By Tom on 4/23/2009 4:50 PM

A Health Care Plan for Vashon A project of the Ad hoc Committee on Alternate Currency Presented here is a combination of single-payer health care with a local exchange currency system. This combination attempts to fix certain problems with US health insurance and US currency. As will be seen, this health care is unlike conventional health insurance and this exchange currency is unlike US currency. Here follows a short description of the combination. The single payer is a Vashon organization that owns a clinic and employs medical staff. It is funded by monthly premiums paid in Exchange currency. The Exchange is a membership group. All members of the Exchange are entitled to basic health care by paying a monthly premium in Exchange currency. The Exchange maintains a ledger consisting of one account per member. Of a type known as complementary, the Exchange records trade between members by subtracting from one account and adding same to the other. Each account begins with zero and has credit up to some figure...

Read More »

By Tom on 4/17/2009 1:59 PM

News synergizes. This is what happened in the April 15 Beachcomber as Tom  Bangasser's crusade to keep K2 industrial got on the front page with the Library move survey. Three Letters synergized, Michael FitzPatrick was displeased that a K2Commons developer brushed off the  survey result. Kyle Cruver sensed with regret a "divisive mindset" in the survey that hampers the worthwhile efforts of the Commons developers. And Bob Moses held that the Library  move would "divide and conquer" Vashon Town. I have always thought the site should be used instead of the dump to recycle our throwaways. Here's what went to the Beachcomber today:   Most of us are having trouble thinking outside of the box labeled K2. From the start it’s been, “what shall be done with it”, which ignores the larger question what shall be done with an island once largely self-sufficient and now a vulnerable collection of bedrooms. Months were wasted on conventional manufacturing ideas when thought should have looked forward to preparing Vashon for...

Read More »

By Tom on 2/16/2009 8:35 AM

Have you wondered if printing money is the same as creating money by making a loan? Is money supposed to have intrinsic worth, or is it supposed to be solely a facilitator of trade? And, how explain that a financial system considered to be essential to civilized life has ruined countless farmers, cast families from their homes, plunged nations one after the other into poverty like dominoes? Perhaps it is time to ask of what nature is money. Permit a detour into evolution. The miracle of life emerged slowly until sexual differentiation evolved one fine night upon which evolution sped up with a passion.. Yet in its later, mature, years sex has been taken over by industry and sullied. Return now to money, where a somewhat similar pattern is found. An easily portable substance having value transformed barter into the far more lucrative trade. Yet in its later, mature, years, that easily portable etc has brought out from the human soul limitless evil. Ponder a quality common to sex and money: in both a need was met...

Read More »

By Tom on 1/26/2009 9:12 AM

The time has come to assess Vashon, to make sense out of the disconnect between global disintegration and our denial that it will affect us. Was going to say “complacency” but that did not seem strong enough to express my dismay, and in fact denial is not strong enough either. If you have not yet noticed, the highest priority of the Council is to maintain ferry service for the commute in spite of overwhelming evidence that car commuting by ferry will be an early casualty of the looming collapse of the US domestic economy. How blind can we get. Well, make that crosseyed, because we are neither blind nor stupid. Let me tell you what we are. We are in an advanced state of mass hysteria induced by the Apocalypse of climate and war, which state is not ameliorated by our leaders because we do not have any leaders. We are unincorporated, ie, without body, and specifically, without the part at the top. We are a raggle taggle bunch of highly intelligent and capable people who do not realize the mortal cost of relegating...

Read More »

By Tom on 12/18/2008 12:56 PM

A tour of the high school has changed my attitude but not my opinion. I was asked to take the tour in hope I would change my condemnation of the planned rebuild. The school is indeed in terrible shape, both meanings. But I was not prepared for the impact of an hour spent in the presence of the students. Sensing their vigor was almost a physical blow. Yes, they deserve better, but no, it is wrong to do that before addressing a completely different matter. There is a dark underside to our high school. The only manifest sign is too many cars in the parking lot. Not evident is what I hear about antisocial action. Together these form a picture of youth and adults not together engaged in living. We adults consume too much and ignore responsibility. Youth responds by pushing limits. A result is that we waste the gift of student vigor. This is a serious loss because urgent action is needed starting now on readying Vashon for the national upheaval beginning in 2009. No adult organization is stepping up, possibly excepting...

Read More »

By Tom on 12/11/2008 9:41 PM

No, not your car. Not you and your barbeque. I mean Vashon Island, you know, that pile of hardpan with trees on it? Each day the green stuff gobbles carbon dioxide and each day we burn some trees in our heaters. So what is the net score for atmospheric carbon , let's say, on December 25, 2008? Hmmm.

Tree: 800 lbs, a quarter of it carbon (no, I just guessed), 200 lbs

Number burned by 5OOO fires,  say 50 trees.

Carbon in fifty trees 200 bs X 50 = 10,000 lbs went to heaven

Photosynthetic sequestration in a typical Vashon tree per day is 1/400 of a pound.

(An acre of Douglas fir trees stores approximately 1.4 metric tons of carbon each year (14). That's 1/400 pound per tree per day given several baseless assumptions http://www.scientificblogging.com/science_mom/i_wanna_go_green_so_show_me_the_math)

Number of trees on Vashon is 30 exp 6 so that 80 thousand pounds of carbon is sequestered per day

Bottom line, 80 thousand pounds of carbon taken out, ten thousand sent back...

Read More »

By Tom on 12/11/2008 8:22 PM

NPR has run a story and a sequel about a family that walks on its hands. Genes were examined. Effort was made to re-train them. Some success reported. Well, in all this, no mention of the role of propriosensors in the foot. Ever wonder how a toddler takes that first step? Or for that matter, how do you stay upright? Doctor Science knows. That family probably had deficient propriosensors.

By Tom on 12/11/2008 6:44 AM

Let's hear it for Backbone's recent action against Glacier. It has been a humbling experience for me on account of my bias against the Backbone Campaign for not drawing and quartering the Democrats. Whereas local Democrats are sheep herded by a competent and wise Roger Fulton, Democrats in Congress wear sheep's clothing on the forms of wolves, carnivores to the manwoman. So let's give a hearty thanks to Backbone for turning out against Glacier.

By Tom on 12/9/2008 7:42 AM

I’d like to clarify the previous letter about rebuilding the high school.

It is my understanding that there is a drug problem at the high school.

It is my understanding that there is a race problem at the high school.

It is my understanding that we adults, not just the parents of the few who misuse drugs and say things that hurt, that we adults are complicit by our silence in the far, far worse crimes of the Bush administration.

It is therefore my understanding that it is the soul of Vashon, not the body of the high school, that most needs fixing.

By Tom on 11/26/2008 10:26 AM

The swirl about K2 has a close relative in the desperate attempt to find a use for an expensive gadget you cannot for the life of you find a use for. A second cousin is finding a use for the unused portion of a batch of mixed epoxy: K2 is here, it is big, ergo the question is how to use it. But a far more important question goes unasked and that is how to use our Island. Pull your heads out of the swirl of words about K2 and look at what is happening willy nilly to America and will soon be happening to Vashon. Bled white and with the Damocles sword of abrupt climate change over our heads we join the third world. Predictions of when it will happen differ wildly but all trend sooner, not later. And while you are calculating, do not forget war. When, then? My mailbox finds a consensus of next summer. There’s the context, and the above noted far more important question is how we use Vashon. Let’s simplify the challenges by two slight exaggerations: when the change has fully developed ferry fares will prohibit commuting...

Read More »