The new breed of Tea Pot Republican is utterly oblivious to both fact and law. That they win elections is testimony to the deliberate ignorance of too many American voters. This is perhaps the core reason for pessimism about the American democratic experiment.
One of the worst examples to come to light is Martin Harty, a Barrington Republican elected to the Vermont legislature. He's a nonagenarian who, according to his own party members in the legislature, is "constantly confused, easily swayed, hard of hearing, and prone to offer up unrelated commentary or go off on unrelated tangents." He recently told a constituent who manages a community mental health program that there are "too many defective people," and that such people should be "shipped to Siberia to freeze to death and clean up the population."
Then there's Michelle Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman whose lack of knowledge of American history would have disqualified her from voting under state regulations in many southern states before passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. She thinks the Battle of Concord took place in New Hampshire.
Republican folly and lawlessness is not limited to isolated fruitcakes like Harty, Bachmann and Rand Paul. The entire majority leadership of the House of Representatives qualifies.
For purely political purposes, these geniuses demanded that President Obama unilaterally declare and enforce a no-fly zone over Libya -- a clear act of war under international law. We're already bleeding our military and our treasury fighting two other illegal, unwinnable wars. These fools want us to launch a third?
If, indeed, a no-fly zone is an effective instrument in bringing down a ruthless dictator and assisting a democratic revolution in Libya, the Arab League has offered a legal way of doing it by petitioning the United Nations to establish a no-fly zone.
As neighbor states to Libya, they act in strict accord with the United Nations Charter, Articles 41 and 42. The first gives the Security Council authority to decide what measures NOT involving military force may be taken against any nation which mounts a breach of the peace. Article 42 allows military actions, such as the no-fly zone, when non-military tactics fail.
But the half-cocked crazies in the house majority can't be bothered with legal procedures and nuances of the law. They're NRA card-carryin' whoop-de-doo Bush II cowboys who shoot first and ask questions later.
As long as someone else's sons and daughters are doing the real fighting.
Remember, too, that these great humanitarians told us, when Bush II's wars were squandering our surplus and plunging us into debt, that Saint Ronald the Reagan had proved that "deficits don't matter."
Except when you can make political capital by demonizing Obamacare, destroying unions and ruthlessly cutting funds for programs that millions of common citizens and unemployed Americans desperately need. Then suddenly the tea brains tell us the Deficit Bogeyman has to be slain this very minute.
Fact? Law? That's real world stuff. Don't disturb their Tea Pot fantasies with reality.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Monday, March 14, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Speak Not Truth, Lest Ye Be Fired (Part II)
Yesterday, P.J. Crowley, the State Department media spokesman, told an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that the military treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning was "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." This is absolutely true.
The Quantico brig's torture and humiliation of Manning, who is accused of giving documents to WikiLeaks, is also barbaric, uncivilized, illegal and revolting.
Today President Obama fired Crowley.
No further comment is necessary.
The Quantico brig's torture and humiliation of Manning, who is accused of giving documents to WikiLeaks, is also barbaric, uncivilized, illegal and revolting.
Today President Obama fired Crowley.
No further comment is necessary.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
On the Primrose Path to the Radish Patch
A friend who grows radishes in England has joined me in a quest for reasons for optimism about the United States, from which he emigrated a few years ago.
Another friend, who like the two of us once committed journalism for a living, opined that Republicans in Wisconsin and in the U.S. House of Representatives have "gone too far" and ignited a political back-fire.
We wanted to be persuaded but weren't, even though folks like Keith Olbermann and Robert Reich support the notion.
Suppose, for a moment, that the disgusting antics of the Republican majority in the House have, in fact, turned many independents and even a few intelligent Republicans against the party's extremism. What would be the practical result?
Perhaps a few Democratic spines in the Senate might be stiffened against some of the more outrageous bills spewing out of the House. But Harry Reid & Co. have already caved in on the big battle of this session: they've accepted as real the Republican Deficit Bogeyman and the only question is how deep will the cuts be in essential services and programs. With near record unemployment, with retirement savings decimated for millions of older Americans, with the poorest health care in the civilized world, with urban infrastructure decayed and failing, we'll disembowel the programs we need most.
We'll keep excreting trillions on unwinnable wars, to beef up the profits of the defense and energy industries.
Having maintained the fiction of a government of, by and for "the people" by making corporations people, all of the real people will lie down and expose their throats for convenient stomping by the hobnailed boots of Big Business.
But if folks really are steamed about what the Republicans are doing with their majorities, we will re-elect Barack Obama in 2012 and restore Democratic majorities in Congress. Obama will make more concessions to the corporate oligarchs, post more foxes to guard more public henhouses, take away more civil liberties, and move the country still further to the right. His second term policies will be virtually indistinguishable from Bush II's second-term policies. You know, the ones that almost caused a second Great Depression.
The new Democrats in Congress will be clones of the ones still there: either thinly-disguised Republicans called "Blue Dogs," or spineless wimps who sell their souls to corporate America and go brain-dead when the far right shouts "Boo!"
As for Wisconsin, all you need to know is that its governor recently told a Christofascist meeting that every decision he makes is made on direct instructions from God, with whom he converses daily.
My radish-farming friend didn't flee these shores for political reasons, but to wed an English wife. Politically, the Brits have problems enough of their own, but at least over there, a pol who hears voices from heaven is usually asked to undergo psychiatric examination.
Another friend, who like the two of us once committed journalism for a living, opined that Republicans in Wisconsin and in the U.S. House of Representatives have "gone too far" and ignited a political back-fire.
We wanted to be persuaded but weren't, even though folks like Keith Olbermann and Robert Reich support the notion.
Suppose, for a moment, that the disgusting antics of the Republican majority in the House have, in fact, turned many independents and even a few intelligent Republicans against the party's extremism. What would be the practical result?
Perhaps a few Democratic spines in the Senate might be stiffened against some of the more outrageous bills spewing out of the House. But Harry Reid & Co. have already caved in on the big battle of this session: they've accepted as real the Republican Deficit Bogeyman and the only question is how deep will the cuts be in essential services and programs. With near record unemployment, with retirement savings decimated for millions of older Americans, with the poorest health care in the civilized world, with urban infrastructure decayed and failing, we'll disembowel the programs we need most.
We'll keep excreting trillions on unwinnable wars, to beef up the profits of the defense and energy industries.
Having maintained the fiction of a government of, by and for "the people" by making corporations people, all of the real people will lie down and expose their throats for convenient stomping by the hobnailed boots of Big Business.
But if folks really are steamed about what the Republicans are doing with their majorities, we will re-elect Barack Obama in 2012 and restore Democratic majorities in Congress. Obama will make more concessions to the corporate oligarchs, post more foxes to guard more public henhouses, take away more civil liberties, and move the country still further to the right. His second term policies will be virtually indistinguishable from Bush II's second-term policies. You know, the ones that almost caused a second Great Depression.
The new Democrats in Congress will be clones of the ones still there: either thinly-disguised Republicans called "Blue Dogs," or spineless wimps who sell their souls to corporate America and go brain-dead when the far right shouts "Boo!"
As for Wisconsin, all you need to know is that its governor recently told a Christofascist meeting that every decision he makes is made on direct instructions from God, with whom he converses daily.
My radish-farming friend didn't flee these shores for political reasons, but to wed an English wife. Politically, the Brits have problems enough of their own, but at least over there, a pol who hears voices from heaven is usually asked to undergo psychiatric examination.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Speak Not Truth, Lest Ye Be Fired
How deep we have sunk. How backward we have regressed. All the way down, all the way back to the black abyss of Orwell's 1984.
You can now be fired from your job for speaking the truth, in private, to your colleagues at work.
Vivian Schiller was forced out Wednesday as CEO of National Public Radio -- one of the last bastions of occasional truth in American media today -- because some slimeball wing nut came up with another entrapment video.
This one captured Ron Schiller -- an NPR executive who is not related to Vivian Schiller -- describing the so-called Tea Party movement as "racist" and "xenophobic." Anyone who is not utterly deluded by Frank Luntz-Heritage Foundation bovine excrement knows that these terms are perfectly apt descriptors.
The chairman of the board that fired Vivian Schiller said, "I recognize the magnitude of this news."
"News?"
What's "news" is that a Big Brother network now operates in this country with absolute impunity to constitutional protections of privacy.
Watch what you say around the water cooler. The Juvenile Spy Klan is everywhere.
You can now be fired from your job for speaking the truth, in private, to your colleagues at work.
Vivian Schiller was forced out Wednesday as CEO of National Public Radio -- one of the last bastions of occasional truth in American media today -- because some slimeball wing nut came up with another entrapment video.
This one captured Ron Schiller -- an NPR executive who is not related to Vivian Schiller -- describing the so-called Tea Party movement as "racist" and "xenophobic." Anyone who is not utterly deluded by Frank Luntz-Heritage Foundation bovine excrement knows that these terms are perfectly apt descriptors.
The chairman of the board that fired Vivian Schiller said, "I recognize the magnitude of this news."
"News?"
What's "news" is that a Big Brother network now operates in this country with absolute impunity to constitutional protections of privacy.
Watch what you say around the water cooler. The Juvenile Spy Klan is everywhere.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
How Blatant Lies Become "Fact" in These United States
A cartoon in today's local newspaper represents the outright lies a gullible electorate believes, partly because the mainstream media repeat them as fact without bothering to do basic journalism checking them out.
It depicts a thuggish, bloated figure labeled "unions" riding the back of a small, overburdened figure labeled "taxpayers."
Its creator accepted as fact the blatant lies that have been repeated countless times in print, on the radio and on television, especially since the Wisconsin public employe protests began.
The media have parroted without challenge Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's wildly untrue statements in support of his so-called "budget repair bill," a thinly-disguised attempt to destroy unionism in one of the states where it began.
Here is David Cay Johnson, multiple Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, best-selling author, distinguished university lecturer (and registered Republican):
"(Walker) says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans.
Accepting Gov. Walker' s assertions as fact, and failing to check, created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not.
Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.
How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so, a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services.
Thus, state workers are not being asked to simply "contribute more" to Wisconsin' s retirement system (or as the argument goes, "pay their fair share" of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin' s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin."
There are foolproof and longstanding laws of economic cause and effect that make this arrangement beneficial to both sides.
Understanding them requires a bit more time, study and effort than simply repeating what politicians like Walker say, as too many journalists today are wont to do. But here, from the economist Dean Baker, is an easy-to-grasp explanation:
"At the center of the right's story is the view that governments are somehow being reckless or irresponsible when they provide guaranteed pensions for their workers. They tell us that these guaranteed benefits will bankrupt state and local governments, imposing impossible burdens on future taxpayers.
This story can be easily shown to be untrue. While the right has been scaring the public with talk of a trillion dollars in unfunded liability in state pensions, this sum can also be expressed as about 0.2 percent of state income over the time-frame in which the liabilities will have to be paid.
In other words, if states raise 20 cents in taxes or cut 20 cents in other spending for every hundred dollars of future income, they will be able to meet their current pension obligations. This is not a trivial sum, but it doesn't seem likely to bankrupt our youth either.
Furthermore, the vast majority of this shortfall was due to the plunge in the stock market that followed the collapse of the housing bubble. Overly generous pensions were not the problem. The problem here were the greedy Wall Street types who profited from the housing bubble and the incompetent economists who did not see it. Of course the market has recovered much of its losses, so future years' pension reports are likely to show that most of shortfall has already been eliminated.
But it is important to understand the basic logic of defined benefit pensions, since many are trying to eliminate them altogether. Defined benefit pensions are in effect a form of insurance. They guarantee workers a level of retirement income based on the years that they work.
This guarantee of future income is more valuable to workers than getting the same amount of money in salary since it would be very expensive for workers to buy the same insurance from the financial industry. From the standpoint of the government, the insurance is virtually costless.
State and local governments will survive into the indefinite future. If the stock market is down any given year or set of years there is little consequence for a government offering a pension fund. Of course, a down market would be devastating for an individual worker if it happens at the point where he/she retires.
This simple logic means that governments can give workers something that is of great value - a guaranteed retirement income -- at very little cost. (Research shows that even after adding in pensions, health care and other benefits, public sector workers are paid slightly less than their private-sector counterparts. This means that because governments offer defined benefit pensions they can either attract better workers at the same pay, or the same quality workers at lower pay, than if they did not offer pensions. This is as basic as economics gets."
Facts, basic economics, logic, legal precedent, even the Constitution -- -- none of these seem to modify in anyway the bullying anti-intellecutal nonsense of the prevailing Tea Pot element of the Republican party. And far too many members of the voting public believe their lies.
It depicts a thuggish, bloated figure labeled "unions" riding the back of a small, overburdened figure labeled "taxpayers."
Its creator accepted as fact the blatant lies that have been repeated countless times in print, on the radio and on television, especially since the Wisconsin public employe protests began.
The media have parroted without challenge Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's wildly untrue statements in support of his so-called "budget repair bill," a thinly-disguised attempt to destroy unionism in one of the states where it began.
Here is David Cay Johnson, multiple Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, best-selling author, distinguished university lecturer (and registered Republican):
"(Walker) says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans.
Accepting Gov. Walker' s assertions as fact, and failing to check, created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not.
Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.
How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so, a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services.
Thus, state workers are not being asked to simply "contribute more" to Wisconsin' s retirement system (or as the argument goes, "pay their fair share" of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin' s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin."
There are foolproof and longstanding laws of economic cause and effect that make this arrangement beneficial to both sides.
Understanding them requires a bit more time, study and effort than simply repeating what politicians like Walker say, as too many journalists today are wont to do. But here, from the economist Dean Baker, is an easy-to-grasp explanation:
"At the center of the right's story is the view that governments are somehow being reckless or irresponsible when they provide guaranteed pensions for their workers. They tell us that these guaranteed benefits will bankrupt state and local governments, imposing impossible burdens on future taxpayers.
This story can be easily shown to be untrue. While the right has been scaring the public with talk of a trillion dollars in unfunded liability in state pensions, this sum can also be expressed as about 0.2 percent of state income over the time-frame in which the liabilities will have to be paid.
In other words, if states raise 20 cents in taxes or cut 20 cents in other spending for every hundred dollars of future income, they will be able to meet their current pension obligations. This is not a trivial sum, but it doesn't seem likely to bankrupt our youth either.
Furthermore, the vast majority of this shortfall was due to the plunge in the stock market that followed the collapse of the housing bubble. Overly generous pensions were not the problem. The problem here were the greedy Wall Street types who profited from the housing bubble and the incompetent economists who did not see it. Of course the market has recovered much of its losses, so future years' pension reports are likely to show that most of shortfall has already been eliminated.
But it is important to understand the basic logic of defined benefit pensions, since many are trying to eliminate them altogether. Defined benefit pensions are in effect a form of insurance. They guarantee workers a level of retirement income based on the years that they work.
This guarantee of future income is more valuable to workers than getting the same amount of money in salary since it would be very expensive for workers to buy the same insurance from the financial industry. From the standpoint of the government, the insurance is virtually costless.
State and local governments will survive into the indefinite future. If the stock market is down any given year or set of years there is little consequence for a government offering a pension fund. Of course, a down market would be devastating for an individual worker if it happens at the point where he/she retires.
This simple logic means that governments can give workers something that is of great value - a guaranteed retirement income -- at very little cost. (Research shows that even after adding in pensions, health care and other benefits, public sector workers are paid slightly less than their private-sector counterparts. This means that because governments offer defined benefit pensions they can either attract better workers at the same pay, or the same quality workers at lower pay, than if they did not offer pensions. This is as basic as economics gets."
Facts, basic economics, logic, legal precedent, even the Constitution -- -- none of these seem to modify in anyway the bullying anti-intellecutal nonsense of the prevailing Tea Pot element of the Republican party. And far too many members of the voting public believe their lies.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The United States of Hypocrisy
A conservative friend, in a recent e-mail, deplored certain politicians of his own persuasion who preach "family values" but practice them only at home, while keeping a tootsie on the side in a hot pillow joint.
Hypocrisy indeed is rife in our public affairs and is not limited to sexual peccadillos, hetero- or homo-.
Can anything be more hypocritical than the words of the Nobel Laureate in the White House and his Secretary of State, demanding that other countries improve their "record" on human rights?
This government's treatment of a young citizen, Bradley Manning, is not merely criminal. It is not merely inhumane. It is not merely contrary to the Geneva Conventions. It is not merely torture. It is beneath contempt. It is barbaric. It demeans every United States citizen who does not cry out against it.
Barack Obama knows this is happening. If he did not explicitly authorize it, his silence gives tacit consent.
Hillary Clinton knows this is happening. Yet she dared to give a speech about human rights and remain silent when a 73-year-old man was physically abused by federal thugs for silently protesting her hypocrisy by standing and turning his back to her.
When both of them were contending for the Democratic party's presidential nomination, they decried the Bush administration's use of torture on so-called "enemy combatants" who were in fact political prisoners. Yet they allow the torture of an innocent citizen soldier-- innocent under the law because he has yet to be tried on any charge -- under the vile and transparent subterfuge that his captors are protecting him from self-harm. When Manning himself sarcastically pointed out this hypocrisy, the military authorities simply heaped more cruelties on him.
United States Senators and Congressmen on both sides of the aisle know this is happening. Their silence on the matter is deafening; they're too busy tilting at windmills like the Deficit Bogeyman to fret over the loss of human rights here at home.
This is a sick country. Neither political party has produced anyone remotely resembling the sort of leader who can make it well again -- financially, morally, politically or ethically.
If such a someone were to emerge from the background, he'd get my vote even if he had half a dozen tootsies on the side.
Hypocrisy indeed is rife in our public affairs and is not limited to sexual peccadillos, hetero- or homo-.
Can anything be more hypocritical than the words of the Nobel Laureate in the White House and his Secretary of State, demanding that other countries improve their "record" on human rights?
This government's treatment of a young citizen, Bradley Manning, is not merely criminal. It is not merely inhumane. It is not merely contrary to the Geneva Conventions. It is not merely torture. It is beneath contempt. It is barbaric. It demeans every United States citizen who does not cry out against it.
Barack Obama knows this is happening. If he did not explicitly authorize it, his silence gives tacit consent.
Hillary Clinton knows this is happening. Yet she dared to give a speech about human rights and remain silent when a 73-year-old man was physically abused by federal thugs for silently protesting her hypocrisy by standing and turning his back to her.
When both of them were contending for the Democratic party's presidential nomination, they decried the Bush administration's use of torture on so-called "enemy combatants" who were in fact political prisoners. Yet they allow the torture of an innocent citizen soldier-- innocent under the law because he has yet to be tried on any charge -- under the vile and transparent subterfuge that his captors are protecting him from self-harm. When Manning himself sarcastically pointed out this hypocrisy, the military authorities simply heaped more cruelties on him.
United States Senators and Congressmen on both sides of the aisle know this is happening. Their silence on the matter is deafening; they're too busy tilting at windmills like the Deficit Bogeyman to fret over the loss of human rights here at home.
This is a sick country. Neither political party has produced anyone remotely resembling the sort of leader who can make it well again -- financially, morally, politically or ethically.
If such a someone were to emerge from the background, he'd get my vote even if he had half a dozen tootsies on the side.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
To Those Who Rally for The American Dream
To my fellow patriots, who are rallying today in state capitals and major cities around the country in support of the government workers of Wisconsin:
I deeply regret that we were unable to make the long journey to Santa Fe to join you today. We support you from afar, as we have supported from afar the beloved granddaughter who is at this very moment with the freedom fighters in Madison, as she has been from the outset.
Like those throughout the Arab world fighting nonviolently for freedom, you are predominantly young, seeking to restore the democracy we older Americans let slip away. Why did we allow giant corporations, plutocrats, oligarchs, to capture our democracy? Avarice. Ignorance. Distraction. Moral sloth. Ethical indifference. Self-deceit. Deafness to uncomfortable truth. History, I fear, will judge us harshly as it will the leaders we allowed to be "elected."
We have placed a terrible burden on your shoulders. We gave away our moral standing when we allowed our leaders to lie us into a degrading, illicit war, which is continuing endlessly, draining our resources and plunging us ever deeper into debt. We forfeited our most precious rights, enshrined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, when we failed to rebel against the so-called PATRIOT Act. Party labels aside, we have persisted in electing a kakistocracy to public office, ignorant or cowardly or amoral individuals eager to trade the public good for private profit.
In the outcome of your struggle lies the fate of the nation. The power of organized workers is the last remaining counter-force in these United States to the corporate takeover of everything. Only you stand between the hope for a rebirth of freedom, and a dictatorship of the obscenely rich.
The odds are against you, as they are against the masses of the common people in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and the other Arab countries where, by some miracle of the human intellect and spirit, a vast clamoring for human rights has spontaneously erupted. They are seeking what my generation had, and squandered.
It remains for you, the young and idealistic, to fight to regain them. We have handed to you, patriots in the capitol squares of America, what our greatest president called a "great unfinished task." You must see to it that government of the people, by the people and for the people does not perish from the earth.
You are the last, the best, the only hope. May you find the strength, the courage, the resolve to win this great battle on behalf of all The People.
I deeply regret that we were unable to make the long journey to Santa Fe to join you today. We support you from afar, as we have supported from afar the beloved granddaughter who is at this very moment with the freedom fighters in Madison, as she has been from the outset.
Like those throughout the Arab world fighting nonviolently for freedom, you are predominantly young, seeking to restore the democracy we older Americans let slip away. Why did we allow giant corporations, plutocrats, oligarchs, to capture our democracy? Avarice. Ignorance. Distraction. Moral sloth. Ethical indifference. Self-deceit. Deafness to uncomfortable truth. History, I fear, will judge us harshly as it will the leaders we allowed to be "elected."
We have placed a terrible burden on your shoulders. We gave away our moral standing when we allowed our leaders to lie us into a degrading, illicit war, which is continuing endlessly, draining our resources and plunging us ever deeper into debt. We forfeited our most precious rights, enshrined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, when we failed to rebel against the so-called PATRIOT Act. Party labels aside, we have persisted in electing a kakistocracy to public office, ignorant or cowardly or amoral individuals eager to trade the public good for private profit.
In the outcome of your struggle lies the fate of the nation. The power of organized workers is the last remaining counter-force in these United States to the corporate takeover of everything. Only you stand between the hope for a rebirth of freedom, and a dictatorship of the obscenely rich.
The odds are against you, as they are against the masses of the common people in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and the other Arab countries where, by some miracle of the human intellect and spirit, a vast clamoring for human rights has spontaneously erupted. They are seeking what my generation had, and squandered.
It remains for you, the young and idealistic, to fight to regain them. We have handed to you, patriots in the capitol squares of America, what our greatest president called a "great unfinished task." You must see to it that government of the people, by the people and for the people does not perish from the earth.
You are the last, the best, the only hope. May you find the strength, the courage, the resolve to win this great battle on behalf of all The People.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
On Wisconsin, FDR and a Coward Named Cox
Andrew Sullivan and Clive Crook have brought Franklin D. Roosevelt into the Wisconsin governor's battle with the state's government employees.
FDR is perhaps the most venerated saint in the labor movement's heaven. Surely, then, the far right will try to make capital of his 1937 letter, cited on the Sullivan blog, to Luther C. Steward, president of the National Federation of Federal employees, particularly these passages:
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees.
Blest though he may be, FDR's private opinions of 74 years ago are utterly irrelevant to what's happening in Wisconsin and spreading to other states with Tea Pot governors. Introducing his Steward letter to the Wisconsin debate would be comparable to introducing into the 1964 Civil Rights deliberations the words Lincoln spoke at Charleston, IL, in the debate with Douglas:
I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.
Such beliefs, held by most white people at the time, did not diminish Lincoln's hatred of the institution of slavery, nor his determination that it must face "ultimate extinction" in this country.
FDR's remarks about federal government employees, set in the context of 1937, were tempered by a preface:
The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical.
It would be decades before both federal and state governments began to acknowledge that if public workers' "desire" is basically no different from that of employees in private industry, then their rights under the laws governing labor relations should be no different, either.
The historical context of FDR's letter is important. It was written just weeks after American labor had been revolutionized by the auto industry's acceptance of the UAW as bargaining agent for its workers. It was written just months after passage of the National Labor Relations Act (the so-called Wagner Act) paved the way for not just auto workers, but millions of other American wage-earners to lift themselves up by the bootstraps into lives of dignity, able ultimately to afford better health care, pensions and win government oversight of workplace safety. New and radical stuff! It came even as the richest Americans, the barons of business and finance, were villifying "that man" in the White House for the communist folly called Social Security. FDR's personal view about public employees was shaped by that political climate, by the times in which he governed, just as Lincoln's personal views on race were shaped by the times in which he operated.
America's labor laws are a swiss cheese of often discordant federal and state laws, so that what's legal in the 22 right to work states, for example, doesn't apply in states like Wisconsin that have for half a century recognized public employees' right to collective bargaining. That is a right democratically won under rules virtually identical to those spelled out in the NLRA, and thus, I contend, absolutely irrevocable by unilateral action of either signatory. It would be for the Wisconsin courts to decide, but I submit that neither the legislature nor the governor can repeal that right without the consent of the unions and their members.
I will not even attempt to conceal my contempt for Wisconsin's governor and Republican legislators, for the rapacious Koch brothers who put them in office, or for their supporters in other states seeking to solve budget problems by breaking the backs of labor and cutting taxes on corporations.
I hold in particular contempt such supporters as Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox of Indiana, who twittered recently that Wisconsin officials should "use live ammunition" against the Madison protesters. Asked if he meant that literally, he replied, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force."
Mr. Cox, my granddaughter, Brittany, is one of those protesters and has been from the outset. She's a social worker, who worked three jobs to get through college and earn her master's degree. She works countless unpaid hours and often spends her own limited resources to provide her clients with things they need. Her program has reduced Wisconsin's infant mortality rate among racial minorities from one of the highest to one of the lowest in the nation.
Mr. Cox, you scum, you are unworthy to lick the dirt off Brittany's shoe soles. I invite you, you miserable coward, to come to New Mexico and tell me to my face that you want to "use live ammunition" against Brittany.
FDR is perhaps the most venerated saint in the labor movement's heaven. Surely, then, the far right will try to make capital of his 1937 letter, cited on the Sullivan blog, to Luther C. Steward, president of the National Federation of Federal employees, particularly these passages:
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees.
Blest though he may be, FDR's private opinions of 74 years ago are utterly irrelevant to what's happening in Wisconsin and spreading to other states with Tea Pot governors. Introducing his Steward letter to the Wisconsin debate would be comparable to introducing into the 1964 Civil Rights deliberations the words Lincoln spoke at Charleston, IL, in the debate with Douglas:
I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.
Such beliefs, held by most white people at the time, did not diminish Lincoln's hatred of the institution of slavery, nor his determination that it must face "ultimate extinction" in this country.
FDR's remarks about federal government employees, set in the context of 1937, were tempered by a preface:
The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical.
It would be decades before both federal and state governments began to acknowledge that if public workers' "desire" is basically no different from that of employees in private industry, then their rights under the laws governing labor relations should be no different, either.
The historical context of FDR's letter is important. It was written just weeks after American labor had been revolutionized by the auto industry's acceptance of the UAW as bargaining agent for its workers. It was written just months after passage of the National Labor Relations Act (the so-called Wagner Act) paved the way for not just auto workers, but millions of other American wage-earners to lift themselves up by the bootstraps into lives of dignity, able ultimately to afford better health care, pensions and win government oversight of workplace safety. New and radical stuff! It came even as the richest Americans, the barons of business and finance, were villifying "that man" in the White House for the communist folly called Social Security. FDR's personal view about public employees was shaped by that political climate, by the times in which he governed, just as Lincoln's personal views on race were shaped by the times in which he operated.
America's labor laws are a swiss cheese of often discordant federal and state laws, so that what's legal in the 22 right to work states, for example, doesn't apply in states like Wisconsin that have for half a century recognized public employees' right to collective bargaining. That is a right democratically won under rules virtually identical to those spelled out in the NLRA, and thus, I contend, absolutely irrevocable by unilateral action of either signatory. It would be for the Wisconsin courts to decide, but I submit that neither the legislature nor the governor can repeal that right without the consent of the unions and their members.
I will not even attempt to conceal my contempt for Wisconsin's governor and Republican legislators, for the rapacious Koch brothers who put them in office, or for their supporters in other states seeking to solve budget problems by breaking the backs of labor and cutting taxes on corporations.I hold in particular contempt such supporters as Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox of Indiana, who twittered recently that Wisconsin officials should "use live ammunition" against the Madison protesters. Asked if he meant that literally, he replied, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force."
Mr. Cox, my granddaughter, Brittany, is one of those protesters and has been from the outset. She's a social worker, who worked three jobs to get through college and earn her master's degree. She works countless unpaid hours and often spends her own limited resources to provide her clients with things they need. Her program has reduced Wisconsin's infant mortality rate among racial minorities from one of the highest to one of the lowest in the nation.
Mr. Cox, you scum, you are unworthy to lick the dirt off Brittany's shoe soles. I invite you, you miserable coward, to come to New Mexico and tell me to my face that you want to "use live ammunition" against Brittany.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Greatest Baseball Player of All Time
Ronald Reagan tops a list of the nation's greatest presidents, ahead of Abraham Lincoln, according to a new Gallup survey. -- News item.
* * *
As spring training for another baseball season swings into high gear, it is time to discuss the Greatest Baseball Player of All Time.
Eddie Miller did things shortstops just don't do today. He cut a hole in the sweet spot of his fielder's mitt! "Gives me a better feel, especially on double plays started by Frey." That would be Lonnie Frey, his second baseman with the great Cincinnati Reds teams of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Together they turned 112 double plays in the 1943 season. Cubs fans may sing the praises of Tinker to Evers to Chance, but in Cincy, Miller to Frey to McCormick spells G-R-E-A-T-N-E-S-S.
Eddie (The Ripper) Miller broke into the major leagues in 1936 at the age of 19. Already he was demonstrating the fielding prowess that would make him a seven-time All-Star. In 1937, the 20-year-old shortstop wasn't charged with a single error.
Eddie could do it all, however. Swing the bat, run the bases . . . he stole 11 bases in 1942 at the ripe old age of 25. It's true that other shortstops like Luke Appling or Hughie Jennings compiled higher lifetime batting averages than Eddie's .238, but Miller could take two and hit to right like nobody before or after him.
And in 1947, he not only hit .268, but also belted a career high 19 home runs. Miller actually led the National League in homers for most of the first month of the season.
Sure, you had your Ty Cobbs, your Babe Ruths, your Honus Wagners, your Ted Williamses and a whole batch of terrific pitchers.
But among everyday position players, there was only one Eddie Miller. (The other Eddie Miller who played big-league baseball was a pitcher.)
To this day, kids on the sandlots of Cincinnati are inspired to go out and win one for The Ripper.
* * *
As spring training for another baseball season swings into high gear, it is time to discuss the Greatest Baseball Player of All Time.
Eddie Miller did things shortstops just don't do today. He cut a hole in the sweet spot of his fielder's mitt! "Gives me a better feel, especially on double plays started by Frey." That would be Lonnie Frey, his second baseman with the great Cincinnati Reds teams of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Together they turned 112 double plays in the 1943 season. Cubs fans may sing the praises of Tinker to Evers to Chance, but in Cincy, Miller to Frey to McCormick spells G-R-E-A-T-N-E-S-S.
Eddie (The Ripper) Miller broke into the major leagues in 1936 at the age of 19. Already he was demonstrating the fielding prowess that would make him a seven-time All-Star. In 1937, the 20-year-old shortstop wasn't charged with a single error.
Eddie could do it all, however. Swing the bat, run the bases . . . he stole 11 bases in 1942 at the ripe old age of 25. It's true that other shortstops like Luke Appling or Hughie Jennings compiled higher lifetime batting averages than Eddie's .238, but Miller could take two and hit to right like nobody before or after him.
And in 1947, he not only hit .268, but also belted a career high 19 home runs. Miller actually led the National League in homers for most of the first month of the season.
Sure, you had your Ty Cobbs, your Babe Ruths, your Honus Wagners, your Ted Williamses and a whole batch of terrific pitchers.
But among everyday position players, there was only one Eddie Miller. (The other Eddie Miller who played big-league baseball was a pitcher.)
To this day, kids on the sandlots of Cincinnati are inspired to go out and win one for The Ripper.
Friday, February 18, 2011
And Crown They Good, With Brotherhood . . . .
In the Arab world, common people by the thousands are taking to the streets and public squares to demand basic human rights and participation in their own government.
In Madison, WI, American workers by the thousands are taking to the public square and Capitol rotunda to preserve basic human rights democratically won half a century ago when The People still had a voice in their own government.
Police and military thugs for the king stormed Pearl square in the capital of Bahrain, killing five of the protesters and putting Manama under army control.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Teabagger, threatens to call in the National Guard to sweep Madison clean of protesters.
Ah, America, Land of the Free.
Ray McGovern, 71, had a distinguished career in United States government as an intelligence analyst. From retirement, he spotted the falsehoods in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and warned the people about them. He has continued to speak out bravely against not just the lies and injustices of our government, but against the abuses and cover-ups of the clergy's abuses in the Roman Catholic Church to which he belongs. He fears no power, neither Papacy nor White House. He is a brave and honest man.
McGovern was in the audience at George Washington University the other day when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived to give a speech about . . . free speech. The audience, including McGovern, stood as she entered. When she prepared to speak everyone sat down, except McGovern. "It was my symbolic way of saying not everybody agrees with her. When she came in I not only remained standing but I turned my back to her." He was seized by government thugs, assaulted, dragged from the room and double handcuffed with metal cuffs causing profuse bleeding.
Ah, America, land of free speech.
In South Dakota a Republican state legislator named Phil Jensen has introduced a bill that would make it "justifiable homicide" to murder any person attempting to "harm an unborn child" -- such as doctors who perform legal abortions.
Ah, America ! God Shed His Grace on Thee
The ruthless king who ordered the shock troops into Pearl Square on the island nation of Bahrain is a real pal of the American government because he lets us park our Fifth Fleet there. Here are some of our other pals in that region:
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Human Rights Watch says his regime "systematically suppresses or fails to protect the rights of nine million Saudi women and girls . . . and some two million Shia citizens. Each year thousands of people receive unfair trials . . . arbitrary detention . . . curbs on freedom."
King Abdullah II of Jordan. Human Rights Watch: "Torture (is) routine and widespread, in particular at police stations." Free speech is prohibited.
President Gurbanguly Berdmukhamedov of Turkmenistan. One of the most repressive regimes in the world, a favorite of General David Petraeus in particular. Makes arbitrary arrests, detains prisoners incommunicado, tortures, abuses women. No freedom of religion, speech or press. Has some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world.
President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. Routinely elected with 90 or more percent of the vote, Kamirov endorses torture of dissenters; two were boiled to death in 2003. The government rounds up children to do the cotton harvest every year. U.S. props him up with aid to his spy agency and police. He provides U.S. with supply routes for our forces in Afghanistan.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. Commands large offshore oil reserves. Good pal of Condi Rice. Human Rights Watch: "Mired in corruption, poverty and repression." Posed for Photo Op with his buddy, Barry Obama, at Metropolitan Museum of New York in 2009.
Ah, America, Beacon of Liberty to the World.
In Madison, WI, American workers by the thousands are taking to the public square and Capitol rotunda to preserve basic human rights democratically won half a century ago when The People still had a voice in their own government.
Police and military thugs for the king stormed Pearl square in the capital of Bahrain, killing five of the protesters and putting Manama under army control.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Teabagger, threatens to call in the National Guard to sweep Madison clean of protesters.
Ah, America, Land of the Free.
Ray McGovern, 71, had a distinguished career in United States government as an intelligence analyst. From retirement, he spotted the falsehoods in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and warned the people about them. He has continued to speak out bravely against not just the lies and injustices of our government, but against the abuses and cover-ups of the clergy's abuses in the Roman Catholic Church to which he belongs. He fears no power, neither Papacy nor White House. He is a brave and honest man.
McGovern was in the audience at George Washington University the other day when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived to give a speech about . . . free speech. The audience, including McGovern, stood as she entered. When she prepared to speak everyone sat down, except McGovern. "It was my symbolic way of saying not everybody agrees with her. When she came in I not only remained standing but I turned my back to her." He was seized by government thugs, assaulted, dragged from the room and double handcuffed with metal cuffs causing profuse bleeding.
Ah, America, land of free speech.
In South Dakota a Republican state legislator named Phil Jensen has introduced a bill that would make it "justifiable homicide" to murder any person attempting to "harm an unborn child" -- such as doctors who perform legal abortions.
Ah, America ! God Shed His Grace on Thee
The ruthless king who ordered the shock troops into Pearl Square on the island nation of Bahrain is a real pal of the American government because he lets us park our Fifth Fleet there. Here are some of our other pals in that region:
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Human Rights Watch says his regime "systematically suppresses or fails to protect the rights of nine million Saudi women and girls . . . and some two million Shia citizens. Each year thousands of people receive unfair trials . . . arbitrary detention . . . curbs on freedom."
King Abdullah II of Jordan. Human Rights Watch: "Torture (is) routine and widespread, in particular at police stations." Free speech is prohibited.
President Gurbanguly Berdmukhamedov of Turkmenistan. One of the most repressive regimes in the world, a favorite of General David Petraeus in particular. Makes arbitrary arrests, detains prisoners incommunicado, tortures, abuses women. No freedom of religion, speech or press. Has some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world.
President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. Routinely elected with 90 or more percent of the vote, Kamirov endorses torture of dissenters; two were boiled to death in 2003. The government rounds up children to do the cotton harvest every year. U.S. props him up with aid to his spy agency and police. He provides U.S. with supply routes for our forces in Afghanistan.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. Commands large offshore oil reserves. Good pal of Condi Rice. Human Rights Watch: "Mired in corruption, poverty and repression." Posed for Photo Op with his buddy, Barry Obama, at Metropolitan Museum of New York in 2009.
Ah, America, Beacon of Liberty to the World.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
How Our Corporatocracy Works
The tragic human cost of living in a corporatocracy is becoming ever more clear to anyone who takes the blinders off and thinks for a while.
Our corporatocracy has been ratified by the Supreme Court, has intimidated our president and bought our Congress. Tea Party Congresswomen to the contrary notwithstanding, that's all three branches of government. Total control.
The budget submitted by Dr. Kidglove, created under the specter of the deficit bogeyman, proposes to make the poor, the old, the sick and the uneducated pay for the economic crimes of filthy rich bankers and financiers.
While the filthy rich count their profits and chuckle like Scrooge, millions of Americans remain jobless. For the most recent quarter, the country has created barely one-fifth of the number of new jobs needed just to accommodate new workers entering the job market. So the net number of unemployed Americans continues to grow.
Meanwhile, corporate America is sitting on a cash horde of well over two trillion dollars. Their Republican puppets in Congress, willy-nilly cutting "job-killing entitlements," talk about the need for jobs even while opposing the very public policies that would create them. The United States Chamber of Commerce prattles about the need for jobs even while plotting possibly criminal disinformation campaigns against those who support proposals to create them.
Dr. Kidglove, eying the corporate stash of cash, went to the US C of C, hat in hand, and begged them to please, sir, spend some of that money putting Americans back to work. They listened grumpily, but have absolutely no intention of spending a dime of the cash horde to hire American workers. The business plans of corporate America have committed all of that cash to huge stock buyback programs and increased dividends to enrich big investors and senior managers. They did this in 2002-2006 with nearly three trillion in hoarded profits, which they dispensed just in time for filthy rich investors and managers to benefit from George Bush's first big round of tax cuts for the richest two percent of us. The new round of payouts comes just in time for the filthy rich to benefit from the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts.
Responding to the Big Bust of 2008, the Bush-Obama strategy was to bail out out the too-big-to-fail financial institutions that caused it. Obama's rationale was that the bailed-out banks and investors would eventually create jobs, lower mortgage rates and adjust terms to save homeowners and boost tax revenues of the cash-starved states. None of it happened.
Now the corporations and their lackeys in Congress have coerced Dr. Kidglove into a policy of cutting the social services that poor, old, jobless and sick Americans depend upon for their very lives. The cuts he offers won't satisfy them. They'll cut more.
Meanwhile, there's no talk whatsoever about cutting the defense budget or ending the immoral wars that drove us into this deficit. There's no talk of cutting the lavish subsidies to big oil and gas companies, to drug manufacturers, to health insurance companies, to the huge Agribusiness conglomerates. These suckers at the teats of tax revenue are part of the corporatocracy that owns us; of course their subsidies won't be touched.
Meanwhile, a new tip of the corporate iceberg is peeking out above the waves. It is the virtual merging of the government's massive spying on citizenry with corporate skullduggery against citizens who speak the truth to power.
The U.S. Chamber, through its rich and powerful Washington law firm, has conspired with government spy technology contractors to engage in possibly criminal disinformation campaigns against supporters of WikiLeaks and other progressive information outlets. It has targeted online journalists and others for "disruption."
And just today, the New York Times and the economist Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated how financial institutions manipulate their Congressional puppets and the public to avoid any real regulation of the sort of crimes that caused the 2008 Bust. They disclosed the utter fallacy of a major report commissioned by the "Derivative End Users Coalition" -- formed by the big banks to prevent implementation of the financial controls in the Dodd-Frank financial reform act. It was prepared by a consulting firm called Keybridge Research, which falsified data and lied about its affiliations with responsible academics.
Confronted with the Stiglitz findings by a Times reporter, the president of Keybridge replied that "the client had asked us" to create the report, which was "a hypothetical study."
Another term for it is lying, but it will serve as a rationale for the puppets of Congress to do the bidding of their corporate masters. The rich will get richer and the poor will pay.
Let them eat cake.
Our corporatocracy has been ratified by the Supreme Court, has intimidated our president and bought our Congress. Tea Party Congresswomen to the contrary notwithstanding, that's all three branches of government. Total control.
The budget submitted by Dr. Kidglove, created under the specter of the deficit bogeyman, proposes to make the poor, the old, the sick and the uneducated pay for the economic crimes of filthy rich bankers and financiers.
While the filthy rich count their profits and chuckle like Scrooge, millions of Americans remain jobless. For the most recent quarter, the country has created barely one-fifth of the number of new jobs needed just to accommodate new workers entering the job market. So the net number of unemployed Americans continues to grow.
Meanwhile, corporate America is sitting on a cash horde of well over two trillion dollars. Their Republican puppets in Congress, willy-nilly cutting "job-killing entitlements," talk about the need for jobs even while opposing the very public policies that would create them. The United States Chamber of Commerce prattles about the need for jobs even while plotting possibly criminal disinformation campaigns against those who support proposals to create them.
Dr. Kidglove, eying the corporate stash of cash, went to the US C of C, hat in hand, and begged them to please, sir, spend some of that money putting Americans back to work. They listened grumpily, but have absolutely no intention of spending a dime of the cash horde to hire American workers. The business plans of corporate America have committed all of that cash to huge stock buyback programs and increased dividends to enrich big investors and senior managers. They did this in 2002-2006 with nearly three trillion in hoarded profits, which they dispensed just in time for filthy rich investors and managers to benefit from George Bush's first big round of tax cuts for the richest two percent of us. The new round of payouts comes just in time for the filthy rich to benefit from the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts.
Responding to the Big Bust of 2008, the Bush-Obama strategy was to bail out out the too-big-to-fail financial institutions that caused it. Obama's rationale was that the bailed-out banks and investors would eventually create jobs, lower mortgage rates and adjust terms to save homeowners and boost tax revenues of the cash-starved states. None of it happened.
Now the corporations and their lackeys in Congress have coerced Dr. Kidglove into a policy of cutting the social services that poor, old, jobless and sick Americans depend upon for their very lives. The cuts he offers won't satisfy them. They'll cut more.
Meanwhile, there's no talk whatsoever about cutting the defense budget or ending the immoral wars that drove us into this deficit. There's no talk of cutting the lavish subsidies to big oil and gas companies, to drug manufacturers, to health insurance companies, to the huge Agribusiness conglomerates. These suckers at the teats of tax revenue are part of the corporatocracy that owns us; of course their subsidies won't be touched.
Meanwhile, a new tip of the corporate iceberg is peeking out above the waves. It is the virtual merging of the government's massive spying on citizenry with corporate skullduggery against citizens who speak the truth to power.
The U.S. Chamber, through its rich and powerful Washington law firm, has conspired with government spy technology contractors to engage in possibly criminal disinformation campaigns against supporters of WikiLeaks and other progressive information outlets. It has targeted online journalists and others for "disruption."
And just today, the New York Times and the economist Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated how financial institutions manipulate their Congressional puppets and the public to avoid any real regulation of the sort of crimes that caused the 2008 Bust. They disclosed the utter fallacy of a major report commissioned by the "Derivative End Users Coalition" -- formed by the big banks to prevent implementation of the financial controls in the Dodd-Frank financial reform act. It was prepared by a consulting firm called Keybridge Research, which falsified data and lied about its affiliations with responsible academics.
Confronted with the Stiglitz findings by a Times reporter, the president of Keybridge replied that "the client had asked us" to create the report, which was "a hypothetical study."
Another term for it is lying, but it will serve as a rationale for the puppets of Congress to do the bidding of their corporate masters. The rich will get richer and the poor will pay.
Let them eat cake.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Message from Liberation Square
Two protesters in Cairo have posted an open letter to the rest of the world that raises an interesting question in the United States.
Mahmoud Salem and Gihan Ibrahim, 20-ish activists and bloggers who have been in Tahir Square since Jan. 25, had this to say:
People here are tired. We’ve been beaten, shot at, tear-gassed, rained on,
denied medical access, and have lived in a public square for more than two
weeks. Mercenary thugs on horses have attacked us with whips, swords,
and knives. Hundreds of people have lost their lives and thousands are
hurt or missing.
The revolutionary feeling here is incredible. Every day this square is full of
peasants, workers, students and professionals, engineers, teachers, singers,
writers and celebrities, Muslims, Christians, young, old, rich and poor.
We are demanding things which everyone can agree on: an end to
corruption, dictatorship and oppression; the ability to vote in free, fair and
democratic elections; freedom, dignity and social justice to all citizens.
The "interesting question" is this.
When, if ever, will masses of Americans bestir themselves to demand the same things here?
Mahmoud Salem and Gihan Ibrahim, 20-ish activists and bloggers who have been in Tahir Square since Jan. 25, had this to say:
People here are tired. We’ve been beaten, shot at, tear-gassed, rained on,
denied medical access, and have lived in a public square for more than two
weeks. Mercenary thugs on horses have attacked us with whips, swords,
and knives. Hundreds of people have lost their lives and thousands are
hurt or missing.
The revolutionary feeling here is incredible. Every day this square is full of
peasants, workers, students and professionals, engineers, teachers, singers,
writers and celebrities, Muslims, Christians, young, old, rich and poor.
We are demanding things which everyone can agree on: an end to
corruption, dictatorship and oppression; the ability to vote in free, fair and
democratic elections; freedom, dignity and social justice to all citizens.
The "interesting question" is this.
When, if ever, will masses of Americans bestir themselves to demand the same things here?
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