Access To Democracy

     In this land of plenty, one of the excesses which seems limitless is stupidity.  In a recent letter to the editor in the Star Tribune (Mpls) a man commended the legislators and governor of Arizona for the recent unconstitutional profiling bill which will never pass court scrutiny, because, as the writer stated:  “Keep up the good work and God Bless America:  home of, and for, Americans.”

     Thus, the guy identifies himself either as a Native American (Indian, if you prefer) or a schmuck.  I suspect it’s the latter.  We’re all here as immigrants, except those whom we’ve displaced, relegated to reservations and in most cases poverty, and Treaties with whom we have broken for centuries.  “…home of, and for, Americans.”  Just how dumb can you get.

     He’s probably a Bachmann supporter, as well!

     I think Arizona is a beautiful state.  I have vacationed there, attended conferences there — but no more.

    Old enough to have lived through the Holocaust, to have lost relatives in Europe, to recognize the horror of profiling, and with a substantial part of my life devoted to studying the horrors of the Third Reich, I cannot believe that in the United States, in 2010, that there is a legislature, and a governor, who in ignorance and bigotry, will emulate the conduct of Nazi Germany.  Yet this week it happened in Arizona.

     There may be illegal aliens in Arizona — as many, as they claim, as 450,000 — but to pass a law which mandates law enforcement (over its objections, I might add) to stop people on the street, demand identification, on the suspicion that they may be illegal aliens, is repugnant to everything I believe, and certainly to what principles this nation was founded on.

     Why not require Mexicans, even in the country legally, to wear an emblem on their chests;  why not require anyone with a “swarthy” appearance to wear an American flag emblem.  What is the difference between requiring one person to wear a Star of David, or another facing questioning because of his or her appearance?  Is this still America?  I begin to wonder, as the crazies  come out of the woodwork and trample on every quality which made this nation the envy of the world.

     Apparently the former Attorney General of Arizona pleaded with its right-wing Governor not to sign this illegal, unconstitutional law, but she is reported to have responded that the will of the people is more important than the Constitution.  No!  There is nothing more important than the Constitution.  When the Constitution goes, we are no longer the “land of the free,” and those who, in their ignorance, would opine otherwise, are lacking in intellect, lacking in history, and more than that, lacking in social conscience.

     So, there will be no more visits by me to Arizona, and I hope that Snow Birds, Conventioneers, Vactioneers, Corporations will join suit to enforce a boycott on a state which put in place a legislature and a governor who are ignorant bigots.  It’s time to enforce the principles which made this nation great, so let’s start in Arizona.

     Rush says he’ll leave the U.S. if health reform passes.

     PLEASE, EVERYONE, call your Congress people and urge a YES vote!

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 THE FOLLOW UP ON APRIL FOOL’S DAY (APROPOS):

  So, Rush, we’re waiting…

After a short hiatus from the blog…

G.O.P. = Greed Over People

How many people dare to speak for “The American People” with a poll to boot?  Most of them on the right, and almost universally full of sh…

A rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…Meet Liz Cheney

Barack - we don’t need a professor and lectures…remember Teddy Roosevelt?  Well, speak softly and carry a big stick…Please!!

Democracy = Majority vote.  Where the hell did “Reconcilaition” come from?

Figures don’t lie…but lobbyists and their money for phony ads do.

Tim Pawlenty claims that “God is in charge.”  Maybe that’s his problem…he’s waiting for God to undo his mess, but Tim is the one who was elected.

Tax cuts for the rich don’t grow jobs…programs to create jobs grow jobs.

John Boehner claims 58% of Americans oppose health care reform.  Really?  I think that too much time in the tanning booth affects the brain.

Did you ever notice that the Congresspeople who oppose health care have it?

Did you know that we the people pay 72% of the health care premiums for members of Congress.  Would you settle for that deal?

The economy is flat, but Anthem Blue Cross in CA wants to raise premiums by 39%.  What’s wrong with that picture?

And with a health care company where over three dozen executives earn salaries over $1 million.  My God, they think they’re with Goldman Sachs.

John Roberts — the man who’ll be remembered for lying his way onto the Supreme Court – believes in precedent, not an activist court — mendacity by any other name is still mendacity.

What kind of democracy allows one Senator, and from a small state at that, to put a hold on legislation and Presidential appointments which affect 300 million people?

If we learned nothing else this past year, it’s that the Senate is ruled by old men who should have been out to pasture years ago.

What should the world’s leading democracy be able to provide for its people?  Well, for starters…health, safety and education — just like all those other industrialized countries provide for their citizens.

Now how’s that for catharsis?

     If the Internet has done nothing else, it has given voices to the multitudes, an outlet for expression which has never been previously available.  And then there’s Facebook, Twitter, cell phones, Ifones, and who knows what else.  That’s the good news and the bad news.

     The opportunity for immediate access to news — and responsible opinion — is wonderful, but at the same time, the opportunity for misinformation, sensationism, bigoted opinions are part of the equation.  We all want to have our voices heard, but how can the reader/listener differentiate between the responsible and the irreponsible?  Almost impossible.

     That said, and with all the good and responsible sources out there, available at the touch of a finger, I think I’m going to use this space less for my political rantings and opinions, and more for personal thought on events, items and material nearer and dearer to my heart.  Which is not to say that I won’t, on occasion, let loose on the issues that are so well covered by others, but rather  I can use this space to take a cathartic approach to things on my mind, and which may be of interest to others.  Then again, maybe not.

     One can only wonder what happpened to Tim Pawlenty — a man from a blue collar, hardworking family, the only one who made it to college, who enjoyed the benefits of financial aid along the way, good-looking, intelligent, engaging, a man who led the Minnesota legislature, and then the State, as Governor. 

     Somewhere along the line he fell in with the far right-wing conservatives, became a legend in his own mind, and as visions of sugar plums (in the form of the White House) danced in his head, managed to abandon the decent ideals of his upbringing to morph into an arrogant, self-centered insensitive individual who was — and is — willing to throw the needy of his state (and indeed all other Minnesotans as well) to the wind in search of his own ambitions.

     Married to a ludicrous “No-tax” philosophy in the face of the national and state economic recession, Pawlenty took a regal (and illegal) stance with regard to the state budget, unalloted several billions of funds, including medical and health cares for the neediest of the citizenry, and ran the state into a record deficit because of his hard-headedness and need to please the right-wing.  For the last few months, while ignoring the state, he has been flying all over the country speaking to GOP groups and trying to endear himself to the far-right, while a state which frequently led the nation in numerous important categories teeters on the edge.

    T-Paw, as he is known locally, recently told Newsweek magazine that “I’m not going to start raising taxes now.”  No, what he’s done is cut back on local government aid to cities and counties (promised and budgeted money), and forced localities — and school districts — to raise property taxes, levies, and find alternate means while at the same time healthcare, educational standards, and the cost of higher education, suffered immeasurably.

   He deceitfully told Newsweek that Minnesota “balanced the budget every year without raising taxes…”  No, he just dumped the responsibility on the localities, who had to raise taxes.  Hypocrisy.  Rather than roll back tax relief unwisely given to — in particular — the wealthiest citizens during the “Mensa” administration of Jesse Ventura, Pawlenty would veto any effort to restore those billions — with a B — to the tax rolls.

     He suggests that “Congress should cut current domestic spending”  including “a government takeover of healthcare” just as he did in Minnesota, where private individuals, healthcare and education took a Ventura-like body slam.  T-Paw even suggested that the Iraq War “may turn out to have been beneficial”  (wasn’t that W’s unitelligent blunder).  Whatever threatens regulation in the private sector seems to be wrong, in Pawlenty’s glazed-over view, who also opposes gay marriage (although he once supported a bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation), and basically sticks to the conservative talking points.  [His deceptive and fuzzy answer on cross-dressing by Minnesota elementary schools educators is not to be believed].

     Taken to Court over his budget unallotment scheme, Pawlenty was recently rebuked  by a highly respected jurist who found his actions unconstitutional.  he suggested that she crossed over into a legislative area — by ruling on a lawsuit properly brought, and which determined that it was he who usurped the role of the legislature with his unconstitutional methods.  So who crossed the line?

     I never thought of Pawlenty, who first appeared on “Access” 11 years ago, as a complete hypocrite;  I thought of him as someone who differed politically, but who would never let rampant ambition strangle his oath of office.  Now I think of him as The Man Who Would be King.  

     With Barack Obama’s election there were millions of us, some as old and jaded as I am, filled with hope that perhaps things would change.  Another idol with clay feet?  Granted, the man has been in office less than one year, came in facing monumental problems caused by the Bush administration and its criminal conduct, and he has tried to move in many directions — perhaps too far too fast, but I find, among other things, his conduct in the health care crisis disappointing, to say the least.

     Obama has made gestures, been a media darling, and used his gift of public speaking and persuasion to warrant attention, but where is the word we don’t hear any more — single payer?  Ah, how soon we forget.

     In a country controlled by lobbyist dollars, shamefully, and by the members of Congress which those dollars buy, even more shamefully, and a U.S. Senate constricted by archaic rules where one member (often representing a minute fraction of the population) can stymie legislation, I wonder if our wonderful system is working.  Or is it really wonderful?  No question about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, no question of the intent of our Founding Fathers, but how has greed and corruption and conflict of interest so managed to turn the dream of our democracy into an absymal  morass of self-interest and self-dealing?

     As I have said over the years, why must every other industrialied — yes, even civilized — nation in the world offer their citizens some form of single payer for health care while this nation, supposedly the world’s “shining light” can’t even offer decent, affordable health care to its people?  The system is strangling the concept, while people die daily for the lack of care.  And the Congress feeds us double-talk and rhetoric as if to convince themselves that they have accomplished a miracle.

     A miracle would have been Medicare E — with stroke of a pen insuring the right of all Americans to health care.  We started our hearing the words single-payer, which faded quickly before the likes of the perfidious Max Baucus, who takes millions in contributions from the health care and pharmaceutical industry, while he warms his bed with a lover whom he tried to foist off as a U.S. Attorney candidate, then gave her a $14,000 raise as an employee, and who has said, in effect to paraphrase Marie Antoinette (with apologies to her less than admirable memory), “Let them eat cake.”  Millions of Americans have no more than crumbs, if that.

     Or the likes of the Republicans, who still haven’t receovered from the election of a Black President, and automatically say “NO” to every proposal.  I would not be surprised that if Sen. Harry Reid (who on occasion finds the gonads to stand up for progress, but far less often than he should) suggested anything to the Senate, no matter how beneficial to the electorate, that the GOP would of habit vote “No.”

     Joe Lieberman, who is a turncoat on positions probably more often than he changes his underwear, and who opposed what the people of his state overwhelmingly want…oh, I forgot his wife’s ties to the Health Care barons.  Conflict of interest, not in Joe’s eyes!   He claims to be a pious man, but he makes a mockery of piety.  Or, as it was said, “Beward of a pious fool, and of a wise sinner.”  It shames me as a Jew to see the sanctimonious Lieberman keep the Sabbath, profess to be a moral man, and ignore the basic tenets of morality and decency regarding health care.

       And so single payer became public option which became cooperatives which became…and so it goes.  And children die.  It makes me ashamed, and it makes me rethink the faith I had that this new Administration would make a change, no matter what the consequences — or at least a concerted effort — be it health care,  or not sending more of our finest and bravest to their deaths in foreign lands which are unconquerable and in which we should not be spilling blood in the face of centuries of historical lessons.

     And so, once again it is Hannukah.  Will the light in the temple burn for eight days, or is it flickering from lack of oxygen?

SPOTTER REPORT -  Governor Tim Pawlenty was spotted at MSP airport.  Must have been changing planes for a trip to another state or country, don’t ya think?

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On the day before Thanksgiving, the inventor of the “pop up” children’s book died.  It really shook up the services when they opened the casket and…up he popped.         

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THE CHUTZPAH AWARD - To Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, an outstanding mayor who announced his run for Governor only two days after winning re-election in November, 2009.  So much for serving out your term.

 PAWLENTY OF QUESTIONS - As Governor Tim Pawlenty cruises the nation seeking the GOP Presidential nomination, disingenuous in his denials, one wonders whether Minnesotans are paying for his State Police bodyguards as he ignores his electorate.

JOE MUST GO - Joe Lieberman, for any number of reasons, must be stripped of his Chairmanship and cashiered from the Democratic Party, for 1) threatening his filibuster if the health care bill has a public option; 2) for deciding, without any qualifications, that the Ft. Hood shooter is an Islamic Terrorist, in the face of qualified medical opinions that he is an unbalanced soldier; 3) for protecting his wife who lobbies for the health care industry, instead of representing the overwhlming will of his constituents on health care; 4) for trashing every campaign promise he made two years ago.

HEALTH CARE - How come it’s the ones who have health care who don’t want those without to have it, often trumpeting the cost, but never say a word about the trillion they supported for the Iraq unnecessary war or any of the other monies squandered in the last decade.

DID YOU KNOW - That every member of Congress and the Senate receives a base salary of over $161,000, and in addition, the taxpayers pay for 72% of their healthcare costs, with numerous choices for them to choose from.  Did the Founding Fathers envision a class of Royalty?  Hypocrites!

DO YOU WONDER - Whether Rudy Guiliani will be on Bernie Kerik’s visitors list in prison.  After all, this is his business partner/buddy whom he wanted to head up Homeland Security.  You did a great job, Bernie!

OR EVEN WONDER - How much good $100 million that NYC Mayor Bloomberg spent (of his own fortune) to get himself re-elected (after changing the term limits rule) could have done if he had directed it to the needy instead of his ego?

DO YOU WISH - That those of us who supported Barack Obama would like to see him show some of the toughness of  LBJ in dealing with the nation’s problems instead of sucking up to a GOP which will never support anything he supports, or not banging heads with wishy-washy Dems who would rather take a lobbyist’s money than fight for their constituents?

ARE THE LUNATICS RUNNING THE ASYLUM - With Tamiflu at a premium and far behind scheduled release (surprise!), why on earth did the Wall St. vultures responsible for our financial scandal, get supplies and injections ahead of needy children and pregnant women?  Heads should roll, all the way up to the Secretary of HHS!

FUZZY MATH - The Republicans are doing victory dances, as though they have won next year’s elections, when they won two Governor’s races (one incumbent was an incompetent screw-up, and the other in a toss-up state) while at the same time all the Special Congressional elections have gone to Democrats, who also took six of eight big-city Mayoral elections?

I HAD A DREAM - That the members of Congress and the House decided to represent the voters in their districts fairly, eschewed lobbyist money to fight for the will of the voters and bettering the nation rather than worrying about their own re-elections and padding their bankrolls.  Damn, it was only a dream!