Shooting of N.Y. Police is a Tragedy

The volleys of political attack are flying back and forth.  Protests against police shooting people in questionable circumstances versus the murder of police officers.  

My stepson works in Stockton.  He is a fireman and EMT.  He tells us about the climate down there, the mean streets.

He talks about the filfth, the depressing circumstances, the crime, the violence.

His  former girlfriend, also an EMT in Stockton, actually was part of a "game" that counted the murders and bet that Stockton would beat other cities for the most homicides.

Most of these homicides were by firearm.

So the African-Americans protest along with liberal whites about the alarming rate of police initiated shootings.  And Fox News rails about the shooting of the two New York policemen casting blame on the liberals for supporting the protests.  

And we all scream at each other, vying for political advantage with a general population that more and more doesn't give a damn.

That's right:  doesn't give a damn.  In the recent elections, people did not show up to vote.  The conservative base did show up some and the result is a more conservative representation than really exists in the country.

So we will be entertained by their high jinks for a couple years, alientating and intensifying the depression of the general population that things are so wrong nobody can do anything.

And what is wrong?  There are places in this country that no white person would go into.  There are places in this country that no person of color dare traverse.  The penalty for this is violence and possible death.

We all know this,  We also all know that there are millions of young people of color incarcerated for everything from shoplifting to getting high on marijuana (that is legal in several states) and have been recruited into street gangs who exist to kill and intimidate.  

In short the mean streets are getting meaner.  The homocide rate in Stockton will probably set another record in 2015.  

And it seems that nobody gives a damn.  

And this is by design.   Many conservatives are using the "there is no racism, its all fixed" and liberals who brag about the "growth of the African American Middle Class", have chosen to ignore the issue.

The issue that still plagues America is gun violence coupled with racism.   And, since it now is anchored by the incarceration epidemic that has seen the jailing and criminalization of millions of people, certain areas of the country are getting to be shooting galleries.

Police and Firemen have to patrol these mean streets.  These streets, of inner Stockton for example, none of us will go into.  But Police and Fire personnel do everyday.

And there is great danger.  And they sometimes shoot first and ask questions later.

And that is the point.   The issue is NOT that police are inhuman animals shooting children.  The issue is racism is still very much with us all; coupled with a gun culture that has everyone armed.

You reap what you sow according to the old saying.  Violence begets violence.  

Guns are easy to get.  Movies and video games glorify gun violence.  Children learn that problems can be solved with a gun.   And we jail people of color for practically spitting on the sidewalk, put them into jails where gangs rule; and then wonder when people are released that they are much "meaner" than when they went in.

We have all created this.  We perpetuate it when we turn on MSNBC or Fox and revel in the opinion that supports our personal stereotypes:  that cops are evil, or that black men are evil.

And the society spins further into the vortex of despair and violence.

Merry fricking Christmas.  

Does Anyone Think Anymore

Ok, let's postulate for a minute.  Let's assume that the ancient Supreme Court ruling that First Amendment Rights are conditioned by the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" analogy.

The point of the ruling is that free speech is not unconditional.  There are times when free speech must be compromised.  Common sense does count for something, even by mega-corporations like Sony who must have thought they were bullet proof from stupid!

We see that in legal cases all the times free speech is NOT unconditional.  Grand Juries cannot divulge their deliberations.  There are penalties if a juror breaks this demand of silence.

The mess over the immature and probably not funny "The Interview" is a good example of wrong First Amendment assumptions.

Sony, without any preparation for possible fall out, produced a film that postulated that a couple idiot media wonks  would be recruited by the CIA and attempt to assassinate the  North Korean Dictator.   This is the same dictator who has sponsored cyber attacks in the past on suspected opponents.  This is the same dictator who possesses nuclear weapons.

This comes on the heels  of the disclosure that the CIA tortured dozens of suspected terrorists.  Then, once the report came out, the CIA and conservative politicians went on a rant that the report was unfair; that torture was good in that it developed actionable intelligence.  And this mess had no effect on deranged Islamic extremists?  There is little doubt that the practice of torture helped the terrorist cause, in a real sense making martyrs of them!

So, the CIA that admitted widespread torture, that violated international law, is depicted by a comedy film trying to assassinate an North Korean dictator as a "good " and rational group?

Really????

And America, tone deaf to the maximum, is in an uproar that Sony's "free speech" has been abrogated.  Many are calling for action.  What, should we bomb them for being upset that a film proposed killing their leader?

Really?  How would we feel if North Korea made a film about killing our leader?

There is no free speech at risk here.  Sony intended to make money with a film that uses a spy agency training a couple idiots to kill the leader of another country.

And North Korea got mad.  And it appears they cyper -attacked Sony.  It appears they punished irresponsible free speech.

This attack by the way,  shows the ridiculouly low security American computer systems use.  It also shows that Sony had no plan B, and never considered any blow-back from a notorious unstable regime.

It also shows that Americans are an incredibly arrogant lot!

In a real sense Sony yelled fire in a crowded theater and got nailed for it.  And there is nothing anybody can really do about it.


Look, I rarely agree with the NRA, but they are right when they focus on violent movies and video games that encourage gun violence.   Video game violence has been proven to drive unstable individuals to violence yet media companies continue making them.  Movie violence sells in the American market, so the idea that a gun can solve problems by blowing the opponent away, is repeated incessantly.

So don't cry when some disturbed young person comes to school and shoots someone. Demand that gun violence be curbed by irresponsible media companies!

And, Sony making a film that makes fun of killing a leader that many disagree with is in the same vein.  It isn't funny to North Korea for sure to watch a plot to poison their leaders.  In a very real sense Sony screamed fire in a crowded theater.

Finally, why does the media react so massively when a terrorist, be he/she a deranged individual or an organized group, strikes?  During WWII there was an agreement to not show dead American soldiers for at least two years of the war.  This was done for morale and intelligence purposes (showing dead soldiers while America  was losing the war and divulging battlefield locations were agreed upon taboos).

Today, the "free world" is locked in a struggle with Islamic terrorists.  And, America's media companies show absolute no restraint in covering their insane acts of violence.

And there is no doubt that offering free publicity does NOT discourage acts of violence.  In fact,the  media everyday uses violence and sex to sell products with absolutely no regard for blowback.  Similarly, the idiotic handling of "The Interview" certainly did not discourage crazy acts from the North Korean regime.  In fact, it encourages them.

You yell "fire" in a crowded theater, you are irresponsible, then don't come crying to us if you pay for it.  And stop encouraging  terrorism.  Sony just lost millions because of media crying fire in a crowded theater.

Free speech is NOT unconditional.

The Tragedy of Ethnocentrism

Today I got an email from a friend who railed against multi-culturism.  It seems in Canada Moslems are complaining that required P.E. classes infringe on their religious right.  The article claimed that the "political correctness" of having empathy for that position and seeking to accomodate that must "finally" end.

I see this position all the time.  The railing at "political correctness" that sees cultural diversity as somehow un American, unpatriotic and "we are simply sick and tired of it" .  The article resorted to the cliche, "If they don't like Canada's Laws then let them leave".

Today, in the United States, we see an anti-immigration movement that attacks cultural differences, language differences, and brands many law abiding citizens or non-citizens as dangers or threats to "America".

So, I asked my friend what Canada and the United States had done to those cultures that were already here when Europeans and other "immigrants" came into conflict over land?  You know, that pesky genocide thing!

What happened?  You all KNOW what happened.  The "dominant" culture destroyed the other cultures in short order.  This was done through religious "order" through direct military action and genocide.

Today, we see the "Redskins" as the mascot of a NFL team in the United States' Capitol.

And if you say anything, you are attacked as being overly "politically correct".

I can and probably should list the literally thousands of etnocentric destruction of culture that western civilization has manifested on millions of people over the past five hundred years.  I could mention the World Wars, the genocide that western culture has perpetrated on the world.

But we still get the "wounded" statements that "political correctness" is "endangering" our way of life.

I have a news flash for you, at the present rate WE are endangering our way of life more every day than ANY immigrant or different cultural group.

Western Civilization as a culture is the dominant culture in the world.  China and India are trying full time to be more western.  And, they are fouling the environment, possess nuclear weapons, and spend more money on "defense" than on their chilrens' welfare.

The United States, the present leader of western civilization as a culture, poisons the air, burns fossil fuels as fast as we can, and spends more money on "defense" (war) than any other country on earth.

And if the day comes when the button is pushed, and the world is plunged into the dark ages of hell, what culture is supreme then?

The Ravaged Middle Class

Today, yesterday, almost everyday we read how the gap between the rich and the rest of us widens.  

In the rare time that conservatives even comment on this, we hear excuses:  its the global economy, its usually laziness or government deficits.  If only we could give the rich more, then the trickle down theory would work.  Of course the vast economic empirical evidence shows no such re-distribution of wealth ever has worked.  When the wealthy get more tax dollars back they hoard them   

Today, the gap between the rich and the poor, and the distribution of wealth in the United States is worse than during the run up to the Great Depression.

The Great Depression was tripped off by a gap in distribution of wealth, speculation in the Stock Market, and the global economy.  Those same conditions are more in evidence today than in 1929.

In short, we stand on the edge of a cliff.  Moreover, the House of Representatives has a higher majority of Republicans than when Hoover was elected in 1928.  This fact is troubling to say the least.  

And what happened then?  Disaster.  What are set up for again?  

Elizabeth Warren warned us a couple days ago in her impassioned speech to the Senate.  She warned the weakening of regulation on Wall Street derivatives (gambling) was dangerous to our already stratified economy.  She warned that the incessant push of Republicans to deregulate the economy was suicide.  

And the middle class voted for them in 2014.

That's right, there is no getting around it.  The American People spoke with a small voice (voter suppression works) and today the majority of governors and state legislatures are red.  Republicans control 2/3 of the government (the Legislative and the Judicial Branch).  Separation of powers is precarious at best.  

Of course the states where the bulk of population is, still trends blue.  But there is no ignoring the fact that America has decided, in these dangerous economic times to once again trust Republicans with our financial future.

And the Republican position?  Its the same as it was in 1928.  no regulations, cut government, cut taxes and incredibly balance the budget.  This was a recipe fordisaster!  

For you Econ 1 students out there this DEPRESSES DEMAND and leads to slow or more likely reverse economic growth.  In short, it opens the door for another 2008 or more likely 1929.

And the ravaged middle class?  They have suffered incredibly at the hands of conservative "leadership", suffered the largest loss of wealth as an economic class than since the Great Depression of 1929, and still vote Republican.

The Koch Brothers and others have spoken.  They have spent billions rigging elections in red states, electing state and local puppets who always vote their way.  

The key fact here is those Americans who remember the Great Depression are mostly gone.  There is no one who remembers the grip of terror that held the nation and the world on the edge of economic collapse.  This of course led to fascism growth throughout the world and plunged the world into WWII.  

So, our fooled middle class have opened the gates for the destruction of us all.

Poverty Flats

If there was ever a more vivid example of what extremism can do, it was what Redding went through the past six years.  We endured a period of Tea Party majority on our city council that just about broke the city.

The Tea Party is a right wing organization that borders on fascism.  Their guiding principle is never compromise on anything, they are always right, the left is an enemy that has to be destroyed and compromise is impossible because of their Constitutional driven principles.

The truth is that they are bankrolled by right wing corporations, the Koch Brothers and others, who have declared war on  participatory    democracy in the United States.

So Redding wound up ranking almost dead last in a Gallup Poll concerning the worst places in America to live:  and the poll was taken from Redding residents.  The right wing mayor at the time actually tried to invite Gallup to Redding a second time, desperate to change the  truth.

Redding traditionally has used a bi-partisan, actually non-partisan approach to running the city.  It uses a City Manager approach and has been highly regarded across the state as a well run bureacracy in so far as public administration is concerned.

In short, Redding works.  Cadd, Jones and to a certain extent Bossetti were able in a short time to undo much of that.

Selected right wing fanatics (I know one of them well) stormed city council meetings to berate the City Manager, call for key official's firing and made the meetings so miserable the Council voted to put public comments at the END of the meeting.

Look, The Tea Party does not believe in conventional government.  They believe that to dismantle government by starving in to death by cutting taxes is good; even if this means less public safety.  Councilman Jones even went so far as publically calling for the firing of the city attorney AND the city manager.

He also championed making Redding a charter city, with a politically powerful mayor, conveniently timed to possibly take effect when HE would become the mayor.  Thankfully it failed.

And Dick Dickerson, a true public servant in every way, lost by a few votes to Mr. Cadd, who then turned around and blew up the city council's remaining ability to work together.

The citizens of Redding, in the ruins of what as once a well run city, finally threw the bums out; only Cadd remains unfortunately.

This my fellow citizens is what extremism can do.  This is what bad government looks like.  This is what gets Redding rated almost last as a nice place to live.  This is what makes Redding what it once was:  "Poverty Flats".

Had enough yet?

I Lost Sympathy

“I lost sympathy for him when the mother and a gang banger got on top of a car and…
Hey, he stole, he was caught on tape roughing a store clerk, and he was a thug.

All of the above are and other statements are symbolic of what is wrong with our country.  They represent years of Jim Crowe discrimination and today a legal system that incarcerates millions in a prejudiced system that would rather jail than reform, would rather repress than educate  would  rather run than turn and deal with centuries of oppression that America has  barely addressed.

 We all are running from ourselves.  We sit in our locked community, holding tight to our guns, waiting…

This  is the America of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the forced busing of 1968, that lasted about 10 seconds.

The America of the War on Poverty that lasted two years!  Hundreds of years of oppression and we fixed it in two years??

 We desegregated our schools by segregating them!

We all know what happened.  Whites ran.  Whites left inner cities for the suburbs.  African Americans and other people of color were left in the inner cities to rot. People still laugh at Detroit’s failures, not realizing that those failures are our failures.

California, a liberal state, has one of the most segregated school systems in the country.  And this is a liberal state, one that some rural counties want to abandon because “they” live there.

The truth is we all have been running from “them” all of our lives.  When we shop for houses they must be in a “nice neighborhood”.  When we shop for schools, we make sure “they” are not in the majority.

Only the lesser live “there”.

And, because we are obsessed with “law and order” we pass law after law multiplying prison sentences for minor crimes, and for drug addictions, so we can “them” in jail forever.

If you care, read “A New Jim Crowe”…that book tells it all!

The United Nations just condemned the United States for two problems:  1. an incarceration rate that leads the world.  2.  A kill rate for police that leads the world.

But what the hell, it’s just the United Nations, what do they know.  We shouldn’t be in it anyway, right, just like we stayed out of the League of Nations and helped Hitler with his madness by doing so.

I spent 35 years in education and this is reality:  Charter Schools were started to get away from “them”, to find “better schools” away from ‘bad elements’.

The “Waiting for Superman” B.S.  purports to show the horrors of segregated education, then incredibly  offers segregated private schools as a remedy.  So we just RUN AWAY again.

Many voters want to end our public schools.

We no longer serve our country either.  The Armed Forces that you were forced to join because of the “peace time” draft forced many of us to spend time close to and under the supervision by people of color.  Less than one percent of us now get that experience.

Always the “them” are people of color…always.  And sure enough the children of color are relegated to the mean streets, where some (not the majority) adopt violence and gang behavior to fit in, to survive.

Sure some of them are punks….Sure they are gangsters.  Sure they are violent.  And they are human beings, children really, who often, have to join to survive, have to behave like animals because the mean streets demand it.

 And it will take a lot of work and money to fix this broken system that kills children everyday by its negligence.

I will never forget the many times African American children told me, after they trusted me, “Mr. Beale I have to get out of here or I will be dead before I am 25”.

 And many of them were.

And we sit back in our safe houses and wring our hands.  And we say, he was a bully he got what he deserved when a child is gunned down for stealing a cigar and pushing a clerk in a corner market.

If it was a white kid everything would be different and you all know it.

The tragedy is that liberal and conservative fail on this one.  We have failed for hundreds of years.  We will not face our past and learn by it.  We refuse to judge people by their character, but judge them by the color of their skin!

Every day we forget what Martin Luther King taught us…every damn day!

We watch “them” play professional sports at an incredible high level and root like hell for “them”.  But, we won’t live next door to “them”.

 We tolerate team names like Redskins and Braves, blithely ignoring centuries of repression and genocide in our own history.  We point to racist African Americans who point at Native Americans and Koreans as inferior.  We feel better if “they” discriminate also, as if that is somehow proving anything except the weaknesses of human behavior.

And many say, “Not me”, I’m not racist.  THEY are.  Not me.  You are just being politically correct by speaking out…”they lost me when they showed their anger”.

Jesus Christ, remember him?   The kid was shot over a half dozen times and was unarmed!   Sure he was pissed off.  Sure he ran!  He was shot!

 And it happens every damn day, by police, citizens, jerks; et al., and we still arm people to the teeth.

Ever wonder in one of the most racist cultures on the planet, why we allow widespread use of fire arms?  Every wonder just a little bit?  What does mass ownership of guns support?   Mass violence and oppression!

Ok, here’s a little story for you.  When I went to Stanford (which was almost lily white in those days), I joined a fraternity that allowed Jews, Latinos, and African Americans into it.  Now in the 60s, there weren’t a lot of “them” in the school but the fraternity was kicked out by the national office, which was housed on Alabama.

And my first roommate was a black guy, who happened to be captain of the football team that I also toiled for.   He was a star, I wasn’t.

My junior year I was going to start, and during the summer one of “them” transferred in and took by spot.  I had to compete against “them”.  And when we were on the field, my whiteness gave me no advantage whatsoever.  It was a meritocracy for sure.

 Meanwhile my roommate graduated and when to UCLA Med School and became a doctor. He then spent several years in Africa tending to the sick.

He was one of the biggest African Americans I have ever known, incredibly strong and fast, and one of the greatest human beings I have ever known.  I know this because we talked for hours about each other, our girlfriends, our fears, our feelings, we became friends.  We grew to really know each other.  The skin color disappeared.

And it changed me.  Living with people of color changes you.

But  I am still racist to a point.  I also get that creepy feeling when in a group of people who are of color pass me on the, I put my hand on my wallet….I am wary.  I still feel fear.

But I also touch “them” every chance I get.  When I see a beautiful child of color, with their parents’   permission of course,  I get close as I can and touch them like I would a white child.  I purposefully break down the space barrier.  I slap the waiters on the back, I shake their hands.  

I do this because I spent at least five years of my career in “ghetto” environments.  I walked as a minority in a sea of colored faces.  I dealt with gang bangers, lots of kids on probation, child abuse, and yes racial violence.  I realized quickly “they” are just people like “us” and I go out of my way to show it.

The vast majority of the educational establishment then as now,  practiced  systematic repression of people of color.

It was sometimes subtle, sometimes graphic like when I witnessed our white Principal give “locker to locker” counseling to a seventh grader, throwing him from locker bank to locker bank until the kid was nearly unconscious.  And that Principal, white of course, later served on the California School Board in Sacramento!

White kids went to college, black kids went to jail.

And my great-great  grandfather was hung by confederate soldiers just before the Civil War broke out because he was a Cherokee married to a white woman.

And that makes all the difference in the world.  It makes a difference when your family has a lynching in its legacy.  It matters when your grandfather was born on an Indian Reservation.

One day we will have to stop running from ourselves.  One day we will have to realize that Love is First.  One of these days we will tell the Police to stop shooting people of color just because they are “mean” or “gangsters”.  One of these days we will stop shooting ourselves to “fix” a problem.  ‘\

Violence begets violence!!

One of these days we well all mourn and be appalled when any child, regardless of color, and regardless of circumstance is gunned down by anybody.

The Police see this every day.  They are on the firing line.  It isn’t Officer Wilson who we should be so concerned it is the “mean streets” claim victims all the time, like the five year old who just yesterday was killed with a shot in the head fired in a mistaken drive by shooting by a bunch of African American gangsters.  The girl was African American.

The Police are on the front line of crime and violence that is America.  And  black on black crime versus white on white crime is about the same.  We kill rape and rob from our own “kind” more often than not. We live in one of the most violent societies on the planet, so don’t so quickly condemn a public servant for acting in an  environment of madness!

We condone a gun ownership society and a violence entertainment industry that teaches that problems in  human relationships can be solved with a gun.  Everyday, every day I see on T.V. or at the movies, the lesson that justice emanates from the barrel of a gun.

And what has it got us; a society that the United Nations no less has condemned.   A culture that allows “Redskins” as a team mascot for our nation’s capital’s    football team?

That really says it all.  Washington D.C., which was once a slave trading center, STILL has REDSKINS as its football team’s mascot!  And an African American Heisman Trophy winner starts as its quarterback.

Jesus H. Christ!

Finally, when Stanford changed its mascot from Indian to Cardinal (actually changed it back), many of my fellow alums and friends STILL go off on that “political correctness”.

And as I imagine my great-great grandfather swinging from that rope.

Really? Really?

Sometimes the actions of the right wing defy imagination.

The latest is the Supreme Court's taking of yet another challenge to the ACA.

This time it is not on constitutional grounds, but purely on legislative pretext (the Court acting like the mortibund Congress).

You see Congress for the past four years, has refused to do ANYTHING in a bi-partisan way.  The ordinary "clean up" of bills, even if your side lost the original vote, has not occurred.

So the Court has incredibly taken on a decision that could take affordable insurance away from millions of Americans.

Because, the ACA is working.  Just like its clone, in Massachusetts, after a slow start, millions are signing up to one, avoid the tax penalty, but two, to get the tax credit that will drop their health insurance to affordable levels.

And this is all for one sentence in the ACA that seems to imply that only state originated exchanges can offer tax deductions.

Many other places in the ACA it directly states that participation in either the state or federal built exchanges will qualify the participant for a tax credit.  The title of the law is the Affordable Care Act, which would make no sense if only a certain exchange qualifies a person for affordable care.

If the court rules that the IRS cannot apply the tax credit to all, then it will be basically be saying that states can veto federal law, nullification again?

Yes, that would be nullification that in U.S. history has always reeped bad returns:  read the Civil War, Jim Crowe, Civil Rights upheavals.

And what about the 14th Amemdment?  Does't that provide equal protection and equal application of law?

Every author of the law has stated that there is no way a segregated applicaton of the ACA's tax breaks is what they intended.  We NEVER heard anything about this mis-print, until a conservative group found the mis-print.

Again, in past years followup legislation would have fixed this.  But this is not ordinary times.

So, if the Supreme Court rules that the law may be applied unequally, millions will instantly be denied the lower cost insurance thay bought.  Millions.

And conservatives, who are arrogant beyond all belief, actually believe they will walk away without blame.  Are you kidding me?

There will be a backlash of millions of consumers, who got a break on their health care and now see their premiums go up with no tax relief.  Democrats will hammer them in 2016.

But worse, it will once again divide this country in a pre-Civil War consciousness, that I am predicting will have Americans killing Americans soon in wide spread violence.

All this so a bunch of ass holes can get their revenge on a President who only wanted to provide a system of health insurance that could bring down prices.

Really?   Then let them rot!

What about Congress?

This is a response to an article in the Sacramento Bee that fear mongered the threat of illegals might pose since they now won't be deported if they have a child that is a citizen:

Your well researched and totally biased piece wanders through logic until the last paragraph.   Your tortured logic demands that we deport illegals because they might commit a crime!

What?

We are to accept that illegal aliens (like from outer space) are all criminals who now can feast on us since we have to wait until they commit a crime before they can be deported.  Have you looked up extradition in the Dictionary?

In our technological world, we are to accept that criminals cannot be tracked from country to country, and if they are wanted in their country, can't extradite them?

A Sacramento  sheriff gets on You Tube and trumpets that we are at risk.  The sky is falling, the sky is falling.  Be afraid, always be afraid.

So the next time I am in a hotel I will carry a weapon because the maids are all axe murderers!

You quote huge numbers of "potential" criminals as proof of the danger.  That is fear mongering.

No wonder the kid was shot down in Ferguson.  No wonder our jails are full of people of color, many who stole a piece of bread metaphorically.  Try reading "The New Jim Crowe", to see how racism is alive and well in our justice system.  A Sacramento Sheriff is the LAST person I listen to relative to race relations.  How many people of color are in his police force:  I will bet way lower than the population at large!

Once again you use fear...why always the fear.?  Because it works.  It worked the last time citizens of your persuasion used it on a large scale:  witness Germany 1932.

The facts are that the huge majority of illegals in this state and country are law abiding citizens.  There are criminals of course, how about extradition for example to deal with them?  How about legislation legalizing and taxing marijuana nation wide that would break the back of the Mexican Cartels where most of the "alien" crime starts?

Oh, that would involve law changes right?  Or it might involve treating our Latin American neighbor countries as equals under the law and beef up our extradition treaties.

But that would involve CONGRESS right?  And CONGRESS right now is too much involved in shoving the conservative world view down our throats, tax cuts forever and balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.

Congress is dominated by the right wing, who don't give a damn about anything but power!

And meanwhile Ferguson burns.

And we all wait for real reform, bi-partisan reform,not my way or the highway reform that the principled right demands and Congressional Republicans fear more than death itself.

The problem is Congress,  who predictably have seized on immigration as the latest fear tactic for political power.

Meanwhile, we Democrats will continue registering Latinos to vote,  and vote you out of the state!

Enabling

So now its their turn.  After six years of obstructing every thing they can, of refusing to assist in any way health care reform, filibustering everything, refusing to approve hardly any administrative officials, the strategy has worked.

The American People, all 1/4 of eligible voters who bothered to vote, have sent a message that non-governing works.

We played with that nonsense in the great state of California for over 30 years.  Prop 13 ushered in a whole host of politicians, Ronald Reagan being the most well known, who propagated the myth that the best government was the one who governed least.

So for 30 years we cut taxes, put in an insane rule that 2/3 majorities for any increase in taxes but a simple majority could reduce taxes.  Republicans took a no tax increase pledge, and our government slowly starved to death.

And we as Democrats we enabled this behavior. We tried to compromise, the right went further right, we tried to accommodate,  more schools closed, we tried to negotiate, college tuitions went higher and higher; everything liberals did was rebuffed by a zealot led right wing Republican Party.

And along came Barack Obama and the Iraq War.  Suddenly the idea of small government fighting a big war while cutting taxes created a huge deficit, and de-regulation led us into a massive recession.

We basically repeated the sins on the 20s, ignoring the environment, and enabling the foolishness that the pursuit of profit in any way possible, would magically cure all ills.

It didn't during the Teapot Dome Scandal, the bust and boom cycle of the late 1800s, and in 1929.  But we Democrats enabled it.

We looked the other way as more and more people lost their homes to crooked mortgage lenders, more were made homeless, and veterans were treated like crap for service in a war that was more about George W. getting even  with a dictator for threatening his father than any national security concern.

We stood by as the United States threw trillions of dollars away and destabilized the Middle East all for oil.

Meanwhile conservatives seemed to have a death wish, refusing to compromise on anything, pure to their principles.  After 2012 it looked like they finally had done it, being crushed in an election that left them finally to confront a radical right wing that was leading them to irrelevancy.

Then we enabled them again by not finishing them off.  We apologized for our President, one even refused to admit she voted for the President and was crushed for her lack of honesty and loyalty.

And now we sit with a majority of cons and only the President in the way of rolling back the actions that saved the country from another great depression.

Meanwhile the Supreme Court yesterday took on a case that could gut the Affordable Care Act over a typo in the law...

Usually Congress would have long ago done follow up legislation to fix these common errors in language, but not the conservative Congress.  No, we have enabled their behavior,  we  have rewarded non-cooperation and obstructionism.

So we, all Americans will get what we deserve.  We will get what California got for almost 40 years, drops in services, deficits, pot holes, high tuition that is killing the American Dream, a medical system that is 35th in the world, poverty, and the fatal attraction that less is more regarding good government.

We get the government we deserve, and right now we don't deserve much.

Two Things

Tomorrow we face an "off year" election, a midterm, that customarily in American history means the party out of party makes big gains:  especially in the last two years of a sitting President's second term.

There are many political science explanations for this, coupled with the Senate electoral rotation, that happens to put more seats up in this rotation.

Moreover, the sitting President's party usually is exhausted by the events of the last election and quite simply sits home.  Mid-term gains for the non-Presidential party are common.

This phenomenon presents itself again this year.  Unfortunately, the stakes are incredibly high this time around and most Americans don't even know it.  A radical shift in the balance of political power is not in our best self interest.

It will be 80 degrees this week in Redding, California!   It is November.  California is caught in a killer drought.  More threatening is a trend of far less Sierra snow pack every year.  Not only are the ski lodges closing, but the water supply is dwindling.

Recent articles from 98% of the climate scientists in the world show a 97% certainty that climate change is man made.  In short, climate change is REAL and MAN MADE!  We must change our energy consumption habits and move to clean energy NOW.  Luckily solar and wind technology make this very possible.

Meanwhile, the first THING:  Republicans for some strange reason (they owe their money to oil, coal and gas companies, have decided that climate change is not real, or worse, that we can adapt to its ravages so why worry.

The cynicism of this is manifested in taking bribes from large companies to get elected, nothing more, nothing less.

We have to act now to avert catastrophe.  This is not a "scare tactic" it is real!   But Conservatives have a "winner " here.  They are gaining votes from their base, by simply putting their heads in the sand.

It reminds me of 1940, when conservatives lived in a isolationistic world of their making, having blocked America's entry into the League of Nations.  This head in the sand approach led to a one vote thin margin to implement the draft in 1940, that quite frankly saved the country when war broke out.  Without that victory over stupidity, America would not have won WWII.

 ONE VOTE!

The same thing applies now:  climate change will kill millions by mid-century, you grandchildren, and great grandchildren will live in a world at constant war over water, food and basic living conditions.  It will be chaos.

Meanwhile Republicans are solidly in the Koch Brother's camp, chemical and oil barons who are very unconcerned if your grandchildren die.

Secondly Republicans have decided that the decidedly conservative Affordable Care Act must be either appealed or emasculated.  They promise both if they get majorities in the Senate.

The President of course will veto any action threatening the Act, but a majority Congress can find a multitude of ways to destroy the ACA.

And this happens just as health care costs threaten to destroy the American economy and the middle class.

The Baby Boom is aging, the first two years have already reached 65.  As the majority reaches retirement Medicare will feel the strains.  Republicans want to destroy Medicare as we know it to "save it".

In fact they have hated it ever since it was passed.  They hate it because it helps people like my father, who without it, would be miserable even more than he is now.

In the larger context, millions now have access to health care thanks to the ACA.  It will take years to ramp up our medical system to serve them.

We cannot afford a two year hiatus, while the Republicans work overtime to destroy an African American President's legacy.

And that is what it is ALL about anyway: an African American President.  Southern racist conservatives cannot abide that a black man is in the White House (note the symbolism).

They will do anything to destroy President Obama, as a warning that only white people can be President.

And they are willing to destroy millions of people's lives to do it.

So, my fellow voters, those are the Two Things you face IF you vote tomorrow.

I pray that you vote.

Fear and Cheating Works

In a couple weeks we will witness the political fact that fear and cheating works.

America will more than likely barely elect a Republican majority in the Senate, to go with a small majority in the House.

The manner the Senate is re-elected has something to do with this,  Democrats have more seats to defend than Republicans this cycle.  But fear and cheating is at work as well.

Fear from the non-stop never ending conservative noise machine, that of late has even stooped to using Ebola as a scare tactic agaiinst the Democratic Administration who has nothing to do with the spread of the disease (which in the United States is miniscule).

Fear of the middle east, that poses not much of a real security threat to the vast majority of Americans.

The inter-tribal and religious civil wars that rage, have nothing to do with the United States; save the destabilizing effects the hopeless Iraq War had.  But we must be afraid, because as Senator Graham unbelievably said, "They will kill us all".

The Republican Party takes fear mongering to new level of absudity.

The President's approval ratings are at new lows, getting the blame for "losing Iraq" when remember, the duly elected government there a couple years ago demanded that we leave.  That's right, if you remember they demanded that any American Forces remaining would have to be subject to Iraq control and laws, which no American Force has EVER accepted.  That is why we pulled all of our troops out.

And, if anyone cares to remember, the whole thing depends on Iraq fighting for itself, which has not happened.  Thousands of Iraq infantry threw down OUR weapons when a vastly inferior in numbers force moved against them..Iraq will not fight for itself, it wants to fight against itself; and that is a legacy of George W. Bush.

But that is too truthful, the cheating fear mongering way is to blame, and blame, and blame.  Forget history, just blame, the fooilsh Ameriican public will buy it!

Then there is the vote ID con, that purports to have found thousands of cases of voter fraud, when only a handful really exist.  So, a white shrinking minority can elect  white minority representation to rule a increasingly diverse country.

That makes no sense as well, but remember, winning is everything. A white minority ruling a vast diverse country will lead to nothing but turmoi.

What should we really be afraid of?

The country is crying for real economic reforms.  The rich are getting richer and the poor worse off....the middle class is shrinking.

Minority racial rule always leads to political instablity:  witness the South in the Jim Crowe era and South Africa.

Even Wall Street of all all areas, is warning that this economic divide is harming economic growth.

And finally, because of all this fear and cheating, we are barely noticing that the climate predictably has gone crazy, as global warming grows in intensity.

Economic social injustice and climate change are what we really should fear!!!

Fix It!!!!!

The following was in response to an article about San Juan Unified in Sacramento, who had to pay out millions of dollars to atone for the unprofessional, sexual discrimination abuse by its former Superintendent.  Once again we are witness to the unprofessionalism and failure of local school boards and leadership.  It needs to change!

If anybody out there still believes in the Local School Board System read this article.  We are wasting billions on an archaic system of "local control" that  not only is waste, but ruins administrative leadership.   It is obvious this Superintendent should never had been hired, and the Board President protected him.  I was a District Superintendent and was never surprised by the rank amateurism of the school boards all over the place.  Many times Superintendents survived by constant gossip to the school board, spending hours on the phone "keeping them in the loop" while the schools floundered.  My last school board was a disaster, made up of people who ran unopposed and were micro managing all the time.  We were not alone...EVERY school board I worked for, did the same lunacy to varying degrees.  One of our best Principals was demoted because a school board member's son was disciplilned correctly, the trustee (?) held a grudge and finally "got" the best leader in the district.

And it goes on and on.   Seldom is a board position contested, often members are appointed; cronies often of the teacher's union or an employee's spouse.  That's right, nepotism runs rampant.  One of my former districts allowed an Assistant Principal's spouse on the board, and then we all watched as he was immediately promoted to the District Office, taking a job he was not qualified for; and then the mistakes began. I watched a Principal "pack the board" with his cornies and actually get the Superintendent fired so he could take his place.  Immediately the guy (I can't call him an educator) then raised his own salary, hired his friends, ran off many competent adminstrators (I was one), and "fixed" the district with a system of cronyism that exists well past his retirement.

I also was a member for many years of ACSA (Association of California Administrators) and listened to similar horror stories all the time.

A disclaimer: there are some fine school board members who work hard for professional leadership.  But they are outnumbered massively by those who don't know what to do, or who are appointed or elected with agendas that have nothing to do with academic achievement.

Our kids deserve professional educational leadership.  Our kids deserve professonal leadership of educatonal leaders way better than the goul from San Juan.

  Eliminate local school boards.  Eliminate state school boards.  Establish by student population joint state/federal schools trustees who represent at a minimum millions of students.    As part of that system, establish professional school evaluation systems that hold schools, Principals and teachers accountable.  Yes, build a bureacracy (like ALL other industrialized nations)  that holds all schools to the same standards and professionally evaluates performance.

The Local School Board system, including the out dated county schools office, is harming our children more than ANY teacher union.  Besides, as currently constructed, for my conservative friends out there, the present local control system cannot compete with a professional union advocacy.  Often, as I have stated, some  of the local board are related to teacher union representatives.

Put control of our schools where it belongs:   in the school.  Keep the overall leadership at a common bureacratic distance.

Does it work?  Ask Finland, Germany, et al!!!!!

Rock and Roll

They called it "rock and roll".

When, long ago, I went through basic training.  I am one of the 1% of Americans who actually served in the military, admittedly with great reluctance at the time.  Today, the vast majority of Congress men and women have not come near military training.  Their foolishness and me first attitudes is a result of never serving something greater than themselves.  

Yesterday, a young girl, nine I believe, lost control of an automatic weapon at a for profit gun range, and shot her instructor to death.  The instructor was a retired police officer, well trained in firearm safety.

It didn't matter, when the girl attempted to fire the automatic weapon on "rock and roll", which was slang for full automatic (machine gun like), she whirled from the kick of the weapon, and accidentally shot her instructor to death.

She is a child.  Video is available, not showing the actual shooting, of the pair as she timidedly attempted to fire a weapon intended to kill with multiple shots.

Have you ever wondered about why automatic weapons were invented?  In the "old west" single shot weapons were of small help in shooting enough Indians to stop a charge.  The Civil War saw the invention of the gatlilng gun, and repeater rifles which enabled the wholesale extermination of Native Americans from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean.  

Up until the invention of what amounts to an automatic weapon, that you don't have to cock, load singly; etc., single shot weapons were useful for hunting, but not for killing human beings.  

If you missed for example, it took time to reload, and your opponent could get close enough to you to do you harm.  The Comanche held off Texas Rangers for decades, because they learned, by counting to wait until the Rangers fired their first volley, and they had horses fast enough to charge and kill with bows and arrows before the Rangers could reload.

And the Comanches were very good at it.  

After the Civil War, the strategy no longer worked, because the Rangers had repeating handguns and rifles.  Counting did not work anymore, and the Comanches were basically wiped out.

Which gets us back to what automatic weapons are for:  they kill people with multiple wounds, or can be used to spray a group, inflicinting wounds or death on many from one weapon.

World War I is a good example of how the machine gun, the ultimate in automatic weapons, changed warfare forever.  Trench warfare evolved quickly, when it became obvious that a frontal charge, usually timed when the enemy reloaded, was useless against a machine gun.  What is amazing is troops for years kept the frontal mass attack as a strategy, with horrendouls results.  An entire generation of European young men were exterminated.  They are called the "lost generation".  

So, an automatic weapon is meant to kill lots of people.  It is not meant to hunt with.  The meat is ruined if you shoot multiple bullets into a deer for example.

And then the interview with the gun range owner.  He was contrite, and at one point said he felt very bad for the young girl.  He was defensive  obviously, and rambled on how safe the range was.

Of course, he never mentioned the absolute lunacy in having a small girl attempt to fire an automatic weapon on rock and roll.

When we fired our M-16s, one shot at a time was ok, but multiple shots sprayed all over, unless you kept the bursts to three or four rounds at a time.  Otherwise, no accuracy at all was the result.

And these were all adult males, who had sat through hours of training, and many had gun handling backgrounds.

At one point the gun range owner said perhaps they needed to have a height requirement, 'like Disneyland'!   I almost gagged on that one.

DAMN THE SECOND AMENDMENT.  That's right, damn our interpretation of it.  Modern firearms do not belong in the hands of anybody.  That's right, nobody needs to have an automatic weapon.  They are a military weapons and should be banned as well, because of the damage they do.  

If a hunter wants to shoot a deer with an M-16, they should be imprisoned for animal cruelty!  A machine gun is an atrocity!

Why on earth do we continue this madness?  Why do we tolerate these loon toons, who advocate children shooting machine guns, and then weep when they shoot someone, or themselves, because THEY HAVE NO REASON TO FIRE AN AUTOMATIC WEAPON.  THIS IS NOT DISNEYLAND, IT IS A KILLING MACHINE!

And automatic weapons have no place for personal defense either.  If you go to rock and roll, you kill everything in front of you, with no accuracy whatsoever.

And don't give me that bullshit that training helps.  It doesn't help a nine year old girl. And for  most troopers, it doesn't really help either.  

In combat most troops fire blindly, because if they aim, they expose themselves to enemy fire.  So they put the rifle around a corner and fire, on rock and roll, and kill or wound dogs, cats, kids; etc.

That is the reality of this madness.  America has lost its mind to fools who worship weapons on rock and roll.

God forgive us!!!!!!!!

What is Real?

Today I read incredulously that Americans by a large margin oppose Common Core national learning standards.  The study also found Americans haven't got a clue as to what Common Core Standards are.

And to make things worse, they also support Charter Schools even though subsequent questions in the survey show they don't know what they really are.

In short they are forming opinions that shape public policy, we are a democracy remember, that are based on erroneous information and ignorance.

Who is to blame?  FOX NEWS.

Many right leaning people, if not all of them, get ALL of their information from Fox.  They listen to that blather for 24/7.

And they are getting lied to all the time.

Recently we had a person from the Probation Department speak to the SIR club I belong to (Sons in Retirement).  She was trying to explain AB 109 and associated legislation that seeks  to reform California's unconstitutional penal system.  The law is complex and seems to be working, but the crowd was having none of the detailed explanation the presenter gave.

No, the "common perception" was that felons were being dumped into the country and running amuck in the community.  The county sheriff is an avowed conservative and hasn't helped, using the "issue" (which is the law) to explain away his department's deficiencies and failures.

And, conservatives in the crowd never asked questions about how California got  into such a fix:  overcrowding its prisons with "get tough on crime" and the war on drugs.

Both of these "programs" are reactionary public policies that were passed after the sixties and seventies, most racist in background, that were aimed at incarcerating every African American in the state!

And to some extent, it succeeded.  It also succeeded in bankrupting the state.

But not a word about that from the right wingers in the elderly crowd

No, conservatives never say they are sorry.

Their "think tanks" never analyze their policies and implementation.  They never fine tune their ideological mistakes.

Fox News says that getting tough, not allowing any rehabilitation, throwing people in jail forever, solitary confinement, and arresting people for drug addiction works.

It doesn't.

California is a perfect example.  Redding today is less safe than every before BECAUSE of  the conservative infatuation with determinate sentences, harsh treatment of mentally ill prisoners, incarceration of people of color at unprecedented rates.

Of course, progressive policies, like the Affordable Care Act, have been subjected to a microscope of criticism and reaction finding every minute detail that can be attacked.  Recently a conservative court found a problem in one sentence of the Act that implied a state could not offer subsidized insurance plans if it had refused to establish a state exchange.  That legal nit picking goes against the entire essence of the thousands of words the act includes.

In short, conservatives don't play by the same rules they subject progressive public policy to....they cherry pick, and NEVER subject their policy to scientific scrutiny.

Tax cuts and tax increases are another good example.  Cons will vote for tax cuts, but all have taken a pledge to NEVER vote to increase taxes.  For California this meant years of tax cuts, and starving the "beast", which meant wholesale cuts to education, that led to more incarcerations which led to prison overcrowding which led to AB 109.

See, the cons now say, AB 109 is flooding our community with felons.  The lady patiently explained ALL of the felons were homegrown, the law expressly calls for release under parole (after the sentence if served by the way) in the home county of the felon!  That's right, they are not dumping them here, they lived here!

Of course, the released felons have no education, no rehabilitation, because the cons cut that out long ago; so they wind up homeless, desperate and often commit crimes of opportunity to stay alive.

See, the cons say (who caused this mess) we "need to get tough on them", build more prisons, cut education and other social programs...and the United States begins to look like a Gulag.

What is real?  It sure isn't the crap that Fox dishes out.  It sure isn't in a political movement that refuses to be accountable for their political policies that backfire.

What is real?

My Hands are In the Air

There is outrage.  

I, and my fellow Democrats rage every day about the unfairness of our society.  We rage about the social and economic injustice that has created a "New Jim Crowe" in our nation.  We rage about the fear of homeless people in our community; a fear that looks away from the poor, that is so smug in its civic irresponsibility it makes me sick.  In my home town, the white Police Chief has succeeded in convincing people that the homeless are panhandlers who make $200 to $500 a day; are criminals who will steal from you.  Meanwhile, of course, the Mission, who houses some of the homeless, screams that this is not true.  But he has succeeded in scaring the shit out of the white middle class, who predictably do all the wrong things about the homeless.  

There is a movement to "round them up" and send them out.  Out to where?  

We rage about the double standards we see everywhere, the middle class that has been gutted by tax cut politics that allow uncompromising positions of no taxes by Republican politicians at every level; government revenues for everything from schools to prison reform are gutted in favor of arming our police like Seal Team Six.  

The poor get it, they are the targets of "starving the Government". Starving the "government beast" is really get the "darkies".  Unfortunately the poor don't vote.

People of color do vote.  They vote highly Democratic.  This scares the racist plutocrats. 

And they are who is really behind this... 

The racist minority in this country that moved from the Democratic Party to the Republican and with corporate money has dominated the political landscape for years. Red states are every bit as segregated as in 1960.  SEC teams have African American players all right, but they are simply hired to win, the colleges themselves are still mostly white.  Alabama wins, Alabama graduates hardly no African Americans.

Stanford however is a different animal.  Stanford is a very exclusive college that housed Mitt Romney in the mid-Sixties for a time.  Stanford was the typical Ivy League school, token people of color and the rest the jet set.  

Today, not so.  Stanford reflects a meritocracy and by coincidence the racial make up of the United States almost exactly.   And the giving of a mostly white alumni is at the highest level in years.  Oh, and Stanford wins; winning the Director's Cup for twenty years in a row for the best athletic program.  

Hmmm, racial diversity and inclusiveness works for better outcomes.   And Mitt Romney was a student there.  

Call it white guilt if you must; I am one of those white (actually part Cherokee) graduates, who is proud of the diversity, who knows Stanford has got it right, in spite of housing the independent Hoover Institute right in the middle of an example of diversity in one the richest areas on earth.

We need to get rid of the Hoover Institute because it supports the economic unfairness in the guise of "conservative principles".  Those who would say this would be unfair, practice unfairness everyday, in fact base their businesses on it.  

There is simply NO COMPROMISE with racism.  None.  Mandela had it right when confronted with a "compromise" that would have left the apartheid government in power in exchange for his freedom, he did not compromise.  

He did compromise once the government changed and he was President,  for the peace of the nation.  

For that, he is remembered next to Ghandi and MLK today; he practiced the principles of Christ as well.    

Conservative principles are not economic, they are racist.  They are exclusive, kill motivation by cloaking people of color with layers of poverty and hopelessness, making a plutocracy  who takes needed jobs overseas, or cynically competes state against state, always cutting corporate taxes and directly hammering the poor. Ironically the vast majority of the poor are WHITE! 

The rich get richer, the colored poor get poorer even in Silican Valley.  Recently the San Jose Mercury News bragged that average home prices in the peninsula were a million dollars.  How on earth does the middle class work in such an environment?  They commute of course, sending more tons of CO2 into the environment, choking California to death with an endless drought. 

Of course, the racist Republican Party thinks Global Warming is non existent.  They also think cutting taxes helps the environment.  They are not only wrong, they are wrong for a racist reason:  repress people of color at every turn.  

The United States has no higher moral ground in the world.  We cannot question the motives of Mr. Putin in the Ukraine, when we allow a segregated economic and social society at home.  The world is watching and again, just like when Bull Connor unleashed the dogs, and shaking its collective head.  

We are failing as a society.

Hitler was famously quoted as demeaning the United States as hypocrites about race, while he was killing Jews by the millions.  Meanwhile, the United States refused to house Jewish refugees during most of the war, dooming them to travel the globe looking for refuge.  

The election of an African American President scared the shit out of the racists , hence the never ending obstruction to reform, which again slams the poor minorities that are actually majorities in their communities.

So from what we hear from my conservative racist friends we have divided this nation between a racist Republican Party and an inclusive Democratic Party, that we need "law n Order" as a solution.      It worked once to give them power by a frightened white middle class.  So arm the police to the teeth, elect fascists to office, and then wonder why the whole thing blows up????

Fear is the the code that works.  Fear is a cover to racism.  Fear leads to power, but  a power that is superficial and doomed to failure.  Jim Crowe failed because it could NOT last.  MLK and his heroism finally stopped it....for a brief moment.  The Apartheid of South Africa succeeded for a few decades, but was doomed to what turned out to be a fairly non-violent end.  It could have been much worse.   

The war on terror as you  know, is code for racism, code for throw the "darkies" all into jail, code for attacking child immigrants who are fleeing violence in their own lands, code for sending a tank into a neighborhood to hammer a peaceful demonstration.  

We know we are in trouble when we consider sending in the National Guard to protect the community FROM the police that is hired to protect it.  

And we stood by for Five Days until a Democratic Governor finally spoke up, AFTER the African American President said enough.  And remember, the federal government has armed these ghouls to the death as an anti terrorism "force".    

Conservatives, under George W., succeeded in identifying American Citizens as terrorists.  So Police "stop and frisk", Police beat citizens, shoot them for no reasons, and almost always the targets are people of color.

We watched in horror as police shot at a van full of children, driven by a African American mother, who feared for her children's safety.  All of the police where white and she of course was not.  Few questioned this act of racist stupidity.  Few asked what she had done so wrong that they used deadly force against a van full of children who simply got angry and was fearful being a lone African American woman in the New Mexico desert surrounded by white guys with guns.    

That would never happen to a van full of white children.  

The United States is all concerned about what is going on in the Ukraine and Iraq.  

St. Louis stands as stark evidence that we have succumbed to racist fascism.

When will enough be enough????

Don't shoot, my hands are in the air.  

ACA Under Attack Yet Again: Bring in the 14th Amendment

So now the 14th Amendment to the Constitution means nothing in RED America.

A Federal Appeals Court in Washington, whose ruling will be appealed, recently ruled that subsidies for insurance cannot be paid to individuals in states that have not set up their own exchanges.

Now remember, the FEDERAL government will pay the subsidies to those low income AMERICANS according to a FEDERAL LAW.   There is not burden to a state save setting up an exchange and the ACA provides assistance for that!  

California for example set up exchanges as the law encourages it to do.  Its citizens gain the advantage of equal protection of the law by getting tax credit subsidies when they purchase policies through the exchange.  Tennessee for political reasons elected to not set up a state exchange, so citizens there still could use the federal one (remember the one that was plagued by software issues that works fine now).

These are ALL private insurance company policies by the way; both in the federal and the state exchanges.  The amount of subsidy is EXACTLY the same; determined by income level  

The idea is to insure all Americans providing equal protection of the law and equal access to affordable health insurance.

Those too poor to qualify for subsidies are covered by Medicaid, that was expanded with huge federal subsidies.  The Supreme Court, in its usual wrongheadedness, ruled that unconstitutional allowing Red States to deny their poor health care coverage.  As a result, if you have the misfortune to live in a Red State, you are screwed if you are poor.  The Supreme Court, riddled with politics, decided 5-4 that states could essentially discriminate relative to who gets health care.  And Republicans cheer!

That in itself is an abomination.

Now, a court made of of two Republicans "regrettably" ruled that subsidies to individual policy owners could be different depending if you live in a a Red state or a Blue state.  This ruling has the effect of driving up insurance policy prices, again for poor Red State citizens, preventing them as well as their poor brethren, from gaining access to health care!

The Federal Exchanges were set up to be used if a state chose not to set one up.  Most Red states did not set up exchanges in their blind opposition to a law that just seeks to bring America into the twenty first century relative to health care.

 The Federal Exchange exists to provide equal protection under the federal law for those citizens who are unlucky enough to live in a Red State!

That is it, there is no other difference.

So, the Appeals Court is rewarding unequal protection of the law.  The Appeals Court is rewarding unfairness and pure partisanship.

I suggest massive lawsuits by the ACLU and others challenging this incredible unfairness and frankly unconstitutional  application of Federal Law.

I am reminded of the old Jim Crowe Laws, that allowed a different application of Civil Rights Law depending on what state you occupied.

This is wrong.  Republican jurists are voting politically against a law they have been drilled into hating because it simply tries to improve the nation's health.

I am ashamed of these people, just like I was ashamed of the southern states who for years blocked civil rights' protections for millions of people.

Enforce the 14th Amendment!!!!!!!  The state you live in should not be a determiner of your basic right to decent health care, just as it could not determine what level of civil rights you enjoy.

The American Dream

I just finished reading an article about Anquan  Bolden, a San Francisco 49er receiver.  It seems that Mr. Bolden is an example of the American Dream.

Like many poor people of color, Anquan is one a very few who was able to escape, partially, his poor sharecropper roots through football.

I can remember when I worked in the then Grant High School District and speaking to the quarterback of the Varsity.  He asked me sadly if there was any way OUT of Del Paso Heights.  He asked me how I had done it, escaping Redding California for Stanford.  He told me, "If I stay here I will be dead before I am 21".

Those words haunt me to this day.

I told he to study hard, don't count on football to get you anywhere, that only a fraction of a percent ever get college football scholarships, and way less get a chance in the NFL.  I told him the way out was through education and hard work.

But, if you talk to parents of kids anywhere, who are playing football, you will hear invariably, "He may get a shot at the NFL".

Anquan Bolden knows better.  He comes from a high school that has won a couple Florida state championships and a few NFL players have come from his area.  But he is working right now with the community on educational opportunity and economic opportunity; not how to get a shot at the NFL.

I have said before in this Blog that I am an example of the American Dream, even though for a long time I did not realize it.

My mother's family were poor dirt farmers; my father's were part Indian and poor.  Both went hungry during the Great Depression.

As a child of that union, I really had no chance of attending Stanford University or becoming a professional educator.  The odds were huge against that happening.

But I got lucky.  I  possessed exceptional speed and could carry a football better than many.  I also loved to read, and took advantage of what the New Deal had given Americans; a good public school system, a way for even the poor to buy a home and enter the middle class.

We were middle class.  We were not rich or upper middle class, but we were the post WWII middle class, whose children got a better opportunity than their depression era parents.

And I took advantage of it, just as millions of other "baby boomers" did.

The opportunities were everywhere.  Tuition at state colleges and universities was low or non-existent.

So an entire generation did much better economically than our parents.  And, except for people of color, we shared the American Dream.

Then in 1976, the year of American bi-centennial, America began to blink.

It started with the Prop 13 movement in California of all places.  A progressive and liberal state began saying no to taxes.  From that same state, a national leader emerged, Ronald Reagan who basically said the American Dream cost too much. He, and his Hollywood millionaires, were enraged by the income tax marginal tax rate that taxed them at a huge rate.  Of course they still were fabulously rich.  But he was able to convince the middle class that taxes were essentially the work of the devil.

And, the middle class baby boomer, who had burned his draft card in the 60s and dodged military service, switched from his New Deal roots and adopted the conservative anti-tax rant.

And the American Dream dimmed for millions, including the poor African American kids in Del Paso Heights.

No longer do we have tuition free schools. No longer do we have state Mental Health hospitals.  We now have student loans that are for a lifetime.  We now have homeless legions of young people, who literally have no chance.

And Mr. Bolden knows this.  And I know this.  My daughter is a college grad, her husband is a small businessman and they are barely making it.  My home town is one of the poorest in the state, with a huge homeless population, belabored by poverty and crime.

I have called this Potterville, a fictitious town from "Its A Wonderful Life" that is in the image of a rich selfish banker, who seeks to run everything at the expense of everyone save himself.  And we are seeing more Pottervilles all the time, middle class people carrying water for the rich few, in the fallacious belief that cutting the future for their grandchildren will somehow create a just society.

These people are fools, nothing more, nothing less!

The American Dream of opportunity for all; now is only for the well off, the affluent, the rich.  The middle class has shrunk the past ten years as much as it grew in the post WWII boom.

And still they vote Republican.  Still middle class people rant about immigrants and "those people" and close their minds to common sense.

The American Dream is why we are still here.  Young GIs in WWII fought fascism to a standstill and destroyed it, only to see their grandchildren adopt the same fascist mindset that they destroyed.  And, strangely, those who still are alive, sometimes through fear support  a conservative cause that for all intents and purposes is fascist.

I am typing this because the American Dream worked for me.  I worked with kids all of my adult life, trying to get them through education to get a shot at the American Dream.  Yes, I was one of the few, who got my chance through football.  But very early on, I realized there would be no NFL for me.

So I gave back.  I was forced to join the National Guard toward the end of the Vietnam War or get drafted.  But I did not run, I joined.

I am glad I did.  I learned the military was not evil, only the political leadership that abused its trust and loyalties  was.

I learned the value of national service both through my Guard experiences and through a lifetime of educating youngsters.

Today less that 1% of all Americans of working age have done ANY public service of any kind.  That is why the American Dream is dying.

And that is why our democracy is dying.

We all should remember where we came from; and how we got where we are, and the American Dream is the answer.

So, pay your damn taxes, pay more.  Demand good government and get involved.  Vote!    Do not listen to the fascists who tell you less is more.  Stop feeding the beast of ignorance and nihilism.

Your grand children's lives depend on it.  

The Little Children

Sometimes they are so infuriating I almost want to resort to violence.

The modern Republican Party, the Party of NO, the Tea Party "Patriots" have so dishonored themselves lately, it makes me sick.

There is a huge need for immigration reform in this country.  The latest manifestation of it is in the thousands of Central American children who are being warehoused in border care facilities.

The Republicans have, predictably pounced on this issue as the President's Fault.

You know, like the health care crisis is the President's Fault.  The weather is the...President's Fault...the deficit (rang up by President Bush who unlike any President in history tried to fight two wars while handing out a tax cut)...is....The President's Fault.

The Fault Lines go deep and are never ending to the current Republican Party.

Of course, there is not an ounce of truth to any of it.

Truth long ago left the Republican lexicon.  Richard Nixon took care of that with his "promise to the end war with honor" and once in office, INCREASED the bombing of North Vietnam and sent more soldiers into harm's way.  Oh sure, he delivered on his promise all right he lied to us.  Gee, a Republican who lies....

And whose fault was it...why Jimmie Carter's of course?  Huh?

And whose fault is the "loss of Iraq"...why it can't be the blundering, stumbling mess Bush made of it, it has to be.....The President's fault.

The Republican Party has, for the past forty some years, denied responsibility for one public policy disaster after another and takes credit for every success: even if they opposed the policy in the first place.

The works with the "base", those beyond middle aged seniors who wake up with Fox News, go to bed with Limbaugh and fill in the rest with "'Free Fire Radio"; a local right wing fascist radio station right here in good old Redding.  Republicans over 65 are mostly hateful bitter old people who hate from the minute they wake up until the minute they go to sleep.   They are an embarrassment to basic humanity. 

And what about the Little Children, some less than five years old, who are really refugees of a Central America whose political systems have been overwhelmed by the foreign policy of the United States and the "War on Drugs" (another Reagan disaster)?  What has really happened is the idiotic policies of Republican administrations has created a gangster infested culture that parents are willing to send their youngest children away from.

Can you imagine sending your five year old to America, in desperation to try to save them from gangsters who will kill them or rape them otherwise?  Imagine giving up your child to save them?

That is what is going on with "The Little Children".  They are not immigrants, they are REFUGEES!

And what do the Republicans do?  Why they scream to "close the border"; build a fence; send in the National Guard. 

I am reminded of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" which depicts a North America ravaged by the effects of global warming, who in desperation advises United States citizens to go south, into Mexico to save their lives.  And the Mexicans, after years of being humiliated when THEY were refugees do what?   They open their borders and let the Americans (who previously denied them access) into their country.  The Mexicans act like human beings SHOULD act. 

Why?  Because most countries are not dominated by a bunch of right wing zealots, who ALWAYS are wrong; who ALWAYS blame the African-American President....and always get away with it.

Had enough yet?  The next time a right wing groups tries to block a bus full of refugee children from gaining access to sanctuary, I advise the federal authorities to arrest every one of them, and assign them to duty helping the children. 

That is the only thing that can break this cycle of stupidity and hate...care for the little children.

I doubt it Republicans have the heart or the guts to do so...

The VA and Government

We always have known.  Of course we have.

Jon Stewart, a comedian and political satirist,  has attacked several administrations for their pathetic progress in reforming the Veterans Administration health care mess.

I still remember the movie "Born on the Fourth of July", showing a  VA Hospital, ill serving Vietnam veterans, in a cesspool of poor care and despair.

It wasn't bad enough that the young men who pulled the short straw and got sent to Vietnam were accused of losing an unjust war, when they were wounded the care was too often  inadequate and  pitiful.

And today, we learn they are still getting the short end  of the stick, enduring months of wait time to see a physician if they make the mistake of using the VA health care.

Of course, Vietnam Vets now also have Medicare and Medical in many cases, so its isn't like they don't have choices.

But, the promises were still made, that the VA was there to serve them.

I can remember when I was in the service, they always  talked  about Veterans benefits; to a 23 years old that sounded like something from Back to the Future, years even decades away.  Right now it is here and embarrassing.

But even then, there always was a pinch of sarcasm to the promise, since the VA Hospitals were rumored to be very poor.   Guys would say, "Yeah, you get VA benefits...ha ha".

Look.... we promise too much and are willing to pay for too little.  We created wars, the last two we even "charged" by starting conflicts and amazingly cutting taxes at the same time.

What cynicism!   To start two wars and cut taxes is a crime.

Bush successfully got away with it, being re-elected in 2004, while stiffing us all with promises of any easy victory an no cost.  Finally Iraq was stabilized with a "surge" that of course created more cost, and created many  more veterans.

Afghanistan has ground on to become America's longest war, churning out more wounded warriors, that combined with a flood of Vietnam veterans has swamped the VA.

And what has the VA done?  Well like any bureaucracy that is getting neglected, they have survived  by cooking the books.  Nobody has looked for years, so self-serving avarice has taken over, leaving a mess of under served Veterans amidst bureaucrats getting pay raises.

And this is not Obama's fault!    Republicans currently are making hay of the recent scandal, while cutting funding to the VA several times in the past, starting wars on a credit card, and mostly ignoring veterans as their needs have not been met.

It is the ultimate con:  be patriotic and pro-military, but cut funding and create  an underfunded and understaffed VA.

All of this of course serves to once again destroy what little credibility the Government has with those who served us best.

And it plays right into the  hands of fascists who have taken over the Republican Party; who work full time to destroy democratic institutions.

Look, we fought two wars in the past twenty years; fairly good sized ones at that.  We need to pay for them with higher taxes, both to pay for the current military efforts and pay for the crippled and maimed veterans.

We ignore this at our peril.

No government can long endure half slave and half free.  No government can long endure with no credibility.

What about the rest of us?

What about the rest of us in the Hobby Case currently in front of the Supreme Court?  

What is disguised as a 'religious liberty' case, is actually yet another in a seemingly endless line of efforts to discredit the Affordable Care Act.

A minority (Evangelical Christians are a minority in the United States), is seeking to foist its values on the rest of us.  I am a progressive Christian and I deep resent other Christians shoving their "values" down my throat.

One person's religious liberty is another's tyranny. What about the employee rights to equal protection under the 14th Amendment?

And what about the fact that providing abortive conception drugs in a person's insurance does not force them to use them?

The next step in this con is obvious, a conscientious objection to state mandated health insurance.

This is not a cute issue that is simply going to weaken and destroy the ACA.

It carries with it echoes of the past; of a Jim Crowe segregation and the great kill off of thousands of Native Americans in the name of God.


Southern Baptists, who for decades proclaimed religious freedom as the reason for segregation, were the vanguard of segregationists'  dubious use of the 1st Amendment Establishment Clause to support injustice.

The Bible, they claimed, sanctioned bans on interracial marriage, exactly like the Bible supposed bans gay marriage today.

The result?  A huge injustice and a way around the 14th Amendment.  The result?  A hundred years of one of the most brutal forms of injustice in human history.

The Bible also says Thou Shall Not Kill, and I was forced by the draft years ago to enlist in the Army.

Without my religious freedom being abrogated, which is most definitely NOT absolute, we lose WW I, WWII ,etc.  It is true there were ways to become a conscientious objector, but those were limited to individuals, not to companies!

There are no doubt lawsuits just waiting for the Supremes to rule in the affirmative and we will see employers claiming that state mandated health insurance is against their religious beliefs.  The conservative right (led by greedy health lobbies) will have their victory.

Recently Arizona's state legislature tried to take the 1st Amendment and twist it around to support bigotry.  "Christians" tried to use the establishment clause to claim that gay marriage could not be condoned, anywhere, because the Bible forbids it.

The Bible forbids a lot of things, including crucifixion, stoning to death; etc., that are long since past.  The Bible has been stretched into painful interpretations that have justified mass murder.

Religious liberty does not imply religious excess.  The 14th Amendment was passed exactly to curb the trick of using the 1st Amendment to condone injustice.

If anyone doubts that, read about Jim Crowe.

We stand again in front of a deeply conservative and reactionary Supreme Court, who doesn't seem to get it, and sides with the regressive gene in our national conscience.

God help us!

Each to His Own,

To each their own.  This saying is the backbone of conservatism in the United States.

What it means is:   me, I'm first, what I want is most important.

It is the backbone of liberty for most.  If I want to drive to Canada, and I can afford it, I can do it.  If I want to buy a RV, that gets 5 miles to the gallon, and drive to Canada, while the nation is starving for oil, so be it:  to each his own.

To most Americans this is the core to freedom.  Doing what I want to do is liberty.

Is it?  When all Americans subscribe to this credo, what about scarce resources?  What happens when the oil runs low?  What happens in a drought?  What happens with a scarcity of food, or health care for example.

At this point, the chorus from the right is "to each his own".  If you teach a person to fish...etc.

Now, narcissism is at an all time high in America.  Profit at all costs.  I am first.  Screw over the poor, they are lazy; all of these and more, are indicative of many America's attitudes.

But is this liberty?  Is it liberty when narcissism is so prevalent that millions do not have health care insurance for example.  The reaction to many to this injustice, is:  Let them go to emergency rooms.  The Republican Party to date has voted over 50 times in the House of Representatives to repeal the ACA.

Individual horror stories are trooped out, decrying rising premium rates, or cancellations in insurance.  Meanwhile millions upon  millions are for the first time in their lives getting affordable health insurance  and health care.

But this is tyranny according to "to each his own".  Libertarians rail against the ACA as socialism, tyranny; etc.  It is nothing of the sort.

The tyranny lies in the narcissism.  The tyranny lies in the widening gap between the haves and the have nots.

Look, there is economic liberty and their is political liberty.   The Constitution of the United States deals mostly with political liberty.  Liberty, according to political scientists, is voting, democracy, representative government, and the lack of a dictator or tyrant.

Liberty is NOT the right to squander resources, selfishness, and narcissism.

And this is the most divisive issue of our times.  Both on the left and on the right, narcissism is becoming a large part of political behavior.  People are increasingly voting their selfish self-interest.

This will increase as the inevitable decline in available natural resources occurs.  Global warming and peak oil are going to lead to less for all of us.  The narcissistic reaction will only makes things worse, widen the gap between the rich and the poor and lead to conflict and probably war.

To each his own will lead us to ruin.

Self Interest?

The concept of voting in your best self interest is not a new one.  It reeks of ME first, but it is what most voters do; they vote in what they think and hope will most help them in their lives.

In Northern California, and rural California the exact opposite has been the norm  now for many years.

With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, working class whites, not just in the south, felt betrayed by the Democratic Party.  In the south and rural north, the party of Roosevelt,  moved  in mass over to the Republican Party.  The motivation was at first racism, no question.

A second motivator was the Vietnam War.  Working class young men bore the brunt of that war.  They were sent to the wrong war at the wrong time, became extraordinarily cynical and came home to rejection by their more affluent friends.

Liberal anti-war college students, protected from the war by an unfair draft, were able to sit out the war in great numbers.  The working class, loyal young man who did their duty,  felt betrayed and abandoned  by his country and by the Democratic Party.

Then along came Reagan and his Hollywood populism.  Reagan was able to collect even more working class people into a Republican party,  based on a working class populism, that mixed racism with revulsion against non-"family values".  Reagan had been elected govenor of California by a backlash to anti-war protestors and "hippies".  Once Reagan was elected he turned this anger on "welfare queens" and taxes, shifting the tax burden from the rich to the middle class.  Trickle down economics was sold as being in the best interest of the middle class.  The concentration of wealh in the top 1% of the past forty years is proof that this cutting taxes to stimulate the economy and aid everyone is simply a LIE.

What really was going on, was a carefully orchestrated campaign, led by special interests, to manipulate the market to their permanent advantage.

The United States was the top dog after World War II.  It remained alone in the world with a non-damaged infrastructure.  This advantage began to wane in the 1970s, with the oil embargo and the ending of the Vietnam setting off high inflation that hurt the middle class.  And who did the conservatives blame for this?  The Democrats of course.

In anger, and as a result of unprecedented propaganda led by radio conservatives, the middle class swung right, abandoning the lessons that the New Deal had taught them.   Those lessons by the way, that wealth had to be re-distributed to a limited degree, or a middle class could not exist, have never changed in their veracity.  Keynesian economics still work, even in the global economy.

The New Deal had saved the middle class in America.  But, when Democratic Party  swung into supporting  civil rights, the white middle class had enough.  It reacted negatively to the Democratic Party, joining Nixon's Southern Strategy and Reagan's "Shining Beacon on the Hill", and started voting Republican.

Meanwhile, the rich benefactors of this political shift, cynically began changing the game in America, accumulating more riches and cutting opportunities for the American Dream.

And the middle class fell into a trap of voting contrary to their self interests.  And the middle class committed suicide.

Fox News was a  direct reaction to this "victory" of the wealthy over former New Deal Democrats.  It continued and perfected the propaganda of right wing commentators, with devastating effect.   Reagan even changed the Federal rules for mass communication, enabling a huge advantage for conservative propaganda.  And white middle class Americans began watching Fox News all day long.

Remarkably, even though their votes brought them NOTHING, middle class whites continued to vote directly against their self interests, electing more and more conservative pro-rich, pro-special interest legislators.

Northern California is a perfect illustration of this.  The logging industry imploded in the 1980s.  The working class in Northern California bought the lie that environmentalists caused the closing of mills.  The logging industry, that cynically outsourced work, closed plants that had simply ran out of public  land lumber.  Clearcutting had simply cut down all the timber.  What was left were private lands, the last of the old growth forests, that had to be preserved.  The sad fact is it takes over 100 years for a forest to regrow.

And the Democratic Party has been perpetually blamed for this .   And the voters in the North State continue to vote for the interests of the wealthy class at stark variance to their own because they see environmentalists as the enemy.

Meanwhile, thanks to an incredibly foolish adherence to an anti-immigration position, the statewide Republican Party has shrunk in size and power.  Currently Republicans do not even have 1/3 of the legislature, do not have one state officer position, and are even losing more influence with the demographic changes in the state.

And in Northern California a nonsensical separation of the state movement grows with absolutely no chance of success.  Conservative groups push for secession, knowing full well there is no chance it will succeed.

And rural people buy it.  Blinded by propaganda, they vote again and again directly opposite of their self interest.

As a result, northern California gets poorer and poorer, "patriots" tilt at the windmills of secession, and the poor get poorer.

People seem to enjoy getting fooled.

And the interesting thing is, in many other areas of their lives, they are getting more progressive.  Families are including gay brothers and sisters, inter racial marriage is commonplace, even in the most conservative of families.  But their churches, who invariably are Christian Conservative, continue to work to blind them to what is in their self interest.  The conservative press doesn't let up.

Of course  they buy it!   Millions are being spent EVERY day to keep the middle class silent.

They continue to waste their votes, sending people like Doug LaMalfa to Congress, who are there for one reason only, line their pockets and vote for their agribusiness profits.

The easy fix for the alienation and lack of representation at the state and federal level, is to elect Democrats.  It is that simple.

And they won't do it!