Earth Day Metro Gold-Line EcoSafari & Festival

The Audubon Center at Debs Park has partnered with the Metro Gold-Line, the City of Pasadena and the City of South Pasadena Natural Resources Commission to celebrate "Earth Day, All Day" along the Metro Gold-Line and the Arroyo Seco. Ride the Metro Gold Line from the Audubon Center at Debs Park (Southwest Museum Station) to "Greening the Earth Day" (Memorial Park Station) held at Memorial Park in Pasadena. Ride your bike from Mission Station to the Arroyo Park Picnic Area on Stoney Drive, north of San Pascual Avenue to join the "Water Water Everywhere" event held by the City of South Pasadena. Show your Metro Gold-Line or Bus Ticket at either event and receive a Free Gift!

The Earth Day Metro Gold-Line EcoSafari and Festival is about living in harmony with Mother Nature to create a sustainable green future. You'll hear music and green voices on how to make green choices. You'll discover the beauty of our urban forest along the Arroyo Seco, see the red hawks and other wild creatures living in Debs Park as well as tour the totally solar powered greenest building in the U.S.

The Earth Day Metro Gold-Line EcoSafari & Festival is an experience that can change your future. Come join the Green Revolution along the Metro Gold-Line and celebrate Earth Day, All Day... then Every Day.

There are two meaning for the term "Green Revolution".

The more familiar one is not ecological, but refers to the start of farming with modern technology, in the 1960s, that increased crop yields around the world. People thought this would eradicate hunger, but it did not, because of "distribution" problems.

Market economies and urban infrastructure similar to those in the West did not exist, so alternate distribution needed to be put in place. There was more food, yet, there was also more poverty and hunger. Read the article for more details.

http://www.foodfirst.org/media/opeds/2000/4-greenrev.html

There was an older Green Revolution in the 1930s, promoted by the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Peter Maurin. He advocated a turn away from industrialized society, to a life of spirt and work, within a Catholic spiritual framework. He lived and organized among the working class and poor, lived on handouts, and spread revolutionary ideas.

With Dorothy Day, he started the Cat Worker movement, and the paper. They were both anarchists, with Day coming from a socialist background, and Maurin from a more back-to-the-land orientation. In these days of Ratzinger the former Hitlerjungen, it's good to remember that there are still Catholics who hold the values of helping the poor.

The Green Party's roots go back to Maurin. Here's some of his writing.

The nature of labor

Labor is not a commodity

to be bought and sold —

Labor is a means of self-expression,

the worker's gift to the common good.

Mechanized labor

Gandhi says:

"Industrialism is evil."

Industrialism is evil

because it brings idleness

both to the capitalist class

and the working class.

Idleness does no good

either to the capitalist class

or to the working class.

Creative labor

is what keeps people

out of mischief.

Creative labor

is craft labor.

Mechanized labor

is not creative labor.

Collective bargaining

Business men

have made

such a mess of things

without workers' co-operation

that they could do no worse

with workers' co-operation.

Because the workers

want to co-operate

with the business men

in the running of business

is the reason why

they sit down.

The sit-down strike

is for the worker

the means of bringing about

collective bargaining.

Collective bargaining

should lead

to compulsory arbitration.

Collective bargaining

and compulsory arbitration

will assure the worker

the right to work.

Selling labor

When the workers

sell their labor

to the capitalists

or accumulators of labor

they allow the capitalists

or accumulators of labor

to accumulate their labor.

And when the capitalists

or accumulators of labor

have accumulated so much

of the workers' labor

that they do no longer

find it profitable

to buy the workers' labor

then the workers

can no longer sell their labor

to the capitalists

or accumulators of labor.

And when the workers

can no longer

sell their labor

to the capitalists

or accumulators of labor

they can no longer buy

the products of their labor.

And that is what the workers get

for selling their labor.

Catholic associations

Organized labor,

organized capital

organized politics

are essentially

secularist minded.

We need leaders

to lead us

in the making of a path

from the things as they are

to the things as they should be.

I propose the formation

of associations

of Catholic employers

as well as associations

of Catholic union men.

Employers and employees

must be indoctrinated

with the same doctrine.

You ignorant bastard.

Can you imagion how that makes ME feel? Sure, post naked pictures of your boyfriend and rant on about the most under represented segment of society, the triploids. Don't tell me it's not pure specieism. Bite me, bread biscuit.

For the most part I have been a "Bush Admirer Admirer" and now I ask:

1) As a Republitarian myself, what you think of this whole Minutemen and border problem in general? Despite my approval of Bush's handling of the Iraq War, I have to grade him a big fat 'F' (and not in that soothing new purple marker) in 'Homeland Defense' for refusing to enforce the Constitution, seal the border and otherwise tell Vicente Fox where to stick his taquito.

2) We differ in our view of the "Drug Problem.". I actually side with the "radicals" here in calling Drug Prohibition a huge failure and waste of money. My view is, drugs should be legalized and then treated as a health problem, not a crime problem. I know you think we should "step up" the driug war, but c'mon, we're already wasting 80 billion a year on this bullshit. So when are you coming 'round? :D



Of course, anyone is free to answer these queries (and most likely will) , but as the "other" sole conservative visitor, I'm looking for BA's answers.

I was something of a Nietzchean when I was 20. A leftist liberal one who hated Niet, but who was pretty individualistic. I'm now 35, and more of a bleeding heart liberal leftist than I was then. I thought I was pretty radical when I was 25, but, I wasn't. You get smarter with age and experience.

Having been in the second highest tax bracket (and almost the highest), I believe that our taxes are pretty reasonable. They're a little high for the poor, and a little low for wealthier people. Mainly, I think we're getting a bad deal on our taxes because so much of it is spent on war and porkbarrel feel-good spending, when it would be better spent on universal services like clinics, free food, and longer library hours, that would benefit everyone.

I'm more of a socialist than I used to be. I used to be more libertarian when I was younger. I'm now less averse to larger-scale welfare, public schools, and other things like that.

BTW - those above explanations were just explanations. I'm not a follower of Peter Maurin.

PS - Sheep. I'm down wit - cha, bro.

Here's what I don't understand about liberals, specifically older liberals (minus the ones who make their living off of taxes or the System).

We now have over 50 years of "evidence" that government programs and projects always come in over budget and never live up to their claims. Most of them actually enable and propagate the very problems they were created to eliminate.

Over the decades, government has grown more intrusive, more suspicious, more paranoid and more threatening.

Now before anyone rushes to say: "That's because--"

STOP.

This is not a partisan or -wing problem. All we need know is government has GROWN, and the only place for a growing government to expand is into people's rights and freedoms.

Government has no special powers and the government worker isn't particularly skilled or adept at anything. It's a so-obvious-it's-not that the best people don't seek government work.

SO WHY AFTER ALL THE EVIDENCE OF CRAPPY RESULTS, DO SO MANY LIBERALS WANT MORE OF THIS SHIT?

You (we) are just going to get screwed over and over again, by the very system to which you claim allegiance.

I'm not proposing anarchy, but rather the limited government as envisioned by the Framers (defense is authorized by the Constitution, but Health, Education and Welfare people are smart enough to do for themselves).

We could get rid of 50% of the government withint one year and no one save a few special interests would miss it.

Anyhoo, that's Lesko's 2 cents. I'm a 'guest' at this left-wing site. You could say I'm here for the facts, in opinionated form.

The first mistake is in assuming that certain things, like poverty, homelessness, insanity, domestic abuse, and ignorance can be eliminated inexpensively. Then, when a certain expenditure to manage these things fails to eliminate the problem, declare the effort a failure.

The problem of eliminating a problem is like losing weight: the first ten pounds are easy to lose, but the last ten are hard.

In an area with 6 million people, and 500,000+ people without permanent homes, it's simple to prevent the first 320,000 from homelessness. They'll mostly take care of it on their own. The next 100,000 or so will self-manage, but need some money. Simple enough. The next group of 80,000 or so are tougher to house. According to this page, there are some 82,000 people homeless each night.

http://www.losangelesalmanac.com/topics/Social/so14.htm

This last bunch require more money and effort. This isn't a "failure" per-se. It's just the reality of what we're willing to pay for. People fall through the cracks -- how much are we willing to pay for caulk to seal up some cracks? How much are we willing to pay up-front to help prevent this situation?

(Also, where's the evidence of cost overruns? I was under the impression that when the money runs out, the services stop. This is unlike in defense or public works, where the government has to keep throwing good money after bad, because the goal is to complete the project.)

If government has grown, it's not in some specific socially useful ways. It hasn't grown the number of libraries. It hasn't appreciably grown the availability of schools in the city. It hasn't grown the number of parks. We're short on free and low-cost hospitals. We have major homelessness and poverty.

I believe the answer is obvious. Government spending has increased, but not for welfare and social programs like welfare.

I see a lot of spending to improve existing parks, with more concrete and goodies like fancy benches and better parking. I see spending to make fancier buildings. I see a lot more defense spending ever since the War on Terrorism started. I see more spending on feel-good projects that at first blush seem to be basic welfare, but benefit a less impoverished group of people. I see a lot of bureacracy and paperwork, and people strutting around giving raises to themselves.

I also see a lot more effort to incarcerate people. Rather than improve communities and policing, we're increasing incarceration. Two convicts cost us as much as one cop, in tax-dollars. In terms of welfare, it would have been cheaper to just pay the guy who got busted, to be bored at some clean-up job to get a meager government paycheck.

The way to get the government off the peoples' backs is to get all the people out of government. Government employment should be cut back, and more money spent directly on basic welfare. If someone is a supervisor or manager, put them under the microscope. Prepare them to be eliminated.

Rather than attempt to see if someone qualifies for a lot of government largesse, implement welfare that's available to anyone. Instead of foodstamps, there should be some kinds of food that are free, or nearly free. Rather than "section 8", let's just have some more government flophouses, and anyone can live there if they really want.

Why spend ,000 to adminster 0,000 in benefits? Just redistribute the full 0,000 back to the people, via goods.

Wow.

The crayon fell out of Bush Admirer's brain.

So did the former Bush Admirer die or something?

-However, I don't believe that welfare spending is a good idea. Most homeless and poor people got themselves into that predicament. Bailing them out doesn't solve the root problem (their own behavior). Handouts become entitlements. -



This is so typical. Accuse the economic refuges of a deliberate disassembly of the American manufacturing base, educational system and small businesses, disavow any involvement through such items as NAFTA, GATT and the activities of the gang of robber barons running this criminal enterprise.

Scum such as yourself should find your humanity and ask forgiveness for being the useless evil failures you seem to enjoy being.

Yep. Lots of stuff rises to the top. Sometimes you can't seem to flush it away.

I thought it was your drunk president who drove himself into a ditch.

Most taxes paid by the middle class are given back to the middle class in the form of entitlements and services. They are also given back to the middle class as jobs. That's where the real waste is: it's in an hour consulting fees, fancy office buildings, business trips to conferences, do-nothing jobs for well-connected swells, weird tax discounts for developers who know politicians.. These assholes set the tone for everyone else "below" them.

The better way to do it is to have the upper half of society pay enough taxes to give entitelments to everyone, roughly equally. Minimal administration, maximum benefits.

Bushiness as usual in the Bush House. Drill For Oil in North Alaska, Drop Tons of Depleted Uranium Cluster Bombs in Iraq, Destroying the Rainforest for Big Corporate Interest, Logging off National Forest to prevent Forest Fires, and Planting more Opium Flowers in Afganistan so the CIA Drug Lords can turn Wall St. into a bigger Drug Laundromat than ever. Next Earth Day Bush will add to his Imperial Antics by War in Iran.