Again Too Much Nails It
Monday, May 26, 2014
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Our Soldiers, Dead at Our Hands
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| How will we remember those who died because of military-industrial-congressional greed? |
Memorial Day Remembrance
May 26, 2014. There'll be a lot of remembrance of dead soldiers this weekend. But there's not going to be any remembrance of an entire class of dead soldiers. Not that they didn't give their all or didn't place the country's needs before their own safety .
No, what got them killed were defective or badly designed weapons--airplanes which can't be flown safely--guns that jammed in combat--armor that didn't shield. No, what got them killed were the weapons given them to use in battle which were known to be defective, but whose defects were covered up by immoral contractors, corrupt military procurement officials, and congressional representatives eager to keep government dollars and contracts flowing to their constituent states.
You might think it odd that I, as a person who doesn't subscribe to the myth of military might, would complain about defective weapons for our soldiers. But all of us grieve at the deaths of our young men and women in the military whether we believe in or abjure the use of force between nations. Each is a tragic loss to the family of humankind.
Some will argue there will always be death in warfare. But when the needless death occurs because of military-industrial greed and pig-headed politics, the loss isn't just one of appropriate national grief. Rather we must respond with national outrage. That our young people are sent to the slaughter is horror enough. That they die at the hands of their fellow citizens is a double monstrosity.
In the link attached Dina Rasor, who has observed firsthand the greed and duplicity in the military procurement process for over three decades, raises the issue of the many who have died "at our own hands."
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Earning (and Trying to Live on) Minimum Wages in America Today, Part II
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| How 100% of the 47% breaks out |
When I was young and impressionable
My parents told me that politics was a rather simple matter: Republicans favored business and the rich and Democrats tried to help the "little guys" (us, I suspected). But voting was not so clear and simple. They had voted for FDR early on but had no regrets about liking "Ike." Then with JFK in 1960, of course, as Catholics, was there another choice?
When I was finally eligible to vote I unenthusiastically cast my lot for LBJ and a host of Democrats since. I had not given policy differences much thought until Clinton, who struck me as more of a Republican than a Democrat. The 2000 election (can we really call it an election?) of Bush over Gore raised my consciousness. Bush's presidency raised my hackles and I realized that all along I was radically progressive.
It took Romney's 47% speech to nail the truth of what my parents related so simply years earlier. Now that Republicans are on the stump trying to forge new relations with the poor, it's time to remember just who is in whose corner. I often sympathize with those who feel there is only one ruling class in America despite the alternation of two parties who participate in a charade of democracy to keep the powerless citizenry deluded.
The op-ed linked below by Charles M. Blow of the New York Times exposes the undercurrent in Republican thinking that reveals their latest pandering to the poor as an exercise in hypocrisy obvious to everyone but them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/opinion/blow-poverty-is-not-a-state-of-mind.html?_r=0
Monday, May 19, 2014
Why Don't We Stop the Rich From Getting Richer? Part II
| IMAGES OF INEQUALITY | |
The folks at Rolls-Royce will customize just about anything for you. This new Rolls came with a bespoke picnic basket, the Pursuitist notes, “complete with custom china, silver, and glassware based on the owners' request.” Other custom requests stand out a bit more. Rolls recently delivered a new $300,000 Wraith model painted to match the color of the new owner’s pale pink leather gloves. (from Too Much, May 12, 2014, Sam Pizzigatti)
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What Inequality?
Shills for the .01% will invariably raise the straw man that it would be totally unfair if everyone--regardless of talent, training, and effort--earned the same as everyone else. Should a bum working as a clerk in an all-night bodega make as much as an emergency room physician? Should a sewer cleaner make as much as a Nobel prize winning physicist? Should a cop make as much as a judge?
Without getting into that argument (since I can think of many instances where risks and responsibilities challenge the conventional wisdom) I'll grant that for the most part there certainly must be grades of income and corresponding grades of wealth accumulation.
I, as well as many other progressives, have no problem with wealth that is a product of hard work, exceptional talent, and fair competition. But when that wealth is really a product of inheritance, rigged markets, and tax favoritism, I think such aggrandizement runs counter to the American Dream of individual accomplishment.
Taylor Swift, for example, earned $39.7 million last year, the highest income of US singers. Maybe you think TS hung the moon or maybe you think she isn't any good at all. But compare her earnings to the top hedge fund earner last year, David Tepper, who made $3.5 billion and we begin to see a disparity which is so vast that to describe it as unequal borders on misrepresentation. Tepper's day brings $9.6 million; Swift's, $109 thousand.
Swift's daily bucks certainly look good to minimum wage workers (who wish they could make that in a year) and, if my slight knowledge of the celebrity scene is at all reliable, she has no children to support.
http://toomuchonline.org/weeklies2014/may122014.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/opinion/krugman-now-thats-rich.html?emc=edit_th_20140509&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=3991573
You Hate the Rich. This is Class Warfare.
Let's get one thing straight: the rich are God's children just like us and I don't hate them. Are they swindling us and ruining American democracy? Fer sure. But put away those guillotines (sp?). We're talking non-violent resistance--financial transaction taxes, equalizing tax rates for earned and unearned income, truly progressive taxation rates, fair inheritance taxes, and repeal of the carried interest loophole (and whole ranges of other unfair tax policies).
Believe me, the rich will be far better off once we restrain their unearned, unfair, unreal advantages. They might even get a little empathy for the lowest paid among us.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Not A Bug Splat, Drone Pilot
"How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile? How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?" She added, "When you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience." Heather Linebaugh, former drone intelligence analyst, writing in The Guardian, December 2013, quoted by Pratap Chatterjee, in Tomgram.com.
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| Soccer field-sized enlargement of an image of a girl orphaned by a drone strike stretched out over farmland because the images drone pilots see on their computer screens at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada aren't large enough or clear enough to distinguish who their victims really are. |
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| Ground level view of the image placed in the hope of instilling empathy for victims among the drone pilots. |
"After six years, Bryant couldn’t take it any more. He saw a therapist who diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder. This was a novel, even shocking development for an airman who had hardly ever come close to a battlefield. Bryant was suitably taken aback and, as a result, began speaking out against the system of killing he had been enmeshed in and what it does both to the killers and those killed. "Combat is combat. Killing is killing. This isn't a video game," he wrote in an angry tirade on Facebook. "How many of you have killed a group of people, watched as their bodies are picked up, watched the funeral, then killed them, too?" from Pratap Chatterjee, The True Costs of Remote Control War, Tomgram.Com.
There's nothing I can add. Read the links.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175842/tomgram%3A_pratap_chatterjee%2C_the_true_costs_of_remote_control_war/
Friday, May 2, 2014
Killing Net Neutrality--Your $s Up for Grabs
Dear family, friends, and colleagues,
Maybe you don't know net neutrality from my Aunt Zelda but if you'd like to get hip in less than 26 minutes pull this link:
http://billmoyers.com/video/
Bill Moyers, David Carr, and Susan Crawford lay the problem out clearly and succinctly. Mr Carr's speech is a little hesitant, but Ms Crawford's is crisp and brilliant.
The big boys are out to steal your internet. The link will explain why and how you can resist.
Maybe you don't know that lowly South Korea has internet speeds five times faster than our best at costs much less than we pay in the US or know why that is. You'll find out fast.
If you've bitched about cable costs over the years, believe me you ain't seen nothin' yet if the FCC gives neutrality away as it looks to be doing.
Miss the link? Here it is again:
http://billmoyers.com/video/
Love, Peace, and Hope,James Manista
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