I’m getting really tired of ignorant bigots and haters in this country justifying their beliefs and feelings towards their fellow man as “religious freedom.”  This past week’s drama in Arizona, which culminated with Governor Jan Brewer’s veto of a two page anti-gay discrimination bill, is the latest in a string of anti-people bills, drawn up on state levels by gun toting, right wing Christian groups.

Make no mistake, Governor Brewer, does not deserve any credit for vetoing the anti-gay bill.  Mrs. Brewer is nothing more than an opportunistic bigot who has pretended the past few days to have to “study” her two page bill of discrimination, disguised as “religious freedom.” Thanks for doing the obvious, Governor,  but awarding you with doing the right thing is the equivalent of giving me a medal for not kicking a homeless man in the balls, after pretending it was a moral and legal struggle to reach that decision. Governor Brewer is a pathetic piece of shit, and she milked this supposed tough decision for all the media it was worth.

The proposed law would have given business owners the right to refuse to do business with people whom their religion viewed as sinners: specifically, the law was inspired by a florist who didn’t want to do business with a gay couple getting married.  In this supposedly civilized and advanced country that we live in, the laws governing business and employment have protections built in to prevent people from being discriminated against because of race, gender, and religion.  So a restaurant can’t refuse to serve a mixed race couple.  Black people don’t have to sit at the back of the bus.  You can’t refuse to hire someone because they’re a Jew, a Scientologist, an atheist, or a woman.  These common sense, basic laws have not always been met with open arms.  Because of a deeply segregated South, we had to have federal Civil RIghts laws, and we have federal agencies that oversee the enforcement of fair labor practice.

Somehow though, enough right wing Christian bigots still hold enough sway in pockets of the country to actually get elected officials  to sponsor unconstitutional bills that discriminate against the gay community.  Although there hasn’t yet been the federal legislative equivalent of the Civil Rights Act to address specifically the rights of sexual orientation, the principles that protect us from discrimination based on race, religion and gender are already deeply ingrained in our laws.  The number of states who have legalized gay marriage (17 and rising) reflect society’s emerging values and consciousness regarding same sex couples, and national polls show a majority of Americans now supporting gay marriage.  The tide has turned so much in the past decade, that a sitting U.S. President has now been able to say he favors legalizing gay marriage.  Candidate Obama, along with Candidate Kerry, were only comfortable supporting “Civil Unions” a few years ago.  President Obama now says his views have “evolved” which really means that our society has evolved to the point where we can actually call it marriage instead of just a civil union, without too much backlash.  Federal courts have increasingly ruled against states that have attempted to ban gay marriage as well, although the partisan Supreme Court has ducked the final decision to call it a constitutional right for same sex couples to marry.

With gays now allowed to serve openly in the military, and with mainstream society and entertainment embracing the gay and lesbian community with open arms, the homophobic minority is pushing back with every tactic it can dream up, from the religious groups in Utah that poured money into a California ballot initiative to ban gay marriage in the state, to states attempting to amend their constitutions to specifically ban it.  As with Arizona’s newest attempt to allow businesses to refuse service to gays, it is usually done with the ironic and inappropriate guise of “religious freedom.”

These hate mongering idiots have a warped sense of freedom; not understanding that their freedom ends when it intrudes or suppresses the freedom of another, they constantly seek to find legal ways to institutionalize their stone throwing, judgmental beliefs.  Not too long back, a jackass President George W. Bush gave lip service to the religious right with an empty threat of calling for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.  His genius reasoning for this stunning display of a U.S. President’s ignorance and dislike of gays?  Because all of the world’s major religions recognized it as between a man and a woman.  So the former leader and brainiac President Dipshit felt justified because of religious consensus.

The good and proper, ugly bitch of a governor, Jan Brewer, is an asshole overseeing a state that appears to have a lot of good people, and a small but unfortunate majority of tea bagging crazies. She signed into law the anti-immigration bill in Arizona in 2010 that caused so much controversy and the Obama administration to file a lawsuit against them to overturn it. It’s the law that allowed the police to ask for your papers or detain you if they had “reasonable” suspicion that you were an illegal immigrant. In other words, it attempted to institutionalize and legalize racial profiling all the time for any person not Mitt Romney white. What is happening now is an extension of that type of discrimination, this time inspired by their so-called good Christian folk’s hate or fear of gay people. The new law would have also allowed and lead to of course, discrimination against races – say a mixed couple that the Klan claims9 goes against the Bible – as well as, say a Muslim with a Turbine on his head. The governor knows this full well, as do three of the state senate republicans who have now expressed public remorse for their yes vote. Some of them are acting as if they were duped, which is bullshit, they’re not stupid, but to their credit, they did admit their fault publicly and thankfully before it was  too late. Governor Brewer needed political cover to do the right thing.  Predictably, Brewer vetoed the bill, but not before feigning it as a difficult decision.  Her veto was predicable, because the really ‘important people,’ the business class and heavyweights like Senator Sore Loser, John McCain, were putting the pressure on, as were a really large mobilized public opposition.

In 2009, about a dozen good Arizona folks attended a public protest outside their convention center in Phoenix where President Obama was giving a speech, openly wearing and displaying their firearms, apparently exercising their “freedom.”  The picture at the top of this blog is of one of the protesters sporting his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.  Arizona law allows this “freedom,” and incredulously, gun nuts saw nothing wrong with heavily armed political protesters in public.  What is it about Arizona and other fanatical communities who apparently feel safer when their citizens walk around openly displaying their murder tools, even at a public protest where the propensity for confrontation is high?

It reminds me of the stupid sons-of-bitches in Murfreesboro, TN, who made national news back in 2012, for opposing the building a new Islamic Center and Mosque by a Muslim group that had been in the city for years.  I saw footage of some dumbass  redneck at a protest there challenging a college student who was supporting the Mosque, saying “do you believe in Sharia Law?  Do you want Sharia Law here?”  The funny thing is, these gun toting religious zealots have a good deal more in common with the Taliban than they do with true lovers of American freedom and liberty.  Fearing a religion based law such as Sharia Law, they attempt to impose their own brand of religious laws, based on their fearful and judgmental interpretation of Christianity.  Like the Taliban, they feel better when their beliefs are backed up with guns.  Freedom, to these tea baggers, means freedom for them to tell everyone else how to live their life, and freedom to discriminate in the business world and public against anyone of a different religion, race, or sexual orientation.

Former Vice President and shoot-a-friend-in-the-face, profit from war liar, Dick Cheney, famously said that we were “in the last throes of the insurgency” in Iraq, when we were clearly in the beginning.  Let’s hope that these bad jokes of laws of discrimination, like the one we just saw fail in Arizona, are the last throes of the insurgency of the American Taliban, the tea bagger, Christian conservatives, who are accepting a more inclusive, free American society, kicking and screaming, with an assault rifle strapped on their backs.

It is a remarkable feat of successful propaganda that educated Americans, living in the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, trail behind most other populations in the world in their belief in the scientific evidence of the dangers of global warming.  What prompted me to look up some very interesting Pew Research Center polls on the matter, which I will address, was the number of people I have spoken with who seem angry or perturbed that the Obama Administration has yet to approve the construction of the Keystone Pipeline.  These were not the type of people who follow environmental issues, or energy issues in general; many were predictably Obama bashers, whom, as the President once said, “If I say fish live in the sea, they’d say, no they don’t.”  But what I find most disturbing is the overall American public’s lack of concern or understanding of the grave consequences of our continued use of fossil fuels and the devastating impact it is having on our climate.

During his State of the Union address, President Obama made it a point to say that climate change is real, regardless of the deniers, and that it is a scientific fact.  If the President were speaking to a group of Kentucky poisonous snake handlers, or a third world country of voodoo practitioners, the necessity of clarifying the fact that global warming is real and mostly caused by mankind’s unprecedented use of fossil fuels, it would be understandable.  In our country though, the business class, aided by right-wing media pundits, and “fair and balanced” other generic shit news peddlers, have succeeded in perpetuating the myth that man-made global warming is some type of controversial theory in which the jury is still out on.  The business elite and policy planners of the government know this to be a lie, but short term profit always trumps long term consequences among corporate leaders, and the policy planners are of course, corporate sponsored.  So they put out the propaganda that allows their current profit models to continue on course as they are, and to hell with the future inhabitants of the planet.

The Pew Research Center polls, which I looked up, paint a pretty clear and pretty pathetic picture of the success of this propaganda campaign. It shows that among most publics of the world, when asked whether or not they think climate change is a serious threat to their country,  a fewer percentage of Americans believed it was than any of the other groups surveyed.  Americans citing climate change as a major threat was 40 percent; all other groups were above 50 percent except for the Middle East, who still ranked above us at 42 percent.  The polls break down the belief system within the U.S. population as well, and not surprisingly, it shows that the more conservative an American is, or republican or tea bagger, the more likely they are to not attribute climate change to human activity.  Of course, this is the most crucial point of the propaganda system, because as long as Americans mistakenly believe that there is “debate” about the cause, then action and policy change become difficult or impossible, and things remain the same.  Copy and paste this link for the Pew polls: http://www.pewresearch.org/key-data-points/climate-change-key-data-points-from-pew-research/

The confusion among Americans, who should theoretically be better educated than their Middle East counterparts, appears to be the belief that there is debate among scientists, that the cause of climate change is still some controversial theory that has yet to be proven or agreed upon.  I saw the joke of a congresswoman from Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn, argue on “Meet the Press” last week that there was not agreement among scientist of the causes.  It’s hard to know if she is just an idiot, or a liar, it could be either one.  Tea baggers who are not idiots are liars, and some of the idiots are also liars, so it’s hard to be sure with her.  Ass-wipe Sean Hannity, of the Fox Propaganda Network, is another one that is hard to tell if he is lying or just a dumb-ass, or both.  When we were recently going through a bitter cold front in New York City, he of course observed that the freezing weather outside his studio meant that global warming was  a “hoax.”  His word.  I was just trying to figure out if him saying that as the truth was a hoax or not.  Like I said, the business elite know the truth, but it goes against their goals of profit over people, so they have jack-asses like Hannity preach misinformation, and scumbags like Congresswoman Blackburn to make sure policy change doesn’t happen.

As I was cursing at the tv during last week’s “Meet the Press” episode as Blackburn was making her ignorant/lying statements, David Greggor also pointed out to her that there is consensus in the scientific community that today’s global warming is impacted by mankind activity.   As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, that consensus in the scientific community is 97 percent at least, and if the credibility of the other 3 percent were to be scrutinized, my guess is most of them are barely what we’d call scientist.  I’ve always joked that these “scientists” that deny climate change are probably undergraduates from Jerry Falwell University or some other religious school, the kind that still deny the existence of evolution and believe that world is only 6000 years old, and that dinosaurs walked around with Adam and Eve.  And there are those “scientists” and “biologists” who believe this.  But to cite these anomalies of idiots as “debate” in the scientific community is a stretch by any imagination.  And it is exactly this stretch of imagination that has our population so ignorant or confused on the realty of our race to ruin the planet.

In fact, the debate among scientist now is about how quickly the earth will continue to warm, and how disastrous the effects of the warming will be.  As of right now, it appears that scientists have been too optimistic about the time frame and consequences.  Evidence so far suggests that global warming is happening quicker than was first predicted, and having more devastating consequences, sooner, than was predicted a couple of decades ago.

Secretary of State, John Kerry, made headlines this past week in a speech in Indonesia in which he compared the danger of climate change to weapons of mass destruction.  He supposedly has a stellar record as an environmentalist politician, but I only heard that in the media and haven’t had time to examine his actual record, but let’s assume he is.  The State Department has to weigh in the most on the Keystone Pipeline, as it crosses our international border with Canada, and President Obama is waiting, among all of the other input of public commentary due in the next month, on Mr. Kerry’s recommendation before approving or not approving the pipeline.  Is Mr. Kerry’s strong words on global warming, and the media’s trumpeting of him as a champion of the environment, merely a ruse to give credibility to the approval of the pipeline, should Obama approve it?  Or is it a hint to Big Oil to not get their hopes up, should Obama not approve it?

I’d like to think it’s the Obama Administration’s way of giving an early warning to Big Oil and all the big profit business that goes along with it that he is leaning towards not allowing the Keystone Pipeline to be built.  But given Mr. Obama’s frequent bragging about America’s increased domestic oil production since he took office (which is accurate) and his optimism that thanks to natural gas, America will be energy independent for the next century, I have reason for doubt.   This new found celebration about our future energy independence – “independence” being misunderstood by the public’s conventional thinking of what that means, as oil and the U.S. will remain part of the global market and we will still be in the Middle East and elsewhere digging for more – seems to be based almost entirely on our current system of fossil fuel use, and our ability to extract more.  Very little is spoken about achieving this abundant century of energy through transitioning to alternative sources of energy.  Aside from talking about better fuel standards, most all of this optimism cites America’s natural gas and fracking to extract it, continued coal use, and better drilling techniques.  The tar sands of Canada, where the most dirty and dangerous form of crude oil lies, is one such example of our so called improved extraction techniques.  The main purpose of the Keystone Pipeline is to transport this dirty fuel, although it will transport some other sources of crude.

So I get calls or emails or Facebook posts from my political opponents yelling for the pipeline.  It’s been a republican mantra and answer to not passing a jobs bill,  to get Obama to approve the Keystone Pipeline. They’ve even tried to extort it from the President over the debt ceiling.  “Drill, baby, drill!” was a Sarah Palin rallying cry during her failed V.P. run, though I suspect half of the one toothed rednecks and snake handlers in her crowd were more moved by a woman of her looks saying “drill, baby, drill!” than they were by actual thoughts on energy production.  The problem, in these mind numbing nit-wit’s mind, is that we just need to drill more.  Scrape the tar sands, drill baby drill.  This faulty belief is understandable, if they first believe that there is no global warming taking place because of our use of fossil fuel.

There are some legitimate arguments about the safety of transporting crude oil through pipelines as opposed to transportation by rail.  Recently, the increases use of our rail system to transport oil and other fuel has led to a spike and new record of accidents that have resulted in devastating explosions and leaks of dangerous material in various communities in our country.  However, pipelines also break, and have led to environmental disasters as well.   The bottom line, and fundamental question, is if we want to invest and sacrifice more to exploit the ever harder to extract fossil fuels such as the oil in the tar sands of Canada, or if we will pull our collective head out of our asses and realize that man-made global warming is real, is a genuine threat to our survival on the planet, and that we must immediately make drastic changes to the way we will manage our energy in the future.  Bragging about a century of energy independence because we have figured out how to extract more dirty fossil fuels is a recipe for environmental disaster, which is already happening.  Building this pipeline will not bring down the price of gas that people pay at the pump for gas.  It will raise the profits of the Big Oil, Big Business, and the Big Banks that service them.  It will also postpone and suck resources away from making the necessary transition to alternative fuels.  This will in turn ruin the planet, and imperil the chance for humankind’s survival in the future.  And as long as the successful spreading of lies and misinformation continue, it appears we are running, not walking, down this path.  And in the end, it will matter little who was lying to deny climate change and it’s causes, and who was just a moron and tool of the liars.  What matters now is that people realize the undeniable truth about global warming and it’s causes and consequences.

This is a link to a most excellent video report from the online version of “The Nation” and I highly recommend you take the time to watch it.  It is extremely informative, and engaging to watch, and I strongly urge everyone watch it, regardless of what side of the fence you are on at the moment on climate change and energy production:

 http://www.thenation.com/video/157441/peak-oil-and-changing-climate

 

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I expressed some hope last week that the workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee would see through the bullshit being propagated by the state republicans and outside tea-bagger groups and vote to join the United Auto Workers union.   I expressed this hope against the backdrop of a Southern state that still suffers from a majority of brainwashed, republican voters, who regularly vote against their own best interests.  Sadly, ignorance prevailed, and the workers voted no against joining the union by a vote of 712 to 626.  It should be noted though, that unprecedented public bullying and threats from elected republican state officials played an unethical, and perhaps illegal part, in this loss for labor and workers, and will undoubtedly have a ripple effect throughout the South for years to come.

Let’s address the ignorance first.  As I wrote in my last blog concerning this union vote, the general public, and in particular the republican voters in Tennessee, have misguided notions on labor unions, and social and economic policy in general.  They demonstrate this ignorance and brainwashed belief system by consistently voting for the greediest, biggest asshole politicians they can find, notably the republicans.  Then they complain about how screwed up the “system” is, a system which is governed by the assholes they chose to represent them, assholes who are funded and sponsored by the industries and corporations that actually design the screwed up system.  I’ve written extensively in the past and noted many examples of how the average citizen votes against their own self interests, so I won’t rehash all of that here, but I will point out a quote in the news from one of the dumb asses at the plant that was opposed to joining the union:

“Look at what happened to the auto manufacturers in Detroit and how they struggled. They all shared one huge factor: the U.A.W.”

The New York Times cites this quote from a dumb ass named Mike Jarvis, a three year employee at the plant.  Last week in my blog, I said that occasionally you would hear an argument from an anti-union idiot working stiff  such as “unions are the reason these companies moved to Mexico and China in the first place, they make it too expensive for the company to survive here.”  And, as the after the fact vote and quote above shows, I’ve heard this ludicrous line of bullshit from dumb asses like Mr. Jarvis many times before, and predictably, it is heard and repeated again and again.

Well, you can lead a red state jack-ass to water, but you can’t make him drink it.

There were just too many billboards, 13 in all,  bought up from scumbag tea-baggers like Grover Norquist and his group Center for Worker Freedom (which of course the title means the opposite) that appealed to the emotions, fears, and prejudices of employees and their friends and relatives over logic and reason.  In addition to the billboard like the one I pictured at the top of my last blog that sought to play on the negative opinions and racism against President Obama in the state, other billboards played on Southerners’ fears and prejudices of becoming another Detroit – that is, a dying and crime ridden city of decay, brought about by labor unions and liberalism.

Overcoming propaganda and workplace intimidation is always a challenge in getting the working class to vote for their own best interests, and at least there are federal labor laws that protect  workers from company sponsored intimidation and retaliation tactics.  In this case, however, the German Volkswagen company appears to have not been involved in either.  They publicly asked third party and outside groups to stay out of it and let the workers decide.

And then came the guardians of the Plantation Party:  Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam,  Senator Bob Corker, and State Senator Bo Watson.  These three pieces of possum shit were in the media actually making threats to the workers and the Volkswagen company, should they vote for unionization.  The governor warned that auto parts suppliers would not come to Chattanooga if the union won, and that future job creators would avoid Tennessee. Bob Corker claimed to have spoken with Volkswagen executives who promised expansion at the plant to make SUV’s, if the workers voted no on the union.  Executives deny saying this to him.  State Senator Bo Watson upped the threat more directly, warning that Tennessee legislators, ruled by the republican majority, would withhold future subsidies (corporate welfare) to Volkswagen, should the factory go union.

Not only are these acts of republican officials unprecedented, appalling, and unethical, they may be illegal.  I’m not a lawyer or expert on labor law, but it seems logical to me that threats of intimidation and retaliation that are illegal for companies to make towards their workers during a union vote, would also be illegal, if not especially illegal, for a politician to make.  The U.A.W. president has said that their team of lawyers are looking at legal action options, but offered no details as of yet.

What is also pathetic on the political side of this is the deafening silence coming from President Obama, the Justice Department and Labor Board, and other national democrats holding office.  Vaguely, I remember a presidential candidate named Barrack Obama once telling a group of supporters at a rally that if elected president, he would put on his walking shoes and join the picket lines with the workers on strike (I forget what workers or strike).  Needless to say, that didn’t happen after he was president and republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin managed to dismantle collective bargaining for unions in that state. I haven’t heard anything from President Obama on this current case either, and very little from democratic leaders in Washington.  This is inexcusable, and the President and silent democrats should be ashamed at of their lack of inaction and commentary.  The future of unions and workers in the country are going to be greatly affected by this loss in the Volunteer White Slave State of Tennessee.  And a message is being interpreted by republican scumbags across the states, that although employers are barred from illegal threats to unionization, that they can gladly step into the debate and use their political power and legal authority to circumvent labor law protections. And even if the politicians didn’t violate the laws in this instance, and it remains to be seen if they did,  the message is that they will go unopposed in the arena of public debate.

Republicans are always willing to lie and intimidate in order to maintain the power and wealth of the top .01 percent, and in the Tennessee case this means that the Governor, and his Senators, are willing to do and say whatever it takes to make sure that Tennessee workers will have no say at the bargaining table.  And that is just the way the plantation style republicans want to rule America: a top down system of extremely wealthy owners, ruling over the working poor, who are still stupid enough to vote for them.

 

If you wanna a fine example of how ignorant and self-defeating republican voters can be on a local level, you need look no further than the Volunteer state of Tennessee.  Like much of the solid red states of the South, the poorer the population is, the more supportive they are of politicians who’s policies support the rich and powerful, and shit all over their own well being.  Tennessee’s city of Chattanooga is home to a Volkswagen, a German manufacturing plant, who is in the process of conducting a three day vote on whether or not it’s workers will join the UAW union.  If it does so, it will be the first foreign owned auto company in the South to have union representation.  It is currently the only Volkswagen plant in the world without some type of worker or union representation, and that is just the way the republican leadership in Tennessee wants to keep it.  So dedicated are the elected republican leaders in the state committed to preventing it’s citizen workers from organizing for their rights and conditions in the workplace, that Governor Bill Haslam and other state legislators are actually threatening the workers and the Volkswagen company publicly with retaliation if they chose unionization.

Republican state legislators have actually threatened to withhold future tax incentives for factories thinking of moving to Tennessee, if the Volkswagen plant joins the union.  Most likely this in violation of federal laws that still protect workers rights to join unions.  Employers are not legally allowed to retaliate against workers seeking to unionize, so now the good republican governor and his army of republican legislators are attempting to intervene by threatening to withhold future corporate welfare for other companies considering location in Tennessee.  Apparently, the republicans in the state want to keep the workers rights, pay, and working condition more in line with that of Mexico and other third world countries.  And the real question is, how stupid are the citizens of this state who vote for these assholes that clearly have nothing but disdain for the working class and poor?  Will they be stupid enough to vote no to joining the union?

When I was a young man many moons ago, living in Tennessee, I remember seeing workers of the Nissan auto plant, and their spouses and girlfriends, wearing tee-shirts that read “Eye Can Speak for Myself” with the “I” being spelled like an actual eye, with a big eye drawn onto the shirt.  This was part of the campaign then to vote no against unionization of that plant.  These idiots actually thought that the union was some outside force that was seeking to take over their job and do them harm, charge them membership fees, maybe even make their benevolent employer Nissan pull up stakes and move elsewhere, where the local population would be happy to work for less and with less benefits.  That campaign succeeded, the union was voted down, and moron workers got what they voted for and deserved:  now days Nissan employs “contract workers” who make as little as 12 dollars an hour, while the temp agency that technically employs them, earns upwards of a 30 percent fee for their part as acting as a vulture and roadblock to workers pay and rights.

Outside groups have bought up billboard ads in Tennessee urging the workers to vote no.  One billboard called the UAW the United Obama Workers union, in a cynical ploy to play not only on the president’s unpopularity in the state, but to stir racists feelings in the former Confederate slave state.  The irony of this is of course, that these working class people of the state, fearful of Obama putting their white asses in chains, are in practice, voting to enslave themselves to the corporate managers and CEO’s, and voting for republican politicians who are staunchly dedicated to tending to the needs of the rich and all powerful corporate paymasters, and staunchly dedicated to making sure that the workers who put them in office, have absolutely power or voice in the workplace.

It is nothing short of stunning, and infuriating.  Watching these dumb, easily manipulated, pay check to pay check living, working poor, continually vote for rich republicans who do not give a shit about them, their pay, their plight, their healthcare,  or their food supply, is about as frustrating to me as I imagine it is to a cop watching an abused woman continue to return to her abuser and refusing to press charges, even though legal protections and help is right under their nose.

Let’s hope the workers at the plant are smart enough to vote yes this time around at a chance to having a collective voice in the workforce. Let’s hope they are smarter than the tea-baggers of the state who vote for their elected officials to stand up and fight against the workers of the state in order to enrich further the handful of corporate swine that they work for.  Another irony in this story is that the Volkswagen leadership and ownership don’t have a problem with the workers joining the UAW.  Germany, the strongest economy in the European Union, is used to workers having rights, decent pay and benefits, and a say in the workplace.  In fact, most all of our European counterparts give their workers more rights, better pay and better benefits.  Contrary to popular belief among conservatives in this country, unions and a livable wage haven’t killed the economies of our Western, European neighbors.  Neither has nationalized healthcare – in fact, it makes the citizens’ quality of life better.  But here, tea-baggers still trust the “job creators” while being suspicious of Big Government, too brainwashed to realize that Big Business currently occupies OUR government, and that they are the fools voting them into power.

I have spoken many times about the sophisticated propaganda system of the super rich that is used to control public opinion, and this is a prime example.  Simple review of the facts and history of organized labor in this country show that when unions had the most membership, the middle class earned more and had better benefits.  As membership of labor unions has declined in this country, so have wages and benefits.  Sometimes the dumber of anti-union working stiffs will say something like “unions are the reason these companies moved to Mexico and China in the first place, they make it too expensive for the company to survive here.”  To which I respond, “No, you dumb son-of-a-bitch, our elected officials writing trade laws that allow these greedy companies to move to Mexico and China for the purpose of exploiting their slave labor market and lack of environment regulations for huge profit increases are the reason they moved to Mexico and China.  And now they have your dumb ass actually paying these companies through your  tax dollars to come to your state and allow you the privilege of working for them, if you are willing to do it at a low enough wage, with minimal benefits, and under a totalitarian, corporate structure in which you have almost no rights.  Or, as your slave masters’s bought and owned republican politicians that you voted for calls it, “a right to work state.”

Surely a salute to our former terrorism sponsoring and class warfare against the middle class and poor, President Ronald Reagan, deserves some credit for helping propagate the myth that “government is the cause of your problems, not the solution.”  Because what of course he really was saying was, “government is the solution for helping the rich and powerful take away your rights enrich themselves even further.”  He convinced workers in this country that “getting the government off of their backs” would make them richer and more free.  Of course what he meant by that was getting the government off of the backs of the big corporations and allowing them to do whatever the hell they want, such as poisoning the water we drink and polluting the air we breathe; move our jobs overseas to sweat shops, use our volunteer army and tax dollars to terrorize and murder people of the third world to allow them to be more profitable; to create a private owned monopoly system over our medicine supply, and allow our insurance companies to determine who gets medical care and who does not; to subsidize companies like Walmart and McDonald’s by allowing them to pay their workers poverty wages while our tax dollars provide food stamps and medicaid to allow their workers to live.  Or, as Reagan also championed this job creation theory: “de-regulation.”

Generally speaking, whatever term a republican comes up, actually means the opposite.  Slogans like “Eye Can Speak for Myself” really mean, vote no on collective bargaining so you cannot speak for yourself in the workplace.  “Support the Troops” really means pay them jack shit, abandon them when they come home, and deploy them multiple times into combat zones to kill and be killed for the private wealth of the trans-national corporations while telling them they are defending freedom.  “Invest in Clean Energy” means continue to subsidize dirty fossil fuels with tax payer money.  “Keep the government out the way between you and your doctor” has meant and still means keep the insurance company in the way of you and your doctor.  The list goes on.

In Tennessee, the term “Volunteer State” apparently means volunteer to give all of your rights to the private and powerful corporations you work for.  And if you don’t, your elected republican governor and legislature just might not give away your tax dollars in the future to companies that you work for.  Volunteer now apparently means to volunteer yourself as a grateful slave, thankful to have your corporate master give you a job, as long as you pay your taxes to pay for their “investment” in your state.

Unbelivable.  Make me proud, the state of my birthplace.  Take back some power for the working men and women and vote yes for that union.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At a recent party I heard a familiar lament:  both parties are corrupt and I don’t vote for either because they both suck.  It is true that both the democrats and republicans are part of the corporate sponsored oligarchy, but indifference and lack of participation only empower the worst elements of both.

A very long time ago in my early days of coming into my political age, I voted for a third party candidate named Ross Perot, who ran under the banner of a third party he was trying to create, the Reform Party.  I don’t agree with all of the things Perot was for, but two causes he highlighted were relevant then and even more so now: the corrupting influence of corporate lobbyist “the ones wearing the alligator shoes” and their big money contributions through campaign donations and the revolving door of cushy jobs for politicians post their time in office, and the dangers of so-called free trade, such as NAFTA at the time.

When Al Gore ran for president and beat governor George W. Bush in both the popular vote – as well as the unofficial Florida recount that was conducted after the Supreme Court stopped the official count and installed W. Dipshit as the worst president in modern history – I supported Ralph Nader running under the third party banner of the Green Party.  Democrats, Al Gore, the press and some liberals blamed people like me for “helping” Bush to win, even though in reality he didn’t win.  I agreed with Mr. Nader that votes should be earned, and don’t automatically belong to either of the two corporate sponsored candidates; I also agreed with his assertion that if you keep voting for the lesser of two evils, all you end up with is less.  Certainly his warning about the declining of the candidates has proven as true as Mr. Perot’s warning that passing of NAFTA would lead to a “giant sucking sound going south” that was the sound of American manufacturing job losses.

There is another very important lesson that Ross Perot’s surprisingly strong showing in the general election taught us and the corporate powers that rig our elections: the value of the sophisticated propaganda system that the super rich control through their ownership of the mass media, and the threat that third party candidates cause this power system.  Ross Perot, despite having dropped out of the presidential race in the beginning under suspicious reasons, and then reentering the same race after taking a beating in the polls and by the media, managed to get nearly 20 percent of the popular vote.  The nationally televised presidential debates are largely credited with allowing Perot to regain support.  His 30 minute political ads, striking for their attention to detail of policy proposal in age of 30 second sound bites, probably helped as well.

No third party candidate has been allowed in the presidential debates since then.

Ralph Nader sued unsuccessfully to be allowed in the presidential debates.  Apparently the threat to the propaganda system of the rich and powerful was so severe after Perot’s performance 8 years earlier, that not only were future non democrat and republican candidates banned from the arena, but in the case of Ralph Nader, banned from even being anywhere near the debates, even as a spectator.  Ralph Nader was a ticket holder to the presidential debate that was held on the campus of the University of Massachusetts, but was escorted away by State Troopers from this public event of democracy, on a public college campus. This was a shocking moment of abuse of power by the corporate elite that sponsor these events, a subversion of our democracy,  and was largely unreported.  I recommend further details of this event that can be found in this online college publication : http://www.dailytargum.com/police-escort-nader-from-first-presidential-debate/article_9cd3213f-a474-5164-bf97-1ad21f288155.html.

I also attended a political rally for Ralph Nader at Madison Square in New York City the year Nader ran against Gore and W. Dipshit.  The rally was filled with around 10,000 other supporters, many of which donated money to his campaign in the form of volunteer contributions to the tickets to the event.  Celebrities such as Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, and  Eddie Vedder spoke or performed at this event.  It barely got any press coverage by the mainstream media, who was too busy highlighting small gathering political events by Gore and Bush.  The propaganda managers of the top 1 percent were busy on many fronts making sure that the general public wasn’t aware of alternatives to the democrats or republicans.  The narrative sold was that a vote for any candidate other than corporate puppet choice number 1 or 2  was a wasted voted.  Nader can’t win, Pat Buchannan couldn’t win, Ross Perot didn’t win, don’t waste your vote.  The maddening thing is that all it would have taken were enough votes for a third party candidate to win, and polls showed then and now that people want an independent voice or a third party, yet most people simply won’t  “waste” their vote.

I supported President Obama during both of his elections.  I would rather have had Ralph Nader or someone else, but by the time his election came around and President George W. Bush had shown the country how disastrous the more evil of the two evils could be if they won the presidency, I voted for the lesser of two evils and went with the democratic candidate.  Not because I thought my vote would be wasted if I didn’t, but because by now I have come to the sad realization that since the majority of the public believe there are only two real choices and will either vote for one of the two, or not vote at all.  I have now surrendered some of my own ideology for practicality.  And predictably, Obama has been less than I hoped for, but to his credit, better than most in conventional, oligarchy owned politicians.

The result of all of this is a broken democracy in which the will of the people, no matter how strong the polls show support among a majority of Americans in any given policy, is subverted and subjected to the watering down or outright refusal by the real powers that currently own OUR government.  Examples of this abound, from the overwhelming, super majority of voters who support criminal background checks on all gun purchases – denied by congress, to a single payer healthcare system – watered down into Obama Care.  More money for domestic issues at home instead of more military spending for aggressive military action and war abroad – not happening, despite the Drone Ranger winning the Nobel Peace prize for lofty rhetoric that bares little resemblance to reality.  Tax increases on the rich as opposed to spending cuts on the rest of us?  Largely denied.  Extending emergency federal unemployment benefits during this period of bare minimum economic growth?  The minority of republican politicians in the Senate just fillibustered that, so the majority of what voters want of course is denied.  More draconian cuts to food stamps, despite public opposition?  Done deal, suck up on crumbs, poor and hungry Americans, the republicans don’t want to spoil you and Bill O’Rielly has assured us that Jesus isn’t down for food stamps either.

All of this sounds like a very logical and preponderance of evidence based reason to not vote at all.  And to a large extent, it is.

But, are we to give up completely on the right of Americans to vote?  Despite as bad as things are right now, I believe that not voting will only make things worse. We still do own the vote, and billions of dollars are now flooded into the presidential elections by corporate fat cats who realize that we can still change things, if enough Americans wake up or see through the smoke and mirrors.  Our vote is still a threat to the oil companies, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the trans-national corporations, and the financial industry that brought us the Great Recession.  That is why they spend so much money to shape public opinion.  As long as they can get us to vote against our own best interests, they will continue to funnel the majority of the wealth created in the world into their very small number of hands.

As a progressive, as a liberal, as a person with common sense, and as a person who’s so called liberal ideas are now in the majority of public opinion on the majority of issues, as noted above, I still implore you to vote, and vote for democrats when the choice is between them and the republicans.  The democratic party, traditionally the party of the working class and the poor (you know, the majority of us) are still the only reasonable choice to vote for our own best interests, when compared to republicans.  Both parties are sponsored by corporations and uber private wealth, and the democrats are increasingly weak and ineffective as a result of this, but at least they are in favor of giving us a few crumbs as opposed to letting us die in the gutter from starvation and lack of healthcare while the rich ride by in their gold plated limos, lamenting on the value of the “free market” and “capitalism.”  And maybe, just maybe, call me an optimists (which I am rarely called), but I also believe that if we stay engaged, vote, and pay attention to what the politicians are doing with the issues, we can embolden enough weak kneed democrats to stand up for the people again.  And, if enough people really pay attention to the issues, maybe even a third party, independent of corporate and concentrated wealth, can emerge.  I doubt it, but its a start and I will not lay down quietly.