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(letter to a friend in Boston who sent the link to an article in the Globe) 

 any thanks for sending such a good article by a really good writer. I'll try to remember Brian McGrory.  Oh, the irony; an Irishman (Scot?) writing scathingly about another Irishman.  The Celtic people and their barroom brawls.  They never stop fighting; if it isn't the English, it's each other.  My favorite barroom sign about the Irish is this:  "The Lord made whiskey so the Irish wouldn't take over the world." 

Of course, anybody with a delightfully Irish name like Tim Kelly deserves $50,000,000 a year.  Or more properly understood, $24,000 an hour.  I wish I did not want as much as they do, to have lots of money to throw around.

What the article misses saying, as do most complaints, is that the damage such an atmosphere of obscene recompense does is that it cheapens money itself. And everyone suffers.   

Jane Fonda, for example, is worth how many millions --- and I heard her say this last night in an interview, 

"At last," said Jane, "at the age of 73, I feel I am a whole person." 

Well, it is the right values in the wrong person.  If only she did not come from great wealth and pursue great wealth and spend all that time working obsessively on the body beautiful.True, she looks simply amazing at the age of 73.  But then, too, Ted Turner still kicked her out of bed after what --- 50. She spent years worrying that he would and then he did.  

Very few get past the era without being soiled by the perverted values of the age.  Look at the people who have embraced the disgusting values espoused by Ayn Rand. That is true evil. 

And it will pass.  

But will it pass before it does more and permanent damage?  Perhaps I am dreaming. I am not trying to say that happiness and wholeness of personhood cannot be attained unless you walk away from money.  But I do think real truth is always at risk when unlimited amounts of money are available.  Money is the root of evil because what it most buys --- which poverty cannot buy,--- is a mirror which only reflects us as we wish to be seen and as we believe ourselves to be worthy.  

The cult of money is the Culture of Narcissism.■

  

Republicans Rethink Health Care

o the Republicans announced at a press conference that they are preparing for the Supremes to reject Obama's health Care Reform bill.  There are several excellent ironies at work here. Perhaps the most laughable is the fact that the health care reform bill is the very one which was originated by the Republicans themselves, and which, from the moment the words passed over Obama's lips, is now referred to by right-wingers as Obamacare; and, of course, this is delivered matter-of-factly with only the slightest screwing of the upper lip and adjacent facial muscles into a sneer.  In the manner of an excessively delicate lady catching the smell of dog shit on her shoe.

But that is far from all of the fragrant irony.  There is also the video of a certain Republican Congressman, who held Town Hall meeting not so long ago, where he invited large numbers of his constituents into a school gymnasium or something similar.  In a voice dripping with triumph, he announced the Republican agenda to dismantle all sorts of government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid; and then, unable to constrain his glee, unveiled the master plan to abolish Obamacare.

How dumbfounding and disappointing it must have been when an outraged constituent stood up and demanded the one thing the lawmaker was ill-prepared to answer.

"What," the man said, "are you going to replace it with?"

How infinitely rude!

The man did not just ask the one question but plowed on with his brief but brutal discourse.  "You want to take away our Safety Net!  We need that Safety-Net simply to live.  Do you want to kill us?  Is that what you and your party are really up to?"

"NO," said the Congressman, "Heavens no!"  Suddenly the crowd turned angry eyes whose pupils were tiny dots of fury, and they were focused on him.

The lawmaker could only stammer and run for cover.

Now, the Republicans are at it again.

At least the three Stygian witches of mythology had an eye amongst them; but these neo-Republicans seem not to have a brain amongst them. Every move they make inspires one more group of voters to walk away.  Their disgraceful conduct as the party of NO, lost more would-be constituents than it tickled.  Their attacks designed to make Obama look bad, backfired more often than not.  Obama came out smelling sweet as a rose.

Now once again, they are the far-right wing partisan Supreme Court 5 are taking their time not quite sure which way to go with the health care reform bill. Should they declare the whole thing unconstitutional or just the part where it says that everybody has to have health insurance.  If they reject it wholesale, it is tantamount to saying what critics of the entire bill have said all along.  It is lame and unconstitutional to boot;  AND it was the best the Republicans could come up with, since, as we all know they dreamed it up in the first place.

But here is the part that made me sit down and bang out this post:  They have chosen this moment to announce that they are seeking to create an all new health care reform plan.  And perhaps they are.  And I am sure it will be as ugly and as outright stupid as Paul Ryan's budget proposal where he takes money from the poor and hands it to the rich. But that as we know is the goal of all Republican thinking.  But with the thinking about a new health care plan and the announcing of such thinking, that are sending out a signal to the ultra-conservative Bush-appointed majority of the SCOTUS that they would like to have the entire bill rejected.

Needless to say, this will only complicate the right-winger justices dilemma.  They are, if anything, viewed throughout the voting population of the USA as being more divisive, more partisan, and ultimately more destructive of American values that made this country great than even Congress itself.  And polls now show that out of a hundred points voters across the USA give Congress around 6 points.

That's dangerously low.

That could spell fighting-in-the-street rebellion.

I hope so!

 
     
  

Mediator Rules In Favor of Killer Cop

bviously, the title says it all.  Two years ago, a Portland, Oregon police officer, unprovoked, shot an unarmed young man in the back. When questioned, the officer of course, claimed that he feared bodily harm or worse.  Fear of bodily harm is all it takes.  They don't even need to fear threatened for their life.  The officer was suspended with pay, it seems.  And City Hall promised to look into it.  And managed to drag their feet doing so.  But citizen's groups stormed City Hall demanding that, at the very least, the officer be fired.  They claimed wrongful death at the least.  City Hall was able to stall for several years.  But finally, they had to deal with it --- so they called in a mediator.  Actually, one ought to say, a MEDIATOR.  But I won't say that.  The mediator heard the case; read the reports; and ruled.

In favor of the cop!

One thing we know about mediators.  They usually find in favor of the company they work for.  The reason for this is not hard to discern.  If they don't find in favor of the company writing the check, 9.99 and 9/10 % of the time, they won't be asked to mediate again.  This applies to any dispute you care to mention.  And it is especially true when dealing with City Hall.

Here is one of the best features of the Occupy movement.  The general citizenry is no longer content to sit back and let the "authorities" do whatever they like --- as long as everybody smiles for the camera.

So a large group of outraged citizens showed up at City Hall to protest the mediator's extremely unfortunate decision.  Now City Hall has to grin and try to maintain its authority in the face genuinely righteous anger.  The news media can try to slant this so as to make the demonstrators look like kooks, and they will do.  But I, for one, am happy to see the public get involved in what is very apparently a corrupt decision.

Europe's Financial Crisis Explained

requently, complex political and economic situations become clear when comedians address them and exploit the laughter inherent.  Think George Carlin, or Jon Stewart; or, my very favorite, Lewis Black.

Here, two British comedians --- very dry, but very funny, --- take on the European economy.■

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Sorry, I just couldn't resist this one, where Lewis Black discusses

George Bush's overwhelming need to amend the US Constitution so as to make it illegal for gays to marry.  Out of all the problems of his administration, this is the one he chooses to obsess over.  This is the important one.

Ri-i-i-ght! 

Enjoy.

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Crime Profiteering and Slavery

Profiteering from another person's incarceration is a racket.  Every thing about it is foul.  It besmirches everyone, including those who stand by and allow it to happen.  Yet it seems to be a burgeoning market.  As Americans we must denounce this entire concept.  Or else we will fall as the most corrupt culture ever to arise on planet earth.  Yet Republicans really like the idea.  My own take is that privatization of prisons and the resulting profit is nothing more than Republican Masturbatory pornography.

The imprisonment of human beings at record levels is both a moral failure and an economic one — especially at a time when state governments confront enormous fiscal crises caused largely by bloated and unnecessary prison spending. But mass incarceration provides a gigantic windfall for one special interest group: the private prison industry. As current incarceration levels harm the nation as a whole, for-profit prisons obtain taxpayer dollars in ever greater amounts. Private prison executives, meanwhile, bring in multi-million dollar compensation packages.

Kevork Djansezian | Getty Images Inmates at Chino State Prison exercise in the yard December in Chino, Calif.

Today, the United States incarcerates 2.3 million individuals — more people, both per capita and in absolute terms, than any other nation in the world including Russia, China and Iran. The current incarceration rate deprives record numbers of individuals of their liberty, disproportionately affects people of color and has at best a minimal effect on public safety. The crippling cost of imprisoning more and more Americans — non-violent offenders in the majority of cases — saddles governments with escalating debt.

This social ill — mass incarceration — is the private prison industry’s bread and butter. Private prison companies openly admit that their profits depend on locking up more people. For example, in a 2010 annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the largest private prison company stated: “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by ... leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices ...”

David ShapiroStaff Attorney
American Civil Liberties Union

As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates. The number of inmates in private prisons increased by roughly 1600 percent between 1990 and 2009. In 2010, the two largest private prison companies alone took in nearly $3 billion in revenue, and their top executives each received annual compensation packages worth well over $3 million.

• Embrace Competition to Lower Costs, Improve Performance in Prisons

While the for-profit prison industry touts the idea that governments can save money through privatization, private prisons often fail to deliver demonstrable fiscal benefits — and can even cost taxpayers more than publicly operated institutions. Numerous studies by researchers, state governments and federal agencies contradict the supposed economic benefits touted by industry supporters.

As state governments across the nation confront deep fiscal deficits, the notion that private prisons demonstrably reduce the costs of incarceration is more than untrue — it is dangerous and irresponsible. Inflated assertions about cost savings threaten to lure states into privatization, rather than reducing incarceration rates and limiting corrections spending through serious criminal justice reform.

Empirical studies also show a heightened level of violence in some private prisons. With every incentive to slash salaries so as to maximize corporate profits, private prison companies in some instances fill their facilities with inexperienced staff. After an infamous escape from an Arizona private prison in 2010, for example, the Arizona Department of Corrections reported that at the prison “[s]taff are fairly ‘green’ across all shifts,” “are not proficient with weapons” and habitually ignore sounding alarms. Private facilities have also been linked to atrocious conditions. In a private juvenile facility in Texas, for example, auditors reported, “[c]ells were filthy, smelled of feces and urine.”

Now is the time for serious criminal justice reform, not privatization schemes. The private prison industry feeds off the mass incarceration problem and cannot be part of the solution. The only real way to cut prison spending is to cut the number of people we keep in prison.

Shapiro is a Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project. He litigates cases and engages in advocacy regarding prison and detention conditions, including immigration detention, access to information about prison conditions, the right of prisoners to communicate with the outside world and to practice religion, and the freedom from arbitrary body cavity searches. Prior to joining the ACLU, Shapiro worked as an associate at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, where he litigated First Amendment cases in federal trial and appellate courts, and served as a law clerk to Judge Edward R. Becker, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Shapiro is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School and studied as a Fulbright Scholar in Moscow, Russia.

Alternet's article of the Breitbart's death

lternet did a very respectable and respectful article on the death of Andrew Breitbart.  By the end of the article I was ready to puke.  The article seemed to go out of its way to avoid mentioning the fact that the biggest headlines of Breitbart's career were all illegitimately cooked up.  After all the hoopla, it would come out that he had maliciously twisted the facts so violently that they came out in the wash as nothing more than made up stories in which he exploited innocent people fraudulently to make himself look like a real journalist.  

He was not.  

Breitbart was a cheap Repuke sock-puppet; and like all mainstream media Repukes: Savage, Beck, Hannity, O'Reilley. etc. he didn't care who he fucked over, or how brazenly he lied, so long as he could squeeze some points and hefty checks out of the most mean spirited right wingers. His attitude was that of an opportunist and a hustler.  

As for right wingers,  we all know they are colossally mean spirited. Famous for it.  David Brock wrote about his epiphany as he talked to a right wing Federal judge who had no shame in displaying the torrent of his mean-spiritedness.  Brock had attacked Anita Hill in an article during the Clarence Thomas debacle in Congress with his little phrase, "she was a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty,"  Although he gained mountains of praise from right wingers, he had qualms about the fact that he had destroyed a good woman without ever even meeting her. 

And for what?  

For the likes of Clarence Thomas?  

Long Dong Silver of the bench?  

And that moment of revelation was all it took to launch Brock's departure from the Republicanism for which he had become such a high performing sock-puppet writer, and reclaim the Liberal outlook he had so assiduously fought against at Berkeley.

But the author of this article doesn't really spend time on Brock's recovery of his own sense of decency.  Something which Breitbart never troubled himself about. None of them, the conservatives, I mean, cared or care anything about reality so long as they could twist facts into a narrative which would stoke the vast boiling cauldrons of their hatred.■

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Further considerations on The FED

ere, in the link below is a passageway to one of the most lucid and well researched essays on the fraudulence perpetrated by the Federal Reserve I have yet seen.  If the public knew of how they were being scammed by both government and major banks there would be outrage such as has never been seen.  But the propaganda machine keeps on hypnotizing those already deep in slumber from womb to tomb.  You certainly won't read of it in any mainstream media.  After all, media, all of it, is owned by the banks; hereafter referred to as banksters. The banksters are far worse than the Capone gang in Chicago.  You always knew where you stood, or didn't stand, with the mob.  Banksters are more like the Wizard of Oz, who stands behind the curtain, pulling the levers of power.  They do their best to keep their identity hidden.  Who for example, would ever suspect that the Federal Reserve, the bank which likes to give the impression that it is a part of the government, and which prints our very dollars, is not only private, but is owned not by the so-called Board of Directors, but by the Queen of England and the Rothschilds. And they have one and only one mission in mind and that is to turn you and your children and their children into debt slaves. Serfs.  Do yourself a big favor and learn something about The Fed:

http://www.webofdebt.com/excerpts/introduction.php

My own recent experience with the banksters has to do with my Sears card debt.  Some background:  After ten years of retirement my supplemental income has dwindled to the point where Social Security is my sole means of support.  And the same is true for my wife.  And despite the fact that I worked from the age of fourteen to 62, I never really made a lot of money.  I devoted my life to art; and then to helping other people raise funds for hospitals and other worthy community charities.

So I am eligible for the minimum amount that Social Security pays.  That combined with the fact that my debt ceiling has continued to rise even as my income has steadily dwindled has led to a crisis:  I cannot any longer pay my credit card and Paypal bills.

This circumstance has led to a lot of telephone activity from my bank creditors.  They call with astonishing regularity every other morning starting at eight AM.  And continue into the evenings and even on 4 or 5 times on Sundays.

When Citibank realized that I was living solely on SSI, they passed me on to a guy who was eager to "help."  His plan was to get me to agree to automate my payments on a certain day of the month, of my choosing and then they would sit back and collect oh, a hundred and fifty or so each month.  In return for this open handed reach into my bank account they would collect not only the original amount but also a percentage of interest, at 28% , that would be, in addition to their original outlay of $3,750.  As I said to one of the Collections people:  "Oh, for the good old days when the Mafia only charged 25%."  But she probably hears that sort of moaning and groaning 6 times every hour.

Compounded monthly about $14,000 over a period of five years. And of course, it goes without saying, that my credit card account would be closed.  And of course, considering my situation and my age, it would be very difficult for them to lower the interest rate.  After all, what guarantee could they have that I might not die before they had bled me dry?  So all of the money goes one way.

To Citibank.

Also, they would need access to my bank in case I decided that enough was enough and simply walked away from the debt.  With my consent to automate the payments they could keep on collecting ad infinitem.  With or without my permission.  And I would never again, in this lifetime, be able to scrape together enough money to buy a movie ticket.  Citibank is just one of my creditors. Paypal is another.  Wells Fargo is another.

Add to this information that I have only recently recovered from a double by-pass open heart surgery, along with advanced diabetes and obesity, which I seem unable to do anything about, the specter of my demise is immanent.

My good days are gone; even the bad ones of my old age are numbered.  I doubt that I have more than five years left on the planet.  Does any of this resonate with anybody out there?

None of this solves the problem of my debt.  These are just factoids.  But reading the article helps me to understand that I am not alone. That everyone is, as is said, in the same boat.  And further, that there is a reason why we are all in debt. Including the Federal Government.  And the banks, themselves.  Of course, the banks have only to claim that they are too big to fail, and run with their hands out to the Federal Government who gives them everything they want or ever could want.  And the Federal Reserve Bank simply prints some more money.That is their primary function.

The Fed prints all the money they want.

And with the principle of Fractionated Money, the banks can lend ten times the amount of money which they actually have.  Thus, all the major banks in America are leveraged out to the breaking point. ■  

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