A World Intwined: SXSW and Snowden

March 10, 2014

SXSW and Snowden

I don't mind SXSW getting political, necessarily, but this is waaaay the wrong cause.

Edward Snowden said (in his SXSW talk) that US citizens should use encryption to protect their data... shouldn't the security systems of the USA be private too? Snowden didn't release info' that showed governmental criminal behavior (as Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers) he released mass-data about individual CIA agents that put their lives in danger, when they weren't even involved in the NSA actions Snowden is against.

Snowden continues to denigrate the USA while living comfortably in a totalitarian state that locks up members of the band Pussy Riot and countless others, for disagreeing with their government on policy issues and he never comes to their aid, or the aid of countless Russian dissidents who are jailed for speaking out about issues that they would be allowed to protest publicly in the USA. If Snowden did complain about the Russian totalitarian system he would be in a prison with far less justice than if he came back to the US and turned himself in.

This is a low moment for SXSW. It is an unforgivable act of pop muckraking that completely distracts from the artistic goals of the festival. Shame on SXSW.

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Perfect Financial Formula-

The tax rates on the wealthy from 1940-80 were double to triple today's rates, no coincidence. From 1940-80 we paid for WWII, Korean War, Vietnam war, Republican Eisenhower built our Entire Interstate Expressway system and we went to the moon-manned 6 times! All this while providing a much more generous safety net of social programs than we have today. Kennedy only lowered the upper rate a little, but Reagan decimated it and America has gone into debt and disrepair since then. Sad...When will we learn?

Obama Did Not Change Unemployed Calculation, Pa Bush and Clinton Did!

Interesting that if you add the upwardly revised jobs # from the previous two months to the April total then it equals the 168k that was projected. But the real point to focus on today is the fake story from the far-right which lies about how the unemployment # is calculated. They say Obama changed it, NO, it was changed in 1994!

"THE DEFINITION OF 'UNEMPLOYED' HAS CHANGED"...
Rightwingers! Show me one link to one reliable source detailing when and how this happened! You can't. What Neal Boortz etc. are referring to (when they say today's rate would be higher under the old formula) is something that occurred in 1994 under Clinton and was started by the Bush Sr. administration.
Here is a link to an article in Harper's by Kevin Phillips proving my point...
Quote and Link: "But in 1994, the Bureau of Labor Statistics redefined the workforce to include only that small percentage of the discouraged who had been seeking work for less than a year. The longer-term discouraged—some 4 million U.S. adults—fell out of the main monthly tally. Some now call them the “hidden unemployed.”
Harpers-
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/0082023

A Walk With MLK-My proudest day.

One bright morning when I was a 12 year old boy living in Sandy Springs GA, my mother June announced to my younger brother and sister and me that we weren't going to school that day. She told us to dress nice and get in the car. We only found out as we were leaving the house that we were going to march in Martin Luther King's funeral procession.

It was a short quiet drive. I don't care for crowds and I was worried that this was going to be a long hard sermon to listen to, but I knew we were doing the right thing. We had mostly grown up in the poorer parts of various southern towns and we were used to both colors of people sharing the streets, but this was an amazing feeling to be the only people of one color we saw in such a large crowd. I wasn't surprised at how warm and comfortable it felt. And I realized immediately what a good idea Momma had to come there.

The entire walk and service seem like a beautiful, if melancholy dream. Never had we felt such an outpouring of peace and goodwill through such sadness. All of us have shared our memories over the years, many times. The whole event passed like a song, but midway through my younger brother, only 8, began fidgeting, being so short he was staring at people's stomachs and bored. Then slowly and quietly, without a word, a tall strong man standing behind Steve reached down and picked him up over his head and gently placed him on his shoulders so he could see. Steve was quietly mesmerized and still says it was the most amazing experience he ever had to be lifted up over the crowd and to watch the whole panorama from his private box.

It was a small piece of heaven on earth that the reverend brought to all of us there that day. My mother and sister and brother and I all agree that was all of our proudest day. Not for anything we've done to help with King's cause, but what we did for ourselves by being there. It changed us. It was a religious experience.

When I see pictures of the good doctor and his statue on the mall, he is very real to me. He is still alive, I'm sure of it.

And I wouldn't be at all surprised if he came back one bright morning.

Lower Tax Rates Bring in More Revenue-Not Really...

'It works every time it's been tried' blares the conservative radio host of your choice. But not so fast...here's how that myth breaks down. If an economy is growing at a very fast clip and increasing in size year after year, that is one thing. Under that circumstance (as was the case in 1965 when our upper rate was lowered from 91% to 70%) then it is indeed possible to garner more tax revenue at a lower rate of taxation because you are, in effect, taking a smaller bite of a bigger pie. But this is a temporary result and depends on the economy continuing to expand. And since a prime factor in the continuing growth of any economy is that a nation stay up to date on modernization and maintenance of its infrastructure, that means this formula for increasing revenue by lowering taxes must inevitably be reversed if a nations economy is to stay strong. Nothing is static in economics!

When Will We Learn?

During what years was the USA at our economic peak? The tax rates on the wealthy from 1940-80 were no coincidence. And don't say 'the rich didn't really pay them'. There's no way our economy grew so much and we did so much with such low debt without vastly more revenue. From 1940-80 we paid for WWII, Korean War, Vietnam war, Republican Eisenhower built our Entire entire Interstate Expressways system and we went to the moon-manned 6 times! Kennedy only lowered the upper rate a little, but Reagan decimated it and America has gone into debt and disrepair since then. Sad...When will we learn?
http://PatrioticEconomics.blogspot.com/

The [N-Word] Lover's Dead -JFK

"The NiXXer lover's dead..."

Those were the words that informed me of the assassination of president John F. Kennedy fifty years ago. The words weren't spoken by an individual, they were sung by a small makeshift choir gathered around the driver of a school bus in Greenville South Carolina where I lived at the time.

I was eight years old and despite the rampant racism in the south, I didn't hear the 'N' word very often. My white family didn't use it and in the all white segregated school I went to and community I lived in Black folks were almost invisible and therefore not available to be abused by this hate speech.

This small bus load of white elementary school boys had been shuttled from school to the Young Men's Christian Association for pee wee football practice and we were on our way home when I heard the 'song'.

I was sitting near the back of the bus and as it rumbled along I absentmindedly didn't notice that most of the other kids had gathered around the bus driver at the front, in a tight bunch. When the song started I couldn't make out the words, but the dirge-like chanting immediately made me feel as if I had crossed into some otherworldly nightmare and I was listening to the chanting of witches...I thought this to myself just before the words became clear to me..."The Nigger lover's dead...The Nigger lover's dead...The Nigger lover's dead..." over and over again, it went on and on and sent a chill down my spine though I had no idea what they were singing about. Even when we got off the bus (back at school) and another kid my age smiled at me and gleefully repeated the phrase...I still didn't know.

I walked home and when I entered the house and the living room I found my mother and our Black babysitter Mariah in a huddle of sobbing and wailing on the couch. My mother June looked up at me with her tortured red tear-soaked face and just shook her head and put it back down...I walked through the hall to my bedroom and I still wasn't sure what had happened, but I knew someone good had been killed and I remember thinking to myself that we weren't going to be happy anymore for a very long time.

Years passed, other tragedies happened and were grieved, MLK, Bobby Kennedy...and in 1990 I moved to Boston Massachusetts. One day as I walked down Commonwealth Avenue, under the CITGO sign, I passed an elderly AfrAmerican man walking the opposite way on the sidewalk. As I nodded, a car full of young white men drove passed us and shouted "Nigger!" in unison. As I barked "Fuck you!" they retorted "Nigger lover!" and sped away. I looked back at the gentleman and said, "I'm sorry about that." He just smiled a sad smile and said, "That's OK," and kept on walking.

Ironically, that's the only time anyone ever called me that horrid phrase to my face - not far from JFK's birthplace.

I don't think America is worse than other nations in terms of racism. In some ways you can argue that the United States is the only place racially diverse enough to be considered a true test of a society's ability to peacefully integrate different races. Barack Obama being elected president surely doesn't mean the end of racism in America, but in my opinion - and I think that of my mother June, who passed on some years back - I believe that it is the greatest moment in the history of our country.

I don't say this because I know President Obama is our best president, but he is a crown on the throne of America as a progressive nation!

And today, while the pain of that early memory has been dulled by time and some modicum of progress, I am freshly sickened by the latest right wing political posturing in which (cynically and wickedly) they are trying to invoke the name of John F. Kennedy as a conservative, one of their ilk, who would gladly abandon the Democratic Party in favor of Republicans, if he were only alive today.

The man whose name they spat on they now claim as their own because of his iconic popularity and youth appeal. 'JFK' they say 'lowered taxes' and that makes him theirs. Yes Rush Limbaugh, yes George Will, JFK's administration lowered taxes from an upper rate for the wealthy of 91% to 77%, (or roughly double today's rates). There's no reason to believe he would join in with you and the modern, government hating, Republican zealots of today or the revitalized racism of the Tea Party.
But there is every reason for you to bow your heads in shame for ever mentioning his name.
http://ChipShirley.Com/