Letter to Chris Hayes

Up with Chris Hayes letter

Chris, how can you do this to me?  My weekends have been such a respite, tranquil, devoid of news and commentary because there was little worth watching or listening to, and now, there you are, inviting yourself into my house, gathering with your friends around my table, and with coffee and pastries yet.  Has a person no peace?

But thank you, thank you, for this wonderful, informal format and the caliber of your guests, and mine.   And the variety of topics discussed.   Of course, there are problems about those donuts, but I actually join you there, on Sunday morning at least, when I make my mad dash out for the Sunday papers and my weekly treat, one donut.  “Mad dash” is putting it mildly, I have to drive 14 miles into Romney, the county seat of Hampshire County, in West Virginia, and stop in Sheetz to pick up the Washington Post and New York Times, paying a premium for these papers way out here.  I have to make it by 7:30 a.m., because they only lay in three copies of NYT, and I have to be early to get a copy.  Last Sunday I picked up the last copy, and the last custard-filled-chocolate-iced donut, and made it back in time to settle in a comfortable chair and join you and your friends—our friends-- coffee, donuts and all.

A real problem is developing, because after a dearth of progressive commentary on tv for lo, these many years, I now find myself DVRing a full lineup (from 3 to 11 p.m)  on msnbc every evening, whereas once upon a time there were only Amy Goodman,  Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert, and then airamerica on xm radio.    When my children gifted me with satellite tv, in 2004, the first thing I did was watch O’Reilly and Hannity, to see if they were really as bad as I had heard; they were, and I never tuned them in again.  Which is strange, because demographics would have it that I would listen to them, and not to you, Olbermann, Maddow, Hartmann, Uyger, Schultz, and the rest,  because I am an 80-year-old mother, gramma, and ggramma, as well as retired teacher.   We are supposed to follow O’R and his ilk.  Where did I go astray?

I didn’t even discover msnbc till Keith Olbermann did a Special Comment in 2006, and it blew me away.  I have been a fan ever since, and have watched in awe as first one and then another wonderful  and provocative commentator is added to the list. 

Anyway, thanks for helping me take pleasure in going astray.  Keep up the good work. 

Warmest regards,

Gramma Windy

Food Safety Regulations and Inspections

When I heard on tv that Michelle Bachmann had visited a meat packing plant in Des Moines and railed against govt regulations and inspections of meat processing plants, I googled “Michele Bachmann visits meat plant” and came up with a number of articles about her visit.  To one of which I posted the following comment:

Perhaps the media should invite the owner/operator of this meat-packing plant, Amend Packing Plant, to disavow Ms Bachmann's jeremiad against government regulations and inspections of meat-packing plants, and assure the public that Amend supports the role of the government in helping them to be sure that their meat will never sicken consumers.  They need to tell us that she doesn't speak for them.  She is using them.

I then googled Amend Packing Plant and emailed them a request that they publicly disavow her comments, and promise that they wanted their products to be safe for consumers.

Following is an excerpt from article in June about GOP congress cutting funds for food safety.  Have you kept up with the latest news about contaminated cantaloupes, ground turkey and ground beef?

House Republicans vote to cut funds to implement food safety law

By Lyndsey Layton, Published: June 16

Arguing that the U.S. food supply is 99 percent safe, House Republicans cut millions of dollars Thursday from the Food and Drug Administration’s budget, denying the agency money to implement landmark food safety laws approved by the last Congress.

Saying the cuts were needed to lower the national deficit, the House also reduced funding to the Agriculture Department’s food safety inspection service, which oversees meat, poultry and some egg products. And lawmakers chopped $832 million from an emergency feeding program for poor mothers, infants and children. Hunger groups said that change would deny emergency nutrition to about 325,000 mothers and children.

No Democrats voted in favor of the agriculture appropriations bill, which passed by a vote of 217 to 203. Nineteen Republicans joined the Democrats in opposition.

The White House opposed many of the cuts, saying they would force the USDA to furlough inspectors at meat and poultry processing plants and leave the FDA unable to meet the requirements of a food safety law passed in December,…which was the first major change to the nation’s food safety laws since 1938, and calls for the FDA to significantly step up scrutiny of domestic and imported food and devise a system aimed at preventing the kind of contamination that sickens one in six Americans every year.

The law, which received bipartisan support, followed years of cutbacks at the FDA and waves of food-borne illnesses linked to foods as varied as spinach, peanuts and cookie dough.

To carry out the new law, President Obama is seeking $955 million the FDA’s food safety program in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

Republican leaders in the House pared back that to $750 million, which is $87 million less than the agency currently is receiving for food safety.

They also shaved $35 million from the USDA’s food safety and inspection service.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), chairman of the House subcommittee that wrote the agriculture appropriations bill, said the cuts to food safety were justified because the nation’s food supply was “99.99 percent safe.”

“Do we believe that McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken and Safeway and Kraft Food and any brand name [how about Jenson and Cargill and Tyson and …] that you think of, that these people aren’t concerned about food safety?” Kingston said on the House floor. “The food supply in America is very safe because the private sector self-polices, because they have the highest motivation. They don’t want to be sued, they don’t want to go broke. They want their customers to be healthy and happy.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 48 million Americans get sick from tainted food every year. Of those, about 28,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die, the government says.

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) tried unsuccessfully to restore some money to FDA by arguing that the agency is overwhelmed by imported foods, inspecting just about 1 percent of the supply after it arrives in U.S. ports….

Food safety advocates said they are counting on the Senate to restore the funding for the FDA that the House cut. “Clearly, we still think there’s a serious need for additional resources for FDA,” said Erik Olson, director of food and consumer product safety programs at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Shadow Government

[This was submitted to Hampshire Review, but will not be printed this week, therefore will not make it before the special gubernatorial election on Tuesday.]

Shadow Government.  Fearful words.   Straight out of a political thriller, no doubt.  Smacking of conspiracy theory.  Or, perhaps, conspiracy itself. 

If one can envision, parallel and secret to the elected government, a highly organized entity that seeks to wrest control from that government by subverting the process whereby that government operates, then you can envision a Shadow Government.    An entity which sets at naught the democratic process,  and makes a mockery of popular elections.  An entity that holds secret conferences to which it invites elected legislators, state and federal, and elected governors, as well as candidates for those positions, a conference which is conducted by corporate leaders who present the invitees with their agenda for vital legislation, where then a consensus is reached as to which items are essential to bring before legislatures, at which point the corporate leaders write the legislation, complete with necessary legalese, and hand it out to the legislators for them to present to their own legislatures back home as their own work.  Shadow Government indeed.  Millions of dollars invested, billions of dollars gained.  The efforts of this entity do not stop at subverting government in this covert manner.  They also aim to mold the views of the public to their ends, investing millions of dollars directly to conservative think tanks and individuals who will perpetrate misleading information through massive public relations campaigns to guide citizen voters to their way of thinking.

There is such an entity as herein described:  The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).   This entity with the innocuous sounding name is funded by major corporations such as Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, and others.   With about 2000 legislators and 300 corporations active, model legislation has been crafted to restrict voting rights, by demanding photo IDs and proof of citizenship of even long-time voters; to limit workers’ rights by eliminating collective bargaining of public workers, cutting wages and benefits, firing teachers and other public workers to a total of half-a-million nationwide; to limit consumers rights, including their rights to sue for egregious physical or financial injury—you will hear the mantra “tort reform…litigation…trial lawyers…malpractice suits..junk, frivolous lawsuits…”; to cut taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals, while reducing programs and services for the middle class and the poor.    On the national as well as state level you will see Shadow Government behind efforts to privatize education and schools, to further deregulate major industries and banking system, to roll back environmental regulations, to oppose health care reform.  More than a dozen states with Republican governors and Republican controlled-legislatures have passed practically identically worded bills on these issues.   As well, ALEC associate Grover Norquist persuaded 238 Representatives and 41 Senators in the U. S. Congress , all but three of them Republicans, to sign a pledge promising never to vote to raise taxes.   Signers include U. S. Representatives Shelley Moore Capito and David McKinley, both of WV, as well as 19 WV legislators, including Sen Clark Barnes and Delegates Ruth Rowan and Jonathan Miller.    For more see www.alecexposed.org  .

Buyers Remorse Part II

The following letter to the editor (Hampshire Review) was written in response to Vogt's reply to my previous letter about  right-wing legislative assaults on citizens in several states.  See Buyers Remorse in August Archives.  To be expanded.) 

In response to Mr Vogt’s letter , you should heed the saying “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts”.  You are free to opine that state governments can best deal with their budget woes by cutting taxes on the rich and on corporations while cutting jobs, pay, and benefits for public workers.  But be careful with your facts.  The wealthy are lauded for having accrued to themselves millions and billions of dollars from the backs of the working class, while teachers, those deluded souls who have spent their lives--their blood, sweat, and tears--to educate our children, are vilified because they seem to think they should get fair wages and benefits.   Upon being hired, teachers, like all workers, have to negotiate with their employers for their salaries and benefits.   Because teachers belong to unions, they do not have to negotiate individually, but depend upon their union reps to undertake this task.  They do not, of course, always get what they want.  Wages and benefits are a package, the union may settle for more pay and then pay more for their benefits.  Or they may balance less salary against being able to pay less or nothing for their benefits.  Employer and employees settle for what they conceive to be a mutually beneficial package.

After giving more tax cuts to the wealthy and to corporations, Gov Walker proceeded to make the public sector pay for it.  He required teachers to take wage cuts and to pay more of their benefits, and repealed their collective bargaining rights.  Contrary to your assertions, teachers had already agreed to the wage and benefits issues, but did not choose to give up their union rights.  Senate Democrats left the state in order to avoid giving the Senate a quorum to pass the flawed bill.  Walker split the bill, passing the collective bargaining section separately, because it did not require a quorum. 

Republicans set out to recall eight of the senators who had fled the state, but were only successful in getting three on the ballot; all three retained their seats.  Democrats set out to recall six Republicans, and succeeded in getting all six on the ballot; two lost their seats.  This is a total of five out of nine wins for the Democrats, and leaves the Republicans with only a one seat majority in the Senate.

SONG WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER

This song came out of the WWII era, out of Great Britain.   It moved me to tears then, it moves me to tears now.  Today, when we think of Peace, do we think only of our own home?  Our own country?  As long as there are no battles here, no terrorist acts here, we are at Peace?  We say, “We are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”  And we call that Peace.

           WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER

There’ll be bluebirds over

The white cliffs of Dover,

Tomorrow, when the world is free.

There’ll be love and laughter,

And peace ever after,

Tomorrow, just you wait and see.

The shepherd will tend his sheep,

The valley will bloom again,

And Jimmy will go to sleep

In his own little room again.

There’s be bluebirds over

The white cliffs of Dover,

Tomorrow, when the world is free.

LAND GRABS IN AFRICA

LAND GRABS IN AFRICA

US and EU investors -- including US universities, pension funds and investment firms -- are involved in unprecedented land grabs currently taking place in Africa, according to a series of investigative reports released on Wednesday by the Oakland Institute.

The Oakland Institute spent over a year working undercover to gather information on land deals in Ethiopia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Tanzania and South Sudan.

The reports show how land deals have a number of effects, including the destabilization of food prices, mass displacement and environmental damage.

"The same financial firms that drove us into a global recession by inflating the real estate bubble through risky financial maneuvers are now doing the same with the world's food supply," said Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute.

"In Africa," she added, "this is resulting in the displacement of small farmers, environmental devastation, water loss and further political instability."

These deals are often presented as agricultural investment, providing much-needed economic funds, creating jobs and infrastructure in developing countries.

Yet, the report argues, many of the deals have negative impacts. These include inadequate participation of local populations, misinformation, lack of adequate compensation, especially for women or indigenous populations.

The intention of releasing the reports is not to curb agricultural investment but rather to ensure that the funding does what it promises to do and minimizes the deleterious effects.

The "Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa" reports reveal that these largely unregulated land purchases are resulting in virtually none of the promised benefits for native populations, but instead are forcing millions of small farmers off ancestral lands and small, local food farms in order to make room for export commodities, including biofuels and cut flowers.

So there is an inversion of small, local farming to industrialized agriculture.

As farmers are forced to vacate ancestral lands, they and their families, who rely on the land for grazing cattle or planting crops, are left without sustenance.

Frederic Mousseau, the Oakland Institute policy director, tells of land recently acquired, where "the investors were required to create 17 jobs. The village has 7000 people living on and surviving off of that land. We have spent time with these people. Seventeen jobs will not suffice. They need the land for the cattle and for the agriculture."

In another instance, Mousseau says, "One thousand jobs were to be created for 100,000 acres acquired. But that is an area that could nurture 25,000 farmers and their families."

Forced off the land, these farmers often find themselves struggling even more simply to survive.

"In many East African countries," Obang Metho said, "we have customary rights. We have systems that can be turned around to take advantage."

The reports charge that this acquisition is increasing in breadth and in speed. Mousseau stated, "in 2009 alone nearly 60 million hectares -- an area the size of France -- were purchased or leased in these land grabs. It is estimated that 80 million hectares were acquired in 2010." By contrast, prior to 2008 the annual expansion of global agricultural land was less than 4 million hectares.

Not only are these land grabs, the land acquired is often also located near water resources. The reports state that major African rivers, including the Nile, the Niger and the Zambezi, are tapped by these land grabs. Hence, these land grabs are actually often water grabs, intended to stabilize not only food supplies but also water access in other countries. Countries that often acquire the land include China, India and the Gulf States.

According to Mittal, "Universities such as Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, Wake Forest University are investing in hedge funds that are involved in these land grabs."

These universities put their money into a direct investment fund, which then purchases the land. According to the Oakland Institute's reports, these are "investment funds with ties to major banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan."

When asked if these universities are aware of their implication in these land grabs, Mittal replied: "We would like to believe that these universities are not aware. But an educational institution also needs to be informed about the kinds of returns that these funds deliver, which are around 25 percent, 30 percent and more, and in this kind of economy, should raise some questions."

"While countries such as China, India and Gulf States acquire the land, the financial sector involved also needs to be examined," Mousseau added. "There is a high level of fiscal incentives." These include exemption from VAT taxes. Moreover, the land is often acquired for very little compensation; some land parcels were even documented as being given away for free.

Obang Metho underscores the financial motivations, stating "These people are not there to feed the Ethiopian people. They are here for the profit. If this is not allowed in the free world, it should not be allowed in Ethiopia."

Tina Gerhardt is an academic and journalist whose writing has appeared in Grist, The Huffington Post, In These Times and The Nation.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151250/

GREAT WOMEN OF THE PAST CENTURY

Memo To Bachmann: 10 Women Who Are More Important Than Anti-Feminist Phyllis Schlafly

By Tanya Somanader, Ian Millhiser and Alyssa Rosenberg on Sep 7, 2011 at 10:25 am

Last month, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) became the first woman to win an influential Iowa Republican straw poll — a victory that would have been impossible before the many decades of feminist activism that proceeded Bachmann’s entrance onto the national scene. Yet, at a Tea Party event with the conservative Eagle Forum last July, Bachmann lauded Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, who spent nearly her entire career fighting to make it impossible for women to participate equally in American society:

BACHMANN: If I could just say a couple of words about Phyllis Schlafly, she is my heroine and my example as a forerunner…She truly is the mother of the modern conservative movement. I think she is the most important woman in the United States in the last one hundred years. Whatever Phyllis Schlafly says, it’s important that we listen, because she’s there on every issue, on every front. She is our hero, our heroine, our stalwart and I absolutely adore her. So God Bless you, my dear mentor and the person I hope to be some day. 

Schlafly dedicated decades to transforming “feminism” into a dirty word. Viewing it as “the most dangerous, destructive force in our society today,” she insists that working mothers pursue “false hopes and fading illusions;” that men should not marry these “career women;” that “women in combat are a hazard to other people around them;” and that, by getting married, women agreed to have sex and thus cannot be raped. Schlafly also waged a successful battle against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) — a constitutional amendment that states “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

Yet, for all of Schlafly’s efforts to maintain women’s second class citizenship, her war on women’s rights was ultimately a failure. Here’s just a small sampling of the many women who made far more important contributions to American history than Bachmann’s “most important woman in the United States”:

1.       Frances Perkins: Perkins was the first woman to serve as a cabinet secretary, and she remains one of the most influential figures to hold any job in government. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor, Perkins spearheaded countless protections for workers and unions, including the minimum wage and overtime laws. She also chaired the commission that produced Social Security.

2.       Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Justice Ginsburg became the single most important women’s rights attorney in American history long before she joined the federal bench. While Schlafly was fighting to keep women from enjoying equal rights under the Constitution, Ginsburg successfully convinced the Supreme Court that the Constitution’s guarantee of Equal Protection applies to women.

3.       Katharine Graham: After her husband’s suicide in 1963, Katharine Graham took control of the Washington Post Company, becoming the highest-ranking woman in American publishing to that date. Her courageous decision to publish the Pentagon Papers crystallized opposition the Vietnam War, and her backing of reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward during their reporting on the Watergate scandal (despite a warning from Attorney General John Mitchell that “Katie Graham’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.”) helped bring down a president.

4.       Nancy Pelosi: Pelosi was not simply the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, she is also one of America’s most accomplished lawmakers. As minority leader, she led her party to almost universally oppose President Bush’s failed plan to privatize Social Security. As speaker, she presided over two of the most successful House sessions in American history, leading a divided caucus to enact the landmark Affordable Care Act despite unanimous GOP opposition.

5.       Betty Friedan: Friedan’s first book, “The Feminine Mystique,” remains one of the most cogent descriptions of the crushing weight faced by generations of women deemed subservient to their husbands. She is widely believed to have ignited the second wave of feminism in the 1960s, and would go on to co-found several influential women’s organizations, including the National Organization for Women and NARAL.

6.       Rosa Parks: In December 1955, African American seamstress Rosa Parks took a seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama that — per Jim Crow — was reserved for white passengers. She simply refused to move. Her defiance and arrest not only “sparked a yearlong protest” that forced Montgomery to give up the practice, but was a seminal act that helped spur the Civil Rights movement. Parks later worked for Rep. John Conyers (D) in Detroit, Michigan until she retired in 1988.

7.       Dorothy Height: The “grande dame” of the civil rights era, Height was a leader of the African-American and women’s rights movements for nearly 80 years. As president of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957 to 1997, she oversaw programs on voting rights, poverty, integration, AIDS, and was a chief organizer of the Million Man March in 1963. One of the first people “to treat the problems of equality for women and equality for African-Americans as a seamless whole,” Heights said just two years before she died in 2010, “I’m still working today to make the promise of the 14th Amendment of equal justice under law a reality.”

8.       Sandra Day O’Connor: O’Connor was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court. In this role, she effectively became the most powerful woman in the country during her final years on the Court — serving as the key “swing” vote between four solid conservatives and four more moderate justices.

9.       Eleanor Roosevelt: President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wife Eleanor Roosevelt was a champion of organized political reform and the first known First Lady to join a labor union. She actively campaigned to eliminate unfair labor practices, child labor, and discrimination against women in the workplace, even compelling several government agencies to create employment programs for women. Her central role in the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — an international agreement among nations on “the fundamental and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” — may stand as her “greatest legacy.”

10.   Hillary Rodham Clinton: As head of the Clinton administration’s Task Force on Health Care Reform, Clinton not only created a health reform plan for America’s uninsured, but successfully initiated the Children’s Health Insurance Program for uninsured children. As the current Secretary of State, Clinton has been a chief advocate for “faster and further” reform in the Middle East, pushing for greater democratic participation of citizens — and women — in government.

Respondents also suggested Madeline Albright, Rachel Carson, Bella Abzug.  You might want to check out http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/09/07/312750/ten-women-who-are-more-important-than-bachmanns-most-important-woman-in-the-united-states/ for comments on this article.

HURRICANE IRENE PART II

Day 2 Sunday

Just as I switched on the bedside lamp at 6 a.m., it went out; I tried the overhead light, it was not on.  And no, the flashlight was not by my bed, so I stumbled through the study in the dark, and then saw by the lights of various equipment, that the power was not off, after all, so apparently when the light bulb blew it shut off the circuit.

The night had been marked by off and on local storms, but none that I would have given a second thought too were it not for the hurricane; not that I was worried about these storms, only that it was a constant reminder of what was going on elsewhere.

Using dvr to record accounts from msnbc and cnn of storm track, and effects of Irene’s progress.  So that at anytime I can sit down and check up on what is going on, without worry about missing anything.

2 million people evacuated along the coast; over 4 million now without power.  Damage expected to be in billions of dollars, from wind damage but probably much more from flood damage.   Cape Hatteras, where 2500 people refused to evacuate, is completely cut off from mainland and roads throughout are also damaged preventing traffic.   May try to get ferry in with supplies.  About 20 deaths throughout the coastal area, most from falling trees or limbs. 

Media, msnbc and cnn, hurricane coverage 24/7; is there anything else going on in the world?  In the afternoon, I checked some local stations; channel 4 and 9 were doing golf, 5 had a program “King of the Hill,” 7 was previewing fall shows.

Here is a link to satellite image of the hurricane, if it works for you. Hurricane

Devastating scenes throughout the day—buildings surrounded by rising waters, some damaged by tornadoes, a guard house moving off its foundation and washing up against a bridge in Long Beach, trees fallen onto houses, cars washing away downstream, people wading through water ankle high, knee high, waste high, and in nearly every scene, American flags shredded. 

East River tops its banks  but New York not hit as badly as expected.  Collective sigh of relief from those inhabitants.  Throughout these two days, those brave, foolhardy, intrepid reporters standing on the beaches or boardwalks, mike in hand, protected by windbreakers and, in some cases, goggles against the blowing sand—who would expect that the sand, as wet as it would be, could blow so?

Chuck in New York says they can’t go to Westhampton Beach because it is in the evacuation zone.  But he is in a 5^th floor condo overlooking Central Park.  Should be exciting  view.  Amy lost power at her cottage yesterday, so moved up to Quaint Acres today.   And Bruce emails:  It's very windy here (Natucket) and I can see the ocean getting riled up but right now there's no rain and it just feels like an intense storm.  And now the sun breaks through!  Devious!

Sunday 9 p.m.  What’s this?  Is Vermont today’s New Orleans?   Earlier today I sent out the following email to some friends and family:

Two reasons to move to Vermont:

They have Senator Sanders http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/08/25-8?print

They have town halls http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/03/05/us-usa-politics-vermont-idUSN0454699420080305

Now it seems Vermont is being pummeled with rain and there are already rising floods.  They did not order evacuations because most of Vermont’s towns are situated on rivers, and there is no place to evacuate to.   They were not even mentioned for many hours of reporting and forecasts, as likely to be affected by this hurricane.  At least, not that I heard.