I'd say that if there are people in your family with whom you can have that
kind of calm, reasonable political discussion, that's wonderful and it's also
unusual. I'd like to believe that I imparted the same kind of values to my
children. Well, neither daughter votes Republican, but neither questions what
she sees on TV and neither is thinking about the welfare of all Americans, let
alone the welfare of all humankind when she hears about what is going on. My
daughter, the attorney, said last week, that she didn't see why I should be
worried about government surveillance since I'm not doing anything wrong. And
yesterday, when I mentioned the March For Science, she said, "What?" She didn't
even know it was happening. And the rule at family gatherings, her rule, is
that we don't discuss anything political so that things will remain pleasant
and cheerful. The people who assist me, the person who takes me to medical
appointments, the person who does my food shopping and errands, and the person
who cleans my apartment, are all white working class, blue collar, female Long
Islanders, and they are all right wing politically. I know that one voted for
Trump. One said she didn't like him, but she thought he had a point about
strong borders and illegal immigration, and the third read one of Bill
O'Reilly's books. So if I want to keep this very dependable help that I have
and desperately need, I'm not going to attempt making my political change
through conversations with them.
And if the socialist revolution for which you yearn, actually took place, that
is, by definition, a political revolution. Making the changes that we'd like to
see is, by definition politics. What you're talking about is the fact that in
the US, the political process has been captured by the 1%. But, in fact, that's
what nation states are all about. They exist to protect the property of
property owners and to further the business of business owners. When all those
Europeans went exploring, it was to find new natural resources for the
companies in their countries, to exploit. If the workers of the world unite and
throw off their chains, that's also politics.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 8:12 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The White House Seems Excited to Shut Down the
Government
Bitch and complain may be one way of putting it, but Investigate and Explain
might be another way.
But first, yes, I do believe that politics is nothing but the wealthy fighting
among themselves for all they can grab away from one another.
If I ever said it was corrupt, I take it back. It's what our Ruling class
does, and what Ruling Classes as far back as I can read, do to jockey for power
positions.
We, on the outside, see what we think is corruption, and sometimes the
combatants accuse their adversaries of corruption. But it's all part of the
Game they are indulging in. While we go forward believing that some people in
high places are liars, cheaters, and corrupt, when the smoke settles, they hug
one another and dine in fine style, and yes, even sleep together.
But it goes even further than our not understanding their Game Rules.
We have never had a Game Plan. We have allowed ourselves to be led by our
noses, misdirected into supporting the ever changing whims of the Ruling Class.
Presently we are being goaded into believing our government is at fault
because it is too big and poorly managed. It needs to be smaller, we are told.
At the same time we learn that we need more military power. This means bigger
military. And what exactly is our military? Well, it truly is big government
on steroids. Except for the VA. We are told we need to cut the fat and
sloppiness out of the VA. The solution for everything except our military, is
to cut out the fat and make it leaner and more productive. And many of us fall
into line and nod our vacant heads up and down.
We need to shut down our TV's and put aside our Shot Jocks, and begin thinking
for ourselves.
If I, an average person, can do it, then millions of folks can do the same.
We have three children with spouses, three adult grandsons(two with
wives) and five younger grand children all living in a climate of questioning.
We have taught them to never take anything they read or hear at face value.
Question and investigate until you are satisfied that you know what is being
put before you, and until you have satisfied yourself as to the position you
hold.
Sure, it's an uphill struggle, but it's what must be done if we are going to
change the direction we are now being taken. It is as if we are under some
sort of a magic spell. And until we can kiss the ugly frog and see it turn
into a beautiful Fairy Godmother who will grant us all of our wishes, we have
only two choices. We can go along and hope enough spills from our Master's
plate, to keep us from ruin, or we can take in a few notches in our belts and
go forward educating our children, teaching them to be proud of who they are
and to rely on their own brains to reason the events around them. Frankly, I
don't think of myself as sitting back, simply because I am no longer able to
march in a picket line, or demonstrate in front of the Quilcene City
Hall...which does not exist. Instead, I question the folks around me.
We just spent time with a nephew and his family in Merced, California.
He told me he votes Republican mostly, but could not bring himself to vote for
Trump. Instead, he voted for Johnson, the Libertarian. We had some very
direct discussions, but never became upset when one or the other of us did not
agree with the other. That was because we were discussing why the government
was behaving the way it is, and how we might impact some of the actions that
will effect our families. A Radical and a Moderate Republican, agreeing on far
more than we disagreed upon.
It's not a glamorous way of going about making changes, but remember the old
adage, Slow but Steady Wins the Race. And if we are truly steady, we have the
numbers, too.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/23/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
I don't understand your post.
Just how do you think politics works? What is the mechanism that we,
the people, would use, to elect one of us? When has that ever happened
in a western country? And, in case you haven't noticed, when you read
about 'activists" or "organizers", you're reading about would-be
leaders who "educate" and "lead" which implies that the mass of people
don't do anything on their own. And once you've got leaders, you need
to have a culture of democracy and equality in your society, or else
you'll be back to what we have now or Stalinism.
And when you say that we don't have a dog in this fight, that it's
between the various factions of the ruling class, then you're doing
precisely what the majority of people do. You're saying that politics
is dirty and is all about money so all we can do is sit back and watch
the powers that be, fight it out. Well yes, you and I are old and
blind and we're not going to do a thing except bitch and complain. But
all those middle aged and young people, it's this attitude that
they're too busy living their lives and there's nothing they can do about
anything, which has gotten us here!
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 4:28 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The White House Seems Excited to Shut
Down the Government
While I have no crystal ball to tell me how this budget fight will be
resolved, one thing is for certain. We, the Working Class Americans,
have no dog in that fight. No, I don't mean that the outcome won't be
devastating for us, but the fight is between the various Ruling Class
Factions. The Working Class is both the donor and the victim of the
results, no matter how it plays out. Well, we've now tried just about
every crazy idea that's out there. We've voted in crooks, generals,
peanut planters and now, a shady billionaire(self proclaimed). How
about trying a member of the Working Class? I hear there's a bunch of
them out of work, and most are more tuned into what's going on. Why
don't we hold our own people to be intelligent? Have we really bought
into the slop being fed us by the Billionaires?
Carl Jarvis
On 4/23/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Under terms set forth by Mick Mulvaney, President Trump's budget
chief, the ruination of Obamacare is once again tied up with keeping
the government running. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) The White
House Seems Excited to Shut Down the Government
By Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker
23 April 17
Next Saturday, April 29th, is President Trump’s hundredth day in
office, a historical marker used by the press to assess a new
President’s progress since the first term of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. F.D.R. was grappling with the Great Depression, and he had
a pliant Congress that would have passed almost anything he proposed.
Presidents since then have often struggled to meet the expectations
of the hundred-day report card but generally can point to a list of
major legislative accomplishments. Trump does not have such a list.
At the same time, the Trump White House is facing a much more
consequential deadline, one that will help define his first months in
office and perhaps his first term: absent a spending deal with
Democrats and Republicans in Congress, next Saturday the government will
shut down.
While the potential for a government shutdown has been overshadowed
by other events—Syria, North Korea, the attempted repeal of
Obamacare—the Trump White House is suddenly seized with the issue.
“Next week is going to have quite high drama,” a top White House
official, who sounded excited by the coming clash, told me. “It’s
going to be action-packed. This one is not getting as much attention,
but, trust me, it’s going to be the battle of the titans.
And the great irony here is that the call for the government shutdown
will come on—guess what?—the hundredth day. If you pitched this in a
studio, they would say, ‘Get out of here, it’s too ridiculous.’ This
is going to be a big one.”
The last government shutdown was in October, 2013, and was widely
blamed on conservative Republicans in the House, with a major assist
from Senator Ted Cruz, who demanded that Obamacare had to be
defunded, a ludicrous strategy given that Barack Obama was President.
Congress failed to pass the necessary legislation, and the government
closed for two weeks before Republicans came back to the table. At
the time, many predicted that the tactic would have dire political
consequences for the G.O.P., but the following year the Party
expanded its majority in the House and took over the Senate.
Republican leaders have prevented their right wing from forcing
shutdowns in the years since, but one lesson from 2013 is that the
threat of a government shutdown is a powerful way to press for
concessions without paying too high a political price.
In recent weeks, the prospect of a government shutdown seemed low. In
the House and Senate, Democratic and Republican appropriators, who,
despite ideological differences, are often united in their desire to
spend money, were making steady progress. But there was an elephant
in the room. In mid-March, the Trump Administration released a
detailed spending request that included a large increase for the
military and for immigration enforcement and massive cuts to domestic
discretionary spending. While the budget was released with fanfare,
the White House seemed to retreat from the talks, leaving
congressional Democrats and Republicans to continue their work without much
guidance from Trump.
Yesterday, that changed. Mick Mulvaney, a Republican and former
congressman who was one of the House members who agitated for the
2013 shutdown and is now Trump’s budget director, announced that
“elections have consequences.”
The consequence, it would seem, was a divisive proposal. Mulvaney
suggested that if Trump didn’t get his defense spending and border
wall—which, it should be noted, he promised would be paid for by
Mexico—then the federal payments, known as cost-sharing reduction
subsidies, or C.S.R., that pay for health insurance for millions of
Americans under Obamacare had to be cut from the spending bill. The
ruination of Obamacare is once again tied up with keeping the
government running.
The funding legislation likely can’t pass in the House without some
Democratic votes, and it certainly can’t pass without Democratic
votes in the Senate, where Republicans need eight Democrats to reach
the sixty-vote threshold to prevent a filibuster. The two sides
aren’t even close.
“There’s a big spread between the bid and the ask here,” the White
House official said, noting that Trump wanted thirty billion dollars
for defense, several billion for more ICE agents and the border wall,
as well as eighteen billion dollars in cuts to domestic spending and
the ability to withhold federal money from cities that don’t
coöperate with immigration officials.
The big priorities for Democrats are the money for those people who
need Obamacare subsidies, the protection of domestic spending, and
increases for programs for opioid addiction and health care for coal
miners, the last two being issues that Trump ostensibly campaigned on.
These shouldn’t be a big deal, Democrats say, and they have accused
the White House of throwing a grenade into negotiations in order to
wrest some sort of political victory in the first hundred days. “For
weeks, the House and Senate Democrats and Republicans have been
working well together,” a Democratic aide said.
“Then,
all of a sudden, the White House is looking at next week and they
have nothing to show for the first one hundred days, and they either
want a health-care bill to pass next week, which seems like a heavy
lift, or to get more on immigration from this process. Even
Republicans don’t want this fight, and they don’t want a shutdown on
Day One Hundred of the Trump Administration.”
The White House, which is trying to force another vote on an
Obamacare repeal, seems desperate to either win some of Trump’s
priorities in a deal next week, or force a government shutdown that
it can blame on Democrats.
That might energize Trump’s supporters, who don’t have much to
celebrate yet.
But it’s not just the Democrats who oppose several Trump priorities.
Congressional Republicans, who are generally united in support for
the increase in defense spending, are divided on the border wall,
which is not popular among border-state Republicans, and the deep
domestic-spending cuts.
So far, it does not look like a bridgeable gap. “This is going to be
high-stakes poker,” the White House official said. When I asked if a
shutdown was likely, the official paused for several seconds. “I
don’t know,” the official said. The official added, “I just want my
wall and my ICE agents.”
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