A history lesson seems to be needed….
I think the people of Oakland has their collective stuff together.
Dont’ believe me? The last general strike in the US was in OAKLAND.
In 1946, after the Oakland Police attempted to break up the garment-worker’s strike so that the businesses could bus in replacement workers across the strike lines. The whole city shut down in response.
Apparently…the idiots calling the shots in Oakland don’t understand the phrase “Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
Remember, remember….
The end of November in 1946… women at department stores in Oakland, two department stores, Khan’s and Hastings, had been on strike for a month. The city elite decided to break the strike. They brought in 400 police who escorted a professional strike-breaking company on December 1, 1946, and they ran through the city. The cops cleared the streets, beat people off the streets, bullied them and broke the strike, but in breaking the strike they catalyzed.
Angry street car drivers coming through on December 1, 1946, had seen the strike being broken and refused to go though the picket lines that the cops had assembled around the department stores and really sparked off the general strike. They were joined by other transit operators, bus drivers, and soon the whole city was alive with people just flooding downtown, filling the streets and joining together as what they called a “work holiday.”
Overall 130,000 people in Oakland stopped work. They went out in solidarity and shut the city down to say that they stood together with the department store clerks at Khan’s and Hastings. This is 130,000 people during a time when that was a HUGE percentage of the population.
All they were asking was that the rights of the workers at Khan’s and Hastings be honored. That they’d be able to have a stable work life which meant a union contract, better wages, and a work situation where they had the rights that had been fought for really in the ’30s.
It was a continuation of the organizing drives saying that people won’t put up with the kind of wages which were non-livable. It was at the time when prices were rising. Things like food was going up 28%; wages were static and people were saying, “We need to kind of fight together to make a better life.”
The ruling elite that really ran Oakland were the Nolans. They shut down their tribune. Hearst ran the newspaper called the Post Enquirer; they set up a picket line and shut it down. They went to Alameda to shut down the Times Star. They went to Berkeley; they shut down the Daily Gazette. They just said that no media except the ones created by the strikers would be allowed on the streets, and that included the solidarity of teamsters who refused to bring the San Francisco daily papers across the bridge into Oakland. And it was a way to say, “We won’t allow the media to demonize and undermine our strike.”
Remember indeed….
They’re not allowed to grow up…
A little lesson in Before & After….
If you wonder why he’s called “Chaos” maybe this will explain things a little…
Yes, he’s been drinking coffee since he was two… That’s my boy.
This is Chaos 4 short years later. Such a big kid, and I have no idea *WHERE* all the time went. He’s a little bruiser now… Of course being the youngest of three, he’s had his two older brothers to teach him every bad habit in the world. 
Lesson #2… This is Panic at 2 (On his second birthday actually.) Doing his favorite “Tah-Dah” pose.
And look at him now. So grown up, so mature. I remember every day of it, yet I feel like I’ve only blinked and it’s slipped by me.
And last, but certainly not least… My big monster at age 4…Feeding the ducks…. I remember so fondly the first time they scared the crap out of him and he scaled me like a ladder trying to get away from them…
Now I look UP at him… Literally.
So how the hell does this happen? Suddenly He’s 3 years from college.. Chaos is playing soccer, Panic is a year away from being a full fledged boy-scout…
I guess my point is this. Don’t screw around and miss the time with your kids. It’s golden, and once it’s gone it’s gone.
The needs of the many….
“The needs of the many, outweigh, the needs of the few, or the one. ”
–Spock
In this day and age, we find this lesson to be a poignant and oddly relevant one.
It’s become obvious over past years that in America, the needs of the few have come to outweigh the needs of the many. Namely, the needs of the top 1% wealthiest people in our economy.
They do. And everything they do they do for themselves.
This is where they’re stupid. Our economy only works when the bottom 99% are spending money.
Trickle-down economics is complete bullshit.. The idea that giving the top 1% massive tax cuts will somehow make it’s way down to you and I.
Tell me something. Do you think the billionaire who gets to keep an extra million runs right out and spends it? Does he say “I have all this extra money floating around, I think I’ll hire a couple of dozen people.”
No.
I run a business. Tax cuts are meaningless to me without increased income. If I get to keep an extra 2% of my income I’m still not hiring anyone. Now if BUSINESS improves by an extra 2% then I might find a reason to hire an admin. Do millionaires and billionaires buy my service? No. People do. People who (usually) make less than $40,000 a year.
And my situation is *NOT* unique.
So if you give a billionaire a tax break and you increase their bank balance. What motivation would they have to spend more?
You give a lowly working class person a tax break, that money gets spent. *WE* are the ones who take our check straight to Target.
There are three engines to our economy. People, Business, and Government. The economy works best when all three work together. But when we get into a situation like the one we’re in today, all hell breaks loose.
The people don’t have money to spend.
The businesses that have the money aren’t spending it. They’re sitting on TRILLIONS in off-shore cash reserves “Just In Case”
That leaves government. The government whose hands the tea-party want to tie.
Last point:
The “great depression” of 1929 was caused when the distribution of wealth became too lopsided. The rich had all the money, the poor had none. Commerce stops at that point and a reset is needed.
Years of economic depression are usually what follow. The republicans don’t really care about redistribution of wealth the way they whine and cry about… They only care when the wealth isn’t being redistributed in their direction.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Getting old….
You know there comes a time when you realize you’re old.
When the “perfect” saturday night consists of a trip to Fry’s electronics for a power cable and shopping for pro-biotic yogurt.
When the joy of balancing your checkbook and having it come out correct (to the penny) carries all the joy of picking up the hot-chick at the bar.
When you take a dozen pills every day and not a single one of them came from a shady-looking guy on the street-corner.
When responsibility trumps fun any day of the week.
That’s pretty much where I am.
Now I just have to learn to be ok with that.
*MY* 9/11 post….
It amazes me that we choose to re-traumatize ourselves every year on the anniversary…complete with graphic visuals and droning, repetitive descriptions of what happened that day.
You don’t tell a rape victim to re-live the experience every year do you?
There is an inherent danger in repeatedly re-opening old wounds.
I think remembering is important – it’s just how we choose to remember. I like to think about the strength, courage and caring so many people displayed during a devistating crisis. I think no victim forgets but they can see the fact that they are a survivor.
Sadly, that’s not what our media is portraying. Gazing into the smoking wound again and again and again in high-definition video doesn’t help us heal, it only serves to inflame anger and keep hatred alive unnecessarily.
Again to use the analogy, it’s like a rape victim being forced to watch a video of the attack again and again in some misguided hope that it will somehow harden them to it. It doesn’t and it never will.
We were violated. It’s true. But there comes a point when you have to start moving towards the future, because nothing can be gained from constantly staring into the past.
I FEEL THE POWER!
…(or don’t, as the case may be)
Nicole over at redlotusmama.com got stuck in the big southwest outage yesterday.. and it inspired me to write this…
We live in Virginia, pretty near to but not TOO near the coast. We’ve learned through experience that A good blow will probably knock out power for some time.
Necesseties in our house include two refrigerators, blower for the furnace, lights for the autistic kid, and most importantly, a sump-pump that keeps the basement dry because some idiot decided to put an outside drain that drains INTO the basement sumpwell.
We went the extra step and bought a 5KVA generator. This gives us just enough power to keep the two refrigerators running along with a small number of lights in the house on. Since we live in a climate that hard-freezes, I have it set up so we can power the heater fan as well (The heater itself is gas, but without power to move the air through the house we’re dead in the water) This should keep us warm on even the coldest days.
Not a paid ad, but if you’re going to go the portable generator route, check out Generlink for easy EASY ways to connect a portable generator into a home electrical system, thus avoiding the need to run a cable through an open window. (Not comfortable when it’s pouring rain and/or 7 degrees outside.) This is an easy single-connection without the need to completely rewire the house and ad a automatic transfer switch…
Half the battle is being ready. We put all this together 5 years ago. We haven’t used it since, but it’s definitely feels good to know it’s there.
High Unemployment…
Of *COURSE* corporations aren’t doing anything about unemployment. They have no real reason to. They like it this way.
While it sucks for mainstream American, abnormally high unemployment is *GOOD* for corporate america. When unemployment is high workers can be worked harder for less money, treated with all manner of disrespect, and if someone doesn’t like it, that’s fine, there’s four people to take his/her place. Corporations say they want to see unemployment come down, but when the rubber meets the road, they are the ones that can, but aren’t, doing anything about it.
Corporations *SAY* they care about the American people. But what they *REALLY* care about is keeping the American people *JUST* solvent enough to buy the latest I-Phone.
Apple is currently sitting on about $76 billion dollars in assets. 100% of it’s manufacturing is done in China. While Apple publically complains about the economy and high unemployment, they have in their power the ability to do something significant about it themselves and won’t.
Actions speak louder than words. Apple’s actions state that they are perfectly happy to let the world go on like it is.
I think companies that employ overseas contractors or contracting firms should be taxed HEAVILY to pay for, among other things, US unemployment insurance extensions. If they want to ship jobs overseas that is their right, it is NOT however the governments obligation to enable that behiavor or make it easy. The government’s responsibility is to protect America, from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
And it’s not just Apple, call into *ANY* computer manufacturer’s technical support and you’ll inevitably end up talking to some idiot who will introduce himself as “Roger” when in fact his real name is “Raj” (How, seriously, do you expect me to trust you to fix my computer when you start of the conversation lying to me about something as simple as your fucking name?)
I’m talking to *YOU* Dell.
Scientific Agnostic…
Welcome to the new Shredderfood. Hope you like the new site that my wife has dubbed the “Home Depot” site due to the color scheme. <sigh> Everyone’s a critic.
In theoretical physics there is an understanding. There is no such thing as a “Proven” theory. There are only theories that have yet to be disproven. A theory is hailed a success when a plurality of scientists concede that it has an internal logical consistency.
No theory is fact. Theories are supported by facts, they’re bolstered by them, but they’re still theories. Global warming is a theory that seems to be supported by the facts. As is evolution.
Of course the term “fact” is up for interpretation. But I’m not going there, at least not in this post.
It’s kind of the way I view religion, or should I say spirituality. There is no proof whatsover of the existence of a god or any kind of spiritual existence in any form. There is however also no proof against either. The way I figure it that sooner or later, one way or another, we’re going to find out.
The question becomes then, what are you going to do with your life in the meantime. The religious cultists (and yes, Christians make up a large part of that group) are convinced that they are right, that god demands our loving adoration, etc, etc.
I’ve always believed that *IF* there was a god, that it’s probably a concept that not only we’ve missed in the course of the couple of thousand years or so we’ve been trying to, I suspect it’s a concept we CAN’T grasp. I don’t mean can’t as in aren’t allowed to, I mean can’t as in, our brains simply aren’t wired for it and any attempt we make to define “god” is as doomed to fall short as a dog’s attempts to recite Shakespeare.
We miss the whole concept. When / if we ever truly understand not only HOW the universe works, but WHY the universe works, only then will be we in a position to even start pondering the existence.
But by then, I suspect we’ll know.
The Diests have a similar belief.. though there’s has always been more along the lines of “God created the universe and washed his hands of it.”
I don’t know. I probably never will. I’m also not going to let not knowing ruin my life with worry. It’s up there with the rest of the mysteries I don’t spend a lot of time on. Like where do 1/2 of my socks go, and why do people insist on talking in the theater.
As far as mysteries go, it’s a minor one.
American Monarchy? I think NOT…
In response to a question on a message board, I felt my response was worthy of a cross-post. The question was to whether maybe America would function more smoothly as a Monarchy…
———
Monarchy, no. I’d rather the guillotine NOT be the only way we can get rid of a leader. That being said, I wish we could give parliamentary democracy a try.
I like the fact that in Britain parliament can call for a vote of no-confidence in the prime-minister, and that the prime minister can dissolve parliament. Of course there are rules and specifics and I’ve horribly oversimplified it… but the point is there.
A large part of us is divided because our governing bodies are still structured as they were when there were 13 colonies. That kind of rule simply doesn’t work when a society gets to this point, and the “strict constitutionalists’ fail to grasp the fact that the only way to get back to the purest form of that constitutional government is to kill off or exile 90% of our population. (Although the way they act I think this may be the end-goal, or at least to force people to emigrate out.)
Representative democracy is built around the concept that the people can’t make their voices heard without it. Well we all know that now-adays, that is no longer the case. (Which is, coincidentally why, IMHO, why representative democracy fails now – it’s hard for a congressman to go and vote that way when it’s obvious (s)he is going directly against at least half of their constituency.)
So what’s the alternative, direct democracy? Everyone called to a vote whenever an important issue comes up? Well we always see how well that works. On any given election only 20-30% of the electorate turns out. Only the ones who are passionate about their causes. This leads us to a 50/50 mix of passionate assholes in congress.
Then again, the other problem with direct democracy is that 2/3 of our population are undereducated morons, do you really want them making the decisions?
We (Americans) blinked, our government has become the corporatocracy. Money talks, bullshit walks. No-one knows this better than big business, who will almost always be about to out-yell the “people” that this government is supposed to represent. The corporations hijacked a few core religious principles to ensure they get the vote (believers in true LIBERTY don’t give a rats ASS about god, gay marriage or abortion, it goes against the belief that FREEDOM is absolute – but they pander to the religious right with it to get their votes, which they desperately need to maintain POWER.)
We’re all sheep. 100% of us. Left and right. And as long as we give them this power, we always will be.
Interest…
The debt ceiling deal that congress just passed ”saves” us an estimated $2 to $3 Trillion dollars over 10 years.
If Congress’ idiotic antics to get this bill passed causes a downgrade in the US’s credit rating, it will cost us between $1 and $2 Trillion dollars…PER YEAR in increased interest costs.
So good going teabaggers. You sure saved us money.
My Pictures
