Thursday, December 22, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
ELITES’ FINAL SOLUTION FOR USPS
If anyone can’t see by now that the financial elites - the bankers, the corporations and the barons of Wall Street - are now openly at war with the middle class and the poor, they’re simply blind.
The postal bosses will use Tea Party and Republican Congressmen to introduce legislation to unleash these Weapons of Mass Destruction against postal workers and retirees. If this legislation is successful, similar measures will quickly be rolled out against state and local government workers and eventually federal workers.
Any legal challenges to these attacks on workers will be quashed by a corrupt Supreme Court years from now.
Those who know American history, will recognize the pattern. Many of the same tactics were used to enslave black people and destroy the Indian nations. In each instance, the rich and powerful corrupted Congress and the courts to trample on the weak and powerless in mockery of the ideals expressed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
So what do we do about it?
A good start would be to recognize we really are at war with people and institutions out to crush the middle class. The Tea Party, Republicans, the Chambers of Commerce, people like the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and all the rest of the right wing shills in the media. These people really do mean to destroy us.
The second thing we need to do is not believe anything they say. Lies live on their tongues and fall from their mouths. This enemy will use every form of deceit to convince you that, far from being out to destroy you, they’re on your side, they’re trying to save you during these perilous economic times. They will ask you once more to trust them. Don’t. Not ever.
The last thing I suggest is that we fight back against them and never negotiate or compromise with them. That mistake has been made too often by everyone from President Obama to APWU President Cliff Guffey and our national officers. Our enemies are not reasonable. They seek nothing less than our complete destruction.
They’ll either destroy us or we’ll destroy them. It’s one or the other.
This isn’t a war any of us asked for. They control most of the financial, judicial and legislative weapons as well as police power and they have shown no reluctance to use them against us.
I don’t know what the odds are, for or against us. But if we’re going down, I say we go down fighting.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Gazette aligns itself with Chamber of Commerce spin on debt ceiling debacle
By Dan Sullivan-
Where do jobs come from? Not from the Mitchell Stapleys and the know-nothing propagandists of the right with their straw man arguments that the Gazette promotes as news.
We don't have a government spending crisis in this economy. For crying out loud, our capitalist economic system is based on spending! What we have is a jobs crisis. People can't spend if they don't have jobs.
So where are the jobs? Well, they're in Communist China and India and Vietnam where the capitalists and the Chamber of Commerce boosters sent them over the last 30 years to increase corporate and business profits. And the plan has worked for the rich. Their share of the wealth in America has grown enormously during this time while everyone else's has declined.
The economy grows when poor and middle class people have money to spend on goods and services. The only entity big enough to infuse money into the economy in amounts that make a difference is the federal government. Small business won't create jobs if there is no increase in demand for their goods and services. Corporations won't create jobs here when they can hire workers at slave wages overseas. There are certainly no patriots in corporate offices or on Wall Street. So to expect them to create jobs out of some patriotic impulse is worse than foolishness. What I would call treason they call best business practices.
The federal government needs to create a jobs program rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. We have roads that need repair, airports that need to be upgraded, water and sewage systems that are failing. We need to find new sources of energy and forms of transportation. It takes taxes and government spending to accomplish these goals, goals that actually promote economic growth and jobs in the country.
Most people forget that the Internet wasn't the creation of some Chamber of Commerce tax cutting scheme that miraculously created jobs. It was an outgrowth of government defense spending.
Henry Ford was wise enough to see that he could only sell the cars he was building on his assembly line if there was a large enough market for them. So he created the market by raising wages for his workers so they could buy the product he was paying them to produce.
We need to rebuild our infrastructure. We need good paying jobs in this country. And we can't count on business or the Chamber of Commerce to create them.
Our 30-year experiment with the politics of greed hasn't worked for anyone but the rich. It's time to tear a page from the New Deal playbook and get this country moving in the right direction again.
It's time for a government jobs program to rebuild this nation. It's time for regulations and legislation which require corporations and Wall Street to invest in America, not in Communist China.
Thirty-years of Chamber of Commerce and right wing brainwashing has left many Americans without the freedom of independent thought that is required to govern ourselves wisely. Which is why we're in the mess we find ourselves in today, where corporations conspire with Communist China to destroy American manufacturing jobs and undermine our economy while politicians aid and abet this folly and we sit idly by.
Americans need to think for themselves again and not blindly follow the ideology of the Chamber of Commerce and corporate interests. Or their promoters and apologists in the Kalamazoo Gazette editorial and advertising offices.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Trump wonders “Is the Pope Catholic?”
By Dan Sullivan
Having forced President Obama to cough up proof of his American citizenship, billionaire-businessman Donald Trump is now casting a suspicious gaze on the credentials of another world leader, Pope Benedict XVI.
“Is the Pope Catholic? I’d like to find out,” Trump said today.
“How much do we really know about this guy?” The Donald asked me during an exclusive interview this afternoon.
“We know he’s changed his name. His birth name was Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger. That doesn’t prove he’s not a Catholic. Lots of people change their names. But it does make you wonder,” The Donald said.
Trump says his suspicions were first aroused when he sent investigators to the Vatican last week, who reported the Pope’s baptismal and confirmation records were missing.
"Well I've been told very recently that the baptismal and confirmation certificates are missing," The Donald said. "I've been told they’re not there or they don’t exist. And if that's the case it's a big problem."
When asked about his sources, The Donald refused to say where he was getting his information from, saying the message, not the messenger is the real issue.
“You have to ask yourself, why doesn’t the guy just produce his baptismal certificate? Why doesn’t he release his confirmation certificate? That would settle the question once and for all.”
Trump denied his investigation into the Pope’s credentials to serve as Christ’s Vicar on Earth was just a stunt to promote his presidential aspirations or his reality TV show ‘The Celebrity Apprentice.’
He also denied any anti-Catholic bias in the investigation, saying, “I like the guy” and that he hopes the Pope can prove he’s Catholic and end all the controversy over the issue.
"I'd love to have him show his baptismal or confirmation certificate," Trump told a reporter. "And to be honest with you, I hope he can."
Having forced President Obama to cough up proof of his American citizenship, billionaire-businessman Donald Trump is now casting a suspicious gaze on the credentials of another world leader, Pope Benedict XVI.
“Is the Pope Catholic? I’d like to find out,” Trump said today.
“How much do we really know about this guy?” The Donald asked me during an exclusive interview this afternoon.
“We know he’s changed his name. His birth name was Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger. That doesn’t prove he’s not a Catholic. Lots of people change their names. But it does make you wonder,” The Donald said.
Trump says his suspicions were first aroused when he sent investigators to the Vatican last week, who reported the Pope’s baptismal and confirmation records were missing.
"Well I've been told very recently that the baptismal and confirmation certificates are missing," The Donald said. "I've been told they’re not there or they don’t exist. And if that's the case it's a big problem."
When asked about his sources, The Donald refused to say where he was getting his information from, saying the message, not the messenger is the real issue.
“You have to ask yourself, why doesn’t the guy just produce his baptismal certificate? Why doesn’t he release his confirmation certificate? That would settle the question once and for all.”
Trump denied his investigation into the Pope’s credentials to serve as Christ’s Vicar on Earth was just a stunt to promote his presidential aspirations or his reality TV show ‘The Celebrity Apprentice.’
He also denied any anti-Catholic bias in the investigation, saying, “I like the guy” and that he hopes the Pope can prove he’s Catholic and end all the controversy over the issue.
"I'd love to have him show his baptismal or confirmation certificate," Trump told a reporter. "And to be honest with you, I hope he can."
Friday, April 22, 2011
A MODEST PROPOSAL TO REDUCE THE DEFICIT
By Dan Sullivan
The current Republican proposal before Congress to eliminate Medicare has been denounced by Democrats as a heartless and cruel plan to rob the elderly of health care in their final years. And perhaps it is, at least in its current configuration. But with a minor amendment the plan imagined by the Christian Congressman from Wisconsin, Paul Ryan - what he calls “The Path to Prosperity” - could not only ease the deficit and the financial burden of the taxpayer but also provide Americans with decent health care, food and shelter in their old age as well.
The way to do this is quite simple. I propose we bring back the Poor House.
Government welfare systems such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have been in place for so long that most Americans take for granted the government’s involvement in these safety net programs. They forget that prior to the establishment of these programs there were old people that needed assistance. It would have been a cruel society that left the elderly to fend for themselves. So Poor Houses were established to provide food, shelter and health care for paupers and those too old or without the wherewithal to care for themselves.
These Poor Houses, or Work Houses as they were sometimes called, provided shelter and food while preserving the dignity of the residents by providing them work in return for the largesse they received. In America, they were often located on farms, where the paupers could raise their own food. And they were quite popular with the poor folk who’d fallen on hard times, as noted by Jack London, writing from London in 1902.
“The workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving crowds who are craving every day and night at their doors for food and shelter. All the charitable institutions have exhausted their means in trying to raise supplies of food for the famishing residents of the garrets and cellars of London lanes and alleys. The quarters of the Salvation Army in various parts of London are nightly besieged by hosts of the unemployed and the hungry for whom neither shelter nor the means of sustenance can be provided.”
The American Poor Houses never achieved the level of popularity of the English Poor Houses, but they were certainly more popular than some of the makeshift programs they replaced, one of which auctioned off the pauper seeking assistance to the lowest bidder, who obtained the services of the poor man or woman in return for food, shelter and medical care.
Of course no one, not even a Christian Congressman, would want to see us go back to the days of indentured servitude when we have the Poor House as a model of dignified, civilized care for the elderly.
To preserve his or her self-respect and dignity, the elderly accepted by the Poor House would be required to work, just as they were in the Poor Houses of old, but only to the extent their age and health allowed.
Besides providing assistance and dignity to the elderly, another advantage of the Poor House would be to ease the financial burden on the taxpayer. With Poor Houses providing shelter and food, serious cutbacks could be made to Social Security. Such savings could be returned to the taxpayer in the form of lower income and corporate taxes, or perhaps even used to help assure the long-term solvency of the program for those who really need it.
Make no mistake about it, any reestablishment of the Poor House system would still require some taxpayer and government assistance. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. The rich can’t forever be expected to support the poor. But such financial assistance would be dramatically less than what is spent today propping up the strained Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid systems.
“The Path to Prosperity” promised in the Republican budget is nothing more than a Dead End Street. Democrats have already stamped it Dead On Arrival in the Senate.
It’s time to head down the real “Path to Prosperity.” It’s time to bring back the Poor House.
The current Republican proposal before Congress to eliminate Medicare has been denounced by Democrats as a heartless and cruel plan to rob the elderly of health care in their final years. And perhaps it is, at least in its current configuration. But with a minor amendment the plan imagined by the Christian Congressman from Wisconsin, Paul Ryan - what he calls “The Path to Prosperity” - could not only ease the deficit and the financial burden of the taxpayer but also provide Americans with decent health care, food and shelter in their old age as well.
The way to do this is quite simple. I propose we bring back the Poor House.
Government welfare systems such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have been in place for so long that most Americans take for granted the government’s involvement in these safety net programs. They forget that prior to the establishment of these programs there were old people that needed assistance. It would have been a cruel society that left the elderly to fend for themselves. So Poor Houses were established to provide food, shelter and health care for paupers and those too old or without the wherewithal to care for themselves.
These Poor Houses, or Work Houses as they were sometimes called, provided shelter and food while preserving the dignity of the residents by providing them work in return for the largesse they received. In America, they were often located on farms, where the paupers could raise their own food. And they were quite popular with the poor folk who’d fallen on hard times, as noted by Jack London, writing from London in 1902.
“The workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving crowds who are craving every day and night at their doors for food and shelter. All the charitable institutions have exhausted their means in trying to raise supplies of food for the famishing residents of the garrets and cellars of London lanes and alleys. The quarters of the Salvation Army in various parts of London are nightly besieged by hosts of the unemployed and the hungry for whom neither shelter nor the means of sustenance can be provided.”
The American Poor Houses never achieved the level of popularity of the English Poor Houses, but they were certainly more popular than some of the makeshift programs they replaced, one of which auctioned off the pauper seeking assistance to the lowest bidder, who obtained the services of the poor man or woman in return for food, shelter and medical care.
Of course no one, not even a Christian Congressman, would want to see us go back to the days of indentured servitude when we have the Poor House as a model of dignified, civilized care for the elderly.
To preserve his or her self-respect and dignity, the elderly accepted by the Poor House would be required to work, just as they were in the Poor Houses of old, but only to the extent their age and health allowed.
Besides providing assistance and dignity to the elderly, another advantage of the Poor House would be to ease the financial burden on the taxpayer. With Poor Houses providing shelter and food, serious cutbacks could be made to Social Security. Such savings could be returned to the taxpayer in the form of lower income and corporate taxes, or perhaps even used to help assure the long-term solvency of the program for those who really need it.
Make no mistake about it, any reestablishment of the Poor House system would still require some taxpayer and government assistance. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. The rich can’t forever be expected to support the poor. But such financial assistance would be dramatically less than what is spent today propping up the strained Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid systems.
“The Path to Prosperity” promised in the Republican budget is nothing more than a Dead End Street. Democrats have already stamped it Dead On Arrival in the Senate.
It’s time to head down the real “Path to Prosperity.” It’s time to bring back the Poor House.
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