What Are We Voting For In 2020?

Something is terribly wrong in America.  A national State of Mind, more foul than the water in Flint and Newark and the air in Richmond Ca. has taken possession of the residents of Main Street.  Fear and insecurity once abolished by the knowledge of a paycheck commensurate with their needs and a society to back them up if they should need help are now front and center in the minds of the residents on Main Street once again.  This situation cannot be allowed to continue and this year and next there is for the first time since FDR a real choice for Americans. 

Bernie Sanders has presented a Platform that addresses the worries in the households of Main Street more completely and satisfactorily than the ideas proposed by the other 'Establishment Approved' candidates.

It is the present 'Establishment' that is the opponent of Main Street.  The 'Establishment' is comprised of the forces that combine to influence lawmakers to make laws.  We understand correctly that at this moment that influence is the Corporate People who cannot vote themselves but who donate large sums.  While they cannot vote they are allowed to influence American elections and social life by giving money to Republican and Democratic Politicians and the organizations that support those Politicians.  Does it make sense to you that someone forbidden to vote can donate money and have laws made to benefit them?  

There is an inherent conflict of interest when a non-voting entity contributes any money at all, let alone substantial amounts,to 'Establishment Politicians' and in return obtains favorable legislation. This is the situation we refer to as the present 'Status Quo' and it is the cause of virtually all of the concerns on the minds of those trying to scratch out a living on Main Street.  Most Americans would like a more equitable Status Quo.

 (link to OpenSecrets.org.)

Bernie Sanders is the only viable candidate addressing the problem of the present 'Establishment' and the present 'Status Quo' which the present 'Establishment' regards as being normal.  It may be normal in the eyes of Republican and Democratic lawmakers but it is an unacceptable quality of daily life for the average American. But that is what is being offered to the People today by the Republican and Democratic Parties.  It's time to stop this one day older and deeper in debt program.   An old best selling song from 1956 at the link describes the workers problem and it showcases the needs of the workers that any society worth keeping seeks to provide in order to keep it from being a wage-slave colony.

The Sanders candidacy in the midst of the present national social failure has made me consider what is the purpose of a government in the first place if it is not to make life easier and more secure than life without a government?  So far neither Republicans or Democrats have proven themselves up to the task of making life easier and more secure.  Instead our money doesn't go as far as it is needed to go and President Trump is seeing to it that the problems are going to get worse.   (link to Forbes Magazine article by  Yuwa Hedrick-Wong ) Trump, as most of his predecessors, has been no help at all except for a very few not of the working and middle classes.  For information of wealth disparity in the U.S. inequality.org  can inform you. 

Sanders proposals address the basic needs of those who live and move and have their being on Main Street. He proposes healthcare as a given, education a given, equitable employment a given, his vision is the vision we need it addresses our needs.  His vision is explained at his website.  

So what is the purpose of Government?  Some might say immediately to keep us secure and safe!  I would ask: "Do you remember 9/11/ 2001, when those paid to protect us claimed a complete and total lack of knowledge of even the possibility of such an attack?"  That failure lead to the subsequent failure to protect us!  Were our protectors asleep at the wheel?  Are you any safer today? If you were safer would you keep being informed by the Corporate Media and your Public Servants of all the dangers surrounding you and how impotent they are to do anything but build a wall?   

A report on the indifference to warnings on the attacks from RT.  

When the person in charge of this kind of activity gives the explanation Ms. Rice gives a question of whether or not we are being protected at all justly arises.  She had no clue and was caught totally by surprise by her own admission. That failure was not only a major failure on her part but it calls the whole concept of security into question.  Are you secure now?  

In this context the need to find an answer to the question of "what is the purpose of a government?" becomes imperative.  In an era such as this with the government in the control of corporate hands and operating for the benefit of those who comprise the corporate Donor Class a Sanders candidacy is like a white dove from heaven.  At the very least it is the first step up the ladder from the bottom.

Have a nice day.

Would you wear this T Shirt?

While watching the burlesque 

of Trump-dom  unfold in real time 

the thoughts on the T Shirt 

appeared in my mind.  

If you'd like to wear one  you can, hopefully, obtain one  by clicking the image below.

I could wear that! T-Shirt
by Hermenutic

Art in the public interest: Serendipity On An August Afternoon (video)

Serendipity On An August Afternoon

As August comes to an end and summer winds down so do the prospects for the earth to remain able to provide what is required to sustain life.  We are faced with the conclusion that the way of life we as the human species have chosen is killing us.  A time for decision making is upon us.  Should we just keep on keeping on until we are extinguished? Or should we change our minds? 

If those who can do something to stop this do not intervene life on earth is over.  If there were a moment more climactic than this moment when the societies of the world are deciding whether their 'way of life' is worth keeping when it means the end of life itself I'd like to know what that moment was.

Frankly it is doubtful that life will not arise from the ashes.  I suppose life must arise from the ashes.  But I wonder why it is so hard to decide to save what we have while we have a slight chance to do so.  After all it can be pretty nice here in August.  

Why did we start the fire and why are we not doing all we can to put the fire out?

Hell's Kitchen City Park (environmental art and video)

Every once in a while the conclusion of the logic of continuing to promote fossil fuels seems to have been lost sight of.  

The logical conclusion should be obvious when it is understood that before non-native residents arrived environmental pollution was under control.  Today environmental pollution is OUT OF CONTROL.

Abandoning fossil fuels appears to be the only rational conclusion to be derived from their use.

Smoke And Portents On A Summer Afternoon (poetry)

Smoke And Portents On A Summer Afternoon

The lawn's been mown

and now smoke is rising from my bowl

made from the antler of a deer

that died before June 13, 1993.

That date is set in stone.

Today is July 24, 2019.

The bowl and my hand

have accommodated themselves gratefully

and purposefully to each other

over the years.

Today in the front yard sunflowers bloom,

on the side porch morning glory vines

with blossoms climb upward

wrapping themselves around the rafters of the porch filling their cups with photons that left the sun

eight minutes and twenty seconds earlier

with an urgent message:

"Keep on climbing, it's still summer

and you have many seeds to make."

Fuel is added and the smoke continues rising,

the present summer afternoon
turns into former summers...

making me laugh,

but sometimes there's tears

that become something else altogether 

with the passing of years….

This afternoon photons with a message sting my face

drawing drops of moisture from beneath my skin.

While smoke curls up from my antler bowl

and wraps around the morning glory vines,

I bemusedly consider what it means.

Rising from the bowl the smoke

brings unspoken messages to my soul

as photons release a sweet fermented gasp

from the fallen blades of grass;

from ninety million miles away they desiccate

and transform

what the October rains

will mediate

and re-form.

"Caw", a crow calls from atop the poplar

behind the house.  "Caw."

On the way out with a cup of peanuts for the crow I think:

 

"This is my seventy second summer…

All I did was chop wood

and carry water

and now the well is dry.

I wonder what's next."

© David H. Roche

Mother Nature's Many Lives (Poetry)

Mother Nature isn't in danger, she's got more lives than nine cats.  Her life is made from living and dying.  Ours isn't. If we don't live we die. We don't do both and stay alive.  We're going to die anyhow but doing all we can do to meet our fate quicker does not hit me as the right decision to make.  How about you?

It's something to think about.

Some Good Reasons To Expect A Progressive Victory In 2020

The political platform presented by Bernie Sanders is a reflection of the needs not now being met by the present Republican and Democratic administrators of the status quo. The current issues of Medicare for all, fully free education and current education debt forgiveness, an economy that produces employment opportunities enabling the worker to fully participate in the consumer society, an administration directed course of action faithful to the next generation. This moment requires an administration that is fully engaged in addressing the results of changing eco-system viability due to climate change and industrial pollution issues as well as representing America as being a fully inclusive society that does not use race, religion, or gender as a means to determine who the problem causers in society are.

The improvements in society proposed by a Progressive agenda will require government spending in areas long forgotten by Republican and Democratic lawmakers. There is no free lunch you get what you pay for.  At least that is the way it should be.  However it is just the opposite in the U.S. right now.  Right now those who contribute the least financially to society are given the biggest financial rewards by the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who are solely responsible for the way life is unfolding on Main Street.

We should not despair.  The mistakes of the past can be used to pay for social justice today. After all if we are able to provide corporate welfare to those who do not deserve it we can simply put that money to use by giving it back to the taxpayer who paid it to the government in taxes in the first place. That makes a heck of a lot more sense than just handing it willy-nilly to corporate nere-do-wells.

By contributing financially to society I mean the paying of the levied taxes. Everyone who works does this. In contrast there are companies who are able to make untaxed billions in profits because of their donations to the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who make tax loopholes for them.

According to the Institute On Taxation And Economic Policy (ITEP)

"If these companies paid the statutory 21 percent federal tax rate, they would owe $16.4 billion in federal income taxes. Instead, they collectively received $4.3 billion in rebates."

These corporations were allowed to get away without paying their share by Republican and Democratic lawmakers who take contributions from these companies and then make laws to help the companies avoid paying their share making the working and middle classes pay damned near the entire bill.  These companies not paying their fair share are in a big part responsible for the economic malaise Main Street Americans are dying from. With that being the case immediate rectification of this problem is obligatory on the part of lawmakers.

Ducking out on the bill is not the only way these creeps get out of paying their way in the world. Sometimes the Republicans and the Democrats just give them money.  It's called subsidies. Do you know who is being given money hand over fist by Republican and Democratic lawmakers? Below in the link is a short list of these corporate panhandlers.

Only eight of the biggest corporate welfare recipients are revealed in this report from Showbiz CheatSheet.  The report reveals the bureaucratic shenanigans employed by Republican and Democratic lawmakers for moving the tax dollars of the working and middle classes to the balance sheets of corporate welfare beneficiaries.  These welfare recipients are real big international corporations that receive the dollars earned by the sweat of Americans, many working multiple low paying jobs and not able to afford a place to live.  And this list includes merely 8 of these easy riders.

The day is coming there will be a raid on the Banks of Marble that claim the workers wealth as their own. Some are saying that day has arrived, some are saying "No, but it is on the way." One thing is sure, the working class and some in the middle class are slowly becoming aware they've been taken to the cleaners by a second class bunch of Republican and Democratic bullshitters.

What the working class and the middle class long divided by an endless succession of Republican and Democratic Punch and Judy shows will do remains to be seen.  I suspect they will join together on the basis that the Progressive issues are human issues and not political issues. I suspect the working class and the middle class will reclaim their humanity and rebuild the U.S. in a way that reflects human, not corporate, values. The Progressive agenda is fundamentally connected to the bedrock human requirements of life and society in the 21st century, that being the case political barriers to unity are revealed as ridiculous and make a Progressive victory possible in 2020.

The Knowledge of "Good and "Evil"

The Knowledge of "Good and "Evil"

Sometimes I feel as if something different than what we have been told is happening is actually happening. This morning for instance while watching the news report on Democracy Now I saw something that did not seem right. After thinking about what I had seen I determined it was a good example of the knowledge and practice of 'Good' and 'Evil' put on exhibit for the entire world to take notice. The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian revealed the complete hypocrisy of the Christian Right in support of this Administration in the face of so much easily solved human need.

To bring you up to date:

On the southwestern border of the U.S. there has been created a vast and growing humanitarian crisis of disenfranchised  people who are fleeing for their lives and pleading for help on the proverbial doorstep of the U.S.

The U.S. has responded by imprisoning them and breaking up families in the name of law and order and national security.  Instead of employing it's vast wealth to aid these people the U.S. has turned all its energies to their arrival by providing the most dismal and cruel receptions within the Christian borders of the U.S. where the words of Jesus have been ignored. 

I was provoked by the report from Democracy Now this morning and it dawned on me that this anti-human behavior by the U.S. is an excellent example to use when showing the difference between "Good" and "Evil". Jesus himself used the very same example when he taught about the Judgment Day. As a result of seeing what the U.S. is doing right this very moment I made the poster above. 

Update Iran

Since I made the art in the video below the shit has begun hitting the fan.  I thought I'd re-post it after the recent attacks on ships in the Mideast.

Democracy Now fills us in on the situation in a June 14, 2019 report.  

The shit storm is about to begin and Iran is the last Mideast Domino left to fall.  

The Ring of Fire shared this report today.  The report indicates that someone in high places may not be telling the truth. As strange as that may seem that is what was said.

I made the poster below after thinking about the Democracy Now broadcast. 

Iran in the crosshairs

Suffering: a meditation (Poetry)

Suffering: a meditation

suffering explained at this link

A young man parked his car and jumped from the bridge yesterday morning…,

an old man unaware
in the park below

burst into tears

while reminiscing.

The body hasn't been found,

the old man still cries in the park

and the tide keeps coming in

and going out.

© David H. Roche

Iran In The Crosshairs

You know it's true, 

now it's up to you.

Stars In Your Eyes

I got the idea from something I read 

a long time ago about all of us 

being made of stardust.  

So I began to doodle. 

The video below is the end result.

Stars In Your Eyes

Political Solutions: Brexit (political art)

Political Solutions Are No Longer Working

So I was thinking after listening to this talk (at the highlighted link) by Howard Zinn on the topic of patriotism, government and citizens in a democracy.  His words got me to thinking and then I began to write. Listen to his lecture. 

He's an interesting guy who participated willingly in the destruction of Germany during WW2 and became a historian and social critic afterward. At the following highlighted link is Zinn talking about "Three Holy Wars."

Americans and the rest of the people in the world are in the grip of something that is strangling the life out of them. That something is the current economic organization of society which mandates the present world conditions as a likely outcome of the rules governing the economic system. 

"Grin and bear it, it will get better." we have been told.  The experts are not that hopeful anymore even as the politicians hold rallies and avoid confronting reality by selling promises never meant to be kept.
It's a bitter bread they're baking that we the people are being forced to buy and eat.  

The people who were elected have sold us out. Ninety percent of the time lawmakers give the non-voting donor class what it wants. To support this obvious obfuscation the important decisions at the highest levels of our government have produced a propaganda program that has the characteristics of a madcap party hosted by the Marx Brothers, Albert and Costello and Laurel and Hardy. We recognize that madcap party as the Trump Administration along with it's supporters in congress and out.

People are capable of extremes of behavior. We can make war and we can make peace. Is it possible the present economic system does not hold the possibility of peace? So far it has not worked out. You can see that, right? (Smedley Butler at the link)

If you think your civil rights are still intact it might be a good time to begin using as many of them as you can. At the highlighted link is an audio essay by Henry Thoreau.  Thoreau is an American original. This work on THE DUTY of civil disobedience has inspired many. At one time it was required reading. It was time of war with no end in sight leaving only a horrible past to remember and an even more horrible future to imagine. 

Here we are again.

I'll let Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky leave something for your thoughts about what to do with your civil rights.

"The April Fools Movement" (worker satire) APRIL FOOLS ISSUE

After posting I encountered this interview with economist Michael Hudson.

The movement began on the first day of January  with a post on the internet by the eccentric and mysterious billionaire from Zambia, Melon Husk, with an offer of forming a world wide workers union. Husk offered to provide a 'bottomless' strike fund to support the workers while they were on strike.  It was a brief message with a web address where workers anywhere in the world could register and join the union. There was no trouble convincing the labor force to join.

The message said: "If you are underpaid, if the quality of your life is not to your liking join the Worldwide Workers International Labor Collective.

The WWILC will make your life better."

At the website the goals of the WWILC were simple. A living wage, completely paid healthcare, affordable housing, ample free educational opportunities, paid vacations, and one year of fully paid maternity leave for each parent.

The idea spread like a virus in a daycare facility and before the first day of March a billion workers worldwide had joined and more were learning about it and joining daily.  There was to be, on the first day of April, a worldwide strike. And so there was.

On April 1 the entire WWILC membership of slightly more than one billion workers did not show up to work. Instead they were on the sidewalks with informational brochures explaining the strike and the conditions which caused the workers to organize. Around the world commerce ground to a halt.

Banks could not open, no restaurants opened, no gas stations opened, grocery stores were closed, the doctor might be in his office, but his staff was not. Every aspect of life that required labor to provide a service was affected.

It was a successful strike that lasted the entire month of April.  Every sweatshop around the world ceased production and when it was over The People had won. The strike came to be known as "The April Fools Movement" and the first day of April is now celebrated annually and the workers lived happily ever after.

If you have not heard the song "Banks of Marble" listening to it may inspire you to rise up and improve your chances which are growing slimmer every passing day.

Mr. and Mrs. Goose

Mr. and Mrs. Goose returned some time around the first of March.  When they began showing up I was pleased to see them again and began bringing out cracked corn each time they returned.

All was well up until a couple of days ago when a second pair of geese landed in the pond and there was a flurry of interaction between the two pairs of geese.

Later that afternoon only Mr. Goose returned.  Mrs. Goose had flown off with the other pair and abandoned him. 

He came just before dark and called and called for her and she did not answer.  I stood in the yard with him as it grew dark while he called over and over again. His voice was like the sound a saxophone with a split reed makes. His cry brought tears to my eyes because no one answered him. It was a lonely, sorrowful, heartbreaking squawking cry and he repeated it over and over before he flew away alone.

This morning a single goose flew overhead I heard it honking and looked out the window.  Mr. Goose has not come for corn today.  I hope he comes back.

Reflections (poetry)

Reflections

Several times today

in windows and mirrors and memories

I saw my face.

.

The years have taken almost all

of  what was "Me"

and what is left is leaving...

for an eagerly anticipated rendezvous.

Several times today I thought

of a flower gone to seed;

and the time for planting once again

approaching.

 

© David H. Roche 2019

Reality Check (political poster)

An Uncomfortable Truth

after making this post Jimmy Dore presented a timely interview with Norman Finkelstein it can be seen at the link.

I made a poster this morning as a correction of the slanted nature of the corporate news reporting on the atrocities being perpetrated in Palestine. They'd just have to stop and think and it would be plain to see who is the anti-Semite in this equation. The only Semites being persecuted are the Palestinians and they are being persecuted by the State of Israel, a government.

The 'Machine' is broken.

The repairman says it cannot be fixed.

It has to be replaced.

Vespers (Poetry and photography)

Vespers

At dusk Mr. Goose stands guard

as Mrs. Goose eats corn.

This is a protocol I have noticed.

She eats,

he stands guard,

and then he eats.

There will be goslings this spring.

That's what this is all about.

After dinner Mrs. Goose preens

and Mr. Goose eats

before both waddle away

to watch the sunset on the edge of the pond.

© David H. Roche

Cold Snap (nature photography)

I came across the video while looking for one I did not find. You might like it.

                               Cold Snap

Enjoy!