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A Plan for America…..My Brother…and George Carlin

  • Posted on February 19, 2011 at 12:14 pm

Yesterday I got an email from my brother Jim.  Jim and I can agree on some things and disagree on others.  I found his email really interesting and I decided I would share it with you because it will make everyone “think” and we all know the mind is a terrible thing to waste.  Also, earlier in the week someone had posted a George Carlin video on the Confluence in a comment and it got me thinking.  All of this to me is tied together and this is my unique way of putting it together for people who might read my blog.  All I can say is “God Bless George” he was a brilliant comedian.  It’s amazing how he is gone but what he has said is still remarkably relevant today.  If you really can’t handle his “language” then don’t watch it, but really are you that sheltered?

This is my brother’s email in its entirety:

Katie

The Challenge for President Obama

President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech, stated “but to win the future, we’ll need to take on challenges that have been decades in the making”. The challenge that needs addressing is correcting our flawed financial system. We need a monetary system that works for all the American people.

Since the on-set of this very deep recession, the Federal Reserve has granted loans to the banks and associated financial institutions totaling over nine trillion dollars and purchased over two trillion dollars of toxic assets; and the Federal government has passed another seven hundred billion dollars directly to these entities with a similar amount to the states, much of which also has found its way to these institutions. And in the process of doing these things, the government has incurred an additional debt of five trillion dollars.

The President inferred in his speech last night that it was worth it as he now tells us this recession is over, in his words: “…broken the back of the recession”. But we now have an official unemployment number of near ten percent and possibly fifteen to twenty percent more under-employed or discouraged from actively seeking work. We also have during this time home foreclosures in the millions. These numbers are not so different from those at the depths of the Great Depression.

Had this debt increase of five trillion dollars been disbursed directly to the people, each would have received about Twenty two thousand five hundred dollars ($22,500). That would be Forty five thousand dollars ($45,000) for most every American family, much of which would have gone to buying down personal debt. This transfer of money directly to the people would have incurred no debt to the government, as the Federal government has the power to create its own money, as Abraham Lincoln did during our Civil War with the famous greenbacks.

But instead of passing this debt free money directly to the American people, this government Lincoln told us was of the people, by the people, and for the people, passed this money to the banks and received it back as debt. This surely will assure the people’s perpetual indebtedness to the banks and their associate elites, both in retiring personal debt and in paying higher taxes to meet the interest payments on the government’s debt.

As a people we could accept nothing stupider than to allow our government to assign this the most important part of our economic life: the control of our monetary system; to this privileged private group. But to talk about our government creating our money is verboten in the mainstream media. The reason seems rather obvious but until we correct this component of our economic life we will continue to digress with our way of life progressively worsening until we truly are a slave state.

And until we get help at least from some of the mainstream media, the greenbacks Lincoln used to free the slaves that have now been given fully to the banking system will continue to be used to enslave us all.

Jim

You are probably thinking about those Lincoln greenbacks, so here is a link.  From my perspective the politicians should be listening more to the American people and less to the corporations.

http://www.xat.org/xat/usury.html

There is more here on the Second Bank mentioned in that link under Andrew Jackson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bank_of_the_United_States

If you are interested in more of what my brother has to say and his thoughts, here is a link to a book he has written.  http://www.aplanforamerica.org/

Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t posted on what is happening in Wisconsin.  I’m working on a post about that and hope to have it up in a day or two.  We have to do more than just play around with Facebook and social network websites.  We all need to do our due diligence to become better informed citizens of the world.  Otherwise, we will continue to get the type of corporate government we seem to have in power right now.

A Place to Put My Stuff

  • Posted on August 30, 2010 at 7:36 pm

There is a point to be made about the “stuff” George Carlin rants about.  I know I have a lot of stuff.  Some of it I don’t pay much attention to but it still sits there, with me unable to throw it out or give it away.  After all, I might need that stuff some day.

When I was in high school my French teacher would get so mad at us when we said we had to get our “stuff”.  She always said, “You stuff a turkey!”  She insisted that stuff was action, doing something and that it definitely wasn’t a noun as in the things we always talk about when we mention “our stuff.”  The class always laughed and I guess most of us never really learned that lesson because I’m sure we all can relate to the “stuff” that George talks about.

Recently, I came across a postcard that I had sent to my brother, Bob, when I was very young and on a trip out west.  I found this postcard after my father passed away.  I’m sure Mom kept it with her “stuff”.  Now it’s once again “my stuff”.  After all it is a part of my history and it even has a Kennedy stamp on it!  How cool is that?

I wonder why so many of us keep and collect so much stuff.  I am as guilty as the next person and maybe more so.  My biggest collection is probably artwork.  I don’t have enough walls to put all the art up that I have bought, traded for and made.  Yet, I keep finding things and making things that adds to my stuff.  George says the answer for most of us is buying a bigger house.  I live alone so I doubt I’ll go for a house much bigger than the one I already own.  Some people suggest rotating the artwork by the seasons.  However, art isn’t the only stuff I have.  Like most people I have a lot of stuff hanging around from clothing, dishes and even furniture pieces.  I cannot think of parting with my stuff, so I am kept in a constant mode of keeping the stuff somewhere by dusting around it and moving it from one place to the other.  I box it up only to discover it years later and wonder once again about it.

I’ve watched the show “Clean House” and I have discovered that a lot of people have a bigger problem with their stuff than I have, so it always make me feel like my stuff is okay!  Since I live alone no one else has to deal with my stuff on a regular basis.  However, like George, if you are looking for space for your stuff on the dresser in my guest room, you will discover my stuff is already there.  I have plenty of little tchotchkes that most people would say, “What are you hanging on to that for?”

As school starts I try to organize my stuff.  It means going through lots of stuff and keeping most of it but giving some to the Goodwill store and putting some in the garbage.  I have found that I have more stuff at school.  As an art teacher it is easy to collect a lot of things because all that stuff might be useful in an art project.  So as I weed through my stuff and organize my life for the new school year I wish you well with all your stuff.

I’d like to just add that this poor woman couldn’t even be found in all of her stuff when she died.  So find some way to live with your stuff without getting lost in it.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hk3EHn9n_UVFd2eEMcvmTEJVgNuAD9HRUOQO2

The Real John Boehner

  • Posted on August 25, 2010 at 3:47 pm

So my brother was offended by a piece I wrote a few days ago and he said I should look up the word “diatribe”.  To humor him I did and decided I would write a real “diatribe”.  (As a noun:  A forceful bitter verbal attack against someone or something.)  Well, hello Representative John Boehner!  Welcome to my version of a diatribe about you!  If you don’t know who John Boehner is he is a representative from the 8th district in Ohio and he is the current House Minority Leader.  If the Republicans have their way in November he is expected to become Speaker of the House.

Now to the juicy stuff!  This is something “snarky” (Oh there’s that word again.) that Lynn Samuels said about him on Sirius left radio the other day.  I thought it was hilarious.  She was talking about Area 51 and Roswell.  Someone phoned into her show and they were saying how some people think there are aliens living among us.  She referred to Rep. John Boehner and his eerily non human form and skin color.  For all of you that haven’t noticed he has the strangest tan around, sometimes he appears quite orange on the talk show circuit.  He’s the current threat to the Democrats.  You know he’s a threat when the next talk show I’m listening to is “Big Eddy” and he’s talking about John as well.  “Big Eddy” is my loving term for Ed Schultz.  Big Eddy played a commercial on his program against Boehner that was pretty funny.  Big Eddy said he was thinking of playing it every day.  This was on the radio so I thought I’d find that commercial on You Tube to see what it was like.

The commercial is put up on You Tube by the Blue America Pac.  It is “priceless”!  When I was listening to Big Eddy he went on to talk about golfing and Boehner’s huge amount of time devoted to it.  Big Eddy loves golf himself so I know much of what he was saying is probably true.  He said for a guy to play golf a hundred or so times a year means he must be thinking about it all the time.  He’s talking about it with his friends and frankly he isn’t doing the work of the American people.  I frankly can’t see how Boehner’s constituents continue to vote for him.  Here is another commercial by the National Sierra Club.

If you look at his votes for 2010 you can see why many people have labeled the Republican Party the party of “No” as most his votes are “NO”.  However, I did notice that he voted “Yes” for a “Congressional Cost of Living Pay Increase” in April of this year.  I wish I could vote myself a cost of living pay increase.  Don’t you?  By the way, the Ohio unemployed might like to know that he voted against extending unemployment benefits in the same year he voted to increase his own pay.  In the same month he voted for his pay raise he had a “NV” which means not voting for extending unemployment benefits.  He made sure he was there to vote for his own pay but either skipped voting or wasn’t even present to vote for his unemployed constituents!  Some of us would call that a “Dick Move”!  Wow, if you look closer, you will notice he used to vote “Yes” a lot until the Democrats came into power.  So, it is obvious that he is an obstructionist although he does vote for defense spending under the Democrats and Republicans.  There doesn’t seem to be a defense bill he doesn’t like.  Even though we all know there is a lot of waste in defense spending.   Here is Rumsfeld once again looking for that defense money!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRqeJcuK-A&feature=player_embedded

John also has gone all out in his attempts to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70.  He’s wealthy what does he care?  He can golf a hundred times a year as though he is already “retired”!  While he’s off golfing the work of the American people isn’t getting done!  Raising the retirement age to 70 basically means that you will get less for Social Security because most people aren’t going to be teaching school, policing our towns, or doing any of their jobs until they’re 70.  They will be forced out of their jobs before that and eventually apply for Social Security early and take a big cut.  It’s not hard to see what this is really all about.  John Boehner, like many politicians, doesn’t have to worry about money.  He is a millionaire.  Strangely enough if you look at this chart he is pretty much “average” among house members in income.  That should be telling us something about all of these politicians not just this man.  http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/CIDsummary.php?CID=N00003675&year=2008

I share John’s Catholicism but we are worlds apart in our politics.  John, as a Catholic, could never speak for me but it does explain his abortion issue voting.  It doesn’t necessarily explain his defense record as Catholics are taught social justice and solving things in a manner like Jesus which involves making peace.

Most of his voting record is tied to business, corporations and special interests.  He is continually pushing to extend the tax cuts while calling for cutting the deficit.  His thinking isn’t truly logical as it is a proven fact that the tax cuts for the wealthy haven’t helped our country.  If they had helped, we probably wouldn’t be in the shape we are in right now.  Those tax cuts came in with Bush and are earmarked to go out at the end of this year.  Many might want to ask themselves that age old question.  Are you better off today than you were in 2000?  Some people may be better off.  Many are obviously not as they fight foreclosures on their homes and battle to keep their jobs.  The extension of these tax cuts will probably only lead to a higher deficit unless we cut something else.

Boehner never saw a defense bill he didn’t like, so I expect he would cut any entitlement program he can get his hands on.  This can include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and even things like unemployment benefits.  It can also include things like school lunches, aid to public schools, financial aid to college students but trust me it won’t include tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.  If John gets to be Speaker of the House while most of us will be balancing our budgets deciding what to do in the coming year, John will be busy dismantling health care reform, extending the Bush tax cuts and cutting programs for the least among us.

Ohio voters from Boehner’s district need to think long and hard about voting for this man that takes care of himself by voting for increased pay to himself as well as golfing more than any man I know.  In Sturgis there are plenty of golfers.  I don’t know anyone that has the time to get out and golf like John unless they are super wealthy or are retired and live on a golf course!

If you consider yourself to be middle class and you want someone to vote for your best interests check out this website.   http://www.themiddleclass.org/legislator/john-boehner-31?gclid=COub1_ud1aMCFUcz5wodQQHXuQ

He has an 8% rating based on his votes from 2009.  Now all of us know that 8% is failing.  If he is failing the middle class, he’s probably failing you and me or at least his constituents in Ohio!  It’s time for people to stop listening to the rhetoric this man puts out on the TV news talk show circuit and really look at the man.  He hasn’t lived up to the hype.  It’s time to give a Democrat a chance to do something for Ohio.

Boehner recently called for the resignation of Obama’s economic team.  I have my own problems with Obama’s team as well.  However, it is disingenuous of Boehner to conclude that the current problem is generated by Obama’s team alone.  It was the Republicans that brought us to the brink of disaster but this disease has infected both parties.  No one has said it better than George Carlin (May he rest in peace.) in this clip from one of his stand up routines.  George has colorful language so if that is offensive to you take more offense to the politicians that are “sticking” it to you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GseyaEibb_4

So, when you are thinking about voting, try voting out the money and start with Representative John Boehner.  If you aren’t convinced how to vote, just check out this post on politico.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29881.html

The politician/golfer is busy spending his PAC money on none other than GOLFING!