“1984” Revisited

George Orwell’s 1984 was a classic tale of a world where the government watched everyone all of the time. Televisions were everywhere and every one of them had a camera that spied on everyone no matter where they were. If that wasn’t horrible enough, the government redefined everything and required everyone to accept their definitions.

Thus green could be called blue and black could be called white. Junk yards could be called beautiful and torture could be called pleasure.

Could the story of 1984 happen in America? Most of you would say “No.”
– Eric Snowden divulged the fact that our phone lines and e-mail contacts are being monitored by the CIA.
– Cameras identified the Boston Marathon bombers within a few hours thanks to cameras mounted on the streets.
– The Fort Hood massacre by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan has been called “work place violence” but not a terrorist attack. Interesting definition when you consider that just before the shooting began, many of the witnesses recounted, the gunman yelled “Allahu Akbar,” the Arabic exhortation meaning “God is great.”
– Former Vice President Dick Cheney on this past Sunday’s Meet the Press was asked by moderator Chuck Todd how he defined torture:
Well, torture, to me, Chuck, is an American citizen on a cell phone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York City on 9/11.

Todd followed up by asking whether rectal feeding was torture, and Cheney continued his distract-with-shiny-objects strategy.
I’ve told you what meets the definition of torture. It’s what 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters did to 3,000 Americans on 9/11.

Killing unarmed Black men is justifiable homicide. We have grand juries that confirm it!

Multi-culturalism is the Source of America’s Wealth

The United States has a history of fear of an invasion by people who didn’t look, speak, or behave like the citizens of their time. It started with The Alien and Sedition Acts passed by Congress in 1798 fearing growing numbers of French and Irish. The Naturalization Act of 1798 increased the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to fourteen years, required aliens to declare their intent to acquire citizenship five years before it could be granted, and made persons from ‘enemy’ nations ineligible for naturalization. Aliens could be deported if they were deemed “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” These laws were signed by our second president, John Adams.

There has been fear and hatred of Irish-12.5% of the total population reported Irish ancestry in 2013, Italians, Jews, Chinese, Japanese and other groups.

In every instance those groups have integrated into American society and made the United States the melting pot of the world. Out of those many groups have come some of our most valued Americans. President John F. Kennedy’s family from Ireland; the Gershwin brothers and Irving Berlin were Jews who brought America some of its most favorite music; Neapolitan immigrant Attilio Piccirilli and his five brothers carved the statue of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial; Frank Sinatra, Vic Damone (Vito Farinola); Dean Martin ( Dino Crocetti), Tony Bennett (Anthony Benedetto), Frankie Laine (Frank Lo Vecchio) all brought us wonderful entertainment; novelist Amy Tan (her first novel, The Joy Luck Club) is the daughter of Chinese parents who had immigrated to the United States three years before her birth; Hispanic Americans worthy of note are Alberto Gonzales (Attorney General of the United States under George W. Bush), Antonio Villaraigosa was mayor of Los Angeles, Sonia Maria Sotomayor is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

The question is which group of people would you eliminate from those who should have the opportunity to migrate to the United States? In almost every instance their parents or grandparents spoke little or no English when they arrived at our shores. Multi-culturalism has made America the greatest country in the world.

Legal Bother

The Weekly Sift

If the moral calculation is simply, “Did the ends justify the means?” it’s hard to see why we even bother with laws in the first place.

— Chris Hayes (Wednesday)

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

— The United Nations Convention Against Torture (1984)

Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner] … I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require … for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.

— George Washington (1775)

This week’s featured post is “5 Things to Understand About the Torture Report“. A couple of Sift milestones: I moved the Sift…

View original post 2,238 more words

Jews Wrote the Most Beloved Christmas Songs

Lauren Markoe wrote this piece for the Religion News Service. PBS also had a program on the contribution of Jewish composers to favorite Christian music.
—
Christians don’t seem to mind that so many beloved Christmas songs were written by Jews, and Jews tend to reel off the list with pride.

“White Christmas”; “Let It Snow”; “Santa Baby”; “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”; “Silver Bells”; “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”; “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” (popular line from “The Christmas Song”).

Those not mentioned here could fill an album.

But why didn’t the Jews write any similarly iconic songs for their holiday that falls around Christmas time: Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights?

“I Have a Little Dreidl”? Great song … if you’re 4.

There are reasons that Jews are good at Christmas songs and why so many of these songs became so popular. And there are reasons why Jews didn’t write similarly catchy tunes for Hanukkah – or any other Jewish holiday.

In the first half of the 20th century, Jews flocked the music industry.
It was one business here they didn’t face overwhelming anti-Semitism, said Michael Feinstein, the Emmy Award-winning interpreter of American musical standards.

“White Christmas,” written by Jewish lyricist Irving Berlin, topped the charts in 1942 and launched popular Christmas music, encouraging many others – Jews and non-Jews – to write more odes to the holiday.

And although celebrating the birth of Christ was not something these Jewish songwriters would want to do, they could feel comfortable composing more secular Christmas singles.

“The Christmas songs that are popular are not about Jesus, but they’re about sleigh bells and Santa and the trappings of Christmas,” Feinstein said. “They’re not religious songs.”

In their music and lyrics, Jews captured Christmas not only as a wonderful, wintry time for family gatherings, but also as an American Holiday.

What they drew on, said Rabbi Kenneth Kanter, an expert on Jews and popular culture at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, was their background as the children of European-born Jews, or as immigrants themselves, in the case of Russian-born Berlin and others.

Jewish songwriters’ own successful assimilation and gratitude to America pervades their mid-century Christmas and other songs, and appealed to a country that wanted to feel brave and united as it fought World War II.

“These songs made Christmas a kind of national celebration, almost a patriotic celebration,” Kanter said.

The nonreligious nature of these Christmas songs may not sit well with pious Christians, said Feinstein, who is Jewish and who cut “Michael Feinstein Christmas,” among many other albums.

But they are now part of the fabric of our larger culture, he said, and “any singer who is a singer of the American song book will sing Christmas songs,” said Feinstein.

“We all sing them.”

Have a Merry Christmas/Hanukkah

Hypocrites or Honest People?

The United States has a history of wanting to assure the world that we did something really bad and it won’t happen again. Other nations for the most part simply move on and say as little as possible about their previous misbehaviour. Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the killing of millions of Armenians is the outstanding example. Germany is the one nation that stands out in trying to make amends for the Holocaust.

Look at the list of things we Americans champion that we once supported. In every instance America says “never again.” Today we lecture other nations about their behavior.

– Slavery: Pope Paul III forbade it in 1537. Great Britain abolished slavery in 1805.

– Massacre of indigenous people: Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado. The killing commenced on Nov. 29, 1864, when 700 members of the Colorado Territory Militia led by Col. John Chivington attacked a Native American encampment in southeastern Colorado, slaughtering between 150 and 200 Indians — mostly women, children and the elderly.

– Internment of people of Japanese descent in America during WWII.

– A Bomb use: The United States dropped it twice to end WWII. Justified or not, the United States does everything in its power to prevent other nations from obtaining the capability of building nuclear weapons.

– Torture of war prisoners: Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and in other locations, prisons were places where there was extreme torture and mistreatment.

What all of these incidents have in common is the words “never again.” However, when the United States government believes it has “the right” to its actions all holds are bared. As a nation we panic. Ebola was not even close to becoming an epidemic in this nation. Still the public and the government behaved as if there was an issue of going shopping at your local market.

When the next event occurs, and it will, you can be sure that panic will bring out the worst in us. Since we choose to investigate and report our behavior, our enemies will use those reports to prove that the United States is a really bad country.

Meet the Press Nerd Facts

Meet the Press Transcript – December 7, 2014

HOST CHUCK TODD:

Nerd screen time about Congress and wealth. The majority of Americans, of course, think members of Congress are out of touch with average citizens. 81%, according to Gallup’s most recent survey. In fact, average Americans don’t think members of Congress understand their needs or concerns.

And that members of Congress are too beholden to special interests. Well, there’s a big reason why our representatives here in Washington appear to have a hard time relating to most of you. And it starts with a massive wealth gap. Let’s take a look at the numbers. First of all, members of Congress make a lot more money than the average American.

Typical household income, $54,000 annually. The annual salary for each member of Congress, it’s nearly $175,000, three times as much. And oh, by the way, that’s not household income. This doesn’t include spousal income. You included that, it’s even much higher. Not surprisingly, members of Congress are also doing better than average Americans when it comes to seeing their wealth grow.

On average, media net worth for average Americans grew just under 4% annually from 2004 to 2012. In that same period of time, members of Congress saw their income increase at a 15% clip annually. The result? By 2013, the average 55 to 65 year old, that’s about the average age of a member of Congress, had a net worth of just over $165,000.

And that includes real estate holdings. The average net worth for a member of Congress? Just over a million dollars. And that does not include real estate holdings. They don’t have to report that on their forms. If they did, that number would even be higher. All of which makes this next figure not so surprising after you see all these numbers. And that is, millionaire households.

Overall, nearly 6% of households in America are millionaires. And that number’s up, by the way. Members of Congress? Over half of them, remember there are 535 of them, over half of them are millionaires. So you wonder why the economy, income inequity, all of these issues, you don’t feel like Congress quite understands the urgency of it, this is all you need to know. Half of them are millionaires. We’ll be right back.

Senator Bernie Sanders is An Outstanding Candidate for President

Senator Bernie Sanders is viewed by many as a communist or at the very least a socialist. Read his 12 initiatives below and tell me who would disagree with his ideas.

I am looking for a presidential candidate that will provide a set of ideas or goals that are achievable. Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats has offered his goals in an easy to understand declaration. I agree with his goals. Despite what others may call him, I identify him as a real progressive who wants to help the poor and middle live better lives. Both the Democrats and Republicans should co-opt these ideas.

Following is a copy of his 12 initiatives to help America’s middle class.

—

The American people must make a fundamental decision. Do we continue the 40-year decline of our middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, or do we fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all? Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class, or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy? These are the most important questions of our time, and how we answer them will determine the future of our country. The long-term deterioration of the middle class, accelerated by the Wall Street crash of 2008, has not been pretty. Today, we have more wealth and income inequality than any major country on earth. We have one of the highest childhood poverty rates and we are the only country in the industrialized world which does not guarantee health care for all. We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing. Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent. Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the median male worker earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago. The median woman worker made $1,337 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation, now earning less than it did 25 years ago. The American people must demand that Congress and the White House start protecting the interests of working families, not just wealthy campaign contributors. We need federal legislation to put the unemployed back to work, to raise wages and make certain that all Americans have the health care and education they need for healthy and productive lives. As Vermont’s senator, here are 12 initiatives that I will be fighting for which can restore America’s middle class.

1. Rebuilding Our Roads

We need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools. It has been estimated that the cost of the Bush-Cheney Iraq War, a war we should never have waged, will total $3 trillion by the time the last veteran receives needed care. A $1 trillion investment in infrastructure could create 13 million decent paying jobs and make this country more efficient and productive. We need to invest in infrastructure, not more war.

2. Reversing Climate Change

The United States must lead the world in reversing climate change and make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies. Millions of homes and buildings need to be weatherized, our transportation system needs to be energy efficient and we need to greatly accelerate the progress we are already seeing in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and other forms of sustainable energy. Transforming our energy system will not only protect the environment, it will create good paying jobs.

3. Creating Jobs

We need to develop new economic models to increase job creation and productivity. Instead of giving huge tax breaks to corporations which ship our jobs to China and other low-wage countries, we need to provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives. Study after study shows that when workers have an ownership stake in the businesses they work for, productivity goes up, absenteeism goes down and employees are much more satisfied with their jobs.

4. Protecting Unions

Union workers who are able to collectively bargain for higher wages and benefits earn substantially more than non-union workers. Today, corporate opposition to union organizing makes it extremely difficult for workers to join a union. We need legislation which makes it clear that when a majority of workers sign cards in support of a union, they can form a union.

5. Raising the Wage

The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. No one in this country who works 40 hours a week should live in poverty.

6. Pay Equity

Women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts make. We need pay equity in our country — equal pay for equal work.

7. Making Trade Work for Workers

Since 2001 we have lost more than 60,000 factories in this country, and more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs. We must end our disastrous trade policies (NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China, etc.) which enable corporate America to shut down plants in this country and move to China and other low-wage countries. We need to end the race to the bottom and develop trade policies which demand that American corporations create jobs here, and not abroad.

8. Cutting College Costs

In today’s highly competitive global economy, millions of Americans are unable to afford the higher education they need in order to get good-paying jobs. Further, with both parents now often at work, most working-class families can’t locate the high-quality and affordable child care they need for their kids. Quality education in America, from child care to higher education, must be affordable for all. Without a high-quality and affordable educational system, we will be unable to compete globally and our standard of living will continue to decline.

9. Breaking Up Big Banks

The function of banking is to facilitate the flow of capital into productive and job-creating activities. Financial institutions cannot be an island unto themselves, standing as huge profit centers outside of the real economy. Today, six huge Wall Street financial institutions have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product – over $9.8 trillion. These institutions underwrite more than half the mortgages in this country and more than two-thirds of the credit cards. The greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of major Wall Street firms plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. They are too powerful to be reformed. They must be broken up.

10. Bringing Health Care to All

The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world and recognize that health care is a right of all, and not a privilege. Despite the fact that more than 40 million Americans have no health insurance, we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation. We need to establish a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.

11. Ending Poverty

Millions of seniors live in poverty and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country. We must strengthen the social safety net, not weaken it. Instead of cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs, we should be expanding these programs.

12. Stopping Tax Dodging Corporations

At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that major profitable corporations have paid nothing in federal income taxes, and that corporate CEOs in this country often enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than their secretaries. It is absurd that we lose over $100 billion a year in revenue because corporations and the wealthy stash their cash in offshore tax havens around the world. The time is long overdue for real tax reform.

Bad Parrot

A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary.

Every word out of the bird’s mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity. John tried and tried to change the bird’s attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to ‘clean up’ the bird’s vocabulary.

Finally, John was fed up, and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot, and the parrot got angrier and even more rude. John, in desperation, threw up his hands, grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer.

For a few minutes, the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed. Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute.

Fearing that he’d hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer. The parrot calmly stepped out onto John’s outstretched arms and said, “I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I’m sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions, and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior.”

John was stunned at the change in the bird’s attitude.

As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the bird spoke-up, very softly, “May I ask what the turkey did?”

California Bullet Train is a Path to the Future

Driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles is a dreary six hour experience. Most people travel inland to use Interstate 5. It is a straight and boring ride. In the summer the heat in the Central Valley and the drive to the top of the Tehachapi Mountains (called the Grape Vine) causes many cars to overheat. The drive from Los Angeles does not include the steep climb but isn’t any fun either.

Today the flight from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to San Francisco International Airport takes about 1½ hours. Airplane seats are narrow, poorly padded, and there is no leg room. The time for check in and clearance through security is about 1½ hours. American Airlines recommends check in “At least 90 minutes prior to departure when checking bags.” Travel to LAX is about 1½ hours. Thus a 1½ hour flight requires 4½ hours. The flight costs $124.00 round trip. Currently the travel time by rail is about 12 3/4 hours. Obviously train travel is not acceptable to most people as the train does not actually go into San Francisco. The last leg of the trip is a bus ride from Emeryville across San Francisco Bay.

The Bullet Train project plans that by 2029 the system will run from San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin in under three hours at speeds capable of over 200 miles per hour. If the train cost is competitive with air travel we will see a new era for travel. We will be able to reach the center of each city without a special effort. The airlines will cut their fares to continue drawing patrons.

Despite the naysayers, I believe Governor Jerry Brown is correct in perusing this project.