TAXES: WEALTH AND RESPONSIBILITY

Lets face it, people get rich both because they’ve made some right decisions in their lives and because our country promotes rewarding right decisions. We promote rewarding right decisions by laying out a fair playing field, in our economic system, our judicial system, universal access to our infrastructure, our educational system and our philosophy of equal opportunity. Rich people have made good use of that playing field to obtain their wealth.

The way I look at it, the wealthy owe a lot more to the upkeep and maintenance of these systems and values than those who haven’t used them so much to their advantage. Let’s look at what the government does. Our government’s financial and regulatory systems provide contractual guarantees, ownership rights and banking standards needed for financial growth, stability and security, of which the wealthy make the most use. Our government’s law enforcement personnel and its standing army provide protection for our families, our homes, our possessions and our assets, against which the wealthy have the most to lose. Our government’s promotion and regulation of infrastructure, roads, air traffic control, electric grids, water supply and garbage disposal, are used more heavily by wealthier consumers and their corporate investments than by marginal consumers and their families. Free education provides a literate workforce for corporate America and it’s wealthy investors to utilize. Unemployment insurance, minimum wage, Medicare and social security provide a middle-class consumer society that makes corporate profits possible.

All told, the more you have, the more you use government to protect, promote and insure your holdings. The more you have, the more you use government to maintain what some might call the immoral imbalance between those that have and those that have not. The more you have the more you require government to stabilize and secure the system that allows a grossly unnatural accumulation of personal wealth.

So tell me that the wealthy shouldn’t be on the front lines of a standing army that holds back the unwashed poor of the world. Tell me that the wealthy shouldn’t pay for a judiciary and police force that protects their gated estates and difficult to justify gross accumulation of corporate holdings. Tell me that the wealthy shouldn’t pay for a government that provided them with the opportunity to rise from immigrant parents to inordinate financial winners within one or two generations of their arrival. Tell me that the wealthy don’t owe the poor, the same arriving immigrants and their descendants, compensation for the win/lose nature of our economic game. Come on now, shouldn’t the ones with the most to lose pay the most for the system that allows a few of us to own so much. Doesn’t that sound like the responsible way these costs should be shouldered.

There are a number of takes on what the relationship between government and the citizenry... One indeed is that it's one citizen, one vote... resulting in distributed power... as opposed to the economic system which tends to concentrate power... I think we all will opt for a healthy balance between distributed power (government & politics) and concentrated power (wealth & corporate interests)... we applaud the reform of political financing to better establish that balance...

Having said that, however, I'd like to point out that the accumulation of wealth to the degree that it happens in these United States is an unnatural result of government backed economic structures (as is true for other nations subscribing to similar structures)... you follow me??... Not that such structures are inappropriate, mind you, but that they make possible bank accounts in the tens of millions... far beyond what natural man could ever accumulate over his natural life time...

Now you might say those structures are what builds civilizations, which, after all, are human constructs for getting things done... and I might agree, as far as that take goes... but doesn't that obligate those that benefit most from such structures to return proportionately more of their unnatural (structure supported) gains... if it weren't for government's existence corporations couldn't be formed, materials and measurements wouldn't be standardized, investments couldn't be made, contracts couldn't be honored, banks couldn't operate, wealth couldn't be secured, private property couldn't be protected, copyrights and patents couldn't be honored, capital couldn't be raised, qualified labor couldn't be assured... in other words, without government's upholding of our social, economic, legal, and enforcement arms, there would be no civilization and no accumulated wealth...

Sooo... I'm not disagreeing with any of this I'm just supplying what I think is undeniable reasoning for justifying the existing progressive income tax... in opposition to the proposition that it would be "fairer" if the costs of government would be more evenly distributed amongst its citizenry... the position of George W and his party... We already have the least progressive tax structures of any of the industrialized countries of the world... we already create and support more tycoons than any other nation... the multiple of CEO's salary to his average worker is already the highest it's ever been... wealth has already been concentrated in a smaller percent of the population than it's ever been... so aside from these facts, which some might claim make us the most successful economic system ever... I would like us all to understand the sound and appropriate reasoning behind the humanitarian gains that our fathers and mothers fought for in times past...

I am worried that the capitalist system no longer has a credible adversary... that without an opposing viewpoint our common reality will slide more and more into smug (or panicked) takes on where our civilization is taking us... I am worried that the measure of our civilization is becoming the DOW... that politics has become the art of furthering economic growth... that our human values are reduced to economic units... that corporate well being supersedes human well being... that cynical analysis overtakes ideals... that its every man for him or her self... that our communal efforts are bound to fail and only our competitive efforts succeed... that there is no alternative to exploitation, whether mother earth, foreign labor, government's tit, or your fellow citizen...

                                                                                    Morty Breier
                                                                                    March 2001
                                                                                    Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

PAVILION MANDALA.... By Morty
This Mandala is an acrylic painting on a four foot diameter piece of plywood and hangs as a centerpiece in our new Pavilion. There are two intertwined motifs: The masculine principle represented by the linear and angular figures (six lobes of the star); And the feminine principle represented by curves and living figures (six lobes between). These motifs converge on an illuminated sphere of earth at its center.

Awe and wonder
    Sparkle and thunder
Creation's locus
    Tension and focus
Belly up laughter
    Nothin ya havta
Humming a ditty
    Looking fine and pretty
Mindful awareness
    Don't be careless
Spirit inside us
    Insight to guide us
Care for each other
    Sister and brother
Light as a feather
    Travel together
Sitting so still
    Relaxing the will
Slow deep breathing
    Reality's weaving
Quit your shoving
    I need loving
Give me some room
    Lighten the gloom
Help one another
    Feelings uncover
Come hold my hand
    Barefoot in sand
Wow what a trip
    Amazingly hip
Having a ball
    Blown away by it all
Smoke good shit
    I got to split
So long and farewell
    Written in gell

ECOLOGY AND FEMINISM
by Holit Bat-Edit

For many years I have watched and participated in demonstra- tions against the destruction of our earth. Mostly, I was active on the Big Island of Hawai’i, where Kilauea spews her life down the mountains,hills and valleys, and ultimately, lava enters the Pacific Ocean, making more land by the second. I chose to live on an active rock or hot spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Before that, and to this day, I have been an active feminist choosing to believe that Gaia and Nature are part of the Matriarchy and-that we should get back to living with respect and love towards the feminine side of us and synthesizing that with Nature. Even the Patriarchy believes that woman is closer to nature than man!

I think that male human beings have the capacity for com- passion of life, but most have to struggle long and hard to overcome their own up-bringing. Both genders have patho- logical behaviors which serve to perpetuate the system of domination and oppression towards all beings.

One of the messages of eco-feminism is that we all must cultivate the human characteristics of gentleness and caring, which would mean giving up the hierarchical patriarchy and all its deadly privileges. Susan Griffin (Woman and Nature) and Petra Kelly, founder of the Green party, also understood this synthesis of ecology and feminism. Here is what Susan Griffin says: “Long ago we gave up ourselves.. .we have traded our real existence, our real feelings for a delusion. Instead of fighting for our lives, we bend all our efforts to defend delusion. We deny all evidence at hand that the civilization which has shaped our minds, is also destroying the earth.”

For western civilization, the world consists of a pyramid, with God and angels on the top, and earth and everything in it, underneath. And on the earth, nature is at the bottom, while white human males are at the top of this hierarchy. And the most privileged occupation is the objective, scientific investigation and manipulation of nature—bereft of emotions. Religion and science have combined to deepen our alienation from this earth. “If the church once offered the denigration of incarnate life as a solution to the human condition, now science offers us the Control of Matter as our rescue.” (Susan Griffin, Eco-Feminism).

The thought process that allows us to believe that we are above the earth is our intellectual response to our deep- seated fear of being overcome by nature. We have learned to think that we must take control of our environ-  ment in order to survive. As early as the 14th Century, witch burning bears evidence of man’s fears, which was utilizing the (then) recent scientific discovery about the cosmic oriler as a justification. In the 16th Century, the slave trade is a demonstration of the white man’s condescension, viewing the black people of Africa as primitive and inferior, and manifested by their close connection to nature.

We have denied our essence and forgotten who we are. Unfortunately, we are still engaged in breaking the heart and spirit of nature, which is actually our very own heart and spirit. I sincerely believe that in our own secret knowledge, and our collective unconscious mind, we remember that nature is an essential part of us, our society, and our culture. Our memory of this natural attachment to life still exists. Maybe even our own breath reminds us of a time when we were curious - and when nature felt like an integral part of who we are.

Our insecurity does not need to be encouraged as it creates the need to control our surroundings instead of cohabitate with it. We so dearly need peace for people, animals and this earth, that we must become active participants in saving our Earth, thus saving ourselves.

Again Susan Griffin sums up my feelings fairly well with this:

“I am a woman born in and shaped by this
civilization, with the mind of this civilization
but also with the mind and body of a woman
with human experience. Suffering grief in my
own life, I have felt all the impulses that are
part of my culture in my own soul. In my re-
sistance to pain and change, I have felt the will toward self-annihilation. And still the singing in my body daily returns me to a love of this earth. I know that by a slow practice, if I am to survive, I must learn to listen to this song.”

Printed in "Ka'u Landing",
Kona Coast of Hawaii, 1999

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:

There would be:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, from both north and south
8 Africans

52 would be female
48 would be male

70 would be non-white
30 would be white

70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian

89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education, and 1 would own a computer

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance,understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.

• This E-Zine of sorts is being started with no expectations. I need not earn a living so my time is my own and I elect to play with some of that time by launching this MONTHLY MISSIVE. It is a creative act inspired by Rabbi Zalman Schechter-Shalomi, my guru once removed, who said "It's time to download our wisdom on the hard drive of humanity." He was speaking to those of us who prefer sageing to ageing.

 

 
 
 

The idea is to get a bunch of hip contributors, secret sages,  to comment on the passing scene, to offer creative work and to wax philosophical about perennial issues.  The tribe's elders, and I count myself among them, need a forum and at least this is a start. To begin with, I hope that my dear friends become this E-Zine's regular contributors. The trouble is that they are, as is perfectly appropriate for this mission, iconoclasts to the core and getting them to cooperate is like hearding cats.

And that's just the part that tries filling these electronic pages... trying to get readers is an entirely different proposition. I remember an actor telling me that it's better to be in a play with a large cast because then all the family and friends of the cast are at least sure to help fill the seats. The start of this E-Zine readership will be like that. Friends have friends and family. And who better to make contact with than our friends and family.

Even though we now have had only three other contributors, my cousin and dear friend Marcus Uzilevsky, my old buddy, the wonderful poet Rose', and posthumously, the legendary Tony Price, the rest being my stuff, I hope these pages might inspire others to join in. I will be sending email messages to those I particularly want to contribute but everyone is welcome to try their hand. I hope to have several different views on a particular topic that needs addressing and I'll let you know each month what those topics are.

Feel free, of course, to submit anything you want. I would like your submittal to be accompanied by your photo and an autobiographical piece. I can read attachments in Microsoft Word or in Corel WordPerfect and I prefer JPEG formatted images. My email address is morty@aloha.net. Let's see what we can do together. Remember:

POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
SHALOHA
MORTY BREIER, Editor

Marcus Uzilevsky: We are proud to have as a contributor distinguished California artist and musician Marcus Uzilevsky. Talk about hip, he's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, for his 1965-68 group The Third Bardo, (he jammed with Dylan in the Cafe Wah). Under his present name Uzca, he has two world music CDs Slice of Light and Gypsy Dreams, this last he calls Nouveau Klezmer. Klezmer, the Jewish music of Eastern Europe with its weeping and laughing clarinets and violins has always been in Uzca's heart and soul and his latest CD blends Gypsy guitars, African talking drums, Middle Eastern belly dancing rythms, Klezmer violin and clarinet and hypnotic vocals in his intuitive universal language. We are invited to join in the dance of life to celebrate our common humanity. As an artist Marcus is well hung in permanent collections and 50 one man shows, selling over a half million lithographs. Born in Brooklyn, migrating to California in the late sixties he is now esconsed in an old railroad building on the fringes of Marin. Uzilevsky has long been a spiritual journeyer, creating his poetry in both the visual and musical arts. The man is out there and be here to tune in on his poetic offerings..

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Rose': Rose' was born deep in the Bronx in 1934. He began crafting his poetry attending a number of colleges during the 50's. After a stint in the army he bounced around working as a lifeguard, masseur and astrology writer. He saw his heaviest combat duty teaching High School English in New York. In the early sixties he assiduously pursued Ancient Greek while dining on Mexican beaches, toping in European cafes and slumming in Moroccan dives. Between a stint of acting, including the movie "The Edge", he published a book of drawings and launched skin diving trips throughout the Yucatan and the Florida Keys. His "School of the Night" specialized in occult classes and his "Liquid Wedge Gallery" made media history with sculptor Tony Price's first "Atomic Art Show" in NYC in 1969. Struck with what he calls his "Man-o-pause", Rose' started his epic poem "The Pearl in the Crown", still a grand work in progress. He performs as a stand-up poet in salons, homes, theatres, clubs, sushi bars, on radio and television in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Santa Fe. Rose' now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Tony Price, 1937-2000: Thomas Anthony Price wa born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1937. He began his art career in the Marine Corps, painting sixty-foot murals and portraits of generals. After his stint in the marines, 1955-57, he painted and illustrated books, poetry and magazines in New York City and Mexico. Price then worked from 1962-3 as an art director and set designer in films and television for Studio 30 in New York and Brazil. In 1963 Price left for Paris and Rome to paint. His European work is held by collectors in Italy, France, Holland, Germany and Spain. In 1964 he returned to New York and began sculpting in stone, metal and electronic materials. Since his move to New Mexico in 1965, Price has worked with nuclear scrap materials exclusively from Los Alamos from which he has created icons of world religions. Tony died in early 2000 after a yearlong battle with a stroke that had left him partially paralyzed.

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HOLIT BAT-EDIT.    The term that I made up, SPIRITUAL BIVOUAKING could be seen as a “conceit” — that is, each word has the opposite meaning. This is not my intention. For me the meaning is that I have found both a safe and nurturing place to be/live.
    It has taken me 55 years to arrive! First I had to acknowledge that the ancient rites or customs of my tribe could seep through to me over thousands of years - and that was hard to conceive. My tribe wandered around the middle east, then got exiled into Europe, Asia, Africa and the Northern Hemisphere taking us through different customs, different colors, different foods and different languages — it certainly rubbed off on me and my family. I spent nearly half a life time, trying to return to the metropolitan desert of unleavened bricks (Israel, Greece, Egypt) and then, the second part, trying to spiritual bivouak here on the Pacific Rim of the Big Island.
    At the beginning of the 90’s, I landed on the Big Island, and with just a few escapes back to my roots in the middle east, I have bern sinking healthy roots into this rock.
    Luckily I have crossed paths with a Hawaiian woman sage — The Messenger-Mahealani. Many spirits here have visited, tested and frightened me at the beginning. Semi-conscious, I went through some ceremonies, perhaps they were initiations of which I knew nothing; of seeing marchers go by, of having animal guardians that I was too ignorant of understanding and accepting. Sometimes I tried not to see it negatively and just to interpret it as wild, dramatic and inexplicable!
    Ultimately I crossed Pele on her own summit — Kilauea, and she gave me a lesson that I still shudder to remember. I was thrown flat into a deep crevice of newly dried lava one night. When I was helped up by a friend, I was unscathed, not one scratch! We screamed with surprise that I wasn’t bloody. Mahealani explained to me later what I had done and how Pele taught me a lesson and she did!
    Humbled by my actions, starting to feel how I fit into this powerful place. I know this as a warrior — biivouak is a fitting word. For me it means: finding a place to protect myself, while also nurturing myself with the spirit of Pele, her people and her island.

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