JURISPRUDENCE
Gun Points
History reveals a long-standing local authority to regulate guns. Shouldn't that matter?
By Saul Cornell, Justin Florence, and Matthew Shors
Posted Monday, March 8, 2010, at 6:00 PM ET
During last week's oral argument in McDonald v. City of Chicago—the term's blockbuster gun law case—Justice Antonin Scalia was quick to move away from arguments about the Constitution's "text and history" and instead took solace in the judge-made "substantive due process" doctrine he has long attacked. Why was this champion of "originalism" so quick to embrace this modern and amorphous judicial doctrine, at the expense of his express preference for carefully considering the text and history of the 14th Amendment? Some scholars argue that it was to avoid relying on the 14th Amendment's "privileges or immunities clause" (which Scalia lambasted as "the darling of the professoriate"). But another possible reason for Scalia's move is that it's simply impossible to square his broad view of the right to bear arms with the history of the 14th Amendment itself. If the justices take a hard look at the actual history of gun regulation in America, then they will recognize that expansive gun rights vis-à-vis states and localities have never really had a place here.
The McDonald case is the court's first opportunity to consider whether the 14th Amendment prohibits states and cities from enacting certain gun regulations. Two years ago, in Heller v. District of Columbia, a divided court decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. But it reserved the question of whether that amendment limits only the federal government for another day. Justice Scalia's view, set forth in Heller, is that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear certain types of arms unrelated to militia service. By relying on the substantive due process doctrine to "incorporate" the Second Amendment into the 14th, Justice Scalia could ensure that the same right would apply against states and cities, not just a federal protectorate like the District of Columbia.
The problem for Scalia, and for those who want to expand gun rights and also stay faithful to the history and text of the Constitution, is that this view cannot be reconciled with the history of the 14th Amendment. In the years before and after the adoption of the amendment, numerous states and cities—motivated by the danger posed as firearms and other deadly weapons became smaller—enacted laws banning the carrying and possession of certain dangerous weapons, including handguns. In other words, there is ample historical evidence showing that at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified, states had broad authority to enact nondiscriminatory gun-safety regulations. We submitted an amicus brief to the court describing dozens of these laws, but just a few examples suffice to make this point: In 1879, Tennessee outlawed the carrying of "any … belt of pocket pistol, revolver, or any kind of pistol, except the army or navy pistol," including on a person's own farm. And in 1876, Wyoming barred anyone from "bear[ing] upon his person, concealed or openly, any fire-arm or other deadly weapon, within the limits of any city, town or village." And beginning in 1872, you had to check your firearm at the jurisdictional door before even entering the town of Wichita, Kan.
This Reconstruction-era regulation by states and localities was hardly new. Near the time of the Founding, several states regulated the storage of gunpowder in order to protect against fires, in some cases effectively banning the possession of loaded weapons in the home. As Justice John McLean explained in1847, in light of the "explosive nature of gunpowder, a city may exclude it" as an "[act] of self-preservation."
New state Constitutions adopted during the Reconstruction era explicitly codified states' power to regulate guns alongside a right to bear arms. In Texas, for instance, a constitutional convention in 1868 (the same year as the ratification of the 14th Amendment) subjected "the right to keep and bear arms" to "such regulations as the legislature may prescribe." Utah's 1889 Constitution provided that "the Legislature shall regulate the exercise of this right by Law." Justice Scalia asserted during oral argument that "something like 44 States currently have in their constitutions protection of the right to bear arms," but he ignored that at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified, these provisions went hand-in-hand with others providing for state gun regulation.
When state and local gun laws were challenged in the era of the ratification of the 14th Amendment, courts regularly held that these restrictions passed constitutional muster. For example, Tennessee's Supreme Court observed in 1871 that the right to bear arms in that state's constitution could "be subordinated to such regulations and limitations as are or may be authorized by the law of the land," and the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld in 1876 that state's ban on carrying pistols as a proper "exercise of the police power of the State without any infringement of the constitutional right" to bear arms.
When the existence of these laws was mentioned in passing by Chicago's counsel at oral argument, Justice Scalia suggested that the laws at the time of the 14th Amendment did not concern "handguns in the home." But as the examples above demonstrate, that is not so. And state courts repeatedly upheld those laws against constitutional attack.
During argument last week, the court struggled to balance a state or city's right to regulate guns with the Second Amendment right to possess them, without seeming to grapple with the fact that such regulations have been on the books since the Reconstruction period (and before). Several Justices asked the advocates whether there was any basis for concluding that the 14th Amendment protected some kind of right to bear arms, but a right that nevertheless permitted states to adopt more flexible and robust laws than Heller permitted of the federal government. History provides overwhelming support for the proposition that states and cities, through their elected representatives, have the authority to balance the public safety interests impacted by the possession and use of dangerous weapons such as handguns.
As John Bingham, the leading drafter of the 14th Amendment, wrote in an 1867 speech, the new Amendment "would maintain intact the powers of the national government and State governments—the one for general defense and protection, the other for local administration and personal security." The 14th Amendment prevented states from discriminating against the rights of certain classes of people, but states could (and did) continue to enact neutral laws banning classes of weapons. Although Justice Scalia did not appear to be interested in this history, there's no reason the rest of the court can't become Originalists this time around.
Saul Cornell is the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History at Fordham University. Matthew Shors is a partner and Justin Florence an associate in the Washington office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. Cornell was lead scholar and Shors and Florence co-authors of an amicus brief submitted to the court in this case.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2247264/
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Will we ever stop this?
New reports out yesterday tell of approximately 500 people--Christians--having been killed as retaliation, by Muslims.
Really.
Muslims killing Christians.
Christians killing Muslims.
Protestants fighting with Catholics in Ireland. And for centuries.
Jews being discriminated against, beaten, abused and/or killed for centuries.
At what point will mankind stop this idiotic, ignorant insanity?
Why can't we "lame und lame lie"?
Live und let live...
Really.
Muslims killing Christians.
Christians killing Muslims.
Protestants fighting with Catholics in Ireland. And for centuries.
Jews being discriminated against, beaten, abused and/or killed for centuries.
At what point will mankind stop this idiotic, ignorant insanity?
Why can't we "lame und lame lie"?
Live und let live...
Monday, March 8, 2010
Reagan on the $50.00 bill?
It seems the Republicans have come up with an idea they want to push.
For health care reform?
Reducing the budget?
Some other important goal for the good of the country?
Oh, heck no. They want to tinker, instead, with the $50.00 bill.
They love, love, love their man Former President Ronald Reagan so they've come up with the idea of replacing U.S. Grant on the 50 with Ronnie.
Whoop-ti-do.
My first reaction is just that--why don't these people focus on working together to solve our problems, rather than toying with who's on our money?
My second thought is pretty much, so what? Grant helped get us through the Civil War, the biggest internal mess this country's ever been in, to date but he was alcoholic. He had his problems, like the rest of us. He was no saint.
But actually, this got me thinking.
If Republicans want to replace someone on our paper money, they've picked the wrong guy and denomination.
The guy we should replace is Andrew Jackson on the twenty.
Now there's a guy who should be ousted.
Things Andrew Jackson did:
--put many of his friends in government jobs;
--killed or effectively tortured many Native Americans;
--exercised his power in government by ignoring two branches of government;
--was a slave owner and horrific racist;
--broke campaign promises (typical, right?);
--didn't just kill many Native Americans, he was responsible for the Trail of Tears--thousands of Native Americans died because of him;
--saw to the "removal" of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands (see the following: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html) both prior to and during his Presidential tenure.
So, yeah, Republicans, take Andrew Jackson and the $20.00 bill. Have at it.
Then get over it, stop messing around and work on the things that really matter.
Like seeing to it our clearly-broken health care system works, instead, and maybe passing legislation outlawing "earmarks" in Congress.
Now there's some things worth spending time on.
For health care reform?
Reducing the budget?
Some other important goal for the good of the country?
Oh, heck no. They want to tinker, instead, with the $50.00 bill.
They love, love, love their man Former President Ronald Reagan so they've come up with the idea of replacing U.S. Grant on the 50 with Ronnie.
Whoop-ti-do.
My first reaction is just that--why don't these people focus on working together to solve our problems, rather than toying with who's on our money?
My second thought is pretty much, so what? Grant helped get us through the Civil War, the biggest internal mess this country's ever been in, to date but he was alcoholic. He had his problems, like the rest of us. He was no saint.
But actually, this got me thinking.
If Republicans want to replace someone on our paper money, they've picked the wrong guy and denomination.
The guy we should replace is Andrew Jackson on the twenty.
Now there's a guy who should be ousted.
Things Andrew Jackson did:
--put many of his friends in government jobs;
--killed or effectively tortured many Native Americans;
--exercised his power in government by ignoring two branches of government;
--was a slave owner and horrific racist;
--broke campaign promises (typical, right?);
--didn't just kill many Native Americans, he was responsible for the Trail of Tears--thousands of Native Americans died because of him;
--saw to the "removal" of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands (see the following: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html) both prior to and during his Presidential tenure.
So, yeah, Republicans, take Andrew Jackson and the $20.00 bill. Have at it.
Then get over it, stop messing around and work on the things that really matter.
Like seeing to it our clearly-broken health care system works, instead, and maybe passing legislation outlawing "earmarks" in Congress.
Now there's some things worth spending time on.
You say you want a revolution?
Time for a U.S. Revolution – Fifteen Reasons, By Bill Quigley
This article appears on The Huffington Post and Common Dreams.
It is time for a revolution. Government does not work for regular people. It appears to work quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people.
The 1776 Declaration of Independence stated that when a long train of abuses by those in power evidence a design to reduce the rights of people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the peoples right, in fact their duty to engage in a revolution.
Martin Luther King, Jr., said forty three years ago next month that it was time for a radical revolution of values in the United States. He preached “a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” It is clearer than ever that now is the time for radical change.
Look at what our current system has brought us and ask if it is time for a revolution?
Over 2.8 million people lost their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions – nearly 8000 each day – higher numbers than the last two years when millions of others also lost their homes.
At the same time, the government bailed out Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the auto industry and enacted the troubled asset (TARP) program with $1.7 trillion of our money.
Wall Street then awarded itself over $20 billion in bonuses in 2009 alone, an average bonus on top of pay of $123,000.
At the same time, over 17 million people are jobless right now. Millions more are working part-time when they want and need to be working full-time.
Yet the current system allows one single U.S. Senator to stop unemployment and Medicare benefits being paid to millions.
There are now 35 registered lobbyists in Washington DC for every single member of the Senate and House of Representatives, at last count 13,739 in 2009. There are eight lobbyists for every member of Congress working on the health care fiasco alone.
At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that corporations now have a constitutional right to interfere with elections by pouring money into races.
The Department of Justice gave a get out of jail free card to its own lawyers who authorized illegal torture.
At the same time another department of government, the Pentagon, is prosecuting Navy SEALS for punching an Iraqi suspect.
The US is not only involved in senseless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. now maintains 700 military bases world-wide and another 6000 in the US and our territories. Young men and women join the military to protect the U.S. and to get college tuition and healthcare coverage and killed and maimed in elective wars and being the world’s police. Wonder whose assets they are protecting and serving?
In fact, the U.S. spends $700 billion directly on military per year, half the military spending of the entire world – much more than Europe, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and Venezuela - combined.
The government and private companies have dramatically increased surveillance of people through cameras on public streets and private places, airport searches, phone intercepts, access to personal computers, and compilation of records from credit card purchases, computer views of sites, and travel.
The number of people in jails and prisons in the U.S. has risen sevenfold since 1970 to over 2.3 million. The US puts a higher percentage of our people in jail than any other country in the world.
The tea party people are mad at the Republicans, who they accuse of selling them out to big businesses.
Democrats are working their way past depression to anger because their party, despite majorities in the House and Senate, has not made significant advances for immigrants, or women, or unions, or African Americans, or environmentalists, or gays and lesbians, or civil libertarians, or people dedicated to health care, or human rights, or jobs or housing or economic justice. Democrats also think their party is selling out to big business.
Forty three years ago next month, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in Riverside Church in New York City that “a time comes when silence is betrayal.” He went on to condemn the Vietnam War and the system which created it and the other injustices clearly apparent. “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing oriented” society to a “person oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
It is time.
Original link here:
http://ccrjustice.org/time-u.s.-revolution-%E2%80%93-fifteen-reasons%2C-bill-quigley
This article appears on The Huffington Post and Common Dreams.
It is time for a revolution. Government does not work for regular people. It appears to work quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people.
The 1776 Declaration of Independence stated that when a long train of abuses by those in power evidence a design to reduce the rights of people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the peoples right, in fact their duty to engage in a revolution.
Martin Luther King, Jr., said forty three years ago next month that it was time for a radical revolution of values in the United States. He preached “a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” It is clearer than ever that now is the time for radical change.
Look at what our current system has brought us and ask if it is time for a revolution?
Over 2.8 million people lost their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions – nearly 8000 each day – higher numbers than the last two years when millions of others also lost their homes.
At the same time, the government bailed out Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the auto industry and enacted the troubled asset (TARP) program with $1.7 trillion of our money.
Wall Street then awarded itself over $20 billion in bonuses in 2009 alone, an average bonus on top of pay of $123,000.
At the same time, over 17 million people are jobless right now. Millions more are working part-time when they want and need to be working full-time.
Yet the current system allows one single U.S. Senator to stop unemployment and Medicare benefits being paid to millions.
There are now 35 registered lobbyists in Washington DC for every single member of the Senate and House of Representatives, at last count 13,739 in 2009. There are eight lobbyists for every member of Congress working on the health care fiasco alone.
At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that corporations now have a constitutional right to interfere with elections by pouring money into races.
The Department of Justice gave a get out of jail free card to its own lawyers who authorized illegal torture.
At the same time another department of government, the Pentagon, is prosecuting Navy SEALS for punching an Iraqi suspect.
The US is not only involved in senseless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. now maintains 700 military bases world-wide and another 6000 in the US and our territories. Young men and women join the military to protect the U.S. and to get college tuition and healthcare coverage and killed and maimed in elective wars and being the world’s police. Wonder whose assets they are protecting and serving?
In fact, the U.S. spends $700 billion directly on military per year, half the military spending of the entire world – much more than Europe, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and Venezuela - combined.
The government and private companies have dramatically increased surveillance of people through cameras on public streets and private places, airport searches, phone intercepts, access to personal computers, and compilation of records from credit card purchases, computer views of sites, and travel.
The number of people in jails and prisons in the U.S. has risen sevenfold since 1970 to over 2.3 million. The US puts a higher percentage of our people in jail than any other country in the world.
The tea party people are mad at the Republicans, who they accuse of selling them out to big businesses.
Democrats are working their way past depression to anger because their party, despite majorities in the House and Senate, has not made significant advances for immigrants, or women, or unions, or African Americans, or environmentalists, or gays and lesbians, or civil libertarians, or people dedicated to health care, or human rights, or jobs or housing or economic justice. Democrats also think their party is selling out to big business.
Forty three years ago next month, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in Riverside Church in New York City that “a time comes when silence is betrayal.” He went on to condemn the Vietnam War and the system which created it and the other injustices clearly apparent. “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing oriented” society to a “person oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
It is time.
Original link here:
http://ccrjustice.org/time-u.s.-revolution-%E2%80%93-fifteen-reasons%2C-bill-quigley
St. Louis housing market ranked No. 8, nationally
8. St. Louis, Mo.- Ill.
One-year Home Price Forecast: -0.02
Housing Opportunity Index: 84.5
% of Housing Units in Foreclosure: 1.58
This brings to mind two thoughts:
First, I don't know how they're on it as I didn't think St. Louis was in that good a position and two, Kansas City is absolutely not ranked in this "top ten", to be sure.
Memphis, TN and Columbus, OH (tied at 6) are both on the list as are Indianapolis (5), Minneapolis (4), Louisville (3) with Pittsburgh, PA at number one.
Makes me wonder what these mid-sized cities are doing particularly right, compared to us.
I mean besides paving their streets and seeing to it the snow is plowed in the winter.
Mayor Funkhouser--any thoughts?
Oh, wait. Never mind.
One-year Home Price Forecast: -0.02
Housing Opportunity Index: 84.5
% of Housing Units in Foreclosure: 1.58
This brings to mind two thoughts:
First, I don't know how they're on it as I didn't think St. Louis was in that good a position and two, Kansas City is absolutely not ranked in this "top ten", to be sure.
Memphis, TN and Columbus, OH (tied at 6) are both on the list as are Indianapolis (5), Minneapolis (4), Louisville (3) with Pittsburgh, PA at number one.
Makes me wonder what these mid-sized cities are doing particularly right, compared to us.
I mean besides paving their streets and seeing to it the snow is plowed in the winter.
Mayor Funkhouser--any thoughts?
Oh, wait. Never mind.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
The only way the insane suicide bombings will end
I've been meaning to write on this all week.
From CNN last week:
"At a news conference in London, England, on Tuesday, the renowned Islamic scholar issued a fatwa -- a religious ruling -- condemning suicide bombers as destined for hell, removing extremists' certainty of earning paradise after death."
"The 600-page fatwa is arguably the most comprehensive theological refutation of Islamist terrorism to date. Qadri said his aim was to set an important precedent that might allow other scholars to similarly condemn the ideas behind terrorism."
"London's The Independent newspaper reports that the imam told fellow Muslims: 'Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses of ifs and buts. The world needs an absolute, unconditional, unqualified and total condemnation of terrorism.'"
The scholar's name is Sheikh Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri. CNN covered him for their "intriguing People" series from March 3.
This, then, is the only way this insanity will end, be it in Iran, Aghanistan, anywhere and everywhere in the Muslim/Islam world.
We need more Imams and Islamist rulers, leaders and scholars to stand up and say that these suicide bombings are insanity and that they need to stop.
Let's hope that this one is the first of many to come. Hopefully Western governments all over the world--our own through Hillary Clinton and the State Department, the French, British, everyone--will push for more clarity and intelligence like this. Fortunately, in this case, it looks as though this Imam spoke out on his own.
Hopefully young Muslim and Islamic men and women 'round the world are listening.
From CNN last week:
"At a news conference in London, England, on Tuesday, the renowned Islamic scholar issued a fatwa -- a religious ruling -- condemning suicide bombers as destined for hell, removing extremists' certainty of earning paradise after death."
"The 600-page fatwa is arguably the most comprehensive theological refutation of Islamist terrorism to date. Qadri said his aim was to set an important precedent that might allow other scholars to similarly condemn the ideas behind terrorism."
"London's The Independent newspaper reports that the imam told fellow Muslims: 'Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses of ifs and buts. The world needs an absolute, unconditional, unqualified and total condemnation of terrorism.'"
The scholar's name is Sheikh Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri. CNN covered him for their "intriguing People" series from March 3.
This, then, is the only way this insanity will end, be it in Iran, Aghanistan, anywhere and everywhere in the Muslim/Islam world.
We need more Imams and Islamist rulers, leaders and scholars to stand up and say that these suicide bombings are insanity and that they need to stop.
Let's hope that this one is the first of many to come. Hopefully Western governments all over the world--our own through Hillary Clinton and the State Department, the French, British, everyone--will push for more clarity and intelligence like this. Fortunately, in this case, it looks as though this Imam spoke out on his own.
Hopefully young Muslim and Islamic men and women 'round the world are listening.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
My depressing find for the day (week, month)
On reading a bit yesterday about the shooter at the Pentagon yesterday and then on true government hate groups, I learned that there is a group organizing a "Second Amendment March" who's coordinating a march on Washington right now set for April 19th this year.
That's bad enough by itself.
But the date?
Besides being my Mother's birthday (God rest her soul) it is also the date of the first shots fired at Lexington in the Revolutionary War, the anniversary of the fiery end of the government siege in Waco and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Sick.
Sick in so many ways.
America seems to be one sad and hurting pup.
That's bad enough by itself.
But the date?
Besides being my Mother's birthday (God rest her soul) it is also the date of the first shots fired at Lexington in the Revolutionary War, the anniversary of the fiery end of the government siege in Waco and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Sick.
Sick in so many ways.
America seems to be one sad and hurting pup.
Forget climate change, then
Don't believe in climate change?
Fine.
The fact is, we need to get out of the Middle East.
We need to wean ourselves off the use of oil and fossil fuels.
The connection between terrorists, terrorism and oil from the Middle East is too direct.
Let's pass a Clean Energy bill so we can get and keep our troops out of the Middle East and their interminable wars.
It's the right thing to do for them, if not for reducing greenhouse gasses, too.
Please go to this website and sign the petition to get a Clean Energy Bill:
www.billiondollarsaday.org
Let's, for the love of pete, get out of the Middle East, once and for all and as soon as possible.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Fun breakfast fundraiser Saturday morning
From KCMO Police Chief James Corwin's blog today:
Kansas City area residents can enjoy a delicious breakfast delivered by a police officer and support Missouri Special Olympics at the same time with Saturday’s Tip-A-Cop event at metro Corner Café restaurants.
More than 40 police officers will be at three Corner Café restaurants in Riverside, Kansas City North and Independence from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 6. Instead of their usual job of fighting crime, the off-duty, uniformed officers will be taking orders, serving food, cleaning tables and assisting the regular wait staff at each location.
At the end of each customer’s meal, officers will encourage diners to tip their “real” waiter or waitress first and then ask them if they’d like to make a donation to Special Olympics, the charity of choice for law enforcement nationwide.
Last year’s Tip-A-Cop raised $3,000 for Missouri Special Olympics at just the Riverside Corner Café location. Thanks to the generosity of Corner Café, this year’s event expands to all three of their locations and will include not only Kansas City and Riverside police but also officers from Independence and Liberty police departments.
This year’s Tip-A-Cop Corner Café locations are:
Riverside, Mo.: 4541 NW Gateway Ave.
Kansas City: 8301 N. Flintlock Rd.
Independence, Mo.: 4215 S. Little Blue Parkway
Go! Enjoy! All for a great cause!
And have a great weekend.
Kansas City area residents can enjoy a delicious breakfast delivered by a police officer and support Missouri Special Olympics at the same time with Saturday’s Tip-A-Cop event at metro Corner Café restaurants.
More than 40 police officers will be at three Corner Café restaurants in Riverside, Kansas City North and Independence from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 6. Instead of their usual job of fighting crime, the off-duty, uniformed officers will be taking orders, serving food, cleaning tables and assisting the regular wait staff at each location.
At the end of each customer’s meal, officers will encourage diners to tip their “real” waiter or waitress first and then ask them if they’d like to make a donation to Special Olympics, the charity of choice for law enforcement nationwide.
Last year’s Tip-A-Cop raised $3,000 for Missouri Special Olympics at just the Riverside Corner Café location. Thanks to the generosity of Corner Café, this year’s event expands to all three of their locations and will include not only Kansas City and Riverside police but also officers from Independence and Liberty police departments.
This year’s Tip-A-Cop Corner Café locations are:
Riverside, Mo.: 4541 NW Gateway Ave.
Kansas City: 8301 N. Flintlock Rd.
Independence, Mo.: 4215 S. Little Blue Parkway
Go! Enjoy! All for a great cause!
And have a great weekend.
Fossil fuels, climate change, our American Troops and terrorism
From Senator John Kerry :
The Pentagon recently released their quadrennial defense review, and they included the instability from climate change as a factor that could cost the lives of the men and women who serve in our armed forces.
The Center for Naval Analysis brought together a blue-ribbon panel of generals and admirals who concluded that "climate change is a serious national security threat." And General Anthony Zinni said flatly that if we don't deal with climate change now, "we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives."
And these veterans know it already does.
The politicians don't have it tough. The troops do. End of story. Now the Senate needs to do its job -- for them.
------------------------
Conclusions:
We need out of the Middle East.
We need to reduce, dramatically and quickly, our use of fossil fuels.
We need to pass a comprehensive, effective Clean Energy bill in Congress.
All, at minimum.
The Pentagon recently released their quadrennial defense review, and they included the instability from climate change as a factor that could cost the lives of the men and women who serve in our armed forces.
The Center for Naval Analysis brought together a blue-ribbon panel of generals and admirals who concluded that "climate change is a serious national security threat." And General Anthony Zinni said flatly that if we don't deal with climate change now, "we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives."
And these veterans know it already does.
The politicians don't have it tough. The troops do. End of story. Now the Senate needs to do its job -- for them.
------------------------
Conclusions:
We need out of the Middle East.
We need to reduce, dramatically and quickly, our use of fossil fuels.
We need to pass a comprehensive, effective Clean Energy bill in Congress.
All, at minimum.
Great fun with hypocrite Sean Hannity
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Tip/Wag - James O'Keefe & Sean Hannity | ||||
| ||||
Again, have a great weekend, y'all.
Update on gunman at the Pentagon
Reportedly (and with documentation, thank you), the "Pentagon shooter" yesterday was apparently a Right-wing, anti-government terrorist.
First, let me just say, this isn't my claim so don't attack me.
Second, I think it's important to point out that he was clearly anti-government if, again, the person who shot the security guards and then died is the same guy who had the blog with the same name. That guy railed against the government.
Third, I don't think calling him a terrorist is a big stretch since he did, in fact, shoot the guards.
The only thing left open to question, then, is the "Right-wing" accusation and that seems well documented here.
If this is true--and it seems as though it is--then "Right-wing gun nut" seems justified.
This should make Fox "News", with all their absurd, irresponsible reporting, vitriole and hyperbole quite proud. They're getting more and more results for their work at pumping people up and dividing the American people.
Question/proposal/challenge for Fox "News": No chance you guys will quit all that stupid ugliness and just truly report unbiased news, is there?
Nah, I thought not.
More on the gunman here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-05/the-crazy-gunman-who-attacked-the-pentagon/
A report on right-wing hate groups here:
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage-on-the-right
First, let me just say, this isn't my claim so don't attack me.
Second, I think it's important to point out that he was clearly anti-government if, again, the person who shot the security guards and then died is the same guy who had the blog with the same name. That guy railed against the government.
Third, I don't think calling him a terrorist is a big stretch since he did, in fact, shoot the guards.
The only thing left open to question, then, is the "Right-wing" accusation and that seems well documented here.
If this is true--and it seems as though it is--then "Right-wing gun nut" seems justified.
This should make Fox "News", with all their absurd, irresponsible reporting, vitriole and hyperbole quite proud. They're getting more and more results for their work at pumping people up and dividing the American people.
Question/proposal/challenge for Fox "News": No chance you guys will quit all that stupid ugliness and just truly report unbiased news, is there?
Nah, I thought not.
More on the gunman here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-05/the-crazy-gunman-who-attacked-the-pentagon/
A report on right-wing hate groups here:
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage-on-the-right
Another psycho lashes out: do you suppose our representatives are paying attention?
This time, once more--though not always, of course--with guns.
The last time, you'll remember, was with an airplane.
Yesterday:
"A California man killed in a shootout with Pentagon police drove cross-country and arrived at the military headquarters' subway entrance armed with two semiautomatic weapons, authorities said Friday. The shooter apparently left behind Internet postings resentful of the government and airing suspicions about the 9/11 attacks."
One more person angry about our government.
Another gun-nut, conspiracy theorist, it seems, if the guy who did it is the guy with the same name who posted a bunch of rants on the 'net. We'll see. Stay tuned.
Doesn't it seem like there's been a lot of these lately?
For a brief update on recent attacks:
"The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings."
"Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself."
"The shooting resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in a barrage of return fire."
It would be nice if this, then, would end this stuff but I wouldn't count on it.
What would also be nice, though, is if we knew all our representatives--especially the ones in Washington--were paying attention to this palpable anger and frustration on the part of the citizens of the country, regardless of the source of the anger.
What any and all representatives in Washington ought to take from this is that we have problems, we want and need them fixed and they need to stop the bickering and the partisan nonsense and the log-jamming legislation they've been doing and get to work, compromise, come up with good solutions and pass that legislation.
And quickly.
That's what should happen.
It won't, of course, but that's what should happen.
Have a great, sunny, warm weekend, folks.
___________________________________
Update:
The Pentagon shooting suspect died of his wounds.
What's that about living by the sword/dying by the sword?
The last time, you'll remember, was with an airplane.
Yesterday:
"A California man killed in a shootout with Pentagon police drove cross-country and arrived at the military headquarters' subway entrance armed with two semiautomatic weapons, authorities said Friday. The shooter apparently left behind Internet postings resentful of the government and airing suspicions about the 9/11 attacks."
One more person angry about our government.
Another gun-nut, conspiracy theorist, it seems, if the guy who did it is the guy with the same name who posted a bunch of rants on the 'net. We'll see. Stay tuned.
Doesn't it seem like there's been a lot of these lately?
For a brief update on recent attacks:
"The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings."
"Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself."
"The shooting resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in a barrage of return fire."
It would be nice if this, then, would end this stuff but I wouldn't count on it.
What would also be nice, though, is if we knew all our representatives--especially the ones in Washington--were paying attention to this palpable anger and frustration on the part of the citizens of the country, regardless of the source of the anger.
What any and all representatives in Washington ought to take from this is that we have problems, we want and need them fixed and they need to stop the bickering and the partisan nonsense and the log-jamming legislation they've been doing and get to work, compromise, come up with good solutions and pass that legislation.
And quickly.
That's what should happen.
It won't, of course, but that's what should happen.
Have a great, sunny, warm weekend, folks.
___________________________________
Update:
The Pentagon shooting suspect died of his wounds.
What's that about living by the sword/dying by the sword?
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Crazy spending imbalances
Look at the imbalances of what is being spent per capita in each State from the "Stimulus money" at the following link:
http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/
I’m sure it’s typical but Missouri is getting $903.00 per person while Alaskan citizens are getting $2711.86 each spent on them. That's galling enough, by itself, with that crazy inequity but keep in mind, this is where Ms. Palin abhors government--and government spending.
Yeah, I'll bet she does.
Then, on top of that bit of indignity, Washington, DC citizens are getting $5780.30 per person spent on them.
Would someone explain this to me?
Why is it that this is supposed to make sense?
That’s some crazy imbalances.
If you’re from a large Western state where, again, they “hate government” and there’s hardly anyone out there, load up ‘cuz they’re each getting lots more money spent on each of them. (e.g., Montana @ $1,619.97 each).
Damn gubmint.
http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/
I’m sure it’s typical but Missouri is getting $903.00 per person while Alaskan citizens are getting $2711.86 each spent on them. That's galling enough, by itself, with that crazy inequity but keep in mind, this is where Ms. Palin abhors government--and government spending.
Yeah, I'll bet she does.
Then, on top of that bit of indignity, Washington, DC citizens are getting $5780.30 per person spent on them.
Would someone explain this to me?
Why is it that this is supposed to make sense?
That’s some crazy imbalances.
If you’re from a large Western state where, again, they “hate government” and there’s hardly anyone out there, load up ‘cuz they’re each getting lots more money spent on each of them. (e.g., Montana @ $1,619.97 each).
Damn gubmint.
The real--and simple--reason why the snow wasn't plowed at Christmas
So I'm at my barber's place today, getting my bi-monthly cut when I see the friend of my barber, in the next chair, just visiting, is a City of Kansas City, Missouri employee. (He had a label on his jacket).
So I asked what department he works for.
He says he works for the "Fleet Department."
He knew I wouldn't know what that meant--he was right--and he said "We're the people who plow the snow in winter."
Ding-ding.
Bells went off for me.
I don't quite remember what he said next but I followed with "Yeah, what was that about at Christmas? How come there was trouble with the streets."
And here it came.
The real reason, so far hidden, as far as I know, as to why the big snow we got over Christmas was such a mess and didn't get plowed well or properly.
You'd have thought it was complicated.
He said it was, as a matter of fact, because a bunch of people were off for Christmas. He said they were still trying to keep it quiet. (So much for that, huh?).
Well, yeah.
Of course.
But maybe that should have been cancelled, once a big snow was forecast to come in???
Sometimes the most obvious answer is also the right and true one.
Message to City Hall: wake up and smell the coffee. Do what we hire y'all to do, especially if it's something important like plowing the streets when it snows.
So I asked what department he works for.
He says he works for the "Fleet Department."
He knew I wouldn't know what that meant--he was right--and he said "We're the people who plow the snow in winter."
Ding-ding.
Bells went off for me.
I don't quite remember what he said next but I followed with "Yeah, what was that about at Christmas? How come there was trouble with the streets."
And here it came.
The real reason, so far hidden, as far as I know, as to why the big snow we got over Christmas was such a mess and didn't get plowed well or properly.
You'd have thought it was complicated.
He said it was, as a matter of fact, because a bunch of people were off for Christmas. He said they were still trying to keep it quiet. (So much for that, huh?).
Well, yeah.
Of course.
But maybe that should have been cancelled, once a big snow was forecast to come in???
Sometimes the most obvious answer is also the right and true one.
Message to City Hall: wake up and smell the coffee. Do what we hire y'all to do, especially if it's something important like plowing the streets when it snows.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
"Infotainment" killing important reporting we need
I just ran across this quote from Chris Hedges on ‘The Death and Life of American Journalism’ at Truthdig.org:
"Newspapers, which engage rather than entertain, can no longer compete with the emotional battles that hyperventilating hosts on trash talk shows mount daily. The public, which has walked away from newspapers, has embraced the emotional carnival that has turned news into another form of mindless entertainment."
The same, unfortunately, is also true of too many blogs. That is, they think they must "entertain", rather than give news solely. This explains some blogs self-perceived "need" to post sexist pictures of scantily-clad women or other waste (in this case, hurtful waste) along with reports of local, regional or city news. These same kinds of blogs are also good at either "preaching" what is right, and true and good or they're particularly good at proclaiming the end of the world or the end of the city or some such tremendously horrible thing.
More:
"We are shedding, with the decline and death of many newspapers, thousands of reporters and editors, based in the culture of researched and verifiable fact, who monitored city councils, police departments, mayor’s offices, courts and state legislators to prevent egregious abuse and corruption. And we are also, even more ominously, losing the meticulous skills of reporting, editing, fact-checking and investigating that make daily information trustworthy. The decline of print has severed a connection with a reality-based culture, one in which we attempt to make fact the foundation for opinion and debate, and replaced it with a culture in which facts, opinions, lies and fantasy are interchangeable. As news has been overtaken by gossip, the hollowness of celebrity culture and carefully staged pseudo-events, along with the hysteria and drama that dominate much of the airwaves, our civil and political discourse has been contaminated by propaganda and entertainment masquerading as news. And the ratings of high-octane propaganda outlets such as Fox News, as well as the collapse of the newspaper industry, prove it."
Now, here's the part that indicts the "man on the street", the average citizen:
"Corporations, which have hijacked the state, are delighted with the demise of journalism. And the mass communications systems they control pump out endless streams of gossip, trivia and filth in lieu of news. But news, which costs money and takes talent to produce, is dying not only because citizens are migrating to the Internet and corporations are no longer using newsprint to advertise, but because in an age of profound culture decline the masses prefer to be entertained rather than informed...Money flows to advertising rather than to art or journalism because manipulation is more highly valued than truth or beauty."
Here, then, is the core of the problem:
"American society, once we lose a system of information based on verifiable fact, will become disconnected from reality."
It is really sad. And maddening.
Worse, it weakens the citizenry.
But what're ya' gonna do, you know?
If you want me, I'll be over here, banging my head against this wall.
"Newspapers, which engage rather than entertain, can no longer compete with the emotional battles that hyperventilating hosts on trash talk shows mount daily. The public, which has walked away from newspapers, has embraced the emotional carnival that has turned news into another form of mindless entertainment."
The same, unfortunately, is also true of too many blogs. That is, they think they must "entertain", rather than give news solely. This explains some blogs self-perceived "need" to post sexist pictures of scantily-clad women or other waste (in this case, hurtful waste) along with reports of local, regional or city news. These same kinds of blogs are also good at either "preaching" what is right, and true and good or they're particularly good at proclaiming the end of the world or the end of the city or some such tremendously horrible thing.
More:
"We are shedding, with the decline and death of many newspapers, thousands of reporters and editors, based in the culture of researched and verifiable fact, who monitored city councils, police departments, mayor’s offices, courts and state legislators to prevent egregious abuse and corruption. And we are also, even more ominously, losing the meticulous skills of reporting, editing, fact-checking and investigating that make daily information trustworthy. The decline of print has severed a connection with a reality-based culture, one in which we attempt to make fact the foundation for opinion and debate, and replaced it with a culture in which facts, opinions, lies and fantasy are interchangeable. As news has been overtaken by gossip, the hollowness of celebrity culture and carefully staged pseudo-events, along with the hysteria and drama that dominate much of the airwaves, our civil and political discourse has been contaminated by propaganda and entertainment masquerading as news. And the ratings of high-octane propaganda outlets such as Fox News, as well as the collapse of the newspaper industry, prove it."
Now, here's the part that indicts the "man on the street", the average citizen:
"Corporations, which have hijacked the state, are delighted with the demise of journalism. And the mass communications systems they control pump out endless streams of gossip, trivia and filth in lieu of news. But news, which costs money and takes talent to produce, is dying not only because citizens are migrating to the Internet and corporations are no longer using newsprint to advertise, but because in an age of profound culture decline the masses prefer to be entertained rather than informed...Money flows to advertising rather than to art or journalism because manipulation is more highly valued than truth or beauty."
Here, then, is the core of the problem:
"American society, once we lose a system of information based on verifiable fact, will become disconnected from reality."
It is really sad. And maddening.
Worse, it weakens the citizenry.
But what're ya' gonna do, you know?
If you want me, I'll be over here, banging my head against this wall.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Want smaller government?
You/we are most surely going to get it, one way or another.
Check this out: "Government methodology for reporting retail sales is based on sampling stores in existence. It does not factor in stores not in existence but recently were. Nor does it handle closed stores when the chain is still doing business. Government reporting of retail sales is fatally flawed."
Here's the deal--states and the Federal Government are reporting sales tax collections down and considerably so and, as you know, the states can't operate on deficits so they're all slashing budgets, programs and staff, etc.
But the reports from the feds in Washington are based on same-store sales from the previous year.
What it doesn't take into account is that so many stores have closed doors and/or gone bankrupt.
So sure, same store retail sales are up.
But tax revenues? The money they get in to spend on you and I?
Down. And big time.
So yeah, with the exception of Washington, DC, you and I are going to get smaller government, no doubt about it.
So if you're Conservative or Independent or Libertarian or just a Liberal like me who wants to see government shrink a bit, stay tuned. You're going to get what you wish for.
(You should maybe check out that link above, to see both how much less the States have in tax revenues and the rather long list of companies whose stores closed).
Let's have a great week.
Check this out: "Government methodology for reporting retail sales is based on sampling stores in existence. It does not factor in stores not in existence but recently were. Nor does it handle closed stores when the chain is still doing business. Government reporting of retail sales is fatally flawed."
Here's the deal--states and the Federal Government are reporting sales tax collections down and considerably so and, as you know, the states can't operate on deficits so they're all slashing budgets, programs and staff, etc.
But the reports from the feds in Washington are based on same-store sales from the previous year.
What it doesn't take into account is that so many stores have closed doors and/or gone bankrupt.
So sure, same store retail sales are up.
But tax revenues? The money they get in to spend on you and I?
Down. And big time.
So yeah, with the exception of Washington, DC, you and I are going to get smaller government, no doubt about it.
So if you're Conservative or Independent or Libertarian or just a Liberal like me who wants to see government shrink a bit, stay tuned. You're going to get what you wish for.
(You should maybe check out that link above, to see both how much less the States have in tax revenues and the rather long list of companies whose stores closed).
Let's have a great week.
Speaking volumes
Again, have a great week.
Political solutions the country needs
Steve Kraske's column, as usual, is a good one in the paper today.
In it, he puts forth some observations on problems we have right now in the country and possible solutions and why we aren't likely to enact them.
Darn shame but great column.
There were 2 solutions he didn't mention that, had he had the benefit of a larger column, it would have been good to see.
The first possible additonal political solution for the country would have been campaign finance reform.
We need it horribly.
We need to get money out of our government and out of politics and it isn't going to happen unless and until we get the corporations, their lobbyists and all their money out of both.
The way to do that is with true, stringent, loophole-free campaign finance reform.
And talk about something that isn't going to happen.
It won't ever happen unless and until the American people raise bloody hell and demand it of all their representatives.
In the meantime, what time does NASCAR start today?
The other solution that would have been nice to see in Mr. Kraske's column would have been reinstituting the "Fairness Doctrine" so both sides of political issues would have to be discussed in media.
It's been my contention for years that the elimination of this Fairness Doctrine by the Republicans has helped divide the country and polarize us as nothing else. It is certainly what has given rise to the Fox "News" network, with it's blatant, one-sided Republican/Conservative diatribes and outright misrepresentations of political and other situations in the country and on their programs.
If we could get this doctrine back in our government and enforce it, I believe it would make for far calmer and much more intelligent discussion of our problems. In the meantime, we will just get vitriole and lopsided, ignorant, emotional rants like those from Glenn Beck and Company.
But this, too, won't happen, sadly, tragically.
The "genie" is "out of the bottle" and we don't have the will or intelligence or insight to put it back in.
In it, he puts forth some observations on problems we have right now in the country and possible solutions and why we aren't likely to enact them.
Darn shame but great column.
There were 2 solutions he didn't mention that, had he had the benefit of a larger column, it would have been good to see.
The first possible additonal political solution for the country would have been campaign finance reform.
We need it horribly.
We need to get money out of our government and out of politics and it isn't going to happen unless and until we get the corporations, their lobbyists and all their money out of both.
The way to do that is with true, stringent, loophole-free campaign finance reform.
And talk about something that isn't going to happen.
It won't ever happen unless and until the American people raise bloody hell and demand it of all their representatives.
In the meantime, what time does NASCAR start today?
The other solution that would have been nice to see in Mr. Kraske's column would have been reinstituting the "Fairness Doctrine" so both sides of political issues would have to be discussed in media.
It's been my contention for years that the elimination of this Fairness Doctrine by the Republicans has helped divide the country and polarize us as nothing else. It is certainly what has given rise to the Fox "News" network, with it's blatant, one-sided Republican/Conservative diatribes and outright misrepresentations of political and other situations in the country and on their programs.
If we could get this doctrine back in our government and enforce it, I believe it would make for far calmer and much more intelligent discussion of our problems. In the meantime, we will just get vitriole and lopsided, ignorant, emotional rants like those from Glenn Beck and Company.
But this, too, won't happen, sadly, tragically.
The "genie" is "out of the bottle" and we don't have the will or intelligence or insight to put it back in.
Thoughts from a Sunday morning
--Weekends are the best. But I state the obvious.
--The warning I wrote of a couple of times, about the Supreme Court ruling in favor of corporations and their ability to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns has just gotten increasingly worse, as if I thought that were possible.
There is an article on page A4 of The Star today, explaining that the one thing that was said to be in the people's favor about this insane ruling was that the corporations would have to announce they were backing--paying for--whatever advertising they put out.
Surprise!
There's apparently a loophole big enough to drive a truck through, giving them the ability to remain anonymous after all.
Get ready, folks.
The elections this Fall will be the ugliest, most advertised, most bitter and divisive and finally, most expensive this country has ever known.
And the Roberts court made sure of it.
--Lightning has struck 3 times. I agree with Right-wing, Conservative Thomas McLanahan's column today for the 3rd time.
The $50 million "given" back to the Kansas City area last week, announced by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Representatives Emanuel Cleaver and Dennis Moore for--sidewalks?--is almost silly.
We need to stop borrowing from the Chinese for this kind of nonsense.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things we need taken care of and paid for for our infrastructure but sidewalks? Are you kidding me?
--Why doesn't some enterprising, admittedly opportunistic Senator or Representative propose a bill making financial "earmarks" to run our country and
come out of Congress illegal?
It would make huge news and a big benefit to the name of the person who did this. They'd likely be popular to all the American voting public
(except contruction company owners and employees), and virtually all people who consider themselves Progressive, Conservatives, Libertarians
especially Libertarians), Republicans, Democrats and, yes, even Liberals (socially liberal), like myself.
Demagoguic?
Yes, absolutely. But in a good way, for once.
--I'm a supporter, mostly, of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi--especially in her fight for us for health care reform--but I have to say one thing and that is, Can you really trust anyone who can keep a huge, frozen, seemingly artificial smile plastered on their face? (I don't think so).
And how in the heck does she do it?
(Her "people" should tell her to stop it).
--Charlie Rangel should step down.
Now.
--The Sunday morning news programs were "lily white" this morning, I believe, and that shouldn't be.
With the exception of Clarence Page of The Chicago Tribune on "The McLaughlin Group" on KCPT/PBS, there wasn't one minority represented on these programs today. (I have to note, I didn't see NBC's "Meet the Press" but the guests did include Marc Moral of the National Urban League and Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House Health Reform Director but these were guests, they weren't moderators and that's my point and issue/beef here).
And Clarence Page's presence doesn't even technically count because this is a rerun of the show, which is always originally done of Fridays, of course.
It's shameful.
ABC needs to get Donna Brazile on the show weekly, along with other minorities--certainly African-Americans but also Latinos, etc.
This country was never "all white" and certainly isn't now.
All the news needs to be covered and it will more likely be so if people of different backgrounds are there, reporting on us.
--Finally, it was so nice to not see or hear Monica Crowley's white, Right-wing, Conservative, Republican whining and ranting today, on "The McLaughlin Group."
It made a sunny, slightly warmer Sunday at the end of February all the more pleasant.
Enjoy your Sunday, everyone and have a great week.
--The warning I wrote of a couple of times, about the Supreme Court ruling in favor of corporations and their ability to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns has just gotten increasingly worse, as if I thought that were possible.
There is an article on page A4 of The Star today, explaining that the one thing that was said to be in the people's favor about this insane ruling was that the corporations would have to announce they were backing--paying for--whatever advertising they put out.
Surprise!
There's apparently a loophole big enough to drive a truck through, giving them the ability to remain anonymous after all.
Get ready, folks.
The elections this Fall will be the ugliest, most advertised, most bitter and divisive and finally, most expensive this country has ever known.
And the Roberts court made sure of it.
--Lightning has struck 3 times. I agree with Right-wing, Conservative Thomas McLanahan's column today for the 3rd time.
The $50 million "given" back to the Kansas City area last week, announced by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Representatives Emanuel Cleaver and Dennis Moore for--sidewalks?--is almost silly.
We need to stop borrowing from the Chinese for this kind of nonsense.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things we need taken care of and paid for for our infrastructure but sidewalks? Are you kidding me?
--Why doesn't some enterprising, admittedly opportunistic Senator or Representative propose a bill making financial "earmarks" to run our country and
come out of Congress illegal?
It would make huge news and a big benefit to the name of the person who did this. They'd likely be popular to all the American voting public
(except contruction company owners and employees), and virtually all people who consider themselves Progressive, Conservatives, Libertarians
especially Libertarians), Republicans, Democrats and, yes, even Liberals (socially liberal), like myself.
Demagoguic?
Yes, absolutely. But in a good way, for once.
--I'm a supporter, mostly, of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi--especially in her fight for us for health care reform--but I have to say one thing and that is, Can you really trust anyone who can keep a huge, frozen, seemingly artificial smile plastered on their face? (I don't think so).
And how in the heck does she do it?
(Her "people" should tell her to stop it).
--Charlie Rangel should step down.
Now.
--The Sunday morning news programs were "lily white" this morning, I believe, and that shouldn't be.
With the exception of Clarence Page of The Chicago Tribune on "The McLaughlin Group" on KCPT/PBS, there wasn't one minority represented on these programs today. (I have to note, I didn't see NBC's "Meet the Press" but the guests did include Marc Moral of the National Urban League and Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House Health Reform Director but these were guests, they weren't moderators and that's my point and issue/beef here).
And Clarence Page's presence doesn't even technically count because this is a rerun of the show, which is always originally done of Fridays, of course.
It's shameful.
ABC needs to get Donna Brazile on the show weekly, along with other minorities--certainly African-Americans but also Latinos, etc.
This country was never "all white" and certainly isn't now.
All the news needs to be covered and it will more likely be so if people of different backgrounds are there, reporting on us.
--Finally, it was so nice to not see or hear Monica Crowley's white, Right-wing, Conservative, Republican whining and ranting today, on "The McLaughlin Group."
It made a sunny, slightly warmer Sunday at the end of February all the more pleasant.
Enjoy your Sunday, everyone and have a great week.
Friday, February 26, 2010
At what point will elected politicians understand?
First, we get a report from The Kansas City Star, just earlier this week, that a bunch of our elected pols took a pretty good deal of corporate paid-for trips--junkets--and that they also, illegally, didn't report and now comes word--as if we're surprised--that "The House Ethics Committee says 20-term Democratic Congressman Charlie Rangel repeatedly violated ethics rules by accepting corporate money for lavish trips to the Caribbean."
And this is just the latest for Charlie Rangel: "Rangel, chairman of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee, also faces investigations into his use of office resources to raise money for a college center bearing his name and his failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets and income."
It's so frustrating.
All these people feel as though, apparently, that as long as the American people don't raise cane (cain?) about it, it's okay--that if they just "get by with it," even though it's illegal, that all will be well.
I assume they figure "If everyone else is doing it, I can, too."
How else can you explain such blatant disregard for ethics, the appearance of really poor judgement and virtually total disregard for law?
If a business or business person is paying for your trip to New York City or the Masters tournament or Japan (which is what Missouri representatives all did) or, as in the case of Charlie Rangel, a trip (trips?) to the Carribbean, how do you accept that trip as an elected representative and not know it's at least unethical, if not downright illegal?
What, are you stupid?
And we're sick of it.
It's not as though this is anything new, certainly, and we all know that but it just seems the graft and appearance of graft and unethical behavior is going beyond the pale in an atmosphere that, otherwise, needs a great deal of attention.
As taxpayers, as voters, as citizens, we are sick of our representatives taking care of themselves first, last and foremost, and then, incidentally doing a little of the public's business by voting on this or that, almost as a sideline.
They have fantastic health care, as elected officials--at least in the US Congress.
We certainly don't.
They have wildly lavish pensions to take care of them later in life, once they're off the public dole.
Again, corporate America has seen to it we don't have that option.
They have travel and franking (postage), both, budgets we don't have.
And in the meantime, America is kind of going to heck in a handbasket, economically and financially, in case they haven't noticed but who are they taking care of?
Themselves.
It's time for this party to be stopped.
We need to raise hell and get the kind of representatives and government we deserve.
Let's start by throwing Charlie Rangel out of Congress.
And this is just the latest for Charlie Rangel: "Rangel, chairman of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee, also faces investigations into his use of office resources to raise money for a college center bearing his name and his failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets and income."
It's so frustrating.
All these people feel as though, apparently, that as long as the American people don't raise cane (cain?) about it, it's okay--that if they just "get by with it," even though it's illegal, that all will be well.
I assume they figure "If everyone else is doing it, I can, too."
How else can you explain such blatant disregard for ethics, the appearance of really poor judgement and virtually total disregard for law?
If a business or business person is paying for your trip to New York City or the Masters tournament or Japan (which is what Missouri representatives all did) or, as in the case of Charlie Rangel, a trip (trips?) to the Carribbean, how do you accept that trip as an elected representative and not know it's at least unethical, if not downright illegal?
What, are you stupid?
And we're sick of it.
It's not as though this is anything new, certainly, and we all know that but it just seems the graft and appearance of graft and unethical behavior is going beyond the pale in an atmosphere that, otherwise, needs a great deal of attention.
As taxpayers, as voters, as citizens, we are sick of our representatives taking care of themselves first, last and foremost, and then, incidentally doing a little of the public's business by voting on this or that, almost as a sideline.
They have fantastic health care, as elected officials--at least in the US Congress.
We certainly don't.
They have wildly lavish pensions to take care of them later in life, once they're off the public dole.
Again, corporate America has seen to it we don't have that option.
They have travel and franking (postage), both, budgets we don't have.
And in the meantime, America is kind of going to heck in a handbasket, economically and financially, in case they haven't noticed but who are they taking care of?
Themselves.
It's time for this party to be stopped.
We need to raise hell and get the kind of representatives and government we deserve.
Let's start by throwing Charlie Rangel out of Congress.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Our own history sheds light on facts from today
"We cannot be content, no matter how high the general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people -- whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth -- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and insecure." --Franklin D. Roosevelt
And yet:
--At least 50 million people are ill-fed -- up from 37 million just a year ago -- including 17 million children. Hunger in America is now at an all-time high, and there are currently entire national geographic regions -- the very large 15-state 'South' being one of them -- where more than half of all public school students are poor and ill-fed.
--30% of the nation's 50 million homeowners own a home whose value is below its mortgage balance, and this number could rise to an almost unbelievable 50% by year-end 2011. It would cost about $745 billion, more than the size of the original 2008 bank bailout, to restore these borrowers to the point where they were breaking even, which there is no obvious political will to find right now.
--Despite the truly dismal 'real unemployment' figures with which most everyone now agrees -- a staggering 30 million workers and 19% of the labor force -- very little attention is being paid to the particularly adverse effects the recession is having on people of color, recent immigrants, and out-of school youth. And almost no one is acknowledging the sad reality that even the nation's 130 million full-time workers have had an average economic loss of 15% just since December 2007 -- an average effective work week of 34 hours rather than 40 -- which means that the number of unemployed workers, measured economically, is actually as high as 50 million.
The overwhelming problem today for most workers isn't this recession, as horrible as it is -- it's the fact that for every earned income level except the top 10%, average household income hasn't changed a bit for 10 years, and that for the bottom 60% of wage earners it hasn't changed for more than 20 years. Through economic expansions and recessions -- and bull and bear markets -- alike, 90% of workers in America have been standing still earnings-wise.
--And 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population, are at or below "200% of the federal poverty line of $21,834 for a family of four", which is a needs-measure made lame by the fact that no family of four can actually comfortably live on such a low annual income.
Let's live up to our own historical standards.
That's not much to ask of ourselves, I shouldn't think.
Or are we not "One nation..."?
Link to original post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-hindery-jr/americas-dirty-little-sec_b_473026.html
And yet:
--At least 50 million people are ill-fed -- up from 37 million just a year ago -- including 17 million children. Hunger in America is now at an all-time high, and there are currently entire national geographic regions -- the very large 15-state 'South' being one of them -- where more than half of all public school students are poor and ill-fed.
--30% of the nation's 50 million homeowners own a home whose value is below its mortgage balance, and this number could rise to an almost unbelievable 50% by year-end 2011. It would cost about $745 billion, more than the size of the original 2008 bank bailout, to restore these borrowers to the point where they were breaking even, which there is no obvious political will to find right now.
--Despite the truly dismal 'real unemployment' figures with which most everyone now agrees -- a staggering 30 million workers and 19% of the labor force -- very little attention is being paid to the particularly adverse effects the recession is having on people of color, recent immigrants, and out-of school youth. And almost no one is acknowledging the sad reality that even the nation's 130 million full-time workers have had an average economic loss of 15% just since December 2007 -- an average effective work week of 34 hours rather than 40 -- which means that the number of unemployed workers, measured economically, is actually as high as 50 million.
The overwhelming problem today for most workers isn't this recession, as horrible as it is -- it's the fact that for every earned income level except the top 10%, average household income hasn't changed a bit for 10 years, and that for the bottom 60% of wage earners it hasn't changed for more than 20 years. Through economic expansions and recessions -- and bull and bear markets -- alike, 90% of workers in America have been standing still earnings-wise.
--And 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population, are at or below "200% of the federal poverty line of $21,834 for a family of four", which is a needs-measure made lame by the fact that no family of four can actually comfortably live on such a low annual income.
Let's live up to our own historical standards.
That's not much to ask of ourselves, I shouldn't think.
Or are we not "One nation..."?
Link to original post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-hindery-jr/americas-dirty-little-sec_b_473026.html
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Kudos to The Star
Once again, the area's "fourth estate"--our newspaper media, in this case--did what it should do and so well. The Kansas City Star reported today that our legislators down in Jefferson City have been accepting trips--some to foreign countries--without reporting them.
And this is against the law, folks. They should know that.
"Lawmaker trips that lobbyists paid for included such destinations as New York City, Boston, Seattle, San Diego, Montreal and Saskatchewan, Canada, and even Japan."
One of the trips was for two representatives to go to the Masters tournament.
Yeah, like they're doing our work there and then.
If you're with a corporate representative of any kind, and they're taking you on one of these trips, isn't it just assumed there's a quid pro quo, once you're back in the office, especially since you're a legistor.
And don't tell me the answer is no.
These people should be summarily thrown out of office. The article names several of the representatives who took the trips and where they went. And that's just some of them.
So cheers to The Kansas City Star for the reporting.
Jeers to our legislators who've done this.
Cheers also to Jason Kander for helping to push for ethics reform out of the Capital City.
Let's make sure we get it.
And this is against the law, folks. They should know that.
"Lawmaker trips that lobbyists paid for included such destinations as New York City, Boston, Seattle, San Diego, Montreal and Saskatchewan, Canada, and even Japan."
One of the trips was for two representatives to go to the Masters tournament.
Yeah, like they're doing our work there and then.
If you're with a corporate representative of any kind, and they're taking you on one of these trips, isn't it just assumed there's a quid pro quo, once you're back in the office, especially since you're a legistor.
And don't tell me the answer is no.
These people should be summarily thrown out of office. The article names several of the representatives who took the trips and where they went. And that's just some of them.
So cheers to The Kansas City Star for the reporting.
Jeers to our legislators who've done this.
Cheers also to Jason Kander for helping to push for ethics reform out of the Capital City.
Let's make sure we get it.
An indictment of the Mayor, his wife and the City Council
Kansas City is up to 26 homicides for the year at present--11 of them in KCMO.
That's bad enough but the latest victim "was gunned down in front of her three children -- an 8- and 9-year-old were getting on a school bus and a child said to be between 1 and 2-years-old was standing in the doorway of the home -- after a brief struggle in her driveway around 8:30 a.m."
The murder itself is horrible.
The other shootings and murders in town that have led up to this one are equally awful and unacceptable.
And it's still February.
If we do not/cannot get a handle on the killings and shootings in Kansas City before the warmer weather starts, they will likely escalate wildly.
What are Mayor Funkhouser and his wife Gloria Squitiro doing to change this?
I think nothing.
What is the City of Kansas City City Council doing or proposing to reduce the killings?
Again, I think nothing.
The Mayor said he wants to do away with the e-tax.
The Council wants to pass a fatcat developer's dream of building hundreds of homes North of the city--25 miles from the core--but on this? Silence. Utter silence.
My entry today is an indictment of this Mayor Funkhouser, his wife Gloria Squitiro (because she insists on being involved) and the entire City Council of Kansas City, Missouri.
The murder rate in Kansas City should be all these people's highest priority but they are doing nothing. They are ignoring the most serious and possibly disintegrating situation for and in the city.
We should stand for this no longer.
We must demand action from them, at minimum.
That's bad enough but the latest victim "was gunned down in front of her three children -- an 8- and 9-year-old were getting on a school bus and a child said to be between 1 and 2-years-old was standing in the doorway of the home -- after a brief struggle in her driveway around 8:30 a.m."
The murder itself is horrible.
The other shootings and murders in town that have led up to this one are equally awful and unacceptable.
And it's still February.
If we do not/cannot get a handle on the killings and shootings in Kansas City before the warmer weather starts, they will likely escalate wildly.
What are Mayor Funkhouser and his wife Gloria Squitiro doing to change this?
I think nothing.
What is the City of Kansas City City Council doing or proposing to reduce the killings?
Again, I think nothing.
The Mayor said he wants to do away with the e-tax.
The Council wants to pass a fatcat developer's dream of building hundreds of homes North of the city--25 miles from the core--but on this? Silence. Utter silence.
My entry today is an indictment of this Mayor Funkhouser, his wife Gloria Squitiro (because she insists on being involved) and the entire City Council of Kansas City, Missouri.
The murder rate in Kansas City should be all these people's highest priority but they are doing nothing. They are ignoring the most serious and possibly disintegrating situation for and in the city.
We should stand for this no longer.
We must demand action from them, at minimum.
You are to be used---and discarded
Guest post on labor and corporations in the US today:
Boycott FedEx
Posted on Feb 22, 2010
By Chris Hedges
Dean Henderson’s career with FedEx ended abruptly when a reckless driver plowed into his company truck and mangled his leg. His doctor will decide this week if it needs to be amputated. No longer able to drive, stripped of value in our commodity culture, he was tossed aside by the company. He became human refuse. He spends most of his days, because of the swelling and the pain, with his leg raised on a recliner in the tiny apartment in Fairfax, Va., he shares with his stepsister. He struggles without an income and medical insurance, and he fears his future.
Henderson is not alone. Workers in our corporate state earn little when they work—Henderson made $18 an hour—and they are abandoned when they can no longer contribute to corporate profits. It is the ethic of the free market. It is the cost of unfettered capitalism. And it is plunging tens of millions of discarded workers into a collective misery and rage that is beginning to manifest itself in a dangerous right-wing backlash.
“This happened while I was wearing their uniform and driving one of their company vehicles,” Henderson, a 40-year-old military veteran, told me. “My foot is destroyed. I have a fused ankle. I have had over a dozen surgeries. It hurts to wear a sock. I was limping pretty badly, but in the spring of 2008 FedEx said I had to come back to work and sit in a chair. It saved them money on workers’ compensation payments. I worked a call center job and answered telephones. I did that for three months. I had my ankle fused in January 2009, and then FedEx fired me. I was discarded. They washed their hands of me and none of this was my fault.”
Our destitute working class is beginning to grasp that Barack Obama and other elected officials in Washington, who speak in a cloying feel-your-pain language, are liars. They are not attempting to prevent wages from sinking, unemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, banks from looting the U.S. Treasury or jobs from being exported. The gap between our stark reality and the happy illusions peddled by smarmy television news personalities and fatuous academic and financial experts, as well as oily bureaucrats and politicians, is becoming too wide to ignore. Those cast aside are reaching out to anyone, no matter how buffoonish or ignorant, who promises that the parasites and courtiers who serve the corporate state will disappear. Right-wing rage is being fused with right-wing populism. And once this takes hold, a protofascism will sweep across our blighted landscape fueled by a mounting personal and economic despair. Take a look at Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here.” It is a good window into what awaits us.
“One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out,” the philosopher Richard Rorty warns in his book “Achieving Our Country.” “Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.”
Whoever rides to power on the back of this rage will swiftly broker a deal with corporations and corporate overlords. But by then it will be too late. Dissent will become a form of treason. The security state will be quickly cemented in place. The bankrupt liberal class, which abandoned the working class and the fight for basic civil liberties, will be reviled, discredited and impotent. America will develop its own peculiar form of Christian fascism.
Obama, entranced with power and prestige, is more interested in courting the elite than saving the disenfranchised. The president, when asked to name a business executive he admires, cited Frederick Smith of FedEx, although Smith is a union-busting Republican. Smith, who was a member of Yale’s secret Skull & Bones Society along with George W. Bush, served as John McCain’s finance chair. I guess Obama is hoping for some cash. And Smith has a lot of it. He founded FedEx in 1971, and the company had more than $35 billion in revenue in the fiscal year that ended in May. Smith is rich and powerful, but there is no ethical system, religious or secular, that would hold him up as a man worthy of emulation. Those who make vast profits at the expense of workers and the common good are not moral. They are not worthy of adulation. They build fortunes and little monuments to themselves off the pain and suffering of people like Henderson. Jesus called them “vipers.”
“He’s an example of somebody who is thinking long term,” the president said of Smith in an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, adding that he “really enjoyed talking” with him at a Feb. 4 White House luncheon.
Smith does think in the long term. His company lavished money on members of Congress in 1996 so they would vote for an ad hoc change in the law banning the Teamsters Union from organizing workers at Federal Express. A few stalwarts in the Senate, including Edward Kennedy (in a speech reprinted in the Congressional Record on Oct. 1, 1996) and his then-colleague Paul Simon, denounced the obvious. The company had bought its legislative exemption. Most members of Congress, then as now, had become corporate employees.
“I think we have to honestly ask ourselves, why is Federal Express being given preferential treatment in this body now?” Sen. Simon said at the time. “I think the honest answer is Federal Express has been very generous in their campaign contributions.”
Following the Senate vote, a company spokesman was quoted as saying, “We played political hardball, and we won.”
What happened to our historical memory? How did we forget that those who built our democracy and protected American workers were not men like Smith, who use power and money to further the parochial and selfish interests of the elite, but the legions of embattled strikers in the coal fields, on factory floors and in steel mills that gave us unions, decent wages and the 40-hour workweek. How was it possible in 1947 to pass the Taft-Hartley Labor Act, which, in one deft move, emasculated the labor movement? How is it possible that it remains in force? Union workers, who at times paid with their lives, halted the country’s enslavement to the rich and the greedy. And now that unions have been broken, rapacious corporations like FedEx and toadies in Congress and the White House are turning workers into serfs.
UPS is unionized. It is the largest employer of the Teamsters. Labor costs, because of the union, account for almost two-thirds of its operating expenses. But Smith spends only a third of his costs on labor. There is something very wrong with a country that leaves a worker like Henderson sitting most of the day in a tiny apartment in excruciating pain and fighting off depression while his billionaire former boss is feted as a man of vision and invited to lunch at the White House. A country that stops taking care of its own, that loses the capacity for empathy and compassion, that crumples up human beings and throws them away when it is done with them, feeds dark ideological monsters that inevitably rise to devour the body politic.
FedEx is busy making sure Congress keeps unions out of its shops. It has lavished $17 million, double its 2008 total, on Congress to fight off an effort by UPS and the Teamsters to revoke Smith’s tailor-made ban on unions. Smith, again thinking “long term,” plans to continue to hire thousands of full-time employees and list them as independent contractors. If his workers are listed as independent contractors he does not have to pay Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes. And when they get sick or injured or old he can push them onto the street. Henderson says FedEx treats its equipment as shabbily as its employees. There’s no difference between trucks and people to corporations that view everything as a commodity. Corporations exploit human beings and equipment and natural resources until exhaustion or collapse. They are cannibals.
“The trucks are a liability,” Henderson said. “They are junk. The tires are bald. The engines cut out. There are a lot of mechanical problems. The roofs leak. They wobble and pull to one side or the other. The heating does not work. And the company pushes its employees in the same way. The first Christmas I was there I worked 13 hours without a break and without anything to eat. It is dangerous. I could have fallen asleep at the wheel and injured someone.”
If you have to send packages do not be a scab. Send it with UPS or the U.S. Postal Service. They have unions. Every step, however tiny, we take to thwart the corporate rape of the country and protect workers counts. We would have to do more, much more, but this would be a small start. Like Smith, our politicians have sold their souls. They will not help us. We must help ourselves. And the longer we stand by and permit the Democrats and the Republicans to strip American workers of their jobs and their dignity the less we will have to say when the day of angry retribution arrives.
Link to original post:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/boycott_fedex_20100222/
Boycott FedEx
Posted on Feb 22, 2010
By Chris Hedges
Dean Henderson’s career with FedEx ended abruptly when a reckless driver plowed into his company truck and mangled his leg. His doctor will decide this week if it needs to be amputated. No longer able to drive, stripped of value in our commodity culture, he was tossed aside by the company. He became human refuse. He spends most of his days, because of the swelling and the pain, with his leg raised on a recliner in the tiny apartment in Fairfax, Va., he shares with his stepsister. He struggles without an income and medical insurance, and he fears his future.
Henderson is not alone. Workers in our corporate state earn little when they work—Henderson made $18 an hour—and they are abandoned when they can no longer contribute to corporate profits. It is the ethic of the free market. It is the cost of unfettered capitalism. And it is plunging tens of millions of discarded workers into a collective misery and rage that is beginning to manifest itself in a dangerous right-wing backlash.
“This happened while I was wearing their uniform and driving one of their company vehicles,” Henderson, a 40-year-old military veteran, told me. “My foot is destroyed. I have a fused ankle. I have had over a dozen surgeries. It hurts to wear a sock. I was limping pretty badly, but in the spring of 2008 FedEx said I had to come back to work and sit in a chair. It saved them money on workers’ compensation payments. I worked a call center job and answered telephones. I did that for three months. I had my ankle fused in January 2009, and then FedEx fired me. I was discarded. They washed their hands of me and none of this was my fault.”
Our destitute working class is beginning to grasp that Barack Obama and other elected officials in Washington, who speak in a cloying feel-your-pain language, are liars. They are not attempting to prevent wages from sinking, unemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, banks from looting the U.S. Treasury or jobs from being exported. The gap between our stark reality and the happy illusions peddled by smarmy television news personalities and fatuous academic and financial experts, as well as oily bureaucrats and politicians, is becoming too wide to ignore. Those cast aside are reaching out to anyone, no matter how buffoonish or ignorant, who promises that the parasites and courtiers who serve the corporate state will disappear. Right-wing rage is being fused with right-wing populism. And once this takes hold, a protofascism will sweep across our blighted landscape fueled by a mounting personal and economic despair. Take a look at Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here.” It is a good window into what awaits us.
“One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out,” the philosopher Richard Rorty warns in his book “Achieving Our Country.” “Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.”
Whoever rides to power on the back of this rage will swiftly broker a deal with corporations and corporate overlords. But by then it will be too late. Dissent will become a form of treason. The security state will be quickly cemented in place. The bankrupt liberal class, which abandoned the working class and the fight for basic civil liberties, will be reviled, discredited and impotent. America will develop its own peculiar form of Christian fascism.
Obama, entranced with power and prestige, is more interested in courting the elite than saving the disenfranchised. The president, when asked to name a business executive he admires, cited Frederick Smith of FedEx, although Smith is a union-busting Republican. Smith, who was a member of Yale’s secret Skull & Bones Society along with George W. Bush, served as John McCain’s finance chair. I guess Obama is hoping for some cash. And Smith has a lot of it. He founded FedEx in 1971, and the company had more than $35 billion in revenue in the fiscal year that ended in May. Smith is rich and powerful, but there is no ethical system, religious or secular, that would hold him up as a man worthy of emulation. Those who make vast profits at the expense of workers and the common good are not moral. They are not worthy of adulation. They build fortunes and little monuments to themselves off the pain and suffering of people like Henderson. Jesus called them “vipers.”
“He’s an example of somebody who is thinking long term,” the president said of Smith in an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, adding that he “really enjoyed talking” with him at a Feb. 4 White House luncheon.
Smith does think in the long term. His company lavished money on members of Congress in 1996 so they would vote for an ad hoc change in the law banning the Teamsters Union from organizing workers at Federal Express. A few stalwarts in the Senate, including Edward Kennedy (in a speech reprinted in the Congressional Record on Oct. 1, 1996) and his then-colleague Paul Simon, denounced the obvious. The company had bought its legislative exemption. Most members of Congress, then as now, had become corporate employees.
“I think we have to honestly ask ourselves, why is Federal Express being given preferential treatment in this body now?” Sen. Simon said at the time. “I think the honest answer is Federal Express has been very generous in their campaign contributions.”
Following the Senate vote, a company spokesman was quoted as saying, “We played political hardball, and we won.”
What happened to our historical memory? How did we forget that those who built our democracy and protected American workers were not men like Smith, who use power and money to further the parochial and selfish interests of the elite, but the legions of embattled strikers in the coal fields, on factory floors and in steel mills that gave us unions, decent wages and the 40-hour workweek. How was it possible in 1947 to pass the Taft-Hartley Labor Act, which, in one deft move, emasculated the labor movement? How is it possible that it remains in force? Union workers, who at times paid with their lives, halted the country’s enslavement to the rich and the greedy. And now that unions have been broken, rapacious corporations like FedEx and toadies in Congress and the White House are turning workers into serfs.
UPS is unionized. It is the largest employer of the Teamsters. Labor costs, because of the union, account for almost two-thirds of its operating expenses. But Smith spends only a third of his costs on labor. There is something very wrong with a country that leaves a worker like Henderson sitting most of the day in a tiny apartment in excruciating pain and fighting off depression while his billionaire former boss is feted as a man of vision and invited to lunch at the White House. A country that stops taking care of its own, that loses the capacity for empathy and compassion, that crumples up human beings and throws them away when it is done with them, feeds dark ideological monsters that inevitably rise to devour the body politic.
FedEx is busy making sure Congress keeps unions out of its shops. It has lavished $17 million, double its 2008 total, on Congress to fight off an effort by UPS and the Teamsters to revoke Smith’s tailor-made ban on unions. Smith, again thinking “long term,” plans to continue to hire thousands of full-time employees and list them as independent contractors. If his workers are listed as independent contractors he does not have to pay Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes. And when they get sick or injured or old he can push them onto the street. Henderson says FedEx treats its equipment as shabbily as its employees. There’s no difference between trucks and people to corporations that view everything as a commodity. Corporations exploit human beings and equipment and natural resources until exhaustion or collapse. They are cannibals.
“The trucks are a liability,” Henderson said. “They are junk. The tires are bald. The engines cut out. There are a lot of mechanical problems. The roofs leak. They wobble and pull to one side or the other. The heating does not work. And the company pushes its employees in the same way. The first Christmas I was there I worked 13 hours without a break and without anything to eat. It is dangerous. I could have fallen asleep at the wheel and injured someone.”
If you have to send packages do not be a scab. Send it with UPS or the U.S. Postal Service. They have unions. Every step, however tiny, we take to thwart the corporate rape of the country and protect workers counts. We would have to do more, much more, but this would be a small start. Like Smith, our politicians have sold their souls. They will not help us. We must help ourselves. And the longer we stand by and permit the Democrats and the Republicans to strip American workers of their jobs and their dignity the less we will have to say when the day of angry retribution arrives.
Link to original post:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/boycott_fedex_20100222/
No one "needs to die"
Let's be clear about this--no one "needs" to be killed.
With the one, possible exception of a person who has been found guilty of murder, our society--and most of the rest of humankind--has come to the conclusion and agreed that no one should be killed for any reason.
Ugly people, filled with either hate or that same ugliness but surely ignorance may say or wish such a thing but it's not true and it's not the case.
It seems one Lauren Ashley, Miss Beverly Hills 2010, "who will compete in the Miss California pageant in November...told Fox News that not only is she against same-sex marriage, but that she thinks it is divine law that gays should be put to death..."
This is unimaginable and unacceptable ugliness from a young woman in a public forum espousing homosexuality be punishable with death.
And the fact that she cites as her source, the Bible, is stunning.
I'm not going to rant and rave on this or say anything more than that churches nationwide and 'round the world should announce that they are, in fact, blatantly against this kind of thought and feeling.
Thinking that gays may be killed for being gay de facto makes it "okay" for gay beatings and bashings, let alone killing, as Ms. Ashley suggests.
Since when was Jesus Christ ever about murdering someone?
With the one, possible exception of a person who has been found guilty of murder, our society--and most of the rest of humankind--has come to the conclusion and agreed that no one should be killed for any reason.
Ugly people, filled with either hate or that same ugliness but surely ignorance may say or wish such a thing but it's not true and it's not the case.
It seems one Lauren Ashley, Miss Beverly Hills 2010, "who will compete in the Miss California pageant in November...told Fox News that not only is she against same-sex marriage, but that she thinks it is divine law that gays should be put to death..."
This is unimaginable and unacceptable ugliness from a young woman in a public forum espousing homosexuality be punishable with death.
And the fact that she cites as her source, the Bible, is stunning.
I'm not going to rant and rave on this or say anything more than that churches nationwide and 'round the world should announce that they are, in fact, blatantly against this kind of thought and feeling.
Thinking that gays may be killed for being gay de facto makes it "okay" for gay beatings and bashings, let alone killing, as Ms. Ashley suggests.
Since when was Jesus Christ ever about murdering someone?
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