Chris Hedges is one of the Great Unsung Heroes of the Working Class.
At this time, the American Empire simply ignores his insight. But
when the time comes that his words gain access to an ever widening
audience, the Empire will smack him down. Although I do fear for
Chris Hedges well being, at the same time I want to see him on the
firing line, telling it like it is.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/22/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> For recipients of this email who are not members of the Blind Democracy
> list
> Chris Hedges, former New York Times bureau chief in the Middle East,
> ordained Episcopal minister, although he never had a congregation, is a
> truth teller. Everything he writes about our society is factual. I've been
> reading the evidence in articles for years, and I hear it discussed on
> podcasts. But you'll never see it discussed in mainstream media. The
> reality
> of what has happened to our society is one of the reasons I'm so sad.
> Miriam
>
> Truthdig
>
> The Death of the Republic
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_death_of_the_republic_20170521/
>
> Posted on May 21, 2017
>
> By Chris Hedges
>
> The deep state
> (https://www.google.com/search?q=tgo&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=deep+state ) 's
> decision in ancient Rome-dominated by a bloated military and a corrupt
> oligarchy, much like the United States of 2017-to strangle the vain and
> idiotic Emperor Commodus in his bath in the year 192 did not halt the
> growing chaos and precipitous decline of the Roman Empire.
>
> Commodus, like a number of other late Roman emperors, and like President
> Trump, was incompetent and consumed by his own vanity. He commissioned
> innumerable statues of himself as Hercules
> (http://en.museicapitolini.org/collezioni/percorsi_per_sale/museo_del_palazz
> o_dei_conservatori/sale_degli_horti_lamiani/busto_di_commodo_come_ercole )
> and had little interest in governance. He used his position as head of
> state
> to make himself the star of his own ongoing public show. He fought
> victoriously as a gladiator in the arena in fixed bouts. Power for
> Commodus,
> as it is for Trump, was primarily about catering to his bottomless
> narcissism, hedonism and lust for wealth. He sold public offices so the
> ancient equivalents of Betsy DeVos
> (http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/watch_betsy_devos_confirmation_hearing
> _20170131 ) and Steve Mnuchin
> (http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/elizabeth_warren_steven_mnuchin_glass-
> steagall_20170519 ) could orchestrate a vast kleptocracy.
>
> Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax, the Bernie Sanders of his
> day, who attempted in vain to curb the power of the Praetorian Guards, the
> ancient version of the military-industrial complex. This effort saw the
> Praetorian Guards assassinate Pertinax after he was in power only three
> months. The Guards then auctioned off the office of emperor to the highest
> bidder. The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be
> five emperors in A.D. 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.
> Trump and our decaying empire have ominous historical precedents. If the
> deep state replaces Trump, whose ineptitude and imbecility are embarrassing
> to the empire, that action will not restore our democracy any more than
> replacing Commodus restored democracy in Rome. Our republic is dead.
>
> Societies that once were open and had democratic traditions are easy prey
> for the enemies of democracy. These demagogues pay deference to the
> patriotic ideals, rituals, practices and forms of the old democratic
> political system while dismantling it. When the Roman Emperor Augustus-he
> referred to himself as the "first citizen"-neutered the republic, he was
> careful to maintain the form of the old republic. Lenin and the Bolsheviks
> did the same when they seized and crushed the autonomous soviets
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Soviet_Socialist_Republics_of_the_
> Soviet_Union ) . Even the Nazis and the Stalinists insisted they ruled
> democratic states. Thomas Paine wrote that despotic government is a fungus
> that grows out of a corrupt civil society. This is what happened to these
> older democracies. It is what happened to us.
>
> Our constitutional rights-due process, habeas corpus, privacy, a fair
> trial,
> freedom from exploitation, fair elections and dissent-have been taken from
> us by judicial fiat. These rights exist only in name. The vast disconnect
> between the purported values of the state and reality renders political
> discourse absurd.
>
> Corporations, cannibalizing the federal budget, legally empower themselves
> to exploit and pillage. It is impossible to vote against the interests of
> Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil. The pharmaceutical and insurance industries
> can
> hold sick children hostage while their parents bankrupt themselves trying
> to
> save their sons or daughters. Those burdened by student loans can never
> wipe
> out the debt by declaring bankruptcy. In many states, those who attempt to
> publicize the conditions in the vast factory farms where diseased animals
> are warehoused for slaughter can be charged with a criminal offense.
> Corporations legally carry out tax boycotts. Companies have orchestrated
> free trade deals that destroy small farmers and businesses and
> deindustrialize the country. Labor unions and government agencies designed
> to protect the public from contaminated air, water and food and from
> usurious creditors and lenders have been defanged. The Supreme Court, in an
> inversion of rights worthy of George Orwell, defines unlimited corporate
> contributions to electoral campaigns as a right to petition the government
> or a form of free speech. Much of the press, owned by large corporations,
> is
> an echo chamber for the elites. State and city enterprises and utilities
> are
> sold to corporations that hike rates and deny services to the poor. The
> educational system is being slowly privatized and turned into a species of
> vocational training.
>
> Wages are stagnant or have declined. Unemployment and
> underemployment-masked
> by falsified statistics-have thrust half the country into chronic poverty.
> Social services are abolished in the name of austerity. Culture and the
> arts
> have been replaced by sexual commodification, banal entertainment and
> graphic depictions of violence. The infrastructure, neglected and
> underfunded, is collapsing. Bankruptcies, foreclosures, arrests, food
> shortages and untreated illnesses that lead to early death plague a harried
> underclass. The desperate flee into an underground economy dominated by
> drugs, crime and human trafficking. The state, rather than address the
> economic misery, militarizes police departments and empowers them to use
> lethal force against unarmed civilians. It fills the prisons with 2.3
> million citizens, only a tiny percentage of whom had a trial. One million
> prisoners work for corporations inside prisons as modern-day slaves.
>
> The amendments of the Constitution, designed to protect the citizen from
> tyranny, are meaningless. The Fourth Amendment, for example, reads: "The
> right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
> effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
> and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
> affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
> persons or things to be seized." The reality is that our telephone calls,
> emails, texts and financial, judicial and medical records, along with every
> website we visit and our physical travels, are tracked, recorded and stored
> in perpetuity in government computer banks.
>
> The state tortures, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air
> Base
> in Afghanistan or at Guantanamo Bay, but also in supermax ADX
> [administrative maximum] facilities such as the one at Florence, Colo.,
> where inmates suffer psychological breakdowns from prolonged solitary
> confinement. Prisoners, although they are citizens, endure around-the-clock
> electronic monitoring and 23-hour-a-day lockdowns. They undergo extreme
> sensory deprivation. They endure beatings. They must shower and go to the
> bathroom on camera. They can write only one letter a week to one relative
> and cannot use more than three pieces of paper. They often have no access
> to
> fresh air and take their one hour of daily recreation in a huge cage that
> resembles a treadmill for hamsters.
>
> The state uses "special administrative measures," known as SAMs, to strip
> prisoners of their judicial rights. SAMs restrict prisoners' communication
> with the outside world. They end calls, letters and visits with anyone
> except attorneys and sharply limit contact with family members. Prisoners
> under SAMs are not permitted to see most of the evidence against them
> because of a legal provision called the Classified Information Procedures
> Act, or CIPA. CIPA, begun under the Reagan administration, allows evidence
> in a trial to be classified and withheld from those being prosecuted. You
> can be tried and convicted, like Joseph K. in Franz Kafka's "The Trial,"
> (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17690.The_Trial) without ever seeing
> the evidence used to find you guilty. Under SAMs, it is against the law for
> those who have contact with an inmate-including attorneys-to speak about
> his
> or her physical and psychological conditions.
>
> And when prisoners are released, they have lost the right to vote and
> receive public assistance and are burdened with fines that, if unpaid, will
> put them back behind bars. They are subject to arbitrary searches and
> arrests. They spend the rest of their lives marginalized as members of a
> vast criminal caste.
>
> The executive branch of government has empowered itself to assassinate U.S.
> citizens
> (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/obama-kill-list-doj-m
> emo) . It can call the Army into the streets to quell civil unrest under
> Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which ended a
> prohibition on the military acting as a domestic police force. The
> executive
> branch can order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be
> terrorists
> or associated with terrorists. This is called "extraordinary rendition."
> Those taken into custody by the military can be denied due process and
> habeas corpus rights and held indefinitely in military facilities.
> Activists
> and dissidents, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment,
> can face indefinite incarceration.
>
> Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations are
> criminalized. The state assumed the power to detain and prosecute people
> not
> for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for
> holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The
> first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be
> the last.
>
> The outward forms of democratic participation-voting, competing political
> parties, judicial oversight and legislation-are meaningless theater. No one
> who lives under constant surveillance, who is subject to detention anywhere
> at any time, whose conversations, messages, meetings, proclivities and
> habits are recorded, stored and analyzed, who is powerless in the face of
> corporate exploitation, can be described as free. The relationship between
> the state and the citizen who is watched constantly is one of master and
> slave. And the shackles will not be removed if Trump disappears.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> John Oliver Breaks From Norm to Discuss Trump's 'Insane' Week in Office
> (Video)
>
>
>
>
> California to Investigate Racial Discrimination in Auto Insurance Premiums
>
>
>
>
> Anti-Trump Sentiment Is Even Stronger in Europe Than It Is in the U.S.
>
>
>
>
> Trump's Speech on Islam Is Just as Bizarre as Everything Else He Does
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
>
>
>
>
>
> C 2017 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
>
>
> Signup for Truthdig's newsletter
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> gumgum-verify
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Monday, May 22, 2017
Monday, May 15, 2017
Fwd: [blind-democracy] Trump Is the Symptom, Not the Disease
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2017 08:55:45 -0700
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Trump Is the Symptom, Not the Disease
To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
"...A narcissist and imbecile may be
turning the electric shocks on and off, but the problem is the corporate
state, and unless we dismantle that, we are doomed."
Chris Hedges, such a remarkable man. Not for his keen insight, which
is remarkable of itself, but because he has the courage to publicly
defend his nation by pointing out the signs of collapse of democracy.
Like Chris Hedges, only far less articulate, I contend that Donald
Trump is a symptom, not the cause of this decline into tyranny.
Remember the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon? Did we learn from the
abuses of his office? After the dust settled, we gave the Office of
Presidency over to two rather bland fellows, Gerald Ford, whose one
great and noble act was to pardon Richard M. Nixon of his high handed
contempt for the American Constitution, and Jimmy Carter who did
nothing to repair the Nixon era damage. The stage was set for reform.
And reform came in the hands of the Mighty Mouth, Ronald Reagan.
Master of Smoke and Mirrors, this Grade "B" actor played the role of
President to the max. While Ronald Reagan postured and posed, coining
phrases such as "Welfare Queen", and "I'm from the government and I've
come to help", his "Handlers" set about making Nixon's contempt for
the Laws look like a walk in the park. The "peace loving, democracy
promoting" government of Ronald Reagan secretly meddled in foreign
governments, not protecting freedom and democracy, but undermining the
very governments they should have been protecting, and backing tyrants
and mobsters.
On the home front Ronald Reagan looked Americans in the eye, through
the magic of the Media's cameras, and pledged to clear crime and
corruption off our streets, making them safe again. And all the time
his wealthy supporters were up to their elbows in the nation's
treasury.
Instead of mounting a campaign to rebuild our faltering democracy, our
freedom, our independence, the Democrats turned away from the Working
Class...sold them out for a few gold coins, and shook hands with the
Devil. They welcomed the flow of new wealth into their Party coffers,
along with all of the dangling strings tied to it. And what did they
do to rebuild the "Middle Class"? Why they backed our first Black
president. A darker tanned version of Bill Clinton. And even if he
had the People at heart, Barack Obama was hog tied and immobilized by
the conservative, white Republicans, who vowed to stand united against
any action proposed by Barack Obama. And how did the American People
respond? How did the once powerful Democratic Party react? Well, the
Party followed their new road toward retaking the High Office, by
turning away from the most likely candidate, and railroading in
Hillary Clinton, a female version of Bill Clinton. And the People?
Well, they acted as the confused, deceived, angry, violated,
disenfranchised
, powerless people that they had become. The result? Instead of
redoubling efforts to rebuild our democracy, the People selected
Donald Trump to "lead" them to a bright tomorrow where they would bask
in the return of America's Greatness(Whiteness).
And as long as we refuse to call out the real offender, Corporate
Capitalism, we can only imagine what the next wave of "reformers" will
do to the tattered remnants of our Constitution.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/15/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Truthdig
>
> Trump Is the Symptom, Not the Disease
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/trump_is_the_symptom_not_the_disease_201
> 70514/
> Posted on May 14, 2017
>
> By Chris Hedges
> Mr. Fish / Truthdig
>
> Forget the firing of James Comey. Forget the paralysis in Congress. Forget
> the idiocy of a press that covers our descent into tyranny as if it were a
> sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats or a
> reality show starring our maniacal president and the idiots that surround
> him. Forget the noise. The crisis we face is not embodied in the public
> images of the politicians that run our dysfunctional government. The crisis
> we face is the result of a four-decade-long, slow-motion corporate coup
> that
> has rendered the citizen impotent, left us without any authentic democratic
> institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent.
> This crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalized bribery and
> empowered those public figures that master the arts of entertainment and
> artifice. And if we do not overthrow the neoliberal
> (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/8/16/1007496/- ) , corporate forces
> that
> have destroyed our democracy we will continue to vomit up more
> monstrosities
> as dangerous as Donald Trump. Trump is the symptom, not the disease.
>
> Our descent into despotism began with the pardoning of Richard Nixon
> (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-ford-pardons-former-pr
> esident-nixon) , all of whose impeachable crimes are now legal, and the
> extrajudicial assault, including targeted assassinations and imprisonment,
> carried out on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals. It began
> with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organizations that
> took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific
> research
> and the two major political parties. It began with empowering militarized
> police to kill unarmed citizens and the spread of our horrendous system of
> mass incarceration and the death penalty. It began with the stripping away
> of our most basic constitutional rights-privacy, due process, habeas
> corpus,
> fair elections and dissent. It began when big money was employed by
> political operatives such as Roger Stone, a close Trump adviser, to create
> negative political advertisements and false narratives to deceive the
> public, turning political debate into burlesque. On all these fronts we
> have
> lost. We are trapped like rats in a cage. A narcissist and imbecile may be
> turning the electric shocks on and off, but the problem is the corporate
> state, and unless we dismantle that, we are doomed.
>
> "What's necessary for the state is the illusion of normality, of
> regularity," America's best-known political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, told
> me
> (https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/388304-philadelphia-police-bombing-move
> / ) last week by phone from the prison where he is incarcerated in
> Frackville, Pa. ". In Rome, what the emperors needed was bread and
> circuses.
> In America, what we need is 'Housewives of Atlanta.' We need sports. The
> moral stories of good cops and evil people. Because you have that .. there
> is no critical thinking in America during this period. You have emotion
> [only]. When I look at someone who is demonized, I can do anything [to him
> or her]. I can do anything. That's how the state works, by demonizing
> people
> and putting them in places where they're virtually invisible."
>
> "Here's the reality," he went on. "America has never come to grips with
> what
> a lot of scholars and thinkers call the Original Sin. That's because it
> never stopped happening. This country brags about being founded on freedom.
> It was founded on slavery. It was founded on holocaust. It was founded on
> genocide. After slavery ended, after the Constitution was rewritten and
> amended, we have the Reconstruction amendments, the 13th
> (https://www.google.com/#q=13th+amendment ) , 14th
> (https://www.google.com/#q=14th+amendment ) and 15th
> (https://www.google.com/#q=15th+amendment ) amendments. But what did the
> South do? They ignored it for a century."
>
> "It isn't until the '60s that you see this deep, rich emergence of people
> fighting for rights that were enshrined in the Constitution a century
> before
> [between 1865 and 1870]," he said. "That's because every state in the South
> and many states in the North were allowed to make exceptions to the
> Constitution when it came to black people. We learned that's not just a
> Southern reality. You can't talk about AEDPA
> (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-destruction-of-defendants-right
> s ) , the so-called Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty [Act of 1996]
> unless you have the same mindset that makes the Constitution an exceptional
> document."
>
> Racist, violent and despotic forces have always been part of the American
> landscape and have often been tolerated and empowered by the state to
> persecute poor people of color and dissidents. These forces are denied
> absolute power as long as a majority of citizens have a say in their own
> governance. The corporate elites, however, frightened by what the political
> scientist Samuel Huntington called an "excess of democracy" that originated
> in the 1960s, methodically destroyed the democratic edifice. They locked
> the
> citizens out of government. And by doing so they made sure that power
> shifted into the hands of the enemies of the open society. When democratic
> institutions cease to function, when the consent of the governed becomes a
> joke, despots, cranks, conspiracy theorists, con artists, generals,
> billionaires and proto-fascists fill the political void. They give vent to
> popular anger and frustration while arming the state to do to the majority
> what it has long done to the minority. This tale is as old as civilization.
> It was played out in ancient Greece and Rome, the Soviet Union, fascist
> Germany, fascist Italy and the former Yugoslavia.
>
> Trump, an acute embarrassment to the corporate state and the organs of
> internal security, may be removed from the presidency, but such a palace
> coup would only further consolidate the power of the deep state
> (https://www.google.com/#q=define+deep+state ) and intensify internal
> measures of repression. Millions of people, including the undocumented,
> those who have felony convictions, those locked in cages and poor people of
> color, have already been stripped of their rights, and some have been
> indiscriminately murdered by police. These minorities' reality of daily
> state terror, unless this process of corporate pillage is halted, will
> spread and become normal with or without Trump.
>
> In Abu-Jamal's book "Live From Death Row
> (https://books.google.com/books?id=GF3jhfdhxY0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=live+
> from+death+row&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFvvezh_DTAhVJHGMKHafnB_sQ6AEIJzAA#v=on
> epage&q=live%20from%20death%20row&f=false ) ," he recounts his protest at a
> 1968 rally in Philadelphia held by the segregationist George Wallace during
> one of the Alabama governor's runs for the Democratic presidential
> nomination. It is a reminder that Trump's racism and lust for violence have
> long been part of the American character.
>
> Abu-Jamal writes of attending the rally with three other black teenagers:
>
>
> We must've been insane. We strolled into the stadium, four lanky dark
> string
> beans in a pot of white, steaming limas. The bank played "Dixie." We
> shouted, "Black Power, Ungowa, black power!" They shouted, "Wallace for
> president! White power!" and "Send those niggers back to Africa! We
> shouted,
> "Black power, Ungowa!" (Don't ask what "Ungowa" means. We didn't know. All
> we knew was that it had a helluva ring to it.) "Black power!" They hissed
> and booed. We stood up in our seats and proudly gave the black power
> salute.
> In answer, we received dubious gifts of spittle from those seated above.
> Patriots tore American flags from their standards and hurled the bare
> sticks
> at us. Wallace, wrapped in roars of approval, waxed eloquent. "When I
> become
> president, these dirty, unwashed radicals will have to move to the
> Sov-ee-yet Union! You know, all throughout this campaign these radicals
> have
> been demonstrating against George Corley Wallace. Well, I hope they have
> the
> guts to lay down in front of my car. I'll drive right over 'em!" The crowd
> went wild.
>
> "Some police and other security came," Abu-Jamal told me about the
> incident.
> "They escorted us out. We thought hey, we had a little fun. Our voices were
> heard. We went to the bus stop. And two or three of us were on the bus. A
> young guy named Alvin and a young guy named Eddie. I was usually the
> slowest, so I was behind them. A guy walked up and hit me with a blackjack.
> Knocked me down. Pulled Eddie and Alvin off the bus. We were getting our
> asses kicked. It never dawned on us these were cops. They can't just walk
> up
> to us and beat us up [I thought]."
>
> "I remember seeing a cop's leg walk by," he said. "I shouted help! Help,
> police! The guy looked at me. Looked down at me. He walked over and kicked
> me right in the face. Then it dawned on me all of these guys were cops.
> That
> was a little taste of [what would happen later in] Philadelphia. An
> introduction to trauma. We see it today. I can hear Trump saying, 'Beat the
> hell out of them.' It's like the old days. Those weren't good days. Those
> were ugly days. And the ugly day is today."
>
> "I have been thankful to that faceless cop ever since," Abu-Jamal writes of
> the assault, "for he kicked me straight into the Black Panther Party."
>
> Abu-Jamal's experience embodies the endemic racism and collapse of the
> American court system that railroad young black men and women into prison
> and onto death row. The Federal Bureau of Investigation placed him under
> surveillance when he was 15 years old. His FBI file swelled to 700 pages.
> His crime was to be a dissident. He was followed, hauled in for questioning
> at random and threatened.
>
> "While walking to work one day," he writes, "I passed in front of an idling
> cop car. I glanced at the driver-white, with brown hair, and wearing dark
> shades. He 'smiled,' put his hand out the car window, and pointed a finger
> at me, his thumb cocked back like the hammer of a gun: bang-bang-bang-the
> finger jerked, as if from the recoil, and the cop gave it a cowboyish blast
> of breath before returning it to an imaginary holster. He and his pal
> laugh.
> Car rolls."
>
> The 1960s and 1970s saw a war on black radicals, which included FBI
> assassinations of leaders such as Fred Hampton
> (http://spartacus-educational.com/USAhamptonF.htm ) . This war against
> radicals, President Nixon's so-called battle for "law and order," put the
> police, the FBI and other organs of internal security beyond the reach of
> the law. This power has only expanded since. We are all under state
> surveillance. And we can all become victims if the state deems us to be a
> threat. The loss of civilian oversight, along with the lack of
> transparency,
> is ominous.
>
> Abu-Jamal was convicted of the 1981 murder of Daniel Faulkner, a white
> Philadelphia police officer. His trial was a sham. It included tainted
> evidence, suppressed defense witnesses, prosecution witnesses that
> contradicted their earlier testimony, a court-appointed lawyer, like most
> within the system, who was allotted few resources and had little
> inclination
> to defend his client, and a series of unconstitutional legal rulings by a
> judge out to convict the defendant. Terri Maurer-Carter, the stenographer
> at
> the trial, later signed an affidavit stating that during the trial she
> overheard the judge, Albert F. Sabo, say of Abu-Jamal, "Yeah and I'm gonna
> help 'em fry the nigger." Sabo during his time on the bench sent 31 people
> to death row, more than any other judge in Pennsylvania. Abu-Jamal, who
> grew
> up in the housing projects of north Philadelphia, is imprisoned for our
> sins.
>
> By 1977, Abu-Jamal, distressed by the internal feuding that tore apart the
> Black Panthers, had developed a close relationship with members of the
> Philadelphia MOVE organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE ) . MOVE
> members lived communally, preached Third World radicalism, ate natural
> foods
> and denounced the established black leaders as puppets of the white,
> capitalist ruling elites.
>
> The Philadelphia police, who constantly harassed the group, besieged the
> MOVE compound starting in late 1977. On Aug. 7, 1978, a gun battle erupted
> between people in the compound and police outside. A police officer was
> killed. Delbert Africa, a MOVE member, was savagely beaten in front of
> television cameras. Nine MOVE members would be charged with murder. The
> trial, like the one held four years later for Abu-Jamal, was a farce. It
> was
> clear, Abu-Jamal wrote of the legal lynching of the MOVE members, that "the
> law did not matter." Two of the nine, Merle and Phil Africa, have died in
> prison. The seven other MOVE members remain, like Abu-Jamal, locked away
> and
> denied freedom by parole boards. Abu-Jamal was given life without parole
> after being taken off death row by the courts.
>
> The Philadelphia police and the FBI were determined to root what remained
> of
> MOVE out of the city and do so with enough brutality to discourage any
> other
> black radicals from organizing.
>
> "On May 12 [the date the two-day-long attack began], Sunday, Mother's Day
> of
> 1985, our home was surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of cops who came out
> there to kill not because of any complaints from neighbors but because of
> our unrelenting fight for our MOVE sisters and brothers known as the MOVE
> 9," Ramona Africa told me in an interview last week. (Authorities, as one
> of
> their supposed justifications for acting against MOVE, cited neighborhood
> complaints about activities and conditions at the compound.) "We had been
> attacked and arrested in 1978. Thirty-nine years later, this August, they
> are still in prison. They became eligible for parole in 2008. The parole
> board just refuses to parole them." [Chris Hedges' interview with Ramona
> Africa begins at the 11-minute mark-click here
> (https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/388304-philadelphia-police-bombing-move
> / ) for the video.]
>
> "What people really need to understand is they did come out there [in 1985]
> to kill, not to arrest," she said. "They could have arrested at any time.
> They did not come out there for any complaint from neighbors. Those running
> this country, this entire worldwide system, have never cared about black
> people complaining about their neighbors. It's never been an issue.
> Obviously, it was something other than that. Which was our unrelenting
> fight
> for our family members who are still in prison. They shot over 10,000
> rounds
> of bullets in on us within 90 minutes. They dropped a bomb."
>
> The bomb ignited a fire that burned down a city block containing 61 homes.
>
> "The fire department, who was out there from the very beginning, was
> immediately aware that there was a fire on our roof," she said. "A
> conscious
> decision was made to not fight the fire. To let it burn. When we realized
> our home was on fire, we immediately tried to get our children, our
> animals,
> and ourselves out of that blazing inferno. The instant we were visible to
> cops we were met with a barrage of police gunfire aimed at us so that we
> couldn't escape that fire. After several attempts to get out, I got out
> first. I was able to get one of our children, a little boy named Birdie,
> out. We were immediately snatched into custody. I'm looking for the rest of
> my family. Trying to see if I could see anyone else. It was a little later
> after they had taken us into custody that I found out nobody else [in the
> MOVE group] survived."
>
> Eleven members of MOVE, including the founder of the group, John Africa,
> and
> five children, were killed in the police assault.
>
> "The people who killed my family were never charged, never prosecuted,
> never
> imprisoned for anything," she said. "Meanwhile, my nine MOVE sisters and
> brothers [convicted in the 1978 shootout], Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier
> [a Native American activist imprisoned in a South Dakota murder case], all
> the way down to line, are in prison with the accusation of murder."
>
> Abu-Jamal wrote, "May 13th, 1985, is more than a day of infamy, when a city
> waged war on its own alleged citizens, but also when the city committed
> massacre and did so with perfect impunity, when babies were shot and burned
> alive with their mothers and fathers, and the killers rewarded with honors
> and pensions, while politicians talked and the media mediated mass murder.
> On that day, the city, armed and assisted by the US government, dropped a
> bomb on a house and called it law. The fire department watched buildings
> ignite like matches in the desert and cut off water. The courts of the land
> turned a blind eye, daubed mud in their socket, and prosecuted Ramona
> Africa
> for having the nerve to survive an urban holocaust, jailing her for the
> crime of not burning to death. Eleven men, women and children died, and not
> one killer was even charged with a misdemeanor."
>
> Ramona Africa, charged with "rioting," spent seven years in prison.
>
> [For a 69-second video showing the bomb exploding on the Philadelphia
> compound roof in 1985, click here
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvEzA8aUJoU ) . For a 56-minute
> documentary
> about the assault on the compound and the circumstances surrounding it,
> click here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eHpRjxk7N4&t=2448s ) .]
>
> Our failure to defend those who are demonized and persecuted leaves us all
> demonized and persecuted. Our failure to demand justice for everyone leaves
> us all without justice. Our failure to halt the crushing of popular
> movements that stand unequivocally with the oppressed leaves us all
> oppressed. Our failure to protect our democracy leaves us without a
> democracy. The persecution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, MOVE members and all the
> radicals of four decades ago is not ancient history. It is the genesis of
> the present. It spawned the corporate coup and the machinery of state
> terror. We will pay for our complacency.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Noam Chomsky: Most Remarkable Thing About the Last Election Was Bernie
> Sanders Not Trump (Video)
>
>
>
>
> John Oliver's Segment on Dialysis Reveals One of the Many Failings of
> Private Health Care (Video)
>
>
>
>
> When Will Enough Republicans Put Loyalty to America Ahead of Loyalty to
> Party?
>
>
>
>
> Trump's Expected Pick for Top USDA Scientist Is Not Even a Scientist
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
>
>
>
>
>
> C 2017 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
>
>
> Signup for Truthdig's newsletter
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> gumgum-verify
>
>
>
>
>
> Sponsored Content
>
>
>
>
> Are You Making the Right RN Salary?
>
> Find out how registered nurse salaries vary by specialty, state, gender and
> years of experience, plus how to negotiate your RN salary!
> [www.HealtheCareers.com]
>
> Learn More
>
>
>
> ExelateData
>
>
>
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2017 08:55:45 -0700
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Trump Is the Symptom, Not the Disease
To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
"...A narcissist and imbecile may be
turning the electric shocks on and off, but the problem is the corporate
state, and unless we dismantle that, we are doomed."
Chris Hedges, such a remarkable man. Not for his keen insight, which
is remarkable of itself, but because he has the courage to publicly
defend his nation by pointing out the signs of collapse of democracy.
Like Chris Hedges, only far less articulate, I contend that Donald
Trump is a symptom, not the cause of this decline into tyranny.
Remember the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon? Did we learn from the
abuses of his office? After the dust settled, we gave the Office of
Presidency over to two rather bland fellows, Gerald Ford, whose one
great and noble act was to pardon Richard M. Nixon of his high handed
contempt for the American Constitution, and Jimmy Carter who did
nothing to repair the Nixon era damage. The stage was set for reform.
And reform came in the hands of the Mighty Mouth, Ronald Reagan.
Master of Smoke and Mirrors, this Grade "B" actor played the role of
President to the max. While Ronald Reagan postured and posed, coining
phrases such as "Welfare Queen", and "I'm from the government and I've
come to help", his "Handlers" set about making Nixon's contempt for
the Laws look like a walk in the park. The "peace loving, democracy
promoting" government of Ronald Reagan secretly meddled in foreign
governments, not protecting freedom and democracy, but undermining the
very governments they should have been protecting, and backing tyrants
and mobsters.
On the home front Ronald Reagan looked Americans in the eye, through
the magic of the Media's cameras, and pledged to clear crime and
corruption off our streets, making them safe again. And all the time
his wealthy supporters were up to their elbows in the nation's
treasury.
Instead of mounting a campaign to rebuild our faltering democracy, our
freedom, our independence, the Democrats turned away from the Working
Class...sold them out for a few gold coins, and shook hands with the
Devil. They welcomed the flow of new wealth into their Party coffers,
along with all of the dangling strings tied to it. And what did they
do to rebuild the "Middle Class"? Why they backed our first Black
president. A darker tanned version of Bill Clinton. And even if he
had the People at heart, Barack Obama was hog tied and immobilized by
the conservative, white Republicans, who vowed to stand united against
any action proposed by Barack Obama. And how did the American People
respond? How did the once powerful Democratic Party react? Well, the
Party followed their new road toward retaking the High Office, by
turning away from the most likely candidate, and railroading in
Hillary Clinton, a female version of Bill Clinton. And the People?
Well, they acted as the confused, deceived, angry, violated,
disenfranchised
, powerless people that they had become. The result? Instead of
redoubling efforts to rebuild our democracy, the People selected
Donald Trump to "lead" them to a bright tomorrow where they would bask
in the return of America's Greatness(Whiteness).
And as long as we refuse to call out the real offender, Corporate
Capitalism, we can only imagine what the next wave of "reformers" will
do to the tattered remnants of our Constitution.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/15/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Truthdig
>
> Trump Is the Symptom, Not the Disease
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/trump_is_the_symptom_not_the_disease_201
> 70514/
> Posted on May 14, 2017
>
> By Chris Hedges
> Mr. Fish / Truthdig
>
> Forget the firing of James Comey. Forget the paralysis in Congress. Forget
> the idiocy of a press that covers our descent into tyranny as if it were a
> sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats or a
> reality show starring our maniacal president and the idiots that surround
> him. Forget the noise. The crisis we face is not embodied in the public
> images of the politicians that run our dysfunctional government. The crisis
> we face is the result of a four-decade-long, slow-motion corporate coup
> that
> has rendered the citizen impotent, left us without any authentic democratic
> institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent.
> This crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalized bribery and
> empowered those public figures that master the arts of entertainment and
> artifice. And if we do not overthrow the neoliberal
> (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/8/16/1007496/- ) , corporate forces
> that
> have destroyed our democracy we will continue to vomit up more
> monstrosities
> as dangerous as Donald Trump. Trump is the symptom, not the disease.
>
> Our descent into despotism began with the pardoning of Richard Nixon
> (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-ford-pardons-former-pr
> esident-nixon) , all of whose impeachable crimes are now legal, and the
> extrajudicial assault, including targeted assassinations and imprisonment,
> carried out on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals. It began
> with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organizations that
> took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific
> research
> and the two major political parties. It began with empowering militarized
> police to kill unarmed citizens and the spread of our horrendous system of
> mass incarceration and the death penalty. It began with the stripping away
> of our most basic constitutional rights-privacy, due process, habeas
> corpus,
> fair elections and dissent. It began when big money was employed by
> political operatives such as Roger Stone, a close Trump adviser, to create
> negative political advertisements and false narratives to deceive the
> public, turning political debate into burlesque. On all these fronts we
> have
> lost. We are trapped like rats in a cage. A narcissist and imbecile may be
> turning the electric shocks on and off, but the problem is the corporate
> state, and unless we dismantle that, we are doomed.
>
> "What's necessary for the state is the illusion of normality, of
> regularity," America's best-known political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, told
> me
> (https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/388304-philadelphia-police-bombing-move
> / ) last week by phone from the prison where he is incarcerated in
> Frackville, Pa. ". In Rome, what the emperors needed was bread and
> circuses.
> In America, what we need is 'Housewives of Atlanta.' We need sports. The
> moral stories of good cops and evil people. Because you have that .. there
> is no critical thinking in America during this period. You have emotion
> [only]. When I look at someone who is demonized, I can do anything [to him
> or her]. I can do anything. That's how the state works, by demonizing
> people
> and putting them in places where they're virtually invisible."
>
> "Here's the reality," he went on. "America has never come to grips with
> what
> a lot of scholars and thinkers call the Original Sin. That's because it
> never stopped happening. This country brags about being founded on freedom.
> It was founded on slavery. It was founded on holocaust. It was founded on
> genocide. After slavery ended, after the Constitution was rewritten and
> amended, we have the Reconstruction amendments, the 13th
> (https://www.google.com/#q=13th+amendment ) , 14th
> (https://www.google.com/#q=14th+amendment ) and 15th
> (https://www.google.com/#q=15th+amendment ) amendments. But what did the
> South do? They ignored it for a century."
>
> "It isn't until the '60s that you see this deep, rich emergence of people
> fighting for rights that were enshrined in the Constitution a century
> before
> [between 1865 and 1870]," he said. "That's because every state in the South
> and many states in the North were allowed to make exceptions to the
> Constitution when it came to black people. We learned that's not just a
> Southern reality. You can't talk about AEDPA
> (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-destruction-of-defendants-right
> s ) , the so-called Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty [Act of 1996]
> unless you have the same mindset that makes the Constitution an exceptional
> document."
>
> Racist, violent and despotic forces have always been part of the American
> landscape and have often been tolerated and empowered by the state to
> persecute poor people of color and dissidents. These forces are denied
> absolute power as long as a majority of citizens have a say in their own
> governance. The corporate elites, however, frightened by what the political
> scientist Samuel Huntington called an "excess of democracy" that originated
> in the 1960s, methodically destroyed the democratic edifice. They locked
> the
> citizens out of government. And by doing so they made sure that power
> shifted into the hands of the enemies of the open society. When democratic
> institutions cease to function, when the consent of the governed becomes a
> joke, despots, cranks, conspiracy theorists, con artists, generals,
> billionaires and proto-fascists fill the political void. They give vent to
> popular anger and frustration while arming the state to do to the majority
> what it has long done to the minority. This tale is as old as civilization.
> It was played out in ancient Greece and Rome, the Soviet Union, fascist
> Germany, fascist Italy and the former Yugoslavia.
>
> Trump, an acute embarrassment to the corporate state and the organs of
> internal security, may be removed from the presidency, but such a palace
> coup would only further consolidate the power of the deep state
> (https://www.google.com/#q=define+deep+state ) and intensify internal
> measures of repression. Millions of people, including the undocumented,
> those who have felony convictions, those locked in cages and poor people of
> color, have already been stripped of their rights, and some have been
> indiscriminately murdered by police. These minorities' reality of daily
> state terror, unless this process of corporate pillage is halted, will
> spread and become normal with or without Trump.
>
> In Abu-Jamal's book "Live From Death Row
> (https://books.google.com/books?id=GF3jhfdhxY0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=live+
> from+death+row&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFvvezh_DTAhVJHGMKHafnB_sQ6AEIJzAA#v=on
> epage&q=live%20from%20death%20row&f=false ) ," he recounts his protest at a
> 1968 rally in Philadelphia held by the segregationist George Wallace during
> one of the Alabama governor's runs for the Democratic presidential
> nomination. It is a reminder that Trump's racism and lust for violence have
> long been part of the American character.
>
> Abu-Jamal writes of attending the rally with three other black teenagers:
>
>
> We must've been insane. We strolled into the stadium, four lanky dark
> string
> beans in a pot of white, steaming limas. The bank played "Dixie." We
> shouted, "Black Power, Ungowa, black power!" They shouted, "Wallace for
> president! White power!" and "Send those niggers back to Africa! We
> shouted,
> "Black power, Ungowa!" (Don't ask what "Ungowa" means. We didn't know. All
> we knew was that it had a helluva ring to it.) "Black power!" They hissed
> and booed. We stood up in our seats and proudly gave the black power
> salute.
> In answer, we received dubious gifts of spittle from those seated above.
> Patriots tore American flags from their standards and hurled the bare
> sticks
> at us. Wallace, wrapped in roars of approval, waxed eloquent. "When I
> become
> president, these dirty, unwashed radicals will have to move to the
> Sov-ee-yet Union! You know, all throughout this campaign these radicals
> have
> been demonstrating against George Corley Wallace. Well, I hope they have
> the
> guts to lay down in front of my car. I'll drive right over 'em!" The crowd
> went wild.
>
> "Some police and other security came," Abu-Jamal told me about the
> incident.
> "They escorted us out. We thought hey, we had a little fun. Our voices were
> heard. We went to the bus stop. And two or three of us were on the bus. A
> young guy named Alvin and a young guy named Eddie. I was usually the
> slowest, so I was behind them. A guy walked up and hit me with a blackjack.
> Knocked me down. Pulled Eddie and Alvin off the bus. We were getting our
> asses kicked. It never dawned on us these were cops. They can't just walk
> up
> to us and beat us up [I thought]."
>
> "I remember seeing a cop's leg walk by," he said. "I shouted help! Help,
> police! The guy looked at me. Looked down at me. He walked over and kicked
> me right in the face. Then it dawned on me all of these guys were cops.
> That
> was a little taste of [what would happen later in] Philadelphia. An
> introduction to trauma. We see it today. I can hear Trump saying, 'Beat the
> hell out of them.' It's like the old days. Those weren't good days. Those
> were ugly days. And the ugly day is today."
>
> "I have been thankful to that faceless cop ever since," Abu-Jamal writes of
> the assault, "for he kicked me straight into the Black Panther Party."
>
> Abu-Jamal's experience embodies the endemic racism and collapse of the
> American court system that railroad young black men and women into prison
> and onto death row. The Federal Bureau of Investigation placed him under
> surveillance when he was 15 years old. His FBI file swelled to 700 pages.
> His crime was to be a dissident. He was followed, hauled in for questioning
> at random and threatened.
>
> "While walking to work one day," he writes, "I passed in front of an idling
> cop car. I glanced at the driver-white, with brown hair, and wearing dark
> shades. He 'smiled,' put his hand out the car window, and pointed a finger
> at me, his thumb cocked back like the hammer of a gun: bang-bang-bang-the
> finger jerked, as if from the recoil, and the cop gave it a cowboyish blast
> of breath before returning it to an imaginary holster. He and his pal
> laugh.
> Car rolls."
>
> The 1960s and 1970s saw a war on black radicals, which included FBI
> assassinations of leaders such as Fred Hampton
> (http://spartacus-educational.com/USAhamptonF.htm ) . This war against
> radicals, President Nixon's so-called battle for "law and order," put the
> police, the FBI and other organs of internal security beyond the reach of
> the law. This power has only expanded since. We are all under state
> surveillance. And we can all become victims if the state deems us to be a
> threat. The loss of civilian oversight, along with the lack of
> transparency,
> is ominous.
>
> Abu-Jamal was convicted of the 1981 murder of Daniel Faulkner, a white
> Philadelphia police officer. His trial was a sham. It included tainted
> evidence, suppressed defense witnesses, prosecution witnesses that
> contradicted their earlier testimony, a court-appointed lawyer, like most
> within the system, who was allotted few resources and had little
> inclination
> to defend his client, and a series of unconstitutional legal rulings by a
> judge out to convict the defendant. Terri Maurer-Carter, the stenographer
> at
> the trial, later signed an affidavit stating that during the trial she
> overheard the judge, Albert F. Sabo, say of Abu-Jamal, "Yeah and I'm gonna
> help 'em fry the nigger." Sabo during his time on the bench sent 31 people
> to death row, more than any other judge in Pennsylvania. Abu-Jamal, who
> grew
> up in the housing projects of north Philadelphia, is imprisoned for our
> sins.
>
> By 1977, Abu-Jamal, distressed by the internal feuding that tore apart the
> Black Panthers, had developed a close relationship with members of the
> Philadelphia MOVE organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE ) . MOVE
> members lived communally, preached Third World radicalism, ate natural
> foods
> and denounced the established black leaders as puppets of the white,
> capitalist ruling elites.
>
> The Philadelphia police, who constantly harassed the group, besieged the
> MOVE compound starting in late 1977. On Aug. 7, 1978, a gun battle erupted
> between people in the compound and police outside. A police officer was
> killed. Delbert Africa, a MOVE member, was savagely beaten in front of
> television cameras. Nine MOVE members would be charged with murder. The
> trial, like the one held four years later for Abu-Jamal, was a farce. It
> was
> clear, Abu-Jamal wrote of the legal lynching of the MOVE members, that "the
> law did not matter." Two of the nine, Merle and Phil Africa, have died in
> prison. The seven other MOVE members remain, like Abu-Jamal, locked away
> and
> denied freedom by parole boards. Abu-Jamal was given life without parole
> after being taken off death row by the courts.
>
> The Philadelphia police and the FBI were determined to root what remained
> of
> MOVE out of the city and do so with enough brutality to discourage any
> other
> black radicals from organizing.
>
> "On May 12 [the date the two-day-long attack began], Sunday, Mother's Day
> of
> 1985, our home was surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of cops who came out
> there to kill not because of any complaints from neighbors but because of
> our unrelenting fight for our MOVE sisters and brothers known as the MOVE
> 9," Ramona Africa told me in an interview last week. (Authorities, as one
> of
> their supposed justifications for acting against MOVE, cited neighborhood
> complaints about activities and conditions at the compound.) "We had been
> attacked and arrested in 1978. Thirty-nine years later, this August, they
> are still in prison. They became eligible for parole in 2008. The parole
> board just refuses to parole them." [Chris Hedges' interview with Ramona
> Africa begins at the 11-minute mark-click here
> (https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/388304-philadelphia-police-bombing-move
> / ) for the video.]
>
> "What people really need to understand is they did come out there [in 1985]
> to kill, not to arrest," she said. "They could have arrested at any time.
> They did not come out there for any complaint from neighbors. Those running
> this country, this entire worldwide system, have never cared about black
> people complaining about their neighbors. It's never been an issue.
> Obviously, it was something other than that. Which was our unrelenting
> fight
> for our family members who are still in prison. They shot over 10,000
> rounds
> of bullets in on us within 90 minutes. They dropped a bomb."
>
> The bomb ignited a fire that burned down a city block containing 61 homes.
>
> "The fire department, who was out there from the very beginning, was
> immediately aware that there was a fire on our roof," she said. "A
> conscious
> decision was made to not fight the fire. To let it burn. When we realized
> our home was on fire, we immediately tried to get our children, our
> animals,
> and ourselves out of that blazing inferno. The instant we were visible to
> cops we were met with a barrage of police gunfire aimed at us so that we
> couldn't escape that fire. After several attempts to get out, I got out
> first. I was able to get one of our children, a little boy named Birdie,
> out. We were immediately snatched into custody. I'm looking for the rest of
> my family. Trying to see if I could see anyone else. It was a little later
> after they had taken us into custody that I found out nobody else [in the
> MOVE group] survived."
>
> Eleven members of MOVE, including the founder of the group, John Africa,
> and
> five children, were killed in the police assault.
>
> "The people who killed my family were never charged, never prosecuted,
> never
> imprisoned for anything," she said. "Meanwhile, my nine MOVE sisters and
> brothers [convicted in the 1978 shootout], Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier
> [a Native American activist imprisoned in a South Dakota murder case], all
> the way down to line, are in prison with the accusation of murder."
>
> Abu-Jamal wrote, "May 13th, 1985, is more than a day of infamy, when a city
> waged war on its own alleged citizens, but also when the city committed
> massacre and did so with perfect impunity, when babies were shot and burned
> alive with their mothers and fathers, and the killers rewarded with honors
> and pensions, while politicians talked and the media mediated mass murder.
> On that day, the city, armed and assisted by the US government, dropped a
> bomb on a house and called it law. The fire department watched buildings
> ignite like matches in the desert and cut off water. The courts of the land
> turned a blind eye, daubed mud in their socket, and prosecuted Ramona
> Africa
> for having the nerve to survive an urban holocaust, jailing her for the
> crime of not burning to death. Eleven men, women and children died, and not
> one killer was even charged with a misdemeanor."
>
> Ramona Africa, charged with "rioting," spent seven years in prison.
>
> [For a 69-second video showing the bomb exploding on the Philadelphia
> compound roof in 1985, click here
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvEzA8aUJoU ) . For a 56-minute
> documentary
> about the assault on the compound and the circumstances surrounding it,
> click here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eHpRjxk7N4&t=2448s ) .]
>
> Our failure to defend those who are demonized and persecuted leaves us all
> demonized and persecuted. Our failure to demand justice for everyone leaves
> us all without justice. Our failure to halt the crushing of popular
> movements that stand unequivocally with the oppressed leaves us all
> oppressed. Our failure to protect our democracy leaves us without a
> democracy. The persecution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, MOVE members and all the
> radicals of four decades ago is not ancient history. It is the genesis of
> the present. It spawned the corporate coup and the machinery of state
> terror. We will pay for our complacency.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Noam Chomsky: Most Remarkable Thing About the Last Election Was Bernie
> Sanders Not Trump (Video)
>
>
>
>
> John Oliver's Segment on Dialysis Reveals One of the Many Failings of
> Private Health Care (Video)
>
>
>
>
> When Will Enough Republicans Put Loyalty to America Ahead of Loyalty to
> Party?
>
>
>
>
> Trump's Expected Pick for Top USDA Scientist Is Not Even a Scientist
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
>
>
>
>
>
> C 2017 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
>
>
> Signup for Truthdig's newsletter
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> gumgum-verify
>
>
>
>
>
> Sponsored Content
>
>
>
>
> Are You Making the Right RN Salary?
>
> Find out how registered nurse salaries vary by specialty, state, gender and
> years of experience, plus how to negotiate your RN salary!
> [www.HealtheCareers.com]
>
> Learn More
>
>
>
> ExelateData
>
>
>
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Fwd: [acb-chat] charges by doctors
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org>
Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 23:22:06 +0000
Subject: Re: [acb-chat] charges by doctors
To: "General discussion list for ACB members and friends where a wide
range of topics from blindness to politics, issues of the day or
whatever comes to mind are welcome. This is a free form discussion
list." <acb-chat@acblists.org>
Cc: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Clifford, Karen and All,
The problem, as I see it, is that we all suffer from Selective Memory.
Sure, doctors still made house calls when I was a boy, and even
dentists. My grandma Ludwig had her teeth pulled right in her own
kitchen. The dentist just sat her on a chair, put a bucket of water
between her feet and began yanking them out. Mother told me that
story, and I never had the nerve to ask Grandma how she stood the
pain, or what they gave her to deaden her mouth...if anything.
My point being that while it was cheaper than today's out of control
costs, the service often left lots to be desired. Even as late as
1965, when I was recovering from detached retina surgery, my
Ophthalmologist came to my house for a follow up examination. My
mother-in-law died in 1966 from breast cancer. They had what they
called Internal Medicine Men, doctors who specialized in mixing the
deadly drugs of that day into Chemo Cocktails. Techniques back then
were very crude. But our health insurance covered everything. In
fact, my mother-in-law sent in her claim on her insurance, and my
father-in-law sent the claim in on his insurance. They actually put
money in the bank...until she died. Of course the insurance companies
caught this little oversight and changed the law so that it was no
longer possible for folks to profit through double dipping. While I
agree that this practice of charging two different insurance companies
for the same medical bill was no more right than today's insurance
companies that charge outrageous rates and only cover 60% of the cost.
Another big change was the fact that our family doctor took care of
about 95% of our needs, referring us to specialists as a last resort.
Not today. Now our old family doctor has been reduced to being a
traffic cop. He/she gives you a quick once over and refers you to the
appropriate specialist. Along the way you may also need Xrays, which
in turn need the expert eye of a specialist who interprets the
results. You are billed by each of these folks as if you had multiple
problems.
But the rising cost...the out of control exploding costs, were not
brought about by big government interference. It's the other way
around. Out of control costs finally drove the government to develop
a method of checking this out pouring, this tidal wave of medical
expenses. The American Medical Association(AMA), functioned as a
Doctor's Union, protecting the nation from an overload of doctors,
which would drive doctors wages down. Working together with the large
Medical Schools and Hospital administrators, rules and conditions were
establish to allow only a limited number of doctors through the system
each year. The wealthier doctors began to improve their earnings by
investing in the fast growing Drug Companies, that merged and merged
again into huge corporations. These monstrous corporations informally
set prices and controlled availability of generic medications, driving
prices higher. Hospitals merged and became giant medical centers,
cutting out many jobs along the way.
Left alone for the "free market" to adjust prices, the Health
Corporations would soon have eliminated all their "competition", and
had free reign over costs and prices. The government was forced to
step in. After all, the government is the representative of the
American People. So you might say, We Stepped In. Along came
Medicare to assist the nation's elders from being resigned to the Poor
House. And because the private sector was bungling the job, this
government of ours established the Veteran's Administration(VA), and
established a most effective program. What is happening to the VA
today is ugly. As if they were dealing in widgets instead of human
beings, congress picked away at the VA's budget. Pretending to
believe that the quality would not be effected by cutting
budgets...trimming off the fat, is how these fat cats put it. And
when the fat had been cut to the bone and demands had been increased
on fewer staff, these same elected officials stomped, snorted and
bleated that here was proof of Big Government's incompetency. And
these same elected officials turned right around and voted, with no
questions asked, billions of extra dollars to the Mother of All Big
Government Boondoggles, the Pentagon.
But hey! why not! Isn't this the great-great-great grandson of the
Great White Father who spoke to the Indigenous folk who already lived
here when we "Discovered" America?
Lie to the Indians(American), lie to the Slaves, lie to the Veterans,
and lie to the Working Class men and women whose sweat and toil made
the Great White Father Great. Yes, there is one thing the Great White
Father contributed...he was always White.
In my humble, but well thought out opinion, the real reason for the
never ending increases to our medical costs is the same one that has
placed our children in deep debt in order to become educated and
hopefully one fine day to take control away from us and set this Ship
of Fools on a new course toward the rising sun instead of aiming for
the setting sun, that issue is the rise of Greed. Greed. Think of a
fast moving cancer, devouring all in its path. That's Greed. Greed
showed up in the Bible as a Serpent. Greed has lurked in the King's
palaces, in the merchant's counting houses, in the factory owners
sprawling mills, and today Greed has moved from the back bed room into
the Living Room and is demanding everything we own or thought we
owned. Greed has helped us create this Fabulous Make Believe World in
which we worship a made up thing called Money. Instead of measuring
one another by our accomplishments...our good deeds, we count success
in green bills. Money is made up. Money cannot be planted and new
money grown. It can't be eaten or used to fertilize our crops or feed
our livestock.
All money is good for in the long run is to buy our way into Hell.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/14/17, Clifford via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
> Dear Karen:
>
> I am old enough to remember a time when we had no Medicare,
> Medicaid and especially no mandated insurance. The fees for doctors were a
> fraction of those today. Thirty dollars a day were the going rate for
> hospital stays in 1968, the year I hung out my shingle.
>
>
>
> The doctors that treated our family carried many patients
> who could not afford the charges, even at the low rates. I did know of one
> doctor who made a home visit, as many did back then, and when the family did
> not have the ability, he took a cow as payment. The problem in that case
> was that the doctor had recommended that the parents
>
> make sure the child got more milk.
>
>
>
> Yours Truly,
>
>
>
> Clifford Wilson
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Karen Rose [mailto:rosekm@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2017 2:37 PM
> To: Clifford <clifford@tds.net>
> Cc: General discussion list for ACB members and friends where a wide range
> of topics from blindness to politics, issues of the day or whatever comes to
> mind are welcome. This is a free form discussion list.
> <acb-chat@acblists.org>
> Subject: Re: [acb-chat] charges by doctors
>
>
>
> I generally charge $175 per hour but insurance companies pay psychotherapist
> approximately $60 per hour. As for market forces Dash where we to have only
> market forces determining who could receive healthcare – that is one could
> receive care only if one could afford it – we would have many dead people in
> this country. Karen
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> On May 13, 2017, at 9:07 AM, Clifford <clifford@tds.net
> <mailto:clifford@tds.net> > wrote:
>
> Dear Karen:
>
> You did not mention what your normal rate is or was. I
> doubt that you would have many patients if you charged $12000
>
> an hour, or even one third of that amount.
>
> I have always thought that the system we have in the country
> is the reason that the market forces are not in play when it comes to health
> care. So long as the costs are sent to a third party, whether it be an
> insurance company or a government agency, the consumer cares little for the
> total costs, but when that cost comes back as an increase in premiums, then
> we get upset. I have often wondered what we would be doing today if
> insurance had never been invented. If I had to hand my doctor the cash to
> receive services, I am of the opinion that charges would be less.
>
> There is a parallel with regard to taxes. There was an
> employer who once started giving employees cash at the end of the week, but
> the employee then had to walk to three other stations on the way out, where
> each employee had to pay income taxes that were to be withheld, Medicare,
> and finally social security tax. The employees became outraged at how much
> they were having to pay. The I. R. S. stepped in and obtained a court order
> to prevent such practices. It is one thing to see a number on a check stub
> and another when we have to shell out the cash.
>
> In this and many other states, a person who is injured in a
> motor vehicle accident and sues the other driver, the injured party is
> allowed to prove their medical bills on the basis of the total charges by
> the provider, even though the insurance company paying for the medical bills
> paid only a fraction of that amount, and in the case of Medicaid, the
> payment is normally around twenty percent of the posted charges. If the
> injured motorist is successful in obtaining a judgement on that basis, then
> he or she is only required to pay back the Medicaid or insurance company the
> amount actually paid, and the remainder is a nice gift to the claimant and
> their attorney. This does not take in to account the claim for pain and
> suffering etc. I have argued for some time that the successful claimant
> should have to pay the full price of the medical bills they bring to court
> after the fact. The Trial Lawyers get bent out of shape at such suggestions.
>
>
>
>
> Yours Truly,
>
>
>
> Clifford Wilson
>
>
>
> From: Karen Rose [mailto:rosekm@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2017 2:28 AM
> To: General discussion list for ACB members and friends where a wide range
> of topics from blindness to politics, issues of the day or whatever comes to
> mind are welcome. This is a free form discussion list.
> <acb-chat@acblists.org <mailto:acb-chat@acblists.org> >
> Cc: Clifford <clifford@tds.net <mailto:clifford@tds.net> >
> Subject: Re: [acb-chat] charges by doctors
>
>
>
> Clifford – I am a licensed psychotherapist in practice in Berkeley and San
> Francisco. I accept all major insurances. I have had no razors from those
> companies in the past 34 years. I received approximately 1/3 of my standard
> rate. Karen Rose and MFT
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> On May 12, 2017, at 10:09 PM, Clifford via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org
> <mailto:acb-chat@acblists.org> > wrote:
>
> Dear List Members:
>
> Unfortunately, the reaction I hear to the current proposals
> for healthcare in this country are nothing less than knee-jerk reactions to
> any proposal that comes from this president.
>
> I do recognize some of the problems that we face even before
> President Trump took office. Within the last two years, I was involved in
> the taking of a deposition of a surgeon who spent a total of three hours
> working for his client. His charges for the three hours was $37,000, and
> that did not include any of the support facilities or personnel. In short,
> the doctor received this amount for his services alone. I thought this was
> absurd and asked if this was the normal fee for services of this type in the
> area where he practiced, and the answer was, YES. When I inquired of my
> family doctor as to whether or not such charges, $12,500 an hour was
> reasonable, he was shocked.
>
> While I am not one to support price controls in general, I
> would hope that any new legislation would address such excesses. I am fully
> aware of the time and costs of a medical education and on the job training,
> but charging such fees to patients who are not generally shopping for
> services, but are looking for help, creates an environment where price
> controls may well be instituted. In the Medicare and medic-aid cases, there
> are already regulations as to the amount doctors can charge.
>
> I am glad that this hillbilly is not a member of congress
> and trying to write a new healthcare law. I was and am fundamentally
> opposed to the notion that the federal government should be able to fine
> individuals who fail to buy insurance to cover medical treatment. There are
> folks out there who can neither afford a fine or medical insurance,
> especially with the costs rising as they have under the Obama system.
>
> If California goes the single payer rout, it will be
> interesting to see how that works. Up to this point, the veterans in this
> country have had experience with a single pay system for them. The
> short-falls of that system have made the headlines many more times than one
> would hope for our veterans.
>
> I for one am hopeful that a better system will be enacted,
> and that the compulsive part of the current law is history.
>
>
>
> Yours Truly,
>
>
>
> Clifford Wilson
>
> <image001.jpg>
>
>
>
>
_______________________________________________
acb-chat mailing list
acb-chat@acblists.org
http://www.acblists.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-chat
From: Carl Jarvis via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org>
Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 23:22:06 +0000
Subject: Re: [acb-chat] charges by doctors
To: "General discussion list for ACB members and friends where a wide
range of topics from blindness to politics, issues of the day or
whatever comes to mind are welcome. This is a free form discussion
list." <acb-chat@acblists.org>
Cc: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Clifford, Karen and All,
The problem, as I see it, is that we all suffer from Selective Memory.
Sure, doctors still made house calls when I was a boy, and even
dentists. My grandma Ludwig had her teeth pulled right in her own
kitchen. The dentist just sat her on a chair, put a bucket of water
between her feet and began yanking them out. Mother told me that
story, and I never had the nerve to ask Grandma how she stood the
pain, or what they gave her to deaden her mouth...if anything.
My point being that while it was cheaper than today's out of control
costs, the service often left lots to be desired. Even as late as
1965, when I was recovering from detached retina surgery, my
Ophthalmologist came to my house for a follow up examination. My
mother-in-law died in 1966 from breast cancer. They had what they
called Internal Medicine Men, doctors who specialized in mixing the
deadly drugs of that day into Chemo Cocktails. Techniques back then
were very crude. But our health insurance covered everything. In
fact, my mother-in-law sent in her claim on her insurance, and my
father-in-law sent the claim in on his insurance. They actually put
money in the bank...until she died. Of course the insurance companies
caught this little oversight and changed the law so that it was no
longer possible for folks to profit through double dipping. While I
agree that this practice of charging two different insurance companies
for the same medical bill was no more right than today's insurance
companies that charge outrageous rates and only cover 60% of the cost.
Another big change was the fact that our family doctor took care of
about 95% of our needs, referring us to specialists as a last resort.
Not today. Now our old family doctor has been reduced to being a
traffic cop. He/she gives you a quick once over and refers you to the
appropriate specialist. Along the way you may also need Xrays, which
in turn need the expert eye of a specialist who interprets the
results. You are billed by each of these folks as if you had multiple
problems.
But the rising cost...the out of control exploding costs, were not
brought about by big government interference. It's the other way
around. Out of control costs finally drove the government to develop
a method of checking this out pouring, this tidal wave of medical
expenses. The American Medical Association(AMA), functioned as a
Doctor's Union, protecting the nation from an overload of doctors,
which would drive doctors wages down. Working together with the large
Medical Schools and Hospital administrators, rules and conditions were
establish to allow only a limited number of doctors through the system
each year. The wealthier doctors began to improve their earnings by
investing in the fast growing Drug Companies, that merged and merged
again into huge corporations. These monstrous corporations informally
set prices and controlled availability of generic medications, driving
prices higher. Hospitals merged and became giant medical centers,
cutting out many jobs along the way.
Left alone for the "free market" to adjust prices, the Health
Corporations would soon have eliminated all their "competition", and
had free reign over costs and prices. The government was forced to
step in. After all, the government is the representative of the
American People. So you might say, We Stepped In. Along came
Medicare to assist the nation's elders from being resigned to the Poor
House. And because the private sector was bungling the job, this
government of ours established the Veteran's Administration(VA), and
established a most effective program. What is happening to the VA
today is ugly. As if they were dealing in widgets instead of human
beings, congress picked away at the VA's budget. Pretending to
believe that the quality would not be effected by cutting
budgets...trimming off the fat, is how these fat cats put it. And
when the fat had been cut to the bone and demands had been increased
on fewer staff, these same elected officials stomped, snorted and
bleated that here was proof of Big Government's incompetency. And
these same elected officials turned right around and voted, with no
questions asked, billions of extra dollars to the Mother of All Big
Government Boondoggles, the Pentagon.
But hey! why not! Isn't this the great-great-great grandson of the
Great White Father who spoke to the Indigenous folk who already lived
here when we "Discovered" America?
Lie to the Indians(American), lie to the Slaves, lie to the Veterans,
and lie to the Working Class men and women whose sweat and toil made
the Great White Father Great. Yes, there is one thing the Great White
Father contributed...he was always White.
In my humble, but well thought out opinion, the real reason for the
never ending increases to our medical costs is the same one that has
placed our children in deep debt in order to become educated and
hopefully one fine day to take control away from us and set this Ship
of Fools on a new course toward the rising sun instead of aiming for
the setting sun, that issue is the rise of Greed. Greed. Think of a
fast moving cancer, devouring all in its path. That's Greed. Greed
showed up in the Bible as a Serpent. Greed has lurked in the King's
palaces, in the merchant's counting houses, in the factory owners
sprawling mills, and today Greed has moved from the back bed room into
the Living Room and is demanding everything we own or thought we
owned. Greed has helped us create this Fabulous Make Believe World in
which we worship a made up thing called Money. Instead of measuring
one another by our accomplishments...our good deeds, we count success
in green bills. Money is made up. Money cannot be planted and new
money grown. It can't be eaten or used to fertilize our crops or feed
our livestock.
All money is good for in the long run is to buy our way into Hell.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/14/17, Clifford via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
> Dear Karen:
>
> I am old enough to remember a time when we had no Medicare,
> Medicaid and especially no mandated insurance. The fees for doctors were a
> fraction of those today. Thirty dollars a day were the going rate for
> hospital stays in 1968, the year I hung out my shingle.
>
>
>
> The doctors that treated our family carried many patients
> who could not afford the charges, even at the low rates. I did know of one
> doctor who made a home visit, as many did back then, and when the family did
> not have the ability, he took a cow as payment. The problem in that case
> was that the doctor had recommended that the parents
>
> make sure the child got more milk.
>
>
>
> Yours Truly,
>
>
>
> Clifford Wilson
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Karen Rose [mailto:rosekm@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2017 2:37 PM
> To: Clifford <clifford@tds.net>
> Cc: General discussion list for ACB members and friends where a wide range
> of topics from blindness to politics, issues of the day or whatever comes to
> mind are welcome. This is a free form discussion list.
> <acb-chat@acblists.org>
> Subject: Re: [acb-chat] charges by doctors
>
>
>
> I generally charge $175 per hour but insurance companies pay psychotherapist
> approximately $60 per hour. As for market forces Dash where we to have only
> market forces determining who could receive healthcare – that is one could
> receive care only if one could afford it – we would have many dead people in
> this country. Karen
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> On May 13, 2017, at 9:07 AM, Clifford <clifford@tds.net
> <mailto:clifford@tds.net> > wrote:
>
> Dear Karen:
>
> You did not mention what your normal rate is or was. I
> doubt that you would have many patients if you charged $12000
>
> an hour, or even one third of that amount.
>
> I have always thought that the system we have in the country
> is the reason that the market forces are not in play when it comes to health
> care. So long as the costs are sent to a third party, whether it be an
> insurance company or a government agency, the consumer cares little for the
> total costs, but when that cost comes back as an increase in premiums, then
> we get upset. I have often wondered what we would be doing today if
> insurance had never been invented. If I had to hand my doctor the cash to
> receive services, I am of the opinion that charges would be less.
>
> There is a parallel with regard to taxes. There was an
> employer who once started giving employees cash at the end of the week, but
> the employee then had to walk to three other stations on the way out, where
> each employee had to pay income taxes that were to be withheld, Medicare,
> and finally social security tax. The employees became outraged at how much
> they were having to pay. The I. R. S. stepped in and obtained a court order
> to prevent such practices. It is one thing to see a number on a check stub
> and another when we have to shell out the cash.
>
> In this and many other states, a person who is injured in a
> motor vehicle accident and sues the other driver, the injured party is
> allowed to prove their medical bills on the basis of the total charges by
> the provider, even though the insurance company paying for the medical bills
> paid only a fraction of that amount, and in the case of Medicaid, the
> payment is normally around twenty percent of the posted charges. If the
> injured motorist is successful in obtaining a judgement on that basis, then
> he or she is only required to pay back the Medicaid or insurance company the
> amount actually paid, and the remainder is a nice gift to the claimant and
> their attorney. This does not take in to account the claim for pain and
> suffering etc. I have argued for some time that the successful claimant
> should have to pay the full price of the medical bills they bring to court
> after the fact. The Trial Lawyers get bent out of shape at such suggestions.
>
>
>
>
> Yours Truly,
>
>
>
> Clifford Wilson
>
>
>
> From: Karen Rose [mailto:rosekm@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2017 2:28 AM
> To: General discussion list for ACB members and friends where a wide range
> of topics from blindness to politics, issues of the day or whatever comes to
> mind are welcome. This is a free form discussion list.
> <acb-chat@acblists.org <mailto:acb-chat@acblists.org> >
> Cc: Clifford <clifford@tds.net <mailto:clifford@tds.net> >
> Subject: Re: [acb-chat] charges by doctors
>
>
>
> Clifford – I am a licensed psychotherapist in practice in Berkeley and San
> Francisco. I accept all major insurances. I have had no razors from those
> companies in the past 34 years. I received approximately 1/3 of my standard
> rate. Karen Rose and MFT
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> On May 12, 2017, at 10:09 PM, Clifford via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org
> <mailto:acb-chat@acblists.org> > wrote:
>
> Dear List Members:
>
> Unfortunately, the reaction I hear to the current proposals
> for healthcare in this country are nothing less than knee-jerk reactions to
> any proposal that comes from this president.
>
> I do recognize some of the problems that we face even before
> President Trump took office. Within the last two years, I was involved in
> the taking of a deposition of a surgeon who spent a total of three hours
> working for his client. His charges for the three hours was $37,000, and
> that did not include any of the support facilities or personnel. In short,
> the doctor received this amount for his services alone. I thought this was
> absurd and asked if this was the normal fee for services of this type in the
> area where he practiced, and the answer was, YES. When I inquired of my
> family doctor as to whether or not such charges, $12,500 an hour was
> reasonable, he was shocked.
>
> While I am not one to support price controls in general, I
> would hope that any new legislation would address such excesses. I am fully
> aware of the time and costs of a medical education and on the job training,
> but charging such fees to patients who are not generally shopping for
> services, but are looking for help, creates an environment where price
> controls may well be instituted. In the Medicare and medic-aid cases, there
> are already regulations as to the amount doctors can charge.
>
> I am glad that this hillbilly is not a member of congress
> and trying to write a new healthcare law. I was and am fundamentally
> opposed to the notion that the federal government should be able to fine
> individuals who fail to buy insurance to cover medical treatment. There are
> folks out there who can neither afford a fine or medical insurance,
> especially with the costs rising as they have under the Obama system.
>
> If California goes the single payer rout, it will be
> interesting to see how that works. Up to this point, the veterans in this
> country have had experience with a single pay system for them. The
> short-falls of that system have made the headlines many more times than one
> would hope for our veterans.
>
> I for one am hopeful that a better system will be enacted,
> and that the compulsive part of the current law is history.
>
>
>
> Yours Truly,
>
>
>
> Clifford Wilson
>
> <image001.jpg>
>
>
>
>
_______________________________________________
acb-chat mailing list
acb-chat@acblists.org
http://www.acblists.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-chat
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
when will workers learn to stand together?
Here's a bit of history demonstrating what happens when Working Class
Labor allows itself to be turned against itself.
***
article
New Era, New Manager
On September 5, 1945, William Allen, a longtime attorney at the Boeing
Company, assumed the presidency of the aircraft company. Almost
immediately, massive
postwar layoffs began. Allen brought a different labor relations
philosophy to the company -- as Boeing employees would find out before
the new decade
began.
1947 Contract Negotiations
When contract negotiations began in January 1947, it became clear that
the Boeing Company wanted to turn back the clock on seniority
provisions that had
been negotiated as far back as 1937. For example, the company wanted
10 percent of the bargaining unit to be exempt from seniority; it
wanted blanket disqualification
of women from open jobs if, in the Boeing Company's opinion, the job
required a man; and it wanted the elimination of plant-wide seniority.
The Machinists'
union wanted to protect seniority and to attain a 10 cents per hour
raise for all labor grades.
Formal negotiations opened on March 16, 1947, with the 1946 contract
"in full force and effect." By April, the Machinists' Union accused
the Boeing Company
of not negotiating in good faith and filed strike notice (a 30 day
cooling off period was required.)
On May 10, 1947, the union held a General Membership Meeting to
discuss the situation. On May 24, 1947, the union rejected the Boeing
Company's final offer
and authorized a strike. From June to December 1947, the company and
the union negotiated only sporadically.
Boeing Revises Its Proposal
The Boeing Company submitted a revised proposal on January 6, 1948 and
negotiations were intensive for about 90 days. At mid-March 15, the
Machinists'
Union offered to submit unresolved articles to arbitration. The Boeing
Company demanded the right of veto in the choice of arbiters and
demanded to submit
the entire contract to arbitration. The Machinists' Union refused
those conditions. On March 26, 1948, under provisions of the new
Taft-Hartley law, the
NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) held an election to determine if
the union was authorized to negotiate a union shop. The vote was a
resounding 12,000
YES to 800 NO.
April Deadlines Set
On April 13, 1948, the Machinists' Union established April 16 as the
deadline for choice of arbiters. The Boeing Company refused to budge.
So, on April
20, the Machinists' Union District Council and 320 shop stewards voted
to strike at 12.30 a.m., April 22, 1948. The Machinists' Union
District Council
met again on April 21 to review the circumstances. One report tells of
some of the reaction:
block quote
"Grand Lodge Representative Cotton addressed this meeting and
cautioned the members as to possible consequences of such strike
action, reminding them of
their weak strategic position, and informing them that the advice of
the Grand Lodge (the national union) was to stay on the job. However,
emotions were
running high and he was booed from the platform."
block quote end
At the prescribed time on April 22, 1948, the Machinists' Union
members laid down their tools and struck the Boeing Company. By April
28, the national
union, International Association of Machinists, granted strike sanction.
Dave Beck's Not-So-Friendly Intervention - Local 451 Formed
On May 28, 1948, Dave Beck, president of Joint Council 28 of the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, announced that Teamsters would
seek jurisdiction
at the Boeing Company. At this time, the IAM was not affiliated with
the American Federation of Labor (AFL), having disaffiliated in 1945
over the failure
of the AFL to settle a jurisdictional dispute between the IAM and the
United Brotherhood of Carpenters.
Beck's raid was intended to capture all of Machinists' Union 751
membership. He organized Aeronautical Workers and Warehousemen Helpers
Union Local 451.
He opened a hiring hall to recruit strike breakers for Boeing. In the
words of Sam Bassett, an attorney on the Teamsters' staff during 1948
(and a founder
of the oldest labor law firm in Seattle), "I am sure that Mr. Allen
will not deny that he came to Dave Beck's office and requested him to
assist in breaking
the strike of the Aero Mechanics' Union."
Beck and Boeing recruited strikebreakers and scabs through most of the
1948 strike period. (Note: The term strikebreaker is used to mean a
person newly
hired during a strike; a scab is an employee who crosses a picket line
set up by co-workers.)
NLRB Acts
In June 1948, the National Labor Relations Board requested District
Court to grant an injunction requiring the Boeing Company to bargain.
The court refused.
By late July, it was becoming difficult for the Machinists' Union to
remain on strike. The Boeing Company refused to bargain. The Boeing
Company, with
Beck and the Teamsters, was recruiting strikebreakers and some members
are becoming scabs. On July 20, the NLRB ordered the Boeing Company
"to cease and
desist from refusing to bargain with Lodge 751" and to reinstate "all
employees who went on strike on April 22, 1948, without prejudice."
In August, William Allen and the Boeing Company announced their
intention both to ignore the NLRB and to carry the case to the U.S.
Supreme Court. The
Boeing Company defied the NLRB until September.
Machinists End Strike
On September 13, 1948, Machinists' Union members went back to work for
the following reasons:
list of 6 items
• They were concerned about the Teamsters Local 451.
• The cost of the strike had gone over $2 million.
• About a third of the original 14,000 members had defected.
• The Boeing Company continued to refuse to bargain.
• The Boeing Company and Beck and the Teamsters continued to recruit strikers.
• The provisions of the new Taft-Hartley Act made the strike more
difficult to win.
list end
The Boeing Company took the workers back because it was accruing a
large financial burden with a fine of $172,000 per day from the NLRB
reinstatement order,
and, probably, most importantly, high military authorities wanted no
further delay in production of the B50 because of Cold War pressures.
This set the stage for the NLRB election between Machinists' Union
District Lodge 751, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 451,
and the Taft-Hartley
required "No Union." The International Association of Machinists,
District Lodge 751's national union, was outside the AFL and had been
since 1945. In
the minds of other AFL affiliates that made IAM local unions the same
as renegade unions and so-called fair game for raiding. Though some
AFL and CIO unions
supported District Lodge 751, the powerful Seattle Central Labor
Council threw its support behind William Allan's "labor statesman"
Dave Beck and Local
451.
The NLRB set the election for November 1, 1949. Despite the help of
AFL president William Green, Beck's Teamsters lost that election.
District Lodge 751
received 8,107 votes; the Teamsters Local 451 received 4,127 votes,
and the Taft-Hartley "No union" received a mere 401 votes.
article end
Labor allows itself to be turned against itself.
***
article
New Era, New Manager
On September 5, 1945, William Allen, a longtime attorney at the Boeing
Company, assumed the presidency of the aircraft company. Almost
immediately, massive
postwar layoffs began. Allen brought a different labor relations
philosophy to the company -- as Boeing employees would find out before
the new decade
began.
1947 Contract Negotiations
When contract negotiations began in January 1947, it became clear that
the Boeing Company wanted to turn back the clock on seniority
provisions that had
been negotiated as far back as 1937. For example, the company wanted
10 percent of the bargaining unit to be exempt from seniority; it
wanted blanket disqualification
of women from open jobs if, in the Boeing Company's opinion, the job
required a man; and it wanted the elimination of plant-wide seniority.
The Machinists'
union wanted to protect seniority and to attain a 10 cents per hour
raise for all labor grades.
Formal negotiations opened on March 16, 1947, with the 1946 contract
"in full force and effect." By April, the Machinists' Union accused
the Boeing Company
of not negotiating in good faith and filed strike notice (a 30 day
cooling off period was required.)
On May 10, 1947, the union held a General Membership Meeting to
discuss the situation. On May 24, 1947, the union rejected the Boeing
Company's final offer
and authorized a strike. From June to December 1947, the company and
the union negotiated only sporadically.
Boeing Revises Its Proposal
The Boeing Company submitted a revised proposal on January 6, 1948 and
negotiations were intensive for about 90 days. At mid-March 15, the
Machinists'
Union offered to submit unresolved articles to arbitration. The Boeing
Company demanded the right of veto in the choice of arbiters and
demanded to submit
the entire contract to arbitration. The Machinists' Union refused
those conditions. On March 26, 1948, under provisions of the new
Taft-Hartley law, the
NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) held an election to determine if
the union was authorized to negotiate a union shop. The vote was a
resounding 12,000
YES to 800 NO.
April Deadlines Set
On April 13, 1948, the Machinists' Union established April 16 as the
deadline for choice of arbiters. The Boeing Company refused to budge.
So, on April
20, the Machinists' Union District Council and 320 shop stewards voted
to strike at 12.30 a.m., April 22, 1948. The Machinists' Union
District Council
met again on April 21 to review the circumstances. One report tells of
some of the reaction:
block quote
"Grand Lodge Representative Cotton addressed this meeting and
cautioned the members as to possible consequences of such strike
action, reminding them of
their weak strategic position, and informing them that the advice of
the Grand Lodge (the national union) was to stay on the job. However,
emotions were
running high and he was booed from the platform."
block quote end
At the prescribed time on April 22, 1948, the Machinists' Union
members laid down their tools and struck the Boeing Company. By April
28, the national
union, International Association of Machinists, granted strike sanction.
Dave Beck's Not-So-Friendly Intervention - Local 451 Formed
On May 28, 1948, Dave Beck, president of Joint Council 28 of the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, announced that Teamsters would
seek jurisdiction
at the Boeing Company. At this time, the IAM was not affiliated with
the American Federation of Labor (AFL), having disaffiliated in 1945
over the failure
of the AFL to settle a jurisdictional dispute between the IAM and the
United Brotherhood of Carpenters.
Beck's raid was intended to capture all of Machinists' Union 751
membership. He organized Aeronautical Workers and Warehousemen Helpers
Union Local 451.
He opened a hiring hall to recruit strike breakers for Boeing. In the
words of Sam Bassett, an attorney on the Teamsters' staff during 1948
(and a founder
of the oldest labor law firm in Seattle), "I am sure that Mr. Allen
will not deny that he came to Dave Beck's office and requested him to
assist in breaking
the strike of the Aero Mechanics' Union."
Beck and Boeing recruited strikebreakers and scabs through most of the
1948 strike period. (Note: The term strikebreaker is used to mean a
person newly
hired during a strike; a scab is an employee who crosses a picket line
set up by co-workers.)
NLRB Acts
In June 1948, the National Labor Relations Board requested District
Court to grant an injunction requiring the Boeing Company to bargain.
The court refused.
By late July, it was becoming difficult for the Machinists' Union to
remain on strike. The Boeing Company refused to bargain. The Boeing
Company, with
Beck and the Teamsters, was recruiting strikebreakers and some members
are becoming scabs. On July 20, the NLRB ordered the Boeing Company
"to cease and
desist from refusing to bargain with Lodge 751" and to reinstate "all
employees who went on strike on April 22, 1948, without prejudice."
In August, William Allen and the Boeing Company announced their
intention both to ignore the NLRB and to carry the case to the U.S.
Supreme Court. The
Boeing Company defied the NLRB until September.
Machinists End Strike
On September 13, 1948, Machinists' Union members went back to work for
the following reasons:
list of 6 items
• They were concerned about the Teamsters Local 451.
• The cost of the strike had gone over $2 million.
• About a third of the original 14,000 members had defected.
• The Boeing Company continued to refuse to bargain.
• The Boeing Company and Beck and the Teamsters continued to recruit strikers.
• The provisions of the new Taft-Hartley Act made the strike more
difficult to win.
list end
The Boeing Company took the workers back because it was accruing a
large financial burden with a fine of $172,000 per day from the NLRB
reinstatement order,
and, probably, most importantly, high military authorities wanted no
further delay in production of the B50 because of Cold War pressures.
This set the stage for the NLRB election between Machinists' Union
District Lodge 751, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 451,
and the Taft-Hartley
required "No Union." The International Association of Machinists,
District Lodge 751's national union, was outside the AFL and had been
since 1945. In
the minds of other AFL affiliates that made IAM local unions the same
as renegade unions and so-called fair game for raiding. Though some
AFL and CIO unions
supported District Lodge 751, the powerful Seattle Central Labor
Council threw its support behind William Allan's "labor statesman"
Dave Beck and Local
451.
The NLRB set the election for November 1, 1949. Despite the help of
AFL president William Green, Beck's Teamsters lost that election.
District Lodge 751
received 8,107 votes; the Teamsters Local 451 received 4,127 votes,
and the Taft-Hartley "No union" received a mere 401 votes.
article end
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Faint Praise for Barack Obama's Embrace of Wealth
As I began reading this article, I thought, "Here is an example of a
No News Article. I mean, who cares what the Obama's do with the rest
of their lives, or how richly they are rewarded for playing patsy to
their Billionaire Masters? The only difference between the Obama's
and all their predecessors, including Gentleman Jimmy Carter, is the
color of their skins. It is the reward for being Faithful to the
Establishment.
But the article did pick up toward the end, and is well worth wading
through the padding(after all, Boardman does need to crank out words
in an effort to make his living).
But I personally feel that time needs to be spent on how Barack Obama
and those who "graced" the Office of the Leader of the World'
Mightiest Empire came to be such War Lords and Murderers. Like Donald
Trump and Bushes I and II, and Bill Clinton, and the Mighty Mouth,
Ronald Reagan, Ford and Nixon and beyond, Barack Obama is simply a
product of our American Empire's Capitalist System.
Capitalism, like Cancer, depends upon growth and expansion. A fast
moving cancer never stops to allow its Host to rebuild before
continuing to grow. Nor does Capitalism. Capitalism long term goals
are short term profits. Never put off until tomorrow what you can
grab today, is the driving motto.
So we working class folk came to this place in our history through our
own weaknesses. We bought into the Capitalists belief that wealth is
the sign of success, and great wealth is the sign of genius. We
accepted the belief that we can expand forever. Even understanding
that our Planet Earth has certain hard and fast limits, we go forward
as if there is no tomorrow...and that may well be our future. We have
become Consumers, not Workers. Everything in today's world is
"sponsored" and we must buy buy buy in order to keep our hopes alive.
We even vote into office the very people who will defend the
Capitalists right to fleece us. I turned on the Mariner, Angels game
last night and the first words over the TV speakers welcomed us to the
name of the Corporation that paid to have the right to call this
baseball stadium by their name. And it was said over and over.
Constant advertising for pennies cost per mention. And that is where
our genius is being focused. New improved methods of getting your
name in front of the suckers, and new improved gadgets to replace the
beads and shiny bobbles we used to bribe the Natives who were blocking
our expansion back on Manhattan Island. And just like a flock of
pigeons, we peck away at the shiny toys, desiring to keep pace with
modern technology and dine on the dwindling resources of Planet Earth.
No, Barack Obama is not the problem, anymore than is Donald Trump.
Even Capitalism is not the root of the problem. The problem we must
solve, if we care to survive, is our own foolish, herd-like mentality
that causes us to believe that we can rape and abuse this Planet Earth
forever. If we can't come to our senses soon, then our Ship of Fools
will be dashed upon the cruel rocks of oblivion.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/3/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Barack Obama. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)
>
> Faint Praise for Barack Obama's Embrace of Wealth
> By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
>
> 03 May 17
> If the Obamas aren't living the American Dream, then who is?
>
> Now they are offering the man $400,000 for making just one 60-minute speech
> (and another $400,000 for a 90-minute speech). That $400,000 is more than
> twice the average net worth of most Americans at their wealthiest ($194,226
> in 2011, mostly in the worth of a home). A Credit Suisse survey in 2014 put
> Americans' average net worth at "a whopping $301,000," still well below
> what
> rich people will pay for a one hour speech by a former president.
>
> Even Obama's annual pension is more than what most Americans own (his
> pension is $205,700 plus roughly $150,000 in perks). Speaking at a rate of
> $400,000 per hour translates to $16 million for a forty-hour work week;
> even
> if the speech takes a day to prepare, that's still $2 million a week. An
> annual household income of $450,000 puts you in the top one percent. It
> takes an income of almost $150,000 to be in the top ten percent. Most
> Americans don't even dream of a payday in the millions.
>
> Why shouldn't he go for it? That $400,000 speech is almost as much as his
> taxable income in 2015 ($436,035, from publicly released tax returns). In
> 2015, the Obamas paid $81,472 in federal income tax, more than Americans'
> average annual household income of $55,775). Citizen Obama is already way
> richer than 90% of his fellow citizens (and almost all Kenyans probably),
> so
> why shouldn't he try to increase that gap between himself and the
> hoi-polloi? At the same time why shouldn't he be trying to narrow the much
> more gigantic gap between himself and his mega-rich play-pals, like Richard
> Branson (net worth over $5 Billion) or David Geffen (net worth over $7
> Billion). Barack and Michelle Obama together have a net worth of only $24
> million or so, up from a mere $8 million when he became president. Or to
> put
> it in perspective, when he became president, Obama was already in the top
> one percent of wealthiest Americans.
>
> None of this is meant to suggest that the Obamas are doing anything wrong
> in
> the way they are living their post-White House lives, insofar as we know.
> At
> least he's not crying poor the way Hillary "dead broke" Clinton did when
> departing Pennsylvania Avenue. Nor has he been smarmily coy like
> then-Presidential multi-millionaire Bush telling The New York Times that,
> in
> retirement, "I'll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol' coffers."
>
> In fairness, it should go without saying that, in the White House,
> President
> Obama was probably, on balance, preferable to his most recent predecessors,
> and is still a notch above the current incumbent. That said, Obama's
> presidency was mostly an ineffectual limp rag of minimal horror that looks
> good mainly in contrast to the glaringly worse high crimes and misdemeanors
> of others. There's no good reason he shouldn't cash in in the same ways his
> less worthy predecessors have. Obama fits quite comfortably into the cliché
> of useless, self-regarding ex-presidential lifestyle to which the only
> recent arguable exception is Jimmy Carter.
>
> Responding to Obama's acceptance of the traditional emoluments of
> out-of-office, the flusterings of the twitterati have often portrayed
> themselves as shocked, shocked to find that there's post-presidential
> enrichment going on (but they express that shock with none of the patent
> irony of Captain Renault in Casablanca). The moral fatuity of these
> nattering nabobs of nonsense is nothing new, it has long been the ruling
> class's farcical manner of flattering itself that it has actual principles
> beyond just having more. The last few minutes of a Bill Maher clip
> illustrate the dominant mind bubble, where only billionaire Nick Hanauer
> reveals any sense of the greater good, wishing Obama had spent time
> building
> houses for Habitat for Humanity and identifying wealth disparity as tearing
> the country apart. The three show biz millionaires at the table don't even
> acknowledge either point.
>
> But then there's Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both of whom seem to
> be running for president in 2020.
>
> Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and former Harvard Law
> School professor, said on SiriusXM, referring to news of Obama's $400,000
> speaking fee:
>
> I was troubled by that … One of the things I talk about in the book [This
> Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class] is the
> influence of money. I describe it as a snake that slithers through
> Washington and that it shows up in so many different ways here in
> Washington…. There's more of us than there is of them. And we've got to use
> our voices and our votes and fight back.
>
> Warren's use of "us" is rather elastic, since she and her husband have a
> net
> worth of roughly $8.75 million, enough to be at the bottom of the top one
> per cent by wealth. The couple's annual income of roughly $950,000 is well
> within the top one percent. She received an advance of $525,000 for her
> book, This Fight Is Our Fight.
>
> Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and former congressman, told
> CNN:
>
> Look, Barack Obama is a friend of mine, and I think he and his family
> represented us for eight years with dignity and intelligence. But I think
> at
> a time when we have so much income and wealth inequality ... I think it
> just
> does not look good…. It's not a good idea, and I'm sorry President Obama
> made that choice.
>
> Sanders is not among the top one per cent in wealth or income. He and his
> wife have a net worth of roughly $1.6 million, putting them comfortably
> within the top ten percent. The couple's joint income of $205,271 in 2014
> is
> also well within the top ten percent. For all of that, Sanders does in fact
> "remain one of the poorer members of the United States Senate."
>
> The point of all this has nothing to do with hypocrisy, which may or may
> not
> exist in any of these examples. What's truly "troubling," what really "does
> not look good," is that, in retrospect, Obama now appears the consummate
> huckster, a man whose gulls remain full of admiration for the man they fail
> to realize has fleeced them from beginning to end with empty eloquence. And
> now the dark joke is that those who benefitted most from all that empty
> eloquence are willing to pay handsomely to hear more of it.
>
> THAT should be troubling, yet few seem troubled by it.
>
> And that's all you really need to know to understand why we're where we are
> now, no longer with a charm shark but with an unabashed con man as leader
> of
> the free world: the richest president in our history, a user and abuser who
> is richer than all prior presidents combined, a man whose wealth was not
> built on actual slavery like Washington's, but close enough by treating
> people like slaves without even the obligation to feed or house them.
>
> The idealized Obama would have – might have – led the resistance to
> President Trump. But then the idealized Obama might have led the resistance
> to Obamacare in favor of single payer, might have led the resistance to the
> Honduran military coup in favor of democracy, might have led the resistance
> to Saudi genocide in Yemen in favor of human rights. In 2009, President
> Obama said, "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat
> bankers on Wall Street," although he managed to do as much. Obama's
> campaign
> included the notion that Wall Street fat cats should pay their fair share
> in
> taxes. That hasn't happened, but at least some of those cats are paying a
> fair share to him.
>
> And that's all fine and good and ironic and amusing and unimportant.
>
> What matters is what he does – and what Warren does, and what Sanders does,
> and what the rest of our real and would-be leaders do, where they stake
> their futures. Recently Obama spoke reflectively [video] about his own
> future: "What is the most important thing I can do for my next job, and
> what
> I'm convinced of, is that although there are all kinds of issues that I
> care
> about, and all kinds of issues that I intend to work on, the single most
> important thing I can do is to help in any way I can prepare the next
> generation of leadership to take up the baton and take their own crack at
> changing the world."
>
> Really? The single most important thing is to kick the can down the road?
> When the house is on fire, the single most important thing is to call an
> architect?
>
> Just as the Bush presidency set the conditions for Obama to become
> president, so did the Obama presidency set the conditions that have
> produced
> President Trump. Obama entered the White House with the wind at his back,
> with Democrats in the majority in Congress, with the country ready for hope
> and change and serious leadership. The result, eight years later, is not
> pretty. Maybe it's not as bad as it seems. Or maybe it's worse.
>
>
>
>
> William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
> print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
> judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
> Corporation
> for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
> nomination
> from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
>
> 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.
>
> e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
>
>
>
>
No News Article. I mean, who cares what the Obama's do with the rest
of their lives, or how richly they are rewarded for playing patsy to
their Billionaire Masters? The only difference between the Obama's
and all their predecessors, including Gentleman Jimmy Carter, is the
color of their skins. It is the reward for being Faithful to the
Establishment.
But the article did pick up toward the end, and is well worth wading
through the padding(after all, Boardman does need to crank out words
in an effort to make his living).
But I personally feel that time needs to be spent on how Barack Obama
and those who "graced" the Office of the Leader of the World'
Mightiest Empire came to be such War Lords and Murderers. Like Donald
Trump and Bushes I and II, and Bill Clinton, and the Mighty Mouth,
Ronald Reagan, Ford and Nixon and beyond, Barack Obama is simply a
product of our American Empire's Capitalist System.
Capitalism, like Cancer, depends upon growth and expansion. A fast
moving cancer never stops to allow its Host to rebuild before
continuing to grow. Nor does Capitalism. Capitalism long term goals
are short term profits. Never put off until tomorrow what you can
grab today, is the driving motto.
So we working class folk came to this place in our history through our
own weaknesses. We bought into the Capitalists belief that wealth is
the sign of success, and great wealth is the sign of genius. We
accepted the belief that we can expand forever. Even understanding
that our Planet Earth has certain hard and fast limits, we go forward
as if there is no tomorrow...and that may well be our future. We have
become Consumers, not Workers. Everything in today's world is
"sponsored" and we must buy buy buy in order to keep our hopes alive.
We even vote into office the very people who will defend the
Capitalists right to fleece us. I turned on the Mariner, Angels game
last night and the first words over the TV speakers welcomed us to the
name of the Corporation that paid to have the right to call this
baseball stadium by their name. And it was said over and over.
Constant advertising for pennies cost per mention. And that is where
our genius is being focused. New improved methods of getting your
name in front of the suckers, and new improved gadgets to replace the
beads and shiny bobbles we used to bribe the Natives who were blocking
our expansion back on Manhattan Island. And just like a flock of
pigeons, we peck away at the shiny toys, desiring to keep pace with
modern technology and dine on the dwindling resources of Planet Earth.
No, Barack Obama is not the problem, anymore than is Donald Trump.
Even Capitalism is not the root of the problem. The problem we must
solve, if we care to survive, is our own foolish, herd-like mentality
that causes us to believe that we can rape and abuse this Planet Earth
forever. If we can't come to our senses soon, then our Ship of Fools
will be dashed upon the cruel rocks of oblivion.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/3/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Barack Obama. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)
>
> Faint Praise for Barack Obama's Embrace of Wealth
> By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
>
> 03 May 17
> If the Obamas aren't living the American Dream, then who is?
>
> Now they are offering the man $400,000 for making just one 60-minute speech
> (and another $400,000 for a 90-minute speech). That $400,000 is more than
> twice the average net worth of most Americans at their wealthiest ($194,226
> in 2011, mostly in the worth of a home). A Credit Suisse survey in 2014 put
> Americans' average net worth at "a whopping $301,000," still well below
> what
> rich people will pay for a one hour speech by a former president.
>
> Even Obama's annual pension is more than what most Americans own (his
> pension is $205,700 plus roughly $150,000 in perks). Speaking at a rate of
> $400,000 per hour translates to $16 million for a forty-hour work week;
> even
> if the speech takes a day to prepare, that's still $2 million a week. An
> annual household income of $450,000 puts you in the top one percent. It
> takes an income of almost $150,000 to be in the top ten percent. Most
> Americans don't even dream of a payday in the millions.
>
> Why shouldn't he go for it? That $400,000 speech is almost as much as his
> taxable income in 2015 ($436,035, from publicly released tax returns). In
> 2015, the Obamas paid $81,472 in federal income tax, more than Americans'
> average annual household income of $55,775). Citizen Obama is already way
> richer than 90% of his fellow citizens (and almost all Kenyans probably),
> so
> why shouldn't he try to increase that gap between himself and the
> hoi-polloi? At the same time why shouldn't he be trying to narrow the much
> more gigantic gap between himself and his mega-rich play-pals, like Richard
> Branson (net worth over $5 Billion) or David Geffen (net worth over $7
> Billion). Barack and Michelle Obama together have a net worth of only $24
> million or so, up from a mere $8 million when he became president. Or to
> put
> it in perspective, when he became president, Obama was already in the top
> one percent of wealthiest Americans.
>
> None of this is meant to suggest that the Obamas are doing anything wrong
> in
> the way they are living their post-White House lives, insofar as we know.
> At
> least he's not crying poor the way Hillary "dead broke" Clinton did when
> departing Pennsylvania Avenue. Nor has he been smarmily coy like
> then-Presidential multi-millionaire Bush telling The New York Times that,
> in
> retirement, "I'll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol' coffers."
>
> In fairness, it should go without saying that, in the White House,
> President
> Obama was probably, on balance, preferable to his most recent predecessors,
> and is still a notch above the current incumbent. That said, Obama's
> presidency was mostly an ineffectual limp rag of minimal horror that looks
> good mainly in contrast to the glaringly worse high crimes and misdemeanors
> of others. There's no good reason he shouldn't cash in in the same ways his
> less worthy predecessors have. Obama fits quite comfortably into the cliché
> of useless, self-regarding ex-presidential lifestyle to which the only
> recent arguable exception is Jimmy Carter.
>
> Responding to Obama's acceptance of the traditional emoluments of
> out-of-office, the flusterings of the twitterati have often portrayed
> themselves as shocked, shocked to find that there's post-presidential
> enrichment going on (but they express that shock with none of the patent
> irony of Captain Renault in Casablanca). The moral fatuity of these
> nattering nabobs of nonsense is nothing new, it has long been the ruling
> class's farcical manner of flattering itself that it has actual principles
> beyond just having more. The last few minutes of a Bill Maher clip
> illustrate the dominant mind bubble, where only billionaire Nick Hanauer
> reveals any sense of the greater good, wishing Obama had spent time
> building
> houses for Habitat for Humanity and identifying wealth disparity as tearing
> the country apart. The three show biz millionaires at the table don't even
> acknowledge either point.
>
> But then there's Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both of whom seem to
> be running for president in 2020.
>
> Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and former Harvard Law
> School professor, said on SiriusXM, referring to news of Obama's $400,000
> speaking fee:
>
> I was troubled by that … One of the things I talk about in the book [This
> Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class] is the
> influence of money. I describe it as a snake that slithers through
> Washington and that it shows up in so many different ways here in
> Washington…. There's more of us than there is of them. And we've got to use
> our voices and our votes and fight back.
>
> Warren's use of "us" is rather elastic, since she and her husband have a
> net
> worth of roughly $8.75 million, enough to be at the bottom of the top one
> per cent by wealth. The couple's annual income of roughly $950,000 is well
> within the top one percent. She received an advance of $525,000 for her
> book, This Fight Is Our Fight.
>
> Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and former congressman, told
> CNN:
>
> Look, Barack Obama is a friend of mine, and I think he and his family
> represented us for eight years with dignity and intelligence. But I think
> at
> a time when we have so much income and wealth inequality ... I think it
> just
> does not look good…. It's not a good idea, and I'm sorry President Obama
> made that choice.
>
> Sanders is not among the top one per cent in wealth or income. He and his
> wife have a net worth of roughly $1.6 million, putting them comfortably
> within the top ten percent. The couple's joint income of $205,271 in 2014
> is
> also well within the top ten percent. For all of that, Sanders does in fact
> "remain one of the poorer members of the United States Senate."
>
> The point of all this has nothing to do with hypocrisy, which may or may
> not
> exist in any of these examples. What's truly "troubling," what really "does
> not look good," is that, in retrospect, Obama now appears the consummate
> huckster, a man whose gulls remain full of admiration for the man they fail
> to realize has fleeced them from beginning to end with empty eloquence. And
> now the dark joke is that those who benefitted most from all that empty
> eloquence are willing to pay handsomely to hear more of it.
>
> THAT should be troubling, yet few seem troubled by it.
>
> And that's all you really need to know to understand why we're where we are
> now, no longer with a charm shark but with an unabashed con man as leader
> of
> the free world: the richest president in our history, a user and abuser who
> is richer than all prior presidents combined, a man whose wealth was not
> built on actual slavery like Washington's, but close enough by treating
> people like slaves without even the obligation to feed or house them.
>
> The idealized Obama would have – might have – led the resistance to
> President Trump. But then the idealized Obama might have led the resistance
> to Obamacare in favor of single payer, might have led the resistance to the
> Honduran military coup in favor of democracy, might have led the resistance
> to Saudi genocide in Yemen in favor of human rights. In 2009, President
> Obama said, "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat
> bankers on Wall Street," although he managed to do as much. Obama's
> campaign
> included the notion that Wall Street fat cats should pay their fair share
> in
> taxes. That hasn't happened, but at least some of those cats are paying a
> fair share to him.
>
> And that's all fine and good and ironic and amusing and unimportant.
>
> What matters is what he does – and what Warren does, and what Sanders does,
> and what the rest of our real and would-be leaders do, where they stake
> their futures. Recently Obama spoke reflectively [video] about his own
> future: "What is the most important thing I can do for my next job, and
> what
> I'm convinced of, is that although there are all kinds of issues that I
> care
> about, and all kinds of issues that I intend to work on, the single most
> important thing I can do is to help in any way I can prepare the next
> generation of leadership to take up the baton and take their own crack at
> changing the world."
>
> Really? The single most important thing is to kick the can down the road?
> When the house is on fire, the single most important thing is to call an
> architect?
>
> Just as the Bush presidency set the conditions for Obama to become
> president, so did the Obama presidency set the conditions that have
> produced
> President Trump. Obama entered the White House with the wind at his back,
> with Democrats in the majority in Congress, with the country ready for hope
> and change and serious leadership. The result, eight years later, is not
> pretty. Maybe it's not as bad as it seems. Or maybe it's worse.
>
>
>
>
> William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
> print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
> judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
> Corporation
> for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
> nomination
> from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
>
> 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.
>
> e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
>
>
>
>
Tuesday, May 2, 2017
Fwd: regarding the proposed minimum wage bill by Sen. Murray and Sanders
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 07:00:25 -0700
Subject: regarding the proposed minimum wage bill by Sen. Murray and Sanders
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@freelists.org>
Cc: carjar82 <carjar82@gmail.com>
This morning I received a request from Senator Patty Murray to support
a proposed bill by herself and Bernie Sanders to raise the minimum
wage to $15 per hour, by the year 2024. Since the article Sen. Murray
asked me to read is on Face Book, which I will not subscribe to, and
in the Seattle Times, which I cannot read without subscribing to the
on-line edition, I am unable to send along that Op Ed article. But
here is my response to Senator Murray:
A brief word of explanation:
I am a strong supporter of both Senators Murray and Sanders. But I
refuse to sign up with Face Book, so I am unable to read the article
in the Seattle Times.
I am also totally blind, and use a screen reader(Jaws) to access
information on-line. I had hoped to post the article on Blind
Democracy, a national list used by many Progressive blind people(and
at least a couple of Radicals).
While I applaud any legislation that raises the minimum wage to $15
per hour, I feel as if it is hope deferred when the target date is set
so far in the future. 2024, for many workers, might as well be
"Never!"
I understand that in order to have even a slight chance of passage,
such a proposal needs to move carefully. But where is the
conversation regarding the fact that workers have been cheated out of
a decent living wage for many long years? $22 per hour would be
closer to where the minimum wage should be set, Today! not at some
future date. By 2024, the minimum wage will most likely need to be
adjusted to around $25 per hour.
And what about a Minimum health protection? And what about fully paid
basic education...to whatever level each individual achieves? And
what about the millions of American Working Poor who are imprisoned in
our nation's slums and ghettos, where they are guaranteed substandard
life. Where they are faced with daily danger, attacks by American
raised Terrorists...police, loan sharks, banks, and lack of education
and basic health maintenance? Not to even scratch the surface.
As I say, we do need to be realistic about what should be our
priorities, and how fast we can move toward our goals of an equal
America. But maybe it's time to say that we can't fight oppression by
talking nice to our oppressors.
I do recall saying that I would be brief...well, like any political
American, I can't resist babbling. But I'll stop for now, frustrated
both by the exclusion from the article in the Seattle Times, and by
the slow moving wheels of Justice.
Nonetheless, I am out here, supporting Senators Murray and Sanders,
among others.
Cordially,
Carl Jarvis, Director
Peninsula Rehabilitation Services
2510 Snow Creek Road: Quilcene, WA 98376
phone: 360-765-4239
email: carjar82@gmail.com
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 07:00:25 -0700
Subject: regarding the proposed minimum wage bill by Sen. Murray and Sanders
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@freelists.org>
Cc: carjar82 <carjar82@gmail.com>
This morning I received a request from Senator Patty Murray to support
a proposed bill by herself and Bernie Sanders to raise the minimum
wage to $15 per hour, by the year 2024. Since the article Sen. Murray
asked me to read is on Face Book, which I will not subscribe to, and
in the Seattle Times, which I cannot read without subscribing to the
on-line edition, I am unable to send along that Op Ed article. But
here is my response to Senator Murray:
A brief word of explanation:
I am a strong supporter of both Senators Murray and Sanders. But I
refuse to sign up with Face Book, so I am unable to read the article
in the Seattle Times.
I am also totally blind, and use a screen reader(Jaws) to access
information on-line. I had hoped to post the article on Blind
Democracy, a national list used by many Progressive blind people(and
at least a couple of Radicals).
While I applaud any legislation that raises the minimum wage to $15
per hour, I feel as if it is hope deferred when the target date is set
so far in the future. 2024, for many workers, might as well be
"Never!"
I understand that in order to have even a slight chance of passage,
such a proposal needs to move carefully. But where is the
conversation regarding the fact that workers have been cheated out of
a decent living wage for many long years? $22 per hour would be
closer to where the minimum wage should be set, Today! not at some
future date. By 2024, the minimum wage will most likely need to be
adjusted to around $25 per hour.
And what about a Minimum health protection? And what about fully paid
basic education...to whatever level each individual achieves? And
what about the millions of American Working Poor who are imprisoned in
our nation's slums and ghettos, where they are guaranteed substandard
life. Where they are faced with daily danger, attacks by American
raised Terrorists...police, loan sharks, banks, and lack of education
and basic health maintenance? Not to even scratch the surface.
As I say, we do need to be realistic about what should be our
priorities, and how fast we can move toward our goals of an equal
America. But maybe it's time to say that we can't fight oppression by
talking nice to our oppressors.
I do recall saying that I would be brief...well, like any political
American, I can't resist babbling. But I'll stop for now, frustrated
both by the exclusion from the article in the Seattle Times, and by
the slow moving wheels of Justice.
Nonetheless, I am out here, supporting Senators Murray and Sanders,
among others.
Cordially,
Carl Jarvis, Director
Peninsula Rehabilitation Services
2510 Snow Creek Road: Quilcene, WA 98376
phone: 360-765-4239
email: carjar82@gmail.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)