The Really Old South, the Phony New South. Our local PBS television station, WNET Newark/New York, broadcast today the last two parts of the four-part series, "Rebels and Redcoats: How Britain Lost America", a British view by English military historian Richard Holmes. This episode speaks to the last time the South was more a boon than bane to the United States. And even, then, its insistence on retaining slavery while claiming to fight for "Liberty" (the name of another series on the Revolutionary War that is also being rebroadcast by WNET) put the success of the Revolution at serious risk.
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The key facts about the American Revolution militarily are (a) that it could not have succeeded without French help — thank you, France — and (b) that the vastness of the Continental Army's homeland and the democratically dispersed nature of power here made recapture of lost colonies extremely difficult. The British found themselves in control of the cities and, like Napoleon in Moscow, thought that that would bring an end to resistance. But, like the Russians three decades later, the Americans had so great a depth of territory that loss of small areas didn't mean much.
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Making things worse for the British, there was no historical nor unified "capital" of "America", which was a group of separate states each of which had its own capital but none of which was particularly important in a predominantly rural society. When the British captured Philadelphia, the ostensible "capital" of the Thirteen States, they found that didn't dishearten the "Rebels". Philadelphia meant nothing to Charlestonians, New Yorkers, or Bostonians.
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Curiously, Napoleon made his quest the ancient capital of Russia, Moscow, not the contemporaneous capital, Saint Petersburg. But it wouldn't have made much difference which city he took. Russia was too big to conquer, as "America" (a geographical term, not a real country at the time) was too big to reconquer without winning "the hearts and minds" of its residents.
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Making things even worse for the British was that England made some crucially foolish mistakes that alienated large portions of the former-colonial population, such as allying with Indians and loosing them upon rural white settlers, to slaughter and scalp, and trying to win over the black population by promising to end slavery. We were to see, 80 years after the British lost at Yorktown, how much blood ending slavery would take.
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Still, the point of this blog entry is that the South has been for almost our entire history (with the POSSIBLE exception of the Revolution), a huge, stinking, dead albatross around our national neck.
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In the later years of the Revolutionary War, after the British took most of the major cities in the North but the war still did not end, they turned their attention to capturing Southern cities, with, however, the same result. The South was far more rural than the North, so the loss of a few important cities was even less important there than in the North, where, in any case, it didn't mean as much as the British had hoped it would. If the Revolution started in the North, it triumphed in the South. Militarily.
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Alas, the South embraced "liberty" only for white men, and long after the establishment of independence, the Union, and a Constitution that entrenched a Bill of Rights for white people, the South fought tooth and nail against equality and freedom for blacks.
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Slavery was abolished, but only at detestable cost in life and treasure; and new institutions that amounted to a new slavery were created during Reconstruction, the South's triumph over the North.
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Southern bigots kept blacks ignorant and uneducated, and made living conditions so unpleasant that hundreds of thousands left the South for the North. Alas, when they arrived there, they did not possess the skills necessary to succeed. Nor was quickly acquiring skills by patient and intense attention to education part of their tradition. Impatient young people could argue, in part rightly, that it didn't matter how much education a black person got; s/he still wouldn't be allowed to rise as high as his or her talents might otherwise permit because of white hostility.
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The consequence of the long denial of quality education to blacks in the South is that instead of moving out of poverty within one generation up North, large proportions of black migrants remained stuck in dehumanizing poverty, a culture that actually derided education and praised stupidity, in ghettoes that were filled with violence and the life-sapping, self-subverting use of drugs.
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Rage at real and imagined slights produced riots and vast criminality that very nearly destroyed American civilization, almost bringing down all of the great cities of the Nation to the lowest level of Southern barbarism. Huge swaths of virtually all our major cities were literally burned to the ground and rendered into "war zones" as catastrophic as 1945 Berlin.
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Fortunately, we have emerged from that terrible time, as Southern blacks (which is to say, the great preponderance of all American blacks) who had resettled in the North and West incorporated key features of the culture of success into the mentality of their children: education, self-discipline, deferred gratification (sacrifice now for success later), and acceptance of the fact that progress is more usually incremental than monumental. American blacks who have taken those values to heart have emerged from poverty to form a huge community of middle-class blacks who are, alas, still coping with an immovable culture of poverty in which getting rich quick, by any means necessary, and displaying the signs of wealth (without perhaps even having the wealth those signs would suggest) are more important than living a life of modest success and happiness rooted in nonmaterialistic values rather than the flash and glamor of the pimp and pusher.
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For several decades, the South has dominated national politics, with extremely harmful results. The most regressive part of the Nation tips the balance between the most progressive and more conservative regions, toward the least-progressive policies. Were it not for the South, the U.S. would be very similar to the progressive nations of Northern Europe.
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The South is the most jingoistic, racist, homophobic, and superstitious region of the Nation, and pretends to speak for "Amurica". All too much of the Nation accepts Southern-identified features of "Americanism" as truly representative of our civilization, when they are wholly at variance with the progressive values we fought our Revolution for.
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Poor whites suffer as much as do poor blacks from the regressive politics entrenched by Southern tie-breaking votes in national politics, and a large proportion of the most desperately poor people, with the worst rates of pay and worst employee benefits, live in the South. How does it profit poor whites to defeat proposals for, to use one example, universal healthcare, when they more than most need exactly that kind of care?
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In recent decades we have been told there is a "New South" that has moved beyond race and embraced a more balanced and nuanced politics. What a pile of crap! Where is this New South? And how did such little progress as the South has experienced come from?
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The Federal Government has poured trillions of dollars into the South, taken from the pockets of taxpayers in other parts of the Union, to try to lift Southerners out of their self-inflicted misery. But Southern "culture" resists self-improvement. Only as outsiders fled cold winters for the Sunbelt, which just happens to be in the South, has what little progress as we see there arrived. Absent migration from the North and Latin America, Miami would be as retrograde and racist as the smallest town in northern Florida.
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Voting rights legislation has changed the complexion of many local governments across the South, but there are still no black Senators nor Governors in the entire region. There was, briefly, ONE 'black' governor, in Virginia, but he wasn't very dark and didn't last long.
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I will believe there is a New South when (a) Southern poor whites realize that they have been played for fools by their 'betters', and change their voting habits to make common cause with progressives to secure really good health insurance for their family, really good wages, and jobs with really good benefits; and (b) when every single monument to the 'heroes' of the Confederacy is torn down, every Southern state flag removes all symbols of the Confederacy, every Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis Highway is renamed.
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I would love to see a real New South. When will it arrive?
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:52 PM

 
Talking Turkey. George Bush has intervened in the internal affairs of the European Union to say that he (and thus, presumably, his government) favors the admission of Turkey to the European Union. French President Chirac rebuffed that suggestion as interference in a matter that does not concern him, like France trying to tell him what the United States' relations with Mexico ought to be.
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Some comments. First, Bush said, "Including Turkey in the EU would prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the 'clash of civilizations' as a passing myth of history." Cute line (which he, of course, could not possibly have written), but false.
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Alas for Pollyanna Bush, Europe is a Christian subcontinent very wary of being overwhelmed by Islam, not necessarily by military conquest but by immigrants from Moslem areas, whose reproductive rate is much higher than that of indigenous Europeans. It is very easy for someone from a huge Christian continent spanning the entire Western Hemisphere and insulated from Islam by wide oceans to tell Europeans to relax about Moslem demographic invasion and to promote diversity of types we don't permit. Our own immigration policy is very definitely and deliberately prejudiced against the very part of the world that Bush wants Europe to welcome.
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Israelis can come and go as they please to the United States, overstay their visas, and form large expat communities in this country, legal status be damned. But Palestinians and other Arabs can't even get student visas due to publicly expressed concern that there is a high probability that they will overstay their visas and try to remain in this country illegally. Why should that matter, if we welcome Moslems to participate in and contribute to our civilization?
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It would be refreshing to see the Republicans practice what they preach, but it won't happen under George Bush's watch.
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Second, Turkey is not, as Bush claims, a European power. Nor it it even, really, a European country. It does not speak an Indo-European language but a Turkic language, which has its origins in Central Asia. Its dominant religion isn't Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Orthodox Christianity, the dominant religions of Europe. Only a tiny fraction of its land area and population are in Europe; the bulk of the country is in Asia. The EUROPEAN Union should not be adding Asian countries without changing its fundamental mission and name.
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Third, Turkey is guilty of crimes against another recent EU member — from Asia — Cyprus, which it invaded and a disproportionately large share of which it still occupies, against international law, including various UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTIONS calling for withdrawal of Turkish troops from occupied northern Cyprus. I thought the Bush Administration held it as a sacred trust to enforce UN resolutions. Isn't that why we invaded Iraq? Oh, no, it wasn't. What was I thinking?
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Fourth, it is just plain stupid for the United States to be promoting the enlargement of an international grouping that has aspirations to superpowerdom in rivalry with the U.S., rivalry that could lead to diplomatic conflict, economic warfare, and eventual military conflict. The Pentagon under Dubya's father said it should be the policy of the United States actively to prevent the rise of another superpower. When it got out that the Pentagon had made that recommendation, Dubya's lily-livered father disowned any such intention. His stupid son seems intent on ignoring the same good advice.
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It seems to me that Dubya didn't like when France and Germany, a mere two members of the EU, took strong stands against U.S. plans to invade Iraq. Would he be more comfortable with a 27-member EU united — that is, forbidding Britain to depart from a single, joint EU foreign policy — to stop future plans of his or any other U.S. Administration? If not, why on Earth would he strengthen the EU? The man is truly a moron.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 10:37 PM

 
"Red-Hot Economy". The Republicans want to neutralize public dissatisfaction over economic justice by pretending that the economy under Bush is now "red hot" because a lot of jobs have been added and housing construction is strong. Both those signs are, alas, false indicators of prosperity for people at large.
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First, the jobs the Republicans are so proud of pay much less than the jobs lost in earlier years that they replace.
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Second, the only reason the housing sector is booming is that people expect the Federal Reserve System to raise interest rates shortly, and once those rates rise, housing costs will as well rise, in many cases beyond the ability of ordinary people to buy.
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I was caught in the last interest-rate escalation when I bought my house in June 2000. Four short years ago, I got stuck with a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage at 9% interest, because a few weeks before I bought, the monster Alan Greenspan had raised interest rates for something like the sixth time in eight months and was expected to raise them again within weeks of my mortgage commitment. I was able to refinance only last year, and my mortgage payment dropped by $261 a month! There are a lot of people for whom an additional $261 a month puts owning their own home, part of the Republicans' oft-cited "American dream", beyond reach. And it's going to happen again if things keep going the way they're going.
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Democrats can easily and permanently end all talk of a "red-hot economy" with this simple answer: "Yes, the economy is so hot you can cook burgers and fries with it!" Because that's where the growth is that Republicans are so dishonestly excited about: in low-paying jobs like burger-flipping and deep-frying.
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Tho Kerry has weakly pointed out that the jobs being created are not the equivalent of the jobs that have been lost, he is somehow exceedingly timorous when it comes to JUMPING on the huge gap in income between new jobs and lost jobs. As Eleanor Clift of Newsweek magazine observed on yesterday's McLaughlin Group, Americans have lost jobs that paid $30 an hour and are getting instead jobs that pay $6 an hour! This would be good only if each American who used to make $30 an hour could get 5 jobs! But of course, s/he can't.
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So why is Kerry so TIMID about denouncing the willful impoverishment of the middle class and poor by the rich? Could it be because he is a megamillionaire?
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He needs to draw a line in the sand between Republican millionaires and Democratic millionaires. Republican millionaires believe that wealth is their God-given right, proof of their superiority and favor from Heaven. Anyone who isn't rich doesn't deserve to be rich; anyone who is intended by Heaven to be rich will become rich, and there's nothing government should do to change this divine order.
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Democratic millionaires never cease to be grateful for their good fortune, and know the huge part that luck has played in making them rich. They who were born to wealth accept wealth as a responsibility, a weighty obligation to use their time and money for public good, to help others, as thru charitable institutions, hospital wings, and educational foundations, not hoard it for the good life for themselves and their children alone.
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To paraphrase the generally accepted assertion by the French Duc de Levis in 1808, "noblesse oblige", decent millionaires of any political party accept that "richesse oblige": wealth obligates the rich to use the money they don't need for their own needs for, instead, public needs.
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There are some Republican millionaires, mostly "old money", who understand and accept that. The Rockefellers, with their University and Foundation, come to mind. But the bulk of Republican millionaires today are greedy enemies of society who pretend that even if they were born to money, they somehow earned it!
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Kerry, given his huge family fortune, is ideally suited to calling the rich to a higher purpose: to promote the public good in the fashion of the Rockefellers, Fords, Kennedys; Bill Gates and Ted Turner.
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Money is power, and power can be used for good or ill. If it is used for ill, it should be taken away from the evil and given to the good — with no apology.
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Progressive taxation is not stealing. It is simple redistribution from those who have too much to (benefit) those who have too little — simple economic equity: fairness. How can anyone attack fairness?
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Republican millionaires pretend that "confiscatory" taxation, summed up by the populist expression "soak the rich", does more harm than good to society. Bull. It has NEVER hurt society to soak the rich, as long as the tax was levied on income, not passive wealth. Income is dynamic. It does not shrink existing fortunes; it just keeps them from growing at too high a rate.
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How rich are the rich today? Well, a billionaire, Donald Trump of New York, briefly entertained the idea of running for President in 2000, and proposed that a one-time millionaires' tax could pay off the national debt entirely and thus save us each year billions upon billions of dollars now wasted on interest payments to the rich. No one even attempted to disprove his assertion that we could actually do that: that a one-time charge on the super-rich could actually pay off the entire national debt!
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If that is true, or even nearly true, then surely dramatically increased taxation on the very rich could starkly reduce the national debt and its concomitant transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich.
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How can anyone oppose the idea of imposing a 99% tax rate on everything above $5 million in income in any given year? That would still leave a multimillionaire with $10,000 per million above $5 million at normal tax rates.
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The top pick at this year's National Basketball Association draft, straight out of high school, will "earn" $11 million his first year! No one "earns" $11 million a year, certainly not with trivia like playing a stupid game. If we had a "confiscatory" tax rate of 99% on every $1 million above $5 million per year, he would nonetheless make, after regular taxation on the first $5 million, say, $3 million, then $10,000 per million thereafter, times $6 million: another $60,000. How many kids "earn" even $60,000 per year straight out of high school? — not to mention the $3 million a year he would take home after non-"confiscatory" taxation on the first $5 million of his salary?
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The typical person in this country who acquires only a high-school education can expect to make, today, on the order of $20,000 to $30,000 a year — if s/he's lucky. This NBA draftee would CLEAR $60,000 a year just on the portion of his (obscene) income above $5 MILLION that is taxed at a "confiscatory" rate, and thus clear approximately $3,060,000 a year! Would it be "unjust" of society to "steal" 'so much' of 'his' money and leave him with 'just' $3,060,000 a year? I don't think so. And I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone on this entire planet who would find such tax rates unjust.
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At the same time as this sports clown who plans to spend the next few years of his life playing a children's game is making this obscene amount of money, essentially all the kids he went to school with will struggle to make a living on less than 1/1000th his income. In what other area of life is anyone 1,000 times superior to the average person? Is anyone 1,000 times as good-looking, athletic, smart, or healthy as another? Does anyone live 1,000 times the average lifespan? No. There is no area of nature in which the disparity between one person and the general run of people is 1,000 times — or more. So why should we have an artificial and unnatural order when it comes to income? We shouldn't.
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"Economic fairness" is the Democrats' best issue in 2004 and for the foreseeable future. Kerry will CRUSH Bush if he lands on the gross inequality that the present tax system and the rapacious behavior of Republican megamillionaires in the corporate suite are getting away with, downsizing away the life savings of working people for the benefit of rich shareholders and overcompensated executives; offshoring the best jobs our technology can produce; replacing people with machines; cutting pay and benefits; taking away what had been regarded as fundamental rights of working people before the Republicans' Plutocratic Revolution of 1986: pensions and healthcare paid for by the employer.
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Kerry must wage a war for economic fairness. Take out a battle-ax and swing it around to chop off the head of the Plutocratic Revolution!
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The obscenely rich do not "earn" the disgraceful amounts of money they have, and it's not their money. Our name is on it: every dollar they have has the words "United States of America" on it, and if that name weren't on it, it wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on.
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It's OUR money and OUR economy. We created the infrastructure; we created the social stability and schools and roadways and telephone system and computer system and everything else that makes it possible for the rich to be rich. We have no reason to hesitate in demanding that the rich pay their dues for living extremely well in a society that affords them such astounding opportunity.
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The Republican Right claims to be religious, pious Christians, and pretends (whether they say this aloud or not) that their wealth is ordained by God. Let them heed these words from Luke 12:48: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:25 PM

 
"Gay Pride" and I. Today is "Gay Pride Day" in New York City, where the term originated. I know. I originated it.
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In spring 1970 I was part of the committee organizing the first "Christopher Street Liberation Day March" to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of June 1969. I had lived in New York since 1965 but happened to be out-of-state at the time of the Riots, visiting my sisters in Bellflower, California and attending a summer session at Long Beach State. While there I tried to establish a chapter of Homosexuals Intransigent!, a student organization I had formed on April 1, 1969, almost three full months before the Stonewall Riots, at the City College of the City University of New York. So I was, alas, nowhere near the Stonewall, a bar I had been a regular customer of since its opening, when the Riots erupted.
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By November 1969, however, I was back East, attending a meeting (the last, as it turns out) of the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations in Philadelphia, at which the Student Homophile League of NYU proposed that our various groups join to establish an annual march to celebrate Stonewall.
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In those days, demonstrations by "homophile" groups (the favored term for what are now called "gay and lesbian" or "lesbigay" organizations) ordinarily imposed a dress code on demonstrators to maintain decorum: jacket-and-tie for men; skirts and blouses or sweaters for women. As head of a student group some of whose members may not have owned a sports jacket or tie, I offered an amendment that the March should not have a dress code. I had no idea - none of us had - that the simple absence of a dress code would lead some degenerates to think that grotesque outfits or total nudity would be appropriate for a march intended to inspire self-esteem in gay men and lesbians. Had we known that, I hope we'd have proposed some guidelines for attire. But we didn't anticipate that some marchers would disgrace themselves by strutting about in leather codpieces - and nothing else - or in drag, so took no precaution against that happening.
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Alas, the consequence is that every year, vicious, antihomosexual media zoom in on the weirdos and weirdettes and ignore the overwhelming preponderance of normally dressed and normal-acting gay people at these events.
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In any case, the plan was to hold the March starting at noon on the Sunday of the weekend closest to the date of the Riots. We wanted to involve people from many surrounding cities, not just New Yorkers, many of whom would have to come in the day before because of time constraints. So we asked all New York-based organizations to hold special events that weekend to draw in people and give them something to do other than spend their time in what were then often Mafia-owned bars. To draw all those events together, we wanted a catchy name by which to publicize the specialness of the weekend as to make more people want to participate.
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The first proposal was from "the other Craig", the late Craig Rodwell, a long-time activist I had met years before thru the Mattachine Society, the granddaddy of New York organizations, and in whose apartment I believe it is that we met that week. Craig R. proposed "Gay Power Weekend". I didn't like that. It was too strident, too other-oriented, concerned with making an impression on straight people. I wanted something more positive, inward-looking, celebratory, so suggested "Gay Pride Weekend". Jerry Hoose (of, I believe, the Gay Liberation Front) seconded the motion. And without debate the proposal was adopted. "Gay Pride Weekend" it would be. Next order of business.
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That's all it was at the time, just one item to take care of before the March. No biggie. But it turned out to be an enormous biggie.
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Because even if gay people have no power, they can have pride, and that will make a difference in their lives. And if they feel pride in themselves and their nature, they won't take crap from anybody.
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Before Stonewall homosexuality was, as Oscar Wilde's lover called it, "the love that dare not speak its name", deeply associated with shame and self-loathing. In the decades since, homosexuality has become a positive orientation intimately and unbreakably linked to "pride". That little linguistic link has made a huge impact on the lives of gay (and lesbian) people internally and been a motive force of consequence in producing social and legal change. And I'm the guy who proposed it, 34 years ago.
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We don't always know the origin of terms in popular use. We do know the origin of "Gay Pride". I coined it in spring 1970 for a weekend of events surrounding the first march commemorating the Stonewall Riots. Now you know.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:16 PM

 
No Apology Necessary. U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Guido Calabresi apologized for embarrassing his court in saying that Dubya "came to power as the result of the illegitimate acts of a legitimate institution". The New York Post won't accept that apology but insists that he should have apologized for the remarks themselves, even tho they are plainly true. Why is the truth of Calabresi's assertion so hard for the Post to accept?
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Half a million more Americans voted for Al Gore than for George Bush. Non-ideological believers in democracy would have conceded that Al Gore should be President, and voted for the man who received the larger popular vote.
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The members of the Electoral College knew the huge disparity in votes nationwide, even putting aside probable massive fraud in Florida, in which tens of thousands of Democratic votes were junked by a Republican state government. Yet they nonetheless misused their legitimate power, to hand the Presidency to a man who was NOT the choice of the people. That is an illegitimate act of a legitimate institution, the Electoral College, which was designed to prevent us from being carried away by the passions of the moment into electing a Hitler. Al Gore was no Hitler; his constituent base was national, not regional. And he got hundreds of thousands more votes than Dubya.
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Further, the Supreme Court's actions in declaring a highly dubious Florida election to be valid was a further illegitimate act of another legitimate institution. Dubya thus doubly benefited from illegitimate acts of legitimate institutions. And then this minority President took us into war by lies, which should hardly surprise: an illegitimate president used illegtimate means to lead us into an unwise war that most Americans now understand to have been a mistake.
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The Post admits none of this. Americans generally, however, admit all of it. (Responsive to editorial "Calabresi's 'Apology', New York Post, June 26, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:24 PM

 
Debtor's Prison. The practice of imprisoning people for debt was supposedly abolished decades ago in this country, yet "deadbeat dads" are constantly menaced with jail time, in some cases perpetual imprisonment until they pay their "debt".
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This is part of the insanity that has gripped society as a direct result of caving in to Radical Feminism, altho in this instance the feminists hpocritically want to be dependent on men's money!
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The vilification of men who "abandon" their family — because they are robbed of their family by divorce courts — is a contemptible feature of the excessive and corrupting power of the women's vote. Women, those supposedly caring and decent people who promote compassion, are seen by legislators as demanding that men be victimized by divorce and child-custody laws to the end of their lives. Is that a correct reading of women's sentiment? Or are legislators merely pandering to the worst elements in the feminist movement?
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Women who claim to be equal to men and demand equal rights, "equal pay for equal work", and all the rest of the feminist agenda, nonetheless want men who don't pay alimony or child support to be arrested and imprisoned until they pay up! Where are all these brave female-equality types when it comes to supporting themselves and the children they insist on taking away from the father?
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The New York Post today reports that a cancer doctor was arrested in New York City when he came to deliver a speech, and is to be held in jail for 30 days or until he pays "$85,000, which is just part of the almost $300,000 he owes." At the end of those 30 days, he could leave jail and leave the State of New York — he now lives in California — and thus make collecting his New York "debt" difficult. Because of this, there are 'feminists' who want the Federal Government to hunt down "deadbeat dads" and alimony-refusing ex-husbands anywhere in the country they might move, and visit permanent oppression upon them — unless they leave this ever-more-oppressive country for freer climes.
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The woman in the case at issue "was awarded $5,000 a month and half the marital assets" in the 2003 divorce decree. On top of that, she was to receive "$7,500 a month to support their [now] 16-year-old twins, Maxwell and Sasha". The mother "gave up her career as a stockbroker to raise the twins". And now she has stolen them from the father but insists he continue to pay for them. That's exactly like a car thief demanding that the victim continue to make car payments on the thief's new ride.
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Let's be clear here. The woman in this case is perfectly capable of supporting herself and her children, especially with half the marital assets, which have to amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars at the least, given the size of the alimony and child-support awards.
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The kids are nearly grown, and could easily take part-time jobs, as regular kids often do to help out. Except there's no way in hell these rich kids would have to lift a finger to keep house and home together. Their mother is bitching because she's not getting TWELVE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS A MONTH! from her ex-husband.
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By what stretch of whose fevered imagination is a woman entitled to $12,500 a MONTH?!?, in a country where the typical working person makes perhaps $25,000 a YEAR (that is, the equivalent of a mere two months of this woman's "rightful" claim on her husband's income), from a man she is no longer married to?
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If you want a man's support, STAY MARRIED to him. Don't divorce and then continue to claim HIS income. You already took HALF HIS ASSETS. If you can't live off that, how the hell is he supposed to live off his half? Oh, that's right: he works. Work for a living yourself, like the rest of us, you lazy bitch!
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The twins aren't infants who need you at their side every hour of the day. Tens of millions of mothers of small children work for a living. You have a very valuable skill: stockbroker. Go back to work. Stop stealing from a man you have already victimized in taking half the marriage's assets, ALL paid for by him in the first place — AND HIS KIDS!
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The divorce and child-custody laws of this country are a nitemare, and must be reformed from the ground up, starting with the premise that unmarried people have no claim upon each other, of any kind. It makes no more sense to say that an ex-husband owes his wife money than that he owes her sexual fidelity. No he doesn't. Absent a marriage, he owes her NOTHING. She is just one of six billion strangers, who has no more claim on him than last nite's casual date.
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People are supposed to stay together for the children, remember? That's supposedly what marriage is for, according to the conservatives who insist that gay men mustn't be permitted to marry because marriage is to benefit children. If you refuse to stay together, and refuse to give custody of the children to the husband, take the financial responsibility with the children. Don't take the children away from their father but demand that he continue to pay for them as tho he still had control over their upbringing.
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To deny a man his parental rights but insist he continue to shoulder parental responsibilities is insanely unjust.
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Responsibilities carry rights, just as much as rights carry responsibilities. No rights? No responsibilities.
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(I undergo reconstructive knee surgery tomorrow, June 22nd, and may not be able to add to this blog for a few days. Then again, I might be unable to post for only a day or two. We'll see.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 10:23 AM

 
McGreevey's "Millionaire's Tax". The New York Post editorially exults today in the idea that a proposed "millionaire's tax" in New Jersey might send millionaires fleeing for New York. It is to laugh.
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Millionaires can live anywhere they want, and tax levels are not the most important thing to them. Millionaires who want to live in New York will do so. Those who want to live in New Jersey will do so.
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And property-tax relief, which is what Governor McGreevey's income-tax increase is largely about, would benefit the very same rich people who would experience an income-tax surcharge. Indeed, it is not knowable how much the tax lowering on their expensive real estate will go toward cushioning the income-tax surcharge, but it's got to help the rich at least as much as other property owners, especially given how much their assessed valuation is to begin with.
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Governor McGreevey has done an astonishing job of balancing the budget in a very difficult period produced by the Republican mismanagement of the national economy, which is only now starting to recover from the ravages of Republican trickle-down economics and then, probably, only because of pent-up demand finally being expressed as purchases because people just couldn't wait any longer.
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People don't feel significantly more secure in their jobs or more confident of the economic future. But they're tired of waiting for things to get better, tired of putting off purchases out of fear that things are going to get worse. The Republicans count that as consumer confidence.
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More likely, it's mere resignation to the fact that the individual cannot control the economy, and it's better to live well now than sacrifice and live badly now just to try to save for the future, because we can't really save for the future because interest rates on consumer debt are so high that what might have gone to saving must instead go to credit-card companies.
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Ordinary people know that there is no way in hell they are ever going to be able to save enuf to provide the six-month cushion that economists urge in case they lose their job. So they admit that if that unhappy time comes, they will just have to go on unemployment or even welfare until they can find a job again — at less pay and lower benefits.
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Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we lose our job.
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Meanwhile, New Jersey's Governor is doing what little he can to reduce economic unfairness by increasing the only progressive tax we have, the income tax, and cutting one of the unfairest of regressive taxes we have, property tax.
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Actually, we should have essentially only one tax: on income. All regressive taxes of every description should be abolished, from sales taxes to excise taxes on alcohol to gasoline taxes that make it hard for poor people to fill their tank. Maybe we should leave high taxes on tobacco and dedicate those receipts to healthcare, but all other regressive taxes should be abolished, to promote economic equity across society. McGreevey hasn't gone that far, but he's taken a valuable first step with his proposed "millionaire's tax".
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Perhaps John Edwards is the best choice for a Kerry running mate, in that his youth and region would add balance to the Democratic ticket. But if, for any reason, Edwards is not chosen or decides not to run, John Kerry would be hard-pressed to find a better veep than James McGreevey, the young, nice-looking, progressive Governor of New Jersey.
+
Two candidates from the same region? So what? Clinton-Gore were not only from the same region but from adjoining states! They won. (Responsive to "... and N.J.'s Gift", New York Post, June 20, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:12 PM

 
Rightwing Hypocrisy, Again. AOL hilited today indignation by President Bush at the "evil" of the Islamists who beheaded a U.S. contractor, claiming that this 'murder' of an 'innocent' 'civilian' showed the justice of our cause.
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On the same day, AP reported that "A U.S. military plane fired missiles Saturday into a residential neighborhood in Fallujah, killing at least 20 people ... Outraged residents accused the Americans of trying to inflict maximum damaged by firing two strikes - one first to attack and another to kill the rescuers."
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This is exactly the tactic roundly condemned by the U.S. Government — when used by "terrorists". They set off one bomb, and then, when rescuers arrive, set off another. When "terrorists" do it, it is unspeakably evil. When the U.S. military does it, our great moral leader in the White House doesn't say a thing, and AP reports that his military HQ in Iraq has 'no comment'.
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At home, AP reported today that

"Kenneth Kimes testified earlier that his mother decided to kill Kazdin, an old friend, after he discovered that she had fraudulently taken out a $280,000 loan by forging his signature. Kenneth Kimes testified that he shot Kazdin, 63, in the back of the head and used an assistant he had recruited from a homeless shelter to clean up and dispose of the body. ... Kimes, 29, pleaded guilty in November to Kazdin's 1998 murder in return for a life sentence without the possibility of parole. He also agreed to testify against his mother. Prosecutors dropped plans to seek the death penalty against his mother after he pleaded guilty. If convicted, she faces life in prison without the possibility of parole."

What of the slimeball from the homeless shelter who helped clean up the crime scene? Is no action whatsoever to be taken against him? What kind of morality is at large in this society when murderers are not executed and a person given shelter by a compassionate society is perfectly content to take money to conceal murder?
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Mind you, this was only one of (at least) TWO murders these two grifters committed. The mother coined the charming "family motto, 'no body, no crime'" — and in fact the body of their second victim has never been found. Yet "Prosecutors dropped plans to seek the death penalty against [the] mother" after the son copped a plea to avoid a death sentence himself. So these two Americans killed two other Americans and our brave, indignant, moral governments - three governments: New York State, California, and Federal - will not execute them. Will our moral leaders be that charitable toward Islamists who kill Americans, or are only Americans entitled to evade execution for killing Americans?
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(Incidentally, has anyone noticed how many murderers cop a plea to avoid the death penalty, even if that means consenting to multiple consecutive life terms or to life imprisonment without possibility of parole? So much for the fatuous and dishonest argument of some capital-punishment opponents that real life imprisonment is worse than death. People don't ordinarily go out of their way to negotiate a worse punishment, do they?)
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AP has also hilited in recent weeks a number of beheadings of Americans by Americans — and, even more appallingly, of children by their own parents. There is essentially no chance that those beheaders will be executed for their crimes. So let us stop pretending to be innocents and angels indignant at savagery. We've got plenty of savagery in this country that is not dealt with lethally, yet innocent civilians in Arab residential neighborhoods are slaughtered by the dozens by our brave "heroes" in Iraq.
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Compare the Saudi beheading incident to these others. The victim serviced Apache attack helicopters used in the war against al-Qaeda. That makes him a combatant, not an innocent civilian. He wasn't a tourist or student or technician helping to set up telephone service or pursuing any other civilian activity. He serviced ATTACK HELICOPTERS!
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The White House's phony indignation about a combatant being killed in a war - even as they fire missiles into residential neighborhoods and kill 20 civilians - is exactly like the insane pretense at the time of the 9/11 attacks that the Pentagon was not a legitimate military target! They really said that: the MILITARY HEADQUARTERS of your MILITARY ENEMY is not a legitimate MILITARY TARGET! The hypocrisy of the Republican "Right" never ceases to amaze.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:12 AM

 
Astounding Cold-Heartedness. Perhaps the most astonishing revelation of the 9/11 Commission hearings to date is the fact that an Air Force general would have, and the Vice President — mind you, the VICE President, not the ostensible President — did in fact issue orders to shoot down CIVILIAN airliners, filled with HUNDREDS of innocent Americans! And the media have not reacted with so much as a second's worth of horror or indignation!
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Since when is the military authorized to kill hundreds and hundreds of Americans?
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The authorities had no idea what the planes were hijacked for until the first actually crashed into the World Trade Center. They had no idea who the hijackers were, nor what cause they were trying to advance thru what might simply have been a grandiose publicity stunt for some extremist cause. Maybe they were Castroists headed for Cuba, where they would have landed safely, killing no one, destroying nothing. Maybe they were anti-Zionists who intended to show that they had greater humanity than the Israelis for having complete control over the life or death of hundreds of Americans, but landed safely to show how much better the Arabs are than the Israelis and the U.S. Government that backs every atrocity committed by Zionists. Maybe they were simple criminals intent on an astronomical ransom for the return of the plane and its passengers. We didn't know.
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But the Air Force was ready to shoot down these civilian airliners and kill everyone aboard! I'm astonished, and appalled.
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I'll tell you this much: if I were on a hijacked plane, I would want my Government to try everything in its power to get me and the other passengers down safely.
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I would want interceptors to deploy not to shoot us down but to force the pilot to land, safely. If the pilot chose to crash into the interceptors that blocked his path to a target rather than land safely and surrender, that would be his choice, not the Air Force's.
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Why would OUR Air Force choose as its first instinct to kill hundreds and hundreds of Americans rather than even try to force the plane down safely? And why would our sitting Vice President gladly order the mass murder of hundreds of Americans?
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Think about this when you go to the polls in November -- and don't stay home, because you need to get rid of people in Government whose first thought is to kill you rather than try to save you.
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You also need to ask yourself why it is that the VICE President issued this order rather than the (ostensible) President. Bush was awake and active in Sarasota, Florida, not asleep in Moscow, Beijing, or India. But no matter where he was, he was accompanied by the famous attache case filled with communications equipment. If Bush were the real President, he would have been the one to issue the order to shoot down those planes. He didn't. "Vice" President Cheney did.
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This shows once again that George Bush is NOT the real President of the United States, but only a front man, a poster boy, a puppet; the public face of a faceless conspiracy that is the real President. And it shows the black heart at the center of the real, Republican Presidency. Cheney wanted the Air Force to shoot down civilian airliners and kill hundreds and hundreds of Americans. Remember that the next time you board an airplane. And if you think our Government's duty is to try to save Americans, not kill them, vote against the Republican Party in November. Don't waste your vote on a protest. Vote Kerry. Vote a straight Democratic line. Democrats care about American lives. Republicans have just proved they don't.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:45 PM

 
"Wrong Again" — Yes, Indeed. Neo-cons (Radical Rightwing Zionists) just can't give it up. They want to impugn the credibility of the 9/11 Commission's finding that there is "no credible evidence" that Saddam was in any way connected with al-Qaeda, and now suggest that the 9/11 Commission could end up being as doubted as the Warren Commission. But the great bulk of Americans believe the Warren Commission. Only conspiracy nuts have major doubts.
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One way people decide whether to believe or disbelieve anything is by checking it against common sense. When you test the premise of a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda against common sense, you quickly see that it makes no sense, so cannot be believed. Now Americans' suspicions are confirmed by the finding of a nonpartisan 9/11 Commission whose impartiality and patriotism are beyond contention, whose credibility in lite of their impartiality and patriotism cannot be discredited by absolutely unsupported and malicious slander from neo-conservative liars. They've been caught in Big Lies too many times: no WMD, an army that caved in weeks so couldn't possibly ever have endangered us, and now no connection to al-Qaeda. They have no credibility left, so try to destroy the credibility of the 9/11 Commission to divert us from the fact that neo-cons are inveterate, habitual liars. It won't wash.
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The majority of Americans now know, and may make plain in November their indignation, that the neo-cons LIED to us to get us to attack a country that never attacked us, never had WMD, and never had ties to al-Qaeda. Why don't the Israel-uber-alles crowd just tell the truth: they wanted us to attack Iraq to protect Israel, not the U.S. Americans can then decide if that was a good enough justification or was a supremely evil con — or should that be "neo-con"? (Responsive to "Wrong Again", New York Post, June 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:16 PM

 
Saddam II (The American Sequel). Deborah Orin pretends to be indignant that U.S. media would not show gruesome footage of Saddam's atrocities, footage that she walked out on! If she can't take it, why would she want us to? The point she refuses to accept is that Saddam's atrocities were irrelevant to U.S. policy, whereas U.S. abuses are intrinsic to U.S. policy concerns.
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Invading Iraq was NOT sold to the American people as a humanitarian "liberation" but as absolutely necessary to defend the UNITED STATES against an 'imminent threat' from "Weapons of Mass Destruction". We would NOT have spent $100 billion to send 130,000 troops 6,000 miles and more from home into harm's way for any other reason, no matter how gruesomely evil Saddam's regime may have been, any more than we have so much as lifted one little finger to stop the slaughter of millions of black animists and Christians in the southern Sudan or of a million Tutsis in Rwanda.
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Is it good that Saddam was ousted? Yes and, alas, no. Saddam knew Iraq's inclinations to violence and constantly had to suppress intercommunal slaughter with great severity. We are now finding we have to do the same thing. So we have become The New (Improved!) Saddam. We don't like being The New Saddam. So maybe we should have tried to reform the Old Saddam so we wouldn't have to become mass murderers to keep the peace in endlessly violent Iraq. (Responsive to "Reporting for the Enemy", New York Post, June 16, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:09 PM

 
Negativism, No. A Positive Program for Britain, Yes. Dick Morris is right to work with Brits who want to stop the EU takeover of Britain, but his one-word program, "No", won't do.
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Simple negativism isn't good enough. People want something to believe in, something positive to pursue. Recent history suggests what we should be working for: a grand rapprochement of the English-speaking world, in which Britain joins the U.S. as several States of the Union, and works with us to bring Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other former parts of the British Empire into a progressive, English-speaking union that will show the remainder of the planet how much we can all gain by joining together democratically. There are a lot of Brits who would like to bring Britain into the Union (see, e.g., "Britain and the British Diaspora", a presentation at the website "United States International"). They need only an invitation from us to set the wheels in motion. (Responsive to "U.K.'s Declaration of Independence", New York Post, June 15, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:45 PM

 
Building Up Our Enemy. Peter Brookes is right to be concerned about Communist China's military buildup. He neglects to mention that key people in the Pentagon believe that China is preparing for war against us within 20 years and he equally neglects to say where the "People's Republic" is getting the money for its massive buildup: from us.
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The U.S. trade deficit with Communist China last year was $124 billion. Its military budget, Brookes says, is "$50 billion to $70 billion a year." The trade deficit this year is of the same order of magnitude as last year, which means that we are paying for Communist China's buildup against us! As Lenin is thought to have said, "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." (Responsive to "The Chinese Age?", New York Post, June 14, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:29 AM

 
Stemming Evil. It is in the nature of all predator species to care only about themselves. It is also in the nature of EVERY species to try to carry on that species.
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Science has afforded choices we never would have had in Nature, such as transferring organs from one person to another, and has consequently produced for us moral difficulties that are not part of the natural order.
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Today we are presented with moral quandaries unique to our time, including my topic today, stem-cell research.
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Very early in the development of a human being, individual cells can become any kind of cell, producing any kind of organ. The period during which the cells of every human being can accommodate to any situation and become anything the body needs, is fleeting. If these cells are seized during that short period of their existence, they MIGHT be made to create tissues of our choice, no matter what nature intended them to do.
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So we have persuaded ourselves that we are ENTITLED to STEAL "stem cells", these special, all-adaptive cells, and redirect them to goals they never had in Nature, in order to fix some defect (tho we are never to utter the forbidden word "defect") in the person we move those cells into.
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But those cells don't belong to anyone but the person they are part of, the embryonic human being that is building itself with those cells. We have no right to "harvest" such cells at the cost of killing that baby.
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This is especially the case in that stem cells can be found in adult human beings: in fat, of which we as a Nation are exceeding rich!
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It is bizarre that Congress has banned human cloning out of fear that babies would be created just to satisfy the demand for "spare parts" of the person cloned, including parts that cannot be removed without killing the clone, such as the liver or heart. That fear underlies a refusal to permit any cloning, even when it has no such purpose but only to reproduce a particular person, for whatever innocent reason, even egotism.
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But at the same time as Congress bans even benign cloning, it is considering legalizing the creation of babies to be chopped up, in cell-size bites, to supply stem cells to create the very "spare parts" that Congress has banned cloning to prevent! Grotesque.
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Congress is thinking of permitting "surplus" embryos created in reproductive clinics that would otherwise be thrown out, to be chopped up for parts. That is inhuman, and must be banned.
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It doesn't take much imagination to visualize disreputable "scientists" deliberately creating far more embryos than would ever be needed to give an otherwise infertile couple a chance to have a baby. So in legalizing the use of embryos from reproductive clinics, Congress would be creating industrial manufacture of babies for spare parts. We must not permit that.
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Benign cloning should be permitted. The creation of embryos that will never be allowed to become children should be forbidden, absolutely, on pain of death to the "scientists" of reproductive clinics.
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Indeed, why on Earth are we permitting in vitro fertilization at all? The world is hugely overpopulated. Infertility is a blessing upon the planet, Nature's way of saying "Enuf is enuf."
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How can we justify in vitro fertilization on a planet where the population grows by over 70 million a year, mostly in the poverty-ravaged Third World; where over 14 million people, mostly children, starve to death each year; and where scores of millions of children need adoptive parents?
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In vitro reproduction is hugely expensive, so benefits only the well-to-do. It diverts science from the many to the few. When it also creates babies that will be killed because they aren't "needed" — as tho whether one is "needed" is the criterion for who is to live and who die — it becomes quintessentially evil and must be suppressed.
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Innocent human life is a sacred trust. Government has the obligation to forbid murder, in all its forms, and punish it with death. If we need spare parts, let's chop up murderers!
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:03 PM

 
Admiring Maggie the Murderess. The New York Post dares to quote one of the most wicked women in the history of the world in her tribute to one of the most evil men of world history, Ronald Reagan.
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Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady", "Attila the Hen" (she was also called "Thatcher, Milk Snatcher" for taking away the right of poor British primary-school children to milk!), murdered hundreds of Argentine men, in first declaring a war zone around the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) and then VIOLATING that "war zone" to kill 368 men in a ship that was LEAVING that "war zone" and weren't any longer IN it when her subhuman-scum troops attacked. The British ruling class is subhuman, antihuman SLIME that deserves mass execution.
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As eloquently expressed at one website, "Thatcher ordered the attack on the Belgrano and effectively launched her cowardly war against a small oppressed nation."
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The British, tho no longer a world power, were still powerful enuf to defeat little Argentina, less than half their population.

The British captured some 11,400 Argentine prisoners during the war, all of whom were afterward released. Nearly 750 Argentine troops were killed--including 368 in the sinking of the General Belgrano--while Britain lost 256.

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Mind you, the Argentinians did manage to sink some British ships, and kill 256 Britons who never expected to be killed by 'Third Worlders' and were probably never told that their voluntary military service, undertaken for economic benefits, could actgually end their lives.
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All this was to "defend" a British imperialist conquest of a small group of nearly-worthless islands in the far South Atlantic.

In 1982 [when Thatcher attacked the Belgrano] the population of the Falkland Islands was 1,800.

The Argentine death toll was some 750 killed by the latter-day British Empire to "defend" a population of 1,800 (a 42% death rate!), which population was NOT threatened with death but only movement from one national sovereignty, Britain's, to another, Argentina's.
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This same British Empire is the "coalition partner" we are proud to be seen siding with in the mass murder of Iraqis.
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We, as English-speaking people, are somehow expected to identify with Britain, even tho we HATED Britain when we established our own country and did so ONLY because Britain was MONSTROUS to us and would not recognize us as British. Why on Earth would we identify now with the enemy we hated then, with such passion that we were willing to take up arms at enormous risk and appalling hardship?
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Oh, that's right. Most of YOU don't have ancestors who served in the Continental Army. I DO. But, then again, most of you don't have ancestors from Britain! So why on EARTH would you identify with the British Empire's rape of a fourth of the world, including abuse of US and the slaughter of some 4,435 Americans in the Revolutionary War?
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Given that in 1776 the population of what became the United States was only about 2.5 million and in 1790 was under 4 million, we can assume that the population in 1779, midway in the conflict, was about 3.35 million. Thus, a death toll of 4,435 for the six years of the Revolutionary War was the equivalent at today's population of over 397,000 Americans killed by the British!
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Some 750 Argentines were killed by the British in the Falklands/Malvinas war, the equivalent in U.S. population terms today of 8,333 dead, which is about 2.75 times as many people as the U.S. lost in the September 11th attacks. That attack was extremely traumatic for us, but we did not identify for so much as 2 seconds with our fellow-Americans', Argentinians' loss. Why not?
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Was the British Empire always our friend? Or was it our worst enemy not just during the struggle for independence but also for the next 100 years? Answer: The British Empire HATED us, and did everything in its power to frustrate us and even destroy us. It worked to keep Canada from us. It worked to keep Central America from us. It sided with the South in the Civil War, and came "this close" (fingers indicating 1/16th of an inch) to recognizing the "Confederate States of America" as the legitimate government of the entire South. It permitted 'private' shipbuilders to produce warships for the South that sank Union ships and killed Union sailors. Even tho it had ostensibly abolished slavery, the British Empire actively sided with the slavers of the South JUST out of spite for the United States, with whom it SHOULD, logically and morally, have sided, in the war against slavery.
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The British Empire is now and always was SLIME. In its earliest days, it slaughtered literally-uncounted numbers of Welshman, Scotsmen, and Irishmen. Then it widened its field of slaughter to include "Native Americans", actual "Indians" (who are now also Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, and Burmese/'Myanmarese'), and Africans of many present-day nationalities.
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Today, the British like to be seen as the nice little guy nextdoor, who would never hurt anyone. Too bad that Brits are still killing foreigners wholesale! How many of the deaths in Iraq are produced by British gunfire? Will we EVER know? Or will these figures, like the figures for Iraqis killed by American military force, always be kept from the public?
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I just want people to know the truth. Ask the Government how many Iraqis we have killed, military and civilians WITHOUT DISTINCTION. Ask how many Iraqis we and the British have killed of people who arose in indignation that we would DARE to invade THEIR country. I want to know. Don't you?
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Margaret Thatcher is among the most evil women who ever lived. She is at the least equal to the Medici and Borgia murderesses. She was also brutally indifferent to the suffering of the lower clases of her own people (thus the nickname "Thatcher, Milk Snatcher").
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The New York Post admires Margaret Thatcher. That shows again the evil of the Radical Right. (Responsive to "Thatcher and a Man of Goodwill", June 12, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:56 PM

 
Reagan's Real "Legacy". Cheerleaders for Ronald Reagan's public Pollyanna view of "America" pretend that he put an end to Big Government, even tho the federal budget rose every single year of his Presidency and no federal department was abolished, even tho:

Ronald Reagan promised to close down two [Cabinet-level departments] (Energy and Education). Instead, he added one (Veterans Affairs). George Bush proposed adding another (Environment), but didn't get to do so. The Republican "revolutionaries" who took over Congress in 1994 pledged to abolish three departments (Energy, Education, Commerce), but quickly retreated.

So, he actually ADDED a Cabinet-level department and abolished none! His Vice President and anointed successor, George Bush the Elder, proposed adding another, and hugely increased the pervasiveness, invasiveness, and divisiveness promoted by the Federal Government in passing the Americans With Disabilities Act, which has given rise to hundreds of billions of dollars of lawsuits by people who cannot do the jobs they want, such as dyslexics who claim the right to work as proofreaders!
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Well, surely Reagan cut the budget, didn't he? No, he did not. As I say, in dollar terms — contemporary dollars and inflation-adjusted dollars — the federal budget rose every single year of his Presidency! Forbes Magazine tries to minimize the significance of this by claiming that as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Reagan's two terms reduced the budget a tiny bit:

In 1981, federal outlays were 22.2% of GDP, and that percentage continued to rise over the next two years, according to statistical tables published by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. But the numbers started falling after that, and by 1989, federal government outlays were 21.2% of GDP.

Wow! Eight years of Reagan reduced the federal budget as a proportion of the GDP by ONE whole percent! — even tho it rose in actual dollars every single year! Reagan didn't stop spending; he stopped paying! He just shifted current costs to future generations, by TRIPLING THE NATIONAL DEBT! That meant that every future budget had to include interest for the debt Reagan wracked up, which meant that future budgets had to (1) increase taxes, (2) decrease services or (3) take us deeper into debt just to pay the debt Reagan's spendthrift years produced. We are STILL paying Reagan's debt! And will be for the foreseeable future! He hid the increased burden on us by sleazy bookkeeping sleight-of-hand to make himself look good while enormously increasing the burden on future taxpayers — which means US, now.
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Reagan's true legacy is a huge national debt, life-crushing personal debt for scores of millions of Americans (see this blog's entry for Sunday, June 6th to see how he did that), and an enormous and growing gap between the rich and the rest of us.
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Shakespeare said it:
"The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones."
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:08 PM

 
20-Year Delay in Execution. Yesterday's news carried a report that Tuesday Ohio executed, by lethal injection, a man who murdered a prison guard 20 years ago, by stabbing. That passes for justice.
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The murderer in question was already in prison when he committed the crime for which he finally, after two decades of a life of leisure at taxpayer expense, was executed.

He had been awaiting trial for a killing in Cincinnati when Hamilton County jail officials received a tip that Zuern had a weapon in his cell.

When officers arrived, Zuern stabbed Pence in the chest with a dagger he had fashioned out of a metal bucket handle, officers said.

Gov. Bob Taft on Monday denied clemency, saying Zuern never showed remorse for the stabbing and had committed other crimes during his incarceration.

Notice that he had already committed a murder and was already in jail when he committed another murder! So much for incarceration as a cure to crime.
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Bleeding hearts who feel pity for heartless beasts in prison should have to pay for the incarceration they want the rest of us to pay for, and be the ones staffing the prisons so that when a guard is killed by a repeat felon, it will be one of those bleeding hearts who is killed — and who might truly bleed from the heart after being stabbed there.
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Prison is a very poor form of punishment that affords prisoners a worry-free life of leisure — as punishment! No rent or bills to pay. No worry about going hungry. Clean, solid housing; three squares a day. There are millions of people in the Third World who would literally kill to live in such luxury.
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While incarcerated, many prisoners continue their life of crime. They steal from, beat, rape, and even murder other prisoners. Some even manage to continue to run, thru couriers, criminal enterprises outside of prison. Sometimes prisoners riot, and burn down at least portions of the prison that houses them so gently, and kill guards. Some prisoners escape, and while out, rampage thru society, stealing, maiming, and killing. When caught, they are merely returned to the same situation they escaped from, where they can continue to be supported by taxpayers and continue their life of crime, victimizing everyone around.
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The prison system of this country is insane.
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To be effective, punishment must fit the crime. Imprisonment fits only a crime of imprisonment, and how often does any such crime occur?
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Violent offenders need violent punishments. Only counter-violence will make a real impression. They don't care about freedom! Many are in prisons of their own creation, prisons of the mind where they will always be captive to insane impulses.
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The conditions inside prison are for most hardened criminals far more pleasant than those they lived thru on the outside, which is why so many are glad to return to prison after release. They can't make in on the outside, and prefer prison. I seriously doubt, however, that they would prefer being flogged or having their good arm chopped off by guillotine and then being returned to society to fend for themselves, with, for repeat offenders, everyone around them being warned of their criminal predilections by a tattoo or brand prominently placed on their forehead!
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We have created a society that is so relatively easy to live within that violations of basic standards of decency should be punished with extreme severity, not thru imprisonment, which means nothing to many prisoners and enables all too many to continue their criminal ways inside and to escape to victimize innocents again, but thru physical punishments. Aside from making more of an impression, physical punishment is cheap. Flog and release — no costs for years of housing and guarding.
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The human species is an animal species. Animals learn by punishments and rewards. Prison is a reward. Flogging is a punishment.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:47 PM

 
Throwing Away Our Freedom and Decency. Two items in the news Tuesday, June 8th show how starkly our civilization is being destroyed by Zionism
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In the first, police will soon begin randomly stopping passengers and searching their bags and personal effects on Boston subways. In the second, a government memo justifying torture of prisoners has come to lite. Produced by a nameless 'committee' within the Bush "Justice" Department, the memo says there is no violation of anti-torture treaties ratified by the Senate nor of anti-torture laws passed by Congress in the military's torturing prisoners in places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib! Astounding.
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(Who wrote this appalling memo? Let's find out. If Ashcroft won't offer the information freely, let's TORTURE him until he tells! I don't imagine it would take more than ten seconds of torture to extract any information from any of the big, brave heros of the Bush Administration.)
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What this memo says is that treaties mean nothing; statutes mean nothing. The military is a law unto itself, supreme over society, and woe to anyone who gets in the way.
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All this is being done in the name of "anti-terrorism". The "terrorism" such measures are responsive to is Moslem retaliation against the United States for its support, to the tune of 3 billion taxpayer dollars a year, of the atrocities endlessly committed by Israel. Gentiles are to be attacked and to die for Zionism. Gentiles are to lose their civilization thru over-reaction to violence incited by Zionism.
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Are we are coming to the end of the road of American civilization? All the liberal hopes for freedom and democracy across the world are vanishing into a pit of barbarism dug by Israel and its morally craven, lunatic servants in right-wing churches and the major parties of this shriveling civilization.
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Never are we to ask "How do we defend freedom by ending it?" "How do we impose a police state and still pretend to be free?" "How do we torture prisoners, in violation of internal laws and international treaties, but pretend to be abiding by 'the rule of law'?"
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How much hypocrisy will the media and government churn out before the people turn against them all? Or will we never rebel against the creeping despotism for Zionism that is destroying everything we ever stood for?
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The German people had Nazism run up and pounce on them before they could react. They were in a terrible condition and the Nazis promised to end their misery — which they did, briefly. What's our excuse?
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We don't have hyperinflation, such that the price of a loaf of bread doubles every day and to buy much of anything you have to roll a wheelbarrow full of money thru the streets, as the Germans in the last days before Hitler's ascent had to do.
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We weren't humbled in war and occupied by enemies, as Germany was. We weren't forced to sign a treaty that assigned to us the entire blame for a great war and imposed reparations upon us for our crimes — tho that may all be coming.
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What's our excuse for throwing our civilization away and becoming monsters unrecognizable to ourselves, a society that remakes itself into a police state that treats everyone as a suspect and tortures prisoners, but calls that "freedom"?
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The police state is creeping up on us slowly. We have time to react and stop it. Do we think that having everybody searched everywhere is "freedom"? And what if police who are ostensibly looking for bombs find instead, say, drugs, or porn, or illegal copies of software or music, or any of dozens of other legally dubious materials? Will they ignore all that? Or are we abolishing the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable searches and seizures and mandates a search warrant to be issued only on "probable cause", without bothering to put that abolition thru the constitutional amendatory procedure?
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Do you personally have anything in your briefcase, knapsack, purse, or house that the authorities might give you grief over? Well, you'd better get rid of it or you may find yourself swept to prison by the emerging police state we are creating in the name of "security".
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Is the police state to be temporary, a necessary "war measure" that will vanish with the restoration of peace? The people who are propounding these measures believe that we have ended the entire period of peace in our history, and are now in a state of permanent war. The "duration" of this war is FOREVER. In permanent war, any "war measure" is PERMANENT.
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Apparently, any sacrifice is warranted for Israel. If we have to give the police unrestricted power to "protect" us, so be it. If we have to make enemies of a billion people and live in perpetual fear of retribution for the crimes against Arabs committed in our name by Israel, so be it. If we have to lay down our lives by the thousands (World Trade Center, Afghanistan, Iraq) or tens of thousands — or millions or tens of millions — that's a small enuf price to pay for preserving the insane delusion of some Jews that they are God's chosen people (never mind that almost none of us are Jews) who are entitled to slay their enemies with impunity and thereby make us the target of retribution for Israel's crimes.
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If we do not break free from Zionism, renounce Zionism, destroy Zionism, it will destroy us — and we will deserve to be destroyed.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:18 PM

 
Reagan on Money?! Never! "Conservative" Republicans are hoping, in the 'mourning' period for Ronald Reagan, to push thru acts to put that Pretend-President and enemy of the poor and middle class on U.S. coins and/or paper money. Never!
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This is the guy who tripled the national debt and instituted a Plutocratic Revolution that has ruined scores of millions of Americans and saddled them with debt so great, at interest rates so high, that for the rest of their lives they will be oppressed by debt — unless they declare bankruptcy, which they should DO!
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If Truman, who stopped Communism from rolling over Europe after World War II, isn't on coins or bills, neither should Reagan be. If Carter, whose aid to Afghan rebels gave the Soviet Army its first bitter defeat, isn't on coins or bills, neither should Reagan be. If, for that matter, any real President, even the most scandal-ridden (Harding) and lackluster (Buchanan, Pierce), isn't on coins or bills, neither should Reagan, an incompetent imitation President (see the Sunday, June 6th entry to this blog), ever be.
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In any case, decisions of this importance should be made not hastily, in a time of pious pretend-admiration even from people who hated Reagan's guts during his lifetime, but well after he is in the ground, and historians have had a chance to weigh the things he did for us as against what he did to us.
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Reagan has done this country enormous economic harm. To reward that harm with enthronement on our coinage or paper money would be an insult to everyone in this country who is up to his or her eyeballs in debt.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:48 PM

 
51st State(s). You may have heard that there are many people in Puerto Rico (about half the population) who would like to make PR our 51st State. But did you know that there are also statehood movements in Taiwan, the Philippines, Ontario and British Columbia (Canada) right now; have been (and might again be) similar movements in other places, like Quebec; and are even people in Britain, Mexico, South Africa and elsewhere who think it would be a great idea if their areas also joined the Union?
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We tend to assume that because we are content to be a country to ourselves, everyone else is content that their country (or territory or province) is separate from the United States. Not so.
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The U.S. is an enormously attractive society in a number of ways, and has drawn over 60 million immigrants from all over this planet. But immigration isn't enuf for some people, who want the kinds of great things we have here to apply to their own area as well. In places like the Philippines and Mexico, they understand that domestic movements for change face an uphill struggle against an entrenched and immovable elite that has no intention of creating the kind of economically equitable and socially mobile society we have created. People concerned about social justice for their own area may see annexation to the United States as the only means by which they can shatter historic unfairness and institute the economic policies that will give the entire population the chance to prosper after centuries of desperate hardship.
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Others are prosperous already but feel left out of something terrific and dynamic, so want in. This is the case in places like Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec (Canada). Canada is a very good country in a number of ways, but it's dull, imitative, and multiply fractured (linguistically, geographically). Many Canadians see no reason it shouldn't be part of the United States. They already have a democratic federal union, and that works, sort of, so they are comfortable with the idea of working within a larger federal union. They understand that many of the decisions that affect their daily life and overall future are made not in Canada's capital or their own provincial capital but in Washington, so if they are really to control their future they must have a say in what Washington does, and the only way they can do that is by becoming a state and sending Representatives and Senators to mix it up in Congress.
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Canada is a "nice" country, but negative. There is nothing distinctive about it. English Canada is a pale imitation of the United States, whose nationalism is negative: Canadians are "not American", which just isn't good enuf for many people resident in Canada, who want to be proud of what they are, not defensive about what they're not. Quebec is a suburban outrigger of France that lives an American (or, in Canada, "North American") lifestyle and isn't really much like France anymore. The French language is neither more secure nor less secure whether there is a border between Quebec and the United States or not. With statehood, Quebec would gain substantial powers (over, for instance, criminal law and taxation) and lose little or nothing.
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Ontario is the most-populous and richest province of Canada. Its capital, Toronto, is one of the great cities of the English-speaking world, the cultural and economic capital of English Canada. Ontario is shaped vaguely like a keystone, which is appropriate, because it is central and indispensable to Canadian Confederation. If Ontario leaves Canada, Confederation collapses. If Ontario joins the Union, the rest of Canada is likely to do so too.
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Ontario is very much in tune with the U.S. states adjoining it, like New York and Minnesota — yes, Ontario really is so big that it spans from New York State to Minnesota, bordering all of the Great Lakes!
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Ontario is headquarters to most of Canada’s largest and richest corporations, most involved in international trade. It is also the center of Canadian television production, news, and publishing. The capital of Canada is an Ontario municipality (there is no equivalent to the District of Columbia in Canada).
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Ontario would make a splendid addition to the Union, all up-side, no down-side. There is an active Ontario-statehood website at www.OntarioUSA.org.
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Quebec is the largest province of Canada in area (it’s even larger than Alaska), and second largest in population, most of whom speak a form of French distinct from that of France. Quebec gives Canada what little distinctiveness it has from the United States. Counterintuitively, more Quebecers than English Canadians are disposed to join the Union!
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French Canadians, who are also found in large numbers in the Province of New Brunswick and in eastern Ontario, understand that French is just one of many languages in the United States, which is comfortable with linguistic difference. Millions of Americans (including me, in slight measure) have French or Quebec ancestry, and large areas of New England have substantial numbers of people whose forebears came from Quebec and blended in perfectly.
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As a state, Quebec would bring to us not just its enormous natural resources, including the hydroelectric power that runs New York City’s air-conditioners, but also a large number of speakers of French who are tied into the trading community of La Francophonie, a group of French-speaking countries in both hemispheres, plus a certain panache, élan — and all those other words for style and flair that the French are known for.
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A State of Quebec would understand that French could be given preference within Quebec, although there could be no discrimination against English, but would have no special status outside Quebec. Quebecers can live very comfortably with that. There has in the past been a Quebec statehood organization (see its proposal), altho I don't know of one right now.
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BC (for “British” Columbia, which is now ‘Canadian Columbia’) is the giant province north of Washington State, Idaho, and Montana, and south of Alaska, whose capital is the pretty little city of Victoria and whose largest city if hip Vancouver. BC statehood would make the State of Alaska contiguous to the rest of the continental U.S., as would allow us to improve roads to Alaska and run oil and gas pipelines over land rather than risk another Exxon Valdez disaster at sea.
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BC statehood would also give U.S. law enforcement control of the entire West Coast of North America from San Diego thru the Aleutian Islands, as would improve our security against illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and infiltration by terrorists. (The U.S. regards Canada's federal government as lax on refugees, and unknown numbers of illegal aliens have entered the U.S. thru Canada.)
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A BC statehood organization has recently been founded. Its website is at www.annexationbc.com.
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Ontario, BC, and Quebec are all large and rich in resources, so would add to our national wealth rather than be a drain of any kind, especially once American-style daring and entrepreneurial spirit replaced the tendency to rely too heavily on government that has characterized the Canadian mentality until recently. All these areas, and the rest of Canada as well, would all add powerfully but painlessly to the Union.
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The Founding Fathers of our Republic hoped, and indeed expected, that Canada would join the Union. They even wrote a provision to that effect (Article XI) into the first constitution of the United States, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. Britain had other ideas. But Britain no longer controls Canada, and many Canadians want in. Let's welcome them.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:16 PM

 
I'm So Glad Reagan's Dead; Now, If Only His Legacy Would Die. The big news yesterday was that Ronald Reagan, our first Pretend-President, has (finally) died. Alas, the national debt he TRIPLED and the hideous economic inequity produced by his Plutocratic Revolution have not vanished with him.
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Nor has the practice of the Republican Party of putting forward puppet Presidents, poster boys to give a face to the collective leadership — rightwing Politburo — that is the Real President, vanished. Dubya, a stupid and incompetent puppet, doesn't have Reagan's ability to memorize the lines written for him and deliver them with the phony sincerity that came as second-nature to Reagan. George Burns, the comic-turned-actor, said that "The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Ronnie Reagan had that down pat.
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Reagan was ridiculed as a mediocre actor. Oddly, the CBS bio shown during the evening news yesterday did not show even the briefest clip from what may be Reagan's best movie, Bedtime for Bonzo, probably out of concern that showing Reagan with a chimpanzee would be regarded as anti-Reagan bias. But that film helped establish warm feelings for Reagan in the general public.
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Ronald Reagan was not a mediocre actor. He was the greatest actor in history. Hundreds of millions of people really believed that he was President of the United States. Oh, he was, in name. But he was NEVER President in reality.
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Phil Hartman did a skit on Saturday Night Live in which he played Reagan as the kindly, bumbling old man to the public, but as soon as the door was closed, he turned into a fierce, focused, dynamic leader fully in control. It was funny because everyone knew that that was not the case.
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Reagan was the front man for a collective leadership of intelligent but vicious Republican insiders who were the Real President. Americans didn't want to believe that, so pretended that Reagan really was President, even tho it was plain to world leaders that he was not. Mikhail Gorbachev got Reagan alone in a room, with just translators, in Reykjavik, and took him to the cleaners! After Reagan emerged from that private meeting and his handlers found out what he had done, they disowned Reagan's acts and put strong words in his weak mouth. Never again was he permitted to meet privately with anyone important, just as the current Pretend-President wasn't allowed to meet privately with the 9/11 Commission, but had to be accompanied by Vice President Cheney to keep him from saying something stupid.
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Reagan was the "Teflon President". No matter how evil the things he did, the public refused to believe that that kindly old man could possibly be doing anything bad. Dubya is our second Pretend-President and, alas, our second Teflon President. The Republicans have an uncanny knack for selecting as front men people whose likability makes evil seem good.
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The Republican constituency is hopelessly naive. They listen to what Republican presidents say. They pay no attention to what they actually do.
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Ronald Reagan talked about ending Big Government, but TRIPLED the national debt thru a combination of huge budgets and huge tax cuts (that benefited mainly the rich). His equally 'conservative' successor, Bush the Elder, added another third to it by the same mechanisms, so after 12 years of 'fiscally conservative' Republicans dedicated to eliminating Big Government, the national debt had QUADRUPLED!
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The debt they produced thru the tax structure they created continued to grow even under the Clinton presidency, but by the end of Clinton's eight years in office, the U.S. was rolling in dough, and we finally had a chance to start paying down the debt — until Dubya, Reagan's spiritual son — came into office and cut taxes even further in PREFERENCE to bringing down the debt. Now the debt is growing at the rate of half a trillion dollars a year, which, with compounding, could double the national debt over the next several years.
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Many people are confused as to why Republicans who represent themselves as "fiscal conservatives" quadrupled the national debt and now threaten to double it again. If you ask the right questions, the answers jump out at you.
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Q: Who owns the national debt? A: The rich. End of inquiry. No other question is necessary.
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Oh, you COULD ask further questions, such as Q: Who PAYS the national debt? A: The rest of us. Put them together. Q: So, who benefits from a huge national debt? A: The rich. Q: Who hurts? A: The rest of us. Q: What is the net effect of the national debt? A: To take money from the poor and middle class, and give it to the rich. Q: Who are the rich? A: Mostly Republicans.
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The Republican Party is the servant of the rich, and its devotion to the rich is far more important than any silly principle or slogan like "fiscal responsibility" or "small government".
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The "Reagan Revolution" also cut taxes in such a way as to benefit the wealthy very disproportionately. The consequence is that in the past 20 years, the distribution of wealth in this country has become hugely skewed toward the rich, with everyone else stagnating or even falling behind. Consider these numbers from the Berkeley-based, liberal Jewish magazine Tikkun:

From 1983–1997, only the top five percent of U.S. households saw an increase in net worth, while wealth declined for everyone else. [Federal Reserve Bulletin, January 2000, p. 10.]

• The financial wealth of the top one percent of U.S. households now exceeds the combined household financial wealth of the bottom 95 percent. [Edward N. Wolff, "Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership," a paper for the conference on "Benefits and Mechanisms for Spreading Asset Ownership in the United States," New York University, December 10–12, 1998.]

Making things worse is that the Reagan Revolution also abolished the deductibility of consumer interest and weakened or destroyed usury laws. The consequence has been a huge rise in personal debt among the poor and middle class. Scores of millions of Americans are so deep in debt, and their debt is increasing at usurious rates (perhaps an average of 20%) that they cannot ever get out of debt. Debt has become a palpable, profound oppression in the lives of uncountable millions.
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That debt too is owned by the rich, who, thru interest payments on the national debt and personal debt are taking enormous amounts of money from the poor and middle class to become ever more obscenely rich themselves.
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Reagan is falsely credited with having destroyed the Soviet Empire, which was presented by Republicans as a Republican triumph. In reality, every President from the end of World War II to the end of the Soviet Empire was staunchly anti-Communist, and it is only decades of encirclement and opposition that brought Kremlin Communism to its knees. (Communism is still doing fine in China, however, and is indeed being subsidized to the tune of $124 billion a year by the U.S. trade deficit with Communist China, thanks to a hardline Republican devotion to "free trade" because it puts pressure on American workers to accept low wages and reduced benefits lest their jobs be sent abroad.)
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Harry Truman started U.S. opposition to Communist imperialism with the Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine, NATO, and Korean War. Eisenhower focused on containment, presided over by the zealous John Foster Dulles. Kennedy stared down Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis and started U.S. defense of Vietnam. Johnson escalated the Vietnam War, as did Nixon during his first term. Only in his second term did Nixon pull out of Vietnam and seek accommodation with world Communism. Indeed, the only President "soft on Communism" was a Republican! Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics and helped the mujahedeen defeat Communism is Afghanistan, a defeat that was critical in demoralizing the empire-builders in the Kremlin.
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Reagan came to office only after the U.S. had already spent 34 years containing Communism. The triumph is not his but ours, and the Soviet people's, because it is they who ended it. Soviet Communism had just gone on too long without ever working, and the people were tired of being miserable.
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Reagan was the first major champion of the modern Republican crusade for "family values". But he was DIVORCED! How is a man who threw over his first wife (the actress Jane Wyman) supposed to be a defender of traditional values? "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." (Jesus' own words, according to Matthew 19:6) Again, we are to do as he said, not as he did. Teflon President. It's sad to see that so many people are so easily fooled.
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There are also rumors that in his younger days (at least) Ronald Reagan was actively homosexual. Perhaps he was just using the "casting couch" to get ahead. A friend of mine declaimed, when Reagan won his first gubernatorial campaign, "I know for a fact that the Governor of California is a [sexually-explicit term for a homosexual man]". My friend, gay himself, was well placed in show-biz/cultural circles, as to be "in" on Hollywood "dope" (or "dirt", if you prefer).
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Well, Ronald Reagan's days of playing the people for fools are over. Thank goodness. Now, if only Dubya would die, we'd have two Teflon Pretend-Presidents no longer conning the people, and we might address the horrendous problems that the Republican cabal behind their smiling faces of evil have produced.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:50 PM