#391 – Dick Bernard: A Demonstration at the State Capitol

/0 Comments/in , /by

Years ago I heard a ‘rule of thumb’ that has seemed to be reasonably well borne out in reality.
It was said that for every one person who actually physically shows up at some demonstration or other, that person represents 1,000 others who feel likewise, but can’t attend for reasons like work, too far away, etc., etc., etc. In other words, one person equals more than one person, be it a rally, or a letter to a legislator, etc.
Today I went to an “Invest in Minnesota” rally at the State Capitol. We’re a dozen hours from either a settlement or a government shutdown.
I would guess there were about 300 at the rally – small by most standards, but understandable. It was from 10-11 a.m. on a work day. Only people like myself could participate. In my perception, it was a good rally. Here is my small photo gallery of the event. My favorite, a guy in a wheelchair wearing a tee-shirt which you can possibly make out in the slide show: “Homeless against Homelessness”. It says a lot in a very few words.
The speakers were the usual, and the event was only an hour – plenty long on a hot and uncomfortable Capitol steps.
One speaker summarized it well. She noted that the legislature seemed to be on record to ‘hold harmless’ public education (and thus, children). But if this involves (as it does) taking money from other programs affecting children then this political strategy is not effective. I thought to myself that this is a bit like saying we’ll save your shirt sleeve, but if we do, we can’t afford buttons for the shirt.
For those of us in Minnesota, the stakes by now should be very clear and are very real.
A key message was to “call your legislator” urging support, in essence, of Gov. Dayton’s stand for investment in Minnesota. Don’t know who your Representative or Senator is? Here’s the link for both State House and Senate. Do it now, not later. Tonight is the deadline.
My message will be: I support Governor Dayton and I believe that our wealthiest citizens can afford and should be required to chip in and help those in society who will be most hurt by the proposed legislative cuts.
Contact Governor Mark Dayton as well.
How about your message?
And while you’re at it, why not contact at least one or two or twenty others and ask them to do the same. Now.
It will help.

#390 – Dick Bernard: Getting to a settlement

/0 Comments/in , , /by

As I write, 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, my spouse, Cathy, is down in the ‘grand canyons’ of downtown Minneapolis, representing our homeowners association at a last ditch mediation to attempt to resolve a matter involving several hundred thousand dollars. Actually, it’s high-priced lawyers who are representing all sides in this now nearly three year old case; Cathy is there as the Association President.
This is the first time Cathy’s been in such a proceeding and it will be interesting to hear her report by phone from time to time today. I have career long experience in this drill of attempting to settle issues, so I know how this process can work, or not….
Enroute to Minneapolis, Cathy drove within sight of the Minnesota State Capitol where a political stalemate is within a day of causing a major government shutdown at midnight June 30. I won’t predict whether they’ll settle or not. I hope they do. Wisely, the leaders of the parties have at least agreed to go behind closed doors, attempt to reach an agreement, and avoid creating a circus atmosphere. (There is a distinct and very important difference between what is happening here, and what happened in Wisconsin back in March. There, one party controls Governor, House and Senate; here the Governor is one party, the House and Senate another.)
In one corner, here in Minnesota, are a motherhood-and-apple pie appearing Young Mom-kind of person who is the Senate Majority leader; and a Jack-Armstrong-All-American [farm] Boy look-alike who’s House Majority Leader. In the other is the wealthy scion of one of Minnesota’s most prominent families, who’s experienced personally the downsides of life, and has scads of political experience. Both sides have a lot of support. There is a huge amount at stake if they can’t settle their differences and come to an agreement that can then justify a special session to ratify the terms of their agreement.
On the outside are ‘we, the people’: the people my Dad used to call ‘kibitzers’ or ‘sidewalk superintendents’ – knowing little or nothing, but having absolute kinds of opinions about what ‘they’ should or should not do, or, alternatively, attempting to wash our hands of the responsibility for the train wreck that we are witnessing not only in our state, but in Washington D.C.
I have my own opinions about what should be done to solve the logjams, but they are just opinions, like everyone elses.
I’m not sitting in those talks that are going on in assorted ways in assorted places. I’ve been in all sorts of similar settings, and I know the heat is on all of those leaders to get something constructive done.
I do have an opinion about what needs to change if we are ever going to go back to the kind of country we used to be:
So long as we choose to consider only one side of the story, and to listen to only one sides point of view, and associate only with people of like minds, we are going to stay paralyzed.
So long as we adhere to a philosophy that declares that our truth or belief alone must prevail, and that we must reject any other beliefs or truths, we will continue to fail.
So long as we have a notion that if we can just say ‘no’ long enough that we will get what we want, at the others expense, we are doomed.

I see little glimmers of hope, but the glimmers are small.
I hope Cathy comes home with a report of a tentative settlement in the mediation today; and that there is no government shutdown tomorrow night in Minnesota.
We need to get ‘er done.

#389 – Dick Bernard: Killing the President, and all of us.

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

On frequent occasions, something in a news source catches my eye, as did this one, on Saturday. Most of us won’t all get to see these attack ads. They’re carefully targeted to certain places in the country where they are likely to do the most good (translated “bad”) against Democrats and the President of the United States.
And most of the funding will not come from small donors: it will come from people with a lot of money to invest in their special interest – keeping and increasing their personal wealth and power.
Early this morning came this always well done compilation on another side of the supposedly evil and inept government story. (The commentary is fairly long but an appropriate headline might well be: “attacking government is attacking ourselves, particularly in these troubled economic times”.) It’s worth your time.
The business of attack ads has become “as American as Apple Pie”.
The worst thing that could happen for the Republican party would be for the Democrats, especially the President, to be perceived as succeeding, so their goal remains to enhance failure. It is a cynical and effective strategy.
The only differences between now and, say, 40 years ago, is that political lying is now more accepted, and the sophistication of delivering the lies is immeasurably greater. These are dangerous times for any semblance of “the truth”.
It is killing us all, and we’re the only antidote, by refusing to buy the garbage called political advertising that is passed off as informing us.
There are endless examples…I see them most every day.
A few weeks ago I had an interesting exchange with a good and valued friend of mine in a neighboring state.
It began with one of those ubiquitous internet “Fwd’s” trashing someone I’d never heard of with text and a selected group of 13 photographs of protest signs seen at a demonstration in the recent past.
The “Fwd” had come from a younger relative of hers, who figures he knows me as a “liberal”, and he said: “Why don’t you send this to Dick Bernard and have him apply his liberal spin on it to tell us how this is all made up and these are all good righteous peaceful people.”
I took the bait.
The photos in the “Fwd” were of signs carried by (apparent) union members at a large demonstration in Los Angeles.
I’ve been in lots of demonstrations in my life and, while I rarely carry signs, it is inevitable that you’ll see signs – and people – which seem sort of out on the edge. Usually, their intention is to attract attention, and these 13 signmakers had succeeded.
The text accompanying the photos blasted a particular Union, specifically the former President of that Union, and was intended to portray the President of the United States as this union leaders lackey, and this union – of low-paid service workers – to be dragging the President around by the nose by spending an outrageous sum to get him elected.
I did the best I could to dig through to the “facts” (which is almost impossible with these kinds of things), and shared this with my correspondent. At minimum the “Fwd” was unfair and dishonest, but that was its intent. Further, it was intended to spread virally across the country, and get people outraged at the President and Unions.
Ironically, the total amount apparently contributed by over 2 million members of this union to helping elect president Obama was about the same ($28 M, about $13 per union member) as what Karl Rove will spend in the first round of attack ads against the President in the next few months ($20 M, mostly from a tiny group of very wealthy donors – see lead article) and that is just the down payment – the election is, in political terms, light years away.
My friend and I closed our conversation: “I JUST DON’T LIKE ALL THESE PROTESTS, PERIOD“, my correspondent said, and that was our last contact about it.
I made a final comment:
“I have been in lots of protests, though rarely with signs. They are part of freedom of speech, like units in parades in general are (watch your 4th of July parade this year, if you have one).
Going back to what started this particular conversation – the 13 signs at the [union] protests – I got to thinking of it in this way: Surely in [your town of about 2000] there must be one person you know (or know of) that the townspeople wish would just leave (hopefully it’s not you!) Most towns I’ve lived in I can think of such a ‘character’…
The way I think of those signs and the people who made and carried them is sort of similar to the above example: what if the symbol of [your town] became the town character.
Or, as importantly, what if that town character actually had a valid story that needed to be told – even if the townspeople didn’t like the story?
That’s how the ‘networking’ of these demonstrations goes. It is what demonstrations are covered, and what parts of the demonstrations are emphasized by the person(s) covering them.”
We – all of us – are the “Government” we like, or despise.
There are facts in there somewhere. You aren’t going to get them from political attack ads this coming year.
It is work to get informed. But worth the effort.

#388 – Dick Bernard: Gay Marriage in New York State

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

Early last evening I was watching my usual news program and a guest was talking about how New York Legislature was about to pass a law authorizing same sex marriage in the state of New York. I’ve been around political decision making for long enough, and closely enough, to question the judgment of a premature announcement of a bill which would be, but had not yet, passed and was still questionable…one doesn’t announce a victory with ten minutes left in, say, a basketball game.
But announced it was. And it happened. And it apparently has already been signed into law by its architect, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
There will be countless opinions flooding the news on this issue. Here is my small ‘squeak’.
This is great news, long overdue. As I understand the law, my Catholic Church doesn’t have to marry Gays; neither can it block Gays from getting married.
This is a very big deal on a great many levels. To me, it is one more piece of evidence that sanity is beginning to return to the political conversation – and by “politics” I mean “people”, generally.
I’m straight, and I thus have no direct personal “frame” to understand the Gay perspective. But that’s the most important reason why such a Law as this is good.
Even most religious leaders who despise what they consider the Gay lifestyle seem to agree that God approves of Gays – at least they admit this on paper. But they don’t understand how it is to be Gay, thus they attempt to throw the theological “Book” – their interpretation of the Bible – at it. “Belief” is made to reign.
I really don’t care if my local Archbishop doesn’t like this new Law, or if my local legislator recently went with the majority to deliberately bypass Minnesota’s Governor and authorize an initiative on the 2012 election ballot to enshrine into our Constitution a provision making gay marriage unconstitutional.
New York went with common sense last night.
(I wonder if our Legislature rules are similar to those in Roberts Rules: where decisions made can be reversed if people who voted on the prevailing side move and second to rescind their previous action. If so, maybe this is still a possibility. In fact, I had this as one of my possible questions at a Forum with Legislators a couple of Mondays ago.)
What happened in New York State overnight was a huge big deal. It won’t make the issue go away in other places. But it will be instructive; and it will empower people like ourselves to speak more confidently and informed about this issue.
I think of two evenings ago, at our annual suburban political party picnic.
This years event was in relative terms lightly attended, largely due to chilly and uncertain weather. We had the usual political speakers, but the first one was very unusual for us. Teresa Nelson, Legal Counsel of the Minnesota branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, addressed us about two issues she felt were absolutely critical for basic civil rights in the upcoming year.

Teresa Nelson, June 23, 2011


The first issue was the proposed constitutional amendment on marriage; the second was another proposed constitutional amendment on a voter id bill whose only purpose is to suppress citizen right and ability to vote. Both are, among many others, national initiatives appearing in many places in slightly different forms.
We citizens have work to do in the coming months. Too many of us have not been engaged. If this applies to you, now is the time.
I offer one last thought on the marriage issue:
My hobby for 30 years has been family history.
In the course of researching my French-Canadian side I came across the marriage contract between my first Bernard ancestors in Quebec, in the year 1730. The translation of this contract is Quebec Marriage Cont001
It is worth taking the time to really analyze this contract: who it was with, what it says, etc. (Here’s the summary: the 1730 document was a civil contract, between the parties and the State, to be followed, two weeks later, by the religious Matrimony….)
Of course, Quebec then was an exclusively Catholic country, so the marriage ultimately had to be finalized in the Catholic Church.
But the U.S. is not Quebec. And the Catholic Church in today’s Quebec is, I’m told, all but completely irrelevant….
UPDATE: This over nite blog post does a good job of defining what’s going on with the political decision making on this and other issues as well.

#387 – Dick Bernard: Politics, the business of talking and listening and seeking agreement when agreement doesn't seem possible.

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

Last night I watched President Obama’s thirteen minute address to the nation on Afghanistan.
I felt it was a thoughtful speech, and it takes no long leap to state that every word, every inflection, everything, was very, very carefully put together for presentation to a diverse and immense world-wide audience including friends and enemies alike. This was not some soapbox kind of oration. Words do matter. Even its brevity fit within YouTube standards (which, in turn, fit within our national attention span, which is, regrettably, very short.)
We watched the address within our usual news show, and a 13 minute speech doesn’t do much damage to an hour program, so, of course, the end of the speech was followed by the grave analysis of what the President said, or didn’t say, or should have said, etc. All of this was to be expected. Ditto the commentaries that will flood the internet, etc., etc., etc.
I respected the analysts last night, but I didn’t stick around to hear their very predictable analysis. They were there to buttress their ‘truth’ as they perceive it to be. If only every one felt the same.
The speech came after a rather significant ten or so days for this individual blogger.
Included was a very respectful hour on a recent Saturday with Sen. Al Franken, his aide, and 20 of us, sharing views on critical issues like Israel/Palestine; Afghanistan draw-down; military spending. Sen. Franken gave us an hour of his time – a rather precious commodity when his constituency is 5 million people. You learn quickly that a focused hour is a very short period of time, and about the best you can expect – which is the best of all – is an opportunity to take the measure of each others feelings, thoughts and perhaps, even, gaps in information, including in one’s own information. Twenty different sets of ears, even if ideologically in general agreement, hear the exact same thing in twenty different ways. Imagine how complex it becomes at President Obama’s level, or at Senator Franken’s.
(click on photo to enlarge)

MN Sen. Al Franken, June 11, 2011


A couple of days later I listened to a briefing by three Minnesota State Legislators giving their views of the intense negotiations now taking place to avoid a government shutdown on June 30. Again, these were ‘birds of a feather’ – people I would ideologically agree with, though not from my district. In assorted ways they conveyed the complexities of the issues to be addressed.
“Reform” is an oft-bandied about term, and one gets the sense that most of us are in favor of reform only if it makes our position stronger; we rail against it if we fear it will weaken our relative position. Of course, politics enters in to these conversations, and negotiations of differences in a fishbowl is a contemporary reality that (even coming from a proponent of open government) leaves something to be desired.
There is something to be said for being forced to sit together, privately, until something is resolved that both sides can own.

Legislators briefing citizens June 13, 2011


There were several more meetings on substantive things these past ten days. At each, the result was the same: if you sit with others of different views, you can learn something. But you can’t isolate yourself with ‘birds of a feather’ and expect to either possess the ‘truth’ or to prevail in your argument within a larger society.
The day before President Obama’s speech, two of us met with a young woman, a Senior this fall at Swarthmore College, who has taken on a most interesting task for a senior thesis: to talk to people about how they talk about our involvement in Iraq, past and present. Allison is a young person from both conservative and liberal roots in a rural midwestern state, going to a College in a major eastern city. She is involved in what I believe is a major project of major importance to us all.
If we can’t listen to and value and learn from each others opinions, how can we expect to resolve anything, politically or otherwise?

#386 – Dick Bernard: My 2:43 Speech*, and some thoughts on Climate Change

/0 Comments/in , , /by

* June 17, in this space, I related a dream about a 2:43 speech.
Here’s my version of that speech, considerably shorter than two minutes.
“Speak your truth to others, particularly those who may disagree with you. Listen. Learn. Participate. Keep open the possibility that there may be flaws in what you believe to be true. Listen outward, beyond your own preferred circle, at least as much as you listen inward to people who share your own beliefs. Imagine being in a circle. Usually, in our ever-more polarized society, we sit exclusively in circles, looking inward, with people who share our point of view. To do so is to deny the much greater world behind our backs, outside our circle: other circles with other legitimate points of view….”
What Professor Abraham’s talk on Climate Change on Thursday night did was to not only shake loose my dream; but cause me to articulate it publicly.
Dreams are private happenings. I haven’t studied dreams but at minimum they are our own brains speaking when the clutter of the conscious world has quieted.
In the context of Thursday, during the question time, I had written my question on a card for the Professor: “Was Al Gore correct in Inconvenient Truth?”
Doubtless, this is a common question to a Climate Scientist, and to my recollection, the Professor’s answer was brisk and with no hesitation: “Probably 90% accurate”, he said, relating a couple of areas where Mr. Gore’s analysis might have been a bit off target.
He suggested directly that the flap over Gore’s analysis was a good example of the clash between science and politics. Because Gore had been pigeon-holed as having a certain political point-of-view, his enemies had to dismiss his arguments, regardless of the truth they might contain. Enemies are, after all, never right.
Dr. Abraham didn’t mention the impact of belief, though he could have: often we say, “I don’t care what the facts are. This is what I believe.” It is an easy dodge of an unpleasant reality, but that doesn’t change the reality.
He went on to the next question, and I thought to myself in school boy terms: 90% would get a grade of A or A-.
A pretty good grade, I’d say. Not only that, but Mr. Gore brought the issue out of the shadows of public discussion.
Towards the talks conclusion, Prof. Abraham commented on the disagreement about the state of Mother Earth, and human impact on this condition called Climate Change. He proposed a manner of looking at this, using the analogy of a person knowing something was not right, and seeking a doctors opinion, and then a second opinion and third and so on. By the end, 100 opinions had been received, 97 of these agreeing on the diagnosis; with the remaining three equivocating about or denying the problem. Would the reasonable person go with the 97 concurring opinions, or with the three dissenting? It’s a choice after all.
The 3% dissenters have been remarkably successful in disputing Climate Change. All they need to do is to sow doubt, Dr. Abraham said. But as with the person who denies a medical condition until it is too late to do anything about it but die, so can humanity, particularly those of us in the so-called ‘developed world’, do ourselves in…in much shorter a time span than we might think.
I sat there thinking about other issues of the day, as peace and war, the economy, relations with others, etc., etc., etc. His talk had come in the midst of a particularly rich – and also absurd – political week in both my life and in the national conversation, so that ‘noise’ bounced around for me as well.
I close as I began: “Speak your truth to others, particularly those who may disagree with you. Listen. Learn. Participate. Keep open the possibility that there may be flaws in what you believe to be true. Listen outward, beyond your own preferred circle, at least as much as you listen inward to people who share your own beliefs. Imagine being in a circle. Usually, in our ever-more polarized society, we sit exclusively in circles, looking inward, with people who share our point of view. To do so is to deny the much greater world behind our backs, outside our circle: other circles with other legitimate points of view….”
Here’s to conversation – to dialogue. Here’s to action.

#385 – Dick Bernard: A 2:43 Speech: "Last Night I had the Strangest Dream". A matter of Climate Change and Other Things.

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

UPDATE/SUPPLEMENT June 19, 2011, here.
As we all do, I dream, and I just awoke from a dream whose essential message I remember. This doesn’t always happen.
I want to share the dream, and speculate from whence it came.
For some reason I found myself as king# of the world, only for a few minutes, able to direct people who were influential decision makers.
Since only a few run things in this world of ours, I didn’t have to speak to all 7 billion people, only to a few. We were in a large, stark, room, and the few of us could gather in a corner. Perhaps there were a dozen of us. Significantly, there were no women# in this directed conversation.
We gathered in a square, each bringing our own platform, which seemed to resemble a school desk such as a student would occupy. They were of random design, these desks. Again, we were all men#.
All gathered together, I gave the direction, which for some reason sticks vividly in my mind.
Each person in this square had precisely two minutes and 43 seconds to say what they had to say. No rebuttal, no debate. Two minutes and 43 seconds.
Then I woke up.
There are people who make their living interpreting dreams. I’m not one of those people.
The back story of my dream perhaps came a few hours earlier when I, along with perhaps 70 others, men and women, participated in a powerful one and a half hours with world climate expert Professor John Abraham of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. He started his talk with a satellite photo of the world, specifically Africa; he ended his presentation with photos of his two daughters, age four and five, who are, he said, the reason he’s devoting his professional life to the crisis of climate change. He is, after all, making their future, and that of their descendants. Africa in particular, and the coming generations will reap the consequences of human activity, especially during the period of the Industrial Revolution.
It was a powerful evening.
I wonder if, when I read this aloud, I’ll come out to two minutes and 43 seconds.
*
“Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream”? I first heard John Denver sing that song years ago; it most impacted me when Lynn Elling led us in that song in June, 2007. It was a moment, that one in 2007, that changed my life.
You can listen to John Denver’s rendition at my website A Million Copies. There you can also read about Lynn Elling, and also about Dr. Joe Schwartzberg’s Affirmation of Human Oneness. Dr. Schwartzberg was in charge of last nights meeting, and at the beginning, we read his Affirmation of Human Oneness, appearing at the website in the 41 languages into which it has thus far been translated.
On reflection, my dream was not at all strange.
How about for you?
What would you say in your two minutes and 43 seconds, and to whom would you say it?
Most importantly, then what will you do to put that 2:43 into reality? Not, what will you order others to do, but what will YOU do?
This is an especially important question to the women. Men have mucked things up royally, and perhaps terminally. Women can turn things around perhaps more effectively than any group of men can.
It’s time to act.
Some Resources:
Dr. Abraham’s climate science organization website is here. There is a lot of content accessible here.
A website he recommended is CoolPlanetMN. And another, Minnesota Environmental Partnership.
The organization Lynn Elling founded in 1982: World Citizen. The organization sponsoring last nights event with John Abraham: Citizens for Global Solutions MN. I am privileged to be part of both groups.
(Click on photos to enlarge them.)

Dr. John Abraham, professor, School of Engineering, St. Thomas University, St. Paul MN


Dr. Joe Schwartzberg, President Citizens for Global Solutions MN, Professor Emeritus in Geography, University of Minnesota, June 16, 2011


Extra Special Thanks to Lee Dechert who made this program happen.

Richard (Lee) Dechert introduces Prof. Abraham June 16, 2011


# – A woman friend challenged me on these references. The references were intentional, and as I remembered the dream. It is we men who have and continue to run our world into the ground. More and more women are involved, but until women make the election to take the lead, past mistakes will continue to be made.

#384 – Dick Bernard: The Multiplier Effect

/0 Comments/in /by

under construction

#383 – Dick Bernard: The Quandary for Big (and Small) Business, and its impact on all of us.

/0 Comments/in , /by

This mornings New York Times (NYT) had an interesting article about a St. Paul area business man reluctant to hire workers.
A couple of days earlier the Minneapolis Star Tribune had an equally interesting column by a long time very prominent business executive essentially rebutting the oft-repeated and false argument of conservatives that taxes will cause a drain of business to lower tax places.
The two news pieces are among many similar commentaries these days, but people tend not to read information, particularly that which does not support their own view of reality. So we have the continuation of our economic storm.
Capitalism is, it seems, tying itself in knots.
“The Quandary”? See the end of this commentary.
For some reason, the Times column caused me to revisit a little adventure from several years ago, and this afternoon I jumped in my car to view in the present day what I had first viewed eight years earlier, June 19, 2003, in Fridley MN*.
On the way home I traveled by the company featured in the NYT column. It is a small place across the street from the tony suburb of North Oaks (below, click on photo to enlarge). I’m always curious how such places and people get chosen for news analyses, out of hundreds of thousands of possibilities.

Vista, in Vadnais Heights MN June 10, 2011


I had been at the Fridley company the pleasant June day in 2003 when George Bush visited. The place looks, today, much as I remember it eight years ago:

Micro Control Co. Fridley MN June 10, 2011


That visit by the President of the United States was one of the most tightly controlled events one could possibly imagine. I could understand avoiding protestors with anti-war signs; but even Bush’s supporters were denied even a glimpse of the motorcade, and they were not pleased. Here is what the President said that day in June, 2003, less than two months after we had “won” the war in Iraq (oh, we were naive then…and still). The Presidents message emphasizes tax cuts, along with some bragging about the War on Terror, and assorted other promises. It is worth reading the history in President Bush’s own words eight years ago this month.
The Quandary: The Alliance of Business and Conservative Ideology has won the battle, but simultaneously lost the war…for all of us.

I have no doubt that corporations and government are full of very smart people, and that leaders of organizations of all types are also very smart. But there is all manner of dissonance between what is stated as truth and what is real. Compare George Bush’s dream in 2003 against the reality only five years later, in mid-2008.
Capitalism is a philosophy that thrives on consumption of goods, which generates revenue through spending of money, which generates profits, and something called the multiplier of money (a dollar spent is actually more than a dollar, because it is spent over and over.) But in many ways the contemporary economy has become nothing more than a gigantic Ponzi scheme. People need money to buy goods; if fewer people have money to spend, less goods can be bought. If the money spent is borrowed (credit card) etc., it is actually not money in hand. It is only a debt to later be repaid.
The rich, who were the greatest beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts, generally put most of their money out of circulation (personal savings). It is money for which they have no immediate use. The poor, on the other hand, need to spend all of their money, and even if they spend it foolishly, it goes into circulation. It can be argued that the poor stimulate the economy more than the rich, simply because they spend their money to survive.
During the years of false prosperity in the Bush years, particularly 2001-2008, the Iraq War was financed off the federal budget books – on borrowed money. The borrowed money brought false prosperity, but also a debt that has come due.
At the same time the economy needs to be stimulated, largely by government infusion of capital, while the conservative drum beat is to strangle government, which costs people jobs, and again cripples the economy. Corporations are sitting on mountains of cash, but decline to hire people for one reason or another. In the long run they are hurting themselves and the country.
The only solution is an informed and active citizenry – you and I. Are we up to the task? We ARE, after all, the government.

UPDATE: Overnight came a most interesting commentary that supplements the above. It is worth a read as well.
* – What I wrote June 19, 2003, about President Bushs visit:
Well, I went. Along with quite a few Republicans, I didn’t even see GWB’s limousine, much less the little guy himself.
We were at a sort of non-descript warehouse type of building in the Minneapolis suburb of Fridley, the headquarters of the company at which he was appearing. We thought we were at the right door. About 1:15 pm CDT, I heard what sounded like a muffled cheer coming from within the building, and I think it was then he made his grand entrance through the back door. I guess we should have had a clue when a U-Haul pulled up to the same front door a few minutes earlier to load up stuff. Hope springs eternal. I wasn’t the only one fooled.
The small consolation is that he “stiffed” everybody – including true believers with tickets who couldn’t get in, and were waiting to see their patron saint, and perhaps even press the sacred flesh. They were not inclined to complain…at least not within the group along the roadside with us.
If you had any interest, you saw the lucky true believers on TV, from inside the warehouse. The disciples looked to be basically very well dressed. Apparently a few dissidents got in, but I don’t know for sure.
It was a beautiful day, and I was surprised that there weren’t more people. There was a good enough crowd, but even on a work day I have seen much higher attendance at political events. Somebody said there were a couple of thousand in the building, which seems a bit on the high side. Anyone who was seated in the building had to go through what seemed to be pretty tight security. The rest of us – perhaps a thousand or so – cooled our heels outside.
There were a few peace activists there (good for them), and beside them were a few true red-blooded Americans, most with their “Liberate Iraq” signs. Either the red-blooded American liberators didn’t hear the president’s speech from the USS Abraham Lincoln, when he said that Iraq was liberated; or he’s told them something that he hasn’t told me; or they thought the signs were too good to waste, after all the official war was very short. An hour or two before the Chief was scheduled to arrive, at the front of the liberator contingent was a little girl, perhaps five, waving a flag bigger than she was, and reciting the mantra over and over “God bless America”. A true patriot, doubtless.
At one point, a phalanx of peace activists quietly approached the front lines – where the Republicans who couldn’t get in, and I, were standing. It was a quietly uncomfortable time. One of the well-dressed types asked another “what do the masks signify” (some of the protestors were wearing masks, I guess). There was no answer, except somebody said they were “rabble rousers”. All this happened very gently. “Minnesota Nice” was dripping.
One young lady with a sign talking about 79,000 lost jobs per month during Bush times, was an object of some derision by two well-dressed people, a man and woman. The man wondered if the demonstrator was an exempt or non-exempt employee. No one directly took her on, however.
Some adult lady in my section sang the first stanza of God Bless America, but no one joined in. She went a little ways down the line, and tried again. Still no takers. Somebody said “Star Spangled Banner”, but no one went there, either, including the singer.
Two protestors came through behind us, one chanting “Who is a terrorist?”, to which the other responded “Bush is a terrorist.” A tall well dressed young guy standing near me, who I had thought must be a secret service agent, dark glasses and all, sort of under his breath muttered “Liberals with radical ideas are terrorists”. I guess I am a terrorist…. He apparently was not a secret service agent. Shortly after that, he disappeared.
Actually, I felt a bit sorry for the Republicans who apparently had tickets for the event but couldn’t get in. I don’t know what the snafu was. I had zero interest in going in, so it didn’t bother me.
Right before leaving I visited briefly with three women who were protesting. We had a nice visit. Peace people are peaceful people!
I left with a guy who does independent media stuff, and he suggested a visit to www.twincities.indymedia.org [his work is most likely no longer on-line, though the web address still is active]. Go to “The rest”, click on “Search”, then select photos and Bert Schlauch, and you’ll see some excellent stuff he has posted (and doubtless will post about today). The site is a very good one. So there you have it.
We have a virtual president. The closest I came to actually seeing him today was five mobile transmission towers for the television stations.
Keep the faith. Keep on, keeping on!
Peace.

#382 – Dick Bernard: Lying our way to mediocrity, and perhaps worse….

/0 Comments/in , , /by

In two years and 381 blog posts, I can think of only one other posting in which I emphasized a single piece of writing I had seen elsewhere.
Today is the second.
I’d highly recommend a reading of this lengthy item, “The fascinating story of how shameless right-wing lies came to rule our politics” by Rick Perlstein in Mother Jones magazine. (There are endless self-righteous and always anonymous comments on this article, as with most articles. I never waste much time reading these arguments back and forth.)
OK, you’ve already tuned out because you’re conservative and you align with the right wing, and you’ve heard Mother Jones magazine is lefty or worse, and you think you know how biased I must be…. (On the final point, you don’t know, but no matter.)
Fine.
Bill Clinton’s famous 1998 lie is in this article. Democrats don’t get a pass*.
But as Perlstein points out, for sheer volume and gall, there is no contest between the right-wing disinformation machine and the left.
To speak truth in politics in this age is to be a loser, and the more lies you can convincingly tell, the better. This goes for high profile clergy, as well as everyone. You’re taught to lie with gravitas. “The ends justify the means.”
My favorite political lie, recently, is not in the article. Recently former vice-president Dick Cheney was quoted famously, about Paul Ryan’s crusade in Congress. The May 26 quote can be read and seen here, plus an earlier statement on the same general topic by the exact same person, taking precisely the opposite public position.
The simple response to this business of political lying, which I have heard with my own ears, is “they all lie”, which gives the person making this claim the permission to lazily vote for the individual he/she prefers (or not vote at all), without getting into the fine points of whether their candidate has any grasp of the truth, or even cares.
It is rationalized that in politics, the truth really doesn’t matter: “they all lie”.
But it definitely does matter.
As most all of us learned when we were kids, what goes around comes around.
What happens to us individually, when we lie and finally get caught, is no different than what will happen to our entire society, if we don’t start paying attention to facts versus fiction*.
We the people are the government of the United States, not the Legislators we elect (and who we seem to loathe as a group as they do battle against each other.
We have asked for, indeed demanded, what we detest.
We get exactly what we deserve.
* As I was writing this, Rep. Anthony Weiner of NY (Dem) admitted, after days of denial, that he indeed did the infamous Twitter and several others in past years. He becomes only the most recent in a long list of politicians caught in personal lying about sex – his Twitter caper will dominate “news” for the next few days…to be followed by someone else. (Re Weiner, I didn’t think he did the deed – it was too stupid. But, he did do it, and so be it. His voters will decide his fate next year.) I differentiate between what he did, and what this column is about: official lying for the purpose of moving political agendas. Politics being politics, what Weiner did, personally, will be mixed into the political agenda and beget more lies, by extending and implicating…. Sad but true.
Also, yesterday, it was revealed that the staff of Sarah Palin had attempted to revise the history of Paul Revere’s ride on Wikipedia, to cover for Palin’s historical gaffe about his action. “History” is fair game for liars too….