Happy Father's Day!?

She is right, not all are missing in action.....and it is wrong to fall into the stereotype that African American fathers cat around, abandon their children, don't care; etc.

These are all the myths of white supremacy.

You SHOULD know the history behind this.   The first thing slavers did with newly captured Africans was make sure the families were broken up.  People were much easier to guard on the mid-passage if the were separated from their families.  And the death rate was enormous during this hell on earth experience; with women and children dying first.

So the population that made it to the "New World" were mostly men. 

And then, on the plantations, families were again something that impeded the forced labor camps that really were plantations.  Do not buy the bullshit that Conservative white supremacists spew now; that the plantation live was somehow bucholic, that white plantation owners took good care of their slaves. 

That is simply not true.  Slaveowners treated their slaves like animals, chattel if you will, separating families at every turn, forcing African Americans into a matriarchal society (many African tribes were organized this way in the first place; men were the hunters and women ran the village).  The result, a twisted marital relationship that worked hard to separate men from their families, that encouraged breeding with multiple women (chattel remember).

And so, when freedom finally came, a culture of anti-familiy values existed. 

Somehow African Americans withstood this attack on stable culture; but then the anti-bellum hell hit.  In order to keep "Blacks" in their place (in short working a sharecroppers under Black Codes that reverted them back to slaves) again the family had no place.  Again men were separated from their families to "keep them under control" for nearly 100 years.

More than once men emigrated to the north to work and sent money back to their families.  But the damage continued; existing without family became a survival method.

And then came 1964 and the civil rights act.  And then 1967 and the Supreme Court voting to allow inter-racial marriages.  And the United States finally realized that white supremacy, NOT inherent Arican American "traits" were the cause of the fractured African American families.

And what did whte supremacy do,, when at least Hollywood and mass media realized the destructioin that the war on African American families had brought?

The WAR ON DRUGS with determinant sentences for even minor possession of drugs was the next trick of White Supremacy to continue the subjugation. 

Mass incarceration was now the tool used to break up African American families; and this crime against humanity continues to this day.  Along with this is the practice of shooting first and asking no questions; that everyday kills countless African American males.  In short, in 2017 it is still happening folks.

There is a short truth about black fathers.  If you want more, read up on the truth of Native American fathers, who were genocided out of existence, leaving a cultural wasteland in it wake:

And  that touched me and touches me everyday!  White supremacy is the problem, it always has been, and we need to eradicate it.

And Trump and the Republican Party is the embodiment of it today!

Bill Maur Listen

And at the end of this piece, Bill messes up again.  He says that he, like many of us, grew up in an all white suburb and there was no racism.   He explains piously that his parents set him straight about race.

I believe that.  I believe that his parents told him the "n" word was wrong, that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution mean what they say.  And Bill is an educated person, he has been taught over and over again that racism has no place in America.

And he is spectacularly wrong.

Did he ever even consider WHY the suburb was all white? 

Now this guy went I think to Columbia.  He is Ivy League educated.  But this was when Columbia was almost all white.  And not too long before he matriculated those suburbs were institutionalized segregated.  That means by law. That means in my lifetime the law was changed to allow inter-racial marriages (my parents were illegal in that regard) and integrated the Armed Forces, so combat arms units could be integrated (and Vietnam was our first integtated war (and Afrian Americans seemed to always be on point?)

But what about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights?  What about "All Men (note Men) are created equal?

Read "White Rage" and it all will come into focus.  Read anything about Nelson Mandela and South Africa.

Racism is a western civilization and eastern civilization...all civilization phenomenon.  It is a curse on the human condition.  It is an original sin, you can find it everywhere in human history.  And yes, people of color practice it as well.

But particularly with the United States it stands out so starkly; beause we profess to be the land of the free, the exception to human inequality and hate. 

And our history betrays that; it negates it, it makes us all hypocrites. 

Bill would have been better to admit the racist slur, then go into some of the history on how it came into being. 

Two things conditioned us; two not one..Both were based in the racist poison that declared people with less pigmentation in their skin, caused by thousands of years of living in northern climates, were somehow smarter and more attractive than those humans who lived nearer the equator.  This in spite of the scientific fact that "people of color" has probably been evolution wise the first "human beings" .

Of course in 1600 people didn't know that DNA shows the human family varies less than 5% different, which is skin color and hair type, one "race" from another.

Bill knows this.  But to really know it you need to have read history.

And the second....why the second is genocide of "racial inferiors"; ethnic cleansing.  And that, my fellow Californians, exists right in your backyard (seriously you might have skeletons in your back yard),  victims of Indian hunters, beheaded their bounties; and enslaved the children for life if they let them live.

The founders of Chico, Sacramento, Old Shasta ; etc.etc. were murderers.  If you have ancestory in California, white or colored, you share that disaster. 

And most of us don't know a damn thing about it.  Still, I mean still, we worship Junipero Serra (I was on Serra Blvd two weeks ago when I went to Stanford for a baseball game).  And the Pope recently made of saint of a short hateful racist who used to beat then rape young Native American children. 

So Bill, you screwed up.  But make it worse by declaring that you "grew up" without prejudice and racism.....it is not lost on God that our nation's Capitol still insists on Redskins as its  NFL mascot when its history goes straight to genocidal atrocities. 

That is genocidal atrocities....that is a system of slavery that simply was the most brutal on earth...that is if you really look, as Bill Cosby (?) once said, if you look at America hard enough "You're going to get a black eye"...then proceeded to show in some detail a history that had been repressed for years: Jim Crowe, Black Codes, Institutionalized Racism; etc.

The history is getting right:   the past twenty years have a seen an explosiion of mostly scholarly works that, rather than the Black History phenomenon  of the 70s and 80s, doesn't talk only about Booker T. Washington and all the positives that people of color contributed, but to the stark horror and brutality that lynched thousands  in our history (one of them my great great grandfather).

Put THAT on  your family tree and discuss it.  Discuss it hell, scream about it. 

Then elect a bigot of a President.  Elect with voter suppression laws bigots and racists all over the place, attempting to once again return us to the "America First" environment that lynched people for not moving over on a sidewalk to let a white woman pass, or dared to get a drink of water from a forbidden water fountain, or dared to follow ancient customs and worship a Great Mystery rather than God.

THE ONLY WAY THIS NATION WILL EVER TRULY BE FREE IS TO END WHITE SUPREMACY WITH PREJUDICE.   That means making behaviors like Trumps and others a crime and punish racism at every turn.  You will change your behavior if you spend time in jail.  You willl not have racist behavior if you educate children with the truth.

It is happening....we are a little further along than in 1960....but we are sliding back once again...as white supremacy raises its miserable evil head.

Bill, devote a show or more to the truth if you want to repent.

It Doesn't Work!!!!!

Ok, this whole idea was whoop assed stupid and crazy from the very beginning.  Any of you out there who use household budget analogies to explain governmental funding and budgets need to shut up.

That's right shut up.  Why?

Because IT DOESN'T WORK! 

The ultimate in stupidity was Kansas, a hell hole in the middle of a red state racist mid-west; decided with Brownbacks brilliant business background to follow tea party dogma and cut taxes to stimulate the economy...a great experiment.

Now this experiment is exactly the trickle down experiment that Reagan sold the nation many years ago; that backfired.....it also is the dogma that was accepted practice in 1929...cut taxes, raise taxes and embargos on imports to "Make America Great Again" and the economy would cure itself.

And the Great Depression followed by WWII killed over 60 million people worldwide.  60 MILLION PEOPLE!

And in Kansas, Bloody Kansas, they tried it again...and it blew up the state.

Why...because a government's budget, the bigger it gets, is NOT micro-economics, it is macro-economics a whole different playing field with different rules and a whole lot more complex and variable.  Even macro rules of economics don't always work.

But Republicans have taken over the country with the bullshit that Kansas just ladled into the gut of each of their citizens.

And they failed. 

Redding is doing it right now, recalling the two "liberals' on the city council because of fiscal issues and crime.  They have ignored their own contribution, by refusing to pass a small tax to add back police officers and firemen, leaving the city partially unprotected from the crime that frankly has been spawned partly by the opoid epidemic that middle aged white people are "enjoying" right now.  Life is so miserable for them in Redding they are stoned all the time...nice retirement huh?

And it is failing, and what is needed most is....more government (efficient and robust) to grow the economy.   What More Government?   Oh no..Oh no!!!!!

You see taxes come back to the community ten fold often.  Right now Redding for example, whose tea party state of Jefferson types want to be in a separate state, takes in millions of state dollars of support, with many working on the state payroll, that keeps the city alilve.  In fact, per capita, Redding citizens get more state dollars than do the citizens of Sacramento, the state capitol.

Government employment is the second largest employer, after retail/recreation. So the "suggestion" is to cut government (become the poorest state in the union) and things will be better as millions of dollars are pulled out of Redding.

That is nuts; plain and simple nuts! 

Why?  Why be so stupid!

I taught Civics in High School.  I told and taught the students about the above....and many glassed over, or I got complaints from right wing parents that I was not being "fair".  The kids were often asleep or did not even listen, because their parents were right wingers and hated public education as well as anything else public...So I got the be fair all the time.

Fair my ass...ask people in Kansas what is fair?!

IT DOESN'T WORK.  IT DOESN'T WORK.  IT DOESN'T  WORK...

"What is the Matter with Kansas"?  The Republican right wing is what is wrong with Kansas, just like it is in Redding right wing California!

For Lewis Mumford

This is for Lewis Mumford.....(look him up)

An interesting read and critical to our survival as a species...that's right, where we live and how we live is becoming a critical choice due to the ravages of global climate change AND peak oil.

We cannot keep running to the suburbs in the conventional sense.  The 40 mile one way commute, which is expanding around the Bay Area to a full hour and one half one way, is simply not sustainable.  The congestion of the future is a one way ticket to disaster.  Moreover, fleeing the cities and moving further and further into the countryside is a recipe for disaster!

We need to follow the instincts of this article.  In Sacramento the downtown is seeing a real revitalization, as millenials move downtown and rennonvate aging residential communities with supporting amenities (small businesses and restaurants that are alive with young professionals who love living downtown).  We live in Campus Commons, an older development that was an alternative to the suburan sprawl of the 70s and 80s and is amazing in its continuing revitalization....it is close to everything and is built to encourage interactions and socialization.  And we are seeing younger people moving in and again, reaching out to each other in a quest for community.  Why live in the suburbs when downtown is becoming more the place to be!

Suburbs have often become expensive traps, where people spend hours commuting to work from, living in the house for  a minimum of time, and for sure isolating themselves from everyone in the neighborhood.  These expensive traps  exist surrounding Sacramento right now, with inhabitants painfully becoming aware of the loneliness of life in a huge house, with a pool and nobody to share it with.  Drive a new suburb sometimes, look at all the houses which are closed off by fences from one another, empty fortresses of lonliness.  And all of them, hopelessly expensive...People are not there because they are driving back and forth to work everyday....100 plus miles one way...

Community has always been the strentgth of mankind.  And the era of suburbs has shown itself to be a failure of simply being human.

It all started going bad when we all built fences around our houses.

The young people and us old baby boomers are figuring it out finally.

Let us hope it is not too late.  We need to 1. Move closer in to downtown; revitalize as we go.  2.  Demand efficient and usable public transportation.  3.  Demand more efficient cars that are supported by a smart transportation grid.  4.  Demand a smarter and more inclusive wireless network (and more accessible to everyone).  5.  And finally, demand an end to the pure automobile driven commuter economy....and become human again....

Another WE TOLD YOU SO!

Ok, we told you so....we told you so..who gets hurt in this abomination of a budget?  You do, the aging white  middle class who had voted Democratic in the past but bought a bill of goods from a person who made his reputation through reality T.V. as a CHARLATAN! 

And YOU VOTED FOR HIM! 

And then you get all huffy, write nasty posts, argue incessantly when your friends, and we are your friends believe it or not, tell you that you GOT SCREWED!  We are your friends because we tell you like it is:  how could you trust Trump who lies all the time?  Here are the two ways you scewed up!

1.  The decline in manufacturing jobs is not a simple thing.  A large part of it is technology advancements that can replace assembly line workers.  A large part is the corporate leadership who ruthlessly outsourced millions of jobs for pure profit with absolutely NO LOYALTY to the working force who made them rich (and one of the...one of them is Donald J. Trump)..

2.  And You...we...have benefited from the outsourcing and cheap labor costs everytime we order from Amazon or go into a Wal-Mart, Penneys, you name it.  Hardly anythiing is made in the U.S.A. I always cringe when I put on a hat that or put together patio furniture (just happened YESTERDAY) that says "Made in Vietnam".

We reap the benefits of the global economy in the ridiculous low prices for electronic, clothing and yes even automobiles. 

Good union jobs, with  benefits and pensions are dwindling because the corporate class, of whom Donald J. Trump is a leader, have benefited from this attack on labor.  Beware of "right to work" laws, that emasculate unions, driving wages and benefits down, and ultimately jobs go overseas.  Now they are attacking the service sector, and public employess, for their benefits as well; in a blood slaughter of human labor dignity!

It is NOT a simple "Make America Great Again" thing.  It is complex and you need to know who your friends are.

The Trump budget tells you right off who your friends AREN'T!  Look at the chart...health care cut, especially Medicaid....he promised he wouldn't do that.  Medicare and Social Security are next; an obsession by the wealth and privileged who want to make more and more and more and don't give a shit about you.  What is next is grandpa and grandma (YOU) won't have a place in a nursing home and the burden will fall even more on middle class families who just can't afford it...I see mercy killings exploding!  Nice end for years of sacrifice and hard work, huh????

They are trying to KILL YOU!

I have warned you all over and over that the rich HATE YOU!.  Is that class warfare?  YOU BET IT IS!

THE ONLY ADVANTAGE IS WE OUTNUMBER THEM...IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION WE SOMETIMES WENT TO VIOLENCE TO MAKE THEM REALIZE THAT THERE WERE A WHOLE LOT MORE OF US THAN THEM!

OK, now that you know that you were used and made a fool of what do you do?  What do you do for your children; for your grandchildren?

Throw the assholes out of office, and I mean Republican assholes.  Get involved in the Democratic Party and demand changes that yes redistribues income...there I said it...we need more taxes on the rich who are getting away with murder right now.  And we need to realize that WE are part of the problem, demanding cheap gasoline all the time when WE KNOW the shit is running out, but refuse to demand mass transportation before it is too late!

There is much to do, and we are going the wrong way...witness the Budget Trump!

And throw Trump out of office with extreme prejudice!

Wilson And Mistakes

If we ignore history we are doomed to repeat it.

Woodrow Wilson is a tragic American figure.  His post-WWI leadership was destroyed by two things: his health that failed him and the Republican Party that refused to share his internationalist vision.

WWI was the most destructive war in human history.  And those who were making decisions about it were in the same generational paradigm as we who are over 60, are comparing the Civil War to Vietnam.

I was 18 in 1965, a civil war veteran was 18 in 1865.  It is 2017 now which compares with 1917 .  In short, my generation is in exactly the same place as were civil war veterans and those old enough to know better in 1917.

And that generation was against ANY foreign war or any war for that matter.

Why?  Because the Civil War virtually destroyed the south and killed a generation of young men.  It was obvious in 1917 that the same thing was happening in Europe, a generation of young men were dying as the war, the SECOND modern war, ground human beings into pulp.

So, the American People, especailly Republicans (the Party of Lincoln remember) were against any modern war.  People were in positions of power who remembered, and their children had been told the stories of Vicksburg, Shilo and Gettysburg.

So when the U.S. went into the war in 1917 it was with great  temerity....there was a lot of opposition.  And the United States was very cautious to get embroiled in European politics that were as unstable as middle east politics are today.

And when the U.S. fresh troops, whose knowledge of static line warfare was far advanced from the Europeans (the lessons of the  Civil War was that small squad type manuvers rather than frontal assaults were most effective) turned the tide, all Americans wanted was to bring the troops home. 

In short, tactically the U.S. troops fought with the hard lessons learned in the Civil War.  Those lessons were observed first hand by Adoph Hitler, a corporal at the time in the German Army, and used twenty years later in France and Poland during the start of WWII; they called it Lightning War. 

After the war, Wilson (a southener) fought for a fair peace and the League of Nations, knowing full well that modern warfare had simply become too  lethal to be used anymore by mankind.  Remember the generations of Americans who were making decisions still had the taste of the Civil War and were highly against  foreign entanglements.

And Republicans, who had won the Civil War and knew the costs,  were not interested in entering the world stage, whose lack of judgement had just cost a generation of young men their lives.  So they resisted ANY actions by the United States to stabilize the world poltical system; which needed it badly.

Wilson, who was a southener had no real base to oppose this isolationism; which was the American dominant foreign policy in 1919.

So the problems of the middle east, Africa and central Europe, that had helped start WWI, were left unaddressed; and would quickly cause WWII!

And Hitler was watching, waiting for his chance to destroy the world.

And America, still remembering the horrors of the Civil War and just witnessing the horrors of WWI, froze politically and withdrew from the world stage, leaving it to the future dictators of the world.

We are faced with a similar situation in the United States right now.  We have elected a potential dictator in Donald Trump. Right now we are faced with a fledgling Constitutional Crisis and Trump struggles to "control" the raging controversy about Russian interference in our election.  And Republicans, ironically, are saying do nothing; that it is all political, ignore it; JUST like they did in 1919.

In a sense their lack of historical judgement is about to cause the same kind of disaster that we endured in 1939!

And the consequences of that were the births of four dictatorships that nearly reduced the entire globe to ashes (Stalin, Mussollini, Tojo and Hitler). 

Right now the dictator who has ALREADY manipulated our political system, is waiting as his surrogate, Donald J. Trump, struggles to carry of the greatest con on the century.

The true tragedy of history is when we ignore it, we repeat it...The true tragedies of history happen when good people know there is a danger and do nothing.

We are going the wrong way!

We have made two huge mistakes in our tortured history of health care:  1.  We decided during WWII that employers, flush with cash from the war, should provide benefits rather than install a socialized medicine model.  So we now have an employer benefit model of medical insurance.  The consequences vastly outweigh the benefits of this error.  Employers immediately became adversaries with workers over health care of all things, constantly negotiating lower and lower benefits relative to costs, to protect profits and sometimes to stay solvent.  As time wore on, benefits were often what prompted strikes not pay.

  Meanwhile in the rest of the world, employers did not have the cash to even consider paying benefits for health care:  their economies were in ruin .  So all over the globe "industrialized" nations were forced to adopt various forms of single payor or socialized medicine, at low level of coverage (only basic services could be afforded). 

Meanwhile America's economy boomed, making the poison pill of health benefits grow and grow; and lure insurance companies of all things (they were invented for fire, theft and life insurance) into the market of health care.

And, science meanwhile was making huge inroads into vaccines, polio for example,  eradicating diseases that had kept the life expenctancy rate to about 48 years.    The drug companies grew quickly, riding the wave of one "wonder drug" after another, rising prices as they went, making a multi-billion dollar industry.

Suddenly medicine, that had NEVER been a major "industry" in America became one: with insurance companies, hospitals, doctors and drug companies making much more money than ever before.

And then, in the 80s, when the rest of the world had rebuilt from WWII (we always under estimate how important that is), their more efficient and less costly single payer/socialized medicine began outperforming the American market based model.  No longer was America the  economic power house of the world and had to compete with Japan for example, and Germany (whose economies had been flattened) in manufacturing: and they did so with single payer/socialized medical benefits.

And that resulted in a huge advantage labor cost wise. 

Americans stopped buying American because labor costs were passed along by American manufacturers that included increasing health care benefits costs. 

2.  We allowed lobbyists of the health care monster that we created to have access to our legislatures, and they have basically bought them.  The Public Interest, as presented in the Preamble to the Constitution ("provide for the genereal WELFARE") has been distorted into "free markets that drove America's rise to economic power will work miraculously to drive down health care costs". 

Meanwhile, thanks to the medicines and medical care, and in spite of an American lifestyle of self abuse through over consumption (do you know anyone who is under weight?), the life expectancy rose to the mid-eighties.  (Which ironically is lower than other single payer/socialized medicine systems).

And we are stuck arguing about a vital issue in the wrong terms.  We argue that health care is not a right (the Constitution basically SAYS it is a right) but a privilege that is STILL anchored to employment.

So, according to conservatives, if you are not employed, you are not "earning" your health care. Conservatives have tied their very political theory to this;  and that transfers into the sick are lazy and brought it upon themselves so "tough luck". 

And liberals, aware that it was their party that was in power when this whole mis-step happened (the New Deal screwed up and should have installed Medicare for all in 1946), now push for the solution that the economically strapped Europeans did years ago.  And vital to making this work is tax and spend, which opens them up to fatal politcal attack.   

Coupled with an increasing aged and ill population (fat, ill and very expensive) and you have the perfect storm.

The solution is complex (Trump finally stated that) and dangerous politically.  It has paralyzed our political process.  Americans are being told the choice is stark, economical health care must basically be rationed or it won't work.  And part of that is true.   But then solution makers go to the extremes, declaring that our political liberty is economic liberty for insurance and pharmaceutical companies. 

On the other hand, 80% of Americans get medical insurance benefits, their employer pays health insurance for them.  And herein lies part of the solution.  This has to stop (that's right stop) and the benefits paid must be paid directly in salary to the workers (and mandated by he way for a time, you just can't cut the benefit because companies will take the difference)....then taxes have to be increased for a lifetime (that's right even tax social securiity some) to run a single payer system in the entire United States. 

The wellness provisions of the ACA and the required coverages need to be continued but wellness even more stressed; our aging just has to be healthier or none of this will work:  diabetes from over weight is an epidemic right now and is simply caused by a high carb and sugar (beer) diet.

And none of this is possible in any kind of free market system....it simply has to been enforced through common government action and oversight. 

Yes taxes must increase and rather than get rid of the ACA we need to gear it to  include the "public option" with private insurance for those who want more and better coverage....Austrailia's model is worth looking at).

And we probably won't come close, because we have built a monster that now, if the ACA is actually gutted, will bankrupt us all.

Again....the Reckoning..our politcal system is broken so bad by those on the right who feel economic liberty  includes punishing the sick for being sick and on the left, who feel economic liberty means a socialized medical system that in effectively punishes the health care providers for treating the sick. 

We need to copy Austrailia!!!!