Mitt, My Good Man

copyright © 2012 Betsy L. Angert. Empathy And Education; BeThink or BeThink.org

Dearest Mitt . . .

I am unsure if we have had the pleasure of an in-person exchange. I too travel in political circles. However, I do not recall. Perhaps we met in the past. I trust I have done business with you and your firm, Bain Capital. Bravo on your successes.

Please allow me to introduce myself by way of this letter. This morning, I caught a glimpse of your Today Show interview with Matt Lauer. I heard you speak of the exaggerated envy now heard on the campaign trail. Oh, my friend Mitt, how I relate. If I might; well stated my man. People do want what they do not have. First Bain, then the White House. Indeed, one Chief Executive position ensured that you were a world power. The other is but a natural transition. Instead of having a seat at the table of global influence, as President of the United States, you, old man, will own the table.

WE’RE #1, WE’RE #1! Charting American Exceptionalism

By Joe Weisenthal
Business Insider

Is America the exceptional, #1 country in the world? Of course it is!

David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has published the truth about American exceptionalism. It turns out, the US is #1 in all sorts of ways.

Living Wage: From Egypt to Canada

The Real News Network covers Egyptian demand for a living wage, while the Victoria Labour Council recently sponsored an evening of discussion about a very important issue: reducing poverty and child poverty, by bringing in a living wage.

Time to Topple Corporate Dictators: Americans Need to Show Up

By Ralph Nader
CounterPunch

The 18 day non-violent Egyptian protests for freedom raise the question: is America next? Were Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine around, they would likely say “what are we waiting for?” They would be appalled by the concentration of economic and political power in such a few hands. Remember how often these two men warned about concentrated power.

Our Declaration of Independence (1776) listed grievances against King George III. A good number of them could have been made against “King” George W. Bush who not only brushed aside Congressional War-making authority under the Constitution but plunged the nation through lies into extended illegal wars which he conducted in violation of international law. Even conservative legal scholars such as Republicans Bruce Fein and former Judge Andrew Napolitano believe he and Dick Cheney still should be prosecuted for war and other related crimes. The conservative American Bar Association sent George W. Bush three “white papers” in 2005-2006 that documented his distinct violations of the Constitution he had sworn to uphold.

The Money Party on the Road to Ruin

Michael Collins

The Money Party is destroying the United States. For ten years, there have been no new jobs with flat income. Unemployment and poverty are making a big comeback. The party consists of those who own and control concentrations of great wealth and the select few who serve them (their Mandarins). Based on the efficiency of the demolition job, you have to wonder if this is by design. If greed, ignorance, and paranoia constitute a plan, then they are master planners. (Image)

Look at the glaring problems below. Then ask yourself, has there been one single program implemented to address any of these problems, just one? Our elected representatives enable the relentless process of driving down the United States. They bicker and fume at the edge of issues. However, when it comes to neglecting the real needs of citizens and the country, they are as one. All rewards and resources flow to their patrons and owners, the made men and women of The Money Party. We are nothing to them.

Broadway’s touring ‘West Side Story’ tweaks theme, boosts Q love

West Side Story's Ali Ewoldt and Kyle Harris

By Rady Ananda

Arthur Laurents’ story about love, racism and violence set in 1950s New York City took on a new twist under the direction of David Saint in Broadway Across America’s Ft. Lauderdale production of West Side Story. By making subtle changes (from the 1961 film version starring Natalie Wood), Saint softens the criticism of US racism and salutes same-sex love.

When I first saw the film as a teen, the song “America” shocked me with its blunt lines, “Life is all right in America … if you are white in America.”  Given our media-fostered culture of anti-Arab sentiment, I looked forward to hearing those words again.  Instead, under Saint’s direction, the song mocked Puerto Rico. “Twelve in a room in America” became San Juan’s burden.

The Genuine Genius

Malcolm Gladwell and Robert Krulwich at the 92nd Street Y

copyright © 2008. Revised Edition © 2011 Betsy L. Angert. Empathy And Education; BeThink or BeThink.org

As educators, parents, and persons who were once young and now thought to be elder, and thus, wiser, and more wondrous, and accomplished, within our own being we might feel we are less than we appear to be. Tis true; our parents, Teachers, Professors, and friends had such high hopes for us. Our own dreams were even more impressive. Most of us envisioned that we would reach the pinnacle as we progressed until we failed an examination, received a lower grade in a class, or “disappointed” our family when we did less well than they hoped we might?

Full Spectrum Dominance: 8 Examples of How the Government Is Taking Total Control of Our Food, Our Health, Our Money and Even Our Dignity

By Michael Snyder
Blacklisted News

Over the past several decades, no matter which political party has been in power the government has continued to become a larger part of our lives. These days many people are speaking of the “nanny state” that we have created, but the reality is far worse than that. The truth is that the government has become a gluttonous, out of control behemoth that is gobbling up everything in sight and that is attempting to exert full spectrum dominance over our lives. Today, the government seems to have an insatiable hunger to watch us, track us and control us. Now they even want to feel our private parts before we get on an airplane. No matter what politicians we send to Washington D.C., it just seems to get worse and worse. Anyone who still believes that we live in “the land of the free” is completely and totally delusional.

Class War: Obama goes after little old ladies

Obama, Captain of the USS Titanic, Willing to Throw Older Women Out of the Lifeboats First By Raising Retirement Age

By Libby Liberal
Corrente

Raising the retirement age to a whopping 70 is more than a twinkle in the eyes of Obama and his Gucci-loafered-Austerian-Commission-sadists from both sides of the aisle. They are about to stick it once again to all of us, but particularly to struggling low-income older women in physical jobs!

America’s Middle Class is dying and the stats prove it

Irish Central July 24, 2010            By CAHIR O’DOHERTY                                                 BUZZ!

Take off your hats and bow to your betters. It’s over – the noble American experiment I mean.

The American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer here at a historically unprecedented rate.

Once the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but that’s ending at a blinding pace.

The new ‘global economy’ means that middle class American workers have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and practically no regulations.

If the socialism the Tea Party is shouting about means anything in the U.S. anymore it refers to the golden circle of the super rich, who are profiting at unheard of rates whilst the rest of this nation suffers.

U.S. Corporations have grown massively rich exploiting third world labor pools, but middle class American workers have increasingly lost out.

Poverty now rampant: Half of U.S. kids on food stamps

By David Gutierrez
Natural News

Almost half of all children living in the United States will receive food stamp assistance at some point before they turn 18, according to a study conducted by researchers from Cornell and Washington Universities and published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Although food stamps were first introduced as a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program, they are now overseen by state governments. Researchers analyzed 30 years worth of data from food stamp programs around the country, finding that nearly 50 percent of all children will receive food stamp assistance at least once during their childhood, if not multiple times.

Haiti copes with a nightmare

By Cindy Kaffen
Socialist Worker

Los Angeles filmmaker and environmental educator Dave Chameides traveled to Haiti two weeks after the earthquake as part of a camera crew for a documentary being made about the humanitarian organization Partners in Health. He talked to Cindy Kaffen about what he saw.

A tale of two earthquakes

By Ashley Smith
Socialist Worker

THE WORLD’S tectonic plates are always in motion, but in the past two months, they seem to have struck more dramatically than usual.

On January 12, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti, killing as many as 300,000 people and leaving more than 1.5 million people homeless. Then, on February 27, another quake hit southwestern Chile, killing hundreds and leaving more than 2 million people homeless.

One Haitian family, the Desarmes, tragically endured both diasters. 

Billionaires Soar with Economic Crisis

By Vlad Grinkevich
RIA Novosti

The current global financial and economic crisis once again confirms the fact that during economic upheavals the rich get richer and the poor become even more destitute.

On Thursday, Forbes Magazine carried an updated list of the world’s wealthiest people.

As of late 2009, the number of billionaires soared from 793 to 1,011 and their total fortunes from $2.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion. The number of Russian billionaires almost doubled, from 32 to 62.

Schools in Orange Jumpsuits

Photo at pasadenaweekly.com

By Robert C. Koehler

The image that flashed into my mind was: schools in orange jumpsuits.

Something has broken apart in our society — an unspoken agreement about sanity, a truce between play and order. The authoritarian strain, always present, of course, has been ratcheting up to ever more absurd levels for a decade now.

It’s as though, as the American political class has watched its real control over the course of events slowly ebb, a collusion of desperation has broken out among them: “The time of fun and waste is over,” as the 9/11 terrorists put it. As our problems get increasingly complex, the solutions we implement get more and more simplistic. Results don’t really matter, just the appearance of holding someone accountable.

Wall Street’s Dirty Lies

By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger   Care2.com

Over the past thirty years, Wall Street has waged a steady war against governments around the globe, convincing policymakers of various ideological stripes that whatever raises profits for bankers and traders will be good for the rest of society. It’s a very simple and appealing portrait of how the world works. Unfortunately, it’s completely wrong.

Profiting from hunger

In an interview with AlterNet’s Terrence McNally, economic luminary Raj Patel explains the connection between widespread global poverty and wild Wall Street profits. Markets are defined by a set of rules—if those rules completely disregard social welfare, then the participants in those markets will ignore them as well. When traders can make a quick buck speculating on the price of rice, they will, even if that speculation drives up the price of a basic necessity and makes people go hungry.

The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup, Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class

By David DeGraw
Alternet

The economic elite have robbed us all. The amount of suffering in the United States of America is literally a crime against humanity.

“The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.” — Michael Lind, To Have and to Have Not

We all have very strong differences of opinion on many issues. However, like our founding fathers before us, we must put aside our differences and unite to fight a common enemy.

It has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99 percent of the U.S. population no longer has political representation. The U.S. economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us.

The Democrats, the Deficit, and Social Security

By Shamus Cooke
Global Research

It’s official: the Democrats are coming after Social Security and Medicare.  How refreshing that all the backroom scheming and political conspiring is finally out in the open.  Before, the corporate elite had been having this conversation in private, via right-wing think tanks and business journals.  Now, mainstream media is promoting these ideas, including the Democrat’s media mouthpiece, The New York Times. 

Haiti the Spectacle

By Robert C. Koehler

Haiti falls apart and America’s journalists are on the ground, bringing us the spectacle of devastation. We care, we donate, we shake our heads in horror at the human toll of poverty.

A bare foot sticks out of a pile of cinder blocks.

“They’ve been digging for five hours,” says Anderson Cooper. He sticks his mike in the rubble. Oh my God, she’s alive. We can hear her screaming! “They only have this one shovel.”

OK, freeze frame. Something is so wrong with this picture, this moment: to be watching — live! — in comfortable detachment as a group of men dig desperately, by hand and with that single shovel, to free a 15-year-old girl trapped in the wreckage of a building.

UN thugs in Haiti

By Rady Ananda

For those interested in a populist view of Haitian neocolonialism, recommended are two independently produced documentaries. The Media Haiti site has posted a 15-minute film, Haiti as Invisible and BrassCheck TV has posted an 88-minute film, Haiti: We would rather die standing.