Picture Perfect

Dear Friends,

I am back at our cabin in northern Wisconsin and went kayaking early this morning. It is a beautiful morning, sunny with a slight breeze out of the east northeast and very little humidity. The birds are singing, and the loons are calling.  I took some pictures while I was kayaking that in all modesty I must say are quite good.  Here they are.

It is good for the soul to commune with nature and to see its beauty and experience true joy.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Opportunity

Dear Friends,

When I was growing up, we always talked about our country as the land of opportunity - anything was possible.  It was the era of upward mobility and a strong and growing middle class and what by today's standards was a limited gap between the rich and poor.  My high school and college years were the years of the Great Society and the ground breaking civil rights legislation.  Everybody was to have equal opportunity to achieve whatever they wanted in this wonderful land of opportunity.

So how has that worked out?  Unfortunately, it has not worked out well at all, particularly from a financial point of view unless you happen to be one of the lucky ones to be in the top 1% or even 5%.  If you have been paying the least bit of attention over the last several decades, you know intuitively that the gap between the rich and the poor has been expanding and that the middle class is shrinking and sinking into the poor category.  You also know that the Bush tax cuts have just accelerated the widening of the gap.  Just so you do not have to rely on your intuition, here are some articles that demonstrate all too clearly the problem that our country is facing.

The first article is from the Huffington Post from July 8th entitled "Income Gap between Rich and Poor is Highest in Decades, Data Shows" (here).  The first few paragraphs are reprinted below, but you should read the entire article.

The gap between the wealthiest Americans and middle- and working-class Americans has more than tripled in the past three decades, according to a June 25 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
New data show that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it's been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.
The CBPP report attributes the widening of this gap partly to Bush Administration tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy. Of the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts taxpayers received through 2008, high-income households received by far the largest -- not only in amount but also as a percentage of income -- which shifted the concentration of after-tax income toward the top of the spectrum.
The average household in the top 1 percent earned $1.3 million after taxes in 2007, up $88,800 just from the prior year, while the income of the average middle-income household hovered around $55,300. While the nation's total income has grown sharply since 1979, according to the CBPP report, the wealthiest households have claimed an increasingly large share of the pie.

The second article is from the Business Insider entitled "15 Mind-Blowing Facts about Wealth and Inequality in America" published on April 9th (here).  The article is really a compilation of charts and graphs from various sources that demonstrate the incredible inequalities in the United States and how they are getting much worse.  You should look at all of them, but I am reprinting a few of my favorites below.

This chart shows average income of the top 1% as a multiple of average income of the bottom 90%.  The far left is 1917 and the far right is 2006.  Sorry the chart is hard to read.

The next chart illustrates that the top 1% have over 1/3rd of the wealth in this country while the bottom 50% have 2.5% of the wealth. 

The next chart is for you statistics geeks.  It shows that if you are rich, there is not now and never really was much of a probability that you would become poor.  On the other hand, if you were poor, there use to be a chance that you would become richer, but now there is very little chance.

The next chart show how recent Republican tax cuts have widened the gap between the rich and poor.

The Republicans want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and they want to repeal the estate tax.  These tax policies would make the gap increase even faster and would perpetuate the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. 

These charts tell an amazing story of how the land of opportunity for all has become the land of opportunity for the rich only.  No society in history has been able to sustain itself when the disparity between the rich and the poor gets too great.  In this regard we are headed in the wrong direction.  A society with empathy would not permit this kind of disparity any more than it would permit torture.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

New Orleans

Dear Friends,

New Orleans is a national treasure.  It is the home of a uniquely American musical style.  It is also the home of great food. 

After Katrina, we let New Orleans down.  We did not help during the crisis, and certainly have not followed through to help them recover.  Needless to say, it is the black people of New Orleans that we have let down the most. 

There have been a couple of news items lately about New Orleans.  Yesterday The New York Times had a major article entitled "New Orleans Mayor Had a Full Plate Even Before the Spill" (here).  The article highlights the many problems facing New Orleans.  Here is a quote from the new mayor:

“The oil spill’s much worse than we ever thought,” Mr. Landrieu said. “The budget’s much worse, the dysfunction is much worse, the N.O.P.D. is much worse. But, you know, that’s why I signed up.”

The second article was also in The New York Times yesterday entitled, "Police Are Charged in Post-Katrina Shootings" (here).  After the local attempt to prosecute was thrown out, the United States District Attorney obtained the indictment so that these rogue police can be held accountable for the their crimes in the aftermath of Katrina.  In addition, the Federal Justice Department is in the process of investigating the New Orleans police department.

Now, New Orleans is facing another environmental and economic disaster from the BP Deepwater Horizon well blowout.  There are new reports about now about the residents of New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast areas are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.  Here is a report in the Huffington Post.  The residents of the gulf coast have just started to rebuild their lives after Katrina and now what they have built is being destroyed again.  Their economic survival is being threatened and their physical health is being threatened.  The stress and related depression should be expected.  I am afraid that once the well is capped, we will lose interest and once again abandon New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast to deal with all these problems by themselves.

New Orleans is a national treasure and it is inhabited by our fellow human beings.  They deserve our support and encouragement.  Don't let our politicians abandon them again.  They need our help and will for a very long time.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Miami Mean

Dear Friends,

I was struck by a report that I heard last night that a Miami City Commissioner had proposed making it a crime to feed the homeless without jumping through incredible hoops.  This morning I looked up the proposed ordinance (here).  The cover for this mean spirited action is food safety, but the fact is that it is yet another attack on the poor - those other people.  Miami City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff does not want homeless people around because it is bad for business.  So rather than working on eliminating homelessness he just wants the homeless to go somewhere else.  If they can not eat in Miami, then they will leave and as far as Marc Sarnoff is concerned the problem is solved. 

Here is an article about this ordinance and another one in Orlando that was just upheld by 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.  That ordinance applied to mass feeding.  The Miami ordinance applies to any feeding.  The ordinance seems way overly broad.  It says, "A person...providing food, without charge, to homeless individuals or other persons...on public or private property, may do so provided..." the person does so at a place on public property designated by the city or with the written approval of the private landowner if the person is registered with the city and if the person has taken the food safety course and if the food has been prepared and stored, etc.  What struck me was that if I lived in Miami and had some friends over for dinner and I did not charge them for the food, I would most certainly be in violation of this ordinance since I would not have met most if not all of the requirements.  Worse yet, if I am walking down the street and I give a homeless person a candy bar I just bought at the grocery store, I would be violating the ordinance.

It is this kind of meanness that is inherent in many of the positions taken by the Republicans these days.  If you do not have some type of universal health coverage or a strong government safety net, then there will be people that will not get health care, and they will suffer and die unnecessarily.  In fact that is happening today.  So when the Republicans say no to providing health care to the poor, they are really saying let them suffer and die.  It is time for all of us to call out the Republicans for the reality of their positions.

If you do not pass extended unemployment benefits, then families including the children in those families will suffer.  They certainly will not get the appropriate preventive medical treatment, they will not get  proper nutrition, and they will suffer now and in the future.  When the Republicans and Senator Ben Nelson filibuster the extension of unemployment benefits and then go on vacation, they are destroying real human beings who deserve much better treatment from their government and community.  President Obama needs to press for passage with an urgency that reflects the fact that we are destroying our fellow human beings.

The list of ways that our government is letting down the people of this country and the world goes on and on.  We can afford tax cuts for the rich, we can afford tax and other subsidies for big oil, and we can afford two immoral and unwinnable wars, but we cannot afford to give the basics of food, shelter, medical care and education to all the people of this the richest country in the world.

It is not just Commissioner Marc Sarnoff or Miami that are mean spirited, right now it seems to be the wave of the future of our country.  We need to change that.  We need President Obama to talk about this mean spirited trend, the way that he talked about racism.  In a post about torture, I referred to a quote that there can be no torture with empathy.  This country needs a heavy dose of empathy, because if we are empathetic we would never permit our fellow humans to be treated the way they are.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal           

Landslide

Dear Friends,

It seems that all the pundits are talking about what a big landslide the Republicans will have in the elections this fall, maybe taking back Congress, etc.  I have a very hard time believing that the Republicans will have some great landslide.  I know that historically the party out of power gains a significant number of seats in Congress in the mid-term elections so the Democrats are at a disadvantage.  I also know that historically when the economy is doing poorly the party out of power gains a significant number of seats in Congress so once again the Democrats are at a disadvantage.

The key Republican strategy should be, and I think is, to force the election to be a referendum on how the country is doing.  Since we are in a very weak recovery from a terrible recession and things are not looking great and unemployment is very high and likely to remain that way, the Republicans should have a very easy time just running against the status quo.

While the crazies seem to have taken control of the Republican party, the Democrats have not yet seized on this opportunity to stop the Republicans from running against the status quo.  At a campaign rally for Senator Reid last week, President Obama spoke about what happens when Republicans govern and made a direct connection between the state of the economy today and what the Republicans did when they were in power.  Unfortunately, as usual President Obama makes a good point once and then shuts up and disappears again.  You cannot overcome the constant barrage of Republican lies and fearmongering with a single speech.  The President needs to create news everyday so the media covers his denouncement of the Republican policies and positions.

The Republicans have made it clear that they support BP and big oil over the environment and a rational energy policy.  The Republicans have made it clear that they support Wall Street over Main Street.  The Republicans have made it clear that a deficit caused by increased spending to help the non-rich and to stimulate the economy must be paid for by cuts in other programs for the non-rich but that tax cuts for the rich do not need to be paid for, they can just increase the deficit.  If President Obama cannot take advantage of these clear Republican positions to give the Democrats a good result in the elections this fall, then frankly he does not deserve to be the President.

I have started a list of things that the President should do to make sure that there is no Republican landslide in the November elections.  I hope that you will add to and otherwise improve my list.

1.  President Obama should not let a day pass that he does not tell the American people at some media event how the Republicans are blocking his efforts to stimulate the economy and create jobs by blocking things like the extension of unemployment benefits.  This effort should include the introduction of a much needed additional stimulus bill which the Republicans will without question fight against.  President Obama must clearly address this obsession that the Republicans have created about the deficit.  It is too high but right now we need to stimulate the economy with spending and deal with the deficit once the economy is moving again. 

2.   President Obama should not let a day pass that he does not tell the American people that deregulation of industry lead directly to the economic collapse and the great recession, the rise of corporations that are too big to fail and that squelch competition, the deaths of thousands of children living near power plants, the deaths of miners in mine accidents, the Deepwater Horizon well blow out and the resulting environmental and economic disasters, etc.  He must then make it clear that Republicans support continued deregulation and that Democrats support reasonable regulation to insure our safety and environment and the stability of our financial system.  A vote for Republicans is a vote for more deregulation.

3.  President Obama must take action to hold his own administration accountable for the problems that have occurred on his watch.  As a start he needs to fire Ken Salazar and replace him with somebody that is not tied to big oil and the ways of the past who will clean house at the Interior Department.  He also needs to signal his intention to make good on his campaign promise that he will bring change to Washington DC.  To do that he needs to fire Rahm Emanuel and replace him with someone who has the vision of a government that works for the people not the politicians and special interests.

4.  President Obama needs to hold members of his own party accountable for their actions.  He should invite Senator Ben Nelson to the White House for coffee and tell him to vote for the extension of unemployment benefits and other critical policies supported by the White House.  President Obama should also make it clear to Senator Nelson that if he fails to do so that Senator Nelson will lose the seniority perqs that he now enjoys and that if Senator Nelson ever considers running for office again, he can be assured of a well funded primary opponent supported by the White House.  President Obama needs to be equally clear with the Blue Dog Democrats.  President Obama lost a chance to have a conversation like this when he supported Senator Lincoln.  If he were going to support her, he should have gotten something for his support.  Unfortunately, his negotiating style seems to be to give something and then sometime later ask for something in return, a rather naive strategy. 

5.  President Obama needs to be honest with the American people and do what he says he is going to do.  Every day President Obama needs to call members of Congress that lie what they really are liars.  Every day President Obama needs to draw the link between the actions of the members of Congress and the impact of those actions on the American people and the impact of those actions on big business and other special interests.  Every day President Obama needs to be clear who is making the political contributions to the politicians from both parties that are casting votes against the American people and for the special interests making the contributions.

6.  Every day President Obama needs to remind the people that the government can and does work for them.  He needs to remind them by showing them what the government is doing for them.  He needs to admit the mistakes the government has made, hold people accountable for those mistakes and replace them with more competent people.  He, as the chief executive officer, needs to make government work.  He needs to tell the American people when the Republicans are blocking his efforts to make government work.  Why don't we ever hear about the hundreds of appointments to important government positions that are being held up by the Republicans?  How can government perform at its best if the Republicans are blocking the appointments to fill important management positions?  Democrats believe that government can be a force for good in a society, and Republicans believe that government is a source of evil.  President Obama needs to make that difference clear and convince the American people that the Democrats have the better position. 

6.  President Obama needs to end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, bring the troops home and take care of the troops that have served their country so well.  He needs to take all the money that is saved and spend it on stimulating the economy, particularly on infrastructure improvements and green technology and on education.

I am not a political strategist, but I am absolutely certain that if President Obama were to follow my advice, it would be the Democrats that would have a landslide in November, not the Republicans.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Knowledge

Dear Friends,

I think that it was Sir Francis Bacon that first coined the phrase "Knowledge is power."  So anytime a government wants to prevent its citizens from knowing what is going on that government is trying to take away from the people the power to control the government and the power over their own lives.  Unfortunately, our government has on way too many occasions sought to keep the public from knowing what is going on.

The most recent blatant case of attempting to keep the public from knowing what is going on is in connection with the BP oil disaster.  Here is the first part of an article from Newsweek (here)

BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill

Photographers say BP and government officials are preventing them from documenting the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Gerald Herbert / AP

Jean-Michel Cousteau (center) was turned away from a wildlife sanctuary by the U.S. Coast Guard after they discovered that an AP photographer was on board.

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers.

The same denial of access is happening in connection with the health problems associated with the BP oil disaster.  Here is an article from The Huffington Post (here):

The latest chapter in the media's ongoing struggle to cover the Gulf Oil Spill comes courtesy of PBS Newshour's Bridget Desimone, who has been working with her colleague, Betty Ann Bowser, in "reporting the health impact of the oil spill in Plaquemines Parish." Desimone reports that on the ground, officials are generally doing a better job answering inquiries and granting access to the clean-up efforts.

But Desimone and Bowser have encountered one "roadblock" that they've struggled to overcome: access to a "federal mobile medical unit" in Venice, Louisiana: "The glorified double-wide trailer sits on a spit of newly graveled land known to some as the "BP compound." Ringed with barbed wire-topped chain link fencing, it's tightly restricted by police and private security guards."

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set up the facility on May 31. According to a press release, the medical unit is staffed by "a medical team from the HHS National Disaster Medical System -- a doctor, two nurses, two emergency medical technician paramedics (EMT-P) and a pharmacist."
For over two weeks, my NewsHour colleagues and I reached out to media contacts at HHS, the U.S. Coast Guard and everyone listed as a possible media contact for BP, in an attempt to visit the unit and get a general sense of how many people were being treated there , who they were and what illnesses they had. We got nowhere. It was either "access denied," or no response at all. It was something that none of us had ever encountered while covering a disaster. We're usually at some point provided access to the health services being offered by the federal government.

It seems that our government is working very closely with BP to be certain that we never know the true extent of the problems caused by the BP oil disaster.  Here is part of an article from ProPublica entitled "When the Police Control the Press" (here):

...when we received a call last week at ProPublica from Lance Rosenfield, a freelance photographer we had hired to work in Texas City, Texas, on stories about BP's refinery there.
Rosenfield said he had been detained by local police [1] after snapping a picture on the road into Texas City. Rosenfield said he had shown the officers and a BP security guard a letter from ProPublica that said he was on assignment. Police said he would be "taken in" if he did not let them look at the photos in his camera.
The senior officer present, Cpl. Thomas Robison, pressed Rosenfield to describe ProPublica's forthcoming story.
Rosenfield demurred but did allow police to review his photos. No threat to national security was detected -- the pictures were innocuous shots of the refinery and signage nearby. Rosenfield was eventually allowed to leave after being warned to clear further photography with the local authorities. At the request of police, he turned over his social security number and date of birth which were promptly given to the BP security officer who was present.

Our government working is involved in a coordinated effort with BP to be sure that we do not know what is really going on.  The supporters of this censorship use excuses like national security, disruption of clean up efforts, safety and other spurious claims to stop real reporting of the BP oil disaster and the unbelievable problems that it is causing.  There is no legal basis for restricting the access the way it is being restricted now.  It is yet another infringement on our Constitutional rights.

President Obama is suppose to be a Constitutional law expert.  How can he permit this kind of censorship to continue?

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal