My Silly Reason

I just watched a video on YouTube, and I re-remembered a conversation I had with my brother Jimmy.

In 2008, I had gone home for Thanksgiving.  I remember my sister Mary Ann telling me that Jimmy had specifically requested that I drive him and Mercedes to my brother Sammy's house for our Thanksgiving get-together.  I did and we spent much of the day with one another.

The 20-minute drive was mostly quiet.  We drove through the countryside taking a road north of Roscoe along a highway lined with hundreds of windmills.  At one point, while Jimmy stared out the window, he said, "This is good.  It's about time that these poor farmers came out on top."

We arrived at my brother's house and family was bustling around.  Jimmy sat quietly taking it all in.

We left that evening and attended church together.  After church, we went to Wal-Mart and bought some candy for Mercedes and some flowers for mom.

Family Picture 11/08

We returned to Sammy's house and enjoyed the company.  Some watched football; we ate; some laughed; we took family pictures.


As the evening came to a close, I recall sitting on the porch with Jimmy and my sister Helen and we started talking about Obama, whispering because, well, Obama wasn't the choice for most of my family. I don't remember if my sister Helen remembers this or not, but Jimmy said he had voted for Obama because he felt that he would make an impact on the kids that needed it most --- the underprivileged. (Some readers don't know this about Jimmy, but he spent most of his life working with juvenile delinquents.  He always championed for the oppressed.)

I knew he had voted for him without him telling me as much.  I knew what Jimmy meant, and if one hasn't worked with troubled kids, it would be hard to understand his point.

I just finished watching the video again and it put a smile on my face to know that Jimmy was right.  It's perhaps a silly reason to vote for someone, but it's my silly reason.

I will vote for Obama again.



* My brother Jimmy died of cancer the day before Obama was inaugurated into office.

My Case Against Romney, My Case for Obama: A list

I’ve gotten on Facebook a few times to vent about Romney. It’s no secret to people who know me: I’m voting for Obama. And I’ve made my case, in several fits and spurts, but I’ve not yet put down my thoughts in a cohesive manner.

Here is my first attempt.

The core of why I’m not casting a vote for Romney has to do with trust. I’m talking about the core of the person and the core of what will follow later in my posts. I just can’t trust him.

Here are a few reasons why:

1. I can’t trust a candidate who changes his position as frequently and with such lack of care as does Romney. He has changed his positions on almost every issue: women’s rights; the auto bailout; the effect of the stimulus; foreign policy; and yes, even domestic economic policy.
2. I can’t trust a candidate who has made millions of dollars by sending American jobs overseas to the country that he calls one of our biggest economic adversaries -- China.
3. I can’t trust a candidate who is less than transparent with his taxes.
4. I can’t trust a candidate who says he will close loopholes for the rich when most of his money is tied up in offshore accounts, which essentially means taking advantage of loopholes.
5. I can’t trust a candidate who tells me that he will close loopholes but won’t provide details about which he would close.
6. I can’t trust a candidate who can’t give a straight answer on whether or not he supports equal rights, yet has said in the past that he does not.
7. I can’t trust a candidate who doesn’t support Latinos and whose immigration advisor wrote the Arizona immigration law.
8. I can’t trust a candidate who tries to make political hay with an ambassador’s death (before even knowing the details).
9. I can’t trust a candidate whose military advisors will be the same people who advised George W. Bush.
10. I can’t trust a candidate who wants to ramp up military action in the Middle East.
11. I can’t trust a person who thinks corporations are people and should have the same rights.
12. I can’t trust a person who calls himself bipartisan when the record clearly shows he has not been.
13. I can’t trust a person who bullies others.
14. I can’t trust a candidate who claims he is unemployed and can relate when he has never lost his job and makes more money in a day than most do in a year.
15. I can’t trust a candidate who believes that 47% of the American population is not worth his time and says so (but only behind closed doors to rich donors).
16. I can’t trust a candidate who, in order to avoid military duty, went to France on missionary work. (This is not to say that missionary work is bad; rather, the point is that he did this to avoid military service.)
17. I can’t trust a candidate who says that our military must grow and that we must spend more taxpayer dollars on this, even after we have already doubled the budget of the military under Bush’s term in office.
18. I can’t trust a candidate who left the Office of Governor of Massachusetts with the same approval rating as George Bush.
19. I can’t trust a candidate whose running mate wants to make Medicare into a voucher system.
20. I can’t trust a candidate whose running mate voted to privatize Social Security.
21. I can’t trust a candidate who denies the impact of human behavior on global climate change.

There are more reasons, some of which I am likely to address at a later time, but the gist of this is

…. I …… just…. can’t...don’t….. trust…… him.

* I will add links to this list.

Poem in Your Pocket Day

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day, and here are two poems that I will keep with me today. Each gives me solace. If you’re here, I hope it provides for you as much.




Poem for the Living
By Theodora Kroeber


When I am dead,
Cry for me a little.
Think of me sometimes,
But not too much.
It is not good for you
Or your wife or your husband
Or your children
To allow your thoughts to dwell
Too long on the dead.
Think of me now and again
As I was in life
At some moment which is pleasant to recall.
But not for long.
Leave me in peace
As I shall leave you, too, in peace.
While you live,
Let your thoughts be with the living.





Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?



* To hear Hayden read his poem go here. The link also takes you to a wonderful poetry site.

Weirdness....anomaly?

So yesterday I was visiting with my Freshmen English class after we had watched portions of Fahrenheit 9/11 and we had moved into the topic of language and how it is used in documentaries to influence how we view a subject matter. Specifically, we had gotten into an article that was a rebuttal to Moore’s production.

(And as political as I am here and on facebook, I work quite hard to steer clear of my personal viewpoints and try to present different viewpoints on issues so that students feel more comfortable in their discussions.)

What usually happens with this unit is that the movie influences those who have no opinion of the Bush Administration to think negatively of him, it influences those who dislike the Bush Administration to dislike him even further, and it has little to no effect on those who previously viewed Bush positively (at times it makes them dig in even deeper).

Essentially the video helps to underscore the role of language in our perception of the world around us and how it affects how we interact with it.

As we started discussing the “59 Deceits” (the rebuttal), I tried to make everyone feel comfortable enough to voice their opinion and I ususally get a mish-mash of students who feel one way or another: some feel used, some still don’t like Bush, some still like Bush, some don’t trust Moore, and some feel vindicated -- again, there is a wide range.

Surprisingly to me, in one particular section of my class, not a one felt any sort of positive feeling toward the Bush Administration, EVEN IF they didn’t like Moore and EVEN IF they realized that some of what Moore did was stretching ideas, and EVEN AFTER reading “59 Deceits.”

This is surprising to me because out of a class of about 20 students, all from Kentucky and about half being rural, not a one denied supporting the Democratic Party.

I was floored by this. This has never happened in all the times I’ve taught this unit and this includes my time teaching in California.

Anomaly? Peer pressure? I don’t know, but it certainly was different.

What? You didn't know they were that rich? What else didn't you know?

So, today I was reading that most Americans don’t really know how much the gap has grown between the haves and the have nots. Well, to put it this way, Americans in this recent study unknowingly picked Sweden’s distribution (where 20 % control 36 % of the wealth) over ours -- the U.S. (where 20% control 84% of the wealth).

I think the percentage of Americans who preferred Sweden’s model was 92%. That’s right. A VAST majority of Americans don’t like the current distribution and don’t even know it!

So, here’s something else that locals here (at least those who vote on WBKO’s poll page) don’t know.

While 87.73% of people said that they didn’t understand the current healthcare law, a whopping 71.52% said it should be repealed.

Uhhhhh... can someone explain that one. I know that there might be a few who vote on one and not the other, but to have it skewed so much???? It’s a sad commentary on sheeple.

More on Tax Cuts (or not for some) OR Just Gifts for Rich

So my last posting had to do with the proposed tax cuts (or not). Personally, I think calling them tax hikes provides the wrong message.

I want to refer to the current plan as tax stasis -- stopping the bleeding of the money from the middle class to the upper class as I outlined in my previous post. We all know that the current economic distress is not affecting everyone equally. The rich got richer and everyone else got poorer.

I’ve heard the following arguments about the current tax proposals:

1. Let the tax cuts stay for everyone
2. Let the tax cuts expire for everyone
3. Let the tax cuts expire only for the rich

I find myself voting for item number 3, and I’ll let you know why AFTER I share why I don’t agree with the first two options.

1. The first option doesn’t make sense to me because the Bush tax cuts have cost $2.1 trillion and with the taxes on that, it actually comes to $2.5 trillion. That tax cut along with the cost of two wars has led us to move from a surplus of $236 billion to where we were at the end of 2009, which is the debt incurred by the passage of the TARP fund.

This just doesn’t make sense for me either because we have to somehow get out of debt, right? So, how are we to get out of debt (as a nation) if there is not an increase in revenue?

I realize that spending cuts are an answer, but not one person in government is actually going to do that. No one wants to cut military spending, which by the way is a very, very big expense. No one dares touch Social Security or Medicare, even those who are against “socialized medicine” (yes Tea Partiers and many Republicans, I’m talking to you). They are just platitudes -- efforts to get re-elected. I’m not saying that Democrats are innocent either. They are wanting to get re-elected as well. (As an aside, I don’t see how Rangel can even contemplate running for re-election -- jerk.)

2. Simply put, it’s a combination of 1 and 3, so read on (please?).

3. Okay, I have many reasons for this one, so many in fact that I had to make a checklist.

        ❑        First of all, they don’t create as many jobs with their surplus money as many would like to argue. In fact, they are more likely to hang on to their money -- to invest it in the markets. If you don’t believe me, then think about what caused the current crisis. It was (partly) a result of people speculating with money to make more money; they didn’t create more jobs with that money. In fact, we can look at what happened during the crisis to see that they (the 2% of the rich, I mean here) did. The government gave them money to help the economy recover. And what did they do? They fired people and subsequently made more money! WTF?!?

                They got richer!

        ❑        Okay, okay.... so here’s another ditty. Some argue that the rich will use that extra tax break to create more jobs. (Did I just list that above? Oh, I must be trying to make a point here.) Even though I’ve partly shown that they don’t do that, here is something to get you thinking: did you know that someone who makes $500,000 -- and when I say that they make this, I am talking about taxable income, not gross income -- will pay about $10,000 more in taxes if the cuts expire? How many people does that employ fulltime? None? Oh, okay. Just checkin’. If you want to plug in your numbers, go here: http://www.mytaxburden.org/. You can check my math as well. If you take into consideration tax write-offs, etc. you can see that someone who clears $500,000 is making some change there. And this bears repeating: they don’t save enough in taxes to create but one part-time job.
        
                So to tell me that they will create new jobs is absolute bunk.

        ❑        I’ve heard some say, “Well, it’s not fair to punish them. Shouldn’t they be able to keep their money to make more?”

                What kind of logic is that? Let me recap for just a bit before I continue: they got rich off of us! It’s that simple.

        ❑        There’s more. Here is part of how they got rich: they took their cash overseas! Got that? In an economy where they have “Bush tax cuts” they are taking their money out of the U.S. They aren’t reinvesting that money in our economy, they aren’t creating jobs with it, and they aren’t paying more in taxes.

        ❑        So let’s continue with why I vote for number 3. We find out that about anywhere from 21% to 30% of people who make around $100,000 / year are living paycheck to paycheck (depending upon which source you consult). The proposal currently being floated is to let the current rates expire for those who make (those who clear) $250,000, and that is 2% of the population. That is the population that most likely benefitted from the crisis, that is the population that least needs the tax break, that is the population that is sending our money overseas. Those who make less than $250,000 could use that extra money, just to make it to the next paycheck.


Any questions about why I think we should let the Bush tax gift for the rich expire and keep it for everyone else?

I didn’t think so.

Comments welcome below.
                
        

Tax Breaks for the Rich = Trickle Down Economics = Doesn't work

This is going to short(er) and sweet -- perhaps bitter to some?

I understand that everyone wants a tax break. What I don’t understand is why people are defending raising taxes on the rich and leaving the other 98% of us with a tax break.







Let me provide two reminders:

1. Remember how the government helped out some very troubled companies? Yes. Okay, do you remember what they did with that money? Let me think.... oh yeah, they fired people and gave their CEOs bonuses.
2. Remember how we used to have a budget surplus at the beginning of Bush’s term? Yes. Okay, do you remember how we had a huge deficit at the beginning of Obama’s? Let me think.... oh yeah, we had higher taxes then.

I realize that many people are mad at Democrats for not fixing the economy, but what I can’t wrap my mind around is the blame that Republicans are shirking, as though we should let them run the country’s economy, one that went from a surplus to a deficit.

What Republicans are promoting now is that we should keep taxes low for everyone. Why everyone?

I don’t get that one.

When the rich have gotten money from the government, they haven’t created more jobs, so what kind of argument is it that we should give them more money (continued tax breaks)?

The truth is that many wealthy people pay less in taxes than what they say they do. They have more loop-holes. Don’t believe me? Well, it’s your job to prove me wrong.

I know... I’ve seen those charts and heard those arguments that show they pay more in total taxes, but have you seen the ones that show they continued to get richer during the current crisis while everyday people did not?

Start here: http://www.businessinsider.com/not-everyone-is-hurting--the-rich-get-richer-as-the-income-inequality-gap-explodes-2010-3

If after reading this, you still think the rich need to have a continued tax break, then I don’t think you’ve really done your homework. Remember, I’m talking about the rich here, not most of the people reading this.