----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@gmail.com>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 7:43 AM
Subject: Re: The Useful Idiots of the Corporate Elite | Thom Hartmann - News
& info from the #1 progressive radio show
Not only did Reagan play to people's racism, fears, and feelings of
superiority, he was so superficial, so phony that I doubt Ronald Reagan ever
knew who he was.
We Americans just love to be charmed by the Corporate Pied Pipers, somehow
believing that we are them. But we are not them. And in that, our own
identity has been stolen from us by the snake charmers, like Ronald Reagan.
I am saddened by the thought that as the Empire builds this phony tribute
around this phony man, we will never know the number of lives crushed by his
ruthlessness.
We were vacationing in Hawaii in April of 1987, and I sat each morning
watching Oliver North and John Poindexter lie and fumble their way around
their roles in the Iran/Contra Affair.
Out of that Mass Media Blitz came a new Oliver North, a defender of freedom
and the American People. And John Poindexter became everybody's kindly
grandfather. And there sat the Wizard, himself. Ronald Reagan, already
forgetting what was going on around him, but still possessing the Golden
Tongue.
And all the while, as these sorry excuses for men played their roles in this
Grade B Soap Opera, I heard nothing of the thousands of lives wiped out or
ruined by their greed and ruthlessness.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 6:32 AM
Subject: RE: The Useful Idiots of the Corporate Elite | Thom Hartmann - News
& info from the #1 progressive radio show
I'm not reluctant to say I voted for those people for President. At least
they promised the right things. Reagan, on the other hand, played to
people's racism, fears, and feelings of superiority.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 1:22 AM
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
Subject: Re: The Useful Idiots of the Corporate Elite | Thom Hartmann - News
& info from the #1 progressive radio show
Ted,
We all have skeletons in our political closets.
I reluctantly admit that I voted for Barak Obama in 2008, Bill Clinton,
twice, Jimmy Carter, LBJ, JFK and Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson did us the
least harm. Who knows what he might have done had he been elected.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "ted chittenden" <tchittenden@cox.net>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 8:28 PM
Subject: RE: The Useful Idiots of the Corporate Elite | Thom Hartmann - News
& info from the #1 progressive radio show
Both of my parents voted for Reagan as governor in the 1960s. And, in 1984,
the first Presidential election in which I voted, I voted for him, too. It
has only been in hindsight that both my mom and I realized what a bad
president he was (though my mom blames him maybe not as much as me). My
mom's two wealthy older brothers (though they're not part of the 1%), who
earned that wealth via stints at Lockheed and other parts of the defense
industry, still revere Mr. Reagan. Given their successes, one can see why.
--
Ted Chittenden
Every story has at least two sides if not more.
---- Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
I've mentioned that I've been reading this book about Reagan. He was
horrible back in the 50's. He was saying terrible things in the 60's. One
wonders about the sanity of the Californians who voted for him to be
Governor. Not only was he saying terrible things, but he lied and
manipulated, and he consistently teamed up with the FBI.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 9:18 PM
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
Subject: Re: The Useful Idiots of the Corporate Elite | Thom Hartmann - News
& info from the #1 progressive radio show
And in fact, poverty, as we poor folk know, is caused by greedy wealthy
people, sitting on their butts in swank offices on Wall Street.
You know, if we changed the name to Skid Road, and called their elite gated
communities, "Ghettos", it would better reflect the charge that lazy bums
and ghetto dwellers are the root of our economical woes.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: "ted chittenden" <tchittenden@cox.net>
To: "blind-democracy" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 6:05 PM
Subject: The Useful Idiots of the Corporate Elite | Thom Hartmann - News &
info from the #1 progressive radio show
Hi to all.
People tend to believe what they want to believe regardless of the truth.
The point hits home with today's blog post from Thom Hartmann.
--
Ted Chittenden
Every story has at least two sides if not more.
----
http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2014/03/useful-idiots-corporate-elite
The Useful Idiots of the Corporate Elite
The Useful Idiots of the Corporate Elite
Submitted by Thom Hartmann A... on 18. March 2014 - 11:43 Live Blog Thom's
Blog
There are a whole lot of useful idiots in America. Yesterday, a caller
called into my radio show, and echoed Congressman Paul Ryan's recent
comments, blaming the black community for poverty in America. He threw out
a Fox So-Called News phony statistic, arguing that "73 percent of
African-American women in this country ages 17-35 have children without a
man in the house, and the majority of this group of people live in the
cities."
First of all, that is completely false. According to the most recent
government statistics, 72 percent of black babies are born to unmarried
mothers today. But that is completely different from saying that "73 percent
of African-American women in this country have children without a man in the
house." It's a perfect demonstration of the old saying, often attributed to
Mark Twain, that, "Figures don't lie, but liars can figure."
In fact, the birth rate for unmarried black women in America has been
falling for almost 40 years. And most of the evidence points to changes in
unmarried birth rates among both black and white women in America that
started in the 1970s, coinciding with the legalization of abortion and the
beginning of widespread use of oral contraceptives, and largely unaffected
over the years by changes in welfare programs.
So, why is it that Conservatives like yesterday's caller, Fox So-Called
News' useful idiots, and Congressman Paul Ryan are obsessed with the notion
that blacks and the black community are responsible for poverty in America?
Like so much that's wrong with America today, it all started with Reagan.
Reagan is famous for his speeches and one-liners about "welfare queens," but
as author Ian Haney Lopez pointed out in an interview on Moyers and Company,
it all began with his earliest welfare stump speech in 1980. Reagan would
speak to (white) Americans, and say something along the lines of, "I
understand how frustrating it is for you when you're standing in line at a
grocery store waiting to buy hamburger, and there's some young fellow ahead
you waiting to by a T-Bone with food stamps."
But, as Lopez points out, the first time Reagan gave that stump speech,
"young fellow" was replaced with "young buck," a racially-coded term for a
young black man. Basically, Reagan was telling white Americans that they
were being taken advantage of by blacks on food stamps, and that it was made
possible by the government taking their money through taxes and then giving
it to undeserving black people.
So, in response to the outrage that he drummed up, Reagan suggested his
infamous tax cuts, dropping the top rate that billionaires pay from 74% down
to 28%. After all, he told middle-class voters - who got a very small income
tax cut - why should you pay taxes to a government that's just turning
around and giving that money to undeserving black people who are using it to
eat fancy steak dinners?
This is very similar to the recent outrage over at Fox about people on food
stamps buying crab and lobster, something that's possible but so rare that
it has no effect on the overall tax we all pay for food stamps. Lopez goes
on to say that, for the past 50 years, Republicans have been telling white
Americans that the biggest threat in their lives are minorities, and that
minorities have taken over government and are eating up all the money.
Just last week, Congressman Paul Ryan went on Bill Bennett's Morning in
America program, and said that, "We have got this tailspin of culture, in
our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of
men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of
work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt
with." In other words, Ryan is saying that lazy black men are responsible
for poverty in America.
For some 50 years now, Republicans have been using race-baiting tactics and
dog-whistle politics like this to convince Americans that the black
community is behind poverty in America, but that's just not the case. After
all, you can see many of the same trends in the largely white Appalachia
region of the U.S. as you do in minority-heavy inner cities. In Appalachia,
white Americans are struggling with poverty, and having children
out-of-wedlock, just like their black inner-city counterparts.
And according to the Pew Research Center's Social and Demographic Trends
project, in 2012, the median net worth of a white household was $91,405,
while the median net worth of a black household was $6,446. So a black child
starts out at a very different place than a white child, both economically
and socially. But Conservatives still argue that blacks are behind poverty
in America. The social and cultural problems that we see in black
communities across America, and in white communities in Appalachia, are
responses to poverty, not the causes of it.
It's time for Americans, and lawmakers in Washington, to wake up, and start
talking about the real causes of poverty in America, which include massive
inequality produced by our tax code, joblessness produced by our trade
policies, and ongoing discrimination by a largely white economic and
political power structure. Only then will every American have an equal shot
at the American Dream, regardless of their race.
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