For a moment, let us suppose that the Conservative push to eject Latino immigrants is wildly "successful" and the NeoCon push to fortify the borders to Iron Curtain levels turns away waves of illegal immigrants. What would be the consequences to the U. S. at this time?

I believe that it would push our economy deeper into the recession that already threatens to amplify into a depression as the liquidity crises spreads and reaches new sectors of the service economy that represents 80% of our modern economy.

The Latino "aliens" come to this country to work, to raise their families, and as a group is a determined bunch, a productive and hard working people largely driven to come here by lack of opportunity at home. So the movement of people to this country is both a relief valve from the pressures of poverty in their home country, as well as an important source of foreign exchange flowing to Latin America.

In this country, Latino Immigrants rent homes, providing an important sector of the rental market, buying food to feed their families, and many times paying taxes "informally" without being able to access the services that the taxes pay for. No doubt the lack of universal medical care means that many use expensive emergency rooms instead of clinics, but this is a marginal effect, as is the number in jail. Mixed into the stream of hard working folks are the usual number of criminals praying on both the immigrants and our locals.

On balance, removing this population would drive up the cost of many basic services, especially the cost of housing. In construction these days in many border states, Spanish is the language of the workplace. Without Spanish speakers, the workplace hammers would be silent or at least muted. Likewise with many other simple services, child care, food prep, warehouse operations, landscape maintenance, cleaning, and the like. Without this "grey market" the cost of doing business would inevitibly rise and our economy would show the scars.

Without this very economically efficient sector, we would see vacant rentals, higher costs, and an important sector of our economy wither.

Yet the George Bush machine, the conservative talk shows, the populist cheerleaders who build the idea that authoritarian rule is a good thing would have us believe that this sector is "the problem" in the tired old pattern of blaming immigrants for our woes.

Over time it was the Irish, the Italians, the Japanese, the Chinese, and now the Latino. We know from our history that as we assimilated these groups, our country became stronger. This is a time when we need to grasp that there is a better way, and we must embrace the very people who can help us through the recession at this critical time: Latino immigrants.

We must not ignore issues and lessons our immigrant history teaches us are important: filtering out the criminals, the gangs and attending to the public health issues. In the past, the mafia grew when the protection of human rights by the government didn't meet the need, and likewise diseases such as TB developed hot spots among illegal immigrants. Today in LA we see a similar growth of "Latin Gangs" who represent a power beyond control by the government in large sectors of Southern California, Arizona and Texas today.

These observations point to the need to legalize the 12 million people to the extent that we can bring them into our system as legitimate citizens, the need to ensure that our police protect all of us regardless of immigration status, and the need for education and health care for the families that are here for whatever reason. In this way we hold our American values true, we protect our economy and we build a road that ensures that we get the best.

This does not mean that open borders are the answer, indeed for our national security we need to do more to address the corruption that smuggling engenders, we need to selectively encourage the folks we want to come here and we must educate the children who are here to speak English, to gain the basic skills that make a civil society function.

Unregulated immigration also brings risks to our security including disease and a flow of criminals who insinuate themselves into the flood. By respecting human rights, we can more effectively handle the public health issues. Treating babies as humans and giving them proper diet and health care shows our basic values, and gives them the best chance to grow up to be productive members of society. Babies don't get to choose where they grow up, and shouldn't be punished for the criminal acts of their parents.

When we honor our commitment to human rights, we feed the hungry, we ensure shelter for us all, and we provide basic health care services, environmental justice, education and police protection in a universal manner. This doesn't take away from our country; indeed it makes us stronger as a nation and ensures that our "Homeland Security" means more than concentration camps, secret police, and "security theatre" at the airport. We must spend more on our core human security needs as our people are our country. Our care for the environment is an expression of our self respect, and our understanding of our place in the web of life. This environmental movement needs the support and energy of the immigrants, support that won’t be found amongst folks with unmet basic survival needs.

So let’s stop blaming Latino's for our problems, lets stop the "minutemen" authoritarian and racist harangues and get back to the struggle to meet human needs. If government programs must be cut back, I’m suggesting that our war budget must take the hit not basic programs such as food stamps and aid to the homeless. It’s late, and evidence mounts that Latino’s are already returning to their homeland as our economy contracts, as residential construction declines, and as the borders are increasingly tight.

Immigrants continue to come by the thousands per day from Asia, from Europe and most of them are not walking across the border from Mexico, they arrive by boat and plane. WE must open our colleges again, and encourage the best and the brightest to do research here, to earn business degrees, to become teachers and workers in our economy. Instead of an unregulated flow, we can shape the flow to our needs more effectively if we attend to these basics.

Our country will be better and stronger with this approach.

Photography and videography can be for me a way to look deeper into what I have in some sense already seen. At the same time, with a good photograph, I can see what I didn't see the first time.

Recently I took a photograph of the street scene along Grant Avenue in San Francisco at the corner in front of the Triton Hotel and Cafe Presse. It's a bit like a Breugel painting in that you see a couple being tourists gazing at the patrons in the cafe. Then your eyes are drawn to a foursome striding accross Grant street together, eager looks on their mature faces.

Behind them a couple is standing close together on the sidewalk, and she is looking intensely into his taller eyes, and just behind them, in the window of the cafe, sits a woman holding herself as she gazes out at us. Just to the right, a number of passers by look intently up Grant Street through the gate into China Town.

The photo started as a quick shot, and I was attracted by the juxtaposition of the Yellow and Blue from the Hotel Triton Sign along with the deep reds of the Cafe Presse framing the many human characters swarming around the intersection.

Once I put the image into photoshop, I looked to see where to crop, and learned that it was precisely the exploration of the rich image that rewards the viewer. Taking the image into After Effects allowed me to implement this vision in a limited fashion.

I used motion graphics to take the incredibly detailed image made with the Nikon D300 and the 18-200mm vr Nikkor lens and explore it with the virtual camera. I made a quicktime movie that is available at this URL:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aKDhzOW5NA
At the same intersection, I also saw a man taking a photo while holding up a drawing in one hand that would appear in his picture as in front of the Chinatown gate. He was doing what an AT&T Cellphone commercial showed a father doing to send reports of his travel back home to his daughter. You can see the original commercial and my photos here at this URL:

http://www.geocities.com/bbamboo/FatherTakingPicturesForAChild.html

This web page combines the use of Google Maps to show what the father saw as he took the picture, and Google Earth where you can see both where he stood and where I stood to take the picture. This amazing technology allows us to learn more about our photos "after the fact". With Google Maps, you can see the street scene in a static sense using their photos of the building fronts. I used it to confirm my location by comparing the background in the photo of the dad taking the picture, and also to confirm my point of view. Amazing.

In another case, I took a landscape photo of what looked like a ring of trees, sent the photo to my mother who asked about the tree ring. I went to Google Earth and "flew" to where I took the photo, stood on the virtual road turnout, and pointed at the scene in my photo.

I discovered that the feature that I'd photographed was in fact a spiral planting of evergreens planted ajacent to a new vinyard near Petaluma. Again, without the ability to "fly" above the landscape and to examine more closely the subject of my photo, I would never have known that what appeared to me as a ring of trees was actually a deliberately planted spiral line of trees!


There are other times when I will use a video editor to look at video in the same manner, exploring the details of an interaction, playing it over with different temporal and/or spatial zoom, sometimes looping it to see the evolution of an encounter.

This is a way of viewing video that is deeper than the vicarious mode we're usually in when television is entertainment.

There is more to video, and it's only available when one can interactively explore a bit of video with your hands on the controls of a powerful non-linear video editing system. Time warping is a great tool for exploriing human interactions.

It's image editing as exploration, analysis and learning.

Lessons from an old cat

Kiwi came to us as a rescue cat, taken from her mother before she was ready to be weened, we saw her at the vet still with her litter-mates. She was the only one who looked her in the eye and meowed, the others hissed. The vet said that she'd be a small cat, and she came home with us that day.

As she grew up, she imprinted on Alicia Star as the mommy cat. She tried to nurse from Alicia Star even as she was bigger than Alicia Star! Alicia was the roshi of the cat brood, indeed the roshi of 7 Myrtle Avenue. Alicia accecpted Kiwi as her pal and companion though her cat son Alex remained her favorite.

During the years at Myrtle Avenue, Kiwi grew to be a 20+lb cat who loved to eat, loved to be in the bamboo garden sleeping in the sun, and who was loyal to me through thick and thin. She wasn't the favorite, and she always wanted approval from the senior cats.

Kiwi would follow me as I walked along the railroad tracks behind the stream at Myrtle Street, lagging a bit behind Alex and Alicia Star, but always wanting to be part of the pack. While the others walked with me on the railroad rail, she'd be content to walk along the railroad ties with us. Sometimes I'd carry her across the stream, sometimes we'd "ditch her" and leave her to figure how to cross on her own. Her great girth limited her atheletic prowess and I never guessed that she'd become the 6 1/2 lb fragile being with a big heart that she is today.

As arthritus fused her lower spine, her ability to get around became more and more limited. Her colon stopped processing properly and she had some incidents where she became impacted and needed vet intervention to continue living. We started her on stool softener, lactulose drops twice a day. This worked for a while.


Then the vet discovered that her kidneys were failing. We started giving her fluids every now and then as supportive therapy. Didn't expect her to live long, but since she was still interested and such a wonderful companion, I gave her a spot on the floor and kept up her daily therapy.

It took me too long to realize that she needed a heating pad, but I bought her a big one ( large enough for Carol and Kiwi to be on it together) and set her up with an incondesent lightbulb over her for radient heat.

The wonderful vet Bill Eshthimer told me that Kiwi needed supplimental fluids via needle under the skin a few times a week. I had given fluids to cats before, and while it's important therapy, in the past it always signaled end of life approaching. I started giving Kiwi fluids, even though my technique was poor.

Unlike most cats, Kiwi allowed me to give her fluids despite my clumsyness with the needle, and patiently waited for the process to complete most times. Her docile nature served her well and I improved with practice. Dr. Bill helped me to learn sterile technique and patiently tutored me in how to insert the needle properly. As I gained in skill, the pain inflicted on the cat diminished, and it got easier to be regular.

She became incontenent, so I gave her fresh bedding twice or three times a day, washing her towels a few times a week. She had some more crises with blockages, and a stand in vet suggested a diet change that really helped her to be back on regular with her digestion.


Her inability to move around has made keeping her clean tough, but she still relates to Carol and wakes me every morning with a squak and a purrr. Kiwi wakes me every morning with her squalk-meow just before the alarm is to go off at 5am. I change her bedding, feed her and give her fluids every other morning.

The yoga of service work, the zen of practice in this tiny corner of the room has been a blessing for me. In one way, the question is should I be doing for a human instead of an "animal"? The answer that I've found is that for me this is the practice that calls me now, knowing that it won't go on indefinately, knowing that it won't end well, but taking each moment together as a gift.

So while I thought that this was a kitty hospice commitment that would last a few weeks, it's turned out to be a blessing that has continued for a couple years now. I'm so grateful for the time with her, and while it's been difficult for both of us, her good attitude and appreciation for what we do for her is both a reward and a lesson.

I used to think that you should "put down" ( kill) a cat with such limitations but when the standard is "are they in pain?" and do they still want to live?, the answer is quite different. The effort is sometimes taxing, but the reward is subtle and lesson one that only unfolds over time.

The service to this small being brings me joy, and wonder. How is it that our love can be sustained through such trials? This small being has such a big heart, and it's a small thing to be able to repay her for the years that she nourished my spirit, for the times that I was too harsh, for the times that I ignored her simple needs. Yet the mystery of life isn't revealed, but the benefits are unrolling as we breathe. Precious being, thanks for this morning, thanks for this day and the time with Sharon, Kiwi, Carol and Snowy.

Time to go to work to earn the money to support this tribe.

Thanks

Now that the housing bubble has burst, real estate prices are plunging, bank credit is evaporating, and the economic contraction is like a spasm, the void in our economy is acting like a shock wave.

Funding of the war hasn't been from new taxes, rather it has come from a combination of taxes on the increased economic activity revolving around the extraction of equity from the real estate that has occured during the interest rate decline of the last few years, and from shifting government resources from domestic progams into war related expenses. Because new taxes have been minimal, the resources invested in public capital like basic research,;human health; environmental protection; infrastructure renewal; NASA; consumer protection have declined.

The interaction of policy with this extraction of public capital has been particularly stupid with respect to basic research. The restrictions on visas cut the supply of intellectual talent that came to the US for study at the same time as much basic research support was cut by the federal government. This at a time when our international competitors are compeating for the brightest minds on the global stage. One result is that China and India are on the way to becomming research powerhouses. Increasing investment and encouraging research involvement by foreign graduates at US Universities and national labs is an obvious high leverage shift that should be implemented immediately.

Some applied research area's should be funded at a higher level, with my favorites being plasma physics, atmosperic research, agricultural research, species conservation, flywheel battery storage, alternative energy, bio fuels and sustainable production, energy conservation, ecosystem conservation, extending our network capital investment, research infrastructure support.

Unfortunately now that the resources are squandered and the common capital depleated, our options narrow. It's a shame to have wasted the last 17 years in the greenhouse warming cycle, but it would be criminal to squander the next 17.

I strongly support the defense of my country, and believe that the best national security policy must balance the investment in the domestic infrastructure with the funding of overseas power exercises. We must be skillful in how we strike the balance, and our national command authority could do better, must do better.
Overextending to try to right a policy ship that is listing to port and has lost headway drains our precious capital, yet there are basic military realities that we must support over the long term.

There are some simple policy choices that could vastly improve our nation and would improve our security. One of the first things we must change is our care of veterans: it is a national disgrace that veterans health care is in crises, ignores so much battle trauma. Funding childrens medical and health care is another no-brainer. Credible elections would be another, reform of our sentencing laws and practices is another. Now that much of the mechanism has been dismantled, some agencies would take time to reconstitute, so the sooner we start the better.

Such measures will reduce dispair, and improve the cohesiveness of our society. Improving our research institutions and reducing the ideological management of research could improve our economy. Improving our energy efficiency and energy distribution systems could also improve our national security.

The present administration has an ideological agenda that opposes development of public capital, favors only increased corporate capital and control. I hope that extending the war will be rethought, and more creative and realistic planners be given a voice. I hope that the administration will listen a bit more, though there isn't much basis for optimism.

Still, the connectivity and collective intelligence that emerges as the web develops is an agent of change beyond government imagination. New opportunities, and new vulnerabilities. We need to think about how to guard the freedom of the network, universal access, and so on. It needs to be codified into law or the web will loose it's extra edge in synergizing the colletive exercise of intellegence.

A quite remarkable development is occuring her in Marin county as the public access television station is forced to seek a new home Comcast stops hosting this vital public service and evicts the studio from it's long time location on Anderson Drive in San Rafael. The county joint powers authority that regulates telecommunications, Marin Telecommunications Agency, has blessed the formation of a non-profit organization that will operate Public Access television.

It's been a long public process starting with a small group of active producers who wanted to nurture public access television in Marin back in 1996 who met at Sandy Marker's home in Corte Madera to strategize. Starting from a small group of advocates who went to Marin Telecommunications Agency public meetings to speak out for Access television as an important public commons, the new town square, the group wouldn't let the cable companies and the MTA kill off public access.

For some years the MTA board was indifferent to public access issues, then actively hostile. Several groups in the county became interested in nurturing and preserving this fragile avenue for free speach including Media Action Marin, a liberal libertarian coalition that included social justice groups and individuals interested in free speach.

The Marin Telecommunications Agency board meetings became rather contentious and eventually the board formed an advisory committee to take public input and advise the board on public access issues. This was the genisis of the Marin Access Advisory Committee eventually known by it's acronym, MAAC.

MAAC met monthly with members appointed by the MTA and developed a number of reports that defined the role of public access, and articulated a vision of how the service could benefit the community in Marin. One of the first things that MAAC did was to redefine it's mission from just Public Access television to include Educational Access Television and Government Access television ( PEG). At first, the MTA wasn't supportive of the idea that government public meetings should be made televised.

Indeed, the San Rafael City Manager at the time, Ron Gould was so hostile to public access that he threw out an MTA consultant who came to discuss putting city council meetings on tv! The county administrator who was assigned to support the MTA attended meetings of MAAC but characterized the group as a fringe group of political activists.

Reality is that the MAAC group had elements from many aspects of Marin life including Len Schlosser who represented seniors ( his show "A Time for All Ages" is still popular years after he passed on), Jerry Catigan ( Marin Special Olympics and environmentalist ), two lawyers, and some public access producers. Over time the MAAC developed the idea that public access is a vital public commons that exists as a concession to the commercial operation that uses the public right of way, a tiny slice of the bandwidth reserved for the public amidst the vast array of commercial channels.

Over time, the composition of the Marin Telecommunications Agency changed and the long time members of the board learned about public television. Despite many lost opportunities to make favorable deals with cable operators, the MAAC continued to advocate for public access and just wouldn't go away.

Persistence had it's reward, eventually the Marin Telecommunications Agency board attracted some members with telecommunications competence. Eventually the agency Exectutive Director was told to hire a consultant to help with negotiations as the board recognized that their director was not able to negotiate on his own with the big cable companies.

Once the outside experts validated a number of the points that MAAC had been advocating for years, the credibility of the advisory group solidified and the process of negotiating a cable franchise that would preserve public access was on solid ground. It still took over 5 years for the county to negotiate an agreement.

Over the years the offers from the cable companies went down in value. As the MTA fiddled around, the offers dwindled from an AT&T offer of $12 million over 10 years down to about 3Million over 1o years made by Comcast.

The national context shifted as well, and it became clear that if the MTA failed to act, changes in law could leave Marin without any public access benefits. Over time the cable companies starved the public access operation, carved out channel time for leased informercials at the expense of public time, and generally discouraged any local production.

Once the new MTA board got serious about supporting public access channels, the executive director changed his tune, brought in Tom Robinson from CBG communications and negotiated a franchise that preserves public access.

The MAAC recommended that a non-profit be established to run public access as a designated access provider (DAP) as an independent public organization funded in part by franchise fees to be a fair broker of the channel time, and to educate the public, to provide the means to produce shows and as a host to the vital public commons. Initially the idea was rejected by the executive director and the MTA board but as the executive director was edged out and replaced by a community orientated person, the idea gained credibility.

Marin now has the Marin Community Media Center, Inc. as a non-profit that will operate public access television in Marin though it is only two months old and just beginning to organize itself.
The vision of the newly formed board of directors includes traditional public access, but also video on demand, web access, community radio and media literacy. The vision for the Media Center is inclusionary, embracing the many populations in Marin County such as the seniors, hispanics, asian community, native americans, youth, arts, cultural groups and religious groups.

The 2007 Marin Telecommunications Board has distinguished itself by taking this bold step, and is negotiating an agreement with the College of Marin to host the main production facility. Marin county is creating a new institution that will nurture the public commons and provide a connection space for our community institutions, organizations and individuals if it can reach out and develop public support.

For me the evolution has been gradual, sometimes imperceptible and yet very rewarding. When I started this journey it seemed impossible that Marin would every have a non-profit that would operate in the public interest supported by the Marin Telecommunications Agency and the public. Today it is a reality.

One side effect of my service on MAAC: I met my wife Sharon at a MAAC meeting!

Deliberate infliction of damage to the economy during the assertion of police powers over "illegal aliens, illegal immigrants" appears to be a policy that the Bush executive is about to implement in a series of visible events designed to make the news. It appears to be a way of using political leverage to force congress to change laws combined with authoritarian action that will feed the conservative fixation on blaming undocumented people for the woes of the day. Administration spokes people deny that the upcomming campaign against illegals in the workplace aims to influence legislation, even while stating that a change in the law is needed.

Already the precedent is set that people defined as illegal aliens won't be given the rights of a citizen, won't be treated with the care and respect that are core American values from our history. More raids, and media events and the process of desensitization erodes further the civil contract. Yet without some respect for immigration laws, the floods of refugees would swamp the countries in what Thomas Barnet calls "the core".

The present system sees billions flowing to Latin America as wages are sent back to families and home towns, money that is the best foreign aid, going where it is needed most in an efficient manner, foreign aid that is earned not charity. The money that these folks send home creates relationship with the US, and contributes indirectly to our security. Guest worker programs and better visa control would help to reduce abuses, as would an increase in State Department funding targeted at providing more field consulate visa and immigration personnel. Some complain that illegal’s only pay some taxes, and while that is true, some assert that they take less in services than they put in on average.

The recent campaign by ICE that targeted people from Latin America in raids all across the U.S. that typically hit before dawn also spit families, and disrupted our community. If the arrests had to be made, provisions to help the families should be made. They should be able to communicate with families and loved ones. To employ the detention camps, to fly folks immediately to a different region of the country away from their support networks creates a maximum impact on the community without yielding more than a marginal difference

Even the official who announced the new round of enforcement actions said that he expected that the effect would hurt industries such as health care, agriculture, hospitality. The economic effect combined with the credit crunch and the real estate devaluation are waves that will swash through our lives for years. Since the service economy is the core of our economic engine, damage here is going to hurt lots of folks.

The administration wants reform, I want reform ( though in a different direction than advocated by the "neo cons"), and this new policy initiative moves a conservative policy agenda ahead with the cynical calculation that by excessive enforcement of laws on the books the democratic congress and key republicans in congress will move to change the law as requested by the Karl Rove directed White House political operatives.

In an presidential election cycle it's hardly surprising to see moves aimed at "activating the republican base" at this stage in the campaign. Closer to the general election I expect to see a moderation that is designed to co-opt the counter reaction that will be generated by this exaggerated enforcement exercise.

Yet another cynical exercise of power from folks who are divorced from the folks who will be paying the price for this pandering to the political "base". It's time that we work our an immigration policy that brings the folks who will add to our society, and that fairly addresses immigration from Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Our policy should grant citizenship based on things like the ability to contribute to society, the ability to join our society, and criteria that honors the family. Reforms that force more into illegal status just encourage exploitation.

Now both sides of the political spectrum must come together to pass legislation that begins the humanization of the process, that adds the resources to the agencies earmarked to improve passport, visa, and immigration services. Now both Democrats and Republicans must lead the way to reform and address the 12 million who are here now without documents, to be more efficient in catching and deporting the violent criminals, and to spend the money to do real health screening for the folks comming into the country.