EFTA00691949.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: jeevacation@gmail.com Subject: Fwd: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 05/19/2013 Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 15:02:08 +0000 Attachments: Moyers_&_Company_Marshall_Ganz_on_Making_Social_Movements_Matter_Mly_10,_2 013.pdf; Subarufraigslist_Ad_Is_Brutally_Honest_Huff_Post_05_12_2013.pdf; IRS_Knew_Teafarty_Was_Being_Targetedin_2011,_Report_Stephen_Ohlemache_AP- Huff_Post_May_11,2013.pdf; Who_Can_Take_Republicans_Seriously_The_Editorial_Board_NYT_May_12,2013.pdf; How_Austerity_Kills_David_Stucker_&_Sanjay_Basu_NYT_May_12,_2013.pdf; America_the_Cluelessiratilc_Bruni_NYT_May_11,_2013.pdf; Gunmen_fire_on_Mother's_Day_parade_ChevelJohnson_May_12,_2013.pdf; The Day_theflarth_Stood_Stupid_Marty_Kaplan_Huff_Post_05_13_2013.pdf; IffiTe_Fed_IC.nows_Banks_Are_To_=?WINDOWS-1252?Q? o_Big,_Why_Doesn=92tit_Make_The? = m Smaller=5FJames Kwak The Baseline_Scenario_May_l 5,_2013.pdf; Ies2ent John_F._KenTiedyfommencement_Address_at_American_University,June_10, _1963.pc11; Are_multiple_concussions_driving_suicides_in_the_military_Alan_Zarembo_LAT_May_16 ,_2013.pdf; 10_Examples_of_Bush_and_the_Republicans_Using_Govemment_Power_to_Target_Critics _Bob_Cesca_Huff_Post_05_16_2013.pdf Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png DEAR FRIEND The last gilded age was the 1920s when the rich and the poor lived is totally separate worlds. But today, the wealth gap is so much more profound than it was in the 1920s. The average `sales associate' at Walmart only makes $8.81 an hour, while the six heirs for the Walmart fortune are worth more than $go billion, the same as the bottom 130 million Americans. One in four Americas makes less than $io an hour. 146 million do not have enough to meet basic needs. 42% of college grads are living at home with their parents because they can't afford rent anywhere else. I realize that the Top 1.96 don't want to hear this, but they should because when people have nothing to lose, violence is a convenient way out. And in countries where there is a huge disparity between the rich and the poor, the rich gets kidnapped. It happens 72 times a day in Mexico, and getting kidnapped in South Africa is so common that there is an industry of professional brokers to handle the transfers. The greatest strength of America was the growth of its Middle Class which has been decimated by trickle-down supply-side Reaganite economics of the past three decades. This economic devastation is compounded by the fact that those at the top are so distance from Mitt Romney's famed 47% at the bottom and the fact that almost everyone in between them and the Top io% are living pay-check to pay-check having been squeezed by the crash of the housing bubble and financial markets. EFTA00691949 Let's remember that the Soviet Union, Roman empire, French aristocracy, overthrow of the Shah and the Arab Spring came to pass from within. And if we chose to ignore the ever increasing plight of the poor and the middle class, due to the indifference, our country runs the risk of an increasing number of Boston Marathons, Wacos, Timothy McVeighs and other forms of armed insurrections. For more than two hundred years the United States of America has been the beacon of hope for people around the world, because hard work and a shared sacrifice enabled anyone to become successful. In many ways today this is still true, with the exception of those who are teetering on the edge of survival or the increasing millions of Americans who have fallen through the safety-net, which if not aggressively addressed will lead to us becoming a second-tier nation, in spite of our military might or the wealth of the Top S. ****** Again, as many of you know I am a huge fan of Bill Moyers and last week's Moyers & Company - Marshall Ganz on Making Social Movements Matter - Bill spoke with veteran activist and organizer Marshall Ganz to discuss the power of social movements to effect meaningful social change. Ganz is a social movement legend who dropped out of Harvard to volunteer during Mississippi's Freedom Summer of 1964, he then joined forces with Cesar Chavez of the United Farmworkers, protecting workers who picked crops for pennies in California. Ganz also had a pivotal role organizing students and volunteers for Barack Obama's historic 2008 presidential campaign. Now 70, he's still organizing across the United States and the Middle East, and back at Harvard, teaching students from around the world about what it takes to beat Goliath. One of Ganz's themes is the crucial role narrative plays in social movements. "I think it's particularly important because doing the kind of work that movements do requires risk-taking, uncertainty, going up against the odds. And that takes a lot of hope,"Ganz tells Bill. "And so where do you gofor hopefulness? Where do you gofor courage? You go to those moral resources that arefound within narratives and within identity work and within traditions." Web site of this segment: http://billmoyers.corn/segment/marshall-ganz-on-making-social-movements-matted "We need a new story, a new way of describing our economic challenges and our political challenges that emphasizes not this idea of what each individual competes with, but the ways in which we cooperate and collaborate with one another." Marshall Ganz EFTA00691950 BILL MOYERS: At Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Marshall Ganz teaches the next generation of organizers, students from all over the world. He tells them: when in doubt, just remember the story in the Bible of little David and his slingshot... MARSHALL GANZ: In the story of David and Goliath the action begins when Goliath day after day marches out and repeatedly challenges the Israelites. And no one comes out to challenge him. It shifts when David shows up to bring the food to his brothers and hears this and says, "Why is no one doing anything to respond to this?" Or as Ganz puts it, the first thing that happens here is injustice, need to act, commit, and then the action begins. Until that point, nothing is really happening.... When the king says, "Here, take my, take my helmet, take my shield.. Take my armor:" And David puts it on only to discover that he can't move because it is too heavy. And being a shepherd who knows how to protect his sheep from a wolf or a bear and it wasn't with a sword and a shield, he looks down seeing five stones, picking up one, using his slingshot to hit Goliath in the forehead. Pointing out that this is not a story about non-violence.... BILL MOYERS: Smiting Goliath might as well be Marshall Ganz's job description. It began in Mississippi's Freedom Summer of 1964 when his fury against injustice pulled him out of Harvard and into the struggle for civil rights. From there, he signed on with the legendary Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and for 16 years, struggled to unionize the men and women in the fields of California who toiled endless hours and mounting days, picking crops for next to nothing. Three decades after Marshall Ganz had dropped out of Harvard, he went back to finish his degree and earn a doctorate. A few years later, he was asked to become the architect behind the Obama campaign's skillful organizing of students and volunteers. Today, Marshall Ganz is a founder of the Leading Change Network, a global community of organizers, educators and researchers mobilizing for democracy. You'll find more of his experience and philosophy in this book: Why David Sometimes Wins. MARSHALL GANZ: It helped me understand that dealing with, dealing with fear is probably the central moral question we have to deal with. By moral, I mean, if you think, if you think of moral questions as not being about principles, but more what Jung called "moral sentiment." In other words, how do I live with empathy as opposed to alienation? How do I live with a sense of my own value as opposed to a feeling of deficiency? How do I live in a spirit of hope instead of fear? WHEN ASKED ABOUT LOVE, POWER and JUSTICE. MARSHALL GANZ: Argues that power without love can never be just, but similarly love that doesn't take power seriously can never achieve justice. what I learned, the public narrative is the leadership skill of moving people to public action. There's a story of self, which is using narrative to communicate why I've been called enabling me to tell stories that can communicate the values that move me . A story of us is using narrative to create a sense of the values we share as a community. And then the story of now is do they experience the challenge to those values that requires action now? So sort of three pieces. THE THEME OF YES WE CAN. BILL MOYERS: Is it true that the slogan for Cesar Chavez and his farm workers was "si se puede? MARSHALL GANZ: Si se puede, yeah. BILL MOYERS: Which translated literally into Obama's... MARSHALL GANZ: "Yes, we can." Oh, you betcha. BILL MOYERS: Is that right? EFTA00691951 MARSHALL GANZ: Well, "si se puede" came in Arizona, 1972 Arizona had a governor Jack Williams that passed a law that deniedfarm workers the right to organize, boycott. I mean, it was a terrible law. And so we had tofigure out were we going to challenge it or not? So we all went to Arizona to challenge it. We got there. And went out talking to people. And Dolores Huerta actually came back. We were meeting in a hotel/motel room. She said, "I've been talking to all these everywhere. And everywhere I go, people say, 'no se puede,"no se puede.'" She goes, "Ah, you can't do it. You can't do it, you know? It's just too, you know? And we got to, we got to answer that. We got to say, 'si se puede.'"And so that became the slogan in that campaign was "si se puede." Yes, it can be done. And that then became a farm worker movement slogan. "Si se puede." So in New Hampshire, when Obama lost that night, and there was a lot of that talk going on around. BARACK OBAMA: Generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums of the spirit of a people. MARSHALL GANZ: Then comes out, "Yes, we can." Well, that's "si se puede." BARACK OBAMA: Yes we can. Yes we can. POLITICAL INEQUALITY BILL MOYERS: I remember what you wrote once that you had learned in Mississippi during the summer of 1964. You said all the inequalities between Blacks and Whites were driven by a deeper inequality, the inequality of power. That seems to me, the fundamental reality of American life today. MARSHALL GANZ: Yeah, I think the political inequality and the economic inequality and a kind of cultural inequality that sort of all reinforce one another is an enormous problem, obviously. I mean, that's sort of what we're trying to deal with. And so the question and in some ways, you could sort of think that liberal democracy is based on a deal that inequality and economic resources can be balanced by equality in political resources. In other words, that equal voice can somehow balance unequal wealth. Well we're sort of way beyond that. And... BILL MOYERS: One man, one vote, one person, one vote has been, has been overwhelmed by $100,000 and a million dollars. MARSHALL GANZ: And it's not even just the money. If you live in a swing state, your vote counts so much more than if you live in New York or Illinois or California, when it comes to electing a president. If you live in a swing district, when it comes to electing a member of Congress, your vote counts . If you live in a district that's been gerrymandered so it's all Democrats or all Republicans, your vote does not count. So when you really look at whose votes count, it's a very, very small proportion. So we have some deep structural flaws that go all the way back to the beginning that aren't, they don't, it's not about us as a people or our culture, our beliefs. We're operating within in a set of political institutions that distort and actually warp our capacity to express our beliefs. Maybe what we really need is an equal voice amendment to guarantee that each vote actually had equal weight. That'd be pretty radical. And if we actually designed a system that did that, now, you know, would we get something like that tomorrow? No, probably not. But, but I guess my point is that, that there are a lot of sources of energy and change in a country, not to mention the world. A lot of it is generationally driven. It's in places that may be unexpected. That was a great moment. That was what sort of raised such hopes about his presidency. THE FLAW OF THE FREE MARKET BILL MOYERS: So you talk about the power of story and for the last 40 years, the story of the free market has been the triumphant story in American culture. MARSHALL GANZ: It really is, you know? And it's powerful, because it has a moral dimension and it has a political dimension and it has an economic dimension. It's sort of like that the market means we're all free to make our own choices, so isn't that great, because we want to be free. And it's all about choices. EFTA00691952 And politically, well it's all based on people making their choices. And so that's democratic. And economically, well, we all know it's efficient, right, because that's how markets work. It's, and the problem is every one of those claims is fundamentally flawed and fundamentally an act of faith. I mean, Harvey Cox wrote this thing about the market is God. And...but the big question is where's the missing alternative counter to that? And I think that is an enormous intellectual challenge for our time right now. Where's that alternative? BILL MOYERS: We need a new story? MARSHALL GANZ: We need a new story. But it's also a new way of describing our economic challenges and our political challenges that emphasizes not this idea of what each individual competes with, each other individual as the answer, but the ways in which we cooperate and collaborate with one another as the answer. You know, Albert Hirschman, the development economist wrote this book a number of years ago, I'm sure you know about it, "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty." And sort of the idea was, okay, so you got an institution. And it's screwing up. And so one way to fix it is to exercise voice. The other way is you can exit. The market solutions are all exit solutions. BILL MOYERS: Explain that to me. MARSHALL GANZ: Well, so you don't like the way the schools work, exit, make your own over here. And that way you exercise choice. You don't like the way public health works, exit, over here, make your own. Now the only problem is you can only exit and make your own if you got the money to do it. And so the result is that you create these parallel systems of elite systems that are, you know, that fragment the whole. The public gets poorer and poorer and poorer, and you create all these little isolated golden ghettos all around of privilege. And the focus is on how do we find market solutions, market solutions, market... when we should but saying, how do we find more effective ways to exercise voice? How can we have more, more effective public deliberation? How can we bring more people into the process? How can we create the venues where people can actually learn and deliberate with one another? BILL MOYERS: Can you take this one step further or beyond government over to the leadership of other institutions, business leaders, educational leaders? I mean, how do we write a narrative that includes them in this new story of collaboration, cooperation? FREE MARKET's BIGGEST FLAW. MARSHALL GANZ: You know Karl Polanyi's book, "The Great Transformation," written in 1941, sort of nailed it when he said, if you have a good that can, where price captures value, you can marketize it. And where price does not capture value you cannot marketize it. And he was talking about labor and land when he was writing in 1941. And he was trying to explain the, the problem of the open market system after World War I that had wiped out all sorts of social structures that cleared the way for the rise of fascism in Europe. I mean, this is the context he was writing in. He was saying, "So the open market system was allowed to be a solvent that ground everything down." Because it doesn't respect values other than price values. Now how do you put a price on education, really? How do you put a price on health, really? How do you put a price on art, really? Now when we price these things, we undermine their value. And so that's why we need churches. That's why we need schools whose value isn't based on pricing, it's based on a different set of understanding and the resources that it generate doesn't depend on pricing. So I don't know. There's potentials out there. But I think somehow we need to get this into the, we need to get into this debate. We need to get into this argument and have it be about something really substantive. And not get drawn into these, "Oh, we're too polarized" or something. We need to be more polarized, but polarized around the right things. THE INTERVIEW ENDS WITH THIS. EFTA00691953 MARSHALL GANZ: There were three questions posed by a 1st century Jerusalem scholar Rabbi Hillel, when asked "How do we, how do we understand what we are to do in the world?" And he responded with three questions. The first one to ask yourself, "If I am notfor myself who will befor me?" It's not a selfish question, but it is a self-regarding question. Sort of saying, "Ask yourself what you're about, what you value, what you have to contribute, what..." But then the second question is, "If I am for myself alone, what am I?" But it, which is, it's to even be a who and not a what is to recognize that we are in the world in relationship with others and that our capacity to realize our own objectives is inextricably wrapped up with the capacity of others to realize theirs. And finally, "If not now, when?" The time for action is always now, because it's often only through action that we can learn what we need to learn in order to be able to act effectively in the ways that we intend. And the fact that they're questions is also really important to me, because it suggests that this work, this work of organizing, leadership is not about knowing, it's about learning. And it's about asking and it's about understanding that it is about dealing with the uncertain. It is about probing the unknown. It's not about control. It's about, it's about learning through purposeful experience. And so that's kind of, I think, what I've tried to, as I look back, what I've tried to learn, to teach, to do, to practice is how to be that kind of a learner and teacher. There was a cliché that management consultants coined years ago, "thinking outside the box." These words suns up much of what is wonderful about Marshall Ganz. He is a non-liner thinker who understands structure and realizes that our real strength is that instead of me, his mantra is we . He is someone who seeks the greater good, even if it necessitates conflict before compromise. Because if you are not willing for fight for something, you deserve whatever you are given. In Ganz's world, we should to see beyond monetary value, status quo, fame or convenience. Example, great films are based are not on box office success and great music is not the result of record sales or how many people download an iTune selection. Greatness is the shared experience that we can offer to others, even if we are not famous or rich, as long as we do it for the greater good for everyone and without prejudice As such, I urge everyone to download and watch Bill Moyers' interview with Marshall Ganz, as he is a inspiration and a guide for everyone who is willing to look beyond their own needs, desires or special interest in search of the greater good. On its second showing I strongly recommend that everyone see — The Untold History of the United States, a to hour (to episodes) documentary series on Showtime, directed and narrated by Oliver Stone. Co-written and co-produced by American University history professor Peter Kuznick — who collaborated with Stone on a same-titled, 784-page tie-in book — Untold History is part of a tradition of alternative cultural criticism, journalism, and history. Its chapters echo Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, John Reid, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Norman Mailer, I.F. Stone, Michael Moore and Jim Burns. With one reviewer calling it ominous, seductive, verbose, apocalypse-left in its politics, filled with scurrilous factoids about men who have monuments named after them, I found it as a refreshing look at United States during the last 8o years, especially when history is always re-written by the winners.... The most recent installment, episode 6, OLIVER STONE'S UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE US: JFK chronicled JFK and the Bay of Pigs; on the brink of total war during Cuban Missile Crisis; early Vietnam; JFK's attempts at peace with Khrushchev; JFK assassinated. As a result, I took another look at the Presidency of JFK, which I would like to share below. President John Kennedy, harboring doubts about another land war in Asia as a student of history who as a young Congressman that visited Viet Nam in 1951 during the debacle of the Korean War he advised the Truman Administration against "aiding the French Colonist and later spoke broadly of needing to win the support ofArabs, Africans and Asians who hated the White Man who bled them, beat them, exploited them and ruled them while pointing out the contradiction of supporting the French empire in Africa and Asia, while opposing Soviet moves in Hungry and Poland." However EFTA00691954 Kennedy a decorated combat veteran of World War 11 resisted in bringing in combat troupes, telling his adviser Arthur Schlesinger, "the troupes will march in, bands will play, the crowds will cheer and infour days everyone will haveforgotten, and then we will be told that we have to send in more troupes. It's like taking a drink, the affect wears off and you have to take another." But being an admirer of guerrilla warfare in World War ii, where British and Americans fought behind the lines in places like the Burma jungle, he did approve his generals other recommendations expanding military involvement in Viet Nam with the US personnel jumping from 800 when he took office to more than 16,000 advisers in 1963. He also allowed a growing army of CIA and numerous American contractors to flock to this new honey-pot of enterprise. Under Kennedy's three year watch, the CIA launched 163 major covert operations worldwide, only seven fewer than had been conducted under President Eisenhower in eight years. As such in its early years, Viet Nam was often referred to as a CIA War. Even with this Republicans were after Kennedy's scalp, with Moderate Republican New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller charging JFK, "being soft on Communism, naively believing that the Soviet leaders are reasonable and desirous of reaching a fundamental settlement with the West. Rockefeller who was a Moderate Republican said, "thefoundations of our safety are being sapped. Kennedy hadn't stopped Communist aggression in Laos, he hadfailed to provide air support during the Bay of Pigs invasion and stood idly by when the wall was being built in Berlin." In June 1963 Kennedy gave one of the extraordinary speeches in the loth Century at the Commencement at American University, where he encouraged his listeners to think about the Soviet people in human terms and calling for the end to the Cold War. Part 1: http://www.youtube.corn/watch?v=UUjWjnynA Part 2: http://www.youtube.cornAvatch?v=Ro5XO8nCes The American University speech, titled A Strategy ofPeace, was a commencement address delivered by President John F. Kennedy at the American University in Washington, D.C., on June 10, 1963. In the speech, Kennedy announced the development of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and his decision to unilaterally suspend all atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons as long as all other nations would do the same. The speech was unusual in its peaceful outreach to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and is remembered as one of Kennedy's finest and most important speeches. As such, I invite you to see the speech on YouTube via the above web links, read the attached transcript of the speech and most of all, I implore everyone to see Oliver Stone's — The Untold History of the United States. ****** I am tired to Republicans trying to tie everything that is not working with President Obama. He didn't start the wars in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Long before the US Consulate in Benghazi was attacked, during the previous Bush/Cheney Administration there were thirteen US Embassies that had been attacked killing several hundred people. Where was these same outraged Republicans? As Mark Shields and David Brooks said last Friday during PBS' Newshour when host Judy Woodruff asked how would they compared Watergate to the "scandal" hearings of the past week. MARK SHIELDS: "Yes. I mean, if we're going to compare it, I mean, we're talking about the Boston massacre vs. double parking, I mean, this week. This is not a -- I have heard this compared, this president -- in fact, Sen. Inhofe talked about impeachment of the president, which is just beyond ludicrous, because there's nothing that rises to any even criminal or negative effect here. I would say this, Judy, that the trust and confidence in the federal government began to end and erode and diminish when that happened. We had a president resign. We had 25 of his closest friends and allies and colleagues go to jail. And it was just -- it was a shock for this country's system, from which it's never really recovered." EFTA00691955 JUDY WOODRUFF: David, what about Watergate? DAVID BROOKS: "Yes. I have a perverse relationship to Watergate, because it made me interested in politics. It was those hearings, watching those hearings on TV that really lit the fire for me that this was really important, that what happened in Washington tremendously important, for good and evil, a test of character and a test of virtue. And it should be pointed out that, in Watergate, we saw acts of cowardice. We also saw some incredible acts of courage from some of the people chasing it down and reacting with integrity. To me, the aftershocks have been negative mostly, in part, as Mark described, with loss of trust in government, in part the rise of a scandal culture. Watergate really was a scandal, but we now have a lot of people who try to use scandal to settle policy differences by other means, who take mini-scandals and try to use them to got some policy edge or a political edge. And I actually think we as a country have become over-addicted to scandal as a way to destroy other people. And that was in the Supreme Court hearings, and that's in a lot of the scandals. So, I think it's bred a politics of cynicism which kind of reverberates, without the actual substance of a major act of corruption." Echoing this last week was Bill Mayer on his HBO show, Real Time With Bill Mayer, during his segment, New Rules, pointing out that there are scandals and then there are scandals and comparing Benghazi, prospective is important. MAYER: "And yes to explain Benghazi on the Sunday morning news shows Susan Rice used talking points (and showing Sarah PalM reading talking points that she had written on the palm of her hand) at least she didn't have to read them off her hand " then commenting about Representative Darrell Issa, who made a fortune in the car alarm business , who keeps calling everything a scandal.... Mayer, "the difference between Darrell Issa and a car alarm is that sometimes when a car alarm goes off, there's actually is a crime... I keep looking for a crime Susan Rice said mob instead of al Qaeda, Obama said active terror instead of terrorist act. Republicans are constantly coming up with these never before stated secret rules, that they only tell you about once you have broken them.... You don't make important speeches from a teleprompter.... No golfing until we have a budget.... Thou shall not criticize the President when he is on foreign soil unless he is a Democrat, then its okay.... Congressman Peter King thundered that the President was almost four minutes into his first Benghazi statement before he mentioned act of terror.... Oh yes, the four-minute rule, how could I have missed it..." MAYER: "Excuse me! Nixon ran a burglary ring out of the Oval Office. Reagan traded arms with terrorist. Bush gin up a war where thousands died by sending Collin Powell to lie to the UN with props.... In a poll last week, four in ten Republicans said that Benghazi was the worse scandal in American history.... If you think that Benghazi is worse than slavery, the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment, Tuskegee, purposely injecting Guatemalan mental patients with syphilis, lying about WMDs and the fact that banks today are still foreclosing on mortgages that they don't own then your hard on for Obama has lasted for more than four hours and you need to call a doctor... And while the press has been occupied with scandal, the biggest sandal and then most important story of the century so far happened last week when scientists reported that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the long-feared milestone of 400 parts per million and unless you are a chimney sweep that is bad news, because humans have never lived through it You think that Susan Rice gave bogus talking points about Benghazi, what about the BS talking points that the entire Republican Party has been spewing on climate change since the 1990s.... Who came up with the talking points that global warming is just a theory, and that it needs more study, and climate change is a hoax The Obama Administration isn't dirty, the air is...." THIS WEEK's READINGS EFTA00691956 In my seventh grade homeroom, my teacher, Mr. Kaiser would welcome each student into his classroom with, "you better check yourself." Because whatever baggage, behavioral issue, anger, arrogance, petty peeve, etc that you were feeling, his "check yourself' was a warning to not bring it into his classroom. Standing 6'7" with a heavy voice, this WWII. veteran was rarely challenged. And for those who did, he had a disarming way of making them feel like idiots in front of the entire class. Although Mr. Kaiser is long gone by now, boy I wish he or someone like him ran Congress. I start with this stow because I realize that in my zeal to expose, enunciate, discover and share whatever pearls of news worthy or cultural information that I post each Sunday, I should "check myself' to make sure that my own arrogance, ignorance and special peeve of the moment are within the confines of a balanced assessment. This doesn't mean I am always successful. Nor does it mean that I am not partisan. Because as most of you know, I am a card carrying liberal Democrat who is extremely proud that I live in a country that elected Barrack Hussein Obama as its President Leading me to believe that it is really true, that anyone in America truly has the chance of becoming President, although they may have a much better chance winning the lottery. I start with the above prequel because in trying to represent my beliefs, even for me at times it seems that I am always beating up on Republicans, Conservatives, Congress and the NRA -- and its over the top. After a bit of soul searching I realize that one of the reasons why my view of the above constituencies is so negative, is because they don't check themselves. Case in point: this week the Editorial Board of the New York Times wrote - Who Can Take Republicans Seriously? And - "It is timefor President Obama to abandon his hopes of reaching a grand budget bargain with Republicans. Senate and House Republicans are refusing to meet with Democrats to negotiate over the budgets passed by each chamber. Four times in the last two weeks, Senate leaders have proposed beginning a conference committee to hash out a federal budget;four times they have been blocked by Republicans. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said they were afraid the committee might reach an agreement to raise both taxes on the rich and the debt ceiling, which are, of course, the Democrats' stated goals. Knowing that their positions would be deeply unpopular among the public if their stubbornness were exposed in an open committee, Republicans would simply prefer not to talk at all. Instead of negotiation, Republicans cling to their strategy of extorting budget demands by threatening not to raise the debt ceiling. On Thursday, the House passed a stunningly dangerous bill that would allowforeign and domestic bondholders to be paid if Republicansforced a government default, while cutting off all other government payments except Social Security benefits. The bill has no possibility of becoming law, but its passage was a deliberate thumb in the eye to Mr. Obama, business leaders and those who say the debt ceiling should not be usedfor political leverage. Republican lawmakers have become reflexive in rejecting every extended handfrom the administration, even if the ideas were ones that they themselves once welcomed. Under the circumstances, Mr. Obama would be best advised to stop making peace offerings. Only when the Republican Partyfeels public pressure to become a serious partner can the real work of governing begin." Even to me, it feels that every week I am taking pot-shots at Austerity, which although totally discredited it is still the economic mantra for Conservatives like Paul Ryan. These same Conservatives believe that an unbridled Market Economy is the pathway to sustained growth which is false, because time and again markets can easily be manipulated and are distorted, enabling malfeasance and induced surges (dot.com bubble, housing bubble or crude oil prices to rise 500% infive years although there was never a shortage orfalse shortages created by ENRON). This week in the New York Times, David Stucker senior researcher at Oxford and Sanjay Basu, professor of medicine at Stanford wrote the op-ed — Why Austerity Kills. The piece starts out with the story of the triple suicide in the seaside town of Civitanova Marched, Italy where a married couple, Anna Maria Sopranzi, EFTA00691957 68, and Romeo Dionisi, 62, had been struggling to live on her monthly pension of around 500 euros (about $650), and had fallen behind on rent, hang themselves in a storage closet at home and after reading their note asking for forgiveness, Ms. Sopranzi's brother, Giuseppe Sopranzi, 73, heard the news, he drowned himself in the Adriatic. All because the Italian government's austerity budget had raised the retirement age, Mr. Dionisi, a former construction worker, became one of Italy's esodati (exiled ones) — older workers plunged into poverty without a safety net. Although most of the stories in the media about Austerity are centered on deficit reduction numbers, little is said about the lives they affect. In addition to greed induced rigging, markets aren't equal. Because in truly free markets there are moral, political and economic dimensions. Yes, free markets are about the freedom to make choices, but what about the choices. The flaw in market solutions, is that they really are 'exit solutions,' which are fine when you are choosing dish powder, computers and restaurants. But if you don't like the way the schools work, then exit and make your own over there. As such, you exercise choice. If you don't like the way public health works, exit, over here, make your own. Except the only problem is you can only exit and make your own if you have the money to do it. The result is that we are creating parallel intuitions and services in elite alternative systems that, that fragment the whole. Causing the public to get poorer and poorer and poorer, while the rich become more isolated in their golden ghettos built around privilege. Market solutions that don't extend to a broader constituency are not solutions at all. The real weakness of markets are that they don't respect values other than price values. They really don't reflect the value of education. They don't value health, otherwise as a country we would be willing to spend more on health than on defense. And often when we price these things we undermine their value. Suggesting that the biggest blockbuster is a better movie and that Justin Beaver latest offering is good music. When we do this we end up with a pop culture, where derivative traders really believe that they are important then doctors, firefighters and schoolteachers. How do you price churches, that offer hope and community? And this is why we need schools whose value isn't based on pricing, We need a different understanding that values are not dependent on price. As for the NRA, their hubris is beyond belief. Even after Newtown, they are opposed to basic background checks or a gun registry. We live in country were the registry of cars is mandatory if you want to use one. We live in a country where a license is required if you want to drive. We live in a country where 19 people were shot during a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans, including two children, with little notice in the major media. I wonder if this most recent gang related mass shooting would have receive this little attention from major media if the victims weren't minorities living in Seventh Ward in New Orleans. If you want to impeach Barrack Obama over four whites killed in a war zone in Libya, why hasn't anyone asked for Congressional hearings for these 19 victims of gun violence here at home? As such, how can I take Republicans, Conservatives and the NRA seriously, other then when they are spoofed by Stephen Colbert or on late night television. With this said, please forgive me if I continue to lambaste the stupidity. arrogance, ignorance, intolerance, hatred, racisim and hypocrisy of those institutions. Because as they use to say in the neighborhoods that I grew up in, "someone needs to tell these people what time it is." Now Welcome to My Weekly Readings. Although it was common knowledge for the past several years, last week a new scandal surfaced. It appears that senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general's report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner. The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees in Cincinnati, Ohio, saying no high-level officials were aware. EFTA00691958 It appears that on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog's report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with 'Tea Party," "Patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says. Obviously if this isn't crime it should be. But to turn it into a national scandal is ridiculous. Because in 2004, the Bush Administration used the IRS to do a full audit on the NAACP because of public comments made by its President Julian Bond against the War in Iraq. And this was stated publicly in the documents of cause as the reason for the audit. Also the head of the IRS, Commissioner Douglas Shulman at the time was a both a Republican and a Bush appointee, whose 6 year term just expired last November. And due to the backlog of Obama appointees having trouble getting through the Congressional process, the agency is now run by an acting commissioner, Steven Miller. And one of the reasons why this came to notice by the IRS was due to a surge of politically active groups claiming tax-exempt status in recent elections — conservative and liberal. Among the highest profile are Republican Karl Rove's group Crossroads GPS and the liberal Moveon.org. These groups claim tax-exempt status under section 501 (c) (4) of the federal tax code, which is for social welfare groups. Unlike other charitable groups, these organizations are allowed to participate in political activities, but their primary activity must be social welfare. That determination is up to the IRS. Having been a subject of targeting (often referred to as racial profiling), since I was a young teenager and until my late 5os, I truly understand the outrage that these conservative groups feel. But every time that something like this happens, before the facts are fully vetted Conservatives jump to scandal, long before everyone settles on stupidity, and yes whether it be the latest IRS skulduggery or Benghazi miscalculation. What is amazing to me is that these same Conservatives - Republicans who are always harping on government's incompetence, (they can't do anything, they don't know what they are doing), except than when Barrack Obama wants to make it work against them, somehow government can do it really well and really effectively. As Napoleon once said, "never ascribe to malice what can easily attributed to incompetence." If you watch The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, you will know one of his regular outside of studio segments, Jay Walking, where he walks around with a television crew, usually in commercial areas, such as Universal City Walk, The Third Street Promenade and The Grove interviewing random people and asking general knowledge things, such as "who is buried in Grant's Tomb, " "who was ourfirst President," "what is the largest state in the country," and "who was Mitt Romeny's running-mate in the 2012 Presidential Election." Answers that a fourth grader should know. And the humor in the segments are the clueless answers. Echoing this sentiment that many Americans are clueless is an article last week in the New York Times by Frank Bruni - America the Clueless. Using Obamacare as his initial example, Bruni says that according to a recent poll, almost 40% of Americans don't even know that it's a law on the books. With 40% of Americans clueless about its sheer existence. Some think it's been repealed by Congress. Some believe it's been overturned by the Supreme Court. According to a survey that Bruni stumbled across several weeks ago, 21 percent believe that a U.F.O. landed in Roswell, N.M., nearly seven decades ago and that the federal government hushed it up, while 14 percent believe in Bigfoot. But only limited sense can be made of what is often nonsensical, and the truth is that a great big chunk of the electorate is tuned out, zonked out or combing Roswell for alien remains. Polls over the last few years have variously shown that about 30 percent of us couldn't name the vice president, about 35 percent couldn't assign the proper century to the American Revolution and 6 percent couldn't circle Independence Day on a calendar. One of Bruni's favorite findings: in a poll in 2011, after intense, closely chronicled fiscal battles in California, a sampling of the state's residents were quizzed about which category of spending EFTA00691959 accounted for the biggest share of California's budget. Only 16 percent correctly said public education through the 12th grade. And they did this poorly in spite of being given just four possible answers, including the correct one, from which to choose. In 2010 in California, Bruni covered a Tea Party rally at which Carly Fiorina, vying for the Republican nomination for a United States Senate seat, was scheduled to speak. Bruni approached a couple whose profusion of hats and buttons and handmade signs — along with their willingness to spend hours in a crowded field under a punishing sun — led him to believe that they were at least somewhat politically engaged. I asked them if they were inclined to support Fiorina. With great seriousness, they said that they hadn't yet decided between her and Meg Whitman. Whitman was running not for senator but for governor, in a race that hardly wanted for coverage. They didn't have to choose. But we live in a country where although the President has said from day one he is a Christian, yet more than four years as President, almost one in third or Republicans still believe that President Obama is a Muslim and 13 percent think President Barack Obama is the Antichrist. According to the poll of 1,247 registered American voters, 37 percent believe global warming is a hoax. Among Republicans, the poll found that 58 percent believe global warming is a hoax, while just 25 percent do not. Among Democrats, 11 percent believe global warming is a hoax, while T7 percent do not. According to the poll of 1,247 registered American voters, 37 percent believe global warming is a hoax. Among Republicans, the poll found that 58 percent believe global warming is a hoax, while just 25 percent do not. Among Democrats, 11 percent believe global warming is a hoax, while 7 percent do not. Apart from perennial news stories about how many Americans would flunk the citizenship test that immigrants must pass, we mostly gloss over our ignorance or deny it. Election analysts are constantly saying that voters are "too smart"for some ploy or "smarter than"they get credit for being. And there's a whole subgenre of nonfiction that assures us that we shouldn't be spooked by how uneducated we are. "The Wisdom of Crowds"suggests that if enough bumbling people act in concert, they'll find their way to a less bumbling place, while "Blink" portrays snap judgments as the fruits of an information intake that isn't easily measured but is meaningful nonetheless. There's "Emotional Intelligence"as well as nuts-and-bolts knowledge, and we can be guided, profitably, by it. Bruni sums up his op-ed: "Into the vacuum of substantive knowledge rush the unprincipled advertisements, the unctuous hucksters, the "super PACs," the Swift boating, the Sunday-morning- talk-show spin. And that a clueless electorate is a corruptible one, and one that seems ill poised to make the smartest, best call about something as sweeping as Obamacare and how it gets tweaked or not down the line. Maybe we'll blink our way to the right decisions. Or maybe we'll just stumble around with our eyes closed." But The Big Ugly in the article is that where there is ignorance. It is played upon by special interest to get pockets in the America to support issues against their own self interest. Otherwise, how else can one explain that there isn't more support for a non-profit national health single payer healthcare system in America, like there is in every other industrialized country? ****** This week in the Huffington Post - Marty KaplanDirector, Norman Lear Center and Professor at the USC Annenberg School, wrote the article - The Day the Earth Stood Stupid. The title is from the 1951 film about an alien landing his flying saucer on Earth to issuing a final warning: Stop it. If you don't, you're doomed. Back then, the "it" was violence -- the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear midnight. But last week, it was climate change -- greenhouse gases, and the promise of ecological extinction. "Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears," ran the headline on the front page lead story in Saturday's New York Times, with this sub-head: "CO2 at Level Not Seen in Millions of Years, Portending Major Climate Changes." Included is a animated graph from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth Science Research Lab showing how atmospheric carbon dioxide has changed over the last 800,000 years should be as horrifying as any computer-generated imagery Hollywood has to offer. Along with EFTA00691960 the news that we had hit the 400 ppm mark on the CO2 curve for the first time since the Pliocene epoch came scary quotes from scientist after scientist calling this our last chance before the point of no return. Unless w