"personal attacks on people who serve in office, from either party, as a way of life, "
So what do you think of Jesse Ventura, Bill?
And look at the personal vendictive a Dennis and Naradar. When just a few posts earlier you said:
"Maybe if everyone stopped demonizing everyone else, from both sides of the political spectrum, we could once again be a country that is the envy of other nations."
I also don't care for Naradar, who came to this country to raise a family and experience the "American Dream", to use an oft-times overused colloquialism?
Fold - your mother should have used a sharper coat hanger.
What the hell is the difference between my situation and yours cocksucker ? Your ancestors came here perhaps a couple of centuries earlier. More time for them to exploit and abuse the underprivelaged in this nation. Selecting the path of least resistance is a human trait - I suspect you would not be aware of that since I question if an imbecile like you can be human. The much ballyhood American Dream is nothing more than folks toughened by circumstance elsewhere doing well among the softies in the US.
Yet all he does is tear America and ALL of it's institutions and people a new asshole, daily.
When the US achieves perfection, I will desist. Till then the excrement coagulating inside in the form of excesses needs to be purged by anal orifices - which I can drill. If you are sensitive go to a pussy Forum and exchange kisses.
. I find that offensive, because I served this country in uniform, and to think I did it for the likes of those two assholes
why do you need this uniform crap to constantly reenforce your manhood? I have seen Nam vets who were essentially vegetables due to their experiences. Those are the guys I have empathy and sympathy for. As for you Fold - I pay you and your progeny to go fight my wars and die protecting me. I do not want to die and the enemy is still there. So I need mercernaries like you to defend and protect me and my family. Your reward is your compensation - and even there you are grossly overpaid. And I can buy your kind by the bushels.
Naradar wrote: What the hell is the difference between my situation and yours cocksucker ? Your ancestors came here perhaps a couple of centuries earlier. More time for them to exploit and abuse the underprivelaged in this nation.
fold's ancestors didn't exploit the the underprivileged, they WERE the underprivileged! With fold as a descendant could they have been anything else? Did you come here to exploit the underprivileged?
....I pay you and your progeny to go fight my wars and die protecting me. I do not want to die and the enemy is still there. So I need mercernaries like you to defend and protect me and my family. Your reward is your compensation - and even there you are grossly overpaid. And I can buy your kind by the bushels.
You can take the boy out of the caste system, but you can't take the caste system out of the boy.
The unemployment rate has "surprised the experts" and shot up to its highest rate in nearly nine years -- 6%.
Please take time off from your posting, or weekend relaxation, to e-mail your elected representatives to complain about their irresponsibility in not extending jobless benefits, to date.
Tell them that this new spike upward is compelling reason to move in American working families' behalf, quickly, without any further bipartisan bickering and resulting inaction.
Jack told me about how the Unemployed Councils would press their demands for federal relief in street demonstrations during the Great Depression.
Led by Communists and other socialist radicals, they traveled the country, in feeder marches destined for Washington, passing through community after community, speaking to the desperate needs of American millions without work or hope.
They demanded what would later be embodied as Social Security in FDR's New Deal.
Plus jobless benefits.
Public works.
Even school lunch and milk programs.
Often hostile rightwingers and the police would physically attack these "Reds" whose devotion to economic justice would succeed in saving our destitute masses from capitalism's cruel failure.
When the reactionaries attacked, Jack had a special task to perform.
He'd pulled the advancing police horses' legs out from under them, preventing the milling throngs from being trampled.
---
But not all authorities were opposed to the Hunger Marchers.
In Ironwood, MI, local police and firemen were prepared to turn high pressure hoses on the local miners, timberworkers and farmers that the town's Communist Party membership had brought into the street.
But a phone call was placed to the county sheriff, in Bessemer, six miles distant.
The sheriff and several of his deputies sped to Ironwood in their cars.
In a confrontation between two armed agencies of the law, the sheriff and his men sternly informed the Ironwood authorities that there would be no attack on the region's jobless.
Their rally went on, unhindered.
---
In the past few months we've seen the Marxist Workers World Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party (US) build two huge coalitions of Americans opposed to a prospective war with Iraq. In October, they put half a million citizens -- from all walks of life and from a broad diversity of political opinion -- into our cities' streets. Their skillful organizing is continuing.
Similar genuinely leftwing (as opposed to Democratic Party "liberal") organizing is already underway relative to our economic breakdown and resulting, spreading joblessness.
A potential for explosive social unrest exists.
Do we have sense enough to grant concessions and reforms to co-opt the influence these groups will otherwise have in a country destabilized by the guns-before-butter consequences of foolhardy and inept Bush rule?
This past week saw the release of study findings from a Pew survey on international opinion regarding the U.S. and its policies.
This most extensive and comprehensive poll ever undertaken, conducted in many countries, found dramatic decline in our nation's standing in global eyes.
Anti-Americanism is rampant around the planet, rather than being a minority phenomenon.
In preparing to present the study to the White House for assessment, a poll official was quoted in our media as saying that "few Americans understand" how deeply the U.S. is looked upon in disfavor around the world, and for what reasons.
So...what's likely to happen next?
Scenario:
UN inspectors find no compelling evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
Bush maintains it's just because Saddam has "cleverly hidden them" and attacks regardless, just as warhawk Richard Perle blatantly admitted while in Britain that the U.S. would do all along.
Rather than face decimation in the open desert, Iraqi troops -- and ordinary patriots resisting unequivocal aggression -- retreat to Baghdad and other major cities, which are then attacked with everything in our abundant arsenal.
Bombs and missiles rain death on the Iraqi capital, which has a population equivalent to that of Los Angeles.
Civilian casualties will be staggeringly high, constituting a war crime of hideous dimensions, which (despite our censorship) will be sensationally reported throughout the world.
Justifiably enraged demonstrators will fill streets of cities on every continent. (There's already been a protest by numerous individuals from several nationalities in Antarctica!) The currently very tenuous and qualified "support" for war within the U.S. will melt like ice cubes in the August sun.
The resulting tumult will have far-reaching negative impact on U.S. interests and prestige. The stock market and economy will take punishing body blows.
The presently pervasive view that Washington's true motives are based on oil, hegemony, and imperialist penetration will become an article of oracular faith -- everywhere.
Objective debacle will become more complete and devastating the more successful our military is in its brutally bloody goal.
There'll be more hate-filled new militants and would-be terrorists waiting to join al-Qaida than there were ticket buyers standing in line at all of the movie houses in America back when The Exorcist premiered.
There's just one thing that can prevent all this from coming to pass.
And that's YOUR opposition to this impending folly finally being loudly voiced.
Yes, YOU.
All of you who've dared not separate 9/11 from its increasingly misdirected -- no, hijacked -- "response" ever since...who've consequently allowed a brigand band of rightwing extremists to make a mockery of U.S. values and ideals.
And who will clearly be complicit in this nation's very definite "downfall" if you don't, at last, break your silence.
All it takes is a simple statement:
"This is wrong. I won't support it any longer."
Accompanied by a public expression of your aroused conscience, audible to Congress and others.
Nothing less than our country's place in history is at stake.
Don't let false pride and misapplied patriotism lead you to a wrong choice.
Please take time off from your posting, or weekend relaxation, to e-mail your elected representatives to complain about their irresponsibility in not extending jobless benefits, to date.
What, a YEAR isn't enough?
Good God, if you can't find a job in a year, more unemployment benefits isn't going to help you.
Actually it's longer than a year. It's extended benefits that they refused to extend further. This is something separate from regular unemployment benefits.
"Please take time off from your posting, or weekend relaxation, to e-mail your elected representatives to complain about their irresponsibility in not extending jobless benefits, to date."
To what date? Retirement? Go back to work, a year off is plenty! Weekend relaxation? Sorry to disapoint you, but I am working this weekend. THAT is the reason why I EARN a near 6 figure income.
"Tell them that this new spike upward is compelling reason to move in American working families' behalf, quickly, without any further bipartisan bickering and resulting inaction."
I agree, Dennis. Act on American WORKING families behalf and cut the cord before they become MORE dependent on the Government to bail them out! I would love to have the year off too but I need to keep working to pay taxes for these poor WORKING families.
Then send them an e-mail cheering their decision not to increase the extension.
In fact, why don't you urge them to cut it back even further?
It only takes a few minutes. I bet you could find time.
Boast about how much money you make, too. I'm sure they'd be interested. This is really about the time of year when poor people should have their nose rubbed in their poverty. It builds character.
The Strib Letters to the Editor Column had a response to a recent column by a professor named Dan Malotky. I didn't read the original column, but it appears he turned the conservative complaint that universities were front loaded with liberal back at them.
But he posed the question: Who's to blame for that?
He must have said something to the extent that it doesn't appear that conservatives are not interested in teaching college. Maybe not interested in teaching much at all.
If that's the case, Malotky contended, what does it say about conservatives? It appears he chided the critics of university education, saying, if conservatives were truly interested in the pursuit of ideas and learning, there'd be more of them on campus.
Maybe there isn't a bias problem, maybe it's an interest problem. If there are more liberals on campus and in the schools, maybe it's because SOMEONE has to do that work.
During the Reagan recession of '82, hundreds if not thousands of people here in the Northland were jobless for extended periods.
Same across the country.
I'm talking time frames of often well over a year.
Despite constant looking, it personally took me eleven months to find anything, and that job was the dregs -- lousy pay in a rapaciously exploitative, sped-up environment.
At certain times of the day, DTA buses were commonly filled with down-and-out souls destined to sell their plasma at the blood center, for the $10 doing so would provide.
A friend of mine "lived" in a wooden packing crate down at the United Van Lines lot by the High Bridge.
Pitied be those insensitive, self-absorbed individuals who'll accede to massive tax outlays for corporate welfare and unbridled militarism -- but who'll balk at helping their fellow citizens who become jobless, and all too often homeless, through no fault of their own.
May your personal wealth (largely derived via economic injustice) safely cushion you from their fate.
Here's hoping your "house" never becomes an icy box hardly bigger than a coffin.
The buzz around the resignations of O'Neill and Lindsey indicate that the White House wanted them both out of their jobs, yesterday.
The New York Times analysis of the shakeup contends that even with the mid-term elections that went his way, Bush is concerned about the political implications of the economy.
"In ushering the leaders of his economic team out the door, Mr. Bush was making a deliberately dramatic if messily orchestrated statement that he now intends to focus on the issues that are closest to home for most Americans even as he leads the nation toward a showdown with Iraq," a Times analysis piece from Richard Stevenson said.
I can't help but wonder how a move like this by Clinton would have been taken. It seemed that every rift within his adminstration was seen by Clinton critics as more evidence of how Bill and Hillary chewed people up and spit them out. But I digress.
This Bush shaekup is being seen as about as ham fisted as it gets. It's probably fitting for O'Neill. I saw on C-Span this morning a story that O'Neill's diplomatic skills could use some work. Leaders in South America were happy that he's gone. He'd done some particularly paternalistic lecturing to countries like Argentina. He called aid to Russia "crazy."
There's probably enought conservatives who wanted O'Neill out after he traveled around Africa with Bono.
"Maybe there isn't a bias problem, maybe it's an interest problem. If there are more liberals on campus and in the schools, maybe it's because SOMEONE has to do that work."
I agree. Maybe there isn't a bias problem, maybe it's an interest problem. If there are so many liberal voters, why are the conservatives in power? Maybe it's because SOMEONE has to do that work.
"May your personal wealth (largely derived via economic injustice) safely cushion you from their fate."
I started my adult life with nothing but debt and a kid on the way. Nothing was given to me, I earned it. I was 17 (yes, I said 17!) and making about $24,000 a year defending your freedom to insult me while in the armed forces. Now, I am 30 and making about $80,000 a year by WORKING. I don't make Enron stock deals, I make electricity for people to power their homes. I stepped on noone's back. There are jobs out there, find them. I did.
The perpetual whine of all the conservatives. The perennial way in which they anoint themselves with a halo and feel smug and superior and above the general riffraff.
If you live in the USA, the system gives a lot to you. The potential exists for all to exploit.
Just having such a system gives folks here an advantage. Those who cannot eke out a decent life in this country must be really the victims or extreme hardship beyond their control or charlatans.
Folks in 3rd world countries do not have such a system. Hence they flock here to our shores.
Once again rightwingers are looking at an issue of vital concern to American workers through the distorted prism of their great prejudice.
First off, there are two very distinct kinds of unemployment.
There's the isolated, almost random joblessness that results when someone is either fired or gets layed off -- in an otherwise healthy economy.
Unemployment of this sort befalls virtually all of us at one time or another in our lives.
Generally, it doesn't last long, as alternative jobs are readily available.
What we're addressing in our posts, however, is the mass unemployment stemming from hard economic times. In this circumstance, people can and do go without jobs for long periods of time, through no fault of their own. The reasons are both obvious and not so evident.
It's a myth that there are jobs enough for everyone. Even in the most prosperous periods, capitalism will have an innate and irreducible unemployment rate of somewhere around 4%, which translates into millions of people being without work, simply because inherent flaws in the system make it unavailable.
But let's look at what typically happens when someone loses their job in a sour economy.
The victim's first instinct is to seek a new job of equal pay and benefit status. This is understandable, since these folks have developed a lifestyle which requires a certain level of income to sustain. Bills have to be met, which can't be done with work that pays significantly less than what they've been used to.
Thus they first seek jobs in their accustomed realm. But the grim reality of recessions is that they hit particular sectors with uniform savagery. Many are the unemployed who've spent months trying to get work similar to what they lost.
Then a frightening prospect dawns on them:
"Maybe I'll have to take anything I can get just to survive."
That daunting possibility comes with nightmarish visions of a dramatically reduced quality of life, complete with foreclosed homes, repossessed cars, boats, etc.
Then, as they compete for such jobs, they find that they're up against an army of jobless who want -- need -- the same positions.
I read recently of one bartender's opening in Seattle. 300 unemployed souls applied. What happened to the 299 who weren't chosen, and the corresponding numbers who desperately hope to land other very limited openings?
Finally, let's disabuse ourselves of the pernicous myth that the jobless:
a) bring on their plight themselves and
b) just lazily chisel the taxpayer for handouts.
Precious few workers have their hands anywhere near the levers of politio-economic decision making. Their lives and livelihoods are disposable pawns in societal hierarchs' power and profit games.
And, once unemployed -- often for the most callous, corporate, bottom-line reasons -- they're required by law to document their searches for work, on a weekly basis. If a jobless individual doesn't comply with reporting regulations, their unemployment insurance is cut off.
Furthermore, being helplessly unemployed is a scary and degrading thing. Almost everyone wants to escape that plight as soon as they can.
I've posted in the past about how humilitaing it was to me, as a young boy, living in a one-industry town devastated by iron mine closures, to go into our pantry and bring out big, silvery USDA surplus food cans for Mom to make "mystery meat" suppers -- our only substantial meal of the day.
Please...
Unless you've walked a mile in their shoes, don't come onto the Internet to display your uninformed bias and heartless cruelty by besmirching the jobless.
As the Great Depression so staggeringly proved, even the wealthy of one day can become "hobos" the next when that camel's back-breaking straw hits an economy that's maxed out by contradictions and injustices.
You know it is a real shame when someone who goes out and works their butt off for money and a good life are demonized. I guess it is a lot easier to sit back, do nothing and wait for the federal government to come in confiscate the money from true hard workers and give it to you for nothing.
CSC good for you and be proud of what you have accomplished!
Quit being a sanctimonious dweeb.
Why don't you quit being a self-rightous, pompous ass.
Nobody works their butt off more, or harder, than the little guy who is forced to toil long hours of overtime, at killingly sped-up rates.
The ones who have bosses who pay them poorly and provide essentially no benefits.
And who'll callously close up shop and run away to Asia rather than offer their employees -- the source of all "their" wealth -- a fair, just return for the tremendous value their sweat creates.
If you aren't championing decent pay, security, and safety for America's backbone (its wage-earning majority), then you're a part of their systematic abuse.
I have walked in those shoes. The military kicked me out with one day notice and left me with -$6,000. I was let go after 6 years because weight standards were lowered and I couldn't hang anymore. They took back my re-enlistment bonus at discharge and said thanks for the 6 years, here's a bill for $6000 you owe us even though you don't have a job. I collected unemployment for 3 months while looking for a job to feed my wife and 3 kids. Not once, during that time did I ask the government for help, in fact, they were the reason I was in the spot I was in. While unemployed I VOLUNTEERED down at the school my son was attending kindergarten in, helping the teacher and reading stories to the little tykes. After 3 months of scraping by and working with creditors, I was hired to work back here in Minnesota where I maintained my legal residence while in the service. I repaid the government all the money I owed them after a few months, I was out from under the clutches of the creditors after about the first 18 months. I worked my ass off and scraped by to make ends meet for quite a while. Call me self-righteous if you will, but don't tell me I haven't walked in those shoes. You have no idea what I'm all about.
And who'll callously close up shop and run away to Asia rather than offer their employees -- the source of all "their" wealth -- a fair, just return for the tremendous value their sweat creates.
Dennis, American companies can only afford to pay so many clerks $82,000 a year before they're forced to pack up and move to Asia. Maybe you should tell your union brothers to quite being so greedy.
"US home foreclosures hit highest level in 30 years"
"US manufacturing continues to decline: thousands more layoffs"
What this means, in stark human terms, is that a spreading multitude of our fellow citizens are faced with life emergencies of the most devastating and frightening kind.
Their plight clearly isn't their fault, but the fault of the misapplied politics and economy of those in power.
Victimized by social irresponsibility rooted in selfishness, conservatives are saying they should be further victimized by being forced to fend entirely for themselves.
Or, perhaps, make use of private charity.
But, as folks here at the Damiano Center and The Solid Rock Mission will sadly tell you, they've been unable to keep up with growing demand for a long while -- with more families joining individuals seeking meals or a roof over their heads.
The Great Depression proved the inadequacy of charity in dealing with wholesale economic breakdown.
Government has to act.
No enlightened society worthy of perpetuation will simply "shoo away" its suffering jobless.
Every great, edifying philosophy of human history -- whether religious or secular -- morally instructs us to be our brothers' keeper.
Not a "keeper in poverty".
The wealth of America's rich is chiefly derived from proper wages and benefits that were never provided, over an extended period, involving both domestic and international labor relations.
Especially when they need some fair payback in time of personal and family crisis, workers ought to get a small portion of that ill-gotten profit returned to ward off hunger and homelessness.
Not with great fuss and resistance, but as an ethical duty.
Instead, all too often, they face exactly what's been seen here.
A smug, supremacist portrayal as being lazy lowlifes.
There's no way that placing private greed above people's need can be twisted to seem right.
In closing, since Pearl Harbor has been raised, please remember that a disproportionate number of those down and out on our mean streets are veterans.
They deserve far better than what they're coldly enduring.
Join the union-led movement for fair, international labor standards that would raise world workers' minimum pay and benefit conditions to a just level.
That way, business parasites would have nowhere to run away to to get rich from others' grossly undercompensated toil.
They'd have to really, finally become the Christians they only are in imagination today.
This little Dairy Queen. The walls decorated with plaques of all-white T-ball teams. An employee named Miss Carol -- hired back before the world changed -- wears a "Jesus Cares" pin on her uniform while her Muslim supervisor cooks his food in a crock pot separate from DQ food. The franchise owner, an Indian, swings by in his Porsche to check on receipts.
Where in the world is this happening??
The cradle of the civil rights movement, Atlanta represents the two-tone world of the past that is now giving way to a new society. Between 1990 and 2000, more than 256,000 foreign-born people arrived here.
The path of the immigrant of the 21st century
i Half the crew is Indian or Pakistani. In their blue polo shirts, they work as if each sale brings a handsome commission instead of low wages in the grubby trenches of the American economy.
The humble beginnings
Rizwan Momin arrived in Atlanta in 1985 from the Indian state of Gujarat. He had $310 in his pocket. His uncle had just purchased a sagging, white-owned Dairy Queen in a black neighborhood in Atlanta. Riz went to work for his uncle, mopping, sweeping, saving, scheming, wearing $3 shirts from K-Mart, sleeping on the floor, working day and night at the DQ except when he went to his second job at a laminations factory on Buford Highway, where he tended the boiler.
---and later
Seventeen years later, Riz owns nine Dairy Queens in the Atlanta metro area. He's one of the largest franchisees in the Southeast. Drives the Porsche on some days, the Infiniti SUV on others, Indian music blasting from the Bose speakers in the wood-grain console.
Indians now own 60 of the 208 Dairy Queens in Georgia. Half of Riz's workforce is Indian. "Forget the white kids with the studs in the tongue," Riz says. "Indians are gonna work for you. At the beginning, they work for minimum wage. Then little raise, little raise, slowly, slowly. Everyone live together; they are saving money, six people in household working, they bank 80 percent of their money and use 20 percent for expenses. They don't drink, no clubs, no fancy clothes. Suddenly, they have $60,000 in the bank. Then they will buy the Subway or the Blimpie."
Good story. Read more about the second geenration becomes Americanized.
Is this any different from the Irish, German, Sacndinavian immigrants of yesteryear. Fold’s ancestors and THX’s ancestors perhaps followed a similar but distinct move to the US.
So the moral of the story is: work hard, don't expect the government to bail you out, and you will be rewarded for your hard labor. Isn't America wonderful!
"A former kindergarten teacher who has organized a 600-strong militia in Arizona will station 50 armed militia members on public land this weekend to "protect their country" against an invasion of illegal aliens, warning federal authorities — including President Bush — not to interfere."
BTW: The guy's now a newspaper owner. Maybe this is the change in the media that conservatives are hoping for.
The Border Patrol is undermanned and the INS is too busy holding lotteries for visas. If the government won't protect the people, it shouldn't be surprised if the people protect themselves.
Thanks Muskwa, I feel the same about you. It's good to see ya'.
"personal attacks on people who serve in office, from either party, as a way of life, "
So what do you think of Jesse Ventura, Bill?
And look at the personal vendictive a Dennis and Naradar. When just a few posts earlier you said:
"Maybe if everyone stopped demonizing everyone else, from both sides of the political spectrum, we could once again be a country that is the envy of other nations."
I also don't care for Naradar, who came to this country to raise a family and experience the "American Dream", to use an oft-times overused colloquialism?
Fold - your mother should have used a sharper coat hanger.
What the hell is the difference between my situation and yours cocksucker ? Your ancestors came here perhaps a couple of centuries earlier. More time for them to exploit and abuse the underprivelaged in this nation. Selecting the path of least resistance is a human trait - I suspect you would not be aware of that since I question if an imbecile like you can be human. The much ballyhood American Dream is nothing more than folks toughened by circumstance elsewhere doing well among the softies in the US.
Yet all he does is tear America and ALL of it's institutions and people a new asshole, daily.
When the US achieves perfection, I will desist. Till then the excrement coagulating inside in the form of excesses needs to be purged by anal orifices - which I can drill. If you are sensitive go to a pussy Forum and exchange kisses.
. I find that offensive, because I served this country in uniform, and to think I did it for the likes of those two assholes
why do you need this uniform crap to constantly reenforce your manhood? I have seen Nam vets who were essentially vegetables due to their experiences. Those are the guys I have empathy and sympathy for. As for you Fold - I pay you and your progeny to go fight my wars and die protecting me. I do not want to die and the enemy is still there. So I need mercernaries like you to defend and protect me and my family. Your reward is your compensation - and even there you are grossly overpaid. And I can buy your kind by the bushels.
Naradar wrote: What the hell is the difference between my situation and yours cocksucker ? Your ancestors came here perhaps a couple of centuries earlier. More time for them to exploit and abuse the underprivelaged in this nation.
fold's ancestors didn't exploit the the underprivileged, they WERE the underprivileged! With fold as a descendant could they have been anything else? Did you come here to exploit the underprivileged?
Did you come here to exploit the underprivileged?
Here's your answer:
....I pay you and your progeny to go fight my wars and die protecting me. I do not want to die and the enemy is still there. So I need mercernaries like you to defend and protect me and my family. Your reward is your compensation - and even there you are grossly overpaid. And I can buy your kind by the bushels.
You can take the boy out of the caste system, but you can't take the caste system out of the boy.
The unemployment rate has "surprised the experts" and shot up to its
highest rate in nearly nine years -- 6%.
Please take time off from your posting, or weekend relaxation, to
e-mail your elected representatives to complain about their irresponsibility in not extending jobless benefits, to date.
Tell them that this new spike upward is compelling reason to move
in American working families' behalf, quickly, without any further
bipartisan bickering and resulting inaction.
Thank you.
Where do you think those benefits come from, Rahkonen?
Jack told me about how the Unemployed Councils would press their demands for federal relief in street demonstrations during the Great Depression.
Led by Communists and other socialist radicals, they traveled the country, in feeder marches destined for Washington, passing through community after community, speaking to the desperate needs of American millions without work or hope.
They demanded what would later be embodied as Social Security in FDR's New Deal.
Plus jobless benefits.
Public works.
Even school lunch and milk programs.
Often hostile rightwingers and the police would physically attack these "Reds" whose devotion to economic justice would succeed in saving our destitute masses from capitalism's cruel failure.
When the reactionaries attacked, Jack had a special task to perform.
He'd pulled the advancing police horses' legs out from under them, preventing the milling throngs from being trampled.
---
But not all authorities were opposed to the Hunger Marchers.
In Ironwood, MI, local police and firemen were prepared to turn high pressure hoses on the local miners, timberworkers and farmers that the town's Communist Party membership had brought into the street.
But a phone call was placed to the county sheriff, in Bessemer, six miles distant.
The sheriff and several of his deputies sped to Ironwood in their cars.
In a confrontation between two armed agencies of the law, the sheriff and his men sternly informed the Ironwood authorities that there would be no attack on the region's jobless.
Their rally went on, unhindered.
---
In the past few months we've seen the Marxist Workers World Party
and the Revolutionary Communist Party (US) build two huge coalitions
of Americans opposed to a prospective war with Iraq. In October, they put half a million citizens -- from all walks of life and from
a broad diversity of political opinion -- into our cities' streets.
Their skillful organizing is continuing.
Similar genuinely leftwing (as opposed to Democratic Party "liberal")
organizing is already underway relative to our economic breakdown and resulting, spreading joblessness.
A potential for explosive social unrest exists.
Do we have sense enough to grant concessions and reforms
to co-opt the influence these groups will otherwise have in a country
destabilized by the guns-before-butter consequences of foolhardy
and inept Bush rule?
"You can take the boy out of the caste system, but you can't take the caste system out of the boy."
NICELY DONE, J.T!!!
SPEAK NOW OR FOREVER BEHOLD THE PIECES
This past week saw the release of study findings from a Pew survey on international opinion regarding the U.S. and its policies.
This most extensive and comprehensive poll ever undertaken, conducted in many countries, found dramatic decline in our nation's standing in global eyes.
Anti-Americanism is rampant around the planet, rather than being a
minority phenomenon.
In preparing to present the study to the White House for assessment, a poll official was quoted in our media as saying that "few Americans understand" how deeply the U.S. is looked upon in disfavor around the world, and for what reasons.
So...what's likely to happen next?
Scenario:
UN inspectors find no compelling evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
Bush maintains it's just because Saddam has "cleverly hidden them" and attacks regardless, just as warhawk Richard Perle blatantly admitted while in Britain that the U.S. would do all along.
Rather than face decimation in the open desert, Iraqi troops -- and ordinary patriots resisting unequivocal aggression -- retreat to Baghdad and other major cities, which are then attacked with everything in our abundant arsenal.
Bombs and missiles rain death on the Iraqi capital, which has a population equivalent to that of Los Angeles.
Civilian casualties will be staggeringly high, constituting a war crime of hideous dimensions, which (despite our censorship) will be sensationally reported throughout the world.
Justifiably enraged demonstrators will fill streets of cities on every continent. (There's already been a protest by numerous individuals from several nationalities in Antarctica!)
The currently very tenuous and qualified "support" for war within the U.S. will melt like ice cubes in the August sun.
The resulting tumult will have far-reaching negative impact on U.S. interests and prestige. The stock market and economy will take punishing body blows.
The presently pervasive view that Washington's true motives are based on oil, hegemony, and imperialist penetration will become an article of oracular faith -- everywhere.
Objective debacle will become more complete and devastating the more successful our military is in its brutally bloody goal.
There'll be more hate-filled new militants and would-be terrorists waiting to join al-Qaida than there were ticket buyers standing in line at all of the movie houses in America back when The Exorcist premiered.
There's just one thing that can prevent all this from coming to pass.
And that's YOUR opposition to this impending folly finally being loudly voiced.
Yes, YOU.
All of you who've dared not separate 9/11 from its increasingly misdirected -- no, hijacked -- "response" ever since...who've consequently allowed a brigand band of rightwing extremists to make a mockery of U.S. values and ideals.
And who will clearly be complicit in this nation's very definite "downfall" if you don't, at last, break your silence.
All it takes is a simple statement:
"This is wrong. I won't support it any longer."
Accompanied by a public expression of your aroused conscience, audible to Congress and others.
Nothing less than our country's place in history is at stake.
Don't let false pride and misapplied patriotism lead you to a wrong choice.
Please take time off from your posting, or weekend relaxation, to e-mail your elected representatives to complain about their irresponsibility in not extending jobless benefits, to date.
What, a YEAR isn't enough?
Good God, if you can't find a job in a year, more unemployment benefits isn't going to help you.
Actually it's longer than a year. It's extended benefits that they refused to extend further. This is something separate from regular unemployment benefits.
"Please take time off from your posting, or weekend relaxation, to
e-mail your elected representatives to complain about their irresponsibility in not extending jobless benefits, to date."
To what date? Retirement? Go back to work, a year off is plenty!
Weekend relaxation? Sorry to disapoint you, but I am working this weekend. THAT is the reason why I EARN a near 6 figure income.
"Tell them that this new spike upward is compelling reason to move
in American working families' behalf, quickly, without any further
bipartisan bickering and resulting inaction."
I agree, Dennis. Act on American WORKING families behalf and cut the cord before they become MORE dependent on the Government to bail them out! I would love to have the year off too but I need to keep working to pay taxes for these poor WORKING families.
CSC and JT:
Then send them an e-mail cheering their decision not to increase the extension.
In fact, why don't you urge them to cut it back even further?
It only takes a few minutes. I bet you could find time.
Boast about how much money you make, too. I'm sure they'd be interested. This is really about the time of year when poor people should have their nose rubbed in their poverty. It builds character.
This is, after all, the new tone in Washington.
Good idea, I think I'll do that.
Rick Edit:
This is really about the time of year when poor people should have their nose rubbed in their poverty. It builds character.
Rick, how much have you given to the poor this holiday season?
You give money to the Salvation Army?
You participate in toys for tots?
You adopt a poor family for Christmas gifts or Christmas dinner?
You volunteer down at sharing and caring hands?
NOYB
That's what I thought.
The Strib Letters to the Editor Column had a response to a recent column by a professor named Dan Malotky. I didn't read the original column, but it appears he turned the conservative complaint that universities were front loaded with liberal back at them.
It appears the professor didn't deny it there are more liberals. Probably no point.
But he posed the question: Who's to blame for that?
He must have said something to the extent that it doesn't appear that conservatives are not interested in teaching college. Maybe not interested in teaching much at all.
If that's the case, Malotky contended, what does it say about conservatives? It appears he chided the critics of university education, saying, if conservatives were truly interested in the pursuit of ideas and learning, there'd be more of them on campus.
Maybe there isn't a bias problem, maybe it's an interest problem. If there are more liberals on campus and in the schools, maybe it's because SOMEONE has to do that work.
During the Reagan recession of '82, hundreds if not thousands of people here in the Northland were jobless for extended periods.
Same across the country.
I'm talking time frames of often well over a year.
Despite constant looking, it personally took me eleven months to find anything, and that job was the dregs -- lousy pay in a rapaciously exploitative, sped-up environment.
At certain times of the day, DTA buses were commonly filled with down-and-out souls destined to sell their plasma at the blood center, for the $10 doing so would provide.
A friend of mine "lived" in a wooden packing crate down at the United Van Lines lot by the High Bridge.
Pitied be those insensitive, self-absorbed individuals who'll
accede to massive tax outlays for corporate welfare and unbridled militarism -- but who'll balk at helping their fellow citizens who become jobless, and all too often homeless, through no fault of their own.
May your personal wealth (largely derived via economic injustice) safely cushion you from their fate.
Here's hoping your "house" never becomes an icy box hardly bigger than a coffin.
The buzz around the resignations of O'Neill and Lindsey indicate that the White House wanted them both out of their jobs, yesterday.
The New York Times analysis of the shakeup contends that even with the mid-term elections that went his way, Bush is concerned about the political implications of the economy.
"In ushering the leaders of his economic team out the door, Mr. Bush was making a deliberately dramatic if messily orchestrated statement that he now intends to focus on the issues that are closest to home for most Americans even as he leads the nation toward a showdown with Iraq," a Times analysis piece from Richard Stevenson said.
I can't help but wonder how a move like this by Clinton would have been taken. It seemed that every rift within his adminstration was seen by Clinton critics as more evidence of how Bill and Hillary chewed people up and spit them out. But I digress.
This Bush shaekup is being seen as about as ham fisted as it gets. It's probably fitting for O'Neill. I saw on C-Span this morning a story that O'Neill's diplomatic skills could use some work. Leaders in South America were happy that he's gone. He'd done some particularly paternalistic lecturing to countries like Argentina. He called aid to Russia "crazy."
There's probably enought conservatives who wanted O'Neill out after he traveled around Africa with Bono.
"Maybe there isn't a bias problem, maybe it's an interest problem. If there are more liberals on campus and in the schools, maybe it's because SOMEONE has to do that work."
I agree. Maybe there isn't a bias problem, maybe it's an interest problem. If there are so many liberal voters, why are the conservatives in power? Maybe it's because SOMEONE has to do that work.
Stay smug like that, CSC.
"May your personal wealth (largely derived via economic injustice) safely cushion you from their fate."
I started my adult life with nothing but debt and a kid on the way. Nothing was given to me, I earned it. I was 17 (yes, I said 17!) and making about $24,000 a year defending your freedom to insult me while in the armed forces. Now, I am 30 and making about $80,000 a year by WORKING. I don't make Enron stock deals, I make electricity for people to power their homes. I stepped on noone's back. There are jobs out there, find them. I did.
I used your words, Rick. I just inserted my cause in them. Is it only a smug comment because I, a conservative, said it?
"I used your words, Rick. I just inserted my cause in them."
Which doesn't have anything to do with what I had to say.
"Is it only a smug comment because I, a conservative, said it? "
No. It's smug because it was smug.
THX 1138 12/6/02 3:40pm
You can take the boy out of the caste system, but you can't take the caste system out of the boy.
A truism old chap – you can never ever take the caste system out of Indians. Just as you can never eliminate color and race in a Western society.
You folks are all outside the boundaries of the caste system – so the more apt accusation would have been race related.
And the boy epithet – was that a Freudian jab??
Common Sense Conservative 12/7/02 12:12pm
Nothing was given to me, I earned it.
The perpetual whine of all the conservatives. The perennial way in which they anoint themselves with a halo and feel smug and superior and above the general riffraff.
If you live in the USA, the system gives a lot to you. The potential exists for all to exploit.
Just having such a system gives folks here an advantage. Those who cannot eke out a decent life in this country must be really the victims or extreme hardship beyond their control or charlatans.
Folks in 3rd world countries do not have such a system. Hence they flock here to our shores.
Quit being a sanctimonious dweeb.
My point was I AM the general riffraff.
"If you live in the USA, the system gives a lot to you. The potential exists for all to exploit."
Start exploiting, it's an equal opportunity country. I choose not to.
Once again rightwingers are looking at an issue of vital concern to American workers through the distorted prism of their great prejudice.
First off, there are two very distinct kinds of unemployment.
There's the isolated, almost random joblessness that results when someone is either fired or gets layed off -- in an otherwise healthy economy.
Unemployment of this sort befalls virtually all of us at one time or another in our lives.
Generally, it doesn't last long, as alternative jobs are readily available.
What we're addressing in our posts, however, is the mass unemployment stemming from hard economic times. In this circumstance, people can and do go without jobs for long periods of time, through no fault of their own. The reasons are both obvious and not so evident.
It's a myth that there are jobs enough for everyone. Even in the most prosperous periods, capitalism will have an innate and irreducible unemployment rate of somewhere around 4%, which translates into millions of people being without work, simply because inherent flaws in the system make it unavailable.
But let's look at what typically happens when someone loses their job in a sour economy.
The victim's first instinct is to seek a new job of equal pay and benefit status. This is understandable, since these folks have developed a lifestyle which requires a certain level of income to sustain. Bills have to be met, which can't be done with work that pays significantly less than what they've been used to.
Thus they first seek jobs in their accustomed realm. But the grim reality of recessions is that they hit particular sectors with uniform savagery. Many are the unemployed who've spent months trying to get work similar to what they lost.
Then a frightening prospect dawns on them:
"Maybe I'll have to take anything I can get just to survive."
That daunting possibility comes with nightmarish visions of a dramatically reduced quality of life, complete with foreclosed homes, repossessed cars, boats, etc.
Then, as they compete for such jobs, they find that they're up against an army of jobless who want -- need -- the same positions.
I read recently of one bartender's opening in Seattle. 300 unemployed souls applied. What happened to the 299 who weren't chosen, and the corresponding numbers who desperately hope to land other very limited openings?
Finally, let's disabuse ourselves of the pernicous myth that the jobless:
a) bring on their plight themselves and
b) just lazily chisel the taxpayer for handouts.
Precious few workers have their hands anywhere near the levers of politio-economic decision making. Their lives and livelihoods are disposable pawns in societal hierarchs' power and profit games.
And, once unemployed -- often for the most callous, corporate, bottom-line reasons -- they're required by law to document their searches for work, on a weekly basis. If a jobless individual doesn't comply with reporting regulations, their unemployment insurance is cut off.
Furthermore, being helplessly unemployed is a scary and degrading thing. Almost everyone wants to escape that plight as soon as they can.
I've posted in the past about how humilitaing it was to me, as a young boy, living in a one-industry town devastated by iron mine closures, to go into our pantry and bring out big, silvery USDA surplus food cans for Mom to make "mystery meat" suppers -- our only substantial meal of the day.
Please...
Unless you've walked a mile in their shoes, don't come onto the Internet to display your uninformed bias and heartless cruelty by besmirching the jobless.
As the Great Depression so staggeringly proved, even the wealthy of one day can become "hobos" the next when that camel's back-breaking straw hits an economy that's maxed out by contradictions and injustices.
There but for fortune go you or I.
You know it is a real shame when someone who goes out and works their butt off for money and a good life are demonized. I guess it is a lot easier to sit back, do nothing and wait for the federal government to come in confiscate the money from true hard workers and give it to you for nothing.
CSC good for you and be proud of what you have accomplished!
Why don't you quit being a self-rightous, pompous ass.
Nobody works their butt off more, or harder, than the little guy who
is forced to toil long hours of overtime, at killingly sped-up rates.
The ones who have bosses who pay them poorly and provide essentially no benefits.
And who'll callously close up shop and run away to Asia rather than offer their employees -- the source of all "their" wealth -- a fair, just return for the tremendous value their sweat creates.
If you aren't championing decent pay, security, and safety for
America's backbone (its wage-earning majority), then you're a part
of their systematic abuse.
And a piss-poor "patriot" to boot!
I have walked in those shoes. The military kicked me out with one day notice and left me with -$6,000. I was let go after 6 years because weight standards were lowered and I couldn't hang anymore. They took back my re-enlistment bonus at discharge and said thanks for the 6 years, here's a bill for $6000 you owe us even though you don't have a job. I collected unemployment for 3 months while looking for a job to feed my wife and 3 kids. Not once, during that time did I ask the government for help, in fact, they were the reason I was in the spot I was in. While unemployed I VOLUNTEERED down at the school my son was attending kindergarten in, helping the teacher and reading stories to the little tykes. After 3 months of scraping by and working with creditors, I was hired to work back here in Minnesota where I maintained my legal residence while in the service. I repaid the government all the money I owed them after a few months, I was out from under the clutches of the creditors after about the first 18 months. I worked my ass off and scraped by to make ends meet for quite a while. Call me self-righteous if you will, but don't tell me I haven't walked in those shoes. You have no idea what I'm all about.
With that, I bid you, good day.
A truism old chap – you can never ever take the caste system out of Indians. Just as you can never eliminate color and race in a Western society.
Well, there will always be racists if that's what you mean. Doesn't make it right.
You folks are all outside the boundaries of the caste system – so the more apt accusation would have been race related.
It had less to do with race than simply where you come from. The comment wasn't about race, it was about mentality.
And the boy epithet – was that a Freudian jab??
Not at all. It's just part of the expression. I guess you've never heard it before.
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And who'll callously close up shop and run away to Asia rather than offer their employees -- the source of all "their" wealth -- a fair, just return for the tremendous value their sweat creates.
Dennis, American companies can only afford to pay so many clerks $82,000 a year before they're forced to pack up and move to Asia. Maybe you should tell your union brothers to quite being so greedy.
 Common Sense Conservative 12/7/02 6:10pm
CSC, good for you! I for one am proud of you.
Maybe a smart-ass veteran. But a desk-pounder? They have gone too far! Just kidding. Thanks Bill.
On a side note: Is it just me or has Pearl Harbor Day become a non-newsworthy item? It seems like they damn near ignored it this year.
Headlines recently in the press:
"US unemployment surges in November"
"US home foreclosures hit highest level in 30 years"
"US manufacturing continues to decline: thousands more layoffs"
What this means, in stark human terms, is that a spreading multitude of our fellow citizens are faced with life emergencies of the most devastating and frightening kind.
Their plight clearly isn't their fault, but the fault of the misapplied politics and economy of those in power.
Victimized by social irresponsibility rooted in selfishness,
conservatives are saying they should be further victimized by being forced to fend entirely for themselves.
Or, perhaps, make use of private charity.
But, as folks here at the Damiano Center and The Solid Rock Mission will sadly tell you, they've been unable to keep up with growing demand for a long while -- with more families joining individuals seeking meals or a roof over their heads.
The Great Depression proved the inadequacy of charity in dealing with wholesale economic breakdown.
Government has to act.
No enlightened society worthy of perpetuation will simply "shoo
away" its suffering jobless.
Every great, edifying philosophy of human history -- whether religious or secular -- morally instructs us to be our brothers'
keeper.
Not a "keeper in poverty".
The wealth of America's rich is chiefly derived from proper wages and benefits that were never provided, over an extended period, involving both domestic and international labor relations.
Especially when they need some fair payback in time of personal and family crisis, workers ought to get a small portion of that ill-gotten profit returned to ward off hunger and homelessness.
Not with great fuss and resistance, but as an ethical duty.
Instead, all too often, they face exactly what's been seen here.
A smug, supremacist portrayal as being lazy lowlifes.
There's no way that placing private greed above people's need can be twisted to seem right.
In closing, since Pearl Harbor has been raised, please remember that
a disproportionate number of those down and out on our mean streets
are veterans.
They deserve far better than what they're coldly enduring.
THX:
Join the union-led movement for fair, international labor standards
that would raise world workers' minimum pay and benefit conditions to a just level.
That way, business parasites would have nowhere to run away to to get
rich from others' grossly undercompensated toil.
They'd have to really, finally become the Christians they only are in imagination today.
The 3rdworldization of Amerika
This little Dairy Queen. The walls decorated with plaques of all-white T-ball teams. An employee named Miss Carol -- hired back before the world changed -- wears a "Jesus Cares" pin on her uniform while her Muslim supervisor cooks his food in a crock pot separate from DQ food. The franchise owner, an Indian, swings by in his Porsche to check on receipts.
Where in the world is this happening??
The cradle of the civil rights movement, Atlanta represents the two-tone world of the past that is now giving way to a new society. Between 1990 and 2000, more than 256,000 foreign-born people arrived here.
The path of the immigrant of the 21st century
i Half the crew is Indian or Pakistani. In their blue polo shirts, they work as if each sale brings a handsome commission instead of low wages in the grubby trenches of the American economy.
The humble beginnings
Rizwan Momin arrived in Atlanta in 1985 from the Indian state of Gujarat. He had $310 in his pocket. His uncle had just purchased a sagging, white-owned Dairy Queen in a black neighborhood in Atlanta. Riz went to work for his uncle, mopping, sweeping, saving, scheming, wearing $3 shirts from K-Mart, sleeping on the floor, working day and night at the DQ except when he went to his second job at a laminations factory on Buford Highway, where he tended the boiler.
---and later
Seventeen years later, Riz owns nine Dairy Queens in the Atlanta metro area. He's one of the largest franchisees in the Southeast. Drives the Porsche on some days, the Infiniti SUV on others, Indian music blasting from the Bose speakers in the wood-grain console.
Indians now own 60 of the 208 Dairy Queens in Georgia. Half of Riz's workforce is Indian. "Forget the white kids with the studs in the tongue," Riz says. "Indians are gonna work for you. At the beginning, they work for minimum wage. Then little raise, little raise, slowly, slowly. Everyone live together; they are saving money, six people in household working, they bank 80 percent of their money and use 20 percent for expenses. They don't drink, no clubs, no fancy clothes. Suddenly, they have $60,000 in the bank. Then they will buy the Subway or the Blimpie."
Good story. Read more about the second geenration becomes Americanized.
Is this any different from the Irish, German, Sacndinavian immigrants of yesteryear. Fold’s ancestors and THX’s ancestors perhaps followed a similar but distinct move to the US.
So the moral of the story is: work hard, don't expect the government to bail you out, and you will be rewarded for your hard labor. Isn't America wonderful!
I wonder if Rizwan votes Republican?
He probably does.
I don't think a Porsche is a Democrat's car.
Maybe it was a used Porsche.
What is a Democrat's car anyway?
What does Senator Dayton drive?
What does Senator Dayton drive?
He doesn't. Someone drives him around in a Lincoln Town Car.
Yahoos play "Fort" on the US Mexican border
"A former kindergarten teacher who has organized a 600-strong militia in Arizona will station 50 armed militia members on public land this weekend to "protect their country" against an invasion of illegal aliens, warning federal authorities — including President Bush — not to interfere."
BTW: The guy's now a newspaper owner. Maybe this is the change in the media that conservatives are hoping for.
The Border Patrol is undermanned and the INS is too busy holding lotteries for visas. If the government won't protect the people, it shouldn't be surprised if the people protect themselves.
I don't think a Porsche is a Democrat's car.
Tell that to my father-in-law.
The most drastic notion embedded in the suggestions is that marriage is just one arrangement among many. Marriage is being deconstructed here, downgraded and privatized. It is no longer the crucial building block of the social order, and makes no special contribution to civil society that justifies any distinctive honor or status.
"If the government won't protect the people, it shouldn't be surprised if the people protect themselves."
They'll pay the price for their belligerence when someone gets killed.
Sadly, someone else will, too.