Check out the story of the Englebrechts. A couple from Texas. He is a machinist who started his own CNC shop about 20 years ago, and has grown it to 30 employees. His wife helped him in the business, but began to get involved in Tea Party activities around 2009. She started two groups, the King Street Patriots and True the Vote. What happened next sounds like it occurred in Cuba. Visits, audits, phone inquiries, fines and fees from the IRS, FBI, OSHA, and EPA. Mrs. Englebrecht's groups came to the attention of Barbara Boxer, who got personally involved in trying to shut them down.
Get a clue, people. We're losing America by the second.
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ReplyDeleteThis president better get a clue re: the will of the people here, this can't be it. Can you clue us in at this time whether you are going to pull for his impeachment?
ReplyDeleteHolding off on calling for that at present. For one thing, as we've both acknowledged in these comment threads, the American public in its current makeup is not going to preliminarily oust its first black president unless the transgression is abundantly clear to the lowest-information voter.
ReplyDeleteWell, I must agree that what happened and is still happening to the Englebrecht's is a total and complete outrage! Problem is, there have been total and complete outrages perpetrated upon the American black and/or "other" (as they may be variously defined by any given administration) under all "regimes,"including Reagan's, perhaps in a thousand shades of grey. There have been so many cries of wolf by the Republicans over the past 12 years that even moderate information voters are wary. Does it upset you that blacks outvoted whites in '12 for the first time in history? Tit for tat, this and that, us and them, that's just the way it is, some things will never change. But this outrage here must change!
ReplyDeleteOh, shit, you're not really going to do the "racism-is-the-most-characteristic-feature-of-America's-past" thing, are you?
ReplyDeleteNot playing "the most" game here. Let's call it a significant characteristic of capitalism that continues on into the present despite the civil rights legislation. Say, since I'm reading a David McCullough book about the buildig of the Panama Canal were you aware that the greatest price was paid by the laborers who came by the boatloads to the isthmus to work on the building of the waterway? The racial disparities became a flagrant reminder that “Panama was four times more deadly for the black man than it was for the white.” The black laborers, who were generally West Indian, if they survived, would remember the many wondrous and worthwhile things about their Canal experience. Throughout their reminiscences, however, they would recall the “tremendous physical exertion and…the constant fear of being killed,” since their deaths filled the fatality statistics by a large margin.
ReplyDeleteDon't expect the black man who you trivialize as being "low info" to be on board with impeaching Obama. There are still many marginalized here. And yes, I'm really really real, at least to myself. Books about this "shit" fill libraries.
The total estimated human cost: 27,609.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say we are losing America by the second, many wonder whether it has ever been found, that's all.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Throughout its history, many of its citizens have taken the ideas and principles enshrined in the Federalist Papers, the Declaration and Constitution, the letters of John Adams, the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville, and said, "This is who we are. This is our country's essence, and it must be preserved at all costs."
ReplyDeleteRacism has nothing to do with free-market economics.
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe slavery and genocide was just the survival of the fittest here stateside, they just happened to be people of the brown and the black.
ReplyDelete''The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal''--Pope Francis
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/pope-blames-tyranny-of-capitalism-for-making-people-miserable-20130517-2jru9.html#ixzz2TvrD8ER0
I'll grant that the free market is the way to go, it's just that the "victors" can be such a-holes, something I have noticed all my life, haven't you, you know, the hotshots at the Country Clubs, they are in every town.
ReplyDeleteHuman nature is going to be what it's going to be under any economic system. I'd much prefer the economic system that leaves you free to choose whether you want to interact with the town a-holes.
ReplyDeleteThey're not "victors." They've merely found a way to economically succeed, as have at least as many really nice people.
What kind of car you drive, how you dress, where you can afford to send your kids to college, all your other toys, your gated communities, your back-slapping golf buddies, all that pukey shit that has been slammed a million times in American art if not media. We have not been really happy campers here in America for frigging ever, it seems, but quite admittedly that is because of some of our other behaviour besides money grubbing. Where do we rank on the global happiness scale? I'll tell you, we're not that "exceptional" there, but our relative prosperity should make us so. Anyhow the 1st big report on global happiness was issued by the UN, so I'm certain that discredits it in your book. Political freedom, strong social networks and an absence of corruption are together more important than income in explaining well-being differences between the top and bottom countries. At the individual level, good mental and physical health, someone to count on, job security and stable families are crucial.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Think about it. Would you really like to trade places with any given Tipton Lakes muckety-muck swinging richard?
ReplyDeleteYes, but I would be a nice guy about it, lol, and admittedly some of the richest are the nicest. Winning friends and influencing people is quite crucial. Ufortunately that seems to too often degenerate into winning the right friends and influencing the right people. You know what I think often makes many of them assholes to the max? ETOH. Just add alcohol. Been there done that, too, of course, to mine and their ultimate detriment. Lord grant me humility. A lot of good true lasting things in life spring from it, as embodied in the Prayer of Francis.
ReplyDeleteStill I realize that all this likely qualifies me for mere reasonable gentlepersonhood in your concerted, if not humble, opinion.
ReplyDeleteIt sort of seems like you'r trying to come up with reasons to have misgivings about economic freedom.
ReplyDelete