Art thief, is the coffee shop liable too?

I was in a Coffee shop on Friday and noticed this artist was selling pictures of artists; Adele, The Clash, Prince, Rhianna, Eminem, and others. They were all clearly images made by others that he had manipulated slightly in a photo editing program, had printed on canvas or some other material, and was offering for sale from the coffee shop's walls. As an artist who creates all my own work and struggles to find a market I was taken aback at this obvious theft. First, of the original image maker's work and secondly of the artist depicted. If the AP-v-Shepard Fairey case taught us anything it is that stealing like this for profit is illegal. I don't think this guy will sell very many of his "paintings" but, even one sale is a theft.

What do you think?

A common good: The gift of sharing.

I've been writing about patience & waiting in the days before December. I've also been listening to our national debate over health care. The debate is coming to an end w/the Senate floor action. During this discussion many ideas flop around, assertions made, facts determined, and opinions expressed.

The Headline: Sunday, November 29, 2009,
New York Times:

Food Stamp Use Soars Across US, Stigma Fades

The Maps:

1) Growth of Food Stamp use from June 2007- June 2009.

Front page map shows high growth in food stamp in FL, home of the head "Ditto-Head" and in ID, WY, UT, NV, & GA. (These six states have ten GOP Senators.)

2) Percentage people in each county who receive food stamps, June 2009.

Jump page map show use highest across the south from AZ thru NM, TX, OK, MO, AR, LA, MS, AL, KY, TN, NC, GA, SC WV, & FL. (These 16 states have twenty-two GOP Senators.)

I feel really good about sharing the wealth of our nation with anyone who needs. Using the Department of Agriculture Food Stamp Program should be stigma free and available to any citizen who is hungry. Even if they are Republican. I ask are these the same places where people are organizing against a right to affordable health care insurance under the label of the Tea Party Patriots? I didn't do a scientific study but looking at the lists of links by state at the Tea Party Patriots Web site and at the Wikipedia page it seems like a large number of these states are the same places. Citizens in good conscience rail against "socialist health care" yet while use the roads, libraries, fire departments, public gathering places and our shared wealth in the form of food stamps. Where are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the like most popular? I looked around and it looks like they are popular all over. I guess the masters of misinformation drive the discussion on this point and they'll certainly ignore this story.

In many cases these are the same people who think nothing spending millions of dollars for three days of intensive care for a malformed premature infant whose prognosis at birth, or even before birth, is for three to six months of life. Life, they say, is sacred. Often the same folks who would force a pregnant woman to seek illegal care to control the outcome of her pregnancy, on the notion that God endows life and life begins when sperm meets egg & genes are intertwined. A poor definition of life in my book. Life is a line, not series of dots, lined up. People exist along the line we don't start & end, we participate. Each moment of consciousness is a decision to continue participating. Life began 3.X billion years ago on Earth and now it is in every crevice and nook.

We can disagree about policies and programs a government should promote. We can disagree about what unseen, or unknown things to believe in. We can teach our children what we choose even if it is a lie like the Easter Bunny exists or Santa comes down the chimney on Christmas morning to celebrate the birth on earth of God made man. But we need each other. We need all of humanity to continue our life on this planet. We even need people who believe such wild stories as are being told in the ultra-conservative, "taxes are only for poor" mainstream media like Fox. We need to share our world if we are to live on it long enough for our species to survive. Self-awareness should allow us to plan the next step in human culture but only if we can move as one.

Health is key to life so it should be a basic right. We need our neighbors to be healthy or we will get infected by them. Our children deserve to be taught how to be healthy. Our government is a great place to mediate & govern the vast and complex issues that make up the public, individual health care universe. A doctor is only a small part of the healthcare system. Patients have responsibility to monitor their own health, instead we've become a nation of fools paying more for less and believing we're getting the best. It's as if we have are the Emperor in the story of the Emperor Has No Clothes. I mourn for our democracy if the loud voices who led us with the failed policies of the past 3 decades can win this debate just by lying to their fans.

One final note on the health care debate: Our nation deserves to have healthy citizens, we need healthy citizens so we can once again lead the world in: innovation; creativity; social, cultural, economic, & artistic ideas; sports; technology; and medicine. We can afford to have the best if we stand up and demand reason prevail over faith, lies, and superstition. We can not afford to continue the byzantine system of healthcare delivery we have now, it bankrupts individuals, small & large businesses across the country. We need the Senate and the House to finish their work and deliver a bill to President Obama for signature.

Illegal Drivers, the Commons & Government

I've written before about the value of those six big ideas in the Preamble to our Constitution. I basically believe the function of government in America can be summed up in three words: Protect Our Commons. At the risk of pedantry, these words need some deconstruction!

Protect, this means to secure, make safe, hold dear, shelter, shield, . . . . Note that it does not mean attack, torture, invade, preclude, preempt, ignore, deny, or squish.

Our, this could be a little dicey but I believe our founders were speaking to a hungry world as they wrote our Constitution. The French Revolution was on, all over there was change and tumult in the air. I think "Our" in this case must mean everyone. All people, all mammals even, all creatures, all living things. We all hold a stake in the Commons so we all own it. It is OUR Commons the Founders hoped to Protect.

Commons, this means those things that are not private. It means, public, held in common, group owned, shared assets, the public square, common markets, public lands.

This is the main duty of Government, Protect Our Commons.

Now, our commons are weakened. We have very few common spaces left. Our marketplaces are mostly malls - privately owned - or on the internet - private and mostly solitary - and city streets - still a common asset. But, even streets are losing their common attributes. In the 1950's an act was passed by Congress and signed by President Eisenhower.

The Defense Highway Act created the Interstate Highway system. A great way to create public right of way from city to city across the US@. It had a few problems that we accept now without question. It bans pedestrians. We created a public place were people on foot are not welcome. (With the speed on these Interstates it's a good idea to avoid walking.) It constricted states with regard to siting and design. It has been used to bludgeon states into accepting things like lower speed limits and higher drinking ages. All and all the Interstates have been good for America in the era of automobiles. But, can this go on forever?

- End illegal drivers' destruction of our common heritage.

As it is, many of our citizens don't follow the simple rules of the common ground. They speed on the Interstate. In many cases it is the same folks decrying "illegal aliens" who then become illegal drivers the minute they step on the gas. Lots of these folks support things like: wars in far off places, private enterprise free to exploit consumers in unlimited ways, domestic spying, detention without trial for "terror" suspects, an end to government waste, etc. While at the same time opposing: public health care options (socialism, they say), public education, welfare for the poorest of our neighbors, unemployment compensation for our idled workers, and using science in governance. Then they get on the freeway and don't even realize the damage they do to our culture when they speed. They believe that as long as they don't crash or get caught there is no harm done. Speeding increases wear and hastens deterioration our roads take a beating from speeders. I say it is time to get these illegal drivers off of our roads. These socialized thoroughfares are meant for law abiding citizens. Illegal drivers should be banned not just fined. Why should we create a socialized system and then let these anti-government, anti-democratic, anti-law folks use it?

Forgiveness: A gift requiring foresight

When we forgive we must be able to see into the future to a time when our anger or disappointment will subside and our friendship will again very important to us. When we forgive we must see into the mind of the other and understand the foibles, the weakness and the goodness that is in each creature of our planet. From fungi to fern, from tree to mammal, from bacteria to mole, from virus to gene, and from reptile to person: all creatures have goodness in them for life is good. 

Forgiveness: a gift when given, a gift when received. A measure of humanity.

Government: A gift from the founders to US.

I've said before, this simple sentence.

Government is good.

Many who know me as a longtime anarchist must be thinking what IS he talking about? Remember, anarchists believe that leaders are not needed. That people can organize themselves without leaders. This doesn't mean we don't need organization. This is where government can use its ability to create and enhance alignment of people. 

People have been self-organizing, aligning their interests for thousands of years. We'd have a hard time surviving an ice-age if we weren't organized. Our first governments seem to have arisen in the past 10,000 years. The Egyptians, Persians, Chinese, and Native Americans, and others show evidence of using governments for cultural, economic agricultural, and social tasks. These tasks often had a very overt power dimension. A leader would coerce with food, intimidate with fear, or cajole with hope. As specialization and scientific discovery grew our structures became more complicated and effective. As language developed we became better able to describe these structures in the abstract and in concrete terms. Writing it all down lead to books, like the Bible, the Communist Manifesto, Origin of Species, or Snowcrash.

Two hundred years ago, the pinnacle of self-organizing systems, was the representative democracy developed in North America based on a mix of Iroquois and Greek ideas (with a lot of other influences). The United States of America created a subtly simple alignment of our nation. We've been wrestling with the consequences ever since. While the United States of America is still strong and 'yeasty' in theory, the practice of our governance faced some real tests recently. 

A group of leaders, let's call them Republicans, has spent much of the past 28 years tearing down government and working to cut off its life blood, revenue. From Ronald Reagan's declaration in 1980 that "government is not the solution, government is the problem," to the starve the government drumbeat of no-tax pledges Republicans have argued for limited government. This while they were in power. Now, in the past few months, their hands no longer on the levers of power their tune has changed a bit but their key points remain the same. Govern on the basis of faith, opinion and fear instead of reason, facts, and shared interest. 

Our Government - given by our founders - is THE one enduring gift, the last vestige of a time before electricity, cars, the germ theory of disease, and evolutionary biology. It is still robust. But, if we let the gift sink us into another dark age of superstition, selfishness, and fear of facts,

we lose the vast power of an open, informed, democratic populace. The Enlightenment brought so much to society and culture. We must stand, honest, truthful, and free in the face of God, Allah, and fascists to avoid digressing and losing our way again. 

Not all states are as lucky as us but many have taken the lesson of our Revolution and built on it. Many governments are now made better by our example. We can't be so arrogant and blind to the advantages developed by others in imitation of our system. Americans are rightly proud of our institutions. This pride cannot be enhanced by starving our system just because we think our faith in the almighty tells us not to pay taxes. I believe the facts as observed. Do you?

A Lesson learned: Gift by example.

In the past dew days the country seems consumed with bonuses paid to about 400 executives from the derivitives trading division of AIG. American International Group is a large insurance company responsible in part for the current lack of trust on the financial markets. These bonuses, in excess of $150 million, have clearly sparked outrage from people making much less income than any of the recipients. 

Since early in 1981, leaders of our country have been facilitating the movement of large sums of cash from the poor and middle class to the rich. A combination of tax cuts, increased contracting for services, reduced oversight of markets, lessened regulatory requirements and relaxation of rules across the spectrum of governing groups has allowed the portion of our annual income that goes to the top 1% of earners to swell from a healthy seven percent to a jaw dropping 25% in 2007. Now the richest among us have raked in one half of all wealth and a quarter of our annual income. We get angry about bonuses paid to a small group of financial experts. Where was the outrage at the money wasted blowing up huge swaths of Iraq? Or the wasted billions in tax give-backs on capital gains? We weren't so mad at the money lost due to lax oversight of WorldCom, Enron, or HealthSouth.

Workers and their managers have created the wealthiest nation on earth and much like the slaves who moved the rock for the majestic buildings of Washington DC, we can marvel at its splendor, but we cannot really participate in the riches. Our country will not ultimately be judged by the gaudy fashions or ostentatious displays of consumption. Our democracy, our republic will be judged by how well we care for the least of our citizens. With homeless people crowding urban cores and foreclosures now hitting the unemployed as well as the greedy speculators workers should be angry but, not at AIG execs or the current government. We should be mad at the failed leadership of the past twentyeight years. The group of politicians and the thinkers who supported them and told us that government was the problem; that taxes were your money being taking out of your pocket; that the role of government is fighting expeditionary wars in far away lands. These people, with the best of intentions led us in the wrong direction and now I fear they are to proud to admit their mistake.

Government is good. We need a government to create a more perfect union, to build the commons, to establish justice and to ensure domestic tranquility.  Public education, public health, public markets, and public information are values to be lauded. Public science and public art create pride in peoples that transcends hard times. 

The only way to benefit from the crisis of trust in financial markets of late is to learn the lessons of evolution. Survival of the Fittest means which species works best together, not which species created the individual with the biggest house. If we learn the lesson of cooperation we can survive many perils now and in the future.