of confusion, miscommunication,
lack of sufficient awareness
that our WinLose feelings and predictions
are rooted in embryonic experience of WinWin norm-expectations for life
in this EarthTribe Cooperative.

I have a healthy economic life
and one more pathologically egocentric,
with monoculturing intent,
feeding on ethnocentric hubris
yet sabbathed in anthro-enculturing Elders,
looking for a co-messianic bodhisattva EarthTribe economy.

Ecosystems like me,
prefer our healthy ecological economies
with mutual subsidiary, multiorganic cooperation.
I expect our political power-relationships
to normatively reflect our economically balancing (0)-sum intent
and orthopraxis centers,
which is why I do not want bicameral governance structures quarreling against,
rather than discerning with,
co-empathic trust in our shared economy
as karmic
and graceful
and incarnational
and evolutionary
and even sometimes revolutionary WinWin cooperative intent.

This is how we have all been raised together
from originating Yang-sperm and Yin-oceanic eggs,
Animus-yolk hemoglobic egocenters
and Anima-nurturing chlorophyllic green ecosystems
of embryonic-empathic trust forests
in healthy economic nutritional-branching and rooting truths
as ecopolitical sabbath beauty choices.

Sabbath climates invite cooperative opportunities
where daily grinds compete to improve WinLose risks and odds pathologies
as if these could be remembered
as a good and true anthro-embryonic history
of new life revolutions.

 

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