The election of 1912 was very similar to today a century later

I finally finished reading "The Bully Pulpit" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It has been an amazing read since conditions a century ago were very similar to now. Only the political parties seemed more honest.  

   2013 NYT Book review

It was mainly focused around the election of 1912, in which all 4 candidates agreed that corporate abuses were the #1 issue. All 4 candidates were in the Progressive spectrum.

Republican William Howard Taft was formerly Roosevelt's sidekick in the Progressive Republican agenda to regulate corporations, break up the Trusts, promote labor rights, and conserve land from the greedy hands of mining corporations and preserve them for the People. They favored a post office bank, child labor laws, 8-hr workdays, Workman's Comp insurance, European style social insurance, direct election of Senators, prohibition of corporate campaign donations, and a progressive income tax. Taft wanted to break up all the trusts. During his first term beginning 1908, he made a lot of compromises. By 1912, he was considered the "Conservative" of all the Progressives running.

Not being chosen by the Republican convention, former President Teddy Roosevelt felt Taft had abandoned the Progressive agenda by compromising with the corporations on some things, so he started a new party called the Progressive Party. But since everyone associated it with Roosevelt, people liked to call it the Bull Moose Party. They were also advocating women's suffrage, and the rights of referendum on 5-4 split SCOTUS decisions. His platform was that all power belongs to the People and money is to serve the People, not be master.  People are more important than property. 

On the way to Roosevelt's first speech as the Progressive candidate for President, an assassin shot Roosevelt at point blank range. The bullet was slowed by the 50-page speech he had written and folded in half to fit into his breast pocket. The bullet lodged in his rib, and he went on to give the entire speech anyway before spending the remainder of his campaign convalescing. He still beat Taft 27% to 24%. He never regained his robust health and died 6 years later of a cardiac embolus.

Calvinist intellectual Woodrow Wilson, governor of New Jersey, was the Progressive Democrat. He was chosen at the Democratic Convention on the 48th vote. Can you imagine if there were 48 votes at the upcoming Democratic Convention in Philadelphia? If so, I'm sure Bernie would be the winner! Wilson had almost the same agenda as Roosevelt and Taft. Only, Wilson was a southerner, and so firmly believed in segregation. He institutionalized segregation in many government services. He also initiated the Federal Reserve in order to control the money supply. But as a candidate, he was an anti-corporate Progressive. He won with less than 42% of the vote.

And Eugene Debbs ran as the Socialist candidate for the 4th time. No, the campaign was not conducted from prison this time; that would be 1920, when he was convicted for Sedition for speaking against the war. He was not just anti-corporate; he believed that the whole Capitalist system was wrong and was impossible to regulate. He promoted common ownership of the means of production, co-op prisons, a national bureau of health, abolition of both the Senate and the presidential veto. 

All of these Progressives envisioned an expanded role for the government beyond just national defense.  They all felt to one degree or another that the role of the government was the welfare of the People.   Unlike today, when only the Green Party expresses values like the Progressives of 1912.  Both our current Democrat and Republican Parties kowtow to Wall Street and corporate interests, just like the corrupt legislatures that the 1912 Progressive candidates were striving to fight. 

The things I liked most about this book are these:

1. Every time they described the boundless energy of Teddy Roosevelt, I thought of Aric Cordell.

2. It really put into perspective the current 2016 election when we are facing mostly the exact same issues.

3. The incredible Muckraking journalists, Ida Tarbell, Jay Baker, Lincoln Phillips, Sam McClure, etc., thought that when they exposed the corruption to the American People, that justice would prevail. They all became disillusioned understanding that the general public doesn't care a whit.

4. It contrasted the campaign styles of Roosevelt and Taft. Taft was straightforward, trustworthy, logical and linear, and wanted to be loved. Roosevelt wanted to win. He rode the public sentiment like a surfer, and learned how to manipulate the legislature in order to get what he wanted. It teaches me how much of getting political justice has to do with manipulation.

The 1912 Democratic Platform was far more Progressive than now

The thing about voting in California is that your absentee ballot only gets counted if you submitted it well in advance of election day. Absentee ballots submitted on election day don't get accounted for until almost a month later. Since the polls in CA close 3 hours after those in the east, by 7pm on election day, Californians have a pretty good idea of how the rest of the nation voted. If it is close, you can vote for the lesser of 2 evils. In 2000, I voted for Gore instead of Nader at 7:45pm. If one candidate is distinctly ahead, you can vote for the best of the lot, because your vote becomes a statement at that point. In 2012 when Obama was far ahead of Romney, I proudly voted for Jill Stein.

The question is, if the race is close, do you vote for the best choice thereby possibly allowing the worst candidate to get elected like in 2000 when Nader got over 2% of the vote which supposedly stole the election from Gore. The fact is, Nader took the blame but Bush stole the election in a rigged system. The next question is, when the system is rigged, what difference does it make how we vote?

It was obvious to Gore in 2000, to Kerry in 2004, and to Sanders in 2016. The system is rigged and they ended up walking away rather than challenge a corrupt system. Bernie at least used his considerable influence, having nearly as many primary votes as Hillary, to squeeze a few progressive concessions into the Democratic platform. Bernie wants it to be the most progressive platform the Democrats have ever had, but he has overlooked the far more progressive 1912 Democratic platform listed below.  Woodrow Wilson was the Democratic candidate and winner. Link to the actual text of the 1912 Democratic Platform

Curb corporate abuses with:

1. Honest tariffs
2. Regulation of Railroad rates
3. Break up the monopolies with Anti-Trust laws
4. Prohibit all corporate campaign contributions
5. Regulate of Interstate Commerce
6. Conserve of National Parks and wilderness lands free from corporate exploitation
7. Nationalize of Alaskan coal before the giant monopolies take them
8. Labor Rights
9. Oppose the Federal Reserve but favor public banks
10. Post Office Bank
11. A Civil Service Law rather than the Spoils System of government positions
12. Direct election of Senators
13. Farm credit reform
14. A Progressive income tax
15. States Rights
16. Presidential primaries in States
17. Pure Food and Public Health
18. Decrease poverty and the high cost of living with redistribution of wealth
19. Control the Mississippi and use it to generate power
20. Enforce the Monroe Doctrine with a strong navy

 The fact is, that in 1912, everyone was so sick and tired of the giant corporations getting filthy rich at the expense of everyone else, destroying free trade and monopolizing the industries, that all 4 candidates in the election were Progressives.  William Howard Taft, the incumbent, was in the Progressive wing of the Republican Party.  Woodrow Wilson was in the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  Former Republican Teddy Roosevelt split the Republican vote by starting a third party called the Progressive Party (aka Bull Moose Party).  Eugene Debs was a Progressive Socialist, left of the other 3 Progressives.  1912 Election candidates in Wikipedia

Conditions a century ago sound a lot like now.  Obviously, whatever the Progressive Reformers did to control corporate abuses a century ago didn't last.  History repeats itself.  But where are our Progressive reformers now, to break the stranglehold of the corporations? 

Our Public Servants Choose to Deceive the Public about Election Results

How can an election be determined on only 40% of the vote???

California has 30 days to report all the mail-in and provisional ballots. Since closing polls saves money, the majority of voters in Mendocino County use mail-in ballots. The County Elections page disingenuously reports 100% votes counted when only 40% of votes were counted in that report.

In that 30 days when the majority of the votes are counted and NOT REPORTED, campaigns change, lives change, decisions are made, all based on counting less than half the votes. When I asked Sue Ranochak, the elected official in charge of these things, she replied that it has always been done that way, even when Marcia Wharff was in charge. Keith Wyner asked Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who referred him to IT. His answer was that it is a software issue.

If it is neglect or a software issue, it is still a matter of our public servants deliberately or negligently deceiving us, the voting public, as to the true results of the election. THE SYSTEM IS FLAWED!!!!

When asked, our county elections official, Susan Ranochak, responded:

The way we've reported our election night results haven't changed.  The number of precincts reporting is always 100%.  The reason for this is all precincts have reported whether it's one vote in the precinct or five hundred.  It's also imperative that the polling places are included in the these results as 100% accounted for.  That in no way means that all the votes are counted.  That is why we identify the report as the final election night report.  When the canvass is complete and the results are posted  we label that report as the final official results.  We do not use the term final official results until we have completed the canvass.

Your are correct some counties have provided additional updates.  It is up to the individual registrar how many updates they will provide during the canvass.  I choose to wait until the canvass is complete and only do one update.  This is not something new.  I've done this during my tenure as Assessor Clerk-Recorder/Registrar Of Voters.  My predecessor Marsha Wharff also thought this was the best route too take so this has been going on for a considerable length of time in Mendocino County.

 "this" refers to deceiving the voters about the results of an election for a month. 

Discussing how the movement continues after Bernie's defeat.  Ugh!

Considering the ethics of forced vaccination programs

 March 20, 2015
I am a school nurse, as well as a student of ethics.

As a school nurse, I am a representative of the State and am required to advocate for vaccines as part of my job description. I make sure all my schools comply with CA State vaccination mandates.
At the same time, I understand that every student at school is someone's family treasure, and we are charged with the duty of keeping the students safe while they are in school.
I don't doubt that many of the vaccines are efficacious and safe. I remember how in my childhood, everyone was forced to get a smallpox vaccine. I remember taking my own perfect infant daughter to be marred and scarred with a smallpox vaccine. But it wiped smallpox off the face of the Earth. It was a success!

But since the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, it has been deemed unethical to force medical treatments upon people without their consent. Then we must weigh which is the higher good, to protect the public from deadly diseases, or to give people sovereignty over their own bodies, and those of their children?

The press release from Senators Feinstein & Boxer concerning Head Start students about preventing "deadly diseases like measles." The CDC reports that over 1/4 of children under 5 who contract the measles have to be hospitalized for diarrhea (24%), dehydration (21%), and (17%) pneumonia. No cases of encephalitis and no deaths were reported. NOT DEADLY! Yet, at least 3000 - 49,000 people die each year of influenza, and I don't hear anyone talking about forced flu vaccines. I think perhaps you are jumping on the measles panic bandwagon with this legislation to force vaccines on children without the parents' consent.

When smallpox and polio vaccines were invented, they were public health miracles. But now we have a government that cuts funding for FDA research, fast-tracks vaccines, and protects corporate rights more than human rights. Many people are suspicious of what the government sponsors these days because our members of Congress seem to have mostly sold out to corporate interests and no longer protect the People. We have been betrayed by our public servants.

Many people feel that natural immunity is superior to vaccinations. As such, they breast feed their infants to protect infant immunity for the first couple of years. They feed their children organic foods, live far from air pollution, and wash their hands before meals. They believe that good health is the best protection, and if their child catches a disease, it will be mild and provide a better lifetime immunity than a vaccine manufactured by a big pharmaceutical corporation interested in maximizing profits. Considering how our government has betrayed the People time and again, many people prefer good health and natural immunity to injecting manufactured serums into their precious children.

I don't know what is right. Historical vaccination programs have been a boon to worldwide public health, but never before have world governments been as influenced by profiteering corporations as they are today. To me, informed consent is the most ethical thing to do. I can't bear the karma of forcing parents to vaccinate their children against their wishes. I just give them the facts and let them decide.

I suggest you get off the measles panic bandwagon and stay off the annual pandemic panics and instead advocate for more money for schools to hire school nurses to teach health promotion. The fact is that most of the school nurses in northern CA shamefully have caseloads of 4000 students each and have no time to do prevention programs. School nurses advocating good health is no longer a priority in CA schools, and school nurses have had their hours cut and caseloads expanded as if they are being phased out as unnecessary expenses. Instead, the government is investing in vaccines. And you want to take away the parent's right to sovereignty over their child for a mild childhood disease like measles.   I don't think it is ethical.

What can we do about bad laws?

Photo of British suffragette Ada Wright being beaten for breaking the voting law

This is what happens when you break the law. She's lucky they didn't shoot her! They might have if she were Black in the USA.

In 1492, it became illegal in Spain to practice Judaism. Let's say a Spanish family secretly lit candles Friday night to keep the Sabbath holy, then went to church Sunday morning, removing their hat in the Christian style of respect, and genuflecting with holy water at the sanctuary door. Then Monday at school, their child accidentally mentions the Sabbath candles, this picture might be that child's mother after the teacher had informed the police of a known family that breaks the law.

What do citizens do about bad laws? There is a list of bad laws too long to mention here. At Move to Amend, they try to convince corrupt members of Congress to amend the Constitution to state that Rights are for natural persons only. They think that a groundswell of public sentiment might sway the Congress. At Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, they say we should write local laws that directly violate the bad laws, and take it to the Supreme Court, if necessary, to achieve justice in the law. Mahatma Gandhi advocated non-violent direct action even risking death at the hand of those enforcing the bad law. He even advocated home rule in his 1910 book, "Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule." by M.K. Gandhi 1910

How do we achieve justice in the law? Should we include illegal provisions in our new Mendocino County charter like banning the constitutional protection of rights to fictional persons? This is like the "Emperor with No Clothes." It is obvious to everyone that the Bill of Rights was aimed at humans. Yet everyone is somehow willing to accept that under a quirk of the law, that aggregates of money charted by a state to do business have equal protection under the law as human beings or citizens.

I wonder if we include something that contradicts currently established laws, i.e. that fictional persons have rights protected by the Constitution, that even if the voters approve the charter at the polls, would the Secretary of State even ratify a charter with provisions directly contradictory to known law? We should call him and ask.

I wonder if the police would beat up a corporation like this if the corporation tried to vote?

Banning Neonicotinoid pesticides in the charter vs. stating our rights

On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 11:08 PM, agnes@mcn.org> wrote:
EPA Confirms Activists' Longtime Claims: Neonicotinoid Pesticide Threatens Honeybees


Els asks, "How does this square with the CA Department of Pesticide Regulation that regulates all economic poisons? Can a charter county override that?"

My response:
That's a good question.  All the thousands of pounds of Roundup that is used on our school campuses has been approved by Chuck Morse, the County Ag Commissioner. 

That's what Community Rights is all about.  They say that we the People have the right to govern ourselves and protect our health and welfare.  Therefore, they advocate making local ordinances that contradict bad state or federal laws, and give the example of the women's suffrage movement. 

Personally, I think that even if the people vote in favor of something like prohibiting corporate constitutional rights within the county, a charter with such wording may not get ratified by the California Secretary of State. 

So if we want specific things like that in the charter, we may need to wait until we tack on an amendment in the future.  That can be a new project for Move to Amend in our county.  I'd vote for it.

Until then, we can clearly declare our right to protect our health, safety and environment within the charter.  That's what I call a Community Rights Charter.  I'd rather see global rights in the charter than specific items like neonicotinoid pesticides.  The chemical industries will just invent another pesticide even worse.  But a statement of our right to be free of chemical trespass, the right to health, safety, environmental protection, and the right to protect our agricultural lands and clean food supply, etc, will better serve us. 

Why can't we practice our 1st Amendment Free Speech rights at the post office?

Until the Patriot Act was passed, we used to be able to gather signatures for ballot measures and propositions in front of the post office.  I call that the citizen's 1st Amendment right to petition the government for redress of our grievances.  Others call it 1st Amendment Free Speech rights.  In 2012, when we were gathering signatures for Prop 37, the GMO labeling effort, and Measure F, the anti-corporate personhood rights effort, the Ukiah postmaster called the police to drive the petitioners away.  I asked Steve, one of the clerks there, who replied that citizens can't petition in front of the Post Office because it is private property. 

I have heard that the USPS had privatized some of their services, but I had thought that the Post Office was federal property.  In a democracy, the government is formed by the People to serve the People, and therefore, all Federal property belongs to all American citizens. 

I had also heard that the Patriot Act had a provision that prohibits ordinary citizens from getting within a certain distance of any diplomat.  Thomas Jefferson is probably turning over in his grave about that. But it shouldn't pertain to the Post Office since there are no diplomats inside. 

Even if the Post Office was private property, the Supreme Court 1980 Pruneyard Decision ruled that 1st Amendment rights are higher than private property in places that can be considered equivalent to the town square, like a modern shopping center.  I would pose that the Post Office is also equivalent to a town square.  So the fact that American citizens can't practice our 1st Amendment rights in our democratic nation in front of the federal post office perplexes and alarms me. 

Can anyone tell me why the Post Office is now off limits to citizens to practice democracy?  Will we have to get arrested gathering signatures in front of the Post Office and take the case to the Supreme Court? 

Picking a President is like picking an investment stock

I wrote this essay 8 years ago, and much of it is still applicable today.  I don't know why I didn't publish it then. 

Picking a candidate for President is like picking an investment stock. When I plan to buy a stock, I first investigate its fundamentals. I begin with the historical prices. This is like evaluating the candidates historical votes and acts from their previous government positions. I can find the voting record of all our members of Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov/.

Then I like to read about the company. I like to invest in good companies with good products that have good management practices, a good balance sheet, and good growth of EPS over the years. I like to vote for a good candidate that has good platforms to offer, that have proven themselves to be good executive managers, whose money is not beholding to special interests, and who have a proven good track record in their previous government positions.

I invest in companies that provide a good service to our society, that are dedicated to human health and the health of our planet, that take responsibility for their mistakes, that have women and minorities on their Board of Directors, and provide good benefit packages for their employees. Likewise, I seek a candidate for President that will provide good service to our society, that is dedicated to the health of our population and of the environment, that takes responsibility for his/her mistakes, that respects the rights of women and minorities, and will strive to give the American people benefits equal to the ones they enjoy.

The companies that I have invested in due to their high-class, glossy promotional literature have almost all declined in value to a hand full of coins. I have learned my lesson not to invest in stocks by the glossy look of its cover. I believe it is the same for candidates for office: you can't judge the book by its cover. Yet, the American people are obsessed with how good the candidate looks. I'll never forget that people voted for Arnie because he was the Governator!

When we look over the candidates contending for the Presidential nomination at this time, we have a long list to investigate, 115 announced candidates to whit according to http://www.vote-smart.org/election_president_search.php?type=alpha. Of the main 16 contenders, there is only one that fulfills my criteria, yet is ignored by the media. Obviously, the media have an entirely different set of criteria for what makes a good presidential candidate.

Rudolph W. Giuliani is plagued with ties to organized crime, was an unfaithful husband, did nothing to defend NYC after the first jet collided with the WTC on 9/11, and ordered a cover-up of the air pollution after the Twin Towers collapsed. Doesn't sound good to me.

Mike Huckabee is strongly in favor of promoting education and the arts. While governor of Arkansas, he facilitated legislation that improved roads, state parks, and health care for children. These are all good! Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister who believes in Creationism over evolution. Its beginning to sound like he might change Democracy to Theocracy. Not good!

John McCain looked like Nosferatu at the 2007 State-of-the-Union address. Creepy! He proved he was willing to sell out to the theocratic Christians at Liberty University and claims to share values with Jerry Falwell. He may have been a prisoner of war and an opponent of torture, but he is all for continuing the occupation of Iraq. McCain is a war hawk and is affiliated with the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Bad!

Ron Paul is an OB/GYN MD. Having worked in the perinatal field for nearly two decades, I found that men often became gynecologists because they were misogynists and wanted to control women when they were most vulnerable. Of course, I can't assume that Ron Paul falls into that category. He is a distinguished scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute known for its economic theories depicting government intervention as destructive, whether through welfare, taxation, regulation, or war. Therefore, we can assume that Congressman Paul is anti-war, and also anti-welfare, anti-taxation, anti-fascist, anti-socialist. He believes that life begins at conception and wants to give legal rights to the unborn. Not good!

Did Mitt Romney announce his candidacy at the Henry Ford Museum in order to affiliate himself with one of America's most vocal anti-Semites? Having graduated cum laude from Harvard Business School, we know he's a smart businessman. This is good. He transformed the Massachusetts budget deficit into a surplus. Very good! First he was pro-choice and for gay rights, but is now pro-life and against gay rights. He supports the death penalty and the three strikes law. Not so good!

Tommy Thompson was governor of Wisconsin for four terms. I guess they liked him. As governor, he implemented welfare reform, health insurance for low-income families, and a school choice program that used public funds to send low-income students to private schools. He wants to let the Iraqis decide for themselves whether they want to be occupied by American forces. And he was involved with improperly hiding the true cost of the Medicare Prescription Drug program before it was passed into law. Mr. Thompson is for injecting Veri-Chips into our skin for ID and financial data, admires George Bush, and is pandering for the Jewish vote.  Some good, and much not good. 

A Wall of Separation Between Corporation and State

The Tea Party advocates told me that the Constitution protects capitalism.  That perplexed me.  I have read the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights several times and couldn't recall seeing anything about capitalism.  As a matter of fact, I carry a copy of the Constitution with me like a Christian will carry a Bible.  I can't say that I am a great Constitutional scholar, but I have a pretty good familiarity with it.  

I contended that I never saw anything about capitalism.  The closest thing I could imagine is the right to own private property.  They responded that this right IS capitalism, but the founding fathers just didn't have that word yet.  I again contended that capitalism means buying low and selling high, which is not at all the same as the right to own private property.  They disagreed, and affirmed that it is the same.  

So I looked up the word Capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision for profit, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market. 

The first real capitalists were the Dutch East India Company founded 1602.  They used capital for investment, but no one ever used the word Capitalism until it was coined in 1867 by Karl Marx in his book co-written with Engels, Das Capital.  The meaning Marx gave it was using capital (money) to buy commodities to sell for profit.  That seems pretty simple to me and confirmed my contention that capitalism is not the same as the right to own property.  There is no right in the Constitution to own property for profit.  Although the founding fathers assumed that shops and businesses would conduct commerce everywhere in the new Republic, they found no reason to guarantee the right to free enterprise or the right to make profits. 

That's why I believe we need to amend the Constitution to guarantee Constitutional rights only to human persons, as well as making election financing answerable only to the Public for which they will be elected.  These together will make a wall of Separation between Corporation and State. 

Racial discrimination within my family

Yesterday was my mother's 99th birthday.  I've been thinking some about my dad lately, now that he's been gone for about 10 years.  It has always been a conundrum why he was such a splendid father to me and my eldest sister, Susan, and an abusive father to my middle sister, Bonnie.

We all heard over and over how Bonnie used to bemoan how dad treated her differently and discriminated against her.  I never saw it until my dad was almost dead, at age 90, when my 2 elder sisters helped him to the bathroom, one under each arm to support him.  He graciously thanked Susan and sneered at Bonnie.  That's when my mother disclosed that she had noticed his discrimination for Bonnie early on and tried to reason with him about it.  He just responded that he found Bonnie to be annoying.

And Bonnie WAS annoying!  Typical of the second child, if they can't get positive attention, then they demand negative attention, better than no attention at all.  Yes, Bonnie was annoying.  As a young child, I remember teaming up with my older sister against Bonnie and taunting her.  As an adult, I apologized to her for that.  But Bonnie was molded into a much different person than me even though we had the same parents due to my father's emotionally abusive discrimination of her.  For over a decade, I have been pondering why my dad did this, and I finally got an answer yesterday.

We are New York Jews.  All of our ancestors came from Eastern and Western Europe.  We are Caucasians with blue or brown eyes, frequently hooked noses, mostly with curly or wavy European hair.  Both my parents fit that description, and all of my grandparents, as well.  But not Bonnie.  Bonnie was born with dark skin, the typical deep blue eyes of the Cohen side of the family, and kinky nearly black hair.  For the first time in my life, I realized that my dad disliked her from the day she was born because she had dark skin.

I remember the horror in my brother-in-law's face when he gazed upon his newborn son, Barry.  I was also with Ronnie the day he gazed upon his first-born, Lori.  Lori's head and part of her forehead was bashed in from the forceps assisted birth.  Ronnie was beaming with pride at his wrinkled infant with a bashed-in head.  But when he gazed upon newborn son Barry, he was struck with horror and disgust.  Barry was born pinto.  He had dark skin and light skin right across the middle of his face.  One side of his neck was light skinned, and the other side was dark.  I could understand it as horror of a deformed, imperfect baby, but Lori was imperfect and deformed, and Ronnie's response was very different.

Today I am thinking that both my dad and Ronnie were more offended by having a child with dark skin.  As I recall the racial attitudes of my parents, my mom said she grew up in NYC with all the races and didn't see much difference.  But my dad was more surreptitious with his attitudes.  Both he and Ronnie felt Blacks were lazy, untrustworthy, and  inferior.  Could it be that they gazed down at their 100% Jewish newborns and saw a Negro?

Bonnie has since gotten vitiligo and her face lost it's Middle Eastern hue to become colorlessly white.  But in her youth, her beauty was striking by those blue eyes in contrast with her dark skin and dark Jewfro.  I was proud of her striking Moroccan-like beauty.  It never even occurred to me at the time that she was "different" or "other" because of the color of her skin being so different from mine.  There was no doubt as to her heritage since she was the spitting image of our grandmother Rose, except with dark skin.  She looked more like the Cohen side of the family than any of us.

I'm not sure my sister Bonnie has ever known happiness.  She hates when I write personal things about her for the public to see.  That's why I am writing it here in my blog, since nearly no one ever reads my blog.  And also, I will skip the details of Bonnie's sources of anguish.  Let's just say that her life might have been much happier if our father had treated her with as much love as Susan and me.  Thankfully, our mother had enough love for us all.  Even in my mother's self-indulgent years, she still made it a hard and fast principal to treat us all equally.

Some might question my right to judge that Bonnie isn't happy as she gazes at the East River from her luxury Manhattan apartment with obscene amounts of money to spend and 2 employed sons and 5 healthy grand-children.  But I think I know my sister Bonnie, and even if happiness was right in front of her, she wouldn't accept it, because our father rejected her. 

Why do counties keep public funds in private, for-profit banks?

• I and my team are trying to make Mendocino into a charter county. After 15 drafts of a charter over the last 3 years, there was little or no political will for our Board of Supervisors to put one on the ballot. So the only other way to become a charter county is to elect a charter commission. This is a 2-step process. First, we need to collect 2003 valid signatures by January to get the charter question on to the June ballot. We are aiming for 4000. Then later in January, anyone registered to vote in the county can run for the unpaid office of Charter Commissioner. When the time comes, I plan to run for this voluntary elected office. I am currently raising funds and cultivating fellow candidates. This will be an amazing opportunity to think outside the box and redesign our local government to assure more social and economic justice, more direct democracy, more citizen participation, more local control and more accountability.

  
  
• The current legal opinion is that a county must be a charter county in order to open a public bank. Ideally, the charter will be a fundamental step in that direction. It is yet to be seen whether language about a public bank will be included in the charter. It will be up to the charter commissioners what language will be included.

  
  
• There are 3 kinds of money: coins, currency, and credit. Coins are printed by the Federal government. Currency is printed and controlled by a private banking conglomerate called the Federal Reserve (nothing "federal" about it). Money greases the wheels of commerce and causes economies to boom when there is enough of it in everyone's pockets. When money is scarce, the economy tanks. The third kind of money is credit. Per Federal Reserve policy, every bank can issue credit of up to 90% of their reserves. Each time they loan out credit, the "note" gets added to their reserve of assets. In other words, their assets are based on loan notes.
  
• The credit market is a kind of Ponzi scheme which occasionally implodes. In 2009, the government bailed out the banks from their Ponzi scheme losses, yet the big Wall Street banks continue to glean obscene profits using business plans based on fraud. All counties in the USA keep their public funds in private, for-profit banks, which use those funds in their reserve for their credit Ponzi schemes.
  
• SBMC stayed healthy during the 2008 economic downturn because they only issue credit up to 60% of their reserves. And credit unions even have a lower limit. Only the big Wall Street banks like Bank of America issue all 90% of their reserves in credit.
  
•  A public bank could serve the purpose of parking and distributing our own public funds instead of Bank of America. Why not keep our public funds in our own bank? And if the law allows banks to issue credit based on a fraction of their reserves, then why not use the county's reserves to underwrite economic development loans issued by the local partners like Savings Bank of Mendocino County and MendoLake Credit Union to keep the money circulating right here in our own county?
  

  
  
  So why should we keep public funds in a private, for-profit bank?  We shouldn't!  

Criticizing Israel doesn't make me anti-Semitic

I usually stay far away from the issue of Israel and Palestine because I am an active member of the Jewish Community and I love my fellow Jews. But as a Buddhist, I love all beings and wish no harm to any, even those that wish harm to me. As a mother of 2 sons, I am well aware how children always blame the other for starting. As a divorcee, I realize how painful it is in the middle of separating from someone with whom you have shared a home for a long time. I also know that it is dysfunctional to retain hates, bitterness, blame, and thoughts of vengeance, and much better for my heart and whole being to forgive and love.

I never say forgive and forget. NO! Forgive and remember! By remembering, we learn and hopefully grow in wisdom and compassion.

The world is shrinking rapidly, and a bunch of myopic international corporations are making obscene profits on promoting fear, hatred, discord, and war. My position is that both sides have their issues. Both sides are full of hate. Both sides are tired of fighting. And both sides are violating international human rights. This is basically a racist war. It is racist for Netanyahu to believe that every Israeli life is worth 500 Palestinian lives. It is a genocide, much like what the USA did with the Indians, and what Australia did with their aborigines. Much like what the Cro Magnin did with the Neanderthals. The way I see it, the Jews of Israel were an oppressed ethnic group, having now been freed of oppression, decided to turn the tables and oppress another ethnic group as they were once oppressed. Yes, it is true that we Jews were slaves in the Third Reich, and the Israelis haven't enslaved the Palestinians yet.

If I love being a Jew, and I criticize the fascist genocide of the Palestinian people by the Netanyahu government, that does not make me anti-Semitic.

I was just discussing the other day how racism all over the world affects dark-skinned people. In Israel, the Yemeni dialect of Hebrew has become the gold standard in common language, even all over the world. The Yemeni rabbinic scholars are touted as the wisest and most profound. Yet, the Yemeni people are discriminated against in Israel because they have dark skin. That is similar to White culture co-opting Jazz, Hip-Hop, Blues, and standards of beauty that include thick lips, and round nostrils in men, yet discriminate against Black people.

I don't love being White. I see it as a quirk of fate. I don't love the White Privilege I receive resulting from that quirk of fate, although I find it ridiculously funny. But if I criticize my racist, sexist, classist, perpetually warring culture, that doesn't mean that I am anti-American.

PS. I am not one to criticize anyway.  I may point out the ironic facts of injustice, but I am one to make a plan to change it rather than waste my time criticizing. 

My response to Senator Feinstein's letter about Fast Track

My answer to Senator Feinstein when she explained that she crossed the aisle and voted with the Republicans to approve Fast Track Authority for the President to negotiate the TPP.

Dear Senator Feinstein,

In response to your letter explaining why you voted for fast track authority, I agree that trade is crucial for the economy and has been since the founding of this nation. Our Founding Fathers also understood the value of tariffs which fund the government and protect fledgling industries. They also understood the importance of sovereignty and the negative effects of powerful corporations, i.e. the British East India Company. They were so enraged about the special privileges that giant corporations received compared to local businesses that they threw all the East India tea into the sea. Perhaps you have forgotten the anti-corporate history which founded this nation.

Previous trade pacts have not only ruined the American economy, but have also bankrupted the government by eliminating import tariffs. Previous trade pacts have moved good jobs offshore and turned the USA into a banana republic.

You stress the importance of trade for California's economy, yet conflate that with why the President should have fast track authority to negotiate secret international trade treaties that are kept from the eyes of the sovereign people who rule in a Democracy. Either we are no longer a democracy, or you and the President are hiding something very foul in the TransPacific Partnership (TPP).

You mention how trade deals in the past have "negatively affected certain areas of our work force." Those certain areas include good union jobs. By eliminating good union jobs, the standard of living in the USA has plummeted. You say that because so many jobs were lost due to previous trade agreements, you support the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). There is no point in retraining people for jobs that do not exist. I have personally seen several of my friends lose their good jobs and been retrained for jobs that don't exist. Your preference to mitigate the expected damage from the TPP with TAA retraining programs is a betrayal of your constituents.

Lastly, you mention how the TPP is key to our national security and foreign policy objectives. If by foreign policy objectives you are referring to overthrowing democratically elected sovereign rulers who block our corporate exploitation of their natural resources as our CIA has done time and again since 1953, and the further expansion of our imperialist incursions into sovereign nations around the world, then you have obviously drank the kool aide and owe more allegiance to your corporate donors than to your human constituents.

Please tell me how allowing corporate interests to override local environmental laws improves our national security? The way I see it, the USA is far more secure with healthy local industry and manufacturing jobs and locally grown food than by sending our military onto foreign soil or by extrajudicial assassinations by drone. I believe your priorities have been subverted and you no longer represent the best interests of the people of California.

Signed,
Your disappointed constituent


• Here is the letter from Senator Dianne Feinstein in response to when I complained about her approval of fast track authority for the President. 

Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns regarding Trade Promotion Authority (TPA).  I appreciate the time you took to write, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

First, please know that as a U.S. Senator, I carefully review each free-trade agreement that comes before me to ensure that the best interests of American workers and businesses are served, and that the agreement will not adversely affect the U.S. economy, human rights, labor rights or environmental standards.

As you are aware, I voted in favor of TPA—otherwise known as fast-track authority—because it grants the President the ability to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I believe that increasing free trade with our neighbors in the Pacific Rim is squarely in our economic and national security interests. 

The process of considering trade legislation has enabled me to see the extraordinary importance of trade to California's economy, and I wanted to share some of this information with you.

Today, trade supports more than 4.7 million jobs in California, and nearly 40 million nationwide. More than 75,000 California businesses export goods out of the state, and 95 percent of those are small- or medium-sized, meaning they have fewer than 500 employees. Since 2009, jobs related to merchandise trade have increased by 11 percent in California, and research has shown that firms that export pay their employees 15 percent more than those that do not.

Three of California's major sectors benefit substantially from trade:

• The services sector—both high-skilled professional services as well as lower-skilled services such as accommodation, food and administration—have helped lead California's economic recovery since the 2008 recession. Services exports have been a key contributor to that sector. For instance, in 2013, California exported $114 billion in services, a 58 percent growth over 2006. This has translated to job growth: last year, 66 percent of all new jobs in California were in the services sector. By reducing barriers to services exports, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is expected to boost this critical sector of our growing economy.  

• In 2014, California exported $174.1 billion in total merchandise goods and over the past 10 years, exports from California to existing free-trade partners grew by 50 percent. If past trade deals are any indication of the future, then our merchandise industry will continue to grow under TPP. Today, California's exports of computer and electronic products face tariffs as high as 35 percent, while transportation equipment and machinery face tariffs as high as 70 percent, both of which will be reduced under TPP. 

• California agriculture also relies on exports. In 2013, agricultural exports were valued at $21.2 billion, making our agriculture industry the largest by value in the United States. According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture study, under TPP nationwide agriculture exports are expected to increase by 5.4 percent by 2025. As with our merchandise exports, our agriculture products currently face steep tariffs in the Asia-Pacific region. Dairy products face a tariff of up to 35 percent in Japan while walnuts face a 30 percent tariff in Vietnam. With these tariffs reduced or eliminated, the TPP will help California's farmers, ranchers and producers. 

The bottom line is that trade has been critical for California's economic growth, and it will be vital to sustaining that growth.  

As you know, past trade deals have negatively affected certain areas of our workforce. This is why in addition to supporting TPA, I also strongly support Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). TAA provides workers displaced by trade with job retraining and other assistance. I look forward to TAA becoming law as soon as possible, and as a member of the Appropriations Committee, I will continue to push for funds for the program each year. 

Lastly, it is important to note that beyond economic considerations, the proposed TPP is key for our national security and foreign policy objectives. TPP will require our trade partners to raise their standards with respect to human rights and workers' rights. Further, it will require countries like Vietnam and Malaysia to improve their laws and enforcement against human trafficking and wildlife trafficking, which I believe are absolutely critical. 

Additionally, TPP will help the United States re-balance our global priorities to take into account the increasing role of the Asia-Pacific region. Pursuing free and fair trade with our allies in the region is a key part of that re-balance. By creating a free trade zone, we will be ensuring its member countries play by internationally-recognized rules that we will help establish. Rejecting this trade deal would cede influence to countries that do not share our commitment to worker rights, human rights and environmental stewardship. 

As the information above demonstrates, trade is economically vital for California and the nation, which is why I will continue to support Trade Promotion Authority.

Sincerely yours,


  Dianne Feinstein
         United States Senator

Another UVP LTE response to Muslim hate

Not as portrayed

 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 22, 2011

UKIAH DAILY JOURNAL

 

To the Editor:

 

Please allow me to comment on Robin Sunbeam’s letter to the editor posted 9/2/11 titled “Hating Muslims doesn’t help.” I would first like to tell readers who I am and how we conduct Ukiah Valley Patriot meetings. I am the “MC” Ms. Sunbeam refers to in her letter, although I am more correctly called a facilitator.

 

The purpose of the Ukiah Valley Patriots is to inform and educate the public, empowering people to make better decisions in electing our city, state, and federal leaders. I conduct meetings in an open and orderly manner. We start every meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag followed by a short prayer (not unlike the prayer that opens each session of Congress). I allow everyone in attendance to speak their mind as long as it is done in a respectful manner and time permits.

 

Contrary to information presented by the mainstream media, we are not an extension of the Republican Party, although some of our members are Republicans. We welcome people of all parties who share our core values of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets.

 

The speaker at our last meeting has been studying Islam for over 40 years and boasts knowing the Qur’an better than most Muslims. He does not hate Muslims nor does he promote hatred of Muslims; his fears for our country drive him to research and present facts most of us would never discover on our own. Everything presented at the meeting was either taken from Muslim documents, web sites, or straight out of the Qur’an; he even quoted the book and line number so if anyone so desired, they could find a Qur’an and verify the truth for themselves (Qur’ans have been translated into English and can be found online).

 

After our meeting, I approached Ms. Sunbeam to ask her why she continues to come to our meetings when she does not appear to share our values and in fact has written many falsehoods about us in the UDJ. I asked her if her purpose for coming to our meetings was to ‘try and find dirt on us.’ It didn’t occur to me at the time that Ms. Sunbeam would construe this as a guilt reaction as our group has never tried to hide anything. It seemed clear to me that her purpose for being there was to try to discredit us with the lies she writes to the newspaper in order to eventually destroy our message and influence. She has stated in a previous letter to the editor that her progressive organization can only draw seven people whereas the patriot group generally has 30 or more in attendance. Does she think that heckling our group is going to help her cause in any way?

 

Neither our ‘chaplain’ nor our ‘prayer man’ ever said anything that would indicate hatred of Muslims or wishing revenge against them. They were merely showing kindness to Ms. Sunbeam and trying to answer any questions she may have had regarding our group or our values. I’m sure they were not expecting what they got in return.

 

Duane Grilli

Ukiah

The UVP response to my Letter to the Editor UDJ 4/27/11

Not dupes

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 2011

UKIAH DAILY JOURNAL

To the Editor:

The Ukiah Valley Patriots sponsored a 12-week course on the U.S. Constitution this winter, from January 18 to April 5, using the Constitution and The Federalist [Papers] as texts. Ron Cannon was our instructor and class attendance varied from 39 to a hard core of 20 participants. Some of us were frankly amazed at the willingness of so many to grapple with a not so easy to read 18th Century Founding American text: it was a group of mostly middle aged to elderly Americans, many of them with jobs and families to support who took time out from their busy lives to take a class for no credits other than to have a better understanding of their country’s founding documents. Many interesting and stimulating discussions ensued and despite a recent disparaging Letter to the Editor from Robin Sunbeam (March 7, 2011, “Feeling Powerless”) there was a lot less spin in that class than there generally is from our so-called Mainstream Media.

Although a majority of the participants were either tea party members or conservatives, several progressives also participated and always felt welcome to contribute their point of view. To say the least, they were always cordial but never shy about expressing their differences of opinion. One can only hope that one day American institutions of “higher learning” could be as respectful of diverging points of view.

The reason we’re writing this letter is to counter certain misrepresentations in Ms. Sunbeam’s letter about both the Constitution Class and the tea party movement. First of all, although Ms. Sunbeam did attend one tea party meeting, ostensibly to check us out, she never attended a single Constitution Class meeting. Therefore, she has no evidence whatsoever to conclude that “[t]hey are teaching a class on the Constitution that spins it into a charter for free enterprise rather than a charter to protect individual and collective rights.” We might add that while the Bill of Rights was added to protect individual rights, there was very little in the Constitution to promote free enterprise or collective rights, unless by that term, Ms. Sunbeam means State’s Rights. The Constitution was mainly a founding document to increase the power of the central government after the Articles of Confederation had failed to produce a viable national government, according to the logic of the Founders. But the Constitution also limited and dispersed power in a tripartite Federalist system; or in other words, it was a document that limited the power of a central government to ride rough shod over the rights of individual Americans and the several states. Of course, it was a far from perfect document, but with seventeen Amendments since the original Bill of Rights, it has withstood the test of time.

As to Ms. Sunbeam’s misrepresentations of the tea party movement: it appears that she gets all of her information from far left blogs or news programs. There has been a concerted effort on the part of the left to portray the tea party as a bunch of wild eyed radicals or “extremists,” as the recent gaffe made by Senator Schumer makes abundantly clear, when in reality they are mostly like our local tea party group of middle and working class Americans. While Ms. Sunbeam claims that tea party participants “eat up the twisted lies being told to them by the Koch-trained liars,” most members of the tea party have never heard of the Koch Brothers and certainly aren’t trained by them (the last I heard, the Koch’s were funding the libertarian Cato Institute). It may be disconcerting to Ms. Sunbeam that the tea party is not a monolithic organization that can be summed up in talking point catch phrases like “trained by the Koch brothers” or “neocon fascists.” (I’ve generally assumed that when people run out of coherent arguments they resort to name-calling, misrepresentations, and distortions.) No, the tea party is not even one organization, but rather a loose consortium of grass roots organizations made up mostly of middle and working class Americans. One thing we share in common is a love for our country as well as a generally shared belief that our country has gone off the rails under the leadership of both political parties, as well as the business and media elites that think they know what's best for us while they bankrupt the country. Quite frankly, if that’s the best they can do, we’d be better off without them.

While numerous Republican operatives and perennial candidates have jumped aboard the tea party bandwagon, the tea party is not the Republican Party. Even so, it has been a leftist tactic to conflate the tea party with the Republican Party, one day blaming the tea party “extremists” for forcing the Republicans into holding the line on the debt limit, while on the next day, blaming the tea party for all the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Administration. The truth of the matter is that the Republican Party establishment is not all that thrilled about the challenges from the tea party as anyone who keeps track of current events is sure to know. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have been feckless and fiscally irresponsible, but the fact of the matter is, there has been a lot more willingness on the part of disgruntled conservatives and libertarians to tackle the problem of deficit spending and our monstrous national debt, which made it tactically more feasible for the tea party to challenge the status quo in the Republican primaries, rather than the Democratic majority in 2010. As an example of why this is so, just look at the current budget battles in Congress. The tea party movement has pressured Boehner into proposing $61 billion in cuts from a budget of $3.7 trillion: That comes out to about 1.6 percent, not enough to make much of a dent, but about double what the Congressional Democrats are proposing, and as for Obama’s “tough cuts,” one would need a microscope to find them. When will the political leadership in this country finally become serious about dealing with our debt and budget woes? Before the nation goes bankrupt and the dollar is worthless, or are they waiting for an even bigger crash than 2008? Finally, we might add, most tea party members did not favor bail outs for the Wall Street scoundrels that got us into the current financial mess, unlike the political establishments for both major parties, so one might ask, who really is beholden to those Ms. Sunbeam calls the “filthy rich”?

P.S. Ms. Sunbeam finally attended the last Constitution Class meeting. We think she enjoyed the intellectual give and take, and hopefully, she now has a more accurate perspective about the class, and the fact that we’re not all a bunch of “Koch-trained” dupes, whatever that means.

Mark Amagi, Redwood Valley

Lou and Betty Morgan, Ukiah

Dave and Kathy Lowe, Redwood Valley

Mike and Brenda Smith, Willits

Ron and Katherine Cannon, Ukiah

Duane and Deborah Grilli, Ukiah

Dave Olson, Philo