NOTHING HAS CHANGED

I have always been a Bob Dylan fan, much to the chagrin of my wife.   During the mid 1960 I was in the military in a Navy special unit.    The Vietnam war was in it's beginnings and the counterculture seemed alien to me - out of step with my military commitment and programming.   But, the music haunted me.   As I got older and the concept of war soured, the protest songs of that era spoke to me in a deep resonance.  

We have a new car and it allows me to connect my small Sonsa music recorder to the car stereo    

Running numerous errands this morning (the wife at home) I  selected a Dylan album.  Dylan's gravel voice boomed through the six speakers with 'The Times They Are A Changing."   I played it again, and then again.   The power of Dylan is not in the music but in the words; and I couldn't help but reflect back some forty years to the hope for the future that was the basis of the protest generation.  

And I realized that nothing has changed.

 Come gather ’round people

Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth saving’
Then you better start swimming’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changing’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no telling’ who that it’s naming’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changing’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is raging’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changing’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changing’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fading’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changing’

Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music

We are still at war
The poor are still down trodden 
The government is dysfunctional
There is defacto-racism
And a drive to disenfranchise women and minorities.


The times did not change.

the Ol'Buzzard

A BUZZARD OMELET #6

I just read Christopher Hitchen’s essay A Very, Very; Dirty Word, published in Slate Magazine of July 2004. 

In this essay Hitchen opines on the phrase Fuck Off, claiming it was a legacy of the British Empire; attributing Fuck You and Go Fuck Yourself as the American form.  His example for this proclamation was a statement made in 1967 by the British governor of South Yemen - Denis Healey; also expletives by Vice President Dick Cheney, John Kerry and Paul Wolfowitz.   

I am not saying that Hitchen was totally out of touch with the world outside of elite Washington and Britain, and I do not know how he dissected the roots and origin of Fuck Off; but I distinctly remember Fuck You and the bird as a part of the 60’s revolution in this country (remembering Easy Rider)  – and a young girl in San Francisco yelled Fuck You at me in the airport when I returned from Viet Nam (along with: how many babies have you killed?) and I replied Fuck Off. 

Now, I claim all the variations of the Fuck word as primarily American.  

Anyone my age can remember George Carlin’s seven words you can’t say on television:

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker and Tits.

‘The good churchgoing people’ were scandalized at Carlin’s proclamation that these words existed, much less that someone would dare to utter them in public; while the flower generation picked up on them and unpretentiously wielded them for the shock factor they knew they could effect.   

Actually this day and age I find the Fuck variations, along with bitch, cunt and bastard colorless and trite.   I actually think arcane Britain may have coined better, more colorful expressions of disgusts and contempt – Or at least the author Ariana Franklin did in her book Mistress of the Art of Death.   (If you have not read Ariana Franklin you have missed a great mystery read in the era of King Henry II - circa 12^th. century.)  

In her book the female doctor Adelia is being held captive by a necked man wearing deer antlers and sporting and erection – Adelia defused the situation by unleashing a series of insult (curses): calling him a stinking crap-hound; a turd-mouth; stench-sucking lummox; dressed like a dog’s beef; son of a pox-ridden sow, and a betty-buttered mother’s boy; a jelly bag; snot-faced; arse-licking; goat fucking; bum-bellied; farting; turd-breathed apology.  (She left out Shakespeare’s cream-faced loon.)

The book is a great mystery read, but like the dictionary when I was young, I couldn’t help but latch on the ‘rude words’ section.

I know I am not the first to express this, but there are few enough words in the English language to emphasize expression, and no word should be forbidden (censored.) ... and damnit - fuck off is ours.

Or in a more British vernacular:

Off we Fuck then,

the Ol’Buzzard

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SCHOOL REFORM

A SOCIALIST SOLUTION

President Obama appeared on TV with his Secretary of Education who outlined his objectives to revitalize the educational systems so as to guarantee a more educated population of the future. 

Sorry, but it is a failure before it starts. 

My background is in education: I have taught elementary, middle school and highs school, and I have been both an elementary and a high school principal. 

Let me address this policy from my point of view.

The new Secretary of Education comes from a background of privileged schools.   These are schools that succeed and score high because the demographic is upper socio-economic, and most parents have a college background.    The schools that are failing do not have the same demographic, the same problems or require the same solutions; and I find the Secretary out of touch with these schools

The Secretary’s entire focus seems to be the same old trite mantra of blame the teachers: increase certification requirements, reward the good teachers and get rid of the bad teachers. 


There are very few bad teachers – but there are plenty of burned-out teachers.   Teachers that enter the field of education are definitely not motivated by income.   They tend to have an ability to teach, they pass strenuous requirements and they hope to find working with young people rewarding. 

The fallacy about bad teachers has been decried by politicians and echoed by unsupportive parents.   When I went to school, had the teacher or principal called my grandmother and said I was misbehaving in class I would have caught hell when I got home – the teacher would have been supported and not vilified.  This is not the case today. 

Teachers undergo the most strenuous oversight of any occupation.   They are required to continue college courses in order to recertify every five years, and at inservices throughout the year and in the summer teachers are brought up to speed on the latest teaching techniques and philosophies.   New teachers receive two formal evaluations each year and tenured teachers receive at least one formal evaluation each year.  Teachers who are having a problem are placed on improvement plans and assisted with improvement.  A good principal not only conducts formal evaluations but sits in on every class room at least a couple of times a month.  Teachers are always under supervision.   

There are occasionally superior teachers; but there are also many good – in the trenches – teachers that teach to the curriculum and do their best, under adverse conditions, to care and educate their young wards.  

More than likely your child’s teacher is better educated than your local bank president, and yet works for a salary more comparable to skilled labor.   The Secretary stated the need to drastically increase the salary of teachers in order to attract other highly qualified people who tend to go into more lucrative fields.   This is needed, but where does the money come from?    

 The Secretary also promoted performance pay – this is not only demoralizing to other teachers but also will tend to go to the teachers in the more productive (elite) schools that continue to excel in test scores. 

The fallacy is, that here again, we are setting up a one size fits all education outline which is contrived by elite educators and unqualified politicians and that is not suited to all public school demographics.

In the average public school, and particularly the schools in crisis, the major problem is that children come into the system unprepared to learn.  These children have poor social skills and are backed by parents unwilling to take responsibility for their child’s behavior.   These children know that bucking the teacher will result in little or no consequence; therefore, classroom behavior has become the major problem for every teacher.   Some of the children are in school to learn; but for many, disrupting the classroom is the goal that will result in peer approval.   Some of these children are actually dangerous.  There are few tools that teachers have to command discipline, and without a disciplined class room requisite learning is impossible. 

The failure to maintain discipline in the classroom is often the fault of the principal, and by extension the superintendent.   Without a strong principal to back the classroom teacher, a knowledgeable teacher can be barbarized by the students, humiliated by the parents and unable to impart the required subject matter. 

Here is the rub: the principal and superintendent hold political positions and are hired and fired at the whim of the school board; therefore, principals (and superintendents) tend to placate irate parents instead of backing the classroom teacher in a controversy.   

School boards are not made up of educators, but most often of parents who have an axe to grind or local politicians looking for an addition on their resumes.   These board members don’t have the education background or the in-class-room experience to understand the complexities of class room teaching.  My last school board was far more concerned (and militant) about why certain children were not eligible to play basketball, than supporting teachers and increasing learning.  The monthly school board meetings were always more like an inquisition than a cooperative learning exercise.

Now we come to testing:  I have taught school in the Eskimo and Indian villages of the Alaskan Bush.  In these villages grandparents speak the traditional language, parents and children speak a bastardized mixture of English and Native language – yet on the test they are expected to read and write and comprehend in highly stylized English.   A few can get past this hurtle, but many can’t.   So, instead of the children being evaluated by twelve years of education within a cultural perspective, we condemn many of these children to failure.   Is it fair to that Native children and children from other cultural perspectives to be denied a diploma, and thereby denied other opportunities for growth and development in adult life, because they can not meet some arbitrary standard devised by politicians and the educational elite?  

It is not rocket science:

We need 100% Federal financing of public schools.

If we took the money we spend on maintaining the largest and most expensive military in the world and divert it to educating our children the problem would be solved.  The main answer for increasing educational outcome for all of our children is a smaller student-to-teacher ratio.  More highly paid teachers in a classroom with a maximum of twelve children would insure the one-on-one time necessary to advance each student.  In low performing schools the student-to-teacher ratio should be smaller.

There is also the necessity to set a high standard of order and discipline in the classroom by removing disruptive student.  There should be highly structured alternative public schools available for the assignment of habitually disruptive students.  Difficult parents of disruptive students would always have the option of enrolling their child in a private school (at their own expense.)

Finally we need to do away with local school boards and have schools run by non-elected educators.   Superintendents and principals need to be judged on performance not popularity.   Expectations of Superintendents and principals need to be increased and teacher performance will follow. 

It is as simple as where we place our priorities: 

We spend more of our National Budget maintaining our massive military than every other country in the world spends on their military - combined.  Likewise, we spend far less on the education of our children than most other advanced countries.  True educational reform of public schools will be costly - a tweek here and a tweek there will not solve the problem.


Educational reform is a political talking point, but the will to actually tackle the problem does not exist.   

The rich and well to do of this country are not concerned about the standard of education of their children – they will have the best education money can buy.   These same people are not particularly concerned about the war fodder being matriculated through our public schools – though they speak to “the problem.”     We have in this country a disconnect between the have and have not’s.    And, as long as the focus of our government is to placate the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, serious educational reform of public schools will remain a political talking point and our education system will continue to decline. 

the Ol'Buzzard approves this post.  

Strategic Vision

Bigniew Brezinski is one of the most intelligent men alive today.  He is currently publishing his new book Strategic Vision.   He appeared on Morning Joe on MSMBC on the 24^th and 25^th of January to discuss his book which details the decline of America as the preeminent power in the world.  

There is nothing I could add to this post that would enhance this discussion.   It is a must see – and possibly the final word on the state of the nation.  

the Ol’Buzzard

Brezinski's interview on the 24th.

Brezniski's interview on the 25th.

(this begins with a clip from the State of the Union, but stay tuned.)

I AM NOT AMUSED

Excerpt from: TIMELINE, by Michael Crichton.

“Everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time.   Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet list and animated graphics, so executives aren’t board.   Malls and stores must be engaging, so they amuse as well as sell us.   Politicians must have pleasing video personalities and tell us only what we want to hear.   Schools must be careful not to bore young minds that expect the speed and complexity of television.   Students must be amused – everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties.   This is the intellectual reality of western society at the end of the century… The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom.   A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do.   A sense that we are not amused.”

Crichton not only writes a great story in TIMELINE, but between the lines are truisms that jump out at you if you read carefully.  

Look at today’s Republican Presidential caucuses – very few people are interested in the actual policies, and the future results these policies would have on the nation at large.   People hear only what they want to hear, and they will switch if their candidate is not amusing. 

Regardless of Democrat or Republican; any politician that dares deal with the dry, realistic, real politics of a party, without amusing, is dead in the water.  

Dead in the water: Along with that line of thought – by all means read Crichton’s EATERS OF THE DEAD (later repackaged as THE 13^th. WARRIOR.) 

the Ol'Buzzard

A BUZZARD EGG OMELET #2

BLOWJOBS AND APPLE PIE.

For Christmas my wife gave me Christopher Hitchens’ last book: Arguably Christopher Hitchens.   As I read the Introduction I immediately latched on to his essay on the art and science of blowjobs.  The title of the article, first printed in Vanity Fair in July of 2006, was: As American as Apple Pie. 

Hitch follows the evolution of the blowjob from Pompeii to the New World (America); and he makes the argument that in this day and age, America really owns the blowjob.

Makes you proud to be an American.

The two most told lies by men are:

1.   The check is in the mail

2.   Honest, I won’t cum in your mouth.

THE Ol'Buzzard 

THE PERIL OF APATHY

IF YOU ARE NOT WORRIED; YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION

To be truly free would be: to be free of all government constrains – to live a life of independence and make choices without conformity to other people's ideas and desires.   This sounds wonderful, but would require a regression to a hunting and gathering society. 

A free man - Jim Bridger - mountain man

Interaction with society is a necessary evil, and societies need governments to organize and run infrastructures, protect resources, oversee commerce and establish a judicial system that looks out for the rights of individuals.  

Corporations are not people – they are not individuals:  they are gangs or cults that are in the business of exploiting the needs of people in order to make a profit.  Their natural inclination is to make a profit at any cost.  Like any gang, mob or organized group of people, corporations have a persona and the person characteristics of an individual; and, just like individuals, it survives through the Darwinian principal of adjust to change or die.   No corporation operates for the benefit of man kind unless it is convenient for its business model. 

The ideal purpose of government is to furnish and maintain the things that an individual is not capable of alone: roads, bridges, mass transit, health care, police, fire and rescue services and protection of the environmental; but also for protection of the individual from the exploitation of corporations and other cults and organized groups. 

No government has ever operated primarily for the good of the individual.  Our government is no exception.   But now, more than ever, the United States is in real danger of being co-opted and moved in the direction of authoritarian rule. It is not operating for the welfare of the individual, but instead has become the tool of corporate greed and religious cults - whose goal it is to exploit and subjugate the individual.

The trend of the U.S. government at this time, especially as driven by the Republican right, is to go far beyond servicing the individual.   The government is now being manipulated by the class of wealthy people, who profit from the corporations, in order to accumulate more wealth.  

Even more dangerous is the cult of religious extremist who, through the Republican Party, are attempting to co-opt influence in the government, with the aim of creation a Christian theocracy.  Under the banner of ‘less government and family values’ these organized mobs, like a moral Gestapo, would insert themselves into our most private and personal lives; decreeing what we should believe, what we should learn, what we should read, and controlling our sexual and reproductive choices.   They would legislate laws giving preference to ‘White Americans’; they would establish English as the national language and Christianity as the national religion.  These extreme Christian groups are no longer a minority voice, but are represented by the Republican majority.  They would revel in an opportunity to establish Christian Shariah law and bring back the inquisition to persecute those who dare to believe or think differently.  

The parallels to Orwell’s 1984 are startling.   We have lost the guarantee of trial by jury under the hypocritical name of The Freedom Act.   The government now has the authority to access our e-mails and track our internet activity, they can read our letters and even monitor the books we check out at the library without proving just cause and seeking judicial approval.  We can be arrested and held indefinitely without trial and even detained by the military and tried by a military tribunal. 

The loss of these Constitutional rights is trivial when compared to the America proposed by the Tea Party – fundamentalist Christian co-opted Republican Party.   We could find ourselves moved back – not to the 1950’s – but to a new Dark Ages where the Bible would replace our Bill of Rights. 

 

During the Stalin era the Communist Manifesto claimed that war with the America was not necessary because the U.S would fall “like an over ripe plumb” because of the inequality among its people. 

Communist Russia in no longer a threat and the economic inequality has surely increased; but the real threat is ignorance and religious fanaticism.  

the Ol'Buzzard

THE COST OF WAR

THE RATIONAL OF WAR IS: IF YOU CAN KILL MORE OF THEM THAN THEY CAN KILL OF YOU - THEN YOU WIN.

When I was in Vietnam my military pay was $1,600 a month; plus, I was making a fantastic $75.00 a month extra for hazardous duty combat pay.   After the war was over I read that the war had actually cost $32,000 per enemy killed.  The cost in American lives in Vietnam was:  58,178 killed, 153,452 wounded and 1,711 missing in action.  

Today I read that, not including the actual cost of the war being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is spending $80,000,000,000 (eighty billion dollars) a year on counter terrorism efforts.   Admiral Dennis Blair (Ret.) who served as director of national intelligence for the Obama administration estimates that there are between 3,000 to 5,000 actual al-Qaeda members.   This means that we are spending between $16,000,000 and $27,000,000 (sixteen to twenty-seven million dollars) per year on each  al-Qaeda suspect.

My question is, why don’t we just contract out the wars?  We should hire mercenaries and pay them per head.  Hell, for a sixteen million dollar bounty you could count me in on the hunt. 

the Ol'Buzzard 

Legacy of the Supreme Court

BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID

Now that I have got your attention...

We often hear about a president’s legacy.   In reality, a president’s legacy may only last to the end of his or her term.   The next president, along with a supporting legislature has the ability to overturn and undo much of his predecessor’s accomplishments.   The only real and lasting legacy a president can leave (or in some cases inflict) is his or her choice of an appointment to the Supreme Court.

The basic purpose of the Supreme Court as designed by the founding fathers was to guard our basic human rights and to act as an arbiter against rash legislation.

However, the idea of impartial judges interpreting the law flies in the face of real politics.   At present, and not for the first time, our Court is divided by strict political party agendas.   Thanks to the appointments of George W. our court is leaning decisively conservative, and conservative courts tend to champion conservative legislation.

Franklin D. Roosevelt constantly fought a conservative court in the 1930’s.   That Court , under Chief Justice Charles Hughes, moved to invalidate much of Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act.   Their opposition included the right to form unions, the right of collective bargaining, minimum wage, child labor laws and social security.   One of the early court’s claims was that the National Recovery Act was an attempt to redistribute the wealth from one class to another. Does that sound familiar?

Soon our conservative leaning Court is scheduled to hear arguments against Obama’s Comprehensive Health Care Reform.   Conservative Republicans are claiming the Individual Mandate, requiring the purchase health insurance or payment of a fine, is unconstitutional.   Now one of the most important legislations in history will stand or fall by a decision from this divided assembly.

The question before the Court is whether Congress exceeded its authority, or whether the Mandate is legal, through the right of Congress to control interstate commerce.   The Obama administration justifies its Mandate on the findings in Wickard v. Filburn (1942.)   In this case the court upheld a penalty on a farmer that was paid, by the government, to limit his wheat crop production, but grew extra wheat for his on personal use.   The court found that if all farmers receiving subsidy grew extra crops for their own use it would affect the economy of interstate commerce.

If the Court overturns the Health Care Mandate it will bring into question literally hundreds of New Deal cases based on the authority to regulate commerce.   It would seem the common sense finding would be to uphold the Mandate; however, in a court with strong ideological leanings the Justices may very well vote their personal political prejudices.

This brings me to the conclusion of this post: The next elected president will most likely appoint one or perhaps two new Supreme Court Judges.   If a Republican is elected President it is likely that our Supreme Court will be skewed to the far right as represented by the current Republican Party.   We stand to see our country move backwards sixty years, to a time of corporate power and limited personal freedom. Ultimately we will see the undoing of Roe v. Wade and Gay rights; a supression of freedom of speech, a move to control the internet, a laxing of integration reforms, a crackdown on immigration; and a move toward a religious theocracy.

So be afraid, be very afraid: and get out and vote.

the Ol’Buzzard

IN GOD WE TRUST

IN GOD WE TRUST: Give me a break.

With all the financial, social and political problems facing the United States, Congress finally decided to act: this week they passed a resolution, with only seven dissenters, confirming that the country’s motto is still IN GOD WE TRUST. 

What ever happened to, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”  This, by the way, is part of the first amendment of our Bill of Rights.

We worry about terrorism, global warming and the financial melt down; but the real threat to this country is creeping Jesus.   Systematically and covertly Christian fundamentalist are moving our country toward a Christian theocracy. 

In Mississippi there is a law proposed to define human life as existing from the time of conception.  This law has been proposed and championed due to the fundamentalist influence that permeates Mississippi and the rest of the south.  Besides outlawing abortion under any circumstances the law would also make the use of some popular birth control methods a crime; and could result in a woman using identified birth control methods being charged with murder. 

At this time oral and anal sex between consenting adults is a crime in thirteen states.   The religious right regularly edit our school books and in many states have passed laws insisting their religious metaphoric creationism be taught in place of, or as an alternative to, the hard science of evolution.   Touting pious morality the amoral Christians have been successful in limiting aides and stem cell research.   They regularly attempt to ban books and movies and they would like to censor the viewing of sexual material on the World Wide Web.

A Christian theocracy would move our country back into a new dark ages; a time of repression, ignorance and inquisition.   Christian fundamentalist must have identified enemies to unite and motivate their flocks.  Moslems, atheist, dead soldiers and homosexuals are their present bitter enemies.   In Maine the Catholic church of Portland was the prime organizer and fund raiser that defeated the Maine Legislature’s Equal Rights Amendment.  Fanatical fundamentalist populated the balcony at the State House and screamed obscenities and scripture verses at the people appearing before the legislature who testified in favor of the amendment.

To paraphrase George Carlin: The Christians are coming and they are not very nice people. 

   

ECONOMIC SANITY

Pie in the sky

The musing of a mad man
Changing a world that can’t change

A Fairy Tail

I opened an earlier BLOG post with the statement: What do we need to turn the country around and make it what we would like to believe it is? We will continue with the subject of moving toward a more perfect democracy – or what needs to be fixed.



FREE MARKET ENTERPRISE



The recent crash in the stock market and banking industry is the final results of years of the flawed Republican Regan economic policies to deregulate markets and backing big business with tax cuts and subsidies. The idea that promoting an environment where the rich can become richer, with a results that it will trickle down to a stable economy for the rest of us, has not worked.



The government must control spending. We must have price controls; we must have clean energy; we have got to quit subsidizing businesses that are not making a profit; and we must close the loopholes that allow business to move manufacturing jobs outside the U.S. in order to profit by avoiding U.S. tax on their products.



Recently the government had to bail out a number of businesses that if allowed to fail would have would have brought about the total destruction of the U.S. economy. We need to learn from this near disaster. The word should go out to all businesses: Never Again.



If the product is good and the business practices are sound the business will survive on its own. A policy of bailing out companies in order to save their work force is encouraging the companies to run inefficiently. Taking a lesson from history, we can see government subsidized businesses in the USSR produced poor products and eventually bankrupted the Soviet state.



American manufacturing companies can not compete against third-world companies, where a workers daily salary equals the hourly salary of an American worker. This type of company is not viable in the United States. We are going to have to allow these companies to restructure or go under. The billion-plus dollars we are spending in the Middle East per-day needs to be channeled into retraining displaced workers, and tax and grant incentives for entrepreneurs to begin new businesses. Steel workers, mill workers, manufacturing workers must be helped to train and find work in other fields. The money spent to save an insolvent company should be used instead, as a safety net to assist displaced workers. There are workers needed in health care, transportation, education, construction…



Manufacturing (the Industrial Revolution) built the wealth of America. With the turn of the new century manufacturing is becoming a third world industry. We must not stagnate – we must move our workforce into the new era of technology. We must have an educated work force with specialized training, if America is going to remain a super power.





BRING BACK THE RAILROAD



I love the railroads. My granddaddy worked for the Illinois Central for sixty-five years. I remember the era of the elite passenger trains: the Humming Bird and the City of New Orleans.



The City of New Orleans in Covington, Tenn.



A few years ago, my wife and I took a trip on Amtrak. We scheduled a compartment from Seattle to Washington D. C. but ended up dumped in Chicago because our train was four hours late (no hold-ups, just not on schedule.) We missed our connections and had to rent a car to complete our trip. It was an expensive and depressing experience.



Amtrak is another company that is poorly managed but subsidized by the government. Rail traffic, however, makes sense. It should be a thriving industry instead of an inefficient government subsidized program. The problem is the infrastructure and technology has remained in the twentieth century. While the oil industry and automobile industry promote the trucking industry with lobbyist in Congress, there are no spokesmen for the rail roads.



An updated freight train should be able to haul a semi-truck load of goods a hundred miles for just a few dollars operating expense, and with a fraction of the energy consumption and pollution. One freight train should be able to replace a hundred semi-trucks.



With grants and tax incentives we need to encourage a renewed interest in railroad transportation. With a network of new tracks and new equipment we could more profitably transport goods, decrease pollution by removing thousands of semi-trucks from the highways. It could relieve the stress on air travel by offering an economical and efficient alternative. Our government would have to accept the decline of the trucking industry and all its support industries. The compensation would be new jobs and new industries to support the modernized rail system.



Right now our rail system is government controlled. Retired railroad workers receive government pensions. The government needs to get out of the railroad business (which they are not running very well) and return it to private, free market control. Privatized railroads, without government subsidies, would run more efficiently. It would initially be costly and require government seed money, but a revitalized railroad system could revitalize the country and eventually operate without subsidies. .





OIL SUX: GREEN IS NOT THE COLOR OF MONEY





The American oil industry and the sheiks of the Middle-East are raping our citizens. They have convinced us that oil consumption is necessary, while they control the supply.



We are presently at war in Iraq because that country sits on the second largest oil reserve in the world. Saddam was a bad guy, but no real threat to America. He did not have nuclear weapons and he did not have a delivery system, but he did have an undeveloped oil reserve. American companies had wanted to develop that oil reserve but were denied access because of an Allied embargo on the country.



Along comes the 2000 presidential election and the oil industry finally take over our government. Cheney was an oil man and the CEO of Halliburton. Bush W. failed as an oil man but is from an oil dynasty. Rice was a lawyer for a major oil company, etc. The dynamic duo of Bush/Cheney came into office with the intention of taking over Iraq and opening the oil fields to American Companies. It was a business move, plain and simple. They just did not understand the complexity of the Middle-East.



We have the technology for wind power; we have the technology for solar power; we have the technology to tap geothermal energy; we have the technology to tap tidal energy; what we do not have is the desire at the government level. Oil company lobbyists, and lobbyists from related industries, are insuring that America remains on the oil standard. And, as long as we remain on the oil standard, we can never truly move toward a low cost, green environmental friendly energy policy. The answer, again, is term limits.

THE FEDERAL BUDGET

The shout in Washington is to reduce revenue, increase spending and balance the budget. If you buy into that you probably plan to spend your tax return on a season pass to the Noah’s Ark Theme Park in Kentucky.



The proposed U.S. budget for 2011 request $3.83 trillion ($3,830,000,000,000.00) in expenditures with an estimated revenue of $2.57 trillion – resulting in a deficit of $1.267 trillion. This will effectively increase our National debt from $11.9 trillion to $13.8 trillion.  See: How Big Is A Trillion? in my Blog of November 22, 2010



In my next BLOG I will look at the big sucking black hole that accounts for over one quarter of our budget.

The U.S. National Deficite or I'll pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today!

OUR CREDIT CARD ECONOMY.

I want it!

I want it all!

I want it now!

And I don’t want to pay for it.

We constantly preach to consumers to pay off their credit cards, lay out a budget and live within their means. However, this is the antithetic of the financial program of the Republican Party. Since the time of Regan the plan has been to operate the budget at a deficit, give the money to the rich, and the rest of us will benefit by serving the needs of the rich as laborers or producers; and, in the meantime the economy will grow to counter set the deficit. Regan called it Trickledown Economics. What an insult to the common man, and yet the punters bought it. We know how much the rich and powerful care for the middle and poorer classes: Let them eat cake. We have seen over the Bush years how well tax cuts for the wealthy benefited the economy.



Ronald Regan begin his term with a tax cut that was not matched by a spending cut, resulting in the largest deficit since World War II. This has only been topped by George W. who, along with the Republican Congress, increased discretionary spending by 26% and decreased revenues with a huge tax cut for the rich, which results in our present deficit.



As of 22 Nov. 2010 at 7:43 GMT our national debt peaked at $13,804,733,376,403.78. Let’s read that off: thirteen trillion, eight hundred and four billion, seven hundred and thirty-three million, three hundred and seventy-six thousand, four hundred and three dollars and seventy eight cents. With an estimated population of 309,527,555 citizens, the debt averages out to about $44,599.37 per person. An even more horrible truth is that with Bush’s wars and the slow economic recovery the debt continues to grow at about $4,170,000,000.00 (four point one seven billion dollars a day.)



When we start talking about millions, billions and trillions the numbers are so large that people don’t really have a concept of actual size. People are so use to hearing the government talk in “trillions” that they become jaded and unconcerned.

HOW BIG IS A TRILLION?

• If you would drum your pencil on the top of your desk once-per-second, it would take you seventeen minutes to drum out one thousand beats.

• If you continued, without stop, twenty-four hours a day, it would take you twelve days to drum out a million beats.

• If you could continue, non stop, it would take you thirty-two years to drum out a billion beats.

• And if you could continue for the rest of your life, and your children’s, and your grandchildren’s… – you could drum out one trillion beats in thirty-two thousand years.



Remember the US budget deficit is over thirteen trillion dollars.

(Check out the national debt at: http:\\www.brillig.com/debt_clock/)

A LEGISLATURE WITHOUT TERM LIMITS,

OR HOW TO BUY A GOVERNMENT.

Remember, the primary goal of any Senator or Congressperson is to remain in office. Fact: the politician able to spend the most money usually gets elected. So how do you stay in office? It doesn’t require a business degree to figure that if you’re good to mamma, mamma’s good to you.



All major businesses are looking for an advantage. It can be government subsidy or relaxation of environmental or labor laws that can increase the profit margin. Therefore, businesses hire lobbyist to romance the legislators with an unspoken understanding that if pro-business legislations are supported the legislator will receive financial support at election time. This whoring by politicians is the results of no term limits.





Now the fly in the ointment: Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876 (2010), was the recent decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that corporate funding of independent political advertisements in candidate elections cannot be limited, under the First Amendment. In other words, corporations can now finance political ads for or against candidates with unlimited funds – they are allowed to buy any election.



As long as politicians can be bought they will legislate on the side of the money. The mega-wealthy and large corporations have usurped control of the Congress and Senate and future legislations will be on the side of war profiteering, tax cuts for the wealthy and tax loop holes for big corporations. The results will be a constant increase in the U.S. deficit and the cutting of social programs as a Republican lip service to deficit responsibility.



Doing away with pork in the U.S. budget is overtly proclaimed by both parties as a step toward financial responsibility – though each Senator and Congressperson covertly pursues all the money he or she can get for their states. A line item veto for the president is the answer to leaning down a bloated budget. (When pigs fly…)



Finally, the U.S. spends more money on its military than all other countries in the world combined.



So, in an ideal world, how would we bring fiscal order to the National budget?

1. Raise taxes to bring in more income.

2. Close the tax loop holes for corporations and the mega-wealthy – one rate for everyone – no deductions.

3. Reorganize and downsize our military.

4. Cut back on unnecessary military related expenditures.

5. Require a balanced budget.

6. Enact a line-item veto for the President.

7. Limit campaign contributions and enact term limits.

Two tears in a bucket – motherfuckit.

The Lady Chablis

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION

THE CORINATION OF ROYALTY

Did you ever consider that you have to pass a test to be a doctor, a lawyer, a CPA or a school teacher; but, any fool on the street can become a senator or congressperson if they can talk enough people into voting for them?



Our legislative body was set up almost two hundred and fifty years ago. Our founders believed in the rights of the individual, but they also believed that the people needed a benevolent, sage group of men to guide them. Illiteracy among the people was the norm and communication and transportation between colonies took weeks and sometimes months. Our founders were opposed to royalty but unknowingly they were creating a royal class.



Both Franklin and Jefferson realized that access to power tends to corrupt politicians and both men supported term limits for officials.



Just as Franklin and Jefferson feared, our Legislative Branch has an old-boy network which is composed of members whose primary concern in reelection. What other small group of people have the power to vote in their own pay raises, decree their own term limits (none) and lock the government into a two party system? Strom Thurman was a senator for 48 years, finally dying while still in office at age 100. Ted Kennedy was in office for 47 years. This is the type of service that locks-in and guarantees the old-boy network. A career as a Senator or Congressman is the best job in town. It is a stepping stone to power, wealth and privilege. It is a coronation to American royalty.



At present senators are elected for six year terms and representatives for two years. Their salaries range upward from $174,000 a year. There is per diem, dislocation pay, foreign travel allowance, domestic travel allowance, office expenses for two offices and allowance for aides and staffers. Legislatures vest in a retirement after five years. They get to choose civil service or government employees retirement systems and health insurance coverage. Their retirement can be up to 80% of their salaries – determined by length of service.



An eight year term limit would change this. It would attract people who desire to serve the public and are willing to make changes for the good of the people. The election to the legislative branch should offer an adequate salary and prestige, but not retirement benefits. It could benefit the people willing to commit to service by returning them to civilian life with an impressive resume. By rotating people in the Legislative Branch we could break the mindset of business as usual and oust the old white men who have controlled and manipulated our government for their own purposes for so many years. The focus would change from getting reelected to serving the people. The Catch-22 is - that the only way we could decree a term limit would be for the Legislative Branch to enact it as law – and they are not about to do that.



In the early 1990’s there was a move by some states to institute term limits for their members of Congress and the Senate. A law suite instituted by legislatures (including Tom Foley, ousted Speaker of the House) against term limits made its way to the Supreme Court. In 1995 the Court ruled term limits unconstitutional. (US Supreme Court ruled term limits unconstitutional in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (May 22, 1995).



Now, the only way for term limits to be instituted would be by an act of Congress. Fat chance for that…



Now let’s move on the other big lie.

ONE PERSON – ONE VOTE – NOT!

As Americans we are brought up to believe that we sustain our democracy through the process of one person one vote. In the Presidential election this is an allusion: the President is elected not by popular vote but by the Electoral College (the old boy network.) It has happened, as recently as Bush that a president was elected that did not receive the majority vote of the people. How wrong is this? In this technological age tabulating the vote of the people is not rocket science. Why do we need an Electoral College if not to allow an avenue for the old-boy network to manipulate the vote?



When we, as Americans, cast our vote for a presidential candidate we are actually casting our vote for electors. Article II of the Constitution requires an Electoral College. The idea of the College was to give states with a smaller population an equal weight in Presidential elections. Also, Congress did not trust the common man to make an informed decision. Each state has one electoral vote corresponding to its number of senators and congressmen. There are five hundred and thirty eight electoral voters and two hundred and seventy are required for a win.



Major political parties may select their electors at their party convention or they may be appointed by party leaders. Here lies the problem: the electors are not required to vote as their state popular vote indicates and their collective votes do not correspond to the percentage of votes cast for each candidate. In the 2000 Presidential election Al Gore won by more than a half million popular votes but George Bush ended up elected to the presidency (with the help of the Supreme Court) by an electoral vote of 271 to 266. Who are these electors that supposedly cast our vote? Most Americans will never know.



Article II, Section I, Clause II of the Constitution states:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.



Changing this system would require a Constitutional Amendment. The old white men who wield the powers in our government and political parties would loose their influence if a Popular Vote Amendment were enacted – and they control the direction of legislation in our House and Senate.



Again, a circular outcome and self-fulfilling expectation comes from a Legislative Body without term limits.



The next BLOG will deal with the selling of our government (Citizens United Ruling,) line item veto and balanced budget.

AMERICA: THE IMPERFECT UNION

ALL THINGS USA CONTINUED.

Or

HOW CAN WE MOVE TOWARD A MORE PERFECT DEMOCRACY?

What do we need to turn the country around and make it what we would like to believe it is? I can give you my list. (Remember, this BLOG is all about me.)



• We need our senators and congressmen to have term limits: being a member of our legislative body should be a service to the country, not a career. No state has term limits for US Senators, as the US Supreme Court ruled such limits unconstitutional in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (May 22, 1995, so tomorrow is the 12th anniversary of that decision).


• We need to get rid of the Electoral College and have the people’s vote elect our president.

• We must close the loop holes that allow industry to manipulate government through lobbyist and contributions. (Citizens United Ruling)

• We need to have a fiscally responsible government: we must stop the pork by enacting a line-item veto for the president.

• We must demand the government operate within a balanced budget.

• We must rethink and reinforce the idea of free enterprise, by not subsidizing inefficient and outmoded companies.

• We need to reinvent the railroad in order to transport goods more efficiently and drastically decrease the need for inefficient and polluting semi-trucks on the highways.

• We must enact a totally green energy-policy.

• We must reorganize and down size our military.

• We must control population growth.

• We must improve the education in this country by removing it from the hands of uninformed legislators and placing it under the total control of educators.

• Finally, we must be an active member, and accountable to a world of nations.



This is a wish list; an unrealistic musing of a path toward a more perfect democracy. The reality is that the United States is not a democracy but a plutocracy: a country manipulated by corporate interest. The government proper is juxtaposed between two political parties, each vying for control. What’s good for the people is second place to securing power for the party and the personal ambitions of the legislatures. All this is fed by the wealthiest Americans and mega-corporations that funnel money into the electoral process, allowing them a major influence on legislative outcomes. Add to this a sizable sector of the population that is not bright, uninformed and easily manipulated by thirty-second commercials, loaded phrased and catch words like abortion, gays, guns, god, patriotism, the military… and you have a country locked in to system that is moving toward a place and time that we will all regret.

The TEA PARTY NATION -

BE AFRAID - BE VERY AFRAID

In future Blogs I will discuss each item listed in the above wish list.

Patriotism: God Bless America and Don't Tell Me Otherwise.

ALL THINGS USA

Life is full of experiences,

though it’s dust in the wind.

What’s really important

are women and men.

People are important. Every person lives in a mini-world of loves, pains, accomplishments and failures. The path we follow constantly changes us. As individuals we are capable of great good and great evil – but generally we just try to keep-on keeping-on: but we constantly change.



Solzhenitsyn said it best (Gulag Archipelago,) “One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being.”



I have empathy for human beings. Most of the people I know struggle just to get by. There are women raising children, men working long hours, kids in school, old people facing the reality of their passing; everyone wants that little bit of happiness, or at least contentment.



The individual’s great down fall is when he loses concern for the feelings of other human beings. We are egocentric by nature, but we have the ability for compassion. It is only when we organize ourselves as group that we tend to lose our personality and our individual compassion. That is when we are capable of the greatest evil.



Humans are heard animals and we have an imprinted nature to organize and identify ourselves as a group. There are good groups, destructive groups, and necessary groups; and when we become a member of a particular group we willingly hand over our individualism and identity to the group. We have club affiliations; church affiliations; local, state and federal affiliations: political parties, law enforcement, military, clubs and gangs etc. As a member of a group the needs of the group become paramount over the needs of the individual – and as a member we loose our individual empathy and concern for people outside our group.

GROUP USA



Patriotism

Good God y’all

What is it good for? 
War



We make a mistake when we show blind allegiance to our government. Our founding fathers came from a monarchy in which the individual’s purpose was to serve the needs of the government. Our country was founded on the premise that the government be organized to serve the needs of the individual. But, over the years our government has moved away from the principals of individual liberty and freedom guaranteed by our constitution. We now find ourselves alumni of the Bush “W” era when the government operated in secrecy; a chilling parody of George Orwell’s 1984:

“WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

And Big Brother knows what’s best for you.

We should hold our government accountable to serve our needs and our best interest.

It makes you wonder at what point in the Orwellian nightmare did Big Brother begin scaring the people with Terror Level Colors – At what point did Big Brother give immunity to the tela-coms for spying on the people – At what point was Big Brother able to convince the people that arrest and confinement without due process was acceptable – And at what point was torture warranted for the protection of the state. It took real patriots to accept the rule of Big Brother.



I don’t trust the word Patriotism, for it bespeaks blind allegiance to the heard. I am fortunate to be born in this country, but I am not blind to the fact that there have always been factions in our government that do not, and have not served the needs of the individual. Just as we must have a realistic view of religions we need to take off the rose colored glasses and have a realistic and informed view of our country.



When I taught History in high schools I always begin by making the point that U.S. history is a record of wars and the lulls in-between the wars - as written from the perspective of the winner. In the United States our heritage is war. War has defined us:

• 1620-1754: Scrimmages with the Indians, Dutch, French and Spanish

• 1754-1763: French and Indian War

• 1770: Boston Massacre

• 1773: Boston Tea Party

• 1775-1783: Revolutionary War

• 1786: Shays Rebellion

• 1812-1814: War of 1812

• 1846-1848: Mexican War

• 1861-1865: Civil War

• 1898: Spanish American War

• 1914-1918: First World War

• 1939-1945: Second World War

• 1950-1953: Korean War

• 1961: Cuban Standoff

• 1964-1973: Viet Nam War

• 1982: U.S. invades Grenada

• 1991: Persian Gulf War

• 2001 The war on Al Qaeda

• 2003: U.S. invades Iraq

• 2003: Iraq war

• 2004 :Troops sent into Pakistan



Each war has brought on social and political changes. We could paraphrase Solzhenitsyn and say: One and the same country is, at various times, under various circumstances, a totally different country. As wars and weaponry have become more and more dangerous to humanity, war should be viewed less and less as the means of settling disputes and controlling natural resources.



The specter of war rallies many of our people to blind patriotism, which allows our leaders to maneuver our Nation into dangerous and destructive situations.

I have told my students that the history they are taught has been written and edited here in America – with an American perspective – and an American spin.



Let’s take a realistic look at the United States.

• We are 16% of the world population, yet we consume 25% of the world’s natural resources

• We have a huge disparity between the rich and the poor resulting in a decline of the middle class.

• 25% of the world’s jail population is incarcerated in the United States.

• We have a greater percentage of citizens in jail than in college.

• We have the highest infant mortality rate of any developed nation.

• We are the only major industrial nation that still has a death penalty.

• Our students perform poorly on standardized test.

• Industries are leaving the United States at an alarming rate because they can not compete using American workers.

• We have a decaying infrastructure: roads, railways, bridges, sewer and water

• We have a government willing to spend billions of dollars a month on the unnecessary invasion of Iraq while we have thousands of families that can’t afford health care, and thousands of children that go to bed hungry.





On the positive side: we live in a country where an intelligent boy from a poor family, raised by a single mother can become President of the United States. (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama)



On the flip side: we must also be aware that a boy from a rich family, with a mediocre education, a background of drug addiction and a history of irresponsibility and business failures, because of his connections, can be appointed President of the United States. (George W.)



Nothing is black and white. People with initiative can succeed here. Good, hard working people can also fall through the cracks. We have many opportunities in this country yet many of our people are disenfranchised.



We have our proud times: On September 11th twenty-three religious fanatics took the lives of 3000 innocent civilians, and our people rallied. This attack will go down in our history books as an atrocity against humanity.



But we also have our darker side that you will not fine detailed in the high school history books as an atrocity against humanity:



The date was August 6, 1945. It was eight fifteen in the morning. The sun was coming up in the east and the city was coming to life. The people of a major metropolitan city were starting their daily routine. Mothers were feeding their children breakfast and preparing them for school; fathers were leaving for their jobs; while somewhere overhead an American bomber was releasing the first nuclear bomb.



The explosion took place 1900 feet above the city. The ground zero area was disintegrated and two thirds of the city leveled instantly. Of the three hundred and fifty thousand civilians in the city of Hiroshima, one hundred and forty thousand died.

Five days later a second nuclear bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Of the two hundred and seventy thousand civilian inhabitants, seventy thousand died: men, women, children, old people, pregnant women, unborn babies…and no birds sang.

The men who released the bombs were American patriots. We are the only country to have ever use nuclear weapons: and we dropped two of them – on civilian cities.



Are we bad? No, we are human. Men have always been willing to kill other humans, we had just learned to do it more effectively – and we did it first. We write the history, so we will justify this killing.



Am I proud to be an American? Sometimes.



I live a pretty good life. I have a cabin in the north Maine woods, a beautiful wife, a fat cat, a four-wheel drive truck, and enough income to keep the wolf away from the door (barely.) There is no place else I would care to be.



Am I disillusioned with America?  No. I am disillusioned with Americans. The American people on the whole are poorly educated, uninformed and apathetic. They do not make it their business to hold their government accountable. A small percentage of our people vote and of those that do, many blindly follow a party allegiance.



A large percentage of the American people believe they live in a fairytale utopian city/state ordained and overseen by a Christian God. They believe that to question actions of the government is blasphemy and they are willing to blindly line up with flags and placards in hand – and even give their lives – when the political/ industrial puppeteers invoke the cry of patriotism.



Samuel Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of scoundrels. Actually, patriotism is the autonomic response of the heard to the scoundrels who invoke patriotism as a means of control and manipulation.

Patriotism is mindlessness – Beware!