SOCIAL SECURITY (OBAMA'S VERSION)

A couple of Netroots workshops in Las Vegas where David and Geoffrey went. Although Geoffrey did not attend any workshops. He's sorta apolitical.

Curious how Obama gets the moniker of a Socialist when he is following pretty closely in the footsteps of our past great president, Bush. In fact, in a lot of respects he exceeds the expectations we had for our former president who could not muster the support to privatize social security. Remember the stocks that we were supposed to substitute for social security payments plunged 30% or more.

Obama’s Social Security "Death Panel": Engaging Activists to Defeat the Drive to Cut Critical Social ProgramsThursday, July 22nd 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM
Panel, Brasilia 1
Time: Thursday, July 22nd, 3:00pm - 4:15pm
Room: Brasilia 1

This panel will detail the push by anti-government organizations and the president’s debt commission to solve the “deficit problem” by slashing Social Security and other critical federal programs. It will describe the real factors driving the federal deficit, including tax cuts for the rich, two wars, rising health care expenditures and the Great Recession. The panel will debunk the most basic falsehood of the debt commission: that Social Security contributes to the deficit. Panelists will expose the hypocrisy of addressing the deficit without considering deep cuts to the bloated military budget or increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Panelists also will describe a newly formed coalition working to blunt attacks on Social Security and other domestic programs and how activists can get involved online and offline.

Immigration Reform's Strange Bedfellows: The Surprising Consensus that Reform will Improve American Jobs and Bolster Our Economy
Thu, 07/22/2010 - 3:00pm, Brasilia 6

Panelists will discuss how meaningful immigration reform will be beneficial to our economy and society, due to overwhelming evidence that the current policy of enforcement-only action does not work and costs our country billions of dollars. This cycle creates a system of virtual slavery for many undocumented workers in the U.S. and drives down wages and benefits for all workers, immigrant and native-born, in many industries. Panelists will discuss various aspects of reform and how enforcement-only tactics are ineffective and hurt our economy, as well as ways in which the netroots can build coalitions around the issue.

President Johnson on Social Security

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010073030/lbj-medicare-because-we-owe-it-them

PROP G ORIGINAL VERSION

More on DCCC Endorsements; SEIU Protests Prop B Millionaires ...
Aug. 16‚ 2010

To the Editor:

We know that some animal species eat their young. But did you know that the human species does it too? The supposed Democratic Party stalwarts who brag about their support of workers and unions suddenly are hesitant to vote affirmatively against Prop G, the Transit Operator Wages.

Outside the hallowed halls of UNITE HERE Local 2 where the DCCC meets one can hear arguments by many supposed progressives how Muni drivers are overpaid. It should be noted that many of these very same progressives could be called Cadillac Liberals making far more than any Muni driver and with less job stress.

An attack on one class of workers is an attack on all! NO ON G!

Denise D’Anne
San Francisco

NO G MUNI TRANSIT OPERATORS WAGES

August 18, 2010
Running from the truth
The supposed Democratic Party stalwarts who brag about their support of workers and unions suddenly are hesitant to vote against endorsing Proposition G to cut down Muni transit operators’ wages. Outside the Democratic County Central Committee meetings, one can hear arguments by many supposed progressives about how Muni drivers are overpaid. Many of these very same progressives could be called Cadillac liberals who make far more than any Muni driver and with less job stress.
Denise D’Anne, San Francisco

HI SPEED RAIL

August 10, 2010

Speed up high-speed rail
Today we can see the devastating effects of our addiction to oil, acknowledged by both Presidents Bush and Obama. The gulf disaster is not the only visible manifestation; worldwide, lands, waterways and monuments, both natural and man-made, are being systematically destroyed.
We now have the opportunity to ameliorate some of the unfortunate impacts of our drive to drive single-occupancy vehicles. It is high-speed rail, the norm in places such as Asia and Europe. What is keeping us from implementing smart transit options are lobbyists from highway builders, automobile manufacturers and airline companies. Let's not let them slow us down. High-speed rail now!
Denise D'Anne, San Francisco

CULTURE OF KILLING

Does anyone get sick of our culture of killing? (August 1, Chronicle article “Afghanistan policy to shift to killing key insurgents”). Killing solves international disputes! Killing solves disputes within the U.S! One cannot pick up a newspaper without seeing drones kill so many people, or the U.S. has a new policy of selective killing in areas of conflict (mostly started by the U.S.). Among all the killings both domestic and international what is left out are by-standers: relatives of the killed, pedestrians in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc. Internationally, far more by-standers caught in the conflict are killed than so-called terrorists. What are called terrorists in faraway places would be called patriots if Americans fought off an invader, an occupier. Reagan had a name for such people, “freedom fighters”.
Martin Luther King said it best, the United States Is "The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World Today” and added that “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
It is time to stop glorying in killing.

PROPOSITION 8 VICTORY

We celebrate a Great Victory. In the tradition of all movements for justice, victory is hard fought and sweet when accomplished. The overturning of California Proposition 8 denying same sex couples to marry is another notch is bringing all discriminatory laws and movements to a halt. This is a wonderful accomplishment but only one of many that continues to need action to finally uphold the ideals of our Constitution.

ANOTHER TWIST ON SELLING WATER

>The sad thing is that the American consumer is so gullible as to believe anything that is advertised as legitimate. We cannot continue to be so cavalier about our finite water supplies much of which is so polluted as to be unusable for any use not even for flushing toilets as flushed water winds up in our oceans from which our next meal comes. Americans have to be smart consumers.

Read The Dark Side Of Vitaminwater by John Robbins.

FOOD WASTE

February 7, 2010

Wasting food, resources

Heinz Food Corp. boasts about selling 11 billion packets of ketchup per year. The company is proud of its new packaging, which is plastic-encased and made from petroleum.

Millions of tomatoes and other food ingredients are used for processing ketchup while the world suffers from diminishing oil and lack of food. Most packets are never used, but wind up in the trash or on the streets. What a waste!

Denise D’Anne, San Francisco

INCREMENTAL DESTRUCTION

It is no laughing matter when we look around to see that we have bought into our throwaway society. An egregious example is the 11 billion packets of condiments produced every year. These condiments are casually given to people, needed or not, and most wind up in the trash or on our streets.

The oil used to encase food in plastic that is literally needed by the starving masses is a crime of incalculable portions. At a time when oil is destroying our ocean systems we need to take some measure to eliminate the waste of a finite resources - oil.

We are not helpless; the first thing to do is loudly say NO when we buy prepared food products wrapped in plastic. And somehow we need to get our legislatures to ban, reduce, tax excessive packaging. If we can ban smoking, Styrofoam and even plastic bags, why is it not possible to ban condiment packaging and other items from food to electronics swaddled in earth destroying material?

Most of us ignore the little things we use in life. In fact, we become so used to items that were invented post 1945 that they have become integral to our life experience. We survived for econs without packaging material and all we have to say is "How do I survive without such and such." We can do better.

GAYS MAINSTREAMING

While racial and ethnic groups are trying to preserve their identity (avoid being assimilates), gay groups are trying to undermine their identity by going mainstream. One way is to declare marriage as a right. The institution of marriage is replete with such practices as bondage, exploitation, torture, a means to enhance family hierarchy and political cohesion. There is the matter of foot binding, child marriages for sexual gratification and female circumcision, both latter still extant, all in preparation for marriage.

Now marriage is used to exploit the unmarried taxpayers to support, in most cases two income married households who need the support the least. Instead of fighting to become a version of heterosexual couplings, gays should be fighting to eliminate the institute of marriage because it is discriminatory and gives special rights not afforded the unmarried population. Why should a single individual, gay or straight be denied visitation rights, medical benefits, immigration status only afforded married or domestic partners, inheritance rights and all the supposed 1000 rights now only afforded married partners with a limited smattering of these rights given to domestic partners?

In a recent speech at the 32^nd Harvey Milk LGBT annual awards banquet. Angela had this to say: “The institution of marriage has historically symbolized the ”civil death” of one spouse. She went on to say that “Marriage may signal freedom to those who are affluent but I want us to think the extent to which we can respect gay marriage and at the same time be radically critical of the institution of gay marriage.”

Then there is the current argument to allow gays to be open in the military. Again the queer population should be demanding the dismantling of the military industrial complex not enhance it. Why in hell are gays so intent on being in the military when they have overall image of being gentle people (with a touch of femininity), arty and talented in all fields considered gentile and sophisticated. Not true, of course, across the board, but the military has one cause in mind – to kill. Forget the idea about protecting the homeland. When was the last time we went to war to protect the homeland (you don’t destroy a whole country to find one person supposedly responsible for twin towers bombing)? Now our mantra is to bring democracy (at the point of a gun) rather than admit our corporate dictated wars of exploitation for resources and cheap labor? How many wars have we fought by proxy or otherwise to deny democracy to countries around the world?

Howard Zinn, the late historian said it well. “My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of the short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.”

http://www.truth-out.org/dont-ask-dont-tell-and-liberal-militarist-diversion