Speak Your Mind And Read Mine

Here's Tea In Your Eye

2011-09-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

Once again, I’ve indirectly been accused of hating America. My ilk was included in the accusation. I can’t control my ilk, but I sure as hell don’t hate America. Those making such accusations don’t know what the hell America is.

I’ve been asked what’s better than capitalism, if capitalism is so bad? I’ve been asked if I know from experience of any other nation in which there is so much freedom. “What works better than our form of government?” Finally, and I thought that this wasn’t used anymore, it’s been suggested if I find a better place in which to live with more democracy and more freedom, I should move there.

Much to the chagrin of those who want to shrink government small enough to just be able to “fit in your bedroom”, a wonderful line once used in the concluded TV series The West Wing, the government of The FUSA utilizes capitalism and socialism.

I worked for a Fortune 500 global mega-corporation for 25 years. I started as a lowly operating technician back in 1972 and became an Operations Supervisor in 1988. As an Operations Supervisor, I was on the team that did the hiring for the plant site at which I worked.

Before I go into the specifics of that hiring process, I remember that, when affirmative action was introduced in the 60s and busing was initiated to basically force Caucasians and African Americans to look at each other as human beings, news reports showed White people shouting “Go back to Africa!” to the Black students getting off the school busses. Obviously, these people never learned that most of the ancestors of those Black people didn’t choose to come to America. Ignorance isn’t only bliss, it’s hatred as well.

I can remember another unbelievable scene during which Caucasians were yelling, “Go back to Africa!” to Black people. In the fall of 1962, President Kennedy ordered 3,000 federal troops to escort James Meredith to school. Meredith had been trying to attend The University of Mississippi for some time. He was twice denied entrance, simply because he was African American. Once again, the government, who cannot, I admit, legislate morality, at least forced a majority of human beings to allow another human being to attend college.

In 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Caucasian bus driver James Blake noticed the unthinkable. White men were standing while an arrogant young Black woman had the gall to remain seated. It took until 1955, almost one hundred years after the enslaving of African Americans became illegal, for an honest to goodness on the books law be to enacted behind which White people like Blake cowered. Who ultimately supported Rosa Parks? The court system of the United States of America, a branch of the US government. I suspect that today’s teabagger fearing SCOTUS would have ruled in favor of Mr. Crowe. Strangely enough, Clarence Thomas would very likely have given into Mr. Crowe. There are some things that I shall never understand.

Africans were inhumanely and savagely stuffed into vessels and forced to “emigrate” to this continent starting in 1619. 1619! Descendents of Africans lived on this land for 336 years before the government of the United States of America insisted that they be treated like the human beings that they are. Although the government was slow, in the end, after protests and demonstrations, aided by an almost truly free press, the unconscionable treatment of a large segment of American society was brought to the attention of the American public.

336 years later, a woman was finally able to remain in a seat on a bus.

It took 343 years for descendents of African “immigrants” to be able to attend the public school of their choosing.

It took 346 years for Blacks to gain the unfettered right to vote in the United States. The right was gained by the 1965 Civil Rights Act, an act of the government of The United States. Today, agents of the private sector, which include the knee jerking teabaggers, want that Act overturned.

Africans weren’t here as slaves in 1492. Women were here, though. It took women 428 years to gain the right to vote. Again, it was a law, an amendment to The Constitution of The United States of America passed by the US government that forced those who didn’t believe women had enough intelligence to vote to stand aside and let women vote.

What kind of Constitutional amendments do teabaggers what to see passed? They want the sixteenth amendment overturned. The sixteenth amendment helps keep our nation strong by levying an income tax. They’ve also got their eyes on the seventeenth amendment, which allows US senators to be elected directly by the people. Apparently this is too much freedom for some teabaggers who would overturn the seventeenth amendment so that state legislatures would appoint US senators.

It took a miniscule 284 years for white, land owning males to gain all of the above rights and the only criteria for that to happen was the birth of a nation.

The detour I just took is relevant to the first experience I had as a member of the hiring team at the plant site for which I worked. Shortly after I became an Operations Supervisor, the hiring team met. I showed up a little late for that meeting. I walked into the conference room. There was grumbling.

The Operations Supervisors of the other two production plants on site, as well as the equivalent manager in the maintenance department and the Human Resources manager, all white men, were bitching because the Plant Manager, another Caucasian male, said we were being “forced” to hire Blacks, but they didn’t refer to them as Blacks (I’m merely reporting what I witnessed). They referred to them as “niggers” so that they could ensure one another that they were all on the same level and that level was higher, for some reason, than the “niggers” that they were about to interview.

We were also being asked to consider Hispanics. They referred to the Hispanics as spics. One member of the hiring team referred to the Hispanics as “gibbering idiots”.

Finally, we were being “forced” to give women a chance to show that they could do jobs previously done by men only. They referred to women as “god damned split-tails”.

For those of us who either thought or still think that name calling is the enterprise of second grade children, this exhibition of the scholarly use of the English language did/would change your mind instantly. The voice inflection was reminiscent of the sounds that would have been made by those very same second graders if recess had been cancelled for the day.

For me, this was a surreal moment. I had no idea that, in 1988, this was still going on. Not only was it still happening, but it was happening in the open, in the official conference room where a hiring team for one of the largest manufacturing corporations was meeting. It may not have been captured in the minutes of the meeting, but it was every bit a part of that meeting.

Sometime after that meeting, I rewarded a Black pipefitter with small bonus for going “above and beyond” to get the plant in which I was a supervisor up and running under an emergency situation. An hour later, my telephone rang. It was the maintenance supervisor. He asked, “What are you, Mike, some kind of nigger-lover?”

This was in the “blue”, liberal state of Connecticut.

This happened 33 years after Black Americans were legally allowed to sit in any seat on any public transport system in any state, 26 years after Black Americans were legally allowed to attend any public school in any state and 23 years after the government of the US finally got serious about outlawing the games that were being played in parts of the nation to keep African Americans away from the polls. I look back today and see future teabagger recruits.

We’re having work done in our home. A contractor looked the job over last week so that he could give us an estimate. He said he’d get back to us. He said he’d bring his partner next time. He said, “Don’t worry, my partner’s White.”

This is in the “blue” liberal state of California. I’m not sure if the man was “assuring” us that his partner wasn’t African American or Hispanic, but does it matter?

Though it should be obvious that the above examples of prejudice are wrong, I fear that those examples aren’t as isolated and unusual as they should be in 2011. In fact, as much as so called conservatives hated Bill Clinton, there were no large, nationally televised teabagger protests during his administration.

One might conclude that the above examples present proof that the laws that were passed by the government didn’t work. One might say that all people should be given an equal chance to succeed, but not all people who are in the position to help people succeed should be required to do so. The government mustn’t discriminate in favor of or against people based upon the color of their skin, their gender, their ethnicity or other personal characteristics, according to some teabaggers, but the government shouldn’t interfere with a business owner if that business owner doesn’t like those who are adorned in black or brown skin.

This is the private sector that so many teabaggers, not the least of whom is the Paul family, claim would be all too happy to be self regulating. Employers in the private sector range form multinational, Fortune 500 mega-corporations to local small contractors.

The small contractor will obviously never hire non whites.

The corporation mentioned several times herein may never have hired African Americans, Hispanics or women if it wasn’t for previous laws passed by the federal government. If a teabagger asks why the government of The FUSA is so “large and bureaucratic”, that teabagger needs to be reminded that the federal government needs resources to do what the private sector won’t do unless it’s forced and what the states are too chicken shit to do.

Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice would never have become Secretary of State if the government hadn’t previously passed certain laws.

The private sector is now running the country. I call it The Corporacracy, although the word Corporatocracy is used more frequently. I’ve been calling it The Corporacracy for quite some time.

The federal minimum wage was $5.15 per hour in the United States until Congress raised it to $5.85 in 2007, $6.55 in 2008 and to $7.25 in 2009, where in now stands.

The Chief Executive Officer of the corporation for which I worked was compensated with $21,337,757 last year. In comparison, the $7.25 an hour minimum wage equals a yearly salary of $15080 which is $6970 below the poverty line and 7/10,000 of the CEOs compensation. This should make the teabaggers happy. There are plenty of Americans there that aren’t being protected.

“Get up off your ass and get a job” won’t cut it today nor did it ever cut it. In the 235 years of this nation’s existence, it’s been only during a relatively short time that employment was such that all people had to do was to “get up off their asses and get a job”. I refer to White people here since, as recently as 1988, a multinational Fortune 500 mega-corporation complained about hiring Black folks, Hispanics or women.

I’ve lived under a better government than this. That government was right here in The Former United States of America. It wasn’t a democratically elected Socialist government that would make equality a meaningful word in this country. It was, however, a government that didn’t mind governing, at least a little bit.

Unfortunately, it liked to govern so much that it tried governing Vietnam.

Unlike the clueless teabaggers, I want a government that governs. If I have to be taxed to help the less fortunate, so be it. The private sector would let those who they don’t hire begin relying on “churches” to keep them alive. If you believe, you get a reprieve.

I want a government that recognizes greed when it sees it and controls it to the best of its ability. It can’t cure the illness, but it can control the consequences. I also want a government that isn’t, itself, afflicted with the disease.

I want a government that’s ready to defend this nation, but keeps the troops home when this nation is not under attack. If this nation is under attack, I want a government that fights those who are attacking us and no one else. Most governments don’t go around putting out fires that don’t exist.

Controlling greed and ending war and poverty are not mutually exclusive. For those who are teabaggers because they’re so enamored of The Constitution, I think that those things fall comfortably under Preamble, the reason why, The Constitution was written:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

To friendship,
Michael

“Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.” - Rebecca West

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Teabaggers; Children of the Sixties?

2011-09-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

Before I get into the real purpose of writing this article, I’d like to express my admiration for Bill Maher. Maher is constantly corrected by conservatives when he refers to members of the Frankensteinien movement called The Tea Party Movement as teabaggers. Teabagging, as some of you may know, refers to an activity, usually done as a prank among college age males. It’s rude, crude and mocks certain parts of the anatomy. Those in the Teaparty Movement long ago pointed to the fact that calling them teabaggers was politically incorrect and an insult.

In 2010, President Obama signed The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) into law. Besides very wrongly referring to this bill as promoting socialism, those who oppose it have called it “Obamacare” since its inception and refuse to refer to it by its official title. They use this so called colloquialism because the sound of it could cause the president’s name to sound seedy.

Maher says that he will continue to call members of the Tea Party Movement “teabaggers” until people stop referring to The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as Obamacare. I think it’s a fairly even trade. In fact I’d like to add that, even though some may not agree with the ideology of one of the two parts of our corporate party, they should stop referring to it as “The Democrat Party”. It is and has always been “The Democratic Party”.

Although many teabaggers belong to the generation who showed the courage and will to protest against inequity in the 1960s and early ‘70s, they revile that courage and will by appearing as though they’re using the same methodology to support that which people protested against 35 or 45 years ago. And this pisses me off.

In the 1960s and early ‘70s, people gathered in large crowds in protest to what the US government was doing. Most of those people were called Hippies, a word that was very often preceded by the pejorative “dirty”.

What people have been protesting recently, subsidized by some of the wealthiest people in the world and promoted by the likes of Michelle Bachman and former Texas governor Rick Perry, is the fact that the president is taking our rights away. They never really elucidate any specific rights that have been taken away from the average American. They have warned that, if given the opportunity to cut their medical bills by up to 30%, the America we used to know and love would turn into the 1960s Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

In the 1960s and early ‘70s, people came out in droves as well. They protested the use of Jim Crowe laws which kept people of color from exercising their right as Americans to vote in American elections. African American people, who were the main target, were not welcomed to sit in restaurants of their choice to eat a meal. People used the argument that states could make laws denying rights to certain people. The people who marched in the ‘60s wanted to stop this injustice, already in progress, to use television jargon.

Recent protesters, although every bit as angry as those in the 60s, don’t really have a chant, at least not one that I’d heard. I guess I’ve heard, “Kill the bill.” This, of course, refers to the government’s intention to intercede on behalf of American citizens to give them a chance to save 30% or more on their medical bills. Although The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed and signed into law, any meaningful health care bill was, indeed, killed.

Teabaggers are still free to hand health insurance companies millions of dollars of which 70% goes towards covering some, but not all, medical expenses. It seems to follow that members of the teabaggers will “pay any price, bear any burden”, to quote John F. Kennedy, for health care insurance as long as it isn’t provided by the American government. They obviously take Ronald Reagan’s famous 1986 quote, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are I’m from the government and I’m here to help” very seriously. Lest we forget, Reagan was the leader of one of the three branches of government when he made that statement.

There was a war in progress in the 60s. It was based upon the lie that small North Vietnamese boats presented an untenable danger to two American destroyers. Many people didn’t want to send our young soldiers to Southeast Asia to fight an enemy which was born and raised in the jungles of Vietnam. Most of these people were young people. Military conscription was still in place and many young men who had plans for their futures began to fear that those plans would never come to fruition. The lie about the Gulf of Tonkin attacks gave the military/industrial complex a reason to convince the American government that Communism, a misnomer for the so called governance of any nation state, past or present, was a threat to the American way of life. Americans were told that the Communist government of North Vietnam had to be stopped in its quest to make Vietnam whole, as that wholeness would be under the power of a Communist government. Just like The Regime which ruled The FUSA (The Formerly United States of America) from 2001 until 2009 frightened Americans into initially supporting the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, in 1968, President Johnson said, “If we allow Vietnam to fall, tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week in San Francisco.”

While they were marching, many of the protestors chanted their displeasure of what was going on at that very moment with slogans such as, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” They were frightened because there was a war in progress and there also was a draft in place and they didn’t want to be drafted to go to Vietnam to fight in a war that was basically unwinnable. They didn’t want the government to hurt them.
As stated a few paragraphs up, however, they did want the government to step in and provide justice for those who were oppressed in the land in which they lived.

Granted, there are two wars in progress today – well, one’s called an occupation. Both are illegal if one is to take what The Constitution of the United States says about The FUSA seriously. Neither the war turned occupation in Iraq nor the war in Afghanistan were ever declared as such by Congress, which has the sole power to do so.

Many remind us that, just as Congress gave LBJ The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, Congress gave Front Man George W. Bush The Authorization for use of Military Force Against Iraq in 2001. In neither document does Congress declare war against anyone; nation state or street gang. Basically, both documents say to the president, “Looks bad, man. Do what you have to do to make it go away.”

We still call the action in Vietnam The Vietnam War and we called the invasion of Iraq in 2003 The War In Iraq. Wars can only be declared by Congress and in neither case did that happen.

The illegal, undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are something very specific. They were happening when the Tea Party Movement was “launched” and are still in progress in spite of the lie recently told to us by President Barack Obama. They have ruined lives and families, not only of American soldiers, but of Iraqis and Afghanis.

Yet, with all of the anger boiling over at the teabagger protests, none of it seems to be aimed at the two wars in progress. “In progress” are very important words when it comes to protests.

The Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movements were in progress when people protested in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Other than the two wars, the only thing that has been in progress since the Tea Party movements began have been the Tea Party protests.

It’s true that people have lost jobs and the deficit is sky high, but that was true in 2008. From the middle of 2001 until January of 2009, hundreds of thousands of jobs were being shed per month. That was in progress at that time, yet no Tea Party protests of note were taking place.

The US deficit began to rise in 2001. The Tea Party wanted to stop the “out of control spending” of President Obama and the Democratic Congress. They even promised to use impeachment, if necessary.

The teabaggers have claimed that Americans are losing their freedoms, but can point to no specific freedom which has been lost.

They complain about taxes, yet ride along government built and government maintained interstate highways to get to their protests. They possibly fly to those protests in jets protected, in part, by the federally operated Department of Homeland Security and, in part, by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Some have brought guns to their rallies to protest that their guns have been taken from them.

The protests of the 60s were brought on by the culmination of unjust treatment of people within the borders of what was then The United States or the growing deaths of young men who were being forcefully given the choice to go to the jungles of Southeast Asia or to jail. They were organic in nature. Speakers were not paid performers, but angry members of the protests. They were protesting the fact that the president and the Congress were not protecting them in the spirit of The Constitution. They were not legislating in accordance to the Constitution, especially the 14th Amendment. States were, indeed, making laws which abridged “the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”. They were also depriving people “of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”; and they were still attempting to deny people within their jurisdictions “the equal protection of the laws.”

If one reads the Constitution, one will note that most of the articles and amendments spell out ways in which citizens of America should be protected, either from the federal government or from the state government. The Constitution is not a document which lists ways in which state governments would be protected from the federal government and it certainly is not a list of ways to deny rights to citizens - human being citizens, that is.

It’s for this reason that the teabaggers, in their attempt to utilize a tool which was used earlier by those who marched in favor of equality and peace and in favor of government intervention to implement equality and peace, have defiled that tool.

While the protestors of the 60s were complaining that the government was not doing enough to “promote the general welfare”, one reason given for writing The Constitution, at their protests, teabaggers complain that the government should stop trying to “promote the general welfare”.

There were states that, in the 1960s, were using what were called Jim Crowe laws to justify squelching the rights of African Americans to go into places into which anyone who was not African American could go, like privately owned restaurants, and interfering with the rights of many, especially African Americans, to vote. Today, teabaggers are protesting in favor of the rights of private business owners to decide not to hire people whose skin or ethnicity is not what they’d like them to be and to increase the difficulty in voting that they feel should be faced by certain segments of American society, especially African Americans and people of Hispanic decent.

To paraphrase Rand Paul, Republican Senator from Kentucky, the government has no right to force restaurant owners to serve Black customers if the restaurant owners don’t want to serve Black customers. Paul claims that, when people learn that a certain restaurant is practicing this kind of racism, people will stop frequenting the restaurant and the restaurant will fail.

First of all, any restaurant that was still in business in the 1960s which was allowed, via Jim Crowe laws, to deny service to African Americans was still in business because their customers either didn’t mind that African Americans were not served or they outright liked the idea. These restaurants remained in business because it was obvious that their customer base was OK with their segregationist policies.

Secondly, in speaking of restaurants, while the suggestion made by Rand Paul is absurd, it, at least, has some potential to work. When speaking of voting, would Paul have suggested that people would no longer vote in Kentucky if Kentucky used unethical methods to keeps African Americans and Hispanics from voting? As unlikely as the restaurant scenario would be, the voting scenario would prove entirely absurd.

Yet, allowing states to make it difficult for Hispanics or Blacks to vote is a “state’s right” in which the federal government should not be concerned in the eyes of teabaggers.

Most articles and amendments to The Constitution of The United States were written for the benefit of its citizens and, more specifically, to ensure that none of its citizens were excluded from participating in American governance. Granted, the founders lived in a time when some human beings weren’t even considered as such. In the beginning, voting was the exclusive right of white males who owned property. The fact that James Adams, the second president of The United States, served only one term, was one piece of evidence that even white male land owners didn’t believe in an exclusionary version of representative democracy. Adams, if given the latitude, may have introduced a monarchy into the United States. At any rate, he would have done nothing to open up participation to all citizens of The United States.

We didn’t see many posters bearing quotes and/or images of John Adams during the protests of the ‘60s and early ‘70s. Those protests supported a more open, more transparent and less violent society.

Teabaggers’ protests, although they may at times look like the protests of 35-45 years ago, have almost nothing in common with those past protests. Teabaggerss’ protests are subsidized by the very kinds of people that the protests of the 60s and 70s targeted. Teabaggers want to allow states to close their societies if that’s what states want to do. Teabaggers want to protect the rights of the very wealthy, although many on the level of those who do the protesting don’t believe that truth. Teabaggers don’t want the wealthy so called “job creators” taxed or regulated because the “job creators” will not create jobs. Teabaggers have not looked at recent history and seen that the tax cuts that the “job creators” were given by The Regime, otherwise known as the Bush Administration, did many things, but they did not help create jobs. In fact, job loss was prolific during those eight years.

Nonetheless, teabaggers have hijacked the spirit of the protests which took place in the 60s and early 70s while rallying against the substance of the earlier protests. They’ve insulted what were real grass roots protests which favored the rights of all people of all colors and all ethnicities. The wealthy greedheads who started this present teabagger movement have appealed to the darker side of human nature and we should cut them absolutely no slack. Those who participate in the rallies and protests should also be cut no slack as they are, apparently, either racist enough to agree with their masters or too unaware of what’s going on to be taken seriously.
Power to the people!

To friendship,
Michael

“At the feast of ego everyone leaves hungry.” – Anonymous

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To A Dream

Will “Americans Elect” Their President in 2012?

2011-08-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

We’ve all heard the cliché, “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

If we tell a conservative that we live in a democracy, most of the time the conservative will respond in the negative. “No we don’t,” the conservative will say. “We live in a Democratic Republic.”

We know that the difference between pure democracy, or, as it’s more commonly known, direct democracy, and a democratic republic is that the voters don’t vote for candidates and legislation in a democratic republic. They merely vote for candidates to represent them in places where legislation in debated and laws are made. However, other than in the case of the president of the Formerly United States of America and the vice president of The FUSA, the process in which we choose our representatives is a democratic process. We go to the polls and vote and the candidate who obtains the greatest number of votes wins the right to represent the voters.

One of the reasons we don’t live in a direct democracy is because, from the very beginning of our nation, direct democracy has been under attack. John Adams, the second president of the then United States of America, said, “Men in general in every society, who are wholly destitute of property, are also too little acquainted with public affairs to form a right judgment, and too dependent upon other men to have a will of their own.” He said this even as his own wife, Abigail, tried to convince him that women should have the right to vote. Adams thought that possibility both laughable and frightening.

Not long ago, I hitched on to the direct democracy movement promoted by a man named Stephen Neitzke. Neitzke states that direct democracy includes initiative, referendum and recall. Although, as we’ve recently witnessed in Wisconsin, many states have added direct democracy to their constitutions, it’s not difficult to see how initiative, referendum and recall might prove cumbersome on a national level. Nonetheless, it would be the fairest method of self governance.

Add to that the monopolization of our media and the fact that many people get the information they would need to help them decide the issues from biased news sources and the above Adams quote seems to pick up some legitimacy.

I don’t want to presume to speak for Mr. Neitzke, but, as I’ve read much of his writing, it seems to me that he leans a bit to the left. I’ve read nothing of his that would suggest that he is even mildly a socialist, but his leanings are toward giving more power to all people. He has also written about taking power away from corporations.

This is why when I heard of a non-movement called Americans Elect, I became fairly optimistically curious. AE describes itself as “…the first-ever open nominating process. We're using the Internet to give every single voter—Democrat, Republican or independent—the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012.” Any American who is qualified to vote in The FUSA can sign up to be a delegate to an online “convention” that AE will hold in June. AE will use the convention to nominate a presidential ticket. It claims that it neither has nor supports any political agenda or candidate. It claims that the ticket will reflect the wishes of the delegates. It insists that it is not a third party, although, in order to get its candidates on the ballots of many states, it has to petition the states as if it was a political party.

At this point, my own ideology will become obvious. I believe it can be said that people like Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers or anyone to the right of center would not create a method to open up direct access to our political process to more people. I pretty much thought that, although AE claims to not promote an ideology of its own, the mere fact that it is creating an open process places it in the center, if not to the left of center. The problem with Democrats, if not Progressives, as I’ve seen it throughout the years, is that they attempt to open up their tent to anyone and everyone. This is why those who disdain government such as Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, were able to do more governing than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Reagan and the Bushes had a Congress with which to work; Clinton and Obama had/have Congresses to whom they can surrender. That is not the entire reason why those “progressives”, Clinton and Obama, did not/are not passing progressive legislation, of course, but there’s enough to that explanation to write another entire article.

At any rate, the fact that Americans Elect seemed like an attempt to include/involve more people in our political process has, in my mind, “Progressive” written all over it.

I then did some research.

Americans Elect is led by an extremely wealthy ex-Marine named Elliot Ackerman. He is the son of Peter Ackerman, probably a billionaire and a member of the right wing Cato Institute. The Cato Institute promotes the privatization of Social Security and supports the so called pledge that Grover Norquist somehow forces most Republican members of Congress to sign. The pledge promises that the signatory will never, in any way, shape or form, vote to raise taxes. It’s a pledge that obviously can only be signed if the signatory has a clear view of the future.

In addition to being run by a billionaire, AE materials “state that the organization will promote the “sensible center”, centrist budgetary views, and a resurgence of centrist politics. The bylaws of Americans Elect state “The ticket shall be balanced around centrist principles…”” We all know that Senator Bernie Sanders has said he will not run in 2012 and Dennis Kucinich has not, thus far, threatened to challenge President Obama. According to the “materials” mentioned above, however, Americans Elect would probably have no tolerance for placing either of those people on any presidential ticket. The same could be said about Rick Perry or Michelle Bachman. So much for not having any ideology, hey?

A second troubling aspect of Americans Elect is who they’ve chosen to collect signatures for petitions that would put them on the ballot in all fifty states.

AE has hired Arno Political Consultants of California to collect signatures. However, Arno Political Consultants have a seedy history.

In 2005, Arno was hired by The Massachusetts Family Institute, an organization wishing to ban same sex marriage, to collect signatures for petitions supporting their movement. What Arno did was to tell unsuspecting passersby that they were signing a petition to allow grocery stores to sell wine. The potential signers agreed with that goal and signed the petition. The Arno employee would then flip the page and ask the signer to sign a “back-up” copy for their records. When the page was flipped, it was flipped to a totally unrelated petition, a petition which supported the banning of same sex marriage. Thousands of petition signers believed the paid petitioners and actually unwittingly signed a petition banning same sex marriage. The state legislature discovered Arno’s bait and switch method and reported it to The Massachusetts Family Institute. The institute claimed they didn’t know that this unethical methodology was happening.

This wasn’t the first and/or only time that AE’s trusted signature gathering contractor had pulled this kind of bait and switch move in getting signatures on petitions.

There is also a serious problem with who is funding Americans Elect.

For the most part, AE is not showing the good faith transparency that a Progressive would want them to show. Americans Elect has raised $20 million from just 50 people, a whopping average contribution of $400,000 per person. Although I signed on as a “delegate” to AE, I can assure you that I am not one of those 50 people.

The only donations that are transparent so far are:

1. $1.55 million worth of contributions from Peter Ackerman

2. An undisclosed amount contributed by hedge fund operator Kirk Rostron.

Hedge Funds, as we all know, are filled to the brim with derivatives. Most of us know that derivatives are bets placed by Wall Street investors. We also know that these patriotic investors bet that Americans would fail to maintain their subprime mortgages and would default. Not surprisingly, most of them were right. They did bet on other pro-American “games” like pension funds. Again, they optimistically bet that pension funds would be wiped out and, again, for the most part, they were right.

Those bets were backed up by firms such as Goldman Sachs, whence many of the members of the last administration as well as the present administration came and, no doubt, to which they will return. When GS couldn’t come up with the cash to pay all of the gamblers that they insured, we, the taxpayers, bailed them out.

3. Jim Holbrook, who as CEO of the marketing firms Emak Worldwide, Neighbor and Upshot, has special interests in the advancement of the marketing industry. More than this, though, Jim Holbrook is Chairman of the Promotion Marketing Association, a trade organization for the $750 Billion industry. The website of the Promotion Marketing Association makes it clear that it has special interests and is dedicated to pursuing those special interests in the spheres of American law and government. It has an entire section devoted to “Legal and Governmental Affairs”, with a publication entitled “PMA Legal Watch,” a “PMA International Law Book,” and an annual Marketing Law Conference. The PMA Bylaws stipulate explicitly that it is an organization dedicated to pursuing the interests of the promotion marketing industry.

The identities of the other 47 contributors are still a mystery.

Another mystery is what Ainsley Perrien, “Press Secretary” for AE, told OEN in a phone interview. “Americans Elect would like to see a ticket which contains two people who have differing ideologies.” Can you see it now? Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will be on the East Coast while Vice Presidential candidate Rick Perry is on the West Coast disagreeing with everything Sanders is saying to the east of him.

Last but not least is a legitimate concern about the security of the site. Could someone actually hack the site and “stuff the ballot box”, so to speak? Even though Joshua Levine, former Chief Technology Officer for E-Trade, is the person who will be overseeing this part of the operation, it doesn’t seem to matter, does it? I’m more concerned about the hacking that may very well come from within the organization than from without.

Does this fly in the face of my original premise that such right of center people and organizations wouldn’t even consider opening up our electoral process in what seems to be such a democratic fashion? Yes, unless, of course, those who created Americans Elect are hoping that more Progressives than Conservatives would find their methodology appealing. Of course, we Progressives are quite disappointed in President Obama’s becoming the third best Republican president in American history - after Lincoln and Clinton. Many of us want to see Obama primaried, will cast our vote for the Green or Socialist Party or will just stay home on Election Day.

Ah, but now we have another choice. Americans Elect will help us not only to vote for an alternative to Obama, but will allow us to nominate those candidates. That’s a hook into which Progressives can really sink the roofs of their mouths.

I don’t claim to be able to read minds, but I would almost bet that the real purpose of Americans Elect is to take votes away from President Obama. It sounds so appealing that it just may work.

Of course, it’s good that the Ackermans and their ilk have money with which to cavalierly play because I’m not really certain that they need to go through all of this trouble to pull votes from Barack Obama.

Nonetheless, just so that you aren’t suckered by AE, I strongly suggest that you stay away from their dirty trick. If you want Obama to lose, vote for someone else or don’t show up. However, don’t allow the sleazebags at AE to control you. That’s just my suggestion. Take it or leave it.

To friendship,

Michael

“Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.” - Gore Vidal

World Conditions and Action Items

CDs

What The President Say

LA Socialist Local Holds Organizing Meeting (Discussion with Mimi Soltysik, Local Chair)

2010-12-20T19:12:00.000-08:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

The Los Angeles County Local of The Socialist Party of The United States of America held an organizing meeting in LA on December 11, 2010.

I attended the meeting to capture for OEN what American Socialists are doing to free us from the one party, two name corporate dictatorship under which the American government operates. In the name of full disclosure, I am also a member of The SPUSA, but not of the LA County local.

In attendance at the meeting were Lynn Lomibao and Rich Fuller, leaders of The Feminist & Family Services Committee, Mohammed Arif, leader of The Muslim Affairs Committee, Justin Simons, leader of the Youth Action Committee and Lauren Avery, Gay and Lesbian Affairs Committee leader.

Also at the meeting was Stewart Alexander, The SPUSA’s 2008 vice presidential candidate. Stewart’s presence seemed to have an invigorating affect on the others in attendance.

The meeting was Chaired by Mimi Soltysik, Chair of the LA County Local of the Socialist Party.

I caught up with Mimi a few days after the meeting to ask him about the goals set at the meeting and his impression of how much longer Americans can exist under a corporate dictatorship.

MB: Mimi, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I hope that this doesn’t take more than an hour of your time. I know you’ve got some recruiting to do.

MS: Rock it, my friend.

MB: How many people actually belong to Socialist Party of the United States of America and how many belong to your local?

MS: Your first question would probably be best directed to Greg Pason at national. He probably has the most accurate numbers.

I know that in the 2008 general election, there were 6,528 votes cast for Brian Moore and Stewart Alexander.

As far as the L.A. Local is concerned, the best figure I can give you is the number of those registered in the state, which I believe is right around 100.

Numbers haven't been a huge part of the focus in the first six or seven weeks that I've been in this position. Organizing a foundation that can be built upon has been the primary focus to this point and we’re starting to see some results in that area

MB: If not in numbers, how are you measuring your results? In what ways have these results manifested themselves?

MS: A few things we've been able to do in the first weeks.

We have a Facebook page up and running which has acted as an information hub.

We’ve been posting releases on places like Indy Media to let the general public know that the Socialist Party in Los Angeles is up and running, that there’s an active presence in Los Angeles with an infrastructure positioned to move forward with the Socialist agenda.

We have people in place who are motivated to carry out the Socialist agenda in the context of their particular fields of interest.

We organized and carried out our first meeting in Los Angeles, which you were a part of, to set up issue-specific committees intended to carry forth a plan of action in the community. People have volunteered to run with those committees and these volunteers are already meeting and setting up dates for future plans of action to have a positive impact in the Los Angeles County.

We are seeing this with the Feminism / Family Services Committee, the Youth Action Committee, and the Gay and Lesbian Committee.

We have a goal, which is to reach 10,000 Los Angeles residents who have registered with the Socialist Party in a one year time period.

Having said all of this, we are still in need of help, which we are actively seeking. Los Angeles County is the largest in the country and as I mentioned in the meeting, we need a sizable cadre of members to run with the Socialist agenda, to reach every pocket of the County, to provide examples of how the Socialist Party is determined to satisfy the needs of the working class, the impoverished, the hungry, the disenfranchised. As Chair of the Los Angeles Local, I can only hope to facilitate this process.

MB: Well, I think I may have asked the wrong question or I’m not understanding the meaning of that last answer. There are 10,000 registered Socialists in LA?

MS: Oh no. I think there are roughly 100 registered in the state of California. The goal is 10,000 by the end of 2011.

A goal of 10,000 registered in the city of Los Angeles.

MB: That makes more sense. I was going to ask why those 10,000 didn't vote for the Socialists.

MS: I think that there were less than 7,000 who voted Socialist nationwide in the '08 general election.

MB: 6,528 votes is a far cry from the 900,000 votes that Gene Debs was able to receive at the beginning of last century. What do you think happened to those Socialists and, judging from the activity in the LA area, is there anything that can be done to recapture what Debs was able to bring to Socialism?

MS: Let me start by saying that my answers are purely my own and that I give great deference to Greg Pason and Stewart Alexander, as well as Lynn Lomibao and others active in the Party.

I believe that the political and social climate is considerably different now than when Eugene Debs garnered 900,000 votes across the country. Third parties haven’t had a lot of success in the U.S. as of late.

MB: That's putting it mildly.

MS: It appears that corporate politics has really got a stranglehold on the electorate.

Ballot access is incredibly difficult, the debates are a joke and the Democrats and Republicans have been highly effective, along with mainstream media, at erasing third party politics from the collective consciousness of the general public.

But, that can sound like an excuse.

We have to become more active on a personal and then a collective level.

MB: What's the connection between the locals and the national party?

MS: They make themselves available when I have questions and request literature. More than anything else, they seem to be comfortable with the autonomy of the Los Angeles Local. Which we all greatly appreciate. Not that we aren't open to working with them on a more frequent basis, but they're 3,000 miles away, so it might be difficult to run every decision by them in real time.

Stewart Alexander, the California Chair, is always there to offer support and advice.

MB: So the SPUSA supports the locals instead of the other way around?

MS: With 100 registered Socialists in California, I don't know how much more we can offer at this point aside from moral support and our commitment to build the Party to be the success we all know it can be.

Los Angeles is the largest county in the country and if we walk the walk, we should be able to accomplish this.

MB: How many locals are there in the US and do any approach the size of LA?

MS: That would definitely be a question for Greg Pason. Geographically, we might cover more area than other locals, but I suspect that, at this point, there are other locals in the country that have a greater membership than L.A. We really are starting fresh.

MB: CA is known for its "progressive" leanings, yet with Prop 8 and the recent ban on pot, it may not be as progressive as many think. Do you think that LA may be an easier target than an east coast target? Do you think we can ever get the Midwest to actually lead the charge again? Sorry, I think I asked three questions.

And by target, I mean is LA more open to Socialistic ideals.

MS: I think that for far too many, Los Angeles is a struggle. A struggle to pay rent, a struggle to find a job, a struggle to feed a family. As a result, Socialism is an approach that would offer the types of solutions many need. I think Los Angeles offers a tremendous opportunity to have a positive effect as far as quality of life is concerned. I would agree, however, that the perception of Los Angeles being highly progressive politically is somewhat off base.

MB: So, are you finding more acceptance? Is 10,000 a reasonable goal? Or is 10,000 an ambitious goal?

MS: I think 10,000 is both ambitious and achievable. We've got roughly 10,000,000 residents in Los Angeles County. I think that, once the full court press is in effect, 10,000 will appear all the more likely.

I don’t know, historically, how much effort has been put into recruitment in Los Angeles County. I know that effort will be placed on recruitment in L.A. County.

MB: Fear of Socialism probably started when Wilson wouldn't support the Bolsheviks. Communism, which Americans were told was going on in Russia, began to be equated with Socialism. Then came Stalin and he was a scary dude. McCarthy took off on that. Khrushchev and Kennedy heightened the fear and, judging from the ridiculous ad campaign against universal health care, that fear of Socialism has been branded into the American brain. Do you think an unwarranted fear of "communism" is the biggest hurdle you have to overcome?

Or just the word Socialism?

MS: Maybe the perceived correlation between Socialism and Stalinism. However, the further removed the general public is from the Cold War, it would make sense that Socialism would be discussed in a context that has less and less to do with Stalinism. To be honest with you, what I find most shocking is those on the far left who continue to reiterate this problem. It seems to drive home the notion that such a problem exists. It may exist to Glen Beck and those who find him credible, but I think we’re finding ourselves moving into a new era. It’s becoming much more difficult for the mainstream media to sell the idea that Chávez and Morales are bogeymen, in my opinion.

We may never see the day where the majority of Fox viewers embrace Socialism and that’s okay.

We need to see the day where equality is a reality for the people of this country.

MB: More difficult to sell the idea?

MS: I think that, if we stop painting the possible embrace of Socialism as impossible, we’ve already crossed a major hurdle.

If you present the Party platform to people, they can, and often do, decide for themselves that this is an option that meets their basic needs.

I do believe that people are fed up with corporate politics. They’re fed up, they’re tired and they’re angry. We need to unify and fight. The time for concession is over. Fat cats have had fun at the expense of the working class for way too long and I think people will gradually become more amenable to what Socialism has to offer.

MB: A little while back, you mentioned that people on the left are actually heightening the fear of Socialism. I’ve read both the SPUSA and Green Party platforms. They’re almost interchangeable. And there’s strength in numbers. Have there been any overtures either way? It seems as if the Green Party name tends to make it appear to be a one issue party. Are they not really Socialists as well?

MS: People may think the Green Party is primarily focused on environmental issues, but like you said, their platform is pretty comprehensive. I think there are some Socialist ideals included in the Green Party platform. I don't know that they capture the demand for equality in quite the same way the Socialist Party does.

In my opinion, the time for concession has reached its conclusion.

MB: Really. It sounds as if it’s been tried, then.

MS: I can’t speak on behalf of the efforts of others. Personally, I admire many who’ve run on Green Party tickets, but I don’t know how much effort has been placed on uniting the two parties.

MB: Maybe the word scares them a bit, as well. In CA, the Peace And Freedom Party had a platform much like yours. Was the Peace and Freedom party representing the Socialist Party? Was there a connection?

MS: I know that Stewart Alexander had a past connection with the Peace and Freedom Party.

As far as this new incarnation of the Los Angeles Local is concerned, there has been no connection.

Our primary focus is organizing and achieving the level of unity required to take this fight to the streets.

MB: OK so there’s that unity again. And the Greens and PAFP are so close to Socialists. I won't belabor that point anymore, though.

MS: There’s no problem with coalition building, in my opinion. We’re open to that.

I was happy to know that many friends voted for Carlos Alvarez.

MB: Let’s look at the other end of the spectrum. Having made use of the phrase "nanny state", Libertarians say that Socialism flies in the face of America’s “can do” attitude. How do you answer the “nanny stat” argument?

MS: I think that the corporate elite have a much better idea of what a nanny state looks like than the working class.

MB: Touché. Does part of your messaging speak to the basic misconception of Socialism=USSR?

MS: To be honest with you, what I find most shocking is those on the far left who continue to reiterate this problem. It seems to drive home the notion that such a problem exists.

I’m not saying that this perception doesn’t exist. It does.

What I am saying is that we intend to focus on what Socialism is and what it offers the working class. If we can collectively concentrate on that, I think we’ll start to see real progress.

I think we know why many connect socialism to Stalinism and it’s time to let that connection die. It’s an absurd connection.

MB: If you were to compare your ultimate goal, would it line up more with what Marx, Engels and Trotsky wrote about or more with what Scandinavia, especially the Swedes, have done?

MS: I think that Marx, Engels and Trotsky can’t be ignored. But, many in the United States have a very limited knowledge of who these people are and what they stand for. We have a responsibility to present those historical examples in a way that’s palatable and practical for the daily life of the working class. With an educated and empowered working class, I think we’ll see something a bit different from the sorts of Socialism practiced in the rest of the world. We can maintain an identity, while still adhering to Socialist principles.

I think the goal is to experience what a Socialist United States might look and feel like.

The people of the U.S. can be tremendously caring, charitable and sensitive.

The government and the media have enacted a masterful campaign of misinformation.

No more. Now, we can and should look to other Socialist countries in Europe with an open mind. Evidence shows that they enjoy a quality of life that we don’t experience here.

MB: The Greens have been going at it for quite a few years now and are very proud when they make any inroads. However, do we still have time in this country to build up slowly? We’re not in the same position we were in after the ’29 Depression. Manufacturing was still here back then. We’ve obviously lost it to cheaper labor. So, does the SPUSA have any plans to fast track its movement? I know this sounds like a question for Greg, right?

I fear that this country can’t really wait another 30 years for a paradigm shift.

MS: I hear what you’re saying and I agree. We intend to maintain a radical and revolutionary position and be as timely as possible. The mechanisms in place to deter this sort of movement are institutionalized and that’s an enormous factor. Many of us in the Los Angeles local spend a lot of time looking at our watches, wondering how we could’ve made better use of our time to push forth the agenda. I promise you that we take this seriously. It’s incredibly difficult to look in the mirror that you bought when you know that your neighbor is sleeping in his or her car.

Screw that. That’s unacceptable.

And, it’s disgusting.

Many who are much brighter than I have attempted to change this system, and I try to maintain a sense of reality. But I’m sincere when I say that the expectations couldn’t be higher.

MB: Agreed. Are there any “big spenders” in the LA area that you can access? For example, Bill Maher seems to be moving more and more to the left. Would it be possible to access him? And I know there have to be others.

MS: I think Bill Maher is funny, but I’m not sure he’d be willing to align himself with the Socialist Party. He has a boss. Do you remember seeing Michael Moore and Bill Maher on their knees begging Ralph Nader to drop out of the 2004 election?

Pretty gross, man.

MB: I don’t think that’s going to happen much more often. Yes I remember. Don’t you think that people have been duped enough by this “drop out or you'll screw it up for the Democrats” ploy? The Democrats have proven they drink from the same trough as the other guys.

MS: I’m not sure. I thought that might be the case in ‘08 until I looked at the numbers for Nader and McKinney. I know I’m not the first to say this, far from it, but Obama really laid an amazing marketing campaign on the people.

MB: I’ve fallen for it twice in a row and I thought I was smarter than that. But who didn’t want to be in on electing the first Black president, right? It’s proven to be a bust, hasn’t it?

MS: Man, I thought, and think, that Cynthia McKinney is a rad lady.

The real McCoy.

MB: I hope that we are all getting smarter than that.

MS: I hope so too. I’m optimistic. I know I’ve told you this before, but I was humbled by the effort you took to make it to our meeting. That has to be a good sign, doesn’t it? That a man in Antioch is willing to purchase a plane ticket to attend a Socialist Party meeting in Los Angeles?

A handful more Michael Bonannos and we're in business!!!

MB: Thanks. I have a lot of questions, but, as you say, many of them might better be asked of Greg. Thanks for giving me your time and you know I wish you all the luck in the world surpassing your goal.

MS: Thank you very much!! I look forward to the article.

MB: Have a good night, man.

MS: You too, my friend.

I, too, was humbled by Zolystik's compliment and, as mentioned, I did make the one day flight from the Bay Area to LA to report what happened at the Socialist meeting to OEN readers.

However, as a fairly new member of the party, I wanted to see what kind of “tyrannical” organization I’d joined. I suspected I didn’t join a tyrannical organization at all and, boy, howdy, was I right!

The number attending the meeting was small as one would imagine with a total of only 100 in the local party. However, they made up for their size with their enthusiasm. One would have thought that there was another million out there that maybe just couldn’t make the meeting.

There was none of the dry, whiny, cynical speech that we hear on C-Span everyday from Congress. There was fresh, passionate and very confident talk from these few Socialists.

I’ve heard that Democrats get into office and they try to make things right. It was FDR that started the social contract with Americans and, if one would listen to Democratic Party apologists, any Republicans who’ve been elected have worked hard to overturn those social contracts. The Democrats put money into public education and Republicans are elected and take it out and that’s why our education system is so broken.

Republicans purposely run up the deficit so that, when Democrats take over, they can point to that deficit and say, “We can't sustain these social “entitlements” that the Democrats want because we have to get the deficit down.”

Do you hear what the Democratic Party apologists are doing? They’re blaming the voters for the Democrats’ lack of accomplishing anything while they hold office.

Until Barack Obama became president, I thought that the best Republican president we ever had was Bill Clinton. Obama plays even more nicely with those who can’t make it any clearer that they want to promote anything but the progressive fixes that America sorely needs.

I ask the Democratic Party apologists, “After the two farces which were the 110th and 111th Congresses of The United States, do you still think that it’s as simple as “fixing the Democratic Party?” Really?

It's a crap shoot, dudes. Keep voting for Democrats until we get a majority of progressives. Under the American system of politics, that could never happen. Each and every Democrat and Republican in Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of someone other than the people of the United States. Neither branch of that party, The Corporatocracy, wants to change the system as it pays off for each and every one of them in the end, one way or another.

The rumor is that Comcast is ultimately going to buy MSNBC. As tepid as MSNBC is, it’s the closest thing that people who want to live in a society, not a serfdom, have.

So here’s the deal. Mr. Olbermann, Mr. Soros, Mr. Hartmann, Ms Maddow, Ms Goodman, Mr. Chomsky, Mr. Moyer, Mr. Schultz, Ms. Huffington, Mr. Buffet, Mr. O'Donnell, Mr. Maher, Mr. Redford, Ms. Rhodes, Mr. Nader, Mr. Moore, Senator Sanders, Representative Kucinich, Mr. Donohue and all others who have so much more than we, the working class, can’t you challenge Comcast and buy MSNBC and run it as a worker owned cooperative? You, of course, would be the workers.

To paraphrase a line from The American President, when one looks at members of Congress, the Executive and the Judiciary, we see many people who claim to love America but who obviously hate Americans.

To the good people I mention above, I implore you, stop speaking for us and start working with us.

We need a new social order. We need a real "Great Society". We need Democratic Socialism. It is the only true "we" society.

To friendship,
Michael

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” - Oscar Wilde

World Conditions and Action Items
CDs
What The President Say

The Masterpiece of Masterpiece Theater

2010-12-05T12:18:00.000-08:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

Democrats and Republicans are wealthy people who put on an act called politics. If one’s gotten far enough in politics to be well known on a national level, one’s probably got some fessin’ up to do. One surely is financially endowed.

Barack Obama has been exposed as a corporatist; a member in good standing of The Corporatocracy.

Yet, there is still prejudice in the vomitus excrement oozing from the mouths of so many people. People are hanging on The President’s every breath with impeach forks in their hands. The ones that are referred to as Republicans only need the noose to complete the picture. Democrats were and still are spineless. The fact that they voted with a Republican president almost in lock step with congressional Republicans isn’t surprising.

Thus far, it is nearly impossible to find a Republican who will lend a helping hand to Obama. He’s beginning to look like a kid at the grown-up’s table.

It’s all theater and the lower and middle classes have never been the targets of any political philanthropy. Nonetheless, no sane human being can like how the present theater is playing out. It looks like junior high school or high school. The cool kids aren’t even paying attention to the new kid. They’re doing all they can to make him look ridiculous.

What’s the new kid doing? He’s saying, “Can’t we all play nicely with one another?”

If there was any legitimacy at all to what we perceive as governance, the facts that Obama is six foot fifteen and stronger than superman, his party, supposed allies, controlled the Senate and the House and even the governorships and he’s the president should have manifested themselves with facts that look like successful progressive legislation. During the campaign and at the very beginning of his presidency, we heard Obama say that change has to be quick. He said then and actually still insists that we don’t have time to screw around with politics

Who could have been making meaningful progress happen since January of 2008? Barack Obama! If things have to happen quickly, he should have morphed into President “No More Mister Nice Guy” a long time ago. There’s been nothing holding him from stomping on every Republican in Congress.

When it came to getting what he wanted, George W. Bush just did it. With the obvious unwillingness of Republicans to agree to pass anything upon which he based his campaign, Obama could have just done it; that’s not a reference to Nike, either.

Barack Obama proved that he doesn’t want to abuse his presidential standing a long time ago. There can be no person who doesn’t know that, no matter what pundits are paid to say.

He’s even admitted to having made mistakes, a human flaw to which one would never see Cheney or Bush admit.

However, if he ever wants to be better than politics, he has to stop participating in political theater.

Many on the right complain about having to be politically correct. Barack Obama has spoken like most other presidents about bipartisanship. He’s used many of the same words and phrases. He’s certainly an expert in political correctness.

“Our objective in the world is peace. Our country has joined with others in the task of achieving peace. We know now that this is not an easy task, or a short one. But we are determined to see it through. Both of our great political parties are committed to working together--and I am sure they will continue to work together--to achieve this end. We are prepared to devote our energy and our resources to this task, because we know that our own security and the future of mankind are at stake.” - Harry S. Truman, 1950

“Our foreign policy must be clear, consistent, and confident. This means that it must be the product of genuine, continuous cooperation between the executive and the legislative branches of this Government. It must be developed and directed in the spirit of true bipartisanship.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

“I am proud--and I think most Americans are proud--of a mutual defense and assistance program, evolved with bipartisan support in three administrations, which has, with all its recognized problems, contributed to the fact that not one of the nearly fifty U.N. members to gain independence since the Second World War has succumbed to Communist control.” - John F. Kennedy, 1963

“If we fail, if we fritter and fumble away our opportunity in needless, senseless quarrels between Democrats and Republicans, or between the House and the Senate, or between the South and North, or between the Congress and the administration, then history will rightfully judge us harshly. But if we succeed, if we can achieve these goals by forging in this country a greater sense of union, then, and only then, can we take full satisfaction in the State of the Union.” - Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964

“I would be the last to suggest that the road to peace is not difficult and dangerous, but I believe our new policies have contributed to the prospect that America may have the best chance since World War II to enjoy a generation of uninterrupted peace. And that chance will be enormously increased if we continue to have a relationship between Congress and the Executive in which, despite differences in detail, where the security of America and the peace of mankind are concerned, we act not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans.” - Richard M. Nixon, 1970

“Some people question their Government's ability to make hard decisions and stick with them; they expect Washington politics as usual.” - Gerald R. Ford, 1975

“Last year, I proposed to the Congress a major legislative initiative that would direct $2 billion into education and job training programs designed to alleviate youth unemployment through improved linkages between the schools and the work place. This legislation generated bipartisan support; but unfortunately, action on it was not completed in the final, rushed days of the 96th Congress.” - James E. Carter, 1981

“We look forward to the enactment of a responsible clean air act to increase jobs while continuing to improve the quality of our air. We're encouraged by the bipartisan initiative of the House and are hopeful of further progress as the Senate continues its deliberations.” - Ronald Reagan, 1982

“We rescued the system in 1983, and it's sound again -- bipartisan arrangement. Our budget fully funds today's benefits, and it assures that future benefits will be funded as well. The last thing we need to do is mess around with Social Security.” - George H. W. Bush, 1982

“Whatever our differences, we should balance the budget now. And then, for the long-term health of our society, we must agree to a bipartisan process to preserve Social Security and reform Medicare for the long run, so that these fundamental programs will be as strong for our children as they are for our parents.” - William Jefferson Clinton, 1997

“Bipartisanship is more than minding our manners; it is doing our duty.” - George W. Bush, 2001 (all emphases mine)

All of these words have been spoken by Barack Obama in some form or other. His quotes can be gathered and printed here, but they would not surprise anyone.

Obama’s hopes for bipartisanship and his promise to get rid of “Washington politics as usual”, as stated by President Ford in 1975, seem to be too familiar, almost script-like. However, he’s human and the vitriol and blatant apparent lack of cooperation should have bothered him into action by now. It would have bothered any human being in his position by now. If this was not theater, he’d have signed universal health care into law with the stroke of a pen and a, “Hey, I asked you guys for help and we only have so much time. I gotta do what I gotta do.”

Isn’t it strange that one-half of our political duopoly all act like cowards and the other half all act as if they own the place? Again, very script-like, no?

If this sounds like just another conspiracy theory, it’s not. There’s no way that any lower or middle class American could ever be privy to the ideas expressed by the president and/or to the president in the Oval Office or in any office in any building.

Ideas may be expressed at some point during the presidential campaign. Certain “operatives” may remind a candidate of the enormous cost of running for most political offices starting at the state level. If the candidate appears to have the popular support needed to win the election, he may be congratulated for his “lead” in the polls by corporate lobbyists or even high ranking officers of corporations. They may promise to help him complete the campaign and put him over the top.

This may be followed by some very specific caveats, however. They may go as far as to tell the candidate that they’re excited about his certain victory. Then they can begin to tell him about issues that relate to their specific businesses and how he can show his gratitude by “partnering” with them to solve these issues. Indeed, they may give him ideas or even specific “roadmaps” for solving their respective problems.

Another possible scenario has corporate money going to the candidate most likely to win without consulting that candidate at all. However, once elected, those who have passionate corporate interests may begin to request meetings with the president-elect and his staff. They may remind the incoming administration that it was their money that helped it gain the margin of victory and give suggestions for ways in which that administration can show its gratitude. The president-elect and, ultimately, the president, may be told that there’s more “support” to be gained for any reelection bid.

He may also be told that any unwillingness to repay their kindness could put them in a very bad mood. He may be told that they’ve seen horrible accidents in their lives. They may tell an unwilling president about the kinds of awful things they’ve seen happen to school children who just so happened to be as young as his own children.

They may ask him, “Isn’t it just awful when things like that happen to little kids, especially little girls?”

It comes across as “small talk”, but “small talk” with a message.

However, this is not a conspiracy theory. Hard facts proving that this happens have not come forth. It’s difficult to find proof anywhere that any of this happens. It’s more a conspiracy “guess” based upon how the play unfolds after each presidential election. It’s not all that different, is it?

Those who supported the president during his campaign become frustrated. Whether it takes four years or whether it takes eight years, the president is eventually busted. He’s busted for breaking his campaign promises or misleading his supporters. Sometimes the supporters feel abandoned. Sometimes, as maybe happened in the case of George W. Bush, they just plain feel like fools. Since Truman, for sure, presidents have never created the utopian “morning in America” that their supporters were certain that they would create; the “change you can believe in”.

Even The New Frontier was as old as secret attacks on the island of Cuba and far too many members of The Great Society left their lives in Southeast Asia.

It seems that there is more hatred toward Barack Obama than there’s been toward any previous president because part of his heritage is African and that part cannot be hidden. However, despite all of the hate, he proceeds as though those who hate him deserve their day in court, so to speak and he’s tried to give them that day. They don’t want a day in court; they want to preside over the court. They don’t even show up when subpoenaed, metaphorically speaking. Their responses to his invitations have become more predictable than the seasons.

Yet he takes it, as if he has no choice; as if it’s all been planned out; the necessary deals have been made and the play has begun.

I’ve watched Rachel Maddow of MSNBC talk about this phenomenon night after night, making the same case. The Democrats have the House, Senate and Administration. They should be able to pass wonderful progressive legislation. Why don’t they? Don’t they see what we see?

Now she’s dwelling on the power that the Democrats have in the lame duck session of Congress and she asks, “Will they finally get the courage to act upon progressive legislation or are the Democrats, all of them, cowards?” The answer, of course, isn’t “yes” or “no”. The answer is there are no Democrats. There are no Republicans. There are no debates. There is no process. There is no meaningful legislation.

Wealthy members of Congress, Democrat, Republican and even Independents, are playing roles laid out for them by those who buy them.

Don’t they see what we see?

They create what we see. They create the allusion of government. Government in The FUSA is, indeed, created. It may be the most realistic piece of fiction ever written.

To friendship,
Michael

“About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.” - Herbert Hoover

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Stop Running Away From Who We Are

2010-11-13T01:37:00.000-08:00

On July 15, 1960, John F. Kennedy said the following words in his acceptance speech: “If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal”, then I'm proud to say I'm a “Liberal.””

I watched a program last night entitled The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. He was a producer, director, writer and performer in the wonderful TV series The West Wing.

He had recently been called too conservative by someone on the left and a socialist by someone on the right.

In his own defense, he played a clip from The West Wing which he wrote. In it, the Democratic Party presidential candidate responded in a debate to his Republican opponent’s accusation of being afraid to be called “liberal”. The Democrat’s response sounded an awful lot like what Kennedy said in 1960.

When’s the last time we heard any Democrat say words that were even close to what Kennedy said?

Kucinich ran for president in 2004 on a personal platform so diametrically opposed to most of the other Democratic candidates, especially John Kerry, that, until he lost the nomination, one could only assume he’d choose to run an independent campaign if he did lose.

When he lost the nomination, he stepped up and supported Kerry! Kerry was talking about a “surge” in Iraq before Bush did it. He’s enamored of so called “Free Trade” and, if he had been elected, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear him quote Clinton and say, “The era of big government is over.”

Just as Ron Paul will not pull the trigger and move, permanently, from the Republican Party to the Libertarian Party, Kucinich knows that, if he takes his millions and moves to the Green Party or even the Socialist Party of the United States, he’d lose for sure.

Or would he?

I think he’d be a hero.

What made the Tea Party candidates so popular was that they said exactly what that group of people wanted to hear. They weren’t afraid to express their views, no matter how far they might be from “mainstream” America.

I submit that the Democratic Party will withhold any support from anyone who speaks the way Kennedy did. If I’m right, it will prove that the Democratic Party is too stupid to know that is what many, maybe most, Americans want to hear.

At the end of his show last night, Lawrence O’Donnell admitted that he is a socialist, at least in the sense that he utilizes the Post Office, supports Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He displayed a Time Magazine cover which read We’re All Socialists Now.

We need candidates who don’t run away from they are. We need candidates who say that they are proud of the help the government has given the people since the days of FDR and that help is absolutely constitutional. More government help, like universal health care, is also within the bounds of the kinds of programs that The Constitution allows Congress to pass and the president to implement. It would be ethically, morally and politically courageous to run on the transparent truth of one’s convictions.

I’m of the opinion that, if we got money out of the system, a Socialist, the kind of Socialist one finds in Scandinavia, could win the White House and Democratic Socialists could win Congress. However, they would have to campaign on what their true intentions were and not mince words. They’d need to debunk every stupidity that was shot at them from the right or the fake left. And they could do it, too.

The media would have to turn truly fair and give such candidates the air time it gives to Ds and Rs. Most importantly, the media would have to include these candidates in televised debates.

These “big spenders” would come closer to balancing the budget than Democrats or Republicans. Clinton supposedly handed Bush a surplus, but too many Americans had to pay for it the hard way.

Democratic Socialists would balance the budget without cutting “entitlements” to working class Americans. They’d do it by cutting “entitlements” to wealthy Americans, corporate America and military America.

To friendship,
Michael

“A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.” – Sigmund Freud

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2010-10-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

(published at OpEdNews)

A few days ago, I was asked what I wanted to see President Obama do in the next two years.

Recently, so called Democrats voted with so called Republicans in the Senate to kill a bill that would stop providing tax incentives to corporations who send their jobs to countries whose people are all too happy to receive a wage upon which no one in any country could live above the line of subsistence, let alone comfortably; to countries whose leaders favor payments of money over protecting the environment.

In 1968, George Wallace, running as an independent, said, “There ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats.”

I abhorred many of the things Wallace did and said at that time. To stand in front of university doors so that he could stop people from entering merely because of the random color of their skin was unconscionable.

After he was shot, Wallace had a change of heart and went to his grave at least outwardly decent. He made amends with African Americans.

I remember the “dime’s worth of difference” phrase, though. He actually was right and it’s become even truer as time has passed. Almost all politicians were wealthy before they ran for office and were elected, remain wealthy during their terms and are wealthy when they’re either defeated or retire.

I had heard that Barack Obama spent $700 million to buy the presidency in 2008. This site says that he spent over $300 million. Either number is ridiculous.

The Supreme Court’s January, 2010 ruling in Citizens United v The FEC has allowed corporations to reach into their vast profit margins and pull out any amount of money that they deem “necessary” to get their candidates elected. The decision also states that there is no disclosure rule for corporations who do this. So, buying a job for $300 million is already obsolete in a black comedy sort of way.

Don’t forget, The Corporatocracy and China have made some sweet and sweaty deals. It’s in China’s interest to keep American jobs going to its nation. It’s so much in its interest that it may accidently drop a $1 billion dollar bill in the office of some corporate CEO who may decide to use it to buy a candidate or two.

Meg Whitman has spent, to date, over $140 million to buy the governorship of California. Jerry Brown has spent a modest $10 million.

The point is that Obama, Bush, Clinton, HW, Reagan and even some before that have/had little or no say in the governance of The Former United States of America.

What incentive can outweigh receiving millions and/or billions of dollars? What can Obama do? What could Bush have even done?

Prima facie, it looks as though the Democrats are for unions and working people and the Republicans are for the wealthy. You gotta be kiddin’ me.

Once again, I present you with the prescient oration Paddy Chayefsky wrote for the movie or book, Network, in 1976. I implore you to watch it and watch it and watch it until you not only hear the words, but until you actually begin to listen to the words.

I paraphrase: There are no Republicans, there are no Democrats, there are no nations, there are no borders. Am I getting through to you, people?

Now, having told the truth about how it is, I will tell you what I would like to see Obama do in the next two years, hoping against hope.

I would like a speech from the oval office. I would like the news media to refuse to allow the “other” party to give a rebuttal. Maybe some of you don’t know this, but this bullshit piece of political correctness is new. The rebuttals were given during the campaign and the winner won. He’s the president. He gives the State of the Union address. He addresses the American citizens. The president, not the presidential candidate, speaks after the politics is over and the governing begins. No rebuttal. No Democratic rebuttal to a Republican president and no Republican rebuttal to a Democratic president. That little move, whenever it started, was one of the silliest and most divisive contrivances to ever be allowed to see the light of day and it’s merely one of the divisive contrivances that makes us formerly united.

In his speech, I want to hear Obama say that he will work solely on election reform during the remaining two years of his term.

I want him to say that he won’t work on health care reform because there will be no health care reform without election reform.

I want him to say that he won’t work on financial reform because there will be no financial reform without election reform.

I want him to say that he, along with Bush, Clinton, HW, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and Truman all committed the impeachable offense of going to war without a Congressional declaration.

I want him to say that The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and The Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq were not even in the same zip code as a Declaration of War. I want him to say that any “OK” from Congress to a president to sort of kind of think about when it may sort of be OK to attack a nation that did nothing to America is not a Declaration of War, but a Congressional abdication of its responsibilities. I want him to admit to guilt, but I don’t want him to be impeached or to step down unless HW, Clinton and Dubya promise to go before The Hague for committing war crimes. I want him to say he’ll pursue all of the above who are still alive for unconstitutionally going to war.

I want him then to say that he will go before Congress and ask if it’s OK by them to end any and all wars that are in progress because he cannot constitutionally do it himself. If they choose not to end the war in Afghanistan and bring the troops home from Iraq and, basically, everywhere they don’t belong, I want him to resign because I want him to say he will no longer execute illegal wars.

I want him to bring before Congress legislation by which money will play no role in whether or not a candidate can even be a candidate, let alone be elected.

When debate begins, I want him to use the presidential bully pulpit to out, in no uncertain terms, anyone who wants our elections to remain commodities to be purchased by the wealthiest people. I want him to demand from that pulpit that anyone who wants elections to continue to be bought by the highest bidder debate that point of view in front of the entirety of the American public.

In fact, if his bill is voted down, I want him to use a signing statement to push it through anyway. This will show that maybe he’s grown a pair. We like presidents who use signing statements? Then he should use one to get money out of elections.

I want him to hammer home that elections are opportunities for those who wish to serve, to do the right thing, whatever they think it is, by the American people. I want him to ask whoever wants elections to remain commodities to explain to the American people how this helps them.

I want him to include that there will be a fine in his bill for Americans who refuse to exercise their right to vote. I want him to tell the American people that a democracy, republican or otherwise, cannot be sustained by a citizenry which bitches and moans, but doesn’t vote.

Then, possibly, when he steps down after his only term is up, the candidates that run for that office will actually be candidates who want to govern.

If he doesn’t work on election reform, I want him to step down and hand his position over to somebody who will.

But, I dream. There’s no incentive for anyone, from Jim DeMint to Dennis Kucinich, to work hard for election reform. Where they are and how they got there, along with what they do, is nothing more and nothing less than a racket. It’s theater, ladies and gentlemen.

The previous corporate front man couldn’t put a sentence together if it was made out of Legos. When he spoke, bullshit vomited from his mouth.

Barack Obama is articulate and when he speaks, bullshit vomits from his mouth.

Of course there are “third” parties, but, just in the way we refer to them - third parties - it’s obvious we think of them as we would think of a third eye on a human face.

It feels awful being a nihilist. It feels awful saying that those who appear to be in charge are not and those who are in charge don’t have the best interest of Americans at heart. In fact, I submit that many who are in charge aren’t even Americans.

So, let’s sit back and listen to the pabulum on the TV machine as the Chinese buy the 2010 elections.

To friendship,
Michael

“Sanity is a madness put to good use.” - George Santayana

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Buy Nothing Day and the “Spirit” of Christmas

2010-09-15T11:44:00.000-07:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

In 1996, Greg Gerritt began encouraging people in the small state of Rhode Island to take to heart the message that is said to be at the center of what is known as The New Testament. Gerritt probably didn’t use the Bible to sell what he wanted to do in Rhode Island, but think about it.

In 1996, Greg Gerritt, who once served on the national committee of The Green Party of the United States, introduced Buy Nothing Day to Rhode Island.

Buy Nothing Day was started by a group called Adbusters out of Vancouver, Canada. Adbusters’ idea was to convert the day after Thanksgiving, a day on which more people do more shopping than on any other day of the year, into a day on which people would buy nothing. Hence the name.

Today the day after Thanksgiving is known as “Black Friday”. This ominous sounding moniker is actually a forecast of good tidings, especially if one is a money changer. No matter how poorly retail sales have been throughout the year, the giant retailers whose CEOs and top managers rake in millions and millions of dollars per year can count on Americans to put themselves, their families and other loved ones at risk by spending money they don’t have on gifts that people don’t need. Consequently, the wealthy captains of retail can be certain that their profits will be in “the black” starting on the day after Thanksgiving until December 25.

Many Americans who call themselves Christians claim that they place themselves more deeply in debt starting on the day after Thanksgiving as a way to celebrate the birth of a very special man. As with all religions, not all Christians practice their faith in the same manner. Not all Christians see the full month before the day on which this man was supposed to have been born as a time to fret over the equity with which they part with the money they borrow. Not all Christians use this time to become agitated, depressed and even angry because of the internal and external conflicts they suffer over the distribution of gifts purchased with borrowed money.

However, the man, obviously the man that people today refer to as Jesus Christ, was an extremely special man. This man is so special that we began counting time once again based upon the year in which he was supposedly born. He was supposedly born about 2,010 years ago. Therefore, many of his followers, aka, Christians, feel the need to become more reckless, not only with their financial standing, but with natural resources and Mother Earth in general starting on the day after Thanksgiving.

Adbusters had seen enough of this consumer insanity and initiated Buy Nothing Day. Adbusters were well aware that consumerism was consuming the consciousness of Americans and noted that, on the day after Thanksgiving, Americans began losing their fiscal minds more and more each year.

There’s not a lot of secular history written about Jesus Christ in spite of his amazing accomplishments and the power he claimed to have over everyone’s eternities. In fact, most of what people “know” about Jesus Christ is written in only one book and in only the second half of that book.

It’s really not important, however, to debate the historical narrative of the life and times of Jesus Christ. What’s important is that the part of the book that’s dedicated to that life and time emphasizes what many would today call “socialism”. Although it’s written that, at times, Jesus Christ warned anyone who would listen that they’d better believe in his words and follow his lead and direction lest they spend eternity experiencing unimaginable torture, torment and agony, the bulk of the writing about Jesus Christ describes giving to those less fortunate, inclusion and peace.

When Greg Gerritt decided to introduce parts of Rhode Island to the anti-consumerism message of Buy Nothing Day, he, intentionally or not, added a piece that’s much more in line with what is written about Jesus Christ. Not only does Greg Gerritt encourage consumers to spend not one penny on the day after Thanksgiving, but uses the day to collect coats from those who have extra and distribute them to those who have none.

What a different outlook we would have if, every day, from the day after Thanksgiving until December 25, the goal for those with an overabundance was to search for those who don’t have any and, when they find them, to give them what they need! Why, it would be almost like the conditional love and peace that Jesus Christ is supposed to have promoted; conditional, of course, because, to use a phrase from another religion, his message was “peace be unto you”, as long as you believe the right way.

Greg Gerritt has never said anything to me about the Biblical references I’ve made throughout this column. My impression is that Gerritt merely wants those who have too much to give to those who have too little. My impression is that Gerritt could care less about all the references I’ve made to religion.

Yet, ironically, what Greg Gerritt does in Rhode Island and a few have begun doing elsewhere is the kind of “celebration” that Jesus Christ, as portrayed in most of the New Testament, would have wanted to see.

So, how’s this giving without buying been working out since 1996? Last year, two people were trampled to death on “Black Friday” as they callously stormed into the money changers’ temples.

Thanks Greg, thanks Adbusters for your attempts to turn the time of year that’s always fallaciously referenced as a time of “peace on earth and good will toward men” into entire years of “peace on earth and good will toward men.”

To friendship,
Michael

“Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.” - George Iles

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Independence Day Wish

2010-07-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve published this poem every year since it was first published in 2004. This year will be no exception.

(originally published by WHITE HERON PRESS, Spring, 2004)

I wish for independence from the past,

might overruling right,

white men encountering

their new world,

slaughtering its true inhabitants.

I wish for independence from the arrogance,

fostering false license to hawk,

redeem extensions

of our own humanity

to dance attendance

upon the burdens of wealth.

I wish for independence from the blindness

guiding us westward,

turning nature into dirt interruptions

without offering notice

to the peace

upon which we trampled.

I wish for independence from the gluttony

which continued

to swallow whole

territories suitable

for planting white seeds,

pulverizing cultures.

I wish for independence from conformity,

born of urban sprawl,

away from cities,

conceiving jealousy

of blood pumping

within mere feet

of white picket fences.

I wish for independence from The Corporacracy,

governing body

governing bodies,

stratifying rich from poor,

life from death,

blending earth

with destruction.

To friendship,
Michael

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” - Sir Richard Steele

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Knock Yourself Out

Who Does the Killing?

2010-06-08T14:02:00.000-07:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

While I was visiting friends about a month ago, a discussion dealing with social current events ensued. More specifically, a discussion about war ensued.

I began the discussion by asking my friend if he’d ever heard the late Utah Philips talk about who’s really responsible for the killing that takes place during war. Philips recorded his thoughts in a narrative he entitled “The Violence Within”.

My friend hadn’t heard this narrative, so, as I happened to have my laptop with me at the time and I had loaded the talk onto the laptop, I played it for him.

At this point, it may or may not be relevant to know a little about my friend and the ways in which we’re of a like mind as well as the ways in which we are not.

If you’ve ever participated in a political poll you know that, at the end, the pollster asks about your educational background. The question is usually a multiple choice question. To paraphrase, the questions asks:

What is your level of education?
a) Graduated from elementary school
b) Graduated from high school
c) Attended some years of college
d) Have a college undergraduate degree
e) Have a post graduate degree.

I have 59 college credits. I don’t even know how one goes about obtaining 59 credits. If I could find a real easy course worth one college credit, I may be able to get an Associate’s Degree in Generality. So, I always check the box that says “some college”.

My friend, on the other hand, is a graduate of The Coast Guard Academy and is a Maritime Lawyer. He has been on both sides of oil company litigation. Much of what he’s done has depended upon the financial rewards of taking a particular position at any given time. In other words, as with most of us, my friend, in the pursuit of employment, has, for the most part, accepted positions which offer the best wages and benefits.

In his defense, if there is any needed, my friend, in his capacity as a lawyer, has always been on the front lines of ensuring that the American judicial premise of “innocent until proven guilty” is upheld.

Although it’s been very difficult to find an oath for lawyers with as much universality and weight as the physician’s Hippocratic Oath, there is a set of ethics that The American Bar Association has published to help guide the integrity of legal representation. The following is but a sample of those ethics:

Canons of Ethics

Rule 1.1 – Competence

A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.

Comment to the Rule. In many instances the required proficiency is that of a general practitioner. Expertise in a particular field of law may be required in some circumstances.

This doesn’t appear, as mentioned, to carry the weight of the Hippocratic Oath and is obviously not as well known among the general public.

Politically, my friend considers himself a Progressive. If that’s what he thinks he is, who am I to tell him differently? However, from my perspective, he’s more of a Democrat in a very American political party sort of way than he is a Progressive. He’s very quick to defend President Obama and equally quick to disparage a professional American politician who is a member of The Republican Party. I would compare him to the “corporate NGOs” that, when begun, were very much grassroots movements but have since become, for lack of a better term “big NGOs”. I consider MoveOn.org, TrueMajority and CommonCause “big NGOs” When you read “big NGOs”, think “big oil”, “big tobacco” and other “bigs” that Liberals and/or Progressives have been fighting for years.

As much as I respect many of my friend’s opinions, I consider him a Democratic Party apologist. It isn’t difficult for a self described Progressive to find him or herself in this position. The media with which most people in The FUSA are familiar and from which most people in The FUSA get their information have made it abundantly clear that there are only two serious American political parties. One party is represented by the color blue and the other by the color red. When talking heads attempt to predict the outcomes of elections, the discussion always seems to center around whether an area will remain red, turn red, remain blue or turn blue. When this media talks about swing areas, it’s very appropriate for one to think of the sandbox equipment with which children play. Swings in a sandbox move in two directions, back and forth. Likewise, a swing area in The FUSA is an area that could go “either” way; it’s not an area that could go any way.

I, on the other hand, think that the only two situations under which the death penalty would be acceptable are if it is used to kill corporate personhood or if it’s used to kill the Electoral College. In fact, I may go as far as to say that the two least serious political parties in America are The Democrats and The Republicans.

Anyone who’s gotten this far and is wondering about the debate concerning war and who actually is responsible for the killing that happens during war can now breathe easier. My tangential journey was necessary to clarify why my friend has his opinion and why it’s wrong.

If you’ve listened to Philips’ narrative, you’ll know what my friend means when he says that the talk is a “theoretically admirable position”, but he doesn’t agree with it.

As Philips ultimately informs us, if the triggers on guns weren’t pulled or if the buttons in the cockpits of planes weren’t pressed and the bombs weren’t dropped, it would be much more difficult to proceed with war.

The late Utah Philips described himself as a pacifist. I don’t know that I’m a pacifist. I don’t know that I couldn’t be driven to violently defend someone somewhere under some circumstance. If a pacifist is a person who swears to never engage violently with another, no matter what the other has done or is doing, it would be difficult for me to be a pacifist.

However, I don’t believe that Philips was suggesting that all soldiers become pacifists. He may have wished that could be the case, but, as a veteran of The Korean Conflict, he knew that people would defend against violence with violence if they thought their defense was the only way to protect the safety of, if no one else, themselves. I can’t even summon the imagery of what it would look like to allow armies led by crazed yet charismatic people to enter one’s space, to kill one’s friends and loved ones at will and to merely stand there and wait one’s turn to die.

This isn’t a judgment call on my part. I’m not saying that it would be wrong or right. I’m merely saying that I can’t imagine refusing to do something so intuitive as to protect one’s self and one’s friends and family. Philips, on the other hand, obviously didn’t have a problem with that imagery.

I do, nonetheless, realize that if I had a weapon in my possession while an invading force was killing those around me, it would be I who would engage that weapon to stop the oncoming force. If I had a simple gun and I aimed it at another human being and pulled the trigger, the bullet would find its target or, possibly, someone close to the intended target. I may believe at that moment that pulling the trigger was an action that had to be done. Whoever the bullet finds, it may kill and, without any hesitation, I would have to confess to killing that person.

Civilian leaders and/or military leaders can order me not to pull the trigger or can order me to pull the trigger. However, it will always be my decision to pull the trigger or to not pull the trigger. This is the simple point that Philips makes.

What he says is that, by using the explanation that we are at war and we have no other option but to do what our superiors, both civilian and military, tell us to do dehumanizes us.

Philips referenced Principle IV which emerged from The Nuremburg Trials. Principle IV states that, “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him”.

In a case during the Vietnam War known as United States v. Keenan, a soldier was found guilty of murder when he shot and killed an elderly Vietnamese woman after receiving orders from his superior to do so. In its decision, The Military Court of Appeals held that “the justification for acts done pursuant to orders does not exist if the order was of such a nature that a man of ordinary sense and understanding would know it to be illegal.”

So what does my “Progressive” friend have against soldiers refusing to kill people they don’t know for reasons of which they are either unsure or which they know aren’t true?

“If we let the military (The Military) decide when we should or should not go to war,” he said, “we will have a military dictatorship!”

I know that The Founders placed not only declaring war but commanding it in the hands of a civilian government. It was done so that we would not come under the control of the military. My friend had a point, sort of.

It’s taken me a month of thought, but I finally know why he’s wrong and how he did what he did.

He’s a lawyer and has been one for a very long time. He’s argued against himself in court, albeit not in real time or, for certain, at the same time. He’s successfully defended big oil and has prosecuted them as well. Now that’s good!

I, on the other hand, have to go to court in the near future to pay a traffic fine. There’s a noticeable difference in our familiarity and comfort with the American legal system.

I’m not necessarily saying that my friend is a good lawyer because he kicked my butt a month ago. That may not be the most difficult thing to do.

I am, however, saying that I now realize that at no time did I ever imply that the military (The Military) should be given the responsibility to decide when The FUSA should go to war. I parenthetically put the phrase “the military” in caps because when I think of an entity known as The Military which has any capacity to overthrow the civilian government, such as it is, of The Former United States of America, I don’t think of soldiers who occupy the bottom most ranks in the service.

Consequently, it’s absurd to believe that a military dictatorship would be generated because a bunch of front line soldiers actually refused to engage in murder. It’s absurd to believe that people who are demonstrating that they’d prefer not to be part of a war, especially one which they’ve concluded is illegal, would have any interest in belonging to a fellowship which has as its goal the power to decide when to go to war.

If soldiers, sailors, pilots and the other members of the military who actually control the weaponry are absolutely sure that, when they engage that weaponry, they are not only obeying “the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over (them), according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice” but are also supporting and defending “the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and are bearing “true (emphasis mine) faith and allegiance” to The Constitution, they should, by all means, fire their weapons.

However, if military personal have first engaged their brains and researched why it is that the President of the United States and the officers appointed over them are telling them to kill and have either come to the conclusion that the reason is not at all clear or that it’s very clear that the reason is illegitimate and internationally unlawful, they are actually required to stop firing their weapons.

Basic training is a time when almost every activity of a recruit is controlled by a commanding officer. The idea is to teach soldiers to almost react instinctively to commanding officers during the heat of battle. This premise is understandable. The battlefield is not a place for democratically conducted brainstorming sessions.

However, no man or woman should be asked to or expected to “lose his or her mind” and, as much as unquestionable obedience is essential during battle, those obeying are not cattle, dogs or cats. They are human beings. For whatever reason, human beings can react based upon a presence of mind, even a quick thought process. Human beings can do more than just salivate at the sound of a bell.

Since the end of World War II, The FUSA has preemptively invaded Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Grenada, Panama and Iraq. We hear so much about how Iraq represented the first time that The FUSA had ever preemptively invaded another nation. That’s never been true.

In one conflict, Americans were told that one party or another asked for our help and that was used as an excuse for preemptive war. Americans were told that US destroyers had been attacked while they were in the act of spying upon another nation in that nation’s sovereign waters. That was used as an excuse for preemptive war. Americans were told that the head of a sovereign nation was involved in international drug dealing and that was used as an excuse for preemptive war. Americans were told that an “ally” complained to us that one of its neighbors was “stealing” its oil supply and we preemptively attacked Iraq for the first time. Americans were told that Iraq hardly had room for its citizenry because the land was so filled with weapons of mass destruction and we attacked Iraq a second time. Americans have recently been told that Al Qaeda’s knowledge of world geography is so poor that the only place in which it knows it can train its new recruits is Afghanistan. We’ve been in Afghanistan since 2001, but, in reality, with President Obama’s promise to escalate that war, we’ve recently begun a preemptive strike against that nation.

Americans have been told that Congress, the only branch of government that can declare war, has, in some of these cases, basically told the Executive branch that it really doesn’t feel like declaring war, thank you, so it signed its responsibility over to the Executive branch. In other cases, the Executive branch has been able to kill enough time debating what the definition of “declare” is to allow it to preemptively attack a sovereign nation without Congressional approval or even Congressional deferment.

If you’re in the military and you’re a person who has the responsibility to kill “the enemy”, I want you to know that I have more faith in you than our government has or even my friend has. I know that you joined the military because American based corporations have taken from you opportunities that Americans once had to work for a living wage and not fear illness and/or injury. I know that you joined the military because you believed that the military can train you for non-military occupations for when you get out of the military. I know that you joined the military because you became enraged at what happened to Americans on September 11, 2001.

I also know that you’re aware of your surroundings and you’re able to read. I know you have access to the internet, books, newspapers and other news outlets. I know that you can understand if what your civilian government, with the unquestioning aid of your superior officers, is telling you to do is ethical and even legal.

I can try to imagine how frightening it must be for you to entertain the idea of laying down your weapons and saying, “No, I will not kill these people anymore. My mission is murky at best and I refuse to kill to support an obscure or illegal mission.”

When you joined the military, you did so because you ultimately wanted to protect the land that is called The United States of America and its citizens. You never wanted your military service to be a negative experience even though you were well aware that you could die in the fulfillment of that service.

Now you realize that, if you lay down your weapons and refuse to kill someone you don’t know for a reason that’s unclear at best, you’ll probably be charged with disobeying an order and there will be a court martial. You know the chances are that you’ll be found guilty and you’ll have to do time in a military prison. You know that your discharge from the military will not be an honorable one and you know that can hurt you when you begin to pursue a career.

It’s understandable that you can be severely conflicted, but it’s also possible that what you do or refuse to do with your weapons may embolden your comrades in arms to do the same. You know that an illegal war could ultimately be forced out of existence by your actions and the actions you may set in motion. You will be sacrificing your standing in society to get others to a point where the civilian leadership and the military superior officers will have no choice but to accept the decision of the people who do the killing and dying. You know that it will be possible that, even if you are found guilty and imprisoned, it may get to a point where those who follow your courage, if there are enough who do, will no longer be found guilty of disobeying an order and, although it may be technically called “mutiny” in the beginning, those who follow your actions may ultimately be found not guilty based upon the illegality of the war or wars and may be held up as heroes.

The point of reference to which you have to compare the above scenario is, as you’re attempting to kill the so called “enemy”, you accidentally hit a child or some other innocent person, putting to an end a life which may have held promise for itself and for all of humanity. You can do that and you’ll be discharged “honorably” from the military. However, when you return to The FUSA, what will be awaiting you?

One thing to which you can look forward is having nightmares of that child falling to the ground as he or she was running, attempting to escape a battle in which you should not have participated.

And for what occupation will the military ready you? The heads of American based corporations are anything but patriotic towards The FUSA. This is one reason why the states are no longer united. American based corporations have done their best to divide Americans because that’s what works best for them. The jobs they have to offer are not offered to Americans like you. They’re offered to the lowest bidder, probably a person living in China who will work for significantly less than what you are paid as a soldier.

If you’re lucky, you can work for a private sector mercenary corporation and go back to Afghanistan or wherever natural resources cry out to the American government to be stolen.

One thing you won’t do, either way, is to persuade The Military to overthrow the civilian government of The FUSA. You’ll want no part of that, I’m sure.

To come full circle, this is why my friend is wrong. Soldiers whose consciences cannot be controlled will never belong to that part of The Military which possesses the capacity to form a military dictatorship. They will merely be soldiers who knew what was right and did it. They will be the heroes for whom America is waiting and whom America needs so urgently. They will be the heroes who may help to unite the states of America once again.

To friendship,
Michael

“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” - Herbert Spencer

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Illegitimate Peace

Ron and Rand Libertarianism May Also be a Disaster

2010-05-30T20:22:00.001-07:00

(originally published by OpEdNews)

If pure Anarchy or Communism is to work, the premise “to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability” has got to be a realistic premise.

Under each of these non systems, government will ultimately become unnecessary. Everyone will be equal. There will be no bosses and there will be no classes. Each person will share possessions as well as the responsibility for getting things done, even the most mundane and menial tasks.

The last thing that Libertarians would have you believe is that they’re anything like Anarchists or Communists. Libertarianism, as far as Libertarians are concerned, is a legitimate, responsible form of governance and the other two forms can only lead to chaos and probably totalitarian dictatorship.

In chapter 5 of his publication entitled THE STATE AND REVOLUTION, Vladimir Lenin writes, “From the moment all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves, have taken this work into their own hands, have organized control over the insignificant capitalist minority, over the gentry who wish to preserve their capitalist habits and over the workers who have been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism--from this moment the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether.”

Lenin goes on to say that the “fundamental rules of the community will very soon become a habit.

In its Statement of Principles, The Libertarian Party states that “…they (the government) must not violate the rights of any individual: namely, (1) the right to life -- accordingly we support the prohibition of the initiation of physical force against others; (2) the right to liberty of speech and action -- accordingly we oppose all attempts by government to abridge the freedom of speech and press, as well as government censorship in any form; and (3) the right to property -- accordingly we oppose all government interference with private property, such as confiscation, nationalization, and eminent domain, and support the prohibition of robbery, trespass, fraud, and misrepresentation.”

The Libertarian Party Statement of Principles also states that “The principle of non-initiation of force should guide the relationships between governments.”

It was quite easy to find sample quotations which reference Anarchism. In fact, it was too easy. It merely depends upon which type of Anarchism one wishes to reference.

Interestingly enough, while doing search for Anarchism, one finds hits for Libertarianism and Communism. One might say that Anarchism utilizes the best of Libertarianism and Communism or, depending on the point of view, the worst of Libertarianism and Communism.

Why, then, are Libertarians thought to be right of Mussolini and Communism left of Marx? Well, not left of Marx; sort of right there next to him.

The answer is in the fact that both Libertarians and Communists believe that a central government is either totally unnecessary or minimally necessary. Government merely restrains the freedoms of the individual. Rules of community will become a “habit” and non-initiation will, in and of itself, be strong enough to “guide the relationships between governments.” Human beings will lose any desire they may have to want more than they need, want what is fair or want more than the other person has. No one will go without because there will be no governing body to interfere with the ability to obtain anything at either no cost or the fairest of costs.

Tariffs are duties paid by companies for the privilege of importing their goods into another country. Although tariffs are very complicated financial instruments - that’s what the call such things these days - the truth is that Ronald Reagan and his administration put the final touches on eliminating tariffs which companies would have to pay to import products into the United States. Note that there is no link, no proof here provided. The reason is that tariffs are based upon the product in question, the countries in question and many other factors that economists use to keep the rest of us in the dark.

Reagan, being a “student” of Milton Freidman who said that the private sector can handle anything that humanity could ever want, wanted to make it easy for American manufacturers to have their products manufactured by people living in nations which make it legal to pay workers less than subsistence wages and then import them back into The FUSA with impunity.

This completed the thinning of the American labor herd, which was begun in the late 1970s with the advent of automation.

To look at this from another angle, as soon as the top executives of American corporations saw the chance to murder American labor, it didn’t give a second thought to pulling the trigger. It sort of shoots holes (no pun intended) in the theory that, left to its own devices, humankind will ensure that everyone is treated fairly, doesn’t it? As soon as American executives found that they could improve so called “worker productivity” and, consequently, increase profits, they planned to keep the extra profits for themselves. They could have spread it out among those American workers fortunate enough to remain employed, but chose to role in it like little piggies rolling in slop. They laughed and reveled and played with the profits like they were some sort of new transformer toys.

Let’s look at the Preamble to the Libertarian Party Platform:

“As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.”

Yet, immediately following the above passage, the Preamble states:

“We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.”

Do these statements seem to be contradictory or at least dependent upon whose “individual’s rights” one is referring? In the case of the recent Rand Paul statement, the right of the property owner is obviously the object.

Could, however, an “individual’s rights” refer to the rights of individuals to enjoy the freedom to enter any establishment, public or private, that the remaining individuals in that society enjoy?

Is this left purposely ambiguous? I submit that, considering the premise of most of the Libertarian Party’s ideology, the rights refer to those belonging to the owner, the moneyed class. Possibly it could be argued that the term “moneyed class” in many instances is an embellishment considering that some who own small businesses like restaurants aren’t actually wealthy. However, they are in control because they are the owners and those who are forbidden to enter their establishments are being controlled, at least as it pertains to entering those particular establishments.

Putting aside the fact that the so called “Founding Fathers” were, themselves, the moneyed class of their time, my personal interpretation of the passage from The Declaration of Independence which reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, the term “unalienable Rights” means rights with which people are born. People are born with the right to equal access to all accommodations offered to the public, whether those accommodations are privately owned or publicly owned.

I realize that The Declaration of Independence is not part of The Constitution, however, it can be looked at as sort of a preamble to the Preamble to The Constitution. The Declaration of Independence says to me, “These are the reasons why we’re cutting ties with the British Empire and, following our list of reasons, we shall write a constitution which ensures that our nation will not employ the unfair policies enunciated in The Declaration of Independence.” It’s a personal observation, admittedly, but one which I consider, if nothing else, at least legitimate.

Top officers of American based multinational corporations received an opportunity from the advent of automation and the virtual abolition of import tariffs to demonstrate what humankind would do left to its own devices. These people chose to keep the increased profits for the benefit of a few top executives of the corporations, to discard American workers like so many old dish rags and to export jobs heretofore done well by American workers to workers in nations which allow subsistence level wages, not to mention lax environmental and labor laws.

The argument has been made that these exported jobs have actually helped those in the slave labor nations by increasing their wages. It’s not that the wages haven’t increased. It’s that the point from which the wages were raised were so low that the new wages are still subsistence wages. Furthermore, the argument seems to be made as if to imply that the betterment of these slave labor nation workers played into why corporations actually sent the jobs to those nations in the first place. Call me cynical, but I find that hard to believe. Go ahead, you’re allowed to disagree with me. This is The Former United States of America after all.

Although some nation states have been referred to as “communist countries” throughout history, I submit that, in light of what pure communism is supposed to look like, there has never been nor will there ever be a “communist country”.

I’ve never even heard anyone even pretend that there’s been an anarchist nation state in history.

I do believe there have been Libertarian nations, but we refer to them as Fascist nations.

“Wait!” you say. “Libertarians believe in minimal or no government intrusion. It states that the only purpose of government is to protect the Mother Land or Father Land (I’ve yet to hear the phrases “Brother Land” or “Sister Land”, but that’s just me). We all know that Mussolini ruled over Italy with an iron fist and Franco didn’t spend a lot of time soliciting suggestions from Spaniards on how to improve his governing process.”

“You’re right,” I would reply.

However, I would remind you that both Mussolini and Franco did solicit input from corporations and that alliance, at least according to some antiquated, non corporate published dictionaries, was and is a mainstay of Fascism.

As an aside, I’ve referred to one of my favorite political talk show hosts on radio and/or TV in many of my articles. His name is Thom Hartmann. Ironically enough, my references have always been in the form of criticism. This reference is to the fact that Thom says that the difference between Progressives and Conservatives is that Progressives see people as innately good and Conservatives see people as innately bad.

This is an interesting observation as Progressives are usually behind initiating regulatory legislation and Conservatives are usually opposed to such legislation. This is an interesting observation as Progressives feel the need to mandate environmental conservation and Conservatives are willing to let corporations, or at least the people who run them, self regulate. This is an interesting observation as Progressives want universal health insurance while Conservatives want to leave it up to “the invisible hand of the market”, obviously manipulated by very visible people, to Ouija Board (a noun turned verb) the necessary financial decisions guiding the health of Americans.

I’d submit that, observing what people do when they’re left unattended with untold quantities of profits obtained from the backs of workers, they are innately narcissistic and self centered and unwilling to share. Hey, but who am I do question my favorite talk show host?

There are no Communist Party candidates running for office in 2010 of whom I’m aware and, if there are any such candidates, they have less than a snowball’s chance in the fictitious place referred to as hell of winning. The same can be said of Anarchist Party candidates.

We know, for sure, thanks to the media’s continuing to give Rand Paul, the Republican candidate for the US Senate from Kentucky, free air time, that there is a Libertarian dressed in Republican clothing running for office. If he’s elected, his influence will basically be the same as his father’s influence has been on American foreign and/or domestic policy. It will be the same as that of Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee. In other words, it won’t exist.

However, if the media, as it has done with the Pauls, continues to treat the Tea Party Movement (do I have that politically correct?) in the same perpetual open forum process, can we not at least give some credence that there may be a Ron or Rand at the top of the Republican presidential ticket in 2012? For, as much as President Obama has gone back on so many of his promises in the short time he’s played the present day version of “Queen for a Day” and as much as he’s been so blatantly obvious (or obviously blatant) a puppet of The Corporacracy, the president still looks more like a winner than most Republicans who are in that psychedelic spotlight at present. In fact, we’ve recently had a son following a father in that theatrical role with but one presidency separating them. Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a father-son ticket in 2012? To put it politely, this would most likely be more exciting than any sexual experience any member of The Tea Party Movement could have ever imagined in his or her wildest dreams.

One thing that I believe is certain about the Pauls is that they are not part of the political theater. They mean what they say and that, in conclusion, is what frightens me more than anything else.

To friendship,
Michael

“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.” - Mark Twain

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Who Can I Be

Follow-Up to Arizona Article

2010-05-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

The news outlet for whom I work, OpEdNews, has recently strongly suggested to authors that they should be the first to comment on their own articles. The Editor-In-Chief of OEN, Rob Kall, insists that this will “prime the pump” for further comment and help increase the popularity of article. Hey, Rob’s the boss and I, therefore, believe him. I’ve always believed my bosses (whether I did or I didn’t).

At my age, I don’t write to impress an English teacher. I write because I believe that’s how I can best help make changes in the world. I write with the idea of either influencing another or, if I’m convinced that my thoughts and/or approach aren’t the best, to make changes in the way I think.

Consequently, increasing the popularity of any article I write would naturally be something that I’d want to do. So, I, as suggested, made the first comment to my article.

If anyone wants to add any further comments, feel free to do so. You can find the article at “Arizona, My Personal Assessment of Some Obvious Facts”.

However, I’m not sending this out to solicit comments for my article. I wrote my pump priming comment and, as I read it, it dawned upon me that it would be an appropriate stand alone follow-up to the article. It’s in this spirit that you are now receiving it.

By the way, even though I’ve tried to steer clear of run-on sentences in the past with mixed success, if read with the passion I possessed while writing this article, I find the run-on sentences to be good tools.

And so the comment begins:

This (Arizona’s march toward ethnic cleansing) is just more proof that teabaggers don't know the difference between capitalism and corporatism.

This is just more proof of their unbridled enthusiasm to be against anything “the other side holds dear” rather than learning what they’re against and making up their own reality show drenched excuse for a collective mind.

Many conservatives say that Americans are too lazy to work, no matter that the jobs have been pulled out from under them. I don’t believe that’s true. I think many Americans are too lazy to think. I know damn well that, as long as they have people like Limbaugh and Beck and Insanity giving them their thinking orders, they’ll remain too lazy to read.

This is just more proof that many Americans will work as hard as they can against their own best interests.

This is more proof that Western Europeans took a perfectly good land away from competent gatekeepers and, in a mere 390 years, killed off the responsible keepers of the land, ruined the vast majority of that land, expanded to other lands in which they had no business being and ruined many of those lands and killed many of their inhabitants and have become whiny, self-centered, materialistic, narcissistic hypocrites whose main goal is to increase and hoard personal wealth and to turn their backs on anyone who may be in need while talking about christian values, family values and the value of owning an arsenal of guns with which any one of them could have defeated both the north and the south in The Civil War.

This is more proof that the democratic capitalism experiment that’s been tried in The FUSA has been a dismal failure because democratic capitalism, the way “capitalism” has been played out in The FUSA, is a contradiction in terms.

This is more proof that national sovereignty is in the last steps of giving way to corporate globalization and, if it’s not somehow miraculously stopped, our “posterity”, to use the word of The Constitution, will be singing anthems to corporations before sporting events in the future and places of worship will not be Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, Islamic or Mormon, but will be Hewlett Packard, Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Goldman-Sachs, AIG, Bank of America, etc.

For you believers, you followers of those violent and hate filled books, to mix metaphors, your golden calf has come home to roost and you’ll have no Moses to square you away this time. There won’t merely be one bush burning this time. The whole planet will burn and, while it’s burning, the CEO of some corporation or some corporate sycophant masquerading as a politician will be fiddling that corporate favorite “Accidents Happen”.

To friendship,
Michael

“I think the world is run by 'C' students.” - Al McGuire

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Arizona, My Personal Assessment of Some Obvious Facts

2010-05-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

(Teagbaggers, Don’t Let the Facts get in Your Way!)
(originally published by OpEdNews)

It seems as if the people of Arizona have been deluded into believing that “illegal immigrants” are why they no longer have jobs.

What we have to teach people, if it’s within our power, is to go into a local Lowe’s or Home Depot or some other corporate store. Stand near the cash register and look to the left and then to the right. Look at the aisle identifiers hanging from the ceilings. Note that the contents of the aisles are written in both English and Spanish.

Ask people, “Do you really believe that those who risk their lives coming across the desert into The FUSA have that much influence over American corporations? Do you really believe that these people warned corporate America that, if they didn’t put documentation in their stores in Spanish as well as English, they’d refuse to sneak into this country?”

If they have any inkling of an open mind – and I realize that’s a stretch – they’d see who the real culprits are. People from poor oppressive countries wouldn’t come to this country if they had no reason to come.

So, if corporations didn’t take advantage of their illegal status by paying them dirt wages and refused to hire anyone who wasn’t an American citizen or at least legally in this country, there would be no reason for people to put so much at risk to come here.

Maybe then you can start to talk to them about how Western Europeans obtained the land that they now call The United States of America. They not only stole it violently from people who’d been living here for centuries, but decided they needed to violently steal land from a sovereign Mexico as well. Arizona, Texas, parts of California and a few other states and territories were already inhabited by Hispanic people. One would think that, once Western Europeans violently took those territories over, they would have had enough compassion to allow the people to maintain their own language and culture.

Western Europeans had been living in an almost constant state of violence for thousands of years before they came to this place and it was embedded in them.

Be careful. There’s a new empire developing over here or over there and, sure enough, the new empire would attempt to expand by using might to conquer areas that had been sovereign before that new empire had even come into existence. It didn’t matter, though, did it? The new empire didn’t own all of the natural resources it needed and it was going to be damned if it was going to compensate another nation for what it needed and/or wanted.

Of course I’m not saying that indigenous peoples all over the world didn’t battle with one another. Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for corrupt tribal leaders in Africa, it would have been much more difficult for Western Europeans to institute and rely so heavily upon the enslaving of Africans.

However, what makes me believe that indigenous people in Africa or in what is now The Americas weren’t nearly as violent as Western Europeans is the simple fact that their weaponry wasn’t as technologically advanced as that of the Western Europeans. Consequently, the Western Europeans ultimately violently defeated indigenous people wherever they encountered them.

If we look at some of the tools indigenous people had, some of the dress they wore, some of the governance they used, we can debunk anyone who would say that nothing indigenous peoples had was as advanced as what Western Europeans had. No, Western Europeans spent a great part of their wealth improving the tools of warfare, much like the present Former United States of America.

Of course, the conquerors tried to assimilate the conquered into their culture because they knew that if the conquered were to maintain their own culture and/or language, it would be easier to conspire to regain their freedom and autonomy.

This brings us right back to Arizona. People who have the most right to call themselves “Arizonans” or whatever the Spanish or indigenous name of the area was originally, if it, indeed, was different, are being told by people who don’t come close to having that right to leave, preferably, and if they don’t leave, to give up their own identity and become as much like the “new” arrivals as possible. In fact, in the case of Arizona, the “conquered” are almost being asked to change the color of their skin even though people with that color of skin were there before the blanched conquerors showed up.

I’m not Hispanic, but my ancestry is fully Sicilian. Sicily is so close to northern Africa that, for 900 years, it was an Arab/Muslim territory. You’d never be able to confuse me with a Scandinavian, at least not by the color of my skin.

The reason I mention this is because, taking into account my beard as well as skin color, I bet dollars to racists that some Arizona “peace officer” would think it within her or his rights to stop me and ask me for my “papers”. I just hope that I would have the NY Times with me at that moment.

To friendship,
Michael

“Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.” - Janis Joplin

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This is What They've Done to Us

2010-05-19T16:18:00.000-07:00

(originally published by OpEdNews)

There’s a documentary going around called “Meltup Hyperinflation”. It’s just another Ron Paul channeling Milton Friedman, free market, tough love, didactic narrative. It preaches, as most of Paul’s narratives do.

We give too much to people. They’re lazy. They don’t want to work. Take the money away from them and you’ll see how fast they get a job.

Just look at China. They go to public and private schools for only $400 - $1200 per year.

In the same documentary, the Paul sycophants decry taxpayer support for public education.

Well, which is it Ron? Do we subsidize public education so that American students can go to college for $400-$1200 a year or do we privatize all education so that the criminals you so rightly castigate for their excesses have another venue through which to add to those excesses?

I could never really understand trickledown economics, which is basically what Paul and Milton Friedman have preached so evangelically. I never could understand how a rising tide could lift all boats if people can’t even afford boats.

According to the Paulians, let’s call them, we should basically have a “skeleton government”. It should provide nothing, preferentially, but, if it has to provide anything, it should protect us from foreign invasion. It should not ensure that local municipalities or states have police departments. It’s none of the federal government’s business. If states and towns and cities don’t want to pay for police departments, then they shouldn’t be forced to do so by the big, bad government.

While chastising bankers for their excesses, Paul is loathe to allow government to intervene in a manner that would regulate those excesses.

Paul claims to be the standing expert in the world on The Constitution of The United States of America. He implies that if the founders knew how large we’ve let our government become, they’d roll over in their graves.

I would then ask Ron, and now his son Rand (whom he would have named Ayn if his son had been his daughter), “What did the founders envision the American government doing in 2010?” I submit that Paul would describe an activity which includes converting the government’s ass into a safe haven for its thumb.

Anarchism and true communism also have as their goals the doing away with any central governing body.

Do anarchists or communists or libertarians truly believe that’s what the founders had in mind when they wrote The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution?

Like the god forsaken Bible, one can point to almost any part of The US Constitution and defend extreme positions and ideologies.

Do the Paulians believe that the Preamble to The Constitution is technically part of the document?

One dictionary defines the word “preamble” thusly:

“1. A preliminary statement, especially the introduction to a formal document that serves to explain its purpose.

2. An introductory occurrence or fact; a preliminary.”

These two definitions may or may not contradict one another, but, as you read further down the page of that dictionary, the words “serves to explain its purpose” are repeated more than once.

So, whether or not the preamble is part of The Constitution or merely an introduction which explains the purpose of The Constitution, the preamble says: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” (emphasis mine)

So, what does Representative Tough Love think “promote the general welfare” could possibly mean? Does it mean that, when we see our fellow countrymen suffering because the very same tough lovers say we shouldn’t have a minimum wage and the government has no right to stop business from doing whatever the hell it wants to do, including sending American jobs to slave labor nations like, yes, China, we should tell them to pick themselves up by the straps on the boots that they can’t afford and find a job working for the companies that no longer provide jobs in The FUSA (The Former United States of America)?

When those Chinese students graduate from the public schools that Paul and his ilk don’t believe we should support in The FUSA, how much do we think they earn? According to a 2008 UN report, China’s per capita income is $3,000.00 per year.

The Paulians don’t want to tie the poor corporations down with a mandated minimum wage, they don’t want to subsidize education the way their heroes in China subsidize education, they don’t want the government to interfere with business decisions, including where they manufacture their products and they want us to be as eager and hardworking as the Chinese to earn a wage of $1.44/hour, in the unlikely reality that the Chinese actually work 40 hour weeks.

This is the lecture that one should watch and take to heart (I have found that it takes a while to download, but it’s well worth it). This is the simplest and most direct narrative of how we got to where we are and suggests the most compassionate and logical way out. No one is punished, even those who should be. Those who should be punished via reregulation will do what they did the first time around, that is, they will do everything in their power to eviscerate any governmental regulation placed directly upon them and they’ve proven they have the money and the power to do so.

However, the lecture by Richard Wolff doesn’t suggest we return the keys to the criminals.

It, admittedly, will take the same kind of courage exhibited by such groups as The Wobblies, The Industrial Workers of the World, in the early 20th century to make the changes Wolff suggests. The Wobblies actually spilled blood to rid this nation of the scourge of child labor, to get us the 40 hour work week and many other benefits that Americans have since lost.

I cringe when I ask myself if those alive today would have done the same for the future of this nation and the workers of this nation and of the world. This corporate run fiasco has put the fear of something or someone into those who live today. Tea Party activists rally in favor of their corporate enemies and against their own best interests. The so called middle class is filled with frightened little boys and girls who believe that the wealthy ruling elite, which I refer to as The Corporacracy, are still working on ensuring that we all attain that “American Dream”. They do this as The Corporacracy creates the ultimate American nightmare and that nightmare is called Free Trade.

So, if you haven’t seen the Paul video homily, please watch it.

I don’t believe in a higher power, so I don’t believe in a heaven or a hell. However, on the off-chance that I’m wrong, I hope I see Friedman and Paul right there next to me, burning for conducting their all out war against the American middle class.

To friendship,
Michael

“We are limited by words.”

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Confessions of a Military Industrial Complex Conscientious Objector

2010-05-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

(originally published by OpEdNews)

A benefit of working for OpEdNews as a line editor is empowerment.

I know, I know, empowerment is a term used by large, multi-national corporations to justify laying off workers. These corporations tell the remaining workers, whose job responsibilities increase significantly with the loss of their work mates, that the new responsibility empowers them.

These corporations have to give the remaining workers some positive feedback since they don’t increase their pay to reflect their additional work load.

However, just as with almost every word, every deed, every discovery and every invention that can be attributed to humankind, the word “empower” isn’t in and of itself a negative entity.

Yesterday, as I was working on the submission queue at OEN, I read the article which follows.

Maybe some of you don’t visit OEN frequently. Many some of you have never visited. It is for this reason that I asked Richard Wilson, the author of “Confessions of a Military Industrial Complex Conscientious Objector”, for permission to share his article in full. He was kind enough to extend that permission to me.

I’m an atheist and Mr. Wilson bases much of the decision he made concerning the Military Industrial Complex on being drawn to the Christian faith. When you read the article, however, you’ll see why spiritual or religious faith isn’t needed for this article to touch you deeply.

This is why I felt empowered to be given the opportunity to publish this article at OpEdNews and I feel empowered to share it with you now.

To friendship,
Michael

“Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.” - John F. Kennedy

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Confessions of a Military Industrial Complex Conscientious Objector
by Richard Wilson

(originally published by OpEdNews)

I was raised in the military industrial complex. My father was a participant in the Manhattan Project while serving in the Army Corps of Engineers. He was employed by The Dow Chemical Company while Dow was the administrator of the Atomic Energy Commission's Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado. Dad had retired from G.E. in Pinellas, Florida while under the contract of the Atomic Energy Commission. I also worked for Dow at Rocky Flats. Additionally I spent 11 years in the United States Air Force and nearly three years in Vietnam and Thailand.

After graduating from high school in 1962 and facing a draft with no possibility of additional education, I chose the Air Force. The military offered some of the best technical schools and vocational training of the time and many of us who had no real financial means depended on that opportunity to prepare us for life.

The choice to join the military was not a difficult one. I had no reason in my life's experience at that point to doubt the honor of such a decision. The opportunities available were limited with the draft looming over my head.

After serving for six years, I was married, became the father of a wonderful daughter, and had spent 22 months in Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. I was discharged "honorably" at McCord Air Force Base and returned to Arvada, Colorado where I attempted to survive civilian life.

My son was born and fortunately I found employment in the general aviation industry. Income was critical as usual for a family so I applied for an instrument technician position at the Rocky Flats Atomic Energy Commission facility managed by The Dow Chemical Company. The Rocky Flats Plant site was responsible for the manufacture of "pits" or the plutonium triggers used in nuclear weapons.

After being unable to adapt to the corporate “cog in the machine” imprisonment I found in the everyday life at that time, I found it necessary to return to the Air Force two years later.

Four more years in the Air Force found me back in Southeast Asia and struggling with marriage and separation from my family. I was again discharged from the Air Force “honorably” and worked several jobs while trying to piece a living together.

Unfortunately during this return experience, my marriage collapsed in divorce. After several years, I found an opportunity to be employed by Lockheed Aircraft Service Company, a defense contractor operating out of Ontario, California.

At that time, my idea of successful employment included wages, benefits, a title and retirement, so this seemed like the American Dream! I made it! I was even flying as a crew member training Air Force personnel. Flying was a lifelong dream. What more could I ask?

After accepting a position to serve as a Technical Representative for Lockheed, training Air Force and supporting their flight operations in Europe, my new friend and wife and I moved to Germany.

Pamela and I had just married in 1983 and through that blessed experience I chose to become a follower of Christ. We chose together to take that journey through her church. My record of follow-through and commitment was not very good and, therefore, I wanted to live up to that challenge and to be clear about what my new commitment entailed.

Through my study I started questioning my participation in the military industrial complex. The more I questioned, the more I studied. I do not know if I was looking to justify what I had been doing or if I was looking for an escape. I did ask several priests about the dilemma and received no consolation or pastoral counsel with regard to a direction either positive or negative.

I found that I had to ignore my spiritual enlightenment to continue my career. After all, I was being “successful” and I had to make a living! All reasons were solid and easily justifiable, especially if I turned my back on the God of nonviolence. While struggling with these two opposing forces -- the manufacture and deployment of weapons systems versus living a life of peace and nonviolence -- I finally erupted with the pain and guilt that I felt.

When the build-up to the first Gulf War began I knew I could not participate. No more weak excuses or compromising my own integrity for money, title, status and ego. During the preparation and build-up of personnel and equipment for the invasion of Iraq, technical representatives at our location were asked if we would participate in the Air Force's missions and deployments. This would be on a voluntary basis. It was like blowing the top off of a capped oil well. I not only told my management that I would not take part in this war but stated that it was the most immoral act we could be involved in!

I suddenly realized I could not support any war anywhere. It was wrong and obsolete. The fraud of war would never produce true peace. All of those involved and many generations following have historically lived and died in anxiety with the shadows of war looming in their past.

Lives are spent as ours are now, and as our children will spend their lives, trying to recover the devastating violence placed in their hearts and minds, as well as recovery of their devastated environment. Impossible! The heart and mind will never intersect. Wars only produce wars!

At this moment I became at peace with being a military industrial complex conscientious objector!

I became enough of a disturbance in the office and in our community that I was relieved of duty and returned to the United States on March 1, 1991. Upon returning to the country, I took a short vacation and then went back to work with no promise of a future position in the company. I was laid off on May 15, 1991, after being offered and turning down a job in Central America in support of more violence.

What have I learned through this experience? I am thankful I have been able to catch a glimpse of the peace we all strive for by not supporting violence. I found that we, as Americans, have been inured to violence. We have become the violence we fight by focusing our limited resources on militarism. We have been duped by the military industrial complex. Its promises of peace are hollow; it only produces insecurity and violence in the name of security.

With all of us well indoctrinated in maintaining a military power and a military industrial complex as a way of life, we pay a high price and will continue to do so. We have sold ourselves short as human beings, as brothers and sisters, as husbands and wives, as neighbors around the world and as those who follow a spiritual life with God of whatever great religion or tradition we belong.

Because of the terror that is looming in our hearts from nuclear weapons, it is a journey with the God of nonviolence that affords us the opportunity to reconcile with ourselves, our children, grandchildren, and with our neighbors throughout the world. Nuclear weapons are like the walls around the cities of Europe. As the author Noah benShea expressed, “Fear put them up and fear maintains them.”

It is we, the employees, ex-employees and supporters of the military industrial complex who hold the knowledge and skills we need to free ourselves from this toxic and threatening death that looms. It is imperative that we turn our careers as physicists, mathematicians, engineers, technicians and support personnel from manufacturers of terror to fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers working for real peace in lieu of this pseudo/false peace we try to accept as the best it can be. All of us are needed to dismantle this environmental disaster. It is our knowledge and work that can get us out of this never-ending buildup looming to take life from us all.

We must go to that sacred space where our heart and mind intersect and listen. We will find that there is only one truth and that is the truth of nonviolence. I encourage all of us to start that journey now! Conscientious objection is acceptance of conscience! If we are to leave a livable future for our young we must stop all development and manufacture of nuclear weapons. We must stop calling war “honorable.” We must stop accepting the robbery of our resources by the military industrial complex. Our work, our knowledge, our gift to the world is much greater than this. They are squandering our financial resource, our hours on earth and our talents.

We must demand an end to war. We must demand leadership that leads and is not bought out by lobbyist and corporate interests. We must demand that our government work for us and our children.

For years I was blind to the cost of my personal perceived success. From the first great movies of WWII to the youthful enthusiasm while listening to my uncle's war experiences, it was easy to become enthralled in the falsely acclaimed “honor” and excitement of militarism. Don't continue the myth of trying to protect our children from violence while building weapons of mass destruction. Someday our children will be asking why we lied.

We can gather together and form safe communities where we can discuss and dialogue about our concerns and approaches to this challenge of truth. We are some of the brightest and I know that with the corporate knowledge that we have used to develop these weapons we have the knowledge and capability and power to reverse this process.

It may require a work stoppage. It may require a strike. It may require quitting and looking for work elsewhere that is not part of the military industrial complex. That is what I had to do to free myself from the guilt and anxiety I felt being complicit in these activities of destruction. The cost has been high. It was not simple to turn my back on a six figure income, perfect medical insurance, life insurance and retirement.

Serenading the Corporacracy (music-songs)

2010-01-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

(originally published by OpEdNews)

“Strong People”, which, when I first recorded it, I sang in a falsetto voice, was actually written in 1969 in protest to The Vietnam War.

As you know, after losing 58,000 of our citizens and killing over two million of theirs, we lost the war. But, not to worry, Vietnam and The FUSA (The Former United States of America) are great pals these days. We trade with them in this crazy, free trade world.

We even send jobs to their people so that they won’t suffer the kind of unemployment in their country that we’re suffering in The FUSA on account of we’re sending jobs to their people. The FUSA, what a guy.

As far as “Strong People” is concerned all was not lost. Twenty-eight years after The FUSA’s war in Vietnam, which was based on a lie told to us by Lyndon Johnson, The Regime, which is better known as the George W. Bush administration, decided that, because Osama bin Laden supposedly had some of his flunkies fly planes into several buildings located within the borders of The FUSA, The FUSA had to invade Iraq, a place in which, if an Al Qaeda operative was ever caught, he would be put to death.

However, the people of The FUSA had to hate someone for what happened on 9/11/2001 and that someone had better look like an Arab. The people of Iraq look a lot like Arabs and they even live in the same part of the world. So, instead of doing some research or even thinking about doing any research, our hungry for revenge population agreed that Iraq would serve as an appropriate whipping boy for a crime that someone else committed.

Now, this was a serious “mistake”, indeed, but it gave me a good reason to revive “Strong People”. As George W. Bush was taking his turn as Queen for a term or two in The White House and he was very well known for having never mastered, or, possibly, even learned, in a formal sort of way, the English language, I not only recorded “Strong People” again, but I had a little fun with it. I sang it in a falsetto voice and I had some of my “pals” making remarks in the background inspired by some of Dubya’s funnier challenges with the language.

Then came this Obama guy. I heard him speak and said to myself, “You can retire “Strong People” forever now. This guy has some intelligence.”

But, alas, Barack has shown us he likes a good war as much as the next guy. So, while he said he was going to take our citizens out of Iraq because that was a bad war (bad, bad war), he was, at the same time, going to place them in Afghanistan, the good war (ah, you’re a good little war aren’t you?).

President Obama has kept the embers burning for the song I thought I’d have to retire, “Strong People”.

I took all the “funny” stuff out because, considering the intelligence nestled in the brain of Barack Obama, there’s nothing funny about his perpetuating The FUSA’s War Without End.

“What The President Say” is another song I aimed squarely at The Regime. It's also another song I can thank President Barack Obama for keeping alive - more than what I can say he's doing for people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

After all, we are The Former United States of America, a country which never met a war it didn’t like.

To friendship,
Michael

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” – Martin Luther King

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Enjoy:
What The President Say
Strong People (some “strong” lyrical content)

Democracy in the Workplace; A Corporate Nightmare

2010-01-26T15:15:00.000-08:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

I received this article entitled 20 Reasons Why The U.S. Economy Is Dying And Is Simply Not Going To Recover in my inbox and, before I knew who wrote it, I came to one of two conclusions.
First, its origin is The Libertarian Party or a libertarian type web site or publication.

Their solution:

1. Stop printing money and give money printing back to the US Treasury. This is something with which I agree and it would be one of the few things with which a libertarian thinking entity would trust the US government.

2. Stop taxing Americans and cut or obliterate all “entitlement” programs. “Entitlement” programs are mostly social safety nets. So, with the biggest employers in the FUSA (The Former United States of America), corporations, moving their jobs to countries where people will do the jobs for $2.50 an hour or less, more and more Americans are losing their jobs. Without social safety nets, unemployment will, and, as the article says, does continue to rise.

What do Libertarians/libertarians think should happen to unemployed people? I don’t really know. The only thing I can think of is that Libertarians/libertarians will warn us to watch where we walk as the unemployed will be lying on roads and sidewalks throughout The FUSA.

3. However, as Libertarians/libertarians are all about freedom, they would be loathe to infringe upon the freedom of corporations to move their jobs wherever they want to move them and hire whomever they want to hire for whatever the “market” will decide the wage should be. If you’re a corporation - after all, The Supreme Court recently verified that corporations are people, too - $2.50 sounds pretty damn good to you.

4. One thing the Libertarians/libertarians are really not strong with is patriotism.

My second conclusion is this was written by a Socialist or a socialist type web site or publication. I would hope it’s a democratic Socialist/socialist web site or publication. (A lot of them say they are until they take power).

Their solution:

1. Stop printing money and give money printing back to the US Treasury. This is something with which I agree and Socialists/socialists do not believe that government, by nature, is inefficient or evil.

2. Review the organizing movements of the late 19th century, early 20th century, like The Industrial Workers of the World (The Wobblies). Study events like the Bread and Roses Strike of Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912.

3. Understand that, if you work for Mr. Smith’s bakery or Mr. Jones’s candy store or Mr. Johnson’s hardware store, all places with less than 15 employees each, if you want any of their money in the form of a wage, you do what they tell you to do.

4. However, if you work for a large employer, like a global corporation, you’re not working for one particular person. In fact corporations are supposed to be democratically run entities, especially corporations which are publicly traded. They do what a majority of shareholders and upper management want to do. The only people who have been increasingly left out of this democracy since the early organizers spilled blood on their behalf are the workers.

Workers in the public sector are barely holding on to their union gained benefits and, as I read letters to the editor, more and more people are blaming them for the economic woes of their communities. Instead of whining about what the public sector workers are getting, these private sector sycophants should take a page out of the Wobblies’ book and fight for the same benefits. They should tell their corporate masters that, if corporations are democratically run entities, they want to be part of the democracy.

The trouble, of course, is that corporations, especially manufacturing corporations, conduct wage surveys which pit American workers against workers in Mexico, China, Vietnam and other so called third world countries. They will soon outright announce this fact to the American worker and the American worker will know that she is, unquestionably, in competition with people who are willing to work for $2.50 an hour or less.

Can you imagine what a Haitian would think he could do with $2.50 an hour?

This is where Socialism/socialism should step in and tell these huge entities, “If you’re actions hurt Americans in any way, you must cease to consider yourself an American based corporation. As such, you’ll stop receiving the benefits of American based corporations such as limited liability status. If you’re going to “benefit” foreign workers in lieu of benefitting American workers, you will not receive grants from the American government. You’ll be taxed at the highest level possible in our progressive tax system.”

Maybe, like Haliburton, all behemoth corporations will, indeed, cease being American based corporations and so called “mom and pop” operations can reestablish themselves as the heart of American commerce. Maybe local economies will grow and, consequently, will grow or at least stabilize the national economy. Maybe The FUSA will come to the logical conclusion that “growth” is not an inherent part of an economy. Avoiding poverty is more important than growth.

Oh, yeah, this was written by Ron Paul. You know the libertarian who’s afraid to leave The Republican Party and who wants to “freedom” all Americans out of jobs?

To friendship,
Michael

“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.” - George Bernard Shaw

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1984=2004? Our “Newly” Born Corporacracy

2010-01-24T15:21:00.000-08:00

(originally published by OpEdNews)

I consider myself a poet. Obviously there are some poetry publications, both online and in hard cover, who agree with me to some extent. I’ve had some of my poetry published and have even gotten small monetary stipends.

I’ve been writing poetry since 1964 and most of you have never heard of me. So, obviously, I spent my life working a so called “middle class” job within a middle class life story. I worked for a Fortune 500 multinational corporation for twenty-five years. After receiving bonus after bonus after bonus for exemplary work, I was “delayered” (Orwell was a genius) in 1997. This was three years before I could have officially retired and enjoyed the health benefits of an “official” retiree.

During my working years, I took a sabbatical from writing. In fact, I was treated so well, and deservedly so, by the corporation, that I lost touch with what was important in the world. Believe it or not, I was so disinterested in this “thing called NAFTA”, that I didn’t even know what it really was, let alone what it meant sociologically.

When I found I had some time on my hands, I began writing again. This may be more a critique of my writing than anything else, but, for me, when I found the right inspiration, writing poetry (and music) was like getting right back on the horse or bike after taking a spill. I didn’t seem to notice the huge gap.

I was a disgruntled ex-employee, but, after I left the corporation, I became aware of a crime which it had committed. I tried to pass this on to the local newspapers both in Connecticut, where I was raised and born (not necessarily in that order) and in California, where I moved in 2001. I started this paragraph by saying I was a disgruntled ex-employee and that’s exactly how the newspapers accepted my “gossip”. Unfortunately for them and for citizens in a specific part of the nation, they missed out on breaking what would have been a huge story about a corporation, who, in cahoots with Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection, covered up a crime of significant importance. Criminals-1, the rest of us-0.

As reporting that crime got me nowhere, I turned to the internet to find forums which focused on writing and, more specifically, poetry.

The first community I found was a wonderful place called the Arcanum Café. What I learned at AC augmented what I already knew about writing and poetry. The people were, and still are, talented and helpful.

Most of the forums dealt with different subject matter to which poems were posted. However, there were a couple of forums that didn’t concentrate as much on poetry.

There was a Short Story forum in which people could obviously post their attempts at writing short stories.

There was also the inevitable Open Discussion forum. I became more involved in this forum as time went on. A lot of the posting to the Open Discussion forum was political and it helped me catch up on what I didn’t pay much attention to for twenty-five years. I became outspoken and even touched off some fairly heated debates.

It was in the AC Open Discussion forum that I first used the word Corporacracy, a word that, at the time, I thought that I’d coined. I found later on that Ralph Nader and others had been using the word for many years. So much for ingenuity.

The web master of another poetry site called Studio Eight seemed to enjoy my Open Discussion rants enough to offer me my own forum. She named it Open Mike – Soundoff. At this point, I’d rather have not been referred to as Mike. I like Michael much more these days. But Open Michael – Soundoff just didn’t make much sense.

Let me be clear. I didn’t begin to see that The Former United States of America was basically being governed by huge multination corporations when I was “delayered” in 1997. That epiphany was not part of my being a disgruntled ex-employee. It became obvious to me over time.

One only need to ask, “Why would a president stand before the nation blaming Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for the tragedy of September 11, 2001 and then, almost on a dime, turn around and say that the most import thing that this country had to do was to invade Iraq?”

One could also question how a man like Bill Clinton could run a presidential campaign all but promising to be the next FDR and then sign a bill like NAFTA (I’d learned what NAFTA was and what its consequences would be by this time).

I took a surf down memory lane last night and found the following which I had posted to my Open Mike forum in 2004:

You’ll see the word “corporacracy” in a lot of my posts. As I’ve never seen this word, I’m under the impression that I coined it.

I’ve created a dictionary type of definition for the word (I actually added it to my MS Word personal dictionary so that it isn’t underlined in red when I use it).

Corporacracy (co-por-AC-racy)
n. pl. co•por•ac-racies
A word combining "corporation" and "aristocracy".
Government by CEOs and top executives of global corporations.
Global corporations, considered the primary source of political power.
Wealth rules
The principles of gross financial inequality and fear of global corporations.
The reason the top 5% of the population control over 40% of the wealth.
A government that, by blatant disregard for humanity and the environment, is causing the American "middle class" to shrink, fading into an almost poverty level existence. They do this by taking advantage of the "middle class’s" apathy and its addiction to fossil fuels.
A government that buys figure head leaders, known as "presidents". These "leaders" are called Republicans and Democrats. Members of the shrinking "middle class" still embrace a fantasy which leads them to write editorial letters debating the differences between the two "parties". They are still under the false impression that there are only two "political" parties existing in the US.
The Corporacracy controls colonies in North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Central and South America, Asia, Africa and Australia. Its sole rule of governance is to create money which creates more money.
We have ceased to be a democracy. Global corporations have turned the entire world into a Corporacracy.

The US has the highest CEO to worker income ratio in the world. The ratio is over 475 to 1.

Have we gone too far? Is this still just plain old free enterprise, fair capitalism or is it becoming more like Bourgeoisie vs. Proletariat.

What perpetuates this situation is that we "elect" presidents and legislators, Democrats, Republicans, it doesn't matter, who owe The Corporacracy big time for the $$$$ they received during the so called election campaigns. So, our vote doesn't count because we are not voting for the liar who is running, we are voting for the special interests to which they are bound.

Again, have we gone too far? Can you still call what is happening free enterprise/capitalism or is it just plain greed? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot for a select few? And, if so, how do we get the word to the American people that the Democratic and Republican parties are owned by The Corporacracy? And, if we get them to understand that, how do we, the working class, change it?

By ignoring the Democrats and Republicans in 2008, if not sooner!

A few nights ago, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina told Keith Olbermann that he’d begun to use the word “corpocray” after the recent Supreme Court give away of our democracy. He told Olbermann that it’s a word one wouldn’t find in a dictionary, but, if one googled it, one would get a lot of hits.

Well, if one googles “corpocracy” or even corporacracy, one will be asked if the intended word is corporotacracy. Corporatocracy, I believe, may have even been used by Mussolini in describing the fascist state he envisioned for Italy.

It’s true that corporacracy, a word I began to use and will continue to use, “corpocracy” or corporotacracy won’t be found in a dictionary.

Earlier in this article, I mentioned, parenthetically, that Orwell was a genius. This is a characteristic which I’m certain that the aforementioned Eric Arthur Blair and I do not have in common. However, as I read my 2004 post, I couldn’t help wishing that, instead of writing for a small and obscure poetry message board at the time, I was writing oped pieces for The New York Times or The Washington Post. It would have been easier to answer the question “…how do we get the word to the American people that the Democratic and Republican parties are owned by The Corporacracy? And, if we get them to understand that, how do we, the working class, change it?”

If more people were aware of The Corporacracy in 2004, would The Supreme Court have made such an egregious decision on Thursday, January 21, 2010?

By the way, I voted for a Democrat in 2008. This is either akin to the definition of irony or the definition of insanity. I’ll let you decide that.

To friendship,
Michael

“Lies can only be effective if people believe them.” – Michael Bonanno

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Flowers (Painted On The Wall)

2010-01-23T10:16:00.000-08:00

Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County Launches Move to Amend The Constitution;
Interview with David Cobb Helps to Explain Move
(originally published at OpEdNews)

In 2006, Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County in Northern California wrote the first draft of legislation designed to ban non-local corporations’ involvement in local elections. The target of the involvement was financial contributions. In a historic vote, the residents of Humboldt County passed the measure.

DUHC then became an educational organization. It has created programs and facilitated workshops intended to help other localities free themselves of corporate interference of local elections.

Thursday, The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the efforts and accomplishments of DUHC.

Once the Supreme Court’s decision to give unlimited campaign contribution rights to corporations became official, DUHC launched a move to amend the Constitution to negate the court’s decision.

DUHC released the following statement after the decision was announced:

Yet again the U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the ruling elite against the interests of the American people. Today in Citizens United vs. FEC they overturned the flimsy federal campaign finance reform laws afforded by the McCain-Feingold law. Corporations can now to spend unlimited money in buying our elections. The Court has legalized corporate bribery of our elected officials.

So if you were already disgusted by the fact that over $5 billion dollars was spent in the 2008 election, watch out. Because the floodgates are now wide open!

And once again, the Court relied on the illegitimate legal doctrine of "Corporate Personhood" in order to justify this profoundly undemocratic decision.

Corporate personhood is the notion that a corporation can claim to be a person, and therefore entitled to basic human rights also described as political and civil rights and have courts overturn laws.

As this decision clearly demonstrates, corporate personhood is not an inconsequential legal technicality. Consider this-- the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation was a “legal person” with 14th Amendment protections before they granted full personhood to African-Americans, immigrants, natives, and women.

And literally hundreds of laws perhaps thousands of local, state and federal laws that attempt to protect our environment, our elections, our safety and health, our right to organize have been overturned as a result of this erroneous doctrine.

The world is being destroyed, the federal government is engaged in unending war, and we live in an unjust, unsustainable and undemocratic country.

It’s time to take ourselves seriously-- both about what is at stake and what it will require to actually assume and democratically exercise real power. We must address the reality that the federal courts have made real democracy impossible.

It’s time to follow the lead of the American Revolutionaries, the abolitionists, the suffragists, the trade unionists, and the Civil Rights activists and to build a broad-based, multi-partisan democracy movement in the United States.

It’s time to amend the U.S. Constitution to make it clear that only human beings can claim to be persons with constitutional rights.

Are you with us?

1) Go to the website http://www.movetoamend.org/ to announce that you are joining the growing national movement.

2) Contact us at Democracy Unlimited at 707-269-0984 to organize locally to make the promise of democracy a reality!

Move to Amend is a project of the Campaign to Legalize Democracy,
a new coalition coordinated by:
After Downing Street
Alliance for Democracy
Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County (DUHC)
Center for Media and Democracy
Independent Progressive Politics Network
Liberty Tree Foundation
Program on Corporations Law and Democracy (POCLAD)
Progressive Democrats of America
Reclaim Democracy
Ultimate Civics
Velvet Revolution
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
. . . and growing . . .

David Cobb, the 2004 Green Party candidate for president, is a volunteer member of the DUHC Steering Committee. I spoke with David Friday morning concerning the high court’s decision and about the MoveToAmend’s goals.

MB: Representative Alan Grayson of Florida told Keith Olbermann yesterday that he’s already proposed five pieces of legislation to combat the court’s ruling legislatively.

Do you have any faith in a legislative response to the court’s decision?

DC: Of course I support any and all efforts to improve the country through the legislative process, through campaign finance; I support publicly financed elections; I support efforts to require any corporate contributions to get a majority of shareholders; I support campaign limits; I support a number of legislative efforts to make elections more democratic, more fair. But at the end of the day, those legislative efforts aren’t going to reach the core of the problem, which is the fact that the social, political and legal system is profoundly undemocratic. And that’s the reason that the campaign to legalize democracy is trying to build a movement that will be commiserate with the level of the problem. That’s not to say that I don’t support the legislative efforts of progressives in Congress.

MB: Following up on that, it’s my impression that the floodgates have opened for corporations to not accept any rulings by lower courts and to bring all rulings to The Supreme Court, at which time The Supreme Court will have no other option other than to side with the corporations as it did yesterday.

Even legislation might be challenged.

DC: Legislation will be challenged. That’s always been the case.

Many of us have been working in the trenches trying to organize, agitate and educate people about the problems at the core level. So, forgive me if I’m not surprised or outraged about The Supreme Court decision. It was inevitable.

So, yes, we should engage in legislative response. We should have candidates running for office on a platform calling for real democracy and calling to challenge the legal doctrine.

But it’s always been the case. There are thousands of laws at the local, state and federal levels that courts have overturned in the last hundred years. When Democrats were in the White House and had control of Congress. When Democrats were sitting at The Supreme Court.

My frame on this decision is not that it is merely a travesty for campaign finance laws. It goes deeper. It is another indication, glaring and specific, of how undemocratic our country is because a law that people care about was overturned.

It’s a profoundly jinxed ruling because it goes to the heart of elections and elections are the infrastructure of how a democratic republic ought to operate.

MB: How did the idea to outlaw corporate personhood develop?

DC: A community organizing group called Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County spent ten years organizing and educating the community specifically about corporate power, which includes corporate personhood. It also includes the whole enchilada, as it were.

MB: I noticed that the words “although they are not people” were included in the majority decision. Is that significant in any way?

DC: They say that they are not living, breathing entities, but they are affording corporations constitutional rights and understand that, if you have a constitutional right, it means that, because of your status as a person, a human being, the majority, through its normal operating purposes cannot infringe upon your core rights and I support that. And so do you and so do all Americans – that the majority should not be able to infringe upon the constitutional rights of others. There is a role for the courts to play if the tyranny of the majority somehow suppresses a minority.

But, to say that corporations have any constitutional rights at all is a perversion of that doctrine.

MB: Do you think that the majority made that statement intentionally?

DC: Of course. There is a growing movement of outraged citizens that is howling at the doctrine of corporate personhood. Frankly, I’m proud to be one of the core people who have helped to set that frame ten years in the making. We’re going to continue to use the frame because it’s a valuable frame.

Corporations are not persons. They should not have constitutional rights. Constitutional protections should only protect people.

Remember this. I’m not saying that corporations don’t have legal rights. I’m saying that those legal rights can only properly come about through the political process. Corporations are creatures of state law and, therefore, the state has the authority and responsibility to say what the rights of a corporation are.

Human beings are not creatures of state law. Human beings are persons with inalienable rights and those rights are codified, acknowledged and recognized in the Constitution. That principle is something that liberals, conservatives and A-political people all understand and know at the very gut level. That’s why corporate personhood is an abomination and it’s why we’re organizing using that frame.

MB: You are proposing an amendment to the Constitution that states that corporations are not people. Is that not right?

DC: We are proposing an amendment which states that corporations are not persons and, therefore, cannot claim any constitutional rights.

So the fact that the court asserted that corporations are not people misses the point and doesn’t address anything.

Our amendment, when it passes, will, in fact, be ironclad because it will allow local, state and federal governments pass laws with confidence because they cannot be overturned by corporations. It will put the political question of economics squarely where it belongs, in the political landscape, in the political debate.

MB: What kind of support do you have on the national level at this point? Is it too early to tell? I know you’ve been working on this for a long time.

DC: Let me just be clear. I’ve actually been working on corporate power as a movement for a long time. And trying to think about constitutional corporate rights and the entire framework of the law and political and economic system.

Ten years ago, the idea of amending the Constitution as a tactic for movement building was discussed and I didn’t think it was worthwhile. It comes up constantly.

The reality is that in the last year, maybe two years ago – in the last six to nine months, the conditions have become rife. Between a Democrat in the White House who is just absolutely flaunting the desires of the progressives who elected him. Anti war sentiment is at its height, yet bombs drop. People want healthcare and an insurance boondoggle is being shoved down our throats. And there is a trillion dollar bailout to Wall Street and banksters that both Democrats and Republicans passed.

So there’s a seething populist outrage over this. Frankly, the tea party people reflect that and there’s much of their anger that I share.

I’m very concerned about the strain of racism and anti-immigrant phobia that is underlying it. So we need progressives to mobilize in response to that.

This moment in time is calling for the tactic of a constitutional amendment, but, for me, it’s much bigger than merely amending the Constitution.

I know most people may say, “What do you mean, merely amending the Constitution?” because most people don’t think in those terms.

MB: You must have been reading my mind because I was going to ask you about the tea partiers or teabaggers or whatever one wishes to call them. Quite frankly, this decision by The Supreme Court is going to affect all of us, liberals, conservatives and independents.

Is there some way that the tea party movement and the left, who are both attacking Obama and his administration, could put aside their differences – and, of course, racism is a big, big issue, so it might be difficult. Do you see some way that the left and the right can look at The Supreme Court decision and see it for the abomination that it is and work together?

DC: Yes. We are reaching out to principled conservatives at the MoveToAmend web site. We actually have people who have signed up and, in their signups, have self described as tea party people. Yes, we are reaching out to them. Yes, we have common cause.

MB: We talked about support. Do you see more people becoming interested in corporate personhood? Have you seen anything overnight?

DC: We launched the web site and, within ten hours, we had ten thousand people. I’ve never experienced that in my entire history of organizing. Without a doubt, people are outraged. Without a doubt, the meme of corporate personhood is catching on. Without a doubt, people are reacting to it.

MB: Is the decision by The Supreme Court a decision that will take precedent over local policies?

DC: Yes, that’s always been the case. Our law got overturned by federal courts because the courts said we were infringing upon the constitutional rights of corporations. And that’s my point, Michael. The use of that doctrine happens thousands of times and it has happened so much that we the people and our elected representatives have been cowed. There’s been a “chilling effect”, if you will, on what people actually think that they’re allowed to do.

The most frustrating thing for me when we started Measure T as a local law back in 2005 is the number of liberals that I talked to in the early stages of planning and thinking and strategizing who said, “Gosh, I support this. I wish we could do it but do we have the right to do it?”

Literally, people tend to think that they have to have permission from the courts before they do what they believe needs to be done. That kind of thinking is the reason that liberals are so pathetic and anemic.

Give me populist outrage any day which is willing to rail and organize against entrenched power.

Frankly, that’s the reason why I spend most of my time either with committed, systemic radicals or ordinary people who are out of working class backgrounds.

The liberals will come along, but they’re not going to lead this.

MB: Systemic radicals. Would you be talking about groups like the Democratic Underground movements of the sixties?

DC: I’d be talking about the Democratic Underground, I’d be talking about the Progressive Democrats of America, I’d be talking about the Green Party and I’d be talking about organizations like The Alliance for Democracy and the Program on Corporation Laws and Democracy and The Liberty Tree.

There are so many examples of constellations of groups that are kind of forming and coming together.

The problem is the Democratic Party leadership has sold out these people just as surely as the Republican Party leadership has sold out people. And that’s a problem.

MB: Have you heard anything from the Students for a Democratic Society?

DC: Yes, we’re engaged and involved with them.

MB: So, this is not like legislative laws that are passed like local marijuana laws or medical marijuana laws which can be transcended by federal laws, if the feds want to go in and do it, although it seems like they don’t want to do it anymore.

DC: Actually medical marijuana is a perfect example. I would say that medical marijuana is indicating a crisis of jurisdiction. Who has the authority to make decisions when it comes to safety, health and welfare? Local communities, state government or the feds?

I, personally, don’t smoke marijuana. I am a supporter of the use of medical marijuana.

I absolutely believe that the federal government does not have the authority to attempt to overturn a state initiative process when the people of California have made a decision in relation to the safety, health and welfare of its citizens.

You know, Michael, in a democracy, we the people are supposed to be the government.

Democracy, broken down, demos kratia. Demos-the people. Kratia-rules. We the people rule. We are the government.

So, when the federal infrastructure tries to impose its will on state governments, that is always suspicious. The only time it would be appropriate is if there was a legitimate argument that people’s constitutional rights were being violated by the legislative process. This is not the case in medical marijuana.

Frankly, if one state wants to make marijuana completely legal, that’s their right to do. If another state decides, through the political process, that they’re going to criminalize marijuana, that’s the people’s right to do.

MB: There’s an adage that The Supreme Court isn’t final because it’s infallible. It’s infallible because it’s final. Could you speak to that adage?

DC: The Supreme Court has been profoundly wrong on many occasions. The Supreme Court upheld slavery. The Supreme Court upheld laws that forbid women to vote. The Supreme Court upheld laws that criminalized trade unions as a criminal conspiracy. The Supreme Court upheld laws of Jim Crowe segregation. The Supreme Court has been wrong and profoundly wrong throughout history.

The Supreme Court is profoundly wrong about granting corporations constitutional rights. When they are wrong, it is up to we the people to organize, to change the culture and to ultimately change the constitutional framework in order to demonstrate that’s how wrong they are. The Supreme Court is not the final say. We the people are the final say.

MB: You’ve mentioned democracy quite a few times. Of course, there’s a difference between direct democracy and democratic republicanism or republican democracy.

DC: Right, we’re a democratic republic.

MB: We the people rule by electing our representatives. And in the senate, that’s relatively recent. What would you say to people who say, “No, we’re not a democracy, stop saying that.”

DC: I’d tell them, “Yes you’re correct. We’re not a direct democracy. We are a democratic republic.”

But the question is do you believe that unelected and unaccountable judges or corporate CEOs or kings should rule us or do you think that we should rule ourselves?

That’s really the issue.

We are a democratic republic. We’re a country of laws and we need to take that seriously.

MB: Would Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County be willing to move toward direct democracy? Would they be willing to move in that direction?

DC: Absolutely. Core human rights cannot be violated, even by the will of the majority.

MB: We’re still going to have elections, but, if we don’t do something about The Supreme Court’s decision, they’ll be totally meaningless.

DC: They already are.

MB: Who knows how credible or disingenuous people like Obama are during the campaign? However, it took him $700 million to become president. So he either learned that he wasn’t going to be able to drive his own agenda before he was even elected or, like Clinton, money sat him down after he was elected.

So, the question is are we electing our representatives or are we electing people to fill slots, who aren’t going to represent us, but are going to represent the money that either got them there or that can keep them there?

DC: If you are voting for an establishment party candidate, you are participating in a sham. That’s my opinion.

You need to vote for people who actually stand for something and who are supporting the values that you believe in.

I feel sorry, actually, for the progressives who mobilized for Obama believing that there was going to be change.

I’ll be candid. I am not disappointed by Obama because Obama is doing what he said he was going to do and what I thought he would do.

MB: Dave, I know that you’re busy and I appreciate you’re giving us some time. Good luck.

DC: Thank you.

To friendship,
Michael

“A man who enjoys responsibility usually gets it. A man who merely likes exercising authority usually loses it.” - Malcolm Stevenson Forbes

World Conditions and Action Items
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Without You I’m No One

More Disaster Opportunism by True American Patriots

2010-01-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

(originally published OpEdNews)

In her book, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE; THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM, Naomi Klein follows the road of exploitation capitalism which started in the 1970s when the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet was inspired by the economic theories of University of Chicago professor Milton Freidman. Freidman’s theory blames government spending for the economic woes of nations which face domestic political unrest and/or the aftermath of natural disasters. His theory went (and still goes) on to say that the government should not fund anything and that the “free market” should show up as soon as possible wherever disaster strikes in order to privatize all aspects of rebuilding and, later, managing the area in question.

Klein does this by utilizing a chronological series of events which give certain areas in need of financial aid no choice but to turn to the US backed WTO, IMF, World Bank and USAID to loan them money to rebuild.

According to Klein, global corporations circle poor countries like so many vultures, hoping for a disaster. The human toll of any disaster is irrelevant to the birds of prey. The only thing that’s relevant to global corporations is that citizens of the area are displaced, much of their belongings are destroyed and there’s an opportunity to rebuild the area in their image.

The Corporacracy isn’t planning to control the world, it is presently controlling it through the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF and, most intricately, through global corporations. Wealthy people, international banks, in essence, loan money to poor nations to help those nations improve their financial and economic standing in the world.

The loans, however, are accompanied by a plethora of caveats that are mostly concerned with the borrowing nations’ internal social policies. Consequently, the borrowers promise to work with multinational corporations to fix their internal infrastructure and economic systems. If the downtrodden nations don’t agree to these caveats, they don’t receive the loans.

If the borrowing nations even think about socializing any civil services, they can forget about getting a loan or expect a very costly default on the loan they’ve already received. The CIA more than likely serves as a collection agency. Defaults result in more than broken legs. The threat of regime change is very likely used as an incentive to keep the borrowers in compliance with the terms of the loans.

Enter the January 12 earthquake in Haiti. The fact that Haiti is a poor nation with an unstable political and economic system has been repeated ad nauseam since the 12th.

Will this happen in Haiti? As has been mentioned frequently, Haitians pretty much had nothing before the earthquake and their goal was to survive each day. They probably do not have the strength nor the will to protest any takeover of their devastated country by global corporations, most of them American and investments made by wealthy foreigners, most of them American.

As with Chile in the 70s, South Africa and Poland in the 1980s, the well planned invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the areas overcome by the Tsunami in 2004, Haiti must look like yet another opportunity to the “free market” Freidmanites of University of Chicago fame.

Luckily for the free trade crowd, people are already displaced and what a gold mine that Caribbean shoreline must look like to them now.

USAID is heading up the disaster relief for Haiti. This is the same USAID which funded investment schemes when given the chance by previous disaster opportunities.

Will the most egregious free trade nation in the world, The United States, use the opportunity presented by the earthquake to clean up Haiti, install a puppet government that wants a cut of the private sector success and hire Haitians to work for little or no money in keeping their investments stable?

If what always seems to happen to a poor country, a country that’s obviously in debt due to this kind of disaster happens to Haiti, it will receive help from the World Bank, the WTO, the IMF and USAID as long as the puppet government that the corporations install agrees to open their borders to global corporations and free trade rules. This will make more corporations’ CEOs and top executives even wealthier than they already are, which, for me, at least, is incomprehensible. At the same time, it will doing nothing for Haiti’s “main street” economy.

Haitians will receive one tuxedo from their American employers, leave their barely livable shacks and show up for work at corporate owned vacation villas made for CEOs and top executives of global corporations. There will be plenty of employment because the wage that the mostly American based corporations will pay the Haitians will allow the corporations to hire a multitude of employees. The wealthy will then have Haiti as yet another rebuilt paradise to which to travel, rest and relax while being pampered by survivors of the earthquake who will be slave labor for all practical intents and purposes.

Somewhere in our minds, especially if we’ve read Klein’s book, we can hear the Corporatists shouting, “Get those bodies and that rubble out of the way! We’ve got another paradise to build for the wealthy!”

The moisture you feel is the drool oozing from the ubiquitous mouth of The Corporacracy.

To friendship,
Michael

“The ultimate most holy form of theory is action.” - Nikos Kazantzakis

World Conditions and Action Items
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What Are You Doing

Bring Back the Signing Statement

2010-01-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

Below is an article by David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of DAYBREAK; UNDOING THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY AND FORMING A MORE PERFECT UNION.

I’ve read the book and it is largely about Dubya’s abuse of the signing statement.

So, this may seem somewhat contradictory at first, but you’ll see that Swanson has caught the latest neocon, Barack Obama, breaking laws in new and creative ways.

To friendship,
Michael

“The impossible is often the untried.” - John Goodwin

World Conditions and Action Items
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What Are You Doing

Bring Back the Signing Statement
(http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/49132)
By David Swanson

Having denounced for years the presidential practice of altering laws with signing statements, I now want the practice restored, because the current president has created something even worse.

When Bush and Cheney left the White House, they left in place five general ways to make laws: instruct Congress what to do, rewrite what Congress does with a signing statement, by-pass Congress with an executive order (or executive decree, or unratified treaty), by-pass everybody with a secret memo from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), and simply create illegal practices without any justification.

Arguably, I have listed these approaches in order from closest to furthest from the Constitution. I have omitted, of course, the creation of laws by the courts, as well as the selective enforcement of laws by the Justice Department, the pardon, and the grant of retroactive immunity.

I could not include the creation of laws by the legislative branch, since that doesn't happen very much anymore (although it remains a possibility should the Congress and the White House belong to different political parties). At best, Congress writes a law at the careful instruction of the president, reversing the appropriate relationship between legislators and an executive. Once a law is created by Congress, it can be altered with a signing statement, a practice Bush engaged in with great frequency and Obama used in the same manner, but less frequently, for the first five months of his presidency, after having campaigned against it.

It would be reassuring to imagine that once a law, or a portion of a law, makes it onto the books without being signing statemented, it is then safely and securely a law. Alas, this is not the case. The president can ask the OLC to write a memo, publicly or in secret, declaring blatant violation of a law to be legal. Or a president can simply violate the law without a word of justification. It is to these two alternatives that President Obama began resorting just as his use of signing statements began to face objections from Congress and the public. From day one he also made laws with executive orders.

Obama has created a modified version of the simply-commit-crimes approach by arguing that he can silently rely on previous signing statements by himself or Bush without repeating anything in a new signing statement. This means that the series of events runs as follows: Congress passes a law; the president undoes it with a signing statement; Congress passes the same law again; the president silently considers the law meaningless; Congress erroneously assumes the new law is law.

But, what happens if Congress passes a law and no previous signing statement or other decree has dealt with it. What can a president do (other than veto the bill or sign and obey it)? Obama has chosen to ask the OLC to write memos. Remember, this is the same office that claimed the power to legalize aggressive wars and torture in secret memos that were (are) treated as law. President Obama has publicly forbidden the prosecution of these crimes, and has kept the Justice Department's own report on the matter secret for another year.

Obama has created other new techniques as well, such as undoing our laws banning torture by declaring his own ability to ban, and therefore un-ban, torture. Meanwhile he's forbidden the prosecution for torture of anyone in the federal government except those who may have strayed from the sadistic formulae of the secret memos, thereby strengthening their importance. He's also perfected the approach of announcing one's illegal powers in important speeches, including claiming the power to launch illegal wars in a Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, and tossing out habeas corpus in front of the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives.

But, at least in these cases, the president is offering an announcement to the public for those who care to listen. That purpose was served by signing statements from the moment Charlie Savage called attention to their use by Bush in the Boston Globe to the moment Obama ceased using them. Savage's latest article in the New York Times explains Obama's current practices:

"The Obama administration is lowering the volume in a long-running argument between Congress and the executive branch over when, if ever, a president has the power to bypass federal statutes he has signed into law. . . . The approach will make it harder to keep track of which statutes the White House believes it can disregard, or to compare the number of laws challenged by President Obama with former President George W. Bush’s record. . . .

"[T]he administration will consider itself free to disregard new laws it considers unconstitutional, especially in cases where it has previously voiced objections elsewhere, officials said. . . .

"The administration's views about certain provisions in the omnibus spending bill had previously been publicly communicated,' said Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, 'so it wasn’t necessary to duplicate them in a signing statement.' . . .

"Representative Barney Frank . . . said it was "outrageous" to contend that if Congress disagreed with the administration's opinion that a provision would be unconstitutional, the president could sign the bill and disobey it. . . .

"When Mr. Bush signed one such bill, he issued a signing statement instructing officials to view the law as merely advisory, and they attended at least one such meeting on his watch. By contrast, when Mr. Obama signed another bill with an identical provision, he did not specifically single it out for challenge. But his administration later obtained an Office of Legal Counsel opinion pronouncing it unconstitutional, and officials continued to attend such meetings.

"Unlike signing statements, opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel are often secret. Mr. Goldsmith said the administration's approach of issuing fewer signing statements would mean 'somewhat less accountability.'"

Now, I don't want the signing-statement back because I want Obama to use it to create policy. (There are comments on progressive websites asking Obama to create better healthcare with a signing statement, as if Obama has any interest in doing that, and as if the next president couldn't just throw it out.) I want the signing statement back, because presidential criminality without the signing statement has become worse. As with escalated wars and exaggerated claims of "state secrets", Obama has found a way to out-do Bush and Cheney.

And how can Congress respond? The Constitution already requires that presidents abide by the Constitution. No specific reform seems to meet the need here, and any specific reform could be undone or violated.

There must be something we are forgetting. What could it be?

The answer, of course, lies in the very definition of the House of Representatives in the Constitution, and in the procedure discussed more often than any other in the Constitution: impeachment. Along with impeachment goes the power of inherent contempt -- that is to say, the power of any congressional committee to use the Capitol Police to enforce its subpoenas. If nobody of, or formerly of, the executive branch can be impeached or subpoenaed, Congress has no power. If someone like Jay Bybee were impeached, or such a thing were even threatened, Congress would gain power. If Congress had power, it could make laws.

And why should we care? Isn't Congress, or at least the 41 Senators who rule it, just about as corrupt and sold-out and media-whipped as a president? Well, just about, but not quite. And to accomplish many important acts of oversight and the defeating of bad legislation, we only need the House, not the Senate. If we clean out the money, fix the media, disempower the parties, and make the elections verifiable, or any of the above, the fact will remain unaltered that our best chance at having any say in our government will be found in Congress. But we will not have that say without an honest, independent, organized movement free of partisan loyalty, presidentialism, and apologies for dictatorship.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.

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Our Goal For 2010; Disprove Corporate Personhood

2010-01-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

There are so many reasons why the primary goal of 2010 for all who “want to take their country back”, with the exception of racists, is to obliterate the myth of corporate personhood. This goal should be the top priority in 2010 for liberals and conservatives alike. This goal should be the top priority for those who want to elect the best candidate to any office, but realize that candidate can’t even run for office because that candidate doesn’t have and can’t raise the money to buy the office.

The Real Beginning of Fascism?

If the word fascism would have been used at the time of the American Revolution, it could very well have been used in reference to the actions of King George III as he was utilizing corporations such as the East India Company to literally fight his fights for him.

In fact, after its chartering by Queen Elizabeth of England in 1600, The East India Company became the “owner and ruler” of The Commonwealth of Virginia. Thus, as one of the definitions of fascism used in today’s world is the partnership between the government and the corporate world in ruling a state or nation, Virginia’s rule by the East India Company obviously qualifies as fascist rule. Before the end of The American Revolution, Maryland and North and South Carolina had been taken over and governed by corporations.

The American Revolution, although initiated by an elite group of White men, was fought by so called “commoners” against the Crown of England. It’s no wonder, however, that neither the elite who instigated the revolution nor the commoners who fought it detested the idea of unregulated multinational corporations. They’d seen first hand the damage and oppression that kind of power in the hands of the “private sector”, backed, of course, by the government, can wield.

Regulation Was Supported by Early Americans

Following the Revolution, Americans were diligent when allowing the existence of corporations in The United States. Corporations had to be chartered by the elected representatives of the local communities in which they planned to set up shop. The charters were strict and saw to it that no harm would come to those localities. The legislatures who chartered the corporations had the right to revoke the charters and shut down a corporation if it violated any part of the charter.

The Myth of Corporate Personhood

Myth has it that, in the 1886 Supreme Court Case of Santa Clara County v The Southern Pacific Railroad, corporations were granted the same protections based upon The Bill of Rights that natural human beings possess. Subsequent court cases have based decisions favorable to corporations upon this myth.

The truth is that the clerk of the court, J. C. Bancroft Davis, a former railroad board president, wrote “Corporations are persons” in the headnotes of the case.

Ironically, the case had nothing at all to do with whether or not corporations were persons. Furthermore, headnotes do not carry the weight of the law and are not part of the decision.

Yet, as mentioned, court cases that followed Santa Clara County v. The Southern Pacific
Railroad have been decided upon as if the 1886 case legally gave personhood to corporations.

There are many court cases which have protected corporations as though they were natural human beings. The following are three examples.

The first example is First National Bank of Boston v Bellotti, 1978. In this case, the court found that political donations by corporations are protected by the first amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees “people” free speech. It claimed, in essence, that money is speech. Obviously, some “people” are able to speak louder than others.

Two court cases protected corporations based upon their “rights” as stated in the fourth amendment to the Constitution.

In 1906, the court case Hale v Henkel decided in favor of corporations not having to present documentation showing whether they are or are not violating US Antitrust Laws.

In the 1978 case Marshall v Barlow’s Inc. it was decided that a surprise inspection by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration violated the fourth amendment rights of corporations. It was decided that surprise inspections were “unreasonable searches”. Not only did the decision marginalize worker safety by denying OSHA the right to inspect a workplace for safe working conditions, but a chemical plant cannot be inspected without warning to ensure that it’s not blatantly polluting. Do you live anywhere near a chemical plant? Think about it.

With the stroke of a pen, corporations didn’t gain personhood, yet began to be treated by US courts as if they had.

What Opportunity did Corporations use to Pursue Personhood?

Following the Civil War, people of African descent were no longer allowed to be owned by Whites in any part of the US. Congress decided that, to solidify this law, an amendment to the Constitution was needed. That amendment was the fourteenth amendment and was passed and ratified in 1868.

Section 1. of Amendment XIV reads as follows: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Freedom would do those of African descent no good if they were not protected under the laws of The United States as full-fledged citizens. The fourteenth amendment was ratified to ensure that everyone in every state in the US realized that people of color were citizens of The United States of America and possessed all of the rights identified in the Constitution of The United States.

How Easily Was the Fourteenth Amendment Implemented?

That depended upon who or what you were.

Ironically, the fourteenth amendment did not recognize women as equal citizens as they had to wait until 1920 to gain the right to vote.

Inasmuch as the fourteenth amendment was for the benefit of the newly freed slaves, people of African descent had to spend almost 100 years after its ratification fighting and dying to actually realize the benefits of that amendment. It wasn’t until President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law that people of color began to enjoy the benefits of the fourteenth amendment.

On the other hand, corporations had to wait a mere 16 years after the fourteenth amendment was signed into law to be considered “persons” with all of the rights granted by the Constitution. Adding insult to injury, no law was ever passed and no court decision ever handed down which specifically granted personhood to corporations, entities which are not only not persons, but which, but for the grace of real persons, wouldn’t even exist.

What the People Got

In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, workers in the US, especially immigrants who came to the US for a better life, fought and many actually died in attempts to organize against draconian working conditions placed upon them by American corporations and businesses.

These people fought for and gained the eight hour work day, the forty hour work week, a reasonable amount of time away from work, including vacation time and compensation for sick time. They also rid the US of the scourge of child labor. These were the early unions and, if not for their persistence and outright courage, those of us working today would not have the benefits we have today, whether our workplace is unionized or not.

However, despite all of the blood spilled in order to gain fairness for the American worker, the stronger the corporate person has become, the weaker the human worker’s rights have become. Today, there is a backlash against unions which protect workers and, unbelievably, much of the attack comes from middle class workers who happen to work in non-union environments. Many letters to the editor lambast federal, state, county, city and/or town workers for the benefits they receive as well as the pay they receive. Instead of displaying the courage shown by the early organizers and pursuing what is rightfully theirs as workers, many people, again many who belong to the disappearing middle class, want no workers to have the benefits that were painfully gained. The workers, especially in the private sector and even more especially who are employed by multinational corporations, are seeing their pay and benefits dwindle, not to mention their jobs disappear They respond to their losses by castigating those workers who’ve fought to hold on to the benefits gained long ago rather than to fight for the same benefits.

They are afraid that, if they attempt to organize, they’ll lose their jobs. They don’t have the presence of mind to realize that, if they don’t organize, the corporation can shut them out at any time without notice so that those at the top of the corporation can increase their wealth. And as it stands now, a worker who’s been wronged can take the corporation to court. However, as the corporation will be viewed as a person as much as the actual human worker who’s been wronged will be viewed as a person, the corporation will claim in its defense that it’s been wronged and, unlike the human worker, the corporation will be represented by the finest, most expensive law firm it can hire.

What People Gained and Where They are Today: An Example

The following is true. This truth was imparted by a person who works for a huge, multinational corporation. The person, who depends upon the corporation not only for a wage, but also for help toward healthcare, has asked not to be identified.

So that, in the unlikely event that a top manager of the corporation might read this article, the corporation will also not be identified. This is not to protect the heartless corporation, but to ensure that the identity of the worker is not discovered.

The operation requires that the workplace runs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Consequently, the worker works a rotating shift. The shift consists of a four person rotation; that is, four people do the same job. One person is always off and the other three are working except on the weekend where two people work twelve hour shifts and two people are off.

When someone either takes vacation or calls in sick, someone else has to cover.

On the regular schedule, coverage during the week is done by those who are already at work. They work twelve hour shifts instead of eight hour shifts. Coverage on the weekend is provided by the two people who are off. One is expected to be the “primary coverage” person. This means that person has to be available to work. The primary coverage person cannot make plans to go away or just plans in general on days off unless the other person who’s off is willing to accept the primary coverage responsibility. It also means that, as the primary coverage person is expected to be available to work, that person really can’t be sick, have a few drinks or just plain not want to work.

This occurs once a month and there is no compensation for this. If the primary coverage person has to work both days off, that person will be working fourteen days in a row.

There have been a few times where the primary relief person has not answered calls from work or returned phone calls. That person is then “in trouble” for not being available. Although, to date, there haven’t been any real severe penalties handed out, like time off without pay or worse, letters documenting the unavailability of primary coverage people have been put in their files. Letters are usually placed in files so that there is documentation for the corporation to fall back on if it wants to fire a worker.

In contrast to workers having to be available on days off without compensation, management has the freedom to change the regular schedule at any point without warning. If a worker is fired, quits, undergoes an extended illness or injury, management has to cover that person’s spot.

The work rotation of management’s choice is called a six and three schedule. One works six twelve hour days and has three days off, then six twelve hour nights and has three days off. As there is one less person from which to choose, anyone who is off is expected to be the primary coverage person for all of those days off. If the primary coverage person is called in to work, that person is paid at one and one-half times the base rate in overtime. However, for all of their days off when the workplace is short one person, workers are essentially “on call” with no compensation.

The purpose of days off, as proclaimed by Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, is to afford the worker sufficient time to recuperate and return to his work thoroughly refreshed. Nowhere in The US Constitution is it written that the purpose of workers’ days off is for them to sit around, wondering if their employer will contact them to come to work. Furthermore, with some possible exceptions, there has never been a law passed by Congress which states that workers have an obligation to their employers during such time that their employers are not required to compensate them for that obligation.

There are rules concerning when and how workers should proceed in requesting vacation time. The main thread of these rules acts as a courtesy to those workers who have to cover the vacancy. The main rule is that a person who is planning to take vacation time is required to give ten day’s notice.

On the other hand, this particular workplace has changed workers’ schedules from day to day with minimum or no notice.

The worker who was willing to share these specifics also explained that a more worker friendly schedule had been suggested. This worker headed up that effort. The suggested schedule is a schedule that doesn’t require one to work fourteen days in a row. The proposed schedule was rejected by corporate management because it said that state law would not allow it.

The truth of the matter is that the state in question requires employers to pay overtime to a worker after the worker has worked eight hours in one day. Other states don’t require employers to pay overtime until a worker has worked forty hours in one week.

Ironically enough, another site belonging to this very same corporate behemoth and located in the same state works the very schedule suggested by the employee whose idea was rejected.

One last fact in this very specific instance which proves that workers are losing any semblance of democracy in the workplace is that people who work the day shift work what is called a 9/80 schedule. Under the 9/80 schedule, a day worker works four nine hour days and one eight hour day in one week and the next week works four nine hour days and has Friday off. Each and every one of those days is paid at straight time. There’s no overtime paid for the daily hour worked after the first eight hours. As the pay is distributed every two weeks, this adds up to eighty hours or forty hours a week.

The obvious question, of course, is how does the corporation manage to circumvent the state law which requires employers to pay overtime to workers who work over eight hours a day so that day workers can work the 9/80 schedule?

Ultimately

The answer to the above question is pretty easy. Corporations have gotten to a place where they no longer worry about their workers, the communities in which they locate or even the nation which allows them to exist. It is an understatement that corporations have a “hand” in governing the United States. They are, after all, “persons”, are they not?

That answer is also easy. No, corporations are no more persons than are the rocks one digs up when planting a garden or the tires on one’s car or the chairs one sits in or the shoes one wears. Corporations are entities created by human beings. Human beings should and do have the right to shut down corporations when they harm communities and people who live in those communities.

Open Up the Floodgates

There is a case before The Supreme Court which should be decided very soon. The case is Citizens United (a corporation) v The Federal Elections Commission.

Citizens United decided to screen a documentary injurious to Hillary Clinton during the last sixty days of the 2008 presidential campaign. Citizens United claims that, by ruling against their showing this so called documentary, the lower courts infringed upon its first amendment rights.

It cost Barack Obama $700 million to become president of The United States in 2008. If The Supreme Court decides in favor of Citizens United, that $700 million will look like pocket change.
Not only that, but those who want to see the Democratic and Republican parties disappear may get their way, albeit not how they envisioned that happening. It’s possible that, if Citizens United wins this court case, the names of the political parties, like the names of our great sports stadiums, will be changed. There will be the Monsanto Party or the Hewlett Packard Party or The Dow Chemical Party. The candidates could possibly be chosen from a group of CEOs who already rake in more money in a year that most Americans will earn in a life time.

If one was to do a root cause failure analysis on why the American political system is broken, one would find a tiny seed which was planted in 1886 and has grown to break that system. That seed has spawned corporate personhood.

Ultimately, the answer is for us, the real human citizens of the US, to not fear the corporations, but to remind them that they should fear us. Without us, they couldn’t exist.

How do we do this?

If we’re workers, we organize. If we’re consumers, we buy and/or bank locally whenever possible. If we keep our money away from the large multinational corporations, we will be able to keep it in our local communities. That could possibly initiate a need for workers and, also, possibly help local economies. If local economies begin to thrive again, it’s possible that the national economy will look better from what has been referred to as Main Street.

Courage does not manifest itself in flags, bombs dropped from miles above a target or tea bags. Courage manifests itself in actions, actions that may not be comfortable at first or may never be comfortable. But those actions can make this a better world for our children and our childrens’ children, the real humans who will be inhabiting this world in the future.

To friendship,
Michael

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.” - Mark Twain

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This Blindness Can Be Cured

2009-12-29T06:05:00.000-08:00

(originally published by OpEdNews)

So, now who are you going to vote for in 2012?

I’m going to inform you, yet, again, of who you can and cannot vote for in 2012 and what the differences will be.

You can vote for Sarah Palin. You can vote for Barack Obama, if he’s nominated. You can vote for Joe the freakin’ plumber. You will receive the same results.

Oh, no, you say? There’s this great big difference between Democrats and Republicans?

If you believe that, you are a lost cause. No matter who gets the most stupid electoral votes or who gets the most popular votes, the nation will progress in exactly the same way.

Maybe some left wing radio head will say, “Don’t vote for the third party candidate. If you do, then the Republicans will win.”

And what will happen if the Republicans win?

We won’t get a universal health care plan that takes care of us like those of other industrialized countries?

We’ll start another foolish war?

Get my drift or would you still rather continue to play baby games?

There is no government of The United States of America. There are no three branches of government keeping one another in line. We lost our government a long, long time ago.

Dennis Kucinich supported John Kerry in 2004. One of the first things that Kerry said he’d do is to increase the troop strength in Iraq, where we shouldn’t have been in the first place. Kerry talked about the surge before Bush did. And Kucinich, who had the gall to read articles of impeachment against Bush, supported the surge. He supported Kerry.

I don’t hear anyone reading articles of impeachment against Barack Obama. He’s sending troops to Afghanistan. He’ll send them there whether or not Congress gives him the OK and/or the money to do so. That is against the law. He has no power to send troops into battle. Only Congress can declare war. He’s as much committing an impeachable crime as did Bush’s Regime.

Back to Kucinich. How can a person who consistently said we should never have gone to war in Iraq support a candidate who promised to increase those forces.

I wish Kucinich could really be elected president. Maybe then you will see that the president, the Congress and the Supreme Court are getting paid for doing what they’re told. Kucinich wouldn’t get his department of peace but he’d end up sending troops somewhere or he’d be assassinated.

Ron Paul. Oh, yeah, Ron Paul’s a regular peacenik. I wonder how the view is from the cheap seats. Oh, no, Ron Paul wouldn’t go to war. He’s a good boy.

“I’ll never be elected”, say Paul and Kucinich, “so I can say stuff that’ll make people like me and I can criticize Bush and Clinton and Obama. People will say I’m brave to stand up to my own party.”

Stop it, people! Please, please stop your madness. Stop! Stop arguing over Democrats and Republicans. Please stop saying stuff like, “At least Bush did this” or “At least Obama isn’t doing that.” You see the words? The words I’m talking about are “at least”. That’s the only thing anyone who gets enough of whatever kind of magic vote it takes to be president can do – the least.

We are fully and without compromise under the control of the global corporation. It’s been called a Corporatocracy. I’ve called it a Corporacracy. It really doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s in total control.

It’s not the government of The United States we have to overthrow, if, by government, we mean an executive branch, a legislative branch and a judicial branch.

But, people, we have to overthrow the government of The United States, The Corporacracy!

We are under the control of an entity which itself cannot be controlled. It can move anywhere in the world it wants to move. It can make people ill and stop people from getting better. And there is no so called legitimate government in the world that can or even wants to do anything about it. People who feign public service are paid handsomely by The Ruler.

As early as 1976, Paddy Chayefsky, through the character played by Ned Beatty in the film Network, had already figured it out.

It took Obama $700 million to become president. All of you disappointed “Progressives”, are you that naïve? Oh, sure, Barack raised that money through nickel and dime donations over the internet. Have our brains been that dissolved that we can’t see, won’t see, don’t want to see?

“I want my country back,” whines the left while Bush is president.

“I want my country back,” whines the right while Obama is president.

When do we start with the real, legitimate taking back of our country?

First, if anyone raises more than $10,000 for any campaign from dog catcher to president, he or she shouldn’t get your vote.

Second, if anyone approves of a campaign ad, in print, on radio, on TV or on the net which says one word more than, “Vote more me”, he or she shouldn’t get your vote.

Please, people, this is no conspiracy theory. This isn’t 9/11 truthers or birthers or Kennedy assassination investigators or alien invasion followers. I’m not judging those. Those may or may not be real.

What is real, people, what is undeniable to anyone who has one eye half open is that The United States of America does – not – have – a - government, nor has it had one for a very long time.

We tell corporations if they can or cannot exist. We tell corporations to clean up after themselves. We tell corporations to keep their freakin’ money out of our government and our politics. We still have that power. Let’s start using it!

Corporations exist to serve us, not the other way around. There are more of us than there are of them, especially if the measurement is who benefits from their unethical dominion.

Stop it! Just stop it! Please, just stop playing these games!

To friendship,
Michael

“A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

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“Patriots” in the Health Care Debate

2009-12-08T00:25:00.000-08:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

There have been a great many reasons given for steering clear of government run health care.

At the bottom of it all is an 1886 Supreme Court decision which did not give the status of natural personhood to corporations but which subsequent Supreme Court cases have cited as if it did give that status to corporations. The case of Santa Clara County v. The Southern Pacific Railroad was as flawed a Supreme Court Decision as any Supreme Court decision and more than most. It should and, hopefully, will be the subject of future articles.

This article, however, must unfortunately be written accepting the premise that even those in the highest levels of our country’s judiciary are still under the false impression that corporations are natural persons and should be treated as such. Under the guise of using their First Amendment right of free speech, health insurance corporations have been able to round up “grassroots” supporters from a small, noisy pool of uninformed “patriots” and neatly place these supporters inside town hall meetings facilitated by members of Congress. These people are anything but neat once the meeting begins. They not only shout down the members of Congress if those members of Congress support health care reform, but have been known to shout down people who are ill or otherwise down and out because of the thieves and the boards of directors who run the health care insurance business.

What are some of the things these “patriots” complain about in opposing health care reform?

First, we have to talk about Socialism. To the uninformed, Socialism is a tyrannical form of governance in which the federal government owns everyone’s lives. Socialism is a form of government which reviews high stepping paraders on the first day of every May. Under Socialism, the government taps the phones of all citizens and intercepts all communications. It reads everyone’s emails and secretly opens everyone’s snail mail before it’s delivered to the intended recipient. To learn the details of how this kind of government operates, read DAYBREAK; UNDOING THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY AND FORMING A MORE PERFECT UNION by David Swanson, co-founder of the After Downing Street Coalition. This wonderfully revealing book talks about the so called George W. Bush administration or, more appropriately named, The Regime.

Socialist governments tie the hands of commerce for the good of the state. Under Socialism, only a privileged few can even get into a position of national governance. In the inspiring rags to riches capitalist democratic republic of The United States of America, it’s heartening to know that one can become president by raising and spending a modest $750 million, as did Barack Obama in 2008.

People are thrown in prison because they disagree with the state. Thus, it’s only natural that under a Socialist government, a nation would have more people imprisoned than a nation which is not a Socialist nation.

The fact that the US, home of possibly more Socialist fearing people than any nation in the world, has the highest incarceration rate in the world, giving it the highest documented prison population in the world, is merely a product of the manifest destiny which ultimately became American exceptionalism.

Responses to the fear of domestic spying and open elections have been offered over and over again and most who are reading this article don’t need to be reminded of the irrationality of the comparisons between the anti Socialist US and the rest of the world. They neither have to be repeated nor reproved here.

However, those “natural” people who seem to have more power per person than other “natural” people are able to say of Socialism, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” And those smaller people who don’t seem to feel the need to be self informed, are, indeed, very afraid of Socialism.

Just as the large natural persons have convinced the smaller persons that marijuana is a gateway drug and will ultimately lead to one stealing money from one’s neighbor to get the next heroin fix, those large persons have convinced those very same smaller persons that socialized medicine will for certain lead to those goose stepping parades and balcony reviews.

The “patriots” want their country back. Giving Barack Obama eight months to take their country away from them - the above mentioned town hall meetings began in August of 2009 - was unconscionable of the 52% of American voters who voted for him. Although he’s since proven disappointing to many voters in this country, including the independents and liberals who voted for him, these corporate fabricated grassroots movements knew before he was ever elected that he was too “uppity” to even run for the office and totally incapable of doing the job.

The article “Socialism and Democracy; The People’s Combination” attempts to explain that the word “socialism” shares its roots with such well accepted words as “social”, “society” and “sociable”. The article shows that, when thought of in that light, socialism or Socialism isn’t a very frightening word at all. Not only that, but if the premise of Socialism can be expanded to other, possibly private sectors of society, we see that not much that we do isn’t of a socialist nature. Many of those activities don’t even have a democratic component.

For example, how many workplaces, especially private sector work places, are democratically governed? Those who remember what it was like to work in a manufacturing factory in the US know that, once a worker enters the corporation’s property, democracy is left at the gate. How many of a Fortune 500 global corporation’s workers have a say in who the leader of their corporation will be? How many workers have a say in how the company can become more “competitive”? Certainly not the workers who are laid off, that’s for sure.

Where there is no union representing a workforce, corporations claim to have the freedom to “pay for performance”. Yet, the payroll, especially for the workers on the lower rungs of the employee ladder, is only so large. One worker may receive a higher salary than another worker based upon some far from democratically decided rating or ranking system, but the difference between the highest and lowest paid worker isn’t much more than a few thousand dollars a year, mere pocket change for the top employee, the CEO. In spite of the fact that many corporations have instituted what are called 360º feedback processes, many of these processes are based upon hearsay, rumor and interpersonal relationships, not upon a well thought out review of the performance of one’s peers. The decision by many large corporations to expunge front line supervisors who emanate from the ranks of the workers makes this feedback system even more of a farce. When one goes to work, one goes to a place where every non executive worker is basically treated the same by an elite management. It’s socialism of the worse kind. It’s undemocratic socialism.

This analogy can be used in the health care debate as well. Uninformed “patriots” claim that Socialism won’t work and that’s why any health care reform in the US will be dangerous. This is because a “deserving” person will be forced to pay for the health care of an “undeserving” person.

How does the private sector health care system differ from this?

The private sector is made up of groups of people, millions in some cases, who don’t know a thing about one another. These people pay premiums which create a central fund whence their health care coverage comes. However, not only do these people pay into a central fund, but they’re expected to pay more money called co-pays and deductibles before they can even draw anything from the central fund.

Why isn’t the premium paid into this central fund enough to cover the client’s health care? The overhead for private sector health care institutions is over 30%. This overhead not only covers necessary administrative costs which would exist in any business, private or otherwise, but it covers a payroll for upper management, in particular the company CEO. This is not an insignificant amount as the five top paid CEOs in the health insurance business make an average of $12,211,480 per year. This overhead is made even greater when the plush buildings which house the corporate elite are taken into consideration.

Those who oppose health reform in which government possesses any meaningful role do so, as mentioned, because they claim that government bureaucrats will simply build one more link in the bridge towards Socialism. The subsequent governing body will become far too intimately involved in the personal lives of US citizens and there will be parades on every first of May.

Consequently, by fighting government run health care, these “patriots” are saying that they’d rather be part of a privately owned and run socialist association. They’d rather the CEO and top managers of this association collect personal information about them. They’d rather take the chance of paying for the health care of people who they don’t know through this socialist association than through a governmentally facilitated association. It’s possible that these “patriots” assume that other members of the association are as “deserving” as they are because, like them, the other members can afford private sector insurance which means that those members must have jobs thus, consequently, aren’t lazy. It’s possible that it doesn’t occur to these “patriots” that there are people who do, indeed, have jobs but the health care “assistance” provided by their employers, if their employers provide any, is so lame that they still can’t afford the ever increasing premiums, deductibles and co-pays.

It’s also possible that those who oppose health care reform which includes government involvement believe that all of those who get a piece of their premiums are honest, hard working people. That’s right. Every privately owned socialist health care insurance community is populated with the most honest among us. Not one of the private sector comrades would even consider defrauding the health insurance corporation which, of course, is the socialist health care community.

Belonging to this social network not only debunks that particular society’s irrational fear of Socialism, it takes from its members any chance of having a democratic say in how the society functions. It’s already been observed that most who work for the corporation don’t have a say in how the corporation functions, but how many who pay premiums, another word for private sector taxes, have a say in how the insurance company operates? How many times have the tax paying members of those societies engaged in democratically implemented votes to decide if the private sector taxes should or should not be raised?

Charlene Frizzera, interim head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services earns a yearly salary of $172,200. This is less than the $250,000 per year that candidate and now President Barack Obama has used as a cutoff for raising taxes. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama and Hillary Clinton each said that they would not tax people making under $250,000 per year. Thus, Ms. Frizzera’s salary is less than what Obama and Clinton appeared to consider wealthy and a far cry from the $12 million dollars raked in by the average health insurance company CEO. The most absurd choice that the “patriots” make when they choose private sector, undemocratic socialism over government enabled health care is their willingness to pay 30% of their private sector taxes towards $12 million salaries for CEO and executive pay and accept that only 70% of those taxes will actually be used to help care for their health.

Overhead costs for Medicare are 3-5%. Instead of paying taxes of which 97% go toward actually caring for their health, the “patriots” opt to pay taxes of which 30% go to exorbitant salaries and expensively decorated buildings.

Until an amendment to the Constitution of the United States passes in which it specifically states that the Bill of Rights protects natural human beings and not corporations, the “patriots” have decided that they’d rather give all of their personal information to, pay taxes to and be dictated to by another person. This person is interested in its wealth and not the least bit interested in the health of its socially connected clientele.

Finally, an explanation for the repeated use of the word “patriots” when referring to those who oppose socialized health insurance (socialized medicine hasn’t even been proposed). Those who oppose health reform on the basis that they don’t want any Socialism to sully their wonderful American democracy tend to be people who are outraged by those who speak out against America’s involvement in warfare. They tend to be the same people who used phrases like “America, love it or leave it” during the Vietnam War. They tend to be the same people who support the president if the president is leading America down the path of death and destruction. They tend to be the same people who fly the American flag from their homes and have stickers of that flag pasted on the bumpers of their vehicles. They also have stickers which read “Support The Troops”. I’ve yet to see a sticker with the words “Support Americans”.

These people are “patriots” who believe America and its government excels at destroying but generally sucks at repairing. Their statement is America can be trusted to kill you but it doesn’t have the ability that the governments of all other industrialized nations have to save you.

“Patriots”, indeed.

To friendship,
Michael

“The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.” - Daniel Webster

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The People's Health Insurance Company

2009-09-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

Were not Americans almost certain that universal health care would be legislated into existence during the next four to eight years? Were not Americans almost certain that at least one financial burden would be removed from their shoulders over the next four to eight years? Were not Americans almost certain that it could hold its head high as it showed the rest of the world that its government can be as compassionate and as competent as the government of any other nation in the world? Was this not part of the message that Americans sent when they went to the polls in November of 2008?

What have Americans learned about hope and its government?

Americans have learned that its government is neither willing nor able to do what the governments of every other industrialized nation in the world are able and willing to do. They have learned that their government is unable and unwilling to meet its mission statement. Lest we forget what the mission statement is:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Our government has decided to ignore the promise to “promote the general welfare”.

The Democrats, the political party that’s supposed to be a loyal opposition to its only competitor, the Republican Party, has violated a political anti-trust guideline. It has joined with The Republican Party to ensure that Americans continue to pay premiums to insurance companies which guarantee the CEOs and top managers titanic incomes the likes of which should embarrass them. They should be embarrassed by those incomes because they should know that US citizens just recently obtained the ability to work for no less than $7.25 an hour. They should be embarrassed by those incomes because those incomes are gained from the illnesses and injuries of Americans. It is only by charging premiums, co-pays and out of pocket payments which are strains on middle class Americans and out of reach for lower middle class and poor Americans that these individuals are able to collect such monumental paychecks.

We got our government’s message, though, didn’t we? We don’t need no stinking government handouts. We’re a proud people and we choose to support ourselves. We choose to support ourselves in spite of the fact that a large and growing number of us have no means of support. We choose to support ourselves in spite of the fact that wealthy CEOs and top managers in the private sector make the jobs in their companies and corporations available not to Americans, but to those who live in foreign nations, preferably poor foreign nations. We choose to support ourselves, which includes having the wherewithal to pay for medical care, without worrying about becoming poor or poorer or just plain broke, in spite of the fact that CEOs and top managers of American based corporations pad their salaries by hiring workers in nations where workers are happy to receive what in this nation would be a poverty level income. We choose to support ourselves in spite of the fact that CEOs and top managers in the private sector grab and maintain their wealth with such a protective spirit that they manufacture their goods in countries which are not wealthy enough, powerful enough or ethical enough to protect the air which their citizens breathe or the water which their citizens, paid poverty level salaries by American corporations, drink.

That’s OK, Mr. President, members of Congress and true leaders of our nation, the heads of American based corporations, pay us no mind. We can take care of ourselves. After all, you decided to stop paying us a living wage and allowing us to lead what we came to know as an American middle class existence a long time ago, didn’t you?

What if A People’s Health Insurance Company was organized and incorporated? What if The People’s Health Insurance Company should differ from other insurance companies is some significant ways?

First, the structures in which every employee of The People’s Health Insurance Company worked would be modest. They would be comfortable for the employees because, unlike the insurance corporations that presently exist, the leaders of The People’s Health Insurance Company would realize that most of their employees, those who make whatever profit the company may incidentally make, are people in need of fairly priced health insurance and a living wage. The People’s Health Insurance Company would use the greenest of technologies to provide comfortable working conditions for its employees. There would not be one unnecessary gadget, decoration or other expense put into the structures in which every and any employee worked.

Secondly, although no one would earn less than a living wage, no one would earn more than a living wage. Granted, the more responsibility one has in The People’s Health Insurance Company, the more one would be paid. This means that employees in the highest positions in the company would earn about $250,000 per year. The top employee, whether a president or a CEO, would earn no more than four times what the lowest paid employee earned. That would be the guideline which The People’s Health Insurance Company would always use for defining the pay scale for its employees.

Thirdly, when any one of its employees fails to meet her or his expectations and a decision is made that he or she is not a good fit for her or his position the company would do whatever it could to keep the employee and find something of value which the employee could do. However, if the company must part ways with any of its employees because that employee refused to do the job for which she or he was being paid, the company would cease to pay that employee. This may not seem unusual and it should not be unusual. Nonetheless, one way in which The People’s Health Insurance Company would differ from other insurance companies is that this policy would hold true for all cases, including those involving the highest positions of management, including the CEO. The CEO or leader of The People’s Insurance Company would not continue to be paid if she or he left the company on unfavorable terms.

The employees would, of course, have the right to organize so that the fair labor practices which were put into place in the beginning would be able to withstand the unforeseen leadership of a potential future greedy leader.

The lack of ornamentally extravagant surroundings coupled with the fair pay practices would be the reason The People’s Health Insurance Company would be able to offer everyone and anyone who is a citizen of the US or is even visiting the US any medical care necessary. It would not be free as our government insists that a profit must be realized from the illnesses or injuries of Americans. There would be a payment expected. That payment would be a monthly premium based upon a sliding scale. That premium would be the only payment expected of the clients. There would be no one in the United States who The People’s Health Insurance Company would not cover. In fact, it is quite possible that those who now receive coverage through their employers would view The People’s Health Insurance Company as a competitive option. It is quite possible that The People’s Health Insurance Company would help to lift the burden of providing health care support from businesses large and small. It is quite possible that The People’s Health Insurance Company would even provide “special” arrangements for people who worked for large American based corporations who kept their manufacturing facilities in this country or returned those facilities to this country. The People’s Health Insurance Company would reserve the right to audit the pay practices of corporations to make certain that they pay their employees what The People’s Health Insurance Company would consider a living wage.

The People’s Health Insurance Company would not turn anyone away who needed health care support. This includes those who are today protesting on behalf of wealthy insurance company CEOs and/or protesting our president’s skin color. Those people would come to The People’s Health Insurance Company for health insurance in spite of the fact that they are today not allowing our government to provide health care support for them.

Finally, there are medical providers who also want to see universal health care implemented, but who want to make sure that they are also treated fairly. The People’s Health Insurance Company would operate under the premise that providers entered the occupation to provide medical care to people, not to become wealthy from merely doing a job. The People’s Health Insurance Company should look forward to working with doctors, nurses and medical facilities whose main goal is to promote the general welfare. These would be proud and patriotic Americans who realize that illness and injury do not exist for the purpose of providing them a generous paying job.

Admittedly, this is only a straw man for what The People’s Health Insurance Company could do.

The People’s Health Insurance Company would need to get support from those who have a significant financial fortune and who are today in favor of the kind of universal health care that every other industrialized nation provides. The People’s Health Insurance Company will never even get off the ground without straight out donations from those who can donate significant sums of money. This should not be a problem as we all have seen people who are wealthy by almost any standard express support for universal health care. And that is exactly what The People’s Health Insurance Company would be providing, universal health care. If this never happened, we would have the right to question the sincerity of people who are expressing support for universal health care.

Universal health care is something the US government should be providing for American citizens.

It’s sad that Americans who believe that ours is a “we” society and not an “I’ve got mine so screw you” society would have to fill the gap left in the Founding Fathers’ mission statement with no help from their government. However, as stated, we heard our government’s answer to the question, “Do you intend to promote the general welfare of Americans?” and that answer has always been, is now and will no doubt always be a resounding, “No!”

To friendship,
Michael

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” - Edwin Schlossberg

World Conditions and Action Items
CDs
“A Sad Song”

Taking the Trash to Task

2009-09-13T19:33:00.000-07:00

(published by OpEdNews)

It took almost the entire presidency of George W. Bush for people to understand that The Regime was lying about why it sent people to die in Iraq. There, indeed, were comparisons to Hitler by those who saw Bush, Cheney and others promoting and actually carrying out overreaches of the executive branch. For the greater part of the so called “Bush Administration”, those who opposed The Regime were marginalized and dismissed by the mainstream media.

Immediately following 9/11, it would have been very difficult to find an American who did not stand firmly behind his/her president. That loyalty, although misdirected, was carried into the invasion of Iraq.

The real “attacks” on The Regime happened not only after it was selected in 2000, but after it began leaking the fact that it intended to invade Iraq. This was in 2002, almost two years after the 2000 election. Furthermore, the opposition was based upon policy and only policy. It was based upon policy that it took The Regime almost two years to formulate.

Before Barack Obama was even inaugurated in January of 2008, there was already one well organized web site dedicated to impeaching the then president-elect. That’s how long it took people to realize that Barack Obama’s “presidency was a failure and based upon a lie”.

Yesterday, September 12, 2008, 8 ½ months after that inauguration, Glen Beck and the corporate sponsored FreedomWorks Foundation led what was described as tens of thousands of people in a march on Washington, DC. Naturally, the sponsors of the event claimed that there were a million or so people in attendance. If there were truly 400 or 500 people in attendance, one could dismiss the event as being overhyped by its organizers. However, MSNBC claimed that “tens of thousands” of so called “fiscal conservatives” showed up to “protest government spending”.

As proven when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Paradise Square in Bagdad, the positioning of the camera taking the picture can veil the truth about the actual number of people in attendance at any event.

However, MSNBC is not likely to give the sort of crowd that showed up yesterday in Washington an inch more credit than it deserves. Several camera shots reinforced the numbers of people claimed to be in attendance by MSNBC and other news outlets. There are a lot of people in the US who may not like what Barack Obama has proposed for the nation during his 8 ½ months as president. More importantly, however, since what Obama has proposed has mostly been for the benefit of the kind of people who are in the financial class as most of those attending yesterday’s rally, it should be difficult to understand why in such a short time so many would express such deep rooted hate of Obama’s policies so early into his administration.

An email made its way around cyberspace earlier this summer. It was a copy of a letter which was supposedly written by an executive of The Proctor & Gamble corporation. As you will see, the letter doesn’t deal much with policy, but it is, nonetheless, a letter attacking President Barack Obama. It is also an insight into what drove so many people to Washington DC on September 12, 2008.

The letter is an example of the kind of unsubstantiated trash that those who are for the most part uninformed send out. Those who originally sent the letter out felt that everyone should read it and find out the “truth” about our president.

I partially agree with these people. I believe all should get a chance to read the letter, not to find out the “truth” about our president, but to find out the truth about those who write such letters and those who showed up yesterday in Washington DC.

Well known writer/author Ron Suskind wrote an article for The New York Times in October of 2004. The title of the article is “Without A Doubt”. The article dealt with the then potential consequences of the results of the 2004 presidential election. The following is an excerpt from Suskind’s article:

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

It seems clear that the letter writer, as well as those who “marched on Washington yesterday, may still believe in the practice of trying to create reality. The letter, after all, is extremely creative.

I read this ugly, lie riddled letter and I felt obligated to point out some of the fantasies.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.
Senator Barack Hussein Obama truly began running for the presidency of The United States after delivering an enlightened, powerful and revealing keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Party convention.

Obama used the first 314 words of that speech to briefly introduce himself, his background, his family and their backgrounds.

He spoke of his father, his mother, his grandmother and spoke with extreme pride about his grandfather who signed up for duty after Pearl Harbor and “marched across Europe” as part of George S. Patton’s army.

It would have taken mere moments of attentive listening to begin to learn about Barack Obama on the evening of July 24, 2004.

I googled “Obama biography” and it returned 4,670,000 hits. If one doesn’t know anything about Barack Obama, it can only be because one doesn’t want to know anything about Barack Obama.You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.
I began to read some of the multitudinous biographies in an attempt to find out just how President Obama paid for his expensive Ivy League education and the letter writer is correct, there isn’t an awful lot about how he made those payments.

Then it dawned on me. I began to read biographies of several presidents and their methods of payment for post secondary education aren’t exactly crystal clear either. The question, then, becomes, “Why does it bother the letter writer so much because he can’t find ledgers documenting this particular president’s college payment schedules?”

I did get the following quote from one of the many, many, many biographies:

“With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.

“After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.”

This is more than one would find about many presidents.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.
Are those who live in parts of our nation called “Little Italy” or “Chinatown” culturally American? I submit that the letter writer would answer, “No.”

It’s difficult to pin down who is and who is not culturally American in the United States, a truly multicultural nation.

After his birth in the US state of Hawaii in 1961, no matter where he resided, Barack Obama remained the son of an American woman and the grandson of another American woman and, as mentioned, a member of The Greatest Generation.

There were presidents who knew only of foreign lands through what they may have read and been told.

This was completely understandable in the 19th century. However, for an American president to not have traveled abroad before being selected president in 2000 is inexcusable and, considering the wherewithal of the man of whom I speak, is lazy and apathetic.

On the other hand, Barack Obama learned first-hand of cultures that were far from American and the richness of that hands-on education has and will continue to serve him well during his presidency. Considering the cultures with which the US has recently been at odds, it is to our benefit that our president knows those cultures intimately so he can avoid looking at them through purely hubristic, jingoistic eyes. He is intelligent enough to avoid arrogantly calling any conflict involving these cultures a “crusade” and flaming the fires that much more.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.
Does the letter writer know how may presidents have run a company and met a payroll? I didn’t think so. This and the next point of “fear” are just “close your eyes and throw the dart” types of irrelevant and/or hypocritical nonsense.You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

More hypocritical nonsense. It takes less than two hands to count how many people in the previous administration, an administration who sent over 4500 American soldiers to their deaths, had any military experience.

The same goes for the administration prior to that one.

So, I guess, “C’mon, who are you trying to kid?” is an appropriate response for this “fear”.You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

“Always blaming others.”

“Always” is quite often. I can name times when Obama has said “my bad”. And blaming others makes him different than most other politicians – how?

If he’s ever blamed others, is it possible that it might be that others are to blame?

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.
Here’s a place when all that can be said is, “The truth is that Barack Obama has not aligned himself with radical extremists who hate America for half of his life – pure and simple.” I guess that makes the above statement a lie, the vomitus bile that extrudes from such toxic places as Fox Fake News and Rush Limbaugh’s well paid fat mouth. That’s the mouth that’s paid to keep this country as divided and self-flagellating as possible. The people that the letter writer obviously listens to are paid to spread lies, many which I believe they, themselves, know are lies. But, money talks and money means more to some than a United States of America.

Of course, Bill Ayers “are the radical extremists” with whom Obama has “aligned” himself. Yes, at the age of eight, Obama was right there at Ayers’ side.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America ' crowd and deliver this message abroad.
Of course, here the letter writer is referring to the president’s speech in Cairo. The president said:

“More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.”

To be fair, it would be the onus of the letter writer to disprove that the US has, indeed, colonized the Middle East, with the help of its unscrupulous leaders. It has done so to the point where we in the US extract and use more Middle East oil than do the people who live atop of that oil.

So, on the one hand, we have one president who calls it as it is and, on the other hand, a former president who chose to insult the people of the region by exclaiming that ours is a “crusade” against the people of the region. Those people and their ancestors know the horrors hidden behind the word “crusade” all too well. You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.
The United States has a Constitution and, although I pride myself on getting to know the Constitution better and better as time goes on, I had to, yet, read it again to try to find where it states that the private sector should “dominate” the social discourse in our country.

For sure the private sector has a major role to play in the US, especially in the area of commerce.

However, it is not the place of the private sector to declare war or to make laws which “promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to (the American people) and (their) posterity”. That is and always has been and always will be the job of government.

If the writer is saying that, despite what The Constitution says and in total defiance of The Constitution, the private sector, through its illegal lobbying and payoffs of members of Congress, actually make these decisions that should be made by the government, then I’d have to agree. This is an unfortunately widely accepted illegal practice that anyone who claims to be “patriotic” should be working very hard to stop.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.
The letter writer, as all who oppose government involvement in distributing and assuring health care for all Americans, should not fear government control. They should be embarrassed and ashamed that The United States of America is the only industrialized nation in the world who sees health care as a privilege, not a right.

It never ceases to amaze me that people will campaign against their own best interests.

No one wants to do away with Medicare or the VA, two “socialized medicine” systems which are managed efficiently and effectively by the government. I don’t hear members of Congress wanting to do away with their health care plan; another government provided, paid for and administered system.

We trust government when it comes to making life and death decisions under the most catastrophic of circumstances, war. However, suddenly government isn’t up to the task of implementing and overseeing health care delivery. The double standard is palpable and the hypocrisy in ubiquitous.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.
Let’s look at the earth as a closed system, sort of like a space ship. The resources inside a space ship are finite. So are the resources inside the space ship earth. Eventually the resources on this space ship will run out. Isn’t finding a method of creating the energy we need from that which will not “run out” the intelligent thing to do?

I also wonder if the letter writer actually realizes what kinds of things happen when we mine the types of carbon based energy sources about which he speaks.

Is humanity the only life form upon the earth? Of course not.

Is it humanity’s right to extinguish other life forms so that humanity can continue to live the unsustainable life style to which it’s accustomed?

If you answer, “Yes”, I strongly suggest you research the word “ecosystem”. The basic meaning of the word “ecosystem” says that humanity will reap what it sows. What we destroy while mining oil, coal and shale reserves are parts of the ecosystem that we need. Indeed, it is far, far more important that we keep the ecosystem intact than it is for us to mine oil, coal and shale reserves.

Humanity needs to use the intelligence that has evolved with it to discover and/or create new sources that can give us close to what we are used to without using finite resources and damaging ecosystems.

The letter writer not only insults human intelligence and resourcefulness, but displays a total disregard for all other life forms on earth. More seriously, he shows his ignorance of the necessity of a balanced ecosystem.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.
According to the UN, the five countries with the highest standard of living are Iceland, Norway, Canada, Australia and Ireland. The US ranks 15th. This makes the premise of the above “fear” a lie on its face.

In a speech he made on July 17, President Obama said,

“I've always been a strong believer in the power of the free market. It has been and will remain the engine of America's progress -- the source of prosperity that's unrivaled in history. I believe that jobs are best created not by government, but by businesses and entrepreneurs who are willing to take a risk on a good idea. I believe that our role is not to disparage wealth, but to expand its reach; not to stifle the market, but to strengthen its ability to unleash the creativity and innovation that still make this nation the envy of the world.

“That's our goal -- to restore markets in which we reward hard work and responsibility and innovation, not recklessness and greed; in which honest, vigorous competition is the system -- in the system is prized, and those who game the system are thwarted.”

What the letter writer doesn’t speak about is the “recklessness and greed” which has been the true assailant of American capitalism.

Unfortunately, the derivatives market was based upon reality and involved peoples’ mortgages, savings and retirement accounts. As with all gambling, the house won most of the hands and the sources upon which these high stakes gamblers bet, lost and shared their losses, thus creating the untenable and immoral economic downturn which began in 2006, were mostly so called subprime mortgages. This disaster was inherited by President Obama’s administration.

Warren Buffet, the wealthiest person in the entire world, reached that position not by leading a Socialist revolution, but by using the tools of capitalism. In Buffet’s case, the tools were honest, indeed, legal economic tools.

Thus, Buffet’s 2002 exposure of the greed that was taking hold inside American corporations, especially financial institutions, and his prediction of economic catastrophe, should have been heeded, but was not. This greed manifested itself through derivatives, instruments more risky and less certain than those used by t-shirted men with unshaven faces who show up at the horse track or the casino day in and day out.

The following is a summation of what Buffet, who even the letter writer has to admit should know something about economics, had to say in 2002, six years before Barack Obama was elected president of The United States:

“I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system. Basically these instruments call for money to change hands at some future date, with the amount to be determined by one or more reference items, such as interest rates, stock prices, or currency values.

“… before a contract is settled, the counter parties record profits and losses – often huge in amount – in their current earnings statements without so much as a penny changing hands. Reported earnings on derivatives are often wildly overstated. That’s because today’s earnings are in a significant way based on estimates whose inaccuracy may not be exposed for many years.

“…the parties to derivatives… have enormous incentives to cheat in accounting for them. …often there is no real market…. This substitution can bring on large-scale mischief. In extreme cases, mark-to-model degenerates into what I would call mark-to-myth.

“Almost invariably, they (derivatives) have favored either the trader who was eyeing a multi-million dollar bonus or the CEO who wanted to report impressive “earnings” (or both). The bonuses were paid, and the CEO profited from his options. Only much later did shareholders learn that the reported earnings were a
sham.

“Another problem about derivatives is that they can exacerbate trouble that a corporation has run into for completely unrelated reasons. …It all becomes a spiral that can lead to a corporate meltdown.

“Derivatives also create a daisy-chain risk that is akin to the risk run by insurers or reinsurers that lay off much of their business with others. In both cases, huge receivables from many counter-parties tend to build up over time. A participant may see himself as prudent, believing his large credit exposures to be diversified and therefore not dangerous. However under certain circumstances, an exogenous event that causes the receivable from Company A to go bad will also affect those from Companies B through Z.

“In banking, the recognition of a “linkage” problem was one of the reasons for the formation of the Federal Reserve System. Before the Fed was established, the failure of weak banks would sometimes put sudden and unanticipated liquidity demands on previously-strong banks, causing them to fail in turn. The Fed now insulates the strong from the troubles of the weak. But there is no central bank assigned to the job of preventing the dominoes toppling in insurance or derivatives. In these industries, firms that are fundamentally solid can become troubled simply because of the travails of other firms further down the chain.”

How prolific was this risky trading of derivatives? The worth of the derivatives now out, the bets that have been made against such resources as mortgages, is now $1.4 quadrillion. That’s right, quadrillion dollars. The GDP of the entire planet is $45 trillion. There are more derivative “bets” out right now than there is money to pay them off, should they come due. Exactly how is Barack Obama to blame for this madness which began in 2006?

As you can see, President Obama has not killed any goose, capitalist or otherwise.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.
As you can plainly see from the previous response, those who hold banks and corporations hostage are the CEOs and top executives of those banks and corporations.

In 1980, the median pay for CEOs of multinational corporations was 42 times that of the workers who made those companies tick, who actually produced the wealth.

Today, that number is 344. The median income for CEOs of multinational corporations is 344 times that of the people who actually create the wealth.

What is patriotism? Is it patriotic for the CEO of an American based corporation to ensure the unemployment of American workers while they rake in millions and millions of dollars? As of late, much of this compensation is in response to a job well failed. CEOs do something that they are trying like hell to stop their workers from being able to do. They sign contracts before they begin working for a company. Not only do these contracts ensure them an obscene salary while they are employed. These contracts ensure that the CEOs receive severance packages when they leave the company which are worth more than the front line worker will ever earn in her or his entire career. These are the same CEOs and top executives who throw American workers out into the streets in favor of slave labor found in Asia, Mexico, Central and South America. These CEOs receive these obscene severance packages whether they retire or are fired. It doesn’t matter if they’ve failed. Even if they’ve failed, they take an enormous amount of money with them when they leave the company. That’s money that could be paid to front line workers who, in turn, would spend it, consequently strengthening the economy.

Who are the extortionists, indeed?

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.
Democrats support Democratic presidents and Republicans support Republican presidents. However, no party has supported a president in such tight lock step as did the Republicans of the 108th and 109th Congresses. They supported a president who spent money he didn’t have to wage war with a country who did nothing to The United States of America. They, and Democrats as well, supported the president and his illegal war that took the country from a $128 billion budget surplus to a $496 billion deficit. Now that’s a congress that shrinks from its responsibility.You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

Barack Obama is well versed in communications technology and is using it to encourage and accept interactive, two way communication with the American people. One tool he’s using is what is called The Open Government Blog. Never in the history of the United States of America has a president been so open with the American people. Granted, he has more technology on his side than most previous presidents. However, the Clinton and the Bush administrations could also have used the very same technology to open the debate and the discussion, but chose not to do so.

It is apparent that intelligent people are just the people with whom President Obama wishes to interact. This may be the reason the letter writer isn’t aware of the president’s Open Government Blog.

Additionally, do we know of any other president in modern history who would have invited the two parties involved in a local police matter to The White House for a beer to talk the situation through? No, we don’t.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.
Ah, and the truth begins to ooze out! The letter writer is presuming to know what Barack Obama believes about himself. Where does the letter writer get this inside, very inside, information?

We can only learn what people believe about themselves if those people choose to tell us what they believe about themselves.

I’ve heard Barack Obama say that he has enough confidence in himself to be president of the United States. George W. Bush, John Kerry, Bill Clinton…on down to Theodore Roosevelt; each person has told his contemporaries that he believes he can be president. Expressing and sharing that belief is necessary if one wishes to run for the presidency. It’s anything but arrogant.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the letter writer hasn’t heard President Obama say much. I honestly believe that I’ve heard more of what the president has said than the letter writer has heard and I’ve never heard President Barack Obama say the he believes he is omnipotent and omniscient. Furthermore, I know that President Obama is far too intelligent to believe that about himself or about any other human being.

The letter writer has begun projecting and the truth begins to come to the surface.You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.
The media gives a president a free pass when it does not question a president who uses resources that should be used to capture those who took down The Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 to invade a nation who had nothing at all to do with that event.

The media gives a president a free pass when it knows of a British cabinet meeting held on Downing Street in which it becomes clear that President Bush intended to invade Iraq, whether or not it possessed so called weapons of mass destruction. What mainstream media outfit ran with this?

Bush lied to Congress and to the American people when he said that Saddam Hussein had 48 hours to leave Iraq or face an American invasion. According to the notes taken during the July 23, 2002 Downing Street Cabinet meeting, The American Regime was going to invade Iraq no matter what the outcome of the UN vote was and no matter if Saddam Hussein stepped down or not.

This lie was not as large and as important as the lie that forced Nixon out of office. The Regime’s lie was much, much bigger than Nixon’s lie and much, much more important and involved putting American troops in harm’s way for absolutely no good reason. Where were investigative reporters like Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward? This should have brought The Regime down and brought it down quickly.

That’s a shameful pass given to a murderous regime by a compliant press.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.
First of all, we should all be thankful that there aren’t “Limbaughs”, “Hannitys”, “O’Reillys” or “Becks”. We should be thankful that there is only one of each of these people.

Secondly, the letter writer shouldn’t fear any attempt he believes the president is making to silence the above mentioned people because, if there is such a plan, it’s unfortunately not working.

The people mentioned above are paid handsomely to keep Americans divided and to keep the flames of hate and discontent burning.

I said that people can’t know what others believe. However, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that one, some or maybe all of the people mentioned above and those that spew anti-American venom on the Fox Fake New Network may not believe what they shout. Some of the people do, indeed, seem intelligent and, if that’s the case, they know very well that what they do is build obstacles to a truly United States of America. They are paid handsomely to do this.

They are as successful as they are because, judging from the kind of trash contained in this so called letter and judging from what I’ve heard their followers say, their followers listen to them, watch Fox Fake News and are loathe to do any research on their own. Keeping a loyal following is easy if one’s followers take what one says as the gospel truth and don’t check the facts.

My sense is that the followers of Fox Fake News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck unfortunately get all of their information from these people and do no investigation on their own.

As far as the president’s trying to silence these people, I have to, again, point to the Open Government Blog. Anyone, even those mentioned above, can add to the blog.

However, these people don’t want to add to an open and honest discussion of issues. These people, like the letter writer, want simply to shout at the moon and anger those who are too lazy to read.

I challenge anyone who believes the lies to begin to become an independent student of current events and of history. Do your own reading and researching.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.
The problem is there hasn’t been any governing for at least the past eight years.

In fact, an important advisor to the previous Republican administration made the following statement:

“I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

Remember derivatives – the wealthiest people in the world have more worth tied up in derivatives than there is worth in the world. People like this need to be at least regulated, if not, indeed, controlled.

An American government who cares about all of its people, not just the wealthy, will regulate those who, for some reason, believe they have an unfettered right to all of the wealth in the world.

Read the polls. Look at the results of the last election.

Americans want America to ensure that their children receive a good education.

Americans want America to ensure that all Americans have access to needed health care.

Americans want America to keep its citizens safe.

Americans don’t want America to spread what it thinks would be an appropriate form of governance to other nations by bombing those nations into submission.

Under President Obama, there is, once again, a democratically elected American government which is trying to bring back the conditions that created the great American middle class.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.
President Obama did not produce The Patriot Act, a shameful piece of legislation, approved by members of Congress with both Rs and Ds after their names. Those who voted for this intrusive, invasive and illegal “law” should have been removed from office and not been allowed to hold any public office in The United States. That’s the kind of legislation that should make the letter writer “scared” and not feel safe to write what he thinks.

However, this letter writer didn’t write this letter out of a concern for America and Americans. I submit that the letter writer is probably repulsed by more than half of the American people. I say this because more than half of the American people are not Caucasian.

This letter, like yesterday’s “march on Washington, was created out of hatred and racial intolerance.

Remember “America, love it or leave it?” It’s what I was told so many times when I thought that the government of this country was engaged in wars it should not have been fighting. I was told that to disagree with “your president” or “your government” was unpatriotic.

I will not use the same line for those who believe that this letter contains anything substantive and should be sent out to everyone so everyone can see what President Barack Obama is “really all about.” I will not say to them, “America, love it or leave it.”

However, if the reason they find this letter so “awesome” and are passing it around, hoping to create hate toward our president; if the reason tens of thousands of them rallied in Washington DC yesterday, carrying hateful posters which depicted President Obama as Hitler, Stalin or in any other disrespectful manner is that they are racists, then they should just say so. They need to cease attacking the character of the President of the United States of America by pointing to anything that resembles policy. The fact is they don’t care about President Obama’s policies. They need to admit that. They’re ignorant, intolerant racists and I will say that there is no longer any room for them and their racism in The United States of America.

There is no need for them and their racism in The United States of America.

In fact, I submit that most of us, the vast majority of Americans, actually desire that they exit our country and take their racism with them.

To friendship,
Michael

“It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.” - Tom Stoppard

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“Your Magazine”

Message to a Racist

2009-09-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

OK, let’s get real. There are several reasons why it’s so easy to talk people into opposing something that could be for their own good. In the case of health care reform, the biggest reason is racism. And this time around it’s a twofer.

First, you oppose health care because it’s being proposed by an American racist’s worse nightmare, a Black president. That’s right, Barack Obama has saved you from having to blame the potential beneficiaries of health care reform.

When others like President Clinton have proposed reform, you had to be a bit more open. To paraphrase something I heard with my own ears, “I don’t want to pay for health care for Leroy or José.”

Take note, Sparky. How many dead bodies have you had to drive over or step over today? None, you say. If you’d like, I can explain that to you.

We’ve not yet gotten to the point of outright denying health care to people just because they can’t pay for it. Poor people with black skin, brown skin and, yes, even white skin ultimately receive medical treatment. Granted, they get it by going to hospital emergency rooms and they get it when their condition is so bad that the care they need winds up costing more than it would have cost if they had insurance or the wherewithal to go to a doctor earlier.

No we haven’t yet begun to just let people die out on the street. I’m thinking you actually know who pays for the care of those poor people who have no insurance and end up going to hospital emergency rooms. In case you don’t, I’ll tell you who pays. I do and so do you. So, want to or not, you’re paying for Leroy and José and even some White guy named, let’s say, Bubba.

If that’s not enough to get you to stop shooting yourself in the foot, consider this.

I’m assuming that you have health care insurance. I think this because, if nothing else, you’re selfish. You may have to hold your nose, but, if you didn’t have health care insurance and there was a way for you to get it, even if it’s on someone else’s dime, you’d be for it.

You pay premiums no doubt. Do you know all of the people in your health insurance network? Are you one of those manly men or manly women who never get sick? It’s just that you wouldn’t be crazy enough to be without health insurance because you know that you just might need medical care one day. Besides, your employer still kicks in a little something, for now.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I suppose that you’re not a big believer in mental health treatment. I’m going to assume that you don’t believe that mental illness is caused by anything biological or physiological. You probably think that people who claim to have or who have been diagnosed with depression, panic/anxiety disorder or obsessive/compulsive disorder are pussies and are just hiding behind those phony words.

Here’s a shocker for you. Not all Leroys, Josés or even Bubbas are lazy bums who don’t have jobs. Some work and some are even in your health insurance network. It gets better.

The fact that you don’t think that mental illness is a biologically based disease doesn’t prevent mental illness from actually being a biologically based disease. Your insurance company knows this and covers mental illness treatment. It covers it for a person whose name is John, Bubba, Leroy or José. That’s right, my racist fellow American, you may be paying for someone you disdain because of how he looks to receive treatment for an illness you don’t “believe in”. Furthermore, instead of paying for it with a small tax donation, you’re doing it with your outrageous insurance premium.

This is fun, you know? And I’m not even finished yet.

I haven’t checked, but I would be willing to bet that not one CEO of a major health insurance company is Black or Hispanic. However, I worked for a Fortune 500 global corporation and, even though I’m not proud of that fact, I was able to watch as that corporation was promoting people with dark skin to major positions. In spite of what you believe, once they get there, they are legitimately there, just as our president is legitimately our president.

So, Mr. White, you could be paying for dark skinned people to receive emergency room treatment with your taxes, dark skinned people to receive treatment that you don’t even believe is needed with your premiums and possibly a $1, $2 or $3 million dollar or more salary for a dark skinned executive who works for your private sector insurance company.

Hold on, I have one more.

If you are beating yourself up by turning your back on the chance to maintain health insurance whether you keep or lose your job, I’m going to posit that you supported your president when he invaded Iraq. You no doubt had a love/hate relationship with 9/11. Even you, like the rest of us, were angered and, dare I say, saddened by what happened on 9/11. However, you might have liked it just a little bit because it gave you the opportunity to use the pejorative “towel head”. 9/11 even helped you learn a new one, “haji”.

You don’t want your tax dollars paying for health care for Leroy or José, but you don’t mind paying for bombs, at least you didn’t mind and I’m betting, even if you turned on Iraq, your support was good to the last drop. After all, it enabled you to call people like me traitors and unpatriotic. You just love calling people names, don’t you? I used to do it, too, when I was in first grade. Well, I admit, referring to you as a racist is a bit cathartic for me, but I only do it because you are one.

What’s a bomb? What’s that precious tax dollar paying for?

The government gives a private contractor lots of money, some of it yours, to take some steel, mold it, possibly fill it with something volatile and then load it onto a plane. The plane then flies over some “target” in Iraq or now, maybe, Afghanistan, and drops that molded metal or propels it into a building. What happens to your tax dollar then? It breaks into billions of little pieces, never to be of any use ever again. Bye, bye tax dollar.

Of course, you’ll justify it if there are 100 members of The Taliban inside the building and they’re all burnt to a crisp. You won’t entertain the possibility that your tax dollar collaterally burnt 100 Afghan children to a crisp because that might even bother you.

Well, that’s it, I guess. Continue to shill for your HMO protectors, even though they won’t protect you if you should lose your job. And continue to pay for what you think you’re avoiding. I see no good reason for you to start thinking logically now.

To friendship,
Michael

“In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right”. - Ellen Goodman

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“A Sad Song”

And Then There Was This Two Year Old

2009-04-20T15:34:00.000-07:00

(originally published by OpEdNews)

You may have been asking yourself, “Hey, where’s that guy who wrote those outstanding articles about letters written to the editor?” nutritious

Well, I don’t know where that guy is, but you may remember I wrote some columns which were inspired by letters to the editor as well. I stopped doing that, at least for a while. Maybe for good, who knows?

One of the reasons I’ve stopped writing those particular columns was that far too many of the letters to which I responded were written by people who were exercising their first amendment right to exhibit the courage to write about subjects without the safety net of factual information. I found myself lately defending President Barack Obama. The issues that the people were choosing to write about dealt mostly with the economy. The letter writers were accusing Obama and the Democratic Party of attempting to create a Socialist nightmare within the borders of The United States, as well as Hawaii and Alaska. I felt it necessary to remind people that even a Libertarian government which federalized a miniscule armed force would be practicing socialism. A lot of the benefits of living in the US are the results of socialist systems.

A lot of the real estate upon which tax hating, tea bagging racists held their “passionate”, “grass roots” protests were state or federal parks paid for with taxes. It would have been neat if Obama showed up at one of those so called rallies and said, “All of you tax haters, get off the grass.”

There was the letter writer who wrote that Obama was pushing that rotten Stimulus Package, meant to help the economy “unBush” by giving the states money to pump into their education programs, fix godawful roads and other infrastructure. He wrote that Obama’s methodology of getting this legislation passed was a “my way or the highway” approach.

I don’t think I reminded the writer of anything because I don’t believe the writer has ever heard of OpEdNews or even Common Dreams or maybe even MSNBC. Besides, who has time to read or watch that propaganda when you know exactly where to go to get a “fair and balanced” news report? However, I did respond by reminiscing about Bush’s Iraq War, preemptively started to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction punish Iraq for its part in 9/11 as proven by the infamous yet mythical meeting in Prague free the Iraqi people from the torture of Saddam Hussein and give them some variety by introducing them to our own brand of torture knit some democracy for the Iraqi people. I reminisced about The Front Man’s diplomatic “You’re either with us or against us” message to our “allies”.

Of course what makes the Stimulus Package so disgusting is the fact that it’s going to strap future generations with taxes needed to pay for it. The invasion of Iraq? That’s going to strap them as well, as the money for most of that worthwhile war was extracted from The Department of No Fucking Thing.

The final letter I’ll mention is one written by a woman who was certain Obama was not going to close Gitmo, that he made that promise just to get elected and that he was either a liar or too stupid to realize that closing Gitmo would not be a piece of cake. The letter was published on the day on which Obama signed the order that would have Gitmo closed within a year. I hope that this fortune teller, aka, Obama hater, doesn’t dabble in the horses or hounds. It appears that she may possess a propensity for guessing wrong.

As mentioned, I defended Obama in some of my responses. However, I was frustrated with the shallowness and even the poorly veiled racism that propelled these writers to write first and check facts – never! Maybe, just maybe, as I was “giving Obama his chance to prove to me that he was really sincere and was not just another one of them, I was arguing against poorly researched and emotional letters written by people that are just pissed that Senator White from Indiana or Congressman White from Georgia, all white and shiny and phony to the most casual of observers aren’t in the White House instead of a Mulatto who definitely fits the description of an African American and even likes basketball. When he speaks, he sometimes lets loose some of that “Black” accent, that homey speak which just proves his inferiority to those who protested with tea bags and Jim Crow sentiments.

I repeat that, however marveled I was that a Black man was elected President of the United States of America by a significant margin, I did listen to his foreign policy plans and I did note that he voted to give a pass to communications corporations that worked with The Regime in its attempt to secretly spy on anyone, American citizen or not, and made sport of some of the more “humorous” dialogues between two parties who they knew were not in any way, shape or form connected with terrorism of any kind.

You may believe that Middle Easterners hijacked planes on 9/11 as well as where that story goes. I submit if you believe that, you believe it because the tin foil hat conspiracy theorists are obviously wrong and you probably aren’t going to “waste your time” researching any of the facts that, basically, make a fool of you for believing the government sponsored fairy tale. I submit you haven’t read nearly enough if you disagree with any of the arguments which demand a real investigation into what happened on 9/11 to, first and foremost, decide “who done it”. If you’ve done any research, you wouldn’t be fair to deny that there was any reason to begin a real investigation starting from that point.

However, let’s say, just for giggles and whatever else, that the government sponsored attempt to outdo Grimm’s Fairy Tales is honest injun true. We all know what happened.

At first we were told that Al Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, was responsible for what happened on that day. If I remember correctly, at one of the more sober “vigils” in response to this attack, a New York firefighter or policeman, one or the other, walked out on stage, dropped drawer and honored us with a look at his crack while he yelled, “You can kiss my white Irish ass, Osama bin Laden.”

I can’t help but believe that this man and his white Irish ass were on the front line cheering when The Regime decided to send troops into Iraq, a move having nothing to do with bin Laden’s desire or ability to kiss any white Irish ass. There was yet another American surge of blind hate toward an ethnic group about which most Americans knew/know little if anything. This placed The Front Man high in his diamond studded saddle as he rode into the sunset to invade Iraq for what Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and other non-Iraqi related entities did on 9/11/01. Clear, lucid thought was not part of the process in this “hate anyone who might be mistaken for an Arab” fest.

If Osama bin Laden coordinated what happened on 9/11 from Afghanistan and we had reason to capture or kill him, most preferably capture him to get him to talk, we should have sent some of our sharp shooting, never missing, super duper Navy Seals, Marine Green Berets, Army Rangers, Delta Force or The Air Force Commandos to flush out Osama bin Laden quicker than one can say “Allah is great.” We could have even sent the CIA covert Special Commandos to track down the overpowering desert rat and cave dweller, capture him and bring him to face trial for the crime he supposedly “blessed”.

I don’t know for sure, but when I hear three Navy Seals knocked off three pirates with three bullets, I can’t help but think that these special operations units could have tracked down and captured bin Laden by now with one hand tied behind their backs.

But, no, he and his magic troop of mountain climbers seem to be too much for our super duper shooters and trackers and covert James Bonds.

Why go after the guy who did it, if that’s what you insist on believing without bothering to read that “other crap” which you know has no merit? No. Listen to the Front Man tell you it was bin Laden and then hang Saddam Hussein. And, most importantly of all, no matter what the facts may prove, stick your fingers in your ears and say, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, I can’t hear what you’re saying, nah, nah, nah, nah” like big boys and girls.

I really didn’t want to write quite so much of what’s already been written by people who’ve poured hour upon hour over all the evidence from all angles.

I did want to write that Obama has finally proved that he is the new Front Man.

“See these? These are memos that prove The Regime tortured in violation of domestic and international law. But we must move forward so that it never happens again. If we release these memos, it’ll teach some future Regime that it better never commit war crimes or maybe the next administration will publicize those war crimes. Of course, they’ll also want to look forward.”

“OK, your honor, sure my client murdered his wife. But will prosecuting him bring her back. Of course not. She’s gone, your honor and I promise that my client won’t do it again, especially now that everyone knows. Wallowing in the past won’t bring her back. Looking to a future where no other wife will ever be murdered again is what we have to do.”

“Oh, you’re so right. You’re so forgiving in a Christian sort of way and, as we are a Christian nation, your client is released pending the promise that he will not kill another wife and, as far as he’s concerned, no man will kill another wife for fear that the murder may be revealed in a court of law.”

We invaded Iraq. It was wrong. We never captured bin Laden because, let’s face it, our lame special ops forces on whom we waste so much taxpayer money are just not up to the task. Mark that down, another tea party aimed at wasting the taxpayer money on special ops groups who can’t capture one man because they just don’t have that kind of talent.

Obama’s as much as admitted it, right? He’s not sending any special ops forces to Afghanistan to capture bin Laden. Like The Regime, he’s sending thousands of troops to build a Kabul Disneyworld. And when the first of his troops dies, he’ll make a speech, like the Front Man before him, saying, “Oh yeah, well it hurts my feelings, too, ya know. I almost started crying last night. But we must continue the effort so that Al Qaeda and The Taliban have no place to go and practice. If we make Afghanistan a democracy in our own image, where will The Taliban go and practice? Afghanistan is its last refuge. Turn Afghanistan into a democracy with a Starbuck’s on every corner and that’s it for The Taliban. Where else in the world could they go to practice being bad guys? We will have stopped them. It’s a small world after all.”

Politicians have to spend upwards of $70 million dollars to buy the presidency. That’s the way Americans like it. They like two years of stupid, brainless political commercials which talk about everything but the issues. $70 million to run for president. Is the most qualified person to be a really effective president residing here in the US? My guess is absolutely. Will he or she come up with the $70 million dollars to make a run at it? Probably not. However, if he or she does come up with it, he or she will have ceased to be the most qualified candidate. It’s just the nature of the game.I saw my two and a half year old granddaughter today. I hadn’t seen her in a over a year. My she’s gotten big. I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face or the joy from my heart. She may be taxed to kingdom come when she’s older in order to pay for what was done well before she even knew what a tax is.

Right now, today, I saw her and, believe me, she’s just beautiful. I love her. And that’s life! The rest of the stuff I wrote about above should be land-filled, along with the thespians who make their dirty money perpetuating the hate between right, left, red, blue, green. It’s their living. Keep this half of America hating the other half and the money will continue to flow into your pockets.

Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Bill O’Reilly, Thom Hartmann, Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, all of you. Your paymaster is hate and as long as he’s alive, you’ll do well for yourselves.

Even Thom Hartmann who is maybe the most knowledgeable of all who own voodoo dolls does nothing with his impressive repetition of history short of validating that hateful division between one half of human kind and the other half. This keeps vegetables on the tables of people who make a living of exploiting the division.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a beautiful little girl to spend a week with. Keep up the good fight, no matter what side you’re on. It’s good for you and your bank accounts.

Oh, by the way, Sean, Thom, Keith, Ed, Glenn, Rachel, if you truly attempted a small degree of introspection, something that I’m sure scares the bejesus out of each and every one of you, you’d realize that, as much as Americans hate one another, your insistence upon broadcasting that hate does nothing but grow it. You won’t look within yourselves. After all, promotion into a higher tax bracket is your goal and that introspection would just ruin the whole thing.

“To friendship,
Michael

“When we got into office, the thing that surprised me the most was that things were as bad as we'd been saying they were.” - John F. Kennedy

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Peace Is Possible

Democrats Can't Even Win Successfully

2009-03-16T15:11:00.000-07:00

Debatable Opinions; Letters to the Editor
(originally published by OpEdNews)

A man writes to the Lincoln, Nebraska based newspaper The Journal Star that “comprehensive health care reform” is the next important legislation on which the Obama Administration should concentrate.

He says that “Government, businesses and families can’t keep up with the burdens this broken (healthcare) system places on them.”

He makes the insightful argument that “many of the thousands of layoffs in America can be directly traced to businesses’ inability to cover insurance costs” and that “our working families and their children deserve a system of health care that guarantees quality, affordable health care for everyone.”

Unfortunately for this gentleman and many of us who share his position, considering the 55-43 majority the Republicans hold in the Senate, there’s not much of a chance that President Obama’s $3 trillion budget which contains what Politico calls Obama’s $634 million “head start” toward single payer health insurance will pass.

If you’re at all confused about the numbers mentioned above, the 55-43 numbers not the $634 million number, it’s understandable. However, there is a logical explanation.

To review, not only did Democrat Barack Obama win the presidency in 2008 by a 7.2% margin of victory, but the Democrats won 25 seats in the House, bringing their total to a whopping 257. Everyone, including yours truly, thought that the Democrats won at least 7 senate seats in the 2008 elections as well. This would have raised the total of Democrats or Democratic leaning senators from 51 to 58. We can only assume that the state of Minnesota and/or the national Democratic Party are ultimately going to allow Al Franken into the more aristocratic and dignified division of congress. One, including yours truly, should be awestruck with the insurmountable 59-41 majority.

But, no, it will no more be an insurmountable 59-41 majority when Franken is finally seated than it is presently a 58-41 majority. No. In the name of “checks and balances”, a name which frightened Democrats dared not utter while The Regime was in power, 14 Democratic Senators have decided to keep the Democratic Obama Administration in check.

Lead by Democratic Senator Bob Nelson of Nebraska, the very state in which the author of the above mentioned epistle resides, the group of 14 have, for all intents and purposes, decided to scrutinize President Barack Obama the way that many Democrats and Progressives hoped that they would have scrutinized The George W. Bush Show.

If you remember, adding insult to deadly, heartbreaking misery, especially for Iraqis and American military personnel, Democrats had voted at every turn with The Regime on legislation in favor of throwing more money at Iraq. They gave The Regime this money in addition to helping it pass its enormous defense budget. Democrats and Republicans who kept voting for The Regime’s occasional requests knew that the money did not come from the defense budget.

As South Carolina's Republican Governor, Mark Sanford, points out, “it's not a good idea to spend money that you don't have…”

Sanford wasn’t speaking about the millions of dollars that we didn’t have yet we spent to perpetuate the ill-advised occupation of Iraq. Sanford was speaking about the reason why he plans to turn away South Carolina’s portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money. No matter how horrible the unemployment statistics for his state are, Sanford’s pride stands far above his constituents needs. I guess it’s not like the good ole days when spending money we didn’t have on Iraq was admirable and patriotic. In fact it was considered outright unpatriotic to vote against such spending.

In 2006, Democrats became the majority in the Senate, but only by a slim 51-49 margin. Yet, in November of 2008, they voted to exempt corporate communications giants from any responsibility or complicity in The Regime’s illegal intrusions into anyone’s and everyone’s private, public and, far more often than not, non terrorist-linked life.

They provided a loyal opposition, with the emphasis on the word “loyal”. “Obedient” opposition would have suited them better.

As already mentioned, the results of the 2008 elections would have given the Democrats no excuse to vote with Republicans. The Regime and its scary cast, starring the beadie-eyed Dick Cheney, were no longer in charge and the official numbers almost ensured that Democrats would finally be able to get populist, pro middle class legislation passed, with or without having to listen to minutes, hours or days of Republican filibustering. That is according to the official November, 2008 election results.

I don’t know where I heard the phrase, but I once heard someone express the opinion that Bill Clinton may have been the best Republican president ever.

Now it's possible that someday, someone may be able to say that the best Republican Senate ever was the Senate which was part of the 111th Congress. In fact, Indiana’s Democratic Senator Evan Bayh says, “If we’re going to get 60, we have to have the pragmatists, the moderates in the Senate, in the Democratic caucus working together and reaching out to those on the other side, of like minds…”

Bayh is correct in his premise that there are “moderate Republicans in the senate”. Three of them, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania voted for President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which allowed the bill to pass. Considering the spending cuts and tax cuts demanded by the “moderate” Republicans, the bill, already called too small by economists, was even further watered down.

The letter writer shares a great many of the concerns of his fellow Americans, the Americans who told Washington, by way of Obama’s overwhelming victory and the seats picked up by Democrats in “The People’s House” that they agree strongly with President Obama’s plan to place the nation on the road to recovery.

It’s obvious that Republicans didn’t get the message and now it’s become obvious that 14 Democrats didn’t get it, either.

Could it be possible that, even though these Capitalist greed heads didn’t listen to their constituents, they actually have heard and heeded a message? Maybe these self-serving lawmakers have understood with even more clarity the message sent to them by The Corporacracy.

I look at the present state of government and my belief that The Corporacracy owns the whole kit and caboodle, including The Executive, is being reinforced. Obama is this close to persuading me that he is, indeed, a “Corporat” (cör-pör-ãt).

I’m worrying that the hopes harbored by our sensible letter writer are too high, as were mine. There aren’t a lot of “Republicans”, including the 14 who just joined their ranks in all but name, who will ever support a single payer health insurance system or any other populist “socialist” system, for that matter. In fact, I don’t think that there are any who will.

To friendship,
Michael

“The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.” - Brooks Atkinson

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<a href="http://www.buzzdash.com/polls/some-dissent-among-democrats-on-obama-agenda-you-see-that-as-more-153917/">Some dissent among Democrats on Obama agenda. You see that as more:</a> <a href="http://www.buzzdash.com">BuzzDash polls</a>

EFCA – End of the Factory Gods

2009-03-08T21:53:00.000-07:00

Debatable Opinions; Letters to the Editor
(originally published at OpEdNews)

A letter writer to The Bismarck Tribune obviously doesn’t think much of HR 800 or The Employee Free Choice Act. He believes that the bill is “oxymoronical” and should be called “The Employee Forced Choice Act”. I decided to give the writer a pass on his over-syllabication because I hadn’t done nearly enough research on this bill.

Consequently, the first thing I did was to actually read the bill, which has to do with the right of employees to form a union. If I waded correctly through the legalese, I’m surprised to find no mention of one of the most contentious debating points used especially by those who oppose it. The controversial point is that this “bill would take away the right to a secret ballot.”

However, the bill does not offer direction on what methodology employees should use to decide whether they do or do not want to organize. In fact, the bill is clear that, if The National Labor Relations Board “finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations”, “the Board shall not direct an election”. The bill doesn’t give the NLRB the power to force any method of determination upon the employees. The workers would be free to choose whether to decide to unionize through sign-up cards or through a secret ballot election.

To make his point, the letter writer uses The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As many of you know, this legislation has become known as The Stimulus Package or, to some, “The Stim”. He says that, “Legislators admit they haven't even read the whole bill…” and calls this a “disturbing method of government”.

On October 26, 2001, shortly after we were “attacked”, President George W. Bush signed The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, otherwise known as The Patriot Act.

The writer may have gotten his cue from House Republican leader John Boehner. Congressman Boehner stood before the House, Stimulus Package in his hands, and called it “1100 pages that not one member of this body has read.”

He then asked, “What happened to our promise that we were going to let the American people see what’s in this bill for forty-eight hours?”

Finally, acting as if he didn’t realize that he was holding an official legislative proposal upon which Congress was going to vote, he disrespectfully, a manner in which most Republicans have approached their jobs since the election of Barack Obama, dropped the bill on the floor.

Let’s go back to The Patriot Act.

The reason we go back to The Patriot Act is because, in his documentary film, “Fahrenheit 9/11”, Michael Moore exposes the fact that Congress, both houses, passed this “security bill” without the luxury of having read it. If we remember, and how can we forget, this “security bill” ultimately served to trespass upon a wide swath of personal liberties. If we think about Moore’s exposé, we come to the conclusion that both Boehner, an obedient and staunch supporter of The Patriot Act, and the letter writer possess a memory deficiency. The other possibility is that these two men are less than honest when arguing for or against legislation.

Returning to the Employee Free Choice Act, the myth that it takes away an employee’s right to a private ballot isn’t the only problem that our letter writer has. “If you prefer not to be a union employee under EFCA, too bad,” he writes.

After I didn’t find anything in the bill which dictates what method workers are to use to vote for or against unionization, I didn’t find anything in the bill which dictates that, if the majority of workers in a workplace vote to organize, all workers must join the union.

Having said that, the majority wins, winner-take-all society in which we live may influence the outcome of a vote and the consequence of voting to form a union may be that everyone working in that particular workplace will be expected to join. There have been so called “open shops” in the past, but no one knows what any particular workplace will do. The important thing is to remember that, even if the workplace is set up so that all who work in that workplace must join the union, there’s nothing in HR 800 which decrees such an outcome. If the union in a particular workplace demands 100% participation, The Employee Free Choice Act will not be the reason for it. This weakens the writer’s argument, to say the least.

We can look at laws that have been passed by Congress and ask ourselves if most of those laws have been passed for the benefit of society or to the detriment of society. Although there are laws with which many of us don’t agree, it’s my opinion that many members of Congress, sometimes misdirected or acting out of political panic, believe that the laws they pass are for the good of society.

Laws passed by Congress should protect the majority of Americans. At this point, my personal belief is that President Obama believes that his stimulus package will help those Americans that need the help. His naïve notion of getting his desired legislation passed with bipartisan support has impaired his efforts and diluted what he’s done so far. However, I think many of his goals are admirable.

If The Constitution and its amendments have taught us anything, they’ve taught us that laws are made for the benefit of the majority.

Of the 27 amendments which have passed, only two, as far as I can see, have penalized or victimized American citizens. One of those two amendments has been repealed.

The two amendments are the 16th amendment, which introduced the income tax and the 18th amendment which was prohibition.

Prohibition was repealed.

There may be disagreement on a few of the other amendments, but, from where I stand, they appear as though they were passed to preserve, protect and defend the people of The United States just as it’s the job of the government to preserve, protect and defend The Constitution, but it’s The Constitution’s job the preserve, protect and defend Americans.

Further proof that this opinion is still the opinion of a majority is a sampling of some of the amendments that were proposed, but didn’t pass. Among these are:

Considering all of this, on whose part has the EFCA been proposed? Let’s look at some facts which may help answer that question.

The letter writer, who begins to come across as a small business owner more than someone who worries about employees losing rights, may have a point. He states that, if the EFCA is passed, small businesses, I mean really, really small businesses, may be the entities caught in the middle which get nothing from the bill. Small businesses may be hurt if their employees join a union.

He says that, “We do our best to compensate them (employees) with wages and benefits that many others don't offer in our industry.

“If employees were required to have dues deducted from their paychecks and small businesses were forced to pay more for compensation and benefits”, the costs would be passed on to the customers. One wonders, if this person was paying his employees “wages and benefits that many others don't offer in our industry”, why his employees would even consider unionizing.”

Our present economy demonstrates that it really doesn’t matter to many customers what costs are or are not passed on to them. The so called customers are/were also employees and many of the so called customers can’t afford what the letter writer is selling anyway. One reason for this is unions have been blown away by employers, whether large corporations, medium size businesses or even small businesses. Employees have been saying for a long time that “unions have outlived their usefulness” and do nothing but obstruct and impede otherwise successful businesses.

Admittedly, there came a time when unions were at least as demanding and corrupt as management. That was the fault of the rank and file, not the fault of the entity called a union. In my humble opinion, unions could never outlive their usefulness.

The day that all unions are tossed aside by their members will be the day when workers will begin to remember the usefulness of a union. Without the protection of unions, labor will cease to be a resource over which management competes. The idea that unions have outlived their usefulness is a major cause of the “race to the bottom”. The fewer unions that exist, the more confidence employers gain to take liberties with labor. The capitalist operational engine called supply and demand takes hold and, as the supply of workers increases, the demand for them falls off and so does their worth. Employees have no support, no protection. Workers find themselves in the unenviable position in which they find themselves today.

One would think that people would rather pay a little more than to have no money at all with which to buy lower priced items. In fact, the more people we have paying union dues, the more people we’d have with a wage that allows them to spend money.

One of the letter writer’s final concerns is that, if a workplace is unionized and bargaining sessions between labor and management stall, a federal bureaucrat will “fly in and dictate local decisions.”

As it is now, the company decides whether or not talk about organizing is to be allowed on its property or during the hours for which the employees are being paid. This means that, instead of a government “bureaucrat” serving as a mediator, a corporate “bureaucrat”, not the most impartial of people, controls labor relations.

I wrote above about open shops. These are workplaces in which some workers belong to a union and others do not. The truth is, especially in the case of large corporations, most employees work in open shops, whether there’s a union involved or not.

We’ve all heard of CEOs who fail. The company and the CEO come to an agreement and the CEO steps down. Notice I didn’t write that the company fires the CEO. The reason I didn’t write that is the same reason why CEOs who have failed walk away with severance packages that are worth more than most workers will receive in a life time. The reason is that CEOs do exactly what they work so hard to prevent workers from doing, they sign employment contracts!

Wages for working men and women have stagnated while pay and bonuses for CEOs have sky-rocketed.

In a study conducted in 2001, it was discovered that 20% of Americans own 84% of America’s wealth. This means that the 80% of the population owns the remaining 16% of the wealth.

In almost every form of governance, including any government headed up by Libertarians, there would inevitably be some socialism. If the government controls even a minimal army, that army is socialized. Nonetheless, Americans fear the word “socialism” as much as a cow fears the word “rib-eye”. Even those who consider themselves “left of center” debate those who call Obama a socialist by insisting he’s not a socialist. Another, truer, more courageous response would be, “There are socialist planks in his platform.” They run from the word instead of admitting that The US has for its entire existence been a socialist society to some degree.

However, Americans will never allow the US to be called a socialist democracy, even though socialist democracies seem to work as well as, if not better than most other forms of governing. Consequently, The Employee Free Choice Act may be the last chance unions will get to fortify the American worker and ensure that worker is compensated with a living wage.

To friendship,
Michael

“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.” - Bertrand Russell

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Jamie

2009-03-02T08:24:00.000-08:00

(originally published at OpEdNews)

I hope that you allow me this small space for a personal utterance.

I’m very passionate about what goes on in the world. Innocent men, women and children die daily so that a particular person or group can steal resources from other countries and/or gain more power over the earth and its inhabitants. These horrors simultaneously frustrate, anger and sadden me.

However, I am, as I bet most of you would be, just as deeply saddened by the lost of a close friend. Jamie, who's been with us for 10 1/2 years died two nights ago and I haven’t been up to finishing a column that I was writing about the Employee Free Choice Act.

This picture is of Jamie on the right and her mate, Bella.

Jamie was 11 and Bella’s six months younger.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe some people are saying that a dog, used by some cultures as food, shouldn’t mean as much to a person as the horrific acts to which I refer above.

However, I received from Jamie and I receive from Bella what I think everyone needs now and again, unconditional love. In fact, if the relationship among all of the people of the earth was merely based upon conditional compassion, the possibility of the kinds of activities such as those mentioned would be unthinkable.

I intend to resume my Monday “Debatable Opinions” column on March 8.

To friendship,
Michael

Thread Does Not a Nation Make

2009-02-23T06:51:00.000-08:00

Debatable Opinions; Letters to the Editor
(originally published at OpEdNews)

On February 14, two of Philadelphia’s finest were sent to the scene of an altercation between a Philadelphia cab driver and a would be thief. The thief warned the cabbie that, if he called the police, he would shoot the cabbie and the police. The cabbie, most likely fearing for his life, called anyway.

Two policeman showed up at the scene. The thief wannabe was wearing a jacket and his hand was in one of the pockets. As the police approached the man, he quickly raised that veiled hand. The hand wasn’t the only thing that the thief raised. In his hand was a .357 Magnum.

A little after nine o’clock PM, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey walked out of the Albert Einstein Medical Center to an anxiously waiting media.

He somberly looked up and said, “It's my sad duty to inform you of the death of John Pawlowski. What makes his death even more tragic is that his wife Kim is expecting their first child. What makes this whole thing unacceptable is that officer Pawlowski was improperly displaying the flag of The United States of America on his sleeve.”

Of course Commissioner Ramsey never mentioned anything about the flag on Pawlowski’s sleeve. In truth, he never mentioned anything about Officer Pawlowski’s wife expecting their first child, but that one is a fact.

This is not glib handling of the senseless killing of one those brave people who work day and night to protect cabbies as well as you and me.

I wonder, though, whether the man who wrote a letter to North Carolina’s Citizen-Times would, indeed, fault the commissioner for failing to mention whether or not the slain officer was displaying the flag properly. After all, he’d been noticing the “improper display of the flag of the United States on the sleeve of various uniforms.”

There’s nothing wrong with knowing the proper placement of the flag. It’s just another piece of knowledge. What’s wrong is that the letter writer states that, “Some of the offenders have included law enforcement…”

Offenders, he says! So “offender” may have been Officer Pawlowski’s status when he lost his life trying to save that of a cab driver. We really don’t know, do we? How the flag was situated on his uniform hasn’t, yet, become an issue. Unless the letter writer from North Carolina gets involved in the investigation, it probably will never become an issue.

I’d like to think that the flag is important because of what it’s supposed to represent. It’s supposed to represent The United States of America and the wonderful participative government for which the founding fathers laid the groundwork. At any rate, they laid that groundwork by penning eloquent words eloquently upon the parchment of the time.

As we know today, much of what they wrote was incongruent with what they practiced. Yet the words are there and, as time has passed, they’ve come to be meaningful. They are the words of which we should be reminded when we see an American flag. That is the purpose of the flag. The flag has a purpose; it is not, in and of itself, a purpose.

Yet, throughout American history, it has somehow become not a representation, but a raison d’être.

We’ve been told that everything’s changed since September 11, 2001. One of the “everythings” is the American love affair with sewn fabric of red, white and blue. Don’t misunderstand. “Old Glory” has always been important to many Americans, more important to some than to others. We’ve even given it a name.

There’s always been a debate between those who see the flag as a representation and those who see it as an end to a means. There have been votes in Congress to amend The Constitution so that it becomes a crime to desecrate the American flag. There could one day be a law which punishes people for “desecrating” cloth while those who desecrate the ideals for which that cloth stands go free.

There exists an opinion that, since the flag represents, for example, the premise that “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”, whenever the government of this country has, with malice aforethought, obstructed those ideals, they have rendered the flag what it really, thread sewn into red, white and blue. It ceases to represent good and becomes a piece of cloth worthy of nothing more than the same destruction of that which it represents.

I’m quite certain that the letter writer, who becomes obviously upset when the flag is not displayed “as if it is advancing, that is, the union should be to the front as it would be if the flag were freely flying”, would call for the death penalty if he ever read the above paragraph. I’m not certain that I’m embellishing in this case. The flag, for some, has taken on the importance of religious dogma.

Justice may be found when the letter writer returns to his home after a hard day of covert flag inspections just to notice a figure through the window of his house. He takes out his cell phone and calls the police who send two “offenders” to his home. As the three are standing outside the home, quietly discussing their next move, our flagomaniac notices that the flags on, not one, but both of the officers’ sleeves are a bit off, not quite right.

The letter writer then says in disgust, “Please call for two more officers who know how to wear a flag correctly.” Then, maybe in that particular case, he would make an exception.

By the way, “Emblem makers offer sleeve flags in “right” and “left” configurations. The same should hold true for decals or other representation of the flag on the sides or windows of automobiles.”

It’s good to know, I guess.

To friendship
Michael

“I wouldn't trust Nixon from here to that phone.” - Barry Morris Goldwater

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Eugene Debs was a Socialist

2009-02-14T13:03:00.000-08:00

Debatable Opinions; Letters to the Editor
(originally published at OpEdNews)

Some time back, I wrote an article entitled Socialism and Democracy – The People’s Combination. In the article, I tried to make the point that words aren’t inherently “bad”.

As reinforcement for that premise, I invite you to read the late George Carlin’s comedic dissertation in which he substitutes the word “fuck” for the word “kill”. It becomes clear via the great Carlin’s logic that words are emotionless, lifeless character formations which have no particular agenda.

Absent the comic genius of Carlin, I used his logic in my article to talk about the word “social”. The conclusion I came to was that the word “social” in almost all of its variations carries a positive ambiance; in almost all of its variations. However, combine the word social with the suffix “ism” and, voila, Mr. Hyde! A word otherwise used to describe a desired relationship among people becomes instantly dangerous.

I don’t bring this up as a veiled attempt to get readers to go back and read my article. That having been said, I don’t write for practice, so I’d never discourage anyone from reading or rereading any of my articles.

I bring up this article to explain why the following question doesn’t shock me:

“Does anyone reading this realize how close we came to having a completely socialistic government?”

This question was submitted in a letter to the editor of Montana’s Billings Gazette. The writer reminds us that 60 Democratic seats in the senate would have given them “unbridled control of this country.”

The letter writer is determined that this “socialistic” Congress, along with its “Messiah”, would be certain to go from hunter’s home to hunter’s home confiscating rifles and ammo.

Obama’s stance on gun control, and guns need to be controlled to some extent, can be found at the On The Issues web site.

He wants most semiautomatic guns banned and he wants to keep guns out of the inner city where they serve one purpose and one purpose only. Aside from those caveats, it’s clear that it’s not his intention to take sports men’s guns away. The letter writer’s insistence that The President does, indeed, want to take them away shows the lack of research effort that was made before the letter was submitted.

According to the writer, it gets worse. “goodbye Bush tax cuts- which people living on the backs of working taxpayers hate - and goodbye freedom.”

The tax cuts that The Regime passed were passed for the benefit of those who collect their money by waiting, not by working. The tax cuts that The Regime passed lessened the tax burdens for nonworking taxpayers and corporations, not for “working taxpayers”. If people are living on the backs of these wealthy taxpayers, that can be easily resolved. The filthy rich taxpayers and corporate upper management can get them off of their backs and hire them.

“Good-bye freedom” is an interesting phrase. We see this man’s warning progressing from a hunter’s weapons search and destroy mission, to a repeal of tax cuts for people who don’t need them and whose taxes would pump needed revenue into the economy, to some kind of government driven incarceration. The writer predicts all of this because of a change from capitalism to socialism that’s never been proposed by anyone in the Obama Administration. Ah, but let’s not lose site of the “ism” that magically creates high stepping Soviet troops marching through Moscow – or, possibly, Billings - on Mayday.

Fortunately, in the opinion of the writer, “Chambliss, the Republican incumbent senator” won Georgia’s revote. There’s no doubt that the writer attributes this good fortune to the fact that Chambliss’s “Democrat” opponent brought in old drunken, skirt-chasing Ted Kennedy and self-confessed war criminal John Kerry” from the “socialist state of Massachusetts” to stump for him.

Saxby (for the writer's sake) Chambliss, on the other hand, brought in “Wonder Woman Sarah Palin” to campaign for him. Noting that Palin drew thousands and thousands of people to Chambliss events, the writer confidently states that “The liberal Democrats are scared of her.” He reminds us that, had Palin’s husband not been arrested for DUI 20 years ago, she would now be the vice-president of The United States, which, I guess, means that she would have carried McCain with her. At any rate, the writer may have reminded some of you about the twenty year old DUI incident that decided the 2008 election, but I don’t remember that being the case at all.

As far as the writer is concerned, the Palin DUI was but a minor peccadillo compared to Obama’s past during which he’s admitted to smoking pot and snorting coke. The implication is that this should have been taken into account by those who voted in the 2008 presidential election. Again, I could not have taken into account that which I didn’t know in the first place.

Neither Obama nor anyone in his administration has spoken about making the American government “completely socialistic”. I’ve heard no talk by The Obama Administration about taking over the production of refrigerators, shoes or basketballs. That would be complete socialism, wouldn’t it?

The closest The United States has ever come to having a Socialist president was in the 1908 presidential election when Eugene Debs collected 450,000 votes and again in 1912 when he received 900,000 votes.[1]

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Obama is not a Socialist, complete or any other brand.

In the article I mention above, I go into much more detail, as do comments posted to that article, about how Americans are still indentifying “Socialism” with “communism” and “communism” with tyranny. This points to the sad fact that there are still Americans who’ve never heard of successful Democratic Socialism. There are still Americans who don’t realize that democracy is a form of governance and Socialism is an economic system which protects a nation’s citizens from unnecessary poverty.

This brings me to my final thought. So what if Obama was or is a Socialist? The Socialist Party and the premise of Socialism do not conflict with The Constitution of The United States. We all know that, after The Bible, The US Constitution is the most “interpreted” non-fiction work ever written.

No, I guess that wasn’t my final thought. My final thought is whence do people like this letter writer come? They seem to be let out of “the hen house” just long enough to repeat the fox’s words.

To friendship,
Michael

“There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.” - Bertrand Russell

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[1] . Zinn, Howard. The People’s History of the United States, HaperCollins Publishers, p. 341

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