The ACA is partly the reason I’m still alive and not broke

We need to fix any glitches, sure, but keep the ACA strong. Anyone who proposes scuttling the ACA without have instituted Universal single-Payer healthcare first is a toadie for the Kochs and a nihilist.

Stop the Drug Wars usurpation of everyone’s rights!

Stop the Drug Wars usurpation of everyone’s rights!

Big Brother is checking your packages.

You right to privacy has been lost due to the War on Drugs – even if you’ve never used drugs. For a civil liberty/libertarian point of view I used to say “It should be called ‘The War on Drug Users'” – but after reading this article, it’s clear the war on drugs so far oversteps its mandate as to be a war on everyone’s privacy & civil rights!
Besides being a health, public safety, economic & environmental morass which squanders $billions, the War on Drug s has failed at its most salient purpose – stopping drugs abuse. Let’s decriminalize “soft” drugs – and treat their users for the mental and health issues they clearly have. Empty the prisons of the non-violent drug “offenders”, and put them to mandatory but honest work rebuilding our nations infrastructure for pay – payrolls are much cheaper than prisons. Regulate and tax pot. Place it under the auspices of agencies like the FDA, BATF and/or state Alcohol Beverage Commissions. And keep it away from our schools and children – which the last 40 years of drug warring has FAILED to do.

Be careful Who you vote for and why

Join me and John Garman: DON’T RE-ELECT RICH INCUMBENT POLITICIANS WHO ONLY “cater to the rich person rather than their electorate”! EVEN IF their local electorate is RICH!

NO, I don’t want you to throw out EVERY politician – that’s called “throwing the baby out with bath water”…

NO, I don’t want you to throw out EVERY politician JUST BECAUSE they’re an “INCUMBENT POLITICIAN” – because a select FEW of them DO NOT IN FACT, “cater to the rich person rather then their electorate”!

I can name a few who CLEARLY care more for the average person AND who CLEARLY are fighting the undue influence of the rich, powerful and corporate interests!

 

They are independents like Bernie Sanders, Senator from Vermont, who NOBODY can claim is beholden to SPECIAL interest, and who is IMMENSELY POPULAR among Independents, Democrats & Republicans in his state.

 

There’s Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), Congress’s leading liberal protagonist – the one who “explained” the GOP’s alternative proposal to Obamacare as “Don’t get sick” … But, if you do, then “Die quickly.” He is the photo-negative opposite to politicians who “cater to the rich person rather then their electorate.”

 

And then there’s Elizabeth Warren, Democrat from Massachusetts, which Wikipedia describes thus:

Warren voted as a Republican for many years saying, “I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets.” She states that in 1995 she began to vote Democratic because she no longer believed that to be true, but she says that she has voted for both parties because she believed that neither party should dominate.

 

NOW, it took me a while to find a current REPUBLICAN example (history has many) BUT I did find one:  Journalist PATRICK GAVIN wrote THIS on 8/22/13 7:08 PM EDT:

There aren’t many Republicans in Hollywood, but actress Angie Harmon is one of them.

The star of TNT’s “Rizzoli & Isles” talks about her rare status in the September issue of More magazine… “I’m a liberal Republican,” she says. “We actually exist. … Call it naïveté or stupidity, but I didn’t know that unless you are a Democrat, you aren’t allowed to talk politics in Hollywood.”

One of those more liberal positions include her views on homosexuality.

“Whether we’re gay or straight, it doesn’t matter. … We all have the same wonderful situations happening to us, the same horrific situations. We all get our hearts broken.”

 

So what if she’s not been elected yet … ANYWAY … Be part of an INFORMED and  OPEN-Minded Electorate FIRST.

 

Don’t vote FOR a candidate JUST BECAUSE you share party affiliation, but because you share a vision, ethos, interest and responsibility with them. BUT, Don’t vote AGAINST a candidate JUST BECAUSE they’re an incumbent – vote against them for a nobler reason than that.

Why the TEA Partiers plattitudes aren’t very Christian

Why the TEA Partiers plattitudes aren’t very Christian

The POWER of music!

The POWER of music!

Broken Arm

Be ever careful everywhere you step when in the French Quarter. I stepped off what I thought was a 3″ curb, but in fact was a 1 foot tall curb and fell, breaking my arm

My Letter on the Zimmerman verdict as it appeared in 7/25/13 Contra Costa Times

FLORIDA VERDICT WAS ABOUT RACE

Paraphrasing Charles Dickens: “’If the law supposes (George Zimmerman wasn’t responsible, then) the law is a ass, a idiot.”

Zimmerman’s jury found him “not guilty,” but racism interprets that verdict to mean “innocent” in Trayvon Martin’s wrongful death.

Florida has a long history of incorrectly acquitting white-on-black crime. Racism holds Martin, the victim of violence, to a higher standard of conduct than his aggressor. This court contradicted reality when purporting this trial “wasn’t about race.”

Florida law failed Martin – through racially charged bias – when an armed white adult was presumed justified in shooting an unarmed black juvenile, when it should’ve pondered the legal probability Martin lawfully stood his ground too.

Racists employ specious speculation, putting Martin on trial by presuming he “started the fight” and “should’ve retreated” yet ironically declare that Zimmerman had no such obligation despite being implored to stand down.

The tangible evil triggering this tragedy is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) promulgated, legally flawed and unequally applied sophistry called “Stand your ground,” which enables and encourages needless violence and must be repealed.

Why should only the poor and middle classes support Social Security?

Why should only the poor and middle classes support Social Security?

Congressman Proposes No More Cap on Social Security Tax for the Wealthy

By Diane Sweet

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt has launched the third in his series of whiteboard videos making the case for bold progressive ideas. In the new video, “Social Security,” Holt argues that millionaires and billionaires should pay the same percent of their income to Social Security as middle-class workers.

The Percentage of American households under the “middle class” designation has fallen.

“According to the Pew Research Center, in 1971, 61% of all American households fell under the “middle class” designation. Today, that number is 51%. And, right now, 35 percent of U.S. households live on $35,000 or less each year.”

Source: Thom Hartmann

My Letter on Race as published in the July 22 edition of The San Francisco Chronicle

Look to the sources of violence

Crocodile tears, racially-tinged sophistry and misplaced umbrage in The Chronicle letters on the Zimmerman verdict obligate me to disabuse some of their most unabashed misrepresentations. Despite some writers’ presumptions, many of all the people protesting George Zimmerman’s unjust exoneration also vehemently objected to O.J. Simpson’s outrageous acquittal.

That they’re somehow selective racists is specious pandering. And only selectively blind and cold-hearted people could have missed the many times this white man has read of and seen the African American community and the likes of Al Sharpton get worked up about black-on-black crime. Thinking otherwise, by definition, is racism. I have joined many blacks and whites who’ve vociferously decried all concomitant violence precipitated by the failed war on drugs which has become a de facto tool of minority oppression upon black youths who all face employment and civil rights discrimination.

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Follow up comment:

The drug trade is one of the FEW “jobs” that an otherwise inexperienced minority child can gain easy entry into. That many consider drug “crime” as a victimless thing is well known. The REAL crime associated with drug dealing often is its mere illegality. And it is that illegality that attracts “regular” criminals into the mix. These career criminals prey on these youth, robbing and assaulting them, confident that a suspicion of Law Enforcement will shield their trespasses.

And the next day the papers and the newscasters will declare another violent “drug related” crime has occurred, all neglecting to inform the readers, listeners and viewers that the DRUG ITSELF DID NOT “cause” the crime, but in fact it was the drug-law that enabled the criminals to act with relative impunity.

The “War on Drugs” is in fact a tool of minority oppression, which occasionally snares poor white trash, but which almost never claims the wealthy or “connected” drug users.

It is a total waste of lives and resources. Treat drug abuse as a health issue, relieve prison overcrowding and hire minority youth to clean up our country and everyone can live in a better world.