Worley Dervish

Dear Russ: An Open Letter to Russ Feingold

2012-01-19T11:52:00.007-06:00

Dear Russ,

We know you have said repeatedly that you would not run for public office in 2012, and we have tried repeatedly to respect and honor that. But over and over again the idea comes sailing back, that the one person who would be best for Wisconsin in this exceptional historical moment, for so many reasons, is you.

Photo courtesy of the Run, RUSS, Run Facebook page.
Yesterday's decisive millionfold denunciation of the Fitzwalker regime underscores what a historic moment this is, not only in Wisconsin history, but in U.S. history. Recall elections in themselves are quite rare, and this may very well be the most extraordinary of all. There's no question but that this represents a singular opportunity for the people of Wisconsin. After having sustained so many wounds at the hands of the soon-to-be former regime, Wisconsin is in need of healing. There are a multitude of reasons why so many of us find ourselves looking to you, not to save us, but to lead us as we seek to clear up the rubble and reassert the values we hold most dear.

We know you and we trust you. As our senator, you listened to us. You respected us. And you proved yourself to be an effective advocate for us. What we said and needed mattered to you. This is in stark contrast to the Fitzwalkers' refusal to listen to or care about the concerns of the people of Wisconsin.

You have a proven record of bipartisan cooperation, as evidenced in the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform of 2002. The Fitzwalkers have been nothing if not divisive. But here in Wisconsin we have a tradition of listening to each other and working together, regardless of ideology and party affiliation, and we desperately need to return to that tradition of mutual respect and cooperation.

It's truly a wonder that any sane, decent person would want to run for office in this country's current political climate, which resembles nothing so much as Hurricane Katrina in more ways than one. So really, we can understand why you'd want to be shut of it. But alas, your reticence to run is evidence of your sanity and decency and is, in fact, one of the best reasons why you are our first choice.

Scott Walker is bad for Wisconsin in large part because of his overreaching power grabs. He is more of a despot than a governor. He listens only to the 1 percent (as evidenced by his scandalous public conversation with pseudo-Koch), and he treats the rest of us with utter disdain and contempt. And here you are, resisting the pursuit of political power. Nothing convinces us more thoroughly that you are the man of the moment.

Those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who ... have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well. —Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

We know there are other good candidates that could run against Walker. But none of them would inspire us and energize us as much as you would. None would have our confidence or enthusiasm as much as you would. There's no one we would fight harder for or be prouder of.

Maybe if this were an ordinary election in a less turbulent time, we would be satisfied with a good candidate and celebrate your new role as our fellow activist. But this is no ordinary time, and we need more than an ordinary candidate to run against Walker.

Many of the other possibilities would be good. But you would be great. And that's what the people of Wisconsin long for and need in this critical moment. Please, please, let us sweep you into office and lead us as we begin a new era in Wisconsin history. Listen to us as you once did.

Run, Russ! Run!

ONE MILLION!

2012-01-17T15:26:00.007-06:00

In this one bright, shiny moment, the state of Fitzwalkerstan has been turned into the state of Euphoria.

Can you feel the earth moving under your feet? This is a tectonic shift in American politics. I've never been prouder to be a Wisconsinite or an American. Today I can truly say that I am one in a million. Wisconsin, you are showing the world what democracy looks like.

Because it's just not possible to go over the numbers too often, here they are:

Population of Wisconsin: 5,686,986

Number of adults in WI: 4,344,857

Number of voters in gubernatorial election in WI: 2,158,723

Number who voted for Walker in that election: 1,128,159

Number of signatures needed for recall election: 539,681

Number of signatures turned in for recall election: 1,000,000

Sources: US Census, JSOnline, and my dear friend the Duck

John Nichols sums up the huge significance of this mammoth achievement:

No other gubernatorial recall drive in American history has gathered the signatures of so large a proportion of the electorate. The total number of signatures submitted Tuesday represents 46 percent of the turnout in the 2010 Wisconsin gubernatorial election. That compares with 23.4 percent that signed the petitions that initiated the successful recall of California Governor Gray Davis in 2003 and 31.8 percent that signed petitions to recall North Dakota Governor Lynn Frazier in 1921.

Yep. This is really big. And the best news of all? We're only just getting started. You ain't seen nothin' yet!

Wisconsin Recall: We Are What Democracy Looks Like

2012-01-07T11:40:00.008-06:00

With less than a week to go in Wisconsin's effort to collect signatures for the Walker recall, many of us are understandably turning our thoughts to who will run against him in the upcoming election.

Honestly, the first thought that has come to mind every time I've considered the question is Russ Feingold. But Feingold has said repeatedly that he will not run for public office in 2012. And although I know that many politicians say one thing and mean another, I think Russ's resolve is quite firm in this respect. In a mid-December interview with Charles Benson of TMJ4 in Milwaukee, Feingold said he feels more a part of real change now than he did as a senator.

Here's exactly what he said: "I feel more a part of real change now than I did even as a senator." Think about that for a minute. What Feingold is saying is that real change comes not so much from elected officials as from the people. You know—us.

I'm not saying that it doesn't matter who runs against Walker. It does. And we do need to talk about that. But before we get going full tilt on that, we need to remind ourselves of something even more important: where real transformation comes from.

Think about who you were, who we were, before Walker unleashed his draconian agenda on the people of Wisconsin last February.

I didn't know the names of any state legislators but my own. I hardly ever spared a thought for state politics. Whenever there was an election, I did my best to catch up with the candidates and the issues. But it's not really possible to do that in just a few days. I was woefully out of touch.

When I first learned about Walker's devastating "budget repair" bill, I firmly expected that people would be angry and would complain for a while and then continue going about their business as though nothing had happened.

But then a miracle happened.

From seemingly out of nowhere, thousands of us—hundreds of thousands of us—gathered on the Capitol Square. Day. After. Day. We brought with us our signs, our outrage, our indignation, our sense of fairness, our determination, our sense of humor, our hats and mittens, and our friends, neighbors, kids, and grandparents. The people of Wisconsin woke up and rose up, and anyone who was there will never be the same again.

We have sloughed off our complacency and have our sights firmly set on transforming our state into the beacon of progressive values it has long been and will be again. No politician, no candidate for governor, can do for Wisconsin what we can. It won't be enough to elect a progressive governor. It won't be enough to flip the state senate and the assembly. No matter how hard we have worked collecting signatures, no matter how hard we work on the recall election, it won't be enough if we don't continue doing the work of democracy.

I have confidence in the transformation that has taken place in Wisconsin. Our sleeves are rolled up, and they will stay rolled up. We will remain vigilant on behalf of our neighbors and our children, our parents and grandparents. We will not stop insisting that the progressive values we prize most are not compromised. All this because we have learned a lesson we will never forget:

We are what democracy looks like.

2012 Talking Points: Rachel, Thomas, George, and Me

2012-01-06T14:51:00.014-06:00

Most weekdays I watch the videos from the previous night's Rachel Maddow Show, and, as you can well imagine, very often I join in the discussion myself. Yesterday Thomas Frank, author of Pity the Billionaire, was one of Rachel's guests:

Thomas: You and I can sit here and say we’ve been engaged in conservative politics in this country for 30, maybe 40 years ... privatizing, deregulating, deunionizing, outsourcing, all of this sort of thing, but their answer to that is, "Uh-uh. We just haven’t gone far enough. And we’ll never be prosperous again until the day we deregulate all the way and we privatize everything. Until then you can’t say that laissez-faire or the free market has been discredited, because we haven’t been allowed to do every last little thing that we want." ...

Rachel: Your thesis absolutely has helped me understand what happened in 2010 and how the simplistic—incredible but simplistic—and vehement argument that sounds simple and effective repeated loudly can work. ...

Me: So this explains why the "trickle-down economics," "government-is-the-problem," "deregulate-and-privatize-everything" ideas still have traction? Because they've been repeated loudly and vehemently and often enough? No wonder it seems like so much of public discourse has become a fact-free zone.

Perhaps this touches on one of progressives' greatest difficulties. We like reasoned discussions; we like exchanging ideas of merit; we like refuting right-wing pundits' assertions. But when we do that, we often respond using the right's own language and ideas; we let them frame the discussion and we don't get to our own frames.

Let's invite George Lakoff, author of Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, to join us.

George: Progressives have a basic morality, which is largely unspoken. It has to be spoken, over and over, in every corner of our country. Progressives need to be both thinking and talking about their view of a moral democracy, about how a robust Public is necessary for private success, about all that the Public gives us, about the benefits of health, about a Market for All not a Greed Market, about regulation as protection, about revenue and investment, about corporations that keep wages low when profits are high, about how most of the rich earn a lot of their money without making anything or serving anyone, about how corporations govern your life for their profit not yours, about real food, about corporate and military waste, about the moral and social role of unions, about how global warming causes the increasingly monstrous effects of weather disasters, about how to save and preserve nature.

Progressives have magnificent stories of their own to tell. They need to be telling them nonstop.

Me: So in essence, this is what the right has been doing so effectively. They have hammered on their talking points until everyone is parroting them, not just the party faithful. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the right has its own 24/7 propaganda machine that happily reiterates right-wing frames over and over again. Still, you have to admit, they've been good at this stuff and progressives have not.

In the coming election year, beloveds, let's quit reacting to the right's provocations and focus like a laser on what we believe in: representative democracy, clean and transparent government, opportunity for all, the common good, the Bill of Rights, the well-being of the 99%, social as well as individual responsibility, inclusiveness and diversity, and compassion and empathy.

From Wisconsin's Department of Unmitigated Gall

2011-12-30T15:17:00.003-06:00

I received a charming little missive in my inbox today from none other than our illustrious guv himself:

E-update from the Desk of Governor Scott Walker
One of the most important duties I have serving as your Governor is to provide you directly with updates related to the operation of our state government. In an effort to improve communication, periodically I will be sending out an e-update to provide you with more information about what is going on in state government.

The e-mail smells like a pathetic effort at damage control. Um, guv? Kinda late, dontcha think? You have the nerve to send an e-mail bragging about your accomplishments? Yeah, right. All over Wisconsin we feel the weight of your many accomplishments: slashed education funding, rescinded collective bargaining rights, less access to health care, voter disenfranchisement, and 15,000 fewer jobs since July. This is like getting a missive from the devil crowing about how it’s even hotter in hell these days.

Then I stumbled on this statement made to Talking Points Memo by the Wisconsin state GOP communications director, Ben Sparks:

The Republican Party of Wisconsin is committed to ensuring that Wisconsin electors are not disenfranchised during this recall process. The Democrats have shown they are committed to preserving the status quo, where a man is able to sign a recall petition 80 times, and their frivolous attempt to intervene in this lawsuit only reinforces their willingness to force this baseless recall on Wisconsin voters at any cost.

Say what?!? There’s enough unmitigated gall in those two sentences to make your eyes water.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin, the same outfit that brought you voter suppression a la mode, is “committed to ensuring that Wisconsin electors are not disenfranchised”? Whoa. I want to hear Sparks say that to the college students, the working poor, the elderly, and every other disenfranchised voter in Wisconsin.

And which “status quo” do you suppose Sparks is accusing the Democrats of being committed to preserving? I’m guessing he was not thinking of the status quo of state workers having collective bargaining rights. Or the status quo of clean, transparent governance. Or the status quo of Wisconsin's great public education system. The people of Wisconsin long for a return to that status quo, Mr. Sparks.

But wait! There’s more! The lawsuit Sparks is referring to is the one brought by the Walker campaign and the Wisconsin Republican Party against the Government Accountability Board asking that the GAB eliminate duplicate or false signatures on recall petitions. Because, of course, it’s not enough that the nonpartisan GAB just do its job as clearly stated in state statutes.

This nonsensical lawsuit actually claims that the guv’s “constitutional rights are being violated by the state’s petition review process.” And Sparks calls the organizers’ request to be involved in the judicial process “frivolous”? Really?

In an interview with Talking Points Memo, Jeremy Levinson, the attorney for the recall organizers, said, “It’s the first time I’m aware of a recall-related lawsuit where only the official who is being targeted for recall gets to be a party, and the folks who are working to recall that official are shut out of the process.” Apparently its frivolous for all the players to ask for a seat at the table.

And who is Sparks to talk about the “willingness to force” anything “on Wisconsin voters at any cost”? This from the people who used every dirty trick in the book to cram their loathsome “budget bill” down the throats of the people of Wisconsin, who repeatedly refused to listen in spite of unprecedented protests and vehement objections. The people of Wisconsin wouldn’t have had any chance to make themselves heard had it not been for the fourteen Democratic state senators who fled the state in February.

Finally, only someone who has never listened to anything the people of Wisconsin have been saying for the last eleven months would refer to the Walker recall as “baseless.”

Roe vs. Wade vs. the Iowa Reality Show

2011-12-29T17:31:00.004-06:00

As we turn our collective attention to the reality show in Iowa, it’s hard to miss that a woman’s right to choose is under attack. Many members of the rabid right like to live in a fact-free zone and are so unhinged from reality that they wouldn’t recognize it if it sat down across from them at the dinner table. Nevertheless, we must do our best to focus on reality while we face the onslaught coming from the right-wing presidential wannabes.

I have a confession to make. Back when I was young and naive, I was a pro-life evangelical. I felt that the unborn were precious (still believe that) and worthy of protection (still believe that too). Christian evangelicals often dislike complexity and tend to see things in simplistic black-and-white terms. Certainly the same could have been said of me. (Someday I’ll tell you about my metamorphosis from evangelical to Episcopalian. But not today.)

During that time I happened on an issue of Sojourners magazine that examined the question of abortion in depth from several carefully thought-out and well-expressed perspectives. I read the whole issue, front to back. Some of it I read more than once. As a result, all the black and white morphed into many shades of gray. I’ve been mulling over what I read there ever since.

What hit home for me was that legislation is not the best way to reduce the number of abortions. Legislation banning abortion serves only to put the back-alley hacks back in business, thereby causing more needless deaths, not preventing them. This can hardly be considered a desirable outcome, but it’s one that many who want to make abortion illegal refuse to acknowledge. If your goal is really to protect the unborn, rather than just beating your chest and trying to make yourself appealing to anti-abortion die-hards, then it’s well to consider how best to do that.

Reducing the annual number of abortions is certainly an admirable goal. However, there are different ways to reach that goal—some of which will help women and some of which will not.

Simply put, there are two key ways to reduce abortion—by making it less necessary or by making it less available. In our view, only the former approach is humane, effective, and just. [Center for American Progress]

Abortion is not new. It has been part of the human story from the beginning. It’s not going away, regardless of how much its foes stomp their feet. Throughout human history women have found ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

None of the options available when a woman is faced with an unwanted pregnancy are especially easy or pleasant. Regardless of the reason for the pregnancy—lapse of judgment, rape, or failed birth control—the decisions that must be made are difficult and rightly belong to the pregnant woman and the people she chooses to trust.

How is it that those most adamantly opposed to abortion seem never to spare a thought for women faced with unwanted pregnancies? In their efforts to outdo each other in their pro-life fervor, abortion opponents even cast shame and suspicion on women who miscarry, and women who are raped cannot expect an ounce of compassion from those who value the unborn more than they value rape victims.

The question is, who decides? Who decides what should be done when a woman finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, for whatever reason?

Surprisingly enough, a bunch of judgmental middle-aged legislators, most of them men, are not the best ones to make extremely personal decisions for women at such crucial junctures. The decision of what to do about a woman’s pregnancy shouldn’t be made by strangers. It should be made by the woman herself. And no one else.

The goal of reducing the number of abortions is a much better one than making abortion illegal. Make good reproductive health care and sex education available to everyone, and then trust women to make the very personal choices they’re confronted with responsibly and with much-needed support and assistance.

I know that’s not what we’ll hear from the reality show in Iowa. All the more reason to counter the reality show with reality. Nothing less than the very lives of our mothers, sisters, and daughters is at stake.

Wisconsin Set to Throw the Republicans Out

2011-12-26T14:08:00.003-06:00

According to Andrew Feldman’s Christmas Eve opinion piece in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “Despite Democrats' massive protests and their success at gathering recall signatures, most Wisconsinites did not appear to be in a ‘throw the Republicans out’ mood in 2011. If they had been, Supreme Court Justice David Prosser would be out of a job and Democrats would have won back the state Senate during the summer.”

First, not all of those who protested Walker’s draconian budget bill in February and March were Democrats. And it’s not only Democrats who are circulating recall Walker and Kleefisch petitions or signing them. Many of those who voted for Walker are more than disillusioned and disappointed. They’re furious—furious enough to work very hard on the recall effort. And the signatures are coming, not just from Madison and Milwaukee but from all over Wisconsin. Over 507,000 signatures were collected in the first 28 days—that’s 94 percent of the signatures needed (540,208) and 70 percent of the signatures hoped for (720,277)—in less than half the time allotted (60 days).

You may recall that voter turnout for the Prosser/Kloppenburg Supreme Court race was unprecedented. The outcome was perilously close and is still considered highly questionable. When the election began, Kloppenburg was not particularly well known, and she was trying to unseat the incumbent. Even if the dubious votes that Kathy Nickolaus miraculously discovered were indeed legitimate, the election can’t be dismissed as a failure for Democrats. We sure as hell gave Prosser a run for his money—a LOT of money, come to that. And I wonder how those who voted for Prosser in April feel about his bad behavior since then.

You can hardly call the recall elections of this past summer a Republican victory. The accomplishments of Democrats, progressives, and labor organizations this summer were truly remarkable. On August 10, 2011, John Nichols told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that “Democrats and progressive groups, labor especially, took on six entrenched Republican incumbents in districts that were drawn to elect Republicans and that, in some cases, have elected Republicans steadily for more than a century. So, this fight was played out on the turf of conservative Republicans. With that reality, you saw two Democrats win.” Recall elections targeted six Republican senators and three Democratic senators. Democrats held on to all three senate seats and successfully recalled two Republican senators.

In August, Ian Millhiser pointed out how truly remarkable those achievements were:

All of the Republican state senators who were eligible for recall in [2011] were Republicans who held on in 2008 despite the fact that they had to stand for election during a Democratic wave. Likewise, all of the Republicans who were elected in 2010 only because they were fortunate enough to run during a Republican wave were immune from recall. Come 2012, however, all of this changes.

In 2011, we were only just getting started. Some of the battles we have already fought were at least as challenging as the ones that await us in 2012, if not more so. We set very high goals for ourselves, and that we didn’t attain everything we went after doesn’t mean that the victories we did achieve count for nothing. Our accomplishments thus far are formidable and cannot be dismissed or discounted.

Feldman is quite correct that unseating Walker will be a daunting challenge. But don’t make the mistake of underestimating how angry Wisconsinites—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents—are about Walker’s actions. Feldman is also right about the need for Democrats to “create a bold agenda that does nothing less than revive Wisconsin's progressive tradition.” But for my part, I am inclined to believe that Wisconsin is indeed in a “throw the Republicans out” kind of mood.

The Transformative Power of Protest

2011-12-13T07:45:00.000-06:00

This weekend HuffPost ran a piece by Steven van Zandt called "There Is Only One Issue in America," that one issue being the financing of public elections. I can think of many important issues other than that one, and I am naturally skeptical of solutions that seem to come with "it's so simple" stamped on them. Still, this one issue is unquestionably a biggie.

But here is what really raised my hackles:

Yes, we can demonstrate. We can march. We can write and sign petitions to our Representatives. We can occupy.

And we should because it's healthy to vent, and we don't feel so all alone. But the truth is, other than the value of venting, we're wasting our time. It is naïve to expect political results from any of these activities.

The results of political demonstrations and marches are seldom immediately apparent. But they are legion. They are not merely "venting." They are not just an opportunity to not "feel so all alone." They are an opportunity to be not "so all alone." What did the demonstrations in Madison last February and March accomplish? What has the Occupy movement accomplished?

They have galvanized people. They have forged connections and built a community of resistance. They have transformed us into a formidable force to be reckoned with that won't back down and won't settle for the status quo.

Of course, demonstrations and protests on their own aren't enough. But they do indeed lead to some very desirable outcomes. They build awareness and stir us from our complacency. They change the direction and tone of public discourse. They cause us to identify and align ourselves with our communities in a new way. They provide us with the opportunity to teach our children what democracy looks like, to teach them who we are, while at the same time affirming that for ourselves. For some of us, representing in actions like these has been an all-out life-changing experience. We are new people, with new connections and new vision, new knowledge and understanding, new determination, and a new appreciation for the power that We The People actually do wield but far too often relinquish.

In Wisconsin, the recall efforts of this summer and the current Walker recall efforts would not have happened without the demonstrations of February and March. Those who are working so hard right now to collect signatures wouldn't have as much energy or focus had they not participated in last winter's demonstrations. The visceral experience of not being alone in our outrage convinced many of us of how much we could accomplish together and how truly excellent our compadres are. The protests were a breath of fresh air to those who are being disenfranchised, ignored, and abandoned by the ruling elite. They were like a giant hug for every public school teacher in the state. They were an acknowledgment to the world that we are here, we are strong, and we are fighting back—together.

I'm sorry you missed out on all the fun, Steven. The demonstrations here in Madison and in Zucotti Park have been far from a waste of time. They haven't had the direct effect on those in power that we envision—yet. But they most definitely have had a powerful effect on everyone who participated in them. We will never be the same again. The power brokers won't let go of their stranglehold quickly or easily. But they are worried. About us. About what we're going to do next. Because they know they cannot withstand the tsunami that is the unrelenting power of the people.

Strong: Coffee

2011-12-12T15:24:00.004-06:00

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a latte drinker, but you don’t need to stand in line at your local coffee shop every day to know there's something wrong in this country when Folgers drinkers can imbibe openly in public but we can't openly drink lattes without derision or ridicule.

As latte lover in chief, I'll end the right's war on latte. And I'll fight against right-wing attacks on our beloved fair-trade organic addiction. Real Americans love their latte strong. They can make it strong again.

I'm Mary Ray Worley and I approve this message.

Adviento 3: El Anhelo de la Humanidad

2011-12-11T08:52:00.006-06:00

From time to time, I have the privilege of sharing a brief meditation at my church (Grace Episcopal Church, right across from the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin). In Spanish. I don't usually post these things on the blog, but hey. Why not? A few of our readers will be able to understand it.

El Adviento es mi favorita estación del año litúrgico, porque creo que la esperanza, el anhelo es un parte muy importante de la vida cristiana. También es parte de la condición humana. El anhelo es nuestro compañero cada día. Y a veces es un compañero incómodo, ruidoso, un poco salvaje. Como María esperando el nacimiento de su hijo Jesús, esperamos la llegada de Dios en nuestro mundo, en nuestra nación, en nuestra comunidad, en nuestro trabajo, en nuestra familia.

Esperamos la intervención de Dios en nuestros problemas y nuestras relaciones. A causa de este anhelo, entendemos el milagro de la venida de Dios. El mundo también tiene ese anhelo, aunque muchas personas no lo entienden. Cada día, en cada parte del mundo, cristianos esperan el reino de Dios. Como oramos: “Venga tu reino. Hágase tu voluntad en la tierra como en el cielo.”

Como la Virgen María, esperamos con gozo y confianza un nacimiento maravilloso: de la justicia, de la paz, de la unidad, de la compasión, de la igualdad, del entendimiento, del amor profundo y abundante entre todos los pueblos del mundo, en otras palabras, el nacimiento del reino de Dios en la tierra. Y esta esperanza crece in nuestros corazones, como un niño precioso, poco a poco creciendo en la fuerza. Tenemos que alimentarla y cuidarla y mantenerla calentita como una madre cariñosa. El desánimo siempre la busca como un lobo feroz. También el miedo. Y el odio. Y la falta del perdón. El hambriento y la desesperación. Esas enfermedades del mundo pueden devorar nuestra esperanza. Pero podemos protegerla en oración, en la comunidad de la iglesia, en leer las escrituras, y en la alabanza entusiasmada.

Si la justicia y la compasión y la paz sean fáciles, no las valoremos, no entendamos que preciosas son. No entendamos la grandeza del regalo de Dios. El anhelo nos forma. Y no estamos solos en ese anhelo. Lo compartimos con la Santísima Virgen María y Juan El Bautista. Cuando ella dice que Dios “puso en alto a los humildes [y] llenó de bienes a los hambrientos,” ella no habla del mundo presente. Porque todavía hay los pobres, los hambrientos, y los desamparados en nuestra comunidad. Pero María confirma que Dios ya ha hecho, ya ha vencido. Y nosotros, juntos con María y todos los santos, podemos vivir en la victoria de Dios.

Es un gran privilegio, un gozo participar en la lucha para las cosas que Dios valora más. Juntos con los discípulos de Cristo en todas las edades y épocas y en todo el mundo, y con nuestros hermanas y hermanos aquí en la iglesia. Tenemos la honra de compartir con Cristo en una lucha de más importancia. Esta lucha nos forma, como el anhelo nos forma. Siempre tenemos que recordar que servimos a Uno que ya ha vencido. Él ha compartido no solamente su victoria, mas que su lucha con nosotros. Porque en la lucha, podemos entender el significado, la importancia de la victoria.

El anhelo, la lucha, y la victoria nos forman en la imagen de Dios. Este es nuestra esperanza, que vamos a ver, cara a cara, Jesús en su trono, Jesús, nuestro rey, Jesús en su victoria. Este es nuestro anhelo: que vamos a ver la justicia y la paz de Dios, el reino de Dios en toda su gloria. En su primera carta a los Corintios (capitula 13, versículo 12), San Pablo escribió: “Ahora vemos de manera indirecta, como en un espejo, y borrosamente; pero un día veremos cara a cara. Mi conocimiento es ahora imperfecto, pero un día conoceré a Dios como él me ha conocido siempre a mí.” Este es nuestro gran anhelo, y la esperanza de María y Juan El Bautista, y todos los santos: Dios con nosotros, Emmanuel.

Profit Über Alles: House's Antiregulatory Folly Is Their Idea of a Jobs Bill

2011-12-08T09:56:00.008-06:00

On Wednesday, in a 241-to-184 vote, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 10, the "Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny" (REINS) Act, which would require congressional approval from both houses for any major new regulations. Four Democrats slithered across the aisle and voted with the Republicans: John Barrow (GA), Dan Boren (OK), Mike McIntyre (NC), and Collin Peterson (MN).

The claim, unsurprisingly, is that, released from the presumably unbearable burden of regulations, businesses will be able hire more employees. But there is little evidence that regulations hamper the economy.

What we have here is nothing more or less than the Tea Partiers proving to their constituents and, more importantly, to their corporate sugar daddies that they're doing all they can to "rein in" and undermine the executive branch. Never mind that Obama has put forward fewer regulations than W had at this point in his tenure. Never mind that the bill is highly unlikely to be introduced in the Senate. Never mind checks and balances (I swear none of these guys was paying attention in high school civics class).

This is the House's pathetically laughable idea of a jobs bill. While the Tea Partiers kowtow to their corporate backers and cozy up to ideological lunacy, the economy continues to teeter on a precipice. It's immoral and unconscionable for these jackals to play politics and unrelentingly adhere to their crackpot ideology while unemployment levels are so high.

From an editorial in Sunday's New York Times:

Reins is a terrible piece of legislation that would undermine a functioning regulatory system that protects people from harm. ... In a nutshell, the bill would stop any major regulation issued by a federal agency and costing more than $100 million from taking effect unless it received approval from both houses of Congress and the president. Many such rules are issued every year involving everything from food safety to efficiency standards for cars. Disapproval from one house would be enough to kill a rule and force the agency to start all over again. A rule would also die if one house failed to act within 70 days.

The bill is the fullest flowering of the Republicans’ antiregulatory philosophy. Beyond that, it would upend the traditional relationship between the legislative and executive branches. Under long-standing practice, Congress enacts laws—the Clean Air Act, for instance—and then empowers the executive branch to negotiate with stakeholders and write detailed regulations.

Congress delegates this responsibility because it has neither the time nor the expertise to develop the rules or the machinery and manpower to enforce them. Reins would radically re-position Congress to make final decisions that involve detailed technical matters.

Remember, the House of Representatives is currently a body that can't negotiate its way out of a paper bag. Would we really want them in charge of the minutiae of regulation? And would we want our regulations subject to the enormous lobbying influences that currently reign (pun intended) in Congress? Of course, not. The idea is beyond absurd.

Rabid-right ideologues believe that the private sector is infinitely better than any public sector body. Given how dysfunctional this Congress is, I can almost see their point. But even as toxic as Congress has been lately, corporations and their influence peddling have been far more so. The assertion that businesses and corporations will self-regulate is patently ludicrous.

What should not be lost on the American people is that issues of health and safety and the common good should never be left up to people whose only concern is the bottom line. Because then, of course, human costs will never be counted when they're tallying up the cost/benefit analysis.

Yesterday's Huffington Post quotes Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX): "Who do the regulators answer to? No one." Ah yes, but whom does Congress answer to? Not the American people, clearly. No, members of Congress answer to big money, for whom environmental, health, and safety laws are nothing more than meddlesome interference. Profit über alles.

Rep. Poe continued: "When the regulators go to work everyday, like most people go to work, their work assignment's a little different. In my opinion, they sit around a big oak table, sipping their lattes. They have out their iPads and their computers, and they decide, 'Who shall we regulate today?' And they write a regulation and send it out to the masses and make us deal with the cost to that."

Rep. Poe is full of crap. Whose well-being does he have in mind when he complains about big oak tables (as if he never sat at one), iPads and computers (who doesn't use one?), and lattes (that's really hitting below the belt). As if the process of writing and passing regulations were altogether arbitrary, as if pure profit motive could ensure the well-being of the environment and Americans' health and safety. Republicans in Congress think protection of the environment, health, and safety should be left up to CEOs and their lobbyists. And this is their idea of a jobs bill.

Madison Police: Providing a Safe Place for Democracy

2011-11-21T16:12:00.012-06:00

Recently we've seen a lot of iconic images of police brutality against peaceful protesters from all over the country.

From New York City to Tampa to Denver to Oakland and Davis, California, police are apparently under the illusion that violence is an appropriate response when the people exercise their constitutional right to free speech and peaceable assembly to petition for a redress of serious grievances.

But in Madison, Wisconsin, site of some of the biggest protests in the country earlier this year and just a few days ago, the police have by and large protected our right to peaceably assemble. This past Saturday, between 25,000 and 30,000 protesters demonstrated around the capitol square in Madison in support of the effort to recall Scott Walker, and according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the capitol police had "reported no arrests as of Saturday afternoon." No arrests. No brutality. No pepper spray.

On February 19 of this year, soon after Walker et al. launched their heinous all-out attack on workers, schools, and health care in Wisconsin, the Madison police went so far as to commend Wisconsin protesters on their good behavior:

SATURDAY'S CAPITOL SQUARE DEMONSTRATIONS
Law Enforcement Praises Protesters' Conduct
On behalf of all the law enforcement agencies that helped keep the peace on the Capitol Square Saturday, a very sincere thank you to all of those who showed up to exercise their First Amendment rights. You conducted yourselves with great decorum and civility, and if the eyes of the nation were upon Wisconsin, then you have shown how democracy can flourish even amongst those who passionately disagree. ... The goal of law enforcement has been to provide a safe environment for democracy to take place. That goal has been realized for yet another day.

"The goal of law enforcement has been to provide a safe environment for democracy to take place." That was very cool at the time, but in light of recent events, it's extraordinary. So let's turn it around, shall we?

The people of Wisconsin praise law enforcement officers' conduct.

I'm sure I'm not alone in my gratitude for the police who have supported our efforts and our right to peaceably assemble. Thank you for not pepper-spraying or clubbing us, for not telling us we can't exercise our constitutional rights. Thank you for treating us with dignity and respect rather than with violence and brutality. Thank you for not hurting our friends and family—the elderly and the very young—who have gathered with us. You are truly a shining example in what otherwise is a dark night of shame. Just as the rest of the nation has been inspired by Wisconsin protesters, we hope that the nation's law enforcement agencies will be similarly inspired by you.

Norquist Beyond the Thunderdome

2011-11-18T11:50:00.010-06:00

Irresistible title on Huffington Post: "Patriotic Millionaires to Grover Norquist: 'Move to Somalia.'"

WASHINGTON — Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, millionaires who want the government to tax them more, met with foremost anti-tax guru Grover Norquist in Washington late Wednesday afternoon.... Patriotic Millionaires ... believe that America has been good to them and that it is their duty to give back. ...

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Norquist felt the group only represented liberal interests. "They were there with a heavy partisan message," Norquist told HuffPost Thursday. "The kinds of arguments I got from these old people weren't interesting when I was 12, the left has not advanced. These guys are Democratic Party hacks. [emphasis added]

Norquist, full-time lobbyist, president and founder of Americans for Tax Reform, who has never run for office much less been elected, is advocate-in-chief for the extreme right-wing no-taxes-not-ever, drown-government-in-a-bathtub political ideology. According to Norquist, paying taxes is not just a partisan message, but a "heavy partisan message." Since when is taxation a left-wing idea? As Mr. Norquist well knows, some Republicans actually believe in taxation. Norquist's hubris allows him to believe that it's up to him to determine what's left and what's right. No doubt he also believes that government is a left-wing idea. And democracy. You know, radical lefty stuff like that.

Norquist (age 55) calls the members of the Patriotic Millionaires who went to visit him "old people." "Old people"? Who does he think he's talking to? A bunch of never-trust-anyone-over-thirty teenagers? I wasn't able to find out exactly which group members met with Mr. Norquist, or exactly how old they are, but in what I found it didn't appear that any were more than about ten years older than old Norquist, and one or two were younger. Check out this photo of the visiting old-geezer delegation of millionaires. Funny how Norquist seems to fit right in with the old white men at the table, isn't it?

"The kinds of arguments I got from these old people weren't interesting when I was 12." Really? Aside from there being very few 12-year-olds who find the idea of taxation especially riveting, since when is "interesting to a 12-year-old" a criterion for the validity of an idea? Norquist is freely admitting here that what he found uninteresting as a 12-year-old is still uninteresting to him today. And he's complaining that the left hasn't advanced?

Indeed he is. Advanced how? No doubt Norquist wants the left to move on from the tired old ideas of justice, equity, and democracy. Is he suggesting that the left should advance as the right has "advanced"? The most casual observation of the Republican presidential debates is indication enough of how the right has "advanced."

And finally, Mr. Norquist labels the Patriotic Millionaires who met with him as "hacks." Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines "hack" (as Norquist is using the word) as follows: "3 a : one who hires out his professional service : one who forfeits individual freedom of action or initiative or professional integrity in exchange for wages or other assured reward : HIRELING, MERCENARY." Uh yeah. Right. Those damned hireling mercenary millionaires who want people like themselves to pay more taxes. Unconscionable.

Norquist's response to the millionaires was the oh-so-predictable "there's nothing stopping you guys from paying higher taxes; just send a check to the government!" Eric Schoenberg, adjunct associate professor at Columbia Business School, pointedly asked Norquist: "Would you be willing to sign a pledge where you're willing to forgo all the benefits that government provides? Are you willing to sign a pledge that says you don't want the U.S. military to protect you? That you will refuse to contact the police if somebody steals from you? That you will refuse to contact the fire department if your house is on fire? Because that's the equivalent! Why should you get a free ride? Why should you benefit from my willingness to support the government?" Norquist claims that if he didn't have to pay any taxes for it, he would indeed forgo all of those things. Schoenberg responded: "There's an easy way to do that: move to Somalia!" There's an idea. But of course hard-core ideologue Norquist attributes Somalia's problems to "too much government."

Norquist needs to be banished somewhere where not only does he not benefit from any past or present government services, but neither does anyone he might want to do business with. Picture what Norquist's no-taxes/no-government world would look like: Mad Max on steroids. No wonder these guys want everybody to carry a gun. They prefer the rule of the gun to the rule of law. This nightmare scenario would make feudalism look "advanced."

Mr. Norquist, you are the hack. In fact, you are a greedy old hack who hasn't advanced any more than a selfish, immature, immoral 12-year-old. Paying taxes is not a partisan activity, sir. (Ooh, is it possible that I'm channeling Keith Olbermann?) Paying taxes is a matter of patriotism and duty and concern for the well-being of our country, all of our country. Your moral bankruptcy compels you to care only for yourself. Somalia is too good for you. You really deserve to live somewhere where there are no public services and no rule of law. I suggest you go beyond the Thunderdome.

Clipboard Army

2011-11-17T14:53:00.008-06:00

At this moment I'm printing out petitions—lots of them—on my totally crappy printer that I have to feed one page at a time. Don't care. Gotta print 'em. Gotta do it.

I would totally love to be able to go stand on a street corner or go door to door collecting signatures, but alas, my body just won't go along for that ride. So here's the plan: I'm going to take my li'l ol' clipboard with me everywhere I go until we're done. I'm thinking about hanging out at my local coffee dive with my clipboard nice and visible. And I signed up to help the recall folks in the office.

To print out petitions to recall both Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch (the lieutenant governor), go to United Wisconsin to Recall Walker. On the right side of the page, click on "Print a petition for recall." You may have to futz with landscaping, as I did, to get the petitions to print out correctly. (The actual petitions are pages 2 and 3. The rest of the pages are instructions and talking points.) Read all the instructions carefully and follow them carefully.

Ten thousand signatures a day. That's how many we need just to get phase 1 of the Recall done. That's a lot, folks. So no slacking off. This is big-time serious business. If we really want this, and I know we do, we're going to have to work really hard for it. Don't worry about what you can't do. Just do what you can, and encourage your friends to do the same. Don't be ashamed to be a member of the clipboard army. In fact, you should be proud. Very, very proud. After all, this is what democracy looks like.

Only Money Has Free Speech

2011-10-26T00:08:00.009-05:00

As it is now, advertisers make the decisions about the media, not the people, because the media exist for the purpose of making money. . . .

The fact that people with money can hire lobbyists to represent them in Washington limits equity in the political system. Poor people don’t have the money for this—if they spent everything they had, they couldn’t get enough money together to equal the lobbying power of the rich. After an election, people don’t have access to government, because lack of money prevents them from having equal access to the people in power. That’s an inequity that’s built into the system. That’s where money is more powerful than people.

People do have a right to vote. But whom do they have a right to vote for? They have a right to vote for whoever is chosen. That’s our dilemma right now. It starts with how much it costs to run for office—it now costs $3 million to run for governor in Tennessee. That rules out a lot of people. So the choice is between two people who are willing to spend $3 million, which is not a democratic choice. You can say that the people have a right to vote, but they only have the right to choose between two millionaires or people whom other people with money are willing to back.

Immigration Uproar

2011-10-25T14:24:00.007-05:00

An editorial on CNN Opinion purports to explain why the uproar over immigration has gone nationwide, but the authors, Audrey Singer and Jill H. Wilson, both at the Brookings Institution, left out some key factors. The factors they cite are the economic downturn and the increase of immigrant populations in urban and suburban areas from 2000 to 2010. "The friction in places unaccustomed to or unprepared for new inflows of foreigners, particularly those who are assumed to be present illegally, manifests itself in different ways."

Scapegoating is common when there's an economic downturn, because those who are actually to blame for the country's economic woes want to divert attention away from themselves. Fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia is a time-honored method of deflecting blame toward those who have the least power:

History is full of irrefutable evidence that when the economy gets bad, scapegoats are targeted, and the worst instincts of humanity reveal themselves. Alabama has asked its citizens to cross invisible boundaries of humanity—waging political battles on the backs of school children, cutting access to the most basic human needs, like water. —Ilyse Hogue.

Although most Americans favor reasonable, comprehensive immigration reform, the small percentage of those who don't are the ones who are the most vocal. They believe they have a personal, vested interest in driving people of color out of their communities. Their fear and hatred compels them. That hatred is validated and reinforced by the terrorizing raids of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

On the other hand, few of those who favor reasonable reform are as compelled or as vocal. Because they may not feel that they personally have a vested interest in the outcome, they keep silent while the xenophobes freely and prolifically spew their hatred.

Another reason anti-immigrant uproar has gone nationwide is that there's a lot of money being funneled into it. And capitalism, whose great golden calf is the bottom line unhindered by any moral compunctions, is always in favor of cheap, exploitable labor with no legal protections. Just ask the booming prisons-for-profit industry.

The Immigration Policy Center dispels the notion that immigrants are the cause of unemployment:

Immigrants are not the cause of unemployment in the United States. Empirical research has demonstrated repeatedly that there is no correlation between immigration and unemployment. In fact, immigrants—including the unauthorized—create jobs through their purchasing power and their entrepreneurship, buying goods and services from U.S. businesses and creating their own businesses, both of which sustain U.S. jobs. The presence of new immigrant workers and consumers in an area also spurs the expansion of businesses, which creates new jobs.

We have to realize that we do indeed, all of us, have a stake in what happens to the immigrants in our midst. We must raise our voices above the uproar and advocate for common sense and compassion. The immigrants among us are our brothers and sisters, and in answer to a very old question, we are indeed their keepers.

Privatized Profits, Socialized Risk

2011-10-24T08:53:00.018-05:00

No matter how outraged you are, it's impossible to keep up (h/t Lily Tomlin). In last week's installment of "Let's Hope No One's Paying Attention," the Bank of America moved uninsured Merrill derivatives to its commercial bank's federally insured ledgers. In other words, if Bank of America fails, the FDIC must clean up its mess. And apparently the FDIC isn't any too happy about it. But the Fed is reportedly all in favor of the move. Matt Taibbi explains: "Essentially, an irresponsible debtor, B of A, is keeping a loan shark from breaking his legs by getting his rich parents to co-sign his loan. The parents in this metaphor would be the FDIC." Actually, the "parents" would be both the FDIC (Mom) and the Federal Reserve (Dad). But Dad is egging the miscreant on instead of calling him to account.

The Federal Deposits Insurance Corporation was created by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, when Depression with a capital D had brought the country to its knees, leading to the bank panic of 1933. The Glass-Steagall Act separated investment banking from commercial banking in order to protect depositors (like you and me) from the risk inherent in investment banking. In effect, it prevented Wall Street from gambling with money deposited in commercial banks. And it created the FDIC to protect commercial banks' deposits.

In 1999, Republicans, enjoying a majority in both chambers of Congress and counting on nobody paying attention (all too often a safe bet), passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the part of Glass-Steagall that prohibited a single institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. During the debate over the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, Rep. John Dingall (D-Michigan), eloquently warned of the consequences: "Under of this legislation ... liability in one area is going to fall over in the liability of the next. Taxpayers are going to be called upon to cure the failures that we're creating tonight. And it's going to cost a lot of money."

So the riskier Merrill Lynch liability is now spilling over into the federally insured liability of Bank of America's commercial operation. And, as predicted, taxpayers are being called upon to cure the failures created by Congress in 1999. Jonathan Weil reports:

Unfortunately, none of the actors here went on the record to explain what's going on. We don't know what kinds of derivatives these are, or even the dollars at stake, only that they are big enough to make the FDIC upset. The entire story would be playing out in secret were it not for some unidentified whistleblowers who seem to have this crazy idea that the public should be informed about what the regulators and Bank of America are up to.

We've been told the Dodd-Frank Act passed by Congress last year would end federal bailouts of large banks. It doesn't exactly do that, though. Taxpayer money still would be at risk in the event that the FDIC has to exercise its new resolution powers. ... While the law says the FDIC is supposed to tap the banking industry to pay for any eventual losses, it's hard to imagine the agency could ever charge enough to cover the costs from a failure at a company with $2.2 trillion of assets.

So in spite of the outcry of Occupy Wall Street, the behemoth Bank of America, in all of its too-big-to-fail glory, is still acting as though no one is paying any attention. Hiding behind the voluminous skirts of the FDIC, whose deposit insurance "is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government," B of A continues its dance of privatized profits backed by socialized risk. Where are the decriers of socialism when you need them?

ALEC Corporations: Boycott Them

2011-10-23T02:57:00.004-05:00

Corporate members of the American Legislative Exchange Council write model legislation and pressure state legislatures to adopt it. These laws break unions, take away worker protections and environmental regulations, capture control of government for use of corporate interests at the expense of the public good. They include: AT&T, Kraft Foods, UPS, Walmart, Amazon.com, FedEx, Frito-Lay, HP, JC Penney, McDonalds, Microsoft, Miller Brewing Company, Outback Steakhouse, Sprint Nextel, Sony, Time Warner, United Airlines, Verizon, Visa, American Express, KFC/Taco Bell, Walgreens, and hundreds of others. Money you spend there will be used as weapons against democracy, against the middle class, against the environment, against civil liberties. Check the list before you buy. Shop at the smallest, most local places.

For Whom Does the Post Exist?

2011-10-21T00:22:00.011-05:00

Postmaster Mark Jamison writes an excellent article in Steve Hutkins' wonderful blog, savethepostoffice.com, about the big issues: does USPS exist merely to serve advertising mass mailers, or does it have an obligation to serve the nation? USPS management and frequently its Office of the Inspector General, and many of the people on the Postal Regulatory Commission, on the Board of Governors, in Congress, and the president, have the wrong answer.

We Are All Immigrants

2011-10-19T00:40:00.013-05:00

If you missed it last night, or you've turned your television off like we have, you can watch Frontline: Lost in Detention online (54 minutes). Not for the faint of heart, it shows the abusiveness and insanity of US immigration enforcement.

Because of the likelihood of abuse, a few things should never be privatized. Prisons, health care, and education are at the top of that list. Capitalism is fine. But when it morphs into unbridled greed, as it clearly has done, it can only lead to human suffering, gross injustice, and economic collapse.

Alabama's new anti-immigrant law is already hurting its farmers, because much to the surprise of Governor Bentley, most U.S. citizens really don't want to do farm work. "Jobless resident Americans lack the physical stamina and the mental toughness to see the job through," says Alabama farmer Jerry Spencer. There's a certain measure of desperation, determination, and fortitude required to do that kind of work. Most of us aren't that desperate, determined, or tough. But if the economy and our elected officials continue on their current path, it's likely that our children will be.

All human beings are migrants. We are born into this life, we stay for a while, and then we move on. None of us are permanent residents. In the meantime, we go where we believe we have the best chance to provide for our families. Those who are desperate, determined, and strong enough to do the work that U.S. citizens do not want to do, who see grueling farm work as their best chance to provide for their families, pose no threat to anyone. We need them. And our well-being is tied to theirs.

--TomRW & MaryRW

And more from the Washington Post/Associated Press: Few Americans Take Immigrants' Jobs in Alabama

Don't It Always Seem to Go...

2011-10-11T11:59:00.006-05:00

My husband works for the US Postal Service, so the assault on the USPS certainly affects us directly. Nothing short of our livelihood is at stake. But that's only part of why I am determined to do all I can to help save the post office. The loss of the US Postal Service would have widespread and devastating effects on all of us. It would have an adverse effect on our unemployment levels, our economy, our commerce and community life. It is not an exaggeration to say that the loss of the US Postal Service would affect every single person in the country.

The USPS is under assault from many different angles: massive closings of post offices across the country, massive closings of processing plants, breaking union contracts to make massive layoffs, going to five-day delivery, reduction of service standards for first-class mail. This is a long-planned and well-coordinated attack, a nightmarish game of Whac-A-Mole with threats on all sides. And not even one mole has yet been whacked.

Any one of those threats could lead either to the complete demise of the US Postal Service or to such a serious downgrade that the USPS would essentially become an arm of the direct marketing association.

The US Postal Service is the second-largest nonmilitary employer in the United States, second only to Walmart. In the last four years, the number of USPS employees has been reduced by 110,000, plus another 20,500 so far in 2011. This doesn’t include the 120,000 layoffs the postmaster general wants to make or the 100,000 more jobs to be lost to attrition. That’s a loss of 350,500 out of 645,000, well over half. To so rashly jeopardize so many good middle-class jobs when the unemployment level is so high is nothing but gross negligence and reckless folly. And yet, that’s exactly what the postmaster general is intent on doing.

With unemployment rates still perilously high, the number of jobs already lost (130,500) is significant. To lose another 220,000 jobs would have a potentially catastrophic effect on unemployment levels and on the economy. It could be enough to push us into a full-blown economic depression.

The Post Office is such a fixture in American lives that we seldom give it much thought. Nearly every town has a post office. Larger towns have several. Your letter carrier will not only deliver your mail but pick up outgoing mail. Many of us give the USPS so little thought that we think we could manage without it no problem.

But think carefully for a moment about what your community would be like without its post office. Think about how many times in your life you’ve gone to the post office, how many times you’ve put outgoing mail in your mailbox, how many times you’ve ordered products online that have been shipped via USPS, how many times you've received birthday cards, holiday cards, condolences, and thank-you notes that made your day.

Maybe some of us wouldn’t notice much. After all, who writes letters and sends them through the mail anymore? Isn’t it the Internet that connects us all now? But the vast majority of Americans, especially those in rural areas, would feel the loss of the Post Office acutely. Yes, the Internet has bound us together in new and exciting ways, but not in ways that obviate the need for our postal service.

The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people. The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities. (39 U.S.C. 101(a))

Those who want to dismantle the postal service are counting on Americans being asleep and complacent. They know we don't want to lose our post office, they know we'll be outraged, but they hope that by the time we wake up it will be too late.

Action Items: Moles to Whack

Sign and share the petition to maintain the current service standards for first-class mail. Deadline is October 21, 2011.

Send a letter objecting to the USPS's proposal to "relax" first-class delivery standards to Manager, Industry Engagement and Outreach, United States Postal Service, 475 L’Enfant Plaza, SW – Room 4617, Washington, DC 20260, or e-mail to industryfeedback@usps.com. Deadline is October 21, 2011.

Sign and share the petition to Congress to keep the USPS from being destroyed. We're planning to close this petition and send it to Congress in the very near future. It'd be great if we could get 3,000 signatures before we send it (we currently have 2,864).

Sign and share the WhiteHouse.gov petition to preserve six-day mail delivery.

Sign and share the WhiteHouse.gov petition to save the postal service.

Stay informed. There are already many posts on the Worley Dervish about the assault on the USPS, and we'll continue to post about unfolding developments. There's always lots of good information at Save the Post Office, a website put together by Steve Hutkins.

What Does Columbus Have to Do with Me?

2011-10-10T18:39:00.005-05:00

Today in my Facebook newsfeed I’ve seen lots of “Rethink Columbus Day” posts. Rethinking Columbus Day is an excellent idea. Yes, let’s do. Celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day sounds great to me. But let’s give indigenous peoples—and our children—more than just a day off in the fall.

The “Ocean Blue” story so many of us were told about Columbus was not just a story about someone who lived in the fifteenth century. It was a story about ourselves. Here’s how the story goes: We, Americans of western European descent, are explorers, adventurers, and, yes, conquerors. We are bold and sophisticated, excelling in written language, technology, and learning. We are the good guys in the white hats. We are rugged individualists who rely on our own ingenuity and resourcefulness to cross the ocean, the continent, the world.

But just under the surface of the myth lies the bloody truth: western Europeans raped and pillaged the people Columbus “discovered”; they terrorized them with their brutality and forced them into slavery. The truth should make us squirm. This is a discomfort we need to sit with for a while.

We are not who we were told we are. We are not who we thought. No white horses, no white hats. We are descendants of arrogant, avaricious imperialists who thought the only possible value of indigenous peoples of any continent was their monetary value as slaves. I am not saying that we are culpable for our ancestors sins, but I am saying that we are still living with their effects. And until we realize that, and soberly weigh our ancestors’ beliefs and culture—and our own, which stem at least in part from theirs—we will not be able to adequately address the violence, greed, and arrogance from which we sprang.

No, not everything we inherited from our predecessors’ culture is bad. But neither is it nearly so squeaky clean nor so heroic as we once believed. If we believe the lies we tell about our ancestors, we will believe the lies we tell about ourselves. But if we honestly and soberly assess our forebears, we’re much more likely to be able to honestly and soberly assess ourselves. Imperialism is not just a sin of the past. It has not vanished; it has changed its form and focus. Neither are racism, arrogance, and greed confined to the past. There is no virtue in wallowing in guilt or angst, but a sober and truthful assessment of who we were and who we are is necessary if we are to make real progress in the things that really matter. And I believe that when all is said and done, what really matters is how we treat each other, and by “each other” I mean our fellow human beings.

If how you see your ancestors affects how you see yourself (and it does), then so too does how you treat others—all others. If you treat all those you encounter in your life—whether in person, online, in the media, or even just in your imagination—with respect and openness, if you assume that everyone is worthy of your time and attention, then you will also know that you too are worthy. We are not defined by the sins of our ancestors. But the sins of our ancestors will live on until we look at them squarely and see them for what they really are. Then, perhaps, we will be free to cultivate respect and humility and compassion—not only for others, but for ourselves and for our children.

Urgent Call to Action: Save First-Class Mail

2011-10-08T22:05:00.007-05:00

The management of the US Postal Service has proposed a drastic and irreversible reduction in first-class mail delivery standards. Currently 41.5 percent of first-class mail is delivered in one day, 26.6 percent in two days, and 31.6 percent in three days. The proposal would eliminate one-day delivery altogether. Two-day deliveries would increase to 50.6 percent and three-day to 49.1 percent. The proposed increase in delivery time would be devastating to the many individuals, small businesses, and entrepreneurs who rely on first-class mail.

The proposal, the stated goal of which is to “bring operating costs in line with revenues,” would enable the USPS to eliminate 60 percent of the USPS’s processing-and-distribution plants, purportedly to cut costs. But the presumed savings are actually quite small (only $3 billion, or 4 percent of the USPS’s annual budget). All the mail would still have to be delivered. It would just have to be hauled farther to be processed, thus increasing fuel costs and the commensurate harm to the environment.

The possibility of raising revenues by increasing prices and expanding services is never mentioned. Bowing to pressure from the Direct Marketing Association, the postal service recently withdrew a request for an “exigent rate increase.” The USPS charges direct mailers less than what it costs to deliver their advertising mail, so in essence the direct mailers are stealing from the USPS with each piece of mail they send. Regarding the withdrawal of the proposed rate increase, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe exclaimed that the direct mailing industry is “way too fragile” to survive a price increase. Clearly, the health of that industry is more important to him than the health of the USPS.

In its projection of the effects of the proposed change in service standards, the USPS does not even mention the American people. It lists only the possible effects on “commercial mailers.” Noncommercial mailers—citizens, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and rural communities—are not given even the slightest consideration.

Because the reduction in service standards would enable the USPS to dismantle its extraordinary processing-and-distribution network, a return to the current service standards would be impossible, thus permanently undermining the USPS’s ability to serve the American people, further reducing mail volume and postal revenues, and further imperiling the US Postal Service itself. The vast majority of the American people won’t fully realize the effects of the proposed reduction in service until it’s too late.

The notice in the Federal Register invites comments from the public between now and October 21, 2011. Letters may be sent to Manager, Industry Engagement and Outreach, United States Postal Service, 475 L’Enfant Plaza, SW – Room 4617, Washington, DC 20260, or e-mailed to industryfeedback@usps.com.

In hopes of gathering more signatures, we have created a petition at Change.org calling for retention of the current first-class service standards. We have less than two weeks to gather as many signatures as possible. Please sign the petition and write your own letter, and ask others to do the same. Once USPS management’s proposal is accepted, there will be no turning back.

Privatized Postal Disservice

2011-10-02T17:19:00.005-05:00

This article, “Privatised mail: a second-class delivery” in The Guardian sheds light on some of the chaos and hardship resulting from privatized postal service. Undelivered mail stacks up in the apartments of privatized carriers in Holland, who are paid piece rates amounting to far less than the minimum wage.

The longer version of the same article, “In the Sorting Office,” in the London Review of Books, includes some of the political history in the Reagan-Thatcher era that brought the privatization about.

The winners from Holland’s liberalization of the postal market were the big organizations who bulk mailed. The losers? Almost everybody else.

The author, James Meek, wrongly accepts that the Internet necessarily means less demand for postal service. The opposite is true. Customers e-mailing documents to USPS to be printed at and delivered from the destination post office could be the biggest boon to mail since paper.

USPS: Vultures Roosting in the Eagle's Nest

2011-10-01T03:27:00.008-05:00

The vultures on the verge of destroying the US Postal Service are not merely circling. They've landed in the nest, ready to plunder and privatize, having fully captured USPS management and oversight. It's clear to many that the the Post Office has enemies in Congress, to wit Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), among others. But it's also apparent that there are those in management and oversight who are just as determined to destroy the Post Office, who are in the service not of the American people but of those who consider the USPS their competition and who are eager to devour the advantages it currently maintains.

The postmaster general plans to make drastic cuts that will do away with first-class service, give the pickings to FedEx and the like, and continue propping up bulk mailers (who currently pay less than what it costs the USPS to process and deliver their junk mail). Those cuts will devastate small towns and inner cities, reduce the USPS to a third-class bulk mailer, and replace its middle-class workforce with a workforce of the working poor. All this for what?

Abdicating 6-day delivery to private postal services would, by Government Accountability Office estimates, save costs of only 4 percent of the USPS budget. USPS management has admitted that it wiped one small-town post office off the map because it "'cost' the USPS $1,500 a year more than it made in sales of stamps and money orders." Never mind the mandate that the USPS serve all Americans. Never mind that the USPS is not meant to make a profit but rather to be a self-sustaining service to the American people. Never mind that closing a post office because it is not "profitable" is against the law.

The devastating cuts proposed by the postmaster general—the projected savings of which are absurdly small—will serve only to weaken the USPS, not strengthen it, not put it on firm financial footing. All of the aspects of USPS service that are on the chopping block—6-day delivery, half the distribution network, half the retail network, half the workforce—represent USPS's greatest assets. So why proceed when the financial savings are so small and the resulting loss so devastating? The only conceivable answer is that the intent is not to save money or alleviate the USPS's financial difficulties, but to serve the interests of the vultures ready to devour this national treasure.

The planned devastation of the USPS is based not on need but on greed. The claim of financial emergency is a pretext to break the USPS up and feed the choice bits to the private mailing industry.

The postmaster general says he expects to close 16,000 post offices in six years—that's half of the nation's post offices! And he plans to close or consolidate as many as 313 of the 487 processing plants by 2013—destroying first-class service while estimating the destruction would "save" costs equal to only 4 percent of USPS's budget. When this happens—and USPS management is proceeding fast, in violation of federal law—there will be no more 44-cent postage. Only FedEx rates. There will be no more service to rural, remote, and distressed areas. Newspaper and magazine delivery will be eliminated.

The Internet could be the biggest source of new business imaginable. Customers could e-mail documents to the USPS, which would then print and deliver them from the destination post office. This would be a hugely popular service: next-day delivery anywhere in the country, of anything you can send to a printer. Fast, cheap, and hard copy. All it would require is leadership interested in providing a service to the public.

But what we have now is leadership more interested in providing profit to private moneyed interests than in serving the American people. That is the end result of setting up a public service to function "more like a business," as was done in changing the U.S. Post Office Department to the US Postal Service in 1970-71.

The United States Postal Service is a national treasure that needs to be saved from the formidable forces arrayed against it. And those forces are not only in Congress, but in the USPS itself. Those who seek to save the USPS will not succeed unless they recognize the threat within, and they must do so very quickly or it will be too late.

~~~

John Nichols writes good Save the Post Office columns in The Nation and The Capital Times. And there's always a lot of good information at Save the Post Office, which Steve Hutkins puts together.

Dear Amazon

2011-09-29T14:47:00.007-05:00

Dear Amazon,
I'm writing to let you know that, in spite of the fact that I own a Kindle, I'm not going to spend another cent at Amazon until I hear that you are (1) treating your employees better and (2) no longer a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). All of the people you employ are worthy of human respect and dignity, and our democracy must no longer be subverted by corporations who think their money entitles them to legislative work-arounds. Not only am I not going to spend another cent on Amazon, but I'm encouraging my friends who support workers and love democracy to do the same.
Most sincerely,
Mary Ray Worley
P.S. And I'm deleting my wish list.

I e-mailed the above letter to Amazon this afternoon. I received the following response:

Hello,
Thank you for your feedback. Please see our message at:
www.amazon.com/message
We hope to see you again soon.
Best regards,
Sai Rongali
Amazon.com

The link goes to a page with this message:

A Message from Amazon - September 22, 2011

There's been recent news coverage regarding temperatures and working conditions in our Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, fulfillment center.

Certain parts of the country experienced unusually high temperatures this summer. We spent more than $2.4 million urgently installing industrial air conditioning units in four of our fulfillment centers, including our Breinigsville facility. These industrial air conditioning units were online and operational by late July and early August. This was not mandated by any governmental agency, and in fact air conditioning remains an unusual practice in warehouses. We'll continue to operate these air conditioning units or equivalent ones in future summers.

We have temporary employees working in our facilities for two reasons - to manage variation in customer demand throughout the year and as a way of finding high-quality full-time employees. There are 1,381 full-time employees in Breinigsville, all of whom receive full-time benefits including healthcare. Since January of this year, 850 temporary employees in Breinigsville have been converted to full-time employment.

We welcome and embrace questions about our preparedness and planning, and indeed we routinely ask those internally, but those who know us well don't doubt our intent or our focus on employee safety.

Thank you. [emphasis added]

I like how hard they work to make sure the reader knows how protecting their temporary employees from being cooked alive is not "mandated by any government agency." Never mind that it's mandated by human decency.

I really hope it's true that Amazon is going to some considerable effort to do right by their temporary employees, and that they'll insist that their private contractors do the same. But I couldn't help but notice that nothing was said about Amazon's membership in ALEC. So they won't be seeing me again soon.

How to #SaveUSPS? Remove the Fangs from Its Throat

2011-09-27T21:28:00.013-05:00

The rally today on the Capitol Square in Madison to save the US Postal Service was good. It was well attended, and the weather didn't interfere. We had a few speakers—politicians and union leaders—and we handed out info sheets, asked folks to sign the petition supporting HR 1351, and talked to people about what's needed to save the USPS. Best of all, it was heartening to hang out with other posties.

This rally and hundreds of others across the country were planned by the postal unions to garner support for HR 1351, the USPS Pension Obligation Recalculation and Restoration Act. From the rally, you might think that the one magical fix needed to ease all of the USPS's woes is just to pass this one bill. In fact, the bill is a needed but tiny step toward fixing the Post Office's situation. It is a temporary fix for one of the worst provisions of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which in fact dealt two ruinous blows to USPS finances.

The PAEA requires that the USPS transfer to the Treasury $5.5 billion per year for 10 years, ostensibly to fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years. This is the part of the PAEA that the postal unions are most concerned about, because it places an undue and even absurd burden on the USPS that is placed on no other government agency. In fact, it forces the USPS to provide for the retirement health benefits of people who aren't even born yet.

Another provision of the PAEA caps all postage rates for "market dominant" service at the rate of increase of the Consumer Price Index. "Market dominant" service is anything that the USPS has little or no competition for, such as first-class mail and bulk mail, including catalogs, periodicals, and advertising circulars. This requirement directly contradicts 39 USC 101(d), which states that "postal rates shall be established to apportion the costs of all postal operations to all users of the mail on a fair and equitable basis." In other words, the prices the Post Office charges should cover its overall expenses. But the provision in the PAEA actually prohibits that it do so. And, of course, the price of fuel has increased considerably faster than has the Consumer Price Index.

HR 1351 does nothing to address the postage rate cap, which is ruinous because the USPS loses money on every single catalog and other piece of bulk mail it processes and delivers. HR 1351 does not even repeal the prefunding requirement, the excessive obligation faced by no private company and no government agency. Instead, HR 1351 merely allows the USPS to use money it has already overpaid into its pension funds to cover future payments to the retiree health benefit fund. HR 1351 would reduce the size of the largest hole in the USPS's budget, the $5.5 billion per year prefunding requirement. This would be good, but it would not prevent the destruction of the U.S. Postal Service.

The fundamental threat to the USPS comes from its own management. Easing the artificial financial burden on the USPS would reduce the need to savagely sever employees, jettison post offices, and dismantle the distribution network. But the problem was never a need to do these things. The USPS's finances could be perfect, and management could—and, from its recent words and actions, would—still seek to destroy the USPS as we know it.

Postal management wants reduce delivery from 6 days per week to 5 days per week, which, as we have already pointed out, is a colossally bad idea. Former president of the APWU William Burrus cites the folly of going with a 5-day delivery scheme:

The Postal Service has been granted a monopoly on access to the mailbox, but if the USPS abandons delivery on a sixth day, it is doubtful the American public will permit the monopoly to continue. If five-day delivery were enacted, the Private Express Statute would likely be modified to permit a private company to deliver mail on the non-delivery day. Rest assured, once the sanctity of the mail box is pierced, it will not be restored at a later date.

Postal management wants to separate retail sales from sorting and delivery operations, as a prelude to abandoning its retail network to private stores and outsourcing sorting and delivery to private mail-processing and delivery companies.
It wants to close half of the nation's post offices. USPS management seeks to close 16,000 of its present 32,000 post offices by 2017—essentially all those that aren't entry points for large amounts of bulk mail. Further closures would follow. These closures are illegal under current law, which stipulates that "no small post office shall be closed solely for operating at a deficit, it being the specific intent of the Congress that effective postal services be insured to residents of both urban and rural communities." Yet USPS management fully intends to proceed with a massive number of closings.
USPS management wants to decimate its mail-processing network, closing some 313 of its approximately 487 mail-processing plants. Management knows, and admits, that the remaining few plants do not, and could not, have the capacity to handle even the current recession-reduced mail volume at current delivery standards. USPS management seeks the approval of the Postal Regulatory Commission to increase delivery times by at least a day or two for all mail. This will be the end of first-class mail as we know it, ceding all important mail delivery to FedEx and other expedited delivery services. By management's own estimates, this permanent destruction of its ability to provide first-class service would save costs amounting to only 4% of budget.

Any one of the above attacks is sufficient to cause the ultimate destruction of the US Postal Service. So any effective effort to defend the USPS as we know it must address every single one of them and the reason the USPS is facing this multipronged attack. The New York Metro Area Postal Union (APWU, AFL-CIO) is demanding that Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe resign immediately, and if he will not, it calls on the Postal Board of Governors to fire him. In colluding with those who would destroy the USPS, "Donahoe is violating his oath of office and failing to meet the requirements of his position to be responsible for the overall operation of the Postal Service."

The New York Metro Area Postal Union is absolutely right, and the postal unions would do well to join the call for the Postmaster General's resignation. Furthermore, they should insist that the USPS again be managed as a government service and not as a business. The management of the USPS has been captured by the private mailing industry to the point that decisions are made for the benefit of big mailers and not for the American people—whom the post office is meant to serve. The "uncoupling" that is really needed, contrary to the USPS Office of the Inspector General's assertion, is that the fangs of the private mailing industry should be removed from the throat of the USPS.

Rally to Support the Post Office

2011-09-26T18:26:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow (Tuesday, Sept. 27), from 5 to 5:45pm, on the Capitol Square at the corner of King and South Pinckney Streets, postal workers and their friends and supporters will rally to draw attention to the best way for Congress to save the US Postal Service. There are those in Congress who are trying to do to the USPS what Scott Walker has done to Wisconsin. If you don't want to see the postal unions broken and the post office dismantled and privatized, please join us. We need your support!

View Larger Map

Rallies are being held all over the country, most of them from 4 to 5:30pm local time. But here in Madison, the rally is scheduled to begin at 5pm and will last about forty-five minutes. Rallies will also be held (from 4 to 5:30pm) in Kenosha, Janesville, and Milwaukee.

The American Postal Workers Union, the National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association, and the National Association of Postal Supervisors are joining together for this nationwide event. Here's what the unions have to say in a nutshell:

There's more info here.

Please write to your Representative and ask that s/he support HR 1351, or thank him/her if s/he is already co-sponsoring the bill. (Here's an updated list of the 215 co-sponsors.)

And please sign and share the petition, which we'll send to Congress tomorrow to coincide with the rallies.

USPS Seeks to Demolish Itself, Be Privatized

2011-09-25T01:56:00.000-05:00

Savethepostoffice.com explains that USPS management, and its "Office of the Inspector General" intend to break up and privatize the U.S. Postal Service. They plan to close the first half of the remaining 32,000 U.S. Post Offices by 2017.

Here's a good 2-minute video of Kent Rose explaining why "There Used to Be a Post Office Here."

TomRW

Breaking News: War Settles Nothing

2011-09-23T11:18:00.000-05:00

In her post "Breaking News: The Civil War Is Over" in Wednesday's New York Times, Linda Greenhouse describes the state of Virginia's challenge to the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, ignominiously known as Obamacare. The day after the PPACA was signed into law, Governor Bob McDonnell signed the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act, which provides that "no resident of this Commonwealth . . . shall be required to obtain or maintain a policy of individual insurance coverage." Greenhouse elaborates: "In other words, a few weeks shy of the 150th anniversary of Virginia's 'ordinance of secession,' the Commonwealth of Virginia seceded from the reach of the federal health care law's individual mandate."

True, Virginia's challenge of the PPACA has a lot to do with asserting states' rights over Federal law. But is that really all there is to it? There are plenty of legitimate reasons to object to the individual mandate. Because of the death of the public option, the mandate requires that each one of us do business with private insurance companies that don't exactly have a good track record in terms of looking out for the welfare of their subscribers and have proven repeatedly that their only interest is their bottom line.

In the Fourth Circuit panel's ruling on Virginia's challenge of the PPACA, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote, "A state possesses no legitimate interest in protecting its citizens from the government of the United States." Greenhouse parenthetically wonders, "Should a federal judge really have to say such a thing in 2011?" as if this comes as a surprise. It shouldn't. The Founders' belief that the American people needed protection from the federal government drove them to put many such protections in the Constitution. Regardless of what you consider tyranny, our laws should indeed protect us from it. Greenhouse concludes: "So as this debate for the soul of the country continues to unfold, I take comfort—perhaps unduly, no doubt prematurely—from the reminder from the appeals court in Richmond that the Civil War is over and that p.s., the Union won."

Does anyone really believe that just because my side beat up your side, you have to agree with me? Does the fact that "the Union won" mean that the Union also wins the "debate for the soul of the country"? Might = right? Do we really believe that anyone can be persuaded by force? That the soul of the country goes to the "winner" of the Civil War? Greenhouse seems to think that the fact that the Union "won" settles everything.

The Union's so-called victory settles no more than a schoolyard brawl would. Hearts and minds are never won on the battlefield. The War Between the States changed points of view on the issues at the heart of the South's secession only insofar as it served to entrench them more deeply. The war didn't convince anyone of the moral indefensibility of slavery. If the intent was to win a moral argument, war was the absolutely least effective means available.

The American Civil War began only 150 years ago. The longer I live, the better I know how short a time that really is. We haven't come nearly as far since then as we like to think. The Pyrrhic victory that Greenhouse finds comforting didn't settle anything. She confesses that she just doesn't "get the attack on the federal law," that she doesn't "understand people who voluntarily, without claiming poverty, let their children go uninsured." Reasserting the Union's "victory" won't be especially enlightening.

Here's a radical thought: it's high time Americans started talking to each other, and—more to the point—listening to each other. Might we not defy the mainstream media's efforts to fan the flames of our ideological polarization? The media has a vested interest in that polarization: conflict makes the most compelling news and conveniently diverts attention away from the corporate owners' and sponsors' plundering of the nation's commonwealth. To be sure, actually talking and listening to each other would be very difficult. But certainly it would be less difficult than, say, Civil War.

USPS: Breaking the Law and the Tie That Binds

2011-09-22T14:18:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday, Representative Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA) and 74 other US representatives (including Wisconsin's own Tammy Baldwin and Gwen Moore) sent a letter to the chair of the Postal Regulatory Commission warning of the harm that will be done to the US Postal Service by widespread closure of post offices. Of the 75 signatories, 7 were Republicans and 68 were Democrats. (Apparently that's what "bipartisan" looks like these days.) It's unclear how helpful this warning will be, but it certainly won't hurt, and it's encouraging to know that at least some of our lawmakers are paying attention and understand what's happening in spite of all the misinformation peddled by the mainstream media.

According to the representatives, "the law requires that 'the Postal Service shall provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas.' (39 U.S.C. 101(b)))." But oddly enough, "the USPS is centering its downsizing efforts on small post offices ... which tend to be located in rural areas." This piqued my curiosity, so I looked the law up. Here is section 101(b) in its brief and comprehensible entirety:

The Postal Service shall provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and small towns where post offices are not self-sustaining.

No small post office shall be closed solely for operating at a deficit, it being the specific intent of the Congress that effective postal services be insured to residents of both urban and rural communities. (emphasis added)

The law assumes that rural post offices will not be self-sustaining. In fact, it's very likely that they've never been "self-sustaining." Nevertheless, the USPS has proposed closing some 15,000 "unprofitable" post offices and has already begun the process of dismantling its "unparalleled retail network." Apparently they won't let a little thing like the law get in their way.

Moreover, as horrifying as it will be to the uber-capitalists among us, the purpose of the postal service is not to make a profit.

The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities. (Section 101(a), emphasis added)

The postmaster general actually wants to close half of the nation's 32,000 post offices. "A reduction of this size would have a severe negative impact on rural America, threatening the viability of thousands of small towns across America." In many small towns, the post office is the center of community life, the constant that draws and holds people together. Closing those post offices would do irreparable harm to American rural life. And once the extraordinary fabric that binds the nation together is gone, there will be no getting it back.

So what's the deal with the law? It appears that the postmaster general can ignore the illegality of what he's doing with impunity. So, whose responsibility is it to see to it that they do in fact follow the law and the congressional mandate to "provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and small towns" in order to "bind the Nation together"? How are the decision makers held accountable? And if they're not, then please explain to us which laws are meant to be followed and which are meant to be ignored?

The Postal Service "is no less valuable today than when Pony Express riders raced across the American frontier." In fact, it is considerably more valuable today. Modern technology has increased its value, rather than decreasing it. Think of all the online shopping we do—not all the packages we receive are delivered by FedEx and UPS. In fact, sending packages via the USPS is usually cheaper, providing substantial savings to consumers, corporations, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. As the representatives correctly assert, "this Constitutional institution must be strengthened, not eviscerated, because it continues to improve quality of life for our constituents."

Strange Fruit and the Execution of Troy Davis

2011-09-22T09:21:00.000-05:00

I am numb this morning. I woke up to learn that Troy Davis was killed last night. I know that for a long time black men have been put to death for flimsier reasons than those given for Troy Davis’s execution. I know we still have a long way to go in the struggle against racism. I suppose it was naive of me to think we were past such racial barbarity, even in Georgia. But still the news comes as a dreadful shock.

Author Tim Wise objects to the “I am Troy Davis” meme when repeated by white people: “To most all white folks and folks with money generally, please stop saying ‘I am Troy Davis.’ No, no you are not. Nor would you ever be. If you don't understand that, you understand nothing.” True. There is a great chasm between my experience and that of Troy Davis. I may very well understand nothing. But I still assert that “we are all Troy Davis.” Because to accept the chasm between us is not an option. The things that divide us are temporal and insignificant. The things that bind us together, whether we acknowledge them or not, are eternal. Although my meager ability to identify with such a one as Troy Davis is paltry, my weakness, my ignorance, doesn't change the fact that in truth Troy Davis is my brother. Jesus died for him as surely as he died for me. We are all Troy Davis, because the hatred and injustice and indifference behind his execution diminish us all.

Strange Fruit (lyrics by Abel Meeropol)

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

"Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." May God have mercy on us all.

Congress Created This Problem, and Congress Can Fix It

2011-09-20T17:33:00.001-05:00

Six Days to Five: A Colossally Bad Idea

2011-09-20T04:31:00.002-05:00

In his 35,000-word “deficit reduction plan” 9/19/2011,President Obama included 300 words to destroy the US Postal Service

“by giving USPS authority, which ithas said it will exercise, to reduce mail delivery from six days to five days.”

Former APWU president William Burrus:

Reducing the number of deliverydays is absolutely the wrong approach to the loss of mail volume, which hasbeen caused primarily by the recession. The economy will recover, but iffive-day delivery is implemented, it will have created conditions that willlead to the ultimate demise of the Postal Service.

The Postal Service has been granteda monopoly on access to the mailbox, but if the USPS abandons delivery on asixth day, it is doubtful the American public will permit the monopoly tocontinue. If five-day delivery were enacted, the Private Express Statute wouldlikely be modified to permit a private company to deliver mail on thenon-delivery day. Rest assured, once the sanctity of the mail box is pierced,it will not be restored at a later date.

Customers will demand Saturdaydeliveries, and if the Postal Service does not deliver, private companies willfill the vacuum. And if the mailbox is not protected on Saturday, why should itbe protected Monday through Friday? This act would preface the dismantling ofgovernment-provided postal service as we know it.

Obama also wants to “give USPS the ability to better alignthe costs of postage with the costs of mail delivery while still operatingwithin the current price cap.”

The “price cap” is the 2006 law mandating that USPS losemoney on every piece of catalog and other bulk mail.

Everything is on the table: destroy processing and distribution infrastructure, close thousands ofpost offices, decimate the workforce, abrogate “no layoff” agreements for whichemployees gave back $5,000/year of their salary scale, renege on pension andhealthcare obligations. Everything is onthe table except mailers paying the cost of delivering their bulk mail.

--TomRW

The Truth about the USPS "Crisis": A Summary

2011-09-16T15:06:00.000-05:00

The lie being told about the US Postal Service’s financial difficulties is that mail volume is down because of e-mail and the Internet. In fact, the “crisis” is an entirely manufactured one. The USPS is under the same kind of attack as the one launched by Scott Walker against Wisconsin public employees: it’s an effort to break the unions and to privatize as much of the USPS as possible.

The Real Problem:
Funding Benefits for Unborn Postal Workers
The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) requires the USPS to prefund medical insurance benefits for retirees for 75 years in the span of ten years. In essence, the USPS is required to fund benefits for retired workers who haven’t been born yet.

Postage rates on catalogs and other kinds of “bulk mail” are lower than the actual cost of delivery. This was true in 2006 when the PAEA was passed. Nevertheless, a provision in the 2006 PAEA ties postal rate increases to the rate of inflation (rather than to actual costs). Costs have risen faster than the rate of inflation because of rising fuel costs.

Decrease in mail volume is primarily the result of the economic recession rather than use of e-mail and the Internet.

The Postmaster General’s Proposals:
Cut, Gut, Privatize
Reduce the postal distribution network by more than half, which would increase delivery times by at least 1 to 2 days for all mail, that is, the end of first-class mail as we know it

Close 15,000 “unprofitable” post offices (as if the USPS were a business rather than a service)

Reduce delivery from 6 days per week to 5

Break USPS contracts with the postal unions and lay off 120,000 workers

Reduce the agreed-upon employee retirement and insurance benefits (also a breach of contract)

Lose 100,000 more postal jobs to attrition

The Winners:
The Private Mailing Industry
After the USPS reduces its distribution network and decreases delivery frequency, anyone who needs to send a piece of mail quickly will have to send it via FedEx, UPS, or another private delivery company.

Once post offices and processing-and-distribution centers are closed, they will be sold, undoubtedly at low prices, to private companies, making it impossible for the USPS to recover them or reinstate current service standards.

The end result will be that private industry will have accrued a huge percentage of what used to be the US Postal Service.

The Losers: Workers, Small Businesses,
Citizens, and the Economy
The USPS has been the second-largest nonmilitary employer in the US, second only to Walmart. In the last 4 years, the number of USPS employees has been reduced by 110,000, plus another 20,500 so far in 2011. This doesn’t include the 120,000 layoffs Donahoe wants to make or the 100,000 more jobs to be lost to attrition. That’s a loss of 350,500 out of 645,000, well over half.

Any jobs that are added to private industry as a result of picking up the slack from the USPS’s decreases in service will be lower-paying, lower-benefit jobs (a la Walmart).

A loss of this many good jobs when the US economy is already embattled will be a huge blow to the middle class and a further widening of the enormous gap between the fabulously wealthy and the rest of us.

“Unprofitable” post offices are scheduled to close in many remote rural areas and in many low-income neighborhoods. In rural communities, the area post office often serves as the center of community life.

Real Solutions
Passage of HR 1351 (which has more than 200 cosponsors from both parties) would allow the USPS to use money it has overpaid into its pension fund to fulfill the PAEA prefunding requirement.

Adjustment of the prefunding requirement so it’s more reasonable.

Make the Postmaster General and the Postal Board of Governors step down and investigate them for malfeasance, gross mismanagement, and dereliction of duty.

Sign the Petition at Change.org
Don’t let the USPS be destroyed: http://www.change.org/petitions/dont-let-the-usps-be-destroyed.
The petition will be sent to Congress on Sept. 27, 2011.

Further Reading
The mainstream media are repeating the lies and misinformation being spread by PMG Donahoe and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform). Only a few sources are reporting the truth:
Save the Post Office, by Steve Hutkins: http://www.savethepostoffice.com/
American Postal Workers Union (APWU), AFL-CIO:http://www.apwu.org/
National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC): http://nalc.org/
Truthout, “Postal Workers: The Last Union,” by Allison Kilkenny:
http://www.truth-out.org/last-union/1315492298
OpEdNews, “Destroying the Postal Service in Order to Save It?”
by Chuck Zlatkin, Legislative and Political Director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Destroying-the-Postal-Serv-by-Chuck-Zlatkin-110905-492.html

Further Questions
Who exactly is behind the deliberate destruction of the USPS?

Who inserted the provision that the USPS prefund retiree health benefits for 75 years and what justification was given for it? Did Congress even know about it?

Who is on the Postal Board of Governors and what are their ties to the private mail industries that will benefit most from the demise of the USPS?

USPS: Vultures Circling the Eagle's Nest

2011-09-15T13:19:00.000-05:00

Last night and this morning mandatory talks about so-called Network Optimization were given to US postal workers across the country about possible plant closings. According to the Associated Press, "the Postal Service says it may close more than 250 mail processing facilities [out of approximately 500] across the country in an effort to cut costs." Orwellian, isn't it? Calling the slash-and-burn proposals "network optimization" is like calling an epidemic "population optimization." Ouch. Once those plants are closed, the USPS will never get them back, thus permanently destroying its ability to provide first-class service. But some lucky private distributors will undoubtedly land many of those plants for a song. So even though the US population continues to grow, the postal service's processing capacity is about to shrink drastically. This is optimization only for the privatization vultures circling overhead.

In Wisconsin, mail-processing plants in Oshkosh (apparently this one is a done deal), Portage, and Wausau would be closed, as would the one in Rockford, Illinois. More closings are being considered in Iowa and Michigan. (Click here to see a list of all the possible closures.) The plant here in Madison, where Tom works, would have to process mail that is now being processed in Rockford and Portage. A few more mail-processing machines could be added in Madison, but overall mail volume at the plant would increase substantially more than processing capacity. Much of the mail would have to be transported farther for processing, requiring substantially more fuel and more time for every piece of mail that would have been processed at one of the closed plants.

The closings would severely cripple the USPS, making it impossible to maintain the current first-class-mail delivery standards. In other words, if they do this, you can kiss first-class mail good-bye. So what's a one- or two-day delay if it helps keep the USPS from closing its doors altogether? Well, first off, the closings don't even remotely address the root of the problem, which is the provision in the 2006 law requiring the USPS to prefund health care benefits of future retirees seventy-five years into the future, which in essence means that the USPS is required to fund health care benefits for workers who haven't even been born yet. This problem could be addressed easily with just a couple of fairly minor accounting adjustments. House Resolution 1351 would do exactly that.

Second, "the closings could cost as many as 35,000 jobs." If the volume of mail being processed every day decreases, then fewer workers will be needed to deliver each day's mail. So the USPS will lose workers that it currently needs. It's not that the USPS is just sloughing off unneeded workers. You'd think that in these days of record unemployment, Congress would move fast to ensure that not one job is lost from the USPS. You'd be wrong.

Furthermore, the reduced volume of mail per day will make it easier to make the case that mail should be delivered fewer than six times a week. With five-day-per-week delivery and slower delivery rates, other providers will seize the opportunity to pick up the slack. Imagine UPS and FedEx eagerly circling the ailing eagle's nest. The next thing you know, we're several steps closer to privatization.

Worse still, those who believe that "government is the problem" claim that this manufactured crisis is further evidence that government programs are destined to fail.

The centrifuge that is government is broken. Here. Let me prove it to you. *throws pitchfork into centrifuge* See there! It's broken!

So the salivating vultures who are greedily circling the post office are using its deliberately cooked-up financial difficulties as a reason to dismantle other government programs and services: Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid. Except war, of course—that's something the government can always do well.

~ ~ ~

Please sign the petition to keep the US Postal Service from being destroyed. And share widely. We're going to submit the petition on September 27 to coincide with the USPS union rallies.

My Brother's Keeper: Personal and Social Responsibility in the Age of the Tea Party

2011-09-14T09:00:00.003-05:00

I am a Christian, an Episcopalian, and my faith drives my politics. There is nothing that Jesus expresses more frequently or more profoundly in the gospels than his concern for the poor and the outcast. "Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'" (Matthew 25:37-40, New International Version).

I believe that it's God's intention that we seek justice in the world we live in, that we care for others—by any and every means available—especially for the poor and disadvantaged, not just to give them handouts, but to respect them, to value and listen to and learn from them, to empower them. I believe that the heart of God longs for justice, and that it is God who places that same longing in our hearts. I believe that if we really want to know Jesus, we will find him among the poor and the disenfranchised rather than among the wealthy and powerful.

The view that Jesus would have us merely protect our own and distance ourselves from whoever we consider "other" is deeply disturbing. Certainly we should take responsibility for ourselves and for our families. But is that really enough? "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors [the universally despised scumbags of their day] doing that?" (Matthew 5:46-47). Of course, we should love and care for and protect our own families insofar as we're able. But doing so does not in any way preclude or excuse us from loving and caring for and protecting others.

There seems to be an exaltation of the idea of "personal responsibility" that justifies dismantling the systems we have put in place to care for ourselves, our families, and each other. If natural disaster strips you of your home and all your possessions, have you failed in your "personal responsibility"? If medical bills impoverish you and your family, should the rest of us turn our backs on you and just expect you to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"?

The callous disregard for others demonstrated at the last two Republican debates is profoundly alarming. The question Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul at this week's debate was in reference to a theoretical person who simply chose not buy health insurance. But are those without health insurance in this country uninsured just because of a simple miscalculation of the risk involved? Unfortunately the real question involves real people in tragic and heartbreaking circumstances.

In the story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4), Cain asks, "Am I my brother's keeper?" after he'd already killed Abel. When we callously allow our brothers and sisters to die—for lack of insurance or a flawed trigger-happy judicial system—their blood cries out to God from the ground, just as Abel's did.

~ ~ ~

Many thanks to the Christian Left for the artwork!

USPS Under Threat

2011-09-11T18:00:00.006-05:00

The Postmaster General is in the process of:

reducing the postal distribution network from some 520 processing and distribution centers to “less than 200,”
increasing delivery times by at least 1 or 2 days for all mail,
closing 15,000 “unprofitable” post offices,
destroying 220,000 of the 645,000 postal jobs.

He also wants to:

reduce delivery from 6 days per week to 5 days per week,
break the employee unions, lay off middle-class union employees, and replace them with part-time, low-wage, low-benefit employees,
take away promised retirement benefits employees have worked for,
take away promised medical insurance benefits employees have worked for.

Why? The big lie is, “USPS is in financial trouble, because volume is down.”

Not true. The “crisis” is entirely a manufactured one. It was manufactured by a 2006 law passed by Congress and signed by George W. Bush. This law requires USPS to:

pay $5.5 billion yearly to the U.S. treasury, every year for 10 years,
never raise postage rates, for any kind of mail, faster than the rate of inflation.

If it were not for these arbitrary and deadly requirements, USPS would not be in a financial “crisis.”

The $5.5 billion per year is supposed to pay for medical insurance benefits for future retirees for the next 75 years. No other company, and no other government agency, has to prepay 75 years worth of future benefits.

USPS has already overpaid at least $50 billion into its pension fund. USPS is in no danger of running out of money for retirees.

Postage rates on catalogs and other kinds of “bulk mail” are lower than the cost of delivery. This was true in 2006, it was known in 2006, and it is still true. The 2006 law makes sure these rates stay lower than what it costs USPS to deliver the mail.

Fuel costs have risen faster than the rate of inflation. The 2006 law makes sure USPS cannot increase its prices as much as its costs have increased.

The effect of these destructive requirements is to bankrupt the Postal Service.

Instead of asking the Postal Regulatory Commission for permission to raise prices, the Postmaster General is closing most of the postal distribution network, closing thousands of post offices, destroying hundreds of thousands of decent jobs, and planning to drastically reduce postal service.

It’s as if the people who wrote the 2006 law, and Postmaster General Donahoe, were trying to destroy the Postal Service.

Who would do this? Who will benefit?

The private mailing industry will benefit. After the US Postal Service reduces its distribution network to the point where it can no longer provide service within 1 to 3 days, anyone who needs to send a piece of mail to get somewhere quickly will have to send it FedEx, or some other private service, at a much higher price.

The U.S. Postal Service owns a huge amount of very valuable property: usually a large Post Office in the center of every town. Once the post offices and processing and distribution centers are closed, they will be sold, at low prices, to private companies. Once these post offices and processing centers are gone, USPS will never again be able to recover them.

The Direct Marketing Association and other big mailers of the “Mailers Technical Advisory Committee” want to keep their postage rates low—whatever the cost.

The cost will be thousands of lost post offices. The loss of some of these will devastate their towns.
The cost will be hundreds of thousands of lost middle-class jobs. In a bad economy, this loss will multiply to many more unemployed people.
The cost will be a lesser postal distribution network, no longer able to provide first-class service.
The cost to remote areas will be that postal service will simply be unavailable.
The cost to the economy will be the loss of a service essential to millions of people and business.

The USPS has been adding 3 million delivery addresses per year, as population grows. Reducing the distribution network and closing post offices, capacity will not be available when population, prosperity, and need for postal service increase.

The U.S. Postal Service is not a business. It is a public service. Its destruction will do great harm to the U.S. economy.

What should be done?

Congress must pass House Resolution 1351. This would allow USPS to use the $50 billion it overpaid into its pension fund to cover its obligation under the 2006 law to prepay future medical insurance for future retirees.
Congress must reject House Resolution 2309 and all similar bills. H.R. 2309 would close thousands more post offices and break the employee unions, replacing decent jobs with low-wage, low-benefit jobs.
Congress must repeal the 2006 “Postal Accountability Enhancement Act,” which is the cause of the crisis.
Postage rates on all kinds of mail must at least cover their costs.
The Department of Justice must investigate and stop the Postmaster General’s actions to close post offices and processing and distribution centers in violation of current law. By law, post offices and processing centers cannot be closed unless USPS can show that the closing will not hurt service. The closings always hurt service. USPS acts without providing required information to the community and unions, without regard to public input, without regard to reduction of service.

Please sign the petition at http://www.change.org/petitions/dont-let-the-usps-be-destroyed. We plan to send the petition to Congress on Sept. 27, 2011.

For more information, see savethepostoffice.com, and follow the links in the “petition activity” tab under “The story so far” on the Change.org petition page.

Contact your representative and senators at http://www.contactingthecongress.org/.

Visit the American Postal Workers Union website at http://www.capwiz.com/apwu/home/ to send your congressional representative an e-mail message and/or find their mailing address.

Contact President Barack Obama via Web Form.

Website: www.whitehouse.gov

Washington Office: District of Columbia 20500

Phone: (202) 456-1414
Fax: (202) 456-2461

Experts on this issue include:

Steve Hutkins writes a brilliant website devoted to exposing USPS attempts to destroy itself:

http://www.savethepostoffice.com/

This post from Sept. 11, 2011 is a good overview:

http://www.savethepostoffice.com/whats-wrong-postal-service-how-about-whats-wrong-media

This post from Aug. 13, 2011 explains that USPS has precipitated a crisis in order to win destructive change not normally possible:

http://www.savethepostoffice.com/shock-doctrine-why-postal-service-scaring-hell-out-us

Carol Miller brings the important perspective of the isolated rural Western town, hard hit by the ruthless and unnecessary abandonment of postal service:

http://www.dailyyonder.com/closing-rural-po-ko-punch/2011/08/12/3472

Cliff Guffey, president of APWU, presented this excellent rebuttal of USPS claims, to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Sept. 6, 2011:

http://www.apwu.org/news/nsb/2011/nsb19-110906-senatehearing.pdf

Chuck Zlatkin, Legislative and Political Director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union, the largest local of the American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO, reiterates that USPS is telling the country the Big Lie about itself, in order to turn itself into an employer in the Walmart mode:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Destroying-the-Postal-Serv-by-Chuck-Zlatkin-110905-492.html

Zlatkin is also quoted in Allison Kilkenny’s piece in Truthout, exposing USPS actions as class warfare:

http://www.truth-out.org/last-union/1315492298

This Truthout link also includes a video of Thom Hartman interviewing Chuck Zlatkin.

—TomRW

Ten Years Later: A Prayer for Peace

2011-09-11T08:56:00.004-05:00

Ten years ago today, I woke up at 9am central time thinking I heard someone crying.

A little later I went to Borders, and I heard the barista in the cafe talking with a person ahead of me in line. I could tell from their tone and the snatches I heard that something terrible had happened, and I knew I didn't want to hear it from some stranger at Borders, because then I would remember what that person said for the rest of my life.

So I just left and drove home, listening with horror to the radio. The whole time I was driving home I was crying and yelling "Not with that bastard in the White House!" I knew that W's response would be more disastrous than those acts of terrorism. And it was. And it still is.

Ten years later we are still at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our civil liberties are on life support. We can't fly anywhere (unless we're wealthy enough to own our own airplane) without either having naked pictures taken of our bodies or being groped by a complete stranger. We are less safe, in spite of the security theater that plays out daily in airports and malls. We are more afraid, we are more hateful, we are more hostile. Our collective wounds have not healed; they have only festered.

I pray for peace and healing for all who suffered so intensely ten years ago. I pray we find ourselves again. I pray we learn that hate begets only more hate. I pray we become a people of compassion rather than aggression, of understanding rather than ignorance, of quiet courage rather than noisy alarm. I pray we would end our wars and begin studying and practicing peace. I pray we would reclaim our civil liberties and defend human rights rather than subverting and undermining them. I pray that we would again abhor torture rather than celebrating and defending it. I pray that we would come to appreciate peoples and cultures who are different from us, rather than fearing and maligning them. I pray for peace and healing for all those who have suffered grief and loss in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks gave Al Qaeda exactly what it wanted: war. Ten years ago the United States had the sympathy and good will of much of the world. Instead of making the most of the opportunity that presented, we squandered it and launched ourselves into a decade of military aggression. Ten years is a very, very long time to be at war. Our volunteer troops are exhausted and haunted by all they have had to see and do.

Ten years is more than enough. It's time to wage peace.

More Adventures in Letter Writing

2011-09-09T19:17:00.004-05:00

Speaker Boehner,

With so many of us out of work, we're sick to death of obstructionism and disrespectful behavior that wouldn't be tolerated in a grade school assembly. Put the American people ahead of party politics for once. We've had it with the shameful behavior of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. Don't think that if you get in the way, we won't remember it come 2012. I don't know when I've ever been angrier with the state of politics than I am now. Pass the bill quickly.

Very sincerely,

Mary Ray Worley

Tell Congress . . .

2011-09-08T19:27:00.007-05:00

Ach! I actually wrote a letter to Ron Johnson. Gag. I was as polite and respectful as I could be under the circs.

Dear Senator Johnson,
I'm writing to ask you to put aside partisan politics and vote in favor the JOBS bill the president spoke about in his address to the joint sessions of Congress tonight. We expect our elected politicians to do more than obstruct. The American people are in desperate need. Please put them before politics.
Sincerely,
Mary Ray Worley

Oh well. It had to be done.

Contact your Congresspeople here.

Thanks to the Armchair Patriots for their awesome poster!

Ready for the Bread Line? The "Wisconsinization" of the USPS

2011-09-07T11:08:00.016-05:00

Yesterday afternoon, a Senate hearing entitled "U.S. Postal Service in Crisis: Proposals to Prevent a Postal Shutdown" was convened before the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, chaired by none other than the inimitable Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). In his introductory statement, Senator Joe had this to say about the USPS:

Through parts of four centuries, the Postal System has actually helped make us a nation, connecting the American people to one another, moving commerce and culture coast to coast and to all points in between. The Postal Service has also bound individual towns and neighborhoods together, with the local Post Office often serving as a center of civic life.

Over the years, the Post Office has grown very large. Today the United States Postal Service is the second largest employer in the United States, second only to Wal-Mart. And with 32,000 Post Offices, it has more domestic retail outlets than Wal-Mart, Starbucks and McDonalds combined. Sadly, these impressive statistics belie a troubled business on the verge of bankruptcy. . . . The bottom line here is that if nothing is done, the Postal Service will run out of money and be forced to severely slash service and employees. And that is the last thing our struggling economy and our country need right now.

First, Mr. Chair, the USPS is not a "troubled business." It is not a business at all. It is a public service. Certainly, severely slashing service and employees (sounds extremely painful both literally and figuratively) is indeed the "last thing our struggling economy and our country need right now." I can't help but think that was a Freudian slip about slashing employees (rather than slashing jobs or slashing the number of employees).

In her statement, Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) correctly asserted that "the Postal Service plays an essential role in our national economy. . . . The Postal Service directly supports a $1.1 trillion mailing industry that employs approximately 8.7 million Americans. . . . Many of these businesses can’t turn to readily available alternatives. They depend on a healthy, efficient Postal Service."

The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) has pointed out that the USPS's financial difficulties can be entirely attributed to the "congressional mandate to pre-fund future retiree health benefits. [The USPS] is the only federal agency required to do so: It must pre-fund these benefits some 75 years into the future on a massively accelerated schedule. This postal-only mandate, which costs the USPS $5.5 billion per year, accounts for 100 percent of the Postal Service’s $20 billion in losses over the past four years. It also accounts for 100 percent of the rise in the Postal Service’s debt in recent years. Without the mandate, the USPS would have been profitable over the past four years and it would have significant borrowing authority to ride out the bad economy" (emphasis added).

That the truth of this situation is not being reported on and that the lies about the situation are being spread by the media has me howling mad. According to savethepostoffice.com, "The Postal Service could be pursuing a rate increase now to help with its cash flow problem, yet it was just a few weeks ago that the Postal Service pulled its request for an 'exigent rate increase' (i.e., one that goes beyond the rate of inflation) because the Postmaster General didn’t want to anger the mail industry — his big 'stakeholders,' for whom a small increase means less profit."

In his testimony yesterday, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe pointed out that as of June 2011 the number of USPS employees had been reduced by 8,000 in the previous quarter. So not only is the USPS hemorrhaging money, it's already hemorrhaging jobs at an alarming rate. In the last four years, the number of USPS career employees has been reduced by 110,000, plus another 20,500 so far in 2011.

Nevertheless, Donahoe wants Congress to give him permission to break a four-month-old contract so he can slash 220,000 more jobs. He wants to go to 5-day delivery and slash worker benefits. The point of this, really, is not to save the USPS. It is to destroy the postal unions.

As Chuck Zlatkin asserts in his perceptive piece in OpEd News, the situation is nothing less than the "Wisconsinization" of the postal service, that is, it's "an excuse to break postal unions and siphon off the profitable aspects of mail delivery to private enterprise and demanding that those most in need sacrifice again."

Both Collins and Lieberman praised Donahoe yesterday for his "courage" and his "creative proposals." Donahoe's proposal to throw the USPS under the bus is neither courageous nor creative. It's cowardly and utterly destructive.

Because the USPS is so big and is spread all over the country, because it supports a $1.1 trillion industry, gutting the USPS as Donahoe proposes will have a calamitous effect on the already embattled US economy. It will have a far greater impact than the "Wisconsinization" of Wisconsin. It will be an enormous blow to the already rapidly shrinking middle class and may very well precipitate another Great Depression.

Remember the bread lines, soup kitchens, hoboes, and Hoovervilles of the 1930s? They may be our future as well as our past.

* * *

If you haven't already signed the petition, please do so,

and ask your friends and family to as well.

Where's the Corruption?

2011-09-02T10:33:00.006-05:00

Troll comment seen on Facebook: "With union corruption, it's hard to see how anyone could be proud." I've heard this "baby-bathwater" sentiment before.

Unions are like any other human institution—prone to human failings. But that weakness doesn't mean we should abandon or vilify them. It means we should strengthen them and address whatever corruption we might find. It also does not mean that we shouldn't be proud of the many, many good things that unions have done for working people—the 8-hour workday, the weekend, worker's compensation, safer working conditions, child labor laws, pensions and health care benefits, to name only a few. There's a lot in labor history to honor and celebrate and be proud of.

At one time, labor unions in the United States had more power than they do today, hence their vulnerability to corruption. You know, "Abuse of power comes as no surprise" and "absolute power corrupts absolutely." But now, labor unions can hardly be singled out for corruption and abuse of power. To abuse power, you have to have some. The real point of labor unions is to give power to the powerless, to aggregate against inordinate corporate power.

Nowadays, the search for corruption is an easy one. Anyone paying attention knows that U.S. politicians are far more responsive to corporate lobbyists and monied interests than they are to their constituents. Corporations are writing laws designed to undermine not only workers' rights but those of the poor and the disenfranchised. And politicians are giving their corporate supporters a leg up on the backs of the poor.

In short, my dear troll, if you're concerned about corruption, follow the power. And given that labor unions have very little of that these days, they should be the least of your worries.

Labor Day Road Trip!

2011-09-01T01:06:00.016-05:00

Perhaps you've been following the hullabaloo surrounding the Wausau Labor Day parade. First, the heroic Marathon County Labor Council disinvited local Republican politicians because of their anti-labor activities. Sensible enough. Would you force your kid to play nice with the schoolyard bullies? Apparently Mayor Tipple would. Tipple told the labor council that if the Republicans weren't allowed to march in the parade, then the council would have to reimburse the city for its expenses (insurance, police protection, etc.).

Now the labor council president, Randy Radtke, has announced that the Republican politicians will be un-disinvited. The Wausau Daily Herald reports that Radtke sent the following statement in an e-mail:

We didn't start this fight in Wisconsin, but were responding to anti-worker positions and policies supported by local Republican politicians, including those who have complained about not being invited. With the track records that Pam Galloway, Sean Duffy, Scott Walker, and Jerry Petrowski have all put together this year, they should be ashamed to even show their faces at a Labor Day parade. [emphasis added]

But show their faces they will—maybe. If they have the nerve. If you're not sure you will recognize those faces if they do turn up, click on the links in this paragraph to refresh your memory. Apparently, Republican U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy (you remember him—he's the guy who complained about his measly $174,000 annual salary and the horrors of having to drive a used minivan) has said he will attend a Labor Day celebration in Merrill, Wis. But maybe State Senator Pam Galloway and State Assembly Rep. Jerry Petrowski will show up. You never know.

Have you ever been to Wausau? It sits just across the Wisconsin River from Rib Mountain, and it's just two and a half hours from Madison, straight up Rt. 51. The parade is on Monday, September 5 at 4 pm. The parade route starts on North Third Ave. at West Wausau Ave. and continues south on Third Ave. to Stewart Ave. (see map below). Whaddaya say come Labor Day we head on up there and show some union pride? I understand that some Wausau workers would be honored if workers from around Wisconsin would join them. And from all the hullabaloo, I'd say they could use some Labor Day solidarity. I'm not encouraging mayhem, mind you. Just some good, sensible, hard-working Wisconsinites who know when to cheer and when not to.

Update: According to the Wausau Daily Herald, Galloway and Duffy will be at the Wausau Labor Day parade. Galloway says she hopes the event "will be about families watching a parade [read: never mind what Labor Day is really about]—not politics," even though the politicians will now be allowed to do their politicking. According to the Herald, "Galloway said she is a little concerned that the conflict will 'poison the well' of the typically feel-good event." Who's poisoning whose well do you think?

Duffy says he'll be there with his kids: "I'm thrilled the organizers of this event [were bullied into setting] aside political differences. . . . The unfortunate truth is Wisconsin's political environment has become so toxic these days [Surprising, isn't it, how people get a little pissy when you take their rights away.] that even parades [meant to celebrate the people we have screwed] are seen as a chance to take political swipes at each other."

No indication yet whether Petrowski will be there.

View Larger Map

Need I Say More?

2011-08-31T14:05:00.001-05:00

Solidarity Begins at Home

2011-08-31T10:35:00.009-05:00

I first sang this song two years ago, when the USPS tried to fire Tom because of his union work. (Of course, that's not what they said, but who are we kidding?) It was—and is—my love song to him. I know, I know, freedom doesn't require "getting you a man," and many have written more woman-empowering, woman-friendly verses to substitute for this one, but I can't help it. I love this verse just the way Woody wrote it. Tom was so tickled when I first sang it to him. He threw his head back and laughed and laughed with his huge bark of a laugh. I'm behind him a bazillion percent, and being in this together makes us both very much stronger.

Tom has spent most of the month of August in Norman, Oklahoma. The USPS sent him there to learn how to fix a machine that doesn't work and that they probably won't ever use. This kind of management decision is not remotely unusual at the USPS. Over and over and over again low-level managers (and by "low-level" I mean "slithering-on-the-ground") make ludicrous decisions that make no sense and just piss money down the drain. There are absolutely no negative repercussions for them, and sometimes there are even rewards. And yet the USPS is crying to Congress about its supposed fiscal crisis.

It sure looks to me, and to many others, like the folks in charge are deliberately running the USPS into the ground. I reckon they can't wait for it to go belly up so they can chop the remains up into little pieces and sell them at a bargain to their cronies. The workers be damned. The people who count on their small rural post offices be damned. The U.S. economy be damned. Somehow they think that if they line their pockets and those of a few of their buds, nothing else matters. I feel sorry for those bastards living their sad little miserable lives. They don't have a clue about what's really important.

While I'm waiting to pick Tom up at the airport on Saturday morning, this will be running through my head:

You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from me;
Get you a man who's a union man and join the ladies' auxiliary.
Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,
A union man has a happy life when he's got a union wife.

Woody was right in one really important respect: Solidarity begins at home! Maybe someday I'll post a video of me singing it, but for now, here's a clip of Woody himself singing my favorite verse.

Reeling Toward Privatization

2011-08-30T15:09:00.004-05:00

If the United States Postal Service is "reeling toward default," it's not for any of the reasons stated in yesterday's editorial in the New York Times. It infuriates me that the NYT editorial staff would just repeat the USPS's lies verbatim, when the truth isn't at all difficult to uncover. Repeating a lie over and over again won't make it fact. Congress must not acquiesce to the USPS's "imminent disaster" demand to break contracts with the postal unions and lay off more than a third of its workforce.

According to the National Association of Letter Carriers, the mandate forcing the USPS to prefund future retiree health benefits 75 years in the future, costing $5.5 billion per year, accounts for all of the USPS's losses in the last four years. A la Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, this is part of a deliberate strategy to bankrupt the USPS, with a view to breaking the postal unions and ultimately to dismantling and privatizing the very lucrative U.S. postal service.

At a time when we're supposed to be adding jobs, we can't afford to be losing them, especially not more than a third of the jobs at the country's second-largest nonmilitary employer. If Congress acquiesces, we will all be losers—people living in rural areas, former postal employees adding to the legions of the country's unemployed, and the U.S. economy.

Please, sign and share the petition at Change.org. And challenge the lies, no matter how often they're repeated.

Late-Night Wavelengths and Saving the USPS

2011-08-21T22:52:00.015-05:00

On Wednesday night of last week I tried to go to bed early. And failed. Tom is in Oklahoma this month for training, and it seems like I never sleep as well when he's gone. So I got up and took my usual post in front of the computer. I had just posted about the post office's so-called fiscal crisis, and I was feeling agitated. So I went snooping around the interwebs looking for more info. I found a bunch and added that to the earlier blog post. I did so primarily because I wanted Tom to read the stuff I was finding, and he checks the blog fairly regularly when he's away (when I don't read the posts to him out loud over the phone, that is).

Meantime, Facebook imported the blog post to the FB Worley Dervish page. (I'd love it if you'd go there and click "Like." Thanks!) My friend Luz, who lives on the west coast and so wasn't up quite as late as I, read the imported post on Facebook. I hope she won't mind if I quote her here: "It is horrible what they are trying to do with the postal service! we can not let that happen!!! privatizing the postal service would be really bad!" I allowed as how "if the postal workers are screwed, the whole country is screwed. Deeply, deeply screwed." Luz replied: "Oh God! we need to make a lot of noise about this. . . . What else can we do Mary?" A most excellent question! So because of my dear friend Luz's timely question, it occurred to me that we should put together a petition on Change.org if there wasn't one already. So I nosed around there, and I found one about saving all the post offices that are being closed. But that wasn't quite what I was after. So I started my own, and then put the link to the petition on that same blog post I'd already added a bunch of stuff to.

Now remember, Tom (the treehugger in the photo) is hundreds of miles away in Oklahoma. And I figured he was asleep and that I'd tell him about the petition the next day. After I plunked the link for the petition onto the blog post and put the widget on the right-hand column, I went back to Change.org to have another look. And whose name do you suppose I saw there? Remember, this is only minutes after I had created the petition. All those many miles away, Tom couldn't sleep either. He had already signed it and posted the first comment. He couldn't have done it any faster had we been talking on the phone while I created the petition. How's that for being on the same wavelength? I can't even begin to tell you how flabbergasted I was when I saw that Tom was the first person to sign the petition after me, and immediately after I'd created it. Nor can I begin to tell you how awesome it is to have a partner whose vision, determination, and talents complement my own so beautifully that it's almost magic.

Sooooooo. . . . If you haven't already signed the petition, please, please do so. We have collected 550 signatures in just four days. Our goal is 120,000—that may be a bit ambitious, but it's the same as the number of layoffs there will be at the USPS if Congress agrees to their request. After you've signed it, please share it, post it, repost it, and ask your friends and family to sign it. Make sure especially to share it with anyone you know who works at the USPS or who has a family member that does. There's a whole lot at stake for a lot of families, for a lot of good folks who love their small-town post offices, and for the whole dang U.S. economy. And many thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement!

Class Warfare and Flying Pigs

2011-08-19T10:55:00.014-05:00

Tom and I have turned off the television. I know. Crazy, isn't it? Veritably un-American. But hey, I'm happy to announce that it's entirely possible to live without watching the boob tube. Not only did we cancel the cable, but we quit watching the networks as well. Can't say we miss it much, especially because our friends share much of what's worthwhile online. (And how else do you think I'd have so much time to prowl the Internet to figure out what's actually going on in the world?) And given yesterday's post, in which I tallied up the class warfare battles taking place in Wisconsin, at Verizon, and at the United States Postal Service, count the following clips from the Daily Show as the next installment on the war on the poor and the middle class.

Although these clips have way more of Fox Noose than I can watch without gagging, it's revelatory to hear what the propaganda machine is churning out these days. Jon Stewart handily pillories the FN talking heads.

[If you're reading this on Facebook (which doesn't let the automatic blog importer import video), the links to the videos are here and here.] Sorry about the commercial at the beginning of each clip. Enjoy!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

World of Class Warfare - Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy Conservatives

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

The part about not assuming that all rich people are billionaires made me giggle. I suppose we shouldn't assume that all billionaires are billionaires either. And I love the bit about Warren Buffet's billionaire cleaning lady.

One of the most galling comments is the one about "the moocher class" as opposed to the "productive class." That actually made me gasp out loud. I mean, really? The people who watch their portfolios are the "productive class"? And the people who actually work for a living (or want to) are the "moocher class"? Unbe-fricking-lievable! Do people actually believe this stuff? If they do, it's because they have deluded themselves into identifying with the billionaire class, even when they themselves are struggling economically and are watching their piece of the pie shrink to a pile of crumbs. After all, they might hit pay dirt someday and become billionaires themselves, right? Sure! When pigs fly.

Tom was carrying his "Tax the Rich" sign downtown one day during the Wisconsin Winter (as opposed to the Arab Spring), and a panhandler—a panhandler!—told him, "Don't say that! Don't you want to be rich?" Tom pointed out the unlikelihood of that eventuality. The panhandler just wasn't buying it. As a matter of fact, he wasn't buying much. . . . With that, I leave you for today with this lovely thought from John Steinbeck (who knew some things about class warfare). And many thanks again to the creative wits at Armchair Patriots!

Attacks on the Middle Class Busting Out All Over

2011-08-18T10:55:00.013-05:00

Forty-five thousand Verizon workers are on strike because the company, although it is "swimming in cash," is demanding that they give up a substantial amount of their earnings, benefits, and job security. But just like the USPS and the state of Wisconsin, the "budget crisis" is sheer fabrication. "In the first quarter of this year, Verizon tripled its profits compared with the previous year. Since February, when it began its new deal with Apple to market the iPhone, the company has signed up an astounding 2.3 million new iPhone customers."

According to the Communications Workers of America, "In the last four years alone, Verizon made more than $19 billion in profits and compensated their top five executives more than a quarter of a billion dollars. But apparently that’s not enough. Now they want to outsource more jobs, including sending jobs overseas, slash sick days, eliminate benefits for workers who get hurt on the job and cut the healthcare benefits they promised retirees."

Once again, Ed Schultz, inveterate advocate for middle-class workers that he is, focuses on what Verizon is up to (link to video here):

So, what to do? Send an e-mail in support of the workers to Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam. Sign the petition at Change.org.

Stand up and speak out for the middle class in Wisconsin, at the USPS, and at Verizon. Demand respect and fair treatment for workers everywhere. Organize, mobilize, and whatever you do, don't give up!

Ed Nails It: USPS Workers Against the Wall

2011-08-17T22:14:00.011-05:00

Unsurprisingly Ed Schultz gets it right about what the United States Postal Service is really up to. (If you're reading this on Facebook, go here to see the video.)

The U.S. Postal Service is the largest civilian employer in the United States, second only to—wait for it—Walmart. So you can bet that the ripple effect of the USPS going down will be felt across the country. It will not have a positive effect on the U.S. economy, to say the least. And that will not reflect well on the Obama Administration.

More about the USPS in the news:

The Perfect Storm: How everything is coming together to take the Postal Service Apart on www.SavethePostOffice.com

The Plot to Kill the Post Office . . . And Its Union Contracts on Crooks & Liars.

Postal Workers to USPS: Don't Shred Our Contract on In These Times

Please sign the petition at Change.org: Don't Let the USPS Be Destroyed

You keep using that word...

2011-08-17T12:31:00.009-05:00

In his statement on the Democratic victories in the Wisconsin state senate recall elections, Mike Tate, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, had this to say: "Democrats . . . shifted the balance of power in the state Senate away from conservatives. . . . Only now is Walker—who has acted unilaterally to advance a staunchly conservative agenda throughout his Administration—talking about 'bipartisanship.'"

Mike! You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means!

We have conservatives??? In the Wisconsin state senate? Really? Coulda fooled me! You couldn't possibly be referring to Walker and his cronies, because they are anything but "conservatives." I expect, though, that Walker et al. really appreciate your calling them that. No doubt they would like nothing more than for those who truly are conservative among the good people of Wisconsin to believe that they can be numbered among them and will look out for their interests.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., defines "conservatism" as follows: "1 capitalized a: the principles and policies of a Conservative party b: the Conservative party 2a: disposition in politics to preserve what is established b: a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change 3: the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change"

Don't we wish! Walker and the other power-grabbing, overreaching Republicans in the state legislature have a disposition to destroy what has been established in Wisconsin. They subscribe to a political philosophy that is based on greed and upheaval rather than "tradition or social stability," undermining our established institutions, and forcing abrupt change on the people of Wisconsin.

The unprincipled despots who have turned Wisconsin into Fitzwalkerstan are not conservatives in any sense of the word. Please, call them what they are: radical right-wing demagogues intent on undermining everything that is good about Wisconsin, determined to set themselves and their billionaire masters up as plutocratic feudal lords and to make the good state of Wisconsin into their private fief and its people their serfs, not to mention making this great state a subsidiary of Koch Industries. There is nothing remotely conservative about them or their agenda. They are utterly destructive.

Wisconsin: Vote from Your Happy Place

2011-08-16T12:15:00.014-05:00

Dear Wisconsin,

I love you. I really, really do.

So I'm begging you, folks in Districts 12 and 22, please do the right thing. Vote. Vote for Jim Halperin (District 12) and Bob Wirch. Help the working families of Wisconsin keep the advantage they gained last week.

To find your polling place, go here: https://vpa.wi.gov/

When you go to vote today, you will be asked to state your name and address and sign the poll book. However, if you show your driver's license (which you don't have to), the address on your license does not have to match where you are currently registered.

You don't need an ID to vote today, even if you are asked for it. It's not required until 2012.

If someone tries to force you to re-register, call Wisconsin Election Protection at 1-866-OURVOTE, tweet them at @EPWisco, or post on their Facebook page.

If you have some extra time today, you can volunteer to participate in the Wisconsin Democrats' Virtual phone bank here: http://action.wisdems.org/.

Many, many thanks to the Armchair Patriots (Oath Smellers) for the great poster!

What If...

2011-08-15T13:21:00.005-05:00

In his most excellent blog, "Blogging Blue," Zach W asks a question that has crossed my mind from time to time: "What if the Democratic Party treated the netroots with the same respect and awe the GOP shows the tea party?"

Here's what I think: To have the same kind of treatment from the Dems as the tea party gets from the Repubs, the progressive base would have to have a 24/7 propaganda machine comparable to Faux News and monied backers like the Koch bros. and their ilk. We'd have to be willing to throw giant tantrums whenever anyone crosses us. We'd have to be willing not only to dispense with the truth but to lie proficiently and prolifically. In other words, we'd have to become the thing we hate.

Fortunately, we have truth and justice on our side, so we don't have to lie or pump bazillions of dollars into a giant misinformation campaign. Mobilization, education, strategic use of social media, grassroots power are where it's at for the progressive base.

The Democratic Party may have gotten away with ignoring its base until now, but the great swing to the right that U.S. politics has experienced in the last few decades will not last forever, and I believe that it's gone as far to the right as it's going to go. The clearer it becomes who the tea partiers are, what they actually want, and who is backing and manipulating them--and it becomes clearer all the time--the less tolerant the rest of America will be, in spite of the great Faux News propaganda machine. The Dems will continue to ignore their base at their own peril.

I'm not at all advocating just waiting around until the pendulum swings back the other way. Already here in Wisconsin we have given it a great big ol' push, and we're only just getting started. Here's hoping that we do some more pushing back in tomorrow's recall elections in Kenosha and the Northwoods of Wisconsin.

What Ailes Us

2011-08-13T15:04:00.003-05:00

Many of us find ourselves wondering how U.S. politics got into such a sorry state—sorry enough to produce the Tea Party downgrade and the radical extremism rampant in the Republican party. Certainly one answer to our puzzlement can be found in the 24/7 propaganda machine that calls itself Fox News. The paranoia, fearmongering, manipulation, and distortion that beleaguer us all emanate from the twisted vision of one man: Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News. He peddles his influence on a staggering scale. His "dear friend" Rush Limbaugh "is a reflection of him." And Ailes is not content that Fox News and the Republican Party should be made in his image. He is determined to remake the United States in his image as well, and he is doing a damned good job of it.

As nauseating as it is, it's worthwhile to bone up on the Ailes juggernaut. Tim Dickinson has a thorough piece that first appeared in Rolling Stone as "How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory." I don't even know how to begin to fight such extraordinary power, but I do know that fight we must. And one of the first steps is knowing the enemy.

From the "U Frame It" Files: Moral Imperatives

2011-08-12T12:22:00.010-05:00

Radical right-wingers are really good at framing the debate ("the presentation of political ideas and principles so as to encourage one interpretation over another"), in part because they're good at coming up with catchy, sticky, snarky frames and in part because the right-wing-owned mass-media propaganda machine loves those catchy, sticky, snarky frames and repeats them incessantly until all of us are repeating them without ever giving them a second thought.

So I propose to do just that—give them a second thought—as a now-and-then feature of the Worley Dervish. We'll call them the "U Frame It" files.

Today's installment: entitlements, as in "entitlements are the greatest domestic challenge the nation faces" (straight off the Heritage Foundation's website).

Really? Really? Not joblessness. Not our imperiled economy. Not the rapid disappearance of the middle class. Not our crumbling infrastructure. Not three—count 'em, three—wars. Not poverty. Not homelessness. Not corruption. Not out-of-control military spending. No, "entitlements" are our greatest domestic challenge.

More from the Heritage Foundation website (I'm still cringing from actually having gone there. It feels like I mighta got some on me. Ewwww...): "The middle class retirement programs, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, will cause federal spending to jump by half, from the historical average of twenty percent of the economy to thirty percent by 2033. This tsunami of spending is a major threat ..."

"Tsunami of spending." Yowzer. That's truly elegant. And completely twisted.

We must protect the prior earnings of American workers set aside in Social Security or private pensions. They have been earned through hard work and discipline. Taking these earnings away is theft, despite the Right’s use of the word "entitlements." (George Lakoff, emphasis mine)

Calling those programs "entitlements" makes their privatization and the theft that that entails more palatable, much less morally reprehensible than it actually is. It enables greedy, morally reprehensible people to dismantle our democracy for their own profit. It takes us that much further down the road that turns the middle class into feudal serfs.

Medicare, if made available to all Americans, would not only save us money; it would make us, well, healthier. And for many, it would truly be a matter of life and death. Life and health are not "entitlements." The Common Good is not an "entitlement." Life, health, and the Common Good are moral imperatives.

Your mission for today (or this week, or this month), should you choose to accept it, is to read Lakoff's recent column "Why Democracy Is Public." When you're done, read it again. Bookmark it. And then recommend it to everyone you know. It's really, really, really that important.

Dear Congress,

2011-08-11T16:42:00.011-05:00

We here at the United States Postal Service are requesting your approval so we can violate the contracts we negotiated with our employees via the postal unions. We know that the elimination of the layoff protections in our collective bargaining agreements is an extraordinary request, and we do not make this request lightly. In fact, we’ve been working our way toward making this request for many years now. And we're proud to announce that at last we’ve managed to create the “exceptional circumstances” that we hope will inspire you to approve these “exceptional remedies.”

"Thanks to our [mis]management policies—for example, making sure to charge less for services than they actually cost—the Postal Service is facing dire economic challenges that threaten its very existence. [Oh my!] If the Postal Service was a private-sector business, which we hope it very soon will be, it would have filed for bankruptcy and utilized the reorganization process to eliminate, er, uh, restructure its labor agreements to reflect the new financial reality (so brilliantly modeled by Walmart).

We need to reduce the USPS workforce by, oh, say, 120,000 career positions by, let's say, 2015, in addition to the 100,000 we expect to lose through regular attrition and the ones who, you know, go postal. Never mind about all the jobs that will be lost. We can hire some of those people back as casual employees (lower wages, no benefits, no unions!). We suppose that some of the 120,000 could come through buyouts and such, but we would really enjoy laying some of them off, especially those blasted union people. Man, are they ever a pain in the butt!

Unfortunately, the collective bargaining agreements between us and our unionized employees contain layoff restrictions that make it impossible to reduce the size of our workforce by the amount we want by 2015, so we are asking you to wave your legislative magic wand to make what is now illegal legal. After all, some of our best friends contribute generously to your campaigns. And besides, these USPS employees don't need layoff protections when every other self-respecting American enterprise is happily laying people off left and right and shipping their jobs overseas. And if private-sector employees have to put up with that kind of stuff, it's only fair that USPS employees should have to too.

We're hoping that the critical financial situation we've got going here will convince some of you waffly Democrats to go along with our union-busting, privatizing, lining-our-pockets plan. After all, what could be more effective in reducing costs than dismantling the postal service altogether? You wouldn't want another BAILOUT, would you? That would be so upsetting for all those little people who pay taxes. (Never mind that the postal service doesn't use a dime of taxpayer money. That'll just be our little secret, k?).

We expect that with enough per$uading, you good folks in Congress will agree that the present crisis warrants these extremely lucrative, er uh, these extreme measures.

$incerely,

The [mis]managers of the USPS

Please sign the petition to keep the USPS from being destroyed! Thank you!

Chin up, Wisconsin! It's a Long Uphill Fight

2011-08-10T10:49:00.007-05:00

We knew it was a long shot, and given all we were up against, we did great and we made real progress. We did not lose. We just didn't win quite as much as we were hoping for. But the fight isn't over, and it won't be over for a long time. Consider how much "dark money" poured into Wisconsin for these recall elections. Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign estimates that a total of nearly $31 million was spent on the Wisconsin recalls in about four months, whereas $3.75 million was spent on all of the state races in 2010. The obstacles are formidable indeed.

So today is a good day to shake the dust off, renew our resolve, reassemble our forces, and rescrew our courage to the sticking place, as it were.

Ian Millhiser at Think Progress reminds us of how truly remarkable yesterday's accomplishments are, given that the the recall rules stipulate that only those who have been in office for one year or more are eligible for recall.

All of the Republican state senators who were eligible for recall in yesterday’s elections were Republicans who held on in 2008 despite the fact that they had to stand for election during a Democratic wave. Likewise, all of the Republicans who were elected in 2010 only because they were fortunate enough to run during a Republican wave were immune from recall. Come 2012, however, all of this changes.

John Nichols of The Nation appeared today on Democracy Now! and rightly asserted that Walker took a serious hit last night. (Take that, you big bully!) Mike Tate, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, proclaimed that yesterday's recall elections amounted to "an accomplishment of historic proportions" and "showed just how vulnerable Republicans are in the November 2012 elections—and how vulnerable Gov. Walker is to a recall election himself."

So chin up, Wisconsin! We have a long, hard haul ahead of us, but we have proven ourselves to be fierce and formidable, and we've got them shaking in their boots. So here's to you, Wisconsin, and Scotty, we've put you on notice. We're coming for you!

My Own Highlander Folk School

2011-05-18T18:00:00.006-05:00

I spent much of my day today researching nonviolent resistance (when, of course, I needed to be working on my current copyediting project). Alas, this was triggered by a post that appeared in my Facebook newsfeed about a recent issue of Sojourners magazine devoted to the subject of nonviolent resistance. I was especially intrigued by Jeannie Choi's interview with civil rights leader Bernard Lafayette. Lafayette describes the training in nonviolent resistance he received when he first became involved with the civil rights movement.

John Lewis [now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives] and I were good friends, and he was the one who persuaded me to come to those workshops. I was a little reluctant because I didn't have time; I was a student and had a couple jobs on campus and a job downtown during the lunch hour washing dishes. But through the training, I learned to see the world through another person's eyes. That was an important step in my personal development.

What methods were used to train you in nonviolence?

Myles Horton, who was in charge of the Highlander Folk School at the time, would always ask provocative questions that got us to think and analyze. At one point, he started making some racist comments like, Why do you black people want to be eating with whites? Don't you enjoy being by yourself? I started challenging him and arguing! Now I laugh at how I responded to that. But I learned so much from that experience. The entire training program was to get people to think about how to put yourself in another person’s position and see the world through their eyes. That was so helpful for me in being able to embrace nonviolence.
We practiced "loving, not judging" your opponent, but thinking about the fact that there was a reason your opponent behaves the way they do. It's important to understand that if you want to bring about change. We learned that the idea is not just to get rights, but to behave in such a way that we would win our opponents over. That was the difference between simply demanding your rights and the goals of the civil rights movement: We were concerned about others.

I want to go to that school. I want lessons in how to be an effective, persuasive change agent. Because it certainly does seem that there's a lot of increasingly powerful evil that needs to be resisted these days, and I want to do my best to resist it in ways that are effective and strategic.

Another thing that's driving me is that lately I feel overwhelmed by all that's going on in the world. "I don't even recognize the world I'm living in" runs through my mind on a regular basis. The assault on the workers and the middle class, the scapegoating of immigrants, racial profiling, the ever-widening chasm between the extremely rich and everyone else. My reaction to feeling overwhelmed is to read, because I can't shake the idea that the better I understand something, the better I can cope with it. And there sure is a lot to cope with and understand these days.

Another thing rattling around in my head a lot lately is a theory that I've read recently that we're still fighting the Civil War. That idea is spurring me to learn what I can about the history of the Civil War and race relations in the United States. I found a ton of stuff that I could download onto my Kindle for free: Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Souls of Black Folk, Up From Slavery, to name only a few. Maybe I've enrolled myself in my very own personal Highlander Folk School.

Bait and Switch

2011-05-11T11:46:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I clicked on an ad in the right-hand column of my Facebook page. (I know. This is probably never a good idea.) It said something along the lines of "Support immigration reform" or "Make your voice heard about immigration reform." Yes, there was a photo of Obama on the ad. I really should have known better.

So my click teleports me to Obama's page. I still stupidly think I'm saying something about my support for comprehensive immigration reform (silly me!). So I click on the next thing that just says "Count me in!" Sure enough, this counted me in to support Obama's bid for reelection. Apparently it had nothing to do with immigration reform.

I know about bait-and-switch. But really--really? So I unsubscribed after I got an email today from the Obama campaign about volunteering. (Again, it said nothing about immigration reform.) In the very tiny box where I was given the opportunity to give my reason for unsubscribing I wrote: "I signed up to voice my support for comprehensive immigration reform, not to support Obama's reelection. There's a difference. I hope you guys know that."

So far, all Obama's done regarding immigration reform is talk nice about immigrants and give his lukewarm support for the Dream Act. And the only action we've seen is the increase in reinforcement of our very broken and very unjust immigration system (for lack of a better word--it doesn't even deserve to be called a system). More raids. More deportations. More broken families.

I'm underwhelmed.

I do support Obama's reelection. I guess. Because whatever the Republicans cook up to run against him will undoubtedly be extremist in the extreme. Although, I have to say, if there's a good candidate running against him in the primaries, I just might vote for her.

I'm really, really, really sick of Obama doing more to appease the extremists than to do the work we elected him for.

In 2008, it was the Latino vote that turned many previously red states into blue ones. Without Latino support Obama never would have made it into the White House. He needs them. Big time.

But so far he's gone way out of his way to show the extremist xenophobes that he's "serious about enforcement." Why is he eager to cater to them? They're not the ones who elected him. And no matter what he does, he cannot please them.

So is it too much to ask for him to go out of his way to do what his supporters elected him for in the first place?

Moral war?

2011-05-07T02:49:00.006-05:00

Every so often someone applauds what he calls a "moral" war, as Krugman does once again here: "the Civil War and World War II are the two great moral wars of our history, and they should be remembered with pride."

Once again, I have to respond:

The Civil War was never about slavery. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."--Lincoln Lincoln preserved the union to preserve its power. Shame on you, Professor Krugman, for calling Lincoln's war moral. You know better. If Lincoln had permitted the states to dissolve the union, we would not have the power to do the great evil we have wreaked in every small country we've meddled in since the end of WWII.

We entered WWII to punish the Japanese, who attacked our war-making capability in the Pacific. We prided ourselves in fighting the evil Hitler. In beating him, we became him. The list of countries the U.S. has attacked with our military, CIA, gifts and sales of weapons, gifts of money for weapons and military . . . is almost endless. The tail of war profiteering has wagged the dog of U.S. policy since Eisenhower succeeded in his quest, begun in WWI, to create the military-industrial complex he warned us of too late. "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."--Mohandas Gandhi The enemy is not an evil dictator. The enemy is evil itself. We do not win by doing evil.

--TomRW

Obama's Speech

2011-04-13T13:59:00.004-05:00

So far, just two things have struck me about Obama's speech today:

Now that our economic recovery is gaining strength...

I'm glad to hear that our economic recovery is gaining strength. I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me. And I suspect there are many more who are equally unaware. No matter how many times you say this, it won't make it true for the majority of Americans. Even tapping your heels together three times won't help.

Democrats and Republicans must come together...

Really? Must we? Would you please quit trying to come together with these guys, Mr. Prez? Can't you see that they're just not that into you? They don't care how many concessions you make. You could steal every play from their playbook and it wouldn't help. It's the very idea of you that they don't like. You can't force the Republicans to be bipartisan, even if you think that's what most Americans want (or think they want).

If you would spend just a fraction of the time and energy you spend on trying to make nice with the Republicans on working for the Democratic base, Democrats would be so much more enthusiastic about voting for you in 2012. Don't forget who voted you into office. Don't leave us dangling here in the wind. Why you work harder to appease the Republicans than doing the work we elected you to do is beyond me.

Union Yes

2011-03-22T03:10:00.005-05:00

Stanley Fish: University faculties need to unionize, so instructors have a voice in increasingly corporate universities.

William Cronon:
"McCarthy helped create the modern Democratic Party in Wisconsin by infuriating progressive Republicans, imagining that he could build a national platform by cultivating an image as a sternly uncompromising leader willing to attack anyone who stood in his way. Mr. Walker appears to be provoking some of the same ire from adversaries and from advocates of good government by acting with a similar contempt for those who disagree with him.

"The turmoil in Wisconsin is not only about bargaining rights or the pension payments of public employees. It is about transparency and openness. It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect. Joe McCarthy forgot these lessons of good government, and so, I fear, has Mr. Walker. Wisconsin’s citizens have not."

William Cronon is a professor of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

--TomRW

True Colors

2011-03-09T21:28:00.006-06:00

The Republican state senators' actions tonight, their attempt to ram through legislation that removes the abolition of collective bargaining rights for public employee unions from the so-called budget repair bill and addresses it in a separate bill (therefore obviating the need for the larger quorum required for financial bills), is clearly a last-ditch act of desperation that shows--yet again--Walker's and the Fitzes' true colors.

Not only will they not listen to the people of Wisconsin, but they hold the people in utter contempt.

Jon Nichols just pointed out on the Ed Show that the decision may have been made because the increasingly strong calls for recall of Republican state senators are putting real pressure on the legislators to break from the governor.

And given that the move is questionable legally, it may also be that Walker intended to provoke a violent response to aid the extremist propaganda machine in painting the Wisconsin protesters as a bunch of inconsequential, unruly, thuggish slobs.

Because we are definitely winning the good-behavior-vs.-bad aspect of the fight. The people of Wisconsin have behaved with dignified, persistent, respectful fervor; we have been remarkably peaceful. So much so, that the Madison police issued a press release commending the protesters for conducting themselves "with great decorum and civility."

Tonight's action by the extremists in the Wisconsin state senate is a nasty, heavy-handed affront to the people of Wisconsin. Walker's been saying all along that the move to strip collective bargaining rights from public unions was a fiscal issue. The move tonight is one more indication of how very untrue that was. Apparently he doesn't care how obvious it is when he lies.

What the majority of Wisconsinites want from their democratically elected officials is clearly of no consequence to Walker and the Fitz boys whatsoever. They are unwilling to listen to anyone who's not a billionaire backer.

The people who voted for Walker and the Fitzes last November did not elect them to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights, nor did they elect them to decimate Wisconsin's education and health care systems. I have tremendous confidence in the good, fair-minded people of Wisconsin, who have already shown their true colors day after day, in snow, rain, and sunshine, that this betrayal will not be met with complacency.

We won't back down, and we won't allow you to provoke us to betray our cause. We're showing our true colors, day after day after day, just as you are showing yours.

You keep using that word...

2011-03-06T11:45:00.008-06:00

I'm all for personal responsibility. But you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means....

Why object so strenuously to the "redistribution of wealth" when in fact, in the last thirty years, we've seen the most massive redistribution of wealth the world has ever seen?

Why is it okay for Wall Street to tank our economy and then be rewarded for it? Where is the "personal responsibility" in that?

Why is it that welfare for humans is right out but welfare for corporations is fine?

And why is it okay for the rich to soak the rest of us, but the suggestion that the the super-rich should pay their fair share of taxes is "class warfare"?

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.
--Warren Buffett

Why do we persist in calling this a democracy when elected officials pay no attention to voters who have a modest income but can't do enough for the very rich? Pretty sure there's another word for a system of government that works like that.

A Little Love Note to Wisconsin

2011-03-03T19:11:00.008-06:00

I don't know just when it was that I fell in love with the people of Wisconsin. When Tom and I first moved here in 1991, we went to visit the beautiful Capitol building and took the tour, like we were a couple of tourists. It really is such a beautiful building. We stood outside on the balcony, way far up on the dome, and looked in one direction at Lake Monona and in the other direction at Lake Mendota. Then we looked at each other, giggled, and said, "We live here!"

Not surprising that we should come to love living in the only city in North America built on an isthmus, especially seeing as how we came from south of the border, where the landscape was dominated by corn and soybeans. I was totally jazzed to live somewhere where people actually came on their vacations.

Even though we hadn't migrated all that far, we did have to adjust to a new culture and some new lingo. We learned that East Washington is never called that. It's East Wash. And the thing that you get a drink from in the park isn't a water fountain; it's a bubbler. We went through a fairly long phase of giving and receiving multitudinous obnoxious cow gifts. We became big fans of Lou and Peter Berryman. And we were blown away at the first local election we experienced, in which the Democrat won by a wide margin, followed by the candidate from the Labor-Farm Party, trailed a long way by the Republican. I can't remember which election that was, but it made a deep impression on me. Something along the lines of "I don't think we're in Kansas (or Illinois) anymore."

We still revel in living here, but not so much because of the scenery or the quirkiness or the politics. We've come to love not just Wisconsin, but Wisconsinites. They are smart, and hearty, and strong. They don't mind having a good laugh at their own expense. They are not vain, nor are they ostentatious. Not sophisticated or pretentious. And I'm not just talking about the people who live in Madison. The people in rural communities all the way up to the northern hinterlands are straight-talking brook-no-fools people with a lively sense of humor. They're fair-minded and honest and just good folk.

Much of what I've been feeling since Walker gave his draconian life-altering budget speech earlier this week is something akin to a mama bear defending her threatened cubs. I am fiercely angry, filled with outrage, disbelief, and righteous indignation. How dare they go after the very core of what it means to live in Wisconsin?

A big part of what makes Wisconsin wonderful is how brilliant and creative Wisconsinites are. And of course, Wisconsin schools are a huge part of what shapes those wonderful people. And they're under serious threat. Wisconsin's children are in danger of not being nearly as well educated as their parents and grandparents are. Education is a huge factor in determining quality of life, and Wisconsin's great schools are a big part of what makes this such a great place to live, even for us childless couples. There's nothing like being surrounded by bright people whose brilliance has been and still is valued and nurtured.

I can hardly believe that there are people in our state legislature and the governor's office who don't seem to value that, who make light of it, who deprecate our teachers and don't even consider that they have "real jobs" (according to State Senator Glenn Grothman). I'm filled with horror that somehow these weasels have found their way into our cow barn, as it were. But it also seems that in their overreach, they have poked a sleeping giant, a sleeping giant who isn't going to go back to sleep anytime soon.

So, people of Wisconsin, you rock! You rock the house! And you're right--that beautiful Capitol, it's your house! You are what really makes this a great place to live, and I am so proud of you for standing up for what's right and fair and not giving in and not backing down. I'm proud of you for your commitment to assembling peacefully in spite of extreme provocation. Every time I've been to the square in the last two weeks, it's been as much party as protest. People are so friendly and kind and caring. I always leave wishing I could invite you all home for dinner.

So sing along with me and Lou and Peter (to the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean"):

They're trying to stifle our voices.
They're trying to keep us derailed.
They'll find it's not easy to do, though.
McCarthy once tried it and failed.

Bring back, bring back, oh bring back Wisconsin to me, to me.
Bring back, bring back, oh bring back Wisconsin to me!

For the video of Lou and Peter rocking out on the square, click here.

And another loving tribute, more eloquent than I, here.

Vote JoAnne Kloppenburg Wisconsin Supreme Court Tues. April 5, 2011

2011-02-26T12:58:00.013-06:00

Corporate interests have financed the installation of a four-of-seven majority in the Wisconsin Supreme Court--among them Prosser, who is being challenged in the Tuesday April 5, 2011 election by JoAnne Kloppenburg.

The four WMC justices are reliably pro-corporation in all cases, whether it means being anti-worker or anti-injured party.

The question before voters on April 5, 2011, is, do we want to continue the 4-3 Wisconsin Supreme Court that assists the concentration of wealth (if so, vote Prosser), or, flip it to a 4-3 Wisconsin Supreme Court that upholds workers' rights, fairness for injured parties, the fairness of the political process (if so, vote Kloppenburg).

The business umbrella group calling itself "Wisconsin Civil Justice Council, Inc." rated the justices on friendliness to their interests:

Prosser, Gabelman, Ziegler, Roggensack 100%

Crooks 64%

Bradley 36%

Abrahamson 29%

Moneyed interests have rolled up control of the governor's office, state senate, state assembly, and--subject to change on April 5, 2011--the state supreme court.

The one that can be changed is the supreme court.

Vote Kloppenburg April 5.

--TomRW

Skunk Punked

2011-02-24T09:45:00.008-06:00

Tweet seen by a friend: "I hope no one sends Gov. Walker any emails today about a Nigerian lottery or we're in even more fiscal trouble."

Today we're seeing just some of the fallout from yesterday's revelation about Walker's 20-minute phone conversation with pseudo-Koch.

In his press conference yesterday, Walker tried to justify having considered planting thugs among the protesters by saying that he didn't do it. But the phone conversation clearly reveals why he didn't do it: It wasn't because it would be unethical or immoral. It wasn't because it would be dangerous. It was because it wasn't politically expedient.

Apparently that is the litmus test for everything Walker does and doesn't do. The phone call revealed that he thinks of what's happening in Madison along the lines of Reagan's firing of the illegally striking air traffic controllers. Talk about being delusional. The two situations are hardly parallel.

Walker told pseudo-Koch about his plan to lay off thousands of teachers, not because of the presumed budget shortfall, but solely for political ends. Think about that for a minute. Not only is this a horror for the people who would lose their jobs, but it is a horror for the school districts and children who can't afford to lose any more teachers than they already have due to budget constraints.

According to Senator Fred Risser, one of the Fighting 14, Walker's folly has "diminished the image" of the Wisconsin governor's office. Boy howdy. It's not just an embarrassment for Walker and his crony Republicans in the state legislature, it's an embarrassment for his corporate overlords. We can only speculate how all the negative publicity is affecting the secretive Koch brothers. It will certainly have ramifications for Walker's status as one of their favorite puppet governors.

David Dayen at Firedog Lake sums up the effects of yesterday's revelation about the pseudo-Koch phone call:

There’s a definite siege mentality around Governor Walker right now. He has turned the tide of public opinion all by himself. The endgame may not come for a while, but Walker is losing his hold over the situation. He may not crack, but his Republican allies, particularly in the Senate, may succumb to the pressure from state media and the public.

So if you haven't already, write to the senators most likely to succumb. The fateful phone call is undoubtedly a game changer.

Kelda Stands Up to Walker's Bullying

2011-02-23T15:13:00.007-06:00

Wisconsin's Democratic state legislators continue rise to occasion and stand up to Walker's increasingly blatant bullying.

For Immediate Release February 23, 2011 Contact:

(608) 266-5340

Rep. Roys Response to Gov. Walker’s Phone Call with Billionaire Koch Impersonator

MADISON – Rep. Kelda Helen Roys issued the following statement regarding Governor Walker’s conversation with a prank caller posing as David Koch, one of the billionaire GOP financier brothers who contributed heavily to Walker’s campaign:

“I am aghast at Governor Walker’s shocking statement that he plans to layoff five to six-thousand workers as a means to extort democratically elected representatives and consolidate his political power.

“While I have deep ideological differences with the Governor, my jaw fell open upon hearing him openly admit that his plan to destroy the lives and financial security of thousands of Wisconsin families was simply to blackmail the legislature to pass his radical attack on workers’ rights.

“We knew Walker’s scheme had nothing to do with the state’s budget situation. Yet to hear him brag to his billionaire backer about using these hardworking families as his political pawns – dehumanizing them – while publicly sermonizing about job creation and corporate tax loopholes, shows a lack of integrity beyond my comprehension.”

Media outlets today reported that Gov. Walker made the following statement to a journalist he believed was ultraconservative billionaire contributor David Koch:

“So we’re trying about four or five different angles. Each day we crank up a little bit more pressure. The other thing is I’ve got layoff notices ready, we put out the at-risk notices, we’ll announce Thursday, they’ll go out early next week and we’ll probably get five to six thousand state workers will get at-risk notices for layoffs. We might ratchet that up a little bit too.”

See full transcript at http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/116751499.html.

Wavering Republican State Senators

2011-02-23T11:46:00.012-06:00

Three Wisconsin state senators are apparently wavering in their commitment to Walker's Wisconsin-busting bill. Wisconsinites, please call or e-mail them to ask that they vote against the bill, especially those of you who live in their districts.

Randy Hopper, from the 18th district (Fond du Lac): 608-266-5300; Sen.Hopper@legis.wi.gov

Luther Olsen, from the 14th district (Ripon): 608-266-0751; Sen.Olsen@legis.wisconsin.gov

Dale Schultz, from the 17th district (Richland Center): 608-266-0703 or 800-978-8008; Sen.Schultz@legis.wisconsin.gov

Here's the e-mail I sent to all three:

Dear Senator ----,

I'm writing to you as a citizen of Wisconsin to ask you to vote against Scott Walker's "Budget Repair" bill. Please be a voice and a force for reason in what is happening in Wisconsin and show respect for Wisconsin's proud heritage of championing the rights of working people.

Or if the bill must pass, please work to remove the most heinous parts of the bill wherein unions are stripped of their collective bargaining power, wherein BadgerCare and Medicaid are imperiled and hamstrung, wherein the state-owned power plants can be sold without even receiving bids. The hard-working people of Wisconsin deserve better than this. Please do all you can to advocate for their best interests rather than the interests of Walker's corporate backers.

Sincerely,

Mary Ray Worley
Madison, Wisconsin

Update: Here's a response I got from Senator Olsen:

Thank you for contacting my office. First we would like to apologize if you were trying to contact us by phone. We have received a significant amount of calls over the past week. My small staff is doing their best to answer your calls but it is impossible for them to keep up.

More importantly, I would like to thank you for contacting me and please know that your voice IS being heard.

Sincerely,

Senator Luther Olsen

Walker Fail

2011-02-23T09:43:00.011-06:00

In the 2010 election, the people of Wisconsin were looking for fiscal responsibility in tough economic times. When they voted for Walker, they thought they were voting for a conservative, someone who would conserve the hard-earned money paid by Wisconsin's taxpayers. These aren't radical people. They're hard-working, fair-minded, supremely reasonable, unwaveringly responsible people. And many of them are waking up to the fact that they aren't getting what they thought they were voting for in 2010.

Many of us know that the public employees of Wisconsin and their unions are not to blame for any fiscal difficulties the state government may have. Many realize that public employees have already paid their share with "negative pay raises" (I kid you not!) and "austerity measures." And many are very proud of Wisconsin's proud heritage of championing the rights of working people.

One protester I encountered on the Capitol square last Saturday voted for Walker because he ran on a platform of balancing the budget, not one of busting the unions. She was dismayed and felt betrayed by what she felt to be Walker's bait-and-switch tactics.

Earlier this week, Dave McClurg, a police officer in Madison and the vice president of the Madison Professional Police Officers Association, told of his own disillusionment, not only with the state Republicans, but also with Fox News, Limbaugh, and O'Reilly:

My name is Dave McClurg. I'm a City of Madison police officer. I've been here, working it, working this rally. I've been to the Capitol on my off time, coming here and protesting.

For years I've been a conservative Republican. I voted for Bush during that time. I have seen ongoing the lies that Fox News and that others are saying about what's going on here. My entire time here as both a police officer and a protester, what I've seen is nothing but peaceful protests, and it sickens me, the fact that none of the Republicans as part of our government in Wisconsin can see what's going on and change their minds. I, for the first time in my life, the other day donated money to the Democratic Party.

I will never vote Republican again. From the lies that I've seen and from the talking heads out there that I used to follow--Limbaugh, O'Reilly--I'm disgusted by the rhetoric you're throwing out there and that you can't see what is going on today and the power that the people have. We are not lazy. We are not bloodsuckers. We are hard-working Americans, and we won't put up with this. (emphasis added)

(You can see the video of McClurg's statement here.)

People like McClurg are discovering to their horror that Walker is anything but conservative. He's a John Birch demagogue willing to throw the people of Wisconsin under the bus to benefit his corporate benefactors. And by his bullying and his refusal to compromise or even listen to the people of Wisconsin, he is making no secret of the fact that he holds these good people who elected him in utter contempt.

In a conversation with a blogger posing as David Koch, Walker says of the protesters, "Hey, this is Madison. It's full of '60s liberals. Let 'em protest all they want." Apparently he doesn't get it that people who voted for him are among the protesters. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, State Senator Jon Erpenbach, one of Wisconsin's Fighting 14, said that "the real story is the total lack of compassion (from Walker) over what's going on in Wisconsin. ... Walker's remarks characterizing the protesters as 'a bunch of '60s liberals' shows how out of touch he is on the breadth and depth of concern across Wisconsin to the governor's union rights rollback proposal."

A letter to the editor of Madison's CapTimes recalls FDR's fireside chat on Sept. 6, 1936:

There are those who fail to read both the signs of the times and American history. They would try to refuse the worker any effective power to bargain collectively, to earn a decent livelihood and to acquire security. It is those shortsighted ones, not labor, who threaten this country with that class dissension which in other countries has led to dictatorship and establishment of fear and hatred as the dominant emotions in human life.

Walker, his billionaire backers, and his Republican cronies in the state legislature are failing to read the signs of the times and clearly have failed their American history. Worse yet, they're failing the people who voted for them. Their arrogance and their contempt for the people of Wisconsin will be their undoing.

The Cheddar Republic

2011-02-22T22:16:00.007-06:00

Tonight in his so-called fireside chat (FDR he ain't!), Scott Walker threatened "dire consequences" if his pet Union-busting, BadgerCare-gutting, power-plant-give-away bill doesn't pass.

The missing Senate Democrats must know that their failure to come to work will lead to dire consequences very soon. Failure to act on this budget repair bill means (at least) 15 hundred state employees will be laid off before the end of June. If there is no agreement by July 1st, another 5-6 thousand state workers -- as well as 5-6 thousand local government employees would be also laid off.

Really, is there no end to this bully's blustering?

State Representative Kelda Helen Roys responds (in her Facebook status) to Walker's threats:

I WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED. I will continue standing up for the rights of my constituents and all Wisconsinites - for workers' rights, the right of peaceable assembly, the right to participate in our democracy. If Gov. Walker wants to try to extort freely elected representatives of a co-equal branch of government, he should go to a banana republic. We in the cheddar republic will not stand for it.

I think it's safe to say that many Wisconsinites didn't realize just how draconian a governor Walker would be. I think it's also safe to say that many of us didn't realize just how awesome some of Wisconsin's state legislators are.

Friday's Assembly Floor Drama

2011-02-21T14:41:00.008-06:00

The events unfolding this past week here in Wisconsin are even more amazing than most people realize. This is a bubbling cauldron of democracy versus plutocracy (or oligarchy, as Paul Krugman calls it, although I still think plutocracy is more apt). It is a roiling torrent of heavy-handed power grab versus groundswell of popular opposition. We are in the process here of holding back what we can of the flood that is decimating the middle class. It's as if the people of Wisconsin are all holding their finger in the dike. Let's hope they continue to stand firm.

Fortunately, the people of Wisconsin are not without their heroes: Wisconsin's Fighting 14—Mark Miller (my state senator), Tim Carpenter, Spencer Coggs, Tim Cullen, Jon Erpenbach, Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin, Robert Jauch, Chris Larson, Julie Lassa, Fred Risser, Lena Taylor, Kathleen Vinehout, and Robert Wirch—walked out of the senate on Thursday to prevent there being a quorum, thereby making it impossible for the senate to vote on Walker's so-called budget repair bill. If it weren't for the Fighting 14, the bill would already have been passed.

And we have yet more heroes, these in the State Assembly. It is something of a puzzle to me that I haven't seen or heard more about this in the media. I thought media outlets were looking for high drama, and if this isn't high drama, I don't know what is. Thanks to the Wisconsin Eye, I was fortunate enough to see this drama unfold live on Friday afternoon as it was broadcast from the State Assembly floor.

The Assembly was set to begin at 5:00pm. But unaccountably the roll call begins at 4:55pm. For some strange reason, the Republicans are present and accounted for, but the other side of the aisle is strikingly empty. Still, at 4:57 the Assembly actually votes on and passes two amendments. At 4:58 the Democrats, all wearing their orange tee-shirts proclaiming their support of the public employees protesting the bill, begin running into the chamber, Representative Gordon Hintz (Oshkosh) the first among them. As Hintz is requesting to be heard, and over the shouts of the Democrats running into the chamber, the Assembly votes on and passes the bill itself.

State Assembly minority leader, Peter Barca (Kenosha) (at the top of his lungs, without his microphone turned on): "Mr. Speaker, I have a point of principle on rule 61. I don't know if you are deaf or what the problem is, but I demand you recognize me." Finally, Barca's microphone is turned on. Mind you, it is still 4:59pm.

Barca: "What you have just witnessed here, once again, is unprecedented. ... It is unbelievable to me, absolutely un-be-liev-a-ble, that you would first of all be here before five o'clock, and take an illegal vote, before even the time the proceedings are supposed to start. Unbelievable! Unprecedented! Un-American! Not in keeping with the values of this state! You should be ashamed of yourselves, each and every one of you! ...

"Where's the rest of the people in the gallery? Unprecedented! Right, you're probably not letting them in! You don't want people knowing what's going on in this body. There's a stench in this body! It is a stain on the history of this state, what you have done! It is outrageous, absolutely outrageous!" Barca then makes a motion to strike the last vote.

Barca continues: "Mr. Speaker, it is even more outrageous. I didn't think it could possibly be any more outrageous. But in fact, Amendments 2 and 3 [not the two that were voted on before the Democrats arrived], which were before the body, were never addressed. I don't think there's a legislative body in the country, maybe not in the world, that actually ignores amendments that are before it. You do not have a right! You might think that because you've been elected to the legislature, you can do whatever you damn well please. But you can't! We have rules! And whether you like it or not, you gotta follow the rules. ...

"What is wrong with you? Honest to God! This is worse than a kangaroo court. This is absolutely beyond the pale, beyond the pale! You ignore amendments that are before you!?!? ... Are you really that eager to shut down this process, to strip people of their basic worker rights, that you're willing to do anything?"

Barca is then followed by Gordon Hintz (Oshkosh) and Cory Mason (Racine), who were equally adamant and articulate in voicing their outrage over what had occurred in the State Assembly.

Gordon Hintz: "I got an e-mail from the gentleman from the 69th, that said 'be here by five o'clock.' So it was three minutes to five. As I was walking here from caucus and saw that we were actually voting. ... Once I heard you guys already decided to vote on things, well then I realized that—why would that happen?—and then, I'm like, oh that's right. It's consistent with how everything else has been handled.

"Like last Friday morning, when I was driving to a school business administrators' meeting in De Pere, and I turned on the radio, and there was an ad saying, 'Support Governor Walker's budget repair bill. Paid for by the Club for Growth.' Well guess what?! I'd never been given a bill. I hadn't even been given talking points yet. And I know we're in the minority, but I'm elected the same way you were elected by the same public from the state of Wisconsin, and I deserve better than that. And it's bad enough, it is bad enough that I had to hear it from a radio ad from Washington, DC, and then show up at a meeting with no details."

At this point Hintz, whose voice is rising in righteous indignation, is interrupted midsentence by Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (Horicon) so he could ask the people in the gallery to be quiet. Hintz makes some funny faces while he's waiting to begin again. It's not easy to hold on to your fervor while someone else is shushing the hoi polloi, but Hintz succeeds in doing so admirably.

Hintz continues: "So, while we heard that we may or may not get an emergency bill, we may get a repair bill, I found out from the radio, from a Washington DC interest group. What does that have to do with Wisconsin? And then, it's a hundred and forty-four pages. And then, we get briefed on Monday, and I'm told that we're going to vote on it on Thursday or Friday. And then when we ask for public hearings, and the public wants to speak out, you cut them off. This isn't how we do things to each other. It's not how things get introduced. And it's just simply not what we do to the public. If you want to jam through a bill, you gotta sit through the messy process that is democracy.

"When we sit there in fourth grade, and we learn about Wisconsin government, and we learn about U.S. government, we learn how amazing it was that they came together. But we also learned that it was bloody, that people had to fight for it, and they wanted to make it hard to do big things. You're supposed to be a deliberative body, you're supposed to have discussions, and you're supposed to be transparent, because the public matters in all of this input. ...

"We show up here, and you guys are gonna vote without us three minutes before you told us to be here. Are you seeing a pattern here? ... But if you want to know why there are thirty-five thousand people here, look at yourselves in the mirror, and have a little respect at least for your colleagues."

Cory Mason (Racine): "I cannot believe what we are seeing here in Wisconsin this week. I cannot believe what we're witnessing. In these times, when I feel like we're seeing the most mean-spirited, anti-worker legislation that I've ever heard of. And you're bringing out the absolute worst in what you're trying to do to working people in this state. And then to see tens of thousands of people bringing out the very best of what democracy is, and what it means.

"And so what have we seen in a week's time? First, you want to take away people's democracy in the workplace. Then you take away people's democracy and their right to speak at a hearing on a bill. Then you take away the minority's ability to dissent and have a voice. You're in the majority, but being in the majority doesn't mean you get to take away people's freedom! We exist in this state to serve the same people. The same people sent us here, and we swore an oath to ourselves and to our constituents and to the Almighty that we would adhere to certain principles that have long been the foundation of this state and this country.

"I do not recognize what is happening in this great state. You're in the majority. You get to set the agenda. But we still have the right to dissent, and you cannot silence our right to dissent as long as we draw breath. We have rights! We have rights in this country and they will be abided by!"

Mason is then followed by Representative Kelda Helen Roys (Madison), who is moved to the point of tears in her plea that the assembly not pass the bill in this way. Finally, the Speaker of the House, Jeff Fitzgerald (Horicon), backs down and consents to strike the earlier, illegal vote and to adjourn until Tuesday morning at 10am.

I have watched the videos of this drama many times now, and I'm still amazed at the power and conviction of these representatives. I want everyone to know what a brave stand they took, not only for Wisconsin's public employees but also for democracy and for fair, democratic procedures in the State Assembly.

Here are the links to the two videos of this amazing drama:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPuqW3BaZRc

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA_ax20KTpk

Please watch them. Please share them. This story of political chicanery and the brave stand Barca, Hintz, Mason, and Roys made against it must be told. And of course it has hardly made a blip in the media. So if we don't tell people about it, no one will know. And everyone who cares about what's happening in Wisconsin should know.

Pluto, Demo: You Pick

2011-02-20T07:47:00.005-06:00

This is what plutocracy looks like.

This is what democracy looks like.

Conservative? Really?

2011-02-18T21:54:00.007-06:00

Can anybody tell me why Republicans like Scott Walker are still being called "conservative"? What exactly are they conserving? The rich, I guess. But really, the policy Walker is trying to push through in Wisconsin is decidedly not conservative. It is one of the most radical, heavy-handed pieces of legislature this country has ever seen.

Walker tried to push his 144-page bill through the legislature with no public comment and essentially no legislative debate in just five days. That draconian move would have unraveled more than fifty years of Wisconsin's finest accomplishments on behalf of working families. It would gut the middle class and ultimately do great harm to Wisconsin's economy.

But Walker's concern is not the state budget. Nor is it the well-being of the people of Wisconsin. His concern is to please his corporate sponsors. And that is all.

So can we please stop calling him a conservative? His policies, his goals, his attitudes are not conservative. They're destructive. They're arrogant. They're un-American.

I know. Let's call him what he is: a plutocrat.

According to Merriam-Webster.com, plutocracy is "1: government by the wealthy; 2: a controlling class of the wealthy."

Plutocrat is a perfectly apt description of Scott Walker. And plutocracy is clearly his goal. Let's call him what he is. Scott Walker, the consummate plutocrat.

Small Victories

2011-02-18T18:54:00.003-06:00

First read this, and then this.

I turned on Wisconsin Eye this afternoon just in time to see Gordon Hintz and Cory Mason lambaste the Republican legislators for taking the vote early, without the Democrats present. They were incredibly eloquent. I was so impressed. I hope people get to see footage of their speeches, because they were really amazing.

The legislature then voted to adjourn until Tuesday, giving more time for the protesters to be heard. First it seemed like the Republicans had upended us, and then it was like the the Dems swooped in and turned things around in only a few minutes. Took my breath away. I still can hardly believe it!

Commit Yourselves to Nonviolence

2011-02-18T14:14:00.007-06:00

"Nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

Now that we have gained national attention, the counterprotesters are coming. The purpose of some will be to bait the Wisconsin workers, to incite them to violence. This will be their strategy because they know that violence will undermine the protesters' message.

People of Wisconsin, stand firm in your resolve. Do not allow yourselves to be baited. Do not give in to the incitement to violence. Your cause will only be advanced by deliberate and determined acts of nonviolent resistance.

This is not something to be decided in the spur of the moment, with the sudden realization that the counterprotesters have arrived. This is something you must decide now. Firmly and with great resolve. Because it is not easy. In fact, it is very, very difficult. Much more difficult than erupting in violence. It may be one of the hardest things you ever do in your life.

Stand firm, and do not allow yourselves to be moved. You are in the right. The opposition knows that, and they also know that inciting you to violence will be to their benefit, not yours. Your commitment to nonviolent resistance will convince the world that you are in the right. Stand firm, my sisters and brothers. Stand firm. And guard the peace of your hearts just as you guard your families, your coworkers, and your livelihoods.

Au Contraire, Rachel

2011-02-18T10:30:00.007-06:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I love you, Rachel, but I think you have this one wrong. Last night in your program, you asserted that what's happening in Madison is a result of Republican efforts to obliterate the opposition, i.e., the Democratic Party. "What's going on right now in the American Midwest is about Republicans versus Democrats. ... This is about the survival of the Democratic Party."

Honestly, I don't give a ripsnort about the survival of the Democratic Party, because it has already been subsumed by the same forces that are trying to bring down the last vestiges of union power in the United States. The assault on the Democratic Party commenced decades ago and has essentially already been successful. The Democratic Party that stood for something died when Russ Feingold lost his bid for reelection last fall. The Democrats who are left have no teeth, no guts, no convictions. They stand for nothing. They are as beholden to their corporate masters as the Republicans are.

Look at what happened with "health care reform." The Democrats held the executive branch and a supermajority in the legislature. But the bill they managed to pass, in spite of overwhelming support for Medicare for Everyone across the country, was a gift, tied up with a bow, for the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies. What the people got out of that was a constitutionally questionable mandate to buy health insurance with few to zero restrictions on cost, quality of service, and the extent of coverage. The people did not triumph; they were set up and railroaded. The Dems proved to be a bunch of namby-pamby wimps, unwilling to stand up for the interests of the people who voted them into their supermajority. This is not what democracy looks like.

The current assault may appear to be on the Democratic Party. But what's going on in Wisconsin is more sinister than that. Who is fighting this fight? It's not the Democrats. Obama is not standing up for the workers in Wisconsin. Obama is treading around this issue so very lightly because he cannot afford to enrage his corporate sponsors. He has even added credibility to the notion of Walker's supposed fiscal difficulties. He only voiced mild support for the protesters in Wisconsin on the fourth day of protests. Pretty slow out of the gate, there, Mr. President. The voices from Democrats in support of the Wisconsin protesters are slow in coming, soft-spoken, and without teeth. No, this is not an assault on the Democratic Party.

This is an assault on the people of the United States. It's an assault on the middle class. It's an assault on freedom and civil rights. The best the Democrats could do was to get out of the people's way, which, thankfully, Wisconsin's Democratic legislators have done. But it's the people who are fighting this fight. And their opponents are not the Republicans, much as we might like to believe that. Their opponents are the terrifically powerful monied interests who won't stop their juggernaut of greed until we have returned to a system of serfs, vassals, and lords.

No, what's going on right now in the American Midwest is about the power of the people versus the power of greed. This is about the survival of the middle class. There's nothing less at stake here than the survival of freedom and civil rights and democracy. And the ones who are on the front lines are most decidedly not the Democrats. They are the ordinary, hard-working, anything-but-radical people of Wisconsin, who have finally had enough bullying from the billionaires' thugs.

Note: If you're reading this on Facebook, click on View Original Post to see the video clip from Rachel's show last night.

"When Does the Greed Stop?"

2011-02-17T16:23:00.009-06:00

It's not a matter of Democrats vs. Republicans. It's not a matter of conservatives vs. liberals. Those distinctions are becoming less meaningful all the time. What's really happening is a great battle between corporate interests and the interests of ordinary people. There's nothing conservative about today's Republicans. And there's absolutely nothing radical about today's Democrats. What is radical is the current all-out attack on the middle class and the blatant contempt for working families.

The mainstream media are owned by those corporate interests. We're not going to get a straight story from them any more than we are getting a straight story from Scott Walker about Wisconsin's supposed budget crisis. If the rich were to actually pay taxes instead of getting an abundance of tax breaks and loopholes, there would be no budget problem. But Walker's actions have nothing to do with economics or the state budget.

The purpose of this manufactured "crisis" is to create an opportunity to strip workers' of their collective bargaining rights. Those workers are teachers, librarians, and nurses--ordinary people who deserve not only reasonable compensation for the important work they do, but also the right to bargain collectively with their employer.

Do the math. The middle class is shrinking at an alarming rate. The extremely rich are getting much, much richer. The poor are getting poorer. In Wisconsin, the last remaining vestiges of workers' rights are under an all-out onslaught.

When choosing sides, it's crucial to accurately assess what sides are really in opposition. The very powerful are diverting attention away from themselves and creating false oppositions and false divisions in order to distract the unwary and take advantage of people's fears and loyalties.

When you find yourself in a battle, you can't fight effectively unless you know exactly who it is who has identified you as their enemy.

"What is the price? we ask the other side. What is the price that you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do we have to give to the private sector and to business? How many billion dollars more are you requiring? When does the greed stop?"

These questions were posed by the Lion of the Senate, Edward Kennedy, some years ago on the Senate floor. Here are the answers I'm hearing:

"What price?" There is no limit.

"When does the greed stop?" When ordinary women and men stand up and say, with one voice, "It stops now."

The Singular and Extraordinary Path of Nonviolence

2011-01-17T10:23:00.008-06:00

Dr. King walked the not-always-popular and not-always-well-understood path of nonviolence.

Nonviolence is extraordinarily effective in demonstrating the rightness of one's cause. When the British attacked the nonviolent resistors in India, it was evident to the world that the resistors, many of whom lost their lives, were in the right and that the British were in the wrong. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, it was clear that her cause was just.

Nonviolent resistance requires the willingness to lay down one's own life for the sake of the cause, so it better be a damn good one. You don't make this kind of commitment to something that's marginally important.

Violence debases us. Nonviolence elevates us.

Violence strips both the perpetrator and the victim of human dignity.

Nonviolent resistance clothes the oppressed with dignity and enables them to view the oppressor with compassion.

Nonviolent resistance empowers the oppressed.

Violence begets only more violence.

Nonviolence begets understanding and empathy.

We need more nonviolent resistors of hate in the world today.

For my part, I commit myself to a path of nonviolence and compassion. Care to join me?

--Mary

What Banking Should Be

2011-01-16T03:13:00.004-06:00

Muhammad Yunus, "banker to the poor," tells how it should be done.
--Tom

Fear, Loathing, and Babies

2011-01-08T10:33:00.007-06:00

Why on earth does anyone waist their time targeting the most powerless and disadvantaged among us--unauthorized immigrants and their children--while the most powerful and unscrupulous--greed-driven corporate hegemons--continue to run our civil rights, our government, and our economy into the ground not only with impunity but with hardly a blip on the collective radar? Isn't it just possible that many who focus on the supposed threat posed by the powerless and disadvantaged are being manipulated into misidentifying who should be held accountable for our current economic and political morass?

Might it be that those who are running away with the wealth and power of this country, those who control the language and focus of the mainstream media--who know that calling people "illegals" will stir up resentment and mistrust--bank on being able to take advantage of deep-seated prejudices to distract us from the very real damage that they themselves routinely and cavalierly cause? Allow me to remind you that until very recently the word illegal was used only as an adjective, not a noun, and it was never used to modify people, only actions. Calling people "illegals" dehumanizes them, allowing us to feel that our attitudes toward them are justified.

The arguments used against the current wave of immigrants are the same as the arguments used against all the previous waves of immigrants: "they don't learn the language," "they don't pay taxes," "they don't assimilate." It's true that adult immigrants to this country find English a very difficult language to learn (think about wrapping your mind around "though," "through," "tough," and "cough"), especially because they are preoccupied with procuring employment and providing for their families. But their children never fail to learn English and never fail to assimilate and are very often tremendous assets not only to the immigrant community they grew up with but also to our country, the country that is their own, their home country in every respect.

The claims that unauthorized immigrants don't pay taxes and that they take advantage of our oh-so-abundant (not!) social services is absurd. It's next to impossible to get a paycheck in this country without taxes being taken out. And those who get paid "under the table" often find that they are not paid as much as they were promised or are not paid at all, and because of their status they have no legal recourse. The effect is that we have a subclass of cheap laborers with no rights, no legal recourse when they're exploited, and no political voice or representation. And these are the people we find so threatening? This is what causes outrage when the middle class is disappearing at an alarming rate while our civil liberties are blithely eaten for lunch by greedy fear-mongering corporate hegemons?

And what about the so-called anchor babies? Just what threat do these babies pose exactly? Unauthorized immigrants who bear a child in this country are still subject to deportation. They gain no legal advantage by having a child except the advantage of U.S. citizenship for the child, while they run the risk of having their family torn apart should one or both parents be deported. In what way, exactly, does this pose a threat to anyone, except that it means a continued shift in the ratio of nonwhite to white babies being born in this country? If these babies truly pose a threat, then it's a threat only to those invested in maintaining a homogeneous white majority.

And what would we have these children do, the ones who grow up here and are far more at home here than they could possibly be in their parents' country of origin? We should deport them to a country of which they are not citizens that would be very nearly as foreign to them as it would be to us?

When, oh when, are we going to learn that cultural diversity is a great blessing and strength, that every wave of immigrants has enriched this country in countless ways? We need these newcomers who are being reviled and terrorized because they have the temerity to want to come here to work when work isn't available in their home country. We need them, because the poor--not the rich--form the basis of our economy. The poor spend every last cent of their income because they have no choice to do otherwise. Some may be fortunate enough to have a modest amount to send home to family, but most of what they earn is spent right here. The same cannot be said of the fabulously wealthy, who make far more money than they can possibly spend and do more to weaken our economy than strengthen it.

We need these immigrants not only for economic reasons but also because many aspects of their cultures are antidotes to the most problematic aspects of our own culture, such as extreme individualism, task-orientation, and rampant materialism. We need them because the mixing of cultures and ideas results in stronger values and communities.

When I first started working with my church's Latino congregation, I would arrive a half-hour early every Sunday to practice and prepare for the service. But I soon learned that although the tasks I had in mind weren't unimportant, it was more important to greet the people who arrived early. In other words, people are more important than tasks, which also meant that I was more important than tasks. It was my presence--and theirs--that really counted, not my performance or preparation. It didn't matter if I made mistakes. What mattered--and still matters--is that I love and cherish the people of my faith community. This may be a simple lesson, but it's a profound one, and only one small example of how I've been blessed by coming to know and love my Latino sisters and brothers.

The children of immigrants are quick to see the virtues and attractions of both their parents' culture and the majority culture that surrounds them, and they're very often brilliant at interweaving the best aspects of both to come up with a fabric that is stronger and more beautiful than either of the original threads. Yet these very children--the "anchor babies"--are the ones we find so abhorrent that we would consider altering the Constitution to prevent them from becoming citizens? Not only do these children not pose a threat, but they are the bright promise of tomorrow. What does denying them citizenship accomplish? And what does it say about us as a country? If such a law had been put into effect in the eighteenth century, the founders of this country would not have been citizens. I submit that altering the Constitution in such a way would signify that we have lost our way, that we have refused to learn the lessons of past generations, and that we are a nation guided not by wisdom and compassion but by fear and ignorance.

--Mary (my first blog post in well over a year!)

War on Drugs

2011-01-04T01:19:00.000-06:00

We're losing the war on drugs.

The Outlaw Is You

2011-01-04T00:15:00.004-06:00

Professor David Cole writes against a recent perversion of the justice system in this country: The government declares that such and such group is a "foreign terrorist organization;" posits that so-and-so is a member of it. Just like that, it is a felony for you to do anything for that person!

The government may not be able to prove that its presumed "terrorist" has violated any law. The government may not be able to prove that that person is a member of the group. The government need not prove that the group even exists.

Just the government's say-so that that person is in a blacklisted group makes you a felon if you fill his tooth cavity, cut his hair, sell him a hamburger. Your ignorance of the guy's status on the blacklist is no excuse.

In the bad old days, the government could pass a law against a person: decree that it's against the law to be Billy the Kid, say. Modern law did away with outlawry--until now.

It's worse now than it used to be. In the dark ages it was only the outlaw who was beyond the law's protection. Now it's you.

Banks Decide Where Money Can Be Used

2010-12-30T04:03:00.004-06:00

This is frightening. Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Bank of America have refused to process payments to an organization that said that it will release data revealing corruption in the financial industry. Banks and credit-card companies create our medium of exchange. Money is "legal tender for all debts, public and private." Financial services companies cannot be allowed, on their say-so, to select who may and may not transfer and receive money.