Displaying 3,631 To 3,660 Of 5,146 Comments Kalima – I did not get up at 3 am to watch (there WAS a party at one local pub here in Sacramento starting at 3 am – I was not there). However, I am watching now and liking it a lot. I became very respectful of Diana as she grew and matured. Her work against land mines, her befriending of ordinary people, her compassion for people with HIV/AIDS and her embrace of life all captivated me. I lived in London briefly before her death, and her presence was well felt everywhere you looked. Her death was a shocking loss of a good human being. To see her sons growing to become good men (Harry will be) with conscience and character is like watching her promise be fulfilled. Plus – it’s just plain fun to see Westminster Abbey, the palace, the gardens, the city scape – all the beauty that is London! So I’m with you here. It’s not adulation of royalty but respect for tradition, love for a wonderful country and its people, and hope for a better future that captures my interest. Kalima – I hope you see dear and familiar places! Enjoy! » Posted By choicelady On April 29, 2011 @ 8:50 am YOU stay safe! Thank you for letting us know about wts, too. We’re keeping you in our hearts. » Posted By choicelady On March 11, 2011 @ 8:17 am I finally had the good sense to come here – I’m so GLAD you’re OK and hope all the cats are the same! I can’t imagine how horrid this was – it’s the largest in Japan’s history. I’m surprised you have power – heard 4 million do NOT. Please know you’re in our hearts, Kalima. We will worry about you until the aftershocks are done. May all be well with you! Tsunami headed here, all the way to Sacramento up the delta and Sacramento River, but they are not predicting levee breech or flooding. Yet. Concern for what this might trigger in San Francisco in the way of a quake – everyone in the Bay Area stay vigilant. » Posted By choicelady On March 11, 2011 @ 8:16 am Thanks, Cher – you have raised countless ethical issues for me. I eat meat. I worry about how it dies. I don’t ignore my carnivore heritage – I have the teeth for it, and we all do. In England they have HUGE laws about how animals must be slaughtered. We don’t. I buy halal when I can (the Muslim equivalent to kosher which Sacramento has none of anymore) because the death is quick. No way to know if it’s painless or fear-less. Nature, however, is NOT quick. One has only to look at nature films to know that. It’s brutal. I can’t determine yet where I come down on the food side of it all. The issue for me is the degree of compassion for the animal. I think First Nations people understood better than any of us. The ask forgiveness from the animal they kill. Wow. Seeing oneself at one with the creatures upon which we feed is awesome. It inclines one toward clean kills, respect, a desire NOT to inflict needless suffering. Dog fights, cock fights, bull fights – it separates us from the animal and from our humanity. It objectifies the animal. It is unacceptable. Now we have a new horror; CA has outlawed “live food” that some Asian cultures prefer. Cutting up or even cooking animals alive. I don’t even eat lobster anymore – they don’t “die nice”. But China is exporting leather goods that I understand are not made from recycled leftover hides of food animals. It is the tanned skins of dogs – skinned ALIVE for their leather. I am so utterly disgusted by this, so horrified at the NEEDLESS cruelty, I cannot find words. What is in human beings that we can ever laugh at another’s suffering even if it’s a fish? Catch and release? Not sure the fish is fine with that. Is that better than catch, quickly kill, and eat? I don’t think so. Natural food webs produce death to be part of the web. The big question is whether we need to depart from our own best possibilities to be part of that. The question needing NO thought is – exploiting the suffering of animals for sport has no justification whatsoever. As we contemplate how easily we tortured people the first 8 years of this millennium, it may stem in part by how easily we torture animals – and children, and women, and immigrants, and GLBT people – and any creature we have convinced ourselves is lesser than we. Enough already. Bullfighting can go on. The ceremony and the drama are beautiful. Just leave the bull in peace. Then it’s a fair fight. That I’d pay money to see. » Posted By choicelady On January 27, 2011 @ 7:27 pm Build Infrastructure Not Bombs Great article, Sue – it’s a problem of long standing, and, of course the longer the standing, the worse it gets. As an historian who documented some of the historic infrastructre in the East, I became aware of how long “deferred maintenance” actually WAS deferred. CA’s problems are compounded by the state’s other long-term history: voting on bonds and projects for which the state then has no funding stream. I read one “thinker” (Glenn Beck’s self designation) who cheered, “Yes! Let’s issues bonds and make the REST of America pay for our infrastructure! Why should WE pay for it?” This was not sarcastic but intended. He had no idea if you issue bonds, you have to PAY the bondholders back with interest. So we continue to have a “something for nothing” way of doing business we cannot sustain. We no longer can issues the bonds voters authorized since our state credit rating makes them totally unattractive. The other side is the absolute lack of clarity about what is needed. The proposed 2012 $11 billion water bond DUPLICATES at least $3 billion we already voted in and have not yet spent. No one can explain exactly what it is to do. There is no existing survey of need – who, exactly, has contaminated water, and why is it contaminated? If it’s agricultural or industrial run-off polluting ground water then where is the corporate liability for clean up? (We are not talking Mom and Pop farms here.) When we do issue contracts such as the I-5 repair running through Sacramento, we celebrate “free enterprise” efficiency in doing it so fast – despite the fact that Cal-Trans is forbidden to close major roads and work 8 hours at night while the private sector guy gets to shut down the highway. And then – the “repair” did not entirely work. Where is the accountability? Same contractor “repaired” part of the Bay Bridge only to have the replaced multi-ton joint come crashing down on a passing car, narrowly missing massive injury or death to the driver. So even our fixes don’t fix stuff. The proposal for high speed rail troubles me since there is still a massive clamor for saving money. How? Imported steel rails for one thing. Chinese steel is too often of poor quality. There is a push for speed and low cost that we have seen produce deadly results in consumer items – what will happen to rails produced under similar pressures? Sue has put her finger on a terrible disaster in the making, something that affects all of us. By deferring construction and repair, we have saved nothing. Back in the early ’80s a section of I-95 over the Connecticut River collapsed killing several motorists whose cars plunged into the water. And identically-constructed section is the main crossover the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, RI. They fixed the CT span – but in 2009 they FINALLY decided to deal with the RI span. How? By warning travelers NOT to cross it. They could not afford the repair, so they diverted traffic. A quarter century, and no one could prevent this. Oh, they DID invest in large electronic signs warning drivers for 20 miles before the diversion. I guess that’s something. Thank you for this Sue. This is a major wake up call for the nation, and we appreciate your focus and warning to us all! We will all be watching where and how we go a bit more closely, thanks to you! » Posted By choicelady On January 27, 2011 @ 8:25 am TAKE ACTION: Join the Protest Against the Koch Conference in Palm Springs Daddy made his fortune building for Joe STALIN? Doens’t that make them “crypto pinko commies”???? Where do they draw the line – they make big bucks making the USSR more self sufficient, but anyone wanting to improve health care is treasonous??? I will lay odds they went waaaaay Right because they got scared they’d be hauled up under HUAC. It’s like Phred Felps denying his gay tendencies. Overcompensation. These are disgusting people. They will pay NO attention to us other than to gin up the fervor to do us in, but maybe the people will figure out these dudes have us by the throat and that we’ve been flimflammed. Or not. Americans have a creepy fascination with creepy rich people. We will see what – and who – prevails. » Posted By choicelady On January 27, 2011 @ 7:39 pm You want to ignore the hate groups, but after Spokane … Khirad – Christ’s Gospel Fellowship????? Grrrrrr. Yet another set of anti-Semitic Old Testamentarian hatemongers using Jesus as a “get out of jail free card” AND a hammer to use against others. I’m sort of hoping the wackos are right, and that Jesus IS coming back this May. Might be a big surprise to lots of folks that they peeved him some. » Posted By choicelady On January 23, 2011 @ 4:02 pm M Cubed – it was the Order that came into CA and firebombed the women’s clinic having financed all that from their Spokane=area crimes spree. Thanks for jogging my memory on that. » Posted By choicelady On January 23, 2011 @ 2:51 pm Thank you, Pepe! Welcome, M Cubed! This has been going on for decades. Remember upper ID was where Ruby Ridge occurred, and that led to an in-gathering of ALL the RW extremists from white power to anti-abortion at Estes Park, CO where the summit led to inter-group cooperation. That is the very scary part – we now have “multi-mission extremists” (MME) and, scarier to me, those who belong to no group but follow all the hate, all the time, and act individually. Tucson anyone? Spokane spawned MMEs who were both anti-government AND anti-abortion who robbed armored cars and banks to fund their weaponry they then used to firebomb a women’s clinic in Redding, CA. After 9/11 the Posse Comitatus leader, August Kreiss, located in Ulysses, PA announced immediately after the first tower was hit that it was the work of Al Qae’da – and that it was because of abortion and ho-mo-sex-u-ality running rampant in America. This at a moment when most everyone thought it was an accident. Kreiss went on the celebrate the “victory” and declare allegiance with Al Qae’da against Jews = and everyone else he hated. For some time Kreiss made himself Butler’s successor as head of AN, and he sought to expand AN into a more diverse hate group – equal opportunity hate mongers – in the greater Coeur d’Alene/Spokane areas. So this bomb MAY be the start of more. This area has spawned huge problems now filtering even more into Montana (remember the Freemen?) whose folks, for a time, stood down but apparently are gearing up. It is beyond naive to think that what happened under Clinton – a good ol’ boy – is not hate squared with this current Black man in office. I am on an anti-hate crime Task Force. We are taking this seriously as are SPLC, Public Eye, and many other hate-watch groups. Who is NOT taking it seriously are conservatives, media, the average person. The average person should understand how many innocent people have been harmed in the terrorist by-play; think Olympic Park in 1998 in Atlanta or Unabomber victims (clerks and by standers). I am beyond furious that media will report (and nuances matter) about public reaction when the perp is Muslim, but domestic terrorists get a pass. Oh! They are insane, not like us! Oh! They don’t seem to belong to a group, or if they do, it’s not us! Oh! They aren’t really Christians. Not like me. Oh! They aren’t me…even though I tolerated the hate and maybe enjoyed it a bit. Oh, no, no, no, this has nothing to do with me or us or “our” way of life. Uh-uh – and saying it does, well that makes YOU hateful, you bad caller-outer of these concerns!!!! Except – it does reflect all of us. It reflects a deep core of hate and anxiety in America that never seems to go away ever. LAy it to lingering guilt and therefore resentment of our slave heritage and to Southern rage over Reconstruction, or whatever you like – it exists. And unlike the 90s, this time these guys are more organized, more heavily armed, more cohesive and united. If we have to freaking wait for ANOTHER OK City we have SO lost our self direction! It is a foolish denier who says they can’t win, they aren’t a real threat, they are tiny in numbers. No, no, and no. Only sunshine will flush them out, and it is imperative we do this and do it NOW before any more people get hurt or die. Only the truth will set us free. » Posted By choicelady On January 23, 2011 @ 2:49 pm Hi Bauart – don’t know you yet, but I like what you said. I LIKE Olbermann about 90% of the time. He backs up what he says, and I tend to be mostly in sync with him. I agree with AdLib – when he was bad he was merely sucky. When he was good he was fantastic! He did reach new levels with his commentaries, especially on health care, and his compassion for real people was persistent and honest. Randi Rhodes was/is the same – over the top, sometimes rude, incredibly narcissistic, but NOT ever at the expense of ideals which too many of the Left give up when something conflicts with their ego. KO kept his focus, backed up his statements, and I learned a LOT from him. He is NOT Bill Maher who has no principles, ONLY ego. With KO it’s the other way ’round – ego yes, but principles more/most. Nobody on the Left can be silenced these days – there simply are too few of us. His loss is a big loss. I will miss him. » Posted By choicelady On January 22, 2011 @ 7:15 pm SIGN THE PETITION: Boycott of MSNBC For Cancelling Keith Olbermann Done, AdLib. Sorry this nation and its media have come to this, but we must send this message. Thank you! » Posted By choicelady On January 22, 2011 @ 7:01 pm The Undeclared War on America…By Americans Cher – I do become as affected, but human beings have choices animals don’t. We domesticate animals who can’t then fend for themselves. We have the hope a child can eventually become more self sufficient, but domesticated animals never will. I think I understand the abject awfulness you see in their suffering. For them there is NO hope. I like Animal Planet, and I do watch the various shows about animal rescue, but some of it is beyond awful. And I agree about the SPCA films – especially that one dog shaking in fear – that show how dreadfully vulnerable these poor things are, and how disgustingly they’ve been treated. It is heart breaking. And yeah – I donate! » Posted By choicelady On January 22, 2011 @ 10:55 pm Oh how horrid! I saw a “hidden camera” film of two guys who use chimps in some Vegas act, and the man was smacking the chimp in the chest. The look on the animal’s face was EXACTLY what you’d have seen if the guy had been smacking a child with Down’s – hopeless, scared, bewildered, and having nowhere to run. Animals deserve so much more from humans than that – they are fairly defenseless, and domesticated animals really do aim to please us. These pictures are heart-wrenching. Why would anyone harm a child or animal? It’s beyond my comprehension. » Posted By choicelady On January 22, 2011 @ 10:51 pm You nailed it, bito – why was a carpenter involved? They were your brothes and sisters. I walked the line for months even though I also was not IAM (and I have MY strike shirt in the closet still!) but faculty with the Cornell Labor Studies program. They were my students, some of them, but mostly they were, yes, my brothers. Their families became mine, too. The leader of our local was a Vietnam Vet of such powerful commitment as something I had rarely seen – and the day the strike officially ended with the dissolution of the company, he discovered he had lymphoma from his exposure to Agent Orange. He died March 21 1992. It burns my heart to this day. He was a great man. Not many like him. Those of us who put it on the line understand the power of the corporation. But I was able to help later with similar stuff at US Air (also some of my students in that IAM local) when I suggested they call on the company to reorganize their debt load FIRST to save the exorbitant interest rates – and they DID. The IAM took up the rallying point, and it worked. Jobs and the airline survived. US Air, unlike Lorenzo, did not want to die. It makes a difference in what you can do. EAL is a textbook example of how managers are destroying our nation by destroying the corporations they’re hired to serve – and everyone attached to them. One of the best things Obama has done is restore the right of shareholders – many of whom are employees – to VOTE on management compensation. The corporate moguls have eradicated that right over the years, but it’s back. And the government supports it. That means shareholders can once again be watchdogs over their assets, and for employees that’s HUGE. My fave movie? “The Solid Gold Cadillac” a 1950s comedy wrapping around these very issues of lousy management and shareholder uprisings. It’s a beaut if you’ve not seen it. And it points the way to some sensible restoration of good corporate actions. Only thing that surprises me about that film? That the director and screenwriter did not get hauled up under HUAC. It’s funny as all get out – and damned radical at the same time. I love knowing that you and I share this EAL moment in history. I’m deeply moved to know you were “out there” at the same time I was. Thank you for what you did. Thank you for being willing to go to jail for it. It mattered. » Posted By choicelady On January 22, 2011 @ 9:34 pm Cher – what a fabulous title – “Souls on ICE”! ABsolutely super! The group I was with included long-time Black and Latino citizens as well as more recent immigrants. Our concern is that the use of the term “illegals” – the noun more than the adjective – is a way we dehumanize these folks. NO one is disputing they crossed, yes, illegally. But as with other terms – WOP, Mick, etc. – “illegals” as a noun makes it possible to talk about them as NON persons. The group is not unifed over the adjective – “illegal immigrants” – and some are willing to go there, including people with undocumented folks in their families. As a faith person, I work pretty hard (fail often) to uphold the “I – Thou” interactions between me and someone else. I try NOT to objectify them – (I-It) as in calling someone names: Bagger! Fascist! Shill! – but continue to honor their humanity. That is what this presses to accomplish – they are people first. PEOPLE – who are here without proper approval from the immigration authorities. Same thing as not speaking of “the disabled” but of “people with disabilities”. People first, modifier second. Since the term WOP is the acronym for “With Out Papers” and we’ve HAD this conversation over and over and over in our history, we will keep pressing on: people first; modifiers second. That’s all. They are human beings. They need to be looked at not as a lump of criminality but individuals with enough desperate circumstances to weather the trek, the danger, the uncertainty, the heat and thirst to come here to work. Reminding everyone that we all have that original desperation in common. What changed was that after WW II, in passionate fear of commies, the government took away Ellis Island. That is the difference. Not the people or their motives or their reasons or their worth. So we acknowledge the legal issues but must emphasize the human ones also. That’s all. That’s the goal. » Posted By choicelady On January 22, 2011 @ 3:33 pm Oh bito – you’re a survivor of EAL???? Now I love you even MORE! “You been to jail for justice? I wanta shake your hand!” Yeah – you did more time than Frank Baby. Sorry. You stood up for rights, HE robbed the company blind. You went to jail. He walked off into the sunset with no consequences at ALL. I’m not sorry you went to jail, per se, but I’m furious you went to jail when he did NOT!!!! I admire you more than I can say. I loathe him more than there are words. Like he cares what I think. Or about you. This disparity has GOT to stop. It’s 1862 Homestead Lockout all over again. I do NOT believe in violence – I’d never sanction the assault on Henry Frick – but this is GOT to stop. Cher is right, too, where is the backbone? I still join the odd picket line, at least honk in support of strikers, and DID do two of the three anti-war marches in SF before the war in Iraq broke out. Where are the young’uns???? They WERE there in SF, to be sure, but we Boomers outnumbered them rather pathetically. (Some were in a group, “Tango for Peace” that entertained us and made us laugh. I thank them for that.) VVAW was back – holy cow. Even the requisite naked people were my age. Not pretty – but there. I stand with Malcolm Gladwell – the revolution will NOT be Tweeted. It has no staying power, and kids don’t have the relationships wherein they KNOW who ‘has their back’. I have no answers, and since I’m on the verge of Boomer fuddy duddy-ism, I will now shut up. » Posted By choicelady On January 22, 2011 @ 3:19 pm WTS – I think the Y’town story was more the basis of “Other People’s Money” with Danny DeVito. Eastern Airlines was “Wall Street”. I think… I was the unpaid political-economic advisor to IAM Local 774 (if I recall the number) machinists in Buffalo, NY during the whole of the strike against Frank Lorenzo 1989-1993. (For several weeks, I also made soup for the strikers and walked the line while they ate. Damn that was fun, even during the sleet storms!) But the goal of the Eastern plan WAS to ditch the airline – it’s hard to win when the corporate master is determined to suck the lifeblood out of the company to feed his non-union Continental Air. You can’t win if they don’t care if they lose. He wanted not only to gut the company while it ran but the write down when if failed. He got both. What he did – raiding capital of an operating firm – is ILLEGAL, and Lorenzo was found guilty some years later and banned from ever owning an airline again. But he did no jail time, lives high on the hog today, and the tens of thousands workers he ditched are STILL struggling. In addition to the “Your Neighbor is NOT the Problem” movement, I also want “Corporations are fictitious people? Then let’s have real personal accountability!” Stockholders may be immune from liability, but managers are NOT. Time to press the law and hold them to it. You steal a loaf of bread, you can get life. You steal a company blind – you can walk away. NO!!!! Corporate criminals MUST pay. The bigger the crime, the longer the time. No more coddling of white collar crooks and thieves!!! Tom Delay is a good start – let’s keep it going! » Posted By choicelady On January 22, 2011 @ 11:12 am WTS – shhhhh. The capital bosses will hear you and then where will we all be? I bet though that they’re already working on it… » Posted By choicelady On January 22, 2011 @ 10:59 am Thank you WTS and AdLib – this IS my hobby horse, what we in my organization call building a “moral economy”, one that is sutainable and works for all, not just the privileged few. You can find more recent articles about some of this in “Justice Rising”, published by the Alliance for Democracy. Some years ago I and one of our Board members edited a special edition from a faith point of view about sustainable economics. This one, however, is much better (my first foray as an editor pretty much sucked.) http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/newsletters.html The man of the hour is Gar Alperovitz from the U. of MD – he presses this issue and gains ground with his allies, most of them in Ohio. What fascinates me is that a CA advocacy group, LIFETIME who support programs promoting welfare to work, are affiliated with the work at Kent State on employee ownership. From microenterprise (see, for example, The Women’s Initiative in the Bay Area of CA) there are efforts to build both personal AND community assets. Personal assets – home, college accounts, small business accounts – are fine IF you have a thriving economic community, and worthless if you don’t. We won’t move out of poverty one person at a time but can move out of both poverty AND corporate control one community – even neighborhoods communities – at a time. One of the biggest blocks to re-starting manufacturing, where the good jobs are, is the snotty anti-blue collar perspectives of faux “green” people. They are “too good” to have manufacturing in their city! It’s ugly and dirty, doncha know. Well yes, but it does not have to be. The Canadian steel plant at Nanticoke, Ont. is low impact environmentally and a joy as a neighbor – surrounded by a 30-foot high earth berm with plants, trees, etc. It’s invisible until you’re 5 miles away at which point yes, you CAN see the top of the blast furnace. I hear it’s no longer running, at least not Canadian owned thanks to lousy MBA (More Bad Advice – WTS that’s perfect!) from free marketers – but it did, it was profitable, and it was, for the day, “green”. However, NONE of this will work until we do a full court press on “Your neighbor is NOT the problem.” Molly Ivins wrote often about our tendency to point fingers at one another. She said politics is not Left and Right. It’s Up and Down. We ALL are the down, even upper level managers who are expendable. If you are expendable – you are equal to the janitor, like it or not. When we hear that some top manager “needs” to be paid a kajillion dollars to “keep the talent” – all I want is the dollar figure at which level you are indipensible and at what point you are just another commodity to be dumped for profit gain. Just let us all know the bottom line of our worth, huh? I highly recommend one book from a series about first thriving then dying steel towns – “Grievance” by K.C. Constantine. I recommend the entire series, but this one book tells the ENTIRE story of manufacturing’s demise brilliantly, all within a fascinating,complex murder mystery. It’s hard to find, but if you do it’s cheap – I got a copy for $1.50. It’s well worth the read about the games management played and still play to maximize their income and screw the workers and communities. Brilliant. I happen to agree with one sign at a TP rally – We Want Our Country Back! Too bad they don’t even know who stole it. We do, and it’s time to tell the tale. Thanks for this GREAT post, AdLib. We need to get this “out there” and start reclaiming the narrative and the solutions. Not a minute too soon either. » Posted By choicelady On January 22, 2011 @ 10:55 am GREAT post, AdLib! The Chinese standard is suddenly lookin’ good. Can’t speak the language or read the literature, but hey – Kindle is good over there, isn’t it? The opening salvo was 1976. Lykes Steamship bought Youngstown (OH) Sheet & Tube, a profitable, if not very, steel plant. Why? Going in to steel? Oh, my NO! For the CASH they got by closing, then tearing down the plant. We do that. The law meant for liquor businesses being put out of business by Prohibition was revised in ’64 so that you could close for any old reason, and gubbmint would give you an accelerated depreciation on the capital machinery and buildings and give you CASH – tax-free CASH – from past income tax payments. It could and did exceed the cost of purchase. Some of you may recall the famous LIFE mag pix of the four blast furnaces being blown down simultaneously. What you never saw was the long shot – with 10,000 men, women, and children surrounding the chain link fence watching their lives go to hell. This because all efforts to buy and run the plant as a community-owned enterprise – to be sold at MARKET, not depreciated, value by Lykes – was in vain. Jimmy Carter bailed out everyone else, but Y’town was rejected for $476 million in federal loans. First step in the march against the Working Class. John Kenneth Galbraith’s “The New Industrial State” was published in 1967. He declared – and it was true at the time – that the age of finance capital was dead. That lasted until 1973. Finance capital surged ahead with the oil crisis and a mad dash to preserve the perfectly ridiculous profit margins the US had enjoyed from WW II and post-war reconstruction. Manufacturing historically returns under 10% – it’s a reliable return but not flashy. Post-war profits had been in the higher double digits for decades, and no one was willing to admit the party was over, back to business as historically usual. Nope. The drive for double digits or more caused manufacturing to be the sacrificial lamb, the “cash cow”, the end game. When businesses ran, they turned to outsourcing, first to the non-unionized South then Mexico, then, eventually, China. One big flaw in all this. When you stop hiring, people stop buying. To maintain a middle class way of life, there was the new bright shiny thing – CREDIT CARDS! So we pretended all was well as people bought, bought, bought – until we crashed, crashed, crashed when bankruptcies finally caught up. Houses were just a part. Everything became too much. Cheaper goods aren’t cheap at ALL if you don’t pay for them and can’t pay for them on your reduced wages. The biggest buyers of cars? The folks who made them. The biggest consumers of capital goods such as steel? The people who make the cars whose workers buy them. Take away the working stiffs – NO market. There weren’t enough yuppies in the world to sustain a significant mass market. They bought high end goods also from overseas, but not the stuff we were producing even at Wal Mart prices. At least – not with cash. Now they want more. Not manufacturing the American way but a return to subsidies, to investments in paper over products. They want to force us to lower wages MORE (the assault on government workers is the next step) but KEEP BUYING. That’s why the bankruptcy laws are now no real relief. The ONLY way out is an alternative economy. I’m not talking about handloomed shawls and tofu but a different form of ownership. Worker and community ownership and management. It works for one really good reason – if you have to be “competitive” the REAL drain on a company is its stockholders. They suck the lifeblood out of a company and put nothing in. Those who work in a company who own and manage that company can make different choices. Share the profits in boom times, cut back in the lean. It would be ours. We can make those choices. I am devoted to this principle above government ownership since that’s just another form of absentee ownership, disinterested management, corporatism with a different set of people who still will get outrageous salaries and perks. They will cheerfully kill the goose that lays the golden egg and move on to the next goose. But working people who own understand something managers do not – you cannot kill the goose; the goose is your future, even if it’s not laying today. They will buy it new feed, make sure its nest is clean, and tend it well. We need to remember that if we extol “entrepreneurial spirit” that can apply to anyone. If you OWN something, you are far more likely to care for it. And workers are the people who understand how to do the tending far better than a bean counter from some company or background that bears no relationship to the company function. A friend once said – the true brains of a company lie under the workman’s cap. If we are to survive, to put these corporate vampires to rest, we first have to lock them out of the building. WE know how to do things well. This time, it’s OUR turn. When we take back the economy, we also take back democracy, and we find cooperation exceeds competition as a way of operating. Time for the Third Way. We already have a great model – Southwest Airlines along with tens of thousands smaller but vital firms. Nope – this is NOT about tie dyed coops but about major enterprises and major control over our lives. Kick the corporate managers out and put in the REAL brains of the outfit – the folks who do the work. We’ll be a healthier nation for it. » Posted By choicelady On January 21, 2011 @ 7:14 pm Why Buy the Cow When You Can Get the Milk for Free? Marion – doesn’t that make her a golddigger? Or worse? Yeow… » Posted By choicelady On January 20, 2011 @ 7:24 pm The one thing I won’t trash about her is her neck. We are all fighting the same fight. Other than that, well, she’s ripe for the pickin’. Her actions are beyond horrific. As far as I can tell, there is nothing over which Issa can impeach this president, nothing the Bitch can do to help, and nothing other than a huge, huge waste of our time that Issa and his amour, Arianna, can put over on us. The freaking question is – why did she start this blog, write books such as “Pigs at the Trough” and “Third World America” but never EVER give up her real politics? How did so many of us fall for her ‘conversion’ and so many still do? She is the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the RW Fifth Columnist, the Quisling, the Benedict Arnold to progressives. Why does ANYONE pay attention to her??? » Posted By choicelady On January 19, 2011 @ 9:22 pm ISSA????? She’s cozying up to Darrell ISSA????? This man is to the right of Attila the Hun. He makes Newt look like a sweetie. He’s a crook and thug. And this is what she does after the shootings in Tucson??????? Aiiieeeeee! » Posted By choicelady On January 19, 2011 @ 9:14 pm Same Shit, Different Day, Same Lies, Same Voices Khirad and Cher – I didn’t see that show, but there was a pathbreakaing book, “Slaves in the Family” by a white man, Edward Ball, who went through family records – they had been slave owners – and found incontrovertible proof that he was related to bi-racial people fathered by his great-great grandfather when their great-greats were still property. It was probably one of the most honest looks at the extended family histories of slave owners and their slaves I’ve read. It made HIS still upper class family enraged, but what he did was honorable. It is my recollection he found some of his cousins and ALSO apologized. What happened after that, though, I don’t know. It simply was an important breakthrough in truth. That’s a lot. » Posted By choicelady On January 20, 2011 @ 8:56 pm YOU are the incentive, Khirad! The brew – well, to a wheat-intolerant person (that’s not politics but physiology) beer is a forbidden treasure. There is a gluten free beer, but – why bother, I ask. I don’t fear the State of Jefferson. I fear the Red State folks to the south and east. San Joaquin county, just south of us, is the site of one of the most horrific anti-government hate crimes I’ve known, directed against a very nice woman who was the county clerk. She refused to file phony liens (a “sovereign state”, militia tactic of harassment of officials) and she was grabbed in the dark in her own garage by a milita guy who, to show her who’s boss, absolutely savaged her. He was caught and imprisoned, but his buds still call her. She can’t get a phone they can’t trace. To this day, any officer in the county who stops one of the militia guys is likely to have them smile and say, “Oh – your wife’s name is so and so, you have kids named such and such, you live at this street and number. See ya.” There is no law willing to go up against them. None. This is an unwritten story – no paper will publish it out of fear of relatiation. It is absolute outlaw time in SJ County. This is known to very few in CA save those of us who do hate crimes opposition work. WE are afraid to be open about it either! But it’s an aspect of CA that is present and growing. On the whole, the State of Jefferson is not lookin’ too bad. » Posted By choicelady On January 20, 2011 @ 8:45 pm I’ve read much of what everyone here said (sorry – I’m late to the game), but I do want to cite the Center for Budget & Policy Priorities on the final tally of the Tax Compromise: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3342 The finaly tally is that the cut for earnings ABOVE $250,000 plus the benefits of extending estate levels to $5 million totals 16% of the package President Obama negotiated. The remaining 84% goes to, yes, working families especially those living at or below poverty level who will still be getting Earned Income Tax Credits (slated for “demolition”. That plus unemployment extension (voted down before), and numerous education and investment credits for SMALL businesses to generate jobs among many other benefits. So the tax cut for the rich is 16%. The tax benefits to middle and lower income families is 84%. That is NOT “caving”. That is NOT “pussy”. That is leadership. I know well that there is a cadre of people who retain a kind of SDS DSoc “bring the system down in chaos so we can rebuild it” mentality. First question – what do you mean by “we”???? Who is “we”???? When you have this nation hanging perilously close to control by the TP, this just might not be a good time for helter skelter, you know what I’m saying? It’s like the doctor I met who opposed health care reform as a dedicated physician wanting single payer. “Let’s just throw this bill out and we will pass single payer!” he clamored. Again – whom do you mean by “we”??? At best count “we” had 50 votes. I’m not seeing a grand sweep here, are you? The Right lives by magical thinking. The Left is doing the same. I’m finding living in a world of fact and reality to be a fairly lonely existence. Glad I have the Planet. BTW – was the CA separatist movement the first effort to create the State of Jefferson? If not, that movement appears to be alive and well up near the Siskyous. Kind of interesting, but I’m not yet up on the details. Overall, I’m less interested in CA once trying to be independent since we continue to talk about breaking in two, north and south or, more practically, west the whole length vs. east the whole length. I’m just not sure where Sacramento would land, and I kinda don’t want to live in a Red State, thanks anyway. But I don’t want to move either. Decisions, decisions… » Posted By choicelady On January 19, 2011 @ 9:51 pm Stoner Question: What is Money? Community Currency – perfectly legal, based on Colonial moral economic principles in barter. Very cool. http://www.sustainable-city.org/articles/currency.htm » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2011 @ 1:38 pm And you can use the fruitcake instead of bondo in case of dents and dings on the car. » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2011 @ 1:35 pm The OBSESSIVE love of fruitcake. A respectful love is fine. If God did not want us to love fruitcake, he would not have passed on the recipe. Oh. Wait. He gave us liver and rutabagas, too. Well, hey – everybody makes mistakes. » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2011 @ 1:32 pm AdLib and Cher – this is probably the BEST theology I’ve read in many years. Cher – your summation – I won’t be fooled again – is pretty much Jesus’ teaching. Coupled with “love thy flaky neighbor”, of course. And here on the Planet, a whole new Biblical exegesis is born. Are we good or what? » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2011 @ 1:31 pmComments Posted By choicelady
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