By Tom on 6/28/2009 6:41 AM

To the Beachcomber:  Vashon is now well on its way to readiness for a natural disaster thanks to the long-time work of Be Prepared and now the publication of its well-done brochure. And what about economic disaster? Ask which is the more likely to occur within say the next two years, the Big One or collapse of the US economy? Think about that. The earthquake operates on probability, but the US economy is a serial cliff-hanger. How do you like the latest episode in which the Government propped up the General Motors corporate logo and kicked the auto workers into the gutter? Right, and has Vashon taken a single step toward self-sufficiency? Right. We could have retrofit K2 for making self-sustaining products but we blew it. But we love our commute. With many well–deserved cheers for our hard working Transportation Committee, what we really need is a Transition Committee.

Read More »

By Tom on 6/27/2009 5:46 AM

(This is the Agenda for a committee meeting. June 25, 2009. Reprinted here for those who didn't make the meeting.) Translation: Sensible, humane, health care will be dead on arrival at President Obama’s desk. The death sentence is coded into the phrase “Public Option” which doesn’t take the brains of an eleven-year old to decipher. It means a “free lunch” which is impossible. Without imposing a new tax it will not be possible for the Government to pay the cost of care for everybody including those already sick while at the same time continuing existing subsidies to the HMOs. That’s the free lunch analysis of what’s going on now in Congress. There’s another analysis that ignores the Public Option scam in preference to wiring shut the gaping maw of the health insurance industry. It’s having a “free lunch” on us and we are fed up. The agenda for tonight, June 25, addresses the single payer movement now underway on Vashon under the auspices of others with more sense than this ad hoc chairperson. Whereas national...

Read More »

By Tom on 6/2/2009 1:34 PM

This past Monday evening the Council Board discussed my motion for a new committee to be called the Transition Committee. The title came from the book Transition Handbook, and the text also except that I replaced Rob Hopkins' words with my own and threw in some local names, like Vashon, and like "commute". The reaction was two-fold, bury it in an existing committee, or forget the idea. There's merit in each.  As to creating another committee there's no way a committee could accomplish much and the reason for that is given in Hopkins' book: progress comes from the root up, never from the council.  As to burying it in an existing committee of similar charter, the board might have gone along with that but I think that Hopkins' point applies there as well. So, then, why did I try? As you might guess it was a way of finding out how the Board felt about the coming perfect economic storm. Gathering together the comments, I'd say most of the board are just as worried as I am, but have their hands full doing what needs...

Read More »

By Tom on 5/26/2009 7:13 AM

How long will Vashon remain unaffected by shocks in high finance? How many more days before we take off the daily mask of business as usual? How soon will the fifteen minute boat ride no longer insulate us? Try five months. The following analysis is hasty and frantic but probably valid. In 1987 William Greider described the rickety US financial system when he wrote “Secrets of the Temple”. A few years later when the Glass Steagel act was repealed commercial banks were allowed to enter the investment market and rickety became an understatement. Bad loans here and abroad increased. The Fed tut-tutted but did not discipline the banks. A feeding frenzy erupted in Wall Street in the late nineties when a few key members in the revolving door known as the Wall Street-Washington money axis devised a means whereby a ponzi scheme could utilize investment paper called “derivatives” to make a few insiders a lot of money and do so in a way that the Securities and Exchange Commission could willingly overlook. Fact: trading...

Read More »

By Tom on 5/7/2009 6:58 AM

You may have heard that the VMICC ad hoccam effort to get Vashon signed up to Fourth Corner Exchange has been put on hold, make that terminated. But wait, full disclosure is that the target has been modified. We want FCX with one little change: the Life Dollar shall have a value of 100 Kwh. That's right, the value of one funnybuck to a resident of Vashon is one hundred kilowatt hours of energy. How's that for a lump of gold?  And how does that fit? Look at this excerpt:

Kucinich, Zarlenga Say Monetary Reform Needed Now By John Tiffany According to Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) U.S. monetary reform is urgently needed: “It is long past time we look at the implications of . . . the privatization of money created by the 1913 Federal Reserve Act, the bank fractional reserve system and our debt-based economic system. Unless we have dramatic reform of monetary policy, the entire economic system will continue to accelerate wealth upwards. I am currently working on drafting legislation for an ‘American Monetary...

Read More »

By Tom on 4/30/2009 11:39 AM

Reliance on the dollar will devastate Vashon’s economy when the approaching perfect economic storm hits Puget Sound. This is because we have not the farming, medicine, nor industry adequate to survive high ferry fares and loss of off-island wages. What we do have is a lot of hard to heat bedrooms. Yet the single most vital step towards self sufficiency has not been taken and that is institution of an alternate currency. There are two reasons. One is cultural, we are not about to push back from the smorgasbord of goodies that only the dollar provides, make that provided. The other is financial, the best available alternate lacks a feature essential to transition: a consensus value. Having that value would allow the investment of dollars in Vashon life: vastly increased farming, single payer healthcare, new high school, fabrication of electric transport, fabrication of solar energy systems, and purchase of tooling to make use of what’s dumped. The path to self-sufficiency is a dual currency. Credit for developing...

Read More »

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 »