If it were not for some outspoken, brave spokespersons in the field of
work for the disabled, we, and our needs, would be ignored.
Especially we blind people. We truly are the "Invisible Minority"
But we will only be victims if we continue to act like victims.
Fortunately we belong to a strong national organization that knows the
value of building strong state organizations, and extending its roots
deep into the towns and rural communities where most of us live.
As one who lived nearly 60 years in the Metropolitan Seattle Sprawl,
and escaped to live for the past 25 years as a Contented Country
Bumpkin, I full well understand the need for reliable, inexpensive
transportation. I am equally aware of the need of taxi cab drivers to
earn a living wage. And, just for the record, my sympathies are
mostly with the Cabbies, since I am also a member of the Working
Class. But regardless of where we come from, can we agree that the
solution is not one of solving the transportation needs of the
Disabled, by under compensating the thousands of drivers who are
themselves feeling a financial crisis?
Perhaps the LIFT Board of Directors believed that there were large
numbers of retired people just looking for something to do to while
away their retirement years. And I'm sure such people do exist. But
far and away are those people who have been retired or displaced, but
still need additional income to make ends meet.
As often happens with desperate people, they hear what they want to
hear. LIFT made a good sales pitch, and many folks, with their backs
to the wall, bought it as the solution to their financial problems.
While we might debate how matters came to the present crisis, the fact
is that the drivers learned that their expectations were unfounded.
They learned the hard way, the difference between "employees" and
"contractors". Sadly, there is another old adage that they had to
revisit. It goes, "Them what's got, gits". While the drivers are
struggling to make ends meet as costs for doing business rise, the
LIFT Board members are busy dividing up millions of dollars among
themselves. It is not my purpose in this article to debate whether or
not this is fair. Obviously the Board members believe it to be their
just returns. But my concern is why it always seems to come down to
the "needy" being pitted against the "down trodden"?
In my mind, we need to try another approach to solving the
transportation needs of the disabled. It's obvious that the "For
Profit" approach is running into rough Seas, the same as the
established Taxi services have experienced.
By way of setting up my "solution" so you all buy in, I would point
out that we are all tax payers. Whether or not we pay income taxes or
not, each time we spend money, some of it finds its way back to our
government. Secondly, that government is *OUR government, too. Our
government is set in place in order to meet certain needs that we
cannot provide on an individual basis. We pay for public schools,
fire and police protection, public utilities, and on and on whether we
use them or not. We, the disabled people, have paid a share of the
public services, for the good of all citizens.
Therefor, as full participating citizens, should we not have the same
access to public transportation as is afforded all able bodied
citizens? We disabled folk did not create a society dependent on a
need for personal transportation.
We disabled citizens want to be full participating members in our Work
Force, enabling ourselves the ability to earn a decent living and to
pay our own way. In order to do this, we need low cost public
transportation, available when we need it, to take us where we need to
go in a timely way. And there is only one way to cover such a cost.
Government subsidy. A door to door transportation service for
disabled citizens, paid by all of us in order to ensure that all of us
are able to exercise our right to be First Class Citizens.
Cordially,
Carl Jarvis
On 5/10/19, Debby Phillips <semisweetdebby@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, but it's becoming more like Justice for Some. I think next time I say
> the Pledge of Allegiance I'm going to change the words, because that's what
> it seems to be. Then if asked why I said that, I can explain that justice
> does not seem to be done for those who are poor, disabled, and People of
> Color. Debby
> On May 9, 2019 11:24 AM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Seems that we're still debating what it is to be an American Citizen.
>> Now, I understand that LIFT feels it can't be expected to solve
>> everyone's transportation needs, but I would remind LIFT that as an
>> Older Blind taxpayer who has spent over 65 years paying for the roads
>> that LIFT drivers trundle about on, I expect to be included in their
>> services. I recall the battles over curb cuts and wheelchair lifts on
>> transit buses. Each time another access barrier is uncovered it's the
>> same old battle. Somewhere in the depths of my brain I recall the
>> words, "...with liberty and justice for *ALL!".
>>
>> Carl Jarvis
>>
>> On 5/9/19, Denise Colley <dmc0124@comcast.net> wrote:
>> > From: Kelly Gasque via leadership [mailto:leadership@acblists.org]
>> > Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2019 9:56 AM
>> > To: leadership@acblists.org; announce@acblists.org
>> > Subject: [leadership] Article: Lyft fights to avoid Americans with
>> > Disabilities Act in federal court
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Lyft fights to avoid Americans with Disabilities Act in federal court
>> >
>> > Article link:
>> > https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2019/05/02/lyft-fights-to-avoid-americans-with-disabilities-act-in-federal-court-1002249
>> >
>> > Lyft argues it should not be subject to the Americans with Disabilities
>> > Act
>> > and is fighting a federal class action lawsuit filed in Westchester
>> > County
>> > on the grounds that "it is not in the transportation business."
>> >
>> > It's an argument long employed by app-based companies like Lyft and
>> > Uber,
>> > and it's one that experts in the field continue to scoff at.
>> >
>> > "According to their public filings their mission is to improve people's
>> > lives with the world's best transportation," said former New York City
>> > Taxi
>> > Commissioner Meera Joshi. "Or maybe it should be improving some people's
>> > lives because throughout the country most passengers that use a
>> > wheelchair
>> > still can't get a Lyft."
>> >
>> > Lyft continues to bill itself as a better-behaved version of arch-rival
>> > Uber, but this is only its latest effort to avoid government regulations
>> > designed to make transportation more accessible to people with
>> > disabilities.
>> > It's facing another class-action lawsuit
>> > <https://mandrillapp.com/track/click/30489975/dralegal.org?p=eyJzIjoiU0NBamdPc0hZXy11MlcxLWItYWY5VmNHNU8wIiwidiI6MSwicCI6IntcInVcIjozMDQ4OTk3NSxcInZcIjoxLFwidXJsXCI6XCJodHRwczpcXFwvXFxcL2RyYWxlZ2FsLm9yZ1xcXC9wcmVzc1xcXC9seWZ0LXN1ZWQtZm9yLWlsbGVnYWxseS1leGNsdWRpbmctYmF5LWFyZWEtd2hlZWxjaGFpci11c2Vyc1xcXC9cIixcImlkXCI6XCJkYjU2NzNlOTEzNjg0MTdmOGZlNzY0ODU4YmM5ODkyMlwiLFwidXJsX2lkc1wiOltcImE1ZTI0OWUwNGVjMzc5YmI2YWJiY2U4ZGUwNWQ4N2MyMmM1MDA0OThcIl19In0>
>> > , that one in the Bay Area, claiming the company discriminates against
>> > people with disabilities.
>> >
>> > In its filings
>> > <https://mandrillapp.com/track/click/30489975/www.sec.gov?p=eyJzIjoiRm9hdm5Ud0pDcXBCb3kwZmFja3FXVldxREF3IiwidiI6MSwicCI6IntcInVcIjozMDQ4OTk3NSxcInZcIjoxLFwidXJsXCI6XCJodHRwczpcXFwvXFxcL3d3dy5zZWMuZ292XFxcL0FyY2hpdmVzXFxcL2VkZ2FyXFxcL2RhdGFcXFwvMTc1OTUwOVxcXC8wMDAxMTkzMTI1MTkwNTk4NDlcXFwvZDYzMzUxN2RzMS5odG1cIixcImlkXCI6XCJkYjU2NzNlOTEzNjg0MTdmOGZlNzY0ODU4YmM5ODkyMlwiLFwidXJsX2lkc1wiOltcImVkMGVkMzIxMGJmYWNmODAyYzk5ZjM0Nzg0NDcwNWQ2Yjc3OTJmMzBcIl19In0>
>> > with the SEC in March, ahead of its public offering, Lyft acknowledged
>> > its
>> > ongoing legal battles against having to comply with the Americans with
>> > Disabilities Act, but said it disputes "allegations of wrongdoing and
>> > intend
>> > to continue to defend ourselves vigorously in these matters."
>> >
>> > "For a company that says they want to do the right thing — they should
>> > do
>> > the right thing," said attorney Jeremiah Lee Frei-Pearson, who is
>> > representing the plaintiffs in the New York class action lawsuit. "Not
>> > serving people with disabilities is very inconsistent with the public
>> > message that Lyft wants to send as being an inclusive and progressive
>> > company."
>> >
>> > Campbell Matthews, a spokesperson for Lyft, declined to comment on the
>> > Westchester litigation, but in an emailed statement suggested the
>> > company's
>> > notion of "accessibility" is more all-embracing than the one put forth
>> > by
>> > advocates for the disabled.
>> >
>> > "We think about accessibility broadly and know that many who were
>> > previously
>> > underserved by transit and taxis are now able to rely on Lyft for
>> > convenient
>> > and affordable rides," she said.
>> >
>> > That argument doesn't satisfy Harriet Lowell of White Plains who, with
>> > Westchester Disabled on the Move, filed
>> > <https://mandrillapp.com/track/click/30489975/www.politico.com?p=eyJzIjoiaEY0Qkc1ZkVZSzlWLXluX0lxWXdwelptWU5vIiwidiI6MSwicCI6IntcInVcIjozMDQ4OTk3NSxcInZcIjoxLFwidXJsXCI6XCJodHRwczpcXFwvXFxcL3d3dy5wb2xpdGljby5jb21cXFwvc3RhdGVzXFxcL2ZcXFwvP2lkPTAwMDAwMTZhLTc1OGUtZDc5Zi1hZGZiLWY3OGVjNzc0MDAwMVwiLFwiaWRcIjpcImRiNTY3M2U5MTM2ODQxN2Y4ZmU3NjQ4NThiYzk4OTIyXCIsXCJ1cmxfaWRzXCI6W1wiMGRkNzkxOTE5Yjk5ZTU4MzVlMmEzY2E1NGVjZDk0MjdkY2JlNDIwMFwiXX0ifQ>
>> > a class action lawsuit in August 2017 against Lyft for the company's
>> > failure to equitably serve disabled people in all areas of the country.
>> >
>> > Lowell, who uses a motorized scooter, has been unable to use Lyft
>> > because of
>> > the paucity of wheelchair accessible for-hire vehicles where she lives.
>> > But
>> > she has a husband willing to drive her around.
>> >
>> > "Not everybody has that: people who live alone who are disabled and have
>> > less resources than I do," she said.
>> >
>> > Lyft moved to dismiss
>> > <https://mandrillapp.com/track/click/30489975/www.politico.com?p=eyJzIjoiS1pxLXNKZTVPeHRvWmJkdEFEMXJoVXI2bG9rIiwidiI6MSwicCI6IntcInVcIjozMDQ4OTk3NSxcInZcIjoxLFwidXJsXCI6XCJodHRwczpcXFwvXFxcL3d3dy5wb2xpdGljby5jb21cXFwvc3RhdGVzXFxcL2ZcXFwvP2lkPTAwMDAwMTZhLTc1NjYtZDEwZi1hZGVmLTdkNmYzNTJlMDAwMVwiLFwiaWRcIjpcImRiNTY3M2U5MTM2ODQxN2Y4ZmU3NjQ4NThiYzk4OTIyXCIsXCJ1cmxfaWRzXCI6W1wiMGRkNzkxOTE5Yjk5ZTU4MzVlMmEzY2E1NGVjZDk0MjdkY2JlNDIwMFwiXX0ifQ>
>> > Lowell's suit on the grounds that Lyft users agree to solve disputes in
>> > arbitration and waive their rights to sue in a class action lawsuit as
>> > part
>> > of the company's terms of service. A federal judge dismissed that
>> > request.
>> >
>> > Now, according to Lowell's lawyers, Lyft is resisting the judge's
>> > efforts to
>> > get the parties to mediate, which the lawyers interpret as an
>> > unwillingness
>> > to solve the problem.
>> >
>> > Without mediation, a protracted legal battle is expected, with Lyft
>> > continuing to dispute its obligations under the ADA. That's more time
>> > that
>> > Lowell and others with disabilities will not be able to access the
>> > company's
>> > cars.
>> >
>> > "We just want Lyft to comply with the law and treat people with
>> > disabilities
>> > equally," said Frei-Pearson. "There are many different ways Lyft could
>> > do
>> > this and it's not for us to dictate which one they use."
>> >
>> > Uber does not provide ADA service in Westchester, either. Frei-Pearson
>> > said
>> > he and his colleagues have been reluctant to also sue Uber, because
>> > there's
>> > already national litigation against the company and it appears to be
>> > taking
>> > more steps toward accessibility.
>> >
>> > Last June, New York City settled a suit with Lyft, Uber and Via over
>> > requirements that the companies provide more service to people in
>> > wheelchairs. Under the settlement, app-based ridesharing companies in
>> > New
>> > York City must service at least 80 percent of requests for
>> > wheelchair-accessible vehicles in under 10 minutes and 90 percent in
>> > under
>> > 15 minutes by mid-2021.
>> >
>> > While many see that settlement as progress, advocates say the federal
>> > class
>> > action suit is a way to make the companies accountable on a national
>> > scale.
>> >
>> > "What I want is for Lyft to make themselves accessible throughout
>> > America,"
>> > Lowell said. "It's definitely not about money for me. I'm not in need of
>> > money. I'm really in need of a ride."
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Image removed by sender.
>> >
>> >
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wcb-l mailing list
>> Wcb-l@wcbinfo.org
>> http://wcbinfo.org/mailman/listinfo/wcb-l_wcbinfo.org
>
Friday, May 10, 2019
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Another insightful article by Chris Hedges
Agree or disagree, Chris Hedges raises issues that are mostly ignored
by the Mass Media.
Carl Jarvis
*******
Truthdig
The destruction of the rule of law, an action essential to establishing an
authoritarian or totalitarian state, began long before the arrival of the
Trump administration. The George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq
and implementation of a doctrine of pre-emptive war were war crimes under
international law. The federal government's ongoing wholesale surveillance
of the citizenry, another legacy of the Bush administration, mocks our
constitutional right to privacy. Assassinating a U.S. citizen under order of
the executive branch, as the Obama administration did when it murdered the
radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, revokes due process. The steady
nullification of constitutional rights by judicial fiat—a legal trick that
has enabled corporations to buy the electoral system in the name of free
speech—has turned politicians from the two ruling parties into amoral tools
of corporate power. Lobbyists in Washington and the state capitals write
legislation to legalize tax boycotts, destroy regulations and government
oversight, pump staggering sums of money into the war machine and accelerate
the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history, one that has
involved looting the U.S. Treasury of trillions of dollars in the wake of
the massive financial fraud that set off the 2008 economic collapse. The
ruling elites, by slavishly serving corporate interests, created a system of
government that effectively denied the citizen the use of state power. This
decades-long disregard by the two major political parties for the rule of
law and their distortion of government into a handmaiden for corporations
set the stage for Donald Trump's naked contempt for legality and
accountability. It made inevitable our kakistocracy, rule by the worst or
most unscrupulous ("kakistocracy" is derived from the Greek words kakistos,
meaning worst, and kratos, meaning rule).
Those in the parade of imbeciles, grifters, con artists, conspiracy
theorists, racists, Trump family members, charlatans, generals and Christian
fascists, all of whom often see power as a way to enrich themselves at the
expense of the taxpayer, are too many to list here. They include former
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner,
Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke (who blamed "environmental terrorist groups"
for the 2018 California wildfires, hired private jets to fly himself around
the country and opened public lands for mineral and gas exploitation),
former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt (who held
lavish dinners with the coal-mining and chemical executives whose companies
he then deregulated) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. This moral
swamp also contains bizarre, Svengali-like figures darting in and out of the
shadows, such as Stephen Miller, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne
Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci and Omarosa
Manigault Newman, not to mention paid-off porn stars and mistresses, sleazy
lawyers and bungling and corrupt campaign managers.
At the center of this clown court is Trump, who, if the rule of law was in
place, would have been impeached on his first day in office for violating
the Constitution's emoluments clause; by violating that prohibition, this
chief executive is raking in millions from officials of foreign governments
and lobbyists who stay at his hotels and resorts and use his golf courses.
Trump not only does not attempt to mask his profiting from his office but in
corporate promotional material says that those who stay at his properties
may be able to get a photo with the president of the United States. As
illustrated by the Robert Mueller report and by Attorney General William
Barr's open contempt for Congress, Trump does not even bother to pay lip
service to the requirements of the law or the Constitution.
The mechanisms that once made democracy possible have withered and died. We
no longer have elections free of corporate control; real legislative debate;
an independent press rooted in verifiable fact that lifts up the voices and
concerns of the citizens rather than peddling conspiracy theories such as
"Russiagate" or cheerleading for disastrous military interventions and
occupations; academic institutions that vigorously examine and critique the
nature of power; or diplomacy, negotiation, détente and compromise. Puffed
up by self-importance, intoxicated by the ability to wield police and
military power, despots and their grotesque courtiers are freed with the
collapse of the rule of law to carry out endless vendettas against enemies
real and imagined until their own paranoia and fear define the lives of
those they subjugate. This is where we have come, not because of Trump, who
is the grotesque product of our failed democracy, but because the
institutions that were designed to prevent tyranny no longer function.
Trump will eviscerate what little legal restraint remains. The Republican
Party, which has been transformed into a Trump personality cult, will not
stop him. Neither will the Democratic Party leadership, which thinks Trump
will be an easy target in the 2020 presidential election, a foolish mistake
similar to the one Hillary Clinton made in the 2016 campaign. That the
Democratic Party elites place their hope to regain power in Joe Biden, a
goofy male version of Clinton, is yet another example of the colossal
failure of the democratic process. It shows how out of touch the ruling
elites are with the growing social inequality, economic stagnation,
suffering, disempowerment and rage that afflict over half the population.
The old forms of political theater and the ruling ideology of neoliberalism
that buttressed the ruling elites in the past do not work anymore. Yet, the
mind-numbing presidential campaigns, begun two years before the vote and
devoid of meaningful content, are once again dominating the airwaves with
empty slogans and the posturing by carefully packaged political
personalities. This burlesque is anti-politics masquerading as politics. Its
disingenuousness, obvious to most of the country, is what made Trump's crude
taunts and ridiculing of the system so attractive to betrayed voters. Trump
may be inept, vile and a con artist, but in this system of anti-politics you
vote not for what you want, but against those you hate. And the established
elites, the Bushes and the Clintons, are loathed far more than Trump by most
of the country.
The billions in campaign funds provided to selected candidates by the
wealthy and corporations, as the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin wrote,
created, before the arrival of Trump on the political landscape, "a pecking
order that calibrates, in strictly quantitative and objective terms, whose
interests have priority. The amount of corruption that regularly takes place
before elections means that corruption is not an anomaly but an essential
element in the functioning of managed democracy. The entrenched system of
bribery and corruption involves no physical violence, no brown-shirted
troopers, no coercion of the political opposition. While the tactics are not
those of the Nazis, the end result is the inverted equivalent. Opposition
has not been liquidated but rendered feckless."
Mass culture has for decades been awash in the lies skillfully disseminated
by the public relations and advertising industries. These lies appeal to our
vanity and insecurities. They are used to sell us products or experiences
that promise an unachievable happiness. These forms of manipulation, which
confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, also were adopted by
political parties before Trump gained the presidency. "The result," Wolin
wrote in "Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Spector of
Inverted Totalitarianism," "has been the pollution of the ecology of
politics by the inauthentic politics of misrepresentative government,
claiming to be what it is not, compassionate and conservative, god-fearing
and moral."
Armando Iannucci's movie "The Death of Stalin," a brilliant black comedy,
captures what happens when self-interested narcissists, buffoons and
gangsters make the laws and rule a state. Once power is based solely on
blind personal loyalty and whim, anything, including wholesale murder,
becomes possible. Rights are transformed into privileges that can be
instantly revoked. Lies replace truth. Opinions replace facts. History is
erased and rewritten. The cult of leadership replaces politics. Paranoia
grips a ruling elite that feeds off conspiracy theories, sees mortal enemies
everywhere and increasingly lives in a hermetically sealed nonreality-based
universe. Force becomes the sole language despots use to communicate to a
restive population and the outside world.
Despotic regimes are uninterested in, and often incapable of understanding,
nuance, complexity and difference. They perpetuate themselves through
constant drama and never-ending crusades against internal and external
enemies that are presented as existential threats to the nation. When real
enemies cannot be found, they are invented. The persecution of
"undesirables" starts with the demonized—immigrants, the undocumented, poor
people of color and Muslims, along with those under occupation in the Middle
East or socialists in Venezuela—but these "undesirables" are only the
beginning. Soon everyone is suspect.
Trump's capricious and arbitrary decisions to remove those around him from
power keep his courtiers constantly on edge. The instability fuels the
vicious court intrigues that characterize all despotism. Trump's inner
circle, aware that the only criterion to remain in power is an exaggerated
and obsequious personal loyalty acutely attuned to his mercurial moods and
temper tantrums, base all decisions on pleasing the despot. This leads to
extreme mismanagement and corruption.
The corporate capitalists who hold real power view Trump as an
embarrassment. They would prefer to put a more dignified face on the
American empire, one like Biden who will do their bidding with the decorum
of a traditional president. But they will work with Trump. He has given them
huge tax cuts, is slashing what is left of government oversight and
regulation and has increased the budgets for internal security and the
military. It may be an uncomfortable relationship, as was the relationship
between German industrialists and the buffoonish leaders of the Nazi Party,
but for the corporate elites it is far preferable to having to deal with a
Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren. Capitalists, throughout history, have
backed fascism to thwart even the most tepid forms of socialism. All the
pieces are in place. The hollowing out of our democratic institutions, which
cannot be blamed on Trump, makes tyranny inevitable.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a
New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree
program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers…
Chris Hedges
by the Mass Media.
Carl Jarvis
*******
Truthdig
The destruction of the rule of law, an action essential to establishing an
authoritarian or totalitarian state, began long before the arrival of the
Trump administration. The George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq
and implementation of a doctrine of pre-emptive war were war crimes under
international law. The federal government's ongoing wholesale surveillance
of the citizenry, another legacy of the Bush administration, mocks our
constitutional right to privacy. Assassinating a U.S. citizen under order of
the executive branch, as the Obama administration did when it murdered the
radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, revokes due process. The steady
nullification of constitutional rights by judicial fiat—a legal trick that
has enabled corporations to buy the electoral system in the name of free
speech—has turned politicians from the two ruling parties into amoral tools
of corporate power. Lobbyists in Washington and the state capitals write
legislation to legalize tax boycotts, destroy regulations and government
oversight, pump staggering sums of money into the war machine and accelerate
the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history, one that has
involved looting the U.S. Treasury of trillions of dollars in the wake of
the massive financial fraud that set off the 2008 economic collapse. The
ruling elites, by slavishly serving corporate interests, created a system of
government that effectively denied the citizen the use of state power. This
decades-long disregard by the two major political parties for the rule of
law and their distortion of government into a handmaiden for corporations
set the stage for Donald Trump's naked contempt for legality and
accountability. It made inevitable our kakistocracy, rule by the worst or
most unscrupulous ("kakistocracy" is derived from the Greek words kakistos,
meaning worst, and kratos, meaning rule).
Those in the parade of imbeciles, grifters, con artists, conspiracy
theorists, racists, Trump family members, charlatans, generals and Christian
fascists, all of whom often see power as a way to enrich themselves at the
expense of the taxpayer, are too many to list here. They include former
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner,
Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke (who blamed "environmental terrorist groups"
for the 2018 California wildfires, hired private jets to fly himself around
the country and opened public lands for mineral and gas exploitation),
former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt (who held
lavish dinners with the coal-mining and chemical executives whose companies
he then deregulated) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. This moral
swamp also contains bizarre, Svengali-like figures darting in and out of the
shadows, such as Stephen Miller, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne
Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci and Omarosa
Manigault Newman, not to mention paid-off porn stars and mistresses, sleazy
lawyers and bungling and corrupt campaign managers.
At the center of this clown court is Trump, who, if the rule of law was in
place, would have been impeached on his first day in office for violating
the Constitution's emoluments clause; by violating that prohibition, this
chief executive is raking in millions from officials of foreign governments
and lobbyists who stay at his hotels and resorts and use his golf courses.
Trump not only does not attempt to mask his profiting from his office but in
corporate promotional material says that those who stay at his properties
may be able to get a photo with the president of the United States. As
illustrated by the Robert Mueller report and by Attorney General William
Barr's open contempt for Congress, Trump does not even bother to pay lip
service to the requirements of the law or the Constitution.
The mechanisms that once made democracy possible have withered and died. We
no longer have elections free of corporate control; real legislative debate;
an independent press rooted in verifiable fact that lifts up the voices and
concerns of the citizens rather than peddling conspiracy theories such as
"Russiagate" or cheerleading for disastrous military interventions and
occupations; academic institutions that vigorously examine and critique the
nature of power; or diplomacy, negotiation, détente and compromise. Puffed
up by self-importance, intoxicated by the ability to wield police and
military power, despots and their grotesque courtiers are freed with the
collapse of the rule of law to carry out endless vendettas against enemies
real and imagined until their own paranoia and fear define the lives of
those they subjugate. This is where we have come, not because of Trump, who
is the grotesque product of our failed democracy, but because the
institutions that were designed to prevent tyranny no longer function.
Trump will eviscerate what little legal restraint remains. The Republican
Party, which has been transformed into a Trump personality cult, will not
stop him. Neither will the Democratic Party leadership, which thinks Trump
will be an easy target in the 2020 presidential election, a foolish mistake
similar to the one Hillary Clinton made in the 2016 campaign. That the
Democratic Party elites place their hope to regain power in Joe Biden, a
goofy male version of Clinton, is yet another example of the colossal
failure of the democratic process. It shows how out of touch the ruling
elites are with the growing social inequality, economic stagnation,
suffering, disempowerment and rage that afflict over half the population.
The old forms of political theater and the ruling ideology of neoliberalism
that buttressed the ruling elites in the past do not work anymore. Yet, the
mind-numbing presidential campaigns, begun two years before the vote and
devoid of meaningful content, are once again dominating the airwaves with
empty slogans and the posturing by carefully packaged political
personalities. This burlesque is anti-politics masquerading as politics. Its
disingenuousness, obvious to most of the country, is what made Trump's crude
taunts and ridiculing of the system so attractive to betrayed voters. Trump
may be inept, vile and a con artist, but in this system of anti-politics you
vote not for what you want, but against those you hate. And the established
elites, the Bushes and the Clintons, are loathed far more than Trump by most
of the country.
The billions in campaign funds provided to selected candidates by the
wealthy and corporations, as the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin wrote,
created, before the arrival of Trump on the political landscape, "a pecking
order that calibrates, in strictly quantitative and objective terms, whose
interests have priority. The amount of corruption that regularly takes place
before elections means that corruption is not an anomaly but an essential
element in the functioning of managed democracy. The entrenched system of
bribery and corruption involves no physical violence, no brown-shirted
troopers, no coercion of the political opposition. While the tactics are not
those of the Nazis, the end result is the inverted equivalent. Opposition
has not been liquidated but rendered feckless."
Mass culture has for decades been awash in the lies skillfully disseminated
by the public relations and advertising industries. These lies appeal to our
vanity and insecurities. They are used to sell us products or experiences
that promise an unachievable happiness. These forms of manipulation, which
confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, also were adopted by
political parties before Trump gained the presidency. "The result," Wolin
wrote in "Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Spector of
Inverted Totalitarianism," "has been the pollution of the ecology of
politics by the inauthentic politics of misrepresentative government,
claiming to be what it is not, compassionate and conservative, god-fearing
and moral."
Armando Iannucci's movie "The Death of Stalin," a brilliant black comedy,
captures what happens when self-interested narcissists, buffoons and
gangsters make the laws and rule a state. Once power is based solely on
blind personal loyalty and whim, anything, including wholesale murder,
becomes possible. Rights are transformed into privileges that can be
instantly revoked. Lies replace truth. Opinions replace facts. History is
erased and rewritten. The cult of leadership replaces politics. Paranoia
grips a ruling elite that feeds off conspiracy theories, sees mortal enemies
everywhere and increasingly lives in a hermetically sealed nonreality-based
universe. Force becomes the sole language despots use to communicate to a
restive population and the outside world.
Despotic regimes are uninterested in, and often incapable of understanding,
nuance, complexity and difference. They perpetuate themselves through
constant drama and never-ending crusades against internal and external
enemies that are presented as existential threats to the nation. When real
enemies cannot be found, they are invented. The persecution of
"undesirables" starts with the demonized—immigrants, the undocumented, poor
people of color and Muslims, along with those under occupation in the Middle
East or socialists in Venezuela—but these "undesirables" are only the
beginning. Soon everyone is suspect.
Trump's capricious and arbitrary decisions to remove those around him from
power keep his courtiers constantly on edge. The instability fuels the
vicious court intrigues that characterize all despotism. Trump's inner
circle, aware that the only criterion to remain in power is an exaggerated
and obsequious personal loyalty acutely attuned to his mercurial moods and
temper tantrums, base all decisions on pleasing the despot. This leads to
extreme mismanagement and corruption.
The corporate capitalists who hold real power view Trump as an
embarrassment. They would prefer to put a more dignified face on the
American empire, one like Biden who will do their bidding with the decorum
of a traditional president. But they will work with Trump. He has given them
huge tax cuts, is slashing what is left of government oversight and
regulation and has increased the budgets for internal security and the
military. It may be an uncomfortable relationship, as was the relationship
between German industrialists and the buffoonish leaders of the Nazi Party,
but for the corporate elites it is far preferable to having to deal with a
Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren. Capitalists, throughout history, have
backed fascism to thwart even the most tepid forms of socialism. All the
pieces are in place. The hollowing out of our democratic institutions, which
cannot be blamed on Trump, makes tyranny inevitable.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a
New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree
program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers…
Chris Hedges
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Re: [blind-democracy] Legislators in Texas push to make every abortion illegal
Here is a clear example of just how the Ruling Class muddies basic
human rights.
The issue is who should have control over a woman's body. But anti
abortionists fog up the subject by making it a tug of war between
unfeeling women and innocent little cuddly fetus'. Once control is
exercised over the abortion issue, will a "safe" dress code be next?
Curfew hours might be needed in order to "protect" our women folk.
Next we will "protect"them by insisting that they only be in public
with a responsible adult male. To make certain our women folk are not
taken advantage of, they will not be allowed to sign any official
documents, hold personal bank accounts, or write checks without a
cosigner. We might need to take a look at the old practice once
popular in Asia, that of binding the female babies feet.
And of course, if our women folk get themselves into a compromising
position...and get caught, they must be flogged in public so other
naughty girls do not think that they can go about tempting innocent
young men.
On another subject, I'm beginning to wonder if the average IQ really
is 100. Maybe 70 would be closer to the norm?
Carl Jarvis
On 04/24/19, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> https://themilitant.com/2019/04/20/legislators-in-texas-push-to-make-every-abortion-illegal/
>
>
> Legislators in Texas push to make every abortion illegal
>
>
>
>
> By Brian Williams
>
> Vol. 83/No. 17
>
> April 29, 2019
>
>
> The Texas state legislative Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee
> held unprecedented public hearings April 8-9 on a proposed bill to
> authorize criminal prosecution of all women who have an abortion and of
> the doctors who perform them. All abortions would be outlawed, including
> for rape, incest and the health of the woman.
>
> While the bill failed to make it to the floor of the House, the
> publicity given to it was hailed as making it a legitimate part of the
> "debate" over abortion by anti-woman forces. It is the latest in a
> series of attacks by capitalist politicians in a growing number of state
> legislatures against family planning, including a woman's right to
> choose abortion.
>
> The bill, called the Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act, would also
> strike down an exception for abortion from the Texas penal code for
> homicide. That would mean women and physicians could be prosecuted for
> murder and subject to the death penalty.
>
> The bill says state and local government officials should enforce the
> legislation "regardless of any contrary federal law, executive order, or
> court decision."
>
> Hundreds of people testified at the hearings over the course of the two
> days, both opponents of women's rights and those backing a woman's right
> to choose. "It was the first time in the state's history," the
> Washington Post noted, "that public testimony had been heard on a
> measure holding women criminally liable for their abortions."
>
> Republican state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, who sponsored the bill, told the
> media that it would make people "consider the repercussions" of having
> sex. Tinderholt had introduced the same legislation in 2017 but it had
> been unceremoniously set aside without a hearing.
>
> Even some who oppose women's access to abortion expressed misgivings
> over the criminal penalties that the bill would impose on women. Texas
> state Rep. Jeff Leach, who allowed the hearing before the judiciary
> committee to take place, said in a statement that while he's "pro-life,"
> this legislation was a step in the "wrong direction." The anti-abortion
> group Texans for Life also said it was against the bill.
>
> The intent of legislators promoting it, and many other bills being
> adopted that impose increasingly far-reaching restrictions on women's
> right to abortion, is to force a court fight to reach the U.S. Supreme
> Court to attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized
> abortion.
>
> In Mississippi, for example, Gov. Phil Bryant signed a bill last month
> that bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, often just six
> weeks into pregnancy — when many women aren't even aware they're
> pregnant. The Ohio Legislature approved a similar bill April 10. Similar
> laws are being considered by legislators in Kentucky, Missouri,
> Tennessee, West Virginia and Florida.
>
> In Alabama, legislation was recently introduced to criminalize
> performing all abortions, with the only exception being a threat to the
> woman's life.
>
> These attacks have been made easier by the character of the Roe v. Wade
> ruling. It "was based not on a woman's right 'to equal protection of the
> laws' guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but on
> medical criteria instead," Jack Barnes, national secretary of the
> Socialist Workers Party, wrote in The Clintons' Anti-Working-Class
> Record: Why Washington Fears Working People.
>
> "During the first three months ('trimester'), the court ruled, the
> decision to terminate a pregnancy 'must be left to the medical judgment
> of a pregnant woman's attending physician' (not to the woman herself,
> but to a doctor!).
>
> "At the same time, the court allowed state governments to ban most
> abortions after 'viability,' … something that medical advances
> inevitably make earlier and earlier in pregnancy."
>
> The SWP supports a woman's right to choose whether and when to have a
> child, free from state interference, and calls for working people to
> mobilize to defend clinics that offer women family planning, including
> the right to safe and secure abortions.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Related Articles
>
>
>
> Defend a woman's right to abortion!
> The following statement was released April 17 by Alyson Kennedy,
> Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Dallas. Supporters of
> women's rights must condemn the attempt by Texas legislators to use the
> failed Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act to…
>
> 66-year South Korean ban on abortion ruled unconstitutional
> Cheers erupted from hundreds of demonstrators chanting "New world! Right
> now!" outside South Korea's Constitutional Court in Seoul April 11 when
> the justices ruled 7-2 that a 66-year-old law banning abortion was
> unconstitutional. The court majority said the anti-abortion law…
>
>
> In This Issue
>
> Front Page Articles •New England Stop & Shop workers strike against cuts
> •Legislators in Texas push to make every abortion illegal
> •Protesters in Sudan say: 'The regime must fall!'
> •SWP campaign builds May 1 actions, demands amnesty for all immigrants
> •Fight against ban on Washington prisoners getting used books wins
> •Cuban Revolution 'put workers in the best position to take on racism'
>
> Feature Articles •Today's fighters can learn from Algeria's 1962-65
> revolution
>
> Also In This Issue •Quebec protests hit gov't ban on wearing religious
> symbols on job
> •'Why do workers face so many problems today?'
> •Quebec taxi, Uber drivers need union to fight boss, gov't attacks
> •66-year South Korean ban on abortion ruled unconstitutional
> •Defend a woman's right to abortion!
> •Campaign to expand reach of 'Militant,' books, fund (week one)
>
>
>
> On the Picket Line •Toronto teachers, students protest education cuts
> •Autoworkers in Russia start 'work to rule' against layoffs
>
> Books of the Month •New battalions of working-class fighters in
> formation in China
>
>
>
>
>
> 25, 50 and 75 years ago
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> © Copyright 2019 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
> York, NY 10018 - themilitant@mac.co
>
> --
>
>
> ---
>
> Christopher Hitchens
> " What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without
> evidence. "
> ― Christopher Hitchens,
>
>
>
human rights.
The issue is who should have control over a woman's body. But anti
abortionists fog up the subject by making it a tug of war between
unfeeling women and innocent little cuddly fetus'. Once control is
exercised over the abortion issue, will a "safe" dress code be next?
Curfew hours might be needed in order to "protect" our women folk.
Next we will "protect"them by insisting that they only be in public
with a responsible adult male. To make certain our women folk are not
taken advantage of, they will not be allowed to sign any official
documents, hold personal bank accounts, or write checks without a
cosigner. We might need to take a look at the old practice once
popular in Asia, that of binding the female babies feet.
And of course, if our women folk get themselves into a compromising
position...and get caught, they must be flogged in public so other
naughty girls do not think that they can go about tempting innocent
young men.
On another subject, I'm beginning to wonder if the average IQ really
is 100. Maybe 70 would be closer to the norm?
Carl Jarvis
On 04/24/19, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> https://themilitant.com/2019/04/20/legislators-in-texas-push-to-make-every-abortion-illegal/
>
>
> Legislators in Texas push to make every abortion illegal
>
>
>
>
> By Brian Williams
>
> Vol. 83/No. 17
>
> April 29, 2019
>
>
> The Texas state legislative Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee
> held unprecedented public hearings April 8-9 on a proposed bill to
> authorize criminal prosecution of all women who have an abortion and of
> the doctors who perform them. All abortions would be outlawed, including
> for rape, incest and the health of the woman.
>
> While the bill failed to make it to the floor of the House, the
> publicity given to it was hailed as making it a legitimate part of the
> "debate" over abortion by anti-woman forces. It is the latest in a
> series of attacks by capitalist politicians in a growing number of state
> legislatures against family planning, including a woman's right to
> choose abortion.
>
> The bill, called the Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act, would also
> strike down an exception for abortion from the Texas penal code for
> homicide. That would mean women and physicians could be prosecuted for
> murder and subject to the death penalty.
>
> The bill says state and local government officials should enforce the
> legislation "regardless of any contrary federal law, executive order, or
> court decision."
>
> Hundreds of people testified at the hearings over the course of the two
> days, both opponents of women's rights and those backing a woman's right
> to choose. "It was the first time in the state's history," the
> Washington Post noted, "that public testimony had been heard on a
> measure holding women criminally liable for their abortions."
>
> Republican state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, who sponsored the bill, told the
> media that it would make people "consider the repercussions" of having
> sex. Tinderholt had introduced the same legislation in 2017 but it had
> been unceremoniously set aside without a hearing.
>
> Even some who oppose women's access to abortion expressed misgivings
> over the criminal penalties that the bill would impose on women. Texas
> state Rep. Jeff Leach, who allowed the hearing before the judiciary
> committee to take place, said in a statement that while he's "pro-life,"
> this legislation was a step in the "wrong direction." The anti-abortion
> group Texans for Life also said it was against the bill.
>
> The intent of legislators promoting it, and many other bills being
> adopted that impose increasingly far-reaching restrictions on women's
> right to abortion, is to force a court fight to reach the U.S. Supreme
> Court to attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized
> abortion.
>
> In Mississippi, for example, Gov. Phil Bryant signed a bill last month
> that bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, often just six
> weeks into pregnancy — when many women aren't even aware they're
> pregnant. The Ohio Legislature approved a similar bill April 10. Similar
> laws are being considered by legislators in Kentucky, Missouri,
> Tennessee, West Virginia and Florida.
>
> In Alabama, legislation was recently introduced to criminalize
> performing all abortions, with the only exception being a threat to the
> woman's life.
>
> These attacks have been made easier by the character of the Roe v. Wade
> ruling. It "was based not on a woman's right 'to equal protection of the
> laws' guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but on
> medical criteria instead," Jack Barnes, national secretary of the
> Socialist Workers Party, wrote in The Clintons' Anti-Working-Class
> Record: Why Washington Fears Working People.
>
> "During the first three months ('trimester'), the court ruled, the
> decision to terminate a pregnancy 'must be left to the medical judgment
> of a pregnant woman's attending physician' (not to the woman herself,
> but to a doctor!).
>
> "At the same time, the court allowed state governments to ban most
> abortions after 'viability,' … something that medical advances
> inevitably make earlier and earlier in pregnancy."
>
> The SWP supports a woman's right to choose whether and when to have a
> child, free from state interference, and calls for working people to
> mobilize to defend clinics that offer women family planning, including
> the right to safe and secure abortions.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Related Articles
>
>
>
> Defend a woman's right to abortion!
> The following statement was released April 17 by Alyson Kennedy,
> Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Dallas. Supporters of
> women's rights must condemn the attempt by Texas legislators to use the
> failed Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act to…
>
> 66-year South Korean ban on abortion ruled unconstitutional
> Cheers erupted from hundreds of demonstrators chanting "New world! Right
> now!" outside South Korea's Constitutional Court in Seoul April 11 when
> the justices ruled 7-2 that a 66-year-old law banning abortion was
> unconstitutional. The court majority said the anti-abortion law…
>
>
> In This Issue
>
> Front Page Articles •New England Stop & Shop workers strike against cuts
> •Legislators in Texas push to make every abortion illegal
> •Protesters in Sudan say: 'The regime must fall!'
> •SWP campaign builds May 1 actions, demands amnesty for all immigrants
> •Fight against ban on Washington prisoners getting used books wins
> •Cuban Revolution 'put workers in the best position to take on racism'
>
> Feature Articles •Today's fighters can learn from Algeria's 1962-65
> revolution
>
> Also In This Issue •Quebec protests hit gov't ban on wearing religious
> symbols on job
> •'Why do workers face so many problems today?'
> •Quebec taxi, Uber drivers need union to fight boss, gov't attacks
> •66-year South Korean ban on abortion ruled unconstitutional
> •Defend a woman's right to abortion!
> •Campaign to expand reach of 'Militant,' books, fund (week one)
>
>
>
> On the Picket Line •Toronto teachers, students protest education cuts
> •Autoworkers in Russia start 'work to rule' against layoffs
>
> Books of the Month •New battalions of working-class fighters in
> formation in China
>
>
>
>
>
> 25, 50 and 75 years ago
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> © Copyright 2019 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
> York, NY 10018 - themilitant@mac.co
>
> --
>
>
> ---
>
> Christopher Hitchens
> " What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without
> evidence. "
> ― Christopher Hitchens,
>
>
>
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Re: [blind-democracy] Shoulder Squeeze: Friendly gesture? or reminder of her place.
See how different we all are? I enjoyed flirting, but never touched.
Roger admits to a lingering touching. It's all connected to the Time
in which we grew up, and with our family values, and the way in which
friendship was acknowledged between family members and friends.
But also, down through the Ages our behavior between women and men
was, and is, directly related to our insecurity and to our inability
to demonstrate honest respect for those people we must interact with.
Also, if we taught our children to be forthright and stand up for
themselves, such behavior as unwanted touching or muzzling would not
be so apt to occur.
Rather than stewing for months or years over such unwanted advances, a
woman of Tomorrow might turn to Uncle Joe and ask, "Are you squeezing
my shoulders and nuzzling my hair because of my great beauty and
sexual desire, or is it your attempt to dominate me and put me in my
place?
But of course this can't happen because the woman must remember that
she really is in a subservient status, and this powerful male can
cause great harm to her career.
And even Joe instinctively understands this, even if he seems shocked
if confronted. Each of us subconsciously understands our status in
our present society. I am far more apt to be successful as a blind
man because I am a blind man, not a blind woman. And I am a White
Blind Man, living in a society of mostly White People whose dominant
members are White Males. Do I think about all of my advantages over
blind women and blind people of color? Even if I convince you that I
do not, I know beyond a doubt that my success in life, such as it has
been, has been enhanced by my White Maleness, which I subconsciously
used when necessary.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/18/19, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@aol.com> wrote:
> Actually, I can't help being at least a little sympathetic toward Joe in
> this matter. I will say that I have never kissed the top of the head of
> a woman I just met. I can't say that I have ever kissed the top of the
> head of a woman I knew well either. That is just not a body part that
> ever entered my mind as being all that kissable. However, I have on
> occasion engaged in some of the other gestures that he is accused of. I
> mean an occasional shoulder squeeze, touching an arm as I was speaking,
> shaking hands and letting my grasp linger until the other person
> withdrew and things like that. I did this with both men and women, but
> it was probably more frequent with women. What were my intentions? One
> intention was no conscious intention at all. That is, it felt like just
> an automatic and natural thing to do and I had no thoughts concerning
> what I might be trying to accomplish. But secondly, when I did have a
> conscious intention it really was to make a friendly gesture, a way of
> saying I like you. I did that kind of stuff mostly when I was sighted. I
> had to make something of a conscious effort to stop when I became blind
> because I can't see what body part I am reaching for and I just might
> grab something that it would be hard to pass off as a friendly gesture.
> Still, though, I think I may still be guilty of the lingering handshake.
> I have also made an effort to refrain from doing that with men. I think
> I have detected some amount of discomfort with it from men, but not from
> women. Men do seem to be more uncomfortable with a lingering touch on
> the hand, the shoulder, the arm than women do. But I assure you that it
> never entered my mind that doing things like that are the equivalent of
> groping.
>
> ---
>
> Christopher Hitchens
> " What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without
> evidence. "
> ― Christopher Hitchens,
>
> On 4/18/2019 9:13 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
>> There's no way I can get inside another person's head. Nor do I ever
>> want to. So I have to decide what Uncle Joe meant by his "laying on
>> of hands" when he came up behind a woman he knew, and squeezed her
>> shoulders in full view of others. Joe would want us to believe that
>> he is a touchy sort of guy from the old school. People in the old
>> school touched more than folks seem to do today. "Just a friendly
>> gesture", he would have us understand. But the woman complained. At
>> best this made it a one way friendly gesture. I don't know what Joe
>> said to the complainent, but I know what I would have said. "Please
>> forgive me. I'm sorry. It was purely thoughtless behavior on my
>> part. I assure you that I will not do it again." I've mentioned
>> before how confused a message was sent out to us teenagers back in the
>> 50's. We guys wanted to do the Macho sort of thing so we'd be seen as
>> real men. We lived in a time when men took the lead. Women were
>> supposed to "melt in our arms". A woman pulling back and saying,
>> "No!" would respond with a kiss if we just pushed a little harder.
>> But that was then, those days when a woman must have her husband or
>> father cosign for any expensive purchase she wanted to make.
>> Those were the days when we still looked at working women as taking a
>> man's job. And on and on. But those were the days I grew up in.
>> Still, it made good sense to me when women began to seriously push the
>> boundaries in the early 70's.
>> Many men stood up beside the women and supported their efforts to
>> achieve equality. Many men jeered and called those men as P---y
>> Whipped. They were not willing to let the girls stand shoulder to
>> shoulder with them.
>> Things got very ugly at times. But we did finally begin to see a dim
>> light at the end of that long dark tunnel. And then we put Donald
>> Trump in the president's office.
>> Remember that this is the man who promised to return America to her
>> former greatness. Putting women back in the kitchen and the bedroom
>> is one piece of that glorious return to our former Glory. And women
>> have had the right to vote for less than half of this nation's
>> history. My grandmother Jarvis was in her mid 40's before women had
>> the vote.
>> So what goes through Uncle Joe's head when he comes up behind a woman
>> and squeezes her shoulders, may remain a mystery to us. But we other
>> men should take heed to the message sent out via the woman's protest.
>> When in doubt, keep your hands to yourself...and that goes with your
>> funny comments, too.
>> Carl Jarvis
>> -------------------
>>
>
Roger admits to a lingering touching. It's all connected to the Time
in which we grew up, and with our family values, and the way in which
friendship was acknowledged between family members and friends.
But also, down through the Ages our behavior between women and men
was, and is, directly related to our insecurity and to our inability
to demonstrate honest respect for those people we must interact with.
Also, if we taught our children to be forthright and stand up for
themselves, such behavior as unwanted touching or muzzling would not
be so apt to occur.
Rather than stewing for months or years over such unwanted advances, a
woman of Tomorrow might turn to Uncle Joe and ask, "Are you squeezing
my shoulders and nuzzling my hair because of my great beauty and
sexual desire, or is it your attempt to dominate me and put me in my
place?
But of course this can't happen because the woman must remember that
she really is in a subservient status, and this powerful male can
cause great harm to her career.
And even Joe instinctively understands this, even if he seems shocked
if confronted. Each of us subconsciously understands our status in
our present society. I am far more apt to be successful as a blind
man because I am a blind man, not a blind woman. And I am a White
Blind Man, living in a society of mostly White People whose dominant
members are White Males. Do I think about all of my advantages over
blind women and blind people of color? Even if I convince you that I
do not, I know beyond a doubt that my success in life, such as it has
been, has been enhanced by my White Maleness, which I subconsciously
used when necessary.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/18/19, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@aol.com> wrote:
> Actually, I can't help being at least a little sympathetic toward Joe in
> this matter. I will say that I have never kissed the top of the head of
> a woman I just met. I can't say that I have ever kissed the top of the
> head of a woman I knew well either. That is just not a body part that
> ever entered my mind as being all that kissable. However, I have on
> occasion engaged in some of the other gestures that he is accused of. I
> mean an occasional shoulder squeeze, touching an arm as I was speaking,
> shaking hands and letting my grasp linger until the other person
> withdrew and things like that. I did this with both men and women, but
> it was probably more frequent with women. What were my intentions? One
> intention was no conscious intention at all. That is, it felt like just
> an automatic and natural thing to do and I had no thoughts concerning
> what I might be trying to accomplish. But secondly, when I did have a
> conscious intention it really was to make a friendly gesture, a way of
> saying I like you. I did that kind of stuff mostly when I was sighted. I
> had to make something of a conscious effort to stop when I became blind
> because I can't see what body part I am reaching for and I just might
> grab something that it would be hard to pass off as a friendly gesture.
> Still, though, I think I may still be guilty of the lingering handshake.
> I have also made an effort to refrain from doing that with men. I think
> I have detected some amount of discomfort with it from men, but not from
> women. Men do seem to be more uncomfortable with a lingering touch on
> the hand, the shoulder, the arm than women do. But I assure you that it
> never entered my mind that doing things like that are the equivalent of
> groping.
>
> ---
>
> Christopher Hitchens
> " What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without
> evidence. "
> ― Christopher Hitchens,
>
> On 4/18/2019 9:13 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
>> There's no way I can get inside another person's head. Nor do I ever
>> want to. So I have to decide what Uncle Joe meant by his "laying on
>> of hands" when he came up behind a woman he knew, and squeezed her
>> shoulders in full view of others. Joe would want us to believe that
>> he is a touchy sort of guy from the old school. People in the old
>> school touched more than folks seem to do today. "Just a friendly
>> gesture", he would have us understand. But the woman complained. At
>> best this made it a one way friendly gesture. I don't know what Joe
>> said to the complainent, but I know what I would have said. "Please
>> forgive me. I'm sorry. It was purely thoughtless behavior on my
>> part. I assure you that I will not do it again." I've mentioned
>> before how confused a message was sent out to us teenagers back in the
>> 50's. We guys wanted to do the Macho sort of thing so we'd be seen as
>> real men. We lived in a time when men took the lead. Women were
>> supposed to "melt in our arms". A woman pulling back and saying,
>> "No!" would respond with a kiss if we just pushed a little harder.
>> But that was then, those days when a woman must have her husband or
>> father cosign for any expensive purchase she wanted to make.
>> Those were the days when we still looked at working women as taking a
>> man's job. And on and on. But those were the days I grew up in.
>> Still, it made good sense to me when women began to seriously push the
>> boundaries in the early 70's.
>> Many men stood up beside the women and supported their efforts to
>> achieve equality. Many men jeered and called those men as P---y
>> Whipped. They were not willing to let the girls stand shoulder to
>> shoulder with them.
>> Things got very ugly at times. But we did finally begin to see a dim
>> light at the end of that long dark tunnel. And then we put Donald
>> Trump in the president's office.
>> Remember that this is the man who promised to return America to her
>> former greatness. Putting women back in the kitchen and the bedroom
>> is one piece of that glorious return to our former Glory. And women
>> have had the right to vote for less than half of this nation's
>> history. My grandmother Jarvis was in her mid 40's before women had
>> the vote.
>> So what goes through Uncle Joe's head when he comes up behind a woman
>> and squeezes her shoulders, may remain a mystery to us. But we other
>> men should take heed to the message sent out via the woman's protest.
>> When in doubt, keep your hands to yourself...and that goes with your
>> funny comments, too.
>> Carl Jarvis
>> -------------------
>>
>
Monday, April 22, 2019
from the Spokesman Review, Monday April 22, 2019
From staff reports
State Rep. Matt Shea participated in an online chat in 2017 that
discussed taking violent action against leftist protesters, according
to
a report from the Guardian.
The group also suggested that it conduct surveillance on its opponents.
The Guardian said it received copies of the conversation from someone
who participated in the chat but who requested anonymity. The chat
apparently took
place in the days leading up to a rumored "antifa" event. Antifa is
short for anti-fascist and refers to groups who protest white
supremacists, sometimes
with violence. The event never materialized.
The report doesn't show Shea making threats of violence himself, but
it also indicates that he didn't attempt to dissuade the other
participants in the
conversation, according to portions of the chat released by the
Guardian. He appeared to back the idea of conducting surveillance when
he asked chat participants
for a list of people on whom he should perform background checks.
In response to the report, Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib, a Democrat, called on
Republican leaders to discipline Shea.
"I call on House Republicans to do the right thing and eject Matt Shea
from their caucus. Obtaining background checks on people for the
purpose of planning
violence against them is a crime, and even offering to do so is
clearly 100% unacceptable in the Legislature," Habib tweeted.
State Rep. Matt Shea participated in an online chat in 2017 that
discussed taking violent action against leftist protesters, according
to
a report from the Guardian.
The group also suggested that it conduct surveillance on its opponents.
The Guardian said it received copies of the conversation from someone
who participated in the chat but who requested anonymity. The chat
apparently took
place in the days leading up to a rumored "antifa" event. Antifa is
short for anti-fascist and refers to groups who protest white
supremacists, sometimes
with violence. The event never materialized.
The report doesn't show Shea making threats of violence himself, but
it also indicates that he didn't attempt to dissuade the other
participants in the
conversation, according to portions of the chat released by the
Guardian. He appeared to back the idea of conducting surveillance when
he asked chat participants
for a list of people on whom he should perform background checks.
In response to the report, Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib, a Democrat, called on
Republican leaders to discipline Shea.
"I call on House Republicans to do the right thing and eject Matt Shea
from their caucus. Obtaining background checks on people for the
purpose of planning
violence against them is a crime, and even offering to do so is
clearly 100% unacceptable in the Legislature," Habib tweeted.
Saturday, April 20, 2019
[blind-democracy] Re: Isolating the Elderly: Is It an act of kindness? or just good business.
Absolutely right, Miriam.
While our imaginations have us back in the late 1800's, down on the
farm, small town USA, extended families, over the river and through
the woods to grandmother's house we go, our real world has changed to
the point that many of our basic values, once believed to be handed to
us by God Almighty, no longer apply.
When I first entered college in 1954, my Sociology professor talked
about the shift from the "Extended Family", to the "Nuclear Family".
That began with a mother, a father and 3.5 children. In a quick move
that nuclear family became, A Parent or Guardian and those for whom
they are responsible.
Today we have trimmed down to a definition of a single unit. The
Libertarian. I'm for me, First, Last and Always Me! Self Serving.
"Get it while the getting's good". "Them what has, gets".
And so what appears to be an act of kindness and generosity, building
a pretty prison for our Seniors, turns out to be linked to our move
toward Isolated Libertarian ism.
Of course it's a complex situation, not clear cut. Since we are
driven by our Capitalistic Culture, it is important that we place a
monetary value on everything. We exploit our children, our health,
and our Seniors. At the rate we're changing, the day will come when
we will simply dispose of any part of our population that cannot
generate profit.
But back to those long forgotten days of the 40's and 50's when
grandma or grandpa had a back bedroom in the family house. And often
times it was actually their own house. But they were a problem,
cleaning up after them, feeding them, listening to them bitch and
complain. We convinced ourselves that it was for their own good to
move into a "Senior's Center", where they could "enjoy" retirement
with other folks of similar age. Financial investors saw this as an
opportunity to turn a buck. Build a fancy facility and then put it on
the market. Large corporations began to figure how to squeeze profit
out of these Elder Care Facilities by cutting corners just a
little...at first. We've seen, over the past 25 years, beautiful,
well staffed facilities trimmed back to bare bones. Light
housekeeping extended from weekly, to twice a month. Activity
directors terminated. Office staff reduced to part time. Dining
room servers replaced by volunteer high school students. The list
goes on, anywhere a corner can be cut. But worst of all is the fact
that these Seniors have been placed outside of their communities.
They are in a pretty prison. A few "busy" activities, but no real
purpose in life. Just waiting for the grim reaper to wander through.
One day Cathy and I entered the Willows, an upper end Senior Apartment
Facility, with all the amenities, and we beheld the most beautiful
display of quilts. It was the culmination of a quilting contest. At
the time I said to Cathy, "next thing you know, they'll be selling the
quilts to pay for some of the "free" services." About ten years later
we entered the same building and beheld the display of quilts and
other home made items, with price tags on them. The money from the
sales of these items would go toward paying the building's van driver.
This service had been provided as part of the huge rent folks paid,
but had to be cut back because of the cost. One client told us that
she had been there for five years, and each year her rent had gone up
$50 a month. In five years she was paying $250 per month more than
her original rent. But her fixed income had barely increased. She
feared she would not be able to afford another increase.
And here's the sad news. Many of these folks living in the Senior
Apartments are good, lifelong Republicans.
My grandma Ludwig(1892-1985)proudly said, "I'm an Abraham Lincoln
Republican". But old Abe had been dead 27 years prior to Grandma's
birth. Abe would not have recognized the world Grandma lived in.
Which reminds me, I just deleted a Spam Message telling me that FBI
statistics show that States with laws permitting concealed weapons,
have 8.5% lower crime rates than those States without such laws. Of
course the note was placed by a company selling me hand guns and
ammunition via the internet.
What a delightful plan! We really ought to drop any age limits to
purchasing guns. After all, it seems that Idiocy knows no age limits.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/20/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Carl,
>
> Those luxury facilities for the elderly which you mention and which,
> immediately deteriorate because of lack of funding, they are the symbol of
> how our society feels about the elderly. Everyone else is so busy making a
> living, trying to care for themselves and their children, that segregating
> old people has seemed like a perfect answer. That doesn't happen in
> traditional cultures and it never used to happen here. Jusst as children
> were integrated into families, so were the elderly. Now we talk about child
> care and elder care. It's a sign of the times. It's a whole change in family
> kinship systems. And what kind of work do we honor? We honor tech experts
> and experts in finance. We don't honor people who care for our children or
> our elderly or our sick. Yes doctors, the people who look at our charts on
> computers, but not so much nurses or nurses' aides.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Friday, April 19, 2019 10:10 PM
> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Attempted murder
>
> Hi Miriam,
> Yes. I do understand. But I'm also driven to do what I can do to prevent
> our clients from killing themselves, or others.
> Because of our Capitalist System, we are constantly struggling to make gains
> in conditions for older folks. We gain a little ground, and some
> corporation swallows it up and triples the cost, or shuts it down as
> unwanted competiition.
> We arrived where we are today, as much through Greed as through Compassion.
> One day we enter a new senior facility full of all sorts of amenities. A
> couple of yuears pass buy and some national corporation buys the facility
> and begins cutting services iuntil the building is falling into disrepair
> and the staff only work part time.
> We fight for door to door transportation. We finally begin to see a system
> that meets the basic needs of Seniors and Disabled folks. Then the next
> budget cuts funding, and it becomes harder and harder to arrange for basic
> transportation. But we got ourselves into this mess, and we'll need to be
> the ones to get us out. The Ruling Class finds ways of diverting our tax
> dollars, insisting that we can take care of our own special needs. Let
> churches and volunteer services pick up the services being cut from our
> budgets.
> It's taken many years to come to such a social mess. It's going to take a
> long time to get out of it...if we have enough time.
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
>
> On 4/19/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>> Carl,
>>
>> The thing is that we have a society which has been organized to depend
>> on individually owned vehicles. Becoming old, finding that one's
>> health isn't as good as it was, losing some eyesight, some hearing,
>> becoming forgetful, all of that is terribly hard for people in a world
>> which worships youth and beauty. And then their independence is taken
>> away. Being unable to drive in our world means for most people that
>> that you are like a dependent child. I understand why they will hold onto
>> driving for as long as they can.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
>> Sent: Friday, April 19, 2019 8:20 PM
>> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Attempted murder
>>
>> Roger and Miriam,
>> I'm assuming that your adventure happened at the time you still had
>> decent vision.
>> But it brings to mind many, many stories Cathy and I have heard from
>> older clients who just can't face the fact that their sight has dimmed
>> to the point that they should quit driving. Because of never having
>> had decent vision, I grew up knowing that driving after dark, or at
>> dusk, or on grey rainy days, would endanger both myself and anyone
>> within striking range. So I seldom drove, and as a result I did not
>> miss the freedom which so many of our clients missed. Even so,
>> because I learned to drive with only one eye, it took a great deal of
>> energy to "see" all that was going on around me.
>> Also it took considerable luck.
>> "Oh, I can see distances just fine," they tell us. "It's just up real
>> close that things get fuzzy." We patiently explain the impact on the
>> Retina, and how our brain can trick us into believing we're seeing
>> more than we really do see, but they are wanting to believe that they
>> are the exception. "Even if you do see distances well enough", I
>> insist, "what you miss is the ability to see quickly enough to avoid
>> disaster in an emergency". And in today's heavy traffic that is a daily
>> event.
>> One dark winter evening a year ago, Cathy and I were coming home
>> after a rather long day. We came off highway 101, onto Snow Creek
>> Road, our county gravel road, and made the long sweeping right hand curve
>> up a steep hill.
>> Suddenly Cathy hit the brakes. I felt the thump. "Oh God!" Cathy
>> groaned, "I hit a deer. It just jumped from the hill right into our
>> path". After driving that road since 1987, this was the first
>> encounter we'd had with a deer...or anything other than a suicidal
>> bird. As many miles as she's driven, and as sharp as her night vision
>> is, there was no way of avoiding that deer. Our headlights confused
>> it and it bolted for the far side of the road, and the safety of the
>> forest. It rolled and then jumped up and dashed into the brush.
>> Hopefully it was just bruised, not damaged fatally.
>> But our new Toyota Tacoma had over $1,000 damage to the grill. That
>> repair, which, thankfully, was covered, reminded me of how cheaply
>> today's vehicles are put together. Inside our truck we feel safe.
>> But when one bump can cause so much damage, what would we look like if
>> we'd struck an oncoming vehicle at 25 miles an hour, each?
>>
>> Carl Jarvis
>>
>>
>> On 4/19/19, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>>> I didn't hit him. He jumped out of the way just in time. That image
>>> of him that I have burnt into my brain was the sight of him in mid leap.
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> Christopher Hitchens
>>> " What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without
>>> evidence. "
>>> ― Christopher Hitchens,
>>>
>>> On 4/19/2019 9:18 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
>>>> Other people might not have laughed in that situation. I've never
>>>> driven a car, but if it were me, I'd have been horrified that I'd
>>>> inadvertently hit someone whom I hadn't seen, relieved that he
>>>> wasn't hurt, and terrified about being arrested. I suspect that if
>>>> you were African American, he probably would have arrested you for
>>>> attempted murder, and you might not be here to tell the tale.
>>>>
>>>> Miriam
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>>>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org> On Behalf Of Roger Loran
>>>> Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2019 10:10 PM
>>>> To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>>>> Subject: [blind-democracy] Attempted murder
>>>>
>>>> Since I was using attempted murder as an example of how one could be
>>>> charged with a crime when the intended crime was not committed I
>>>> reminded myself of the time a cop threatened to arrest me for
>>>> attempted murder. I tell you this only because I thought you might
>>>> find it amusing. In retrospect I do. I was driving along once at
>>>> night. I came up to an elementary school on my left and sitting in
>>>> the parking lot was a police car with its blue lights flashing, its
>>>> headlights on and a door standing open. There was no cop in it nor
>>>> outside of it that I could see. That made me curious and so I was
>>>> looking at it wondering what was going on. As I passed it I returned
>>>> my eyes to the road just in time to see the cop. The image I saw was
>>>> burned into my brain and I still recall it in detail.
>>>> Right there in my headlights was an airborne cop. He was actually in
>>>> the air above the road with arms and legs spread out, with a
>>>> flashlight also in the air and detached from his right hand by
>>>> several inches, and a look on his face that could only be utter
>>>> panic. I hit my brakes just in time to avoid hitting the stopped car
>>>> that was partially in the road and partially in a deep ditch. I
>>>> could see that the car was stuck and that the cop had been directing
>>>> traffic around it, but because I was distracted by his cop car with
>>>> all of its lights flashing I did not see him until too late. It was
>>>> his leap that I caught part of in my headlights that saved him, not
>>>> my application of the brakes. The application of the brakes only
>>>> saved me from hitting the car. Once I had stopped here came the cop
>>>> from the foliage that he had leaped into. From his mouth came a
>>>> flurry of invectives each of which was preceded by the words god
>>>> damn. It was god damn idiot, god damn moron, god damn fool and god
>>>> damn everything else.
>>>> Between the god damns he threatened to arrest me for reckless
>>>> driving, attempted murder and numerous attempted other crimes. Even
>>>> while all this name calling and threats were going on I was hard
>>>> pressed to not laugh.
>>>> What struck me as so funny were all the leaves and twigs adorning
>>>> his uniform and his hair too. He must have landed in a real thicket.
>>>> Amazingly enough, though, he finally said that he had other things
>>>> to deal with other than me and he told me to get out of there before
>>>> he really did arrest me. I left without even a ticket.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
While our imaginations have us back in the late 1800's, down on the
farm, small town USA, extended families, over the river and through
the woods to grandmother's house we go, our real world has changed to
the point that many of our basic values, once believed to be handed to
us by God Almighty, no longer apply.
When I first entered college in 1954, my Sociology professor talked
about the shift from the "Extended Family", to the "Nuclear Family".
That began with a mother, a father and 3.5 children. In a quick move
that nuclear family became, A Parent or Guardian and those for whom
they are responsible.
Today we have trimmed down to a definition of a single unit. The
Libertarian. I'm for me, First, Last and Always Me! Self Serving.
"Get it while the getting's good". "Them what has, gets".
And so what appears to be an act of kindness and generosity, building
a pretty prison for our Seniors, turns out to be linked to our move
toward Isolated Libertarian ism.
Of course it's a complex situation, not clear cut. Since we are
driven by our Capitalistic Culture, it is important that we place a
monetary value on everything. We exploit our children, our health,
and our Seniors. At the rate we're changing, the day will come when
we will simply dispose of any part of our population that cannot
generate profit.
But back to those long forgotten days of the 40's and 50's when
grandma or grandpa had a back bedroom in the family house. And often
times it was actually their own house. But they were a problem,
cleaning up after them, feeding them, listening to them bitch and
complain. We convinced ourselves that it was for their own good to
move into a "Senior's Center", where they could "enjoy" retirement
with other folks of similar age. Financial investors saw this as an
opportunity to turn a buck. Build a fancy facility and then put it on
the market. Large corporations began to figure how to squeeze profit
out of these Elder Care Facilities by cutting corners just a
little...at first. We've seen, over the past 25 years, beautiful,
well staffed facilities trimmed back to bare bones. Light
housekeeping extended from weekly, to twice a month. Activity
directors terminated. Office staff reduced to part time. Dining
room servers replaced by volunteer high school students. The list
goes on, anywhere a corner can be cut. But worst of all is the fact
that these Seniors have been placed outside of their communities.
They are in a pretty prison. A few "busy" activities, but no real
purpose in life. Just waiting for the grim reaper to wander through.
One day Cathy and I entered the Willows, an upper end Senior Apartment
Facility, with all the amenities, and we beheld the most beautiful
display of quilts. It was the culmination of a quilting contest. At
the time I said to Cathy, "next thing you know, they'll be selling the
quilts to pay for some of the "free" services." About ten years later
we entered the same building and beheld the display of quilts and
other home made items, with price tags on them. The money from the
sales of these items would go toward paying the building's van driver.
This service had been provided as part of the huge rent folks paid,
but had to be cut back because of the cost. One client told us that
she had been there for five years, and each year her rent had gone up
$50 a month. In five years she was paying $250 per month more than
her original rent. But her fixed income had barely increased. She
feared she would not be able to afford another increase.
And here's the sad news. Many of these folks living in the Senior
Apartments are good, lifelong Republicans.
My grandma Ludwig(1892-1985)proudly said, "I'm an Abraham Lincoln
Republican". But old Abe had been dead 27 years prior to Grandma's
birth. Abe would not have recognized the world Grandma lived in.
Which reminds me, I just deleted a Spam Message telling me that FBI
statistics show that States with laws permitting concealed weapons,
have 8.5% lower crime rates than those States without such laws. Of
course the note was placed by a company selling me hand guns and
ammunition via the internet.
What a delightful plan! We really ought to drop any age limits to
purchasing guns. After all, it seems that Idiocy knows no age limits.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/20/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Carl,
>
> Those luxury facilities for the elderly which you mention and which,
> immediately deteriorate because of lack of funding, they are the symbol of
> how our society feels about the elderly. Everyone else is so busy making a
> living, trying to care for themselves and their children, that segregating
> old people has seemed like a perfect answer. That doesn't happen in
> traditional cultures and it never used to happen here. Jusst as children
> were integrated into families, so were the elderly. Now we talk about child
> care and elder care. It's a sign of the times. It's a whole change in family
> kinship systems. And what kind of work do we honor? We honor tech experts
> and experts in finance. We don't honor people who care for our children or
> our elderly or our sick. Yes doctors, the people who look at our charts on
> computers, but not so much nurses or nurses' aides.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Friday, April 19, 2019 10:10 PM
> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Attempted murder
>
> Hi Miriam,
> Yes. I do understand. But I'm also driven to do what I can do to prevent
> our clients from killing themselves, or others.
> Because of our Capitalist System, we are constantly struggling to make gains
> in conditions for older folks. We gain a little ground, and some
> corporation swallows it up and triples the cost, or shuts it down as
> unwanted competiition.
> We arrived where we are today, as much through Greed as through Compassion.
> One day we enter a new senior facility full of all sorts of amenities. A
> couple of yuears pass buy and some national corporation buys the facility
> and begins cutting services iuntil the building is falling into disrepair
> and the staff only work part time.
> We fight for door to door transportation. We finally begin to see a system
> that meets the basic needs of Seniors and Disabled folks. Then the next
> budget cuts funding, and it becomes harder and harder to arrange for basic
> transportation. But we got ourselves into this mess, and we'll need to be
> the ones to get us out. The Ruling Class finds ways of diverting our tax
> dollars, insisting that we can take care of our own special needs. Let
> churches and volunteer services pick up the services being cut from our
> budgets.
> It's taken many years to come to such a social mess. It's going to take a
> long time to get out of it...if we have enough time.
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
>
> On 4/19/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>> Carl,
>>
>> The thing is that we have a society which has been organized to depend
>> on individually owned vehicles. Becoming old, finding that one's
>> health isn't as good as it was, losing some eyesight, some hearing,
>> becoming forgetful, all of that is terribly hard for people in a world
>> which worships youth and beauty. And then their independence is taken
>> away. Being unable to drive in our world means for most people that
>> that you are like a dependent child. I understand why they will hold onto
>> driving for as long as they can.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
>> Sent: Friday, April 19, 2019 8:20 PM
>> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Attempted murder
>>
>> Roger and Miriam,
>> I'm assuming that your adventure happened at the time you still had
>> decent vision.
>> But it brings to mind many, many stories Cathy and I have heard from
>> older clients who just can't face the fact that their sight has dimmed
>> to the point that they should quit driving. Because of never having
>> had decent vision, I grew up knowing that driving after dark, or at
>> dusk, or on grey rainy days, would endanger both myself and anyone
>> within striking range. So I seldom drove, and as a result I did not
>> miss the freedom which so many of our clients missed. Even so,
>> because I learned to drive with only one eye, it took a great deal of
>> energy to "see" all that was going on around me.
>> Also it took considerable luck.
>> "Oh, I can see distances just fine," they tell us. "It's just up real
>> close that things get fuzzy." We patiently explain the impact on the
>> Retina, and how our brain can trick us into believing we're seeing
>> more than we really do see, but they are wanting to believe that they
>> are the exception. "Even if you do see distances well enough", I
>> insist, "what you miss is the ability to see quickly enough to avoid
>> disaster in an emergency". And in today's heavy traffic that is a daily
>> event.
>> One dark winter evening a year ago, Cathy and I were coming home
>> after a rather long day. We came off highway 101, onto Snow Creek
>> Road, our county gravel road, and made the long sweeping right hand curve
>> up a steep hill.
>> Suddenly Cathy hit the brakes. I felt the thump. "Oh God!" Cathy
>> groaned, "I hit a deer. It just jumped from the hill right into our
>> path". After driving that road since 1987, this was the first
>> encounter we'd had with a deer...or anything other than a suicidal
>> bird. As many miles as she's driven, and as sharp as her night vision
>> is, there was no way of avoiding that deer. Our headlights confused
>> it and it bolted for the far side of the road, and the safety of the
>> forest. It rolled and then jumped up and dashed into the brush.
>> Hopefully it was just bruised, not damaged fatally.
>> But our new Toyota Tacoma had over $1,000 damage to the grill. That
>> repair, which, thankfully, was covered, reminded me of how cheaply
>> today's vehicles are put together. Inside our truck we feel safe.
>> But when one bump can cause so much damage, what would we look like if
>> we'd struck an oncoming vehicle at 25 miles an hour, each?
>>
>> Carl Jarvis
>>
>>
>> On 4/19/19, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>>> I didn't hit him. He jumped out of the way just in time. That image
>>> of him that I have burnt into my brain was the sight of him in mid leap.
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> Christopher Hitchens
>>> " What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without
>>> evidence. "
>>> ― Christopher Hitchens,
>>>
>>> On 4/19/2019 9:18 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
>>>> Other people might not have laughed in that situation. I've never
>>>> driven a car, but if it were me, I'd have been horrified that I'd
>>>> inadvertently hit someone whom I hadn't seen, relieved that he
>>>> wasn't hurt, and terrified about being arrested. I suspect that if
>>>> you were African American, he probably would have arrested you for
>>>> attempted murder, and you might not be here to tell the tale.
>>>>
>>>> Miriam
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>>>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org> On Behalf Of Roger Loran
>>>> Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2019 10:10 PM
>>>> To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>>>> Subject: [blind-democracy] Attempted murder
>>>>
>>>> Since I was using attempted murder as an example of how one could be
>>>> charged with a crime when the intended crime was not committed I
>>>> reminded myself of the time a cop threatened to arrest me for
>>>> attempted murder. I tell you this only because I thought you might
>>>> find it amusing. In retrospect I do. I was driving along once at
>>>> night. I came up to an elementary school on my left and sitting in
>>>> the parking lot was a police car with its blue lights flashing, its
>>>> headlights on and a door standing open. There was no cop in it nor
>>>> outside of it that I could see. That made me curious and so I was
>>>> looking at it wondering what was going on. As I passed it I returned
>>>> my eyes to the road just in time to see the cop. The image I saw was
>>>> burned into my brain and I still recall it in detail.
>>>> Right there in my headlights was an airborne cop. He was actually in
>>>> the air above the road with arms and legs spread out, with a
>>>> flashlight also in the air and detached from his right hand by
>>>> several inches, and a look on his face that could only be utter
>>>> panic. I hit my brakes just in time to avoid hitting the stopped car
>>>> that was partially in the road and partially in a deep ditch. I
>>>> could see that the car was stuck and that the cop had been directing
>>>> traffic around it, but because I was distracted by his cop car with
>>>> all of its lights flashing I did not see him until too late. It was
>>>> his leap that I caught part of in my headlights that saved him, not
>>>> my application of the brakes. The application of the brakes only
>>>> saved me from hitting the car. Once I had stopped here came the cop
>>>> from the foliage that he had leaped into. From his mouth came a
>>>> flurry of invectives each of which was preceded by the words god
>>>> damn. It was god damn idiot, god damn moron, god damn fool and god
>>>> damn everything else.
>>>> Between the god damns he threatened to arrest me for reckless
>>>> driving, attempted murder and numerous attempted other crimes. Even
>>>> while all this name calling and threats were going on I was hard
>>>> pressed to not laugh.
>>>> What struck me as so funny were all the leaves and twigs adorning
>>>> his uniform and his hair too. He must have landed in a real thicket.
>>>> Amazingly enough, though, he finally said that he had other things
>>>> to deal with other than me and he told me to get out of there before
>>>> he really did arrest me. I left without even a ticket.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
Friday, April 19, 2019
Fwd: [blind-democracy] The New Deal: Roosevelt’s answer to ‘radicalism’
This article on the depression days and FDR is pretty accurate.
Dad/Grandpa
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 10:45:12 -0700
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] The New Deal: Roosevelt's answer to 'radicalism'
To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
To Quote Teddy Roosevelt, "Bully! Bully!"
Back in the mid 1950's, Westbrook Peglar, Hearst's fair haired Op/Ed
writer, continued to trash FDR, dead for a dozen years, and even
carried the attack forward to Eleanor Roosevelt.
Hearst, like so many "self-made" millionaires of the day, was so full
of himself that he never did figure out that his well being was
directly tied to FDR's New Deal.
When FDR first ran in 1932, my folks were just courting. Married in
April of 1933, they lived in what today would be considered to be
Shacks. A single dangling light bulb, a wood stove, a water pump just
outside the kitchen door, and a path to the Out House. After four
years of President Herbert Hoover, they grabbed onto the New Deal as
if it were the last life boat on the Titanic.
Carl Jarvis, just one of the Depression Babies.
On 4/19/19, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> https://socialistaction.org/2019/04/19/the-new-deal-roosevelts-answer-to-radicalism/
>
>
> The New Deal: Roosevelt's answer to 'radicalism'
>
> / 8 hours ago
>
>
> April 2019 Roosevelt
> Franklin D. Roosevelt.
>
> By DAVID RIEHLE
>
> Four score and seven years ago … Franklin Roosevelt brought forth in
> this country a New Deal. Not a Square Deal (Teddy Roosevelt) or a Fair
> Deal (Truman) but a NEW DEAL. New York Governor Roosevelt was nominated
> for president at the Democratic Party national convention in Chicago on
> July 2, 1932. In his acceptance speech he said, "I pledge you and I
> pledge myself to a new deal for the American people."*
>
> FDR's Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins, revealed that when Roosevelt
> took office in March 1933, "the New Deal was not a plan with form or
> content. It was a happy phrase he had coined during the campaign and its
> value was psychological. It made people feel better."
>
> Fundamentally, the New Deal was a series of recovery programs designed
> as aids to businesses and banks. Congress passed and Roosevelt signed
> during his first 100 days in office the First New Deal Program (1933–5),
> including an Emergency Banking Act (March 1933), an Economy Act (March
> 1933), and the establishment of a Federal Emergency Relief
> Administration (March 1933), to be followed in June by the creation of a
> National Recovery Administration.
>
> Participation in the NRA was merely voluntary, and participating
> businesses were supposed to put the NRA's symbol, the Blue Eagle, in
> their windows. The Wobblies called it "The Blue Vulture." At the same
> time, there was a program of public works legislation, the WPA. Most
> significant and enduring for workers are three measures:
>
> 1) The National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935, which gives unions
> whatever legal status they have in this country.
>
> 2) The Social Security Act, passed in 1935, was a watered down version
> of Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party Representative Ernest Lundeen's bill
> proposing a comprehensive social insurance system "for all workers,
> including all wage earners, all salaried workers, farmers, professional
> workers and the self-employed." The bill provided for compensation equal
> to average earnings for wages lost due to layoffs, injuries, illnesses,
> maternity, and old age. Mothers of children under 18 also would receive
> allowances if they lacked male support.
>
> The Lundeen Bill was reported out of the House Labor Committee in 1935,
> but Congress failed to enact it. Instead, the Congress passed and
> President Roosevelt signed the restrictive and discriminatory Social
> Security Act, which excluded almost all African American workers—i.e.,
> agricultural laborers, as in the cotton fields—and (mostly African
> American) female domestic workers.
>
> 3) The Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938, which required overtime
> pay after 40 hours at the time and one half rate, outlawed most child
> labor and established a national minimum wage. Most embedded in the
> memory of the working class, perhaps, is the public works program known
> as the Works Progress Administration, or WPA. I happen to remember that
> Mad magazine, reviewing FDR's first term in office, with its alphabet
> soup of new federal agencies and programs, (NIRA, AAA, FCA, FSA, CCC,
> TVA, WPA, CCC, FHA FTC) said "Roosevelt's first term was an initial
> success." It's probably needless to say that all three of these
> threshold standards are under relentless attack and have been for the
> last 40 years or so.
>
> In July 1932, Roosevelt was speaking as unemployment, which had surged
> up from around 4% after the October 1929 stock market crash, was now,
> nearly three years into the Depression, approaching 25% and still
> rising. There was virtually no social safety net, and people were
> obviously desperate.
> Men Waiting Outside Al Capone Soup Kitchen
> Despite the New Deal, high unemployment persisted during the Roosevelt
> administration until the beginning of World War II.
>
> There had been depressions before in American history, but FDR assured
> the delegates that "the great social phenomenon of this depression,
> unlike others before it, is that it has produced but a few of the
> disorderly manifestations that too often attend upon such times.
>
> "Wild radicalism has made few converts, and the greatest tribute that I
> can pay to my countrymen is that in these days of crushing want there
> persists an orderly and hopeful spirit on the part of the millions of
> our people who have suffered so much. To fail to offer them a new chance
> is not only to betray their hopes but to misunderstand their patience."
>
> Of course, this was in July 1932. Their patience wore thin pretty
> quickly. "To meet by reaction that danger of radicalism is to invite
> disaster," Roosevelt said. "Reaction is no barrier to the radical. It is
> a challenge, a provocation. The way to meet that danger is to offer a
> workable program of reconstruction, and the party to offer it is the
> party with clean hands."
>
> Why did FDR have the danger of "wild radicalism" on his mind? This was
> not just an abstract consideration, or even simply a recollection of the
> social turmoil during the depressions of the late 19th century.
> Roosevelt, in fact, had every reason to be especially aware of and
> sensitive to "wild radicalism."
>
> FDR had been involved in New York and national politics for decades. At
> the time of his nomination for president he had been serving as governor
> of New York for the previous four years, and he had earlier been a
> member of the New York state legislature. New York, and New York City in
> particular, was the center of working-class radicalism in the United
> States, with tens of thousands of workers who supported left-wing
> parties and made up the membership of militant unions, particularly in
> the garment industry. In 1920, five socialists whom workers in New York
> City had elected to the state legislature were denied their seats by the
> Democratic/Republican majority on the grounds that they were "elected on
> a platform that is absolutely inimical to the best interests of the
> state of New York and the United States."
>
> By 1938, when FDR was serving his second term, "wild radicalism" had
> made enough converts to produce a wave of mass strikes in 1934, the
> formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations by the seceding
> unions from the American Federation of Labor, and the semi-revolutionary
> occupation in late 1936 of the giant General Motors plant in Flint
> Michigan, led by radical autoworkers.
>
> As socialist journalist Art Preis wrote in "Labor's Giant Step," his
> history of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), "The picture
> of Roosevelt as a 'friend of labor' giving the people concessions out of
> the tenderness of his heart—this portrait painted by both the
> conservative trade union officialdom and the Stalinists—is completely
> false. Roosevelt was a clever, adroit politician who carefully gauged
> popular sentiment. His slightest concession to the workers was given
> grudgingly out of fear of the masses and to prevent their moving left.
>
> "He voiced this in his 1932 acceptance speech, saying that 'a resentment
> against the failure of Republican leadership … the failure of Republican
> leaders to solve our troubles may degenerate into unreasoning
> radicalism. … To meet by reaction that danger of radicalism is to invite
> disaster.'"
>
> Preis quotes Raymond Moley, one of Roosevelt's closest associates of the
> early "New Deal," who wrote in his book, "After Seven Years": "It cannot
> be emphasized too strongly that the policies which vanquished the bank
> crisis were thoroughly conservative policies. If ever there was a moment
> when things hung in a balance, it was on March 5, 1933—when unorthodoxy
> would have drained the last remaining strength of the capitalist system.
> Capitalism was saved in eight days."
>
> And he cites Ferdinand Lundberg, in "America's 60 Families," the classic
> study of the big capitalists who run this country, who concluded that
> the New Deal was neither "revolutionary nor radical; in reality it was
> 'conservative.' He wrote that 'its mild tentative reformist coloration'
> was a concession in the face of widespread unrest."
>
> The original draft of NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Administration)
> said nothing about collective bargaining rights. Long afterwards, Miss
> Perkins admitted that Section 7(a) was written into the bill only after
> protests by William Green (then president of the American Federation of
> Labor). She comments: "Written in general terms, 7(a) was a problem in
> semantics. It was a set of words to suit labor leaders, William Green in
> particular."
>
> Of course, everyone knows that FDR came from the upper class, but does
> anybody really know where the family got its wealth? It wasn't from
> operating a farm in upstate New York (FDR identified himself on the
> census as a "farmer.") Franklin Roosevelt was a member of the oldest
> section of the American ruling class, what is sometimes called the
> "Knickerbocker Aristocracy." This group's original fortunes derived from
> vast land grants along the Hudson River from the Dutch West Indies
> Company in the 17th century. Eventually the Roosevelt family fortunes
> came to rest on banking, railroads, and shipping. FDR's grandfather,
> Warren Delano II, made a fortune in the highly profitable China opium
> trade.
>
> It is interesting to note that no less than five members of the extended
> Roosevelt clan served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy: Theodore
> Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. who served from
> 1921 through 1924 under Harding and Coolidge, Theodore Douglas Robinson
> (the son of Corinne Roosevelt) who served from 1924 through 1929 under
> Coolidge, and finally Henry Latrobe Roosevelt, a descendant of Robert
> Fulton's old friend "Steamboat Nicholas" Roosevelt, who served from 1933
> through 1936 under FDR.
>
> FDR, who received presidential compensation of $75,000 annually, also
> was given a $75,000 yearly allowance by his mother, Sara Delano
> Roosevelt, while he was in the White House. If Roosevelt knew anything
> about poor people, it was that God must have loved them, because he made
> so many of them.
>
> Now: The Green New Deal
>
> The first problem in calling for a Green New Deal is that it
> misrepresents the original, which was, if anything, miserly and
> conservative. It happened to coincide with the most massive labor
> uprising in U.S. history, but it didn't create it. At this point in
> time, it is doubtful if many people under 60 years old except students
> of history and Democratic Party politicians have ever heard of the "New
> Deal." And trying to rally people around a false version of history has
> obvious complications, to say the least.
>
> The "Green New Deal" that we're hearing about now is a response to an
> October 2018 report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on
> Climate Change, which found that in order to avoid catastrophic
> consequences worldwide, the global temperature must be prevented from
> increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next 12 years. To
> reach this goal, global greenhouse gas emissions need to be 45 percent
> below 2010 levels by 2030 and be net zero by 2050.
>
> This will require, they say, in a very limited time frame,
> "extraordinary transitions in transportation; in energy, land, and
> building infrastructure; and in industrial systems."
>
> Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has achieved instant
> celebrity as an electoral phenom, at least presents the GND proposition
> in more sweeping terms. She calls the Green New Deal proposed in Obama's
> 2008 platform a "half measure" that "will not work." She says, "The
> Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the
> mobilization efforts seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan. It will
> require the investment of trillions of dollars and the creation of
> millions of high-wage jobs. We must again invest in the development,
> manufacturing, deployment, and distribution of energy but this time
> green energy."
>
> In other words, if this statement is to be taken seriously, the model is
> not FDR's "New Deal," but an all-out and continuing mobilization of
> national (and international) resources of the scale and intensity of
> World War II, but directed at saving the ecosystem, and not destroying
> it in the name of "democracy."
>
> The Marshall Plan, it should be noted, was a forthright attempt, largely
> successful, to resuscitate capitalist Western Europe and inaugurate the
> Cold War, notably with the help of Nazi war criminals in West Germany.
>
> This at least has the merit of posing or strongly implying that the
> challenge to humanity demands an unprecedented social, economic and
> political effort. However, it is historically out of context. The
> economic, military, and human mobilizations by the United States during
> World War II were directed towards achieving maximum human and material
> destruction, the only goal around which the ruling class could coalesce
> effectively. The greatest technical accomplishment was at the same time
> the most sinister—the atom bomb—used to immediately extinguish the lives
> of more than 200,000 non-combatant human beings in Hiroshima and
> Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945.
>
> All these things were carried out with the full force and credit of the
> U.S. ruling class, and primarily through executive fiat by FDR. (Nuclear
> war against Japan was authorized by Harry Truman after FDR's death in
> April 1945.)
>
> But how is this green transformation to be accomplished? Several
> socialist organizations have explored this question.
>
> For example, Socialist Alternative, the newspaper of the organization of
> the same name, writes (Dec. 18, 2018), "We have seen young people
> propelled into action on this issue, as shown by the occupations of
> Nancy Pelosi's office in November demanding a 'Green New Deal,' and it
> is likely this movement for climate justice will develop further in the
> coming year. We need a massive green infrastructure program to create
> millions of good paying jobs transitioning the U.S. away from fossil
> fuels and to renewable energy!"
>
> The goals enunciated are compelling, but vague. There is little sense
> here of the utter urgency of taking on the unpostponable crisis of
> climate change. While Socialist Alternative scores what it calls the
> "corporate Democrats," like Pelosi, it champions the Democratic Party's
> main proponent of the Green New Deal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This
> reinforces the delusion that any progress can be achieved by people of
> good will, through the medium of the capitalist Democratic Party, not to
> say the Congress of the United States.
>
> Directing this movement into the Democratic Party, and the U.S.
> Congress, will suffocate it: "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate"
> ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here").
>
> Even FDR, with all the unilateral power of the Oval Office and the
> momentum of a landslide victory, was repeatedly stymied by the Supreme
> Court and reactionary inertia and sabotage of Congress. And all he was
> trying to do was save capitalism.
>
> It is absolutely true that the emerging crisis cannot be seriously and
> effectively addressed without the elimination of fossil fuels. But the
> extraction and use of fossil fuels is not even slowing down; pipelines,
> crude oil trains, supertankers—it's too fabulously profitable and it has
> been so for over a century. This is the most arrogant and richest class
> in the history of the world—and the most destructive. They will not give
> this up; they are incapable of it. They want more. What are they doing
> in Venezuela, which has the world's largest proven reserves of oil?
>
> Leon Trotsky explained, in his introduction to "The History of the
> Russian Revolution," what makes a revolution possible: "The most
> indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct intervention of the
> masses in historical events. In ordinary times the state, be it
> monarchical or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and history
> is made by specialists in that line of business—kings, ministers,
> bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments
> when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break
> over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside
> their traditional representatives, and create by their own intervention
> the initial groundwork for a new regime….
>
> "The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the
> forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their
> own destiny."
>
> It's no accident that the majority of young people express a preference
> for socialism over capitalism. They don't know much about the theory of
> surplus value or dialectical materialism, but they sense that capitalism
> is dog-eat-dog and that socialism holds out the promise of a society of
> peace and human solidarity, and a genuinely green planet.
>
> And they are beginning to move into the streets to demand change. We've
> recently seen demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of young
> people—people under 18—in many countries. This is the beginning. This is
> the vanguard that doesn't want to compromise with self-serving
> politicians, that demands action now. These are the youthful legions
> that are on the threshold of becoming the vanguard of the working class
> of the world—a movement in the streets that can begin to express
> political independence and can educate and inspire others.
>
> It is clear from the testimony of history that there is no other social
> force that can push aside, overthrow, and repress the architects of the
> overwhelming disaster facing the human race other than the masses, the
> workers, the farmers, the wretched of the earth. Can it be done in time?
> That is, of course, impossible to say. But we do know that when a window
> opens up, when an opening is created by a social and human crisis of
> unprecedented depth and intensity, the historic possibility is there.
>
> If a crucial minority has been assembled that is prepared to act
> decisively to "create by their own intervention the initial groundwork
> for a new regime," it can be done. And all history shows there is no
> other way.
>
> *FDR's distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, had introduced the "Square
> Deal: "…if there is one thing that I do desire to stand for it is for a
> square deal, for an attitude of kindly justice as between man and man,
> without regard to what any man's creed or birthplace or social position
> may be, so long as, in his life and in his work, he shows the qualities
> that entitle him to the respect of his fellows."
>
>
>
>
> Share this:
>
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>
>
> April 19, 2019 in Economy, Environment, Marxist Theory & History.
>
>
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> ---
>
> Christopher Hitchens
> " What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without
> evidence. "
> ― Christopher Hitchens,
>
>
>
Dad/Grandpa
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 10:45:12 -0700
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] The New Deal: Roosevelt's answer to 'radicalism'
To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
To Quote Teddy Roosevelt, "Bully! Bully!"
Back in the mid 1950's, Westbrook Peglar, Hearst's fair haired Op/Ed
writer, continued to trash FDR, dead for a dozen years, and even
carried the attack forward to Eleanor Roosevelt.
Hearst, like so many "self-made" millionaires of the day, was so full
of himself that he never did figure out that his well being was
directly tied to FDR's New Deal.
When FDR first ran in 1932, my folks were just courting. Married in
April of 1933, they lived in what today would be considered to be
Shacks. A single dangling light bulb, a wood stove, a water pump just
outside the kitchen door, and a path to the Out House. After four
years of President Herbert Hoover, they grabbed onto the New Deal as
if it were the last life boat on the Titanic.
Carl Jarvis, just one of the Depression Babies.
On 4/19/19, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> https://socialistaction.org/2019/04/19/the-new-deal-roosevelts-answer-to-radicalism/
>
>
> The New Deal: Roosevelt's answer to 'radicalism'
>
> / 8 hours ago
>
>
> April 2019 Roosevelt
> Franklin D. Roosevelt.
>
> By DAVID RIEHLE
>
> Four score and seven years ago … Franklin Roosevelt brought forth in
> this country a New Deal. Not a Square Deal (Teddy Roosevelt) or a Fair
> Deal (Truman) but a NEW DEAL. New York Governor Roosevelt was nominated
> for president at the Democratic Party national convention in Chicago on
> July 2, 1932. In his acceptance speech he said, "I pledge you and I
> pledge myself to a new deal for the American people."*
>
> FDR's Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins, revealed that when Roosevelt
> took office in March 1933, "the New Deal was not a plan with form or
> content. It was a happy phrase he had coined during the campaign and its
> value was psychological. It made people feel better."
>
> Fundamentally, the New Deal was a series of recovery programs designed
> as aids to businesses and banks. Congress passed and Roosevelt signed
> during his first 100 days in office the First New Deal Program (1933–5),
> including an Emergency Banking Act (March 1933), an Economy Act (March
> 1933), and the establishment of a Federal Emergency Relief
> Administration (March 1933), to be followed in June by the creation of a
> National Recovery Administration.
>
> Participation in the NRA was merely voluntary, and participating
> businesses were supposed to put the NRA's symbol, the Blue Eagle, in
> their windows. The Wobblies called it "The Blue Vulture." At the same
> time, there was a program of public works legislation, the WPA. Most
> significant and enduring for workers are three measures:
>
> 1) The National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935, which gives unions
> whatever legal status they have in this country.
>
> 2) The Social Security Act, passed in 1935, was a watered down version
> of Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party Representative Ernest Lundeen's bill
> proposing a comprehensive social insurance system "for all workers,
> including all wage earners, all salaried workers, farmers, professional
> workers and the self-employed." The bill provided for compensation equal
> to average earnings for wages lost due to layoffs, injuries, illnesses,
> maternity, and old age. Mothers of children under 18 also would receive
> allowances if they lacked male support.
>
> The Lundeen Bill was reported out of the House Labor Committee in 1935,
> but Congress failed to enact it. Instead, the Congress passed and
> President Roosevelt signed the restrictive and discriminatory Social
> Security Act, which excluded almost all African American workers—i.e.,
> agricultural laborers, as in the cotton fields—and (mostly African
> American) female domestic workers.
>
> 3) The Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938, which required overtime
> pay after 40 hours at the time and one half rate, outlawed most child
> labor and established a national minimum wage. Most embedded in the
> memory of the working class, perhaps, is the public works program known
> as the Works Progress Administration, or WPA. I happen to remember that
> Mad magazine, reviewing FDR's first term in office, with its alphabet
> soup of new federal agencies and programs, (NIRA, AAA, FCA, FSA, CCC,
> TVA, WPA, CCC, FHA FTC) said "Roosevelt's first term was an initial
> success." It's probably needless to say that all three of these
> threshold standards are under relentless attack and have been for the
> last 40 years or so.
>
> In July 1932, Roosevelt was speaking as unemployment, which had surged
> up from around 4% after the October 1929 stock market crash, was now,
> nearly three years into the Depression, approaching 25% and still
> rising. There was virtually no social safety net, and people were
> obviously desperate.
> Men Waiting Outside Al Capone Soup Kitchen
> Despite the New Deal, high unemployment persisted during the Roosevelt
> administration until the beginning of World War II.
>
> There had been depressions before in American history, but FDR assured
> the delegates that "the great social phenomenon of this depression,
> unlike others before it, is that it has produced but a few of the
> disorderly manifestations that too often attend upon such times.
>
> "Wild radicalism has made few converts, and the greatest tribute that I
> can pay to my countrymen is that in these days of crushing want there
> persists an orderly and hopeful spirit on the part of the millions of
> our people who have suffered so much. To fail to offer them a new chance
> is not only to betray their hopes but to misunderstand their patience."
>
> Of course, this was in July 1932. Their patience wore thin pretty
> quickly. "To meet by reaction that danger of radicalism is to invite
> disaster," Roosevelt said. "Reaction is no barrier to the radical. It is
> a challenge, a provocation. The way to meet that danger is to offer a
> workable program of reconstruction, and the party to offer it is the
> party with clean hands."
>
> Why did FDR have the danger of "wild radicalism" on his mind? This was
> not just an abstract consideration, or even simply a recollection of the
> social turmoil during the depressions of the late 19th century.
> Roosevelt, in fact, had every reason to be especially aware of and
> sensitive to "wild radicalism."
>
> FDR had been involved in New York and national politics for decades. At
> the time of his nomination for president he had been serving as governor
> of New York for the previous four years, and he had earlier been a
> member of the New York state legislature. New York, and New York City in
> particular, was the center of working-class radicalism in the United
> States, with tens of thousands of workers who supported left-wing
> parties and made up the membership of militant unions, particularly in
> the garment industry. In 1920, five socialists whom workers in New York
> City had elected to the state legislature were denied their seats by the
> Democratic/Republican majority on the grounds that they were "elected on
> a platform that is absolutely inimical to the best interests of the
> state of New York and the United States."
>
> By 1938, when FDR was serving his second term, "wild radicalism" had
> made enough converts to produce a wave of mass strikes in 1934, the
> formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations by the seceding
> unions from the American Federation of Labor, and the semi-revolutionary
> occupation in late 1936 of the giant General Motors plant in Flint
> Michigan, led by radical autoworkers.
>
> As socialist journalist Art Preis wrote in "Labor's Giant Step," his
> history of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), "The picture
> of Roosevelt as a 'friend of labor' giving the people concessions out of
> the tenderness of his heart—this portrait painted by both the
> conservative trade union officialdom and the Stalinists—is completely
> false. Roosevelt was a clever, adroit politician who carefully gauged
> popular sentiment. His slightest concession to the workers was given
> grudgingly out of fear of the masses and to prevent their moving left.
>
> "He voiced this in his 1932 acceptance speech, saying that 'a resentment
> against the failure of Republican leadership … the failure of Republican
> leaders to solve our troubles may degenerate into unreasoning
> radicalism. … To meet by reaction that danger of radicalism is to invite
> disaster.'"
>
> Preis quotes Raymond Moley, one of Roosevelt's closest associates of the
> early "New Deal," who wrote in his book, "After Seven Years": "It cannot
> be emphasized too strongly that the policies which vanquished the bank
> crisis were thoroughly conservative policies. If ever there was a moment
> when things hung in a balance, it was on March 5, 1933—when unorthodoxy
> would have drained the last remaining strength of the capitalist system.
> Capitalism was saved in eight days."
>
> And he cites Ferdinand Lundberg, in "America's 60 Families," the classic
> study of the big capitalists who run this country, who concluded that
> the New Deal was neither "revolutionary nor radical; in reality it was
> 'conservative.' He wrote that 'its mild tentative reformist coloration'
> was a concession in the face of widespread unrest."
>
> The original draft of NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Administration)
> said nothing about collective bargaining rights. Long afterwards, Miss
> Perkins admitted that Section 7(a) was written into the bill only after
> protests by William Green (then president of the American Federation of
> Labor). She comments: "Written in general terms, 7(a) was a problem in
> semantics. It was a set of words to suit labor leaders, William Green in
> particular."
>
> Of course, everyone knows that FDR came from the upper class, but does
> anybody really know where the family got its wealth? It wasn't from
> operating a farm in upstate New York (FDR identified himself on the
> census as a "farmer.") Franklin Roosevelt was a member of the oldest
> section of the American ruling class, what is sometimes called the
> "Knickerbocker Aristocracy." This group's original fortunes derived from
> vast land grants along the Hudson River from the Dutch West Indies
> Company in the 17th century. Eventually the Roosevelt family fortunes
> came to rest on banking, railroads, and shipping. FDR's grandfather,
> Warren Delano II, made a fortune in the highly profitable China opium
> trade.
>
> It is interesting to note that no less than five members of the extended
> Roosevelt clan served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy: Theodore
> Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. who served from
> 1921 through 1924 under Harding and Coolidge, Theodore Douglas Robinson
> (the son of Corinne Roosevelt) who served from 1924 through 1929 under
> Coolidge, and finally Henry Latrobe Roosevelt, a descendant of Robert
> Fulton's old friend "Steamboat Nicholas" Roosevelt, who served from 1933
> through 1936 under FDR.
>
> FDR, who received presidential compensation of $75,000 annually, also
> was given a $75,000 yearly allowance by his mother, Sara Delano
> Roosevelt, while he was in the White House. If Roosevelt knew anything
> about poor people, it was that God must have loved them, because he made
> so many of them.
>
> Now: The Green New Deal
>
> The first problem in calling for a Green New Deal is that it
> misrepresents the original, which was, if anything, miserly and
> conservative. It happened to coincide with the most massive labor
> uprising in U.S. history, but it didn't create it. At this point in
> time, it is doubtful if many people under 60 years old except students
> of history and Democratic Party politicians have ever heard of the "New
> Deal." And trying to rally people around a false version of history has
> obvious complications, to say the least.
>
> The "Green New Deal" that we're hearing about now is a response to an
> October 2018 report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on
> Climate Change, which found that in order to avoid catastrophic
> consequences worldwide, the global temperature must be prevented from
> increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next 12 years. To
> reach this goal, global greenhouse gas emissions need to be 45 percent
> below 2010 levels by 2030 and be net zero by 2050.
>
> This will require, they say, in a very limited time frame,
> "extraordinary transitions in transportation; in energy, land, and
> building infrastructure; and in industrial systems."
>
> Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has achieved instant
> celebrity as an electoral phenom, at least presents the GND proposition
> in more sweeping terms. She calls the Green New Deal proposed in Obama's
> 2008 platform a "half measure" that "will not work." She says, "The
> Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the
> mobilization efforts seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan. It will
> require the investment of trillions of dollars and the creation of
> millions of high-wage jobs. We must again invest in the development,
> manufacturing, deployment, and distribution of energy but this time
> green energy."
>
> In other words, if this statement is to be taken seriously, the model is
> not FDR's "New Deal," but an all-out and continuing mobilization of
> national (and international) resources of the scale and intensity of
> World War II, but directed at saving the ecosystem, and not destroying
> it in the name of "democracy."
>
> The Marshall Plan, it should be noted, was a forthright attempt, largely
> successful, to resuscitate capitalist Western Europe and inaugurate the
> Cold War, notably with the help of Nazi war criminals in West Germany.
>
> This at least has the merit of posing or strongly implying that the
> challenge to humanity demands an unprecedented social, economic and
> political effort. However, it is historically out of context. The
> economic, military, and human mobilizations by the United States during
> World War II were directed towards achieving maximum human and material
> destruction, the only goal around which the ruling class could coalesce
> effectively. The greatest technical accomplishment was at the same time
> the most sinister—the atom bomb—used to immediately extinguish the lives
> of more than 200,000 non-combatant human beings in Hiroshima and
> Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945.
>
> All these things were carried out with the full force and credit of the
> U.S. ruling class, and primarily through executive fiat by FDR. (Nuclear
> war against Japan was authorized by Harry Truman after FDR's death in
> April 1945.)
>
> But how is this green transformation to be accomplished? Several
> socialist organizations have explored this question.
>
> For example, Socialist Alternative, the newspaper of the organization of
> the same name, writes (Dec. 18, 2018), "We have seen young people
> propelled into action on this issue, as shown by the occupations of
> Nancy Pelosi's office in November demanding a 'Green New Deal,' and it
> is likely this movement for climate justice will develop further in the
> coming year. We need a massive green infrastructure program to create
> millions of good paying jobs transitioning the U.S. away from fossil
> fuels and to renewable energy!"
>
> The goals enunciated are compelling, but vague. There is little sense
> here of the utter urgency of taking on the unpostponable crisis of
> climate change. While Socialist Alternative scores what it calls the
> "corporate Democrats," like Pelosi, it champions the Democratic Party's
> main proponent of the Green New Deal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This
> reinforces the delusion that any progress can be achieved by people of
> good will, through the medium of the capitalist Democratic Party, not to
> say the Congress of the United States.
>
> Directing this movement into the Democratic Party, and the U.S.
> Congress, will suffocate it: "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate"
> ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here").
>
> Even FDR, with all the unilateral power of the Oval Office and the
> momentum of a landslide victory, was repeatedly stymied by the Supreme
> Court and reactionary inertia and sabotage of Congress. And all he was
> trying to do was save capitalism.
>
> It is absolutely true that the emerging crisis cannot be seriously and
> effectively addressed without the elimination of fossil fuels. But the
> extraction and use of fossil fuels is not even slowing down; pipelines,
> crude oil trains, supertankers—it's too fabulously profitable and it has
> been so for over a century. This is the most arrogant and richest class
> in the history of the world—and the most destructive. They will not give
> this up; they are incapable of it. They want more. What are they doing
> in Venezuela, which has the world's largest proven reserves of oil?
>
> Leon Trotsky explained, in his introduction to "The History of the
> Russian Revolution," what makes a revolution possible: "The most
> indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct intervention of the
> masses in historical events. In ordinary times the state, be it
> monarchical or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and history
> is made by specialists in that line of business—kings, ministers,
> bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments
> when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break
> over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside
> their traditional representatives, and create by their own intervention
> the initial groundwork for a new regime….
>
> "The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the
> forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their
> own destiny."
>
> It's no accident that the majority of young people express a preference
> for socialism over capitalism. They don't know much about the theory of
> surplus value or dialectical materialism, but they sense that capitalism
> is dog-eat-dog and that socialism holds out the promise of a society of
> peace and human solidarity, and a genuinely green planet.
>
> And they are beginning to move into the streets to demand change. We've
> recently seen demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of young
> people—people under 18—in many countries. This is the beginning. This is
> the vanguard that doesn't want to compromise with self-serving
> politicians, that demands action now. These are the youthful legions
> that are on the threshold of becoming the vanguard of the working class
> of the world—a movement in the streets that can begin to express
> political independence and can educate and inspire others.
>
> It is clear from the testimony of history that there is no other social
> force that can push aside, overthrow, and repress the architects of the
> overwhelming disaster facing the human race other than the masses, the
> workers, the farmers, the wretched of the earth. Can it be done in time?
> That is, of course, impossible to say. But we do know that when a window
> opens up, when an opening is created by a social and human crisis of
> unprecedented depth and intensity, the historic possibility is there.
>
> If a crucial minority has been assembled that is prepared to act
> decisively to "create by their own intervention the initial groundwork
> for a new regime," it can be done. And all history shows there is no
> other way.
>
> *FDR's distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, had introduced the "Square
> Deal: "…if there is one thing that I do desire to stand for it is for a
> square deal, for an attitude of kindly justice as between man and man,
> without regard to what any man's creed or birthplace or social position
> may be, so long as, in his life and in his work, he shows the qualities
> that entitle him to the respect of his fellows."
>
>
>
>
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> April 19, 2019 in Economy, Environment, Marxist Theory & History.
>
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> The Real Deal on the 'New Deal'
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> Challenges posed by the 'Green New Deal'
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> Christopher Hitchens
> " What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without
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> ― Christopher Hitchens,
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