YES WE CAN

Expectations?   As I have pondered Justice (?) Scalia's now infamous slower colleges for "the blacks" versus the University of Texas, I hit on what should be obvious.

We have been trained as teachers that setting high expectations are critical to academic achievement.  A teacher's  high expectations and guidance with students is critical to how they perform.

It is true that students from poor schools, and bad backgrounds will struggle in elite colleges.  I had that experience at Stanford.  Shasta High, now a first class school, was not so in 1965.  I had a World History teacher who taught from the book with worksheets that everyone copied.  I read the text and because of my avid interest in history got a little out of the course. But, when faced with the History of Western Civilization my freshman year at Stanford, I was in deep trouble.  I did not have the background in Western Civilizations that my preppie peers had.  

It was the only class I asked to tutoring for, and pulled a C working my tail off.  

You see the Preppies were way ahead of me.  The privileged class shined in "Western Civ".  The years of privilege made a difference.  Many of the "Preppies" had traveled to Europe.  Many had gone to plays, concerts; etc.    And being a poor kid from Redding, I struggled.

I often have said the first major college football game I saw was the one I played in!  

But then I joined the ATO, a fraternity that had just been kicked out of the national for pledging men of color and Jews.  At the time I knew I was part Native American but had never acknowledged it.  I knew I was behind many of my freshman peers at Stanford; one being a friend named Mitt Romney, a very nice guy who was a preppie.

My lifelong best friend was also a preppie.  Our sophomore year, as I worked twice as hard to "get it" in classes, he pulled me aside and taught me how to write.  Both of his parents were teachers at an exclusive prep school in Minneapolis.  

He explained it was a code, that once you knew it, then let your passion take over.

Now this was while I was fighting my ass off trying to make the Stanford Varsity Football team, spending four to six hours a day, working for my board and room, AND going to class and doing homework.

It meant I could not go out and drink with the boys at the Goose, in season (?) and I just didn't have the time.

But I roomed with a guy named Al Wilburn, the first African American captain of the Stanford Football Team, an All American, pro football bound who instead decided against all our pleadings to become a .....DOCTOR.  This young man from the Fresno area, whose father was a sharecropper, and poorer than hell told us all he was going to UCLA med school and was going to be a doctor.

He was 6 foot four and weighed 245 pounds and could run like a damn deer.  I had to block him my freshman year, he almost tore my head off.

But someone along the line had raised his expectations and he was going to be a doctor by God.  And he was one of the first African Americans to pledge ATO.

And the place raised expectations for all of us.  We played against USC and UCLA when they were the best in the country; and got beat.  But my senior year, with Jim Plunkett as our QB, we almost got them.  

Raised expectations by John Ralston, one of the greatest men I ever knew, drove us, we worked and worked and worked, practicing twice as long.  I probably got beat deep  by Gene Washington and Plunkett more than any other cornerback in football.

But  the high  expectations built success.  In the classroom and on the athletic field football players were EXPECTED to be students FIRST AND athletes SECOND; so what if you studied 20 hours a day in both, we did it.

And we succeeded.  And we won.  But WE did it.  In the ATO we were brothers, we learned about each other's culture, preppies, poor part Indian kids from Redding, African Americans from L.A., Jews from New York, and Latinos from Los Angeles, we learned together; and the place drove us always expecting excellence.

So don't tell me Justice Scalia,  that African Americans need a "slower track", don't you dare.

I have seen it at the highest level.  I also was trained as a teacher to never accept excuses.  If a kid came in and said I can't, I said no...you can.  And many times they could.

Finally there was Steve Anderson.  Steve had been struck by a car when he was a toddler.  He was brain damaged and his motor skills put him in a wheel chair.  Back then we were just starting mainstreaming so he was placed in my Resource Specialist Class; I went into Special Education, that's right from Stanford to Special Education because I care about the wonder of human capacity and potential; unlike Scalia.

Scalia and his ilk would and did put students like Steve in special school, away from the privileged, away from a chance.  

Steve's parents were insistent that Steve experience a regular student's existence.  So we tried.  We tried so hard that one day, when Steve's personal aide was sick, I assigned two of my kids to push his wheelchair to PE.  They lost control of the chair and Steve rolled down a hill and suffered some minor cuts on his face.

The parents came to school to check him out.  I held my breath waiting for a lawsuit: they just laughed and said, other kids fall down don't they, we EXPECT him to be treated like everyone else.  We expect him to fall and to get up and try again!

That is what Scalia doesn't get.  That is what this country of white privileges doesn't get.  People of color don't want a handout, they just want a fair shot and to be pushed for excellence like the privileged. You delegate them to inferior schools and "slow" colleges and you don't get achievement.  AND, we lose human capital and capacity that can add immeasurably to America.  I have always thought that some poor Native American on a reservation somewhere, who will die of alcoholism, has the capacity to cure cancer; but white supremacy America is in the habit of not just wasting human achievement but crushing  it!  

Finally, when Steve graduated his parents demanded that he WALK  across the stage.  They EXPECTED HIM TO WALK ACROSS THAT STAGE!  Steve could not walk except with considerable help.  

Now Steve fell a lot.  I mean a lot.  So we tried to talk them out of it...they would have none of it.

So we practiced the walk, they call the last walk for the football seniors to the stadium at Stanford the WALK as well.  I did that one too many times.  And this WALK was only ten steps or so.  But ten steps in front of thousands of people.  

One Walk with thousands rooting you on, the other....the same!

So we practiced.  His parents expected him to make that walk. They had high expectations.  

And that graduation I hooked my arm underneath his and we walked those ten steps.  And as we walked the entire stadium erupted in applause, they rose to their feet and Steve, smiled, then laughed and mumbled,  "I did it".

DO NOT EVER SAY YOU CAN'T.  DO NOT EVER LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR ANYBODY.  STOP WHITE SUPREMACY BY TEACHING WITHOUT BIAS AND EXPECTING EVERYONE, I MEAN EVERY SINGLE ONE TO SUCCEED AND TO REACH THEIR FULL POTENTIAL.  AND THAT MEANS INVESTING WAY MORE IN EDUCATION THAN WE CURRENTLY DO!

THAT IS WHY I AM ANGRY AT JUSTICE SCALIA AND EVERY OTHER CONSERVATIVE WHO HIDES THEIR RACISM BEHIND THE HE/SHE CAN'T.........

YES....WE CAN!

Divided We Stand

I would urge you to read the article, "Divided We Stand" in the San Jose Mercury News" Sunday, December 13, 2015.  

  It shows that the entrenched system of white supremacy is only slightly less obvious than in 1960!  That is heartbreaking to say the least.

Right now the Supreme Court is about to eliminate complete any vestige of Affirmative Action.  Voter rights have already been curtailed making Selma irrelevant.  In short, white supremacy is on the rise and winning in every area.  

Consequently, people of color  lead in virtually every indicator of poverty and agony, from incarceration rates to reading scores.  Charter Schools have been pushed, along with private schools, to segregate our schools worse than 1960.  And "Black Lives Matter" is a outrage of African Americans against the wholesale slaughter of young men by the police in shoot after shoot after shoot.

A political party, once of Lincoln the Great Emancipator, now feeds off racial prejudice and white privilege.  The stereotyping of an entire religion (which is mostly practiced by people of color) is just one more example of WASPs incredible racism.  

And then there is the violence in the mean streets of America, by gangs, drug peddlers you name it, making  living to maturity an accomplishment for many.  Chicago is a town where an African American young man has more than one way to get shot on the way to school.  White kids just worry about which bus to take.  

And I haven't even mentioned Native Americans, who have made absolutely no progress in the last 40 years: none.  Sadly the Casinos have made more white people richer and the  lot of most Native Americans is the same as always, poverty, addiction; and early death.

And white supremacy rides on, in all its evil; now supported by a denier class championed by Fox News and other conservative voices who simply pretend the whole thing is not there.  After all, we elected a Black President, right; as they sabotage everything he has tried to do.

And the gap between the rich and the poor is now a chasm.  And white former middle class victims of this swindle, turn on the poor scared to death that they are next.  And, the way this is going, they already are next; poor, dying early, angry, miserable and lost.  And what do they do?  Why they rally around Trump, as their savior; who is NOT their friend by any stretch of the imagination.  

Divided we stand for sure.  And weakened as well.  America is losing. It is losing because in the world economy we do not get the fact that white supremacy is an enormous weakness, and invitation for reaction, and retaliation (call it terrorism).  Why do "they" hate us....for Christ's sake think about it!

Why do "they" hate "us"?  A Presidential candidate promises to send all the Mexicans home, stop Muslims from entering the country, then brags that "they" all love me.  

Look in the mirror this Christmas and who do you see?  When will we ever see the face of Jesus, shaking his head because we simply do not get it.  When will we stop hating and love; when?

And finally, for those who say, not me...it is our ancestors who did all that bad stuff; then why are people still screaming.  Why do we think we have integrated colleges when the University of Alabama, who just had a young man win the Heisman, still have segregated fraternities?  

How does that make any sense, if we truly are "All men are created equal".  

It doesn't...so divided we stand, with a target on us from the rest of the disbelieving world.

Here We Go Again

Here we go again.  In 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War college campuses exploded in protest.  Moreover the Civil Rights movement was going full throttle and M.L. King was murdered.  Protests shut down campuses, administration offices were occupied, the ROTC building at Stanford was torched.  

And the newspaper articles decried the immaturity and lack of knowledge of the college "spoiled brats".  Articles were written like this one, calling students immature and spoiled.  

Dr. Spock was assailed for teaching a permissive humane form of child rearing, that was a cause of young men not wanting to go off to die in a senseless war.   The fact that it was a senseless war was discounted by the greatest generation.  Parents were turned against their children, second guessing "sparing the rod".  One wonders what happens to cultures who produce soldiers first and citizens second?  

The greatest generation watched in horror as their anti-war sons and daughters resisted, demonstrated, and dropped out.  

And now, we listen to  the same nonsense when young people act like America's promise is real.

Vietnam, as it turns out was wrong.  Only the most conservative hard liner believes that the mistakes in Vietnam were warranted.  The dominoe theory, that was thrown up to us constantly by Johnson and then by Nixon, did not happen.  

Today every baseball cap you buy is "Made in Vietnam".  We discovered, after the war, that Vietnam hates China, even fought a brief war in the mid-seventies with China and is a capitalist nation economically; communist politically.  

In short the children of the sixties, spoiled and immature, had it exactly right.  The greatest generation was wrong.

And Civil Rights?  The sit ins, the marches at Selma, all led by the young.  And the deaths, borne by the young college students who discovered the white supremacy realities of the American nightmare.  And the non-violent  protests turned to angry violence when Martin Luther King was gunned down.

I suppose those riots were the actions of spoiled brats?  With yet another leader shot down, it was that superficial a reaction?  Really?    Talk to any African American about the M.L. KIng murder riots; they will tell you straight up what those riots were all about.  And the white supremacy leaders did not listen then either!  

And the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the Voter Rights Act was passed after bloody Sunday, when the march at Selma was attacked by white state troopers in an ugly example of white supremacy at its worst.  And we all choke up when we hear Glory, the song of Selma.

Milk and cookies?  Tell that to the students at Kent State with blood on the ground, or U.C. Berkeley, where Govenor Reagan earned his tough guy image by ordering actions that killed students.

And  there is David Harris, Stanford Student Body President, who elected prison over Vietnam; another "spoiled brat" ?

David Harris went south with the demonstrators; he paid his dues.  He has more love for this country in his little finger than the author of this nonsense has in her whole body.  

When  we invaded Normandy the first boats were loaded with 19 year olds.  The brass knew it would be bad and the youngest were sacrificed; they were brave and foolhardy.  The young feels the passion more and are less careful.

Young people are who die first in a war.  The Young die for old people's mistakes.  

But, as any parent can tell you, children often look up from their milk and cookies and ask, "Daddy, why are black people treated bad?"  Why are people mad at "Redskins".  Daddy, why are we fighting a war?   Daddy, why does that old man have no leg?  

It is not spoiled brats we are talkiing about.  This con has it as usual all wrong.  It is the insightfulness of innocent youth that we are seeing; calling us to our promises and ideals.

Listen to your children!  It is in their innocence that we find our idealism.

Neocon/Isis Both Terrorist

The civilized world is in a battle with terrorism.  There are several terrorist regimes, who cannot gain political footholds in any nation states, so they use fear and terror to try to undermine authority.

Terrorists are a diverse lot, ranging from tribal affiliations gone bad, to religious fanaticism.

After 9/11 Americans of the conservative persuasion, mostly Christian conservatives, decided we were in a Holy War, with Islamic Radicals who were intent on religious warfare.  The fact that most terrorists are secularists have been lost on the GOP.    

The Republican Party, in reaction to being absolutely asleep prior to 9/11, grabbed at this fabriciation, and attacked Afghanistan to destroy terrorist training camps, and Iraq to supposedly rid the area of WMDs.

They never found any WMDs nor any "Yellow Cake Uranium", but they did throw away trillions, and created even more terroists by their arrogant and stupid treatment of Iraqi Sulnnies.  George W. Bush was so ignorant of the middle east that his administration did not know the difference between a Sunni or a Shiite, or Kurd for that matter.  

He blundered into Iraq, destroyed the infrastructure, stupidly tried to privatize the rebuilding effort, put a Shiite in power, put all the Sunnis out of work, and created Issis.  

Meanwhile, the neocons persisted in a demanding yet another military solution to a complex political and historical situation in the middle east.

In short, the foreign policy of the United States is a mess thanks to neocon stupidity.  

Now, as Syria burns with Civil War, GOP "experts" decide to not take refugees and guess what, call for ground troops in Syria; which would be again stupid beyond belief.

Basically the Republican neocons are at it again, calling for widespread war to rid the world of terrorists.  

And of course, in the African black nations, the world's worst state terrorism is totally ignored because there is little oil in that part of Africa; and the faces of the victims are overwhelmingly black not white.  

Oil drives the neocons approach to the Middle East.  Donald Trump, a poltical humorist, even has stated outright that he will "take all the oil" if he is elected.  At least he is honest.  Evil but honest.  

And, fear reigns supreme.  Even though very few United States citizens have been harmed since 9/11, you would think there have been countless slaughters to listen to right wing radio and Fox News.  

Fear, fear, fear is the mantra that is used by right wingers to stir up irrational and wrong headed reactions to terrorist attacks.

This comes from the same crowd who sponsored the disaster in Iraq that is resulted in the rise of the Isis terrorist organization.

So we stumble along, deeply divided, reacting exactly as the terrorists expect, being played like a fiddle by both the terrorists and the neocons who are desperate to regain power, so they can spend more lives endlessly and get back into power.  

It is all about power, for the Isis terrorists and the neocon terrorists...

Terrorism has goals and objectives.  The terrorist has gripes and issues that got them into this revengeful state.   We never bother to investigate the reasons for the terrorism, but are lured into reactions that only feeds their recruits.

The neocons we halfway understand, the Isis no way.  

A Free Press

Two  events recently are of great alarm to those of us who still value freedom in the United States.

One was the behavior of Republicans on the Benghazi Committee in the way they handled Hillary Clinton's "testimony".  In actuality it was a partisan witch hunt; Republicans for eleven hours attacked, maligned and tried every trick they could to rattle the presumptive Democratic Presidential candidate.

Why did they do this?  American politics have  deterioriated into a Gotcha game.  If the opposing party can find a gaffe, just one, it is lifted from the tape, and played over and over during the campaign.   Elections can turn on just one gaffe.  The former  Secretary of State of the United States was fair game for eleven hours of searching for that one gaffe, that one statement from fatigue, that could win the election.

Never mind that all of us, in a pressure situation, can say almost anything.  No, the rules are now inhumanely attack looking for the kill.

And try as they might, the Republicans whiffed.   The only time the Secretary came close was when she laughed when asked if she was alone the night after the attack...the questioner lept to the attack and said, "It is not funny, four Americans died".  Ms. Clinton was certainly not laughing about the deaths but about the ludicrous question and quickly said so.  I will bet this shows up in a campaign ad!  

But that is America's gotch politics.   In the first hours long Benghazi Committee appearance of Mrs. Clinton, she in frustration said something to the effect, all of these questions don't matter, lives were lost and we need to find out why.  Conservatives ran ads claiming she really said the lives did not matter.  

Her comment was lifted out of context, placed among a damning narrative, and ran as a hit ad all over the country.  I had conservative friends actually chant this to me....It doesn't matter to Hillary that people were killed!   Dirty politics at its worst has become the new normal in Washington.  And, the right wing is practicing it at full bore.

Now the ultimate in hypocrisy.  It seems that in the last Presidental "debate" run by CNBC, with one questioner a Latino, the candidates complained about the content of the questions.  Incredibly, the head of the GOP has suspended NBC from carrying a future debate!

Interesting, Republicans get to pick and choose their questions to answer, the Democratic front runner for President is subjected to eleven hours of witchhunt with no chance to screen the questions?  

The real threat is to the First Amendment.  A free and unfettered press is essential to the existence of a democracy.  The press, and this includes Fox News, is necessary to hold politicians accountable.  Watergate comes to mind.  So does the Vietnam War and yes, the Iraq War.  During the Civil War, when the nation's very existence was in question, the free press attacked President Lincoln at every turn.  

The Press, even the opposition press, must be able to ask probing and yes even stupid questions.  This is necessary and proper to our freedom!

If a politician does not want to answer the question then he/she has the option of saying so.  There may or may not be fallout.  At a recent debate that happend to Mrs. Clinton.  She was asked about her emails and she simply chose not to answer.  That was it, no answer.  

The Benghazi Committee is not the free press, but Mrs. Clinton still showed up and endured eleven HOURS of grilling so brutal that even Republicans were shocked.  It is a direct threat to our basic political freedoms for the National GOP leadership to boycott CNBC.  

What is next, allowing political parties to shut down news companies they don't like?  That my friends is totalitarianism.  

Why Can't We Fix Things Without Government?

I just posted yet again, another picture of a gentleman helping others in spite of his age.  I have posted several examples of "paying it forward" of individual philontrophic efforts that help scores of people.

And my conservative friends always bring up the fact that Redding, a poor area, has one of the largest personal giving percentages in the state.

That's right, in spite of grinding poverty, the haves up here are overall  very  generous in their giving.

So why not just let it be like it used to be?    Before the Great Deprression personal donations and church benevolence was what took care of the less fortunate.  Why can't we just do that?

Then mean old Mr. Roosevelt came along, and socialism in Russia, making government a wet nurse.

Why then can't we just put it back, like Conservatives want to do.

Its a matter of scale and population.  

Our church had a series of meetings on what to do with the poor and homeless in Redding.  We strategized for weeks trying to maximize resources to make a difference.

With over 3000 homeless the task is daunting to say the least. 

And everytime, I mean everytime, we ultimately turn to government to do something.

Ok, this is why conservative philosophy regarding social welfare will always fail:  numbers.

That's right numbers.  There are over 300 million Americans now.    They mostly live in huge metro areas that depend on large scale infrastructures for everything.  They can't grow their own food.  They can't provide their own roads.  They can't be "rugged individualists".

Inland the smaller population numbers live more individualistic lives, but still are hugely dependent on each other for support.  In short, we ALL need each other, working together, to maintain our  wasteful and climate endangering lifestyles.

Years ago the United States made a serious mistake.  We allowed Big Oil to run our politics.  We are so enamored with automobiles that we tore down our passenger rail infrastructure; we did away with trollies, we even reduced Greyhound Bus Lines to a shadow of itself.  

We now drive everywhere, we depend on the personal automobile for our economic existence.

And that individual freedom has fooled us into believing that we are somehow separate, aloof from the rest of us.  

People are isolated in our cars, until someone swerves into our lane or heavan forbit, we have an accident.  Then wham, the government is right their in the personage of the Highway Patrol, Judges, Lawyers; etc.  In a heartbeat we realize we really were not alone in our cars.

And everytime gas prices spike we flinch; because the vast majority of us now live paycheck to paycheck.  The vast majority of us drive over 30 miles one way to work in citiies where only the rich can afford to live close to work.

Meanwhile the gap between the rich and the poor grows.  The homeless grows and we begin hearing from the demogogues who tell us all we have to do is "Make American Great Again" and we "Can Fix This".

And everyone of them on the right are USING us against ourselves.  They cater to  our panic when we slow down and realize we are trapped.  We are trapped in our myths in our yearning to be free of one another when it is just impossible to be free from one another.  

It always has been. The rugged invidualist is a myth.  In the "Wild West" the only thing that kept settlers safe was the United States Army.  That is what "won the west" by a system of brutal genocide toward Native Americans and out and out land theft.  That's right, your great grandparents stole the land, they DID NOT earn it.  The military protected them.  That's right, government won the west!

Today it will be over 100 degrees in Redding, California in the middle of September.  In the next week we will see temperatures that will set, once again, records for heat along with a drought that is endless.

Our California Dream is quickly becoming a nightmare of heat, crime, homelessnes and a sense that we can't do anything about it ourselves.

It's the "ourselves" part we HAVE to address.  WE ARE NOT IN THIS ALONE!  We have to fix it or it will fix us:  we are talking species survival here.

Rugged invidualism is a myth; never have been, never will be.  We have to realize that teamwork and working with not against government is the ONLY way we can get out of this one way trip to hell.

That's right a one way trip to hell.  Global warming is on us, poverty is on us, and yes an unfair distribution of wealth is on us.  It will destroy democracy, encourage fascism (the Republican Party has become a fascist poltical party by any political science measurement) and paralyzes effective refroms to solve problems. 

There is a reason why the Congress can't solve or do anything.  It is by design, it protects the gas, coal and oil industries who have decided to ruin the planet to protect their profits.  And they use our love of the automobile against us.

They are sly, they are very well funded, and they will never quit.  They have pledged to win this no matter what the costs.  Just like Germany in the 30s, coroporate power has thrown its power to the right wing, gambling that "at the end we can control them".  

That was crazy then, it is crazy now.  Fascism ultimately leads to conflict and leads to warfare.  And that warfare ultimately leads to ruin.  

And that is a reckoning that none of us can afford.  We can turn this around, but it will take those of us who are mesmorized by the right to blink, shake their heads and see.  It is the only way we can stop this madness.  

I pray every day that this will happen.  

The Lying Oil and Gas Companies

The truth just tell the truth.  

 

Let's talk a bit more about the gas and oil industry.  I, like all Americans, love my cars. I love the freedom of going where I want when I want.  I don't like the traffic jams and I particularly don't like having to pay more and more for gas.  I don't like the potholes in the roads and the congestion.

 

Lately I really don't like the ridiculous heat that beats down on us; nor do I like the endless California drought.  I don't like the news stories warning that either global climate change is a liberal plot and not true, or that global climate change is real and is ruining the earth.

 

I don't like President Obama warning us all the time.

 

I smell a rat and its the oil and gas companies.

 

Why are we fracking so much?  No really, why so much?  Why are we drilling for oil in the Arctic?  

 

Why don't gas and oil companies tell us what their estimates are of oil reserves for the rest of the century.

 

Why don't we start building up our transportation system to allow trains and buses?  Why don't we have a choice like we USED to.

 

Right now, to get to San Francisco from Redding you only have two viable choices; by auto or by plane (and that is expensive).  Trains come in the middle of the night and it takes a day to get to San Francisco.

 

I am old enough to remember getting to San Francisco by train in six hours!

 

 

I suggest we all demand from the gas and oil industry a straight answer to the basic question:  How much is left?  How many years of full consumption do we have?

 

I think I know the answer; about fifty on a good day.

 

So, we are looking at the ravages of rising oceans and high temperatures along with running out of gas all at once.

 

And who is leading us that way?  Who resists every climate initiative?  Who lies to us all the time.

 

The gas, coal and oil industry.  

 

Why do they do that?  Why do they lie.  One answer; short sighted profit.

 

These guys are so evil they don't care.  That's right they don't care.  The corporate culture is so bereft of morality, profit rules EVERYTHING, that they constantly lie to the public about everything.  You can count on them to resist every government regulation; as they ruin the Arctic Ocean after they wrecked the Gulf of Mexico.  Have we forgotten that so soon?  They are banking on that.  They are evil!

 

I have an idea.  As we run out of gas, go to Shell Headquarters, take the bastards out of their office and HANG THEM!   I don't advocate that, but it WILL happen if people ever wake up to the way we are being used and lied to.

 

Why do they lie?