This project grew out of the Tom DeLay scandal. It has quickly become clear that not only is the Republican party unwilling to hold Tom DeLay accountable for his corruption, but many other Republicans are also terribly corrupt. Given the facade the Republicans have of being the "moral party," this kind of widespread corruption kind of tarnishes their image. This blog will highlight specific Corrupt Republicans and specific actions we can all take to expose their corruption.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
The Lesson South Carolina Taught Us
Newt "traditional values, nudge nudge, wink wink" Gingrich's success in the South Carolina Republican Primary taught us that Southern Republicans hate traditional marriage. I expect them to finally endorse same sex marriage very soon.
Either that or this whole Republican lip service to "traditional values" is nothing but a load of hypocritical bullshit. Then again their claims of "fiscal responsibility" are about as credible as Newt's support for "traditional values."
One of my first and most brilliant readers has died and I want to honor her memory.
Margaret was a Culture Kitchen blogger for awhile and, while there, was one of our best bloggers. She moved on long ago, and I always missed her presence at CK. But she went on to what she considered bigger and better things. In her 80's she discovered her public voice and I am proud I was one of the people who encouraged and helped her find that voice.
This comes late because I mainly interacted with Margaret Bassett by email. So if I didn't hear from her, I didn't think much about it. But I knew she was over 80. She was a subscriber to my Progressive Democrat Newsletter from the beginning soon after the 2004 election. She had seen me as something of a hope for the future in messaging, something I think she overrated me on, but I was flattered and tried to live up to.
Today I sent out a message to my subscribers that my writing of the Progressive Democrat Newsletter had clearly been on hold for over a month and I wasn't sure if/when it would come back.
One email bounced. It was the first time Margaret's email bounced in all the time she read my stuff. So it caught my attention immediately. It sent a shiver down my spine. So I did a quick google search and discovered what I feared...Margaret had died, back in August, at the age of 89. I cried.
[NOTE: Damn! In the preview I realize that a lot of the old material I post has formatting problems, but it is midnight and I am sad at her passing, and I don't have the attention span to fix everything...Margaret's brilliance speaks for itself even with formatting errors!]
Margaret was an original FDR progressive just like my grandmother. She was about 20 years younger than my grandmother, but clearly they had experienced many of the same things and their political lives had been very similar. Margaret somehow connected with my blogging and for a brief period I was her connection (from where she lived in Red Tennessee) to liberal politics. She wrote me often and we had long discussions by email from which she drew inspiration and I learned a lot. I quoted her in my writing, seemingly to her surprise and pride. She forwarded my newsletter to others, to my surprise and pride.
Eventually her blogger presence developed beyond my newsletter, extending to MyLeftWing, Culture Kitchen and Political Cortex, and then to OpEdNews where she became something of a force of nature. Most of my writing that ended up at OpEdNews was thanks to her. And she sent me a lot of their stuff as well.
But my favorite material from her was on the blog Culture Kitchen. I recruited her for Culture Kitchen. She was on it for only a brief period, but she participated in some amazing discussions about race in America that blew everyone away. I am sorry I can't link to these amazing discussions because Culture Kitchen is currently in limbo because of a conflict between our wonderful publisher and the (evil?) site host, but trust me, people of ALL races were moved by Margaret's comments on the history of race in America.
She left Culture Kitchen, to our loss, when she became active with OpEdNews. From what I gather OpEdNews gained from our loss. From then on she would occasionally comment on my Progressive Democrat Newsletter, more occasionally post something from my newsletter to OpEdNEws, and also would send me info from OpEdNews. For some years if I didn't hear from her for awhile I would get worried. In fact she was one of two people I would worry about if I didn't hear from. Margaret I worried about because of her age, and another blogger I recruited for Culture Kitchen, Leo Igwe of Nigeria, I worried about because he was a Humanist activist fighting Christian and Muslim fanatics in Nigeria. Leo has been beaten, arrested, and generally attacked over the years I knew him, so I learned to check in with him from time to time. Margaret always seemed so alive and almost immortal, so I stopped worrying if I didn't hear from her.
So it didn't even register that I had lost touch with her. I guess it doesn't matter, since she seems to have been alert and emailing up to the day before her death, so it isn't like I missed that she was dying. But somehow I wish I had caught on SOME time between now and last August. But I didn't and so today I found out. It hit me like a punch in the stomach.
This is the last article Margaret shared with me in the very last email I got from her back in May: http://www.alternet.org/story/151101/how_our_government_has_merged_with_corporations
But previous to that she had particularly thanked me for the intro I did to a December 2010 issue of the Progressive Democrat. She just commented on how much she liked it. This was the intro she liked:
Last week this headline was overlooked by too many people:
Remember, Republicans OPPOSED this! Democrats passed the Auto Industry Bailout over Republican objections and THANK GOD they did because that saved 1.4 million American jobs. Now we need a Green Energy Stimulus, because that could CREATE a large number of American jobs, but of course Republicans tend to oppose ANYTHING that creates American jobs and instead support policies that help foreign oil companies, offshore banks and multi-nationals who outsource American jobs...
We must never let the voters forget this fact.
Democracy for America recently reminded me, in our of their fundraising letters, of a VERY important fact for all Democrats to keep in mind:
Looking at Congressional races in 2010, 96% of the Progressive Caucus won re-election while only 47% of the Blue Dogs won.
I happen to like some Blue Dogs, but the basic fact is that as a caucus they have made the dismal mistake of becoming too much like Republicans and when Democrats start to look too much like Republicans they eventually lose. Democrats win by clearly differentiating themselves from Republicans. Which leads me to another reminder...
For those who have read this newsletter for some time you know that I have often plugged a book that in some ways should be required reading for ANY Democrat: Drew Westen's "The Political Brain." Simply put the book analyzes how people vote and why, and shows how Democrats too often campaign in away that does not appeal to most voters even when most voters agree with the Democrats more on issues. Republicans, even though they usually take unpopular stands that hurt middle class and working class Americans, can often win the voters over because they campaign in a way that works better at getting votes. Drew Westen then outlines how Democrats can better appeal to voters while still being true to their values. For any Democrat who wants to win, read this book...now more than ever. And pass the book on to any Democrat you know of running for office or working on a campaign.
We're going to miss this guy:
Alan Grayson was one of the VERY few Congressional Representatives who really was completely up front, honest and told it like it is. He didn't hide the truth even when it made him unpopular. As I recall Harry Truman was admired for the same quality, even though it hurt him politically. I am proud that it is usually Democrats who are willing to put truth before popularity. Popularity comes and goes. But the truth is far more valuable. We need more people like Alan Grayson in Congress!
To me this was a run of the mill, off the cuff intro to my usual newsletter of facts, links and organizations to get involved with. In retrospect it was the last time my writing inspired her. That means something to me.
But looking back through our correspondence, I want to share a key email from 2007:
Article published Aug 29, 2007
We are all in this world together
Dear Editor:
Thank you for the editorial in the Aug. 22 issue, and also for the two thought_provoking letters you printed. Perhaps it is because the weather has been very hot and I spend time indoors reading, finding news online, and watching C_Span, but it seems to me that we are all more sensitive to a wider world with many troubles. Bridges fall. Hurricanes wreak havoc. Drought or floods destroy. And there’s war.
So I’m glad you take pen to paper, so to speak, to point out that reporters track the making and selling of weapons. This is not what we think of when we proclaim that a person should have the right to bear arms.
And through it all, we are talking about America in Iraq. I personally was adamantly against a pre_emptive strike into Iraq. I watched and listened as I heard how many months it would take to get the gear all in place for the invasion. What I wondered about was how difficult it would be to get the stuff back out. Of course, some would be used up. But how about explosives? Might they not be used for destructive reasons? The editorial, based on an AP report, gives numbers which make me think that guns multiply faster than rabbits.
It’s our country, and all of us in it need to think of ways to put an end to the folly. Would impeachment help? Should we just ride it out and then let the Democrats take the heat if they win the next election? So many questions.
To me, we must recognize that we are in this together. Let’s get real and waste no time in trying to shove the blame on someone else. Let’s think of positive solutions and expect our leaders to carry them out.
So I hope you will continue to lay out facts. During these past six years it seems that the media has given us few solid facts and a lot of opinions. And I hope if you do give us the hard truth that no one will shoot the messenger.
Yours truly,
Margaret Bassett
That was one of her letters she was proud of and sent me to circulate, and I DID circulate it.
Here is an email she sent me on immigration and a global perspective:
As a school girl, I spent summer Sunday afternoons in our empty schoolhouse, wondering what the pastel countries around the old globe were like. And I would pick a country and study what I could find in the World Book. All the while, I thought that the change of colors did not mean a big wall. More confusing still was whether various colors of people were expected to stay in their designated nations. Perhaps I came to this quandary because I saw real life evidence contradicting the lines. We all were from other states. Homesteading in our part of Wyoming happened after World War I. Our neighbors were from other states–Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, mostly. I reasoned our parents pioneered because they were looking for a better place to live.
In high school, I learned enough history to understand how religious freedom and better working conditions brought people across the oceans. They were largely the working poor and willing to become scullery maids and ditch diggers until they learned English and studied the Constitution. Then they could become citizens. Except—Orientals were discouraged and could work on railroads, but could not bring their families or gain citizenship.
In college, I learned the details of the 1924 immigration law. It was necessary to make a change because women had become voters in the US. They could become citizens of another country by marrying an alien, but they would have to give up their American citizenship. As a matter of fact, it was generally believed that all persons lost their citizenship of another country when they were naturalized. One way for men (women were still not in the military) to gain citizenship was to join the army and serve honorably. There were a lot of "ifs" in common lore about US citizenship.
After college and WWII, rules changed quickly to allow for those who sought relief from being displaced from earlier homes. They were generally referred to as DP’s, displaced persons. Prelude to that was the arrival of refugees during the war, if lucky enough to reach the other side of the Atlantic. My personal experience included weekends at Scattergood, the Quaker settlement at West Branch, Iowa which is the home of Herbert Hoover. Some of us students would spend time helping the Friends who were orienting recent arrivals of Jewish families. And there went my ditch digger analogy! Many of the men were doctors or professors. To polish their English was what they craved mostly, for they saw language as necessary to regain their former positions. It seemed incomprehensible to some that they would have to take refresher courses and pass new examinations to become licensed when they were well-established in their professions.
The Cold War brought other refugees, usually referred to as dissidents. And then the tide turned when Cubans and Haitians and later Central Americans claimed refugee status. By that time we had to recall what we had learned in high school history. The Monroe Doctrine had clearly emphasized that the Americas were for the Americans. During WWII, under the Good Neighbor Policy, those south of the border were courted for the contributions they could make in fighting totalitarianism. It became more than just semantics when my Latin American friends reminded me that it was incorrect to refer to citizens of the United States of America as Americans. They were Americans, too.
Fast forward to the demonstrations of the past few months. The rhetoric was heavy during the 2004 presidential campaign, but by 2006 there was action in the streets. I guess our country had a Latino problem.
Latino has become a term to describe someone who lives in the Western Hemisphere in some place other than Canada and the United States. So those who speak Spanish, Portuguese and French have an inclusive adjective. It tells nothing about country of origin. The term Hispanic narrows citizenship to those nations where Spanish is the official language. And still there is little that the words tell about a group of people who live in America and want to come to the United States.
The question of political importance at this time is how does the United States respond to a surge of population which comes from other countries, whether by legal or illegal means. They chance to make a living in our country better than in theirs, or else they wouldn’t uproot themselves from a culture they like. Their religion is universal. They may differ on who the next Pope should be, but they recognize that the Pope has a commanding presence in all parts of the world.
But, oh, us Gringos! We don’t understand that for centuries we have sent in the Marines to do what James Monroe, Teddy Roosevelt, and others declared to be in the interest of ourselves. After all, we stole a good part of our territory from the Mexicans.
And then there are the folks in places like Tennessee. Without Tennesseans perhaps the Panama Canal would not have been built, because that is where much of the labor came from. In that regard, I have an interesting story from my days of studying Constitutional Law in Iowa. One of my fellow students had a father from Tennessee and a mother from Panama. He was born in Panama, but not in the Zone. Did he have US citizenship? Should they have taken him to the Consulate when he was 21? (Never heard the end of the story, because by then 1945 had come and things were changing.)
I’ve lived in Tennessee since 1977 and I never hear about how Tennesseans helped make the Panama Canal. We do celebrate how Sam Houston, who once taught school a few miles from here, fought in Texas. He was Tennessee governor and is a big name in history.
But I’m hearing a lot about "those," "them people" or "Latinos." Folks who have lived here all their lives, worked hard, and enjoyed some success will speak about "the ones coming in" as though there is a threat. Largely it has to do with language. Why don’t they speak English? And why do they rent an apartment and then bring a whole bunch of others to live there too? It’s classic concern for "there goes the neighborhood." But the language makes a starting point for a debate over educating their children, providing welfare, and more classic gripes that have confronted other new groups of immigrants.
For my part, I don’t worry about the language. In my young, innocent college days I was pretty good in Spanish, even to translating El Cid, not that it helps me anymore than it does others who complain about not understanding. I do have a slight ability to detect country of origin according to accent. But dialect! Those people who espeak Espanish can’t understand each other at times.
So now we have to talk about a delicate issue. Is there animosity between Hispanics and African-Americans. In Chicago there were many Puerto Ricans when I lived there, and no love lost between them and blacks. After a couple of friendly attempts, I backed off from the explanation that Borrenquenos are US citizens, too. There was the reaction I have come to recognize as "hair standing on the back of neck." At some point in discussing generally how all people have good points and some a few strange ones, there comes a superstitious fear. And that will be what will accompany many voters to the booth this fall. I feel truly baffled about what politicians should and can do to make firm commitments on their position. We may decide that there was an ironic e1oquence in the Senate’s vain attempt.
But all of this has been a digression from my first paragraph. Where my heart was in the 30's is where my moral values take me in this century. However, I long ago gave up on believing that nations solve real problems of people who decide to breach borders. Actually, it can be said that nationalism is itself the problem. At this time, the Bush administration is looking at the enemy as having no borders. Why not? We have journalists without borders. Doctors without borders. Why not banditos without borders? Manuel Noriega and Osama bin Laden are both enemies of our Nation.
I get a little facetious about Nafta. Consider: now the textile industry moves its operation to Honduras; natives can no longer make a living in those factories so they go to Mexico; Mexicans are having a harder time of finding work so they cross the Rio Grande; and the "illegals" work for peanuts and make the Anglos mad for ruining the wages on their old jobs. And the irony is politicians talk about Nafta as needing a tune-up to see that labor is paid a decent wage and enjoys healthy working conditions. Duh!
I also want to post an email she sent me in Dec. 2005 that is interesting to review given what has happened since:
Your newsletter this week was, in Christian-speak, almost an epiphany. It reminded me of how much I took Al Gore's book to heart before the 2000 campaign. To be good stewards, the three ingredients of living are sometimes referred to as giving of time, talent and treasure. When you think of it, there isn't enough money in the world to heal an injured planet. Some can get jollies by taking their excesses to the recycle bin. But really all we have is ourselves in whatever form. And for a lot of us these days it starts at the keyboard. As long as we don't buy everything on the pop-ups.
There is a stealth issue, which most don't care to address. Rampant consumerism is what is messing up the nation. Any time one-third of GDP is considered to come from production and twice that much from consumers, we are headed for a meltdown. Yet, should we all start living within our means while saving some for our old age (Money can be described as congealed energy.), it's not just WalMart's stock which will plummet. If Bernanke refuses to print money for spendthrifts, those with the least of it are hurt the most. Before they beatify Greenspan I hope I can say that he did us no favor by making a red hot housing market. My observation is that Boomers, those who worry most about their entitlements, were conned by low interest rates. They cashed in 401k money to put in real estate. From my perspective their peers are the wheelers and dealers in politics and finance. I hope someone learns how to make a soft landing. And, for those who are raising young families, they've got a lot to think about before they answer all the Christmas ads with their plastic.
Well, that's my Scrooge message of the day. Keep up the good work!
You can see she was a bright, thoughtful woman!
Here is another fascinating email she sent me in 2005 while we were, over many months, still getting to know eachother:
David: There’s more heat than light coming out of Washington these days, and I tune in c-spans and PBS and wonder where we’re headed. Then I log on to my favorite back fence sites and that doesn’t help much either. Jim Lehrer tonight featured a piece asking editors from other part of the country how their readers saw the filibuster question, to which they mostly replied only the activists cared and it hadn’t touched most of the folks. "Grassroots" came into my head and I wondered about the term. The Nashville paper (not the Tennessean) said "folks" just hadn’t got interested in it yet. And then there’s little old me!
I’m a walking time warp. When my father homesteaded in Northeastern Wyoming in 1918 he was in his mid-thirties. My mother, whom he met out there was younger, but she too was 18 when WWI ended. My three siblings and I were all born before the stock market crash. When FDR declared a bank holiday I already knew about how some people in other states had lost their farms when the banks went out of business. By the time I was through high school, many of my men teachers had left for the service to get a better commission. Times were tough on the farms still. I worked my way through college for five years at the University of Iowa and got out just as VJ Day came. In Washington on my first real job, I saw government workers re-align their assignments because all returning veterans were given extra points when they applied for jobs. After that, I spent a maturing period in the City, with a year’s timeout in Copenhagen. I met my husband in 1952 when I took a trip out West for the summer. The sour taste of Joe McCarthy’s capers shoved me away from a future in international education. But I could always work. I was a good typist, and the first thing I learned in college was to be a good waitress. My husband and I followed resort restaurants in the beginning and then moved to Chicago in 1955 where we made a stake through 1977. Then we bought a fixer-upper in Maryville, TN. We had no company pensions, and I was too young for SS and Medicare for what seemed like a long time. We made it on the proceeds of a few investments and his Social Security check. I would be in deep trouble today except that in the 90's I was able to get ahead of the curve on inflation. It nearly flattened us during the 80's when double digit increases came for material to re-model the house. Now, I manage to pay fair market rent in the elder housing where I moved six years ago. I’ve been widowed 12 years (today, as a matter of fact) and could have moved easily, but I like it here. No family in the State but lots of friends.
When I took up gardening and canning and making our everyday clothes again, just as we had done in Wyoming, I didn’t feel out of place. My neighbors were just like the people I grew up around. Many of them were a few years older than I and I learned the way to live on Social Security and to fight the Medicare rules. After my husband died, and there were new younger families with children, I became involved in the lives of the young. It was not easy for working class families in the 90s. I could supplement their scarce time by giving what I hope would be enrichment. The children had things, but little else in my view. I cancelled all but basic cable and ordered edutainment CD’s after my sister gifted me with a computer. It is what I consider to be my way of paying back for 21 years of Social Security checks.
I lived in early life what can best be described as 19th Century. After formal schooling and some jobs I jumped to the 20th. I was just about ready to believe I was ready for Bill Clinton’s bridge to the 21st, when all of a sudden it feels like I’m somewhere after WWII. I mean everyone is hellbent on acquiring whatever has just been invented. Now, with credit cards, they don’t have to wait for payday. Many in the child-nurturing period are so busy trying to keep body and soul together that they don’t remember what they learned about the three branches of government. Some are anxious to get to the welfare office for supplemental help, as others are too proud to even let their neighbors know when they need food. It’s always been that way. I’m just talking about our county, which is surely not one of the poorest in the State.
Through all these years I have only been able to become a little educated because of my husband, who grew up in San Francisco. Orphaned at 9, he knew the ways of city living and, in good paperboy fashion, was also well aware of the ways of the world. It took him a long time to realize that the depression was hard for us country people too. Actually, he didn’t really understand until we moved down here. Oh, yes, he fell out of love with the Republican party and read Howard Fast’s novels during that time. When he reached maturity he moved to LA and worked in a defense factory during WWII, the same kind of work he followed in Chicago. I became a bookkeeper there and changed over to computer programming in 1966. The greatest job I’ve ever had was teaching high school graduates to program or operate computers. The students were many of them directly from housing projects on student loans and grants. I can’t say enough for LBJ’s Great Society. It made some real changes. The problem was it was not carefully monitored. Of course, there are excesses and Clinton was right to help rein it in. I have a hunch that Bush shoots for FDR’s programs because if he mentions LBJ’s he’d lose his so-called base. John Edwards wants to talk disadvantaged, and he may just be making some traction with his poverty group. I could make a case for myself as well. But no one can outdo Johnson’s upbringing.
What brought this on? It was when I wrote you about the Earth Day celebration in the Smokies and you replied that tourism is not a good economic base. Or something about like that. And I remembered that you said you were a city kid. Then I thought about the way the media learned to morph the map in red and blue. Sure enough, those states adjacent to water are bluer. Actually, they are wealthier because of global trade. The nation mimics the old tradition of town and country, meaning the people at the county seats ran the banks and sold the merchandise and elected the officials. Those in the country produced the goods (originally mostly food, but later industrial supplies) and climbed up the social ladder by sending the children to school and getting them jobs in town. Culturally, the rural folks knew they were superior because their kids worked hard and didn’t dance or gamble–or so the story goes. But those they called city slickers knew they had better homes and nicer clothes and could travel more. I recently read several of Sinclair Lewis’ novels, which are older than me. Whenever I re-read Elmer Gantry I realize how little things change.
So here I sit, still a country bumpkin worrying over whether Section 8 housing will be cut even more, and how the children should learn to like to learn, and whether there will be any channel on TV that the tired, hard-working, underpaid parents will watch besides Fox. In my spare time I check out MSNBC’s articles about why Wal-Mart stock is down and the predictions aren’t rosy. That gets me to thinking about the many hours I’ve pounded away on the Wal-Mart predicament. Is it possible people in Peoria, or wherever, are going to have to listen to what happens in Washington? Best regards, Margaret
Now here is the first email I have a record of, though I know we must have connected before. It is from November 2004, so it was one of the first interactions we had. Again, much insight and background from someone who has been around for some time:
The first tells about previous progressive movements which supplied candidates. I realize that Vermont has an existing party, and there is some movement around Madison, Wisconsin.
The second is something with which I have little experience. It catches my eye because the working poor (hard-working poor) are certainly the forgotten man and woman as far as I can see.
In the Teddy Roosevelt age, an economic shift to heavy industry created robber barons, and thus a need to come back to a sense of fairness. In the second phase, labor was becoming organized. World War I created more jobs, but more discontent with working conditions. To avoid the revolutionary trends in Europe, especially Russia, a more benign form of organization came about here through unions.
The curious part of the aborted movement in 1948 with Henry Wallace produced the same kind of Bolshevik scare, but I believe that unanswered civil rights questions were what drove the scare to a frenzy. My experience at that time was that to be associated with rights for colored people put one in the same cubby hole as with communist and fellow-traveler groups.
About the only advantage of being old is that one can see three waves, described by Toffler. The first, agrarian, required decent shipping facilities for livestock and crops as well as reasonable prices for farm implements. (I grew up on a homestead in Northeastern Wyoming, where we battled dust storms and the depression.) The second wave was the industrial age where a combination of machine and men mass produced a never-ending supply of labor saving devices. From the end of World War II to the advent of cybernetics, more and better planes, locomotives, trucks, etc. shortened distances and made goods accessible to more people. Workers were lured into corporate loyalty with the promise of retirement benefits and medical insurance. Not until the 70's did the price of company affiliation begin to backfire for both sides. We talked about the rust belt. Lifelong union members began to question the Democratic party and Reagan welcomed them to his shining hill. The third wave, incubated during World War II, became all important as soon as computers advanced past tubes to transistors to the current microchips. (I started programming computers in 1966 and worked on three generations of IBM equipment within the spate of a few years. The Olivetti ten-key adding machine I pounded 8 hours a day had over 50 precision springs in it. My husband worked in a plant making such parts. We escaped job crises only because we retired to East Tennessee from Chicago after 22 years.)
By the last quarter of the 20th Century, the global village concept was real. And thus we come to what will have to be dealt with before a progressive movement can flourish again. Just as in the past, when Americans could not ignore people of the ghettoes and slums forever, so now no nationality can ignore the cry of other nationals for a share of the earth’s treasure. I recommend reading Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber’s The World Challenge (Simon & Schuster 1981) which tells about the Near East’s rising up to assert that technology as the price we pay for oil and other basic materials. And it’s not just oil (OPEC) but other raw materials, and it’s not just the Near East but many underdeveloped nations.
Another author who has influenced me is Lester Thurow, an economist who in 1995 wrote a book on the future of capitalism. He outlined what he considered the main changes over the ensuing twenty-five years. Changes in demography (mature countries have a high percentage of mature citizens) and communication and transportation (commerce can cross national boundaries to grow wheat in Siberia as well as North Dakota) affect voters in real time. Globalization, which is here to stay, can be criticized but there is no way to stop it. Countries can help their nationals to adjust, but recognizing how to corral unbridled world commerce takes more than tweaking the safety net. With world wide business comes the need for world wide rules governing it. On a line stretched from competition to cooperation regarding this challenge, there must be very astute negotiation. The WTO and the IMF are acting from a position of weakness, which allows laissez faire to flourish.
How a new facet of progressivism can come about is problematic. It espouses a mixture of innovation and conservatism. If the rest of the world wants to have goods, services and opportunities equal to what we Americans have learned to cherish, it goes without saying that super-consumerism should be nobody’s first goal.
Under the surface I think citizens in this country realize the truth of sharing or fighting. Wars only use more of the precious resources. The twin realities of Iraq and economic well-being were debated in this campaign as though it were an either/or proposition. George W. Bush's assertion that both must be achieved–his recognition that people having a stake in their future will not have time to fight each other--has validity. That’s all well and good, but he’s trying to convince the Iraqis his war is different. Imperialism is the ultimate outcome from the way he goes about it. If we take a look at the article in The Nation, we can see that fighting each other is a recipe for decline of leadership. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1124-10.htm
With a long history of solving problems in the USA by going to a place farther away, it’s not surprising that Bush would like to get to the Moon and Mars.
If you and I pursue this line of reasoning, I believe we must organize small groups of individuals, preferably online, who will help to shape the real issues for 2008. My summer was spent with a yahoogroup who answered the media when members perceived that it was giving false information. With a mixture of professional backgrounds and serious interaction we, and others doing similar work, probably did have some impact on the outcome of the election. Because Kerry lost, we have not known how to proceed. I suspect this group is not the only one which is essentially inactive but still so committed that it is trying to find a new approach to carry on.
Finally, I suggest the article in the Nation about Paul Wellstone. Possibly his legacy has something to help us in progressing toward new insights.
The following obituary was provided to Opednews by Dr. Annabel Agee to be shared with Margaret's beloved online community:
Margaret Ems Bassett
02/14/1922 -- 8/21/2011 "Margaret Ems Bassett, age 89, quietly passed away at her residence in Maryville, TN, on Sunday, August 21, 2011. Born in Gillette, WY, on February 14, 1922, the eldest of four, Ms. Bassett is preceded in death by husband William John Bassett, parents James Edwin and Fanchon Rosenstiel Ems, sister Norma Agnes Ems Cotter, and brother Robert, and niece Roberta Ems Salley. She is survived by her brother Morris Ems, niece Janeth Cotter Hernandez, niece Connie Cotter Rasmussen, niece Colleen Ems Morrison.
Ms. Bassett graduated from Campbell County High School in Gillette, WY (1940), received a BA degree in political science from State University of Iowa (1944), studied as a graduate student until August 1945, worked in international education until 1950, spent a year in Denmark, took numerous computer science classes, and completed an MS degree from Roosevelt University (1975). Ms. Bassett worked in Chicago from 1955 to 1977, at which time she and her husband retired to Tennessee.
Her lifelong interest in political philosophy was reflected by her active role as editor for almost five years on OpEdNews (OEN), an online platform for which she wrote 68 articles and posted almost 4000 comments. Also to her credit, the content she generated for OEN was viewed over 700,000 times. Margaret's most recent OEN activity was logged on the Friday evening before her passing on Sunday. In her own biographical statement for OEN profile, she noted that her early introduction to computers (1966) has served her well in keeping up with "the requirements for modern communication." She said that she hoped to find "some good coming off her keyboard into the lives of those who come after her."
She will be missed by many of the residents of Maryville Towers, a senior housing facility where she has resided since selling her home in 1999. Many of her neighbors and friends will remember Margaret as the long-time organizer/leader of the Reminiscing Writers Group at Maryville Towers."
I would like to remember this wonderful woman. I think a fitting tribute would be a contribution to Wellstone Action or Progressive Majority. I know these were groups we both discussed and admired a lot, though I think more because they were my favorites. I am not sure what she would say was her favorite tribute, but I know these would be good enough in an imperfect world she knew and loved so well. Please join me in donated to these groups in Margaret Bassett's name.
I have personally been switching my money (credit cards, accounts, mortgage) away from the big bad mega-banks that screwed Americans with predatory lending and took taxpayer handouts with better banks and financial institution. And I invite you to join me. It is a way of moving your money at least a step away from the worst of Wall Street.
In particular I pick four banks to target: Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo
I base my recommendations on three things:
1. Customer service complaints. The banks that get the most customer service complaints are as follows: (according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, I think these numbers are from 2009)
Bank of America: 7,230 complaints (25.5% of total) J.P. Morgan Chase: 4,890 complaints (17.3%) Citigroup: 3,742 complaints (13.2%) Wells Fargo: 2,695 complaints (9.5%) HSBC North America: 1,963 complaints (6.9%) Wachovia: 1,265 complaints (4.5%) U.S. Bancorp: 1,027 complaints (3.6%) National City: 586 complaints (2.1%) The Royal Bank of Scotland Group: 537 complaints (1.9 %) Key Corp: 343 complaints (1.2 %)
Total Top 10 complaints: 24,278 complaints (85.7%) Total complaints: 28,316 complaints (100%)
I advocate avoiding the banks that are around 10% or more of the total complaints (Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Chase and Bank of America). Why patronize companies that treat their customers like crap? Particularly since they have been giving even WORSE service since we bailed them out!
2. Predatory lending. The same banks that rank highest in customer service complaints are among the worst offenders when it comes to predatory lending. That is strike two against them. Why patronize companies that have bad, greedy business practices that lead to national and international economic crises? And furthermore the predatory lending was carried out by these same banks in a racist manner, charging higher interest rates for blacks and Hispanics than for whites and Asians. And it is the SAME four banks that were the most racist in their predatory lending.
3. Welfare Banks: The same banks are also ones that eagerly took taxpayer funded bailout money while also advocating for cuts to services for poor and middle class Americans as being "big government". They are selfish and hypocritical as well as lousy businesses.
Also, I should note that two of these banks, Bank of America and Citigroup, also are two of the top ten tax dodging companies in America. They love to take our tax money, but hate to pay their fair share.
So I advocate boycotting at least Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Chase and Bank of America. However people need alternatives. I personally have switched to USAA and TD Bank, both of which are famous for customer service, did no predatory lending, and took no bail out money. But I am learning about even better options through Green America.
Green America (which I have been associated with since they were Co-op America) has some resources:
I personally have been divesting myself of these big bad banks like Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo and Citibank and instead switching my mortgage, accounts and credit cards to USAA (which only works with Veterans and their families) and TD Bank (a large bank that actually has excellent customer service and did not engage in predatory lending). Other people I know have been switching to local credit unions. I have particularly liked TD Bank who refinanced my mortgage at a much better rate and much simpler than the big bad banks. By comparison, Chase dicked me around so much, constantly upping the interest rate every time I talked to them, that I finally told them where they could stuff their refinance. TD Bank offered me a better rate and stuck by it.
But so far my wife and I still haven't been able to get rid of all our Chase and Bank of America credit cards. Paying off the debt is tough, but we are working on it. But I would like to find better credit cards to use.
Well, Green America has some suggestions I would like to pass on to you.
Cards Connected to Better Banks There are socially responsible banks and credit unions that exemplify responsible lending practices—as well as community investing institutions that take the social mission one step further by also investing in low-income populations.
Wainwright Bank Visa Cards (fees and rates vary): Wainwright, a Boston-based bank with a tradition of “socially progressive” banking, offers six different Visa credit cards with different rates and terms. All of these cards are issued and managed by Elan, a financial services company. Steven F. Young, senior vice president at Wainwright, says they “chose Elan because we felt their consumer practices were best.”
Permaculture Credit Union’s (PCU) Visa card (13% apr, no annual fee): Based in New Mexico, PCU is committed to Earth-friendly and socially responsible loans and investments. PCU’s card is issued by the Illinois Credit Union League to anyone, whether or not they are a PCU account holder, though applicants should mention they are “affiliated” with Permaculture Credit Union.
ReDirect Visa (15.15% apr, no annual fee): The ReDirect card is issued by Washington state’s ShoreBank Pacific.Depositors fuel the bank’s lending programs, which enable sustainable community development. ShoreBank Pacific issues the card by way of TCM, which is owned by ICBA Bancard, a subsidiary of the Independent Community Bankers of America.
Your card fees support ShoreBank Pacific’s community investing mission, and half of the card’s proceeds go toward reducing CO2 emissions through Sustainable Travel International’s “MyClimate” high-quality offsets. In addition to a conventional rewards program, the card also earns cardholders discounts at the sustainable businesses listed in regional “ReDirect Guides” for Denver/Boulder/Fort Collins, CO; Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA; and Salt Lake City/Park City, UT. Those businesses that offer Internet purchasing will extend ReDirect discounts to any cardholder. There’s no need to have a ShoreBank Pacific account to apply.
Salmon Nation Visa (15.15% apr, no annual fee): This card, also from ShoreBank Pacific, directs a percentage of its income to growing a community of citizens that practice environmental stewardship of “Salmon Nation,” a bio-region stretching from Alaska to Oregon where wild salmon live. Like the ReDirect card, Salmon Nation Visa isn’t benefiting a mega-bank, and you don’t need a ShoreBank Pacific account to apply.
The Loop Card (11.99% apr, no annual fee): A Visa from Albina Community Bank in Oregon. Profits from this Visa from Oregon’s Albina Community Bank not only support Albina, but one percent of every purchase goes to Portland’s neighborhoods, funding education, health, social services, environment, the arts, or economic development projects. You do not have to have an account with Albina to get the card, and it is not connected to a mega-bank.
Shorebank’s Elan Visa Consumer Card (variable apr, no annual fee): ShoreBank, in the Midwest, is a community development and environmental bank that issues a credit card available to anyone nationwide through Elan, the same company servicing Wainright Bank’s cards, at a rate determined by your credit history.
Self-Help credit union cards (9.95–12.95% apr, no annual fee): Self-Help, headquartered in North Carolina, works in communities traditionally underserved by conventional financial institutions. It offers Classic and Platinum Visa credit cards to members, and through online banking, anyone nationwide can become an account holder and apply. The cards are issued by Self-Help, a community development bank.
For those purchases you make by credit card, using one of these best-option cards can make your charges a force for good.
One of my goals once we can pay off most of our current credit card debt is to switch from my current credit cards, which are still mega-bank linked, to one or two of these cards. I hope you will all join my in making the switch.
Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
Mike Lofgren has left the Republican Party. He is not the first and won't be the last. Lofgren was a Republican staffer who worked in both the House and Senate Budget Committees.
He grew so disgusted by the corruption and lies of the Greedy Oil Party that he has left them...and has been writing about his dissatisfaction. From his article on Truth Out.com:
But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.
To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.
It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages...
It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.
This comes from a Republican (now former Republican) insider. He saw what was going on from WITHIN the Republican Party and found it disgusting and corrupt. He also directly addresses the destructive and cynical hypocrisy of the modern Greedy Oil Party:
This tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is schizophrenic. For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document. This is not to say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of government; I would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and Constitutional. But most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the United States has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. If anything, they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, as imprisonment is a profit center for the prison privatization industry, which is itself a growth center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] Instead, they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people. And when a program is too popular to attack directly, like Medicare or Social Security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the deficit. That concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious...
This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.
You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. This must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama. I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black.[2] Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.
It is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid claptrap. I would bet that most do not. But they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink...
I do not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. While it surely exists, it is also a fact that Republicans think that no Democratic president could conceivably be legitimate. Republicans also regarded Bill Clinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do I remember the elaborate conspiracy theories that Republicans traded among themselves). Had it been Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, who had been elected in 2008, I am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's alleged murder.
There is a lot more...it is a long article and represents the careful unloading of what seems like years of gradual disillusionment in the political party he had previously identified with. I suggest reading the whole thing.
Arianna Huffington is another person who made the transition from Greedy Oil Party cultist to opposing the GOP when she realized they were a bunch of liars who never actually did what they promised. She worked for Newt Gingrich and it was Newt Gingrich's own cynical hypocrisy drove Huffington away. I am no big fan of Arianna Huffington, but I respect the fact that she, like Lofgren, was able to see through the lies and theatrics of the Greedy Oil Party and reject them as one of the most destructive and corrupt forces in American politics. Lufgren is right...there is corruption in the Democratic Party as well, as I have written about frequently in regards to my own home territory of Brooklyn. But the corruption within the Republican Party, measured by comparing the numbers of politicians under investigation, indicted or convicted, FAR outweighs any corruption within the Democratic Party (see also this site for a somewhat less clearly laid out but more up to date analysis). Furthermore, many Democrats, myself included, fight to reform our own Party (to the degree of even endorsing Republican Joseph Cao in Louisiana against a corrupt Democrat). There is hardly a corrupt Republican who isn't embraced by the Greedy Oil Party and often given and maintained in leadership positions.
More interesting is the case of Pete McCloskey who was so disgusted by the behavior of the Republican Party during the Bush years that he left the party. Pete McCloskey had been a life-long Republican and a former candidate for President in a Republican primary. He himself says his family had been Republicans since before Lincoln, suggesting they were among the founders of the party. Yet the corruption and hypocrisy of the modern Greedy Oil Party drove away Pete McCloskey. Here is the letter he wrote explaining his decision:
McCloskeys have been Republicans in California since 1859, the year before Lincoln's election. My great grandfather, John Henry McCloskey, orphaned in the great Irish potato famine of 1843, came to California in 1853 as a boy of 16, and joined the party just before the Civil War.
By 1890 he and my grandfather, both farmers, made up two of the twelve members of the Republican Central Committee of Merced County. My father's most memorable expletive came when I was a boy of 10 or 11: "That damn Roosevelt is trying to pack the Supreme Court!"
I registered Republican in 1948 after reaching the age of 21. We were the party of civil rights, of free choice for women and fiscal responsibility. Since Teddy Roosevelt, we had favored environmental protection, and most of all we stood for fiscal responsibility, honesty, ethics and limited government intrusion into our personal lives and choices. We accepted that one the duties of wealth was to pay a higher rate of income tax, and that the estates of the wealthy should contribute to the national treasury in reasonable measure.
I was proud to serve with Republicans like Gerry Ford, the first George Bush and Bob Dole.
In 1994, however, Newt Gingrich brought a new kind of Republicanism to power, and the election of George W. Bush in 2000 has led to wholly new concept of governance. The bureaucracy has mushroomed in size and power. The budget deficits have become astronomical. Our historical separation of church and state has been blurred. We have seen a succession of ethical scandals, congressmen taking bribes, and abuse of power by both the Republican House leadership and the highest appointees of the White House.
The single cardinal principle of political science, that power corrupts, has come to apply not only to Republican leaders like Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney and John Doolittle, but to a succession of White House officials and appointees. The stench of Jack Abramoff has permeated much of the Washington Republican establishment.
The Justice Department, guardian of of our rule of law, has been compromised. It's third ranking official, a graduate of Pat Robertson's dubious law school, has taken the 5th Amendment.
Men who have never felt the fear of combat, and who largely dodged military service in their youth, have led us into grievous wars in far off places with no thought of the diplomacy, grace and respect for other peoples and their cultures which has been an American trademark for at least the last two thirds of a century. We have lost the respect and affection of most of the world outside our borders. My son, Peter, one of the U.S. prosecutors at The Hague of the war crimes in Serbia and elsewhere, tells me that people of other countries no longer look at the country which countenances torture as a beacon for the world and the rule of law.
Earth Day, that bi-partisan concept of Gaylord Nelson in 1970, has become the focus of almost hatred by today's Republican leadership. Many still argue that global warming is a hoax, and that Bush has been right to demean and suppress the arguments of scientists at the E.P.A., Fish & Wildlife and U.S.Geological Survey.
I say a pox on them and their values.
Until the past few weeks, I had hoped that the party could right itself, returning to the values of the Eisenhowers, Fords and George H. W. Bush.
What finally turned me to despair, however, was listening to the reports, or watching on C-Span, a whole series of congressional oversight hearings on C-Span, held by old friends and colleagues like Pat Leahy, Henry Waxman, Norm Dicks, Nick Rahall, Danny Akaka and others, trying to learn the truth on the misdeeds and incompetence of the Bush Administration. Time after time I saw Republican Members of the House and Senate. speak out in scorn or derision about these exercises of Congress oversight responsibility being "witch-hunts" or partisan attempts to distort the actions of people like the head of the General Service Administration and the top political appointees in the Justice and Interior Departments. Disagreement turned into disgust.
I finally concluded that it was a fraud for me to remain a member of this modern Republican Party, that there were only a few like Chuck Hegel, Jack Warner, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins I could respect.
Two of the best, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Jim Leach of Iowa, after years of battling for balance and sanity, were defeated last November, and it seems that every Republican presidential candidate is now vying for the support of the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells rather than talking about a return to the values of the party I joined nearly 59 years ago. My favorite spokesmen have beome Senators Jim Webb and Barack Obama.
And so it was, that while at the Woodland courthouse the other day, passing by the registrar's office, I filled out the form to re-register as a Democrat.
The issues Helen (McCloskey) and I care about most, public financing of elections, a reliable paper ballot trail, independent re-districting to replace gerrymandering, the right of a woman to choose not to bring a child into the world, a reversal of the old Proposition 13 and term limits which have so hurt California's once superb education system and the competence of our Legislature, are now almost universally opposed by California's elected Republicans, and the occasional attempts at reform by our Governor are looked on with grim disdain by most of them.
From Helen's and my standpoint, being farmers in Yolo County gives us the opportunity to work for purposes which were once Republican, but can no longer be found at Republican conventions and discussions.
I hope this answers your questions about the party and a government I have served in either civil or military service under ten presidents, five Republican and five Democrat ... I doubt it will be of much interest other than to our friends, but it has been a decision not easily taken.
Respectfully, Pete McCloskey
The Republican Party has for some time now become a party of extremists where every single reasonable Republican is driven out or silenced and corruption rules the day. It is time America recognized the corrupt Greedy Oil Party for what it is: an anti-American, destructive, greedy and corrupt organization that cares nothing for actual governance but only cares about being able to freely loot the American economy for their own personal power and gain.
The Republican Thugs are trying to crush the unions. This is nothing new. For decades now the rich and powerful have tried to break the working class, and you know what? Despite their crap we have WON the right to a weekend, WON the right to a 40 hour work week, WON the right to childhood without forced labor, WON the right to health and retirement benefits, WON the right to collective bargaining...
There has not been one moment since the turn of the 20th century that labor hasn't had to fight for its rights. Now is no exception and now, just as much as any other time, we have to fight together, and we have to STICK TO THE UNION.
And you know it was Woodie Guthrie that got the whole thing started:
Perhaps the best message to remember from Woodie (Hillbilly) Guthrie, is "You Fascists Bound to Lose"
That is how the union movement took off, back when farmers and workers were sacrificed for the sake of trickle down economics back in the Great Depression. Yep...NONE OF THIS IS NEW. All that is new is the communication technology we all use. The basic fight dates back to the Dust Bowl and then the Great Depression. The right wing Republicans tried to force trickle down on us back then and it FAILED then...and it will fail now.
Of course Woodie was known for another great progressive song we all know:
Later Woodie Guthrie's "Union Maid" was taken up by a later generation, represented by Pete Seeger (who stood up to the Blacklist with great determination) and Woodie's son, Arlo Guthrie (who continues to stand up to a physical disability):
And then Union Maid continues in modern times:
But Woodie's other songs also continue into today's consciousness. Bruce Springsteen called it "about the greatest song ever written about America":
And Pete Seeger, who took the torch from Woodie, sang it with Bruce, who took the torch from Pete:
SHIT, THIS is what Republicans are fighting to KILL! Why do Republicans want to KILL this spirit? This spirit is the HEART of America. I mean SHIT, Johnny Cash did the song:
This FUCKING land is YOURS and MINE. Not the damned Koch Billionaires'.
And of course Greatful Dead and Los Lobos did it as well:
And of course Woodie's son Arlo did the same song:
And what about Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Denver singing it with Arlo Guthrie:
And here is yet another version:
Yeah...I mean how much more AMERICAN can you get than this kind of WORKING CLASS, pro-fucking-union, PROGRESSIVE sentiment.
But look...the union spirit is NOT just the musicians and organizers...it is the WORKERS who are at the heart of it...there is no famous singer in this version, just blue collar, working class, AMERICANS:
THIS is what the Republicans fear most...honest, working class Americans who stick to the union, because when honest, working class Americans stick to the union the pro-Billionaire Republicans LOSE. THAT is what we have to do.
Okay...enough. What is my point.
America is NOT about Teabagger, Koch Billionaire trickle down bullshit. America is NOT about the modern Republican Party. America is about Woodie Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Willie Nelson, John Denver, Johnny Cash, Los Lobos and everyone else who sings a god damned UNION song to support America's working and middle class. We support our teachers, our firefighters, our cops, our nurses, our construction workers, our trash collectors, our road builders, our farmers...you get the point. Republicans oppose each and every one of these and help ONLY billionaires. Why is this even a contest? They have the money, but we have the votes.
It is time for farmers, firefighters, cops, teachers, nurses, construction workers, miners, trash collectors, and every single working and middle class American to unite against the Republican pro-Billionaire, trickle down bullshit.
I can think of no better thing than to fight for our teachers, firefighters, nurses and police. Republicans are screwing them over, and for what? ALL they want is tax breaks for billionaires. I'd rather teachers, firefighters, nurses and cops than billionaires. What about you?
For now, there are four key states where the fight is going down. There are more, and there WILL be even more. But for now, the four key states are Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Help fight the good fight.
We are all angry at the big banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase and Citibank because of their predatory lending practices, terrible customer service and greedy, selfish politics and business practices. Basically these banks and similar ones have screwed working class and middle class Americans and made a profit off our suffering. Then they got bailed out with OUR tax money when their lousy business practices and predatory lending hit them in the ass. These banks got us into the economic mess we are in and the CEOs of these banks took America to the cleaners and have been reaping the profits while we suffer foreclosures and tough times. And the fees they charge are insane!
That is why I advocate breaking ties with these big predatory banks and finding alternatives. I personally have been divesting myself of these big bad banks like Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo and Citibank and instead switching my mortgage, accounts and credit cards to USAA (which only works with Veterans and their families), TD Bank (a large bank that actually has excellent customer service and did not engage in predatory lending), and local credit unions. I have particularly liked TD Bank who refinanced my mortgage at a much better rate and much simpler than the big bad banks.
But so far my wife and I still haven't been able to get rid of all our Chase and Bank of America credit cards. Paying off the debt is tough, but we are working on it. But I would like to find better credit cards to use.
Well, Green America has some suggestions I would like to pass on to you.
Cards Connected to Better Banks
There are socially responsible banks and credit unions that exemplify responsible lending practices—as well as community investing institutions that take the social mission one step further by also investing in low-income populations.
Wainwright Bank Visa Cards (fees and rates vary): Wainwright, a Boston-based bank with a tradition of “socially progressive” banking, offers six different Visa credit cards with different rates and terms. All of these cards are issued and managed by Elan, a financial services company. Steven F. Young, senior vice president at Wainwright, says they “chose Elan because we felt their consumer practices were best.”
Permaculture Credit Union’s (PCU) Visa card (13% apr, no annual fee): Based in New Mexico, PCU is committed to Earth-friendly and socially responsible loans and investments. PCU’s card is issued by the Illinois Credit Union League to anyone, whether or not they are a PCU account holder, though applicants should mention they are “affiliated” with Permaculture Credit Union.
ReDirect Visa (15.15% apr, no annual fee): The ReDirect card is issued by Washington state’s ShoreBank Pacific.Depositors fuel the bank’s lending programs, which enable sustainable community development. ShoreBank Pacific issues the card by way of TCM, which is owned by ICBA Bancard, a subsidiary of the Independent Community Bankers of America.
Your card fees support ShoreBank Pacific’s community investing mission, and half of the card’s proceeds go toward reducing CO2 emissions through Sustainable Travel International’s “MyClimate” high-quality offsets. In addition to a conventional rewards program, the card also earns cardholders discounts at the sustainable businesses listed in regional “ReDirect Guides” for Denver/Boulder/Fort Collins, CO; Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA; and Salt Lake City/Park City, UT. Those businesses that offer Internet purchasing will extend ReDirect discounts to any cardholder. There’s no need to have a ShoreBank Pacific account to apply.
Salmon Nation Visa (15.15% apr, no annual fee): This card, also from ShoreBank Pacific, directs a percentage of its income to growing a community of citizens that practice environmental stewardship of “Salmon Nation,” a bio-region stretching from Alaska to Oregon where wild salmon live. Like the ReDirect card, Salmon Nation Visa isn’t benefiting a mega-bank, and you don’t need a ShoreBank Pacific account to apply.
The Loop Card (11.99% apr, no annual fee): A Visa from Albina Community Bank in Oregon. Profits from this Visa from Oregon’s Albina Community Bank not only support Albina, but one percent of every purchase goes to Portland’s neighborhoods, funding education, health, social services, environment, the arts, or economic development projects. You do not have to have an account with Albina to get the card, and it is not connected to a mega-bank.
Shorebank’s Elan Visa Consumer Card (variable apr, no annual fee): ShoreBank, in the Midwest, is a community development and environmental bank that issues a credit card available to anyone nationwide through Elan, the same company servicing Wainright Bank’s cards, at a rate determined by your credit history.
Self-Help credit union cards (9.95–12.95% apr, no annual fee): Self-Help, headquartered in North Carolina, works in communities traditionally underserved by conventional financial institutions. It offers Classic and Platinum Visa credit cards to members, and through online banking, anyone nationwide can become an account holder and apply. The cards are issued by Self-Help, a community development bank.
For those purchases you make by credit card, using one of these best-option cards can make your charges a force for good.
One of my goals this year is to switch from my current credit cards, which are still mega-bank linked, to one or two of these cards. I hope you will all join my in making the switch.
I was surprisingly inspired by John and Teresa Heinz Kerry's book, This Moment on Earth when I first read it in 2007. This inspiration snuck up on me around the third chapter. Prior to that, I found the book good, well worth reading, but a little bit like just one more book outlining what humans are doing wrong. Starting around the third chapter I realized I was referring to the book in several conversations and several blog diaries and that several of the people and organizations featured in the book I mentally filed away as worth looking into for future political connections, diaries and general research.
In short, almost without my realizing it, John and Theresa Heinz Kerry's book was getting into my brain and inspiring me. The book starts a bit dull but by the end is excellent.
My earliest impression, from the press material that arrived with the book and from the introduction, was that this book promised something really new and welcome. The book was billed as the next step in the evolution of the environmental debate. I was ready for a book that took as given the problems and focused primarily on solutions. Having been through way too many "debates" online where I yet again outlined the very clear and definitive scientific evidence for global warming only to have yet the same false claims of global warming deniers (these claims are never backed up by scientific evidence of any substance), I really was ready to have a book that moved beyond that.
And, on exactly the same day I received This Moment on Earth I was reading the February 9th, 2007 issue of Science, America's most respected scientific journal. And in that issue, the scientific community was doing exactly what John Kerry seemed to be proposing. In the summation of the 4th IPCC Working Group presented in that issue of Science, has this to say:
The last time the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessed the state of the climate, in early 2001, it got a polite enough hearing. The world was warming, it said, and human activity was "likely" to be driving most of the warming. Back then, the committee specified a better-than-60% chance--not exactly a ringing endorsement. And how bad might things get? That depended on a 20-year-old guess about how sensitive the climate system might be to rising greenhouse gases. Given the uncertainties, the IPCC report's reception was on the tepid side.
Six years of research later, the heightened confidence is obvious. The warming is "unequivocal." Humans are "very likely" (higher than 90% likelihood) behind the warming. And the climate system is "very unlikely" to be so insensitive as to render future warming inconsequential...
The fact of warming was perhaps the most straightforward item of business. For starters, the air is 0.74°C warmer than in 1906, up from a century's warming of 0.6°C in the last report. "Eleven of the last twelve years rank among the 12 warmest years in the [150-year-long] instrumental record," notes the summary. Warming ocean waters, shrinking mountain glaciers, and retreating snow cover strengthened the evidence.
So the IPCC authors weren't impressed by the contrarian argument that the warming is just an "urban heat island effect" driven by increasing amounts of heat-absorbing concrete and asphalt. That effect is real, the report says, but it has "a negligible influence" on the global number. Likewise, new analyses have largely settled the hullabaloo over why thermometers at Earth's surface measured more warming than remote-sensing satellites had detected higher in the atmosphere (Science, 12 May 2006, p. 825). Studies by several groups have increased the satellite-determined warming, largely reconciling the difference...
The IPCC concludes that both models and past climate changes point to a fairly sensitive climate system. The warming for a doubling of CO2 "is very unlikely to be less than 1.5 °C," says the report, not the less than 0.5 °C favored by some contrarians. A best estimate is about 3 °C, with a likely range of 2 °C to 4.5 °C.
Much of the rest of the issue of Science is devoted to a discussion of SOLUTIONS to global warming through energy policy. The overwhelming consensus of scientists, as reported in America's most prestigious science journal, is that anthropogenic (human-caused) warming is happening and the most optimistic scenarios are not the most likely scenarios. We are in for a rough ride and the time is now to accept the problem and move on to solutions. Shift the debate, people. Let's talk what to DO ABOUT IT.
I was ready for John Kerry's book to carry the same theme: it is time to take as given the problem and move on to solutions.
That isn't what I got. And at first I was disappointed. As I read the first two chapters I felt I was reading yet another book that outlined the problem with perhaps a little more emphasis placed on solutions and how individuals and small groups are empowering themselves to fight back. The book was good and very informative, but I was unconvinced that it was new. This kind of outlining the problems we are facing reached its peak, I think, in Jared Diamond's book Collapse, covering many environmental issues from a very broad historical and sociological perspective. Superb book that I HIGHLY recommend. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth gave us a nice Powerpoint presentation on global warming that can be easily appreciated by a far wider audience than Jared Diamond's Collapse. And John Kerry was giving us something in between: more accessible than Collapse and more fleshed out than An Inconvenient Truth.
And with more emphasis on the people who are coming up with solutions.
By the third chapter the main theme of the book emerged: we are killing ourselves and our children with the full participation of a government that is supposed to protect us. Data sound the alarm, like one in six infants born in the US each year has blood mercury levels above the EPA standards and high enough to cause neurological problems, fueled by coal-burning power plants whose owners contributed $6.6 million to the Republicans since 1999, making them one of the biggest Republican source of donations. Or that in 2005 people of color were 79% more likely to live in the most polluted communities, up from 49% in 1996. Or a study by the United Church of Christ in 1987 that found that race was the single most significant factor in determining the location of a hazardous waste facility. And so on. Every parent should read chapter two. Everyone interested in racial equality should read chapter three. Etc. The alarm bells ring constantly.
But what I found I was citing the most and taking the most note of was exactly what the Kerrys WANTED me to notice the most: the people who are fighting back. I think it was the case of Majora Carter and Sustainable South Bronx that finally made me realize that this book was inspiring me because I immediately decided she'd be perfect as an invited speaker for a political group I am involved with. The example of Riverkeeper, where ex-marines decided to patrol our nation's waterways to protect them from polluters, was another "wow" moment. Even Don Imus and his wife Deidre come off inspiring in This Moment on Earth, something I never imagined I'd say. And Chapter 7, discussing energy policy, is the best chapter, showing how right here and now, using existing technology, the city of Portland, OR, as well as companies like Texas Instruments and DuPont are doing EXACTLY what needs to be done to reduce carbon emissions--and doing it while creating jobs and saving money. Chapter 7 shows us that there remain NO EXCUSES for America to continue to avoid taking a leadership role in stopping global warming. All that we lack, as I have written before is the political leadership on a national level. Kerry shows us that locally there has been considerable leadership by both Democrats and Republicans. But nationally Bush has led us down a path that leads nowhere and that has ceded economic ingenuity to other nations.
So it is precisely through highlighting some wonderful people who are empowering themselves, their communities and, in fact, all of us that John and Teresa Heinz Kerry inspire in this book. Although the book still focuses primarily on a myriad of environmental problems that are killing us now and will kill us more in the future, solutions are the constant theme: the people who come up with solutions, solutions each individual can do for themselves (throughout and in Appendix B) and, perhaps something I will have particular interest in, considering the almost simultaneous issue of Science dealing with the same theme, Appendix A is John Kerry's proposal for a national energy policy. Put all this together and you may not have the next step in the evolution of the environmental debate, but you certainly have one more important step forward and one that might have a wider appeal than Collapse and An Inconvenient Truth.
In the future This Moment on Earth will likely be the inspiration for several diaries that are brewing in my brain: energy policy, Majora Carter, Riverkeeper, Portland, Oregon... But for now I leave you with the main message of the book, from the Introduction:
In truth environmentalism isn't dead, it's just being reborn...the very idea of what it means to be an "environmentalist" is being revolutionized. People from all walks of life, without concern for party or ideological lines, are coming together in unprecedented numbers across the globe...
The new environmentalist knows that caring about the environment can no longer be mislabeled as caring less about national security, the economy, family, education, profit, or community. Rather, the leaders of today's new environmental movement understand that these issues are all connected...
Above all, we want this book to expose the false choices...the straw men...put forwards to purposefully slow or reverse progress in environmentalism and politicize the debate.
Break Up With Your Mega-Bank!...Green America's Community Investing Guide
This comes from Green America, an organization I have been supporting since they were called Co-op America.
How you save and invest your money has as much an effect on the world as how you spend your money. If you’re tired of seeing your banking and investment dollars support projects you don’t believe in (like fossil-fuels or weapons manufacturing) or practices you can’t endorse (like deceptive lending or huge bonuses to their CEOs), then make 2011 the year you break up with your mega-bank and start investing in communities.
Green America’s Community Investing Guide provides an introduction to community development financial institutions, or CDFIs – banks, credit unions, and other financial groups with a mission to direct your banking and investing dollars into projects that improve people’s lives.
Whether you need a bank for depositing a weekly paycheck, or an investment opportunity for a larger sum – or anything in between – our Community Investing Guide gives you the resources you need. With the global economic crisis focusing even more public scrutiny on the greed and mismanagement of the corporate mega-banks, it’s clear: community investing is more important now than ever before.
Arizona Republican Leader Follows KKK Leader on Twitter
So, the evidence that the Republican Party has a major racism problem just keeps mounting. I highlight the sad connections between the Republican Party and white supremacists with what sometimes seems like depressing frequency. The latest example comes, not surprisingly, from Arizona.
Arizona State Senate Majority leader Chuck Gray, supposedly part of the mainstream Republican Party and a major proponent of the recent Arizona racist laws, actually is a follower of Don Black, a white supremacist who has been banned from the UK for his violent, neo-Nazi rhetoric, and Chuck Gray is also a follower of Stormfront, Don Black's KKK website. I kid you not. A leading Arizona Republican is a follower on Twitter of a KNOWN KKK leader.
Don Black is a Florida-based white supremacist who is deemed so dangerous he's banned from the UK for inciting hatred. Arizona State Senate Majority leader Chuck Gray—a proponent of the recent immigration bill—follows him on Twitter.
StormfrontWPWW (White Pride Worldwide) is the Twitter account for Stormfront, a racist organization that is the latest project of uber-racist Stephen Donald Black, better known as Don Black. He was a Grand Wizard in the KKK and a member of the American Nazi Party. In 1981 he was convicted and jailed for trying to invade the Dominican Republic with a boatload of weapons, in order to set up some kind of utopian state. (He's pictured below, at a conference organized by the infamous white supremacist David Duke.) Stormfront.org, the website he set up on his release from jail, is a hate-filled racist forum.
And here is what the Southern Poverty Law Center has to say about Arizona Republican Leader Chuck Gray's inspiration:
Don Black Don Black Associated Profiles: David Duke Related Articles: Back to Black Irreconcilable Differences Electronic Storm Insatiable Date of Birth: 1953 Groups: Stormfront Location: West Palm Beach, FL Ideology: White Nationalist
A former Klan state leader and long-time white supremacist, Don Black is best known for creating Stormfront.org, the first major Internet hate site. While the site remains popular in racist circles today, Black came under criticism in 2008 from other white supremacists for toning down its offensive content and for the claimed renunciation of racism made by his wife, Chloe Black, to a reporter.
In His Own Words "The people that visit Stormfront have a righteous indignation to the Israelization of America. Zionism unbound, that is what goes on in Washington, D.C., these days. … [T]he Jewish people demolish homes abroad and condition peoples minds with the media here in the U.S.A." — 2004 interview with Impact News
"I remember [the 1950s] quite well, that a lot of people were mad about blacks. They were mad about school integration and black crime… . [B]ut … it was kind of rare to find someone that really, fully understood the Jewish involvement … behind all of this promotion of the destruction of culture and our heritage, the destruction of our schools and our neighborhoods. … [W]ith the Internet — and, I think, with this involvement in the Middle East, American involvement in the Middle East — everything's changed. I mean, we have to calm down people sometimes on Stormfront about the Jews." — Stormfront.org radio, 2008
"I get nonstop E-mails and private messages from new people who are mad as hell about the possibility of Obama being elected. White people, for a long time, have thought of our government as being for us, and Obama is the best possible evidence that we've lost that. This is scaring a lot of people who maybe never considered themselves racists, and it's bringing them over to our side." — 2008 interview with The Washington Post
"[I]f Obama wins, then Americans, white Americans, are really going to realize where they stand. It'll be demoralizing for a lot of our people, and also white people throughout the world, to have the world's greatest military power headed up by a black." — Stormfront.org radio, 2008
Criminal History On April 27, 1981, Black and nine other white supremacists were arrested as they prepared to board a yacht stocked with weapons and ammunition to invade the Caribbean island of Dominica and take over its government. Black served three years in federal prison for his role in the invasion plot and for his violation of the Neutrality Act.
In 1987, Black, along with Klan leader David Duke, was reportedly charged with reckless conduct and for illegally blocking a state highway in Forsyth County, Ga., where they had traveled to take advantage of simmering racial tensions.
Background Going back to high school, Don Black has always been one of the more enthusiastic proponents of white power. One of his first forays into the organized movement was in the 1970s, when he volunteered for the late white supremacist J.B. Stoner's unsuccessful run for governor of Georgia. He stayed with the campaign until Stoner's campaign manager, Jerry Ray, the brother of Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray, shot Black in the chest. The shooting apparently stemmed from accusations that Black had broken into Stoner's office to steal a mailing list for the National Socialist White People's Party.
After recovering, Black went on to join the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the group headed by David Duke in the 1970s. Working on Duke's unsuccessful campaign for Louisiana state Senate, Black won Duke's trust, moving up to become his mentor's right-hand man in addition to his post as Alabama grand dragon, or state leader. When Duke left the group amid allegations that he'd tried to sell its membership list to another Klan group for $35,000, Black took over. Later, in the 1970s, according to The Crusader, a KKK newspaper, Black sponsored marches in defense of Robert Chambliss, who stood accused (and was later convicted) of the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls in Birmingham, Ala. Not long after, Black got into trouble himself. In 1981, he and nine other white supremacists were arrested as they prepared to board a yacht with which they intended to invade the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica, oust its black-run government, and transform it into a "white state." Black's resulting three-year federal prison sentence was time well spent. He took classes in computer programming that would provide the basis for his future.
Not long after his release, Black launched an unsuccessful campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from Alabama. He wound up marrying Duke's ex-wife, Chloe Hardin, and moving to West Palm Beach, Fla. Once there, he began dabbling with his computer, eventually setting up a dial-up bulletin board service for the radical right. By March 1995, that service evolved into Stormfront.org, the Net's first ever and best-known American hate site.
Black saw clearly that with this new technology, white supremacists might finally bypass the mainstream media and political apparatus, getting their message out to people who otherwise would never hear it. And he realized the importance of the fact that people who now could read about white supremacist ideas in the privacy of their own homes without fear of embarrassment or reproach. "The potential of the Net for organizations and movements such as ours is enormous," Black told a reporter in 1996. "We're reaching tens of thousands of people who never before had access to our point of view."
The results have been fairly spectacular. In January 2002, Stormfront had a mere 5,000 members. A year later, membership reached 11,000; and a year after that, in early 2004, it had 23,000. By 2008, membership hit about 133,000 registered users, though the majority were inactive. These numbers don't include the large numbers who simply read Stormfront postings without actually joining up (becoming a member allows one to post messages and also to view personal information posted by other members).
One of Stormfront's main attractions is that it provides forums for so called "white nationalists" to post articles, engage in forum discussions, and share news of upcoming racist events. Below the Stormfront motto, "White Pride World Wide," are links to racially charged news stories like "Mestizo Rapes White Woman in Elevator" and "Negro Man Stabs Elderly Woman, Shoots Detective, Negroes Screaming ‘Police Brutality." Stormfront's various forums can also contain threads like "What do you want done with the Jews?," "Aryan Storm Rising," and "To Hate or Not to Hate." But one thing you won't normally find on Stormfront today, unlike in its early years, are racial slurs. In fact, new members are explicitly warned not to use such language, and also not to post violent threats or anything describing illegal activity. It's not that Stormfront is about moderation. The talk is all about the evils of African Americans, homosexuals, non-white immigrants, and, above all, Jews, who are blamed for most of what's wrong in the world. But Black clearly has modeled his site on some of the tactics used by David Duke, who famously urged his Klan followers to "get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms." As Black once told a reporter, "We don't use the ‘nigger, nigger' type of approaches."
Duke and Black have remained close over the years. In 2004, Black was on hand to celebrate the end of Duke's one-and-a-half year federal prison term (for mail fraud and misstating his income taxes) at a New Orleans event put on by Duke's European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO). Black signed on to Duke's "New Orleans Protocol," a set of principles "pledging adherents to a pan-European outlook." More recently, Duke has been a regular on Black's Stormfront.org Radio, an Internet radio program that features white supremacists.
In 2008, Black made the news when the Intelligence Report reported that his wife Chloe worked for Emilia Fanjul, wife of sugar baron Jose "Pepe" Fanjul, as an executive assistant. Part of Chloe's duties involved serving as a publicist for Glades Academy, a charter school created by Emilia Fanjul to help poor minority children. Despite having attended an event put on by the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens a month earlier, Chloe Black told the Palm Beach Post, "I am not involved with the website [Stormfront] and do not agree with extremist or racially prejudiced views." The Post, based on information supplied by the Southern Poverty Law Center, also reported that Don Black had recently toned down Stormfront, banning many symbols of Nazism that formerly were common on the site, including swastikas and SS lightning bolts, and getting rid of particularly offensive terms, including "nigger." White supremacists were not happy. In racist Web forums, they ripped both Don and Chloe, denouncing them for caring more about money than their beliefs.
The 2008 presidential election gave Stormfront a lift. Don Black boasted on the site he was seeing six times the usual web traffic because of a possible Obama win. "There are a lot of angry White people out there looking for answers," he wrote. "Let's show them. We will not be defeated."
In 2009, the BBC reported that five American right-wing extremists were among 16 individuals banned from entering the United Kingdom for reasons of "fostering extremism or hatred." Black was one of those banned. According to the U.K. Home Office (the lead U.K. government department for immigration and passports), Black was banned for "promoting serious criminal activity and fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence in the UK."
Let me reiterate: The LEADER of the Republican Arizona Senate is a FOLLOWER of a former KKK Grand Wizard. This is sick, sick sick! And this is part of the origin of the current racist Arizona laws. RACISM is a major part of Republican policy these days and it is disgusting!
Republican Racism is out of control and it gets down to the level of eagerly rubbing shoulders with KKK and neo-Nazi leaders. It is time we face up to the fact that the Republican Party has been working with and following KKK and neo-Nazi leaders. It isn't even hidden. The Republican/racist connection is open and public.
