Tag: Government

Across the board frustration at Washington, DC, will characterize this November’s elections.  The question on the minds of many is why, despite the promises to the contrary, nothing gets done and the situation gets worse and worse with every passing year.  To answer this question, one first needs to examine Washington culture in detail.  To begin, it is insular, frequently secretive, and suspicious of outsiders.  Capitol Hill dictates a more or less common mindset among everyone who lives here.  And, in all fairness, one really needs to get involved on the inside to totally understand its riddles.  I firmly believe that reform is possible, but, on the difficult matter of a solution, the analogy I always use is that of the Gordian Knot of Greek mythology.  This was an impossibly entwined knot that was eventually undone by a bold stroke of the sword, rather than through a probably hopeless desire to devote hour upon hour in the hopes of eventually untying it.    

On this Labor Day, the fullest definition of economic equality and fair wages is on my mind.  While on the subject, I’d like to pursue a related issue that has lately been front and center.  While we continue to debate the role of marriage and what it means to us today, I thought I’d contribute a different strain of discourse to the already deeply rutted road.  Most prevailing trains of thought opposing same-sex marriage tend to see it in only one of its many incarnations over the eons.  Opponents of marriage equality take a rose-colored glasses interpretation of an earlier era that probably never really existed.  Imagination can be deceptive.  The sacred institution was only as sacred as each individual couple regarded it.  These arguments presume that the impetus and motives of marriage were basically the same across the board and throughout the centuries.

Today Glenn Beck claims to be “Restoring Honor” …

Is it about “Restoring Honor”?    for whom?  for which slight?

Or is it about “Restoring Privilege to God’s enlightened few“?

Glenn Beck Confirms That Your Rights Come From God

Glynnis MacNicol — Mar 16, 2010

Glenn Beck:

I don’t know if you’ve read the Declaration of Independence but you don’t have the power to grant people rights. You don’t create them, you don’t enhance them. They are not yours…In case you missed it “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

Who the hell do you think you are Congress?  You are not God.

Or put more succinctly, as I just heard Glenn Beck say TODAY on FOX, in re-running of a previous show:

Glenn Beck:

“Government does NOT grant you Rights — God does” …

“If there is No God, that grants you Rights — Who grants you rights?”

I dunno.  Fox News?

This, directly below, as well as the continuing political? propaganda speak from a certain group that still wear the banner of a once political party, their media mouth and sponsor on 24/7 TV, their so called think tanks and those that want to leave the previous administration in the dust, after agreeing with everything it did, In Our Names, but now don’t want anyone  to think they’re associated with that eight years plus so they formed the so called TEA party or as many did even before that started calling themselves libertarians, Has Been Eating At My Craw!!

Summertime Blues: Senator Tom Coburn, M.D., Senator John McCain A u g u s t  2 0 1 0

100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues 74 page PDF, but there’s plenty of articles, by reliable sources, to read all about without downloading.

While it is important to point out the inconsistencies and lies that are the hallmark of most of our public institutions we also need to start with some firm foundations to future essays and comments. I feel one of the first things we need to face is that the situation we face today is no longer a political struggle between conservatives and liberals or even reactionaries and progressives. As has been brought out by several people here at DD the struggle is between criminal entities (most large corporations, big banks, traditional organized crime, the military (yes I believe much though not all of the military has become a criminal enterprise), the covert ops part of the intel agencies, the MSM (the worst of the lot), the federal government and many state and local governments. No, it is not a matter of “incompetence” that has brought us to this situation but of what I consider criminal behavior.

There are two aspects of criminal behavior. The first, obviously, is the breaking of laws on the books–well, in this country with more laws (I’m sure) than any entity that has ever existed, it is pretty easy for anyone to break the law but still even if you look at major statutes the fact is that major corporations and the elites escape the law while the poor do not. The Federal government now no longer even pretends to follow the law, for example, the Geneva Conventions and protocols are routinely ignored despite the fact that they are the law. Of course, laws against fraud were ignored during and after the financial crisis. Disappearance of trillions from DOD elicited no action and no response from the media, criminal fraud by contractors in Iraq almost completely ignored by any agencies and, generally, underreported in the MSM. The list can go on and on and this blog has at one time or another reported on nearly all of them. These aren’t arguments over policy but clear criminality that, in a healthy society, would have been prosecuted. This criminality and corruption has rapidly increased in recent years.

The second aspect of criminal behavior I would like to describe as follows:

The deliberate attempt by private interests to undermine public welfare, public spaces, public health and the future of the species for financial gain.

This aspect of criminality is far worse than simply breaking particular laws. It is about the deliberate destruction of society and government itself. I suggest to you that this has been the conscious and deliberate intention of most (not all) of the ruling elite for the past few decades but particularly since the stolen election of 2000. I believe their intention was then and is now the looting of the entire world and the destruction of American society and any other society for the purpose of instituting a New World Order based on a global imperial system on the macro-level and various modes of neofeudal social arrangements at the local level with most of the population either expendable or in a state of serfdom. This system is not in place yet and can be stopped but this is the agenda of most of the power players.

As has been made abundantly clear on this blog, the Obama administration is only cosmetically different than the previous administration. The differences are largely cultural rather than political. We can mostly agree here that we are no longer fooled by the Kabuki of Obama and his allies in Congress. Obama simply is beside the point.  

On June 8, Californians will vote on several referendums, in addition to primary races.  One of those referendums, Proposition 14 (aka the Top Two Primaries Act), could hugely change how those primary races are conducted, and it would definitely not be for the better.  As if to add insult to injury, but it could take down a public campaign financing measure along with it.

Prop 14 was put on the ballot through the backroom dealings of State Senator (not Lt. Gov.) Abel Moldonado, the very last holdout on the budget this year.  He used the budget crisis for his own profit and one of his demands was to put this measure on the ballot.  Now, his reckless action is being opposed by every political party in California and numerous electoral reform groups, groups ranging from the NAACP to the Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.

But big business wants this to pass because of the control it could give them over elections (explanation below the fold).  So your help is needed – $5, $10, $100 – whatever you can chip in to prevent California from descending further into a mess of broken government.

Have a friend that contacted me and in that e-mail she told me about a brainstorming meeting taking place just before this weekend and into, April 1-3 of the Millennial Veterans. One of the couples sons, an Afghanistan and Iraq war Veteran, he served in both theaters, is attending this gathering. This group of Millennials sounds an awful lot like what happened as to us boomer’s especially those of us after our service in the military and especially Vietnam. Matter of fact the whole movement, the Millennials, of this generational group are getting much more involved in many issues that seemed to have skipped over the couple of generations just previous to them at least for most in those generations. I’ve been watching them for a few years now. They’ve not only taken up the issues we oldsters worried about and lobbied to change, in government and in society, they’ve been expanding on them not only to fit these times but like the technology they’ve expanded the issues forward, and now some of them have not only served in War but have done so in Two occupations of choice and in more then one tour of duty.

Cross-posted at DailyKos.

At 11:30 yesterday morning on the corner of Greene St. and Washington Pl. I met Firefighter James M. Sorokac for the first time. I’d never met him before but being the keeper of “The Last Alarm” and a member of the of the FDNY ceremonial unit, his face was far too familiar to me.

In the shadow of the Asch Building he explained that the bell that is rang for the fallen dates back to a time when there was one bell at every NYC fire house. He told me the story of the four fives. When firehouses would communicate to each other across the city by ringing five times in a series of four the message that “a brother has fallen in the line of duty.”

Today that bell is rang once by a white gloved firefighter at funerals and memorial services.

Yesterday Firefighter James M. Sorokac rang that bell 146 times.