Kansas’ Road Likened to Mao’s

Strike Scene

Louis Lozowick

1935

THIS is the world of the Republican Party… any questions?

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Study for “Construction of a Dam”

William Gropper

1938

THIS is what we have to return to… “One for all and all for one”… “He ain’t heavy; he’s my brother”… NOT “Greed is good”… NOT “The race goes to the swiftest”… NOT “I earned it… its MINE”. In any case, the Apostle said, “The love of money is the root of all evil“, NOT “The love of social justice is the root of all evil”… my, my, my... note well that the Republicans are trying to stuff this part of our history “down the memory hole“.

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Editor’s Foreword:

This letter to the editor well-summarises what the libertarian idiots and chowderheaded “culture warriors” are doing to our country. That is, they’re cutting into “social capital”, the reserves that society built up from the time of the New Deal to the inauguration of Slobberin’ Ronnie in 1981. For 32 years, the Affluent Effluent has partied hearty by preying on the rest of us. The top 5 percent have 275 percent of their 1981 incomes in real terms… the rest of us have only 85 percent. None dare call it “class warfare”… of the country club set against all others.

However, it can’t go on much longer… lately, in December 2012, Jim DeMint, one of the more-unhinged rightwing nutters, resigned his Senate seat to head a District-based stink-tank. He’d won re-election in 2010, so, he had four more years left in his term. Recently, he said that the GOP couldn’t count on “angry white men” forever… you see, at present, the most-solid GOP bloc is white men over 70… and they’re dying off steadily. Have some patience… the rightwing scourge may soon be over. After all, DeMint resigned a “safe” seat… that says something. I believe that extremist (and wrongheaded) Tea Party policies are going to lead to further meltdowns in GOP-run states as basic government functions become unaffordable due to tax cuts favouring the Affluent Effluent. That won’t be pretty…

When the Tea Party tanks, it’ll take “social conservatism” along with it. That is, those who allied themselves with the GOP due to its anti-abortion platform will founder at the same time as the greedsters do. Whether one likes it or not, the rest of us outnumber the troglodyte Evangelical stormtroopers of the GOP. After all, Our Lord Christ didn’t use the cudgel of the state’s police power to spread His message… neither should we. That’s what HH said recently… we should follow him… NOT certain loud parties in the District. Read n’ heed…

BMD  

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In 1966, Mao Zedong initiated the Cultural Revolution in China. It was an ideologically-based movement to replace capitalism and certain traditional practises with Maoist orthodoxy. The result was a fiasco. Characteristic features of the movement were the eviscerating of universities and intelligentsia, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, public humiliation, and property seizure. The abuses continued until after the death of Mao in 1976. China’s Cultural Revolution has been seen… even in Communist China today… as an unmitigated failure.

Today, in Kansas, we see eerie parallels. Governor Sam Brownback and the Legislature are in the process of destroying education, social services, scientific research, infrastructure maintenance, and the ability of low wage-earners to improve their lot. They’re trying to eliminate the progressive income tax from which the state gets half its revenue in favour of continuing and expanding the regressive sales tax. Brownback tries to convince people that we need the sales tax to continue funding higher education, but the truth is that his reduction of the income tax created the need to do so. Another result of no- or low-income tax in a state is higher property taxes. This self-inflicted wound benefits only those with significant wealth to start with. The conservative Tax Policy Center rated this programme as the worst in the nation.

Other Brownback initiatives include reduction of university faculties, evisceration of such social services as mental health, children’s food programmes, and Medicaid, making abortion totally unavailable, expanding the presence of guns in society, and disdain for the suffering of the less well-off. He’s doing this in the name of ideology and extremist orthodoxy. So far, we haven’t suffered as badly as Mao’s China, but we’re well on the way.

10 May 2013

Douglas B McGaw

Emporia KS

Topeka (KS) Capital-Journal

http://cjonline.com/opinion/2013-05-10/letter-kansas-road-likened-maos

2 April 2013. “Conservatives” Trash Google for Cesar Chávez Doodle on Catholic Easter… It was Sr Chávez’s Birthday, Guys… And He was a DEVOUT Catholic, Too

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What do we want the Church to do? We don’t ask for more cathedrals. We don’t ask for bigger churches of fine gifts. We ask for its presence with us, beside us, as Christ among us. We ask the Church to sacrifice with the people for social change, for justice, and for love of brother. We don’t ask for words. We ask for deeds. We don’t ask for paternalism. We ask for servanthood.

César Estrada Chávez

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Click here and here. César Estrada Chávez was a sincerely-believing Catholic Christian who prayed the Rosary every day of his life on his knees before his God. 31 March was his birthday… and it was Easter… a holiday that Sr Chávez celebrated every year of his life. Google’s “doodle” wasn’t only in good taste and appropriate, it FIT… for its subject was a man who had no guile in him as far his faith and his vision went.

It tells you much about the “conservative” movement that they would find this offensive. I’m not even going to comment on the fact that some righties were so stupid that they thought that the “doodle” honoured Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, not César Estrada Chávez. I have news for them, President Chávez was a sincere Catholic Christian, and His Holiness Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow and all the Russias gave him his blessing (whilst he was Metropolitan of Smolensk and head of the MP DECR). Both Sr Chávez and President Chávez drew their thirst for social justice from their religious faith.

You can stand with those whose faith leads to struggling for justice for all, or, you can stand with those whose “faith” snickers at man’s inhumanity to man in the name of “economic freedom” and “free markets”. Choose well… your eternal destiny DOES depend on it.

BMD

7 October 2012. If the USA’s the “Richest Country in the World”, Why is Russia Upping Old Age Pensions, and Why is Wet Willy Proposing to Smash Them?

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Russia increased old age pensions and upped spending on state healthcare; its economy is some 30 percent the size of the USA‘s in percentage terms. Yet, Willard Romney and Lyin’ Paul Ryan scream that we need to cut social spending in the USA to finance more toys for the Pentagon, more torture at black sites abroad, more pointless wars in foreign parts, more tax breaks for the Affluent Effluent, and more boodle for corrupt war contractors. Let’s NOT call the last-named “defence contractors“… that’s a lying euphemism. They’re arms merchants; they’re soulless parasites. The blood shed by ordinary American kids from modest homes and families underpins and fans the increase in their bloated and obscene fortunes. That’s what an “all-volunteer armed force” means… that’s a euphemism, too. It’s a mercenary force recruited to protect and serve the interests of the One Percent (I hasten to add that the poor bloody sods in the forces aren’t to blame… the warmongering pols and voracious rich are the perps; all the onus is on them).

If America‘s richer than Russia, and it is, by a factor of three, then, reason should tell you that if Russia increases pensions and healthcare spending, so can the USA. However, Wet Willy wants to preserve a system where he pays less federal income tax in proportion than a NYC cop or fireman. Therefore, he rants that we need to kick our old people and poor people in the head to preserve tax breaks for the Affluent Effluent. He fulminates that we must smash our heel into grandma’s face, and be right smart about it, too, so that crooked war contractors can steal even more from the fed slop chute. That’s the problem with the deficit… it ain’t Grandma and Grandpa… it ain’t layabouts on the dole… it ain’t public spending on healthcare. It’s people like Willard Romney… they have much, much more than the vast majority of us, but in their bottomless greed they want MORE. There’s only one place that they get it… from you and from me.

Don’t try to argue with rightwingers. They don’t follow the real news media… they only follow the Righwing blogosphere, Fox News, and Rush Limboob. They really believe that Willy won the first debate (all objective observers abroad agree… it was a dead heat, a draw). Don’t waste your time and energy on them. Get out to vote on 6 November. Talk to your friends and spread the real news amongst real people…

Corporations AREN’T people, and they can’t vote… but all of us “real people” can. Vote for the Prez… he ain’t perfect, but he ain’t Willy…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 7 October 2012

Albany NY

6 October 2012. A Point to Ponder. Just What IS “Pro-Life?”

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Let’s not take forever on this. “Pro-Life” is so much more than anti-abortion… it’s being against the death penalty for non-state crimes (hey, that was Tsar Aleksandr‘s stance, and he was no weak sister)… it’s being critical of promiscuous warmongering… it’s being for economic justice in the marketplace for workers and consumers. The late John Cardinal O’Connor called it the “seamless garment“. He was right… if you advocate war in foreign parts on flimsy pretexts… if you advocate the death penalty for crimes that aren’t against the state or the society as a whole (that is, Timothy McVeigh and the Minsk Metro bombers were examples of legit capital punishment)… if you advocate anarchic libertarian nihilism (“economic freedom” and “shrinking the state”)… if you defend a tax system that cheats the working class to enrich the Wet Willies… you’re NOT Pro-Life… not at all.

Let’s put it plainly… if you support the Republican Party, you’re not Pro-Life… their platform is antipodes removed from Christianity and justice. That’s the way it is…

BMD