Sep 2012 19

Mitt Romney: I Think I Figured It Out0

Posted In Activism,Blog,Entertainment,Music,Politics

Ok, I think I figured it out.

Mitt Romney is disdainful of anyone receiving government assistance because:

1. He comes from a rich and privileged background, so he’s never needed or received government assistance.

And…

2. He comes from a rich and privileged background, so he’s never known anyone who’s needed or received government assistance.

Almost everyone I know has received some sort of government assistance, whether it’s student loans or small business loans or Medicare or Medicaid, and almost everyone I know now pays taxes and contributes to society.

I’ll use myself as an example.

I was the only child of a single working mom. We struggled a lot economically, and there were times when we lived off of food stamps and social security and government assistance. And then when I went to the University of Connecticut and SUNY Purchase I received Pell Grants and student loans.

So, according to Mitt Romney, I was part of the 47% “who are dependent upon government…who pay no income tax.” [As heard in a video obtained by Mother Jones] Mitt Romney then went on to say: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

In the last 20 years I have either personally or professionally paid millions of dollars in income taxes to the state, local, and federal government. I have employed hundreds of people, who have in turn paid income taxes and in many cases have gone on to start their own businesses.

So I think it’s safe to say that the government assistance my mother and I received was money well spent. I was able to go to decent schools and get a decent education, all thanks to ‘government assistance.’ My mother and I were able to eat, all thanks to ‘government assistance.’ I was able to see doctors, all thanks to ‘government assistance.’ We were able to pay our rent at times thanks to ‘government assistance.’

Not to mention the roads, clean water, streetlights, police departments, fire departments, clean air, libraries, public transit, electricity, etc., that all came from the government and enabled my mother and I to stay alive and live good, educated, safe, and healthy lives.

Mitt Romney comes from extreme wealth. He has never once needed financial assistance from the government, as his family had millions and millions of dollars. But there are millions and millions and millions of Americans like me who didn’t come from extreme wealth and who needed help with education and food and healthcare and shelter, but who have gone on to start businesses and pay taxes.

We are not an ‘entitled’ class, we are not ‘dependent upon the federal government’ and we do not consider ourselves ‘victims.’ We are the hundreds of millions of Americans who had the misfortune of not being born to millionaire parents.

So I understand why Mitt Romney is disdainful of government assistance, as his parents paid for everything and he never needed help being fed or educated or looked after by doctors. I understand that in Mitt Romney’s entire life he’s never known anyone who’s needed student loans. He’s never known anyone who needed food stamps to keep their family fed. He’s never known anyone who’s had to spend hours in a health clinic just to get basic medical care. He’s never known anyone who couldn’t pay the rent.

I understand that Mitt Romney grew up with phenomenal wealth and privilege
but I don’t understand why that leads him to contemptuously dismiss anyone (like my mother and I) who have, at times, needed government help with food and education and shelter and health care.

Mitt Romney is a product of wealth and privilege. That does not give him the right to loathe and dismiss the rest of us who are not the product of wealth and privilege.

Oh, for some reason I was thinking of ‘Common People’ by Pulp when I heard Romney’s quotes.

– Moby, September 19, 2012

“But still you’ll never get it right,
Cos when you’re laid in bed at night,
Watching roaches climb the wall,
If you call your Dad he could stop it all.

You’ll never live like common people,
You’ll never do what common people do,
You’ll never fail like common people,
You’ll never watch your life slide out of view.”

– “Common People” by Pulp

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Sep 2012 19

From Death And Despair. . . Dreams Can Soar1

Posted In Activism,Blog,Favorites,Politics,Society

by Steven Whitney

When traveling throughout the world, one learns a lot about the Dream of America by talking with whomever one meets along the way – taxi drivers, shopkeepers, writers and artists, students, and ordinary men and women with or without agendas of their own…almost anyone except the country’s elite and politicians.

Berlin, 1996

In the mid-80s, Berlin was a shadowed city within a divided nation, split into East and West by a concrete barricade that cut off all unauthorized passage between the two sectors. Actually two barriers about 50 yards apart, with manned guard towers overlooking what became known as “the death strip” in-between, the Berlin Wall put a punishing halt to the mass defections from the Eastern Bloc and became a global symbol of entrapment and oppression.

Standing at Checkpoint Charlie, looking from the American zone to the Soviet sector, drab residential buildings and factories filled the bleak landscape. Soviet tanks and the Stasi – arguably the most intrusive and repressive secret police of its time – prowled the streets under dark clouds spewed forth by gigantic industrial smokestacks, adding to an almost palpable sense of imprisonment.

Ten years later, with both the Wall and the USSR antiquities of a vanquished era, the united Berlin was a bustling metropolis determined to become one of the greatest and most sophisticated cities in the world. No expense was spared, no architectural or cultural plan was too extravagant. Giant cranes dotted the landscape like oil rigs on the west Texas plain. Berlin had become a modern “boom town.”

Yet several hundred miles south, the Bosnian conflict had become a sordid battleground of “ethnic cleansing.” Refugees from both sides fled north, and the Germans – a people imprisoned within their own walls for decades – took them in.

I was in Berlin to write a television film involving the journey of two families – one Christian, one Muslim – from the corpse-littered streets of Sarajevo to the German border. These were people who had left everything behind, families that had lost brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and even children to the hatred of racial and religious persecution. They arrived in Germany without money, water, and food, possessing only the clothes they wore.

For research, I spent two days at one of the largest camps. Fenced in on multiple acres of flat, dry farmland, the refugees lived in tents erected by the government and guarded by UN forces. They were provided with basic medical care, immigration assistance, language classes, and small daily rations of food, water, and wine. And each day, more and more refugees arrived – hungry, sick, and weak from their desperate flights – until the camp resembled an overcrowded ghetto.

By the time I visited, literally tens of thousands or people were cramped into this makeshift Tent City. Yet I heard few complaints. Even fewer fights broke out. Bitterness and recrimination had for the most part evaporated in this netherworld of safe harbor. They were no longer Muslims and Christians torn apart by separate and warring ideologies, but survivors entwined by the brutal migration north.

I went from tent to tent, accompanied by translators. At each, I was invited inside and offered food and drink so I could more comfortably listen to the stories they wanted the world to hear. Their last portion of meat or wine, whatever they had left, was tendered. A few families had been in residence long enough to make Bosnian moonshine…and that was offered as well.

It struck me that in the aftermath of unimaginable horror, these people offered me everything they had left in the world. I was their guest and all their hardships would not deter them from being gracious hosts. Never before nor since has anyone ever offered me everything he or she had. It speaks to the overwhelming generosity of the impoverished and their inherent goodness.

We talked about their journeys, their hopes, and their imagined futures. When I asked each of them the key to their ongoing survival in the face of such devastating loss, they all replied with the same sentiment: “You must let go of hatred and forgive your enemies.”

They had many different questions about my own homeland, but the one thing they all wanted to know was this: did we truly practice religious freedom here?

I recited to them our First Amendment and it perfectly fulfilled their dream of America – a land where people of all religions are free to practice their beliefs without fear of bloodshed and discrimination…a nation where they could worship whatever they held sacred both in peace and in harmony with others.

I did not tell them that many people wanted to officially sanction the United States as a Christian Nation, just like the warlords in Bosnia sought to make that country either a Christian or Muslim nation. Some things are better left unsaid for dreams to soar undisturbed.

South Africa, 2001

I was reminded of the Bosnian camp when I flew to a country that for most of my life had been held in the strangling grip of apartheid, a rogue nation in which the majority was brutally held under the cruel thumb of a racist minority.

When the changeover finally occurred, most people throughout the world expected rivers of blood to flow in the streets – payback for a pitiless regime of torture, murder, and almost unimaginable repression. But for the country to succeed, national and racial unity was mandatory, so outside of a few isolated incidents, calmer heads prevailed and violence never went viral.

In the new South Africa, Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu led their people – black and white – to a peaceful aftermath of a startling and long overdue revolution by putting into play the transformative power of forgiveness. They even convened “Forgiveness Trials” under the newly created Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which victims and perpetrators alike bore witness to gross violations of human rights and amnesty was granted in cases of true repentance.

Was justice done?

Justice is always somewhat immeasurable. But a just country was born and sustained that otherwise would have faltered – old resentments and hatreds were put to the side and the awful cloak of “victimization” was avoided. Once again, harmony was achieved through simple and multiple acts of forgiveness.

And, too, wherever I went – from Johannesburg to Cape Town – both white and black South Africans talked openly about the benefits accrued by the national policy of forgiveness.

In times like ours, when senseless and widespread violence can be sparked at a moment’s notice over what seems to many the most trivial of slights, as happened last week, it’s important for those of all religions, cultures, and nationalities to appreciate the potential of forgiveness in bridging an oft times considerable communication gap to saner and more human understanding.

Sometimes, it is true – what is invisible to the eye is essential to the heart…and to a better life for the global community.

Sep 2012 19

When The Shit Hits The Fan, You Gotta Think Outside The Box4

Posted In Activism,Blog,Politics

by Lee Camp

Conventional thinking is getting us nowhere. Right now we’ve got a lot of shit to deal with in this little world of ours, and the standard solutions are part of the problem. But who can we get to help us think outside the box? I know just the guy…

[..]

Sep 2012 19

Sons of Anarchy’s Theo Rossi Says Juice Is ‘Crying Clown’ In Season 50

Posted In Blog,Entertainment,TV

by Damon Martin

Season 5 of Sons of Anarchy is in full swing, with the debut episode breaking all records for ratings for any show ever airing on FX. Now as the heat turns up with the new big bad Damon Pope making all kinds of trouble for the boys in SAMCRO, more stories from previous seasons will rear their ugly heads.

Last season was the toughest, but most telling for Juan-Carlos ‘Juice’ Ortiz, as he had to suffer silently as the cops twisted him in the wind with threats of telling his club that he actually had an African-American father unless he turned informant. The race issues broke down barriers in terms of telling the inner workings of biker clubs, or any social club really, but at the center of it actor Theo Rossi shined as a tortured soul who lived with shame while trying to deal with the fact that he was ratting out his friends at the same time. Ultimately, the cops decided to let him go from his obligation after the entire operation was shut down at the season’s end, but that doesn’t mean you get out from under the thumb of law enforcement so easily.

“Juice is just the clown crying on the inside. He’s trying to act as if. Like when he came into that chapel at the end of Season 4 and Jax said ‘are you alright?’ and he says ‘yeah, I’m good,’ and he took that picture of his father and the ATF, and realized it’s all good and got rid of the files. You know, that’s not the case,” Rossi told SuicideGirls in an exclusive interview. “So this is a guy who’s living with secrets and secrets eventually turn to shame and how that all plays out we’ve just got to watch and see.”

Juice already felt the sting from last season in the debut episode when Sheriff Eli Roosevelt looks for a little ‘good faith’ help from his past informant when trying to find dirt in the new found war between the Sons of Anarchy and the Oakland street gang the One-Niners. The new president of the motorcycle club Jax Teller also knows there was something dirty going on within his group from a drug sting that only could have happened from the inside.

Will Juice’s dirty little secret be revealed this season or is he destined to face the wrath of SAMCRO if they find out he was the rat that outed their drug scheme to the cops?

Sons of Anarchy Season 5 continues every Tuesday night at 10 PM on FX.

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