Good morning, again, everyone. I am amazed at how much of our snow mountains has melted away. We still have a lot left since most of the snow that fell from Christmas through the blizzard had survived. But we are supposed to get a couple of 50 degree days and one that may even get into the 60s. From the weather person's mouth to God's ear; I hope they are right.

I can relate to your frustration, Kay. I never joined in the protests of the 1960s--I was still in junior high and high school through the most active years and then I enlisted in the Navy. My family was blue collar working class and none too sympathetic to the protest movements. Most of them still aren't unless the protest is a union action. Most of my 'protest' is individual and, like you, it involves exercising my right not to buy something. Or involves making my opinions known however unpopular they might be. I don't like what the industrial agriculture and food manufacturers have done to the food supply so I take action to avoid as much of it as possible. I don't like what Wal-mart and other big box stores have done to our local economic environment and avoid it as much as possible. Besides, the quality of the goods leaves a lot to be desired and I absolutely hate spending good money for crap. I saw an article on strategic mortgage defaults where one of the people interviewed said that the bank seeking to keep him paying on his underwater mortgage said the hit to his credit rating would make him economically invisible because he wouldn't be able to get credit again. As far as I am concerned, being an economic ghost is far better than being a debt slave. We aren't in the market for a mortgage and all credit card offers go into the trash. Although we may feel that such individual actions are futile, given the fact that corporate interests have a hammerlock on our government withholding our financial support may be the only meaningful political option we have left. Apply the Republican philosophy of government finance to the economic tyrants--starve the bastards.

Going on to other things--I found this story from eutimes.net while searching for more information on a story posted by Natural News. Some unscrupulous ass$#%#s in China are marketing a 'fake' rice made from potatoes, sweet potatoes and plastic. You read that right--plastic. It is causing a bit of a furor in Viet Nam and Singapore right now.

This is an interesting post for a couple of reasons. Don't let the fact that it deals specifically with India and the comments of a Nobel Prize winning Indian economist. The ideas apply well here. We (especially our politicians) are fixated on growth with no real mention of how that growth should be used. As I read this I suddenly realized that all mainstream economics is really an application of the" trickle down theory". Or to use another frequently cited phrase: "a rising tide lifts all boats." We don't engage in any kind of serious discussion about how society should use the fruits of growth because we believe that those should be reserved for the parties we think have created them--the entrepreneurs and the financiers. We totally ignore the fact that no matter how creative and productive those groups are without the people who did the actual work of production and who then used the proceeds of their labor to buy the products crated society would never have even entered the stone age much less progressed beyond. And then there is the other basic assumption which failed during this last recession and bit a whole lot of us in our collective and individual asses: growth goes on forever.