Righting a Wrong for Washington, DC

Good to great news today. The House of Representatives in Washington passed statehood for Washington,DC today.

Could you imagine living in Washington, DC and paying taxes, everything but YOU HAVE NO REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS? Really? Greater population than Wyoming but zero representatives in Congress. So wrong. Obscene.Let's do this. #DCStatehood #DCStatehoodNow

Quote of the Day -- On Fair, Living Wages

Know This About Amazon and Jeff Bezos and Union Organization

Amazon: --World's 4th biggest company --$21 billion a year in profit --Owner Jeff Bezos is worth $184B, up $70B in a year

--Sends workers 5 anti-union messages a day --36,000+ employees are on food stamps and Medicaid --Cost to lift them from poverty? 2% of annual profit --Dan Price @DanPriceSeattle

Contact Your Senators

What's in the #ForThePeople Act?

--Automatic voter registration --All states allow online updates --Limits voter purges --Same-day Voter registration --Universal vote by mail with online tracking --15 days of early voting --Nonpartisan redistricting Oh, yeah. #PassFTPA

Simple, Intelligent Things We Need to do on Taxes

Republicans are frequently concerned about deficits and deficit spending. At least they are when there is a Democratic Party President like now. Herwith, 3 easy and intelligent things we could do to help solve this problem.

--Raise the corporate tax rate so they pay the same as small businesses. --Raise the tax rate on the rich so they pay the same as the middle-class. --Remove loopholes and increase enforcement. --Dan Price @DanPriceSeattle

Quote of the Day -- On Capitalism

We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill, and lie to make money. They throw poor people out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars for profit, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship money and power.

Chris Hedges

The Two Political Parties, In a Nutshell

The two political parties, ladies and gentlemen, broken down.

Dems: We'd like cops to stop killing minorities.

Reps: Dems hate police.

D's: Women should have the right to choose.

R's: Dems want to kill babies.

D's: We need reasonable immigration policies.

R's: Dems want open borders.

D's: We kneel in protest of inequality.

R's: Dems hate the flag, soldiers and America.

D's: We should wear masks to protect others.

R's: Dems want to take away your freedom.

D's: We should have background checks.

R's: Dems want to take your guns.

D's: Feds should not be policing in cities.

R's: Dems encourage rioting.

D's: People should have a living wage.

R's: Dems want to give everyone free stuff.

D's: We want religious freedom for everyone.

R's: Dems want Sharia Law.

D's: Taxes should be used for the benefit of everyone.

R's: Dems want socialism.

D's: We want people to be able to vote safely during a pandemic.

R's: Dems want to rig the election.

D's: People need more unemployment assistance.

R's: Dems blocked unemployment assistance.

D's: Listen, we just want to find ways to help people.

R's: Listen, we just want to find ways to misrepresent everything you say in order to scare people into voting for us, even though we offer zero solutions.

What Do You Suppose It Will Take To Get KCPT To Recognize There Is a Hispanic Community Here?

Really, this puzzles me.

It took far too long to get KCPT to get one token black person reliably, week after week, on their weekly news programs, "Ruckus" and "Week In Review" and even now, they still get left off some weeks.

That was bad enough but the station still hasn't recognized or accepted or something there is a Hispanic Community in the metropolitan area.

Sure, we still get loads and loads o' white folk what with Right Wing, Republican Mike Shanin and his also Right Wing, Republican buddy Woody Cozad (don't get me started) but the shows are heavily, heavily weighted with bleached white people.

As I've said before, their commercials are all the time putting up minorities in them, asking people to send their money like so many Christian churches but what is it going to take to get a token Hispanice on both these shows each week?

They've recognized there is the Dos Mundos newspaper, having one of their staff on not long ago. You'd think they could--and would--maybe call them up once a week and ask if someone would show up for the program.

At least they let women---one, usually, each week, another token--on the program but once again, it's usually a white woman to round out that very varied group.

This week on Ruckus, they had 3 white people---ONE WOMAN!--and Terry Riley, a former City Council person.

And forget about "Week in Review" this week. The entire show was bleached white people. Every one of them.

Minorities??

Bah!

They don't live here in Kansas City!

Right, KCPT?

I would like to now take this time and place to formally challenge KCPT---a PBS station, after all--to please, for the love of God and fairness and decency and all that is good, to start having, reliably, one Hispanic, one member of the black community, one woman and one---ONLY ONE--white guy on these two programs each week, going forward, indefinitely.

Seriously.

It just doesn't seem like too much to ask.

They say they rely on our contributions in order to survive, exist.

How about including ALL of us?

KCPT?

Have you no shame whatever?

Fairness? Balance? Decency in journalism?

Any of that?

On Presidents, Honesty and Released Tax Returns

Check out the list.

And clearly Republicans are, to date, okay with this.

To quote another Republican:

"People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook." 

--President Richard Milhouse "Tricky Dick" Nixon. Also famously--or infamously--a Republican it should be remembered.

What Gerrymandering Is, What It Does, Why You Should Care and What We Need To Do

And for that matter, we also need to press, push, fight to end "voter ID laws", too.

How Voter ID Laws Are Being Used 

to Disenfranchise Minorities

How Voter ID Laws Discriminate 

Against Racial Minorities

Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. 

Unless you're poor, black

Voter ID Laws Are Discriminatory Efforts 

to Disenfranchise, Courts Rule

We Should Have This National Conversation For and About Women, Equality and Our Nation

I proposed/asked this earlier tonight out on Facebonkers:

Can you imagine how different, how likely radically different our country would be, our legislation, our laws, if 50 percent of our government legislators were women?

Honestly, we should have this conversation. A national conversation.

I'd love to hear it, first of all, and then I'd like to hear it at least locally and then go nationally.

On the issues of health care and child care and schools and, heck, war and our war machine?

And then there's equal pay for equal work, along with really an untold list of what would be different and changed.

Can you imagine how different even the legislative conversations would be, let alone the results of their legislation

I'm no fool on this. I don't for a minute think we'd hit some Nirvana.

I just think we would be a radically different society and nation. Our government would be radically different and so, our nation would, as well.

Scotland is ahead of us on this. They even have an organized group, pushing for 50% of their representatives to be female.

Women 50:50

There are more  people out there in the world, proposing this idea, this framework and working on and for and toward it than I knew, before today. Here's another example.

Can We Create Planet 50-50 by 2030? 

The UN is in on it, too.

Get involved: Step It Up for gender equality: 

About Step It Up

Think about it.

How insane is it that we're still so horribly unequal, that there is still so much gross inequality, not just in the world but here in the US in the 21st Century? We agreed the part about "All men...created equal" meant men and women long ago, I think most of us agree.

Imagine.

I'd love to hear at least one show, one full hour out on KCUR, maybe on Steve Kraske's show.

It would be perfect for that station, him and his program.

Kudos, At Long Last, To KCPT, "Ruckus" and Mike Shanin

At last.

At long last.

I've posted here, at least a few times, if not several, how our local PBS station has singularly, only white people, time after time and week after week, on the show to discuss and hopefully solve Kansas City's issues and problems. In spite of our considerable Black and HIspanic and others population, the program had just that, only white people. Alone.

So imagine how pleased I was this week when they included Jamekia Kendrix on the weekly panel to discuss and talk and be heard. She was and is eloquent and intelligent and well-spoken and more than held her own and gave different viewpoints.

Thank goodness.

Here's hoping it's the shape of things to come for them, for the program and for all of us.

Kudos and salutations, KCPT.

And thank you.

Their "Week in Review" was its same bleached whiteness but at least this "Ruckus" was inclusive.

Hoping they learn, at long last.

Links:

Ruckus | Watch Online | Kansas City PBS Video - KCPT

Ruckus - KCPT

Quote of the Day -- On Labor

Brilliant woman.

“The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all... 

The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.”

― Helen Keller, Rebel Lives: Helen Keller

Links:

Helen Keller - Wikipedia

Helen Keller Biography - Biography.com

Helen Keller Biography - American Foundation for the Blind

What the Labor Movement Begat

Quote of the Day -- On Race in America

William Faulkner wrote these very insightful, telling, even indicting lines all the way back in 1956. They could not be more true of us, then as well as, sadly, even now, today, this much father along in 2017.

That’s what the white man in the South is afraid of: that the Negro, who has done so much with no chance, might do so much more with an equal one that he might take the white man’s economy away from him, the Negro now the banker or the merchant or the planter and the white man the sharecropper or the tenant. That’s why the Negro can gain our country’s highest decoration for valor beyond all call of duty for saving or defending or preserving white lives on foreign battlefields, yet the Southern white man dares not let that Negro’s children learn their ABC’s in the same classroom with the children of the white lives he saved or defended.

More should read the entire, brief article:

Southern Harm, by William Faulkner | Harper's

Additional link:

The White Man's Fear of the Educated Negro

On Being A Progressive

From a document in 1912, for pity's sake. And we're still fighting for lots of, most of these things.

I'm a "Progressive" and this is what we stand for (from a 1912 document)

-Effective legislation looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern industry;

-The fixing of minimum safety and health standards for the various occupations, and the exercise of the public authority of State and Nation, including the Federal Control over interstate commerce, and the taxing power, to maintain such standards;

-The prohibition of child labor;

-Minimum wage standards for working women, to provide a “living wage” in all industrial occupations;

-The general prohibition of night work for women and the establishment of an eight hour day for women and young persons;

-One day’s rest in seven for all wage workers;

-The eight hour day in continuous twenty-four hour industries;

-The abolition of the convict contract labor system;

-Standards of compensation for death by industrial accident and injury and trade disease which will transfer the burden of lost earnings from the families of working people to the industry, and thus to the community;

-The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use;

-The development of the creative labor power of America by lifting the last load of illiteracy from American youth and establishing continuation schools for industrial education under public control and encouraging agricultural education and demonstration in rural schools;

-We favor the organization of the workers, men and women, as a means of protecting their interests and of promoting their progress.

How long, America? How long?

Republicans? The question to you, specifically.

Nike And Big Name Athletes Respond To Mr. Trump's "Muslim Ban"

Nike has a fantastic ad campaign out just now, complete with videos and a full page ad in the NYT today, responding to this President's attempt to shut America's doors. And with racism, no less.

Nike ad sends serious message about equality, opportunity and discrimination

Here's the video:

So kudos, congratulations and much success to you, Nike! A fantastic campaign, for sure! Equality--or something very near it--is what has and should make America great, not fear-mongering and racism and "alternative facts." Y'all are "hitting it out of the ballpark", in sports terms.

Additional links and further, terrific support:

Tiger Woods gets political with Nike's new 'Equality' campaign

LeBron James, Serena Williams and others push Nike equality ad

WATCH: LeBron James and Kevin Durant star in Nike ad calling for 'equality'

For a Little Window of Time There, America....

For a little window of time there, these past nearly full 8 years, we had intelligence and calm and lucidity and rationality and strength and a lot of things good and right in the country. Not perfect, no, not by a long shot. But we had it good and right.


The first of humanity to declare "Nothing lasts forever" had it so right.

It was great while it lasted.

An Open Letter To White America

Dear White America,

Don't like the silent protests during the National Anthem at NFL games?

Fight for justice. Fight for more equity for all. Fight for fairness.

Do something. Do something about it. Stand up for what's right.

Sincerely,

The rest of America

Today is.......

National Women’s Equality Day

This Graphic Shows Why We Still 

Need Women's Equality Day

Links:

Women's Equality Day | National Women's History Project

Women's Equality Day - Wikipedia