Yesterday, May 26, I attended a meeting of agencies who are tasked with coordinating services in our county for children ages 0-5 years of age.  By and large, it was a good meeting, with a great discussion going on how to find approximately $75,000 to keep staffing levels current so that services for this critical age are not depleted.  This center assesses children between the critical ages of 0-5 who have been referred to them by schools, social services, parents, care-givers, foster parents and others who perceive at-risk behaviors.  After the initial assessment, the children are either referred to an outside agency that has the capability of providing the necessary services for the child, or in the case of children whose birth mothers abused alcohol or other illicit drugs while pregnant with the child, in-house treatment.  These substances can cause significant disruption in the dynamics of brain development.  Our Children’s Assessment Center (CAC) has the unique capability of treating these children in-house.  The children whose birth mothers abused alcohol often suffer from what is called Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, or FASD, but with early intervention can achieve remarkable results with our specialized treatment services.

During the meeting, however, I became very angry.  Exxon/Mobile paid no taxes in the State of California last year, nor did many other corporations.  Our Governor, Jerry Brown, wants to put a ballot measure before the public to enable the people to vote on raising taxes on both corporations and the wealthy.  Enough members of the State Legislature will not vote to allow him to do that.  At the same time the US Supreme Court has ordered California to release prisoners from prisons because of overcrowding.  Some of these prisoners will end up in our county jail, which is already overcrowded, and will cost the county several million dollars which we simply cannot afford.  At the same time, we are scrounging for a measly $78,000.00 to help these children who, if not helped, will surely end up in our jails and prisons.  One of the results of FASD in older children and adults is impulsive behavior.  They will just up and do something for no logical reason.  It has been estimated that for every dollar spent during this critical 0-5 age group, $3.50 to $17.00 is saved in required services, including jails and prisons, during the lifetime of the person.  Sometimes those old clichés are totally accurate – An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Where in the name of all that’s Holy have our priorities gotten so screwed up that we value the obscene profits and incomes of corporations and the wealthy over the needs of children, especially these who are so vulnerable.  There is not one religion or major philosophy which would excuse such behavior.  These children are not responsible for their problems, nor of an age where they can “get a job”.    

We should be completely ashamed!

Republicans. Is Your Paradise Lost?

Republicans.  Is Your Paradise Lost?

Let’s set the stage a bit here.  Go back many billions of years and imagine the scene.  It is after the angels, led by Lucifer, have challenged God in battle, and lost.  They have fallen to Hell, but are still rebellious and trying to decide what to do next.  One choice is to do nothing and just accept what has happened to them.  Another choice is to attempt another attack on God.  The third choice…  To find out what that one is, you must read John Milton’s Paradise Lost. 

Another point to make is that Milton gave human traits to the fallen angels.  As one reads these chapters, it is possible to think, “I know someone just like that fallen angel of Milton.”  This particular speech of a fallen angel is to be found in Book II, beginning in the middle of line 108.

               “On the other side up rose

Belial, in act more graceful and humane;

A fairer person lost not Heaven; he seemed

For dignity composed and high exploit:

But all was false and hollow, though his tongue

Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear

The better reason, to perplex and dash

Maturest counsel: for his thoughts were low;

To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds

Timorous and slothful: yet he pleased the ear,

And with persuasive accent thus began:”

Fast forward now to the speech that Paul Ryan gave to The Economic Club of Chicago this past week.  Most of the speech was the usual right wing radical fiscal nonsense, but then he concluded with some statements that need to be scrutinized. 

 “Sowing social unrest and class envy makes America weaker, not stronger.  Playing one group against another only distracts us from the true sources of inequity in this country – corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless.”  Really?  He discusses corporate welfare that the right wing has ensured will happen with their current fiscal policy, and the continued obstruction in the House of Representatives of any plans to control that corporate welfare, at the same time making it appear that it is the Democrats who are ensuring the continuation of corporate welfare.  All the while that same right wing obstruction guarantees that promises made to the powerless remain empty.  Marvelous spin on the class warfare the Republicans have been waging against the middle class.

He continues (Ryan, that is, not Belial) with the accusation that, “Those committed to the mindset of “shared scarcity” are telling future generations, sorry, you’re just going to have to make do with less.  Your taxes will go up, because Washington can’t get government spending down.”   It doesn’t seem to occur to Ryan that the bulk of American citizens are already in a situation of “shared scarcity” brought about by fiscal irresponsibility of the past 10 years.  Is he speaking directly to the top 1-2% of wealthy Americans that they will now have to also accept some “shared scarcity” because their taxes will go up?  To whom is he speaking here?  Sounds to me like it is the top 1-2% and not the rest of us.  The rest of us are already sharing scarcity.

Another marvelous paragraph.  “They are telling future generations, you know, there’s just not much we can do about health care costs.  Government spending on health care is going to keep going up and up and up…and when we can’t borrow or tax another dollar, we’ll have to give a board of unelected bureaucrats the power to tell you what kind of treatments you can and can’t receive.”  I guess Ryan has yet to recognize that there were 40 million Americans without health care of any kind, and unelected health insurance bureaucrats were telling people, “Sorry.  Your child has a preexisting condition that we just won’t cover.”  Our health care bill isn’t the greatest, but it is certainly an improvement over nothing.  The best bill would include a single payer system.

Ryan continues.  “If we succumb to this view that our problems are bigger than we are – if we surrender more control over our economy to the governing class – then we are choosing shared scarcity over renewed prosperity, and managed decline over economic growth.”  Well, there’s a corker!!  “…governing class…”?   Is this in response to the growing awareness that the Republicans are no longer capable of governing – but that the Democrats are?  Is Ryan trying to get out in front of this awareness by calling the Democrats the “governing class”?   If the Democrats are the “governing class”, what does that make the Republicans? 

Here’s the conclusion to these statements from Ryan:  “That’s the real class warfare that threatens us – a class of governing elites picking winners and loser, and determining our destinies for us.”  Again, to whom is he speaking here?  Certainly not to most of us who are well aware that the corporate interests in this country have already chosen who their winners and losers will be, and have determined that our destinies ought to be at their corporate direction.  It is not possible to gut public education, the social safety net, et al, and then pretend that there is not a nefarious intent. 

Going back to John Milton’s Belial, we all know that he was a fictional character, though brilliantly portrayed.  Would that Paul Ryan was fictional as well.  But he is not, and we must be aware of his ability, as exemplified in this speech, to “make the worse appear the better reason”, and not let the Republicans “…perplex and dash maturest reason.” 

Tips from the Great Depression

Sewing Machines - A Memory from the Great Depression

It may sound a bit weird, but if one is facing or enduring economic hard times, it is time if you don’t already have one, to buy a sewing machine.  Lots of money can be saved with a useful sewing machine.  It need not be a fancy one that does everything but buy the fabric, but it has to have three features:  go forward, at the flip of a switch go backward, and do adjustable width zigzag.

Going forward is obvious, so no need to comment on that.  Going backward means when sewing a seam, starting out about a half inch from where you want to start sewing, going backward for a few stitches, then forward will prevent the stitches from pulling apart.  The same is true at the end of the forward motion.  Taking a few stitches backward will prevent the same pulling apart at the end of the forward motion.  In the really olden days, one needed to tie the upper and lower ends of the threads together, which was a tedious and time consuming process.  Thus, the need for backward stitches.

Zigzag stitches are used in a variety of ways, and it takes practice to figure those out.  For this post, however, the most obvious one is mending holes in the kid’s pants!  Back and forth with a zigzag does the job nicely.

One other good tip from the Great Depression is to never buy contour sheets.  They are convenient, of course, but not a necessity.  When a flat sheet wears out in the middle, don’t put it in the rag bag.  Cut it down the very center, take the outer edges and overlap them so they make a flat seam, sew the edges down, of course, and then hem the new worn outer edges so they don’t rip.  Use this sheet for the top sheet only for comfort’s sake.  My own kids said they were in high school before they realized the top sheet didn’t have to have a seam down the middle.  They are all college graduates, so they were not permanently damaged by sleeping under a “turned sheet”, as these sheets were called.

Re: bin Laden

Re: Bin Laden

“Justice has been done”

“Vengeance is mine saith the Lord”

“Of course it is all right to just kill him.  He had declared war on us”

“We have laws against assassination”

“Congress had not passed a law declaring war on al Queda”

“We should have taken him prisoner”

“We weren’t there in the compound, so we can’t judge what was done”

“He was a terribly evil man, so it was OK to kill him”

“But we decided that he was evil.  His followers didn’t think so.”

“He killed 3,000 of our citizens”

“Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed thousands and thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis”

And I doubt if the discussion will stop anytime soon.  My own personal opinion is that I wish he could have been taken prisoner.  Then taken to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.  That would have been more appropriate than here because of the al Queda acts of terrorism world-wide.  There he would for sure have received justice.  But then, I thank God that I was not the one giving the orders, but I also thank God that someone who has courage and intelligence did.  When decisions are made that are made on thoughtful analysis and not on ideology, generally they are the correct ones.

As it is, I thank the stars for Mark Twain who once again, even though it was 100 years ago, came up with a very pithy quip which expresses my feelings exactly.  “I have never wished for the death of any man.  But I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

The dangerous work has been done by some incredibly brave men.  Now the slogging, boring, but very necessary work begins of analyzing the anti-terrorism laws and procedures that were put in place by the Bush administration to ‘fight’ terrorism .  Were these laws and procedures necessary?  If so, are they still necessary?  The questions go on, but we must never let bin Laden win by losing our civil rights to the radical right-wing agenda of one-party rule – theirs.

Scaring Myself

It took me three times as a candidate before I was actually elected to the Board of Supervisors.  The first time I ran I was so naïve, but even though I lost I was thrilled that 3,000 people agreed with me.  Wow! 

So the first time a ran it was about 1985/86 when I was walking precincts that I knocked on the door of a modest home with a well-kept garden.  A woman answered, clutching a Bible.  This startled me a tad, but I went into my usual candidate spiel.  Her only question was, “Do you approve of the welfare system?”  My answer, “I used to be a social worker so I know the system needs to be overhauled, but basically, yes, I approve of the welfare system.”  By that time her husband was standing behind her, clutching his Bible.  The wife said, “We can’t support you.  We believe that the devil is behind the government trying to take over from God.  People need to rely on God, not the government, for what they need.  They need to pray that God will supply their needs.  We need to go because we’re late to Bible study.” With that she shut the door.  I was relieved that the clutched Bibles were not a means of protection against me.

Needless to say, I was taken aback because that was the first time I had heard that idea.  As a Roman Catholic of a fairly liberal stance it never occurred to me that the welfare department I had worked for was an instrument of the devil.  I had rather thought we were trying to help people – not hinder their spiritual development.  We weren’t very good at times in helping people, and I was probably one of the worst of social workers in that I had graduated from college on a Friday with a degree in English, and gone to work for the welfare department on Monday.  I could identify almost any verse from Milton or Shakespeare but hadn’t a clue as to the few laws the department had to follow in the early 1950’s.  Fortunately for the county I was then working in, I didn’t last very long.

But back to the couple and their beliefs.  I shrugged and went on, thinking that these two were real ding-bats, and thank the good Lord there weren’t that many of them.  How wrong I was.

Since none of my friends were Evangelical Protestant Christians, and I didn’t really see the need to attend one of their churches, little did I know that this anti-government attitude was so very prevalent.   There was also this notion that if they had enough faith, God would reward them with material goods.  How wonderful this was!  And how it fit in perfectly with the right-wing Republican notion that taxes are basically a bad thing, especially if used for the benefit of the poor, elderly, disabled or other unfit members of society who are unable to work, because that is socialism, and socialism requires tax dollars, and these unfit people should be praying to God anyway. 

So we ended up with what I consider the unholy alliance of right-wing Christians who believe that only God should provide, and the wealthy that want it all for themselves, and don’t want to pay any taxes to benefit anyone else.  Unfortunately for the rest of us, the wealthy have great PR people who twist words to mean what they want them to mean.   For example, we constantly hear from our current Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, “the American people have spoken”.  He says this because the House of Representatives now has more Republicans than Democrats after the 2010 elections, even though the Senate and the White House are Democratic. 

The Huffington Post Social News, March 22, 2010, posted Frightening GOP Behavior.  “The idea that the minority party represents the “will of the people” (not some of the people, but ‘The people”) is the seedling of a totalitarian mindset.  In this mindset – democracy doesn’t matter, ideas are not to be discussed, and opposing views are not to be respected.  What matters is that they alone have the truth, they alone are metaphysically connected to the “mind of the people” and can interpret their will, and because they have truth and speak for the people, others represent a threat and must be silenced and stopped.”

How perfectly this fits into the fundamentalist Christian view that unless one accepts Jesus Christ as one’s personal Savior, then one is not a Christian.  They and they alone have the “truth” for Christians.  This convergence of the radical right in religion and radical right in politics is becoming ever more frightening for those of us spend time looking at these issues.

Three Bios

If you are reading the Bio blog, you will notice that I inadvertently entered by Bio blog 3 times.  All three are identical, so don't bother reading the 2nd and 3rd.  Other than that..... 

Biography

Blogging for Dummies suggested that one of the initial entries on one’s blog ought to be a bio – after all, readers like to know something about the person who is putting these words on paper.

Years ago when I first got involved in politics one piece of advice was that my husband and I should review our lives, determine what could be used against us, and then reveal it first before any opposition could find out about it.   All we could discover was that we had both lived very boring lives, relative to any scandal, that is.  Both of our parents were still married to each other, we were still married to each other, and our kids were not on the way to creating any public scandal.   We had both grown up in Southern California, gone on to public schools from K – 12, then on to public colleges and universities.  We had both graduated with a Bachelor degree.  After we were married my husband went on to graduate school, eventually earning a PhD, at a public university.   We have four adult children now, with grand-children and some great-grands.  By the way, both my husband and I arrived along with the Great Depression, which will give you some idea of our ages.  We, of course, think our lives have been very exciting and satisfying, even without any scandal.

I mentioned being involved in politics.   I was a local political activist for eleven years, then an appointed official in our county for eight years, then an elected county official for another 8 years.  This has given me an insight into politics that not too many people have, and that insight is one of the reasons I want to have my own blog.  That and some bits of wisdom in my years of experience outside of politics might be interesting to some.  Thus, the title of this blog:
“Surely You Jest.  Primarily Progressive Political Punditry,  and other irrelevant matters.” 

The main reason for my wanting my own blog is that our local paper will only print my writings every 30 days, and I am limited to no more than 600 words.  I will say that this has made my writing somewhat devoid of adverbs and adjectives, but perhaps that will change.  Many people have commented that they enjoy my writings.  I am going to take them at their word.

 

Blogging for Dummies suggested that one of the initial entries on one’s blog ought to be a bio – after all, readers like to know something about the person who is putting these words on paper.

Years ago when I first got involved in politics one piece of advice was that my husband and I should review our lives, determine what could be used against us, and then reveal it first before any opposition could find out about it.   All we could discover was that we had both lived very boring lives, relative to any scandal, that is.  Both of our parents were still married to each other, we were still married to each other, and our kids were not on the way to creating any public scandal.   We had both grown up in Southern California, gone on to public schools from K – 12, then on to public colleges and universities.  We had both graduated with a Bachelor degree.  After we were married my husband went on to graduate school, eventually earning a PhD, at a public university.   We have four adult children now, with grand-children and some great-grands.  By the way, both my husband and I arrived along with the Great Depression, which will give you some idea of our ages.  We, of course, think our lives have been very exciting and satisfying, even without any scandal.

I mentioned being involved in politics.   I was a local political activist for eleven years, then an appointed official in our county for eight years, then an elected county official for another 8 years.  This has given me an insight into politics that not too many people have, and that insight is one of the reasons I want to have my own blog.  That and some bits of wisdom in my years of experience outside of politics might be interesting to some.  Thus, the title of this blog:
“Surely You Jest.  Primarily Progressive Political Punditry,  and other irrelevant matters.” 

The main reason for my wanting my own blog is that our local paper will only print my writings every 30 days, and I am limited to no more than 600 words.  I will say that this has made my writing somewhat devoid of adverbs and adjectives, but perhaps that will change.  Many people have commented that they enjoy my writings.  I am going to take them at their word.

Blogging for Dummies suggested that one of the initial entries on one’s blog ought to be a bio – after all, readers like to know something about the person who is putting these words on paper.

Years ago when I first got involved in politics one piece of advice was that my husband and I should review our lives, determine what could be used against us, and then reveal it first before any opposition could find out about it.   All we could discover was that we had both lived very boring lives, relative to any scandal, that is.  Both of our parents were still married to each other, we were still married to each other, and our kids were not on the way to creating any public scandal.   We had both grown up in Southern California, gone on to public schools from K – 12, then on to public colleges and universities.  We had both graduated with a Bachelor degree.  After we were married my husband went on to graduate school, eventually earning a PhD, at a public university.   We have four adult children now, with grand-children and some great-grands.  By the way, both my husband and I arrived along with the Great Depression, which will give you some idea of our ages.  We, of course, think our lives have been very exciting and satisfying, even without any scandal.

I mentioned being involved in politics.   I was a local political activist for eleven years, then an appointed official in our county for eight years, then an elected county official for another 8 years.  This has given me an insight into politics that not too many people have, and that insight is one of the reasons I want to have my own blog.  That and some bits of wisdom in my years of experience outside of politics might be interesting to some.  Thus, the title of this blog:
“Surely You Jest.  Primarily Progressive Political Punditry,  and other irrelevant matters.” 

The main reason for my wanting my own blog is that our local paper will only print my writings every 30 days, and I am limited to no more than 600 words.  I will say that this has made my writing somewhat devoid of adverbs and adjectives, but perhaps that will change.  Many people have commented that they enjoy my writings.  I am going to take them at their word.