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7 November 2004 - SundayReceiving money is not the same thing as earning it. The most abused word in the American press is 'earned.' Wealth is responsibility; owning land and other property real or otherwise means being responsible for it. You can't take it with you. The most prosperous years of this country's history were the middle 1900's. We also had the highest tax rates on high incomes, 90% on the last dollars raked in. New companies and new wealth sprouted everywhere -- but so did the well being of regular citizens and families. This was not coincidental. High taxes on raking cash out of corporations public and private encouraged capital growth and employment. It has been downhill ever since. It's said that the rich pay half of all income taxes. This is a lie. It doesn't take much more than 30 seconds to prove that, but leave it for another time. However, consider this: When the rich and powerful take all of the money, they will have to pay all of the taxes. We live in a money-archy that was briefly a promised land for working families. Yet we have the vote. The only discipline we have for the rich is our right to vote taxes on excesses, and our right and responsibility to define excess. Our forbears finally did that, after suffering the Depression. Now the neo-Confederates are appealing to simpleton logic to kill those hard-fought laws, which clearly worked for regular citizens and working families. Citizens of all sorts have to start voting for themselves and their families' welfare, first. That would be the most patriotic American act I can think of.
4 November 2004 - WednesdayPerhaps there was yet more treachery last Tuesday, 2 November. More likely, though, it seems clear that the country is gripped by ignorance, stupidity, and simple-minded superstition like no time since the Civil War. In fact, the clearest picture I know is that the so-called 'Neo Cons' controlling the administration are just Neo-Confederates. The South has risen again, and stolen the White House, and now created a bare majority for its unconstitutional program. McCarthyism pales next to the Bush agenda, not least because that agenda has been elected after Bush showed clear incompetence in every dimension, and malicious intent to subvert and wreck our Constitution. Again, those who call themselves Christian, yet support war, need to read the book. These shallow un-American zombies condone the murder of strangers by the thousands, and American military personnel by the hundreds, yet wrap themselves in self-righteousness and my flag. For almost all of my years, a treacherous and self-destructive force has gripped America, and it makes me sick. May miracles somehow turn it all around, and soon.
19 October 2004 - TuesdayRecently we passed 1100 US military deaths in Iraq. No headlines announce this. See CNN Many others have died, especially Iraqis, of course. The election approaches. The Bush administration, still illegitimate, incompetent, and corrupt, continues to draw half of the votes in the polls. The Kerry campaign struggles to win against failure, treachery, and financial disaster now and for the forseeable future. The fourth estate does next to nothing about it in the meantime. Lies are cheap. The truth is expensive. It's hard to imagine how we ever had a responsible media, if we ever did. It certainly did not derive from a free-for-all anything-goes marketplace. Recently The Oregonian indicated that it would reassign a reporter for sending out emails that indicated that Baghdad is a disaster. I haven't read what became of that threat. The editors seemed to think that this revelation had destroyed the reporter's claim to objectivity. But objectivity is not found between the truth and a pack of lies.
25 September 2004 - SaturdayAbout 2.5 million people die every year in the USA. That means more than 7 million people have died since September 2001, according to the US Statistical Abstract, published by the US Census, and other sources such as Infoplease. The leading cause of death is heart disease, followed by cancer. Old age is not listed as a cause of death, but among these numbers are more than 40,000 deaths from car accidents and more than 25,000 from gun shot wounds, per year. That would be about 200,000 people dead from these two causes alone in the past 3 years. These numbers put the 2700 people who died in the WTC attacks, and the more than 1200 who have died in the US dominated Iraq and Afgan attacks, in perspective. If we say the number of those who have died as we attack the Middle East is not enough to cause us to withdraw, or even that the number is 'not that high,' as has been said, then the number that died in the WTC attacks was similar. It gets more similar with every passing day, and if George Bush is re-installed in the White House, there is every reason to believe that the number of Americans who die in the service of the Bush cabal will increase and surpass the number killed by Al Queda. The idea that people who call themselves Christians support this war and this killing is too twisted for words. But it is too widespread to deny. Raised as a Christian, I have separated from any organized religion. But the idea that Christians could believe that their religion supports war and killing and that God is on their side makes my head spin, once more. To those so-called Christians who believe that their religion supports war or killing in any form, I say: Read the damn book!
16 September 2004 - ThursdayIt is easy to point to the people in power in the US to place blame for our untenable policies and path. I blame the government -- but I have met the government, and in my country, it is US. Next to US, I blame the press. It is hard to fathom how even a blatant conspiracy could do such damage, pitting fact against lie and calling it 'balanced,' promoting the worst that our country has produced, propping them up and running interference for them, and framing them like mythic heroes in old master paintings. I'm talking about Busholini, 'The Dunce,' of course. One professor says he was spoiled, loutish, and a pathological liar, but not as stupid as he seemed. Some things don't change, it seems, after all. CNN is the only primary national or regional news source I know of that makes it easy to find the US military casualty figures for the Iraq conflict: http://cnn.com/casualties. 1029 and counting. Iraq Coalition Casualties is an excellent comprehensive source with more details on the first page. Using 'coalition' in the title is sarcastic, notwithstanding the sadness of those comparatively few others who have died. This site also lists, as of today, approximately 151 contractors known dead, and shows the difference between wounded and returned to duty, versus those not immediately returned. With 4 more years, we can let Bush kill far more Americans than Osama. More digging is required to find the number of American service members killed in Afghanistan and in other unnamed adventures. Go straight to the Pentagon for some of those numbers: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf Just as important, many sites such as Iraq Body Count attempt to count and even name the much more numerous victims of our attacks on Iraq, counting well over 10,000 so far, and climbing. There's more to write.
6 September 2004 - MondaySeem to have missed my goal of writing more often. Still working at a very cool company, The Insitu Group, and the area around Hood River, Oregon and White Salmon, Washington is still surprisingly beautiful. The company now has small robotic uninhabited (unmanned) aircraft, of about 40 pounds or 16 kilos max takeoff weight or mass, take your (corrected) pick, in the field, with good reports. The principal customers are military so far, though commercial customers exist as well and preceded military orders. We just haven't made announcements yet. Since last posting, my country continues on its path of intensifying lukewarm fascism, which is hard to write about in any case, and more so in my current circumstances. One post to the good, at least.
19 January 2004 - MondayBeen working at a very cool company, The Insitu Group, for the new year, in a surprisingly beautiful area around Hood River, Oregon and White Salmon, Washington. The company makes small robotic uninhabited (unmanned) aircraft, of about 40 pounds or 25 kilos max takeoff weight or mass, take your pick.
1 January 2004 - ThursdayPeace to all, and let us hope that this page updates more frequently, and more cogently, in the new year...!
10 December 2003 - WednesdayEvery group is a democracy—some just do it better than others.
5 December 2003 - FridayThe existence of creationists and 'creation science' proves that evolution doesn't work.
3 December 2003 - WednesdayWe now have a debt-o-nator for governor in Kalifornia. Charming.
2 December 2003 - TuesdayAh-nuld promised in his campaign that all we had to do to fix Kalifornia was to get rid of waste and fraud. That was just one of many outright lies. Idea: He is a waste, and a fraud.
1 December 2003 - MondayIn a cult, believing is seeing.
27 November 2003 - ThursdayThanksgiving Day Still hard to write about the state of the world, given what is, compared to what could and should be. Optimists can be their own worst enemies, always finding hope in the face of tragedy and treachery, even when fierce attack is the only reasonable course of action to stave off disaster. I am not often called an optimist, so it would surprise some to find out that I believe that I have been, and still am. Massive corrupt forces have robbed humanity of our best future, and perhaps any future, and those forces are gathering strength — not losing it. Yet, every day we must remember that there is still, and always, hope.
19 November 2003 - WednesdayThe world is so surreal, it's hard to write about it, whether personal, national, or global. We have an awkward, unfunny, boorish Austrian as governor of California, who is described what seems like everywhere as 'charming.' This in itself is a reason to worry, and not just about our press. He wants us--virtually commands us--to vote for a $15 billion bond in order to overcome a debt. How can a regular citizen hear that and not choke on the lie? It is too absurd to joke about, in a state with $1 trillion in personal income, perhaps less, but perhaps more, which means we could fix the whole shortfall with an overall 2% tax increase. Wall Street, Washington, and Sacramento practice every form of financial terrorism on the population, and the population applauds. Regarding Iraq, the press can't seem to tell the difference between breaking down a door with a warrant, versus without a warrant. The warfare, in Iraq, which is going very badly, is said to be good because it ousted a dictator. If the police are allowed to shoot anybody they have capital evidence against, we could say the same thing. 35 years ago Reagan was in California bankrupting the state, and Nixon was going to Washington to take the program national. Then it got worse, for a long, long time. The world could be a much better place, but there's no reason to bet on it, today.
5 November 2003 - WednesdayCouple of very important birthdays recently... In 1949, my father took the bus from St. Louis, Missouri, where each of us was born, to somewhere near Los Angeles. He would have been about 13 or 14. I don't have time to make it pretty, just now, but some of the postcards he sent and wrote, but kept, are here.
28 October 2003 - TuesdayBusholini is in way more trouble, on many more fronts, than Nixon ever dreamed he could attempt. Yet the simplest justice seems as remote as ever. The greater mass of the American people are still like an abused spouse, battered, weak, embarrassed, yet still in deep denial about their partner. They spew hysteria and histrionics to defend the scum, even while being treated for the latest life-threatening wounds at the emergency room. We have got to face the beasts, America. They are right here at home.
23 October 2003 - ThursdayIt seems that some Republican from Florida is going to be brought in to audit Kalifornia's books. Who is he going to bring in to audit our elections -- Katherine Harris? (Harris is currently sitting in Congress with no protest from so-called Democrats, to make another point.) Arnold apparently thinks that she can find $300 million. That's less than $10 per person, for the whole year. This state, which has produced Nixon and Reagan and other historic embarrassments, has sunk to a new low. Truckers, farmers, and anybody with common sense, including most of us that is, should be watching their wallets, their children, and their privates more alertly than ever before.
20 October 2003 - MondayThe screamers on sucker radio have finally made it clear: The poor have stolen all of our money.
18 October 2003 - SaturdayThere is so much work that needs to be done -- look around. How can we have so many unemployed, underemployed, and underpaid when so many schools, water mains, electrical grids, roads, medical centers, and other foundations of our general welfare need significant repair and upgrades? It's disgraceful. Wealth is responsibility first, obligation second, and privilege a distant third if that. The righteous currency of America is liberty. You can't print that, but it is a promissory note from the Constitution, nonetheless. The money currency of the United States is no less ours than the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And you can take that to the bank.
17 October 2003 - FridayIt is simply common sense to see that more than two-thirds of the newly wealthy either married their money or inherited it; that is, they did not earn it by any American standard. By the same logic, the greatest fraction of wealth in this country is old money. These people do not take the most cash every year, so most of them are not even visible to us most of the time.
16 October 2003 - ThursdayWe are told that CEO's must be paid our big bucks because of the risks they are taking. When they promise to pay back the money they lose, and actually do it, I will begin to believe that they are taking risks. Until then, we are just being robbed. It's our US Treasury money we're talking about here. It is going to take many years of very high taxes on the rich and those who take lifetimes of cash every year (the 'cash holes'), to get back to where we need to be. There is no other way.
month of October 2003 |
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