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Second Amendment
Second Amendment: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Having been oppressed by a professional army, the founding fathers of the United States had no use for establishing one of their own. Instead, they decided that an armed citizenry makes the best army of all. George Washington created regulation for the aforementioned “well-regulated militia” which would consist of every able-bodied man in the country.
The reason I’m bringing this up has nothing to do with the National Rifle Association but with the fact that we ARE oppressed by a professional army—our own! I wrote about this a few blogs ago in my 800 pound gorilla piece but nagging is profoundly underrated so here I am again, nagging you to do something about this travesty. Do you really enjoy working six months every year and giving every penny you make to support this expense that gives us nothing in return except the hatred of the world? I’m sick of it.
When I point this out to most people they respond by saying that military spending is only 5% of GDP. Why they would use non-standard accounting to justify this stupidity astounds me. GDP is just everybody’s salary—regardless of what they do. GDP means nothing whatsoever, except as a ruse. Military spending consumes over half of our total industrial output! That’s the real truth. We could cut our work week in HALF with no loss of incomes if the military industrial complex would stop oppressing us.
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I was a chief petitioner…
Excerpts from Rolling Stone Magazine, March 2010
…on the Oregon Marijuana Legalization Initiative in 1986. Talk about being ahead of the times. In 1999, when Gary Johnson was still governor of New Mexico, he spent some time examining drug-policy reports, found the evidence for decriminalization compelling and publicly announced his support for legalization — and immediately saw his approval rating plunge from 58 percent to 28 percent, almost overnight.
“I wasn’t blind — I knew that was going to happen,” Johnson says today. “But actually having it happen was something else.” Rather than backtrack or waffle, Johnson took a novel tack: He continued to speak out on the subject. “I vowed to myself to make it to every nook and cranny in New Mexico to explain to people what I was talking about,” he says. “And I ended up leaving office with a 58 percent approval rating. I really see this issue as one of education.” Later, he adds, “There is one segment of the population that is 100 percent against legalizing pot. And that’s elected officials. What I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen is that legalization is a good issue. By good issue, I mean it makes sense. I really believe that, literally, one day all politicians are going to go to bed and get up the next morning and say, ‘Yeah, OK.’ I always say it’s a litmus test for having a brain.”
Repeal of Prohibition is not normally listed as a New Deal jobs program. Still, it happened in 1933, when unemployment had soared to nearly 25 percent, the high point of the Depression. Certainly repeal had some positive economic effects. Alfred Vernon Dalrymple, the National Prohibition Director — the drug czar of his day — predicted in Time magazine that repeal would mean “putting hundreds of thousands of men back to work and…hundreds of thousands of dollars of new business.” And FDR himself — who, in 1937, would be the first president to make marijuana illegal — argued in a 1932 campaign speech in Sea Girt, New Jersey, that “our tax burden would not be so heavy nor the forms that it takes so objectionable if some reasonable proportion of the unaccounted millions now paid to those whose business had been reared upon this stupendous blunder could be made available for the expense of government.”
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The only affordable healthcare insurance…
…is to exercise and eat right. No one can afford remedial healthcare – at any price. At best it will only miserably stretch out your death. I own the federal trademark on the advertising slogan “Exercise and Eat Right.”™ I’ve been in the preventative health business for 30 years. I’m 66 and only see a doctor for my required flight physicals. I wouldn’t go then if I didn’t have to by law.
There are a few things we can do to improve this situation. We could mandate the implementation of sustainable agriculture practices to stop poisoning ourselves. We could ban proven harmful ingredients in prepackaged foods like High Fructose Corn Syrup and Genetically Modified Crops. We could mandate proper nutrition be taught in school. None of these practical solutions are politically feasible however, so it’s up to you to learn what to eat. Food is the new medicine, says Tufts University School of Nutrition but physician training doesn’t even include nutrition. As for exercise, all one has to do is get one’s heart beating fast every day. No end of ways to do that and it takes only one minute.
Physicians are the new priests. People used to pay Physicians of the Soul to relieve their self-induced maladies, or witch doctors. Superstition is still the rule. I think our health would improve dramatically if physicians were restricted to setting broken bones, repairing hernias and gun shot wounds but people have “faith” so most will continue running to the doctor every time they sneeze. Reminds me of what that great enlightment philosopher Denis Diderot said, “The best physician you can run to is the one you can’t find.”
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When words lose their meaning . . .
When words lose their meaning
the people will lose their freedom. Confucius
I’ve always supported and voted for Nader. Despite his being labeled a “socialist” by the corporate-owned press, he’s anything but. We’ve been close friends for twenty-five years. He’s cited my America, Inc. capitalist treatise many times on national television interviews. You can thank Ralph for the Freedom of Information Act and countless other legislative acts to hold government accountable, maybe even your life if you drive a car. Ralph isn’t perfect but he comes about as close as any human I’ve seen in the political sphere. He’s always been right, even when he knew the political consequences of telling the truth. Que cajones!
I’m flattered he cited my autobiography as exhibiting “semantic discipline” and putting me in the company of Pulitzer Prize winning Chris Hedges, one of my heroes for sure. I’ve tried to exercise the same semantic discipline in this governor’s blog. Here’s his article:
Words Matter
by Ralph Nader
Ever wonder what’s happening to words once they fall into the hands of corporate and government propagandists? Too often reporters and editors don’t wonder enough. They ditto the words even when the result is deception or doubletalk.
Here are some examples. Day in and day out we read about “detainees” imprisoned for months or years by the federal government in the U.S., Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn’t the media know that the correct word is “prisoners,” regardless of what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld disseminated?
The raging debate and controversy over health insurance and the $2.5 trillion spent this year on health care involves consumers and “providers.” How touching to describe sellers or vendors, often gouging, denying benefits, manipulating fine print contracts, cheating Medicare and Medicaid in the tens of billions as “providers.”
I always thought “providers” were persons taking care of their families or engaging in charitable service. Somehow, the dictionary definition does not fit the frequently avaricious profiles of Aetna, United Healthcare, Pfizer and Merck.
“Privatization” and the “private sector” are widespread euphemisms that the press falls for daily. Moving government owned assets or functions into corporate hands, as with Blackwater, Halliburton, and the conglomerates now controlling public highways, prisons, and drinking water systems is “corporatization,” not the soft imagery of going “private” or into the “private sector.” It is the corporate sector!
“Medical malpractice reform” is another misnomer. It used to mean restricting the legal rights of wrongfully injured people by hospitals and doctors, or limiting the liability of these corporate vendors when their negligence harms innocent patients. Well, to anybody interested in straight talk, “medical malpractice reform” or the “medical malpractice crisis” should apply to bad or negligent practices by medical professionals. After all, about 100,000 people die every year from physician/hospital malpractice, according to a Harvard School of Public Health report. Hundreds of thousands are rendered sick or injured, not to mention even larger tolls from hospital-induced infections. Proposed “reforms” are sticking it to the wrong people—the patients—not the sellers.
“Free trade” is a widely used euphemism. It is corporate managed trade as evidenced in hundreds of pages of rules favoring corporations in NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. “Free trade” lowers barriers between countries so that cartels, unjustified patent monopolies, counterfeiting, contraband, and other harmful practices and products can move around the world unhindered.
What is remarkable about the constant use of these words is that they permeate the language even if those who stand against the policies of those who first coin these euphemisms. You’ll read about “detainees” and “providers” and “privatization” and “private sector” and “free trade” in the pages of the Nation and Progressive magazines, at progressive conferences with progressive leaders, and during media interviews. After people point out these boomeranging words to them, still nothing changes. Their habit is chronic.
A lot of who we are, of what we do and think is expressed through the language we choose. The word tends to become the thing in our mind as Stuart Chase pointed out seventy years ago in his classic work The Tyranny of Words. Let us stop disrespecting the dictionary! Let’s stop succumbing to the propagandists and the public relations tricksters!
Frank Luntz—the word wizard for the Republicans who invented the term “death tax” to replace “estate tax” is so contemptuous of the Democratic Party’s verbal ineptitude (such as using “public option” instead of “public choice” and regularly using the above-noted misnomers) that he dares them by offering free advice to the Democrats. He suggests they could counteract his “death tax” with their own term “the billionaires’ tax.” There were no Democratic takers. Remember, words matter.
Using words that are accurate and at face value is one of the characteristics of a good book. Three new books stand out for their straight talk. In Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-party Tyranny, Theresa Amato, my former campaign manager, exposes the obstructions that deny voter choice by the two major parties for third party and independent candidates. Just out is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Pulitzer Prize winner, Chris Hedges. Lastly, the boisterous, mischievous short autobiography of that free spirit, Jerry Lee Wilson, The Soloflex Story: An American Parable.
Not withstanding their different styles, these authors exercise semantic discipline.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author.
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The Senator from China
The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people too, have first amendment rights like people so can now contribute as much as they want to candidates of their choosing. The ruling also permits foreigners to contribute whatever they want to help us decide what’s best for us. This should be interesting. The people who will actually get all the money, the media, will love it. Think I’ll call Hugo Chavez today; see if he’ll back my run for governor. I might finally get some press attention. But I’m getting off track. “I yield my time to my esteemed colleague from China,” says our esteemed colleague from Boeing…
When are we gonna get it, that a government for sale to anybody is a really bad idea! I have promised to end government for sale in Oregon by Executive Order my first day in office. No contributions, no gifts, no favors, no bribes of any kind will be allowed to choose our elected representatives or influence their legislation. I don’t know if this will actually improve things but things can’t get any worse so why not try something new?
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THE TEA PARTY CROWD:
“I have several “tea bagger” friends, and they are funny. They are against big government but support the creation of the Homeland Security Department and the Transportation Security Administration for $62 billion annually.
They are against deficit spending but support the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, projected to cost $3 trillion.
They are against “Wall Street” and “Fat Cats” but they support the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which rescinded key protections within the Glass-Steagall Act, enabling the current financial crisis. They are also against the Federal Reserve (and are clueless as to its purpose) but complain about lack of lending.
They are strict constitutionalists, but they are in favor of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, suspending of habeas corpus, torture, extraordinary rendition, and other Bill of Rights abuses. They are against government control and intrusion, but they support the Patriot Act.
Tea-baggers are amazingly self-contradictory and they really don’t know what they are mad about.
There are no simple solutions to any of the issues we face. However, there are rational approaches that can work with a concerted effort. Sadly, ignorance always has a price.”
Dr. Steve Belovich, Richfield, OH.,
Letter to the editor, The Progressive, March 2010
Can’t add anything to this…
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A Free Press?
My buddy Dan Meek, the great public interest lawyer, sent my last blog (The 800 pound gorilla) out to 242 press outlets in Oregon. The subject was the most important issue facing the country. It was relevant, pertinent and topical; all the things a good press release should be, and well written too if I do say so myself. Not a single mention of it from any of the newspapers, radio or TV stations – and sent from a candidate for governor! Why no mention? It’s because we don’t have a free press in this country, not since the CIA infiltrated it in the 40’s. Google search Operation Mockingbird if you think I’m exaggerating.
“There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar weekly salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” John Swinton, former Chief of Staff for the New York Times.
John Swinton was one of New York’s best-loved newspapermen, called by his peers “The Dean of his Profession.” He made this statement when asked to give a toast before the New York Press club in 1953. It wasn’t reported in the press of course. It did come out in Senator Frank Church’s senate investigation in 1975 but few noticed. I did.
So while you’re reading about Chris Dudley missing another free throw or Allen Alley taking a stroll or Kitzhaber wearing jeans, take some time to do your homework before you let the press tell you who to vote for. Please.
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State of the Union?
“In a word, the state of the union is ANGRY! The question for the president and for BOTH parties to figure out is, at what?
Because we have a two-party system, the only choice people have if they don’t like what’s happening is to vote for the other guy, even if the other guy is largely responsible for what’s happening, and the guy that’s in there now is in there because of the other guy’s mistakes.
People are angry at deficits, largely run up by the irresponsibility of the Bush administration, and topped off by Obama. They’re angry that the bankers who got us in this mess are making millions while we lose our shirts, thanks mainly to deregulation promoted primarily by Republicans (but signed off on by Clinton). They’re angry about jobs, but there’d be a lot more of them if the stimulus package had been larger, which would have increased the deficit, which they’re angry about. They’re angry that Washington seems wholly beholden to special interests, so they’re going to vote for the party that loves special interests at least as much as the party in power now. They’re angry at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were started by the party they just voted out a year ago. They’re angry that Obama has accomplished so little of his agenda, so they’re going to vote for the party that has unanimously opposed every single aspect of it.”
Ed Stein
Ed pretty well sums things up. Gore Vidal said it too: “It makes no difference who you vote for — the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.” There is NO difference in the major parties!
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