If we are focused on militarization of our nation's police
departments, we are missing the bigger picture. The growing violence
and the appearance of an armored division, even in many of our small
towns, is a result of a growing violent nature within our Corporate
Empire. Under the greedy desires of the Ruling Class, we are breeding
a nation of professional killers. From the games our children are
exposed to, and on through the conditioning by the TV cartoons and the
reading materials pushed by the mass media, we are twisting the
innocent minds of new born babes into violent, angry little puppets,
ready to serve their masters.
Perhaps you have not yet felt the boot of the Master's Robots. You
may live in a gated community, where the police stand guard protecting
you from the "rabble".
Or you may be one of those fortunate folk who still cling to a Middle
Class life style, living in a mostly White neighborhood, among "Your
Kind". You teach your young to keep their noses clean and they will
stay out of trouble...maybe. But more and more often our young are
being used for target practice, especially our children of Color.
But before we blame the police, or even our Masters, we need to look
in the mirror. We are allowing our minds to be dragged toward the
Gates of Hell. We do not need to go there. We do hold the final
power...the Power of the Masses.
If we don't like having our police force armed to the teeth, take away
their arms. Turn our police into Peace Keepers. Turn our Corporate
Empire into a democracy. Send our Ruling Masters straight to Hell.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/28/14, S. Kashdan <skashdan@scn.org> wrote:
> Do Cops Just Tase People for Fun Now?
>
>
>
> By Steven Rosenfeld [2]
>
>
>
> AlterNet [1], August 26, 2014 |
>
>
>
> http://www.alternet.org/print/civil-liberties/do-cops-just-tase-people-fun-now
>
>
>
> On the first Sunday in August, Brandon Ruff, an offduty sergeant with the
> Philadelphia Police Department, was given three guns by a friend who wanted
>
> to turn them in to the police under the city's no-questions-asked firearms
> policy. Little did Ruff know when he walked into a station at 6:30pm, that
> by midnight he would be assaulted by a half-dozen police officers using
> Tasers--stun guns delivering up to 50,000 volts--arrested, thrown in a cell,
>
> and put under a police investigation.
>
>
>
> "You are a piece of f**king sh*t, you are scum, and you are supervisor. You
>
> are a disgrace to me, this department and the 35th District. You do not
> belong on this job," a desk sergeant yelled at Ruff, after he produced his
> police ID, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit [3] filed by the
> officer on Monday, seeking damages and a court review of cops who use "their
>
> status as police officers to have persons falsely arrested, assaulted and
> [subject to] malicious prosecution and unlawfully searched... to achieve
> ends not reasonably related to their police duties."
>
>
>
> Excessive use of force by police is hardly new. But it is unusual when a
> police officer points the finger at abuses by fellow cops, as Ruff does in
> his lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania. When Ruff identified himself as a cop,
> one officer shouted back, "I'll fucking tase you," the lawsuit said. A
> half-dozen other officers then ambushed him as he stepped outside to make a
>
> telephone call, grabbing him, roughing him up, shocking him and finally
> arresting him.
>
>
>
> Ruff's suit was one of two filed in federal court Monday citing police
> brutality and Tasers. In his suit, Ruff said that Philadelphia police were
> "deliberately indifferent" to the need for "more or different" training,
> supervision, investigation and discipline in for "false arrest... [and]
> evidence planting." Ruff said the department also turned a blind eye to
> "police officers with emotional or psychological problems."
>
>
>
> The second federal lawsuit [4] filed Monday over Taser abuse, in San
> Bernardino County in southeast California, concerned eight deputy sheriffs
> who routinely tortured prisoners at a jail with Tasers, even sharing videos
>
> of the assaults for entertainment. The victim, Cesar Vazquez, was regularly
>
> attacked while working in the jail's kitchen. The lawsuit has even more
> graphic details than Ruff's cop-on-cop violence:
>
>
>
> Vazquez "was given a job within the [West Valley Detention] Center as a
> 'chow server;' in that job, Plaintiff was to possess greater privileges than
>
> other inmates, including telephone calls, television time, and freedom of
> movement within the Center," the suit said. "Soon after starting this job,
> Plaintiff was told by [San Bernadino County Sheriff Department Captain
> Robert] Escamilla and [Deputy Sherrif Russell] Kopasz that these two
> deputies used a Taser or other electroshock weapon on, or 'tased,' all chow
>
> servers as part of an 'initiation' process."
>
>
>
> "Escamilla and Kopasz then proceeded to place their weapons on the
> Plaintiff's
> upper thighs, and produced a shock to the Plaintiff's body, causing pain so
>
> intense that Plaintiff leapt to his feet; Escamilla and Kopasz each
> laughed," the suit said, noting that they tased Vazquez once a week or more.
>
> "On another occasion, while Plaintiff and other inmates were watching
> television, Escamilla approached them and said that he was going to hold a
> 'taser seminar,'" the suit continued. "Escamilla told Plaintiff to sit down
>
> so that the deputies could try to break the Plaintiff's 'record' of the
> number of electroshock weapons Plaintiff could endure at a time."
>
>
>
> The suit said that Vazquez "cooperated" with another string of taser
> assaults by [Deputy Sheriff Nicholas] Oakley "since Oakley used a threat of
>
> physical harm... which Plaintiff considered more serious than the possible
> tasing." The suit said another deputy sheriff, Andrew Cruz, "tased Plaintiff
>
> between 20 and 30 times... while housed at the facility," between March and
>
> December 2013.
>
>
>
> Both lawsuits say a range of constitutional rights were violated, starting
> with freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and due judicial process.
> The California suit seeks $30 million in damages; the Philadelphia suit
> doesn't specify a figure, but calls on the court to look at the
> "psychological problems" among officers using Tasers.
>
>
>
> AlterNet has long documented [5] abusive policing and misuse of Tasers.
> Civil liberties groups such as the New York Civil Liberties Union have
> issued reports on police misuse of Tasers. In late 2011, the NYCLU found [6]
>
> that in 75 percent of incidents where New York police had used Tasers, the
> cops issued no verbal warning. In only 15 percent of incidents involving
> Taser use, the target was "armed or thought to be armed," NYCLU found.
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, the San Bernardino branch of the NAACP held [7] a press
> conference with the widow of Dante Parker, a 36-year-old African-American
> man who was tasered by county sheriff deputies on August 12 and later died
> at a hospital. The NAACP was calling on the federal government to take over
>
> the investigation into Parker's death, as the Department of Justice is doing
>
> with Michael Brown's killing in Ferguson, MO.
>
>
>
> "We are asking for transparent accountability as to what happened to Mr.
> Parker's encounter with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's deputies and how
>
> and why did Mr. Parker die in their custody," Samuel Carl Jr., Victor Valley
>
> NAACP president, said [7]. "While this instance regarding Mr. Parker's death
>
> is heartbreaking and all the questions and answers have yet to be known, we
>
> also stand here today with the realization that African-Americans are dying
>
> at the hands of those sworn to protect and serve the community in record
> numbers."
>
>
>
> The family's lawyer told [7] the San Bernardino Sun that "the evidence will
>
> show in this case that this did not happen as the deputies described it."
> The newspaper cited remarks by his widow, Bianca Carlisle Parker, who is
> left with five children:
>
>
>
> Bianca Parker said since her husband's death, her youngest son, 6-year-old
> Dan'te Parker, has asked every morning "Why all black men have to die?"
>
>
>
> "He was our provider, he was the rock of our family," she said, beginning to
>
> sob. "And I don't want to go through life being a bitter person but I feel
> myself having a whole bunch of anger and I'm not an angry person. I'm very
> forgiving, and it's not right. He taught me how to be a better person. He
> taught me how to not be prideful. He taught me how to apologize to people.
> We've known each other since we were 13. This is not just some dude off the
>
> street. He was a loving, caring father."
>
>
>
> The more one looks for examples of police brutality and excessive weapon
> use, the more one finds. George Curry, editor in chief of the National
> Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, wrote [8] after Michael
> Brown's
> killing that estimates based on incomplete reporting by police agencies
> across America suggest that white police are killing African Americans at a
>
> much higher rate than is admitted.
>
>
>
> "According to stats compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice, an unarmed
> African American died at the hands of an armed white police officer at the
> rate of nearly two per week from 2005 to 2012. Over that 8-year-period, 400
>
> police killings were reported per year. White officers killed a black
> person, on average, 96 times per year.
>
>
>
> "As bad as those figures are, they grossly understate the problem. The FBI
> statistics are based on the voluntary reporting of local law enforcement
> jurisdictions. Currently, approximately 750 of 17,000 law enforcement
> agencies regularly report their figures to the FBI. That means if the ratio
>
> holds true for all 17,000 agencies, the annual 96 black deaths at the hands
>
> of white cops could be as high as 2,170 a year or almost 42 (41.73) per
> week--nearly six per day (5.94).
>
>
>
> Curry said that a conservative estimate--based on cutting those numbers in
> half--would still mean three deaths at police hands daily. Of course, not
> every person shocked with a Taser dies. But police agencies across America
> certainly know that Tasers can be very dangerous, if not fatal.
>
>
>
> In March, San Francisco police responded to a report of a young man with a
> Taser in a city park in a neighborhood that's become a Silicon Valley
> bedroom community. Police ended up shooting and killing Alex Nieto, 28, in
> an incident that prompted his family to file a federal civil rights lawsuit
>
> [9] against the city this past Friday.
>
>
>
> "In the aftermath of the incident, the City and County of San Francisco
> ('CCSF') and the involved Officers claimed Alex defied Officers' orders and
>
> pointed a taser at them," the suit said. "To date, CCSF has refused to
> release the involved Officers' names. Instead, CCSF has engaged in a media
> campaign to besmirch Alex's reputation as a well known San Francisco
> resident who never sustained a single arrest."
>
>
>
> On Monday, the media covered the funeral of Michael Brown. The same day, two
>
> federal lawsuits were filed on different ends of the country, including one
>
> by a police officer, saying that police are using tasers to unnecessarily
> assault civilians and torture prisoners.
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, in the same county where a Latino man was mercilessly attacked
> by sheriff's deputies, the NAACP called on the FBI to take over the
> investigation of yet another police killing involving excessive force and
> Tasers. That same day in Georgia, the lawyer for the family of a man who
> died in April after being tased 13 times held a press conference saying [10]
>
> police didn't follow their own rules for using tasers, prompting the police
>
> to say that man, Gregory Towns, died from other causes.
>
>
>
> And in San Francisco, Alex Nieto's family is still waiting for answers about
>
> why their son was killed by police.
>
>
>
> [11]
>
>
>
> See more stories tagged with:
>
>
>
> tasers [12],
>
>
>
> police brutality [13],
>
>
>
> police killings by Tasers [14],
>
>
>
> naacp [15],
>
>
>
> San Bernardino Sheriffs and Dante Parker [16],
>
>
>
> San Bernadino Sheriffs and Cesar Vazquez [17],
>
>
>
> Philadelphia Police Sgt. Brandon Ruff [18],
>
>
>
> michael brown [19],
>
>
>
> Alex Nieto and San Francisco Police [20]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/do-cops-just-tase-people-fun-now
>
>
>
> Links:
>
>
>
> [1] http://alternet.org
>
>
>
> [2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-rosenfeld
>
>
>
> [3] http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/08/26/70754.htm
>
>
>
> [4] http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/08/26/70763.htm
>
>
>
> [5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/taser-abuse
>
>
>
> [6]
> http://www.nyclu.org/news/nyclu-analysis-finds-misuse-of-tasers-police-across-ny-state
>
>
>
> [7]
> http://www.sbsun.com/government-and-politics/20140819/naacp-calls-for-accountability-in-dante-parkers-police-custody-death
>
>
>
> [8]
> http://www.stlamerican.com/news/columnists/guest_columnists/article_00fb7d1e-27dd-11e4-bc3a-001a4bcf887a.html
>
>
>
> [9]
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/237546801/Refugio-Nieto-and-Elvira-Nieto-v-City-and-County-of-San-Francisco-et-al-8-22-2014
>
>
>
> [10]
> http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/27/georgia-cops-fired-taser-13-times-as-a-cattle-prod-to-make-tired-man-walk-before-he-died/
>
>
>
> [11] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Do Cops Just Tase
> People for Fun Now?
>
>
>
> [12] http://www.alternet.org/tags/tasers
>
>
>
> [13] http://www.alternet.org/tags/police-brutality
>
>
>
> [14] http://www.alternet.org/tags/police-killings-tasers
>
>
>
> [15] http://www.alternet.org/tags/naacp
>
>
>
> [16] http://www.alternet.org/tags/san-bernardino-sheriffs-and-dante-parker
>
>
>
> [17] http://www.alternet.org/tags/san-bernadino-sheriffs-and-cesar-vazquez
>
>
>
> [18] http://www.alternet.org/tags/philadelphia-police-sgt-brandon-ruff
>
>
>
> [19] http://www.alternet.org/tags/michael-brown
>
>
>
> [20] http://www.alternet.org/tags/alex-nieto-and-san-francisco-police
>
>
>
> [21] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
Friday, August 29, 2014
The Courage to Disarm
We need more articles such as this one. But how do we move them into
the Corporate Media? While so much of our concern is regarding the
strangle hold by the international oil cartels, and rightfully so, we
forget that what keeps them in power is the weapons industry. Every
nation, every cluster of rebels, and even our town law enforcements
are armed to the teeth. The only possible outcome is Murder...mass
murder.
How has it come that the multitude is held captive and led around by a
small band of greedy, self-serving bullies? They are driving us like
cattle over a cliff of no return. Not only ending the Human Race, but
all innocent life on this Planet Earth.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/28/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> The Courage to Disarm
> Published on
> Thursday, August 28, 2014
> by
> Common Dreams
> The Courage to Disarm
> by
> Robert C. Koehler
>
> (Photo: Face-to-Face)
> The Ferguson tragedy, like all those that preceded it and all that will
> follow - involving the trivial and panicky use of lethal force, by the
> police or anyone else - stirs up questions the social status quo doesn't
> dare face.
> My sister, Sue Melcher, put it this way: "I find myself also nauseated that
> another issue never seems to enter the discussion: the issue that a highly
> trained officer could make such a mistake with a gun demonstrates that just
> having the weapon present increased the danger of the situation. Had the
> citizens been armed, how many more casualties could there have been? None
> of
> us is 'healthy' enough to be trusted to use lethal force wisely - and is
> that even possible?"
> The "wise" use of lethal force . . .
> We've wrapped our global civilization around the certainty that we
> understand and revere life in all its vastness and mystery so completely
> that we know when to cut it short, indeed, that we - those of us who are
> officially sanctioned good guys - have a right to cut it short in, it would
> seem, an ever-widening array of circumstances. In so doing, we allegedly
> make life better for the social whole. This is called militarism. To keep
> this profitable lie going, we refuse to look deeply at its consequences.
> When we inflict death on distant cultures, at the sterile remove that
> modern
> weapons grant us, we can avoid all but the most cursory awareness of the
> consequences of our actions. But when we do it at home, it's not always so
> easy.
> Ferguson, Ferguson. A community - and a nation - erupted in agony at the
> hellish absurdity of Michael Brown's killing. One of the deeper, darker
> questions concealed in the maelstrom of rage and grief of Ferguson is this
> one: What if Officer Darren Wilson had not been armed when he told the two
> teenagers to get out of the street? What if the police force that employed
> him knew of, and practiced, effective, nonlethal forms of keeping order in
> the community (and did not regard the people it was "protecting" as the
> enemy)? This is not a simple question, but it has a simple answer. Michael
> Brown would be alive and Darren Wilson would not be in hiding.
> But no one is asking it because the popular imagination doesn't even
> entertain the possibility that such methods exist - or can be created.
> I ask this question now not to toss a superficial answer or two at the
> national and global violence epidemic we're caught in but to establish,
> first of all, the idea that violence has consequences and, furthermore,
> that
> having lethal force at one's fingertips also has consequences. "None of us
> is 'healthy' enough to be trusted to use lethal force wisely," Sue wrote.
> This is true if only because such power can always be wrested away from us,
> and knowing this is bound to bring an intensified level of panic into
> someone's decision-making process - even a trained professional's.
> The demand for police accountability that the Ferguson tragedy has
> unleashed
> is a demand for public scrutiny of an officer's state of mind when he makes
> the decision to use lethal force. At present, such accountability is murky,
> contained as it is within the police and legal community. Most likely,
> these
> communities will protect their own and cut officers slack for acting out of
> panic.
> Consider what Michael Bell learned during his campaign for police
> accountability. Bell, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force
> whose 21-year-old son was killed by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis., in
> 2004, eventually won a wrongful death lawsuit in the incident and used the
> $1.75 million settlement to pursue a campaign for stricter police
> accountability in Wisconsin.
> Writing recently in Politico, Bell noted the results of the campaign's
> research: "In 129 years since police and fire commissions were created in
> the state of Wisconsin, we could not find a single ruling by a police
> department, an inquest or a police commission that a shooting was
> unjustified."
> What concerns me about this isn't so much the protection of police officers
> who use lethal force unnecessarily as the protection of lethal force
> itself.
> This is what gets off scot free time and again, in shooting after shooting,
> and therefore remains unquestioned as a necessary part of social order. If
> the consequences of lethal force were subjected to objective scrutiny, I
> believe we'd be looking for alternatives with far more seriousness.
> Bell's son, for instance, was killed in the course of a routine traffic
> stop. According to the police report, one officer screamed that his gun had
> been grabbed and a second officer shot the young man in the head, "sticking
> the gun so close against his temple that he left a muzzle imprint."
> Because the Bell family hired a private investigator, they learned details
> of their son's killing independently of the legal system, e.g., "that the
> officer who thought his gun was being grabbed in fact had caught it on a
> broken car mirror," Bell wrote. In other words, a minor misperception
> escalated instantly into a fatal shooting, ending a young man's life and
> inflicting a lifetime of grief on those who loved him. Not only that, it
> shattered the life of at least one of the officers involved. The officer
> who
> screamed that his gun had been grabbed committed suicide six years later.
> Violence explodes in every direction. According to the Badge of Life
> website, U.S. police officers commit suicide at a rate of 17 per 100,000
> officers, well above the rate of the general public and close to that of
> the
> U.S. military. It's also well above the rate of officers who are killed in
> the line of duty.
> "Particularly startling in the study was the finding that not a single
> suicide in 2008 (or 2009) was ever attributed to police work," the site
> notes. "While police departments announce that law enforcement is a 'highly
> stressful, traumatic job,' they prefer to place the blame for a suicide on
> the family or on the officer for having some kind of 'personal problem.'"
> Lethal force gets off scot free.
> As militarization of the police escalates and our brutal wars for profit
> come home to haunt us, the time has come to face the violence we bring on
> one another in the name of social order. The time has come to find the
> courage to disarm.
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
> License
> The Courage to Disarm
> Published on
> Thursday, August 28, 2014
> by
> Common Dreams
> The Courage to Disarm
> by
> Robert C. Koehler
>
> (Photo: Face-to-Face)
> The Ferguson tragedy, like all those that preceded it and all that will
> follow - involving the trivial and panicky use of lethal force, by the
> police or anyone else - stirs up questions the social status quo doesn't
> dare face.
> My sister, Sue Melcher, put it this way: "I find myself also nauseated that
> another issue never seems to enter the discussion: the issue that a highly
> trained officer could make such a mistake with a gun demonstrates that just
> having the weapon present increased the danger of the situation. Had the
> citizens been armed, how many more casualties could there have been? None
> of
> us is 'healthy' enough to be trusted to use lethal force wisely - and is
> that even possible?"
> The "wise" use of lethal force . . .
> We've wrapped our global civilization around the certainty that we
> understand and revere life in all its vastness and mystery so completely
> that we know when to cut it short, indeed, that we - those of us who are
> officially sanctioned good guys - have a right to cut it short in, it would
> seem, an ever-widening array of circumstances. In so doing, we allegedly
> make life better for the social whole. This is called militarism. To keep
> this profitable lie going, we refuse to look deeply at its consequences.
> When we inflict death on distant cultures, at the sterile remove that
> modern
> weapons grant us, we can avoid all but the most cursory awareness of the
> consequences of our actions. But when we do it at home, it's not always so
> easy.
> Ferguson, Ferguson. A community - and a nation - erupted in agony at the
> hellish absurdity of Michael Brown's killing. One of the deeper, darker
> questions concealed in the maelstrom of rage and grief of Ferguson is this
> one: What if Officer Darren Wilson had not been armed when he told the two
> teenagers to get out of the street? What if the police force that employed
> him knew of, and practiced, effective, nonlethal forms of keeping order in
> the community (and did not regard the people it was "protecting" as the
> enemy)? This is not a simple question, but it has a simple answer. Michael
> Brown would be alive and Darren Wilson would not be in hiding.
> But no one is asking it because the popular imagination doesn't even
> entertain the possibility that such methods exist - or can be created.
> I ask this question now not to toss a superficial answer or two at the
> national and global violence epidemic we're caught in but to establish,
> first of all, the idea that violence has consequences and, furthermore,
> that
> having lethal force at one's fingertips also has consequences. "None of us
> is 'healthy' enough to be trusted to use lethal force wisely," Sue wrote.
> This is true if only because such power can always be wrested away from us,
> and knowing this is bound to bring an intensified level of panic into
> someone's decision-making process - even a trained professional's.
> The demand for police accountability that the Ferguson tragedy has
> unleashed
> is a demand for public scrutiny of an officer's state of mind when he makes
> the decision to use lethal force. At present, such accountability is murky,
> contained as it is within the police and legal community. Most likely,
> these
> communities will protect their own and cut officers slack for acting out of
> panic.
> Consider what Michael Bell learned during his campaign for police
> accountability. Bell, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force
> whose 21-year-old son was killed by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis., in
> 2004, eventually won a wrongful death lawsuit in the incident and used the
> $1.75 million settlement to pursue a campaign for stricter police
> accountability in Wisconsin.
> Writing recently in Politico, Bell noted the results of the campaign's
> research: "In 129 years since police and fire commissions were created in
> the state of Wisconsin, we could not find a single ruling by a police
> department, an inquest or a police commission that a shooting was
> unjustified."
> What concerns me about this isn't so much the protection of police officers
> who use lethal force unnecessarily as the protection of lethal force
> itself.
> This is what gets off scot free time and again, in shooting after shooting,
> and therefore remains unquestioned as a necessary part of social order. If
> the consequences of lethal force were subjected to objective scrutiny, I
> believe we'd be looking for alternatives with far more seriousness.
> Bell's son, for instance, was killed in the course of a routine traffic
> stop. According to the police report, one officer screamed that his gun had
> been grabbed and a second officer shot the young man in the head, "sticking
> the gun so close against his temple that he left a muzzle imprint."
> Because the Bell family hired a private investigator, they learned details
> of their son's killing independently of the legal system, e.g., "that the
> officer who thought his gun was being grabbed in fact had caught it on a
> broken car mirror," Bell wrote. In other words, a minor misperception
> escalated instantly into a fatal shooting, ending a young man's life and
> inflicting a lifetime of grief on those who loved him. Not only that, it
> shattered the life of at least one of the officers involved. The officer
> who
> screamed that his gun had been grabbed committed suicide six years later.
> Violence explodes in every direction. According to the Badge of Life
> website, U.S. police officers commit suicide at a rate of 17 per 100,000
> officers, well above the rate of the general public and close to that of
> the
> U.S. military. It's also well above the rate of officers who are killed in
> the line of duty.
> "Particularly startling in the study was the finding that not a single
> suicide in 2008 (or 2009) was ever attributed to police work," the site
> notes. "While police departments announce that law enforcement is a 'highly
> stressful, traumatic job,' they prefer to place the blame for a suicide on
> the family or on the officer for having some kind of 'personal problem.'"
> Lethal force gets off scot free.
> As militarization of the police escalates and our brutal wars for profit
> come home to haunt us, the time has come to face the violence we bring on
> one another in the name of social order. The time has come to find the
> courage to disarm.
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
> License
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
the Corporate Media? While so much of our concern is regarding the
strangle hold by the international oil cartels, and rightfully so, we
forget that what keeps them in power is the weapons industry. Every
nation, every cluster of rebels, and even our town law enforcements
are armed to the teeth. The only possible outcome is Murder...mass
murder.
How has it come that the multitude is held captive and led around by a
small band of greedy, self-serving bullies? They are driving us like
cattle over a cliff of no return. Not only ending the Human Race, but
all innocent life on this Planet Earth.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/28/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> The Courage to Disarm
> Published on
> Thursday, August 28, 2014
> by
> Common Dreams
> The Courage to Disarm
> by
> Robert C. Koehler
>
> (Photo: Face-to-Face)
> The Ferguson tragedy, like all those that preceded it and all that will
> follow - involving the trivial and panicky use of lethal force, by the
> police or anyone else - stirs up questions the social status quo doesn't
> dare face.
> My sister, Sue Melcher, put it this way: "I find myself also nauseated that
> another issue never seems to enter the discussion: the issue that a highly
> trained officer could make such a mistake with a gun demonstrates that just
> having the weapon present increased the danger of the situation. Had the
> citizens been armed, how many more casualties could there have been? None
> of
> us is 'healthy' enough to be trusted to use lethal force wisely - and is
> that even possible?"
> The "wise" use of lethal force . . .
> We've wrapped our global civilization around the certainty that we
> understand and revere life in all its vastness and mystery so completely
> that we know when to cut it short, indeed, that we - those of us who are
> officially sanctioned good guys - have a right to cut it short in, it would
> seem, an ever-widening array of circumstances. In so doing, we allegedly
> make life better for the social whole. This is called militarism. To keep
> this profitable lie going, we refuse to look deeply at its consequences.
> When we inflict death on distant cultures, at the sterile remove that
> modern
> weapons grant us, we can avoid all but the most cursory awareness of the
> consequences of our actions. But when we do it at home, it's not always so
> easy.
> Ferguson, Ferguson. A community - and a nation - erupted in agony at the
> hellish absurdity of Michael Brown's killing. One of the deeper, darker
> questions concealed in the maelstrom of rage and grief of Ferguson is this
> one: What if Officer Darren Wilson had not been armed when he told the two
> teenagers to get out of the street? What if the police force that employed
> him knew of, and practiced, effective, nonlethal forms of keeping order in
> the community (and did not regard the people it was "protecting" as the
> enemy)? This is not a simple question, but it has a simple answer. Michael
> Brown would be alive and Darren Wilson would not be in hiding.
> But no one is asking it because the popular imagination doesn't even
> entertain the possibility that such methods exist - or can be created.
> I ask this question now not to toss a superficial answer or two at the
> national and global violence epidemic we're caught in but to establish,
> first of all, the idea that violence has consequences and, furthermore,
> that
> having lethal force at one's fingertips also has consequences. "None of us
> is 'healthy' enough to be trusted to use lethal force wisely," Sue wrote.
> This is true if only because such power can always be wrested away from us,
> and knowing this is bound to bring an intensified level of panic into
> someone's decision-making process - even a trained professional's.
> The demand for police accountability that the Ferguson tragedy has
> unleashed
> is a demand for public scrutiny of an officer's state of mind when he makes
> the decision to use lethal force. At present, such accountability is murky,
> contained as it is within the police and legal community. Most likely,
> these
> communities will protect their own and cut officers slack for acting out of
> panic.
> Consider what Michael Bell learned during his campaign for police
> accountability. Bell, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force
> whose 21-year-old son was killed by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis., in
> 2004, eventually won a wrongful death lawsuit in the incident and used the
> $1.75 million settlement to pursue a campaign for stricter police
> accountability in Wisconsin.
> Writing recently in Politico, Bell noted the results of the campaign's
> research: "In 129 years since police and fire commissions were created in
> the state of Wisconsin, we could not find a single ruling by a police
> department, an inquest or a police commission that a shooting was
> unjustified."
> What concerns me about this isn't so much the protection of police officers
> who use lethal force unnecessarily as the protection of lethal force
> itself.
> This is what gets off scot free time and again, in shooting after shooting,
> and therefore remains unquestioned as a necessary part of social order. If
> the consequences of lethal force were subjected to objective scrutiny, I
> believe we'd be looking for alternatives with far more seriousness.
> Bell's son, for instance, was killed in the course of a routine traffic
> stop. According to the police report, one officer screamed that his gun had
> been grabbed and a second officer shot the young man in the head, "sticking
> the gun so close against his temple that he left a muzzle imprint."
> Because the Bell family hired a private investigator, they learned details
> of their son's killing independently of the legal system, e.g., "that the
> officer who thought his gun was being grabbed in fact had caught it on a
> broken car mirror," Bell wrote. In other words, a minor misperception
> escalated instantly into a fatal shooting, ending a young man's life and
> inflicting a lifetime of grief on those who loved him. Not only that, it
> shattered the life of at least one of the officers involved. The officer
> who
> screamed that his gun had been grabbed committed suicide six years later.
> Violence explodes in every direction. According to the Badge of Life
> website, U.S. police officers commit suicide at a rate of 17 per 100,000
> officers, well above the rate of the general public and close to that of
> the
> U.S. military. It's also well above the rate of officers who are killed in
> the line of duty.
> "Particularly startling in the study was the finding that not a single
> suicide in 2008 (or 2009) was ever attributed to police work," the site
> notes. "While police departments announce that law enforcement is a 'highly
> stressful, traumatic job,' they prefer to place the blame for a suicide on
> the family or on the officer for having some kind of 'personal problem.'"
> Lethal force gets off scot free.
> As militarization of the police escalates and our brutal wars for profit
> come home to haunt us, the time has come to face the violence we bring on
> one another in the name of social order. The time has come to find the
> courage to disarm.
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
> License
> The Courage to Disarm
> Published on
> Thursday, August 28, 2014
> by
> Common Dreams
> The Courage to Disarm
> by
> Robert C. Koehler
>
> (Photo: Face-to-Face)
> The Ferguson tragedy, like all those that preceded it and all that will
> follow - involving the trivial and panicky use of lethal force, by the
> police or anyone else - stirs up questions the social status quo doesn't
> dare face.
> My sister, Sue Melcher, put it this way: "I find myself also nauseated that
> another issue never seems to enter the discussion: the issue that a highly
> trained officer could make such a mistake with a gun demonstrates that just
> having the weapon present increased the danger of the situation. Had the
> citizens been armed, how many more casualties could there have been? None
> of
> us is 'healthy' enough to be trusted to use lethal force wisely - and is
> that even possible?"
> The "wise" use of lethal force . . .
> We've wrapped our global civilization around the certainty that we
> understand and revere life in all its vastness and mystery so completely
> that we know when to cut it short, indeed, that we - those of us who are
> officially sanctioned good guys - have a right to cut it short in, it would
> seem, an ever-widening array of circumstances. In so doing, we allegedly
> make life better for the social whole. This is called militarism. To keep
> this profitable lie going, we refuse to look deeply at its consequences.
> When we inflict death on distant cultures, at the sterile remove that
> modern
> weapons grant us, we can avoid all but the most cursory awareness of the
> consequences of our actions. But when we do it at home, it's not always so
> easy.
> Ferguson, Ferguson. A community - and a nation - erupted in agony at the
> hellish absurdity of Michael Brown's killing. One of the deeper, darker
> questions concealed in the maelstrom of rage and grief of Ferguson is this
> one: What if Officer Darren Wilson had not been armed when he told the two
> teenagers to get out of the street? What if the police force that employed
> him knew of, and practiced, effective, nonlethal forms of keeping order in
> the community (and did not regard the people it was "protecting" as the
> enemy)? This is not a simple question, but it has a simple answer. Michael
> Brown would be alive and Darren Wilson would not be in hiding.
> But no one is asking it because the popular imagination doesn't even
> entertain the possibility that such methods exist - or can be created.
> I ask this question now not to toss a superficial answer or two at the
> national and global violence epidemic we're caught in but to establish,
> first of all, the idea that violence has consequences and, furthermore,
> that
> having lethal force at one's fingertips also has consequences. "None of us
> is 'healthy' enough to be trusted to use lethal force wisely," Sue wrote.
> This is true if only because such power can always be wrested away from us,
> and knowing this is bound to bring an intensified level of panic into
> someone's decision-making process - even a trained professional's.
> The demand for police accountability that the Ferguson tragedy has
> unleashed
> is a demand for public scrutiny of an officer's state of mind when he makes
> the decision to use lethal force. At present, such accountability is murky,
> contained as it is within the police and legal community. Most likely,
> these
> communities will protect their own and cut officers slack for acting out of
> panic.
> Consider what Michael Bell learned during his campaign for police
> accountability. Bell, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force
> whose 21-year-old son was killed by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis., in
> 2004, eventually won a wrongful death lawsuit in the incident and used the
> $1.75 million settlement to pursue a campaign for stricter police
> accountability in Wisconsin.
> Writing recently in Politico, Bell noted the results of the campaign's
> research: "In 129 years since police and fire commissions were created in
> the state of Wisconsin, we could not find a single ruling by a police
> department, an inquest or a police commission that a shooting was
> unjustified."
> What concerns me about this isn't so much the protection of police officers
> who use lethal force unnecessarily as the protection of lethal force
> itself.
> This is what gets off scot free time and again, in shooting after shooting,
> and therefore remains unquestioned as a necessary part of social order. If
> the consequences of lethal force were subjected to objective scrutiny, I
> believe we'd be looking for alternatives with far more seriousness.
> Bell's son, for instance, was killed in the course of a routine traffic
> stop. According to the police report, one officer screamed that his gun had
> been grabbed and a second officer shot the young man in the head, "sticking
> the gun so close against his temple that he left a muzzle imprint."
> Because the Bell family hired a private investigator, they learned details
> of their son's killing independently of the legal system, e.g., "that the
> officer who thought his gun was being grabbed in fact had caught it on a
> broken car mirror," Bell wrote. In other words, a minor misperception
> escalated instantly into a fatal shooting, ending a young man's life and
> inflicting a lifetime of grief on those who loved him. Not only that, it
> shattered the life of at least one of the officers involved. The officer
> who
> screamed that his gun had been grabbed committed suicide six years later.
> Violence explodes in every direction. According to the Badge of Life
> website, U.S. police officers commit suicide at a rate of 17 per 100,000
> officers, well above the rate of the general public and close to that of
> the
> U.S. military. It's also well above the rate of officers who are killed in
> the line of duty.
> "Particularly startling in the study was the finding that not a single
> suicide in 2008 (or 2009) was ever attributed to police work," the site
> notes. "While police departments announce that law enforcement is a 'highly
> stressful, traumatic job,' they prefer to place the blame for a suicide on
> the family or on the officer for having some kind of 'personal problem.'"
> Lethal force gets off scot free.
> As militarization of the police escalates and our brutal wars for profit
> come home to haunt us, the time has come to face the violence we bring on
> one another in the name of social order. The time has come to find the
> courage to disarm.
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
> License
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Re: what an educational leader eh?
On 6/22/14, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
> Huppenthal is entitled to his opinions. And voters are either going
> to support him or reject him based, in part on his positions.
> Remember, Huppenthal is a product of the same constant brain washing
> that has come to be known as the mass media. While we are all
> impacted by it to one degree or another, some of us slop it up like
> pigs at a trough.
> While there are many Working Class people living in Arizona, a large
> portion of the citizens are made up of older folks who moved there to
> be with their own kind. Over the ten years that Cathy and I spent
> traveling each March to visit my sister in Sun City, I noticed that
> many of the elders who believed that they would be living on peaches
> and rich cream, wound up eking out an existence on bread and thin
> water. Often I wanted to jump up and offer my chair to an elderly man
> or woman tottering past me in a restaurant, only to discover that they
> were my wait person. But even though they were working for wage
> minimum...or for less, under the table...they were solidly against
> social programs, higher wage minimum, free medical, decent increases
> in their social security, and Democrats.
> Any time an elderly waits person made the mistake of expressing such
> Fox News Views to me, I slipped their tip back in my pocket.
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
>
>
> On 6/19/14, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Superintendent admits harsh anonymous blog posts By Cathryn Creno The
>> Arizona Republic He likened welfare recipients to "lazy pigs . He blamed
>> the
>> Great
>>
>> Depression on Franklin D. Roosevelt and said FDR's economic policies gave
>> rise to Hitler. He said Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was
>> responsible
>>
>> for feeding 16 million African-Americans into abortion mills. He is state
>> schools Superintendent John Huppenthal, and he admitted Wednesday that he
>> made
>>
>> those comments, along with hundreds of more mundane musings, in anonymous
>> posts on political blogs. The comments, under various pseudonyms
>> including
>> Falcon9
>>
>> and Thucydides, have been appearing since 2011. Writers for the
>> Democratic
>> Blog for Arizona have been suggesting for several months that all signs
>> pointed
>>
>> to Huppenthal as the author. Huppenthal remained silent on the accusation
>> until Wednesday, when he spoke exclusively to the Arizona Republic. "I
>> love
>> talking
>>
>> about public policy, and I have a passion for engaging in debate,"
>> Huppenthal said on Wednesday. "I probably have 300,000 words out on the
>> Internet, and
>>
>> 100 of them are getting me in trouble. When all of your missteps are
>> there
>> all together for people to see, it's not a pretty picture. In an earlier
>> statement
>>
>> released to The Republic, Huppenthal apologized, saying, "I sincerely
>> regret
>> if my comments have offended anyone. While the inflammatory comments may
>> pose
>>
>> an image issue for Huppenthal, who is seeking re-election,
>> government-accountability experts say they also pose an ethical problem
>> because elected officials
>>
>> should state their opinions publicly. "There is a conflict of interest if
>> an
>> elected official is trying to skew the conversation in a way that
>> supports
>>
>> their views," said Fred Solop, Northern Arizona University's
>> political-science department chairman. "It's a violation of the public
>> trust, and (Huppenthal)
>>
>> needs to be held accountable. Jaime Molera of the Molera-Alvarez
>> consulting
>> firm and Robbie Sherwood of Progress Now Arizona say few candidates and
>> officials
>>
>> go online anonymously. However, Huppenthal said the Internet has made
>> anonymous comments prevalent. Todd Gitlin, an ethics specialist and
>> chairman
>> of the
>>
>> Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, said the issue is a
>> simple one. "Public officials should not post anonymously," he said.
>> "They're elected
>>
>> to be accountable. They can't be held accountable if they hide behind
>> pseudonyms. However, one political consultant said anonymous
>> communications
>> aren't
>>
>> new - or problematic. "American history is littered with people writing
>> anonymous pamphlets," said Doug Cole of Highground Public Affairs
>> Consultants.
>>
>> Blog comments In his statement, Huppenthal said he participated in the
>> blogs
>> anonymously "because I felt that any other (approach) would limit a free
>> and
>>
>> open exchange. The websites include posts on issues including education,
>> the
>> economy, health care and immigration. Huppenthal said he sleeps very
>> little
>>
>> and spends the wee hours reading scientific and academic research, then
>> sharing his thoughts online from his own computer. He said Wednesday that
>> his online
>>
>> handles came from the name of a rocket and an ancient historian. Under
>> the
>> monikers, Huppenthal joined discussions and shared views on issues
>> including
>>
>> abortion, the economy, education and child protection. Some examples: ¦
>> "There is no aspect of (Child Protective Services) nationwide which
>> protects
>> children.
>>
>> No correlation between spending on CPS and child safety," Thucydides
>> posted
>> in January on Blog for Arizona. "The only factors which provide safety
>> for
>>
>> children are employment of parents and good schools on the positive side
>> and
>> welfare enrollment on the negative side. ¦ "It was Darwin, not Hitler,
>> who
>>
>> named the Germans the master race," Thucydides posted in September 2013
>> on
>> the blog Seeing Red AZ. "It was Darwin who expressed approval of
>> eliminating
>>
>> both Jews and Africans. Hitler worked to eliminate the Jews. Margaret
>> Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood was given the job of eliminating
>> African-Americans.
>>
>> Hitler fed 6 million Jews into the ovens. Sanger has fed 16 million
>> African-Americans into the abortion mills. ¦ "We now know that (Franklin
>> D.
>> Roosevelt)
>>
>> was almost completely responsible for the great depression," Falcon9
>> posted
>> in 2013 on Blog for Arizona. "Only in liberal mythology did FDR 'save'
>> the
>>
>> nation. ... Worse yet, Roosevelt's disastrous economic policies drug down
>> the whole world and directly led to the rise of a no-name hack named
>> Adolph
>> Hitler
>>
>> who was going nowhere until Germany's economy went into the tank. ¦
>> "Obama
>> is rewarding the lazy pigs with food stamps (44 million people),
>> air-conditioning,
>>
>> free health care, flat-screen TV's (typical of "poor" families).
>> (Editor's
>> note: Parentheses included in posting.) Huppenthal said his posts are
>> meant
>>
>> to correct "a lot of really bad ideas" on political blogs, not to insult.
>> He
>> said his reference to "lazy pigs" refers to a phrase in a nursery fable.
>> In
>>
>> "the Little Red Hen ... in which a fat lazy pig refuses to help the
>> little
>> red hen sow her seeds," he said. "I have never been insensitive to issues
>> around
>>
>> poverty and have fought for public policy that provides opportunities for
>> jobs for all our citizens who want to work and support for those who are
>> vulnerable.
>>
>> Huppenthal said his comparison of Sanger to the Nazis has been taken out
>> of
>> context. Sanger "was at the heart of a eugenics movement, clearly
>> reflected
>>
>> in her writings. In hindsight, I do regret my choice of certain
>> inflammatory
>> words, but I will never apologize for being a pro-life policy maker, or
>> someone
>>
>> who believes in improving conditions for all people," he said in the
>> statement. Political fallout Huppenthal said he does not think the
>> controversy will
>>
>> hurt his re-election chances. "In eight of my 12 elections, I have had to
>> walk through fire," he said. "I don't get into this to get along. He has
>> served
>>
>> as Arizona's top education leader since 2011. Conservatives have
>> criticized
>> him for his support of the Arizona College and Career Ready Standards,
>> based
>>
>> on the Common Core. Liberals have criticized his support of charter
>> schools
>> and private-school vouchers.
>>
>>
>>
>
> Huppenthal is entitled to his opinions. And voters are either going
> to support him or reject him based, in part on his positions.
> Remember, Huppenthal is a product of the same constant brain washing
> that has come to be known as the mass media. While we are all
> impacted by it to one degree or another, some of us slop it up like
> pigs at a trough.
> While there are many Working Class people living in Arizona, a large
> portion of the citizens are made up of older folks who moved there to
> be with their own kind. Over the ten years that Cathy and I spent
> traveling each March to visit my sister in Sun City, I noticed that
> many of the elders who believed that they would be living on peaches
> and rich cream, wound up eking out an existence on bread and thin
> water. Often I wanted to jump up and offer my chair to an elderly man
> or woman tottering past me in a restaurant, only to discover that they
> were my wait person. But even though they were working for wage
> minimum...or for less, under the table...they were solidly against
> social programs, higher wage minimum, free medical, decent increases
> in their social security, and Democrats.
> Any time an elderly waits person made the mistake of expressing such
> Fox News Views to me, I slipped their tip back in my pocket.
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
>
>
> On 6/19/14, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Superintendent admits harsh anonymous blog posts By Cathryn Creno The
>> Arizona Republic He likened welfare recipients to "lazy pigs . He blamed
>> the
>> Great
>>
>> Depression on Franklin D. Roosevelt and said FDR's economic policies gave
>> rise to Hitler. He said Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was
>> responsible
>>
>> for feeding 16 million African-Americans into abortion mills. He is state
>> schools Superintendent John Huppenthal, and he admitted Wednesday that he
>> made
>>
>> those comments, along with hundreds of more mundane musings, in anonymous
>> posts on political blogs. The comments, under various pseudonyms
>> including
>> Falcon9
>>
>> and Thucydides, have been appearing since 2011. Writers for the
>> Democratic
>> Blog for Arizona have been suggesting for several months that all signs
>> pointed
>>
>> to Huppenthal as the author. Huppenthal remained silent on the accusation
>> until Wednesday, when he spoke exclusively to the Arizona Republic. "I
>> love
>> talking
>>
>> about public policy, and I have a passion for engaging in debate,"
>> Huppenthal said on Wednesday. "I probably have 300,000 words out on the
>> Internet, and
>>
>> 100 of them are getting me in trouble. When all of your missteps are
>> there
>> all together for people to see, it's not a pretty picture. In an earlier
>> statement
>>
>> released to The Republic, Huppenthal apologized, saying, "I sincerely
>> regret
>> if my comments have offended anyone. While the inflammatory comments may
>> pose
>>
>> an image issue for Huppenthal, who is seeking re-election,
>> government-accountability experts say they also pose an ethical problem
>> because elected officials
>>
>> should state their opinions publicly. "There is a conflict of interest if
>> an
>> elected official is trying to skew the conversation in a way that
>> supports
>>
>> their views," said Fred Solop, Northern Arizona University's
>> political-science department chairman. "It's a violation of the public
>> trust, and (Huppenthal)
>>
>> needs to be held accountable. Jaime Molera of the Molera-Alvarez
>> consulting
>> firm and Robbie Sherwood of Progress Now Arizona say few candidates and
>> officials
>>
>> go online anonymously. However, Huppenthal said the Internet has made
>> anonymous comments prevalent. Todd Gitlin, an ethics specialist and
>> chairman
>> of the
>>
>> Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, said the issue is a
>> simple one. "Public officials should not post anonymously," he said.
>> "They're elected
>>
>> to be accountable. They can't be held accountable if they hide behind
>> pseudonyms. However, one political consultant said anonymous
>> communications
>> aren't
>>
>> new - or problematic. "American history is littered with people writing
>> anonymous pamphlets," said Doug Cole of Highground Public Affairs
>> Consultants.
>>
>> Blog comments In his statement, Huppenthal said he participated in the
>> blogs
>> anonymously "because I felt that any other (approach) would limit a free
>> and
>>
>> open exchange. The websites include posts on issues including education,
>> the
>> economy, health care and immigration. Huppenthal said he sleeps very
>> little
>>
>> and spends the wee hours reading scientific and academic research, then
>> sharing his thoughts online from his own computer. He said Wednesday that
>> his online
>>
>> handles came from the name of a rocket and an ancient historian. Under
>> the
>> monikers, Huppenthal joined discussions and shared views on issues
>> including
>>
>> abortion, the economy, education and child protection. Some examples: ¦
>> "There is no aspect of (Child Protective Services) nationwide which
>> protects
>> children.
>>
>> No correlation between spending on CPS and child safety," Thucydides
>> posted
>> in January on Blog for Arizona. "The only factors which provide safety
>> for
>>
>> children are employment of parents and good schools on the positive side
>> and
>> welfare enrollment on the negative side. ¦ "It was Darwin, not Hitler,
>> who
>>
>> named the Germans the master race," Thucydides posted in September 2013
>> on
>> the blog Seeing Red AZ. "It was Darwin who expressed approval of
>> eliminating
>>
>> both Jews and Africans. Hitler worked to eliminate the Jews. Margaret
>> Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood was given the job of eliminating
>> African-Americans.
>>
>> Hitler fed 6 million Jews into the ovens. Sanger has fed 16 million
>> African-Americans into the abortion mills. ¦ "We now know that (Franklin
>> D.
>> Roosevelt)
>>
>> was almost completely responsible for the great depression," Falcon9
>> posted
>> in 2013 on Blog for Arizona. "Only in liberal mythology did FDR 'save'
>> the
>>
>> nation. ... Worse yet, Roosevelt's disastrous economic policies drug down
>> the whole world and directly led to the rise of a no-name hack named
>> Adolph
>> Hitler
>>
>> who was going nowhere until Germany's economy went into the tank. ¦
>> "Obama
>> is rewarding the lazy pigs with food stamps (44 million people),
>> air-conditioning,
>>
>> free health care, flat-screen TV's (typical of "poor" families).
>> (Editor's
>> note: Parentheses included in posting.) Huppenthal said his posts are
>> meant
>>
>> to correct "a lot of really bad ideas" on political blogs, not to insult.
>> He
>> said his reference to "lazy pigs" refers to a phrase in a nursery fable.
>> In
>>
>> "the Little Red Hen ... in which a fat lazy pig refuses to help the
>> little
>> red hen sow her seeds," he said. "I have never been insensitive to issues
>> around
>>
>> poverty and have fought for public policy that provides opportunities for
>> jobs for all our citizens who want to work and support for those who are
>> vulnerable.
>>
>> Huppenthal said his comparison of Sanger to the Nazis has been taken out
>> of
>> context. Sanger "was at the heart of a eugenics movement, clearly
>> reflected
>>
>> in her writings. In hindsight, I do regret my choice of certain
>> inflammatory
>> words, but I will never apologize for being a pro-life policy maker, or
>> someone
>>
>> who believes in improving conditions for all people," he said in the
>> statement. Political fallout Huppenthal said he does not think the
>> controversy will
>>
>> hurt his re-election chances. "In eight of my 12 elections, I have had to
>> walk through fire," he said. "I don't get into this to get along. He has
>> served
>>
>> as Arizona's top education leader since 2011. Conservatives have
>> criticized
>> him for his support of the Arizona College and Career Ready Standards,
>> based
>>
>> on the Common Core. Liberals have criticized his support of charter
>> schools
>> and private-school vouchers.
>>
>>
>>
>
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Fwd: Charities that make the rich richer; proving that it's good business helping the handicapped
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 14:44:22 -0700
Subject: Re: Charities that make the rich richer; proving that it's
good business helping the handicapped
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Cc: ceverett@dslextreme.com
Here's the thing...in my humble opinion.
We have our values screwed up. We've been trained, like Pavlov's
dogs, to salivate every time we smell a dollar.
In our world we put a monetary value on everything. An elderly woman
left a paper sack on the bus, containing five thousand dollars. A
fellow took the seat after she had exited the bus and discovered the
sack. He managed to track down the lady and return her life's
savings. And what were the first words out of the reporter's mouth?
"Did she give you a good reward?"
The man might have said, "Honesty is its own reward", but instead, he
sadly shook his head and said, "She just thanked me. Guess she
thought that was good enough. I should have kept the money if that's
all it was worth."
The super star scores points every time he gets his hands on the ball.
Fans flock to the games and the owners of the team pay him huge
amounts of money for his skill. So, is he a team member, or a super
star? If the other team members sat down and decided to simply watch
the game, as if they were spectators, what sort of a score would the
lonely player run up?
The corporate CEO takes his bonus, along with his huge salary and
tucks most of it in his off-shore banks. He is fawned over and feels
that he is so valuable to the corporation that he is merely receiving
his just reward. Is he really that important? Or is he simply one
member of a large team? How much money and business will he bring in
if all the people working for the corporation were to sit down and
watch him work?
To my way of thinking it is a cop out to argue that the market place
will determine the fair value of each person's labor. Since we can
prove that the market place can be manipulated, and there really is no
such a thing as free enterprise in the real world, why do working
class men and women continue to support such a corrupt system?
A new president will not change things. Replacing all of Congress
will make no difference. A revolution will only replace the present
Ruling Class with a new Gang of Opportunists. None of that will
amount to a hill of beans unless we shake up our entire value system.
But I know that a shake up has about as much appeal to Americans as a
bowl of soy bean chowder.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/17/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> mee too.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Claude Everett
> Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2014 2:11 PM
> To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
> Subject: RE: Charities that make the rich richer
>
> Personally I feel that no CEO or director of a company "For Profit", or
> "Non
> Profit Charity" should earn no more than 4 times the income of the lowest
> paid employee.
>
>
> Regards,
> Claude Everett
> "Every one has a disability, Some, are more aware of it than others."
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of ted chittenden
> Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2014 9:12 AM
> To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
> Subject: Re: Charities that make the rich richer
>
> My mom now refuses to support any United Way charities because of what the
> CEO is paid. She believes that the CEOs of charities should receive nothing
> with running the charities playing second fiddle to running actual
> businesses. Unfortunately, running a charity is actually a fulltime job in
> and of itself so I really don't think that paying the heads of charities
> absolutely nothing and expecting them to work "real" jobs in private
> businesses is really going to assist the poor (in fact, it would probably
> exacerbate the situation against the poor). However, Mr. Baker may be on
> the
> right track for both charities and profit-generating businesses when he
> suggests having set limits on executive pay based on how much their
> low-level employees earn. Unfortunately, I don't think the current Justices
> of the U.S. Supreme Court would agree with him as money is supposed to be
> free speech, and I also don't think that most executives would agree with
> him, either.
> --
> Ted Chittenden
>
> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
> ---- Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Charities that make the rich richer
> Either end obscene pay at charitable organizations or revoke their
> tax-exempt status June 16, 2014 4:15AM ET by Dean Baker @DeanBaker13 We
> usually think of charities as institutions that direct money from those on
> top to those who are most in need. But in our vibrant 21st century economy,
> charities often funnel money in the opposite direction, with the rest of us
> subsidizing the incomes of the very rich. That is the implication of
> several
> recent news stories.
> Take, for example, John Sexton, president of New York University, a
> tax-exempt institution. The university was recently in the news because of
> a
> story reporting that workers building its Abu Dhabi campus are often beaten
> and have their wages stolen. This campus is part of an ambitious expansion
> plan designed by Sexton, who reportedly makes $1.5 million a year and
> stands
> to pocket a "longevity bonus" of $2.5 million if he stays into 2015.
> The University of Chicago is another school whose president, Robert Zimmer,
> appears to be doing rather well financially. Zimmer's total compensation
> for
> 2013 was reportedly $1.9 million, after having spiked at $3.4 million the
> prior year. This compensation comes in spite of the fact that the school
> has
> an operating deficit and may be at risk of a credit downgrade.
> A study by the Institute for Policy Studies found that student debt and
> low-paid faculty increased more rapidly at the universities with the 25
> highest-paid presidents than the national average. At the very least, this
> suggests high presidential pay is not associated with scoring well in terms
> of relieving the burdens of those most in need in higher education -
> student
> debtors and adjuncts.
> There is undoubtedly much more that could be said about high-paid
> university
> administrators or heads of other nonprofits, who don't seem to be earning
> their keep. But this is not just a story of university boards possibly
> using
> bad judgment in designing compensation packages for top management. The pay
> for these millionaires comes directly out of the pockets of the rest of us
> in the same way as the food stamps or disability payments that get
> conservatives so excited.
> These institutions all enjoy special tax exemptions as charitable
> organizations. Their wealthy contributors can deduct the money they give to
> New York University or the University of Chicago from their taxable income.
> Since most of these universities' contributions come from people in the top
> tax bracket, taxpayers are effectively paying 40 cents of each dollar the
> institutions receive in contributions. That means we are picking up a large
> chunk of the paychecks of Sexton, Zimmer and the rest of the gang.
> There is a simple remedy for the high pay at tax-exempt institutions:
> Make it illegal.
> If we took the extreme case and assumed that all of a university's revenue
> came directly or indirectly from tax-deductible contributions, then
> taxpayers would have paid roughly $600,000 toward Sexton's 2013 salary and
> $680,000 of Zimmer's paycheck. For comparison purposes, the average annual
> food stamp benefit is roughly $1,600 per person. This would mean that
> taxpayers gave Sexton roughly as much money as they would to 375 of the
> "takers" who get food stamps, and Zimmer as much as 400.
> Of course, this comparison is not entirely fair. A university gets much of
> its money from tuition and other sources, so it is not correct to claim
> that
> all of its president's pay came from tax-deductible contributions. On the
> other hand, there are many charities and foundations that rely almost
> entirely on such contributions or the income from endowments that were
> created from them. In these cases it would be reasonable to assume that
> roughly 40 percent of the pay for the presidents and other top executives
> came from taxpayers.
> Most people would likely be bothered if they knew they were subsidizing the
> compensation of some of the highest-paid people in the country.
> Unfortunately, this fact is rarely mentioned in the news. We are far more
> likely to see articles on taxpayer subsidies for food stamps or disability.
> There is a simple remedy for the high pay at tax-exempt institutions: Make
> it illegal. We can just put a cap on pay at tax-exempt organizations - say,
> at 15 times the average production worker's pay (or $600,000 a year). That
> would limit the subsidy the rest of us provide to the very rich.
> This is not an interference with the freedom of the University of Chicago
> and New York University to pay their presidents whatever they like. They
> would just have to organize themselves as regular for-profit corporations.
> Then their presidents would have to figure out a way to win the charity of
> shareholders rather than taxpayers.
> Fans of the free market should be completely behind this sort of
> initiative.
> After all, if they are upset when the government gives someone $1,600 a
> year
> for food stamps, how could they not be infuriated when the government gives
> several hundred times as much to university presidents or other highly paid
> executives at tax-exempt institutions? If these presidents are worth their
> paychecks, then the private sector should be happy to cough up the money
> without needing a subsidy from the government.
> Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
> and
> author, most recently, of The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets
> Progressive.
> The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
> necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editori Charities that make the
> rich richer Either end obscene pay at charitable organizations or revoke
> their tax-exempt status June 16, 2014 4:15AM ET by Dean Baker @DeanBaker13
> We usually think of charities as institutions that direct money from those
> on top to those who are most in need. But in our vibrant 21st century
> economy, charities often funnel money in the opposite direction, with the
> rest of us subsidizing the incomes of the very rich. That is the
> implication
> of several recent news stories.
> Take, for example, John Sexton, president of New York University, a
> tax-exempt institution. The university was recently in the news because of
> a
> story reporting that workers building its Abu Dhabi campus are often beaten
> and have their wages stolen. This campus is part of an ambitious expansion
> plan designed by Sexton, who reportedly makes $1.5 million a year and
> stands
> to pocket a "longevity bonus" of $2.5 million if he stays into 2015.
> The University of Chicago is another school whose president, Robert Zimmer,
> appears to be doing rather well financially. Zimmer's total compensation
> for
> 2013 was reportedly $1.9 million, after having spiked at $3.4 million the
> prior year. This compensation comes in spite of the fact that the school
> has
> an operating deficit and may be at risk of a credit downgrade.
> A study by the Institute for Policy Studies found that student debt and
> low-paid faculty increased more rapidly at the universities with the 25
> highest-paid presidents than the national average. At the very least, this
> suggests high presidential pay is not associated with scoring well in terms
> of relieving the burdens of those most in need in higher education -
> student
> debtors and adjuncts.
> There is undoubtedly much more that could be said about high-paid
> university
> administrators or heads of other nonprofits, who don't seem to be earning
> their keep. But this is not just a story of university boards possibly
> using
> bad judgment in designing compensation packages for top management. The pay
> for these millionaires comes directly out of the pockets of the rest of us
> in the same way as the food stamps or disability payments that get
> conservatives so excited.
> These institutions all enjoy special tax exemptions as charitable
> organizations. Their wealthy contributors can deduct the money they give to
> New York University or the University of Chicago from their taxable income.
> Since most of these universities' contributions come from people in the top
> tax bracket, taxpayers are effectively paying 40 cents of each dollar the
> institutions receive in contributions. That means we are picking up a large
> chunk of the paychecks of Sexton, Zimmer and the rest of the gang.
> There is a simple remedy for the high pay at tax-exempt institutions:
> Make it illegal.
> If we took the extreme case and assumed that all of a university's revenue
> came directly or indirectly from tax-deductible contributions, then
> taxpayers would have paid roughly $600,000 toward Sexton's 2013 salary and
> $680,000 of Zimmer's paycheck. For comparison purposes, the average annual
> food stamp benefit is roughly $1,600 per person. This would mean that
> taxpayers gave Sexton roughly as much money as they would to 375 of the
> "takers" who get food stamps, and Zimmer as much as 400.
> Of course, this comparison is not entirely fair. A university gets much of
> its money from tuition and other sources, so it is not correct to claim
> that
> all of its president's pay came from tax-deductible contributions. On the
> other hand, there are many charities and foundations that rely almost
> entirely on such contributions or the income from endowments that were
> created from them. In these cases it would be reasonable to assume that
> roughly 40 percent of the pay for the presidents and other top executives
> came from taxpayers.
> Most people would likely be bothered if they knew they were subsidizing the
> compensation of some of the highest-paid people in the country.
> Unfortunately, this fact is rarely mentioned in the news. We are far more
> likely to see articles on taxpayer subsidies for food stamps or disability.
> There is a simple remedy for the high pay at tax-exempt institutions: Make
> it illegal. We can just put a cap on pay at tax-exempt organizations - say,
> at 15 times the average production worker's pay (or $600,000 a year). That
> would limit the subsidy the rest of us provide to the very rich.
> This is not an interference with the freedom of the University of Chicago
> and New York University to pay their presidents whatever they like. They
> would just have to organize themselves as regular for-profit corporations.
> Then their presidents would have to figure out a way to win the charity of
> shareholders rather than taxpayers.
> Fans of the free market should be completely behind this sort of
> initiative.
> After all, if they are upset when the government gives someone $1,600 a
> year
> for food stamps, how could they not be infuriated when the government gives
> several hundred times as much to university presidents or other highly paid
> executives at tax-exempt institutions? If these presidents are worth their
> paychecks, then the private sector should be happy to cough up the money
> without needing a subsidy from the government.
> Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
> and
> author, most recently, of The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets
> Progressive.
> The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
> necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial polic
> http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/6/charity-universitytaxexemptsext
> onzimmer.html
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 14:44:22 -0700
Subject: Re: Charities that make the rich richer; proving that it's
good business helping the handicapped
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Cc: ceverett@dslextreme.com
Here's the thing...in my humble opinion.
We have our values screwed up. We've been trained, like Pavlov's
dogs, to salivate every time we smell a dollar.
In our world we put a monetary value on everything. An elderly woman
left a paper sack on the bus, containing five thousand dollars. A
fellow took the seat after she had exited the bus and discovered the
sack. He managed to track down the lady and return her life's
savings. And what were the first words out of the reporter's mouth?
"Did she give you a good reward?"
The man might have said, "Honesty is its own reward", but instead, he
sadly shook his head and said, "She just thanked me. Guess she
thought that was good enough. I should have kept the money if that's
all it was worth."
The super star scores points every time he gets his hands on the ball.
Fans flock to the games and the owners of the team pay him huge
amounts of money for his skill. So, is he a team member, or a super
star? If the other team members sat down and decided to simply watch
the game, as if they were spectators, what sort of a score would the
lonely player run up?
The corporate CEO takes his bonus, along with his huge salary and
tucks most of it in his off-shore banks. He is fawned over and feels
that he is so valuable to the corporation that he is merely receiving
his just reward. Is he really that important? Or is he simply one
member of a large team? How much money and business will he bring in
if all the people working for the corporation were to sit down and
watch him work?
To my way of thinking it is a cop out to argue that the market place
will determine the fair value of each person's labor. Since we can
prove that the market place can be manipulated, and there really is no
such a thing as free enterprise in the real world, why do working
class men and women continue to support such a corrupt system?
A new president will not change things. Replacing all of Congress
will make no difference. A revolution will only replace the present
Ruling Class with a new Gang of Opportunists. None of that will
amount to a hill of beans unless we shake up our entire value system.
But I know that a shake up has about as much appeal to Americans as a
bowl of soy bean chowder.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/17/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> mee too.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Claude Everett
> Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2014 2:11 PM
> To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
> Subject: RE: Charities that make the rich richer
>
> Personally I feel that no CEO or director of a company "For Profit", or
> "Non
> Profit Charity" should earn no more than 4 times the income of the lowest
> paid employee.
>
>
> Regards,
> Claude Everett
> "Every one has a disability, Some, are more aware of it than others."
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of ted chittenden
> Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2014 9:12 AM
> To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
> Subject: Re: Charities that make the rich richer
>
> My mom now refuses to support any United Way charities because of what the
> CEO is paid. She believes that the CEOs of charities should receive nothing
> with running the charities playing second fiddle to running actual
> businesses. Unfortunately, running a charity is actually a fulltime job in
> and of itself so I really don't think that paying the heads of charities
> absolutely nothing and expecting them to work "real" jobs in private
> businesses is really going to assist the poor (in fact, it would probably
> exacerbate the situation against the poor). However, Mr. Baker may be on
> the
> right track for both charities and profit-generating businesses when he
> suggests having set limits on executive pay based on how much their
> low-level employees earn. Unfortunately, I don't think the current Justices
> of the U.S. Supreme Court would agree with him as money is supposed to be
> free speech, and I also don't think that most executives would agree with
> him, either.
> --
> Ted Chittenden
>
> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
> ---- Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Charities that make the rich richer
> Either end obscene pay at charitable organizations or revoke their
> tax-exempt status June 16, 2014 4:15AM ET by Dean Baker @DeanBaker13 We
> usually think of charities as institutions that direct money from those on
> top to those who are most in need. But in our vibrant 21st century economy,
> charities often funnel money in the opposite direction, with the rest of us
> subsidizing the incomes of the very rich. That is the implication of
> several
> recent news stories.
> Take, for example, John Sexton, president of New York University, a
> tax-exempt institution. The university was recently in the news because of
> a
> story reporting that workers building its Abu Dhabi campus are often beaten
> and have their wages stolen. This campus is part of an ambitious expansion
> plan designed by Sexton, who reportedly makes $1.5 million a year and
> stands
> to pocket a "longevity bonus" of $2.5 million if he stays into 2015.
> The University of Chicago is another school whose president, Robert Zimmer,
> appears to be doing rather well financially. Zimmer's total compensation
> for
> 2013 was reportedly $1.9 million, after having spiked at $3.4 million the
> prior year. This compensation comes in spite of the fact that the school
> has
> an operating deficit and may be at risk of a credit downgrade.
> A study by the Institute for Policy Studies found that student debt and
> low-paid faculty increased more rapidly at the universities with the 25
> highest-paid presidents than the national average. At the very least, this
> suggests high presidential pay is not associated with scoring well in terms
> of relieving the burdens of those most in need in higher education -
> student
> debtors and adjuncts.
> There is undoubtedly much more that could be said about high-paid
> university
> administrators or heads of other nonprofits, who don't seem to be earning
> their keep. But this is not just a story of university boards possibly
> using
> bad judgment in designing compensation packages for top management. The pay
> for these millionaires comes directly out of the pockets of the rest of us
> in the same way as the food stamps or disability payments that get
> conservatives so excited.
> These institutions all enjoy special tax exemptions as charitable
> organizations. Their wealthy contributors can deduct the money they give to
> New York University or the University of Chicago from their taxable income.
> Since most of these universities' contributions come from people in the top
> tax bracket, taxpayers are effectively paying 40 cents of each dollar the
> institutions receive in contributions. That means we are picking up a large
> chunk of the paychecks of Sexton, Zimmer and the rest of the gang.
> There is a simple remedy for the high pay at tax-exempt institutions:
> Make it illegal.
> If we took the extreme case and assumed that all of a university's revenue
> came directly or indirectly from tax-deductible contributions, then
> taxpayers would have paid roughly $600,000 toward Sexton's 2013 salary and
> $680,000 of Zimmer's paycheck. For comparison purposes, the average annual
> food stamp benefit is roughly $1,600 per person. This would mean that
> taxpayers gave Sexton roughly as much money as they would to 375 of the
> "takers" who get food stamps, and Zimmer as much as 400.
> Of course, this comparison is not entirely fair. A university gets much of
> its money from tuition and other sources, so it is not correct to claim
> that
> all of its president's pay came from tax-deductible contributions. On the
> other hand, there are many charities and foundations that rely almost
> entirely on such contributions or the income from endowments that were
> created from them. In these cases it would be reasonable to assume that
> roughly 40 percent of the pay for the presidents and other top executives
> came from taxpayers.
> Most people would likely be bothered if they knew they were subsidizing the
> compensation of some of the highest-paid people in the country.
> Unfortunately, this fact is rarely mentioned in the news. We are far more
> likely to see articles on taxpayer subsidies for food stamps or disability.
> There is a simple remedy for the high pay at tax-exempt institutions: Make
> it illegal. We can just put a cap on pay at tax-exempt organizations - say,
> at 15 times the average production worker's pay (or $600,000 a year). That
> would limit the subsidy the rest of us provide to the very rich.
> This is not an interference with the freedom of the University of Chicago
> and New York University to pay their presidents whatever they like. They
> would just have to organize themselves as regular for-profit corporations.
> Then their presidents would have to figure out a way to win the charity of
> shareholders rather than taxpayers.
> Fans of the free market should be completely behind this sort of
> initiative.
> After all, if they are upset when the government gives someone $1,600 a
> year
> for food stamps, how could they not be infuriated when the government gives
> several hundred times as much to university presidents or other highly paid
> executives at tax-exempt institutions? If these presidents are worth their
> paychecks, then the private sector should be happy to cough up the money
> without needing a subsidy from the government.
> Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
> and
> author, most recently, of The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets
> Progressive.
> The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
> necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editori Charities that make the
> rich richer Either end obscene pay at charitable organizations or revoke
> their tax-exempt status June 16, 2014 4:15AM ET by Dean Baker @DeanBaker13
> We usually think of charities as institutions that direct money from those
> on top to those who are most in need. But in our vibrant 21st century
> economy, charities often funnel money in the opposite direction, with the
> rest of us subsidizing the incomes of the very rich. That is the
> implication
> of several recent news stories.
> Take, for example, John Sexton, president of New York University, a
> tax-exempt institution. The university was recently in the news because of
> a
> story reporting that workers building its Abu Dhabi campus are often beaten
> and have their wages stolen. This campus is part of an ambitious expansion
> plan designed by Sexton, who reportedly makes $1.5 million a year and
> stands
> to pocket a "longevity bonus" of $2.5 million if he stays into 2015.
> The University of Chicago is another school whose president, Robert Zimmer,
> appears to be doing rather well financially. Zimmer's total compensation
> for
> 2013 was reportedly $1.9 million, after having spiked at $3.4 million the
> prior year. This compensation comes in spite of the fact that the school
> has
> an operating deficit and may be at risk of a credit downgrade.
> A study by the Institute for Policy Studies found that student debt and
> low-paid faculty increased more rapidly at the universities with the 25
> highest-paid presidents than the national average. At the very least, this
> suggests high presidential pay is not associated with scoring well in terms
> of relieving the burdens of those most in need in higher education -
> student
> debtors and adjuncts.
> There is undoubtedly much more that could be said about high-paid
> university
> administrators or heads of other nonprofits, who don't seem to be earning
> their keep. But this is not just a story of university boards possibly
> using
> bad judgment in designing compensation packages for top management. The pay
> for these millionaires comes directly out of the pockets of the rest of us
> in the same way as the food stamps or disability payments that get
> conservatives so excited.
> These institutions all enjoy special tax exemptions as charitable
> organizations. Their wealthy contributors can deduct the money they give to
> New York University or the University of Chicago from their taxable income.
> Since most of these universities' contributions come from people in the top
> tax bracket, taxpayers are effectively paying 40 cents of each dollar the
> institutions receive in contributions. That means we are picking up a large
> chunk of the paychecks of Sexton, Zimmer and the rest of the gang.
> There is a simple remedy for the high pay at tax-exempt institutions:
> Make it illegal.
> If we took the extreme case and assumed that all of a university's revenue
> came directly or indirectly from tax-deductible contributions, then
> taxpayers would have paid roughly $600,000 toward Sexton's 2013 salary and
> $680,000 of Zimmer's paycheck. For comparison purposes, the average annual
> food stamp benefit is roughly $1,600 per person. This would mean that
> taxpayers gave Sexton roughly as much money as they would to 375 of the
> "takers" who get food stamps, and Zimmer as much as 400.
> Of course, this comparison is not entirely fair. A university gets much of
> its money from tuition and other sources, so it is not correct to claim
> that
> all of its president's pay came from tax-deductible contributions. On the
> other hand, there are many charities and foundations that rely almost
> entirely on such contributions or the income from endowments that were
> created from them. In these cases it would be reasonable to assume that
> roughly 40 percent of the pay for the presidents and other top executives
> came from taxpayers.
> Most people would likely be bothered if they knew they were subsidizing the
> compensation of some of the highest-paid people in the country.
> Unfortunately, this fact is rarely mentioned in the news. We are far more
> likely to see articles on taxpayer subsidies for food stamps or disability.
> There is a simple remedy for the high pay at tax-exempt institutions: Make
> it illegal. We can just put a cap on pay at tax-exempt organizations - say,
> at 15 times the average production worker's pay (or $600,000 a year). That
> would limit the subsidy the rest of us provide to the very rich.
> This is not an interference with the freedom of the University of Chicago
> and New York University to pay their presidents whatever they like. They
> would just have to organize themselves as regular for-profit corporations.
> Then their presidents would have to figure out a way to win the charity of
> shareholders rather than taxpayers.
> Fans of the free market should be completely behind this sort of
> initiative.
> After all, if they are upset when the government gives someone $1,600 a
> year
> for food stamps, how could they not be infuriated when the government gives
> several hundred times as much to university presidents or other highly paid
> executives at tax-exempt institutions? If these presidents are worth their
> paychecks, then the private sector should be happy to cough up the money
> without needing a subsidy from the government.
> Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
> and
> author, most recently, of The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets
> Progressive.
> The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
> necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial polic
> http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/6/charity-universitytaxexemptsext
> onzimmer.html
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Fwd: more on the Catholic babies and Free Will
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2014 21:55:33 -0400
Subject: RE: more on the Catholic babies and Free Will
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Carl,
I like your explanation at the beginning of your email regarding why none of
us has free will and I agree wholeheartedly, of my own free will.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 9:48 PM
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
Subject: Re: more on the Catholic babies and Free Will
Pam, Alice and All Believers in Free Will,
Allow me to state my bias right from the git go.
There Is No Such A Thing As Free Will!!!
From the moment of our conception we are shaped and pressured and
influenced. Long before we are aware of our own being, while we are totally
dependent upon our Mother's womb. By the time we struggle out of the birth
canal, much of our future has already been decided. Our parents, their
parents and so on, back to the beginning of Man, determine much of who we
are and what we will be able to do. How we are nourished and loved and what
we are taught, both informally as well as formally, establishes a base of
information from which we draw in making Life's Choices.
Every choice I make is based on all of those factors and more.
Becoming totally blind at the age of 30 cut off many choices I might have
made as a sighted person, but opened other doors. So I "freely"
chose to become a rehabilitation teacher of the blind, a choice I had never
entertained during my years as a sighted man.
My friend said, "I became a Pastor by my own Free Will". But he also told
me, " God opened doors and showed me the way".
So, which was it?
To me, saying that I can exercise my free will is sheer silliness.
Even deciding to write this post is based on countless previous decisions.
I chose to read email rather than to do my work. Free choice? It was a
long day, beginning with having to bring Winston the Wonder Cat, to have an
eye enucleation, then spending hours in the office contacting clients and
future clients, hunting down information and resources, returning to the
vet's to pick up Winston, bring him home and spend time babying him, and
back to the office without dinner. So I chose to fiddle with my email.
I try to figure out where I exercised Free Will in my day to day life.
I like to think that I'm an independent blind man. But if I am, I can't
find out just where that is.
So, before I begin going in circles, I will go, of my own free will, and
grab those little chocolate doughnuts I stuck in the freezer.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/10/14, Pam Mathers <lind139@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Carl, I agree with Alice. No one forces anyone to follow God or to
> become a Christian. I'm sure when you were a Christian you became one
> by choice, not because someone told you that you must do it. People
> who become Christians do so by choice, not because they are forced to
> so I don't understand where this idea of dictatorship comes in.
> Christians are not slaves.
> On Jun 10, 2014, at 10:51 AM, Alice Dampman Humel wrote:
>
>> Oh, come on now Carl, you know better than that, haha...I would think
>> that even in the speaking in tongues, fundamentalist brand of
>> fanatical Christianity that you used to inhabit, the concept of free
>> will was rattling around in there somewhere...and God, as he defines
>> himself, or, if you prefer, the way men have defined/created him does
>> permit dissent...otherwise, you would be forced to believe in Him,
>> and you would not have the choice of which you have availed yourself,
>> not to believe, to decline...
>> That's not a dictator by my definition...a dictator would say,
>> believe in me, follow my ways, or off with your head or some other
>> form of coercion or punishment...and, since in your unbelief, you
>> don't believe in an afterlife or any kind of Deity whatsoever, even
>> that threat of eternal damnation is, for you, an empty one...Alice On
>> Jun 10, 2014, at 1:09 AM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The examples
>>> are all around us, and still we want to worship an absolute
>>> dictator. God Almighty.
>>>
>>> carl jarvis
>>> on Earth be so cruel and hard hearted, if On 6/9/14, Miriam Vieni
>>> <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Williams writes: "It gets worse. One week after revelations of how
>>>> over the span of 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers
>>>> cavalierly disposed of the bodies of nearly 800 babies and toddlers
>>>> on a site that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole
>>>> different set of charges about what happened to the children of
>>>> those Irish homes."
>>>>
>>>> (photo: AdrianNunez/Shutterstock.com)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The Catholic Irish Babies Scandal: It Gets Much Worse By Mary
>>>> Elizabeth Williams, Salon
>>>> 09 June 14
>>>>
>>>> New revelations about unauthorized vaccine trials
>>>>
>>>> It gets worse. One week after revelations of how over the span of
>>>> 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly
>>>> disposed of the bodies of nearly 800 babies and toddlers on a site
>>>> that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole different
>>>> set of charges about what happened to the children of those Irish
>>>> homes.
>>>> In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail
>>>> has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across
>>>> several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from
>>>> pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal
>>>> drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports,
>>>> "Michael Dwyer, of Cork University's School of History, found the
>>>> child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of
>>>> medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the
>>>> trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for
>>>> commercial use in the UK." There is no evidence yet - and there may
>>>> never be
>>>> - that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many
>>>> children had adverse effects or died as a result of the
>>>> vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, "The fact that no record of
>>>> these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department
>>>> of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports
>>>> relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London,
>>>> suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to
>>>> government, municipal authorities, or the general public.
>>>> However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in
>>>> the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of
>>>> human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners
>>>> and facilitated by authorities in charge of children's residential
>>>> institutions." In a related story, GSK - formerly Wellcome -
>>>> revealed Monday on Newstalk Radio that 298 children in 10 different
>>>> care homes were involved in medical trials in the '60s and '70s
>>>> that left "80 children ill after they were accidentally
>>>> administered a vaccine intended for cattle."
>>>> Irish Minister of State for Training and Skills Ciaran Cannon has
>>>> called for a public inquiry into the treatment of the children and
>>>> their deaths.
>>>> The
>>>> archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has also called for an
>>>> investigation, adding that it should be free of Catholic Church
>>>> interference. "We have to look at the whole culture of mother and
>>>> baby homes; they're talking about medical experiments there," he
>>>> told RTE Radio this weekend. "They're very complicated and very
>>>> sensitive issues, but the only way we will come out of this
>>>> particular period of our history is when the truth comes out." And
>>>> a spokesman for GSK said the latest revelations, "if true, are
>>>> clearly very distressing."
>>>> This is not even the first time information on these kinds of
>>>> vaccine trials has come to light. In 2010, the Irish Independent
>>>> uncovered how children born in the homes were subjected to a single
>>>> "four-in-one" vaccine trial without their mothers' permission. The
>>>> children often didn't even know what they'd been subjected to until
>>>> well into adulthood. Appallingly, Ireland had no laws regarding
>>>> medical testing on humans until 1987. Mari Steed, who was born at
>>>> the Bessborough home in the '60s, told the Sunday Independent, "We
>>>> were used as human guinea pigs."
>>>> What Ireland is only now beginning to fully investigate and
>>>> understand is a story involving potentially thousands of children
>>>> who were almost certainly neglected and mistreated, and whose
>>>> deaths were addressed as a mere trash disposal issue. It is now
>>>> believed a total of upward of 4,000 children were similarly
>>>> disposed of in other homes across the country. It's a story of
>>>> untold even higher numbers of children who were unwitting subjects
>>>> in a vaccine test that further refused to see them as human beings,
>>>> capable of fear and pain. And an interesting insight into why so
>>>> many children may have been so casually treated and tossed away was
>>>> revealed in a recent feature on the scandal in the Independent.
>>>> Babies born to unwed mothers - and this, let it be noted, would
>>>> have included mothers who were raped - "were denied baptism and, if
>>>> they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities,
>>>> also denied a Christian burial." In other words, the Catholic
>>>> institutions that these women and their children were forced to
>>>> turn to as their only refuge viciously turned their backs on them -
>>>> treating them, quite literally, as garbage. This is abuse of the
>>>> highest order. Abuse in life, abuse in death. Carried out by
>>>> religious orders so warped, so perverted in their utter lack of
>>>> mercy that they participated in the suffering of an unfathomable
>>>> number of babies and children. This is what the Catholic Church of
>>>> Ireland is capable of, when it is given free rein over the bodies
>>>> of its most vulnerable members. And an official inquiry hasn't even
>>>> begun. As Michael Dwyer told the Mail this weekend, "What I have
>>>> found is just the tip of a very large and submerged iceberg."
>>>>
>>>> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference
>>>> not valid.
>>>>
>>>> (photo: AdrianNunez/Shutterstock.com)
>>>> http://www.salon.com/2014/06/09/the_catholic_irish_babies_scandal_i
>>>> t_gets_mu
>>>> ch_worse/http://www.salon.com/2014/06/09/the_catholic_irish_babies_
>>>> scandal_i
>>>> t_gets_much_worse/
>>>> The Catholic Irish Babies Scandal: It Gets Much Worse By Mary
>>>> Elizabeth Williams, Salon
>>>> 09 June 14
>>>> New revelations about unauthorized vaccine trials t gets worse. One
>>>> week after revelations of how over the span of 35 years, a County
>>>> Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly disposed of the bodies of
>>>> nearly 800 babies and toddlers on a site that held a septic tank,
>>>> new reports are leveling a whole different set of charges about
>>>> what happened to the children of those Irish homes.
>>>> In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail
>>>> has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across
>>>> several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from
>>>> pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal
>>>> drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports,
>>>> "Michael Dwyer, of Cork University's School of History, found the
>>>> child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of
>>>> medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the
>>>> trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for
>>>> commercial use in the UK." There is no evidence yet - and there may
>>>> never be
>>>> - that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many
>>>> children had adverse effects or died as a result of the
>>>> vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, "The fact that no record of
>>>> these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department
>>>> of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports
>>>> relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London,
>>>> suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to
>>>> government, municipal authorities, or the general public.
>>>> However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in
>>>> the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of
>>>> human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners
>>>> and facilitated by authorities in charge of children's residential
>>>> institutions." In a related story, GSK - formerly Wellcome -
>>>> revealed Monday on Newstalk Radio that 298 children in 10 different
>>>> care homes were involved in medical trials in the '60s and '70s
>>>> that left "80 children ill after they were accidentally
>>>> administered a vaccine intended for cattle."
>>>> Irish Minister of State for Training and Skills Ciaran Cannon has
>>>> called for a public inquiry into the treatment of the children and
>>>> their deaths.
>>>> The
>>>> archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has also called for an
>>>> investigation, adding that it should be free of Catholic Church
>>>> interference. "We have to look at the whole culture of mother and
>>>> baby homes; they're talking about medical experiments there," he
>>>> told RTE Radio this weekend. "They're very complicated and very
>>>> sensitive issues, but the only way we will come out of this
>>>> particular period of our history is when the truth comes out." And
>>>> a spokesman for GSK said the latest revelations, "if true, are
>>>> clearly very distressing."
>>>> This is not even the first time information on these kinds of
>>>> vaccine trials has come to light. In 2010, the Irish Independent
>>>> uncovered how children born in the homes were subjected to a single
>>>> "four-in-one" vaccine trial without their mothers' permission. The
>>>> children often didn't even know what they'd been subjected to until
>>>> well into adulthood. Appallingly, Ireland had no laws regarding
>>>> medical testing on humans until 1987. Mari Steed, who was born at
>>>> the Bessborough home in the '60s, told the Sunday Independent, "We
>>>> were used as human guinea pigs."
>>>> What Ireland is only now beginning to fully investigate and
>>>> understand is a story involving potentially thousands of children
>>>> who were almost certainly neglected and mistreated, and whose
>>>> deaths were addressed as a mere trash disposal issue. It is now
>>>> believed a total of upward of 4,000 children were similarly
>>>> disposed of in other homes across the country. It's a story of
>>>> untold even higher numbers of children who were unwitting subjects
>>>> in a vaccine test that further refused to see them as human beings,
>>>> capable of fear and pain. And an interesting insight into why so
>>>> many children may have been so casually treated and tossed away was
>>>> revealed in a recent feature on the scandal in the Independent.
>>>> Babies born to unwed mothers - and this, let it be noted, would
>>>> have included mothers who were raped - "were denied baptism and, if
>>>> they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities,
>>>> also denied a Christian burial." In other words, the Catholic
>>>> institutions that these women and their children were forced to
>>>> turn to as their only refuge viciously turned their backs on them -
>>>> treating them, quite literally, as garbage. This is abuse of the
>>>> highest order. Abuse in life, abuse in death. Carried out by
>>>> religious orders so warped, so perverted in their utter lack of
>>>> mercy that they participated in the suffering of an unfathomable
>>>> number of babies and children. This is what the Catholic Church of
>>>> Ireland is capable of, when it is given free rein over the bodies
>>>> of its most vulnerable members. And an official inquiry hasn't even
>>>> begun. As Michael Dwyer told the Mail this weekend, "What I have
>>>> found is just the tip of a very large and submerged iceberg."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>>>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>>>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
_______________________________________________
Blind-Democracy mailing list
Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
_______________________________________________
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Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
From: Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2014 21:55:33 -0400
Subject: RE: more on the Catholic babies and Free Will
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Carl,
I like your explanation at the beginning of your email regarding why none of
us has free will and I agree wholeheartedly, of my own free will.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 9:48 PM
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
Subject: Re: more on the Catholic babies and Free Will
Pam, Alice and All Believers in Free Will,
Allow me to state my bias right from the git go.
There Is No Such A Thing As Free Will!!!
From the moment of our conception we are shaped and pressured and
influenced. Long before we are aware of our own being, while we are totally
dependent upon our Mother's womb. By the time we struggle out of the birth
canal, much of our future has already been decided. Our parents, their
parents and so on, back to the beginning of Man, determine much of who we
are and what we will be able to do. How we are nourished and loved and what
we are taught, both informally as well as formally, establishes a base of
information from which we draw in making Life's Choices.
Every choice I make is based on all of those factors and more.
Becoming totally blind at the age of 30 cut off many choices I might have
made as a sighted person, but opened other doors. So I "freely"
chose to become a rehabilitation teacher of the blind, a choice I had never
entertained during my years as a sighted man.
My friend said, "I became a Pastor by my own Free Will". But he also told
me, " God opened doors and showed me the way".
So, which was it?
To me, saying that I can exercise my free will is sheer silliness.
Even deciding to write this post is based on countless previous decisions.
I chose to read email rather than to do my work. Free choice? It was a
long day, beginning with having to bring Winston the Wonder Cat, to have an
eye enucleation, then spending hours in the office contacting clients and
future clients, hunting down information and resources, returning to the
vet's to pick up Winston, bring him home and spend time babying him, and
back to the office without dinner. So I chose to fiddle with my email.
I try to figure out where I exercised Free Will in my day to day life.
I like to think that I'm an independent blind man. But if I am, I can't
find out just where that is.
So, before I begin going in circles, I will go, of my own free will, and
grab those little chocolate doughnuts I stuck in the freezer.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/10/14, Pam Mathers <lind139@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Carl, I agree with Alice. No one forces anyone to follow God or to
> become a Christian. I'm sure when you were a Christian you became one
> by choice, not because someone told you that you must do it. People
> who become Christians do so by choice, not because they are forced to
> so I don't understand where this idea of dictatorship comes in.
> Christians are not slaves.
> On Jun 10, 2014, at 10:51 AM, Alice Dampman Humel wrote:
>
>> Oh, come on now Carl, you know better than that, haha...I would think
>> that even in the speaking in tongues, fundamentalist brand of
>> fanatical Christianity that you used to inhabit, the concept of free
>> will was rattling around in there somewhere...and God, as he defines
>> himself, or, if you prefer, the way men have defined/created him does
>> permit dissent...otherwise, you would be forced to believe in Him,
>> and you would not have the choice of which you have availed yourself,
>> not to believe, to decline...
>> That's not a dictator by my definition...a dictator would say,
>> believe in me, follow my ways, or off with your head or some other
>> form of coercion or punishment...and, since in your unbelief, you
>> don't believe in an afterlife or any kind of Deity whatsoever, even
>> that threat of eternal damnation is, for you, an empty one...Alice On
>> Jun 10, 2014, at 1:09 AM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The examples
>>> are all around us, and still we want to worship an absolute
>>> dictator. God Almighty.
>>>
>>> carl jarvis
>>> on Earth be so cruel and hard hearted, if On 6/9/14, Miriam Vieni
>>> <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Williams writes: "It gets worse. One week after revelations of how
>>>> over the span of 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers
>>>> cavalierly disposed of the bodies of nearly 800 babies and toddlers
>>>> on a site that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole
>>>> different set of charges about what happened to the children of
>>>> those Irish homes."
>>>>
>>>> (photo: AdrianNunez/Shutterstock.com)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The Catholic Irish Babies Scandal: It Gets Much Worse By Mary
>>>> Elizabeth Williams, Salon
>>>> 09 June 14
>>>>
>>>> New revelations about unauthorized vaccine trials
>>>>
>>>> It gets worse. One week after revelations of how over the span of
>>>> 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly
>>>> disposed of the bodies of nearly 800 babies and toddlers on a site
>>>> that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole different
>>>> set of charges about what happened to the children of those Irish
>>>> homes.
>>>> In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail
>>>> has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across
>>>> several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from
>>>> pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal
>>>> drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports,
>>>> "Michael Dwyer, of Cork University's School of History, found the
>>>> child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of
>>>> medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the
>>>> trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for
>>>> commercial use in the UK." There is no evidence yet - and there may
>>>> never be
>>>> - that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many
>>>> children had adverse effects or died as a result of the
>>>> vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, "The fact that no record of
>>>> these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department
>>>> of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports
>>>> relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London,
>>>> suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to
>>>> government, municipal authorities, or the general public.
>>>> However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in
>>>> the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of
>>>> human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners
>>>> and facilitated by authorities in charge of children's residential
>>>> institutions." In a related story, GSK - formerly Wellcome -
>>>> revealed Monday on Newstalk Radio that 298 children in 10 different
>>>> care homes were involved in medical trials in the '60s and '70s
>>>> that left "80 children ill after they were accidentally
>>>> administered a vaccine intended for cattle."
>>>> Irish Minister of State for Training and Skills Ciaran Cannon has
>>>> called for a public inquiry into the treatment of the children and
>>>> their deaths.
>>>> The
>>>> archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has also called for an
>>>> investigation, adding that it should be free of Catholic Church
>>>> interference. "We have to look at the whole culture of mother and
>>>> baby homes; they're talking about medical experiments there," he
>>>> told RTE Radio this weekend. "They're very complicated and very
>>>> sensitive issues, but the only way we will come out of this
>>>> particular period of our history is when the truth comes out." And
>>>> a spokesman for GSK said the latest revelations, "if true, are
>>>> clearly very distressing."
>>>> This is not even the first time information on these kinds of
>>>> vaccine trials has come to light. In 2010, the Irish Independent
>>>> uncovered how children born in the homes were subjected to a single
>>>> "four-in-one" vaccine trial without their mothers' permission. The
>>>> children often didn't even know what they'd been subjected to until
>>>> well into adulthood. Appallingly, Ireland had no laws regarding
>>>> medical testing on humans until 1987. Mari Steed, who was born at
>>>> the Bessborough home in the '60s, told the Sunday Independent, "We
>>>> were used as human guinea pigs."
>>>> What Ireland is only now beginning to fully investigate and
>>>> understand is a story involving potentially thousands of children
>>>> who were almost certainly neglected and mistreated, and whose
>>>> deaths were addressed as a mere trash disposal issue. It is now
>>>> believed a total of upward of 4,000 children were similarly
>>>> disposed of in other homes across the country. It's a story of
>>>> untold even higher numbers of children who were unwitting subjects
>>>> in a vaccine test that further refused to see them as human beings,
>>>> capable of fear and pain. And an interesting insight into why so
>>>> many children may have been so casually treated and tossed away was
>>>> revealed in a recent feature on the scandal in the Independent.
>>>> Babies born to unwed mothers - and this, let it be noted, would
>>>> have included mothers who were raped - "were denied baptism and, if
>>>> they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities,
>>>> also denied a Christian burial." In other words, the Catholic
>>>> institutions that these women and their children were forced to
>>>> turn to as their only refuge viciously turned their backs on them -
>>>> treating them, quite literally, as garbage. This is abuse of the
>>>> highest order. Abuse in life, abuse in death. Carried out by
>>>> religious orders so warped, so perverted in their utter lack of
>>>> mercy that they participated in the suffering of an unfathomable
>>>> number of babies and children. This is what the Catholic Church of
>>>> Ireland is capable of, when it is given free rein over the bodies
>>>> of its most vulnerable members. And an official inquiry hasn't even
>>>> begun. As Michael Dwyer told the Mail this weekend, "What I have
>>>> found is just the tip of a very large and submerged iceberg."
>>>>
>>>> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference
>>>> not valid.
>>>>
>>>> (photo: AdrianNunez/Shutterstock.com)
>>>> http://www.salon.com/2014/06/09/the_catholic_irish_babies_scandal_i
>>>> t_gets_mu
>>>> ch_worse/http://www.salon.com/2014/06/09/the_catholic_irish_babies_
>>>> scandal_i
>>>> t_gets_much_worse/
>>>> The Catholic Irish Babies Scandal: It Gets Much Worse By Mary
>>>> Elizabeth Williams, Salon
>>>> 09 June 14
>>>> New revelations about unauthorized vaccine trials t gets worse. One
>>>> week after revelations of how over the span of 35 years, a County
>>>> Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly disposed of the bodies of
>>>> nearly 800 babies and toddlers on a site that held a septic tank,
>>>> new reports are leveling a whole different set of charges about
>>>> what happened to the children of those Irish homes.
>>>> In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail
>>>> has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across
>>>> several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from
>>>> pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal
>>>> drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports,
>>>> "Michael Dwyer, of Cork University's School of History, found the
>>>> child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of
>>>> medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the
>>>> trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for
>>>> commercial use in the UK." There is no evidence yet - and there may
>>>> never be
>>>> - that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many
>>>> children had adverse effects or died as a result of the
>>>> vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, "The fact that no record of
>>>> these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department
>>>> of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports
>>>> relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London,
>>>> suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to
>>>> government, municipal authorities, or the general public.
>>>> However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in
>>>> the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of
>>>> human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners
>>>> and facilitated by authorities in charge of children's residential
>>>> institutions." In a related story, GSK - formerly Wellcome -
>>>> revealed Monday on Newstalk Radio that 298 children in 10 different
>>>> care homes were involved in medical trials in the '60s and '70s
>>>> that left "80 children ill after they were accidentally
>>>> administered a vaccine intended for cattle."
>>>> Irish Minister of State for Training and Skills Ciaran Cannon has
>>>> called for a public inquiry into the treatment of the children and
>>>> their deaths.
>>>> The
>>>> archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has also called for an
>>>> investigation, adding that it should be free of Catholic Church
>>>> interference. "We have to look at the whole culture of mother and
>>>> baby homes; they're talking about medical experiments there," he
>>>> told RTE Radio this weekend. "They're very complicated and very
>>>> sensitive issues, but the only way we will come out of this
>>>> particular period of our history is when the truth comes out." And
>>>> a spokesman for GSK said the latest revelations, "if true, are
>>>> clearly very distressing."
>>>> This is not even the first time information on these kinds of
>>>> vaccine trials has come to light. In 2010, the Irish Independent
>>>> uncovered how children born in the homes were subjected to a single
>>>> "four-in-one" vaccine trial without their mothers' permission. The
>>>> children often didn't even know what they'd been subjected to until
>>>> well into adulthood. Appallingly, Ireland had no laws regarding
>>>> medical testing on humans until 1987. Mari Steed, who was born at
>>>> the Bessborough home in the '60s, told the Sunday Independent, "We
>>>> were used as human guinea pigs."
>>>> What Ireland is only now beginning to fully investigate and
>>>> understand is a story involving potentially thousands of children
>>>> who were almost certainly neglected and mistreated, and whose
>>>> deaths were addressed as a mere trash disposal issue. It is now
>>>> believed a total of upward of 4,000 children were similarly
>>>> disposed of in other homes across the country. It's a story of
>>>> untold even higher numbers of children who were unwitting subjects
>>>> in a vaccine test that further refused to see them as human beings,
>>>> capable of fear and pain. And an interesting insight into why so
>>>> many children may have been so casually treated and tossed away was
>>>> revealed in a recent feature on the scandal in the Independent.
>>>> Babies born to unwed mothers - and this, let it be noted, would
>>>> have included mothers who were raped - "were denied baptism and, if
>>>> they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities,
>>>> also denied a Christian burial." In other words, the Catholic
>>>> institutions that these women and their children were forced to
>>>> turn to as their only refuge viciously turned their backs on them -
>>>> treating them, quite literally, as garbage. This is abuse of the
>>>> highest order. Abuse in life, abuse in death. Carried out by
>>>> religious orders so warped, so perverted in their utter lack of
>>>> mercy that they participated in the suffering of an unfathomable
>>>> number of babies and children. This is what the Catholic Church of
>>>> Ireland is capable of, when it is given free rein over the bodies
>>>> of its most vulnerable members. And an official inquiry hasn't even
>>>> begun. As Michael Dwyer told the Mail this weekend, "What I have
>>>> found is just the tip of a very large and submerged iceberg."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>>>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>>>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
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Tuesday, June 10, 2014
rabbi charged stealing from disabled kids
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alice Dampman Humel <alicedh@verizon.net>
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 11:40:45 -0400
Subject: Re: rabbi charged stealing disabled kids
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Carl,
I had very similar thoughts and reactions when I read the article...
Sarcasm, Sheldon?
Maybe...but as with much sarcasm, it reflects the, or at least one,
truth...not saying whether that truth is good, bad , or indifferent, not
hear, anyhow...
Alice
On Jun 10, 2014, at 10:56 AM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
> Joe and All Believers in the American Way.
>
> Was it Morgan, or Hill, or someone else who said something to the
> effect that if you're going to steal, don't rob the train, take the
> whole railroad.
> The sin of these Rabbis was their small mindedness. They did the
> American thing, steal from the poor in order to live the "Chosen"
> life, but they failed to go the distance. They should have taken more
> notice of how the "big boys" do it on Wall Street. While they are
> headed off to pay the price for their petty theft, the big time crooks
> are really living that good life that the Rabbis longed for. And
> there are so many great examples of unfettered greed to draw from.
> Why, just this morning I learned that the student loan debt is over a
> trillion dollars. Larger than all credit card debt. Now there are
> some crooks to be proud of! Stealing the future from our children,
> right out from under our noses. And what about the fellows who have
> cleverly figured out how to steal the very Souls from our poor Black
> and Latino citizens by building private "holding pens" in order to
> squeeze some really cheap labor, and even handing us taxpayers the
> bill. And then there's the squeeze on our elders, and the really big
> rollers who play war games with our children and our tax dollars.
> Yup, those Rabbis were pretty dumb, and they deserve what they get.
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
> On 6/10/14, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Rabbi charged with stealing $12.4 million from New York disabled kids |
>> Reuters
>>
>> (Reuters) - A New York rabbi and three others were indicted for stealing
>> over $12.4 million in public aid for disabled pre-schoolers and using it to
>> spruce
>>
>> up their homes, get catering discounts and fund a relative's cosmetics
>> business, authorities said on Tuesday.
>>
>>
>>
>> The four men, who had ties to one of the city's largest providers of special
>> education services for disabled pre-schoolers, were due in court on Tuesday
>>
>> on criminal charges in a 42-count indictment, including grand larceny,
>> identity theft, and falsifying business records, Queens District Attorney
>> Richard
>>
>> Brown said in a statement.
>>
>>
>>
>> If convicted, each faces up to 25 years in prison.
>>
>>
>>
>> They are accused of stealing money meant to benefit the Island Child
>> Development Center in Queens, a non-profit special education provider for
>> Orthodox
>>
>> Jewish children aged 3 to 5.
>>
>>
>>
>> "It is disheartening to see a betrayal of the magnitude alleged in this
>> indictment," Brown said in a statement.
>>
>>
>>
>> Rabbi Samuel Hiller, who is the center's assistant director, and Roy
>> Hoffman, the center's independent auditor, were accused of using the money
>> to fix up
>>
>> their homes. Hoffman spent $300,000 for a house redesign and diverted
>> $15,000 to his wife's make-up business. Hiller spent $30,000 on home
>> plumbing work,
>>
>> the prosecutor said.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hiller also was accused of diverting $8 million to various unrelated
>> religious schools and camps, including $3 million to B'nos Bais Yaakov
>> Academy, a private
>>
>> all-girls school where he is principal.
>>
>>
>>
>> The New York State Comptroller's Office said they uncovered the fraud when
>> the center's former executive director, Ira Kurman, ran off with his books
>> and
>>
>> records just before a scheduled routine audit meeting in the summer of
>> 2012.
>>
>>
>>
>> In the indictment, Kurman was accused of making more than $143,000 in loans
>> to community members, including a caterer in exchange for discounts for his
>>
>> daughter's wedding and his son's Bar Mitzvah.
>>
>>
>>
>> A fourth man, Daniel Laniado, described as an investor in the center, was
>> accused of using check cashing locations to liquidate more than $1 million
>> of
>>
>> checks meant to benefit the center.
>>
>>
>>
>> The center received roughly $27 million in state funding between 2005 and
>> 2012.
>>
>>
>>
>> In addition to the criminal charges, the District Attorney's Office sought
>> forfeiture of over $11 million, of which $1 million has already been
>> repaid.
>>
>>
>>
>> Attorneys for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for
>> comment.
>>
>>
>>
>> (Editing by Barbara Goldberg; editing by Andrew Hay)
>>
>> FILED UNDER:
>>
>> U.S.
>>
>>
>>
>> Source:
>>
>> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/13/us-usa-disabled-new-york-idUSBREA4C0NI20140513
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
From: Alice Dampman Humel <alicedh@verizon.net>
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 11:40:45 -0400
Subject: Re: rabbi charged stealing disabled kids
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Carl,
I had very similar thoughts and reactions when I read the article...
Sarcasm, Sheldon?
Maybe...but as with much sarcasm, it reflects the, or at least one,
truth...not saying whether that truth is good, bad , or indifferent, not
hear, anyhow...
Alice
On Jun 10, 2014, at 10:56 AM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
> Joe and All Believers in the American Way.
>
> Was it Morgan, or Hill, or someone else who said something to the
> effect that if you're going to steal, don't rob the train, take the
> whole railroad.
> The sin of these Rabbis was their small mindedness. They did the
> American thing, steal from the poor in order to live the "Chosen"
> life, but they failed to go the distance. They should have taken more
> notice of how the "big boys" do it on Wall Street. While they are
> headed off to pay the price for their petty theft, the big time crooks
> are really living that good life that the Rabbis longed for. And
> there are so many great examples of unfettered greed to draw from.
> Why, just this morning I learned that the student loan debt is over a
> trillion dollars. Larger than all credit card debt. Now there are
> some crooks to be proud of! Stealing the future from our children,
> right out from under our noses. And what about the fellows who have
> cleverly figured out how to steal the very Souls from our poor Black
> and Latino citizens by building private "holding pens" in order to
> squeeze some really cheap labor, and even handing us taxpayers the
> bill. And then there's the squeeze on our elders, and the really big
> rollers who play war games with our children and our tax dollars.
> Yup, those Rabbis were pretty dumb, and they deserve what they get.
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
> On 6/10/14, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Rabbi charged with stealing $12.4 million from New York disabled kids |
>> Reuters
>>
>> (Reuters) - A New York rabbi and three others were indicted for stealing
>> over $12.4 million in public aid for disabled pre-schoolers and using it to
>> spruce
>>
>> up their homes, get catering discounts and fund a relative's cosmetics
>> business, authorities said on Tuesday.
>>
>>
>>
>> The four men, who had ties to one of the city's largest providers of special
>> education services for disabled pre-schoolers, were due in court on Tuesday
>>
>> on criminal charges in a 42-count indictment, including grand larceny,
>> identity theft, and falsifying business records, Queens District Attorney
>> Richard
>>
>> Brown said in a statement.
>>
>>
>>
>> If convicted, each faces up to 25 years in prison.
>>
>>
>>
>> They are accused of stealing money meant to benefit the Island Child
>> Development Center in Queens, a non-profit special education provider for
>> Orthodox
>>
>> Jewish children aged 3 to 5.
>>
>>
>>
>> "It is disheartening to see a betrayal of the magnitude alleged in this
>> indictment," Brown said in a statement.
>>
>>
>>
>> Rabbi Samuel Hiller, who is the center's assistant director, and Roy
>> Hoffman, the center's independent auditor, were accused of using the money
>> to fix up
>>
>> their homes. Hoffman spent $300,000 for a house redesign and diverted
>> $15,000 to his wife's make-up business. Hiller spent $30,000 on home
>> plumbing work,
>>
>> the prosecutor said.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hiller also was accused of diverting $8 million to various unrelated
>> religious schools and camps, including $3 million to B'nos Bais Yaakov
>> Academy, a private
>>
>> all-girls school where he is principal.
>>
>>
>>
>> The New York State Comptroller's Office said they uncovered the fraud when
>> the center's former executive director, Ira Kurman, ran off with his books
>> and
>>
>> records just before a scheduled routine audit meeting in the summer of
>> 2012.
>>
>>
>>
>> In the indictment, Kurman was accused of making more than $143,000 in loans
>> to community members, including a caterer in exchange for discounts for his
>>
>> daughter's wedding and his son's Bar Mitzvah.
>>
>>
>>
>> A fourth man, Daniel Laniado, described as an investor in the center, was
>> accused of using check cashing locations to liquidate more than $1 million
>> of
>>
>> checks meant to benefit the center.
>>
>>
>>
>> The center received roughly $27 million in state funding between 2005 and
>> 2012.
>>
>>
>>
>> In addition to the criminal charges, the District Attorney's Office sought
>> forfeiture of over $11 million, of which $1 million has already been
>> repaid.
>>
>>
>>
>> Attorneys for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for
>> comment.
>>
>>
>>
>> (Editing by Barbara Goldberg; editing by Andrew Hay)
>>
>> FILED UNDER:
>>
>> U.S.
>>
>>
>>
>> Source:
>>
>> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/13/us-usa-disabled-new-york-idUSBREA4C0NI20140513
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Re: Josephine Lauth
Thanks Lucinda, we'll contact Jo this week and see if she wishes to
meet with us.
Keep up the good work.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/6/14, Lucinda Daly <LDaly@sightconnection.org> wrote:
> Hi Carl and Cathy!
>
> Hope you both are well and happy! You were kind enough to visit with
> Josephine Lauth last Fall, re-connecting with her and her son Rich and doing
> a safety assessment, and some counseling. We just got an updated chart note
> from Martha Leen, MD at Retina Center Northwest, noting that Josephine is
> experiencing more decreased vision since her last visit. Just wondering if
> you might give Josephine a call to check in with her. I know you are so
> very thorough and intuitive, and if you aren't too busy, a check in call to
> assess her welfare would be very helpful. Thank you very much! Her number
> is: (360)698-7755
>
> Lucinda Daly
> Low Vision Clinic Coordinator
> 800-458-4888
> www.SightConnection.org
> [cid:image001.jpg@01CF692F.705B8860]
>
> Research, public awareness, client success stories,
> and event news - get the latest by subscribing to
> the SightConnection PRISM
> e-newsletter!<http://www.sightconnection.org/e-news-signup/>
>
>
meet with us.
Keep up the good work.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/6/14, Lucinda Daly <LDaly@sightconnection.org> wrote:
> Hi Carl and Cathy!
>
> Hope you both are well and happy! You were kind enough to visit with
> Josephine Lauth last Fall, re-connecting with her and her son Rich and doing
> a safety assessment, and some counseling. We just got an updated chart note
> from Martha Leen, MD at Retina Center Northwest, noting that Josephine is
> experiencing more decreased vision since her last visit. Just wondering if
> you might give Josephine a call to check in with her. I know you are so
> very thorough and intuitive, and if you aren't too busy, a check in call to
> assess her welfare would be very helpful. Thank you very much! Her number
> is: (360)698-7755
>
> Lucinda Daly
> Low Vision Clinic Coordinator
> 800-458-4888
> www.SightConnection.org
> [cid:image001.jpg@01CF692F.705B8860]
>
> Research, public awareness, client success stories,
> and event news - get the latest by subscribing to
> the SightConnection PRISM
> e-newsletter!<http://www.sightconnection.org/e-news-signup/>
>
>
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