Sustainable America

Two recent news items caught my attention this week. The first was the $800-plus billion bailout that the U.S. Congress just passed in an attempt to forestall the inevitable economic recession brought on by eight years of failed economic policies. The other news item was quite a bit more obscure. It involved a man, Chip Paillex, who planted a 30-foot by 30-foot garden at his new country home to help feed his family of four. By the end of the growing season, this 30 x 30 plot had produced far more vegetables than his family could eat. The end result was that his family wound up donating over a hundred pounds of surplus vegetables that year to families in need. This led to the creation of a nonprofit organization, Grow-a-Row, which now takes in over 250,000 pounds of home-grown, donated vegetables per year for charity.

What struck me about these two stories is the contrast in worldviews they present.

Wall Street America is driven by the gilded version of the American Dream: rampant consumerism at all cost. This mentality has led to yet another debt and drain on the American taxpayers to the tune of somewhere between $5,000-$10,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. Many of my neighbors are pondering what this means for the economic future of the country. They worry about losing their plastic cracker box palaces and their SUVs. They worry about the rising cost of Big Macs and gasoline. It