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Comments Posted By choicelady

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WHY SO AGGRESSIVELY PASSIVE?

Blues Tiger – you are a brave human being! but yes, telling the troglodytes that you, a citizen of their fair state, wants a GOOD health reform plan (WITH a government-run public option) will do a great deal to destabilize their hair spray.

The more we raise our voices, the more they get the jitters. We, the people, are really pretty clear on these thing. They can hide behind the tea canisters, but they cannot count on all of us supporting their 19th=Century Gilded Age ways of thinking.

GO for it!

» Posted By choicelady On February 22, 2010 @ 6:00 pm

Real Time Real Good … for Now: A Review of Season 8 Episode 1 of Real Time with Bill Maher

Go Kalima! I don’t get why it is not obvious to progressives what Obama is doing. Yesterday I did a 2-hour workshop on health care with a bunch of progressive Methodists (not a contradiction in terms at all!) who asked about this. I said I thought it was the opposite of the Wizard of Oz. Rather than “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” Obama is saying, “Pay ONLY attention to me right now – and leave the people doing the REAL work alone.” I think it’s marvelous.

He will have a proposal, and the Republicans will have none. He will be reaching out, and they will be shrinking back. I think he is doing the perfect thing.

In the meantime, the staff from both Houses of Congress are hard at work trying to honor the PEOPLE of this nation, not the nay-sayers, whoever they may be.

Brava, Kalima, for seeing it so clearly!

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 10:31 pm

Hi Marion. I don’t have HBO so don’t see Maher, but the few times I have over the years, I’ve been totally underwhelmed by him. Unlike the handful of ‘showbiz’ people who bother to study and read and think and review, Maher is superficial always. I suspect him of being one of the ilk who reads the NY Times Review of Books, then discusses the book review, not the book.

For whatever reason, Al Franken, Randi Rhodes, and Jon Stewart are much better informed. They clearly read things closely, can cite chapter and verse, and do their critiques from a sustainable and consistent point of view.

Maher and too many like him are like little boys for whom critique is dropping drawers and yelling, “Yah, Boo, Sucks to You.” I don’t trust that he, or his darling Arianna, have anything deeper than a desire to have a president who is flashy. They can’t forgive that Obama has not clamped Bush and Cheney in irons and made decisions precisely by the methods we claim to want to change. We want a bully president, just with our values. Criticiaing Obama for not being Bush is precisely the problem.

I feel real contempt for working people from Maher. I think he is snotty and snobby and disdainful of people whose way of life and politics are not mixed with Scotch and BMWs. I don’t even trust his critiques of Palin et al. because they are less about what she believes than about whom she represents. I happen to know and like the blue collar folks – have spent years with them – and can FEEL the difference between the dislike of Palin and the dislike of the people who gravitate toward Palin. He radiates his superiority. He also disdains union folks, farmers, working people of all types who live more conventional lives than does he. Even when these people are on the progressive side, he makes it clear they don’t measure up to his standards. Especially if they still go to church.

This puts him into the category so many of us who are deeply progressive have wrestled with: what do we do with self-styled progressives who in fact hate people? What do we do with self-styled progressives who have no core values – who could turn on US at any moment for some imagined “flaw” in our thinking. These are the self-styled progressives who are sure to remain above the fray, protected, and therefore, as KQ and I keep saying, have no skin in the game. They pontificate. They don’t participate.

If I get lectured one more time about the religious right, abortion rights, gay rights, budgets, health care, ad nauseum from people whose butts have yet to leave the armchairs, I’m going to puke. Or worse.

I told an acquaintance about how our handful of members in Mike Thompson’s district – all people of faith from small mainline Protestant churches – mobilized themselves after one of my alerts and turned Thompson’s Blue Dog position to one supporting the public option. We were the only people working that district. I had no idea the response would be that amazing, that heartfelt, that energetic. They did this on their own. (One minister apologized for “only” getting 85 people to go with her to Thompson’s office in a town with not many more than that in it.)

So what was the response from the cranky do-nothing progressive? To deny this happened. To say Thompson “turned” because of Pelosi (his office told me it was public outcry). To call my story “merely anecdotal” and thus meaningless. He’d personally done NOTHING to pump for health care reform, but he read the NY Times and “knew” Obama was dropping the public option, “knew” the Dems were selling out, “knew” no one in the faith community could be progressive, “knew” people of faith could not possibly be that organized around progressive values in health care. So he blew me off, disdained my “participant observer” status and that way can keep whining. It’s so much easier than learning something and easier still than doing something.

We are up against the Mahers who have a premium, as does Arianna, in being nay sayers. We are up against a legion of Americans who do the same. Read the NYT or HuffPo and decide they have answers about issues all over the world with which they do not engage.

Maher may have smartened up his act, but since when is Wanda Sykes a knowlegeable person? I don’t even think she’s funny, and I sure don’t think she is well informed. Glad he has Spitzer, and I do take HIS criticism well since he’s still in the mix, but I will never trust that Maher won’t put his penchant for the fast cheap joke ahead of thoughtful introspection. Even when he trashes the right, I don’t trust him. And I find I don’t trust a lot of people whose rapier wit and sharp tongues may be entertaining – but whose substance is lacking.

I have no problem with differences of opinion. I do have a problem when that difference is based entirely on narcissistic solipsism. I’ll trust Maher if and when he has substance, consistency, and can name one Congressional staffer who has NOT been a source in the WaPo, NYT, or HuffPo and works in a signficant place. Then he will have shown me he’s cultivated some serious research base and that he’s grown up.

Until then, I’m saving money by not having HBO and thus not having Bill Maher. Much easier in the long run.

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 6:45 pm

Abuse of Power – Tale of a Red State

javaz – I so agree! Are they not the precise people we once were? We were proud of our unrelenting work ethic, our willingness to tough out hard times. We admired immigrants, were the immigrants once, who drove themselves to build not just their own lives but the very life of the nation.

And that’s the same today. Our office has a gardener who is the sweetest man alive. He workd incredibly hard and is probably not here legally. But I’d trade him in a nanosecond for all the lazy suburban people I know who think the world owes them a living. Who would not want our gardener in exchange for every slacker kid or won’t-do-it refusenik who thinks every job outside a corporate suite is not good enough for them? We have a huge number of unemployed here, and I’ve offered jobs to many of them, but they “don’t want to do that” or “won’t work for $8 and hour” or are “too good to lower myself” – and these are OFFICE jobs I’m providing!

I so admire the people who will risk their lives to cross the border to work. And then they get hit with two things: “They are taking OUR jobs” and “They are shiftless and lazy.”

Huh? How can those both be true?

In CA undocumented people get nothing but emergency medical care. That’s it. Their children can go to school (gasp – how awful) but most of them are citizens.

We have so lost sight of what this nation is all about. I know historically it’s not the first time, but it is damned depressing. The only difference between these immigrants and my grandparents is that we have taken away the port of entry. No Ellis Island. No one who came here before the immigration crackdowns of the Cold War ever had to have paper, and I know many a person who will laugh about the fact their forebear was a crook, draft dodger, con artist – and then revile the new immigrants.

And then you get this sheriff, whose family MY family probably did not want (we were so very WASP), and he makes immigrants his targets of hate, and forgets his own family’s roots. Disgusting.

America. Land of the forgetful.

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 9:05 pm

javaz- The Italians in Springfield, MA during the early part of the 20th C. and Depression were as welcome as a case of poison ivy. I imagine he’s working out his anger by oppressing a new group of immigrants the way an abused kid bullies other, younger ones. I figured that might be the case. It’s the real “trickle down” economics – spitting on the ones who come after you.

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 1:27 pm

Hi Sue – love the Cubs, totally agree. How did we get the mindset that profitpearning corporations need public support? Capitalism is supposed to reward with profit for the risks the company takes. Where are the risks if WE pay for everything? In Buffalo, they got heavily into “naming rights” for stadiums etc. giving the corporate name in exchange for the corporate payment. However, when taxpayers redid the Bills’ stadium, they named it for the team owner when CLEARLY it should have been “Citizens’ Field”. Apparently when the public pays, the naming rights do not apply. And therein hangs the tale of why America is in the toilet.

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 1:22 pm

I think it’s only a matter of time before they bring back child labor, too. With the numbers of mining companies doing business there, you could have kids come back as “breaker boys” at pennies per ton. You could put those lazy, shiftless kindergarteners to work – what’s this NAP time thing for anyway? Clearly coddling them, that’s the problem. Any family claiming it needs public assistance first has to send all its kids out to earn a living. Any family with a wage earner asking hard=pressed embattled corporations for a raise have to do the same. Why should corporations have to pay to raise these rug rats? Let them earn a living like anyone else!

Forward to the Past. The Republicans are leading the way in Arizona!

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 1:18 pm

The RW seems to labor under the illusion that their whim trumps the Constitution. Federal election rules cannot be altered locally.

I am beginning to think that we never should have tried to keep the South in the 1860s, that we should have an easy way out of the US for states that do not respect democracy. Let them leave! I think we could survive as a nation much better without these people. Of course we would also need a liberal and flexible immigration policy for those wishing to leave those states and remain in the US and function with the rest of us in democratic ways.

They want a banana republic? Let them BE a banana republic. Alone. By themselves. No foreign aid.

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 1:12 pm

BT – I understand that the OK City NPR station has done a series on the links between both your Senators and several of your Congressmen to “The Family” and what that means for your representation. Very brave of the NPR folks to “out” that factor. Here in CA we occasionally get feeds from your state legislature, too, about some ultra-right smarm that some legislator has uttered.

I like OK a lot – LOVE Tall Grass Prairie – but the politics are just weird. The elected officials have done NOTHING for the ordinary citizens, yet they keep getting re-elected.

Your poor state may not be worse than CA, but you sure are peculiar in your own unique way.

On the other hand, we are starting to call our state “Calabama” though someone pointed out that was unfair to Alabama. Our chant now is “We’re No. 50!” We’re No. 50!” about almost everything. I found out today that Sacramento ranks WORSE than Youngstown, OH by just about every economic indicator.

We have people leaving CA for OK, in an historic reverse flow that probably will require a new novel. Will the “Callies” be as reviled in OK as the Oklahomans were in CA during the other Great Depression? Remains to be seen. At least they might bring some “blue” to OK? Hope so.

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 11:45 am

It was probably both, because I don’t think the two were mutually exclusive. I recall that the concern about the mob had to do with some form of concession that was later taken over by the Buffalo, NY firm of Delaware North that itself has long been accused of being “mobbed up” though that’s never been proven.

My concern is that such violence is hardly unknown in AZ. Pick on the “wrong” target, and… Arizona since Goldwater is moving in a very nasty direction.

What ethnicity is “Arpaio”? I find people such as he with un-WASP names (you know – like Tancredo) whose own families were reviled in their day to be particularly scary. Race and ethnic hate from those whose own histories have experienced it is often more virulent for reasons I do not understand. I see it. I don’t “get” it. But it seems to be a very American tradition.

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 11:35 am

Yeah, javaz – my heart bleeds for those poor, oppressed corporations!

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 9:10 am

javaz – this list of both the retaliatory actions and accusations by the sheriff and his cronies AND the list of laws proposed and passed by the legislature is horrifying. I have friends and family in Phoenix, and while they are the least likely to come afoul of any of these issues, I do not want the kids growing up there. What kind of state will this be? My grandaughter is three years old. Her best friend is Black. Will they be arrested walking down the street because the friend is suspect since she obviously “does not belong”? Might be a “criminal” – at three years old. Can’t be too careful, you know. Pre-emptive arrests. Good way to assure “they” – people of color and their race-traitor friends – don’t get uppity.

Arizona is the last place I’d have figured the Civil War was still being played out since it was not a state then. I’m only surprised that the legislature has not proposed flying the stars and bars as a manifesto against the “loss” of white upper class privilege.

Many years ago Sinclair Lewis wrote “It Can’t Happen Here” about the insidious way in which fascism could worm its way into America. People took it seriously but still believed that could not REALLY happen. And yet, looking at all you have written, it may already have.

I will not forget that it was in Arizona that reporter Don Bolles was killed by a car bomb at his home in 1976 – a year not unlike this when we were hit with a wave of RW violence. I fear for the people trying to bring back law and order to Arizona. I will be horrified but not surprised should something of this type happen again.

YOU stay safe, javaz. Arizona has become a dangerous place to be for anyone with a heart, soul, and conscience.

» Posted By choicelady On February 21, 2010 @ 9:08 am

Night of The Living Reform

Don’t blame you for being wary, but even the Senate bill alone is not awful. I know that’s faint praise, but it would still have a lot of good stuff and would “do no harm” which is a huge consideration. But what I’m being told from Congressional staff in key offices and key committees is that OUR voices have made the PO a key component, and that the rest of the bill leans toward the House side. Much of it can be done through budget reconciliation with only 51 voites AND (I was told) it cannot be amended, so DeMint can’t screw with it.

» Posted By choicelady On February 20, 2010 @ 3:36 pm

Es-cat – I think WE had a little chat with him. Sen. Reid takes emails from every state in the union (says a lot about how seriously he takes his responsibility) so log onto his site and keep those messages coming!

http://reid.senate.gov/contact/

» Posted By choicelady On February 20, 2010 @ 3:34 pm

Well said, AdLib – great post! I especially like the “tan turning white” since that’d be worth paying money to see!

As a lobbyist (yes – I am. For the Good Guys and Gals, meaning us all here and around the nation) I have been briefed by Congressional staff that this is ON, it’s working, and what we all want should emerge. There will be low points. We cannot reform the hateful omission of legal immigrants (what part of taxpayers do we still fail to see?) but many programs such as the PO can and will be part of Reconciliation. I am VERY hopeful.

That said, we have to press on with raising our voices. We got Dianne Feinstein to sign on early in the renewal, and that probably proves that America is going Commie, but her phone calls are running 4 to 1 AGAINST reform and especially against the PO. So we need the Virtual March (faith community people are doing a Virtual Vigil in the same spirit) by keeping on contacting our Congress and Senate officials.

How often is too often? No such thing. Does someone do what we want? Call ’em again and thank them. Is there a minute nuance change in some aspect of the bill? New “ask”. Every single day we can call, write, or even visit the district offices if those are nearby.

The one thing that offsets Big Money is VOTES. We as constituents have real power over money! Democracy is very hard work, but what’s the alternative? Oh. Wait. We can SEE the alternative, and it’s a RW theocracy. With President Sarah.

I believe it’s well worth the effort to work for that democracy thing.

So keep on keepin’ on, Planateers. WE have the moxie, the info, the voice, the inclination, and probably the allies to make this work. Last count 119 Dems said no public option, they will NOT be re-elected. It’s not that Dems or even Independent will vote Republican. It’s that they won’t vote at ALL, and that let’s the wolf in the door.

Thank you so much, AdLib – this is just great. Not only can we keep most of our states Blue, we can turn Boehner white (whiter than he already is philosophically) as his face pales from total failure, and his Man Tan bottle fails him under the klieg lights.

As I said – that’s well worth seeing.

A big, virtual hug to you all. You lead the way!

» Posted By choicelady On February 20, 2010 @ 3:31 pm

The American Crash

I want to recycle this to respond to Cher on “one man’s terrorist is another man’s hero”.

If any of you have ever seen “The Battle of Algiers”, that issue is front and center. It opens with three Muslim women taking off their veils and robes, cutting their hair, putting on makeup, and sauntering outside to place bombs in milk bars and other public places. One woman, leaving her bomb, looks at the little boy near her – a blonde, French boy about 6 years old – and you can see the struggle she is having with the morality of this. She walks out, the bomb goes off, and probably the child is killed or at least maimed.

But then they show what the French did to the Algerians. They stopped all practice of Islam, tortured – hideously – the Muslim Algerina men, forbade people to even get married under shura law, and stripped them of every ounce of national or religious observance. The Muslim population was ghettoized in the Casbah, and they were virtual slaves to the French landholders.

What is right? My pacifist brother HATES the milk bar bombing and can find no justification. My gut is in turmoil becauase the UN would not intervene against France, and Algerians suffered a slow, daily, terror and death at the hands of the French. Coming so soon on the heels of WW II, the French genocidal policies were beyond tolerance. Their use of torture made the Gestapo look like choir boys.

Where is the line? IS there a bright line at all?

One thing I know beyond question is that every question embodies some moral relativism. It depends so much in whose shoes you are walking.

But back to my first long post (and thank you all for the kind words)that somewhere we have lost sight of victimhood. We have elevated our own inconveniences and even hard times into a kind of suffering that, from any objective viewpoint, is not suffering at all. Criminals and miscreants shift their punishment for crimes into a kind of persecution. Bullies justify their actions on the grounds that someone ‘dissed’ them or annoyed them or walked in front of them or something.

So while we may have real debates about Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRA, etc., what we need to do is stop seeing inconvenienced people or those who brought things upon themselves as “victims”.

I hope I did not already say this, but some years ago, an anti-abortion protester yelled at me that “pro-choice Christians” were being “persecuted”. In fact they were somewhat controlled by one of the few federal injunctions that mandated they keep their hands OFF the women (including people NOT going to clinics but their own physicians in a general medial building) and stay 15 feet away from clinc entrances. Over these pretty slim guidelines, the protesters were now rending garments and gnashing teeth because they had to mind their manners or face a fine.

So this angry protester ranted about the “persecution” and how they were ALL being “locked up” and “silenced”. So (because I have a very snotty streak sometimes) I asked him where he was right that moment. He thought I was nuts but answered he was on the sidewalk outside the medical building. And, I asked, what are you DOING? He snorted that he was handing out literature and ‘counseling’ women seeking abortions. And, I asked where was he going when he was done? He said, “Home”.

So much for incarceration, restraint, and muzzling.

We may not always agree on who has a justification for violence. But man – we sure can tell who does NOT. It ain’t that hard.

» Posted By choicelady On February 20, 2010 @ 9:04 pm

OK – the choicelady/churchlady says that churches get the same non-profit standard as your local food bank or women’s shelter or boys’ and girls’ club. No more.

If Stack wanted this status what the HELL did he do to earn it because that is the essence of the non-profit status – you give to the community. Churches are assumed to provide not just worship for anyone who walks in the door but charity to anyone who walks in the door. If churches rent space for Jazzercise time, for a business, for any profit-driven activity, guess what? They DO pay taxes on that income AND on the property they’ve leased for that purpose. Surprised? Well it’s true.

Non-profits may not take in money that they do NOT spend for “public good”. If they make a wad (those mega churches sometimes do) they have to return the money to service.

Now if you are making a profit that you can spend on trips to Aruba, and non-profits can’t, why do you get the same tax status as they? Where is the charity you’ve offered your community? How have you contributed to the public good as opposed to totally private gain? Where are your open doors instead of utterly private property?

As I write this, I’m getting nauseated. I’m so sick of these insane arguments that I constantly take seriously!!! Where is the LOGIC of a man making a PROFIT and doing nothing for anyone but himself deciding that he deserves to pay no taxes as non-profits do? Why is this even a consideration????? Why am I bothering to discuss this???? There is no SENSE in a thing he wrote, and someone died because of his idiocy and utter selfishness.

And that’s the bottom line. He’s a murderer. Period.

» Posted By choicelady On February 19, 2010 @ 5:54 pm

Hi Blues.

Consider the erosion of basics that occurs with a flat tax. Take 10% of $40,000 – it leaves you with only $36,000 for mortgage or rent, food, clothing, etc. Take 10% of $400,000 and you’re left with $360,000. It is not fair at all because you have the ability to cover all basics AND have disposable income at the higher levels, while you’ve eaten into the survival base of the lower income person or family.

The CA Budget Project (www.cbp.org) shows that even with a graduated tax, those in the bottom decile pay MORE as a percentage of their income overall than do the wealthy. A flat rate would make that much, much worse.

De Toqueville noted that in the 1830s that one man’s imposts were another man’s bondage.

We do not tax productive wealth. In businesses, we tax profit that is over and above productive wealth and goes for personal disposal.

With a flat tax, we would tax all income, so when you take IN less, you would be taxed on the productive wealth by which you pay for your survival costs as well as on any surplus. As you increase the wealth, a flat tax DECREASES in its impact on survival income.

That is anti-democratic.

If you start back with deductions, you tend toward larger deductions for the wealthy, smaller for the middle class.

To read more fully on this, try David Cay Johnston’s “Free Lunch” and Jacob Hacker’s “The Great Risk Shift”. They are eye-opening on the issue of how we indeed have redistributed wealth – UPWARD – from the middle and working class people to the rich, all through flattening the taxes and reducing obligations on those with the greatest incomes.

It is a myth that we tax productive wealth today. We do not. And I do not want to start doing that now!

» Posted By choicelady On February 19, 2010 @ 3:24 pm

Wow Kalima – that is very thought-provoking indeed! Creeeeepyyyy…

» Posted By choicelady On February 19, 2010 @ 11:01 am

Kalima – I believe you are correct. It’s so sad that people are angry about things that are not even happening to them!

» Posted By choicelady On February 19, 2010 @ 11:00 am

Hi AdLib – I agree at what people do not have on housing, income, jobs, health care, but that is thanks (odd word choice) to the private sector and, yes, their minions in government. At core, however, it is CORPORATE in nature.

But we have not lost the basic freedoms they rant about. Most of what they say is projection – “gonna take my guns” and all that. The Black Helicopter fears. But who has greater freedom of speech, assembly, petition, religion, and right to be weird than they?

So no, they have NOT lost what they claim is supposed to be on the chopping block from Obama and the Dems.

And Stack was hardly poor but furious he got caught for tax evasion. I’d just ask what is the difference between him and Al Capone on that issue? Wrong is wrong.

Accept your personal responsibility and stop killing people because you’re pissed that you got found out. You have no right to murder just because you’re angry!

» Posted By choicelady On February 19, 2010 @ 10:56 am

AdLib and all – I think this is the best question: how do we prevent it? On some other blog (that I now cannot find!) I asked the people hailing Stack as a hero because the government is so “evil” – what have you LOST as an American that you hate this nation and government?

I think we all have to ask the tea bag and other (including “progressives” with their own rants) – what do you NOT have? On a light note, when one of my cats is whining, I ask him or her, “What is it you want that you don’t have?” So far they’ve yet to answer, and neither have any of the RW or angry people. What IS it that they want but do not have?

Even in the last 8 years I have been aware that as an American, I am free. I still could denounce Bush with fair impunity, could walk freely, breathe the good air, love the beauty of this nation and its people, even the pre-tea bag folks, and know I could pretty much do whatever I chose. I don’t want for much.

OK – I am a sucker for HGTV and have what I call “kitchen envy”. Oohhh, yeaahhh – would LOVE some of those kitchens! But for most of my life I’ve been aware that I had everything I wanted even if it was not exactly as I’d envisoned it. My kitchen is not glossy but does get the job done.

We once were happy with “enough”. Now there is no such word. No such concept.

But seriously – to the raging anti-American terrorists of today: what DO you want you that you don’t have? Not what you fear – black helicopters and re-education camps. But what do YOU NOT HAVE NOW? And if you DO have problems with government – why? What role did your own bad choices play? Caught selling drugs? Why am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Cheated on your taxes and have to pay those plus penalties? Ummm – that made ME pay for YOUR services.

Tim McVeigh and the Nichols brothers believed they were “oppressed” because they had to have license plates and drivers’ licenses. As Molly Ivins noted – that’s merely an annoyance. An inconvenience. It’s not oppression. Have to put up with (fill in the blank type of person you hate)? Well – no one says you have to have them over for dinner. So you have to work with them. See them on the street. Sit in the same restaurant with them. So what? You’ll go home, and they aren’t coming over.

What IS it that they want that they don’t have? What IS it that they have “lost” under Obama that they had under Bush? How is the government taking away their rights? What rights? When? How?

I think if we all keep asking these questions – and insisting that the enraged stick to actual losses – that maybe, just maybe, we will start to slow this rampage down. It’s worth a try?

» Posted By choicelady On February 18, 2010 @ 11:11 pm

Amen, KQ! Years ago after the S&L debacle, I joined with a number of progressives to circulate a petition at a festival in an upstate, largely blue collar city asking that 25 cents per $100 of deposits over $100,000 be collected to re-fund the FSLIC protection for small account holders. Hardly anyone would sign because they all thought that even if they did not have that kind of money, someday soon they would. Insane!

A century ago, people of modest means understood that the rich were exploiting them. Now the rich feel exploited even though they have had the rest of us once again bearing all their risks. I realize Stack thought the rich got too many benefits, but he blamed the current administration, not the corporate gougers, for this turn of events. And overall he blamed the IRS not himself for the mess he’d made of his own life. So he thought it “fair” to kill people because he had money problems. And he thought himself some kind of avenger against those low-wage schnooks who put one foot in front of the other, paid THEIR taxes, and were trying to make ends meet on far less than he had. That’s terrorism. Manifesting your personal disgust through violence against the innocent. Enough already!

» Posted By choicelady On February 18, 2010 @ 10:33 pm

I know a pretty cool woman, Susan Pace Hamill, in Birmingham, AL who made a point that pertains to Stack and his actions. She led the movement, “Alabama Arise” to revise the outrageous tax inequities in that state whereby the poor pay the heaviest tax burdens, and the rich get off nearly scott free. She notes that America is a “low sacrifice society”. We don’t want to have to do anything to bear our own weight in this society. We want something for nothing, and the only things we focus on have nothing to do with ourselves and our responsibilties. We point fingers at gay rights and abortion and other people’s poverty or lives because we never then have to examine our own lives, our own selfishness, our own irresponsibilities.

Reagan started some of it with the “government is the problem” mantra. But once we descend into utter narcissism, we forget that taxes are the dues we pay for democracy. It’s what gets us good roads, schools, ports, harbors, airports,public safety, fire fighting, streetlights, stop lights, on and on. It’s how we preserve clean drinking water, air we can breathe, land we can work. It is a manifestation of our Common Good – the way we support those things we all need and use. It’s also how we look out after one another, especially in hard times.

If we want total individualism and thus no taxes, then we have to revert to what did not work. We also have to give up taking one red cent for our businesses, agriculture, and protection. We go back to paid-for fire departments so if my house catches fire and yours is threatened, we each have to call our individual fire department – if we’ve paid for it. Or we have our houses burn down since MY fire department cannot rescue YOUR house. We will have nothing but toll roads. Nothing at all. We will have to pay fees and tuition for our kids’ education at top rates rather than lower taxes. We will not have anything that is a public good – you want clean water? Don’t turn on the tap. Buy bottled water only or have your own cistern. Clean wholsome food? Good luck to ya.

Taxes give us the “stone soup” principle. Stone Soup: A town under siege had no food and was on the verge of starvation. An old lady hauled out a huge cauldron of water, put it on a fire and threw in a stone. As she stirred, neighbors asked what she was doing. “I’m making Stone Soup,” she said. “You can have some. But you know, you have only a couple of carrots, so if you throw those in, it will taste better. And you – you have an onion, and you have some barley, and you have a bit of meat. Toss it in for flavor.” So everyone put in what they had, and pretty soon the soup was made full of nutrition and flavor and enough for everyone to get what they needed – soup. That’s taxes. Stone soup.

We are not “overtaxed” at all. We are less taxed than any other industrial society. And we don’t get all they get, but we have a good nation, a good society, lots of freedoms, and no reasonable fear of government.

Mr. Stack made his own hell trying to have stone soup without putting in a carrot. He bought the Kool Aid – you can get without paying. That’s the Reagan, low-sacrifice principle. Make someone ELSE pay – the “taxes are for little people” belief of Leona Helmsley that has beset us all. Mr. Stack had money and cheated on his taxes. When he got caught, his problems began to escalate, but it was and is entirely of his own making.

So to show the “injustice” of the “system” rather than examining his own selfish assumptions, he tried to murder his wife and kid, he set a bomb to kill innocent people at the airport, and he crashed into a bunch of low-wage government employees apparently killing at least one person and terrorizing the others.

Mr. Stack is the perfect tea bag low-sacrifice person. It’s never about him. It’s about “them” whoever they may be. And he is less justified than even bin Laden because the government did nothing to him that he did not do to himself. At the end only one thing mattered to Stack. Himself. And his willingness to kill others to satisfy his own rage is the essence of terrorist action.

» Posted By choicelady On February 18, 2010 @ 10:06 pm

The very sad and complicated story of Mercy the Cat

Why do we care so little for kids that we don’t intervene when it might have helped? I feel so sad for the little kitty – my various cats have all been rescues, and all have been well worth it. But how horrid for the abuser to be who he was, too! What wiring snapped either at birth or because of some awful thing? I realize that not all abused people turn that abuse on others, but we do know that upwards of 80% of people in prison for violent crimes were themselves victims as children.

Years ago I had a kid in my daycamp group (I was the counselor) who, now, I think we’d call a sociopath. His home life was horrid – he was a foster kid, Black, forced to be Jewish when he wasn’t and did not care to be – raised by a mean, probably physically vicious foster “mother”. In those days we did nothing about such abuse. I have long wondered where he wound up. My heart just broke for him, but he scared me, too – he’d do mean things to other kids with an empty, glazed look in his eyes.

I think he just wanted to stop his own pain. I bet that was the case here as well. Why do we turn our backs on kids crying out for help? It mystifies me. We did not know anything about such things then (40 years ago) but even now we have kids hurt and dying in “care” – and do nothing.

As for the finger pointing haters who post things online about perps they don’t know – they are not all that different are they? I’d not want to get around them either. The need we have to point fingers and find fault is scary. It’s like the people who have no personal involvement in a crime who want to draw and quarter the perpetrator even before trial. And since we’ve released nearly 200 people from Death Row since the early 1980s, it’s clear our salivating desires for vengance don’t breed justice. So yeah – this is a deeply troubling story on many fronts. Mercy the Kitty, the abuser, the abuser’s abusers. So much rage, so little kindness.

» Posted By choicelady On February 18, 2010 @ 10:51 pm

Troll Busters!

It’s interesting that CArnegie, who for years subscribed to Social Darwinism, changed 180 degrees after the Johnstown flood. He was a member of the millionaire’s club at the top of the mountain the dam of which club was not maintained and gave way causing the horrific devastation in Johnstown. It may not be a coincidence that he built precisely the number of libraries as totaled the final death count from that horror. (This is official National Park Service info.)

The philanthropy of yore was partly to stop the anger from working people about the numbers of their own that were killed and maimed and impoverished by corporate capitalism.

The “liberal” corporate rich formed the National Civic Federation in 1901 to promote policies that would ease some of the harm they themselves caused with GOVERNMENT programs such as workers’ compensation. Cynically one can see that this was to stop lawsuits for harm done, but it did have an impact that was good. People were no longer forced to sue for compensation but got it as a matter of right. Other similar reforms were instituted state by state because people such as Gary, Carnegie, and others saw Debs as a real threat to their economic hegemony. One can say workers were bought off, but justice that works is still justice. Later more enlightened corporate capitalists such as Ford paid decent wages to stabilize his consumer base.

The way we were.

» Posted By choicelady On February 23, 2010 @ 9:59 am

New PlanetPOV Parody Video – Sarah Palin and Intelligent Denial

And the answer was…????

» Posted By choicelady On February 17, 2010 @ 1:21 am

Name That Activist Group – Part Two!

I love all of these. I don’t really have a dog in the fight, but I do have to say I like the Picket Fence image as well, even though that was not my vote.

I am SO tired of the anger around us, and somehow the picket fence is soothing. But my one question is whether that resonates for people who aren’t Beaver Cleaver? Do communities of color see that as anything but oppression – all us nice middle class white folks having the picket fences, then picking out pickets to whomp anyone else who dares enter our community? Mine is entirely a cultural bias (though when I did have a white picket fence, I took it down.) I’d like feedback from people who may see the picket fence as a pretty version of razor wire?

» Posted By choicelady On February 17, 2010 @ 6:22 pm

Evan Bayh to resign—Crisis or opportunity?

Hi – Cher – it’s deserved up to a point. The problem is that too many progressives blame Obama. Ezra Kline from the WaPo noted that he cannot do what the Congress will not, and the Congress needs to be the entity with the moxie to stand up for real people. Progressives we have watched make sweeping judgements against Obama rather than paring out the bad apples from the good.

I just heard that Obama and the WH are prepared to resume using more Executive Orders – the thing we CLAIMED we wanted to end. But what we really wanted is a President with balls who was simply on OUR side – one who used the imperial presidential powers for our values. Well, after a year, I guess I’m ready, and apparently so is Obama. I pretty much give up on civility which is what makes me admire him. We as a nation want decisive action even if it has to be via mechanisms we don’t like. So OK – gloves are off. I think we’ll make progress faster and better. Apparently there is a reconciled House/Senate health plan – and the Reeps are furious. They want NO plan so they can create the Republican one. Sorry. It looks as if the House and Senate are ready to ditch process and go for it however they must. I suspect the “summit” will point out that the Republicans got ALL FOUR of their wishes in this (that’s all they wanted – tort reform as if that mattered) so shut up already. Too late.

If Obama is taking off the gloves, I think I’m ready to accept it. I wish it were not so, but I can’t see any alternatives.

So GO for it. And with the jobs bill, finance reform, banking regulation, consumer rights, etc., etc., etc.

I give up on civility. Let the strong man rock out!

» Posted By choicelady On February 15, 2010 @ 7:49 pm

They just said on Olbermann that the Dems can pick a candidate via the party with the deadline in June. So if we can get progressives in Indiana and real liberals to coalesce, maybe there is still hope. The deadline for the 4500 signatures for the conventional mode is TOMORROW. So the party mechanism is what’s left. Who is in charge of the Indiana Democratic party – and where are my folks in the various unions???? Let’s get a real progressive with a strong spine in there!

» Posted By choicelady On February 15, 2010 @ 7:41 pm