Another Day in Potterville

Head start sequester cuts.  79 children lose. The sequester has finally met its purpose, denying education to 79 pre-school poor kids.  This will mean 79 kids not ready for kintergarden, not ready to read, and headed for possible failure.  

Brown signs minimum wage bill, Chamber of Commerce goes nuts:  For the first time in seven years, the minimum wage in California will go up.  This will be phased in, over a three year period.  The good ole Chamber of Commerce (sic) once again claims the move will bankrupt small businesses, while statistics show fast food CEOs and corporations making record profits.  

Poll, California citizens, especially in Potterville, paranoid about court ordered release of inmates.  After forty (count em 40) years of passing more and more restrictive and reactionary laws against crime, that have failed, now the citizens are frightened to death because non-violent inmates must be released due to unconstitutional overcrowding.   Meanwhile, conservatives, without even a whisper about their failed policies, push for "tougher penalties"...

A stamp will cost 3 cents more, and that means we must privatize the U.S. Mail, losing millions of jobs.  But hey...small or no government is best.

Home sales up:  After a trainwreck, homes are finally sellling...to the rich..the middle class rents now and forever.

The above were headlines in the Record Searchlight, Thursday, September 26, 2013.  Another day in Potterville, where the poor get poorer, the rich get richer, and the middle class gets dumber!  

As Long As Its the Other Guy

As long as its not me, ok.

This is the modern narcisstic viewpoint of Americans.  The Greatest Generation, who learned the hard way that teamwork and selflessness, is the way to prevail in global conflicts, is gone.  

They have passed on mostly, the remnants are too old and mostly stored away in the "rest homes" baby boomers built for them, so boomers didn't have to be bothered by their elders.  Grandma and grandpa die along in "facilities", as their kids go to Hawaii.  

Today, we are seeing growth, at least in their noise, of nihilists, who deny any responsbility socially for anything.  Everything revolves around them.  Food stamps are big government intruding into the natural selection process, poor people deserve their status, and should starve.  Government welfare programs, of every kind, are reducing the competitive nature of people, creating a "takers" culture that are really parasites.

Now, this "privileged hard working class" only makes up a dwindling fraction of the population.  The "takers" class is growing rapidly.

This is all part of nature's plan, the boomer rich say.  If we continue helping others through governmental programs, even ANY programs, we will criipple our economy.

So, we see boomers pushing for more punitive approaches to social/economic issues.  In the past forty years, America has become a prison nation, with millions incarerated endlessly for drug infractions.  We treat addiction in the United States with jail, while the rest of the world treats it with medicine.  The results?  The highest inceration population in the world, and no end to crime; especially drug related crime.  

And the homeless...now there we have success of the "as long as its not me" generation.  Homeless populations have exploded.  Every village, small city and metropolis in the country is struggling with legions of homeless.  

And when the boomers encounter a homeless person..."as long as it not me, ok".

American lost its soul with the advent of conservative philosophy that regards all government as evil, all taxes as taking from the rich to give to the poor.  

And the middle class has shrunk, as its leaders actually sponsor the madness that is destroying it.  

"What's the Matter with Kansas" is a classic, showing millions of people who are voting exactly against their (and their childrens') best interest.  It shows that "as long as its not me its ok" is pervasive in the United States today.

And where does this lead us.  The uncaring, hard is best approach to social/economic problems leads us straight to fascism!   And we all know where that got Germany.

But, what the heck, if its not me, its ok!  

Hit the Streets

Ok, the deed is being done.  For the first time in American History a political party is willing to shut down the government to halt a legally tested, and passed law.  The first time!

Republicans were not happy with Medicare, Social Security, even the income tax, but never did a political party seek to extort the country to get its way, with the stakes being the economic well being of the country.

Never.

Now, the House has acted and this "drama" is being played out.

This will take awhile.  But what those of us who are getting more sick of this need to do is this.

Organize as it gets bad, if it gets bad and protest:  Social Security checks not sent.  Military not paid.

Hit the streets.  Put thousands into the streets and demand that the Congress grow up or else we will stay in the streets, just like they have done in Egypt, and simply stop putting up with this idiocy.

I am ready.  As we get more damaged by this behavior, the more we need to take this into our own hands.

I am calling on the 99% ers, the old Civil Rights protesters, the anti-war 65 somethings who will see their social security checks not arrive, to go into the streets, and scream.

I AM MAD AS HELL AND I WON'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE.

It is time we stop tolerating this crap!   

Know better than we do

We are headed for another government shutdown, this time extortion is being used  to stop the Affordable Care Act from being fully implemented.

The radical right, henceforth I will call them Republican Fascists, have decided to go all in on stopping the ACA.

And the justification is basically that their constituents are incensed that the ACA represents the federal government condescendingly treating them like it knows better.

The logic of this anarchist philosophy is startling:  if your side lose a vote in a fair exercise of democracy, the minority can  still can stop the action by throwing a fit, and shutting down the government to do it.

This is fascism folks, clear and simple.  Read the history of the rise of fascism in Italy and yes, Germany, during the 1920s and 1930s.  Both movements started as small minorities at the beginning, and used obstructionism and anarchy to slowly erode the democratic institutions (which were struggling with the ravages of WWI) of the time.

The Wiemar Republic, in Germany, struggled against huge odds, to pay unjust reparations and establish a democratic tradition in a former monarchy.  The fascists used the approach that the legitimate government was ineffective because it was using a I know what is best for you approach, was allied with the other democracies in the world (who had just prevailed on paper in WWI), and was failing.

Fascism in Germany preached a return to ancient values, militarism, and hatred of Jews as the source of all of Germany's problems.  And, it also set up a para-government everywhere it could, to prove fascism could govern better.

History shows that this was a sham.  The para-governmental structures that were put together, using outsourcing of civil service function, were in the end, hopelessly corrupt.  Gold was hoarded, expensive art stolen, and fascist "officials" basically used their positions to line their pockets.  You only need to analyze the "privatized" functions in Iraq of Republican Fascism to find the same corruption.

The Tea Party, if you check, is based on Revolutionary War values, militarism, and hatred of liberals (especially a certain President who just happens to be black), as the source of all of America's problems.  In addition the Tea Party has actively taken over local and state governments, to prove that its form of government (we decide you follow or else) can govern better.  It is no accident that states who have been taken over by the Tea Party, have enacted right wing legislation, that curbs civil rights, reproductive rights, and allows no input from the minority party.  

And, the next step, will be through voter suppression, to eliminate the other party.  

And, if you look closely enough, many of these para-governmental activities, are riddled with corruption.

These are not idle coincidences.  There is a plan here, and it is being dictated by the Koch Brothers, the Heritage Foundation; etc., who meet together all the time to plan a coordinated attack against democracy.  The efforts to close down the government and create chaos are just that, an effort to cause chaos and increase calls for dictatorship.

If we allow this cabal of evil to prevail, by extorting us into curbing the ACA, what is next?  I would predict ending various governmental departments, cutting the Civil Rights Act (just as they have ended the Voting Rights Act), and finally suspending the Congress of the United States.

There will be some "crisis" that requires this, which will also necessitate the incarceration of all Democrats and liberals, who could be  forced to carry ID placards hung around their necks.

If this sounds far fetched, it isn't.  Democracy is at risk right now, there is no doubt about it.  If the Republican Fascist Party prevails, we are on our way to totalitarianism in this country.

Fight back.  Call your Congressmen, even Doug LaMalfa (who is in on the above by the way) and tell them that you will work to beat them in the next election if they don't stop the extortion.   And then, in 2014, vote!  Vote, and get others to vote with you, else we won't be voting anymore.

There's Nobody There

The latest in the fracking madness, is the push to mine the Monterrey Shale.  Supposedly this is a huge deposit of shale oil.  Now, shale oil, is not the regular sweet crude, that long ago was mined out in California.  Shale oil is oil trapped in rock and shale deposits.  It needs a special process, called fracking, high pressure hydronic mining, that injects millions of gallons of water and secret chemicals into the shale, releasing the oil that is then pumped to the surface, alone with the water and chemicals.  

Much of the fracking brew, if you will, remains below, supposedly immune from water supplies.  Fracking proponents promise (cross my heart) that there is no way this toxic brew can affect water aquifers.  Of course, there are already incidents where that is exactly what has happened.  However, the Clean Water Act has been walled off from fracking by a Bill pushed by then Vice President Dick Cheney.  This is called the so-called Halletburton Bill, because it benefits Cheney's former company in that no water tests can be done relative to fracked drilling.

So the first promise is, even though common sense screams that clean water is one, being used in huge numbers, and two, there are several incidents where water supplies were contaminated, TRUST us, we know what we are doing.  

The second promise is Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.  North Dakota is pointed to with the growth of thousands of jobs.  

What they aren't telling you is the vast majority of these jobs are created for a short period of time.  Once the fracking is done, and the wellhead is capped and attached to a pipeline, the work moves on to the next frack.  Once all the wells are done, the number of jobs drops to zero; save an inspector here and there.  In short, there is no net increase in jobs due to fracking...none.

But there is one thing that increases, profit for the gas and oil companies.  Fracking costs a lot of money.  It has been a known process for years.  But, the cost of extracting the oil and gas was so high, that companies did not bother.  

Now, that the public is clamoring for more oil and gas, due to the fact that the less expensive ways of mining it are gone, the oil barons can charge just about what they want.

So, fracking does not make for permanent jobs; it just doesn't.  

What it does do is create the illusion that our energy problems are over.  In fact, peak oil was reached several years ago, and it is all downhill from here.

Fracking once again is used to put off doing what we must do, conserve, change our transportation habits, and learn to live in a limited energy production world.

By encouraging a "glut mentality" fracking only hastens the day when we flat run out; broke, our water supplies ruined, and victimized by oil companies that are just plain evil.  

Follow the Tea Party to Disaster

A new political trend or movement developed in opposition to the ACA in 2010.  It appeared, at first blush, to be a grass roots movement against the ravages of the Great Recession, Big Government, and the Democratic Congress.

Closer historical analysis has shown the Tea Party movement to be a cynical ploy by big money interests to effect the balance of political power, rid the Republican Party of "Rhinos", and radically affect the United States.

Some, me included, call the most radical of the Tea Party as a latent fascist movement, aimed at the overthrow of the government.  Many Tea Party Web Sites indicate as much.

Now, we in Northern California are enduring more Tea Party strategy.  The latest is the state secession movement.

I must note, that in Germany in the early 30s, the Fascists  used secession from the national government in a similar fashion to discredit the democratic regime.  The economy was failing, so rural areas in Germany sought "autonomy through the fascist party" on everything from economic policy, tax policy, and finally even defense.

A familiar approach of fascism is to divide and conquer.  And a ploy often used is to seek a break away from central authority, set the party up as a puppet government, then overwhelm the government with fringe local governments who are actually fascist fronts.

Sound familiar?  The Tea Party Movement is practicing the same thing.   It is targeting rural areas in the United States, working on the fear and concern about state and federal governments, to "reform" the system.  In effect, what they are working to do is "take over" the system from outside, using rural areas as a springboard of discontent.

The revival of the "State of Jefferson" in northern California is an example.  Rural counties, like Siskiyou that was recently skewered by the Sacramento Bee, are seeking, with Tea Party members leading the charge, a secession from California.  This goes against all common sense, and is probably not doable, but the Tea Party persists.  The "cause" of the "State of Jefferson" works on fear, and frustration that rural counties have with state government that is dominated by urban areas.  It also is founded on racist reaction to the growing power of urban areas in California and the emergence of people of color as a potent political force.

On the national level, it is way more serious.  The Constitution set up a separation of powers government, that leans heavily to rural lightly populated areas.  There were two reasons for this:  one, the nation was at the time highly agrarian with slavery in half of it and purposefully restrained anti-slavery urban areas; and two, much of  what is now the United States were territories  not even owned by the United States and rural areas had to have more autonomy and power  to lure them into the union.  Territories would not join the union if they would lose all political power to the urbanized north.

As a result of this and other motives, we have a system that gives more representation to  territory than to people.  Each state has two Senators, and the Senate must pass everything that becomes law.  Wyoming has the same number of Senators as California, even though there are many counties in California that have more people in them than Wyoming and Montana together.

The corporate, frankly fascist leaders of the Tea Party have figured this out.  They have discovered that even though they might not ever again  win the Presidency, and may lose the House of Representatives, they can hold inordinate power if they win the Senate, or control it with filibusters.

The rural "outrage" fueling the secession movement in Siskiyou and Shasta Counties is  going on in other urban/rural state conflicts.  This is a quietly led movement by the Tea Party's nation wide, to overcome the increasing power of urban, multi-racial areas.

Which gets us to the next motive:  the use of secession to support white supremacy.  Sounds familiar doesn't it?  The drive for dividing rural counties from urban ones in California is directly related to the fact that people of color are increasingly gaining political power in urban areas.  White racists have fled those areas, for rural areas, and now find hope for the continuation of white supremacy in their white dominated "new states".

Of course, a bitter by-product of this will be the impoverishment of rural areas.  And in fact, "Red" areas of the country are increasingly become poorer when compared with "Blue" areas.

Red areas ironically depend more on central government money for their economies, but work to separate themselves with Tea Party leadership from Blue urban  areas.  The ironic result is impoverishment of Red areas.

Why do you ask, would they do such a stupid thing?  The reasons are evident if you study what happened in Germany.   Bavaria, a rural area, was the base of power for the rise of Hitler. It provided a nice cover to criticize and undermine central authority.  Of course, once Bavaria was successful in undermining the central government, its leadership became the central government, ended democracy and implemented a dictatorship.

This same approach is going on right now in the United States.  The looney secession movement is crafty like a fox.

Its local and seemingly tame objectives hide its true motives, the radical take over and destruction of our democratic form of government.