Anti-government candidate: Oxymoron or Just Plain Moron?

At his 1981 inauguration, [Ronald Reagan] voiced his simple revolutionary credo: "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."  That remark was prescient, although not in the sense that Reagan intended. His naive faith in the private sector's capacity to regulate itself, along with his disdain for many of the necessary functions of the modern state, allowed cronies and crooks to flourish. Inept government, corrupt government and cynical government became severe problems during his tenure, leaving fiscal wreckage that remained for many years after he returned to private life.                  Joe Conason,  "Reagan without Sentimentality"

Hope for the corporates, change for the workers--
and downhill ever since.

It's one thing to want to win a spot in congress in order to change the government.  Wanting better government is a fine and noble calling, and more power to ya'll.  But it takes colossal chutzpah to go after a job where your salary and perks are paid for by the same people whose government you're out to destroy.

We have a government in place, for better or for worse, because we the people are doing our share to keep big government going.  Big government is big because we are a big country.  We've seen what happens when big government is undermined and/or watered down.  It becomes tasty carrion for Big Vultures to feed on, and they won't stop until they're down to bloody bones.

Rand Paul, the libertarian running for a Republican senatorial seat in Kentucky, tells his Tea Party followers, "Capitalism is freedom, we've come to take back our government".  That kind of Gekko talk is building momentum among the Limbaugh/Beck/Palin/ crowd, even though they haven't yet explained what it means to "take back our government".  Take it back to when?  And give it to whom?  Which of the Tea Party heroes is equipped to get us out of this mess?  How will Smaller Government do it?

Last week Sarah Palin backed Clint Didier, a Washington state Tea Party candidate for senate who calls the federal government "a predator" and sees public spending as a "Marxist utopia".  I'm betting Palin, in her rah-rah speech, forgot to mention that over the last 15 years the rabidly anti-government Didier has collected almost $300,000 in Federal farm subsidies.  I'm betting neither one of them consider that little gift from the tax-payers an entitlement. 

At the supposed heart of all the anti-government caterwauling is our astounding deficit.  The truth is, it is totally astounding.  Even I, a complete ignoramus when it comes to budget numbers, know a monster  when I see one.  It's terrifying.  So when those Tea Party greenhorns yak on about how they're going to change things, I want to know exactly how they're going to do it.  What magic plan do they have for altering the course of this out-of-control projectile called SOL America and bringing it back down to earth?  Give it over to private industry?  Isn't that how we got here?  So if not private industry, what's left?

Oh, anti-G people, you're not gonna want to hear this, but. . .

Big government.  They looked the other way when the marauders were laying waste, and now they're left to rebuild our villages (after they've cleaned up a massive oil disaster perpetrated and perpetuated by those same interests who would love to be joining you in your crusade against authority).  They're going to have to do it by re-regulating, by in-sourcing, by creating life-sustaining jobs for Americans, and by assisting the people most affected by the economic downturn.  If that means smacking down a few bankers or forcing corporations to play fair, it won't be the end of the world.  The big guys got greedy and they blew it.  Now they have to play nice.  We can't have people out of work and out of food and out of homes and out of options.  This is America.

 We the people have to take top priority, and you the Tea Partiers have to get your priorities straight.  You can't, for instance, still have control of your taxes once you've paid them.  (If we could, mine would go to free clinics and food banks and homeless shelters--those socialistic necessities now currently swamped and overwhelmed because of America's refusal to end its love affair with Corporatist Bad Boys.)

If you've got gripes, join the club. We've all got gripes. But be mindful that your Tea Party movement, giving succor to the vicious, paranoid rantings of the Limbaughs, Becks, Bachmanns and Palins of the country, also eggs on the hate groups, trained and ready and itching for a reason to do bodily harm.

Do us all a favor and think about who you're actually choosing to run things around here. If your candidate's main qualification is a clever way of expressing his or her hatred for the government, just remember--in America that would be you.

Ramona
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The Battle for Public Schools - Kids? What kids?

On C-Span's Washington Journal, the question this morning was "Should Public Schools receive a bailout?"  The majority of the callers said no.   I don't know where these people live--offshore, maybe--but My God.  I've lived a good long time, as my creaking joints are so keen on reminding me, but how long do I have to go on being amazed and chagrined that even now, even in the 21st century, forces from the dark side are still working on getting us out of the edjamacation business?

(By the way, what's the matter with C-Span?  Am I the only one who's noticing a definite Republican bent to their questions, their newspaper choices, and their programming?  The C in C-Span stands for Conservative these days.  Their idea of Fair and Balanced is moving suspiciously closer to the Fox's lair. That's a pity.)

These days we're looking, talking and acting more and more like some comic's version of a third world country, but so far we've kept the mercenaries at bay when it comes to our most sacrosanct obligation--basic education for all.  The Right Wing in our country have been beating their gums for eons now about the need to turn public schools over to private interests, but so far we've been able to brush them off like the nasty little gnats they are.

They can't rightly come out and admit that their idea of absolute nirvana is a wholly-privatized, for-profit, non-regulated society, so they latch onto the one guaranteed button-pusher:  taxes.  They use the threat of more taxes going to unworthy (read "socialist") causes as their reasons for denying every kid a chance at the American dream.  They know their audience well.  Dreams are for suckers when it comes to doling out their tax dollars.  Who wants to pay more taxes for anything?  Not we.  Cut the funding!  Kill the unions!  Minimum wage for teachers!  Pack those kids into the classrooms!  No free lunches!  Leave no child behind except yours!

 Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote a piece that found its way into the Wall Street Journal, (yes, truly) in which she makes the plea for more government funding.

According to a survey of more than 80% of school districts by the American Association of School Administrators, 275,000 teachers and other school staff will receive pink slips. It's not that these schools will educate fewer children, or that students won't need the personnel and programs that will be cut. But the cuts could rob an entire generation of students of the well-rounded education they need and deserve. Class sizes will swell, and students will lose important classes and programs, such as art, music, physical education, Advanced Placement classes, and counseling and intervention programs for those who need the most help.

Nowhere does she use the word "bailout", but the headline shreiks it.   It's a convenient word--it suggests we taxpayers have a choice.  Should we or shouldn't we keep funding our schools?  Will we or won't we bail them out?

Bail them out from what?  Ourselves?  Our neglect?  Our contempt?   What a sorry state we're in if the best we can do for our schools is to threaten to put them on the auction block if they don't behave. 

The funding for public schools should never be in question.  If you want a voice in how schools use taxpayer funds, fine--do it from within, at the local level. Work hard to make the schools better.  Give the kids a chance. Our education system is being bullied and battered, and in the end it's the kids who take the blows. (Ironic, isn't it, that it's the Family Values mob doing the bullying?  And, as with all bullies, they're not about to pick on somebody their own size. )

Ramona

It's Official - Goldman Sachs harbors and nurtures Creeps and Crooks. But we love the rich, so lay off.

The financial crisis has unveiled a new set of public villains—corrupt corporate capitalists who leveraged their connections in government for their own personal profit. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, many of these schemers were worshiped as geniuses, heroes or icons of American progress. But today we know these opportunists for what they are: Deregulatory hacks hellbent on making a profit at any cost.

Zach Carter, Alternet, 5/13/10

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In his superb Alternet blog this morning, Zach Carter published his Top Ten list of America's most corrupt capitalists.  Not surprisingly, almost all of them have had or still have substantial ties to Goldman Sachs.   And equally not surprising, even while Carter exposes them and dazzles us with the length and breadth of their successful efforts to corrupt everything within yodeling distance of their corporate grasp,  the worshippers of their Fat Cat sugar daddies are, as Carter described yesterday, out there defending their good name. 

There are plenty of people roaming these great states who would have us believe the Goldman Sachs types are simply honest brokers who made a few--okay, pretty big--mistakes, but they're all family men with little, chirpy mouths to feed and we're all liberal, progressive, bambi-loving, tree-hugging, welfare-grabbing, anti-embryo, pro-intellectual, socialistic, communistic meanies if we can't see that. (Blankfein didn't say that, of course, but he didn't have to, what with all the vociferous toadies out there who will do it for him.)

But thankfully, Andrew Cuomo isn't one of them.  Cuomo, son of my hero, Mario Cuomo, is New York state's Attorney General.  He's out to get those guys, and it's not just lip service.  They know that, and they'll go after him with a vengeance.  They already have.  But nothing beats the scope of the Goldman Sackers for raiding and pillaging, and no amount of self-righteous diversion is suddenly going to turn them into grateful recipients of the E Pluribus Unum Award.  They deserve every justifiable take-down our few brave heroes are attempting.  ("Attempting" is the operative word here.  "Accomplishing" would be so much more satisfying, but we know from past experience how likely that is.  One look at the latest hand-slap from Congress proves that the proof is in the pudding.  Looky here:  "As the executives testified, Goldman Sachs was the only stock among 79 financial companies that gained in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The stock rose $1.01 to $153.04 as of 5:04 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.  Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, was sued for fraud earlier this month by the Securities and Exchange Commission on a similar deal. The company contests the claim.")

Now, okay, in this paragraph I should be pulling this all together and making my point.  But the truth is, I know nothing about finances or financial transactions, or the reasons for booms or busts, or why those guys look like freakin' nuts down there on the trading floor.  I'm not expected to, since I'm not in the business, but what scares the living daydreams out of me is that way too often even the so-called Wall Street experts don't seem to have a clue.  That happened last week, when, for 20 minutes or so,  the market went into "Flash Crash" mode and we caught a glimpse of just how insane the grand scheme of all capitalism all the time really is.  (I'm sending "Flash Crash" to the word banishment people at LSSU.  Amidst all this doom and gloom, they're still having fun with reading:  "The [2010] list this year is a 'teachable moment' conducted free of 'tweets,'" said a Word Banishment spokesman who was "chillaxin'" for the holidays. "'In these economic times', purging our language of 'toxic assets' is a 'stimulus' effort that's 'too big to fail.'")

Almost finished, but I can't leave here without mentioning Ronald Reagan.  He started this, and there was nothing heroic about it.  We wouldn't be in this fix if it weren't for Ronald Reagan making "deregulation"  and "anti-government" household words.  A president who usurps his duties to the people in order to build a golden throne for corporate fat cats is no hero.  (A president who follows along in order to make friends or hide transgressions is no better--before you accuse me of forgetting about Bill Clinton's blind eye toward outsourcing and union-bashing.  And neither is a president who salts his cabinet with the same money people who were in on this without expecting some good-works penance from them.)

Deregulation.  Anti-government.  The best way to banish those words is to banish the practices.  We need regulation.   We need good, all-encompassing government.  And we need to do more to the Gold men than to try and embarrass them in public.  They don't embarrass.  They don't do anything but hoard money.  And they won't do anything for us until we make them.

Let's make them.  I'm tired of having to watch people beg for jobs while the undeserving flip us the bird by closing off the money sources to create them.

That much I do understand.

Ramona

Ernie Harwell -- in Remembrance of You

Baseball is the President tossing out the first ball of the season and a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm. A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That's baseball. And so is the big, fat guy with a bulbous nose running home one of his (Babe Ruth's) 714 home runs.


There's a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh forty-six years ago. That's baseball. So is the scout reporting that a sixteen year old pitcher in Cheyenne is a coming Walter Johnson. Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.


In baseball democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another.


Baseball is a rookie. His experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream. It's a veteran too, a tired old man of thirty-five hoping that those aching muscles can pull him through another sweltering August and September. Nicknames are baseball, names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.

Baseball is the cool, clear eyes of Rogers Hornsby. The flashing spikes of Ty Cobb, an over aged pixie named Rabbit Maranville.

Baseball just a game as simple as a ball and bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. A sport, a business and sometimes almost even a religion.


Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World's Series catch. And then dashing off to play stick ball in the street with his teenage pals. That's baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying., "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”

Baseball is cigar smoke, hot roasted peanuts, The Sporting News, ladies day, "Down in Front", Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and the Star Spangled Banner.

Baseball is a tongue tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown. This is a game for America. Still a game for America, this baseball!

Ernie Harwell, Hall of Fame Induction speech,  August 2, 1981

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WASHINGTON – Sen. Carl Levin delivered the following statement on the Senate floor on May 5, 2010:

“For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”

Mr. President, spring after spring, for four decades, a man named Ernie Harwell would recite those words. He would recite them at the beginning of the first baseball broadcast of spring training. And those are the words that would tell the people of Michigan that the long, cold winter was over.

Ernie was the radio voice of the Detroit Tigers for 42 years, and in that time, there may have been no Michiganian more universally beloved. Our state mourns today at his passing, yesterday evening, after a battle with cancer. He fought that battle with the grace, the good humor, and the wisdom that Michigan had come to expect, and even depend on, from a man we came to know and love.

This gentlemanly Georgian adopted our team, and our state, as his own. And his career would have been worthy had he done nothing more than bring us the sound of summer over the radio, recounting the Tigers' ups and downs with professionalism and wit, as he did.


But without making a show of it, Ernie Harwell taught us. In his work and his life, he taught us the value of kindness and respect. He taught us that, in a city and a world too often divided, we could be united in joy at a great Al Kaline catch, or a Lou Whitaker home run, or a Mark Fidrych strikeout. He taught us not to let life pass us by “like the house by the side of the road.”


In 1981, when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Ernie told the assembled fans what baseball meant to him. “In baseball democracy shines its clearest,” he said. “The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another.” That was a lesson he taught us so well.


Mr. President, I will miss Ernie Harwell. All of Michigan will miss the sound of his voice telling us that the winter is past, that the Tigers had won a big game, or that they'd get another chance to win one tomorrow. We will miss his Georgia drawl, his humor, his humility, his quiet faith in God and in the goodness of the people he encountered. But we will carry in our hearts always our love for him, our appreciation for his work, and the lessons he gave us and left us and that we will pass on to our children and grandchildren.

Sincerely,
Carl Levin

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The Voice of Summer died in the spring, just before the Tigers’ first pitch of the evening. That was fitting. Ernie Harwell never wanted to interrupt the game.

Mr. “Looong Gone” is gone now. Like the home run that lands in the seats, like the final out of the ninth inning, like the thousands of games he closed with his signature sign-offs, his genteel voice telling us he’d see us tomorrow. Gone now. No more tomorrows. At 92, after a battle with bile duct cancer that stretched into extra innings, Ernie let go of this world and moved on to the higher place from which we were certain he was sent.

Gone now. We knew this was coming. Ernie, in his final grace, prepared us for it. He told us not to worry. We still worried. He told us not to cry. We cried anyhow. He told us he had led the life he’d wanted, that he was ready to say good-bye.


Mitch Albom, Gone Now but Never Forgotten, Detroit Free Press, 5/6/10

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Yes, as Mitch Albom said, we knew it was almost time to let go of Ernie, but none of us wanted to think about it, so when it came, it came as a shock.  We were never going to be ready.

I"ll admit right up front that I don't love the game of baseball.  Even though I had lived in or near Detroit nearly all of my life, I had been to Tiger Stadium only once. I couldn't tell you who won or who played on that day, or even when it was.  What resonated for me was Ernie Harwell's cocky drawl--his "looooong gone", his "sitting like the house by the side of the road", his way of pulling us in, letting us know that at this moment, in this place, baseball is all that matters.

There were enough people in my family who did love baseball, so the Tiger game was on the TV or the radio whenever and wherever they played.  I didn't follow, but I didn't mind--I think mainly because of Ernie's voice.  There was a cadence to his voice that kept a kind of rhythm going.  There was nothing jarring or annoying.  It was almost soothing.  It was Ernie.

I had the honor of spending a couple of hours with Ernie Harwell once.  We were holding a book fair in our town and we invited him to come and sign his book, "Tuned to Baseball".  He showed up right on time only to find a near-empty room.  I don't remember the particulars, but somehow the word didn't get out, or the weather was bad, but for two hours I had Ernie nearly to myself.  After an hour or so, I practically begged him to go home.  I was mortified that he had taken the time to come to our town and so few people had come out to meet him.   He, gracious gentleman that he was, insisted on staying the full two hours.  I got over my mortification and we sat down and talked.

He told stories that I knew he had told dozens of times before, but he had a way of telling them with such enthusiasm I was lulled into believing they were told just for me.  He talked about Lulu, and I loved him even more because he loved Lulu unabashedly.  He asked me about my life and hung on my every word.  He asked questions and apologized because he got the name of one of my children wrong.

During that second hour my grandson came in, excited about meeting one of his baseball heroes.  The photographer from the newspaper happened to be there then and he took a picture of
Ernie with my grandson.  I wrote freelance for the paper at the time, and I asked the photographer if he would get me a copy of the print.  He did, and it's around here somewhere, and I've torn this house apart but I can't find it.  I know it's here because I've seen it within the last year, but it's hiding too darned well.  (When I find it, I'll post it here.)

I emailed my grandson, Mike, and asked him if he remembers meeting Ernie.  This is what he wrote:

"I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the summer of 1987, so I would've been 14. Tigers shortstop Alan Trammell was having the best year of his career that summer and I asked Harwell if he thought Trammell should win the American League Most Valuable Player award or if he thought it should go to George Bell of the Toronto Blue Jays. He said they were both deserving and that it was too close to call. :)

He was exactly like what everyone who has met him says about him: genuinely interested in what I was talking about. He was very nice to me."

During my talk with Ernie I told him that my father-in-law was the ultimate Tiger fan and never missed a game, to the point of carrying his boom-box with him everywhere he went so he wouldn't miss an inning.  I asked Ernie if he would say hello to him on the air, and he said he would be happy to.  He did it, too, during the very next game, and my father-in-law felt as though he had been knighted.

In 1991 the announcement came that Ernie was leaving his job as Tiger broadcaster.  Nobody believed for a minute that it was his choice to say goodbye to the broadcast booth.  Rumors flew that he was being forced out, but, ever the gentleman, Ernie didn't add to them.  But before long word came that Tiger management and WJR were--yes, indeedy--looking for newer, younger blood.

What boneheads! He was Ernie and they were idiots.  The uproar was long and loud and entirely predictable, but Bo Schembechler, former U-M football coach turned Tiger head honcho, stuck with the plan and added fuel to the fire by going around crowing about his decision-making skills.  So Ernie was side-lined during the 1992 season, when newer, younger blood came in--and flopped so pitifully you actually had to feel sorry for them.  Nobody could fill Ernie's shoes--not in Detroit, anyway.

By the spring of 1993, pizza king Mike Ilitch (Little Caesar's) had purchased the Tiger franchise from pizza king Tom Monaghan (Domino's) and BoSchembechler was out and Ernie Harwell was back in.  Life was back to normal in Detroit.

Ernie finally retired for good in 2002, and his fans were still not ready.  He died three days ago and we're still not ready.  We can't stop thinking about him or talking about him or caring about him.  Because every Tiger fan knows that wherever Ernie is, he can't stop talking about or thinking about or caring about them.

Ramona

May Day: Workers of the World, Hang in There

In a proclamation printed just before May 1, 1886, one publisher appealed to working people with this plea:

•Workingmen to Arms!

•War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.

•The wage system is the only cause of the World's misery. It is supported by the rich classes, and to destroy it, they must be either made to work or DIE.

•One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!

•MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT HOURS with weapons in your hands to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, police, and militia in proper manner.        IWW, The Brief Origins of May Day         

Okay, so that's the kind of thing that gives Socialists a bad name.  In the name of civility and good manners we've moved on to less violent (but probably less effective) ways of getting our message across.  The larger point here, though, is that since the 19th century, workers of the world have embraced May Day as the day to honor the sacrifices of the laboring classes.

In 1958, despite Joe McCarthy's earlier best efforts,  the Cold War Commies and Socialists were still purportedly climbing out from under every rock in every little burg in the US.  The VFW saw trouble in those May Day celebrations and foiled those plotters by renaming it "Loyalty Day".  Congress made it official and Ike actually signed it into law, but now, apart from a few VFW chapters and a few small towns, Loyalty Day is pretty much forgotten. (Not that loyalty isn't important, mind you. It is.  My loyalty to labor knows no bounds.)

But despite their best efforts, May Day demonstrations in America are still going strong.  Much of it centers on the controversial Arizona  "Show your Papers" law today, as hundreds of thousands in cities and towns all across the country are scheduled to march in solidarity against immigration and worker abuses. 

But even as I write this James Dobson, formerly of Focus on the Family, is leading  May Day, a Cry to God for a Nation in Distress on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  Dobson and others, including Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association,  are calling it a "day of repentance and remembrance",  addressing "The greatest moral crisis since the Civil War", which seems to include abortion, Obamacare, Obama in general, and the scary notion that there are more "Socialists" than Republicans running Congress these days.

The Liberty Council will be there, as well.  They wouldn't want to pass up a chance to sell  their membership cards:

Oy. . .

May Day means different things to different people.  On the islands of Hawaii, May Day is Lei Day, a refreshingly apolitical approach to that first day in May.  Here's a little respite from the cares of the day:

So.  May our efforts this May Day and every day forward bring peace and equity to those who break their backs struggling to build this nation.  Solidarity until the sun ceases to shine or until worker equity is a reality.  Whichever comes first.


Ramona

 

Don't take your guns to town, boys. There's nobody out to get you and you're just going to look silly

Remember the Black Helicopter scares from some 30 years ago?  (Oh, they're still around?  Do tell.  Have they attacked yet?)  The paranoia parties were going full swing back when Right Wing talk radio was young and the Commies, the Reds, the Pinkos were still such an obvious threat.  The New World Order as conspiracy theory was shiny new, and we in the Detroit area got a kick out of tuning in nearly every day to Mark "Excelsior!" Scott striving mightily to warn his followers about the dangers of big, nasty, secretive, elitist government.  According to Mark and his merry band of conspiracy-addicts, there were secret facilities hidden deep in the west and along the borders and there were black helicopters in the skies and Russian tanks under the trees and it was all a part of a New World Order plotting to rule the planet and make us all slaves.  Danger was all around us, and we were idiots if we couldn't see what was coming.

That was 30 years ago and then 20 years ago and then 10 years ago, and then five years ago and then last October (when Glenn Beck was astonished that people are talking about the New World Order without flinching)  and then right up to the moment I typed the last word in this paragraph.

And this one.

It's coming!!!!
Again.

So what's the natural progression, considering that the New World Order in all its blackness is honest-to-God almost almost here?  Well, if you've got any brains at all, you strap on your guns and saddle up and then you go to wherever the President of the United States happens to be, or at least to wherever a prominent Democrat happens to be, because. . . .

Because you have guns and you know how to show them.

You could be honest, but you've seen from past appearances by everyone you've ever admired that you don't have to be honest.  But if you were honest you might have to admit that the alleged threats to our republic from the black sites and the black helicopters pale in comparison to the fact that, even after all that jawing, that fear-mongering, you're still stuck with a government headed by a man whose skin is dark and who has a hint of the dreaded Muslim somewhere deep in his past.  And on top of that, he's a Democrat.  And on top of that, there are more Democrats than Republicans in the house and the senate.  And you hate that.

Look, I know life is tough for you guys, what with all your hollering going for naught, but honestly?  Nobody you're setting your sights on is out to get you. Nobody at those get-togethers is suddenly seeing your wife and kiddies as prey.  When you carry a gun to a public place--especially a place where politicians and their followers gather--you might as well be carrying a sign that reads, "Dick Cheney and the Neocons scared the hell out of me, but just because I can't think straight doesn't mean I can't shoot straight."

(By the way, that picture at the top of the page?  I took it from a fifth floor balcony, right out in the open, and I lived to tell about it.  It most likely was a Marine helicopter; there are Marine bases to the north and south of us there. One thing I know for sure:  It was on our side.)

Ramona
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A Day to Celebrate the Earth. Tomorrow: Business as Usual?

"[O]n April 22, 1970, 20 million people, 2,000 colleges and universities, 10,000 grammar and high schools and 1,000 communities mobilized for the first nationwide demonstrations on environmental problems. Congress adjourned for the day so members could attend Earth Day events in their districts. The response was nothing short of remarkable, and the modern American environmental movement took off.
My major objective in planning Earth Day 1970 was to organize a nationwide public demonstration so large it would, finally, get the attention of the politicians and force the environmental issue into the political dialogue of the nation. It worked. By the sheer force of its collective action on that one day, the American public forever changed the political landscape respecting environmental issues."
Sen. Gaylord Nelson, Dem. Wisc - Founder of Earth Day.

Created by Walt Kelly for Earth Day, 1970

I remember that first Earth Day, April 22, 1970.  The scope of it was astonishing and really surprising. It was a grassroots movement in the best sense of the phrase, and we all felt good about it.  (Most of us, that is.  The day after, The Daughters of the American Revolution branded  the Earth Day commemoration "distorted" and "subversive".  (It didn't help that the first Earth Day happened to fall on the 100th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin's birth.)


What Gaylord Nelson originally proposed was a nationwide teach-in on school campuses.  He chose April 22 because it would fall after Easter break but before final exams.  It was spring.  The earth was renewing itself.  Environmentalism was gearing up and in motion,  and it was a fine time to give the earth a day.  Richard Nixon was president and, while he didn't participate in any of the day's events (maybe because a damned Democrat came up with the idea), he was actively talking about attacks on the environment and the steps the government would need to combat them.  Pollution was a big issue already, and steps had been taken to de-smog the cities.  It was working.  (Nelson had actually talked to JFK in the early 60s about the need to draw attention to the environment, and a day to commemorate had been thrown out there then.)


Industry was king, and the environmentalists, alarmed at water, ground and air pollution levels, were talking to brick walls (when they weren't batting their heads against them).  In 1962, the year Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring", 750 people died in London's smog.  In 1965, four days of inversion held down a cloud of filthy air that killed 80 people in New York City.  In 1969, Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire. Earlier that year, an oil platform six miles out from Santa Barbara, California, blew out, spilling 200,000 gallons of oil, creating an 800 square mile oil slick that settled on 35 miles of California shoreline.  Almost 4,000 birds were killed, along with fish, seals and dolphin.  


Enough had finally become enough, and under Lyndon Johnson and a congress that could see clearly now (even though the rest of us were still lost in a choking, eye-watering, salmon-colored, man-made smog), we saw a Clean Air Act, a Clean Water act, a National Wilderness Preservation System, a Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, a National Trails System Act, and, for what it was worth, a  National Environmental Policy.


That all changed, of course, when Ronald "A tree is a tree" Reagan became president.  For the Department of Interior, he chose James Watt, a notorious anti-environmentalist, to head it. He chose Ann Gorsuch, another determined anti-earthling, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.  What a laugh that was--or might have been, if it weren't so serious.  They were chosen for the same cynical reasons George W. Bush chose his department heads--so that regulatory agencies could, from the inside, be forced to stop regulating.  


Gale Norton, GWB's choice for Secretary of Interior was called "even worse" than James Watt, by the Defenders of Wildlife.  I shuddered over that one.  I remembered James Watt, and I thought nobody could cause as much havoc on our little section of the earth as that little man did.  I thought we had learned something along the way.  I thought all those Arbor Days and Earth Days and global warming warnings had taught us all something.  Some of us obviously weren't listening.


But now we're in the era of Obama and former Colorado senator Ken Salazar is the Interior secretary.  The jury is still out on him; his voting record was either for or against the environment, depending on what I'm assuming was the alignment of the stars or the fullness of the moon.  I don't know.   But he's showing signs of bucking the oil industry, and he isn't necessarily doing what his naysayers thought he would, so I'm willing to cut him some slack for a while.


Lisa Jackson is the current head of the EPA. She's a chemical engineer, which seems like a start, and she said this in Newsweek:  "The difference between this administration and the last is that we don't believe we have an option to do nothing."  I like that.  But she seems to think there's no cause for alarm over offshore drilling.  That makes me more than a little nervous, considering the above-mentioned Santa Barbara incident, and the 11-million-gallon Exxon-Valdez incident, and today's oil-rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana.  (I hope she remembers that the EPA is 40 years old this year, too.  In fact it's a few months older than Earth Day--all the more reason for it to be the designated caretaker.)


This Earth Day, 40 years after the first, got a lot of play in the news and on the internet, but I was hoping to see crowds out there giving it their best.  I didn't expect teabags, of course, but what I wouldn't give for a sea of tie-dyes and peace signs and flower garlands. . .  The aroma of pachouli. . . 


All those things I thought were pretty silly in the day are looking downright good to me as I take note of the day we promised to give Earth a chance.

"Sometimes I wonder if Lewis and Clark shouldn't have been made to file an environmental impact study before they started west, and Columbus before he ever sailed.  They might never have got their permits.  But then we wouldn't have been here to learn from our mistakes, either.  I really only want to say that we may love a place and still be dangerous to it.  We ought to file that environmental impact study before we undertake anything that exploits or alters or endangers the splendid, spacious, varied, magnificent and terribly fragile earth that supports us.  If we can't find an appropriate government agency with which to file it, we can file it where an Indian would have filed it--with our environmental conscience, our slowly maturing sense that the earth is indeed our mother, worthy of our love and deserving of our care."  

Wallace Stegner, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs 

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Could we Just have the Damn Tax Day without the Rollicking Tea Party?

I filled out my first tax return when I was 17 years old and still in high school.  My Dad was ready to do it for me, but I wanted to be a grown-up and do it myself.  The entire form was on a cardboard third-sheet and it couldn't have taken more than five minutes to fill out, but when I dropped it into the mailbox I felt like I was no longer a child but was now part of the citizenry.  (It didn't hurt that I was getting a refund, of course, and when that check came, straight from the government, I almost didn't want to cash it.  It was wonderful to behold.)

Every year since that first mid-20th century tax day (then March 15, the Ides of March), I've had occasion to file my income taxes.  For the past 53 years my husband and I have filed jointly.  So yesterday we filled out our 1040, gave the government a whole lot of personal information, signed our real names with the promise that all of the above is true to the best of our knowledge, enclosed a three-figure check and  mailed it in.  Then we went back to doing what we were doing before we did it.  No protests planned, no signs made, no bullhorns, no teabags hanging off of silly hats.  We paid our taxes.  That's what we do when we're Americans and we have incomes.  (Which--I don't have to tell you--is getting harder and harder to say in this country.)

It's what we did even during the odious Bush years, when the thought of where our hard-earned money was going was entirely too painful to even contemplate.  We endured a royal screwing during those eight years--those of us who didn't wear a corporate crown--and still we understood that our nation couldn't survive without our taxes paid.  We paid our taxes even when we knew without a shadow of a doubt that those who could most afford to pay theirs weren't doing it.  We paid, knowing they would never choose to pay, would never have to pay, and would never have to pay for not paying.

(We sent in our census yesterday, too.  It took all of three minutes, 27 seconds to fill it out, and it felt pretty good.  Now we're counted.)

So now that I've done my duty, what do I want for my taxes?  I want BIG, smart, honest, conscientious  government. 

I want a government that saves jobs, protects jobs, creates jobs, and thinks rampant unemployment in the Land of Plenty is a mortal sin.

 I want a government that takes public education seriously and stays awake nights thinking up ways to educate every American child without having to put them at the mercy of the private sector. 

I want a government that thinks safety is pretty damned important, and allows no quarter when it comes to pollution or hazards or human neglect.

I want a government that minds its own business and stays out of wars and remembers who they're here to serve.

I want a government that stands up for the people who voted them into office, and gives their big donors nothing more than the hearty "Thank you" they so heartily deserve.

What I don't want is no government at all.  That's just stupid.

So when I wasn't filling out forms I was snickering at those faux-Yahoos mugging their faces off for the TV cameras, pretending that they're mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore.  Who are they trying to kid?  They're mad as hell that Obama is president and then the other thing is that they're mad as hell that Obama is president.

There isn't a person in this country who isn't angry about something the government does.  They're the government, for chrissake.  They do some of the dumbest damn things. 

But come on, Baggers, don't pretend you're angry at rising taxes when, in fact, your taxes are LOWER this year.

Don't pretend your concerns are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.  The only thing that would make you happy would be Obama in exile and the liberals traveling behind him in cattle cars.

Don't pretend  that things are worse today than they were under George W. Bush.  Even on the darkest night under the deepest of covers you can't say that without crossing your fingers.

Don't pretend you're Everyman or Everywoman--just folks.  Your heroes are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Mitch McConnell. They HATE just folks.  So how about you ask them what they've done for their country, not what their country has done for them?   And then ask yourselves:   Where am I?  How did I get here?  Who ARE these people?  Why am I dressed this way?  What is this sign I'm holding?  Am I on Candid Camera?

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here and at Alternet here)

Giving Legitimacy to Hate

The faculty of attention has utterly vanished from the Anglo-Saxon mind, extinguished at its source by the big bayadère of journalism, of the newspaper and the picture magazine which keeps screaming, "Look at me." Illustrations, loud simplifications... bill poster advertising - only these stand a chance. ~Henry James

This is the front page of the Washington Post this morning:

Small President Obama, BIG teapartier, on the morning after an event of historic proportions--an event pulled off IN SPITE of the tea partiers, not because of them, and yet the tea party guy gets center stage. (Don't look, Mrs. Graham.  It's not a pretty sight.)   

The online link to the teapartier story has a lovely photo gallery on those nice people and the efforts they go through in order to make their voices heard:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032503849.html?sub=AR

I'm all for public dissent.  I wish we would have seen more of it during the Bush years.  I wish we would have seen ANY of it during the Reagan years.  But for the Washington Post to relegate the president's picture to a small square at the top of the page after an historic achievement in order to highlight the dissenters who are off to join the crazies is tabloid journalism at best and reckless anointing of the fringe elements at worst.

WaPo staff writer Eli Saslow followed a man named Randy Millam as he prepared his protest sign on his kitchen table and drove his "muddy Ford Fusion 50 miles across the cornfields" to Iowa City, where President Obama was scheduled to speak.  Two years before, Millam lost his job as an assembly-line worker at Kraft Foods, and he was angry.

"Millam's resolve Thursday was reinforced by the sense that he was taking part in a movement -- a rising tide of anger, fear and vitriol in the wake of the health-care overhaul signed into law by Obama this week. Millam joined a chorus of discontent surrounding the president's visit: a warm-up protest Wednesday night, a greeting party of protesters waiting at the airport and hundreds more with plans to chant outside the downtown arena while Obama spoke. In the hours before he left for Iowa City, Millam watched reports on Fox News Channel about vandalism at Democratic offices and visited a Web site of the conservative "tea party" movement, where he was inspired by a Thomas Jefferson quote about how bloodshed might be necessary to protect a country from tyranny.

"I'm not ready for outright violence yet. We have to be civil for as long as we can," Millam said. But, he added, "we are watching the infrastructure of this country crumble under our feet. The government doesn't want to hear us. We have to make them listen."

Mr. Saslow apparently never got around to asking Mr. Millam how exactly he would go about "making them listen". When you're writing a feel-good story you want your readers to feel good. The jolly Mr. Millam is just a'jawin' when he mentions the Jefferson quote (The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants). It's all in fun.

"'The president just about declared war against the American people last weekend,' [Millam] said. And it is a war Millam intends to fight."

Hey, Eli!  Did you even read your own piece?  The guy is giving you signals, and you're not picking up.   His anger over not having a job is legit.  Boy, can we all relate. (Those Bush years were doozies.)  But by giving him and his buddies everyman status, heroes of the people, out to right a wrong by any means necessary, you've given them license to do damage.

Where was the other side in that article?   Here:

"By now a group of about 200 Obama supporters had stopped to watch and listen, congregating across the street from the protesters. Seven police officers stood in the middle of the road, monitoring both sides. On one sidewalk: Obama T-shirts, health-care-reform advocates, and students from the University of Iowa, one of whom held a sign inviting Obama to join him at a local bar for Thursday night's $1 you-call-it drink special."

And here:

"Finally, one student walked across. He wore dark sunglasses and carried a poster-board sign, made moments earlier. It read: "These People are Idiots." He stood with the protesters, his sign mocking them, while he listened to an iPod."

Memo to WaPo Front Page editor:   You missed the big news.  The big news is that American health care just took a baby step toward actual reform.  You might be bored with it, it's been going on for so long, but trust me, the millions without adequate health care can't get enough of it.

Ramona
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Fear and Loathing - Part 2 - Rachel Maddow takes them on

This is important enough to add an addendum to yesterday's post.  Rachel has once again done her homework and takes a scathing look at the fear-mongering tactics on the right.  It's chilling.  Here is the segment from Rachel's program last night, in case you didn't see it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is the link.  Share it with everyone you've ever cared about.  

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/36010598#36010598

Ramona