The World Becomes What You Teach

If you dream of a world where teaching is world changing, you need to watch this video.  Zoe Weil has a vision of teaching children how to make the world they long for,  a world where justice rules and harm to people and animals and our planet is not disallowed, because it doesn't have to be.  Children grow up learning to live without harming others, learn to share, learn the joy of being creative and fulfilling their potential in a non zero-sum world.

If nothing else, it will remind you of how stifling our current world view is.

Granny D's last speech

A Facebook friend shared this speech which he received by e-mail.  It is a wonderful piece of writing, and really hits on all the issues we, as a people, face today.  I miss her, I wish we still had her, but we still have her voice and her vision.

This is a draft of the last speech Granny D was working on last February when she was in Arizona, less than a month before she died. She was planning to give it at the September 2010 Bob Fest event in Wisconsin.

She had spoken at three previous Bob Fests, billed as the largest progressive rally in the nation. She and Jim Hightower have been among the most requested repeat speakers.

At last summer's gathering, she posthumously received the Robert M. LaFollette Congressional Advocacy Award, a musical tribute by the Raging Grannies and a long and loud standing ovation.

In honor of what would have been her 101st birthday on Jan. 24, here are the words she had wanted to say last summer, her gift to all of us. 

Her words, work and indomitable spirit go marching on...

            Nations, history has shown us, have a state of mental health. A nation may be open and positive, hard-working and fully confident of its future. It may send great white fleets around the world and humans into space.  A nation may also be angry, self-destructive, cruel. We are individuals and we are parts of a whole. The whole can be as troubled or as ecstatic and positive as an individual. You all know this very well, and you know that, at the present time, America is angry and divided and rather like a mentally-disturbed person. Many of its citizens are turning away from obvious truths and embracing angry and dangerous fantasies instead.

            If someone you know flies off the handle in an uncharacteristic way and will not listen to the clear facts, perhaps his dear wife will take you aside and explain that there is a major problem with their son, or his job or the family business is in trouble.  It’s hard to settle arguments and put away anger when we are desperately anxious about our future and our family’s future.  That sort of anxiety is driving America’s politics today. And where does it come from? Anger and blindness to the facts are the twin children of powerlessness––powerlessness over one’s own––and one’s family’s––future.

            That anxiety is manipulated by masters of self-interest. In the 1950s, as great corporations began to wash away the family businesses of Main Street, the anger of those middle class families should have been directed against those corporations and the political officials in league with them. Instead, anger was redirected very purposely and methodically against a phantom Communist threat, against the civil rights of blacks, and against any expansion of government into worker protection and consumer protection.  Because the anxiety was misdirected, it was not brought to bear on the proper cause of the anxiety, and so the anxiety only grew.

            Corporations and the very wealthiest people began to finance the election campaigns of their foot soldiers in Congress. They financed talk radio and propaganda television. We now see millions of people whose anxiety has been hijacked and redirected against all their own best interests.  In the Reagan years, all the stops were taken off things like hostile corporate takeovers and the rise of new monopolies, so that even the most ethical companies were forced to ship their jobs overseas and shutter their plants in American towns and cities. This was all very profitable for the wealthiest elite. You might wonder why these people have allowed things to go so far that the earth of their grandchildren is now endangered, and perhaps fatally, and the answer is that they do not care about their children or grandchildren, so long as they themselves have the longest yacht in Monaco harbor.

            From those yachts are sent instructions that control what Fox News watchers and talk radio listeners will be upset about tomorrow. This undead army will be used to stop all real progress toward real solutions, and the mass anxiety of the people will grow even greater, even as their homes are taken from them and their foods are poisoned. All this engineering needs ready enemies, and so it is the Mexican immigrants or Arabs anywhere who are the Other who now have the honor of being the scapegoats and the diversions.  We could, after all, end illegal immigration by improving economic conditions in Latin America, and we could end Arab anger by moving our economy from oil to solar, but those are big business considerations for proper discussion in the yachts off Monaco, not in our pretend Congress.

            So the anger of anxiety grows. Guns and ammunition now flow into our communities in semi-trucks.  The politics polarizes to the extent that the Republicans have no moral or patriotic objection to sabotaging the economy if it will mean more votes in the next election. And facts as plain as day––as plain as a birth certificate––will be insulted and burned in the streets.

            If I were the President of the United States, looking at all this, what would I do?

            I would do a great deal.

            I would use administrative powers to do as much as I could to return a sense of personal power to people.  Every notch will help defuse anger. I would require federally-insured banks to have human beings answering their phones, and have local human beings assigned to personally help every customer, with full authority to make most decisions regarding those accounts.  I would find out which other industries federal leverage would permit similar returns to the human scale, so that people had more daily moments when they did not feel so powerless against the machinery of modern life.  Just because we have the technological power to dehumanize our world, doesn’t mean we should do so.

            As the President, I would look at the companies that sell things to the federal government.  I would give a purchasing preference to those companies that dumped their computerized, outsourced telephone systems and other systems of human contact in favor of a more human-scaled operation. I would give a preference to small businesses. I would order the agencies of government to buy American products when possible, even at a premium.  I would start a holy war against the kinds of red tape at every governmental level that inhibits the creation of Main Street businesses, market areas, small family businesses and small-scale manufacturers. 

            The object of these moves is simple: to give more people a sense of control over their own lives and futures.  This is not some Libertarian rant.  The Far Right would have us living in some everyone-for-themselves nightmare world.  Government at its best is just the lot of us making some decisions together for the benefit of all.  Getting back to that, and getting away from the “them versus us” notion of government is crucial. Getting rid of the bloat of bureaucracy is an essential part of it.  We can move with the right wing on this issue, though we may get off the bus a few stops before they do. I expect a roomful of citizens could come up with a thousand things that make them feel disempowered and that might be changed. Little empowerments can build toward more meaningful empowerment. People ultimately need to believe, and correctly so, that their daily efforts will bear the harvest they have earned.

            They need to own their own financial records just as they own their own medical records, and they should therefore have the right to opt out of credit reporting systems. A person’s name and address and email address should never be sold without their permission.  All the fine print in contracts––things you must click on and agree to if you are to get access even to things you have purchased, should be outlawed for purchases of under, say a thousand dollars. You shouldn’t have to sign a ten-page contract to buy a damn song or to use the program that plays it. All those little things are insulting to us, and they add up.  Maybe we will need to take our shoes off at the airport for awhile yet, but we shouldn’t have to bow so low to every company that tells us to.

            Stores ought to look for shoplifters and stop them, but devices that scan and beep and the doorways, and clerks who stop you at the door before leaving to examine your basket and your receipt are making an accusation that you are probably a thief, and Americans should not be accusing each other of such things without probable cause. It is dehumanizing. There should be a presumption of innocence even in our stores. Our dignity demands it. These little things that eat away at our dignity ultimately make us angry and alienated. So end those practices. Put consumer and government pressure to bear against companies that will not abide by a new and golden rule of personal treatment in America. When people are treated with an expectation of honor, they tend to respond. The few that do not are not worth worrying about or ruining our otherwise pleasant dealings with each other.

            When we have a Congress that again represents the people, we need to return to the states the authority to limit interest rates that can be charged on loans and credit cards. States used to have that power, and rates were generally limited to not much over ten-percent, but the interstate banking lobby bought Congress and we are all now paying for a lot of yachts as a result.  This can be a states’ rights issue, and we can do business with the right wing on this.

            The United States of America has an interest in the development of small, family-run local and regional businesses. Those businesses are good for the economy, good for communities, good for families, good for personal empowerment, and good for democracy. When we have us a Congress again, lets create a corporate tax system that discourages businesses from growing larger than they need to be. A computer company and an automobile company may need to be large, but there is no reason for general merchandise stores to be overlarge.  There is no reason for insurance companies or media companies to be overlarge.  Returning the economy to a more local and more human scale is important and necessary for our political, cultural and ecological survival. While we are at it, we should get rid of corporate-run prisons. What is a greater insult to an American than to be locked up by a corporation? Anyone in that circumstance out to have a right to resist. It is a science fiction horror that insults all of us.

            If we fail to act on these matters, the sense of personal disempowerment will grow, and also its anger and its violence.

            Returning a more human scale to our economy would also create quite a few jobs and quite a few new businesses. If a U.S. president would take up an aggressive campaign to return human scale and its personal power to Americans, I don’t think he or she would find too many opponents, except in the yachts off Monaco. They would of course instruct Fox News to rail against this return to the stone age. But the anger that fuels their toxic enterprise and others like it would dissipate, and we might soon have a governable country again.

            The idea of a social safety net, while constantly attacked by the wealthy elite and the Fox undead, provide important ways to reduce the kinds of anxiety that otherwise disrupt society and democracy. If parents know their children will be able to attend college, that they themselves will have a secure old age, and that the only time people will sleep outdoors in America is when they are camping, they will be better neighbors, better parents, better spouses, better and more productive workers, and better Americans.  

            If there is one thing that would guarantee any President’s re-election, it is this final suggestion: A President could administratively modify the procurement code of the federal government so that companies that do more than a million dollars worth of business with the federal government annually must not lobby the federal government in any way except in open hearings. This disempowerment would result in a grand re-empowerment of average citizens, who then would stand a chance being heard by their elected representatives. With every notch––and that would be a big one––anger subsides, racism subsides, we step away from the precipice now before us, and we move toward a much better America.

            These are ideas someone might package and promote. A joining of left and right might be possible regarding this package. A president in search of a little triangulation might even listen.   Frankly, I don’t think we have much time to waste.

             Thank you very much. 

              Doris "Granny D" Haddock

Doris“Granny D” Haddock, campaigner for election reform, died March 9, aged 100 

Addicted to Risk

I was sent this video by a man who cares about us all and the planet we live on.  Please watch it, and share it widely.

68 years

68 years ago today I was born in New York City, in the midst of war, with my father on a destroyer in the Pacific.  While I don't really think of 68 as old, when I think back on all the happenings, all the changes, since then, my head spins.  My father would have been 95 at the end of the month, my mother would have been 93 in April,  and thinking about their lives is even more mind-boggling.  Maybe there is less wonder that many of us have so much difficulty coping with modern life.  Although I am not willing to give them too much of a pass, I can see a bit how those who are full of fear, the authoritarians, want some strong person to take over making decisions for them.  The willingness to turn oneself over to a dictator-like entity scares the shit out of me, but I can also see how that might happen in a world that just won't stop changing.

As for me, I like change, most of the time.  I worry more about being bored than about things changing.  So far, despite some really hard times in the past, my life has been pretty damn good.  I am quite healthy for my age, although losing 20 pounds would be a good thing, and I am working on that, slowly.  I have lots and lots of great friends, people I respect and admire, people who do things which help others they may not even know, rather than selfishly thinking only of themselves and their families.  I see the world through a political lens, because, as my good friend Bob Perry notes:

"People often say with pride, 'I'm not interested in politics.'  They might as well say, 'I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future...'  If we mean to keep control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics."   -- Martha Gellhorn (1908 -1998)  American novelist, travel writer and journalist

Like Ms. Gellhorn, I believe we all need to be involved in the political process, do our research (not depending on one source and TURNING OFF FOX), and do more than just vote.  Democracy, as our founders knew well, depends on a citizenry that knows enough to make good decisions about today AND tomorrow.  And above all, we need to care for one another, and for everyone's children and grandchildren, and for our planet, the only home we have.  

Miss me?

Between shoveling snow, managing e-mail, and learning to post content to our wonderful on-line newspaper, The Forum, my own blog has been left in the lurch.  I am learning to manage all this time I have since I retired.  It's very different than being very busy and managing the little free time you have.  You get very efficient.  But now I have trouble deciding what to do next, what to put off, and what to say NO to.  It's an odd feeling.  Not what I expected.

But it's still wonderful!

Christianity and political hate speech

Very interesting article on how hateful political speech relates to Christian belief.  It should be read by all who profess to follow the teachings of Christ.

As Christians, we accept that words shape lives. With that comes a moral duty to use them carefully and gently for what is just. Too many among our faith have forgotten that. Civil discourse is not just a civic duty; to those of us who follow Christ, it is a Christian duty.

Of course, this will be rejected by the very "Christian" right wing.   They own the rights to "Christianity" now.

Hate speech

Matt Taibbi points out in this article that the new Speaker of the House was intemperate in his speech during the campaign.   Perhaps not as intemperate as Gabby Giffords' opponent, who offered a target with her picture on it and a weapon to shoot at the target at a campaign event, but when you suggest that violence is part of our political process, you will be held accountable by at least some Americans.

Another Ohio Democrat, Steve Driehaus, clashed repeatedly with Boehner before losing his seat in the midterm elections. After Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, Driehaus "may be a dead man" and "can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati" because "the Catholics will run him out of town," Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house. Driehaus says he approached Boehner on the floor and confronted him.

"I didn't think it was funny at all," Driehaus says. "I've got three little kids and a wife. I said to him, 'John, this is bullshit, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.'"

Driehaus is quick to point out that he doesn't think Boehner meant to urge anyone to violence. "But it's not about what he intended — it's about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work."  (emphasis mine)

Driehaus says Boehner was "taken aback" when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: "He said something along the lines of, 'You know that's not what I meant.' But he didn't apologize."

"...that's not what I meant."  But other people might very well think that is what you meant.  When you represent the people of your district, they should be able to believe that you speak with care and thoughtfulness.  You are not the boss because you were elected, you are the employee of your constituents.  Enough.

New sound bite

I hear from a friend who attended a hearing in Concord on the new Wild West reenactment scenario they have passed that there is a new sound bite making the rounds.

"Killing zones" are places where guns are prohibited.  And of course, "safe zones" are places where everyone and anyone can pack a gun.

So look for your local "killing zones," schools, town halls, shopping malls, workplaces, to become much "safer" in the future.

Party time for Frankie

Frank Guinta attended a party and got some personal attention from Mr. Koch.

After the ceremony, David Koch walked up to Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH) - a freshman Republican Koch helped to elect using his front group, Americans for Prosperity - and asked him to confirm that he will be attending a party that Koch is hosting for Republicans. Guinta said he would be at the party, which began at 5:00pm today.

I wondered during the campaign who Frank would really represent, and now I wonder even more.  I somehow suspect that he isn't really very interested in "the rest of us," as his predecessor would say.  I will be keeping a close eye on this relationship.

It's only a deficit when it's for you or me

Among other things, the new Republican majority in the House has redefined deficit spending.

For two years, Cantor and his colleagues campaigned against high deficits. Now, in the new majority's first major act, they plan to vote to increase the deficit by $143 billion as part of a repeal of health-care reform.

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post has a nice compilation of the ways Republicans redefine what they are doing when they go from election-mode to "governing"-mode.  (Quotes because I don't believe Republicans today have any idea how to govern.)

Here's another interesting one:

For two years, the Republican minority vowed to return power to the people. Now the House Republican majority is asking lobbyists which regulations to repeal, hiring lobbyists to key staff positions and hobnobbing with lobbyists at big-ticket Washington fundraisers.

However, in this paragraph I think Milbank is just doing what is apparently the obligatory dig at Democrats in any article that points out the failings of Republicans - this is what passes for "objectivity" these days in journalism.

Even before the speaker's gavel is passed at noon from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner, it would appear that the Republicans are determined to form just as arrogant and overreaching a majority as the one they defeated.

Anyone who equates Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner should be ashamed of himself.

Some thoughts on the role of government - repost

I am reposting this from my campaign blog because I am listening to Al Gore's Assault on Reason at the gym.  I have read the book, and was very struck by his description of how TV and our brains interact.  Listening to it again, I remembered writing this.  Read it and let me know if you have noticed the same thing.

One of the biggest differences between political philosophies these days is the perception of the role of government in our society. I come to this from the perspective of a student of anthropology, sociology, political history and economics. Some of my knowledge and belief system comes from schooling, much from reading extensively, and some from discussions with others involved in the political process. Much of it comes from actually getting involved.

I am not a person who does sound bites well, so I will ask you to stick with me for a bit, rather than turning me off when I can’t give you instant and simple reasons for my beliefs.  I do not believe these things because I am a Democrat, I am a Democrat because this is what I understand about the world I live in.

29 years ago Ronald Reagan made his famous pronouncement, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”  This has been interpreted by many as a license to attack government whenever possible, even while asking to be elected to run such a government.  For some the goal is to “shrink government enough to drown it in a bathtub,” another famous quote from Grover Norquist, lobbyist extraordinaire. 

I have a very different vision of my government that comes from getting involved at the local level with town committees and boards, including the selectboard.  Learning about town budgets, employees, taxes, etc. as the person responsible for making it work gave me a different perspective. Standing outside and criticizing is easy.  Actually making it work is very difficult.  However, it is also very, very rewarding.  And I don’t mean monetarily!

The rewards come from the people I have met, truly wonderful, smart, caring, thoughtful people who volunteer their time to make a town run.  The pay stinks, but the rewards come when I have managed to involve some others in the process, because although we all moan about how hard it is, I know have introduced them to something that will enrich their lives and empower them to see what I see, that government is ultimately ours, and we make it or break it.

But when people hear over and over again that government is a problem, that “they” are  taking away from, not adding to our lives, and that the best thing to do is elect people who promise to dismantle what, unfortunately, turns out to be the only thing between the voters and the rapacity of the greedy in all too much of our recent history, what are they to believe?  It is easy to blame someone in “the government,” but we really are responsible, in our system, for electing those in the government and using care in doing so.

The people who founded this country and wrote our constitution did have a vision of how they wanted this to work.  Their vision was of an educated public, who knew something of history and current affairs.  This knowledge came from the written word, books, self-published pamphlets and newspapers.  Today we have many, many ways to get information.  So how do we get ourselves to the point where we actually consider electing people who think government is a problem, to run that government? 

Part of it is schooling, and part of it is that explosion of ways to find out about how things work.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of the written word involved for too many of us.  Most people now get their news from television, and there are a number of problems with that.  Some of them have to do with the corporate ownership of the media, and some have to do with the way the brain reacts to TV.  Part of our biological heredity is how movement in our field of vision affects us.  We are instinctively compelled to focus on moving images, because back in the day when we were creatures in the wild, anything moving in the area was either food, or something that wanted to make food of us, or potential mates, all things we needed to pay attention to immediately. 

Television is an endless series of movements to the visual field.  Reading a book, or a magazine or newspaper or even articles on my laptop, I find it easy to pull myself away from the written word. But if there is a TV in the room it is constantly catching my attention and drawing my eyes, and I find myself sitting there almost hypnotized.  Yes, hypnotized.  Passive, waiting for direction.  So what does that mean in an article about government?

If people are getting most of their information about how to choose their government from a medium that makes them passive, rather than interacting with the information, choosing what to read, stopping and thinking about it, maybe even writing about it, are they not vulnerable to being manipulated?  If you watch TV for hours a day, you certainly are not likely to get involved.  And if you are not involved, at least to some extent, is it not easy to see the government as not being of much importance to you and your life. 

And yet everyday, governments at all levels of our society are making decisions that affect our lives.  If our only interaction is once a year, or every two years, or even every 4 years, at the voting booth - and many of us choose not to even do that - how much effort are we going to put into finding out what is really going on?  It is so much easier to sit in front of the TV and watch whatever we happen to find, including 30 second political ads, getting our emotions stimulated, and perhaps even being manipulated into voting against our own self-interest and the interests of the communities we live in.  I don’t think we are lazy, I know we are tired and overworked, which is a subject for another post.  I do suspect we are being used by clever people to find government a distant body that either has little to do with our lives or that actually is hurting us. 

But that is not what our founders intended!  And it is not what inevitably has to be.  So when that neighbor of yours runs for office, or asks you to get involved, don’t say, “Oh, I don’t want to get involved in politics, it’s a dirty nasty business.”  It is the business our founders intended us to be involved in deeply and thoughtfully.  It’s our government.

My thanks to Al Gore who called my attention to the TV phenomenon in his book, The Assault on Reason.

As both a person who is fascinated by weather and has been since I was a child, and as a precipitation reporter, I just want to remind you again that government is not the problem, it IS the solution to many problems and concerns. And that the Republican desire to make everything a money-maker for one of their buddies is dangerous.

Tasks of the National Weather Service and related agencies: 

-Operate 122 Weather Forecast Offices across all 50 states (and Pureto Rico), with a full staff 24/7/365. 

-Provide detailed forecasts to the public for every square mile of the United States. Forecasts are detailed down to hundreds of thousands of gridded points across the country. 

-Provide aviation forecasts for the safety of all aircraft in United States airspace. 

-Provide fire weather forecasts for those in regions vulnerable to forest/brush fires. 

-Provide hydrologic forecasts for those with interests around rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans. 

-Provide marine forecasts for anybody who takes sail on a boat in United States waters. 

-Provide tropical forecasts via the National Hurricane Center for anyone in the path of a tropical storm/hurricane in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific Oceans. 

-Provide climate forecasts and maintain climate data via the Climate Prediction Center 

-Monitor the United States constantly for severe weather development via the Storm Prediction Center.

Within each of those general areas, they do hundreds (even thousands) of other smaller tasks that make our day-to-day lives livable.

The legacy of St. Ronnie the Reagan is the destruction of much of what made the USA such a leader in the world and a great place to live. And we still are on that course. As things get worse over the next couple of years if the Republicans get their way, just remember that government is not the problem, IT IS THE SOLUTION to many problems we face. That's why human societies have governments. And they all have some kind.

Where is our safety net?

I continually wonder why we reject building a safety net for our people?  Europe is full of successful democracies (despite the spin we hear, they do provide a great standard of living and a lot of security for their populations, they just don't make many billionaires, tough isn't it?) who provide for their own, but we can't have that, because we are all going to be rich tomorrow and won't need it...or something.

Let’s be clear that the subtext of the Spiegel article is that these are the ethics promulgated by a country with the weakest social safety net of any major industrialized country in the world. Let’s think about this, aren’t they in fact right about that? Please consider that the annual income of the wealthiest 12,000 households is bigger than that of the poorest 24 million households. Doesn’t America allow 59 million of its citizens to go without medical insurance; 132 million without a dental plan; 60 millionwithout paid sick leave; and 40 million on food stamps. Let’s please remember that, the wealthiest 1% of American households already have more net worth than the bottom 90% of American households. Is this the American dream or the American nightmare? By contrast, virtually everyone in the European Union has a medical plan, has a dental plan, gets paid sick leave, paid maternity leave; receives paid annual leave. This also includes low wage workers. Now ask yourself who has the moral high ground here? Now while we can all be proud Americans, surely we don’t have to be proud of the broken American social safety net.

What if the Republicans get their way and cause ANOTHER recession?  Will you be OK?  How come we love our billionaires and give them everything they ask for, but can't help our unemployed neighbor?  Are we really the richest country in the world, or do we only have the most rich people?  There is a difference.

Hypocrisy seems too mild a term

Hypocrisy seems too mild a term to describe how the Republicans are starting their House rule.

Which would have been the case had they not already blown a big ol' loophole in their own rule.

Under new rules drafted by House Republicans in an effort to bolster fiscal discipline, lawmakers must show how they will pay for legislation that increases the deficit. But a bill repealing the health care law would be explicitly exempted from that requirement.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the health care overhaul will reduce deficits by more than $140 billion over 10 years, largely because new spending will be more than offset by new taxes and cutbacks in the growth of Medicare.

The whole idea of the rule of law, the whole idea of telling the truth, none of this is part of the new Republican ethos.  It is simply do what you want when you want it, and to hell with the consequences, as long as we get ours.

More media lies and misinformation

Our "journalists" have completely failed us in talking about Social Security and the role it plays in our economy and society.  They don't understand it, they don't bother to educate themselves about it, they simply parrot what the "important" people say, and they get to decide who is important.

William Greider: This is a staggering scandal for the media. I have yet to see a straightforward, non-ideological, non-argumentative piece in any major paper that describes the actual condition of Social Security. The core fact is that Social Security has not contributed a dime to the deficit, but has piled up trillions in surpluses, which the government has borrowed and spent. Social Security’s surpluses have actually offset the impact of the deficit, beginning with Reagan.

TL: Why don’t reporters report this?

WG: They identify with the wisdom of the elites who don’t want to talk about this—because if people understand that Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus, building toward more than $4 trillion, people will ask why are politicians trying to cut Social Security benefits?

And it gets worse from there.

TL: Is this different than in the past?

WG: Yes. In the last twenty years, as media ownership became highly concentrated, the gulf between the governing elites, both in and out of government, and the broad range of ordinary citizens has gotten much worse. The press chose to side with the governing elites and look down on the citizenry as ignorant or irrational, greedy, or even nutty. 

Read it all, so at least when they take it away you will know how it happened.  If you want to do something about it, start writing letters to the editor, start commenting on the newspaper articles.  Start making noise.  Maybe someone will hear.

Inequality is bad for the soul

Nicholas Kristof makes the case that inequality of economic status eats at the soul.  The grinding away of the American dream as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class shrinks away causes poor health, both physically and mentally.  I think we have always known that, the war on poverty was about that, but then the issue got highjacked by what I guess I would call Calvinism, the belief that the rich are rich because they are better than the rest of us. John Steinbeck observed that "a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ."

There's growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.That's the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments - and they cite mountains of data to support their argument. Meanwhile, our planet gets sick as well.  I keep wondering what is the string to pull that unravels this nasty knot, and keep coming back to getting the money out of campaigns.  But even if that is the answer, can we mobilize a large enough movement to get it done?