When we are children, we are provided for. When we
are parents, we provide. When we are grandparents, we watch provision wobble
on. Gaining, using, sharing, hoarding, leaving behind… asset management is
pervasive.
Two opposing realities all people experience are
life and death, order and entropy. There is the wonder of the green blade
springing out of the earth, providing food, shelter and beauty. There is the
shock of drought, disease, fire and harvest, life consumed in death and the
struggle to not die so fast.
No where is this so evident as on a farm.
Cycles of planting, cultivating, harvesting, and
dormancy miniaturize seasons of human life every year. Cycles of animal
breeding, gestation, birth, nurture and independence model cause and effect for
us and our children.
And, nothing escapes the tearing and shock of
destructive forces that are beyond our control. A lamb dies when the mother ewe
inadvertently smothers it on a cold spring night. A lamb dies when a birth
defect robs it of its functions of life. A lamb dies when a coyote makes a meal
out of it.
Life and death. Shiny new metal tools that get
rusty blades and rotten wooden handles. We get tired of the fight, and look for
mitigation. Why not sell out and retire into town. That corporate job sure looks
good! Shift work? 12 hour days? Unhappy mommies? We can put up with it. "Can" the
farm troubles!!
Recently, I read several eye popping histories that
look at American corporate investments and values at probably the most
sensitive level—espionage. Some of you may recognize the name of former federal
prosecutor, John Loftus. His several epic portrayals of 20th century
international political and economic subterfuge are at least highly
controversial, and at most totally damning of the American corporate soul.
In short, shut out of extreme corporate advancement
by Theodore Roosevelt’s anti-trust/monopoly laws, American big money families
gained a legal loophole that enabled them to play business cartel games at the
international level. Two decades of lucrative investments into Russia, Germany
and Saudi Arabia culminated in huge conflicts of interest as World War 2 burst
into flames.
Indicted at the highest levels by previously highly
classified and deliberately buried government archives, leading American corporate
families and American State Department officials were co-perpetrators of the
Holocaust. After the war, they became more deeply enmeshed with other Western
governments and the Vatican in a huge cover up of Nazi war crimes and
criminals. All this was done in the interests of American corporatism and
preserving American, British and German capital assets.
This last month, Whatcom Works has been silent. In
the recent quarter, our capital assets took a beating. The windstorms ripped a
stretched fabric shelter to pieces. Two older vehicles died. A third vehicle
had significant repairs. A fourth vehicle kissed a tree on the other side of
the ditch. A hard disk died. The color printer died. We have been a little
distracted and busy.
Yet not all was bad. There were several good
electrical jobs. The registered Labrador Retriever had nine puppies. We were
able to car pool and get new tarps on and save the data on the hard disk. We
were able to keep going with the after school clubs in Kendall. We were able to
complete commitments in the election cycle. New public policy doors are
opening.
If I were working for a corporation, I would have
had much less flexibility to team up with family members to do these things.
Corporations pay you to be there at set hours. Family job wages come with
strings attached.
If I were working for a corporation, I may have had
more money to buy better vehicles. Farmer and self employed electricians seem
to pay less attention to having a late model car or truck. Family based
businesses are more vulnerable to the blows of life, and often lack the capital
and trained professionals to quickly leverage themselves into sudden, golden
market opportunities.
Corporatism is attractive! Let’s get a coal
terminal. OR, lets get Sierra Club or Washington Conservation Voters to throw
their corporate assets at shutting out the coal terminal. (Is it just a rumor
that the big donor from California to the no coal campaign actually owns
significant right-of-ways for the Keystone Pipeline, and stands to benefit from
oil (trains?) more than coal trains? I would like some feedback on this.)
May I suggest that although family based endeavor
is fragile and weak, that is the model the founders of America used to build
this great nation. Checks and balances were the watch word. Families checked
families. Cities checked cities. States checked States. Citizen rulers checked
prior citizen rulers.
When a businessman becomes a corporate titan, he
has the option of leaving his roots and joining the macabre wax museum club of
international corporations. Uber-rich families with unbroken successes usually
become wrinkled, strange caricatures that grasp and groan and kill to keep
their grip on their assets. Failure teaches far more life lessons than success.
Charity. As a parent, I run the world’s best
charity. I get to give daily to the poor and needy under my roof. As a family,
we can share freely with our neighbors, without having to get the head office
to put it into the budget. When the tarps blow off and the cars go off the road,
we are grateful for the words and acts of charity from other families and
people who have skin in the game. You know who you are. Thank you!
Corporations. Families. Capitalism. Conservatism.
May I encourage you to continue to invest in families, and as families. Big
corporations are probably smarter and more efficient than big government, but
beware of the larger levers of community that both the big corporations and big
government move. See the links at the end--
- Common core and dumbing down children to being factory workers rather than entrepreneurs and corporate competitors. RINO legislators are deliberate malefactors here.
- Immigration of willing workers who are malleable to corporate interests.
- Locking up of natural resources by green groups who are largely pawns of international corporations and educational institutional survivalists.
- Foreign policies that pawn lives and families in large and uncertain circles of economic intrigue.
- Moral confusion that blackmails gifted people into zombie like corporate servitude with bitter ends.
Families? Yes! We will keep on trucking! Lets
ignore the uncommon ground and work together. Lets use checks and balances at
the local, community level. Then, perhaps, we can mitigate the monopolies at
the top. --JK
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