Documents Show Details on Romney Family Trusts

How much more do we need to know about Romney in order to understand that his interest in the American People is for personal gain, not for a return to the Land of the Free.  While we Working Class folk tighten our thread bare belts and try to figure out how to squeeze another gallon of gasoline into our tank so we can drive to the job that now pays half in purchasing power as it did four years ago, Romney continues to invest his money in off-shore banks.  

Carl Jarvis 

 

 

Subject: Documents Show Details on Romney Family Trusts

Documents Show Details on Romney Family Trusts
Saturday, 25 August 2012 11:39 By Nicholas Confessore and Julie Creswell,
The New York Times News Service | Report
Hundreds of pages of confidential internal documents from the private equity
firm Bain Capital published online Thursday provided new details on
investments held by the Romney family's trusts, as well as aggressive
strategies that Bain appears to have used to minimize its investors' and
partners' tax liabilities.
The documents include annual financial statements and investor letters
circulated to limited partners in more than 20 Bain and related funds where
Mitt Romney's financial advisers have at times invested large parts of his
personal fortune, estimated at more than $250 million.
As part of his retirement agreement with Bain, Mr. Romney has remained a
passive investor in the company's ventures and continues to receive a share
of the firm's investment profits on some deals undertaken after his
departure.
The documents, obtained and published by Gawker.com, do not specify the
stakes held in the funds by the Romney family trusts or by other investors.
But they highlight the range and complexity of Mr. Romney's investments at a
time when those very qualities have been the subject of the Obama campaign's
main attacks against him, including demands that Mr. Romney release his tax
returns to clear up any suggestion that he might be benefiting financially
from legal loopholes or tax shelters.
Many documents disclose information that, while routinely provided to Bain's
investors, is not typically disclosed to the public: the dollar value of
Bain investments in specific companies, fees charged by Bain and other
investment managers, and the value of different Bain funds in some years.
The documents also reveal that Bain held stakes in highly complex Wall
Street financial instruments, including equity swaps, credit default swaps
and collateralized loan obligations.
"The unauthorized disclosure of a number of confidential fund financial
statements is unfortunate," said Alex Stanton, a Bain spokesman. "Our fund
financials are routinely prepared by auditors and demonstrate a commitment
to transparency with our investors and regulators, and compliance with all
laws."
Mr. Romney said last week that he had paid an effective federal tax rate of
at least 13 percent over the past decade, but he declined - as he has over
months of speculation and attacks - to release returns before 2010.
"My view is I've paid all the taxes required by law," Mr. Romney said.
Bain private equity funds in which the Romney family's trusts are invested
appear to have used an aggressive tax approach, which some tax lawyers
believe is not legal, to save Bain partners more than $200 million in income
taxes and more than $20 million in Medicare taxes.
Annual reports for four Bain Capital funds indicate that the funds converted
$1.05 billion in accumulated fees that otherwise would have been ordinary
income for Bain partners into capital gains, which are taxed at a much lower
rate.
Although some tax experts have criticized the approach, the Internal Revenue
Service is not known to have challenged any such arrangements.
In a blog post Thursday, Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University
of Colorado, said that there was some disagreement among lawyers, but that
he believed: "If challenged in court, Bain would lose. The Bain partners, in
my opinion, misreported their income if they reported these converted fees
as capital gain instead of ordinary income."
A typical private equity or hedge fund pays its managers in part with a
management fee based on the size of the fund, and in part with a share of
the profits earned by the fund. Those profits are considered "carried
interest" and taxed at capital gains rates, which in recent years have been
15 percent, assuming that the underlying investment profits qualified for
that treatment.
The tax strategy Bain appears to have used is intended to convert the
remaining management fee - the part not based on investment profits - into
capital gains. Mr. Romney appears to benefit from the carried interest
structure in these funds, but it is not clear from the documents made public
whether he also benefits from the fee waiver. The Romney campaign declined
to comment.
In an article that appeared in the journal Tax Notes in 2009, Gregg D.
Polsky, a tax law professor at the University of North Carolina School of
Law, called the tax strategy "extremely aggressive" and said it was "subject
to serious challenge by the I.R.S."
Details in the documents suggest that Bain funds in which Mr. Romney's
fortune is invested also used a variety of legal mechanisms to help some
investors avoid significant taxes.
A 2009 document concerning Bain Capital Asia, one of the firm's overseas
private equity funds, for example, refers to three "blocker" corporations
used to invest in D&M Holdings, a Japanese electronics company.
Blocker corporations, typically set up in tax havens like the Cayman
Islands, can help investors avoid a levy known as the unrelated business
income tax, which was created to prevent nonprofit groups from undertaking
profit-making ventures that compete with taxpaying companies.
The documents also showed that some of the funds owned equity swaps, which
have been used to avoid taxes that would otherwise be owed on dividends paid
by American companies to foreign-based investors, like funds based in the
Caymans.
The major purpose of such "swaps," a Senate committee report stated in 2008,
"is to enable non-U.S. persons to dodge payment of U.S. taxes on U.S. stock
dividends." Congress later adopted a provision intended to prevent that
tactic. Parts of that provision took effect in 2010 and other parts this
year. It is not clear how effective the provision will be, and final I.R.S.
regulations have yet to be released.
Before enactment of that provision, if a Cayman Islands hedge fund owned an
American stock that paid dividends, a tax would normally be withheld when
the dividend was paid. Under the swap arrangement, the shares were "owned"
by an American company, typically a bank or brokerage firm, which was exempt
from withholding taxes.
The hedge fund entered into a "total return swap," in which the bank agreed
to transfer all the financial benefits of owning the stock to the hedge
fund, including the dividend payment. The hedge fund pays an interest rate
that, in effect, pays the bank for the tax benefit of avoiding the
withholding tax.
The 2009 financial statements of Absolute Return Capital Partners LP, a fund
that maintains Cayman Island subsidiaries, reported $17.7 million in
realized and unrealized profits from "equity contracts." It was not clear if
all of those profits related to total return swaps, but it is likely that at
least some of them did.
That tactic is also used to avoid taxes in some other countries and to avoid
restrictions on share ownership by noncitizens of some countries. In its
2010 annual report, released by Gawker, Viking Global Strategies, a hedge
fund, reported using such swaps in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Romney
family trusts have indirect stakes in that fund through a Goldman Sachs
fund.
Like many other private equity and hedge funds, Bain and its affiliates
operate several offshore funds that are domiciled in the Caymans for a
variety of tax and regulatory reasons. For the most part, these Cayman-based
funds are completely routine and legal, tax experts say.
This article, "Documents Show Details on Romney Family Trusts," originally
appears at the New York Times News Service.
C 2012 The New York Times Company Truthout has licensed this content. It may
not be reproduced by any other source and is not covered by our Creative
Commons license.
 
JULIE CRESWELL
Julie Creswell is a Sunday Business feature writer for The New York Times.
Since joining the Times in 2005, she has covered Wall Street, the nation's
banking system and various business and legal issues for the paper.
After graduating from the University of Iowa, Ms. Creswell covered the debt
markets and the mutual fund industry for Dow Jones Newswires before she
joined Fortune magazine in 1998. She is married and has two sons, and lives
in New York.
________________________________________
Show Comments
Hide Comments
<a href="http://truthout.disqus.com/?url=ref">View the discussion
thread.</a>
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Documents Show Details on Romney Family Trusts
Saturday, 25 August 2012 11:39 By Nicholas Confessore and Julie Creswell,
The New York Times News Service | Report
. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
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reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.
Hundreds of pages of confidential internal documents from the private equity
firm Bain Capital published online Thursday provided new details on
investments held by the Romney family's trusts, as well as aggressive
strategies that Bain appears to have used to minimize its investors' and
partners' tax liabilities.
The documents include annual financial statements and investor letters
circulated to limited partners in more than 20 Bain and related funds where
Mitt Romney's financial advisers have at times invested large parts of his
personal fortune, estimated at more than $250 million.
As part of his retirement agreement with Bain, Mr. Romney has remained a
passive investor in the company's ventures and continues to receive a share
of the firm's investment profits on some deals undertaken after his
departure.
The documents, obtained and published by Gawker.com, do not specify the
stakes held in the funds by the Romney family trusts or by other investors.
But they highlight the range and complexity of Mr. Romney's investments at a
time when those very qualities have been the subject of the Obama campaign's
main attacks against him, including demands that Mr. Romney release his tax
returns to clear up any suggestion that he might be benefiting financially
from legal loopholes or tax shelters.
Many documents disclose information that, while routinely provided to Bain's
investors, is not typically disclosed to the public: the dollar value of
Bain investments in specific companies, fees charged by Bain and other
investment managers, and the value of different Bain funds in some years.
The documents also reveal that Bain held stakes in highly complex Wall
Street financial instruments, including equity swaps, credit default swaps
and collateralized loan obligations.
"The unauthorized disclosure of a number of confidential fund financial
statements is unfortunate," said Alex Stanton, a Bain spokesman. "Our fund
financials are routinely prepared by auditors and demonstrate a commitment
to transparency with our investors and regulators, and compliance with all
laws."
Mr. Romney said last week that he had paid an effective federal tax rate of
at least 13 percent over the past decade, but he declined - as he has over
months of speculation and attacks - to release returns before 2010.
"My view is I've paid all the taxes required by law," Mr. Romney said.
Bain private equity funds in which the Romney family's trusts are invested
appear to have used an aggressive tax approach, which some tax lawyers
believe is not legal, to save Bain partners more than $200 million in income
taxes and more than $20 million in Medicare taxes.
Annual reports for four Bain Capital funds indicate that the funds converted
$1.05 billion in accumulated fees that otherwise would have been ordinary
income for Bain partners into capital gains, which are taxed at a much lower
rate.
Although some tax experts have criticized the approach, the Internal Revenue
Service is not known to have challenged any such arrangements.
In a blog post Thursday, Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University
of Colorado, said that there was some disagreement among lawyers, but that
he believed: "If challenged in court, Bain would lose. The Bain partners, in
my opinion, misreported their income if they reported these converted fees
as capital gain instead of ordinary income."
A typical private equity or hedge fund pays its managers in part with a
management fee based on the size of the fund, and in part with a share of
the profits earned by the fund. Those profits are considered "carried
interest" and taxed at capital gains rates, which in recent years have been
15 percent, assuming that the underlying investment profits qualified for
that treatment.
The tax strategy Bain appears to have used is intended to convert the
remaining management fee - the part not based on investment profits - into
capital gains. Mr. Romney appears to benefit from the carried interest
structure in these funds, but it is not clear from the documents made public
whether he also benefits from the fee waiver. The Romney campaign declined
to comment.
In an article that appeared in the journal Tax Notes in 2009, Gregg D.
Polsky, a tax law professor at the University of North Carolina School of
Law, called the tax strategy "extremely aggressive" and said it was "subject
to serious challenge by the I.R.S."
Details in the documents suggest that Bain funds in which Mr. Romney's
fortune is invested also used a variety of legal mechanisms to help some
investors avoid significant taxes.
A 2009 document concerning Bain Capital Asia, one of the firm's overseas
private equity funds, for example, refers to three "blocker" corporations
used to invest in D&M Holdings, a Japanese electronics company.
Blocker corporations, typically set up in tax havens like the Cayman
Islands, can help investors avoid a levy known as the unrelated business
income tax, which was created to prevent nonprofit groups from undertaking
profit-making ventures that compete with taxpaying companies.
The documents also showed that some of the funds owned equity swaps, which
have been used to avoid taxes that would otherwise be owed on dividends paid
by American companies to foreign-based investors, like funds based in the
Caymans.
The major purpose of such "swaps," a Senate committee report stated in 2008,
"is to enable non-U.S. persons to dodge payment of U.S. taxes on U.S. stock
dividends." Congress later adopted a provision intended to prevent that
tactic. Parts of that provision took effect in 2010 and other parts this
year. It is not clear how effective the provision will be, and final I.R.S.
regulations have yet to be released.
Before enactment of that provision, if a Cayman Islands hedge fund owned an
American stock that paid dividends, a tax would normally be withheld when
the dividend was paid. Under the swap arrangement, the shares were "owned"
by an American company, typically a bank or brokerage firm, which was exempt
from withholding taxes.
The hedge fund entered into a "total return swap," in which the bank agreed
to transfer all the financial benefits of owning the stock to the hedge
fund, including the dividend payment. The hedge fund pays an interest rate
that, in effect, pays the bank for the tax benefit of avoiding the
withholding tax.
The 2009 financial statements of Absolute Return Capital Partners LP, a fund
that maintains Cayman Island subsidiaries, reported $17.7 million in
realized and unrealized profits from "equity contracts." It was not clear if
all of those profits related to total return swaps, but it is likely that at
least some of them did.
That tactic is also used to avoid taxes in some other countries and to avoid
restrictions on share ownership by noncitizens of some countries. In its
2010 annual report, released by Gawker, Viking Global Strategies, a hedge
fund, reported using such swaps in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Romney
family trusts have indirect stakes in that fund through a Goldman Sachs
fund.
Like many other private equity and hedge funds, Bain and its affiliates
operate several offshore funds that are domiciled in the Caymans for a
variety of tax and regulatory reasons. For the most part, these Cayman-based
funds are completely routine and legal, tax experts say.
This article, "Documents Show Details on Romney Family Trusts," originally
appears at the New York Times News Service.
C 2012 The New York Times Company Truthout has licensed this content. It may
not be reproduced by any other source and is not covered by our Creative
Commons license.
javascript:return addthis_sendto('email'); javascript:return
addthis_sendto('email');
Julie Creswell
Julie Creswell is a Sunday Business feature writer for The New York Times.
Since joining the Times in 2005, she has covered Wall Street, the nation's
banking system and various business and legal issues for the paper.
After graduating from the University of Iowa, Ms. Creswell covered the debt
markets and the mutual fund industry for Dow Jones Newswires before she
joined Fortune magazine in 1998. She is married and has two sons, and lives
in New York.

Howard Zinn Turns 90: The Great Legacy of the People's Historian

A tribute to a great American. 

 

Subject: Howard Zinn Turns 90: The Great Legacy of the People's Historian

Howard Zinn Turns 90:  The Great Legacy of the People's Historian



By Anthony Arnove [2]



AlterNet [1] August 24, 2012



http://www.alternet.org/print/visions/howard-zinn-turns-90-great-legacy-peoples-historian



Howard Zinn would have turned 90 this Friday if his seemingly boundless
energy and youthfulness had not been cut short in January 2010.



Toward the end of his life, when a New York Times reporter called him with
the morbid task of interviewing him in preparation for his future obituary,
he asked him, "What's your deadline?"



Howard never missed an opportunity to add levity, a sense of humanity, to
the often over-serious and sterile culture of the left.



Going through Howard's archives recently, gathering some of his talks for a
book, I found early speeches of Howard's I had never listened to before.



The speeches, going back to 1963, showed Howard's sharp political acumen,
his clarity, his ability to speak the language of his audience in a way that
crystallized their passions and ideals.



But they also revealed something I had not quite expected.



Here in 1963, speaking in Atlanta to activists of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, a very serious gathering, was Howard joking with his
audience about ending his talk short because he was hungry.



I had thought that maybe Howard had probably grown into his ease with an
audience, his dry wit.  But he was clearly a natural from the beginning.



How else would someone only 26 years old, as he was in 1948, be asked to
introduce Henry Wallace at a presidential campaign event in Brooklyn?



And how else could he sustain his remarkable optimism over all the years of
setbacks and challenges he encountered?



It's worth remembering that A People's History of the United States [3]
first came out in 1980 as a tide of reaction was seeking to bury the social
movements that inspired Howard's book and which he saw as the hope for the
future.



It could have seemed a hopeless venture in that political environment to
seek to change the way the United States understands and teaches its
history, and yet he achieved precisely that.



Not surprisingly, there has been a backlash against Howard's impact on
popular culture and on a younger generation whose teachers have found ways
to bring into their classrooms A People's History of the United States, as
well as the book I had the privilege to edit with Howard, Voices of a People's
History of the United States [4].



There are historians who want to police the boundaries of their discipline
to say Howard strayed too far into engagement with the world.



There are liberals threatened by his political independence and desire to
see more fundamental change than can be imagined within the ever narrowing
horizons provided by the Democratic Party.



And there are always people who want us to know that things are "more
complicated," by which they mean really, "things aren't really so bad."



Howard challenged these ideas in a terrific speech he gave in 1970:  "If you
don't think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things, you
actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little
things are wrong.  But you have to get a little detached, and then come back
and look at the world, and you are horrified.  So we have to start from that
supposition--that things are really topsy-turvy."



Howard had that rare ability to step back and help us understand our
topsy-turvy world primarily because he approached politics and history from
the standpoint of someone who thought it was possible to turn our world
right side up--to put people before profit, the environment before the
interests of mining companies.



As strange as it is to say of someone who was 87, Howard's passing was a
shock.  All of us who knew him and worked with him were usually racing to
catch up with him, even as he became more frail and had difficulty walking.



Working with Howard on our film, The People Speak [5], Howard would spend
full days in the edit room of our post-production house, working to craft
every frame and word of the film.



He was not content to let others do the work, to rest on his laurels.



To the end, he was committed to the belief that the only hope for meaningful
change is to work for it--and that there is no more meaningful life than one
spent working alongside others for a better world.



That is why you will find Howard's ideas and books at any Occupy encampment
that is allowed to spring up, why every week on the subway I see some new
person engrossed in reading A People's History, why Howard's legacy is more
relevant than ever in our age of ever diminishing expectations.



¡Howard Zinn presente!



See more stories tagged with:



howard zinn [6],



a people's history [7],



history [8],



speech [9]



Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/visions/howard-zinn-turns-90-great-legacy-peoples-historian



Links:



[1] http://www.alternet.org



[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/anthony-arnove



[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People's_History_of_the_United_States



[4] http://www.peopleshistory.us/



[5] http://www.thepeoplespeak.com/



[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/howard-zinn



[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/peoples-history-0



[8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/history-0



[9] http://www.alternet.org/tags/speech-0

_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
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just what is discrimination? Fw: [acb-chat] What's the best for the blind?

Just what is Discrimination? 

 

Born in Missouri(1874-1960), my grandmother Jarvis was nursed by a wet nurse and raised by a nanny, both Black women.  "I loved them dearly, especially Sarah, my nanny", she told me.  "They took good care of me and both kept to their own kind and caused no trouble." 

As a young man, I worked on the Seattle waterfront for Bartmann and Bixer.  They claimed to be a drapery manufacturer, but in reality they were a sweat shop and a primitive torture chamber. 

But I would take my lunch at George's Cafe Tavern, a dining delight and a central breeding ground for some of the largest, fattest cockroaches in the entire Northwest. 

This fine establishment was the grazing ground for local longshoremen and produce house workers.  All White, and all Macho Men. 

In those days I would have to count myself as one of them. 

If only to survive. 

During those tumultuous days of unrest in our Central Cities in the late 50's and early 60's, the favorite topic for discussion over lunch was what we should do about those trouble making Negroes. 

"Why can't they just stay with their own kind?" one huge dock worker growled. 

Another young fellow put down his newspaper and took the center stage.  He was a short haul truck driver with a wife, three grubby kids and two girl friends.  He lived in a hovel that even the rats abandoned.  And he smelled to a point of always having an empty stool on either side of him.  "Personally," he said, grinning through brown-green snaggles of teeth, "I get along with them just fine, as long as they stay in their place". 

No, I never asked Mister Skuzzy just where "Their Place" was. 

 

Many years passed.  One day, at the age of 29, I awoke to find that I had become the Blind Man.  Life changed dramatically for me.  Even though I continued living in the same house, with the same wife and small daughter, and attended the same church, and visited with the same relatives and friends, I could feel the difference.  Without saying it openly, the word was out that I was to conform and become one of "those people".  For several years I actually found myself becoming the neighborhood Blind Man.  That pitiful, but brave Soul whose wife led him to church where God tended to his needs.  "You've lost your physical sight", said my kindly neighbor, "But God has given you great insight."  If only she knew just how silly that was. 

But it made her, and all the other Christian ladies feel good. 

Coming to my senses was not one of those, Ah Ha! moments.  For me it was a slow process.  But one day I did realize that I was not going to be controlled by the Universal Blind Stereotype any longer. 

After leaving my wife, I sought an apartment.  The woman who managed the place I chose to live in, turned to me when she saw that I was blind.  "Why don't you go over to that Blind Center.  Don't they have a place for your kind to live in?" 

I said, "Does your kind have a place to live in?" 

I could feel her instant anger rise up.  "What do you mean by that remark?" she demanded. 

"Well, women have been discriminated against for as long as blind people have, and I don't see anyone offering you a safe place to live.  You and I both have to make our own way in this world.  No one is looking out for us." 

She rented me the apartment. 

"Your Kind", Black or Blind, Female or Elderly is all the same.  It's discrimination. 

And discrimination is nothing more than a lack of understanding and respect for others. 

 

Carl Jarvis

 

Dear Mr. Akin, I Want You to Imagine...

Subject: Re: Dear Mr. Akin, I Want You to Imagine...

My thought is that Todd Akin had so thoroughly internalized the so called theory that women subjected to "Legitimate rape" could not become pregnant, that his statement on the subject would be accepted as a matter of course. 

He must have been knocked for a loop when the roar of angry protests rained down on his befuddled head. 

I can only hope that his wife and two daughters are now instructing him in subjects unfamiliar to him.  Like, what happens when a Penis is forcibly jammed into a Vagina and Sperm is Ejaculated.  Perhaps they can demonstrate that what happens below the belt is not controlled by the brain.  Of course Akins sexual equipment excludes a direct demonstration, but...

 

Carl Jarvis

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Miriam Vieni

To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'

Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2012 6:28 PM

Subject: Dear Mr. Akin, I Want You to Imagine...

Excerpt: "Clarification. You didn't make some glib throw away remark. You
made a very specific ignorant statement clearly indicating you have no
awareness of what it means to be raped. And not a casual statement, but one
made with the intention of legislating the experience of women who have been
raped. Perhaps more terrifying: it was a window into the psyche of the GOP."
 
Senate candidate Todd Akin uses victim blaming tactics to craft the
definition 'legitimate' rape for his political agenda. (photo: George Doyle)
 

Dear Mr. Akin, I Want You to Imagine...
By Eve Ensler, Reader Supported News
21 August 12
 ear Todd Akin,
I am writing to you tonight about rape. It is 2 AM and I am unable to sleep
here in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am in Bukavu at the City of Joy
to serve and support and work with hundreds, thousands of women who have
been raped and violated and tortured from this ceaseless war for minerals
fought on their bodies.
I am in Congo but I could be writing this from anywhere in the United
States, South Africa, Britain, Egypt, India, Philippines, most college
campuses in America. I could be writing from any city or town or village
where over half a billion women on the planet are raped in their lifetime.
Mr. Akin, your words have kept me awake.
As a rape survivor, I am reeling from your recent statement where you said
you misspoke when you said that women do not get pregnant from legitimate
rape, and that you were speaking "off the cuff."
Clarification. You didn't make some glib throw away remark. You made a very
specific ignorant statement clearly indicating you have no awareness of what
it means to be raped. And not a casual statement, but one made with the
intention of legislating the experience of women who have been raped.
Perhaps more terrifying: it was a window into the psyche of the GOP.
You used the expression "legitimate" rape as if to imply there were such a
thing as "illegitimate" rape. Let me try to explain to you what that does to
the minds, hearts and souls of the millions of women on this planet who
experience rape. It is a form of re-rape. The underlying assumption of your
statement is that women and their experiences are not to be trusted. That
their understanding of rape must be qualified by some higher, wiser
authority. It delegitimizes and undermines and belittles the horror,
invasion, desecration they experienced. It makes them feel as alone and
powerless as they did at the moment of rape.
When you, Paul Ryan and 225 of your fellow co-sponsors play with words
around rape suggesting only "forcible" rape be treated seriously as if all
rapes weren't forcible, it brings back a flood of memories of the way the
rapists played with us in the act of being raped -- intimidating us,
threatening us,muting us. Your playing with words like "forcible" and
"legitimate" is playing with our souls which have been shattered by unwanted
penises shoving into us, ripping our flesh, our vaginas, our consciousness,
our confidence, our pride, our futures.
Now you want to say that you misspoke when you said that a legitimate rape
couldn't get us pregnant. Did you honestly believe that rape sperm is
different than love sperm, that some mysterious religious process occurs and
rape sperm self-destructs due to its evilcontent? Or, were you implying that
women and their bodies are somehow responsible for rejecting legitimate rape
sperm, once again putting the onus on us? It would seem you were saying that
getting pregnant after a rape would indicate it was not a "legitimate" rape.
Here's what I want you to do. I want you to close your eyes and imagine that
you are on your bed or up against a wall or locked in a small suffocating
space. Imagine being tied up there and imagine some aggressive, indifferent,
insane stranger friend or relative ripping off your clothes and entering
your body -- the most personal, sacred, private part of your body -- and
violently, hatefully forcing themself into you so that you are ripped apart.
Then imagine that stranger's sperm shooting into you and filling you and you
can't get it out. It is growing something in you. Imagine you have no idea
what that life will even consist of, spiritually made in hate, not knowing
the mental or health background of the rapist.
Then imagine a person comes along, a person who has never had that
experience of rape, and that person tells you, you have no choice but to
keep that product of rape growing in you against your will and when it is
born it has the face of your rapist, the face of the person who has
essentially destroyed your being and you will have to look at the face every
day of your life and you will be judged harshly if you cannot love that
face.
I don't know if you can imagine any of this (leadership actually requires
this kind of compassion), but if you are willing to go to the depth of this
darkness, you will quickly understand that there is NO ONE WHO CAN MAKE THAT
CHOICE to have or not have the baby, but the person carrying that baby
herself.
I have spent much time with mothers who have given birth to children who are
the product of rape. I have watched how tortured they are wrestling with
their hate and anger, trying not to project that onto their child.
I am asking you and the GOP to get out of my body, out of my vagina, my
womb, to get out of all of our bodies. These are not your decisions to make.
These are not your words to define.
Why don't you spend your time ending rape rather than redefining it? Spend
your energy going after those perpetrators who so easily destroy women
rather than parsing out manipulative language that minimizes their
destruction.
And by the way you've just given millions of women a very good reason to
make sure you never get elected again, and an insanely good reason to rise.
#ReasonToRise
Eve Ensler
Bukavu, Congo

________________________________________
EVE ENSLER is a Tony award winning playwright, performer and activist. She
is the award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues, which has been
published in 48 languages and performed in over 140 countries. Eve's newest
work, I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life Of Girls Around The World,
was released February 2010 in book form by Random House and made The New
York Times Best Seller list. The book was workshopped in July, 2010 at New
York Stage and Film and Vassar College, moving towards an Off-Broadway
production. She is also the founder of V-Day, the global movement to end
violence against women and girls, which has raised over 80 million dollars.
In the summer of 2010, Eve's newest play Here was filmed live by Sky
Television in London, UK. Eve's other plays include Necessary Targets, The
Treatment and The Good Body, which she performed on Broadway, followed by a
national tour. In 2006, Eve released her book, Insecure At Last: A Political
Memoir, and co-edited A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and a Prayer. Eve's film
credits include an HBO film version of The Vagina Monologues. She also
produced the film What I Want My Words to Do To You, which won the Freedom
of Expression Award at Sundance and was shown on PBS. She is currently
working on a film adaptation of her play Necessary Targets with National
Geographic, Independent Features which she will direct. Eve has written
numerous articles for Glamour Magazine, Huffington Post, and O Magazine. She
has won many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting and an
Obie Award.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.

Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
 
Senate candidate Todd Akin uses victim blaming tactics to craft the
definition 'legitimate' rape for his political agenda. (photo: George Doyle)
/opinion2/273-40/13039-dear-mr-akin-i-want-you-to-imagine/opinion2/273-40/13
039-dear-mr-akin-i-want-you-to-imagine
Dear Mr. Akin, I Want You to Imagine...
By Eve Ensler, Reader Supported News
21 August 12
ear Todd Akin,
I am writing to you tonight about rape. It is 2 AM and I am unable to sleep
here in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am in Bukavu at the City of Joy
to serve and support and work with hundreds, thousands of women who have
been raped and violated and tortured from this ceaseless war for minerals
fought on their bodies.
I am in Congo but I could be writing this from anywhere in the United
States, South Africa, Britain, Egypt, India, Philippines, most college
campuses in America. I could be writing from any city or town or village
where over half a billion women on the planet are raped in their lifetime.
Mr. Akin, your words have kept me awake.
As a rape survivor, I am reeling from your recent statement where you said
you misspoke when you said that women do not get pregnant from legitimate
rape, and that you were speaking "off the cuff."
Clarification. You didn't make some glib throw away remark. You made a very
specific ignorant statement clearly indicating you have no awareness of what
it means to be raped. And not a casual statement, but one made with the
intention of legislating the experience of women who have been raped.
Perhaps more terrifying: it was a window into the psyche of the GOP.
You used the expression "legitimate" rape as if to imply there were such a
thing as "illegitimate" rape. Let me try to explain to you what that does to
the minds, hearts and souls of the millions of women on this planet who
experience rape. It is a form of re-rape. The underlying assumption of your
statement is that women and their experiences are not to be trusted. That
their understanding of rape must be qualified by some higher, wiser
authority. It delegitimizes and undermines and belittles the horror,
invasion, desecration they experienced. It makes them feel as alone and
powerless as they did at the moment of rape.
When you, Paul Ryan and 225 of your fellow co-sponsors play with words
around rape suggesting only "forcible" rape be treated seriously as if all
rapes weren't forcible, it brings back a flood of memories of the way the
rapists played with us in the act of being raped -- intimidating us,
threatening us,muting us. Your playing with words like "forcible" and
"legitimate" is playing with our souls which have been shattered by unwanted
penises shoving into us, ripping our flesh, our vaginas, our consciousness,
our confidence, our pride, our futures.
Now you want to say that you misspoke when you said that a legitimate rape
couldn't get us pregnant. Did you honestly believe that rape sperm is
different than love sperm, that some mysterious religious process occurs and
rape sperm self-destructs due to its evilcontent? Or, were you implying that
women and their bodies are somehow responsible for rejecting legitimate rape
sperm, once again putting the onus on us? It would seem you were saying that
getting pregnant after a rape would indicate it was not a "legitimate" rape.
Here's what I want you to do. I want you to close your eyes and imagine that
you are on your bed or up against a wall or locked in a small suffocating
space. Imagine being tied up there and imagine some aggressive, indifferent,
insane stranger friend or relative ripping off your clothes and entering
your body -- the most personal, sacred, private part of your body -- and
violently, hatefully forcing themself into you so that you are ripped apart.
Then imagine that stranger's sperm shooting into you and filling you and you
can't get it out. It is growing something in you. Imagine you have no idea
what that life will even consist of, spiritually made in hate, not knowing
the mental or health background of the rapist.
Then imagine a person comes along, a person who has never had that
experience of rape, and that person tells you, you have no choice but to
keep that product of rape growing in you against your will and when it is
born it has the face of your rapist, the face of the person who has
essentially destroyed your being and you will have to look at the face every
day of your life and you will be judged harshly if you cannot love that
face.
I don't know if you can imagine any of this (leadership actually requires
this kind of compassion), but if you are willing to go to the depth of this
darkness, you will quickly understand that there is NO ONE WHO CAN MAKE THAT
CHOICE to have or not have the baby, but the person carrying that baby
herself.
I have spent much time with mothers who have given birth to children who are
the product of rape. I have watched how tortured they are wrestling with
their hate and anger, trying not to project that onto their child.
I am asking you and the GOP to get out of my body, out of my vagina, my
womb, to get out of all of our bodies. These are not your decisions to make.
These are not your words to define.
Why don't you spend your time ending rape rather than redefining it? Spend
your energy going after those perpetrators who so easily destroy women
rather than parsing out manipulative language that minimizes their
destruction.
And by the way you've just given millions of women a very good reason to
make sure you never get elected again, and an insanely good reason to rise.
#ReasonToRise
Eve Ensler
Bukavu, Congo

EVE ENSLER is a Tony award winning playwright, performer and activist. She
is the award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues, which has been
published in 48 languages and performed in over 140 countries. Eve's newest
work, I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life Of Girls Around The World,
was released February 2010 in book form by Random House and made The New
York Times Best Seller list. The book was workshopped in July, 2010 at New
York Stage and Film and Vassar College, moving towards an Off-Broadway
production. She is also the founder of V-Day, the global movement to end
violence against women and girls, which has raised over 80 million dollars.
In the summer of 2010, Eve's newest play Here was filmed live by Sky
Television in London, UK. Eve's other plays include Necessary Targets, The
Treatment and The Good Body, which she performed on Broadway, followed by a
national tour. In 2006, Eve released her book, Insecure At Last: A Political
Memoir, and co-edited A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and a Prayer. Eve's film
credits include an HBO film version of The Vagina Monologues. She also
produced the film What I Want My Words to Do To You, which won the Freedom
of Expression Award at Sundance and was shown on PBS. She is currently
working on a film adaptation of her play Necessary Targets with National
Geographic, Independent Features which she will direct. Eve has written
numerous articles for Glamour Magazine, Huffington Post, and O Magazine. She
has won many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting and an
Obie Award.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.



_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy

Pablov's theory in humans

Carrying Pablov's theory right along, we see conditioned response demonstrated day after day.  People who get their daily"fix" out of violence, seek more violence in the Mass Media, which obliges by providing more and more violent and explicit violence. 

Those who are fired up by sex, are served lots of it.  And again, it becomes more explicit and even more coarse and "kinky" as time passes.  

Folks loving to be lulled into a sense of Euphoria  by the Pied Pipers of the Corporate Empire, eagerly tune into the likes of Limbaugh, Savage and their army of clones. 

Only we pure Progressives rise above this Pablovian condition and look at the world through objective, wise, understanding eyes. 

Ah, it's good to be so close to perfection. 

 

Carl Jarvis

----- Original Message -----

From: R. E. Driscoll Sr

To: ceverett@dslextreme.com ; Blind Democracy Discussion List

Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2012 7:03 AM

Subject: Re: Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal

Some of the activities of the Jesuit Group have been troublesome to the Group.  Their theories of indoctrination approached, in my opinion, the thoughts and actions of Pavlov.

On 8/20/2012 10:41 PM, Claude Everett wrote:

That goes back to the old adage from the Jesuits: and I paraphrase,   "Give  us a child from the cradle to age 12 and no matter where, or how far  they  wander they will always return to Mother church. "  Claude Everett  "First of all:  what is work?   Work is of two kinds:    first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface  relatively to other such matter;   second, telling other people to do so.    The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and  highly paid."  >From The collection of essays "In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell      -----Original Message-----  From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org  [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of ted chittenden  Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 7:42 PM  To: Blind Democracy Discussion List  Subject: RE: Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal    Claude:  The situation is actually more complex, because while many children rebel  against their parents, not all of them stick with rebellion. In fact, most  children, though they seldom recognize it, wind up behaving as their parents  did when the younger ones reach their parents' age. The whole truth is that  most people ultimately don't leave the boxes in which they were raised,  despite any youthful indiscretions and rebellions that may have taken place.  --  Ted Chittenden    Every story has at least two sides if not more.  ---- Claude Everett <ceverett@dslextreme.com> wrote:   That is one good reason that liberals should not have many children, and  conservatives should!       Claude Everett  "First of all:  what is work?   Work is of two kinds:    first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface  relatively to other such matter;  second, telling other people to do so.    The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and  highly paid."  >From The collection of essays "In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell      -----Original Message-----  From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org  [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni  Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 6:47 PM  To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'  Subject: RE: Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal    See, kids revolt. And your kids are to the right of where you are  politically, as are mine. But my parents were basically FDR Democrats and if  we still had an FDR, so would I be.    Miriam     ________________________________    From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org  [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis  Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 9:25 PM  To: Blind Democracy Discussion List  Subject: Re: Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal      My dad came from a Bible Thumping den of Republicans.  His mother dragged  him to church by the ear.    He joined the Communist Party, proclaimed he was an Atheist, and went forth  to organize workers.       Carl Jarvis    	----- Original Message -----   	From: Miriam Vieni <mailto:miriamvieni@optonline.net>    	To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'  <mailto:blind-democracy@octothorp.org>    	Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 2:44 PM  	Subject: RE: Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal    	Well, many of the neo cons came from leftist families. You know,  kids rebel  	against their parents.  	  	Miriam   	  	-----Original Message-----  	From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org  	[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of ted  chittenden  	Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 5:24 PM  	To: Blind Democracy Discussion List  	Subject: Re: Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal  	  	This is about as ironic as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence  Thomas' votes  	to dismantle affirmative action when affirmative action helped him  get where  	he is today. I wonder if in both cases the movement to the right was  a  	reaction to their parents' support of leftist political ideas.  	--  	Ted Chittenden  	  	Every story has at least two sides if not more.  	---- Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:   	   	Parry writes: "It is ironic that as an adult, Cheney has contributed  as much  	as almost anyone to dismantling the New Deal, the social compact  that pulled  	his family into the American middle class and opened extraordinary  	opportunities for him."  	   	Former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks about national security in  	Washington, 05/21/09. (photo: Reuters)  	   	  	Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal  	By Robert Parry, Consortium News  	20 August 12  	 Former Vice President Dick Cheney would agree that he is about as  	right-wing as an American politician can be, openly hostile to the  federal  	government's intervention in society. But one surprise from his  memoir, In  	My Time, is that Cheney recognizes that his personal success was  made  	possible by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the fact that Cheney's  father  	managed to land a steady job with the federal government.  	"I've often reflected on how different was the utterly stable  environment he  	provided for his family and wondered if because of that I have been  able to  	take risks, to change directions, and to leave one career path for  another  	with hardly a second thought," Cheney writes.  	In that sense, Cheney's self-assuredness may be as much a product of  the New  	Deal as the many bridges, dams and other public works that Roosevelt  	commissioned in the 1930s to get Americans back to work. By  contrast, the  	insecurity that afflicted Cheney's father was a byproduct of the  	vicissitudes from laissez-faire capitalism.  	So, it is ironic that as an adult, Cheney has contributed as much as  almost  	anyone to dismantling the New Deal, the social compact that pulled  his  	family into the American middle class and opened extraordinary  opportunities  	for him.  	In sketching his family's history, Cheney depicts the hard-scrabble  life of  	farmers and small businessmen scratching out a living in the  American  	Midwest and suffering financial reversals whenever the titans of  Wall Street  	stumbled into a financial crisis and the bankers cut off credit.  	After his ancestors would make some modest headway from their hard  work,  	they would find themselves back at square one, again and again,  because of  	some "market" crisis or a negative weather pattern. Whenever there  was a  	financial panic or a drought, everything was lost.  	"In 1883, as the country struggled through a long economic  depression, the  	sash and door factory that [Civil War veteran Samuel Fletcher  Cheney]  	co-owned [in Defiance, Ohio] had to be sold to pay its debts,"  Cheney  	writes. "At the age of fifty-four, Samuel Cheney had to start over,"  moving  	to Nebraska.  	There, Samuel Cheney built a sod house and began a farm, enjoying  some  	success until a drought hit, again forcing him to the edge. Despite  a solid  	credit record, he noted that "the banks will not loan to anyone at  present"  	and, in 1896, he had to watch all his possessions auctioned off at  the  	Kearney County Courthouse.  	Samuel Cheney started another homestead in 1904 and kept working  until he  	died in 1911 at the age of 82.  	His third son, Thomas, who was nicknamed Bert (and who would become  Dick  	Cheney's grandfather), tried to build a different life as a cashier  and part  	owner of a Sumner, Kansas, bank, named Farmers and Merchants Bank.  But he  	still suffered when the economy crashed.  	"Despite all his plans and success, Bert Cheney found that, like his  father,  	he couldn't escape the terrible power of nature," Dick Cheney  writes. "When  	drought struck in the early 1930s, farmers couldn't pay their debts,  	storekeepers had to close their doors, and Farmers and Merchants  Bank went  	under. ... My grandparents lost everything except for the house in  which  	they lived."  	Bert Cheney's son, Richard, ventured off in a different direction,  working  	his way through Kearney State Teachers College and taking the civil  service  	exam. He landed a job as a typist with the Veterans Administration  in  	Lincoln, Nebraska.  	"After scraping by for so long, he found the prospect of a $120  monthly  	salary and the security of a government job too good to turn down,"  his son,  	Dick Cheney, writes. "Before long he was offered a job with another  federal  	agency, the Soil Conservation Service.  	"The SCS taught farmers about crop rotation, terraced planting,  contour  	plowing, and using 'shelter belts' of trees as windbreaks -  techniques that  	would prevent the soil from blowing away, as it had in the dust  storms of  	the Great Depression. My dad stayed with the SCS for more than  thirty years,  	doing work of which he was immensely proud.  	"He was also proud of the pension that came with federal employment  - a  	pride that I didn't understand until as an adult I learned about the  	economic catastrophes that his parents and grandparents had  experienced and  	that had shadowed his own youth."  	Like many Americans, the Cheney family felt it had been pulled from  the  	depths of the Great Depression by the New Deal efforts of Franklin  	Roosevelt, cementing the family's support for the Democratic  president and  	his party.  	"When I was born [on Jan. 30, 1941] my granddad wanted to send a  telegram to  	the president," Cheney writes in his memoir. "Both sides of my  family were  	staunch New Deal Democrats, and Granddad was sure that FDR would  want to  	know about the 'little stranger' with whom he now had a birthday in  common."  	After growing up in the relative comfort of middle-class, post-World  War II  	America, Dick Cheney would take advantage of the many opportunities  that  	presented themselves, attaching himself to powerful Republican  politicians,  	most notably an ambitious congressman from Illinois named Donald  Rumsfeld.  	When Rumsfeld left Congress for posts in the Nixon administration,  he  	brought the hard-working Cheney along. Eventually Rumsfeld became  White  	House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford and - when Rumsfeld  was tapped  	to become Defense Secretary in 1975 - he recommended his young aide,  Dick  	Cheney, to succeed him.  	Cheney's career path through the ranks of Republican national  politics, with  	occasional trips through the revolving door into lucrative  private-sector  	jobs, was set. He would become a major player within the GOP  Establishment,  	establishing for himself a reputation as one of the most  conservative  	members of Congress and a foreign policy hawk.  	Now in his 70s, Cheney is widely recognized as a right-wing  Republican icon,  	inspiring a new generation of conservatives to dismantle what's left  of  	Roosevelt's New Deal and shrink the federal government.  	It doesn't seem to matter that those were the two social factors  that  	created "the utterly stable environment" which gave Dick Cheney his  chance  	in life.  	  	________________________________________  	Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for  the  	Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, "Neck Deep: The  Disastrous  	Presidency of George W. Bush," was written with two of his sons, Sam  and  	Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books,  	"Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to  Iraq"  	and "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'"  are also  	available there.  	  	Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not  valid.  	   	Former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks about national security in  	Washington, 05/21/09. (photo: Reuters)  	  http://consortiumnews.com/2012/08/20/dick-cheney-son-of-the-new-deal-2/http:  	//consortiumnews.com/2012/08/20/dick-cheney-son-of-the-new-deal-2/  	Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal  	By Robert Parry, Consortium News  	20 August 12  	ormer Vice President Dick Cheney would agree that he is about as  right-wing  	as an American politician can be, openly hostile to the federal  government's  	intervention in society. But one surprise from his memoir, In My  Time, is  	that Cheney recognizes that his personal success was made possible  by  	Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the fact that Cheney's father  managed to  	land a steady job with the federal government.  	"I've often reflected on how different was the utterly stable  environment he  	provided for his family and wondered if because of that I have been  able to  	take risks, to change directions, and to leave one career path for  another  	with hardly a second thought," Cheney writes.  	In that sense, Cheney's self-assuredness may be as much a product of  the New  	Deal as the many bridges, dams and other public works that Roosevelt  	commissioned in the 1930s to get Americans back to work. By  contrast, the  	insecurity that afflicted Cheney's father was a byproduct of the  	vicissitudes from laissez-faire capitalism.  	So, it is ironic that as an adult, Cheney has contributed as much as  almost  	anyone to dismantling the New Deal, the social compact that pulled  his  	family into the American middle class and opened extraordinary  opportunities  	for him.  	In sketching his family's history, Cheney depicts the hard-scrabble  life of  	farmers and small businessmen scratching out a living in the  American  	Midwest and suffering financial reversals whenever the titans of  Wall Street  	stumbled into a financial crisis and the bankers cut off credit.  	After his ancestors would make some modest headway from their hard  work,  	they would find themselves back at square one, again and again,  because of  	some "market" crisis or a negative weather pattern. Whenever there  was a  	financial panic or a drought, everything was lost.  	"In 1883, as the country struggled through a long economic  depression, the  	sash and door factory that [Civil War veteran Samuel Fletcher  Cheney]  	co-owned [in Defiance, Ohio] had to be sold to pay its debts,"  Cheney  	writes. "At the age of fifty-four, Samuel Cheney had to start over,"  moving  	to Nebraska.  	There, Samuel Cheney built a sod house and began a farm, enjoying  some  	success until a drought hit, again forcing him to the edge. Despite  a solid  	credit record, he noted that "the banks will not loan to anyone at  present"  	and, in 1896, he had to watch all his possessions auctioned off at  the  	Kearney County Courthouse.  	Samuel Cheney started another homestead in 1904 and kept working  until he  	died in 1911 at the age of 82.  	His third son, Thomas, who was nicknamed Bert (and who would become  Dick  	Cheney's grandfather), tried to build a different life as a cashier  and part  	owner of a Sumner, Kansas, bank, named Farmers and Merchants Bank.  But he  	still suffered when the economy crashed.  	"Despite all his plans and success, Bert Cheney found that, like his  father,  	he couldn't escape the terrible power of nature," Dick Cheney  writes. "When  	drought struck in the early 1930s, farmers couldn't pay their debts,  	storekeepers had to close their doors, and Farmers and Merchants  Bank went  	under. ... My grandparents lost everything except for the house in  which  	they lived."  	Bert Cheney's son, Richard, ventured off in a different direction,  working  	his way through Kearney State Teachers College and taking the civil  service  	exam. He landed a job as a typist with the Veterans Administration  in  	Lincoln, Nebraska.  	"After scraping by for so long, he found the prospect of a $120  monthly  	salary and the security of a government job too good to turn down,"  his son,  	Dick Cheney, writes. "Before long he was offered a job with another  federal  	agency, the Soil Conservation Service.  	"The SCS taught farmers about crop rotation, terraced planting,  contour  	plowing, and using 'shelter belts' of trees as windbreaks -  techniques that  	would prevent the soil from blowing away, as it had in the dust  storms of  	the Great Depression. My dad stayed with the SCS for more than  thirty years,  	doing work of which he was immensely proud.  	"He was also proud of the pension that came with federal employment  - a  	pride that I didn't understand until as an adult I learned about the  	economic catastrophes that his parents and grandparents had  experienced and  	that had shadowed his own youth."  	Like many Americans, the Cheney family felt it had been pulled from  the  	depths of the Great Depression by the New Deal efforts of Franklin  	Roosevelt, cementing the family's support for the Democratic  president and  	his party.  	"When I was born [on Jan. 30, 1941] my granddad wanted to send a  telegram to  	the president," Cheney writes in his memoir. "Both sides of my  family were  	staunch New Deal Democrats, and Granddad was sure that FDR would  want to  	know about the 'little stranger' with whom he now had a birthday in  common."  	After growing up in the relative comfort of middle-class, post-World  War II  	America, Dick Cheney would take advantage of the many opportunities  that  	presented themselves, attaching himself to powerful Republican  politicians,  	most notably an ambitious congressman from Illinois named Donald  Rumsfeld.  	When Rumsfeld left Congress for posts in the Nixon administration,  he  	brought the hard-working Cheney along. Eventually Rumsfeld became  White  	House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford and - when Rumsfeld  was tapped  	to become Defense Secretary in 1975 - he recommended his young aide,  Dick  	Cheney, to succeed him.  	Cheney's career path through the ranks of Republican national  politics, with  	occasional trips through the revolving door into lucrative  private-sector  	jobs, was set. He would become a major player within the GOP  Establishment,  	establishing for himself a reputation as one of the most  conservative  	members of Congress and a foreign policy hawk.  	Now in his 70s, Cheney is widely recognized as a right-wing  Republican icon,  	inspiring a new generation of conservatives to dismantle what's left  of  	Roosevelt's New Deal and shrink the federal government.  	It doesn't seem to matter that those were the two social factors  that  	created "the utterly stable environment" which gave Dick Cheney his  chance  	in life.  	  	Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for  the  	Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, "Neck Deep: The  Disastrous  	Presidency of George W. Bush," was written with two of his sons, Sam  and  	Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books,  	"Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to  Iraq"  	and "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'"  are also  	available there.  	  	  	  	_______________________________________________  	Blind-Democracy mailing list  	Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org  	http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy  	  	  	_______________________________________________  	Blind-Democracy mailing list  	Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org  	http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy  	  	_______________________________________________  	Blind-Democracy mailing list  	Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org  	http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy  	      _______________________________________________  Blind-Democracy mailing list  Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org  http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy    _______________________________________________  Blind-Democracy mailing list  Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org  http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy      _______________________________________________  Blind-Democracy mailing list  Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org  http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy    _______________________________________________  Blind-Democracy mailing list  Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org  http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy    

---

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will our children follow our teachings?

Speaking of children rebelling against their parents politics. 

That is one good reason that liberals should not have many children, and
conservatives should!
Claude Everett

Ah, if only it worked that way!!! 

I'm reminded of the story a Missionary once told.  He was preparing to leave home to go into another Land and save the Heathen.  As he opened the door of his house, his small son ran up and wrapped himself around his dad's leg.  Looking up into his father's face the small child sobbed, "Daddy, don't leave again!" 

The Missionary smiled down at his sweet baby and said, "But I must go out and tell people about Jesus Christ." 

The child began weeping and shouted out, "I Hate Jesus Christ!!!" 

 

We teach our children by our own priorities.  Too often we do not even realize the real lessons we are passing along.  My dad did not become a Radical because his mother was a Bible thumping Southern Baptist and an unmoving Lincoln Republican. 

The lessons she taught to him were that she cared more for that Sacred Book and her own Salvation than she cared for her children and the suffering of the people living in the logging and mining camps where my dad grew up. 

She sent a message that Prayer keeps us safe, and to Hell with everyone else.  Oh sure, that's not what she said.  Grandma would have been shocked to hear me say those words.  She believed that she was praying for all the suffering people.  But grandma did not raise a hand to protest the rough, uncaring treatment by the Bosses. 

 

In reflection, I did my children a disservice by spending so much time and energy away from home.  The message I provided to them was that they were not quite as important as the battles I fought.  Even though I thought I was making it clear to them that I was involved because the outcomes could impact them at a later time in their lives, they still received a sense that I was not taking their needs to heart.  

Of course my children all survived, as most of us do, and became everything I'd hoped they would become.  They did learn to stand up for themselves, to care deeply for the people around them...even my conservative daughter, and to actually be involved in life. 

 

Carl Jarvis

 

Fukushima Updated What They Won’t Tell You

Subject: Re: Fukushima Updated What They Won't Tell You

Did I miss something here?  Aren't governments formed to protect the people?  Has the definition of, "The People" become narrowed down to just the government people?  Even the Ruling Classes must know that they are going to be impacted by the Fukushima     fallout. 

Mutant butterflies only forewarn of mutant humans.  Have you wondered, as I have, what our people will look like in the year 2112? 

 

Carl Jarvis

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: S. Kashdan

To: Blind Democracy List

Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 8:20 PM

Subject: Fukushima Updated What They Won't Tell You

Fukushima Updated What They Won't Tell You



by Karl Grossman



HUSTLER Magazine, Thursday, April 19th, 2012



http://larryflynt.com/politicalarticles/fukushima-updated-what-they-wont-tell-you/



The "whole world" is being "exposed to the radiation from Fukushima,"
explains nuclear physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of physics at the City
University of New York.  The still-ongoing catastrophe at the six-reactor
Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan has caused radioactivity to be
"circulating around the entire Earth."



Major health impacts can be expected in Japan, of course, but also wherever
the Fukushima radioactivity has fallen or will fall, including in the United
States, say toxicologist Janette D.  Sherman, M.D., and epidemiologist
Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project.  Already, they've
discovered that infant mortality in parts of the United States has increased
substantially as a result of Fukushima  fallout.

Paul Ryan's Faux Populism

Subject: Paul Ryan's Faux Populism

Another clear example of government serving the people.  Once we understand that we are not the people this government represents, we can begin to plan how we will establish our own government. 

 

Carl Jarvis

 

 

Subject: Paul Ryan's Faux Populism

Reich writes: "On Friday, Paul Ryan, the presumptive Republican
vice-presidential nominee, made the most populist speech of this campaign
season."
 
Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
 

Paul Ryan's Faux Populism
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
19 August 12
 On Friday, Paul Ryan, the presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee,
made the most populist speech of this campaign season.
"It's the people who are politically connected, it's the people who have
access to Washington that get the breaks," he told an enthusiastic crowd of
over 2,000 at a high school gym in Virginia.
"Well, no more. We don't want to pick winners and losers in Washington... .
Hardworking taxpayers should be treated fairly and it should be based on
whether they're good, whether they work hard and not who they know in
Washington. That's entrepreneurialism. That's free enterprise."
Sounds good, but earlier this week - three days after being picked as
Romney's running-mate - Ryan went to Las Vegas to pay homage to Sheldon
Adelson, the casino billionaire who is the poster boy for using money to
become "politically connected" in Washington, and getting the "breaks" that
come with it. Adelson has promised to donate up to $100 million to make sure
Romney and Ryan are in the White House next year.
Much of Adelson's fortune comes from his casino in Macau, in China, via his
money-greased access to Washington.
When China's pitch for the 2008 Olympics was endangered by a House
resolution opposing the bid because of China's "abominable human rights
record," Adelson phoned Tom DeLay, then House majority whip and recipient of
Adelson's political generosity - urging him to block the resolution, which
DeLay promptly did. The next day, according to the New York Times, a Chinese
vice premier promised Mr. Adelson an endless line of gamblers to the Macau
casino.
The money Adelson has committed to putting Romney and Ryan into the White
House is a business investment. Adelson has a lot riding on the 2012
election.
Last year, his Las Vegas Sands Corporation came under investigation by the
Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission for possible
violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act - bribing Chinese officials
to help expand its casino in Macau.
The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, meanwhile, is investigating
whether the Sands Corporation violated federal money-laundering laws by
accepting more than $100 million from high-rolling gamblers accused of drug
trafficking and embezzlement, rather than reporting the suspicious funds to
the government.
Ryan has also been a major recipient of contributions from billionaire
energy moguls Charles and David Koch. Koch Industries PAC has donated more
than $100,000 to Ryan's campaigns and his leadership PAC - more than any
other corporate PAC, according to a NY Times analysis of campaign records.
You see, Koch industries spans a variety of oil and gas investments - whose
value would be compromised if Congress and the White House got serious about
climate change.
Small wonder Paul Ryan has emerged as one of Congress's most outspoken
skeptics of climate change. He has also repeatedly voted against energy
efficiency standards, including a House vote to prohibit the EPA from
regulating greenhouse gases.
Several months ago, when I debated Paul Ryan on ABC-TV's This Week, he said
we need to shrink the size of government because big corporations and
wealthy individuals otherwise use government to their advantage.
"If the power and money are going to be here in Washington, that's where the
influence is going to go ... that's where the powerful are going to go to
influence it," he said.
It's an odd argument coming from Ryan because his proposed budget doesn't
shrink government by cutting benefits and payments to big business and the
rich. He increases military payments to defense contractors, for example,
slashes Wall Street regulations, and gives giant tax benefits to the rich.
His budget shrinks government mainly by cutting benefits and payments to the
poor and lower-income Americans. Over 60 percent of his spending cuts target
programs for Americans in the bottom third of the income ladder.
Ryan is correct when he says "it's the people who are politically connected,
it's the people who have access to Washington that get the breaks."
But his faux populism obscures the main point. A much smaller government
still dominated by money would continue to do the bidding of billionaires
like casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, energy moguls like the Koch bothers,
military contractors, and other high rollers now actively trying to put Ryan
and Romney into the White House.
It just wouldn't do anything for the rest of us.

________________________________________
Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University
of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His
latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage." He is also a founding editor of the
American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.

Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
http://robertreich.org/post/29638134341http://robertreich.org/post/296381343
41


Paul Ryan's Faux Populism
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
19 August 12
n Friday, Paul Ryan, the presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee,
made the most populist speech of this campaign season.
"It's the people who are politically connected, it's the people who have
access to Washington that get the breaks," he told an enthusiastic crowd of
over 2,000 at a high school gym in Virginia.
"Well, no more. We don't want to pick winners and losers in Washington... .
Hardworking taxpayers should be treated fairly and it should be based on
whether they're good, whether they work hard and not who they know in
Washington. That's entrepreneurialism. That's free enterprise."
Sounds good, but earlier this week - three days after being picked as
Romney's running-mate - Ryan went to Las Vegas to pay homage to Sheldon
Adelson, the casino billionaire who is the poster boy for using money to
become "politically connected" in Washington, and getting the "breaks" that
come with it. Adelson has promised to donate up to $100 million to make sure
Romney and Ryan are in the White House next year.
Much of Adelson's fortune comes from his casino in Macau, in China, via his
money-greased access to Washington.
When China's pitch for the 2008 Olympics was endangered by a House
resolution opposing the bid because of China's "abominable human rights
record," Adelson phoned Tom DeLay, then House majority whip and recipient of
Adelson's political generosity - urging him to block the resolution, which
DeLay promptly did. The next day, according to the New York Times, a Chinese
vice premier promised Mr. Adelson an endless line of gamblers to the Macau
casino.
The money Adelson has committed to putting Romney and Ryan into the White
House is a business investment. Adelson has a lot riding on the 2012
election.
Last year, his Las Vegas Sands Corporation came under investigation by the
Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission for possible
violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act - bribing Chinese officials
to help expand its casino in Macau.
The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, meanwhile, is investigating
whether the Sands Corporation violated federal money-laundering laws by
accepting more than $100 million from high-rolling gamblers accused of drug
trafficking and embezzlement, rather than reporting the suspicious funds to
the government.
Ryan has also been a major recipient of contributions from billionaire
energy moguls Charles and David Koch. Koch Industries PAC has donated more
than $100,000 to Ryan's campaigns and his leadership PAC - more than any
other corporate PAC, according to a NY Times analysis of campaign records.
You see, Koch industries spans a variety of oil and gas investments - whose
value would be compromised if Congress and the White House got serious about
climate change.
Small wonder Paul Ryan has emerged as one of Congress's most outspoken
skeptics of climate change. He has also repeatedly voted against energy
efficiency standards, including a House vote to prohibit the EPA from
regulating greenhouse gases.
Several months ago, when I debated Paul Ryan on ABC-TV's This Week, he said
we need to shrink the size of government because big corporations and
wealthy individuals otherwise use government to their advantage.
"If the power and money are going to be here in Washington, that's where the
influence is going to go ... that's where the powerful are going to go to
influence it," he said.
It's an odd argument coming from Ryan because his proposed budget doesn't
shrink government by cutting benefits and payments to big business and the
rich. He increases military payments to defense contractors, for example,
slashes Wall Street regulations, and gives giant tax benefits to the rich.
His budget shrinks government mainly by cutting benefits and payments to the
poor and lower-income Americans. Over 60 percent of his spending cuts target
programs for Americans in the bottom third of the income ladder.
Ryan is correct when he says "it's the people who are politically connected,
it's the people who have access to Washington that get the breaks."
But his faux populism obscures the main point. A much smaller government
still dominated by money would continue to do the bidding of billionaires
like casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, energy moguls like the Koch bothers,
military contractors, and other high rollers now actively trying to put Ryan
and Romney into the White House.
It just wouldn't do anything for the rest of us.

Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University
of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His
latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage." He is also a founding editor of the
American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy

can we really understand Barak Obama?

Hi Carl and all,

I am about one-third of the way through the book whose BARD annotation appears below my name and I must say that it is fascinating. while I doubt seriously that I will agree with the author's conclusions, it does provide some interesting insights into Obama's early years and his relationship with his father.

The author is very likely a right-wing ideologue A la Milton Friedman.

I would recommend that anyone wishing to learn more about what may make Obama tick read this book. but first, do read Obama's "dreams from my Father" if you've not already done so.

Bob Hachey

 

The Roots of Obama's Rage
D'Souza, Dinesh. Read by Bob Moore. Reading time 7 hours 42 minutes.
Government and the Law

 

Conservative scholar revisits President Barack Obama's 1995 autobiography Dreams from My Father (DB/RC 43877) and concludes that Obama's political philosophy
is grounded in radical anticolonial views espoused by his African father in the 1950s and 1960s. Bestseller. 2010.

---

 

***

 

Hi Bob, 

What I wonder is how knowing Obama's childhood, or his relationship to father, mother, grandmother or any of the other influences in his growing years is going to help us understand him?  Understand what?  Sure, it's interesting reading, and I do read lots of similar books.  But when I put down the book, I remind myself that this is someone's point of view.  No matter how hard they work to be objective, it reflects themselves as much, or maybe even more than the person they are reporting upon. 

For my simplistic mind, too much supposed information creates confusion. 

How I understand Barak Obama is by his actions, by the people he appoints to key positions, by the people he brings to dinner, and also I listen to what he says.  I can review his public record, too. 

I will never know Barak Obama.  But I do know some about President Obama.  I know enough to understand that he is moving further and further away from supporting the interests of Working Class and Lower Class Americans. 

I know enough about Barak Obama to understand that he is not one of my people, nor does he want to be among them.  His eye is on a more genteel life. 

When Obama is done with the White House, we will go back to being strangers. 

I have my hands full enough in trying to understand my wife, my children, my grand children and my wife's family.  Okay, so I'll never understand my wife's family. 

But I feel that sometimes we read this stuff and get the sense that we now "understand" or "relate" to the person.  I think this can not only be misleading, but it can create a false kindred with a person who has no such illusions about us. 

 

Carl Jarvis

 

12 reasons to vote democrat -- From a friend of mine in California

From Dick, followed by my own comments. 

Carl Jarvis

 

This came to me from a very good friend of mine in California.  I pass it on for its value as potential humor.

Top 12 Reasons to Vote Democrat 1. I voted Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my German Shepherd. 2. I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't. 3. I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would. 4. I voted Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it. 5. I voted Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves. 6. I voted Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius. 7. I voted Democrat because I'm not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive. 8. I voted Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits, and we should take away the social security from those who paid into it. 9. I voted Democrat because I believe that businesses should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrats see fit. 10. I voted Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters. 11. I voted Democrat because I think that it's better to pay billions for their oil to people who hate us, but not drill our own because it might upset some endangered beetle, gopher or fish. 12. I voted Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my ass, it's unlikely that I'll ever have another point of view.

   

 

***

 

Actually I believe the word is Democratic, unless you're a Republic. 

The problem with this sort of "humor" is that many folks believe it.  The reasons they believe it is because:

1.  It's repeated over and over and never challenged. 

 

2.  It's so simple that even the simplest minds can grapple with it. 

 

3.  It fits into the campaign snippets of ten seconds or less.  That is the length of most Republic's concentration. 

 

4.  It fits right into the old adage, "Don't confuse me with facts.  My mind's made up". 

 

5.  Finally, the only way the Republic knows where someone else's head is, is because that's where his/hers is. 

 

Other than that, it's a real hoot. 

 

Carl Jarvis