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.