I received this email from my neice in Minnesota. One of Ms. Bachmann's constituents in Minnesota sent her an email in response to her whackjob rant that people need to be "armed and dangerous" against President Obama's supposedly "socialist" policies. Apparently, her constituent thought this was an irresponsible comment to make. One of her flunkies responded with the email that I post below:
Jack Tomczak Political Director Bachmann for Congress 651-324-9825
If you were to click on the link, you would find yourself watching a clip from Billy Madison wherein a man proceeds to berate the main character as rambling, incoherent and irrational. Then, for good measure, the flunky adds the weblink for a definition of the word "metaphor."
Let me suggest here and now that Republican is a metaphor for "elitist" and that Michelle Bachmann contributes daily to the dumbing down of her constituents, the state of Minnesota and America in general.
Pathetic Bachmann flunky: ask not for whom the dumbass bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
When we look around at the mess that our country is in right now and examine how it got this way, one of the issues that keeps coming up is lack of citizen involvement. We all got into this mindset that running things was someone else’s job, to the point where many of us even stopped voting. If we have learned anything at all, I hope that we have learned that we all have an impact on everything around us. If we want things to run properly, we have to be informed, actively involved and willing to stand up for what we believe in.
That is why I was so happy when my friend Miguel Morales told me that he was running for a seat on the Board of Trustees at Johnson County Community College. This is obviously his call to service. You have to know some things about Miguel to understand why that is such a great fit.
Miguel has been a student and employee at JCCC for years. He has worked as a reporter and editor at the student newspaper, The Campus Ledger, [http://campusledger.jccc.edu/] and worked at the Billington Library as an aide. He has been involved with various campus groups and is liked and respected by students, faculty and staff. Miguel feels a great debt to the College for all that he has learned during his time there. I don’t know anyone that cares more about the College, its programs and policies, its reputation and future, its students, faculty, administration and staff.
The Board of Trustees oversees the management of the College. They set the budget and vote on policies that affect programs, faculty, students and staff. It is a non-salaried position, but is integral to the day-to-day operations, the classes and programs offered, student and faculty policy and everything that makes JCCC a quality institution.
Miguel has first-hand knowledge of this because he has been a student and employee and has covered the Board meetings closely as a reporter for the Ledger. He broke the story of retired President Charles Carlson’s alleged sexual harassment of a female employee. It was a tough story for Miguel to research and write because the College means so much to him and because he had to stick his neck out to write it. I know he anguished over it and checked and double-checked the facts before he ran it. It was an important story that would impact the College greatly, so it had to be told. And it took integrity and guts for Miguel to run that story in the Campus newspaper, but he did it because he believes in transparency and the people’s right to know.
Some will view his lack of a business background as a weakness, but Miguel has been involved with non-profit organizations and is intelligent and savvy. Having worked his way up from humble beginnings as a migrant worker, he knows how to live on a budget in a way that most of these other candidates haven’t known in a long time (some maybe never). Besides, as a country, haven’t we put to rest this notion that we should be running everything as if it were a business? Governments and schools aren’t businesses; they are institutions that serve the public interest and meet community needs.
Miguel understands the necessity to run the College in a fiscally responsible and financially efficient way in order to keep the focus on quality education. You don’t have to have a business background to understand how to stick to a budget and plan for the future. And if you spent even five minutes talking to Miguel about the challenges that the College is facing in this economic downturn, you would realize that he is the candidate with the most knowledge on these issues.
As a student, employee and concerned citizen, Miguel would bring a unique perspective to the Board that no other candidate can match. He understands better than any of them the direct impact that the Board’s decisions have on students, faculty and staff at the College. And Miguel would bring much needed diversity to a Board of Trustees that has never included a minority member in its 40 year history. The student body and community that the College serves is increasingly ethnically diverse and it is important for the Board of Trustees at the College to reflect that diversity.
Check out this video on YouTube:
This country needs people who care about their communities and institutions to get involved. As many of us learned in typing class, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.” Miguel Morales wants to serve the College that means so much to him. He is knowledgeable, intelligent, dedicated, passionate, practical and highly qualified. He is a man of the people and has no agenda other than to maintain and improve the quality of education and programs at JCCC.
Please vote for Miguel Morales for Johnson County Community College Board of Trustees on April 7th.
And if you don't live in Johnson County, Kansas, please donate any amount you can to Miguel's campaign. He is running against well-connected business men and politicians and he needs all the help that he can get. http://trustmiguel.wordpress.com/ (There is a donation button at the bottom of the page-secure and easy!)
Check out Miguel's blog: http://latinoreporter.blogspot.com/
Anyone who reads my posts with any regularity and/or anyone that knows me at all, knows that I have been speaking out against various administrations, their policies and the disintegration of the America created by our founding fathers for years now. But no matter how many bad things I noticed and discussed, no matter how many signs and symptoms I observed that we were losing our freedoms and that the ruling classes were gaining unprecedented power and wealth, I could not have believed even six years ago that things would get as bad as they have. The fundamental flaw in my logic was believing that the wealthy and powerful loved this country as I do, valued freedom and democracy as I do, and felt the same allegiance to our founding fathers to maintain what they fought, suffered and died to give to us as I do.
Those of us who have paid attention in the past thirty years have watched as everything that we were taught to value and love, all the precepts and fundamental ideas that this country was built upon, have slowly been eroded and replaced with the kind of system from which our forefathers fled. Opportunity became a thing for the wealthy-- blue collar workers were devalued; manufacturing jobs that paid a living wage disappeared and were replaced with service jobs that were largely minimum wage; public education was defunded and college tuition sky-rocketed. Meanwhile, unions were demonized and busted, attorneys were demonized and civil liberties degraded, the “wall” separating church and state was chipped away, and corporate interests seeped into every corner of our government like toxic waste. Our society began conflating capitalism with democracy, elevating greed over service, equating dissent with treason, and valuing blind nationalism over liberty and freedom. We as a people have been divided by race, religion, social status, financial status and political philosophy. It was under the Bush II Regime that my eyes were fully opened, but this has been coming for a long time.
Many who have been watching this have come to the conclusion that only violent revolution will turn things around. They have given up on the system; they have given up on all leaders. They sit on the sidelines and stew in cynicism. They have good reason to feel the way they do. Many of them have been very aware for many years that America as we know it is slipping away. And they have been active in attempting to change things, to no avail.
Though I understand where they are coming from, I am not there yet. I will not reject the possibility that they might be right, but I am not ready to accept that we cannot change our system using non-violent means. I will continue to advocate for change from within until I see proof that there is no hope.
I am advocating that EVERYONE get involved. Every time you hear a concerned citizen voicing the idea that somehow it is somebody else’s job to turn things around, you should be telling them that nobody else is going to rescue this country, it is up to them. If people want to turn things around, YES THEY CAN, if they will only: Get Informed!, Get Involved!, and Get Active! You are the change that you have been waiting for; you are the only change that you can believe in.
We all know that the media is pure propaganda. From Katie Couric to all of Fox News; you can’t trust them, you can’t believe them and, if you must watch or listen to them, you must do so with extreme prejudice. However, there is an occasional reason to hope and Glenn Greenwald writes about one:
This Fox News interview with Virg Bernero — the Mayor of highly unionized Lansing, Michigan and himself the son of a retired GM worker — is, for several reasons, really worth watching (h/t Brainwrap). The glaring discrepancy he notes — between (a) the consensus of our political class that workers must endlessly give up wage, health and other benefits even as (b) we shovel trillions of dollars in government subsidies to Wall Street for ongoing massive executive bonuses and the like for the very people who caused the collapse — is one that (whether you agree or disagree with it) is rarely heard in our mainstream debate with such clarity and passion.
VIRG
It gives me hope to see that people who are part of government, even local, are thinking this way. They are seeing the same things we are seeing and instead of pulling away, they are getting inside the system. They believe that they can be the change that they are seeking. Others are marching, joining groups, planning protests, speaking out, blogging and getting organized. This is the way that the people of this country have been able to bring about change in the past. I can’t say for certain that it will be successful in these days and times. But I still have hope.
This is not to say that I would not support violent revolution if it comes to that. Our Constitution lays upon us the duty to overthrow authoritarian rule. But it is a tool of last resort and I grow increasingly suspicious of those that are vigorously advocating that tool.
Please click on the link in the title of this blog and go read the full article that is posted there. It connects the dots between the sophomoric Rick Santelli, his idiotic rant on Chicago's Trade floor against Obama's plan to help foreclosure victims and who is really behind this supposed "grass roots" uprising against Obama's budget (Chicago Tea Party-- my ass). The wealthy are acting to protect their millions and they have many pawns in the game. Santelli is merely the jester.
This whole ruse was apparently set up by the Koch family who own the "largest privately held company in America" Koch Industries. [check out this wiki bio on David Koch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Koch] And so, you see, it's no suprise; the free-marketers are not giving up without a war.
Charles Koch, President Koch Industries
It never ceases to amaze me that the richest people in the world can't stand to give up one thin dime of their money. Most of them inherited the money and so it's not like they earned it or anything. It's not like you and I who work hard for our salaries and barely make enough to live on. So what's the big deal; can't they spare a few million? No? WHY IS THAT?
I have my own theory. The rich are afraid of giving any power to the poor because they are afraid that they might have to actually DO something some day. This would be an occurrence for which they would be totally unprepared. Nobody has taught them how to EARN money; they only know how to hang on to it.
So they will spend BILLIONS to hang on to millions. Their only goal is to keep the money and power out of the hands of the poor who could actually really do something with the money. And that something would be to turn this society on its ear.
We've all been lied to for so long now. We were all taught that if we worked hard and played fair, we could get ahead. But the truth is that the rich have never played fair. They have to make it all look fair so that we won't get angry and rebel, in the same way that the powerful also have to make it appear as though this is a democracy so that we don't rebel. If they can just keep us blaming ourselves for all of our misfortune; our fault we can't find jobs, our fault we can't earn more money, our fault we can't afford to send our kids to decent schools or give them proper health care, they can hide behind the curtain of lies and keep pulling the strings in their favor.
As the man once said, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" Indeed; we have met the wizard and the whole thing is a fraud.
A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
One man with courage is a majority.
ON AMERICA'S HEALTH CARE CRISIS
"Anywhere you have extreme poverty and no national health insurance, no promise of health care regardless of social standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of market-based health care. " — Paul Farmer
The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend. — Benjamin Disraeli
As you improve health in a society, population growth goes down. You know, I thought it was... before I learned about it, I thought it was paradoxical. — Bill Gates
America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system. — Walter Cronkite
Everyone should have health insurance? I say everyone should have health care. I'm not selling insurance. — Dennis Kucinich
"Until everyone in our country has access to quality affordable health care, all of our other battles - whether organizing for a living wage or fighting foreclosures - are compromised.” — Maude Hurd
"For too long health care in America has been left up to the insurance industry and its allies who are focused on maximizing profits regardless of the consequences for working people. It's time to turn around the corporate-driven system and focus on providing quality, affordable health care for all." — Caren Benjamin
“This is the human rights movement of our time. If there is one thing that our government should be guaranteeing each one of us, it is the basic, fundamental right to affordable and quality health care. This must be the birthright of every American.” — Jeff Blum
“The crisis of health care hits communities of color and poor families the hardest. The majority of these communities lack coverage entirely, and when they are able to secure health insurance, the care they receive is abysmal.” — Deepak Bhargava
“RNs at the bedside have been centrally positioned to witness how a dysfunctional health care system has failed the patient, the patient’s family, and our country. This daily fact of life for RNs has kept us at the forefront in calling for comprehensive change. Tweaking the current so-called ‘system’ is not enough. Nurses cannot – will not -- stop there.” — Rebecca M. Patton, MSN, RN, CNOR
“Working families are suffering mightily under health care that costs too much, covers too little, excludes too many and is getting worse! Both workers and our employers need relief soon.” — Arlene Holt-Baker
