Our Racist Selves and Countrymen
Posted by Justin in Freedom, police state, the economy on June 16th, 2010
I agree. Just because white people do not lynch people of other races anymore does not mean there is no more racism. Truth: Everybody is racist to one degree or another. But the first step in recovery from racism is to admit it and recognize it, and watch for it in ones self. This is the only way to minimize the damage we do to others due to our own racism. It is far better to resist our own racism than to act it out against others even as we deny it and rationalize our racist behavior and politics.
There does not exist a country today in which foreigners enjoy the “right” to work. There are very few countries today in which it is possible to obtain a permit to allow a foreigner to work legally. Truth: Foreigners come into the USA illegally because there are literally millions of jobs available to them even though it is technically illegal for employers to hire foreigners without a work permit. Foreigners come here illegally because US employers hire them illegally while US authorities look the other way, or pretend to try to enforce the laws all the while complaining that they lack sufficient resources to perform any more than token enforcement. Truth: US workers deserve protection from cheaper illegal foreign workers just like the protection workers in most similar countries enjoy that is provided by their respective government authorities. Truth: cheap illegal labor grinds EVERYBODY’S wages down, everybody who earns wages anyhow, and not just those in occupations in which foreign labor is concentrated. But this does not concern those Americans among us whose income does not come from wages they earn. Guess who comprise this group. Instead they have chosen to use their influence, political and economic, to exploit latent American racism to criminalize not the US employers engaged in illegal hiring practices but instead to criminalize illegal foreign workers. This is a high crime against one’s own countrymen, a betrayal, a crime that renders the crime of working illegally completely trivial in comparison.
But it gets worse. Truth: It’s one thing for the rich to exploit the poor, but there is a large group of wage-earners who are complicit in this high crime against American wage-earners: Americans who work for prisons, jails, law enforcement, and associated organizations such as probation departments and the courts. What should we call the slaves who sell their fellows down the river into an even worse kind of slavery?
This is life for American citizens in America today, and it is no coincidence that (Truth:) there are more American citizens in American prisons and jails today than in any other country, respectively, both in absolute numbers as well as per capita.
This is a shame and a disgrace, and Republicans and Democrats have been working hand-in-hand for decades to maintain this status quo and to prevent serious public discourse about the issue. Instead we have been conditioned to avoid socialism at all costs, and to maintain “free markets” at all costs. Truth: socialism need not require extreme authoritarianism, not at all, and the “free market” isn’t a market and there is nothing free about it.
Welcome to the United States of America in the 21st Century! Permanent high unemployment, endless expensive overseas military operations, ever-increasing police powers, and now the biggest environmental disasters in human history. Meanwhile Republicans screech, yammer, and cajole on every channel every hour of every day on television, even on the “liberal” shows (because they have to be fair, after all), that the main problem, or the main cause of all problems, is Government, and that it is Too Big. Give me a break.
-Justin Hale,
“Trickle-Down didn’t work, and it never will!”
Pass it on!
On Jun 16, 2010, at 7:51 PM, a concerned retired California public school teacher wrote:
Ruben Navarrette: Arizonans should ditch the talking points
Posted: 06/08/2010 06:31:12 PM PDT
IF Arizona’s new immigration law is supposed to be the best thing since warm tortillas, why do supporters have to prop it up by engaging in falsehoods and scare tactics? Let me count the ways:
The law bans racial profiling. Truth: Racial profiling is already banned by federal statute, yet it happens. The Arizona law requires that once local and state police make contact with someone over an alleged infraction, they must determine legal status if they have “reasonable suspicion” that the person is in the country illegally. It is naive to assume an officer can make that call without taking race into account.
Arizona is being invaded. The law is a cry for help. Truth: No, it’s a claim to victimhood. Our society is full of people who duck responsibility for their actions by playing the victim. Now states are doing it. Arizona has illegal immigrants because Arizonans hire them. Take away the “help wanted” sign, and they won’t come.
The federal government is doing nothing to stop illegal immigration. Truth: The Obama administration deported more illegal immigrants last year than the Bush administration did in its final year in office. There are 20,000 Border Patrol agents, more than any other federal law enforcement agency. The Border Patrol budget was $3 billion last year, and it has increased almost tenfold since 1992. Not exactly an “open border” policy.
The scope and intent of the law have always been clear. Truth: Supporters like to forget that there have been two versions of the law. The first was defective and had to be fixed one week after it was signed by Gov. Jan Brewer.
The Arizona law is no different than laws in other states, such as California, that require police to `cooperate’ with Border Patrol officers and allow them to inquire as to citizenship.
Truth: (1) Cooperating with the Border Patrol isn’t the same as impersonating Border Patrol agents; (2) California Penal Code 834b pertains to “any person who is arrested.” That’s the key difference. In Arizona, you need not be under arrest to be interrogated.
The Arizona law is a carbon copy of federal law. So, it can’t be unconstitutional. Truth: The problem is how the law will be implemented. Under existing federal statutes, immigrants may have their citizenship questioned but only by federal agents. Under the Arizona law, that power is extended to local police. Many legal scholars believe this to be clearly unconstitutional because immigration policy is a federal responsibility and not something that can be done piecemeal by individual states.
The presence of immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, in a given town, city, county or state inevitably leads to more crime, i.e., burglary, assault, drunk driving, rape, murder, etc.
Truth: For a variety of reasons, as the immigrant population increases, crime rates go down. For one thing, immigrants aren’t as bold and defiant as people think. Various researchers who studied the rise in immigration during the 1990s concluded that cities with increased numbers of immigrants had the most significant drops in crime rates.
Americans show identification to cash checks, board planes, drive cars, etc. This is no different. Truth: In such transactions, we’re asking for a privilege or a benefit and we willingly identify ourselves to get it. It’s a quid pro quo. In Arizona, where you can be grilled for attending a house party with loud music or being a passenger in a vehicle, the “privilege” Latinos are asking for is simply to breathe. This shouldn’t come at a price.
Latinos won’t be racially profiled. But if they were, it would be justified given that most illegal immigrants come from Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
Truth: Supporters can’t have it both ways, insisting that a practice won’t occur while justifying it as logical and thus likely to occur.
This law makes Arizonans safer. Truth: Quite the opposite. By sending illegal immigrants underground, Arizona has created a pool of ready-made victims who can be preyed upon at will because they won’t report crimes to police. Scoundrels, thieves and predators will pounce.
If supporters of the Arizona law truly believe in this legislation, they should ditch their list of disingenuous talking points and start speaking honestly. It would do wonders for their credibility – not to mention the credibility of the dubious law they support.
ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com
Ruben Navarrette is a syndicated columnist with The San Diego Union-Tribune and Washington Post Writers Group.
Did you ever ask yourself, “Why are so many people protesting the new Arizona law allowing the police to approach people and ask them for proof of citizenship?”
WELL, it has nothing to do with undocumented aliens, it has to do with unreasonable search and seizure. It has to do with the racial profiling and subjecting our citizens, whose ancestors were here as early as the 1700′s and 1800′s, to being accosted by the police, and delayed by police, maybe even arrested by the police because they appear to be Latin Americans. Remember, these citizens constitute a large fraction of our population.
Fourth Amendment– Protection from unreasonable search and seizure
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
People supporting the Arizona law, often appear to be racist. Or else, they are naïve, believing we can solve the undocumented problem with this ill-thought out law.
We have had guest workers with green cards helping to build America, pick fruit, perform childcare duties, pack chicken, do gardening, even work for IBM—all the while of course there are citizens who could perform these jobs. Most of these workers are exploited and paid rock-bottom wages and have poor benefits, no sick leave, no paid holidays, no health insurance. In the case of IBM—they claim they cannot find engineers, although we have many college-graduate engineers who are unemployed. Naïve people claim that green card holders and undocumented do not pay taxes. Well of course they pay taxes, obviously sales taxes, and they pay property taxes. No matter where they live, their rent goes to the landlords who pay property taxes with that money. Most start out with green cards and they get a social security card and pay payroll taxes including federal and state income taxes. Then if green card problems come up, many stay on as undocumented workers because legal services are expensive and often the workers are exploited by shyster lawyers.
When cities and businesses contract out for cleaning services, these workers are often exploited because they may be undocumented. They do not appear on the books of the cities and businesses that are paying the contractors.
I met a woman from Mexico with a PhD who was teaching at a California university. She said when she applied to come to California, although she had a certified job offer from that university, she had to wait fourteen months. Her colleague from Canada only had to wait two months. Imagine then, that if you are not a PhD, imagine what kind of wait you might have.
Those protesting against the Arizona law are showing empathy and showing they do wish to support the Fourth Amendment. This has been a heartening show of morality on the part of every municipality that voted to go on record as not supporting such a detrimental law.
The New Howdy
Posted by Justin in Freedom, police state on June 12th, 2010
Who wants to learn the 21st Century how-dee-doo? It’s real easy.
To initiate the greeting, say ‘Hi! How are you?’
To respond to the greeting, say ‘Hi! How are you?’
and repeat.
It ends when either party says ‘How high are you?’
then the most common responses are
‘Pretty fucking high!’
and
‘Not high enough!’
followed by
‘Right on, dude!’ or variations thereof.
You should practice this with your friends, because it is deceptively simple.
My name is, my name is, my name is
My name is Andy Gram. Or Grandy Am.
I have come from Monrovia, via San Marino and Puerto Rico.
My job is to defeat Corporatism and restore American Freedom, in our lifetimes.
Pearl Harbor
On this anniversary of Pearl Harbor, I’d like to urge all Americans to remember that we nuked two cities. I’ll refrain from Monday afternoon quarterbacking about it. No need to thank me.
Before Pearl Harbor, Americans had the funny idea that they could sit back and watch while dictators, racists, and imperialists ravaged almost every other corner of the globe. Kind of like how a lot of us now approach health care reform and global warming, to name but two huge challenges facing us. Today banks and corporations ARE ravaging every corner of the globe, including our own.
Which?
If terrorists detonated a nuclear device near Wall Street, would it initiate the Second Dark Ages, or would it initiate the Great Renaissance?
No More Foreclosures!
No more foreclosures!
Lynch the judges that sign foreclosures!
Lynch the mortgage bankers that initiate foreclosures!
Bring the banks down!
Senatorial Weirdos
All the weirdos that various States elect as Senators ought to be a set of telling clues regarding elections in the USA.
There are the bizarre duo from Maine, one Olivia Snowe (sounds like a phony name) and her counterpart who can barely speak.
Then how about “Saxby Chambliss”, from Georgia?
Yes, the Senators from California are only a little less weird. “Feinstein — the Senator that packs heat but doesn’t want you to.” Boxer — the Senator that “worked really hard” to get to be Senator, and doesn’t like being addressed as “ma’am”. She may have worked really hard to get there, but she hasn’t worked very hard to stay there.
Weird, weird, weird.
And the weirdest part is how the US Senate is deliberately ignoring the public in regards to bringing US health care into the 21st century. Including the worthless Boxer and Feinstein.
Odd Things in the Health Care Reform Debate
Posted by Justin in the economy on September 22nd, 2009
There are a couple of things about the current “debate” that many people, myself included, find a wee bit odd.
First, there is the lackluster performance of Democrats, from President Obama on down, particularly in regards to the need for a “public option”. (It’s also a bit odd that they insist on calling it that, when everyone knows we really need “single-payer”.)
Second, there is a distinct lack or even absence of both substance and relevance in the rhetoric emanating from those who claim to be opposed to health care reform.
I wonder, and not for the first time, whether the odd spectacle we are witnessing might actually be a well-staged theatrical production. A theatrical production for which the working title “The Great Health Insurance Industry Bailout” would be entirely appropriate.
Everyone knows their days are numbered, but nobody in the center is willing to come out and actually say that. I’m sure that the insurance industry also is quite aware that big changes, to say the least, loom on the horizon. Meanwhile a “great debate” rages on.
What better way to bail out the health insurance mega-corporations than by dragging out their inevitable demise by a decade or so, during which time they’ll enjoy the proverbial ‘laughing all the way to the bank’ on a regular and frequent basis? As in billions in profits, and hundreds of millions in executive bonuses, every year, right up to the tearful but loving end? And to do it in a clever way such that there is no appearance of stalling or foot-dragging, only the unfolding of brave and earnest politics in our Great Democracy?
“Freedom”? Not Your Freedom, Something Else Entirely
Posted by Justin in Freedom, the economy on September 21st, 2009
Imagine you are a devout Christian, but lately it seems you’ve come to realize, through no fault or effort of your own, that the words ‘salvation’ and ‘damnation’, as you know them, and intimately so, are reversed in the Teachings, and always have been.
That’s how I feel, if you substitute ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ for the former.
Gov Hutchison is on TV saying that we must defeat al Qaeda and Taliban so that Americans can have freedom. What freedom is she talking about? She’s not talking about your freedom nor mine. She is either talking about the freedom of Corporatism to continue to profit by enslaving Americans in myriad ways, or she is talking about nothing, using it as a buzzword to influence the ignorant among us. Those foreigners cannot take away your and my freedom, no matter what they do. Not even if they attacked every American city on every day of every year.
The Taliban got guns? Guess what? We got guns. They got bombs? We got bombs. The Taliban is grass-roots with benefits, i.e. grass roots with guns. Guess what? We got grass-roots with guns. Some factions are more visible than others… Now, on the other hand, if the Taliban, hypothetically speaking, were to grow far more powerful, they could push us into a far larger war. But it wouldn’t be the first time, would it? We thrive on war. We finish wars.
You know what people do when there is a deadly bombing every day downtown in their town?
They adjust. But they do not give up their freedom. You could say they are no longer free not to adjust. But that is only an irrelevant rhetorical argument. In Israel, when it became dangerous, sometimes, to go to the beach with your kids, you know what they did? They started watching the beaches and their surroundings far more carefully, and guarding every group of children at every beach with rifles and submachine guns, but they absolutely did not give up their freedom to go to the beach.
Republicans and Corporatist politicians utter the word ‘freedom’ every hour of every day on every TV channel every day of the year. Lately it’s been associated with health care. People going to the doctor, or not, when they are ill. People contracting, and recovering from, or dying from, diseases or maladies. So when they use the word ‘freedom’ in this context, what are they talking about? The freedom of poor people to seek but not obtain adequate treatment? The freedom of rich people to obtain whatever treatments they desire even when they are not sick? The freedom that you and I enjoy to forfeit our currently barely adequate health care, and that of our families, anytime we either voluntarily or involuntarily depart from our positions of employment?
They often utter the word-pair “your freedom”, but they rarely follow that word-pair immediately with a transitive verb. They never utter the four words “your freedom to smoke dope”, perhaps because that is five words, but more likely it is that such a freedom does not exist. Sometimes they’ll break with this and utter a phrase like “your freedom to choose a health care option”, and when their audience consists primarily of the over-privileged, its purpose is to enflame, but usually the audience consists mainly of people who have no such freedom, and in that far more common context its purpose is to confuse.
When I had employer-subsidized health “insurance”, we had a choice of more than one “plan”. We had like four choices of plans. I, being healthy and in my prime, naturally chose the one that gave me the most freedom to choose my medical caregivers, my physicians. There was undeniably a certain amount of freedom in that. I didn’t have to go to the clinic THEY SAID, I could go to the clinic I SAID. Just like a kid in an ice cream store with his mom who wants tho make his own choice of flavor. Well, it was a little taste of freedom all right, just like the kid with his own flavor, and it tasted good.
Compared with no freedom, any little bit of limited freedom feels good. But I didn’t have the freedom to go to a doctor where I could ask for and receive medications that I alone thought I needed, or medications that made ME feel better, or treatments that only I believed would be beneficial to me. Not at all. In fact, there were and are unwritten rules, such as “If the patient asks specifically for a particular medication, do not prescribe it for him.” Of course now we all know even that rule always carried with it the standard loophole/exception: “Unless he is wealthy or otherwise has some celebrity status.” And it is needless to say that it did not apply to people who were paid by the hour nor to people who were paid a salary.
But it is neither a reference to the tiny, token freedoms enjoyed, nor a reference to the fundamental freedoms denied, that is made whenever the word ‘freedom’ is uttered in the context of health care reform. You only need to consider for an instant the enormous opposition to strictly voluntary, optional medical marijuana that whenever the word ‘freedom’ is uttered in the context of health care it represents an overt deception, a bald-faced lie, and a denial of every definition of freedom held by ordinary people everywhere.
So what are they talking about when they keep saying the word ‘freedom’ over, and over, and over, until you must “self-indicate” somehow or other in order to avoid becoming ill?
Make no mistake, what they are specifically referring to is the freedom of the health care “industry” to operate in a business environment that imposes no meaningful requirements whatsoever to behave in ways such that continuous improvement of the health and well-being of the society-at-large, that is, the citizens comprising the nation, that is, the Homeland Bush Called America, is always the highest priority, regardless of whether profits are made or anything else — for lack of a better wording, of which I am sure there are many.
It is common knowledge that any person, company, or corporation who is engaged in an effort to establish and increase a cash flow with the ultimate goal of earning a profit, sooner or later, but frequently in all cases, finds themselves engaged in a subsidiary process of evaluating and establishing priorities to serve as a real-time guide to activities and decision-making. The first meaningful result of such processes is to identify activities currently engaged in that contribute to the goal of increasing cash flow and producing profits less than the others, and to take steps to eliminate or de-prioritize them forthwith! Andy Grove, the founder of Intel, coined the phrase “Management by Objective” to describe this.
This is exactly the freedom that the Republicans and most of the Democrats, collectively the Corporatists, are referring to when they utter that sacred word so often. It is worse than a lie, a deception, a fraud, a work of trickery: it is a blasphemy. It is a blasphemy against the human organism, against human life, because the human organism is not an individual, human life is not simply things individuals experience: The human organism is our entire society, a human organism is an entire human society. Every one of us is like a blood cell floating along an artery with the mistaken belief that it has some very important business which has absolutely nothing to do with the ugly chaos surrounding them.
Cells in a body, however, (figuratively speaking), drop whatever fantasies of independence they may possess instantly when the body is threatened, injured, or attacked. Then they do whatever is asked of them, whatever they are told to, they morph, they commit ritual suicide, they switch careers, they send signals, and who knows what else. No longer speaking figuratively, they do these things instantly and without difficulty nor doubt, because, they do not, as far as we know, possess anything we would recognize as consciousness.
But for the creatures that make up the organism infesting at least one planet, and threatening to extend their infestation to other planets, and by logical extension billions and billions of other planets, life is not nearly as simple.
One-hundred-million, perhaps two-hundred-million Americans currently believe, without question, or hesitation, that whenever they hear the work ‘freedom’ uttered, usually on TV, but also in print for a shrinking minority, that it is intended, somehow, somehow, to refer to things that they personally associate with their own use of that word, rare though their use of it may be.
This we believe, and we believe this, and we believe it more fundamentally than any of our “religious beliefs”, which we can barely keep track of ourselves and change significantly over time. We believe, yet nothing could be further from the truth. What do you call this? Should you be foolish or naive enough to call it “mass insanity”, you will instantly be forever labeled a “whacko” by all that can hear you and all that hear of you, and you will never be given any further attention, here, in the Land of the Free.
So we had better find something else to call it. But I digress.
As a Nation, Let’s Make Three Decisions
Posted by Justin in Freedom, the economy on September 21st, 2009
First, we need to make a decision as a nation, as a people, that when a person is sick, they can see a doctor, period. No and, ifs, buts, nor other qualifications or exceptions. Many other nations have already done this. The fact that we have not this is the central problem to be overcome in order to reform health care and join the civilized world.
We also need to make a decision as a nation that every able person should have a job. To tolerate joblessness generation after generation based on the false premise that it is just a fact of economic life is barbaric, ignorant, and cruel. Joblessness is the root cause of the majority of our social problems. It breeds crime and despair. What if every criminal and gang-banger suddenly went straight through a miraculous act of God? There’s no jobs for us as it is, and there’d be none for them, and none for all the cops either!
We need to make a similar decision regarding people and places to live, as in everyone needs a place to call their home, no matter how modest. That will come a little later.
In the past we made a decision as a nation that we wanted freedom from crime, freedom from the fear of becoming a victim. We’ve since build more prisons than any nation in the world’s history. In the process we also made a lot of things into crimes that were not crimes before. I call these ‘crimes by statute’, and now we have more criminals than ever despite having so many prisons. It wasn’t the former decision that was wrong, it was the implementation. Too many of our leaders have been selfish or sociopathic and they used our fear to manipulate us into things we never intended.
Have you noticed they’re using fear again to stifle health care reform? And unemployment is reported as though it were no more controllable than the weather, as though it were something mysterious and in the hands of a higher power. We’re told that the recession is ending, but that we can expect unemployment to continue rising for a while longer. We’ve been taught a completely false definition of ‘recession’, and it makes having a conversation that much harder.
So let’s all decide, together, one nation under God, that if a person is sick, they can see a doctor. Period. Canada did that and their greatest national hero is the person who led the movement that led to it. Some may complain, but they don’t regret. Read the book just out by T. Reed.