The economy and politics today continues the following disturbing trends. If Bush and those trends make you nervous you need to meet Art and find out about Kaweah Co-op.

Following the lead of Halliburton Hedge Funds and other questionable ventures are beginning to relocate off shore. This provides immunization for possible liability when the bottom falls out. Pensions, annuities, and other investments are at risk.

Never have Americans carried such a weight of debt. Never has it been more difficult for them to simply tread water.

Nearly all Americans with phones are receiving daily calls from mortgage refinance companies. Today I received 5 such calls. Two different offers for refinancing options appeared as ads today on the opening page for Yahoo.

What is government offering as safety?

Today states like New Hampshire are being threatened by Homeland Security for the offense of refusing to comply with the REAL ID.

George Bush has begin using Executive Orders to enact edicts that he can use to flout the law. The direction of his orders is fascism.

George Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was part of a plot to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a right-wing military coup in 1934.

That Bush Conspiracy was confirmed in Congressional Hearings. Strangely, no action was taken.

Nothing about us is as persistent as family culture. You drink it in with your mother's milk.

How secure are you and your family right now?

Today Americans have no savings; we live from pay check to pay check.

Your local grocery store has enough food for two days.

Much of that food comes from off shore or is transported long distances.

What would your community be like if the shelves of those grocery stores were empty?

Food the originates from off shore is more likely to carry diseases and have been impacted by toxic conditions.

Where is the food you will eat next week NOW?

Hurricane Katrina taught us that FEMA and the Federal government may take money in taxes but they will not deliver the services and security we thought we were buying.

The bottom may fall out at any moment. That is where you are today.

That said, what real action can you take to make your family, your neighborhood, and your community more secure, healthier, and less dependent on all things that are harmful or must come from a distance?

There are answers.. All challenges life offers come with unsuspected opportunities. Emergencies make us focus on what really matters in life. What really matters to you? That new cell phone that will be history in six months? Or the voice you hear on the other end when someone you love answers?

People across the U. S. are already adopting solutions that enrich their lives, allowing them to live healthier and know where and how what they will be eating is being raised; that those they love will be happy and cared for.

Families and communities are coming together to accomplish good things. So can you.

Arthur Ogawa is a resident of Three Rivers, Tulare County, California. With his family, he has lived there since 1993, immigrating from the San Francisco Bay area.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Art had a career as an experimental physicist (PhD, Physics, UC Berkeley, 1978), working at facilities such as the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Fermi National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Commuting kept him from being the kind of active father he wanted to be to their two children.

So in 1986 he turned to technical consulting in order to work at home with his wife Marian Goldeen. He has worked as an electronic publishing consultant for some 20 years, serving clients such as Apple, HP, NASA, and Boeing. Their children became home schooled. Today their daughter and son develop Web comics, music, and painting as part of their continuing self-directed learning.

The family achieved a closeness they never believed possible but had always wanted. They also got out of debt entirely. They are part of a community that helps each other. Art is now working on making their home more energy efficient.

When Art and his family moved to Three Rivers Art became active in the Kaweah Food Co-op. Starting with the food they eat, now far more locally grown and so more dependable and healthy, they are working on more ways to make their community better.

The Kaweah Food Co-op of Three Rivers, Tulare County, California, is a group of some 30 families who work cooperatively each month to provide high-quality, cost-effective food for their families and the community. Meeting once every four weeks, the Co-op distributes food obtained from UNFIW and local sources on a non-profit basis. That has provided a basis that can now meet other needs that their community and other communities across the U. S. did not imagine would be necessary a decade ago.

Life is about values and quality for them. What is it for you?

We think of the world as divided into 'for profit' and 'government.' But the history of America's people and communities is really the history of cooperation that yields profits not counted in fiat money but in far richer benefits. Community involvement builds deep bonds, enduring trust, and the kind of capital that lasts.

Across the country people are reconsidering how their needs might be better met and they are doing it themselves.

Co-ops are one way people do that. Kaweah in Three Rivers strives to find and develop local sources for food, also on the agenda are solutions for problems that revitalize the essence of American Community and leave families and neighbors better, not worse, off.

Art works to help local small farms keep going in a world of factory farms that would otherwise gobble them up. Small, family farms produce food you can trust and great community.

In small towns, big cities, and in the suburbs, people like Art and Kaweah Co-op are looking for solutions to looming problems. With back yard gardens, co-ops, and exchange they are changing how they eat and live. They use consensus, finding common ground, and caring. Working together works both to solve problems now and prevent problems in the future.

Knowing your neighbors is the best insurance you can buy today, a security that you probably don't yet have but that you can learn about from Art and Kaweah.

Their Co-op dates back 25 years, and some of the founding members are still active.

Communities across the country are assessing the present political reality and doing the same thing, working towards local independence in every way.

You can do the same thing where you live. Listen in this Friday to The Spiritual Politician on BBSradio.com at 4pm Pacific Time and find out how to make your family, your community, and your world better than you imagined possible