The State of Things

I often get a bit of inspiration while responding to some bit of rigamarole, falderol, shenanigans or tomfoolery on any among a number of news or opinion sites in the gol' durned eternally beloved interwebs. Sometimes, my responses are concise enough to stand on their own without extraction contexts or any other lead-in explaination. Here's one:

Thirty years of Reagan policies, subsequently amplified by Bush/Clinton/Bush to the current cocophany of nonsense, are exactly the problem and must be reversed.

1)Regulation protecting the population and the economy from financial fraud would break up, as it used to be before Reganomics and rampant deregulation toward the current near nehilistic, "wild west" free market, the too-big-to-fail investment banks from insurance carriers and charter banks (Glass-Stiegle Act).
2) Campaign finance reform that would at least make contributions tracable or, better yet, all campaign contributions placed into an independent super fund from which all candidates and issues organizations (SuperPACs) receive funds equally according to contest and constituency, and inclusion of lobbyist spending, pointed at any legislator with rights of refusal to entertain their entreaties, as campaign contributions, again reflecting complete transparency and mandatory public disclosure from a single, one stop resource.
3) National infrastructure maintenance, abandoned beginning with Nixon, put into overdrive by Reagan and ignored by Bush/Clinton/Bush to upgrade the country's backbone of public safety, create jobs and stimulate the economy in a permanent manner,
4) Universal healthcare option, coinciding with private insurance plans (for whomever believes paying more for less is a good idea), to eliminate the currently locked in private insurance inefficiencies/greed/run away costs/bureaucratic "death panel" control over therapy qualification and delivery.
5) Tiered tax system where those better able to pay for the nation's physical (infrastructure) and philosophical (that which creates and sustains actual American exceptionalism) upkeep contribute a reasonable, proportional share to sustain the systems, the advantages upon which the rich and better off were able to build their wealth, (safe roads, safe air travel, safe communities, safe air and water, universal education) that everybody, including future generations, depend on.
6) Reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine to fairly balance the unrestricted, irresponsible radical right rhetoric that passes for news in some quarters without answering to anybody or anything over blatant lies, distortion and information fraud upon the public.

These actions would remedy and, in time, reverse the effects of the last forty years of regressive, "conservative" class warfare at the expense of the middle (and impoverished) class(es).

Melissa Harris-Perry writes (http://www.thenation.com/article/163544/black-president-double-standard-why-white-liberals-are-abandoning-obama#comments) that Obama is losing white liberal support more quickly, in spite of rather positively comparable records and circumstances, more quickly that did President Clinton because of vestigial, latent racism. The umbarge in response was striking. Methinks she doth protest too much. Besides:

Ms. Harris-Parry's analysis hits and misses the mark to varying degrees according to the variations among the individuals who make up the electorate. Not everybody's the same, and not everybody is as cuplable within her harrative as the worst among us. But, it strikes home at least a little among all of us. Sure, I'm angry and resent the shortfalls between actual policy and what we'd been promised for our vote. Whom among the most vociferous above took the time and energy to relate their concerns, in a contemporaneous manner, to the President? Once, twice, or each and every time? Nothing short of at least a majority of the time, considering the contentious nature of governance these days, and the unremitting pressure from a relentlessly irrational opposition, excuses any of us of being part of the problem or for grousing after the fact. Without pressure that includes workable alternatives, it's no more than embittered crying in one's beer. Are the complainers on this page really saying they'll vote for the Republican alternative, or render punitive, passive agressive retribution, withhold their vote altogether, and allow Republicans any more power than they now enjoy by default? If what you see isn't good enough, do something CONSTRUCTIVE about it. Whigning doesn't count. Cutting your nose to spite your face is as ugly as you can get, and fits in perfectly with MH-P's premise here, whether you like it or not, whether you agree or not.

Write the President daily. Put his feet to the fire. Counter the pressure he's getting from all other quarters with pressure of your own. Election day was only the barest of beginnings. There's no room to complain if you fail do to your part.

My Letter to Nancy Pelosi re: Rep. Anthony Weiner

As a San Francisco voter, Nancy Pelosi, California 8th Congressional District, is my representative and I have proudly voted for her every time I've had the opportunity. So, when I read even she was calling for Rep. Weiner's resignation, I just had to speak up. Here is the message I sent her, cc:Anthony Weiner.

Madam Leader:

Even suggesting Rep. Weiner step down is absurd. This story has legs only because the House Leadership hasn't stood up and LEAD the nation's understanding in the difference between fantasy and reality. Neither you nor any other leadership Democrat has defined for those assumed to be the great undiscerning public the difference between desire and action. Not one single person who has engaged in any manner of online networking flirtation is above Anthony Weiner. The bottom line is that he flirted and THAT's ALL she wrote. Pandering to your opposition's faux outrage unequivocally surrenders the power of your constituents to those who never received a single California vote. Take the power back, draw the lines in the sand with definitions and opportunities for understanding, and tell those small minded hypocrites to shut the hell up. The only reason Democrats so often get our heads handed to us is because we let small minded regressives define every issue against us. Stop putting up with that and call out their duplicity and small mindedness in no uncertain terms. It's the wishy-washy, politically correct attempts at diplomatically walking eggshells around issues that's so destructive. Give 'em hell. Call a spade a spade and a magical thinking delusion out for the dysfunction it is. Instead of speaking down to the public, require that they think enough to understand you. Raise the bar or it'll never get better. Never, EVER, get better.

From the early 90's through the year 2000, I was involved in and eventually hosted and owned an internationally syndicated talk radio program about computers and technology. At various stages, as I rose in the ranks of the broadcast production hierarchy, I was pressured to change the format and dumb down the content of the show. I steadfastly refused and never lost listeners and steadily built a following primarily because I didn't underestimate my audience's intelligence and drive to understand the show's technical content.

Our country's political survival is the same thing. But for the rabidly regressive, well heeled, corporate lacky, perennially uninformed or willfully obtuse minority, the vast majority of Americans want better than the third grade reading level pablum universally offered. You're never going to get the support of the uneducated, willfully ignorant regressive ideologue. Stop talking to them at all. Instead address those who are better than the ditto heads and falsely fair-and-balanced. Talk to the American public as if you were talking with your bright (formerly) adolescent children. Reason with them as you would smart relatives -- Americans, indeed, throughout our country ARE your relatives -- instead of as if to cognitively challenged pre-adolescents. You'll never beat the Boehners and Cantors, Becks, Palins, Bachmans and Bushes of the world if you don't. Just say no to ignorance. Never respond timidly to absurdities or magical thinking, unsubstantiated assertion or lies contrary to fact and reason. Call them out, chapter and verse, at every opportunity and never, ever, apologize for fact and reality.

Support Rep. Weiner's constitutents who would reelect him today by 54% majority. You owe all Americans, and especially New Yourk's 9th Congressional District at least that much.

With warmest regards,
Nathan Garcia

Same Old Endless Republican Loop

Proof positive it's the same old hyperbole with the same old nefarious, unAmerican goal.

"The Republicans will try to make people believe that everything the Government has done for the country is socialism. They will go to the people and say: "Did you see that social security check you received the other day-you thought that was good for you, didn't you? That's just too bad! That's nothing in the world but socialism. Did you see that new flood control dam the Government is building over there for the protection of your property? Sorry-that's awful socialism! That new hospital that they are building is socialism. Price supports, more socialism for the farmers! Minimum wage laws? Socialism for labor! Socialism is bad for you, my friend. Everybody knows that. And here you are, with your new car, and your home, and better opportunities for the kids, and a television set-you are just surrounded by socialism! Now the Republicans say, 'That's a terrible thing, my friend, and the only way out of this sinkhole of socialism is to vote for the Republican ticket.'"
-Harry S Truman, 1947

I like the sentiment, but haven't been able to verify this quote's provenance. Can anybody help me out? Nathan@queers.com

Buttinsky Abuse of Freedoms Guaranteed

Religious delusion is no excuse to attempt micromanagement of others' lives. The plain and simple fact is that reproduction is nobody's business but the actual people involved. It is not the place of government, neighbors, relatives, strangers, magical entities, pseudo-sacrosanct representatives of bronze age scriptural boogiemen or made up sky gods to dictate any facet of another's life.

There are more than one guarantee in the Constitution that safeguard an individual’s privacy and selfsame sovereignty regarding such issues. Roe v. Wade was decided on the right to privacy, and guarantees individual protection against government intrusion into the workings and control of one’s own body. Use of the referendum ballot, or voting in anti-freedom ideologues and empowering codependent officials who can stack the courts in favor of curtailing established rights is dangerous, un-American, and unpatriotic. It undermines the integrity of the Constitution that those who would curtail innocent, law abiding citizens’ rights rail so loudly and disingenuously to defend.

The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause dictates that there shall be no religion based laws conferring preference, under the law, for one religion over another. That is a two edged sword. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that this means that no religion or religious precept, however popular, is grounds to limit the behavior of any citizen or inhabitant under the jurisdiction of the United States Constitution. Limiting any citizen’s choices of procreation, family planning (specifically contraception and abortion), life partner, sexual orientation, as well as myriad other freedoms and liberties under the guise of religiously motivated morality are misguided and weaken the Constitution.

The Fourteenth Amendment also guarantees equal protection under the law. That means that no citizen can be treated differently than any other, which includes association, privacy, and the intimate life choices enjoyed (and taken for granted) by popular fiat and Constitutional protection by the majority of Americans may not be abridged. They may not be curtailed, truncated, or made conditional. 

Anti-abortion laws and causes are un-Constitutional, un-American, and unpatriotic. 

Anti-same sex marriage sentiments and activities are un-Constitutional, un-American, and unpatriotic.

Anti-undocumented worker activity are anti-Constitutional, un-American, and unpatriotic.

The rights bestowed upon one's religion end at the tip of one's own nose. Stop making stuff up to justify abuse of your freedoms and license to infringe others' rights. Get over it and butt out where your nose doesn't belong.

More Arizona Based Sedition

McCain: 'Serious mistake' if car bombing suspect was Mirandized

The distinguished gentleman from Arizona, Senator John McCain, decorated war veteran, elder statesman of the United States Senator, perennial candidate for President of the United States,  is categorically mistaken. Either Americans universally recognize and honor our country's traditional rule of law, or the very ‘war’ we're said to be fighting is for naught. We’re fighting first for America’s assumed right to push anybody in the world around to serve America's national interest, meaning the oil to drive industry, drive arms manufactory, and promote those at the top of the American capitalism paradigm: the so-called American dream. Everything else is a side issue, and everybody else are bystanders. These points are only possible because of the tenuous protective vaneer established by the very existence and application the United States Constitution. One cannot pick and choose which parts of it one will recognize and honor as the Religious Right does with it’s other sacred texts. Trying to merely undermines the whole document. 

Think Richard Nixon and the Watergate coverup, Ronald Reagan/Bush 41  and the Iran/Contra bombs for cash to circumvent Congressional limitations spectacle, Bush 43 abuse of the Patriot Act, illegal wiretaps, selective intelligence secrecy for national security ruse, Claimed immunity from court orders both domestic and international,  the Valerie Plame affair, each a Constitutional Crisis.

Even were this guy, Faisal Shahzad, not an American citizen who acted, incidentally, on American soil, he and everybody else who comes into contact with any facet of United States's lawful juristiction is both subject to and protected, as is everybody, again, who comes into contact with the U.S. A., by the Constitution of the United States. Denying equal access, equal protection, under the law is denying equal Justice under the law. Either we’re a nation ruled by law or we’re not. McCain’s suggestion is seditious, anti-constitutional political treachery. He is countermanding his own oath of office to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against all threats, foreign and domestic. As a private citizen and a United States Senator, he avails himself of his Constitutional First Amendment right of Freedom of Speech. Were he still in uniform, he’d be subject to court martial. What McCain suggests is even more threatening and dangerous to America than a car bomb terrorist act that could have killed tens if not hundreds of people. McCain’s seditious threat to the integrity of the United States Constitution effects every man, woman, and child citizen as well as every visitor, immigrant, legal or illegal resident of our soverign land.

Undermining the Constitution

It's pretty amazing how so many who support Arizona search and seizure AB 1070 law don’t understand (or outright ignore) its true ramifications on bona fide Americans as well as everybody else who is entitled to mind his own business without molestation. Yes, it's about civil rights afforded to anybody who sets foot on American soil, regardless of nationality.

My family has resided on what is now American soil since before there was an America, prior to either California, Arizona and Texas Sovereignty and even before there was Spanish Colonization. Every member of my family has prior, native born rights to roam among, reside within and enjoy all the protections of the United States Constitution provided to all among citizen, resident, visitor, immigrant and alien regardless of immigration status. I and my siblings all look like the so-called Mexican, more accurately named Mestizo, native American and European descendant blend. I, who have a longer standing claim to Constitutional protections than any ethnically unmixed peace officer, can be legally stopped, questioned and detained simply for looking as I do. Let's say I'm gardening in my own Arizona back yard and pop around to the garden center for weed killer or lawn seed, but forget to take along my passport, and decide to drive my vintage car, a lovingly restored and maintained 50s era Chevy Biscayne that still needs a paint job. I spend the night in jail because I fit a patently xenophobic (oh, the irony) profile mandated by descendants of European immagrants (oh, more irony). All because I didn't carry my papers with me as I went on a shopping errand. It quite literally could happen to anybody. Like anyone minding their own business driving through on I40 or I10 while some Highway Patrol officer who is a bit bored as he contemplates his stop quota in the hot sun. 

Let’s take a look at historic precedents:
South Africa Aparteid era "pass laws" required all black and mixed race, “colored” residents to carry officially issued identification documentation which included name, birth date, fingerprints (biometric ID) and employment status. Arresting officers were given complete discretion regarding requirements to produce the documentation, even so far as imprisoning citizens immediately outside their residences because they were prevented by the arresting officer from recovering the needed documentation from their home mere steps away. These laws scapegoated black and non-white citizens, effectively isolating them from participation in broad social and economic aspects of society even though they often paid a higher percentage of wages in taxes than citizens not so subject to regulation.

In 1930s Germany, any person who could not prove they were not Jewish were required to carry  identification documents which they had to produce anytime any police or public officer requested them. These laws isolated and marginalized Jews from social and economic participation in society.

Jim Crow: separate but equal facilities laws in the United States.

These are the exact tactics also used in Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, Socialist Russia, Talibanic Afghanistan, Islamic Iran, Baathist Iraq, and almost every totalitarian state without a Bill of Rights. And, now, as well and again, in an ostensibly democratic country wth the Original Bill of Rights. This is a measure purportedly implemented to control illegal aliens. But it also, immediately, effects natural born and naturalized citizens. Bystanders and witnesses to a stop can bring suit against officers’ lenience if they feel the officer hasn’t applied the law correctly. That is, they didn't cart away the guy who isn't one of us. It doesn't matter to all these entitled elite folks with misplaced anger because their packaging, the way they look and the opportunities citizenship has provided, alone, makes them safe. Do you think for a moment unscupulous lawmakers and fickle proposition voters won't extend the 'look like an illegal alien' motif won't be extended to include even lily white Aryan and Nordic types? When are sari and burkha clad women and turbaned men added to the list?

Indeed, this is a very slippery slope we’re dealing with. Already, Arizona’s legislature has handed Governor Jan Brewer a revamped education policy by which schools will lose state funding for offering courses that "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." Progressive analysts suggest that the target is the Tucson Unified School District’s popular Mexican-American studies department which the state Superintendant says is about “ethnic chauvinism.” The irony is astounding considering that, according to the Wall Street Journal,  the Arizona Department of Education has decreed that teachers with “heavy” or “ungrammatical” (is that not a malapropism?) accents, like those English-as-a-second-language teachers recruited heavily from Latin America under Bush’s No Child Left Behind program for ten years, may no longer teach English. This follows a year 2000 ballot initiative that banned bi-lingual classes. Never mind that these hundreds of heavily accented, fully accredited teachers were hired specifically because they were bilingual.

This is the face of hysteria masquerading as sound public policy. AB 1070 is patently unconstitutional on unreasonable search and seisure grounds. Its intrinsic vagueness is overarching and likewise unconstitutional. It's mean spirited, misguided, as contemptible as it is contemptuous of the Bill of Rights. It was built to address troubles and problems that don’t exist.

Respondents to online reportage cite immigrant crime, public services freeloading, and other unverifiable justifications for these measures. The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit education organization which has collected and disseminated basic information about government finance since 1937, reports that growing numbers of undocumented immigrants, ineligible for Social Security Numbers, are using Individual Tax Identification Numbers to file their federal income taxes. They pay FICA, Medicare and other payroll taxes with every paycheck. USA Today reports that the “tax system collects its due, even from a class of workers with little likelihood of claiming a refund and no hope of drawing a Social Security check” and that “the latest figures available indicate it will amount to billions of dollars in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes this year (2008). One rough estimate puts the amount of Social Security taxes alone at around $9 billion per year.”

The fact of the matter is that illegal immigrants put in far and away  more in taxes and fees than they now or will ever hope to receive under current federal immigration law. The border crime touted by anti-immigrant proponents is perpetrated by smugglers, drug cartels and other organized criminals. That’s a completely different issue and has nothing to do with the hard working, marginalized family breadwinners just trying to make a living. The jobs filled by illegal immigrants are not high profile, well paying positions preferred by more privileged, natural born Americans. They’re the unwanted, literally back breaking, dead end jobs that would go unfilled were illegals not there to do the essential yet menial support without which society's fabric would unravel. Elite citizens' very standard of living would collapse and, in extreme cases, disappear.

The effect of SB 1070 and education policy changes are already apprent. Main street usiness is down, universitys are losing high end students, tourism and the converence trade is losing billions per month in long range bookings.

Outspoken poponents to these measures would do well to study both the Constitution of which they so fervently claim defense, and the verifyable statistics on which jobs and taxes are being paid, while also comparing how many of those same dollars are paid out to these taxpayers as public goods and services.

At the same time, I personally invite all the trolls spewing nonsense and bile to keep it up. The louder you are, the clearer your true nature and corrupt positions become.

Word to the wise: Be very, very careful what you ask for.