Monday, February 29, 2016
Friday, February 26, 2016
Feel the Bern, South Carolinians & Remember, "I got involved in electoral politics because I believed that movement activism on behalf of civil rights and women's rights and labor rights and environmental protection and peace needed to be reflected on our ballots and in the corridors of power." Bernie Sanders (2015).
(M)an: Dude! The
Reno Gazette-Journal’s Jon Ralston said it best Saturday night as to why
Hillary Rodham Clinton came out of Nevada a winner over Bernie Sanders in the
latest Democratic caucus. According to Ralston,
The
story of the Nevada caucus is that a lame-duck senator and a self-neutered
union conspired to revive the Clinton campaign in a remarkable bit of backroom
maneuvering that helped Madame Secretary crush Sanders in Clark County, the key
to winning almost any statewide election. Combined with a Clinton machine,
erected last spring and looking invincible, that suddenly had to scrape the
rust off its gears and turn out her voters, Caucus Day also was a remarkable
story of an indomitable candidate, her nonpareil Nevada staff and a ragtag but
committed Sanders operation that made them sweat.
In
the middle of last week, Reid made a phone call, first reported by The New York
Times’ Amy Chozick, to D. Taylor, the head of the parent of the Culinary Union
local in Las Vegas. Before that call, the Culinary, facing difficult contract
negotiations and seeing no advantage in enmeshing itself in a bloody
internecine fight, had declared it was more Swiss than Hispanic. With the
Culinary not endorsing and unwilling to even engage in the caucus, turnout at
six casino sites on the Las Vegas Strip was forecast at a combined 100 or so.
That is, insignificant.
“He’s
been extremely cooperative,” Reid told Chozick of Taylor. “Probably 100
organizers will be at the caucus sites and in hotels to make sure people know
what they’re doing.”
But
Reid did not stop there. He also called casino executives, sources confirm,
with a simple message: “Let your people go.”
That
is, he wanted to ensure the workers would be allowed time off from work to
caucus.
(D)ude: Man! This
Democratic race for the presidential nomination is anything but transparent on
the side of the Democratic National Committee! The DNC’s Chair Representative
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz always noncommittally—and actually quite dismissively—
includes Bernie Sanders as a party candidate. And now that you’ve shared what
Senator Harry Reid did to tilt the elections process in the direction of
Hillary Clinton becoming the Democratic nominee for the American presidency,
you’ve got to ask whether Harry Reid coaxed that culinary labor union to
endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton and not Bernie Sanders specifically. If Harry
Reid is guilty of feigning nonpartisanship until the very last days of the
Nevada Democratic Caucus purposely, then I think he should be held accountable for
swaying the caucus towards a Clinton win. I think the culinary labor union
leadership is guilty of misleading the public too, having put up a façade of
nonpartisanship, its Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Arguello Kline assuring MSNBC
viewers of the Culinary Workers Union’s open invite to all the candidates
running for the presidency, including Senator Sanders and Donald Trump, to
address the organization’s membership.
M: Dude! The
Town Hall in Nevada hosted by Jose Diaz-Balart and Chuck Todd was an eye-opener
for me yet again! Hillary Rodham Clinton dismissed Bernie Sanders as not even
being a legitimate Democrat until he chose to run for the American presidency.
Doesn’t Hillary Rodham Clinton not know by now that people are smelling the rot
that has strayed into her campaign and demeanor? Look at the way she asked
combatively why she ought to release the transcripts of her talks on Wall
Street when no one else has done likewise. Well, the last time I checked, she
was a presidential candidate once before and either should have known better
than to engage in such speaking engagements if she planned to attempt another
run, or she is deliberately setting the course of the Democratic Party on the
wrong foot with her “better-than-thou” attitude towards critics.
D: Man! Why
don’t people understand that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a significant player in
the status quo globally? She has had direct ties to Wal-Mart and continues to
address Wall Street. This must be clarified in great detail by her surrogates
and supporters. In fact, haven’t folks noticed how Hillary Clinton gets irate
when status quo rights are challenged? I believe she and the DNC are polluting
the progress achieved by the previous administration by having already begun to
place blinders on the electorate about the primaries and caucuses. Did you
know, for example, that early voting is concluding in Texas today? On the other
hand, the Republican Party showing at the polls has been the highest ever in
the history of Tarrant County?
M: Dude! Really?
Have you gone on any of the political websites and printed out a sample ballot?
There are six referendums on the Democratic ballot that are worth noting. The
Austin Chronicle has by far the most elaborate coverage of the Texas elections
this time around. The Texas Tribune seems to have moved to the moderate right
as Hillary Rodham Clinton, which concerns me, especially after how Hillary
Rodham Clinton performed at the MSNBC Town Hall moderated by Jose Diaz-Balart
and Chuck Todd. The sirens went off in my head when I heard her explain her
foreign policy stance regarding Cuba and the Castro Brothers,
You know, I think it's a different
situation because there's so much traffic now between the United States and
Cuba. There are so many Americans, both Cuban-Americans, and other Americans
coming to, you know, look at new businesses. Looking to make alliances with
people in their professions, or similar interests.
So, I think it's not just a
presidential visit. It is a punctuation point that makes clear the United
States is going to stay with this. We're going to keep pushing, you know?
I don't think the Castros can live
forever, unless they have found Ponce DeLeon's magic water fountain somewhere. So,
there will be a new generation, and we've got to -- you know, I want the
president to be able to look in the eyes of the new generation, just like we
did with the Burmese. We need to say, OK, we're here. What are you going to do
for your people? Look how far behind you are.
I mean, the economy in Cuba is stuttering
because they're not part of the larger world. Let's lift it up, and open it up.
D: Man! Hillary
Rodham Clinton’s argument that the Cuban people are far behind and their
economy ‘stuttering’ because they are not part of ‘the larger world’, is insulting.
To say that the Castro Brothers bear the brunt of the trouble over there is
just as uncivil! I believe Hillary Rodham Clinton is just as toxic as Richard
Nixon and Henry Kissinger for the United States of America and the World! And
I’m not just talking about Richard Nixon as President, but as Vice President to
Eisenhower as well! Because it was Eisenhower who funded the unsuccessful collaboration
of the CIA and Mafia to overthrow Fidel Castro! Talk about the GOP purposely
manufacturing troubles abroad! And I predict that Hillary Clinton and and any
of the Republican presidential candidates will go after American enterprise the
way Fidel Castro nationalized businesses in Cuba that led to the eventual embargo!
I mean, look at Apple’s troubles with the FBI: obviously, the folks the FBI
needs to go after are the ones in positions of authority who manipulated the
terrorist couple’s iPhones and changed the password or passwords before handing
the devices over to Apple! Duh! Did you know that all Apple products come with
a warning for everyday folks like us to not take apart or manipulate devices
and to entrust a licensed Apple service provider instead with such nuances? If the
San Bernardino police force had not manipulated the devices, a licensed Apple
service provider would have easily been able to backup the devices to the
iCloud system itself and reveal the necessary revelations needing to be made
about these terrorists!
M: Dude! There are
rotten apples in the San Bernardino police force?
D: Man! Duh!
M: Dude! Hillary
Rodham Clinton is abrasive towards ordinary people. When she answered questions
from audience members identifying as undecided or supporting Bernie Sanders,
Hillary Clinton became intolerably elitist in her disdainfulness towards these
constituent opponents.
D: Man! Duh!
M: Dude! Let me
finish the point I was trying to make! As I was saying, Hillary Clinton is a
major setback for the United States in that she is a bona fide intellectual
snob who is a part of the top one-tenth of the one percent in American society
herself. Another Clinton White House will mean internships and chances at advancement
for special interests and their children and young adult descendants. The only
way the White House will remain open for the descendants of the disenfranchised
and working classers like us is if Bernie Sanders becomes the democratic
nominee and subsequent president and commander in chief.
D: Man! Senator
Harry Reid endorsed Hillary Clinton yesterday and I believe that is a
no-brainer that only reiterates what we were discussing earlier. Harry Reid won
Hillary Clinton the Nevada caucus and keep in mind that she has yet to win an
actual primary, having won the Iowa caucus too through coin tosses that favored
her every time like a magician’s trick. And tiebreakers were resolved in the
Nevada caucus through high-card draws utilizing a fresh deck of cards every
time. But Hillary Rodham Clinton is a queen of spades representing the highest
ranked-suit status quo and Bernie Sanders is a king of clubs representing the
lowest ranked-suit laborers.
M: Dude! Black
leadership roles in politics do not equate to black constituent concerns being
addressed. The disenfranchised—black, brown, and white— need to wake up to the
call to civic duty and cast their ballot in these primaries for Bernie Sanders.
I can’t figure out why Hillary Clinton chose to come to Texas fairly recently
when the Texas Primary is actually going to be underway March 1, 2016.
D: Man! Early
voting was underway in Texas this week! Today’s the last day and, yes, I did
print you off a sample ballot with the stances you’ll be taking marked in blue
ink. Polling places are open until 7PM in Tarrant County. I went and cast my
ballot for Bernie Sanders and the progressive Democrats yesterday and was
surprised to find myself amongst the very few who declared themselves to being
Democrat to the pollsters. I wonder how many people lose the strength to
declare themselves Democrat upon seeing the sea of Republican voters hurrying
about in their sectional of electronic voting booths.
M: Dude! Haven’t
Tarrant County voters not learned the lessons of the present and the past? The
past present? Clearly, to cast a ballot in favor of the Republican Party is to
act against your own best interests for at least several generations down the
line. To remain a Republican is to continue to suffer in the hands of special
interests and leaders who are essentially squanderers pocketing vast sums of
money from their campaigns and terms in office for their own personal wealth
interests. The Republican Party is investing in death and destruction through
not addressing climate change, believing Mother Nature will resolve troubles on
her own whim, but the fact is that there is a genocidal warfare pattern
emerging everywhere in the developed and developing world, from the American
Carolinas being effected by violent storms to the Middle East becoming bone dry
and inhospitable due to lacking water sufficiency.
D: Man! Speaking
of death and destruction, Narendra Modi and his rightist BJP political party in
India are going after political opponents with charges of sedition, or
incitements of rebellion against the government. The charged include leftist student
protestors and their teachers at Jawaharlal Nehru University expressing concern
for Kashmir’s sovereignty and the Kashmiri terrorism suspect executed in 2013
for an attack on India’s parliament in 2001; and the Jat people of Northern
India demanding fairness and end to the quota system in place for so many years
to make up for the unfairness faced by non-Jat residents there, only to be
abandoned in mob chaos in towns like Rohtak. But upon careful inspection, you
will find that the lack of water sufficiency in that region too has caused the
unrest and uprisings. Plus, Modi’s nationalist favoritism of Hindu India over
all other religious sects present in by far the most diverse democracy in the
world, that is India, has a genocidal warfare pattern emergent in it as well.
M: Dude! Rohtak
is India’s Flint, Michigan!
D: Man! The
lawlessness in Rohtak is similar to the delays in proper intervention by
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. Just as the emergency managers took over the
local governments throughout Michigan, the local government in Rohtak also has
abandoned law and order, deserting residents in potential bloodbaths for over a
week without resolutions even as we speak. An eyewitness account tells the
situation on the ground in Rohtak as collapsing, the male witness stating that the leaders of the Jat
community must end this to save the image of proud Jat caste. Looters have
nothing to do with quota agitation.
The
local administration is neither answering our calls, nor doing anything to
punish the mob. We hold the administration directly responsible for this utter
lawlessness in the state.
If
the rampage goes on for just one day or may be two days, we can understand.
But, it has been going on for over 5-6 days. It clearly shows that the
administration has totally collapsed.
I
am now seriously planning to go to Delhi to live with my sister for sometime.
Even if the violence ends, it will take many more months to restore normalcy in
Rohtak.
In
my opinion, Rohtak region has never seen something like this before.
Where
is the administration? Will it own up and pay for its inefficient handling of
the situation?
We
have no such high hopes.
M: Dude! And
Jawaharlal Nehru University has been adversely singled out by Modi and his BJP
political party because of Modi and his BJP’s anti-Muslim sentiments! As the
first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru encouraged humanism and secularism,
identifying as an agnostic himself. According to The British Humanist Association, Nehru became a
follower and close associate of [Mahatma] Gandhi. Their close relationship was
unusual because they were very different in their beliefs. Gandhi was widely
recognized as a holy man. Nehru, on the other hand, rejected religion. He had
seen the effects of superstition on the lives of his people and wrote of religion that “…it shuts its eyes
to reality.” Nehru thought that religion was at the root of the stagnation and
lack of progress in his country. The basis of Indian society at that time
was unthinking obedience to the authority of sacred books, old customs, and
outdated habits. He felt that these
attitudes and religious taboos were preventing India from going forward and
adapting to modern conditions: “No country or people who are slaves to dogma
and dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have
become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded.” He felt, therefore, that
religions and all that went with them must be severely limited before they
ruined the country and its people. He was deeply concerned that so many
Indian people could not read or write and wanted mass education to release
Indian society from the limitations that ignorance and religious traditions imposed.
He knew that industrialization was needed to feed the growing population and
that illiteracy denied people the skills required.
D: Man! Hillary
Rodham Clinton was very intimidating in her delivery of the happenings in
Burma, the country that now goes by the name Myanmar. I am so fearful that Rodham
Clinton will resort to esoteric rhetoric not decipherable for the masses of
Americans without access to the libraries and an understanding of how to find
pubs with Wi-Fi networks. You know, I recently did all my online shopping at
the mall? The rent has skyrocketed at Fort Worth malls and it’s like a ghost
town inside, with white boards covering the walls where shops were located
before Governor Greg Abbott’s administrative reign. It’s sad. So, I took a
laptop with me to the mall and did all my shopping via the Wi-Fi internet
connection available throughout the premises. Likewise, I am so fearful that
Wi-Fi and public libraries and public transportation will be halted and
sacrificed under Clinton’s presidency for the purposes of getting things
through the bloodless United States Congress. Again, Hillary Rodham Clinton
will address the issues of the day with a really tough vocabulary and not
enough background as to exactly what it is she intended to say, instead opting
to throw in names like Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (formerly Burma) as if there
was no time for clarification on her part as our president and commander in
chief.
M: Dude! That’s
corruption! Rodham Clinton talked about Rudyard Kipling once and although I do
not like Kipling the man, there is a poem for his son in which he shares the
wisdom of being able to become a man, a human being, only “If”! That’s the
title of the poem! “If”!
If you can talk with crowds and keep your
virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common
touch!
D: Man! Aung San
Suu Kyi is just as formidable a force as Hillary Clinton! Suu Kyi identifies as
a Buddhist, yet is a strong proponent of overlooking a harsh reality playing
out in her country since the times of British Colonial rule, specifically the
tensions and battles waged between the Buddhists and the Muslims in one
particular locale in Myanmar.
M: Dude! There
is a genocidal warfare pattern emergent there as well? No!
D: Man! Yes! The
Rohingya Muslims and Buddhist Rakhines have been left to fight amongst
themselves although both populations are impoverished and living on the edge of
existence as a result. Aung San Suu Kyi identifies herself as a practicing
Buddhist, although her alliances abroad have included a United Nations stint in
New York City with a Burmese pop culture icon and family acquaintance Ma Than
E, and married life in London to a fellow scholar like herself with whom she
had two sons in the nineteen seventies.
M: Dude! This
presidential election cycle in the United States is crucial for the survival of
the most desperate amongst us. When the impoverished are left to suffer without
government assistance, blue collar folks like us living on the edge of
existence—seriously, we are one climate calamity away from homelessness and
having to start over with absolute nothingness—are going to be left to fight
for our daily bread and water too! Leadership roles in politics do not equate
to constituent concerns being addressed. The disenfranchised—black, brown, and
white— need to wake up to the call to civic duty and cast their ballot in these
primaries for Bernie Sanders. Otherwise, we will be left with limited resources
for which we will be made to fight one another amongst friends. Bernie Sanders
has the capacity to feel the pain of hunger and destitution and suffering. His
White House will be run by everyday people like us, and we will be able to understand
his messages and addresses to the country because he will be speaking with his
heart. And keep in mind, a steady heart guarantees a brilliant head on one’s
shoulders.
D: Man! You
know, I never thought Buddhist monks would take a political stance against any of
their fellow human beings, but the situation in Burma amongst the Muslim
Rohingyas and the Buddhist Rakhines has brought out Buddhist monk organizations
to side with the Rakhines over the Rohingyas. According to a headline in the
UK’s Independent [online publication] on July 24, 2012, Burma’s monks call for Muslim community to be shunned: The Buddhists have reportedly tried to block
humanitarian aid getting to ethnic group, Burma’s president Thein Sein was
attempting to get neighboring Bangladesh to accept the Rohingyas. Clearly, this
is not a feasible design for any of humanity’s peoples! Globalization in the
twenty-first century doesn’t mean that humankind can continue shuffling its
members from one country into the next! The world’s disenfranchised are being
dealt the wrong hand over and over again in this game of cards socioeconomic
elites have created.
M: Dude! We are
being made to fight one another amongst friends by the elitists! This trend was
created by the Reagan Administration and Hillary Rodham Clinton will be
carrying this trend into the White House as will all the Republican
presidential candidates from Donald Trump onwards! The reason for the July 24,
2012 headlines spelling doom for the disenfranchised all over the world and
claiming Buddhist monk organizations as having been swayed towards prejudices
is that the world elites, including the Clintons and the DNC, had calculated
Mitt Romney as winning the White House the following November.
D: Man! The only
end to this card game created by socioeconomic elites since Ronald Reagan is
for us to stand up and kick justice into motion by voting for Bernie Sanders in
these primaries! South Carolina mustn’t forget that Hillary Rodham Clinton has
yet to win a primary and that she and her superdelegates have basically hijacked
the caucuses and Bernie’s messages and stances word for word! It is
preposterous and shameful!
M: Dude! Hillary
Rodham Clinton used a teleprompter to deliver her cessation speech in New
Hampshire. Let South Carolina not forget that nor the fact that Hillary Rodham
Clinton has essentially plagiarized from Bernie’s original and superb political
playbook.
D: Man! South
Carolina must understand that American media and the press corps are all siding
with Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Republican ship of fools because Clinton
and the Republicans are the status quo elites. Think South Carolina! Think
about how Hillary Rodham Clinton has hijacked Bernie’s talking points! Think
and then cast your ballots for the truth, for Bernie Sanders of course!
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
"The heart is a sea far deeper than any ocean. Who knows what lies within?" Sultan Bahu (ca 1630 - 1691).
We are because of Steve Jobs (24 February 1955 - 5 October 2011).
We are because of Steve Jobs (24 February 1955 - 5 October 2011).
We are because of Steve Jobs (24 February 1955 - 5 October 2011).
We are because of Steve Jobs (24 February 1955 - 5 October 2011).
We are because of Steve Jobs (24 February 1955 - 5 October 2011).
Friday, February 19, 2016
Feel the Bern, Nevada! American Realities and Bernie's Heartfelt Credibilities!
(D)ude: Man! Food banks are
feeling the weight of over twenty-two states reinstating time limits and work
requirements in order for people to qualify for government food assistance
through SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as
food stamps) this presidential election cycle. Remember that it was Bill
Clinton’s presidency that enforced time limits and work requirements on people
before they could qualify for food assistance.
(M)an: Dude! The over
twenty-two states are imposing these time and worker restrictions despite these
states still suffering from high unemployment rates themselves. According to
the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, more
than 500,000 Adults will lose Benefits in 2016 as Waivers Expire: Affected
Unemployed Childless Individuals are very poor; Few Qualify for Other Help,
and as of the January 21, 2016 update of an article by the same headline,
One of the harshest pieces of the 1996 welfare law, this
provision limits such individuals to three months of SNAP benefits in any
36-month period when they aren’t employed or in a work or training program for
at least 20 hours a week. Even
SNAP recipients whose state operates few or no employment programs and fails to
offer them a spot in a work or training program — which is the case in most
states — have their benefits cut off after three months irrespective of whether
they are searching diligently for a job. Because this provision
denies basic food assistance to people who want to work and will accept any job
or work program slot offered, it is effectively a severe time limit rather than
a work requirement, as such requirements are commonly understood. Work
requirements in public assistance programs typically require people to look for
work and accept any job or employment program slot that is offered but do not
cut off people who are willing to work and looking for a job simply because
they can’t find one. In fact, SNAP has separate work requirement
authority much like this, where states can require individuals to participate
in job search or a training program but cannot terminate them if no program is
available.
D: Man! But didn’t the Great
Recession end the stringent rules since the economy had been and was plummeting
as George Walker Bush finished his second term and exited the White House?
M: Dude! According to the
article I’m quoting, there are harsh discrepancies in place today like,
In the
past few years, the three-month limit hasn’t been in effect in most
states. The 1996 welfare law allows
states to suspend the three-month limit in areas with high and sustained
unemployment; many states qualified to waive the time limit throughout the
state due to high unemployment rates during and since the Great Recession. But as
unemployment rates fall, fewer areas are qualifying for statewide waivers. Most states have counties and other
localities that are eligible for waivers because they continue to have
especially high unemployment.
D: Man! Hillary Rodham
Clinton has not been able to disconnect from her husband physically this
campaign season as well! How can we the people and electorate be guaranteed a
leader in someone like Hillary Rodham Clinton when we see just how debilitating
her husband has proved to be as her campaign surrogate? And what’s up with her
utilizing a teleprompter to give her cessation speech in New Hampshire?
M: Dude! Bill Clinton is
ruining her election chances by campaigning so degradingly and
authoritarian-like, as if we’re in for another eight years of him, rather than
her! Bill Clinton is not an emissary, he’s an anathema!
D: Man! What are the racial
characteristics of individuals affected by these SNAP cuts?
M: Dude! According to the Center
on Budget and Policy Priorities, the numbers are as follow,
The
indigent individuals at risk are diverse. More than 40 percent are women. Close to one-third are over age 40. Among those who report their race, about half
are white, a third African American, and a tenth are Hispanic. Half have only a high school diploma or GED,
and one-quarter have not completed high school.
They live in all areas of the
country, and among those for whom data on metropolitan status are available,
close to 40 percent live in urban areas, 40 percent in suburban areas, and over
20 percent in rural areas.
D: Man! Have you heard the
commercials for earthquake and flood insurance policies on the radio? I called
up my parents’ home insurance company and they informed me that their home was
not necessarily in a flood or earthquake zone as of right now. And I saw family
of four sized tornado shelters available for purchase outside the hardware
store the other day. What’s up with that?
M: Dude! The climate change
deniers may be denying global warming and the long-term effects of fracking in
Washington, DC, but they are shareholders in these insurance companies that are
forming in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex! It’s reprehensible! My parents are
already spending hundreds on regular home insurance and have had to get their
air conditioning repaired recently. Did you know that companies like Old
Republic Home Protection actually send out non-Better Business Bureau-approved
companies out for repairs despite having an A rating from the BBB themselves?
D: Man! What about these tornado
shelters at the hardware stores? What’s going to happen to those of us without
the means to accommodate such apparatuses? Are we in for tornado season this
year?
M: Dude! Ask Governor of Texas
Greg Abbott! Speaking of which, did you hear Robert Reich characterize the
present-day as the second gilded age somewhere on MSNBC this week?
D: Man! Mark Twain came up
with the term “the gilded age” and he had every right to do so because of the
obscene Newport, Rhode Island estates that went up all over the United States
map back then. But I agree, we are living in a second gilded age at the moment,
and are in need of another Sherman Anti-Trust Act to end the reign of such
obscene wealth seeping into our democracy alongside the seeping hatred for the
disenfranchised in our society.
M: Dude! We have a clear
choice to make between shantytowns and another well-crafted Sherman Anti-Trust
Act for right now. According to Robert L. Barker’s Social Work Dictionary, that federal
law enacted in 1890 to eliminate business monopolies and and conspiracies in the restraint of trade and commerce brought back the collective
bargaining rights of labor unions that had been targeted and shutout from
engaging with government, like what the members of the Republican Governors
Association have done to dismantle the powers and rights of the labor unions
today. Remember Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker prancing like an excited
chicken from his presidential campaign tour bus, bragging about how the
Republican Party had severed the influence of the labor unions?
D: Man! The only reason the
Republican Party and the Clintons run for the presidency is to raise money for
themselves. Since 2010’s Citizen’s United ruling by the Supreme Court, there is
no means to trace just where the money gathered from campaign fundraisers goes.
How convenient for the Republican Party and Bill and Hillary Clinton to want to
campaign with as many as ten candidates on their side running for the
presidency!
M: Dude! The only way we’re
ever going to achieve an anti-trust act and restoration of unions in the new millennium
is if Senator Bernie Sanders becomes the next president of the United States! Robert
L. Barker’s Social Work Dictionary
defines shantytowns as follows on
page 440,
Densely
populated settlements of impoverished people who have built homes of scrap
materials on land they do not own. Because these people usually occupy the land
illegally, they cannot demand public services and have little fire and police
protection, water and sanitary facilities, or schools. Shantytowns are growing
rapidly, especially in Third World nations, and are also found in more affluent
nations that do not provide adequately for their poor populations.
D: Man! According
to a Washington Post article dated February 22, 2015,
But
recalling the benefits that union membership might have brought before the 2011
law stripped most public-sector unions of their collective-bargaining rights is
difficult when workers consider the challenges of the present.
“I
don’t see the point of being in a union anymore,” said Dan Anliker, a 34-year-old
technology teacher and father of two in Reedsburg, a tiny city about 60 miles
northwest of Madison.
The law required most public
employees to pay more for health insurance and to pay more into retirement
savings, resulting in an 8 to 10 percent drop in take-home pay. To help
compensate for the loss, Anliker said he took an additional 10-hour-a-week job.
“Everyone’s
on their own island now,” he said. “If you do a good job, everything will take
care of itself. The money I’d spend on dues is way more valuable to buy
groceries for my family.”
Sean Karsten, a 32-year-old
middle and high school reading instructor in his first year of teaching in
Reedsburg, said the unions are “just not something I concern myself with.”
“I just look to keep
improving my teaching in the best way I can and try to keep my nose out of the
other stuff,” he said.
M: Dude! That
guy’s just numbing himself to the pain of having lost everything! Yet he
continues on for the sake of his students! Maybe they will construct legislation
in their professional futures to rectify what their instructor lost!
D: Man! The
article continues and clarifies the ridiculousness of Governor Walker’s
conservative crusade against liberalism. I believe the fact is that Governor
Walker and his cronies are pocketing the following three billion dollars he
boasts about having saved for Wisconsin,
Walker
has pointed to the unions’ membership troubles as a victory — presenting
himself as a conservative warrior unafraid of taking on big battles against
liberal interests.
Walker’s administration has
said forcing public employees to contribute more to retirement plans and health
insurance helped local governments save $3 billion. The governor also has
credited the 2011 law with saving homeowners money on property taxes while
giving school districts the ability to make reforms that increased third-grade
reading levels and high school graduation rates. And the law has emboldened
Republican state lawmakers to further challenge Wisconsin’s labor movement this
year by pushing right-to-work legislation that would allow private-sector
workers to opt out of paying union dues — a measure Walker has said he would
sign.
M: Dude! Speaking
of crooks, Jeb Bush is campaigning around insisting that people need to just
work more hours than they already are on minimum wage, while Hillary Rodham
Clinton’s telling folks she’s better for Black America than Bernie Sanders due
to her and her husband’s history with Black communities. But I think Antonio
Moore’s opinion piece, Hillary Clinton
Should Ask for Black America’s Forgiveness Before She Asks for Its Vote in
the Huffington Post, summarizes the truth about the Black Vote and the Clintons
fairly,
The
woman that was supposedly married to America's first black president is now
hoping that it is Black America that buoys her campaign. The problem is that
regardless of whether Bill Clinton believes, as he has recently stated, that "we
are all mixed-race people...", he is white and the Clintons were far from
good for Black America in their last go around in the White House.
Whether we look at "The
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act" signed by President Clinton
in 1994, a piece of legislation which led to more black men being incarcerated
than we had seen in all of America's dark history, which is saying a lot. Or,
the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which nearly gutted black media ownership by removing caps on
corporate media ownership.
D: Man! Hillary
Rodham Clinton wants to raise the minimum wage to twelve dollars, while Bernie
Sanders will raise the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour. That’s a
difference of twenty-four dollars a day that could be spent on groceries for a
family of four! That’s what’s at stake in this election! I see it every
Wednesday morning when I pass by the church food pantry. That’s when families
and individuals congregate outside for the opportunity at being able to get
their needs met for an entire week. Recently, I saw a frustrated mother and her
equally flustered child eating pudding outside the pantry and wondered whether
the mother had run out of food supplies earlier than expected, hence their aching
appetites.
M: Dude! Nobel
Laureate economist Paul Krugman ought to ponder that scene and circumstance
long and hard before labeling everything Bernie Sanders stands for as “voodoo
economics”!
D: Man! If
Krugman wants to argue over deceptive simplicities in his field of study, there’s
nothing simpler and more natural than a mother’s struggle to address her child’s
distress, especially hunger!
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