Get this straight, Corporate Pimps: There ARE NO JOBS!

How many times does this have to be repeated:  There are 15 million unemployed in this country, with 6.8 million chronically unemployed.

Most of them spend their days looking for work.  When they hear about the possibility of jobs, they'll stand in long lines just waiting for a chance at an interview.  They would rather stand in line for a job than stand in line for an unemployment check, but the check is a lifeline when there are no jobs.

Most of them have families who are suffering because there are no jobs.

Most of them had good jobs before the Republicans and turn-coat Democrats took up the phony cry about good wages killing us all and turned the entire country over to Big Business, who in turn thanked us all for bending over and kissing their asses by sending our jobs to corrupt slave wage countries.

They rub salt in the wounds by expecting us to buy those sweatshop goods at whatever price they tag them.  They're cheaply made and cheap to produce--facts not in the least reflected in the dazzlingly audacious price tags.  Talk about chutzpah.

They scream bloody murder because people aren't buying enough but they'll kill every chance American workers might have to earn enough to pay for their pirated booty. (Again with the chutzpah.)




And now the final slap in the face:  The Republicans in the Senate (and one Democrat, Ben Nelson) voted against an unemployment benefits extension.  Two reasons, according to them:  They don't want to add to the enormous deficit they created in the first place, and they don't want to be giving unemployment checks to people who would otherwise have to be out finding a job.

What hogwash.

Never mind that there are at least five people clamoring for every available job, including those jobs that only old people and teenagers used to take:  Fast food flippers, car washers, Walmart greeters. . .what's next?  Shoe shiners and apple sellers?

The real reason--as perverse and cold-blooded as it can get--is that the Republicans don't want the Democrats to have any kind of an edge that might win them the majority again in November.  The bastards are fighting for their political lives and using the already miserable and downtrodden as pawns

So let's say the Republicans win back the majority in November. (A likely prospect, given the baffling inattention of their followers and the woeful inability of the Democrats to fight against our domestic enemies.) What will they do to improve the lives of all our displaced American workers?  What kinds of jobs will they create?  Will the poor get richer and the rich get poorer?  Will all our troubles be over?  Will happy little bluebirds fly?

* La
** La la
*** La la la. . .

I'm waiting. . .

Ramona

The Lunatic Fringe is No Longer Amusing. Let's get Serious.

The collapse of the economy in the Great Recession gave us the starkest, most painful evidence imaginable of the failure of laissez-faire economics and the destructive force of the alliance of big business and government against the interests of ordinary Americans. Radical change was called for. (One thinks of Franklin Roosevelt raging against the “economic royalists” and asserting that “we need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer.”)

But there has been no radical change, only caution and timidity and more of the same. The royalists remain triumphant and working people are absorbing blow after devastating blow.

Bob Herbert, "When Greatness Slips Away",  NYT, 6/21/10

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Bob Herbert has been my favorite doom-sayer for a while now.  Every bit of doom and gloom coming off of his little portion of the paper confirms and solidifies my own feelings of the permanence of America's rack and ruin.  Together we wallow in our weariness and grief, but we don't enjoy it.  Not even a little bit.  That's about the only positive thing I can say about it.

We're also not alone by any means.  I can say that positively, too.  There are a lot of us who recognize a river of no return when we see one, and there are some of us who might even know how to turn this sorry ship around, but our voices are being drowned out by the lunatic fringe shouting crazily for another exciting ride down the rapids.

There's no getting around the fact that we're being hijacked by a loud-mouthed group of know-nothings and evil-doers.  They really, truly want to get us back to the dark days of Bush/Cheney.  They want to give what's left of what we laughingly call a "government" over to the Private Interests, making it a total surrender, and they want to make it happen now.

The crazy thing is some of them don't even know that's the plan.  They get out there and shout for Obama's head and for the destruction of all things liberal/progressive/socialist/communist/Marxist/Leninist/Rooseveltist/
Steinbeckist/MLKingist/WalterReutherist/FlorenceNightingalist/GoldenRulist and think they're doing their part to save the country!
 
They listen to people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and Dick Armey (who know they're talking nutty but like reaping the rewards), and Michelle Bachmann (who apparently doesn't, but reaps anyway), gathering their assigned weapons of anger and hatred, heading out to the battleground without ever recognizing that the real enemies of the state are the generals at their backs.
 
 

 
We're hearing well-paid Republican men and women in powerful governmental positions telling 15 million out-of-work folks that the solution to their problems is to get off the unemployment dole and go get a job.  Some of those same out-of work folks, even the ones who know there ARE no jobs, march with the tea partiers and vote Republican.  In some circles that's called masochism.   I wouldn't care if it was strictly their problem--even masochists need a crazy kind of love--but their actions are affecting us all.  We don't want to have to feel their pain.
 
Unrepressed anger and the attendant vicious stabs at any kind of remedies are hallmarks of the rest of them.  It's the Gong Show/Jerry Springer mentality, except this is real reality, with consequences. 
 
Chris Hedges, in a scary-fascinating piece on the "American Psychosis", writes:

  "Our culture of flagrant self-exaltation, hardwired in the American character, permits the humiliation of all those who oppose us. We believe, after all, that because we have the capacity to wage war we have a right to wage war. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are deemed ugly, ignorant or poor, should be belittled and mocked. Human beings are used and discarded like Styrofoam boxes that held junk food. And the numbers of superfluous human beings are swelling the unemployment offices, the prisons and the soup kitchens. 


It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt."

We have to stop pretending that what is happening in our country is a cyclical blip in our journey toward  glory.  We're being destroyed from the inside by our own citizens, and our real enemies couldn't be happier.  They don't have to lift a finger.  All it takes for them is patience.

Our goal is a government working toward the common good, and a free press that recognizes their role in achieving it.  Our responsibilities as citizens and voters is to make sure our government works for us.  We do that by taking our voting rights seriously and choosing our leaders judiciously. 

If it's true that senatorial-candidate-from-nowhere Alvin Greene got 60 percent of the primary vote in South Carolina simply because people didn't know who they were voting for, then lord help us, we're doomed.  Something tells me we're not in the '30s anymore.  We actually do have something to fear besides fear itself.

Ramona

Tom Friedman wants me to take the fall for BP. I'm not going to do it.

Thomas Friedman has a buddy who works in the pentagon and wants to take the blame for the BP oil crisis.  The guy, Mark Mykleby, wrote a letter to the editor of the Beaufort Gazette in South Carolina, saying “I’d like to join in on the blame game that has come to define our national approach to the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. This isn’t BP’s or Transocean’s fault. It’s not the government’s fault. It’s my fault. I’m the one to blame and I’m sorry. It’s my fault because I haven’t digested the world’s in-your-face hints that maybe I ought to think about the future and change the unsustainable way I live my life. "

Mark has reluctantly come to the conclusion that we use too much oil and that's why the Gulf is in such a mess.  His solution is to ride bikes to work and plant gardens and. . .something something something.

Tom Friedman thinks his buddy Mark is on to something, as he tells us in his NYT piece:  "I think Mykleby’s letter gets at something very important: We cannot fix what ails America unless we look honestly at our own roles in creating our own problems. We — both parties — created an awful set of incentives that encouraged our best students to go to Wall Street to create crazy financial instruments instead of to Silicon Valley to create new products that improve people’s lives. We — both parties — created massive tax incentives and cheap money to make home mortgages available to people who really didn’t have the means to sustain them. And we — both parties — sent BP out in the gulf to get us as much oil as possible at the cheapest price. (Of course, we expected them to take care, but when you’re drilling for oil beneath 5,000 feet of water, stuff happens.)"

What's this "we" business?  I didn't do any of those things.  (And neither did any of the people I know who just plod along and do their jobs and worry about keeping a roof over their heads.)

I'm getting ready in a few minutes to go hang a load of dark clothes on the clothesline.  Tomorrow I'll wash whites and lights and hang them out if the sun is shining.  If it isn't, I'll wait to wash until the next day.  I have a dryer but the wind and the sun do the job in a much more satisfying way. 

Nearly every light socket in our house is fitted with CFL bulbs.  The ones that can't take them are on dimmers.

We drive a car that gets at least 33 MPG in the country, which is where we live.  It's our only car.

We burn wood in our high-efficiency stove as much as we can so as not to have to use our propane glutton of a furnace.  We close off half of our house in winter and leave it unheated.

We recycle and compost and wash out our zip-lock bags and use them over again.

When we use paper plates, they're paper and not plastic.

I watch "Living with Ed" and find lots to think about when I'm not ROTFL. (Love that guy!)

I'm still not good at remembering to take my own grocery sacks in to the store, but that doesn't mean I'm letting BP off the hook.  Uh uh.

I'm not the paragon of virtue when it comes to living Green, but I'm to blame for the BP oil mess like a sweat drop in a river is to blame for downstream flooding.  As I write this, the Census Bureau clock says the US population is 309,500,735.  If all 310 million of us dripped sweat into the river, we wouldn't raise that river one inch.  Yet you KNOW if we stand there long enough, it's gonna be our fault that somebody upstream messed up and caused the dam to break.

My kids didn't go to school to learn how to cheat people, as Friedman suggests.  What college teaches that?  (They didn't go to Wall Street or K Street or Easy Street, either.  That gladdens my heart no end.)

 And what kind of mindset thinks building a workforce in Silicon Valley might have been the answer to our collosal, unending unemployment problems?  We need to build goods from start to finish in the US, not assemble electronic gadgets with Chinese components.

Okay, people stupidly bought houses they couldn't afford, but somebody else aided and abetted.  They didn't hold guns to those bankers' heads in order to get their loans. 

And nobody but BP made the decision to deep-drill without giving a thought to safety and repairs.  No hoi polloi were involved in the decision to look the other way while British Petroleum went about their dirty business unimpeded.

Now that the inevitable oil crisis is upon us, every pol and pundit has a solution.  More regulation.  Less regulation. A definite reduction of our dependence on foreign oil, and more oil production in the U.S.  Wind, sun and water as alternatives.  Forget wind, sun and water and go with nuclear.

Here's my humble contribution to the discussion:  Bring back the trains, you idiots!  Tell the truck lobbies and car manufacturers to shove it.  One train engine dragging even a paltry dozen cars takes 12 or more gas-guzzling trucks off the roads.  With passenger trains, it's a multitude of automobiles off the highways.   Was I the only one horrified when our government stopped subsidizing the railroads and let them die a slow death?  Couldn't everyone see where that was going to lead?  More trucks, more cars, more roads, more road repairs, more dependence on oil, more and more pollution and the associated illnesses.

In time, as the railroads declined and air freight proved to be too expensive, freeways sliced through cities and divided neighborhoods.  They created traffic jams and brought us unprecedented air and noise pollution.  Trucks are now the bullies of the road and whatever the trucking lobbyists want the lobbyists get.

A local example:  Here in Michigan our Mackinac Bridge is a toll bridge.  A few years ago it was running in the red, succumbing to constant repairs, since Michigan has the highest weight limit on trucks in the nation (164,000 pounds on 11 axles--more than double most states' limits). So someone suggested raising the tolls on trucks.  Boy, howdy, what a stink!  They threatened a boycott of the entire Upper Peninsula, the eastern portion of which can only be reached by that bridge.  We're poor here--and needy.  That's all it took.  They raised the rates on cars, instead, and now we're paying $3.50 one way instead of the $2.00 we paid just a few years ago.  And repair crews and lane closings have become permanent fixtures on our beautiful bridge, thanks to overloaded trucks. 

Our beautiful Mackinac Bridge, complete with resident maintenance equipment.

Michigan's roads are the worst in the nation, thanks to those behemoth trucks traveling our byways and an auto industry abhorrence of rapid transit.  The state's idea of a solution?  Raise gas taxes to pay for road repairs.  Someone even said out loud that the reason we need the trucks is because we don't have a good rail system in Michigan.  So. . .one-two-three, all together now:  That's because you morons tore up the tracks and scrapped the trains!  You had it once.

When they pulled up the rails--the rails that once took us and our goods speedily, efficiently to where we needed to go--and turned the rail beds into hiking trails, I finally gave up all hope and went into the mourning phase.  Railroads, our beloved national identity, became nothing more than sources of scrap metal.  Every now and then we hear squeakings about a return to trains, but really--how likely is that when they would literally have to start building the system from scratch? (And, adding insult to injury, buying the steel from China, since we don't produce enough of it anymore to rebuild anything of any consequence.)

So, back to taking the blame for BP and that now-permanent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.  I won't do it.  We do love our selfish indulgences in this country, and we most surely have to learn to curb our impulses and look at the impact on life beyond tomorrow, but to even mention them in the same breath as BP in order to dilute that vile corporation's crass and criminal actions . . .   I'd just like to slap you silly, Friedman and friend.  Get ahold of yourselves.  We don't have time for this.

Ramona
*
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The Kalamazoo Promise: How did Obama miss this?

[I’m] here tonight because I think that America has a lot to learn from Kalamazoo Central about what makes for a successful school in this new century.  (Applause.)  You’ve got educators raising standards and then inspiring their students to meet them.  You’ve got community members who are stepping up as tutors and mentors and coaches.  You got parents who are taking an active interest in their child’s education -- attending those teacher conferences, yes, turning off the TV once in a while, making sure homework gets done.

President Obama, Kalamazoo Central High Commencement Speech, June 7, 2010

Kalamazoo, Michigan is currently home to an unprecedented experiment in economic development. Announced in November 2005, the Kalamazoo Promise guarantees full college scholarships to potentially every graduate of the Kalamazoo Public School district. Behind the scholarship program is an economic development agenda that seeks to revitalize the city and the region through a substantial investment in public education. It is an unorthodox approach and one that is drawing attention throughout the United States. If the return on investment in human and economic terms is high enough, the Kalamazoo Promise could serve as a new model for community revitalization and change the way policymakers think about K-16 education.

Upjohn Institute:  Research related to the Kalamazoo Promise

____________________________________

Something amazing is going on in the Kalamazoo (MI) public schools. Every student who graduates from their schools is eligible to receive a fully or partially paid scholarship to a Michigan public university or community college of their choice. The scholarships aren't based on need, or on highest grade point average, or on ethnic background, or religious persuasion, or on fantastic essays, or on how many clubs they joined throughout their school years.  It's based on location, length of time in the schools, and a minimum 2.0 GPA.  Every child within the Kalamazoo School District boundaries is potentially eligible to receive some help for secondary education.  No strings attached.

The donors for this project insist on anonymity, and I find that refreshingly admirable--I do--but if, after reading about this program, there's one instance where curiosity is nearly killing the cat, this is it.  Who is paying for this? Is it the Upjohn Institute, disseminators of the Kalamazoo Promise information?  Is it Western Michigan University, the evaluators of the project?  Is it the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which, according to the Upjohn info, is funding an initiative called Investing in the Success of the Kalamazoo Promise, "to strengthen the outcomes of the scholarship program by investing in its evaluation and research infrastructure, and deepen community engagement"?  Or is it all of the above, plus a whole lot of other "nice people"?  (The most Upjohn will say about the donors.)


As the self-designated Protector of All Education Public and Free, I'm necessarily suspicious of private interests sticking their noses into our schools.  (One look at the Texas textbook miasma is enough to prove my point.) Their agendas are usually highly suspect, falling in line with their time-honored principal of Total Destruction of Public Education, that Dirty Communist/Socialist Plot to Capture and Brainwash our Precious Commodities.  


So I've looked pretty carefully at the Kalamazoo Promise, and if there is an agenda other than giving their kids a chance at success which may then come back to the community ten-fold,  I can't find it.  I have to admit, it's pretty amazing.


The project is so amazing, in fact, it came to the attention of the White House and the Department of Education as they looked for the one high school in the country where President Obama would be delivering his first high school commencement address.  High School seniors from all over the country were invited to write essays and send in videos presenting their case for winning the honor. (Kalamazoo was one of only two public school districts to race past the 1,000 or so entries and make it into the final six.)

Incredibly, happily, Kalamazoo won.  Here is Katie Couric's segment on the Promise:



And here is the essay:

Kalamazoo Central is a diverse, dynamic and dedicated community of students and staff committed to our district’s mission:  Every Child, Every Opportunity, Every Time. We challenge ourselves to take more AP classes (an increase of 221% in 4 years); we involve ourselves in our community through activism such as PeaceJam; and we take classes such as aviation technology and construction trades that prepare us for careers and college.  Our relationships with teachers and staff empower us all to form a united bond and a belief in our end goal:  changing the world through education.  Since 2006, 91% of all Kalamazoo Central graduates have attended college, affirming a college going culture in a vibrant community of 1700.  The Kalamazoo Promise—free college tuition for all—gives us the opportunity to achieve our college dreams. Our superintendent phrased it best:  

“If you’re looking for a community where going to college is a birthright, then Kalamazoo Public Schools isn’t it; but, if you’re looking for a community trying to send a whole host of students to college, then Kalamazoo Central is a model of that success.” 

We no longer merely hope for a future; we are confident that we are the future.

Considering that our fine Republican legislature decided to cut the Michigan Promise College Scholarship, a $3,000 lifeline for some 100,000 students, as a way of sticking it to higher Public Education in the guise of Saving Our Budget, the success of the Kalamazoo Promise is even more noteworthy.  Which leads me to wonder why President Obama didn't even mention it during his commencement speech.

He lauded the community and the parents and the students, and they truly deserved it--they're truly great--but  The Kalamazoo Promise is big.  It is life-changing.  One thing is leading to another, and  "Promise Zones" are popping up all over the place.  It is a welcome shot in the arm for the chronically ailing Public Education.  How about a little rah-rah from our top Public Servant?  It's right there in the essay:  Free college tuition for all.  It just jumps out at you, doesn't it?  So why wouldn't he want to talk about one of the very reasons why these kids (and their parents and their teachers and their administrators) have worked so hard to get  ready for college placement?  A golden opportunity to give a shout-out to the people who got this thing going, who are keeping it going, and who don't give a care about tooting their own horns.  That in itself is pretty earth-shaking. (I'm guessing they're not politicians.)

June 14 - (Disregard all that I said above about Obama missing an opportunity to praise the Kalamazoo Promise.  He did it, and did it well, and I completely missed it, both in listening to his speech and reading the transcript later.  Mea culpa.  My good friend Ramona (Yes, there are two of us) gave me the quote in the comments below.  Thank you, friend.  I hate it when I'm so obviously wrong, but I would hate it even more if I didn't have a chance to fix it.)

Ramona
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It All Comes Down to Loyalty

For a nation that can’t stop bragging about how great and powerful it is, we’ve become shockingly helpless in the face of the many challenges confronting us. Our can-do spirit was put on hold many moons ago, and here we are now unable to defeat the Taliban, or rein in the likes of BP and the biggest banks, or stop the oil gushing furiously from the bowels of earth like a warning from Hades about the hubris and ignorance that is threatening to destroy us.    Bob Herbert, NYT, 5/31/10

  Just as we saw in Wall Street's devastating economic disaster and in Massey Energy's murderous explosion inside its Upper Big Branch coal mine, the nastiness in the gulf is baring an ugly truth that We the People must finally face: We are living under de facto corporate rule that has rendered our government impotent.

Thirty years of laissez-faire, ideological nonsense (pushed upon us with a vengeance in the past decade) has transformed government into a subsidiary of corporate power. Wall Street, Massey, BP and its partners — all were allowed to become their own "regulators" and officially encouraged to put their short-term profit interests over the public interest.    Jim Hightower, Alternet, 6/2/10

There was a time when America was known for its greatness.  We were a prosperous country with an upper class that put its riches back into the American economy.  Our middle class, our vast majority, was vibrant and full of life.  Our poor were always with us, but our homeless and hungry weren't so overwhelming in numbers that our shelters and our food banks couldn't keep up.

There was a time when anyone who wanted a job could find one.  Fathers could earn enough to take care of an entire family, and mothers, if they chose, could stay home and care for them.

There was a time when we built factories on American soil and produced goods and made steel and planted crops in such abundance that we not only sustained ourselves, we were actually able to export the remainder.

There was a time when, if we could have looked ahead, we would have had enough sense to be ashamed of what we have become.

What a waste.  All that hard work, all those years of working together to build an America we could all be proud of, and look where we are.

Every day in every way I resent the hell out of the people who put us here.  I've lived through the good times and I've lived through the bad times.  I've watched as greed and selfishness and yes--disloyalty--have eroded  a workable system that had been in place since the aftermath of the Great Depression, and is now plummeting us back into a reprise of those same dark days.

Big business is running our country into the ground.  Big business doesn't care because big business is global now.  If they lose here, they'll gain somewhere else.  Big business has no shame and they have no sense of loyalty.  They live big here because they can.  They can because there are enough Americans who will watch their backs and circle the wagons whenever they think big business is being attacked.  Since the days of their most exalted hero, Ronald Reagan, capitalism at all costs has been hammered into their pointy little heads.  (Never mind that, thanks in large part to the bleatings of their most exalted hero and his most vociferous followers, a good number of their capitalist pals have taken their booty offshore and have completely abandoned ship.)

The Republicans, the Tea Partiers, PalinCorp, Fox "News", the Right Wing pundits, and certain of the DINOs are working hard to distract us from the increasingly obvious truth:  Big business has run amuck and is destroying us.

Why those people feel the need to defend those Terminators is beyond me, but they're apparently going to defend them to the death of us. The mainstream media, either by intent or shortsightedness or fear of ratings, is big into aiding and abetting the Destroyers of All Things American.  Even C-Span, the seeming last bastion of objectivity, is turning right just when we need them to stay focused.  More and more, they highlight the rightward-leaning, and seem to delight in covering everything Tea Party as if they were an actual political party and not simply an angry mob whose only solution to this mess is to pump up the anger.

Defending the status-quo encourages the undermining of our economy.  There is something decidedly ludicrous about that claim to want to "take our country back". The only ones who want to go back to that are the ones who made (and are still making) obscene bundles of cash off of our collective misery.

If they really wanted to take our country back they would be fighting against the disloyal, dishonorable corporations that chose to build factories outside America using foreign slave labor in corrupt, unregulated countries rather than  live by the necessary rules and pay decent wages and benefits.

They wouldn't be waving the American flag while chanting "Drill, baby, drill".

They wouldn't be buying into the corporate lie that all things public, including health care, Social Security and schools, should be privatized so that corporate interests can have the control and keep the profits.

They wouldn't be so bent on electing people who despise the very idea of good, all-encompassing government but wouldn't mind collecting a paycheck while they're attempting to destroy it.

If those people had any sense of loyalty toward this country, they would, instead, be climbing out of that comfy bed they've made with the worst of Big Business and think twice about railing against anyone wanting to put a stop to the most destructive, out-of-control business practices this country has seen since we let this same thing happen in the 1920s.

It all comes down to loyalty.  Do we privatize or do we keep "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people".  Every member of Congress pledges this Oath of Office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

 Every time we say the Pledge of Allegiance we pledge loyalty to these United States.

Some of us actually mean it.

Ramona
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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

_______________________________

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

________________________________

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