#464 – Rev. Dr. James Gertmenian sermon: A Culture of Contempt

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NOTE FROM DICK BERNARD: An advantage of having even a small network to communicate with is the ever present, and increased, possibility of a nugget dropping in unannounced and unexpected.
Such is the October 16, 2011, sermon “A Culture of Contempt” of Rev. Dr. James Gertmenian, pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis.
Rev. Gertmenian’s is a powerful and very timely commentary, related to and generally commenting about the currently raging Occupy Wall Street, 99%, Gospel of Success and similar movements.
Here, with Rev. Gertmenian’s permission, is the pdf of the sermon: Gertmenien Oct 16 11001 The sermon is also accessible in its entirety, including the audio version, here.
My friend who alerted me to its existence, Mike Romanov, said this: “I’m Jewish, but this really moved me. You probably know his scriptural references much better than I.”
The Christian Scripture Text is Luke 1:39-56. I include here that text as it appears in my grandmothers 1906 Douay-Reims (Catholic) translation: Luke 1 39-56001
Dr. Gertmenian applies this text in his sermon.
Whatever your relationship with religion, organized or otherwise, I urge you to read and reflect on Dr. Gertmenian’s message, and then act.

#463 – Dick Bernard: Visiting My Minnesota DFL (Democratic Farmer Labor) Party

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One of tents for Founders Day celebration at Minnesota DFL Headquarters October 29, 2011


When I made the decision to create this blog two and a half years ago, I had to decide how to label myself. It was not a difficult choice: “moderate pragmatic Democrat” is what I called myself then, and I’ve not seen any reason to change the label.
Each word, of course, carries its own meaning. As owner of this particular label, “moderate” and “pragmatic” speak a personal truth I learned over many years of advising and representing people. It is great to have ideals, but the reality of our communities and our nation and world is much messier. We are a “booyah”, a stew, of infinite variety. Anyone who seeks to impose his or her views on everyone is in for a very rude awakening, if not in the short term, certainly in the longer term.
As for “Democrat”, I’ve mostly been quiet, but in more recent years more active and visible. The Democrat view I see is more oriented to people at large, rather than to the most powerful, the ones who can control through money and media in particular.
Of course there are infinite points along any ideological line. Some progressive friends would view me as a sellout to the cause; some off to the right wing would view me as a socialist, or worse (I spent most of my career working for a Union – one of the hate words in the right wing lexicon.)
But that’s who I am.
Earlier this evening I drove over to the newly refurbished DFL Headquarters on Plato Avenue in St. Paul. It was a celebratory evening, featuring Guest Speaker Sen. Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. In the gathering period before the dinner (I did not attend the dinner) was the motley variety of people I have come to expect at DFL events. This is truly a ‘big tent’ organization of people who care about people.

Celebration of DFL Headquarters remodeling, Oct. 29, 2011


Wandering around the attractively remodeled headquarters of the State DFL, I came across a couple of quotes which serve as well as any words I might add to this blog.
I close with these two quotes, engraved on the walls of the headquarters (click on photos to enlarge them).
We would be well advised to follow their sage advice:


Today is slightly over nine years since Paul Wellstone’s death; nearly 48 since the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
We remember.

#462 – Melvin Berning: Heritage. On Plowing before the advent of Tractors.

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COMMENTS AT THE END OF THIS POST, as well as a photo of the Busch farm in the summer of 1907, soon after the sod-busting of 1905:
Previous Heritage postings: here, here and here.
“One had to be impressed with the silence.
All you could hear was the jingle and creaking of the harness and the plop, plop, plop of the horses hooves, along with the silent plop of the sod being upturned.”
Melvin Berning
October, 2011
My mother’s cousin, Melvin Berning, saw the photos of the old walking plows I found at the ND farm (you can view them here), and it inspired the drawing below, and a short story of his memories behind the plow in the 1930s and 1940s. (click on drawing and photo to enlarge).

Drawing, text by Melvin Berning, October, 2011


Remains of two old walking plows, Oct 6, 2011, rural Berlin ND


Here, with great thanks to Mel, is his story, received October 27, 2011:
“I actually learned to plow [with the walking plow] but I preferred the new 2-bottom plow that you could ride on, pulled by 5 horses, three in back and two lead horses.
I think you have two kinds of plows [in the photo].
Notice the mold board and plow shares. [The plowshare] was used for plowing after the sod was broken up. The [other] one seems to have a moldboard that is less curved and longer and I could not distinguish the plow share [see note below]. The different shape allowed the sod to lay over better. I did see some sod broken up and if the sod didn’t turn completely upside down, it had the tendency to go right back to its original position, thus the longer moldboard. I can’t really tell from the pictures.
The plow share was detachable sharpened every year at a blacksmith shop. Uncle Ferdie [my Grandpa] may have done that himself in his shop. I know we would shrink wagon wheel steel rims over there. The wagon wheel rims would be pounded [?] out during during their travels.
I actually plowed the fields with a five horse team – three in back and a lead team of two horses. It was my job to harness, hook up the teams to the plow and ride it. We worked from 8:00 till noon approximately 3 miles/hours in 12 round trips in the morning with an hour for meals for myself and oats and hay for the horses then back to work at 1:00 with another 12 rounds (12 miles) till 5:00-5:30. The silence was unreal and you could see the eyes of the seagulls following the new furrow (field mice). There would be 5 to 10 gulls following. I started full-time plowing in my sophomore year 1943 until school started in September. Dad did not buy a tractor until 1946. So I got lots of silent miles . Fortunately the horses would stay in the furrow and I could sleep the weekend dances off for about 5-10 minutes to a round. The horses would stop at the end of the field. I only fell off once when I hit a rock.
I believe that when they broke up the sod they used a three horse team as that was a hard pull. Life for the old-timers was hard!!!
PS. We had one of those plows on our farm to plow the garden and plant potatoes. That’s where I got my limited experience with the walking plow.”
NOTE FROM DICK: I did not know the terminology. On closer look at the photo, I think the second plow (the one at right) also had a moldboard.
There followed a brief ‘back and forth’ between Melvin and I:
Dick:
I am guessing that [Grandpa] Ferdie [Busch] did the sharpening. He was ALWAYS in that shop in the shed by the barn. Last time I looked the forge was still there. One of these trips I’ll find the building has collapsed. It was the original granary, and one of the first buildings constructed on the property.
Stories like this one from you are rapidly disappearing from the memories of the olden days. I’ve been saying to folks that people in my age range – I was born in 1940 – are the last generation who will have any memories whatsoever of old time ways in farming or anything else. Our kids generation has no reference points at all. There has been a huge change, and if/when we go back to the primitive days of back then, none of us will either know how to or be able to cope.
Melvin:
I can’t really tell which one of the plows was the SOD BUSTER without seeing them but the difference is noted and they each had a specific use, once the sod was plowed the SOD BUSTER was not needed again.
I don’t know if you remember seeing the old steam engine below the house [I don’t], but [Mel’s cousin, and my Uncle] Art and I would spend hours around that old thing wondering if it would ever run again. You are very right in remembering that old shop of your grandfathers, it was truly a trip into the past with all the old tools in use at the turn of the century. And I remember very well watching dad [August Berning] and uncle Ferdie casting a babbit bearing for one of our old pump engines and cranking the old forge blower to heat the charcoal.
Dick:
I don’t recall the old steam engine you mention. Doubtless in my meanderings as a kid I came across it when we visited, which was quite often, but it would have had no more meaning to me than those plows. Things like the horses and chickens and the menagerie (geese, pigs, etc.) got far more of my attention.
I asked Mel what I thought was a stupid question: since the plow was designed to dig into the soil, and didn’t have any mechanical lifts or such, what did they do to get the plow to the field in the first place? Very simple: they put the plow on its side and it was simply dragged along the ground till it was to be used. It was a “duhhh” moment for me, trying to render something very simple into something complex.
(Click on photo to enlarge it.)

The Busch farmstead from the south, summer, 1907. The first field to be plowed in 1905 was likely where the people are standing. From left: Frank Busch, Lena Berning, Fred Busch, Wilhelm Busch, Rosa Busch and her and Fred's first child, Lucina.


COMMENTS:
Ellen Brehmer: Very interesting. Yes, we need to record our experiences. I’ll try. My wonder is this – “What is a moldboard?” Is it to mold the furrow or did the ground have mold? [look at right, here] I really liked hearing about the silence. These days there is always something electrical running; fans, heaters, not to mention radio, TV, stereo and even flourescent lights have a noise. It may be essential to the massive physical labour these guys were capable of.

#461 – Dick Bernard: Two Trains Running

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Last night we attended August Wilson’s play, Two Trains Running, at St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre. It is a play first performed in the late 1980s, and set in the 1969 African-American community of the Hill District in Pittsburgh.
The Penumbra engagement runs through Sunday, October 30. (click on photo to enlarge)

Two Trains Running is one of August Wilson’s ten now famed “Pittsburgh Cycle”, ten plays, one about each decade of the the Twentieth century, as experienced by African Americans. All but one of the plays is set in his home town of Pittsburgh.
I’ve seen eight of the ten, nearly all at Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul. Last nights performance was also at the Penumbra, the second time I’d seen the play there.
There is more than adequate internet information about the play accessible here. Other blog entries I’ve written about August Wilson are accessible here and here. Both include photos I took of his Pittsburgh in 1998.
August Wilson is now an American institution with two Pulitzer Prizes for his work.
Set simply in a down-at-the-heels restaurant in the Hill District, Two Trains Running has seven characters: the owner, the waitress, and five customers who, in two acts, eight scenes and three hours, comment very powerfully on the matter of personal stories, relationships and contemporary history.
It is a time of tension in the United States and particularly in the African-American community. Pittsburgh’s Hill District is being killed to be reborn through urban-renewal; Malcolm X, though dead some years, lives on in demonstrations occurring somewhere in the city. There remain “two trains running” from Pittsburgh to Jackson, Mississippi, home to the Restaurant owner till the violence of racism drove him north years earlier; bitter personal experiences he could not leave behind.
Into, and out of the Restaurant come the characters who make up its regulars. All are simple yet immensely powerful representatives of lives in the neighborhood. They include the local numbers runner; an ex-con not long out of the penitentiary; a sage elder; a demented street person; a wealthy mortician; the waitress and the owner. They speak their voices; their relationships ebb, flow, ebb again…. They speak “family”, though none are related in the legal sense of that term.
Off-stage, a local prophet, laid out in a casket at the morticians funeral home, draws unseen mourners; a woman, said to be 322 years old, dispenses advice to troubled souls, as might a muse.
We sat in the front row, feet against the stage. We were in that restaurant, and within those characters lives….
It was near 20 years ago when I first saw Two Trains Running at the Penumbra, so it was a new yet old experience last night.
Though there was no way for me, a white man from a country upbringing in North Dakota, to directly identify with the experiences of those in that Pittsburgh restaurant, it was simple enough to see how lives, even of strangers, interact, come together, drift apart.
We may pretend that we can isolate ourselves from others, but we are all family in one way or another. I can only speculate about what August Wilson was saying to us through his characters. His mortician, wealthy because of others deaths, important because of his wealth, would some day die himself, unable to take his wealth along for the ride. Polar opposite, the street person with the grocery cart, obsessed with the ham he’d been promised but never received, probably was every man – each of us.
Last night, Mr. Wilson worked his magic for me once again.
We’ve come a long way since August Wilson’s Pittsburgh, 1969.
Or have we, really?
Maybe when August Wilson was writing his play in one or other restaurant back in the 1980s, he had in mind the 99% vs the 1%. Who knows?
In Two Trains Running there were demonstrators in the streets; there was no work; there was great inequality between those who have, and those who have not.
The message was, in too many ways, spoke to today.

#460 -Dick Bernard: Clueless at the Top

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Last week I had the time to act on a long avoided task. I took on our long neglected bookshelves.
Among the collected works that caught my eye was a book I had purchased in 2005, “Clueless at the Top, While the Rest of Us Turn Elsewhere for Life, Liberty and Happiness” by Charlotte and Harriet Childress. The essence of the book is captured both in the title and at its helpful and informative website, here.
It’s hardly a revelation that we Americans live in a hierarchical (pyramidal) society – perhaps we’re inclined to a hierarchical structure. We seem to want somebody in charge, particularly someone to blame. But the collective body is often ill served by these same clueless leader(s). (I suspect you have someone in mind as “clueless” already.)
Most noticeable are the clueless ones at the top of the big hierarchies: the leaders of the country; of big corporations. They’re convenient targets. Indeed they can do immense damage by virtue of their position. But most likely in the course of any day we will witness many other hierarchies down to the most basic, seemingly never-ending (and endlessly controversial) biblical one: “wives, submit to your husbands” (Colossians 3:18).
At whatever level, hierarchies often create big problems.
As I relooked at the Childress’ volume, it occurred to me that we are ALL “clueless”, every one of us. Within each of us there is the constant struggle between belief and reason, between knowledge and faith, between the easy route and the hard. We lurch between wisdom and cluelessness, hopefully with a bit more wisdom than stupidity!
Sunday night, for a single example, I watched the 60 Minutes segment on recently deceased Steve Jobs, visionary founder of Apple and easily one of the people at the pinnacle of the hierarchy called success. Jobs is legendary and deservedly so (I type this blog on part of his legacy: an iMac).
At the same time, Jobs died at 56, still youthful in his career; his death came at a very early age in contemporary America. In a fateful decision some years ago, he apparently chose to not follow advice to get surgery for cancer when that cancer could conceivably have been cured. Rather, he opted for alternative means which did not work. He followed his own advice, and it served him ill.
Mr. Jobs apparently was no different than the rest of we mere mortals in at least the cluelessness aspect.

So, what to do.
The only reasonable place to start dealing with this cluelessness issue is within ourselves, starting exactly where we are, not even bothering to look elsewhere for people to blame.
Last May we saw a documentary which will be publicly available in a month or two. It is entitled I Am, the Documentary, and its main take-aways for me were 1) the inherent democracy of the natural world, the ability of natural systems to work together cooperatively; 2) what was called The Power of One: the capacity each one of us has to make a positive difference not only for ourselves, but for society at large.
Sunday night, after 60 Minutes, we watched a public television special on “Radioactive Wolves” at Chernobyl 25 years after the catastrophic nuclear meltdown in 1986. What sticks with me from that program were two things: 1) the natural populations (wolves and the like) seem to have recovered without apparent significant long term damage; 2) all that remained of human presence was the abandoned and stark evidence of former human occupation, including the virtually completely abandoned city of Pripyat.
As Chernobyl et al demonstrate daily, there is a great abundance of “Cluelessness at the Top” amongst we humans.
Let’s do what we can within our own individual “pyramids” to make this planet we occupy a better one.

#459 -Dick Bernard: Heritage. Michif Language and Music; Haitian Family Story and Food. Thoughts of Booyah and Culture, generally.

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An October theme for this writer came to be the topic of Heritage. Previous posts on this topic are here and here and here.
October 18, found me in a classroom with multi-cultural students of French at Macalester College in St. Paul MN. We were listening to Professor of French and French in America scholar Professor Virgil Benoit of the University of North Dakota speak on the Michif culture of the Chippewa Reservation at Turtle Mountain ND. Dr. Benoit is a passionate defender of the French language, one of the major world languages, and one of the most studied languages in the world.

Dr.Virgil Benoit, University of N. Dakota, at Macalester College, St. Paul MN October 18, 2011


Dr. Benoit’s video guests (from a 2005 video interview) were Turtle Mountain Michifs Dorothy and Mike Page (Mike is pictured with the fiddle above). Mr. and Mrs. Page conversed about various aspects of their culture, including use of their native Michif language, a language infrequently used at this point in their history. “Michif” is a culture and a language, usually a combination of French-Canadian and Canadian Cree ethnicity and language and customs. (A number of links related to Michif, including a fascinating conversation spoken solely in Michif, can be found here.)
A few days later, October 21, we attended a most interesting talk presented at a Minneapolis Church by Jacqueline Regis about her experience growing up in the southern peninsula of Haiti (near Les Cayes). Haiti, the second free Republic in North America (independence in 1804) was born from a revolt of African slaves against their French masters. It was viewed as a threat by slave-holding and infant United States with consequences to the Haitians lasting to this day (click on Haiti history timeline link here NOTE. the reference to 1919 should be 1915). The loss of Haiti was a major defeat for the French, however, and a direct consequence of that defeat was the co-incident sale of the huge Louisiana Purchase to the United States in 1803.
Ms Regis, long in the United States, is fluent in English but grew up speaking Kreyol and learning French, now both official national languages of Haiti, though French is the language of government and commerce.
[UPDATE: see note at the end of this post] Here is a Haitian recipe for Haitian Pumpkin Soup, served at the gathering: Haitian Recipe001. Food, along with Fun and Family, are very important parts of all cultures.
As I was listening to the Page’s and Dr. Benoit on Tuesday I began to think of a regional stew often featured at large group gatherings in this area. It is called “Booyah“, sometimes “Booya”, and when I looked it up I found it is likely actually derived from a French word, and possibly was first used as a reference to the stew in Wisconsin.
Booyah, like Americans generally these days, consists of many common elements, but no Booyah is exactly the same.
So also is American culture: very diverse. And the diversity was reflected both in the classroom and the church sanctuary in the Twin Cities this week.
Dr. Benoit, the Page’s, Jacqueline Regis, and everyone who make up the American booyah have good reason to be proud of their heritages, as reflected in the rich tapestry that is the American culture.
UPDATE October 26: an incorrect link is shown in the pdf. A reader provided the correct link for the Pumpkin Soup recipe: see it here. Other recipes here and here

#458 – Dick Bernard: The Vikings Stadium

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If you live in Minnesota or vicinity, and you give even the tiniest bit of attention to news, you will know that THE MINNESOTA VIKINGS NEED A NEW STADIUM (or so they claim). What is more real is that they WANT a Stadium.
MN Gov. Mark Dayton has called for a Special Session of the Legislature before Thanksgiving to decide what obligations will be assumed by Minnesota Taxpayers to build this new facility, wherever it happens to be built. His is a prudent political decision.
Personally, I have no particular interest in the issue. I think the Stadium will be funded, and taxpayers will pay lots of the cost, and I think it will be a very stupid decision, and I will so advise my legislators, but it won’t interfere with my daily life. It’s only a few hundred million, after all. Heckuva deal.
I attended a single Vikings game in my life, back in the early 1970s before sophisticated cameras and large TV screens, and I had arguably the worst seat in the stadium: beyond the end zone, in perhaps the third row up along the third base line at old Met Stadium. I could see the football in the air when it was being passed or kicked. I could discern progress only by cheers, boos and public address system, and by the long sticks showing where on the field the team was.
It was a horrid experience, never to be repeated.
This doesn’t deter the pitchman for the National Football League (NFL) saying yesterday “Great Cities are defined by the great institutions that they support”. This quote was on the front page of yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune, above the fold.
Quite obviously he was talking about taxpayers supporting NFL football.
What a joke.
The Vikings have never won a Super Bowl, and are having a rotten season this year.
Since I don’t follow the game, I only see the aftermath in the morning after coffee crowd who mostly watched the game on television.
These days, there isn’t much animated conversation about The Team. The Vikings have died and gone to hell…quite literally.
Still, when all is said and done, my prediction is that even in these dismal economic times, when everything else is being cut, the State Legislature will find a way to involve ‘we, the people’ in helping along the wealth machine that is the NFL and its teams, including the Vikings GETTING THEIR STADIUM.
So, how much should this matter? Of course, points of view differ.
Real roughly, it seems that perhaps 1 of 1,000 Minnesotans actually attend the home games of the Vikings during the season, and, likely, most of these attend more than one game or are season ticket holders.
Very few care much about what the stadium looks like, or what amenities it has.
Lots of others (not I, thank you) watch the games at home or in other gathering places. But their time is not occupied by seeing how wonderful the corporate boxes are, or how good the obscenely priced drinks or food at the stadium are.
You could play the game in a large warehouse, with a green screen (a la the weatherman’s invisible screen) and sound effects, and nobody would know the difference. There’s a great plenty of authentic crowd pictures and noise already archived.
That would be much more efficient.
But in the end, we’ll cough up several hundred million dollars one way or the other, to preserve a home team which doesn’t perform especially well, and most of us will never see the inside of their stadium. There’ll be another coach, another quarterback, a new tight end…by Super Bowl XC (we’re approaching XLVI in a few months) THE VIKINGS WILL WIN!!! And that new stadium will have to be replaced, again.
What happens between now and the Minnesota Special Session, and after, will be political fodder in 2012. Gov. Dayton knows this; so do the legislators.
The real losers will be the school kids, the small rural cities and country, the poor, the people who suffer loss of revenue or services to help satisfy a greedy industry and its satellite businesses dependent on it.
Sad.

#457 – Dick Bernard: Newly released book "FOOL ME TWICE. FIGHTING the ASSAULT on SCIENCE in AMERICA" by Shawn Lawrence Otto

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Judging by the response last evening, this new book by Shawn Otto – its title describes it well – will not only be worth the read, but will provide a very useful springboard for informed discussion.
And there is a great need for informed discussion.

Acknowledgment: while I have the book, I just purchased it a few hours ago and obviously have not read it myself. I have read random portions. But the accolades the book has already received, including the effusive and lengthy introduction of Mr. Otto by long time Twin Cities media personality Don Shelby this evening, help to move me to pay especially close attention to its contents. This is a serious book about a serious topic recommended by serious people.
There appeared to be well over 100 of us in a packed room at Minneapolis’ Loft Literary Center this evening.
More details on the book are here.
Being that this book encroaches on politics, always a dangerous area these days, there are negative reviews along with the positive at places like Amazon, but they don’t destroy the authors basic premise that science, the source of so much that has been helpful in this society of ours, is now under assault, and if the assault is successful, our society as we know it is in deep trouble. (About those negative reviews: I’ve recently learned that ideologues seek to undermine books that they deem in opposition without even bothering to read the book. This is very simple to do on line. I’m pretty sure this dynamic will be in place in some reviews of this volume.)
Indeed, challenging politicians and the major media to again start seeing Science seems to be a major reason for this book. Science is under attack and despite its long and proud history and increasing relevance, it is derided by politicians or political candidates; or its revelations avoided by them. To embrace even well-settled science these days is politically very risky. Fool Me Twice covers a great deal of ground in what random segments portray as being very readable and easily understood, and I predict it will become a basic text for becoming grounded in the issues and the arguments – on both sides – of this contentious debate.
Waiting for the authors talk to commence I read a segment which he later emphasized in his own presentation: “In late 2007, the League of Conservation Voters analyzed the questions asked of the then candidates for president by five top prime-time TV journalists…By January 25, 2008, these journalists had conducted 171 interviews with the candidates. of the 2,975 questions they asked, how many might one suppose mentioned the words “climate change” or “global warming”? Six. To put that in perspective, three questions mentioned UFOs.”

As I listened, I couldn’t help but think of the rather bizarre intersection we Americans have reached in this time in history: at the same time in history that science is positioned to make a huge and positive difference for everyone; there is active advocacy for going back to the dark ages where belief trumps reason. Examples are easy to find.
But the message will be in the heavily footnoted 376 page document. And as Beny Bova, award-winning author and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says on the book jacket: “Before you vote in the next election, read Shawn Lawrence Otto’s Fool Me Twice.”
I’ll say no more till I’ve read the book, except to recommend a visit to an important associated website I learned about tonight: ScienceDebate.org . Check it out. It sounds most interesting.
Now to the book….
UPDATE October 25, 2011: Lori Sturdevant of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote this commentary on Otto/Fool Me Twice in today’s paper.

#456 – Dick Bernard: Who's Rolling in Dough?

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Recently House of Representatives Whip Eric Cantor admitted that there is a problem with the disequity in wealth in this country. The brief commentary, here, is worth reading.
Probably a more honest assessment of who has, and who deserves, and how they get what, was this letter to the editor in yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune. The letter could be a useful springboard for conversation; far more useful than playing the information game on Rep. Cantor’s court.
Here’s the letter:
“State Rep. Carly Melin, D-Hibbing, said the Occupy Wall Street crowd is bringing a voice back to working people and the middle class. But Wall Street already gave a voice to my father, a Coca-Cola truck driver out of the Eagan plant, and to millions of working people.
In the ’80s, he researched, then invested $10,000 in a junk stock and made a fortune, in his opinion. No broker — he trusted only his own counsel. He then researched and invested in other stocks, both risky and mainstream, and made more money. Over the years, he turned the $10,000 into $4 million. Boy, did he find his voice, nagging everyone he knew to invest in the stock market.
Everyone wants the dishonest bums on Wall Street out, and no one was happier than my father when they caught a crook on Wall Street or in Washington. Melin’s real interest is in vilifying Wall Street itself. You never hear her, or others like U.S. Reps. Keith Ellison or Barney Frank, speak of how many millions of Americans of modest means became middle-class or rich when they took a chance on Wall Street.
My dad said that the way to make money for your family is to get up and go to work five days a week or more, save, and invest in the stock market. No guarantee — but when it comes to ideas that work, I would take the advice of a working man or businessman over the theories of a politician.
MAUREEN HANSEN, SAVAGE”
One expects a high profile politician like Cantor to distort and manipulate by omission or commission. Voluntary sharing of wealth has never worked, ever. There might be an occasional glimmer of guilt: think of those ubiquitous Carnegie libraries which still dot towns and cities nationwide. But by and large, once you get addicted to acquiring of wealth, you are equally addicted to retaining control over it.
Maureen Hansen lays out a more ordinary scenario: her Dad figures out a way to make a fast buck in Wall Street Junk stocks, and did well.
She admits there is no guarantee of riches, but her Dad got very lucky in the casino-for-the-little-guys that is Wall Street. He basically hit the casino jackpot by gambling the American Way.
If it were only that simple.
There is a big untold back story to Ms Hansen’s fascinating letter.
One would guess her Dad is deceased. If not, he certainly will be.
If he’s lucky and his pile continues to grow, and she is an only child, will she inherit this wealth? And, if so, is this wealth she inherits wealth that she “earned”?
By accident of birthright, does she then deserve to be rich? And someone else poor?
There are endless questions in this business of wealth distribution. All that is absolutely certain is that there is a hideous imbalance in wealth in today’s United States and those have more’s have shown little or no inclination to share their bounty with those who can’t imagine such wealth, much less being able to invest in the stock market.
The “lucky duckies” who have nearly cornered the wealth in the United States have got a heckuva deal, and Eric Cantor and his ilk know it.
And they have no interest or inclination to share…. After all, they hope to participate in this largesse of the 1% themselves, someday.

#455 – Dick Bernard: A Decade of Difference. A concert celebrating ten years of the William J. Clinton Foundation.

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This entire program is accessible here. In all, the program is nearly four hours, but worth a watch.