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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/

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.

Jon Stewart “Must See” TV and Frances Perkins

  • Posted on March 4, 2011 at 9:53 pm

Last night I stayed up late just to watch the Daily show because I knew Diane Ravitch was going to be on the show.  It was too late to stay up but I’m not sorry I watched it.  Jon has a great staff.  They put together all of the important elements in their clips and it is truly “must see” TV.  If you do nothing else tonight, watch Jon Stewart’s whole show.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-march-3-2011-diane-ravitch

Diane mentioned Finland because that country has been sited so many times for their world standing in education.  Diane talks about this and also the relation of education test scores to poverty which I have written about here on my post many times before.

It is amazing that teachers have become the “scapegoat” for all that is wrong with education today.

After checking out Jon’s show you might want to get the new book on Frances Perkins.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Perkins

I, like most Americans, don’t know enough about our history.  Frances Perkins was FDR’s labor secretary.  My sister is reading a book about her and it sounds fascinating.  The book is, “The Woman Behind the New Deal” by Kirsten Downey.

If you cannot afford to buy the book, remember you can get it at your local library.  They will even have it shipped in from another library for you.

What is shocking to me is how little I know about this amazing woman.  She was truly a champion for workers’ rights and we all need to learn more about her.  When you think about the fact that a state like Mississippi hasn’t even elected one woman to congress in all of their history, then you read about Frances and “New Deal”, you will be absolutely amazed.  http://womenincongress.house.gov/

We need more women like Frances Perkins in public office today.