So I am sitting with a lawyer friend (yes I do have those) who specializes in helping poor people. He has a client who is a single mom. She is behind on her mortgage and about to be foreclosed on. She owes a small amount of money back, is making enough to pay monthly, but was sick is self employed and cant get enough to make up the money she fell behind on.
SOOOOOoooooo I say to my lawyer friend," Hey I know Sister So and so, she's been a Church Member in good standing for twenty five years, lets go to her pastor and have the church raise the money." My lawyer friend looks at me as if I have dropped fifty tabs of acid, smoked some crack and consumed three fifths of Jack Daniels all in a second. Its a look of pity, revulsion and fear. He laughs and says "You're not serious?" 'Well yeah, that's one of the things churches are FOR, of Course I am serious." Now he looks at me with almost pure pity. Slowly he says, as if I were some stoned drug filled homeless person "S t e e e v e, Churches don't give money to poor people, they snatch it from them. They NEVER help anyone."
Now I know this is probably generally true. Its a heartbreak, really, that the general condition of the so called Church of Jesus Christ, the supposed representatives of the Kingdom of Jehovah here on Earth, is that they do not distribute, but take storehouses unto themselves. Seems they never have read where it is written:
"Will a man rob G_d"
You will say "How have we robbed you?"
"You have robbed me in that the storehouse for the poor is not distributed to them, but my house is made a gathering place for wealth for the priests, who oppress the poor. In this have you robbed me."
Preach that on Faith Promise Sunday!
Sadly, I reached out to my lawyers clients pastor. he was not interested in helping her. Another storehouse of iniquity and thievery. I( am not so sad for her though, but fort he pastor. For all the Pastors who can not condescend to help their own parishioners, who can not, who will not roll their sleeves up and lift one of the sheep up. These ravenous wolves will be lost at the end of time, standing at the Great White Throne Judgment, announcing their degrees, their so called good works, their preaching and some even miracles, and Jesus the Christ will look them straight in the eye and say "Depart from me you evil doers of iniquity, I know you not. When I was hungry you did not feed me. When naked you did not clothe me, when broken you did not bind me up, when in prison and alone you did not visit me."
They will say "When did we ever see YOU such?'
And he will say "As you saw the LEAST of these who are my brothers, so there was I."
Preach THAT on Faith Promise Sunday, you brood of vipers.
Can I hear an Amen?
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Friday, May 24, 2013
Who would Jesus dispossess for a lousy buck?
Recently, I was having coffee with a young friend. My young friend was seeking both advice and connections. My friend was perplexed. He had spent some $8000 on lawyers, consultants and filing fees to start a Not for Profit and he didn't yet have enough donations for it to be "self sustaining".
So, I asked the young man "What's your Not for Profit about?" He said "Feeding homeless people." Soooo I asked, with a slight chuckle, "Well how many sandwiches can you make for eight grand?"
My young friend seemed confused. I explained to my young friend that decades ago I volunteered for a Not for Profit in Hollywood. We had a suicide prevention hot line, provided three meals a day and housing for at least sixty people every night, did free drug rehab, rescued hookers from pimps and got their lives turned around, and on Wednesday night we distributed several hundred sandwiches.
On Wednesday mornings Restaurants, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, local Churches and mostly private individuals dropped groceries off. On Wednesday afternoon the staff made as many sandwiches as we could with the groceries. On Wednesday night we distributed hundreds of those sandwiches on Hollywood and Santa Monica Boulevards to every hungry homeless and hooking person we could find. No paid Executive Director, no paid staff, no four color mailer, no paid fund raiser or grant writer. Just "What would Jesus do?" We used to talk about the fact that if every church, temple and synagogue in America made and distributed 100 sandwiches once a week, there would be no starving hungry people in America. Alas, I was not confused about my young friend. His interest was not in feeding homeless people, for him this was just a "hook".
In America there are millions of Churches and Not for Profit organizations that receive property tax, parsonage tax, income tax exemptions. Their donors receive income tax breaks. In 1937 the U.S. Supreme Court found that these tax exceptions are given for "good works" Churches and Not for Profits do in feeding hungry people, providing health care for the sick, sheltering homeless people, and ameliorating the effects of privation and poverty. Since the 1950's they have been technically not allowed to be directly involved in politics.
But Churches and Not for Profits are NOT doing these good works. They are busily building real estate and investment portfolios and building payrolls of people who mostly support the institution itself, rather than serve the needy.
My young friend was upset not because feeding hungry people was something he was being prevented from doing, but because he was not yet able to become a salaried Executive Director, consider lunching to be "work", have a staff , free car, and live a luxury lifestyle of ease and moral superiority, on the backs of poor people. Needless to say, he left our meeting with no new connections and the advice to go to Super King Market, buy a bag of groceries, and find some people to give them away to. He left very sad. The greedy motivation of my young friend, and the lavish life of many Not for Profit Executive Directors and staff, while achieving little, if any, of their mission, have become common in the Church and Not for Profit world.
One Pasadena Church is so dominant in political issues that last year when several Altadenan's called Unions asking for help in fighting the opening of a local Walmart, they were told that the Union organized ALL of there political efforts in the San Gabriel Valley though one Pasadena Church. Several Unions claimed they would not work with any activists who were not under the direction, influence, supervision and control of this particular Pasadena Church. This particular Pasadena Church recently purchased a Altadena not for profit facility that had for 100 years provided housing and healthcare for old indigent people form the Altadena area. That Altadena Not for Profit, run by godless humanist had adhered to the tenants of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, until the Pasadena Church took it over. The particular Pasadena Church tore down the buildings, left the land fallow for five years, and is about to build over 300 luxury retirement villas for wealthy people from all over America. Because ownership will be retained by the Church, no property tax will be paid. There will be no services provided for Pasadena's or Altadena's indigent poor people. I guess that Pasadena Church's Gospel goes something like "What old poor unhealthy people would Jesus dispossess to make a lousy buck?" This is not uncommon. Churches all over America are dishonoring the life and Gospel of Jesus Christ in this kind of greedy, despicable, Hypocritical, and may I say Satanic, salary serving careerist manner.
We need a change. tax breaks for Churches and Not for Profits must be DEEDS tested. The majority of funds raised must be expended directly on the mission of feeding, housing, clothing the poor, drug rehabilitation, real job training, re entering prisoners to society, tending the sick, ill and dying and relieving the conditions of poverty. Every Citizen and for profit corporation is being taxed more than they would be, more than their fair share, because religious institutions and Not for Profits are getting a free ride. That would be OK were they serving the functions they get the free ride for, but in the main, they are not, and we are all also being taxed to fulfill those functions through government. So we outside of the not for profit world are paying at least twice.
Oh that wonderful all volunteer Not for Profit I volunteered for in Hollywood? Our founder and Executive Director fell in love and got married. He needed a job and needed to hand off our not for profit to others. It was difficult for him, a very reserved person, to glad hand enough to raise our $50,000 a year budget, manage our staff, and actually do redemptive work himself. He was exhausted. We found a International Not for Profit that promised us the world in the funding they would bring to bear to accomplish the mission. They got our donor list, fired all the volunteer staff one afternoon, closed down all operations the next, and with four color glossy print materials raise millions of dollars a year on doing good works in Hollywood. They have no operations there, not a dime raised by them is feeding, clothing, housing a single homeless kid, rescuing a hooker, or preventing a suicide. they raised almost three million dollars through our old organizations name last year. Yes, that is painful to type. They are basically stealing 3 million dollars a year from poor people, and doing it with a name that used to serve them well.
The Not for Profit industry needs to become accountable and brought to heel. The gravy train of high salaries, and questionable, if any deeds, must come to an end.
So, I asked the young man "What's your Not for Profit about?" He said "Feeding homeless people." Soooo I asked, with a slight chuckle, "Well how many sandwiches can you make for eight grand?"
My young friend seemed confused. I explained to my young friend that decades ago I volunteered for a Not for Profit in Hollywood. We had a suicide prevention hot line, provided three meals a day and housing for at least sixty people every night, did free drug rehab, rescued hookers from pimps and got their lives turned around, and on Wednesday night we distributed several hundred sandwiches.
On Wednesday mornings Restaurants, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, local Churches and mostly private individuals dropped groceries off. On Wednesday afternoon the staff made as many sandwiches as we could with the groceries. On Wednesday night we distributed hundreds of those sandwiches on Hollywood and Santa Monica Boulevards to every hungry homeless and hooking person we could find. No paid Executive Director, no paid staff, no four color mailer, no paid fund raiser or grant writer. Just "What would Jesus do?" We used to talk about the fact that if every church, temple and synagogue in America made and distributed 100 sandwiches once a week, there would be no starving hungry people in America. Alas, I was not confused about my young friend. His interest was not in feeding homeless people, for him this was just a "hook".
In America there are millions of Churches and Not for Profit organizations that receive property tax, parsonage tax, income tax exemptions. Their donors receive income tax breaks. In 1937 the U.S. Supreme Court found that these tax exceptions are given for "good works" Churches and Not for Profits do in feeding hungry people, providing health care for the sick, sheltering homeless people, and ameliorating the effects of privation and poverty. Since the 1950's they have been technically not allowed to be directly involved in politics.
But Churches and Not for Profits are NOT doing these good works. They are busily building real estate and investment portfolios and building payrolls of people who mostly support the institution itself, rather than serve the needy.
My young friend was upset not because feeding hungry people was something he was being prevented from doing, but because he was not yet able to become a salaried Executive Director, consider lunching to be "work", have a staff , free car, and live a luxury lifestyle of ease and moral superiority, on the backs of poor people. Needless to say, he left our meeting with no new connections and the advice to go to Super King Market, buy a bag of groceries, and find some people to give them away to. He left very sad. The greedy motivation of my young friend, and the lavish life of many Not for Profit Executive Directors and staff, while achieving little, if any, of their mission, have become common in the Church and Not for Profit world.
One Pasadena Church is so dominant in political issues that last year when several Altadenan's called Unions asking for help in fighting the opening of a local Walmart, they were told that the Union organized ALL of there political efforts in the San Gabriel Valley though one Pasadena Church. Several Unions claimed they would not work with any activists who were not under the direction, influence, supervision and control of this particular Pasadena Church. This particular Pasadena Church recently purchased a Altadena not for profit facility that had for 100 years provided housing and healthcare for old indigent people form the Altadena area. That Altadena Not for Profit, run by godless humanist had adhered to the tenants of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, until the Pasadena Church took it over. The particular Pasadena Church tore down the buildings, left the land fallow for five years, and is about to build over 300 luxury retirement villas for wealthy people from all over America. Because ownership will be retained by the Church, no property tax will be paid. There will be no services provided for Pasadena's or Altadena's indigent poor people. I guess that Pasadena Church's Gospel goes something like "What old poor unhealthy people would Jesus dispossess to make a lousy buck?" This is not uncommon. Churches all over America are dishonoring the life and Gospel of Jesus Christ in this kind of greedy, despicable, Hypocritical, and may I say Satanic, salary serving careerist manner.
We need a change. tax breaks for Churches and Not for Profits must be DEEDS tested. The majority of funds raised must be expended directly on the mission of feeding, housing, clothing the poor, drug rehabilitation, real job training, re entering prisoners to society, tending the sick, ill and dying and relieving the conditions of poverty. Every Citizen and for profit corporation is being taxed more than they would be, more than their fair share, because religious institutions and Not for Profits are getting a free ride. That would be OK were they serving the functions they get the free ride for, but in the main, they are not, and we are all also being taxed to fulfill those functions through government. So we outside of the not for profit world are paying at least twice.
Oh that wonderful all volunteer Not for Profit I volunteered for in Hollywood? Our founder and Executive Director fell in love and got married. He needed a job and needed to hand off our not for profit to others. It was difficult for him, a very reserved person, to glad hand enough to raise our $50,000 a year budget, manage our staff, and actually do redemptive work himself. He was exhausted. We found a International Not for Profit that promised us the world in the funding they would bring to bear to accomplish the mission. They got our donor list, fired all the volunteer staff one afternoon, closed down all operations the next, and with four color glossy print materials raise millions of dollars a year on doing good works in Hollywood. They have no operations there, not a dime raised by them is feeding, clothing, housing a single homeless kid, rescuing a hooker, or preventing a suicide. they raised almost three million dollars through our old organizations name last year. Yes, that is painful to type. They are basically stealing 3 million dollars a year from poor people, and doing it with a name that used to serve them well.
The Not for Profit industry needs to become accountable and brought to heel. The gravy train of high salaries, and questionable, if any deeds, must come to an end.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Why the American People Are Not Excited this Election Year.
It's August in Altadena. A hot still humid sweltering August. It's a Presidential election year summer, volunteers should be calling and walking precincts, but here in the blazing foothills of Southern California it seems as if no election is happening. Those Southern Californians who are calling are calling into "battleground States" . California is assumed to be deeply in the Obama camp, so no one, not Governor Romney, nor President Obama, Not Even Congressman Ron Paul, is "wasting" money on the most populace state in the Union. So far this means that Californians can contemplate the election from afar.
I have been doing just that. I will not deny I have at times made calls for President Obama into a few "battleground States". The voters there are just as un enthused about this election as I am. Yes, they will vote for the President, but they will not do so enthusiastically. Why?
The first problem is President Obama's first year in office. He lost the troops there. Candidate Obama had said to the party faithful, the hard core of believers who march through precincts, make phone calls, and volunteer every waking hour for the candidate, that they would have to hold his feet to the fire (actually quoting FDR) and "make me do it". They did. The reaction from Rham Emannuel and his staff, who ran all the White House Communications was antagonistic, rude, spiteful and in a short time alienated the troops on the street that Obama administration would have had. It was a betrayal and a slap in the face. The ground troops have never stopped being disaffected. The Obama machine pretends to not notice this on the one hand and on the other snickers that the disaffected have no where else to go. Have they considered that the disaffected can just stay home?
The second problem was the Health Care Reform fight. A large portion of the members of the Democratic Party wanted Universal Coverage, Single Payer. Perhaps the President and his administration knew that Universal Coverage Single Payer was not possible with Congress, but they never started there. They started with Romneycare and slowly negotiated pieces of that away to the Republicans in Congress. Lobbying for Single Payer Universal Coverage would have made the President seem as if he had stood up high in the saddle, and eventhough he may not have won, He would have been a hero to his troops. He could have on his initial wave of popularity galvanized the nation. Instead by being a mealy compromiser, he threw that popularity away, almost instantly. Probably starting from that point could have negotiated more from the Republicans. Instead he passed the Heritage Foundations bill, was escoriated as if he had passed a socialist program by the Republicans, whose very legislation is what he must take "credit" for, and gave the Democrats a "Success" they can not be proud of.
So far not very good.
But the REAL problem with this election isn't that Governor Romney is as honest as a kid with his hands in a cookie jar and as dull as white paint in the Mojave desert on a stucco west facing wall, nor is it that President Obama has disaffected his troops, it's that this election is not about the crisis the American public have been living through and dealing with for thirty years now.
Somehow the election is about how much various benefits the baby boomers have paid into their whole lives, will be reduced, who is the biggest tax cheat, and whose Vice Presidential candidate has had the biggest gaffe this week. Most American voters are tired of the dog grooming show. They want some reality and some answers to what they face. No one is excited because so far this election is not about anything real.
You see real America, Street Level America, if you call that the 99% or the 49%, is in trouble. Deep trouble. our politicians are gleefully ignoring the trouble. The wealth of any nation is in three areas: labor, infrastructure and natural resources. We are in the water surrounded by sharks on all three.
First Trouble: Labor.
The work is in China, everything we buy seems imported from there and we are surviving on loans from China. For some reason, America's industrial and political classes have deemed this "inevitable", It wasn't. \Laws were changed, factories unbolted and shipped. The American People want the laws changed. they want work to come home. They want to create wealth here and loan the fruits from ourselves to ourselves. The political classes pretend they can't hear us. We need Tariffs based upon the working conditions and wages of the nations we are importing from and the environmental costs of producing those same goods here. It's not protectionism, it a level playing field.
Second Trouble: Labor.
Many of the jobs that do remain here are to a large part being taken by Illegal alien workers so that those jobs can be done for the investor class at low wages and in 19th Century working conditions. Both parties are complete total whores to this investor class and explain the exploitation of these workers in bizarre terms of kindness and compassion for mankind. I kid you not. the Bullshit can not be believed, but when this bullshit is challenged, one is accused of a lack of compassion and racism by the people benefiting form the largess of those exploiting these illegal aliens. Even worse, there has been bipartisan support for allowing the children of illegals imported here to be educated for free, stay, get professional licenses and have an easy route to citizenship. This is killing American wages. We need a immigration policy that is kind and compassionate, We already take 500,000 people a year legally, and almost half of those are from Mexico, we take more people every year than the rest of the world combined. Isn't that enough? Each year we import three and one half cities the size of Pasadena Ca. in population and we build no sewage plant, no electrical generation plant, no roads, no bridges, no schools for them...And we have to compete with these legal and illegal folks for our jobs. What American worker really thinks thats a good idea?
Third trouble: Infrastructure.
Anybody who has driven a crater filled road in California, stood below a bridge after the first thaw of winter and listened as the concrete chips fell to the ground as cars rolled across, seen the eroded condition of a levve sidewall on an American river, or experienced a summer brownout, knows that this countries infrastructure needs some serious and thoughtful reinvestment. Our great grandparents and grandparents built harbors, airports, highways, damns and bridges that this nation has used and benefitted from for seventy five years. Our work, companies, and personal lives all benefitted far beyond the cost of these improvements. They were indeed investments in the future. Now we are told we can not afford to build more and better roads and bridges and that what scant work will be done will be done with materials and crews imported from China. We need to rebuild our country, the great things our great grandparents built are all worn out. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren deserve smooth roads, functioning electrical plants, water purification plants, bridges the envy of the world, national parks, railroads, mass tansit, and a world of wonders.
We can afford these things, we just can not have them and endless war for no real reason. It's time we chose life for our people instead of the ability to potentially destroy any population disobediant to the will of our Oligarchs, at a moments notice. We need the oil you say? Buying it at three times its present price would be cheaper than the three wars we have fought this decade and for that we could have solar panalized every roof on every house in the county twice over...
Fourth trouble: Natural resources.
This ties in with infrastructure. Our water is impure and we are running out of it. We need a system nationwide that cleans our sewage (YES, I said that) makes the water pure and pumps it back into our rapidly depleting aquifirs. We need to stop running water off our roofs into gutters and out to sea. Again it needs to be cleaned and pumped back to the ground. Our residential developments need to be built so that water runs into french drains at the property edge and back to the ground.
Fifth trouble: Natural resources.
The soil. We depleted our top soil of natural minerals and nuetriants by 1937. The Nation has been living off petrochemically derived fertilizers ever since. The nuitrition of American grain, fruit and vegetables grown with these petrochemical fetilizers has steady declined over time. Presenlty America takes all of it's green waste, food waste and solid sewage waste and landfills it. We need a national drive to restore our soil.
The American People are aware of most of these issues. they dont know what to do about them and we can not understand why our "leaders" wont even discuss them. Thats why we just can't get excited about this election.
We should have two years of national service for every American, not to build up our war machine, but to build our roads, our bridges, our sewage reclamation plants, our national parks, to restore our streams, to rebuild and re-envigorate our topsoil, to make America once again the shining city on the hill. We can give all our Children the same benefits as we now give military veterans. Free health care, Assisted living when they are old, reduced or free University.
This time we can make it not an illusion, not Las Vegas lights made up of gas from the death cycle, but made up of regenerative policies that care fro the land as if we believe that Genisis is true, God placed mankind upon the earth to tend it as a garden fit for his children to live in. We the American People can repent of our love of the war machine, of endless profligate waste, or carelessness of everything and everyone, and we can heal our land.
Thats the kind of thing a voting public can get excited about.
I have been doing just that. I will not deny I have at times made calls for President Obama into a few "battleground States". The voters there are just as un enthused about this election as I am. Yes, they will vote for the President, but they will not do so enthusiastically. Why?
The first problem is President Obama's first year in office. He lost the troops there. Candidate Obama had said to the party faithful, the hard core of believers who march through precincts, make phone calls, and volunteer every waking hour for the candidate, that they would have to hold his feet to the fire (actually quoting FDR) and "make me do it". They did. The reaction from Rham Emannuel and his staff, who ran all the White House Communications was antagonistic, rude, spiteful and in a short time alienated the troops on the street that Obama administration would have had. It was a betrayal and a slap in the face. The ground troops have never stopped being disaffected. The Obama machine pretends to not notice this on the one hand and on the other snickers that the disaffected have no where else to go. Have they considered that the disaffected can just stay home?
The second problem was the Health Care Reform fight. A large portion of the members of the Democratic Party wanted Universal Coverage, Single Payer. Perhaps the President and his administration knew that Universal Coverage Single Payer was not possible with Congress, but they never started there. They started with Romneycare and slowly negotiated pieces of that away to the Republicans in Congress. Lobbying for Single Payer Universal Coverage would have made the President seem as if he had stood up high in the saddle, and eventhough he may not have won, He would have been a hero to his troops. He could have on his initial wave of popularity galvanized the nation. Instead by being a mealy compromiser, he threw that popularity away, almost instantly. Probably starting from that point could have negotiated more from the Republicans. Instead he passed the Heritage Foundations bill, was escoriated as if he had passed a socialist program by the Republicans, whose very legislation is what he must take "credit" for, and gave the Democrats a "Success" they can not be proud of.
So far not very good.
But the REAL problem with this election isn't that Governor Romney is as honest as a kid with his hands in a cookie jar and as dull as white paint in the Mojave desert on a stucco west facing wall, nor is it that President Obama has disaffected his troops, it's that this election is not about the crisis the American public have been living through and dealing with for thirty years now.
Somehow the election is about how much various benefits the baby boomers have paid into their whole lives, will be reduced, who is the biggest tax cheat, and whose Vice Presidential candidate has had the biggest gaffe this week. Most American voters are tired of the dog grooming show. They want some reality and some answers to what they face. No one is excited because so far this election is not about anything real.
You see real America, Street Level America, if you call that the 99% or the 49%, is in trouble. Deep trouble. our politicians are gleefully ignoring the trouble. The wealth of any nation is in three areas: labor, infrastructure and natural resources. We are in the water surrounded by sharks on all three.
First Trouble: Labor.
The work is in China, everything we buy seems imported from there and we are surviving on loans from China. For some reason, America's industrial and political classes have deemed this "inevitable", It wasn't. \Laws were changed, factories unbolted and shipped. The American People want the laws changed. they want work to come home. They want to create wealth here and loan the fruits from ourselves to ourselves. The political classes pretend they can't hear us. We need Tariffs based upon the working conditions and wages of the nations we are importing from and the environmental costs of producing those same goods here. It's not protectionism, it a level playing field.
Second Trouble: Labor.
Many of the jobs that do remain here are to a large part being taken by Illegal alien workers so that those jobs can be done for the investor class at low wages and in 19th Century working conditions. Both parties are complete total whores to this investor class and explain the exploitation of these workers in bizarre terms of kindness and compassion for mankind. I kid you not. the Bullshit can not be believed, but when this bullshit is challenged, one is accused of a lack of compassion and racism by the people benefiting form the largess of those exploiting these illegal aliens. Even worse, there has been bipartisan support for allowing the children of illegals imported here to be educated for free, stay, get professional licenses and have an easy route to citizenship. This is killing American wages. We need a immigration policy that is kind and compassionate, We already take 500,000 people a year legally, and almost half of those are from Mexico, we take more people every year than the rest of the world combined. Isn't that enough? Each year we import three and one half cities the size of Pasadena Ca. in population and we build no sewage plant, no electrical generation plant, no roads, no bridges, no schools for them...And we have to compete with these legal and illegal folks for our jobs. What American worker really thinks thats a good idea?
Third trouble: Infrastructure.
Anybody who has driven a crater filled road in California, stood below a bridge after the first thaw of winter and listened as the concrete chips fell to the ground as cars rolled across, seen the eroded condition of a levve sidewall on an American river, or experienced a summer brownout, knows that this countries infrastructure needs some serious and thoughtful reinvestment. Our great grandparents and grandparents built harbors, airports, highways, damns and bridges that this nation has used and benefitted from for seventy five years. Our work, companies, and personal lives all benefitted far beyond the cost of these improvements. They were indeed investments in the future. Now we are told we can not afford to build more and better roads and bridges and that what scant work will be done will be done with materials and crews imported from China. We need to rebuild our country, the great things our great grandparents built are all worn out. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren deserve smooth roads, functioning electrical plants, water purification plants, bridges the envy of the world, national parks, railroads, mass tansit, and a world of wonders.
We can afford these things, we just can not have them and endless war for no real reason. It's time we chose life for our people instead of the ability to potentially destroy any population disobediant to the will of our Oligarchs, at a moments notice. We need the oil you say? Buying it at three times its present price would be cheaper than the three wars we have fought this decade and for that we could have solar panalized every roof on every house in the county twice over...
Fourth trouble: Natural resources.
This ties in with infrastructure. Our water is impure and we are running out of it. We need a system nationwide that cleans our sewage (YES, I said that) makes the water pure and pumps it back into our rapidly depleting aquifirs. We need to stop running water off our roofs into gutters and out to sea. Again it needs to be cleaned and pumped back to the ground. Our residential developments need to be built so that water runs into french drains at the property edge and back to the ground.
Fifth trouble: Natural resources.
The soil. We depleted our top soil of natural minerals and nuetriants by 1937. The Nation has been living off petrochemically derived fertilizers ever since. The nuitrition of American grain, fruit and vegetables grown with these petrochemical fetilizers has steady declined over time. Presenlty America takes all of it's green waste, food waste and solid sewage waste and landfills it. We need a national drive to restore our soil.
The American People are aware of most of these issues. they dont know what to do about them and we can not understand why our "leaders" wont even discuss them. Thats why we just can't get excited about this election.
We should have two years of national service for every American, not to build up our war machine, but to build our roads, our bridges, our sewage reclamation plants, our national parks, to restore our streams, to rebuild and re-envigorate our topsoil, to make America once again the shining city on the hill. We can give all our Children the same benefits as we now give military veterans. Free health care, Assisted living when they are old, reduced or free University.
This time we can make it not an illusion, not Las Vegas lights made up of gas from the death cycle, but made up of regenerative policies that care fro the land as if we believe that Genisis is true, God placed mankind upon the earth to tend it as a garden fit for his children to live in. We the American People can repent of our love of the war machine, of endless profligate waste, or carelessness of everything and everyone, and we can heal our land.
Thats the kind of thing a voting public can get excited about.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Uh No the Middle Class Wasn't divided by Scott Walker.
O.K. I'm at LEAST as liberal as the next guy. More so, mostly. This week Scott Walker narrowly escaped recall as Governor of Wisconsin. The pundits left and right are declaring the working class of Wisconsin was split in half. Half voted for Tea party Walker, half voted for the Union Champion, Barrett.
A couple things that are important, especially for those of us on the left who may want , moving forward to take lessons from this loss...
1. You don't run the guy the People didn't like so much last time that they elected a Tea Party Whackadoodle , this time in the recall. Hey, the People said "No thanks" to this guy once already.Get a new face. Americans LOVE new, that's why the same old products always have a NEW AND IMPROVED label on them every six months.
2. Working class unionized and non unionized private sector workers don't see any public sector workers as their brothers and sisters. They see them as what they generally are: the enforcement arm of the Corporatist State. Private sector workers and voters see these public sector employees as the ENEMY. Until the left comes to terms with this, understands it, admits it to themselves, they won't be able to capture the working class like the Tea Party has. It's not that there is something wrong with Kansas, its that Kansas has experiences we on the left have refused to recognize.
"Steve, Steve , Steve", you say in a condescending, humoring mockingly gentle voice, "How can you say
T H A T ?" Well, in my many years as a Activist and Town Councilman no one ever came to my office or called my phone asking for solidarity with some Union.
Little old widow ladies called in panic because they had signed a petition against some development and two weeks later the County Zoning Department with Sheriffs carrying pistols and shot guns swept down on her property and demanded costly and extensive repairs and alterations be made. Those were Unionized Public Sector Employees devastating her meager retirement funds, attempting to drive her out of her home, and being used to retaliate against her free speech rights. That happened a few times and each incident took years of the little old ladies life and all of her energy to resolve.
A Little old woman whose family had lived in her house since it was built in 1919 owns three homes in a row on a small street next to a commercial district. A developer wanted her land. She spent six years with endless inspections, demands, shotguns pointed at her, her family members, her friends. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the Public Sector employees gave up, after they had gone through every single home on the block subjecting them to Zoning hell. Those folks were all working class, some unionized, some not, but none of them see Public Sector employees union or not, as friends.
A carpenter has a trailer on his commercial property at his shop. There is mixed zoning on his land and he rented the trailer to the local Parking Enforcement Officer. She filed a complaint against the department for discrimination. Zoning, Building and Safety, Edison Inspectors, and the Sheriff's Department, guns brandished forced their way warrent-less into the friends property. He had to remove the trailer,so the complaining unionized County employee became homeless at the hands of complying unionized County employees, Solidarity? There was no permit on the storage building that had been there for at least seventy years, that had to go. They made him install fire systems in his studio. Cal Osha showed up to inspect all of his vintage saws and equipment, and wanted thousands of dollars of safety equipment on them and tens of thousands of dollars in dust collection and spray booth equipment. All this in spite of the fact that my carpenter friend has no employees. You see he MAY have them someday. That went through rounds and rounds of administrative hearings. Cost my buddy a FORTUNE, all because he had committed the crime of renting to a County employee who thought she had rights.
A friend works at a Automotive repair shop. Its been in business here in town since 1916. It is the oldest continuing operating automotive repair shop in Los Angeles County. My friend buys the shop from his boss. I go with him to the County when he transfers the business licenses. We are told everything is in order. Six months later, my friend who has put his life savings into purchasing his shop, gets a letter from the County saying his licenses have been revoked. His business that has continuously operated in the same fashion since 1916 at the same location was rezoned at some point. He has to apply for a Conditional Use Permit and he has to stop operations until he does. This normally takes a year and a half, costs about $30,000 by the time all the permits, fees, drawings, and fixers are paid. In the meantime the mortgage on the shop must be paid. I make an appointment with my friend and the County Zoning guy. Eight County thugs show up who proceed to mock and humiliate my friend for starting his own business and not getting a good paying safe secure County job. I would not have believed it had I not heard it. We ran out of the meeting before we each killed some County Bastard. We organized. we got the County to lay off, yet every eight months some new person would take over the County Zoning desk, start again, and we would have to start everyone calling to save this guys shop. Some brilliant County employee figured out the way to ruin my friend was to call in the State. My friend got inspections and fees and fines and work orders on a monthly basis until the oldest continuous business in town and my friends bottom line and life savings were completely destroyed. Do we imagine my mechanic friend sees government employees as people he has some kind of solidarity with? Uh NO.
These are not unusual stories. I can go on for pages upon pages of people just going about their lives in a way we would all consider "normal" who upset someone in government and were then persecuted by government employees.
Working class people see government employees as the enemy, because they behave that way, and with complete total contempt for members of the public. Until we on the left UNDERSTAND this, we will continue to lose to the Tea Party, to the Koch brothers, and the Oligarchs. We have to understand, government employees are not the same as private sector workers and small employers. There is and as long as they function as arms of enforcement for the international corporations and government who are attempting to destroy the workers and the middle class, never will be any solidarity with the Working and middle classes and government employees.
We on the left need to figure out a message that is for the Working Class, By the Working Class and Of the Working Class, or we will continue to lose and be irrelevant noise.
A couple things that are important, especially for those of us on the left who may want , moving forward to take lessons from this loss...
1. You don't run the guy the People didn't like so much last time that they elected a Tea Party Whackadoodle , this time in the recall. Hey, the People said "No thanks" to this guy once already.Get a new face. Americans LOVE new, that's why the same old products always have a NEW AND IMPROVED label on them every six months.
2. Working class unionized and non unionized private sector workers don't see any public sector workers as their brothers and sisters. They see them as what they generally are: the enforcement arm of the Corporatist State. Private sector workers and voters see these public sector employees as the ENEMY. Until the left comes to terms with this, understands it, admits it to themselves, they won't be able to capture the working class like the Tea Party has. It's not that there is something wrong with Kansas, its that Kansas has experiences we on the left have refused to recognize.
"Steve, Steve , Steve", you say in a condescending, humoring mockingly gentle voice, "How can you say
T H A T ?" Well, in my many years as a Activist and Town Councilman no one ever came to my office or called my phone asking for solidarity with some Union.
Little old widow ladies called in panic because they had signed a petition against some development and two weeks later the County Zoning Department with Sheriffs carrying pistols and shot guns swept down on her property and demanded costly and extensive repairs and alterations be made. Those were Unionized Public Sector Employees devastating her meager retirement funds, attempting to drive her out of her home, and being used to retaliate against her free speech rights. That happened a few times and each incident took years of the little old ladies life and all of her energy to resolve.
A Little old woman whose family had lived in her house since it was built in 1919 owns three homes in a row on a small street next to a commercial district. A developer wanted her land. She spent six years with endless inspections, demands, shotguns pointed at her, her family members, her friends. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the Public Sector employees gave up, after they had gone through every single home on the block subjecting them to Zoning hell. Those folks were all working class, some unionized, some not, but none of them see Public Sector employees union or not, as friends.
A carpenter has a trailer on his commercial property at his shop. There is mixed zoning on his land and he rented the trailer to the local Parking Enforcement Officer. She filed a complaint against the department for discrimination. Zoning, Building and Safety, Edison Inspectors, and the Sheriff's Department, guns brandished forced their way warrent-less into the friends property. He had to remove the trailer,so the complaining unionized County employee became homeless at the hands of complying unionized County employees, Solidarity? There was no permit on the storage building that had been there for at least seventy years, that had to go. They made him install fire systems in his studio. Cal Osha showed up to inspect all of his vintage saws and equipment, and wanted thousands of dollars of safety equipment on them and tens of thousands of dollars in dust collection and spray booth equipment. All this in spite of the fact that my carpenter friend has no employees. You see he MAY have them someday. That went through rounds and rounds of administrative hearings. Cost my buddy a FORTUNE, all because he had committed the crime of renting to a County employee who thought she had rights.
A friend works at a Automotive repair shop. Its been in business here in town since 1916. It is the oldest continuing operating automotive repair shop in Los Angeles County. My friend buys the shop from his boss. I go with him to the County when he transfers the business licenses. We are told everything is in order. Six months later, my friend who has put his life savings into purchasing his shop, gets a letter from the County saying his licenses have been revoked. His business that has continuously operated in the same fashion since 1916 at the same location was rezoned at some point. He has to apply for a Conditional Use Permit and he has to stop operations until he does. This normally takes a year and a half, costs about $30,000 by the time all the permits, fees, drawings, and fixers are paid. In the meantime the mortgage on the shop must be paid. I make an appointment with my friend and the County Zoning guy. Eight County thugs show up who proceed to mock and humiliate my friend for starting his own business and not getting a good paying safe secure County job. I would not have believed it had I not heard it. We ran out of the meeting before we each killed some County Bastard. We organized. we got the County to lay off, yet every eight months some new person would take over the County Zoning desk, start again, and we would have to start everyone calling to save this guys shop. Some brilliant County employee figured out the way to ruin my friend was to call in the State. My friend got inspections and fees and fines and work orders on a monthly basis until the oldest continuous business in town and my friends bottom line and life savings were completely destroyed. Do we imagine my mechanic friend sees government employees as people he has some kind of solidarity with? Uh NO.
These are not unusual stories. I can go on for pages upon pages of people just going about their lives in a way we would all consider "normal" who upset someone in government and were then persecuted by government employees.
Working class people see government employees as the enemy, because they behave that way, and with complete total contempt for members of the public. Until we on the left UNDERSTAND this, we will continue to lose to the Tea Party, to the Koch brothers, and the Oligarchs. We have to understand, government employees are not the same as private sector workers and small employers. There is and as long as they function as arms of enforcement for the international corporations and government who are attempting to destroy the workers and the middle class, never will be any solidarity with the Working and middle classes and government employees.
We on the left need to figure out a message that is for the Working Class, By the Working Class and Of the Working Class, or we will continue to lose and be irrelevant noise.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
California Cap and Trade is the wrong answer
As any and every Environmentalist knows, the earth, water and atmosphere are all one completely inter related system. When developing or regulating anything in the environment, we do so at our complete peril when we fail to remember this fact.
This week the California Air Resources Board voted to implement a 3000 page cap and trade regulation on those industries that remain in California. Under this regulation, those industries remaining in California will have a number assigned to them of the maximum units of carbon they can consume, if they go over that maximum number they can buy credits through an exchange, much like the exchange that led to California's electricity debacle that we as a state have yet to recover from. The credits would allow the industry to use more carbon than the State of California allows. The credits would be created by those industries using less carbon than their allowance selling them at a fixed price to the exchange who would then be allowed to sell the credits at any price above the fixed price. Call it what you will its a gigantic tax , the state estimates worth $20Billion in 2020, on California manufacturers.
What this means is that in the middle of the deepest recession in seventy five years, where California's unemployment rate is 30% higher than the nation as a whole, the California Air Resources Board has passed a new tax that companies outside of California are not subject to. California already has the tightest most difficult regulations in the world for industry. One major reason we have such high unemployment is that our industry is fleeing because in a one world economy, even with the most efficient machines and workers on earth, they can't compete when the horrific costs of California's regulations are added to their backs.
Many small companies have relocated to Arizona, New Mexico and Idaho. Each of those states has more relaxed regulations than California now has. These regulations are more like California's regulations of the late 1980's and represent a burden that these companies can already meet or do better than. They don't have to spend all their capital meeting California's ever changing ever more demanding regulations, or trading with enviro thieves on an exchange just to keep their doors open. Many of the remaining California industries will relocate to other States, rather than attempt to stay in business with a new back breaking tax that no one else in America faces. This of course will increase un employment in California and the states economic crisis.
Many more larger companies have moved their manufacturing to Latin America and China. With this new California only carbon tax, they will continue to do so. In those countries where there are either no regulations or local government officials co-operation can be bought cheaply, these companies usually operate completely filthy dirty factories that look like something directly out of late 19th Century photographs of disgusting inhumane industrial conditions. There are no filters or masks for the workers, no scrubbers in the smokestacks, no detention and clean up facilities before the industrial waste hits the water. Communist China is where the most base industrialists with the least care for the workers and the Earth go to supply our lust for shiny glittery things. Workers paradise indeed.
When I complain about these and many other California regulations people say to me "Yes, but the air here is so much cleaner than it was thirty years ago." Indeed it is. This is not, however, because the products we use are being made in a more environmentally friendly and safe manner. There are in fact, in the main, being made in a less environmentally safe and friendly manner than they were made thirty years ago. We are just under two delusions:
First that it's SOMEONE ELSE'S air, water and soil being polluted and
Second that this is PERFECTLY FINE, since our air, soil and water are not being polluted.
Friends, this is an obscenity. It is also environmental classism, nationalism, xenoism and racism. The thinking goes that pollution to make my toys is fine as long as I don't have to deal with it and if the Mexicans, Bolivians, and Chinese are "willing" to choke themselves to death making my Nikies, Apples, Ipods and so on, well HooRah for the one world economy! Really? This is I again repeat, nothing more than colonialism, classism, racism and stupidity done in the name of the environment. It is morally, scientifically, and even politically bankrupt. There will be a overall world system increase in pollution, directly due to this California only cap and trade law, even if that pollution is reduced in California. That's not good for the planet, or for California.
What we need instead is a national carbon and pollution tax on all products sold in the United States. Not an exchange where some enviro pirates can get rich, but a direct tax on every product that taxes the pollution used in it's manufacture and shipping to our market, NO MATTER WHERE IT WAS MADE. This would, with America still the world's chief consumer, tend to make companies worldwide clean up their act to sell to us. It would also tend to bring jobs and manufacturing back to the United States and back to California, while filling the national budget deficit. Its a win for the united States, a win for California, and a win for the Earth, Water and Sky.
P.S. Hey- Who ELECTED the California Air Resources Board? Think about it.
This week the California Air Resources Board voted to implement a 3000 page cap and trade regulation on those industries that remain in California. Under this regulation, those industries remaining in California will have a number assigned to them of the maximum units of carbon they can consume, if they go over that maximum number they can buy credits through an exchange, much like the exchange that led to California's electricity debacle that we as a state have yet to recover from. The credits would allow the industry to use more carbon than the State of California allows. The credits would be created by those industries using less carbon than their allowance selling them at a fixed price to the exchange who would then be allowed to sell the credits at any price above the fixed price. Call it what you will its a gigantic tax , the state estimates worth $20Billion in 2020, on California manufacturers.
What this means is that in the middle of the deepest recession in seventy five years, where California's unemployment rate is 30% higher than the nation as a whole, the California Air Resources Board has passed a new tax that companies outside of California are not subject to. California already has the tightest most difficult regulations in the world for industry. One major reason we have such high unemployment is that our industry is fleeing because in a one world economy, even with the most efficient machines and workers on earth, they can't compete when the horrific costs of California's regulations are added to their backs.
Many small companies have relocated to Arizona, New Mexico and Idaho. Each of those states has more relaxed regulations than California now has. These regulations are more like California's regulations of the late 1980's and represent a burden that these companies can already meet or do better than. They don't have to spend all their capital meeting California's ever changing ever more demanding regulations, or trading with enviro thieves on an exchange just to keep their doors open. Many of the remaining California industries will relocate to other States, rather than attempt to stay in business with a new back breaking tax that no one else in America faces. This of course will increase un employment in California and the states economic crisis.
Many more larger companies have moved their manufacturing to Latin America and China. With this new California only carbon tax, they will continue to do so. In those countries where there are either no regulations or local government officials co-operation can be bought cheaply, these companies usually operate completely filthy dirty factories that look like something directly out of late 19th Century photographs of disgusting inhumane industrial conditions. There are no filters or masks for the workers, no scrubbers in the smokestacks, no detention and clean up facilities before the industrial waste hits the water. Communist China is where the most base industrialists with the least care for the workers and the Earth go to supply our lust for shiny glittery things. Workers paradise indeed.
When I complain about these and many other California regulations people say to me "Yes, but the air here is so much cleaner than it was thirty years ago." Indeed it is. This is not, however, because the products we use are being made in a more environmentally friendly and safe manner. There are in fact, in the main, being made in a less environmentally safe and friendly manner than they were made thirty years ago. We are just under two delusions:
First that it's SOMEONE ELSE'S air, water and soil being polluted and
Second that this is PERFECTLY FINE, since our air, soil and water are not being polluted.
Friends, this is an obscenity. It is also environmental classism, nationalism, xenoism and racism. The thinking goes that pollution to make my toys is fine as long as I don't have to deal with it and if the Mexicans, Bolivians, and Chinese are "willing" to choke themselves to death making my Nikies, Apples, Ipods and so on, well HooRah for the one world economy! Really? This is I again repeat, nothing more than colonialism, classism, racism and stupidity done in the name of the environment. It is morally, scientifically, and even politically bankrupt. There will be a overall world system increase in pollution, directly due to this California only cap and trade law, even if that pollution is reduced in California. That's not good for the planet, or for California.
What we need instead is a national carbon and pollution tax on all products sold in the United States. Not an exchange where some enviro pirates can get rich, but a direct tax on every product that taxes the pollution used in it's manufacture and shipping to our market, NO MATTER WHERE IT WAS MADE. This would, with America still the world's chief consumer, tend to make companies worldwide clean up their act to sell to us. It would also tend to bring jobs and manufacturing back to the United States and back to California, while filling the national budget deficit. Its a win for the united States, a win for California, and a win for the Earth, Water and Sky.
P.S. Hey- Who ELECTED the California Air Resources Board? Think about it.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Now we know who killed those Kennedy's
Forty seven years. For most of human history, that span has been an entire lifetime. I was a small child forty seven years ago, but I remember that day better than any day last week. It's the day of the American Coup D Etat. It's the day the national Military Intelligence Industrial Complex shot an American President down like a rabid dog on Elm Street in Dallas Texas.
It was always a hinkey kill. That business a couple days later killing Oswald in the police station alerted even my six year old mind that there was something rotten in the cotton. Conspiracy theories sprouted almost instantly. Some believed LBJ did it. Some thought the Russians did it. Some said it was the Cubans. Dan Smoot the Conservative Texas commentator was the first to claim in public that the Intelligence community may have done it, and Dan was a former FBI man. I used to read my fathers copies of the Dan Smoot Report as a kid.
As a young adult, I met and befriended the Investigative Reporter, Mike Canfield. Mike and his co-Author, A. J. Weberman fingered three guys from the CIA as being the lead team that was responsible for carrying out the assassination of President John Kennedy. Those guys were stopped shortly after the Assassination by rail road police, dressed as tramps, hanging out in the train yard in back of Dealy Plaza. One guy was the famous CIA assassin, Frank Sturgis who Fidel Castro said was the most dangerous CIA agent ever. Another was E. Howard Hunt, and the third is an unknown man believed to be a Lebanese contract assassin. Canfield and Weberman wrote a ground breaking book Coup D Etat in America. They detailed the CIA mafia interlinks in the Assasination of President John Kennedy. Oddly enough, E. Howard Hunt, famous for his role in Watergate (Along with Sturgis) sued Canfield and Weberman for Libel and Slander. The suit never went to trial and was primarily designed to destroy book sales and keep the authors bottled up in litigation for years.
So here forty seven years is some GREAT news:
E. Howard Hunt confessed on his deathbed,in an interview taped by his own son, Saint John Hunt, that he indeed had involvement in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Not only that, Hunt said it was instigated by his case officer, who was also the CIA agent in charge of the Bay of Pigs.
Case closed. The CIA Killed President John F. Kennedy. That's right, as a pair of young journalists, A. J. Weberman, YIPPIE extraordinaire and Mike Canfield, Jesus Freak got it right way way way back in the early 1970's. Good work boys!
But friends there is more to know:
Jack Ruby was Mob from the get go and ran all the strip clubs, porn and male and female prostitution ofr the mob in the American Southwest. The mob had him assassinate and silence Lee Harvey Oswald.
Lee Harvey Oswald, was indeed exactly what he claimed to be: He was a Patsy. But he was more than that- Lee harvey was a CIA double agent. He had been Francis Gary Powers radio man and interviewed Powers while he was in captivity, supposedly for the Soviets, but? Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, married the daughter of the Soviet equivalent to the FBI and then was repatriated to the USA and had his passage paid for by the American State Department. Strange huh?
There were lots of Ruby/Oswald tie in's to Texas Oil Men. Some of those dirty no good so and so's are still alive. Even after forty seven long years, some of them are left alive to be brought to justice. Even Hunt's CIA case officer is still alive and could be brought to justice, except of course, the John Kennedy Assassination was a Coup D Etat, and justice, once a occasional visitor in America is now a stranger.
Yet on this cold November day we must remember the courageous who knowing it had been a Coup D Etat, none the less pursued the Assassins and the enemies of the American Republic: Dan Smoot, Judge Garrison, Congressman Henry B. Gonzales, Mort Saul, A. J. Weberman, and my good friend Mike Canfield. You each deserve the Medal of Freedom and the eternal gratitude of the American People.
All Power to the People!
It was always a hinkey kill. That business a couple days later killing Oswald in the police station alerted even my six year old mind that there was something rotten in the cotton. Conspiracy theories sprouted almost instantly. Some believed LBJ did it. Some thought the Russians did it. Some said it was the Cubans. Dan Smoot the Conservative Texas commentator was the first to claim in public that the Intelligence community may have done it, and Dan was a former FBI man. I used to read my fathers copies of the Dan Smoot Report as a kid.
As a young adult, I met and befriended the Investigative Reporter, Mike Canfield. Mike and his co-Author, A. J. Weberman fingered three guys from the CIA as being the lead team that was responsible for carrying out the assassination of President John Kennedy. Those guys were stopped shortly after the Assassination by rail road police, dressed as tramps, hanging out in the train yard in back of Dealy Plaza. One guy was the famous CIA assassin, Frank Sturgis who Fidel Castro said was the most dangerous CIA agent ever. Another was E. Howard Hunt, and the third is an unknown man believed to be a Lebanese contract assassin. Canfield and Weberman wrote a ground breaking book Coup D Etat in America. They detailed the CIA mafia interlinks in the Assasination of President John Kennedy. Oddly enough, E. Howard Hunt, famous for his role in Watergate (Along with Sturgis) sued Canfield and Weberman for Libel and Slander. The suit never went to trial and was primarily designed to destroy book sales and keep the authors bottled up in litigation for years.
So here forty seven years is some GREAT news:
E. Howard Hunt confessed on his deathbed,in an interview taped by his own son, Saint John Hunt, that he indeed had involvement in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Not only that, Hunt said it was instigated by his case officer, who was also the CIA agent in charge of the Bay of Pigs.
Case closed. The CIA Killed President John F. Kennedy. That's right, as a pair of young journalists, A. J. Weberman, YIPPIE extraordinaire and Mike Canfield, Jesus Freak got it right way way way back in the early 1970's. Good work boys!
But friends there is more to know:
Jack Ruby was Mob from the get go and ran all the strip clubs, porn and male and female prostitution ofr the mob in the American Southwest. The mob had him assassinate and silence Lee Harvey Oswald.
Lee Harvey Oswald, was indeed exactly what he claimed to be: He was a Patsy. But he was more than that- Lee harvey was a CIA double agent. He had been Francis Gary Powers radio man and interviewed Powers while he was in captivity, supposedly for the Soviets, but? Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, married the daughter of the Soviet equivalent to the FBI and then was repatriated to the USA and had his passage paid for by the American State Department. Strange huh?
There were lots of Ruby/Oswald tie in's to Texas Oil Men. Some of those dirty no good so and so's are still alive. Even after forty seven long years, some of them are left alive to be brought to justice. Even Hunt's CIA case officer is still alive and could be brought to justice, except of course, the John Kennedy Assassination was a Coup D Etat, and justice, once a occasional visitor in America is now a stranger.
Yet on this cold November day we must remember the courageous who knowing it had been a Coup D Etat, none the less pursued the Assassins and the enemies of the American Republic: Dan Smoot, Judge Garrison, Congressman Henry B. Gonzales, Mort Saul, A. J. Weberman, and my good friend Mike Canfield. You each deserve the Medal of Freedom and the eternal gratitude of the American People.
All Power to the People!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Well Whose playing Chess now?
I TOLD you So! Is such a annoying phrase both to use and to hear. In spite of this fact, I can not help but say "I told you so." to my friends within the Democratic Party who have their panties in a bunch that the Tea Party is gaining on them and that the Republicans may overtake them in the November Congressional elections.
While I was predicting this gloom, my more insider more well connected would be beltway dwelling friends were telling me to SHUT UP! That I was stupid, that Rham and Obama played Chess and I only played Checkers, and that opposing Obama meant that i had unrespolved buried below the surface racism in my pea picking little heart. Uh huh... I kept telling them pass REAL EUROPEAN STYLE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE and SCREW the INSURANCE INDUSTRY and you will have a electoral majority for forty years. Fail to do that and you won't see yourselves hold onto Congress in two years.
I said "Hey dont sell Chrysler to Italy, bail her and GM out", oh Noooo I was playing checkers. I said don't bail out the banks without relief for the underwater unemployed homeowners. Oh Noo I was playing checkers with Bull Connor in my heart...I said no no no more breaks for corporations, rebuild the bridges, the roads, the electrical grids and the national parks. Build a nationwide railway/streetcar system. I was playing checkers on a cracker barrel.
Well whose playing chess NOW ? The Democratic Party, and hello to my friends on the State Committee has been so smart, so confident that the voters had nowhere else to go, so delusional about the depth of love the average voter had for Obama that they managed to lose a mid term election. They could have won. They could have taken both houses. They could have done a major generational shift that would last for thirty years by standing tall for the interests of the 95% of the country. They could have had such a deep loyalty from the American People that they wouldn't need corporate dollars for a decade.....BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Alas. They wont get the message the People are sending them by staying home. They will sit at the expensive lunches in the expensive restaurant where some corporate shill is paying the bill and fret about how much they wish they could really do some little thing for the People and be appropriately loved for it....
When I was young I would read Abbie Hoffman railing against liberal politicians and what total limp schmucks they were. I could not then, but clearly do now appreciate his viewpoint.
While I was predicting this gloom, my more insider more well connected would be beltway dwelling friends were telling me to SHUT UP! That I was stupid, that Rham and Obama played Chess and I only played Checkers, and that opposing Obama meant that i had unrespolved buried below the surface racism in my pea picking little heart. Uh huh... I kept telling them pass REAL EUROPEAN STYLE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE and SCREW the INSURANCE INDUSTRY and you will have a electoral majority for forty years. Fail to do that and you won't see yourselves hold onto Congress in two years.
I said "Hey dont sell Chrysler to Italy, bail her and GM out", oh Noooo I was playing checkers. I said don't bail out the banks without relief for the underwater unemployed homeowners. Oh Noo I was playing checkers with Bull Connor in my heart...I said no no no more breaks for corporations, rebuild the bridges, the roads, the electrical grids and the national parks. Build a nationwide railway/streetcar system. I was playing checkers on a cracker barrel.
Well whose playing chess NOW ? The Democratic Party, and hello to my friends on the State Committee has been so smart, so confident that the voters had nowhere else to go, so delusional about the depth of love the average voter had for Obama that they managed to lose a mid term election. They could have won. They could have taken both houses. They could have done a major generational shift that would last for thirty years by standing tall for the interests of the 95% of the country. They could have had such a deep loyalty from the American People that they wouldn't need corporate dollars for a decade.....BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Alas. They wont get the message the People are sending them by staying home. They will sit at the expensive lunches in the expensive restaurant where some corporate shill is paying the bill and fret about how much they wish they could really do some little thing for the People and be appropriately loved for it....
When I was young I would read Abbie Hoffman railing against liberal politicians and what total limp schmucks they were. I could not then, but clearly do now appreciate his viewpoint.
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