tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12264986733953801842024-02-08T11:43:54.195-07:00KittisplaceLIVING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURYAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-12503285528903657652012-02-08T16:33:00.000-07:002012-02-08T16:33:34.886-07:00Kittisplace: THE POWER IS US.<a href="http://kittyh1k.blogspot.com/2012/02/power-is-us.html?spref=bl">Kittisplace: THE POWER IS US.</a><br />
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<br />
Suddenly the news is that women and their supportive men have won another battle toward freedom of<br />
choice. As the VP of the Susan G Komen Foundation steps down in defeat after announcing that the<br />
Foundation would no longer fund Planned Parenthood. In the Fundie fight against the freedom of women<br />
to choose their own future the oppressors have lost another round. Women have been fighting for forty<br />
years for this right to choose, and have gradually gained some power against the old white men<br />
personified by Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh; incidentally Limbaugh coined the misnomer “feminazis”. For<br />
all the years of this fight women have won small victories, but have done so at great cost, always moving<br />
one step forward and two steps back. The loss of the effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment lost in the<br />
same period that the first female Vice President was running on the Democratic ticket; Josephine Ferraro<br />
also lost the election. Since that time things have changed in society with the advent of subsidized day-care<br />
Title Ten and Pell Grants. It has been a slow climb for women, aided by the availability of effective and<br />
available birth control. Planned Parenthood has contributed much to this change, by offering affordable<br />
health care, including birth control to women and girls. Mothers take their teen-aged daughters to Planned<br />
Parenthood at the first sign of sexual activity, cutting the incidence of teen-aged motherhood for white,<br />
middle-class girls, though still leaving the daughters of poor families, Latinas, and black teen-aged girls in<br />
the cycle of poverty and single parent families, but also cutting the incidence of abortion. Rather than<br />
seeing this as a positive step the men and women who would control women and girls see it as a threat to<br />
the status quo, and unleash all of their power against this positive trend. Sexual politics has accelerated to<br />
an alarming degree, as the Tea Party voters, largely dominated by right-wing-christian-<br />
fundamentalists….or, in the word coined perhaps by gifted blogger astra navigo, “Fundies”, changed the<br />
playing field by giving dominance in the Congress to this group, who, with their aggressive overreach have<br />
wakened a sleeping giant. Not content to keep their own wives and daughters subservient through a<br />
generation of home-schooling, they decided that they could use their newly gained power to force every<br />
family into that mold. They did not take into account that there were new weapons in this war, and they<br />
were weapons in a battle that they didn’t anticipate or understand. The first skirmish in this was the virtual<br />
uprising of the women in Mississippi who, along with supportive men defeated the first “Personhood<br />
Amendment” in a state that has an overwhelming number of Fundie voters; they were not ready to give up<br />
the freedom given them by the availability of birth control, and with this defeat the other Republican<br />
governed States were warned and did not risk the same defeat. The leaders slowed their offensive and<br />
looked for other ways. One Tea Party Congressman, drunk with power, instigated an investigation of<br />
Planned Parenthood, which signaled the Fundies in the Susan G Komen Foundation to use the investigation<br />
as an excuse to refuse to give their customary 700,000 annual grants to that organization. This would have<br />
been a point at which the leaders on the board of SGK could have used the Rick Perry exclamation<br />
“OOOPS”. In 24 hours, assailed by liberal leaning members of the Social Network organizations Facebook<br />
and Twitter, they reversed this decision The world is changing exponentially and they are losing ground and<br />
losing “face”. But, and this is a billboard sized “BUT” they now have Rick Santorum in the fight to unseat<br />
the man they hate: President Barack Obama, by using the power given them by the Supreme Court to enlist<br />
those who have the most to lose in the 2012 election, the billionaires in the 1%.<br />
It is no accident that the right defeated Al Gore by using the conservative Catholic Justices to rule for<br />
George W. Bush, who appointed a Conservative Catholic as Chief Justice. In the Robert’s Court the Citizens<br />
United decision gave power to the 1% whose “good old days” are the Gilded Age that preceded the Great<br />
Depression. This is the most important election of my lifetime since Franklin Roosevelt and in all the<br />
elections since the one lost to Reagan in 1981 for most of you who will read this.<br />
Don’t worry about the President defeating Mitt Romney; worry about the dark-horse, the guy in the<br />
sweater vest: Rick Santorum. A Fundie Catholic who thinks we are losing power because the birthrate in<br />
the U.S. among white, middle class families is too low. The Gingrich money will now flow to him, not just<br />
from the Casino mogul but from those who have an “anyone but Mitt” mentality. The Koch Brothers come<br />
to mind. The power structure in the Republican Party will rise up in his support, more attacks from the<br />
Party and from the extremists on the Left, including those who want to see Hillary trade jobs with Biden,<br />
will mean a narrow defeat for the President….but a defeat nevertheless. The strangest of all strange things<br />
is that the rank-and-file Catholics are not necessarily Republicans, and 98% of all Catholic families use birth<br />
control. Watch closely and be ever alert to changing trends. The fight that still goes on is not just for<br />
women, but for all who seek a level playing field and a just society. But now we have a weapon that we<br />
must not give up to the enemy: Facebook and Twitter. <br />
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-65295937402125020742011-11-08T17:03:00.002-07:002011-11-08T17:32:16.961-07:00Wars Of The Early Twentieth Century: 1898-1918For my children: I have been working on a blogspot post in my 20th Century History series and here is the research I have completed and written about but not posted. But since your comment on Multiply I am trying to pull it together. Here are notes that will help you answer the questions of your in-laws....about the early involvements of the first two decades of the 20th century. No wonder no one really is aware of these foreign entanglements that were reluctantly entered into by the Presidents...they were wars of empire, in my view.<br />
<br />
My father and his 5 wars: (Not really wars but he had Battle Ribbons for each, and got a pension for the Spanish-American War.<br />
<br />
1898-1900<br />
Spanish-American War<br />
<br />
Enlisted in Regular Army in 1898 at age 20. He had to have his father's signature to enlist. I have the enlistment document.<br />
1900 Census he was at the Manila Vaccine Station. I have a copy of this census<br />
Philippine Insurrection.<br />
The Phillipino natives did not want the U.S. occupation force to stay once the Spanish had been removed; the Maori fought an insurgency against the American troops. <br />
<br />
1902<br />
<br />
China Boxer Rebellion<br />
<br />
The northern peasants in an attempt to overthrow the Dynasty which had ruled China for 250 years, began a geurrilla war against the Dowager Empress and with an additional purpose of removing foreign influence in China, slaughtered both foreign Christian Missionaries and Chinese Christians as they moved toward Peking (now Beijing) they besieged the so-called Imperial City trapping Europeans and Americans in the city. Eventually the Dowager made peace with the Boxer's. An Expeditionary Force landed in early 1900 of Sailors and Marines, but failed to breach the city where the foreigners were trapped.. Regular Army including Cavalry, Artillery and Infantry left Manila and landed on the China coast, then marched toward the city fighting against roving bands of Boxer insurgents along the way. They entered and occupied Peking, rescuing the trapped foreigners. The invading force included Russians. Australian, Japanese and Europeans. Each country's forces were assigned a gate to enter what had previously been known as the Forbidden City. The Russians besieged the gate that had been assigned to the American forces, but failed after setting the gate on fire; the Americans scaled the wall and using artillery blew a new gate in the wall where Reilly's Battalion, a force from Manila entered The President did not want to enter this engagement, but there were already Army forces in the Phillapines and the Navy near Japan so with a "coalition" (sound familiar) he ordered the Army to join other countries in a "rescue" of the foreign civilians that were trapped by the Boxer Rebellion....There is an old movie about this called "44 Days in Peking". I have read Military History to find the basic information of the root of this rebellion.<br />
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1900-1913<br />
Maori Uprising<br />
<br />
The Army unit he was in returned to the Phillipines and continued to fight against the Maori Insurgency until it was pacified and the country was secured for the U.S. occupation.<br />
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1916<br />
Mexican Insurgency<br />
<br />
My father's battalion returned to the San Francisco Presidio in 1913, where he had first served. The Army under Pershing was defending our SW borders against incursions by Mexican bandits under Pancho Villa across the border into New Mexico and Texas, and as a member of the Regular Army who had been vaccinated against tropical diseases, he was attached to this force. The Army continued into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa as far as Vera Cruz....Villa was never captured but the Texas/New Mexican borders had been secured against Mexican incursions. <br />
<br />
WWI 1917-1918<br />
<br />
After the Mexican Insurrection in 1917 the U.S. entered WWI which the British had been fighting since 1914. Though my father by this time was 38 years old he remained in the Army and trained new recruits who had been drafted.<br />
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<br />
Your Hunt grandfather had joined the Army in 1917 and been at the Argonne in a long and terrible conflict where he was badly wounded in the leg, and had a partial amputation of his left leg in a battlefield hospital. He was also exposed to mustard gas which damaged his lungs and caused vision problems. He was 100% disabled. He endured two more amputations of the left leg until finally he had lost the whole leg up to his hip. He was 31 when he married your Smithson grandmother; my father married your Reeves grandmother, my mother, when she was 22 and he was 39.<br />
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My nephew Dennis has ribbons from the Spanish-American War, the China-Boxer Rebellion, the Maori Uprising, the Mexican Insurrection, and WWI.<br />
Whether you would call each of these a "war" is perhaps a question of semantics but American military members were killed in each of these, and those who served were given a medal/ribbon for participating.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-21334687862620571882011-11-08T16:01:00.000-07:002011-11-08T16:01:30.844-07:00My ChildhoodIndianapolis, Indiana 1929<br />
The tall, unhappy looking girl in the picture is my sister Aileen; I am the little girl sitting on the arm of the setee: I was two years old, and in the next year we left our home in a 1929 Model T Ford to move to California, a trip that reportedly took eleven days. My father's brother lived near San Francisco with his wife and son, and had convinced my father through correspondence by letters exchanged that we should move there because of the mild climate that was recommended for my sister Etheldella, (in the spectacles) who had Rheumatic Fever and was frail; she was nine, my sister Aileen was eleven and my brother Warren was six. My father was a policeman on the Indianapolis Police Department and we lived on Spann AvenuIndianapolis, in a two story house of which I have fleeting memories of dark woodwork and warm stoves. My only clear memory of this time was that I wore one piece underwear called a "union suit" that had garters attached that held up long stockings. I hated the high top shoes and the long stockings itched. According to family stories my father quit his job, they sold their house, and auctioned their belongings, anything that did not fit in a Model T was sold....my father mourned his books and my mother mourned her china. She had somehow managed to find room for a small porcelein tea set that was decorated with a technique called Copper Luster that had belonged to her mother and was marked with "Nippon" on the underside of the saucers and teapot...I don't know what happened to that set, but I was not there when after her death her few belongings were divided by my older sisters. <br />
So begins the memories of my life in the Twentieth Century, a defining time in the history of the nation; defining because of the rapid changes that began with the industrial revolution and gradually changed the country from an agrarian culture into an urban culture, a century that began with gas lights and coal furnaces and ended with electric illumination and efficient air conditioning, from "coolers" and root cellars to freezers and refrigerators, a country that wrote letters to a country that sent messages over the internet, and a country that traveled by horse and buggy, horse drawn street cars, trains and steamships to one that had thousands of miles of freeways congested with automobiles, airplanes crowding the skies and rockets to space. Change was so rapid that I went from owning a Commodore 64 with floppy disc storage and MS-Dos to owning an IBM laptop with Windows Vista within less than fifteen years. This was my century, and my memories and observations are many and varied and mostly of a full and rewarding life, a life of adaptation to changing conditions, and purposeful observations that led to a gradually changing philosophy. <br />
The country is again at a vital cross-roads, the pendulum of political opinion swinging from one extreme to another, and at a point of precarious balance that causes me to fear for my great-grandchildren. It is for them I want to share my personal history and offer them insights and strategies developed over my 84 years. I hope their children will not be communicating with cave paintings.<br />
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Indianapolis, Indiana 1929Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-64188205850756452422011-09-05T13:35:00.000-07:002011-09-05T13:35:05.202-07:00Another View of the White House"The GOP that sabotaged Reagan into the White House with the October Surprise and got away with it, created the talk radio monopoly and impeached Clinton, stopped Clinton efforts at single payer, sold us Bush, got us into Iraq, Swiftboated Gore and Kerry and stole those elections while keeping Americans out of the streets is just getting better as the Left ignores the Right's best weapon and gives that same talk radio monopoly a free speech free ride to kick internet ass beat the crap out of another Dem president right under their noses. this is as good as it gets and the left's best chance right now is to work inside the Dem party, which is already set up.<br />
<br />
There is NO organized opposition to the right's best weapon - Right wing talk radio- and until it does the Left collectively can not say it got or is getting their candidates or their Reps backs. a lot of individuals did a lot to get Obama's back but collectively the left is pitiful at it."<br />
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Comment posted to Truthdig by trank<br />
<br />
This is pretty much where we stand in 2011, while the Left Dreamers promote the idea that a Socialist Bernie Sanders, or a thrice failed has-been Ralph Nader can overcome the galvanized Right candidate, whoever he or she may be, by splitting the ticket and running AGAIN an opposition candidate from the Left. I have shed the tears of defeat as too many losers tried this. The comment by trank is the position I take in the 2012 election. These same Left critics of Obama have sunk the chances of a Progressive 20th Century with their "dream candidates"...Over many years of being a liberal I have learned to forget the impossible and do the possible. Obama is the possible. Bill Daley needs to go....<br />
<br />
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In a blog titled "It's Past Time for Bill Daley to Step Down" blogger karoli shares a Fox video of Neil Cavuto interviewing the spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce Kennedy who alludes to the fact that he and Bill Daley have a close relationship.....Bill Daley works for the opposition! The rat named Rahm Emmanuel has left what he considers the sinking ship of the Obama Administration and retired to friendlier climes in Chicago.....taking Chicago style politics with him. With friends like Bill Daley, who needs enemies.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-54677861274094226752011-04-14T12:55:00.000-07:002011-04-14T12:55:56.355-07:00MEDICARE RANTAs a long time enrollee in the Medicare program I have insights into the reason that Medicare is facing problems. It is not that the program is not well designed, but that it is abused. Until recently I had AARP Medigap insurance that cost me $180 a month, and covered all deductibles and co-payments so that in twenty years I have never paid a cent out of pocket except for that policy. As a survivor of a deceased disabled veteran I now have ChampVa which covers costs that were covered by the AARP policy. It also pays for 75% of my prescription costs. <br />
At age sixty-six I had breast cancer and had radical surgery to stop it. I declined the very, very expensive Tamoxifen, not because of cost but because I didn't trust it to be a safe medication. I have a personal conviction to refuse any medication that has not been on the market for at least five years....in that time all of the deadly side-effects have been reported and that is how long it will take the FDA to recall it. It appears I was right as many women on this therapy have encountered uterine cancer, one of the reported side-effects. I have been fortunate to avoid a recurrence of the cancer...for 18 years. I had also refused to take estrogen therapy for menopausal symptoms, also a cancer causer. Medicare does not pay for prescription drugs, so that is not a cause of the problem, but Medicaid does, and I have seen in my own family that doctors prescribe name brand drugs when they could easily prescribe a generic....just a personal history that might be useful to consider. Here is the problem as I have experienced it. <br />
Doctors and hospitals abuse the program and for whatever reason patients allow them to do this..they order tests that are done in their offices and cost a very lot of money and are paid for by either Medicare or Medicaid. A nurse at my doctor's office told me that I "needed" to have a bone scan. This is a very expensive test that detects osteoporosis, a condition of aging that for many centuries has not had a treatment, but now does. I had this scan about 8 years ago, and of course I do have the condition; it is not a disease it is a condition of aging. The treatment is a very expensive once a month, or now, once a year pill that reportedly not only prevents bone loss, but also reverses it. This medication has some very troubling side-effects so I have refused to take it. So, for what purpose would Ihave a bone-scan? To enrich the doctor. I am 84, of course I have osteoporosis...it is a function of aging. When I say I don't want the test, the nurse looks at me as if I have lost my mind: with pity. What percentage of people do you think refuse medical tests? It would be difficult to find out. Among the people in my age group (not many left) I have known, I have neve known a single person, of either sex who refused a medical test. This adds up to billions of dollars in costs to the program. Mammograms; that is indicated. That is one test, not very expensive, that I have. <br />
I have never had more than three doctors: a primary care physician, basically a pill pusher and medical test purveyor, a gynocologist, and an eye doctor. I see two of them once a year, one of them three times a year. Frankly, it is too much bother to be going always to a doctor's appointment. But women I have known have as many as six doctors they routinely go to see, and often. It is like an insurance policy against disease, and from each they have a test that is routinely taken, and a medication. The tests are the biggest expense for Medicare...My husband was a disabled veteran of WWII, and had VA doctors. But when he had an urgent medical need he had to go to the local emergency room, and if necessary then be taken by medivan to the distant VA hospital. He observed that whenever he went to the emergency room at the local hospital the first thing they did was order a chest x-ray and blood tests. His problem was not related to his lungs so why a chest x-ray? Why extensive blood tests before a doctor had even seen him. The same reason my doctor wants me to have a bone scan: revenue. In the last couple of years of his life he had at least four chest x-rays. This cost Medicare, as he paid for Medicare Part B, which this year cost a little more than $100. a month. <br />
I entered the hospital a few years ago because I was suffering from shortness of breath. They called a cardiologist who ordered a chemical stress test, of course a chest x-ray, an echocardiogram, and many blood tests. My heart and arteries were not involved in my breathing problems. The final diagnosis was bronchial asthma...and I was given two inhalers and sent home. Why didn't they rule this out first? No money in it. <br />
Over the years I have seen many, many friends, made anxious by their doctors ordering tests and referring them to specialists, who have agreed to all manner of expensive tests and procedures. Would they have agreed if they were themselves paying for them? I very strongly doubt it. Medicare is too generous with its reimbursement for tests and procedures, doctors are too prone to order tests and procedures for unlikely illnesses, and Medicare is hostage to all of these. Insurance companies go too far in denying tests and procedures, and I am not suggesting that Medicare go that far, but there should be the same oversight of tests and procedures offered that you would exercise if you were paying yourself.....<br />
Oh, and another thing: diabetics get one pair of free shoes a year. OK. It is important that diabetics wear well-fitting shoes, as an ulcer can lead to eventual amputation if left untreated. But shouldn't there be a means test for this? Shouldn't people who can afford to buy shoes pay for them? Just askin'. There is an industry built around this benefit: shoe companies that provide at a cost of about 300 dollars, plus the cost of the doctor "fitting them", shoes that could be easily purchased for half that. I have a pair of New Balance walking shoes that I paid 159. dollars for. They fit perfectly. I just bought a pair of Easy Spirit clogs for 79 dollars that also fit perfectly. Why does Medicare pay upward of 300 dollars for shoes? because they are provided by a Podiatrist who supposedly fits them to your foot configuration, and yet, they are just shoes; not custom built to your foot's paramenters, and usually the person fitting them is not the doctor, but a young woman who probably makes minimum wage. <br />
This is turning into a rant, and it is because the prospect of having what was a valuable program for needed medical care has turned into a scam....a scam that may well cause it to be killed. I don't want it killed; I have children approaching the age when they will qualify for the program; I want it to be available for those who are very sick, who need surgery or chemotherapy, in short, I don't want to see it die by grift. Why are medical costs and so Medicare/Medicaid costs rising so high? Because no one is paying attention, and every year a new benefit is added. My mother died of colon cancer: it was well advanced by 1965 when Medicare was signed into law by LBJ; had she had access to a regular doctor who could have detected it early she would have lived longer. I do not want to see this program gutted by Republican zealots without conscious, but I do believe it should be reformed. President Obama has promised to do this; I trust him.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-91107893441338406002011-03-02T15:28:00.001-07:002011-03-02T15:36:56.051-07:00Gardening in the desert.Living as I do in the Foothills of Yuma, AZ I find it interesting that the Yuma area, especially in the lower levels along what was once the river bed of the Colorado River before five dams were built, is a main source of vegetables in the winter and spring. When we came here in the winters we always planted flowers in our RV space which was on the banks of the river and were pleased with the beautiful little garden we had with almost no effort. When we bought a house we came to the Foothills area, about ten miles east of the town and really a suburb of the town. My husband and I landscaped with a style called xeriscape, using native materials that require very little water. We removed the inappropriate trees that were actually dying of sunburn, leaving one large laurel tree that Yumans call Ficus trees, and ten palm trees.<br />
We went on the road again in 2005 and leased our house to a couple from New Jersey, who after two years became homesick and left. We decided to move back into our home. We have tried gardening, planting melons and strawberries but our advanced age made it difficult to maintain and the resident doves ate the fruit as fast as it came on the plants. My husband died in the fall of 2009 and my son and grandson moved into my house with me. My grandson kept the yard neat and the pond my husband had created free of algae, but he was working and didn't have time to do any landscaping. <br />
When he was laid off his job, (the unemployment rate in Yuma County is 12.5%) he got interested in planting a garden. He began with landscaping plants around the pond, then created flower beds, built a grape arbor and planted grapes. He became interested in the growing and nurturing of grapes and found that roses planted near grape vines attracted insects that would otherwise feed on grapevines. So roses were added. Then for further insect control marigolds were added and chives. Early in the year he planted a variety of flowers and shrubs in beds he created. This was a young man, raised with his sister by a single father, who had always lived in apartments. He has now become an avid gardener, searching horticultural sites on the internet for information and isnpiration. So far we have besides the grapes and flowers, watermelons, canteloupe, strawberries, blackberry vines, corn and sunflowers. We are eagerly watching the new leaf growth on the grapevines (we planed three Thompson Seedless and one Red Flame) and monitoring the strawberries and melons as they begin to grow. We now have two resident cats which should solve our problem with the voracious doves.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-65519458996291516052011-02-24T15:30:00.000-07:002011-02-24T15:30:48.225-07:00The Celestial Navigator: The Old Man and Tomorrow (Part IV)<a href="http://astranavigo.blogspot.com/2011/02/old-man-and-tomorrow-part-iv.html">The Celestial Navigator: The Old Man and Tomorrow (Part IV)</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-60901166634756718192011-02-14T18:22:00.002-07:002011-02-14T21:38:51.809-07:00Is It 1948?1948 Revisited?<br />
Notes: I recommend a long life, but it has its drawbacks. Perhaps the worst is that when history repeats itself because it isn‘t heeded, it must be lived over again, with the knowledge that you are powerless to stop it. <br />
When I see a new book by a favorite author, it brings a quickening of joy akin to finding that the biggest present under the tree has your name on it. <br />
There are only one or two authors who bring this euphoria: one is Barbara Kingsolver. End of notes.<br />
<br />
Rereading a book after several months or years reveals ideas that had not been inspired by a first reading.<br />
Barbara Kingsolver understands context. Though the book “The Lacuna” begins in the late 1920s the period that brought about this reflection began in 1948: The year Zelda Fitzgerald died in a mental hospital in Asheville, NC, when a fire from the first floor swept up the dumb waiter chute and strangely only entered only her room. That year was also notable for the campaign of Harry Truman and the activities of the Dies Committee in the House which looked into the lives and associations of U.S. Citizens whom they alleged had earlier associations with Communists or allegedly Communist Front organizations. <br />
<br />
“Conspiracy trials, deportation hearings. Do you know how many New Yorkers are from someplace?” Words from the “cool” friend/lover of the protagonist of the book after a liaison in an almost empty hotel in Asheville, NC…empty because the city is quarantined by the polio epidemic. Fear of the dreaded illness that strikes mostly children is another fear in this time of many fears. And the fears are magnified by the press, and sensationalist radio commentators. The Dies Committee has used the FBI to investigate their “targets”……the author character in “The Lacuna", a homosexual male, that has written two blockbuster books on the fallen civilizations of the Aztec and Mayan people, has had numerous inquiries directed to him that are fielded and answered by his stalwart secretary Mrs. Violet Brown. She is an interesting character in her own right: a middle-aged woman who grew up in the rhododendren "hells" of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and retains much of the Shakesperean language patterns that still remain in the area. She is self-taught, widowed at 20 and lives in a boarding house. She is fiercely protective of her young employer. During the investigative process the author has signed several “loyalty oaths” a common demand in those bad old days which in itself is a form of entrapment. <br />
<br />
"members during the 1947 Hollywood Ten hearings were Parnell (NJ), Nixon (CA), Vail (IL), John McDowell (PA), and John S Wood (GA).[25] Robert E Stripling was the Chief Investigator[26] and appears on many recordings and transcripts of those hearings.<br />
In the fifties, the most effective sanction was terror. Almost any publicity from HUAC meant the 'blacklist.' Without a chance to clear his name, a witness would suddenly find himself without friends and without a job. But it is not easy to see how in 1969 a HUAC blacklist could terrorize an SDS activist. Witnesses like Jerry Rubin have openly boasted of their contempt for American institutions. A subpoena from HUAC would be unlikely to scandalize Abbie Hoffman or his friends"<br />
[24] From Wikipedia <br />
<br />
1948 was the year that Truman ran for another term against Dewey. This was the first year I was old enough to vote, 21. Truman had been maligned by the Chairman of the Republican National Committee Hugh Scott, who told voters in Massachusetts that Harry Truman had been endorsed in his 1944 run by the Communist Party and, “now shows indifference to Communist penetration at home” calling the Hearings “red herrings“…he went on to say that when Dewey and Warren, were elected the “greatest housecleaning since St. Patrick cleaned the snakes out of Ireland” would result. When the Republican platform was approved it made “no mention of controversial state referenda on birth control and labor unions” Kingsolver wrote. <br />
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What resulted was a victory by Truman that left the right-wing press gasping as the newspaper headlines declaring “Dewey Defeats Truman appeared in the morning Chicago Tribune, and was repeated by the other papers. Truman had gone to bed early not knowing who the winner was. With a three way race on the ballot: Truman, Henry Wallace from the left and Strom Thurmond as a Dixiecrat, the Democrats voted for Harry Truman. The Republican poisonous attacks trumpeted by the right-wing press accusing him of being a Communist sympathizer had not prevailed. By the end of 1949 the House Committee on Unamerican Activities had spread a wide net and convicted Alger Hiss of spying for the Communists. A breath of icy cold fear settled over the country but by 1950 the fear was of the Committee. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover had let its shadow fall over too many in its relentless pursuit of “Communists and Fellow Travelers”….notoriously Robert Taylor and Ronald Reagan testified against their colleagues in Hollywood. Reagan’s then wife Jane Wyman divorced him because of this activity. Much of the testimony against those charged was by people who were paid to inform on neighbors, and based on the outright lies of the sensationalist newspapers that were used as evidence, or those who testified against associates to save themselves. Almost all of it was lies, perpetuated by a dishonest press and radio. By 1950 the Junior Senator from Wisconsin had taken up the attack in the Senate and the House Committee was no longer the point of the spear. At the end of 1954 the Senate voted to censure McCarthy, but together with Representative Dies he had managed to ruin the lives of thousand of people before this was ended.<br />
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My original point in writing this is that the book brings to mind the vitriolic lies and the fear being generated by Fox News and the Republican Party. The Tea Party candidates who have won with nothing to recommend them except that they are anti-Obama, or anti-Democratic, against capable candidates with experience and integrity, is trying to revive this hateful patriotic fervor that began in 1948. They have attacked and discredited such stalwart Republicans as Bob Bennett of Utah, Mike Castle of Delaware and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Only Murkowski hung on by running as a write-in candidate. This is for me a frightening time, as the ghosts of these right-wing patriots rise again with the intent of taking the “country back”; back to where? Well of course, back to the Fifties.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-11851605267401413642010-12-28T20:48:00.000-07:002010-12-28T20:48:58.249-07:00LOOKING BACK AND FORWARD: A DISCUSSION OF AN EDITORIAL BY CHARLES PETERS;In a long article in Washington Monthly by Charles Peters titled "Tilting At Windmills" there is a lengthy discussion of just about everything. It was written just before the mid-term elections and in today's reckoning of time relevant information it may seem passe, but there is so much to consider here, in hindsight, that I feel that many would be interested in reading it. So many facts that were unknown to me are revealed. The actual reason for the deficit that is not because of Democratic spending, but of the policies and values of preceding administrations. These discrepancies must be undone if we are to recover from the damage done previous to 2008,<br />
In discussing the cost of the Pentagon and the percentage of the budget spent on the military Peters makes a telling comparison to World War II:<br />
<br />
"A veteran Pentagon critic, Winslow Wheeler, notes that during World War II, we had one general for every 6,382 enlisted men. Now we have one for every 1,519 soldiers. Even more dramatic is the contrast between today’s American forces and the most effective armies of history—the Israeli force that won the spectacular victory in the 1967 war, which had a ratio of one general to 6,916 enlisted men, and the Roman army of 52 AD, which had a ratio of one to 8,711."<br />
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And then there is this. While the Pentagon and the military grew the number of people in the regulatory agencies whose function is to keep us safe has shrunk.<br />
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"On the other hand, at one regulatory agency after another, we see the need for more, not less enforcement personnel. The SEC, the FDA, and the Consumer Products Safety Commission are examples. More recently, the pipeline explosion in San Bruno, California, exposed a need throughout the country either for more inspection or for more rigorous requirements that defective pipes discovered by inspection are repaired or replaced."<br />
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We have been exposed to e coli and salmonella, basically old fashioned food poisoning not only because of the lack of inspectors but because of the failure of inspectors to report and share obvious violations of food safety standards. There has been a "hands off" approach of anything that will disrupt business in the FDA, for the past thirty years. This is the big govrnment that we need. Children died from eating raw spinach grown in a California field that was below a feed-lot operation whose run-off ran into the field during a heavy rain. Should the farmer (corporate farmer) be allowed to grow a crop that can be eaten uncooked in such fields? Obviously not. Did not the Department of Agriculture have jurisdiction over this? If we are going to be a third-world country this is one of the first indications. Those of us who live in Arizona know not to eat melons, strawberries or green onions grown in Mexico and imported into our state. Why? Because they irrigate with polluted water. Hmmm.<br />
<br />
"Of course, sometimes when there is an adequate number of inspectors, they are conditioned not to make trouble for the inspected. When the Department of Agriculture inspected Wright County Egg in Iowa, later found to be a major source of salmonella, they discovered, according to the Wall Street Journal, “[d]rain clogged, full of shells,” “bugs everywhere,” “cooler floor was dirty, lots of trash,” and “the dry storage area had lots of trash, cartons on the floor everywhere.” These reports came from inspections that occurred from April 1 through August 17 of this year. But the DOA failed to tell the FDA, which is responsible for egg safety, about these problems. The salmonella outbreak occurred a few weeks later. Why didn’t the DOA say anything? “The conditions at the egg plant packing facility were routine.<br />
In other words, the plant has always been a mess, so why speak up now?"<br />
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This is only some of the content in the Charles Peters editorial. There is much more about the current war inherited by Obama, who promised in his capaign to make decisions after talking to the "military leaders". That is perhaps the worst kind of error. It cost LBJ a second term. The Military Leadership is intent on ongoing war. In conclusion, let's see what General Petraeus has to tell us about the Afghan War.<br />
<br />
“You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It’s a little like Iraq, actually … Yes, there’s been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives.”Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-85028971852575012692010-11-10T17:14:00.001-07:002010-11-10T17:42:37.325-07:0020th Century History: Veteran's Day20th Century History: Veteran's Day<br />
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When I was a child November 11th was called Armistice Day to memorialize the signing of the Armistice with Germany at the end of WWI.....my hometown always had a parade down Main Street with the veterans marching and carrying the flag of their branch of service. As a Spanish-American War Veteran, and someone who was active in the VFW, my father rode in an open car. We were very proud of him. The parade ended at a smaill cemetery at Five Points, where there would be a short Memorial Service with a couple of speakers, and Honor Guard of active service men who walked in to a drum beat and placed the flags in their supports. We would be restless but quiet as my father would give us a look that went to the heart, and none of us wanted to get that look. We knew we were there to remember the men who died in that war and were respectful no matter how cold, hot or windy, until Taps was blown by a bugler and the flags retired by the Honor Guard. When Taps was played and the folded flag given to me at my husband's Memorial Service it brought back those memories. When this was over, all of us, six kids, would get in the family car and my father would drive to the Presidio In San Francisco where he was stationed before shipping out to Manila Bay in 1900. At the Presidio he would walk among the headstones and stop at various places to look out over the Golden Gate, while we were released to lounge on the lawn area across the road.<br />
Holidays were sacred to my father, and this one and Independence Day were the most sacred of all. He was fifty when I was born, and seemed very old, as my classmates had much younger fathers, but my father instilled in me a love of country and an interest in history that is still a part of my life<br />
My husband and I were married the day after Armistice Day in 1944: he was 21 and still in the Navy and had recently returned from New Guinea on a Navy hospital ship; my father was 68 and was working as a Night Watchman at Fort Mason under the Golden Gate Bridge. He had returned to work from his retirement to do this, and drove to San Francisco every night throughout the War, driving home in the early morning and picking up hitch-hiking servicemen along El Camino Real on his way to Redwood City. My mother would be prepared to cook breakfast for anyone he brought home, and with Food Ration Coupons that was not easy. My parents had a generosity of spirit that has largely disappeared in the U.S. and has brought us to a shameful state of greed and selfishness, the worst in remembered history.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-62850797097722367192010-10-31T20:47:00.000-07:002010-10-31T20:47:44.337-07:00The Story of the Japanese Internments On The Pacific Coast: Paranoia in ActionI had just finished reading “Hotel On The Corner of Bitter and Sweet” by Jamie Ford and this is one of the books I will review here. The other is “Tallgrass” by Sandra Dallas which I read after browsing through saved Book Club emails and found. I review them together as they are related in one important way; both are novels about aspects of the very sad time which is history to most of you but memory to me: the relocation of the Japanese families that lived on the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington.<br />
The first book “Hotel……:” is the story of a Chinese family in Seattle, a father and mother and their second generation son. The father is very traditional and has in fact been sent to China by his parents to be educated so that he will know his heritage and traditions, a thing he plans to do for his son when he reaches high school age. Meanwhile, he arranges a scholarship for him to an exclusive all white middle school, where part of the scholarship is earned by the boy working in the cafeteria and after school doing janitorial work. There is another scholarship student he works with: a Japanese girl. Both are bullied and rejected by the white students and join together to be friends. When the round-up of Japanese begins the Chinese boy is devastated and actually travels to the internment center to see his friend. The hotel is a boarded up building where the Japanese families have stored their belongings in the belief that they will be able to return later to retrieve them….This is a story that is mostly about the Chinese family and the boy, but gives insight into the cultures of both Chinatown and Japantown, and the families that live there. The devastating scene when the Japanese families are standing in line to board trains that will take them to a center in Idaho reveals the injustice of this policy and the sadness of the families and children. There is much more to this, as the boy is befriended by a black man who is a jazz saxaphone player who sets up on street corner to play and support himself with donations. It is still the Depression. There is a subplot concerning the sax player and the great jazz musicians of Seattle. <br />
When I read Kathryn’s review of “Tallgrass” I knew it should be read consecutively with the first book, as it was the story of what amounted to a concentration camp in Colorado where the Japanese were interred, and the community that was adjacent to the camp. It is a story of bigotry, courage and kindness. If you haven’t read “Tallgrass“, do. And if possible read “Hotel….” first.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-51941066901849300792010-10-20T14:12:00.000-07:002010-10-20T14:12:13.138-07:00BOOK CLUB REVIEWS<i></i><br />
My friend Barbara Carvallos asked me about an online Book Club made up of 15 relatives and friends...my sister manages it so she limits it to that number, but i think we could share our reading here not in a formal book club but just sharing randomly things we read. I am always interested to see what people read. I'm going to post the same review I emailed to the Book Club members...if anyone reads this, I will post once a month. I read maybe six books a month so some are bound to interest others.<br />
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In September I read several books, a couple of them were mysteries writeen by women. I enjoy taking a break from more serious reading to indulge in the intricate suspense, and plot twists in mystery books. Anne Perry has been a favorite of mine for several year. Most of her mysteries are set in the mid 19th century in London and her protagonists are a former police inspector who after an accident which leaves him with only a sketchy memory of his past, named Thomas Monk. He has met and married a woman who was a battlefield nurse in Turkey during the Crimean War working with Florence Nightingale and is a determined activist for making nursing a profession with schools to train them instead of the practice of hospitals in those years using nurses as scrub women.The nurse's name is Hester, and she has appeared in previous novels as a single woman who is a private nurse; since her marriage she volunteers at a charity hospital to supervise the nursing staff. The latest book I read in this series was The Twisted Root. The plot, a young woman is engaged to the scion of a prominent family and is accused of murdering the coachman as she fled the scene of a garden party at her fiancees home. Monk is hired by this family to find her and clear her of the charges, and the sub-plots include a nurse who steals morphine and quinine from the hospital where Hester works, to give to elderly veterans of the war with France who have no pensions and no money to seek medical care and buy the drugs they need. Perry's descriptions of the physical and historical context of the time she writes of is poetic. This is a read-all-night book.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-14612879104826142482010-10-19T11:35:00.000-07:002010-10-19T11:35:09.966-07:00The media join in on Rand Paul's hissy fit over Conway's 'Aqua Buddha' ad | Crooks and Liars<a href="http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/media-joins-rand-pauls-hissy-fit-over-c">The media join in on Rand Paul's hissy fit over Conway's 'Aqua Buddha' ad | Crooks and Liars</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-3173069430963515082010-10-13T16:38:00.000-07:002010-10-13T16:38:28.763-07:00HARD TIMES<i></i> It has been sometime since I have composed a blog here or on Multiply. It is easy on Facebook, to share what someone else has written, with only my comment to introduce it: I can no longer take the easy way out. A blogger named Ramona has inspired me to speak again of my experience and knowledge of the 20th century, having lived through 73 of it as child, wife, mother, student and finally worker. Early on, perhaps as early as ten, I knew my father was wrong for hating FDR..regardless of his hate, we had three radios in 1937 and I listened to the Fireside Chats each Sunday night after a pot-roast dinner. The radio was our link to the world, and we all listened. I knew that we had come to California from Indiana, though I did not remember the trip: in 1930 I was three years old. I knew that we had lived with my father's brother and his family and that my father had sold his Masonic ring to help with expenses, and I remember when he got his first job in California with the San Francisco Police Department as a patrolman at the Tanforan Race Track on the edge of San Bruno.<br />
These are just vague memories but apparently when some happening was important to my family it left an impression. <br />
Perhaps because my father had joined the Army in 1898 during the Spanish American war and spent more or less the next nineteen years in one or another branch of the U.S. Services, and when he married and left the Army had worked eleven years as a policeman in Indianapolis, he was a died-in-the-wool conservative, and remained that way for the rest of his life. Of his six children five were Democrats: all of the girls. Our only brother became a Republican. <br />
That is the background in which I was nurtured in my early years, and despite the views of my parents I adored Franklin D. Roosevelt and hear his voice in my memory to this day. A patrician in the old sense, descendant of the Dutch settlers, he nevertheless understood the trials and needs of the working class, and like the Rockefellers and Carnegies he believed in the European concept of noblesse oblige. What an idea! That those who had succeeded and become wealthy either by activity or inheritance, owed a debt to the working people whose work had contributed to their success. FDR grew up on an estate in New York with all of the things money could buy to make his life easier. After leaving Harvard and attending Columbia Law School, he left before completing his studies there and passed the New York Bar. Under Woodrow Wilson he was Secretary of the Navy having chosen public service as his career. He was a two term Governor of New York He did not need money so could not be bought..like his uncle, Teddy Roosevelt who inspired him, he knew that life should be better for the working classes in a rich country. He was a Liberal Democrat and the legislation that he pushed through the Congress has changed the lives of Americans for the 75 years since they were enacted. Let us not forget what was signed into law during his thirteen years in office. <br />
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1. Social Security, which gave people who worked hard but were too poor to save for retirement security in their old age. <br />
2. Unemployment insurance paid for with the contributions of the employer which gave a small stipend to a worker who had lost a job through no fault of his or her own.<br />
These are the two programs that have had the most important and lasting benefit to the working class. There were many other programs that he enacted in his first hundred days that kept the people who had lost jobs because of the severe market and banking class including the Works Progress Administration that used Federal funds to emply workers in infrastructure projects and other fields that made life better for Americans. We had a neighbor, a widow, who worked iMn San Francisco in a garment factory being paid by the WPA sewing clothing for children. <br />
My personal knowledge of the WPA was when my father was laid off by the San Francisco Police Department (he was 60 years old, but had not worked long enough to retire) and went to work in the construction of the San Francisco Airport, which is built on a land fill, setting dynamite charges in a rock quarry in the hills above Millbrae. Though my family had increasingly benefited from the policies of FDR, he never acknowledged that fact. I did and still am a FDR Liberal intending to remind people of what the real intent of Conservative leaders and contributors is: to roll back all of the programs and legislation still in place from the New Deal.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-24338095184229589322010-09-28T11:11:00.000-07:002010-09-28T15:32:21.729-07:00I want you to stop being afraid <a class="select" href="http://spacestevie.multiply.com/journal/item/945/I_want_you_to_stop_being_afraid">Link</a><br><br>This link came from Stephen Koehler's blog. It is a plea asking Americans to behave as they did in WWII, when the people in Tillamook, Oregon built a wooden hanger for blimps that would serveill the coast for submarines....it was immense, but built in 90 days. When my father who was retired went back to work as a guard at Fort Mason under the Golden Gate Bridge, when we mashed cans, saved grease, grew "victory gardens" and volunteered at the Red Cross and shopped with ration books, while our brothers, husband and often fathers went to war. During the Depression when people near the railroad fed men traveling by hitching rides on freight trains to look for work, and if they had no money to hire them at least sent them on their way with a meal and good wishes. My mother was 4'11" and did not fear these men. Perhaps I lived in a different world those who lived in big cities and in the South where they feared black people, but most of the country really did pull together and feel a kinship with other Americans. When did this fear and hatred begin? I believe it was after the Civil Rights legislation was made law and schools were integrated, and the farm workers from Mexico that had been Braceros during the war began to settle as residents...the fear of "the other" became ingrained in the imaginations of the white middle-class. The racism that we have today was passed down to children, and then to grandchildren, and here we are, perhaps on the brink of real revolution because one of "the other" is President. This is a little disjointed and I haven't taken the time to edit it for grammar and coherence, but when I read the sign on Stehphen's blog, it produced this emotional rant.<br> <!-- multiply:no_crosspost --><p class='multiply:no_crosspost'></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-6066671142524927932010-09-25T16:31:00.000-07:002010-09-25T16:31:16.671-07:00Copied from Facebook...<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/DNN0jL4xUE4?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/DNN0jL4xUE4?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-44469693945490147402010-05-07T09:29:00.000-07:002010-05-07T09:29:40.557-07:00DAVE JOHNSON OF CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE BLOGGED ABOUT THE CUMULATIVE EFFECTS OF THIRTY YEARS OF TRICKLE DOWN POLICY.<br />
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Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Is Crumbling<br />
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.<br />
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The conservative argument of the last 30-40 years boils down to this: "Hey look at this big pile of seed corn. Let's eat it!"<br />
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Almost 30 years after the "Reagan Revolution" our infrastructure is crumbling around us. Since the Reagan-era tax cuts we have been deferring maintenance of (and never mind modernizing) our infrastructure, and as a result have become less competitive in the world economy.<br />
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Meanwhile our economic competitors, countries like China and India, have been building infrastructure like crazy. Other countries are investing, educating, improving public services because they know these things make the economy explode later. A major component of China's stimulus was infrastructure and public services -- including public welfare -- because of the economic benefits that come later.<br />
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Now for those countries it is later, while for us it's just becoming too late. Their investment is paying off while we're having trouble paying off the accumulated Reagan/Bush tax-cut debt.<br />
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How did we get here?<br />
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Public infrastructure is the roads, courts, education, etc. that enable an economy to prosper. We got ourselves out of the Great Depression with a big investment in public infrastructure. The government taxed the wealthy and built or improved modern roads, bridges, post offices, courthouses, shipyards, schools and other public structures that enabled business to take off.<br />
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And then business took off. The idea was, of course, that business would give back some of the returns to keep that process going. But instead the big companies and wealthy families funded a conservative propaganda machine that convinced people to let them just keep it. Look at this chart from 14 Ways A 90 Percent Top Tax Rate Fixes Our Economy And Our Country:<br />
krugman_chart<br />
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You can clearly see that the money that should have been invested in maintaining and modernizing our infrastructure instead has gone to a few wealthy people at the top of the food chain. (We're the food.) And of course, we all can clearly see the results of this in today's economy. They ate the seed corn, America is crumbling.<br />
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Now, here we are later and we are seeing the result of the Reagan Revolution. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Infrastructure Report Card estimates that we are $2.2 trillion behind just on maintaining the existing infrastructure, never mind modernizing. Please click through and explore what ASCE is saying there. (Conservatives -- there are lots of pictures!)<br />
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What do we do?<br />
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The answer is obvious. It is called public investment. Ask the big companies, the banks and the wealthy to pay back some of the incredible amounts of money they have been piling up as a result of the past investment that We, the People made in building that infrastructure that enabled the economy to boom. Use that money to invest in maintaining and modernizing the infrastructure so that the economy can again thrive for all of us.<br />
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We can employ the unemployed and bring our infrastructure up to par at the same time. There is a lot of work that needs doing and we have a lot of people out of work.<br />
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The payback will be enormous. The economy will explode. And we can build sustainability into the process this time.<br />
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What is in the way?<br />
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The problem now is that the corporate/conservative propaganda machine has gone way past talking people into cutting taxes for the rich and cutting back on public spending for infrastructure and our people. Now they have become very extreme, convincing a number of people that government spending - We, the People spending on the common good - and government itself - We, the People making the decisions for ourselves - is the wrong approach. They believe that any government at all is "socialism" -- run for the benefit of all of us -- and that all public services must be "privatized" -- meaning run for the benefit of a few. They believe it is wrong, even immoral to have public schools, public transit, public health care, regulations that restrict what companies can do to consumers or the environment, etc.<br />
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They have the megaphone because they have the money. We have to confront this head on.<br />
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More to come!<br />
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This is another story of a wealthy few selling off the country's people and future. This is another story of gains for a few at the expense of the rest of us. These stories are becoming all too common. This is the Reagan Revolution coming home to roost, and I will continue to write about the terrible price we are paying and will be paying for a long time for the failed experiment in conservative ideology.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-18630683219536061622010-05-05T10:46:00.000-07:002010-05-05T10:46:31.535-07:00Naomi Wolf says "don't blame Betty Friedan"But reading Friedan would not encourage those budding feminists in India to abandon their deepest personal and familial attachments, and that was certainly not the message that most American women who read The Feminine Mystique at the time of its publication took away from the book. Women who changed their lives in response to Friedan's book disproportionately went into the helping professions. They became teachers. They founded women's centers, domestic-violence shelters, programs for displaced homemakers. They embarked on projects designed to help people.....<br />
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Mid-sixties women did not use Friedan's message as an excuse to abandon their children, husband's and homes. Instead they found a way to demand more freedom to decide on how many children they would have and whether they could work outside the home, or get more education....what really changed the culture was the availability of reliable birth control and colleges that offered courses in Women's Studies. Though I had six children at home I volunteered in helping to bring a Head Start program to my home town...with other women from my Lutheran Church Women's Society. We tended to use our existing resources to affect positive change. It was the young college students who were radicalized by the movement, but Betty Friedan was not responsible for this process, even though she was a target of the John Birch Society whose members then, as now, wanted to preserve the status quo. The Vietnam War and the opposition to it by college students, mostly due to the threat of being drafted if their GPA sank too low, was the major reason for this opposition. Though there often is a new idea that triggers radical change expressed in the press, it is actually historic events that precipitated the idea.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-52936534844601415432010-04-28T11:22:00.000-07:002010-04-28T11:22:03.642-07:00Beware: This is real journalism. Very rare.<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://embed.crooksandliars.com/v/MTI1NzMtMzY1MjU?color=173466"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://embed.crooksandliars.com/v/MTI1NzMtMzY1MjU?color=173466" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355" wmode="transparent"></embed></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-22273190199835360732010-04-23T19:38:00.000-07:002010-04-23T19:38:56.259-07:00ANOTHER STUPID REPUBLICAN WOMANIt was with disgust I watched another Republican nitwit woman: Governor Jan Brewer, sign the idiot legislation that will cost my state money and keep law enforcement busy looking for illegal Mexican immigrants instead of looking for criminals. The two are not synonamous. In my town in Southern Arizona there is a 40% Mexican population, most of whom were born here and their parents were born here. Some live in the same house that their grandparents were born in. Of course there are illegal immigrants among them; they would not count in the 40% statistic because they would not respond to a census. This area is dependent on Mexican workers, male and female for the planting, maintaining and harvesting of thousands of acres of farm land where most of the vegetables eaten anywhere in the U.S. in the winter months are grown and exported. Agriculture is the number one industry here; second is tourism: the arrival of more than 100,000 retired Americans to spend the winter in our warm winter climate. Mexican workers, clean their yards, prune their trees and clean their houses. This terrible legislation sponsored by the majority Republican Arizona Legislature and receiving not ONE Democratic vote is a disaster for my state. Winter conferences of corporate entities will not be scheduled here; Pro baseball teams will no longer schedule Spring Training here. After all, if they need to worry about their players being "profiled" and arrested they will not take that risk.How long before Manny Ramiriz of the Dodgers last before being pulled over in his sports car and arrested. He fits the profile. The Phoenix area, where the majority of the residents vote for Republicans will suffer most, for it is in their suburbs that the teams practice. If Jan Brewer only knew that she has just, in an effort to appease the right-wingnuts, shot herself in the foot today.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-89674488540381751482010-04-21T18:38:00.000-07:002010-04-21T18:38:27.213-07:00WHERE ARE THE SMART WOMEN?It is with much despair that I have watched the candidates and their supporters that are Republican candidates for Congress. I can hardly believe that women not much younger than me, dependent for their income and medical care on Federal programs that were passed by Democratic presidents many years ago, are attending Tea Party demonstrations demanding that they want the government to "keep your hands off my Medicare" or "my Social Security". Are they on the same medication as Palin, Bachman and the new dingbat from Nevada Sue Lowden?<br />
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Where do the Republicans get these women? Michelle Bachman, from what I have always considered a state with reasonable citizens, is so wild eyed that I wonder what medication she is taking; from the wild and wooly state of Alaska we have a wannabee beauty contestant with such strange religious ideas that she had a witch doctor bless her when she ran for governor, and now Sue Lowden, Harry Reids Republican opponent, has said that we need to change our health care system to what it was when "our grandparents" bartered chickens for medical care. She said doctors are "kind and caring" people. How many chickens would you need to pay $167. which is the cost of an office call? I lived in Las Vegas for fourteen years and never met a doctor who would take anything but an insurance card in return for care. This woman works for a casino corporation....she doesnt't seem to have sense enough to count poker chips. I was a State delegate for Gary Hart before his fall from grace for being caught on camera with a woman with wom he was allegedly having an affair. The people who came to that caucus were reasonable people...Where are the smart women who were young in the sixties and seventies? The Gloria Steinems...smart, political, and brave. Who with any intelligence would vote for one of these three Republican women I have mentioned. Will Sue Lowden actually win a Senate seat long held by Harry Reid? Harry Reid's pushing of the Health Care Reform bill may cost him his seat; it seems I left a state people by idiots to move to a state made up of even worse idiots. Barbara Boxer is one of those smart women from the seventies; concerned for her constituents in California, intelligent and courageous will she go down in this crazy election year? It is time that the Democrats stop "hiding behind the shower curtain" as Ed Rendell claims and get back their soul and end the careers of these mad women.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-50362731554740305602010-04-20T11:59:00.000-07:002010-04-20T11:59:41.330-07:00THE PARTY OF NO STILL PLAYING POLITICSMar<b></b>Mark Halperin on Morning Joe today says the Republicans are deliberately mis-reading the Financial Reform Bill.. Watch:<br />
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<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eICpHqDBUtE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eICpHqDBUtE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-22383098350798954522010-04-13T11:24:00.000-07:002010-04-13T11:24:39.210-07:00Kittisplace<a href="http://kittyh1k.blogspot.com/">Kittisplace</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-3403943664048513232010-04-07T11:39:00.002-07:002010-04-07T11:40:29.732-07:00Michelle and Sarah: Together<b></b>Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin are campaigning together. These two who both are appealing to their "base" for support for Bachman's run to keep her seat in Congress in November. Who are her base? Her supporters? Her contributors? One liberal radio host has exposed one of her contributors as a man now being investigated in a Ponzi scheme..She tried to get rid of the dirty money by donating it to a faith based organization that returned it because of the source. She and Palin are two women who are "dumb like a fox", and their base are those who only watch Fox News. We ignore them or dismiss them as wingnuts at our own peril. Here is a clip from the radio host who exposes her long-time contributor:<br />
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<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KAfS0NggClo&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KAfS0NggClo&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1226498673395380184.post-82906111690224134352010-03-22T22:11:00.000-07:002010-03-22T22:11:49.941-07:00MICHAEL STEELE'S BAD DAYTHIS IS A VERY FUNNY FOX NEWS CLIP <br />
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<object width="448" height="368"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailykostv.com/flv/player.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="flashvars" value="config=http://www.dailykostv.com/w/002253/vxml.php?448"></param><embed src="http://www.dailykostv.com/flv/player.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="448" height="368" flashvars="config=http://www.dailykostv.com/w/002253/vxml.php?448"></embed></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17089499544970290116noreply@blogger.com2