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The Despot Lives or What’s the Matter with Michigan?

  • Posted on April 27, 2011 at 9:39 pm

Once again the mass media is working hard trying to get me to care about Will and Kate.  I want to just state this right now for the record.  I care about Will and Kate about as much as I cared about Jon and Kate Plus 8.  I’m not a fan of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” or crappy reality shows, so I’ll pass on the up and coming nuptials.  No matter how I try to avoid this “Wedding of the Century”, it has had an impact on my daily viewing.  Every morning I like to watch a little “Morning Joe” before I go to school.  This is out of habit.  I used to watch Imus.  This show just replaced his show when he was dismissed.  I like the talk format.  Unfortunately, Morning Joe is doing the show this week in London.  They actually think their viewers care about this wedding.   What I want to hear about has more to do with the economy and civil liberties.

Recently, here in Michigan, Benton Harbor was taken over by our governor.  This means basically that the people that live there lost their local representation.  I look at this as taxation without representation.  This kind of behavior is what one might expect if we lived under a King’s rule like in the Will and Kate variety before they lost all of their real power.  Maybe this is why we are supposed to care about Will and Kate.  We are the little serfs looking up to the wonderful future King and Queen.  We should bow and bring our first born child to them for a special blessing.

Mr. Harris, an accountant, is now in charge of Benton Harbor.  The city must pay him $11,000 a month for his services.  He has the power to hire and fire.  The duly elected officials have no power.  Benton Harbor is a very poor community and they are struggling.  One thing I find very interesting is that Benton Harbor and Detroit are both fairly black cities.  These are the two cities that have been targeted thus far to be taken over by the state government.  While the city of Detroit has not been taken over the schools in Detroit have been taken over and are continually being cut back.

Mr. Harris claims he has the backing of the citizens in Benton Harbor.  I don’t know how he would know this because he is not an elected official.  He was appointed by the governor.  Rachel Maddow does a good job of explaining what is going on in Benton Harbor.

Since 2000 it seems more and more to me that no one really cares about our votes.  We had the Bush/Gore election decided by the Supreme Court.  The Kerry/Bush election still has questions about those votes in Ohio.  During the Democratic Primary here in Michigan in 2008, my vote and countless other votes, were stolen and given to Barack Obama.  Both parties are guilty of stealing our votes or just not counting them.  I am tired of being told I live in a Democracy only to discover that my vote doesn’t really count or has been stolen.

It feels like Governor Snyder believes in an Aristocracy type of government.  According to Wikipedia this is a form of government in which the best qualified citizens will rule.  These qualified citizens are usually privileged by birth and class, thus an elite aristocratic class.  How else can he explain “appointing” someone to run a city government?

The more I learn about “rule” under Governor Snyder, the more I believe we now live in Michigan under Despotism.  In this form of government a single entity, yes called a “despot”, rules with an absolute power.  Yes, this is what we have in Governor Rick Snyder.  It’s his way or the highway.  Everyone is in fear of what he will do next.  He has cut the public school budget, so he can give tax breaks to businesses.   When a group of Superintendents of Schools asked to meet with him, he refused to see them.  They might have had some good ideas but he didn’t want to hear them.

Today Governor Snyder gave a speech about reinventing education in Michigan.  He likes that word, reinvention.  However, much of the talk is the same old line the Republicans have been pushing for years in Michigan.  He wants more charter schools, students to spend up to two hours a day with online instruction, and he wants the money to follow the student which it kind of does now to a point.  However, tax payer money doesn’t go to private schools.  I suspect this is something that he will want to change.  Teachers can expect another year to wait to make tenure which would be five years instead of four.  Teachers can also pay 20% of their health care costs with less pay and more work time.  Many people don’t realize that teachers who are let go don’t get unemployment as they are contracted yearly.  If they are out of a job with all of these cuts, they are out of luck.  Governor Snyder says, ‘We will break down the status quo’.  I don’t know what he has been doing for the last ten years or so that he thinks there is some kind of “status quo” in education as education has been constantly changing.  All of us teachers have had to deal with No Child Left Behind and the constant use of assessment materials both good and bad.  At Sturgis we are constantly doing “whatever it takes” to educate students and raise test scores.   We are not complacent.  This is an ongoing process.  I suspect most schools are doing everything they can to raise their test scores.  With Governor Snyder he wants all of this magic to happen while making drastic cuts to education.  It’s that same old mentality that President Bush used, pay less and expect more.

Here is a video about what’s happening at a school in Detroit set up to educate pregnant teens.

We need to all be informed about what is happening around this country.  If this can happen here in Michigan, it can happen in your state as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/us/27michigan.html

According to Rache,l Michigan wins!  Yes, we have the most over reaching governor of all of the crazy Republicans that have been recently elected.  Lucky us!

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Wall Street Wives, Taxes and Privatization

  • Posted on April 22, 2011 at 12:34 pm

Illustration by Victor Juhasz

Whew!  Everyone has just breathed that big sigh of relief that their taxes are done and they don’t have to think about them for another year.  However, we should all be thinking about where our tax monies are going instead of focusing on the two parties that would have us believe that we must slash and burn “entitlement” programs in order to contain this unyielding budget deficit.  I, for one, don’t complain a lot about my taxes and I pay plenty in terms of percent of my income.  I am single with no dependents and I no longer run a business that might help for write off reasons.  This puts me in that tax space of hell that most single people understand.  When I add up all the money I pay for federal, state, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, property taxes and sales tax I could be screaming about the taxes I pay.  However, I don’t because I know that we need roads, public education, colleges, hospitals, airports, police, defense and many other things to make our society run.  I know I pay my fair share of the tax burden.  I don’t need any more and I know that many corporations pay nothing.  I also know that many wealthy people don’t share my percent of the burden.  I’ve been saying that we need to change the tax code so those at the top can do more for our country.  They have more, so they should do more.  After all they use more of these government resources than you or I will ever use.  They use the airports all the time to fly wherever they want to be in the world.

However, what I want to share with you today is how the rich have access to the government in a way that you and I will never have.  They take advantage of programs.  They even get programs written for them so they can dip into the honey pot of our tax payer monies.  Many of us that are old enough, remember John Wayne being paid not to farm.  Yeah, that’s funny.  That’s small potatoes compared to what I recently read in this  Rolling Stone article.  http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/5564-americas-shadow-budget

The Federal Reserve appears to be at the beck and call of the wealthy superstars.  Even though those wealthy bankers were basically crooks and liars and never had to pay for their shenanigans, we keep forking it over to them and now even, their WIVES!  This is important to read.  It’s from the link within the article about, “Why isn’t Wall Street in Jail?”

Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What’s more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even “one dollar” just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick “The Gorilla” Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.

So, we know these guys are crooked and the government knows it too, so what does the Federal Reserve do?  Our government has a “Shadow Budget”.  There is a budget that we see and then there is another one that the Federal Reserve creates.  You must watch this video because it is eye opening.

The Fed books have been opened up and now we are finding out about these secret transactions.  This was brought about by bi-partisan support as the video has stated.  Here is just a snippet from the article:

The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. “Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this,” says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “Every one of these transactions is outrageous.”

Here is more:

But if you want to get a true sense of what the “shadow budget” is all about, all you have to do is look closely at the taxpayer money handed over to a single company that goes by a seemingly innocuous name: Waterfall TALF Opportunity. At first glance, Waterfall’s haul doesn’t seem all that huge — just nine loans totaling some $220 million, made through a Fed bailout program. That doesn’t seem like a whole lot, considering that Goldman Sachs alone received roughly $800 billion in loans from the Fed. But upon closer inspection, Waterfall TALF Opportunity boasts a couple of interesting names among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches.

Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley’s investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.

Obviously, I encourage you to read the whole article.  I also think we have to press congress to stop this outrageous transfer of money to the wealthy Wall Street fat cats.  It’s Robin Hood in reverse.  We all pay our taxes.  We aren’t crazy about paying them, but we know that we have to pay something to keep society going.  I have no desire to pay for the fat cats on Wall Street so they can keep their cushy lifestyles.  It’s time we all woke up and really learned more about how our government is being run.  Right now we keep getting brain washed into accepting what must happen to those “terrible entitlement” programs because they are truly the problem.  We are also being told about all those “terrible teachers” and of course now those sleepy, good for nothing, air traffic controllers as well.  This is all smoke and mirrors, so they can privatize everything.  It will just give those fat cats on Wall Street one more thing to control.  I ask everyone that reads my blog to just pass this on and think about who the enemy really is.  It isn’t the teachers and it isn’t air traffic controllers that are asked to work all night by themselves without so much as a potty break.  It’s okay for our Vice President to fall asleep because he isn’t bringing in planes but truthfully, who is really at fault for putting these planes at risk?  I can’t help but wondering why we are hearing about the air traffic controllers right now anyway.  Is there some new reason they’re falling asleep or is there something else in the works?  http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/privatization

The next time you hear Rep. Paul Ryan blowing smoke your way, think about the real problems in government and where you tax dollars are being spent.  Here is a quick link for Rep. Ryan from Open Secrets.   http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00004357&cycle=2010

Isn’t it nice to know that he rakes in so much money from insurance and health professionals?  Of course they will clearly make more money under his big proposal to privatize Medicare and Medicaid?  http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/07/nation/la-na-gop-budget-20110408

Now, that I’ve spoiled your Easter with all my happy talk on my blog, have a happy Easter!

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Bush Tax Cuts + Wars = A Deficit Problem

  • Posted on April 17, 2011 at 4:03 pm

Two peas in one proverbial pod!

Okay, it’s a simple math problem.  The Republicans would have us all believe that the deficit issue is because of the American people.  That’s right folks, you are the problem.  You are really the problem, if you are a union member and you work for the government.  You are not the problem, if you are a member of Congress or the head of some government entity because your position is so very necessary for the proper functioning of government.  You caught me laughing again!  You are so very “special” if you work for the military.  You don’t have to worry about losing your job because they’ll never cut enough to matter.  However, if you are a lowly Private in the military, it’ll be mostly talk about honor and bravery, less about money and benefits!

Rep. Dennis Kucinich says, “The geniuses on Wall Street decided that a certain amount of unemployment is necessary for the proper functioning of the economy.”  You must ask yourself a question.  Does your job fall under the category Dennis is talking about?  If it does, beware!  You could be next.  So, I’m thinking what does this mean?  It might explain why a friend of my son went in for a job interview thinking he was really competing for a job, when he really wasn’t.  It turns out, they weren’t really hiring at all at that time.  The business was just seeing what’s out there to hire.  Of course that isn’t how the posting was listed.  My son works for the company and was surprised to find out that they weren’t really hiring.  So, why would the economy benefit from a certain amount of unemployment?  Could it be that it makes people hungrier and willing to work for less?  You know less money, less benefits and more hours for less.  Who benefits under this scenario?  Certainly not the American worker!  Here is Dennis talking about the deficit and President Obama.

Dennis is right.  If we get more jobs going out there, there will be a bigger tax base.  Why have the politicians decided to focus on “contracting” government instead of focusing on job creation.  James Carville had that catch phrase, “It’s the economy stupid!”  Someone needs to be whispering these words into President Obama’s ears every day because for some reason, he hasn’t figured this out either.  Instead of going to the Republican playbook of tax cuts for the wealthy and reducing spending to cut the deficit, President Obama should be focusing on JOBS!

The other night I caught a bit of a program on the History channel about our collapsing infrastructure.  Here is just a taste of that program.  It’s a nightmare.  However, it’s not the Freddie Kruger kind where you watch it at the movies and know it’s not real.  This is a real nightmare that could have a profound effect on our lives.

We all remember the bridge in Minnesota.  Most of us know that the roads, bridges, sewer systems and many other structures in our states are failing.  So when our infrastructure truly is at risk, what are the politicians doing?  They are like Henny Penny screaming, “The sky is falling!”  Of course, the sky they are talking about relates to the deficit and the hole we have dug ourselves into.  They weren’t singing that tune back in December when they ushered in two more years of the Bush tax cuts and decreasing the amount we pay into social security by 2%.  This is corruption at its core.  There is a systematic effort here to destroy wages and benefits for the American workers while continuing to prop up business, banks and the super wealthy.  If the politicians and their cohorts can do enough damage to the American workers wages and benefits, we might have enough unemployed that will be willing work for peanuts.  Now, you might be wondering why this is important.  I’m thinking that the cost of fuel is far too high to ship things.  It only makes sense to produce things locally to save energy costs.  However, the wages have to be low enough so that business can make the type of profits they really want.  Those profits have to be big enough to be able to give out the big bonuses to the big bosses.

Now let’s get back to that equation, “Bush Tax Cuts + Wars = A Deficit Problem.”  War is very profitable.  One of the things that the politicians are really pushing for is PRIVATIZATION.  They want to privatize everything from health care to education.  They have already taken over our military.  This is happening throughout our government.  Tonight my sister asked me if I knew that while we have 50,000 troops in Iraq, did I know there are another 77,000 working with private companies.  Of course these aren’t military.  They are probably ex-military working for “for profit” companies that have been hired by the Department of Defense.  Of course, the American tax payer is still footing the bill.  Don’t be thinking we will be getting out of any of these wars too soon.  They are far too profitable for private businesses that are invested in them.

So, where are President Obama and the Democrats in all of this?  Our fearless leader is spending his time dangling carrot sticks at us at moments when he thinks we might be vulnerable.  He was “unaware” that his mike was on and he was being recorded recently.  He sure gave it to those Republicans in that private conversation, or so we have been led to believe.  As we get closer to the election of 2012, he will probably look more like he’s actually in charge.  So far in my book, he has looked like a wimp.  This is all window dressing for the next election.  My brother says he will win the election.  I don’t know if he will or he won’t.  However, I think it’s interesting that the Republicans and Democrats publicly sound so different, but when they get behind closed doors they both do everything they can to dismantle social programs, subsidize the rich with deep tax cuts and ignore the plight of the poor and they do it all on the backs of the middle class, or what’s left of the middle class.  Is the problem in our country really all about the deficit?  If it truly is about the deficit then what on earth were these two parties doing in December when they set us up with two more years of the Bush tax cut?

Here is another good piece from the Real News Network.  It’s an interview with William Black and you should watch it through the end.

Think back to what Dennis said about this being a transfer of wealth.  This is not about transferring wealth, like robbing the rich to give to the poor as in Robin Hood.  It’s all about taking from the majority and giving to the wealthy.  The government is giving tax breaks and tax cuts to the wealthy and they are also privatizing much in government and giving those no bid contracts to their buddies!  There is a constant drumbeat that we have to get on board whatever those “brains” in Washington think we must do to fix the economy.  Just remember those “brains” are listening to the geniuses on Wall Street!  Remember  William Black said, “Deficit hysteria has nothing to do with anything.”

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Protest at the Capital in Lansing

  • Posted on April 13, 2011 at 9:42 pm

Here is a video from Wood TV8 about the protest that took place at the Capital building today.

I’m sure most people won’t know much about the protest here in Michigan today.  The best printed press I could find on it was from San Antonio.  Yes, I know that’s not a Michigan newspaper.  Surprise, surprise!  Here is a link with many pictures.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/Anti-Snyder-protest-draws-thousands-to-Capitol-1335980.php#photo-

In Detroit many bus drivers took the day off to support the protest.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20110413/METRO05/104130390/1361/Scores-of-Detroit-bus-drivers-call-in-sick-during-Lansing-protest–expected-back-Thursday

In our own local Sturgis Journal there is an article about possible budget cuts here at Sturgis that amount to a bit over a million dollars.  I can’t get to the piece online but it includes shutting down the pool which would be sad.

I also came across this bit about Ken Ross.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2011/04/09/State-regulator-gives-Fed-rule-thumbs-down/UPI-68151302369316/

And then a few days later look here is Ken Ross again.  This time he’s leaving the job.

http://www.lifeandhealthinsurancenews.com/News/2011/4/Pages/Ken-Ross-to-Leave-Michigan-Insurance-Post.aspx

I also found this buried tidbit informative.

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20110405/FREE/110409954#

This was meant to be a quick post just to let people know what’s going on here in Michigan.

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How High is the Price of Freedom?

  • Posted on April 12, 2011 at 10:19 pm

I was over at Modern Schooland clicked on one of his links to theNYC Educator blog.  Holy smokes but that blog had a video with Ronald Reagan supporting unions….in Poland!  I had to laugh.  This isn’t the Ronald Reagan that killed the air traffic controllers’ union, is it?  All of the Repubs like to talk about dear Ronnie, but they never mention this Ronnie.

And here is more…

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”  Those words were spoken by none other than Ronald Reagan.  If governors like Walker, Snyder and the other Repubs love Reagan so much, why don’t they follow his advice and protect unions?

I like this video here on labor in the United States.  This interview is with Elaine Bernard, the head of the trade union program at Harvard Law school.

Moving on over to the SkyDancing blog I came across another video post from Real News. Something is up and it’s not to help the American worker.  This professor says the objective is to move the tax burden to labor.  He talks about parasites and hosts.  Watch this video and think about that war I wrote about on the American people.  When the parasites are done destroying our country, don’t worry, they’ll just move on to another country!

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The War on the American People

  • Posted on April 8, 2011 at 1:52 am

I heard Speaker Boehner say today that we are involved in three wars.  A thought immediately crossed my mind.  I thought there is a fourth war.  There is a war on the American people.  Legislation that is being crafted today is nothing but a war on the American people and life as we have known it.

I’m reading the book on France Perkins, “The Woman Behind The New Deal” by Kirstin Downey, and I came to the beginning of a chapter that really shook me up because it could have easily been written about today.  Here is that paragraph from page 197 of my paperback book:

By the time the Roosevelt administration came to power, the labor movement had disintegrated, with union membership falling to 5 percent of the workforce.  The American Federation of Labor had more than 4 million members in 1919 but fewer than 2 million in 1933.  Companies in the 1920s had set out to break the unions, and succeeded.  As joblessness mounted, the remaining workers faced falling wages and lengthened work hours.  Union leaders had to fight the insurmountable combination of implacable employers, a receding economy, and hostile courts.  Many lost hope.

So, let’s get back to that war that I’m talking about.  After WWII our country blossomed.  The GI bill allowed many people to go to college that would not otherwise have been able to go.  This was an investment in our country and something had to be done because there wouldn’t be jobs for everyone after the war anyway.  A lot happened to develop and improve industry in our country.  Through education many people were able to elevate their lives and gain that “American Dream”.  Today, all of that American Dream stuff is being assaulted.  The average American has a difficult time with normal life today because there are many things happening that make it difficult financially, from the cost of gas to wages to the cost of health care.

We are fighting in the Middle East and our focus, energy and money seem to all be put over there, not here.  The programs that helped get the “commoners” to the top are being systematically dismantled so there is no room for that American Dream.

The politicians have been using mind control on us for years.  I cannot repeat how many times I’ve heard how inept the government is at running anything.  The answer for these career politicians is to privatize everything they can get their hands on.  You might be thinking why they want to privatize everything.  I can give you one very good reason.  Many of the people we elect for Congress are super wealthy.  They own or are invested in many corporations.  These are the same corporations that will be running those private companies that will be running everything from Medicare, Medicaid and who knows what else to education.  http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/index.php

So, I asked my sister the other night who owns the Milwaukee Bucks?  I had been to the Open Secrets page I’m sharing with you and I thought who owns the Bucks as they are listed on the site first.  It’s Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat.  Now, he may be a good guy.  I don’t really know.  I just know that it doesn’t seem to matter if they are Republicans or Democrats, many of them are just what I’m going to label “Richicrats”, you know the aristocrat, wealthy, people of our country.  They certainly aren’t you and me!

We have been told that private industry can make things cheaper because they have to compete for the job, unlike the government.  I find this interesting especially when you think about all of the no bid contracts that were happening in Iraq with private industry.  A lot of our military spending is on private corporations like Kellogg Brown and Root or Halliburton.  What is amazing is how much the military spending has increased in the last ten or so years.  http://armscontrolcenter.org/policy/securityspending/articles/fy11_growth_since_2001/

The only true “sacred cow” is the military, even though we spend a lot more money than any other nation.  http://armscontrolcenter.org/policy/securityspending/articles/US_vs_Global/

We sit back in fear and so we keep spending on that military.  We have been programmed that we must fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here.  We say, “Whatever it takes!” to keep us safe.  We can lose our liberty, our freedoms and now our way of life but hey, don’t you feel safe?

Many programs, formerly labeled sacred cows, are being dismantled by the government elite in the name of “saving our country”.  We have to “share the sacrifice”.  We have been told this and how is it being done?  Systematically, over a period of many years unions have taken a big hit.  Business went over seas and yep, it was the unions fault because after all they wanted too much money, so they had to go.  The private sector unions were hit first and now of course the public sector unions have to go.  This was a big first part of the plan.  Health care is another problem.  Business cannot pay for health care.  It costs too much.  What can we do about that?  Single payer might be a fair option but no, we have health care which is set up to continue to feed the “for profit” insurance industry.  This certainly does nothing for the rest of us.  What does Rep. Ryan want to do?  We’ll call it something else, like a shared sacrifice, which sounds so patriotic, but really it is dismantling Medicare and Medicaid and giving more money “vouchers” to the American people so they can “purchase” health insurance from yep, you got it, private insurance companies that are for profit.  Public education has been a bastion of our society.  I cannot even imagine our country without a good public education system.  So, over the last several years we have been told how bad education is in the United States.  What I find really interesting about this is how closely this talk aligns with the beginning of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.  If I was a cynical person, I might be thinking that NCLB was a smokescreen for the beginning of the dismantling of public education as we know it.  That couldn’t possibly be.  Could it?  Now, think about college education and how outrageously expensive it is to go to college today.  Our kids are stuck with an ungodly amount of debt if they go to school.  They end up being slaves to a system because they have to work to pay back their school loans.  They take whatever job they can get so they aren’t in default of their school loans.  What does Congress do about this?  They take away Pell grants and put many of those loans our kids are getting in the hands of for profit companies.  Our kids can’t get enough government loans, so they go the other route and they pay dearly.

Now the Republicans are hitting everything from the WIC program to Planned Parenthood.  Who might use these programs?  I know it won’t be any of them or their children because they don’t need them.  My friend at Modern School has put up a good post showing where all that money is going that he got from the Center for American progress.  I will be posting it here.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/tax_breaks_infographic.html

Yes, let’s hit the most vulnerable Americans because they don’t have the power to fight back and hey, if they’re homeless, they won’t be voting anyway!  These greedy politicians have done a good job of getting us to look at our neighbors with an eye of scrutiny.  We see those lazy bums living near us that just don’t want to work.  We’ve been told that they just want to live off the government.  They’re useless.  They need to learn how to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps, stop whining and get to work” because after all we did!  I’m laughing as I’m writing this because if anyone has a problem with welfare it is the corporations that get the real welfare like bank bailouts and tax breaks beyond the scope of anything the little guy next door is ever going to get.  We have been told that the “job creators” have to be pampered or they will take their jobs somewhere else.  Guess what?  We pamper those job creators and they still take those jobs somewhere else.

This is the real war.  It’s an all out assault on the American people.  If you are lucky enough to have a secure job, you may think I’m a nut.  However, if you have ever had to think before you paid a bill because you’re not sure you can afford to pay it right now, or you have a kid in college, or you have a health emergency, think about what I’ve written.  So, here we are left with no hope.  We always thought if we got a good education, we could go far in this country.  Some still can, but it usually is based on who they know, not necessarily what they know.

However, there is one thing really interesting about all of this.  In my mind, I see wages falling and gas prices going up which could mean that manufacturing might be able to happen in this country again.  If the companies can get us down to where we are just happy to have a job, even if it pays peanuts, it might be more affordable for them to do business here.  After all, the cost of oil and gas is kind of restrictive for shipping costs.  We are being turned into a nation of cheap labor.  Instead of China joining us and growing their middle class, we are becoming a nation of the wealthy and everyone else.  Don’t worry about those factory jobs.  They’re probably coming back.  They just might be paying peanuts and you might have to get a couple of more jobs to pay for your home and utilities.  Don’t worry because your kids can always help out.    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/31/maine-republicans-seek-to-loosen-child-labor-laws/

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This Little Piggy Went to Market and Brought Home Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz

  • Posted on April 6, 2011 at 12:11 am

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

(Warning!!!  This piece is to be read with a hillbilly, sarcastic voice to feel the full effect of my thinking content.)

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0405/Debbie-Wasserman-Schultz-A-good-fit-to-replace-Tim-Kaine-at-DNC

Hey all you women, especially Hillary Clinton supporters, step up and vote for Obama.  You know you want to.  After all the Democrats with President Obama are going to put Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz in charge of the DNC since Tim Kaine is going to run for the senate.  I smell something a bit off here.  Oh, that’s right.  Since my vote was stolen and given to Obama on May 31st of 2008 in the Michigan primary, I haven’t been a very happy Democrat.  So, let’s appease all those disheartened women voters.  After all Debbie is just so likable.  I’m sure that the “good old boys” on the Obama campaign team were just trying to figure out how they’re going to get those cranky women to vote for Obama.  You know how those women are.  They just can’t seem to get over the 2008 election.  Let’s throw them a bone!  Hey, Debbie!  We need you!

I like Debbie.  I think she’s a fine woman but I also think she is being used.  Maybe she doesn’t mind being used since Hillary has set the pace for women everywhere.  Obama can call her a racist, bitch slap her with music by JayZ and she’ll step right up and do his bidding as though they are “old” friends.  I know this says a lot about politicians of both genders when they so easily let those “little” indiscretions slide like water off a duck’s back.  Yes, I know.  We are supposed to think it is all for the greater good and all that other crap we’ve been told over the years.

I remember the 2008 primary when Hillary gave that wonderful speech about putting some cracks in the glass ceiling and then she caved when all of us women wanted her to stand up for us at the convention.  She capitulated and conceded to Obama.  Those of us that were closely following the race could see that it was rigged.  They got rid of the old Michigan and Florida problems and Hillary won all of the “real” big Democratic states.   http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html

The race was a dead heat even though the Democratic Party tried to paint it as an Obama run away train.  So, you’re probably wondering why I’m bringing all of this up today.  It seems to me that President Obama has a little problem.  It’s called a woman problem.  He’s hoping that Debbie can get us women back on board where we belong.  You know, it’s the same thing as “barefoot and pregnant” or “back in the kitchen”.  Whatever you want to call it, they are looking for simple, easy tricks to get women to vote for President Obama and Debbie is just the ticket to get us on board that Obama train!

Truthfully, I can’t tell you how I’m going to vote.  I just know that everything the Republicans seem to be doing lately looks good for Obama.  All of these crazy, Republican governors are scaring the hell out of most sane people.  With their slash and burn mentality, it makes me not wish for a Republican president to do the same on a national level.  In walks Representative Ryan with his crazy scheme to destroy Medicare and Medicaid.  Is the Democratic Party scripting this stuff?  It just makes you wonder.  However, President Obama is more Republican than Democrat in my book.  I have such a dilemma in the coming year with figuring out what to do.  Oh, Debbie, are you going to help me make that awesome decision and twist my arm to vote for Obama?  Are you going to tell me how it’s about abortion, gay rights, education and the right to belong to a labor union?  I know those crazy Republicans are just like the big bad wolf at the little piggy’s door.  They will huff and they will puff and they will blow all my dreams away!  Okay, I’m laughing now because in my mind the two parties are so much alike that it really is sad that I have no real choices in the next election.  I can vote for bad or I can vote for worse!  I can vote for President Obama who seemingly never met a Bush policy that he didn’t love.  Better yet, I can vote for some crazy, Tea Party loving Republican that never met a Bush policy that he didn’t love!  Choices, choices!  Hmmm, wonder which Bush policy lover I’ll be voting for.  Oh, is Jeb Bush ready to throw his hat into the ring?  I think it still might happen!  http://www.ksvoboda.com/?p=1110

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Who was Henrietta Lacks?

  • Posted on April 3, 2011 at 4:00 pm

I am going to post this under the category of more things I don’t know but should.  I had never heard of Henrietta Lacks before.  If you are a scientist, you probably know who she was.  If you are like me, you have no idea who she was and why she is important today.  I saw an ad for a book about her and I wondered about her.  The book is titled, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, if you’d like to read it.  Looking at reviews of it on Amazon, it must be a good read.  This is such an interesting story.  She was a young black woman with cervical cancer who died in 1951.  Some of her cancer cells were taken from her prior to her death and they are still living today.  Prior to this cancer cells only lived a short time outside of the body.  Henrietta’s cancer cells were unique and this is why she is such an important part of the scientific community.  This video explains her life fairly well in a very short form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRrNjHYxP_o

In 1976 a team of scientists wanted to study her family.  The family didn’t know about their mother’s cancer cells, the line called Hela.  It makes me wonder what else is being done without our knowledge for science.  It just doesn’t seem right to me that companies have profited from the sale of Hela and her family has members that don’t even have medical coverage.  Her cells have transformed modern medicine.  There is a documentary here that I suggest watching as it is fascinating.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-way-of-all-flesh/

Henrietta’s cells were used without her knowledge.  After her death, her cells were used without her family’s knowledge as well.  I find all of this morally troubling but also fascinating for the research that has been done from her cells.  My sister, Colleen, died of ovarian cancer.  A cure has never been found.  However, there are many things that have been accomplished because of the study of Hela cells.  You can read about them here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jun/23/henrietta-lacks-cells-medical-advances

Henrietta became a scientific heroine.  In Atlanta, October 11th is her special day!  Her contribution to science is immeasurable.  This has to make anyone wonder what else is being studied without our knowledge.  If you watch the video, you will see how her cells seemed to just multiply and live on.  It is rather scary how her cells ended up in research without the scientists understanding exactly how it happened.  It reminded me of my nephew, Will, who is a scientist.  I remember him talking about labs and how some are just not sterile.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4th, 1968 in Memphis where he had gone to stand with sanitation workers who wanted the right to collectively bargain.  Tomorrow there will be many rallies for labor across this nation.  We all need to stand together and support labor.  I suggest thinking of Henrietta on this day as well.  I’m sure Dr. King would be appalled at how she was used by a system that chooses to allow big business to profit by the use of her cancer cells.  Some may think that it is fine.  However, in my mind, the fact that pharmaceutical companies are still profiting off her Hela cells is just wrong.  A product can have a patent and people get money for their discoveries.  It seems very strange to me that this black woman and her family were treated the way they were while companies still sell her cells.  If nothing else, they should get free medical care for life.

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Governors Gone Wild…..or is it ROUGUE?

  • Posted on April 2, 2011 at 3:38 pm

Labor Panel 7-9 which depicts Frances Perkins and the artist's parents.

It seems like every day some strange new occurrence is happening with Republican governors these days.  As an art teacher I find the latest happenings in Maine to be an insult to history and art.  In Maine a call went out to artists to depict the history of labor in the state of Maine for a mural to be put up in the Department of Labor building.  Judy Taylor won the commission.  She spent a year studying Maine labor history and creating the mural.  A fact most people probably don’t really know is that Frances Perkins is the first woman labor secretary.  She worked with FDR and many of the programs that we all know about today like Social Security, unemployment insurance, and child labor laws developed under FDR because of Frances pushing for them.  Now what does Frances have to do with Maine you ask?  She was born in Boston but her family came from Maine and that is where she really felt her home was.  The Perkins family has a long history in Maine.

Governor LePage decided that the mural, which depicts the history of labor and working people in Maine, had to go because it just wasn’t business friendly.  He had a complaint about the mural and so, it just had to go.  Even though the artist was commissioned to do the work and there wasn’t a problem prior to LePage being elected as governor, it had to go!  Judy Taylor is the artist.  I’ve decided she MUST be a subversive!  She must have secretly painted images to create propaganda and to control the minds of the people.  It must have been the images she used of her mother and father that put the governor over the top.  They were both depicted in the Frances Perkins panel.  She must be a SOCIALIST for depicting such a painting.  Okay, I’m laughing while I’m writing this.  I’m just so surprised that someone with the intellect of Governor LePage is actually running a state.  You can see the mural at Judy’s website.  See for yourself what has Governor LePage so distraught that he felt the need to CENSOR the artwork.  I’m sorry.  The word censor might mean he covered certain parts but no, he removed the entire piece.  No part of it was worthy of human, visual consumption in the state of Maine.  It has been put in storage and maybe it will be put on display somewhere else in Maine or maybe it won’t!

http://www.judytaylorstudio.com/mural1.html

Judy Taylor, the Artist

Here is Judy Taylor’s statement about what has happened in Maine.

Judy Taylor: Statement concerning the Maine Labor Mural March 30, 2011 As the artist who created the mural, people ask me how I feel about what’s

happening and what I would like to see done. Like many of the people of

Maine, I want to see the mural displayed publicly as it was originally

intended. I want people to see it and connect to Maine’s labor history. The

purpose of the mural is historical, the artistic intent to honor. It belongs

to the people of Maine and needs to be accessible to them.

Painting the mural is what I have trained my entire life to do. The theme of

figure and context is what I set out to chronicle in my career as an artist.

In fact, my first painting as a child was of my grandfather on his farm in

Nebraska, in the context of his work and life. I loved seeing my

grandparents work and followed my grandmother all over her farm and rode with

my grandfather as he delivered oil around the state.

I’ve always had a deep curiosity and passion for my family’s history as well

as our nation’s history, so when in 2007 I learned that the Maine Arts

Commissions was requesting submissions for a commissioned piece of artwork

detailing the history of labor in Maine, I immediately entered the

competition.

After a competitive process, I was awarded the commission and commenced upon

a year of research, preparation of archival materials, sketches of stories in

context based on historical fact and painting the panels. I added one

personal piece which was to include my mother and father as I had lost both

of them the previous year. My father is the young Army officer and my mother

the little girl in the Frances Perkins panel. My father served as a Forward

Observer during the Korean War and was awarded a Bronze Star. He was a man

who stood by every word he spoke, every letter he wrote. It was so

heartbreaking to learn that this controversy may have started with an

anonymous letter comparing this mural to a North Korean propaganda poster.

Perhaps we should hang my father’s Bronze Star for his service in Korea in

the now empty reception area of the Maine Department of Labor until the mural

is returned, as a symbol of the importance of remembering our history, and

not shuttering it away.

Robert Reich wrote a great piece on this subject.  I encourage you to read it because no matter what Governor LePage does, he cannot erase history!

http://yubanet.com/opinions/Robert-Reich-Why-Governor-LePage-Can-t-Erase-History-and-Why-We-Need-a-Fighter-in-the-White-House.php

What has become of our country when art is being censored?  Actually, this isn’t the first time art was removed for a controversial reason.  Anyone that is a student of the art of Diego Rivera will know about the mural that he created for Nelson Rockefeller.

http://www.diego-rivera.org/rockefellercontroversy.html

Let’s just hope the Detroit Institute of Arts doesn’t decide Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals to be too controversial for the viewing public to see.

A Panel From Detroit Industry

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103337403

It’s a sorry state I see our country in when governors can go wild with legislation to destroy public unions, limit collective bargaining and remove public art.  In the preamble for our constitution I don’t remember any mention of dictatorship.  It simply says, “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”  It’s “WE THE PEOPLE” and we have a right to determine how we run our government.  I think it’s time to start recalling these so called “servants of the people” and get true representation.

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