A letter to the Financial Speculators

Dear Thieves,

I have come to warn you as Jacob Marley's ghost came to warn Scrooge (loosely quoting Dickens): "You will wear the chain you forge in life. You make it link by link, and yard by yard... For it is truly required of everyone, that one's spirit should walk among his fellow men, and travel far and wide. If that spirit does not, it is doomed to wander the world and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared."

How do you feel now? Are you happy in your cold, big house? Are you beloved by all you have touched? Does your money comfort you in the loneliness of your thoughts? What if you lost all your money? What would you have then? Do you have friends who come through for you in the hard times?

You sure did have what Scrooge would admire as "a good head for business." You sold out yourself, your fellow brothers and sisters, our children, your country, and mankind, but you did do a lot of business. You took the easy way. You took the greedy way. It didn't feel right, but your values are "greed is good." As Dr. Seuss' character, the Once-ler, says, "If I didn't do it then someone else would." You justified your lies.

"Would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? ...It is a ponderous chain!" Every time your ego clouded your judgment, every moment you were silent when you should have spoken, every dream you have shattered, is a link on your chain.

The hubris you wear as a shield now prevents you from knowing, "This means YOU." But someday, your chain will keep you awake. Someday, your chain will wear you down. Someday, your chain will chill you with its loneliness.

There is no way out. The only way is sacrificing short-term payoffs for long-term benefits: "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings were a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" Your business distracts you from your real business.

The rest of us wish you "a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. You'll be very merry and very happy, we have no doubt!"

Lacking Integrity

Dear Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches,

We the People do not authorize you to use our money to bail out the banks as you will most certainly not bail us out of our home foreclosures and layoffs. You stood by the free market when the banks, speculators, and loan sharks inflated share prices without creating value and now the People ask you to stand by the free market while it self-corrects.

Instead you sign a blank check from our checkbook for more of the same.

Ironically, you have created quite a welfare state... A welfare state not of single mothers and their poor children, but a welfare state that rewards military contractors' spending and corporate financial speculation.

-"We the People"

Another Letter to Superdelegates

I believe in Barack Obama. He represents what this country so desperately needs: the audacity to force a new political paradigm, the desire and vision to finally make honest, positive change in our country and the hope to make it all reality.

I did not know much of Barack Obama 18 months ago. My wife and I started discussing him as the buzz about his presidential bid was becoming louder. I checked him out, tried to see what he was all about. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was not the typical Washington politician I was used to. He was sincere; he was real, more so than any politician I has seen or heard in my 35 years.

We read his book, The Audacity of Hope, last summer. Reading it I got real feel for his integrity, honesty and leadership. I learned that he is well versed in the political system and that he has the wherewithal and persistence to make good things happen. He is not selfish. He is not greedy. He does not do what he does for himself; Barack Obama truly serves his country and the people he represents in every sense of the word.

Superdelegates, consider Barack Obama. Be diligent in getting to know him, what he can do and what he stands for. Understand that he is the only one on the playing field that does not closely represent the establishment that has steered our country away from hope and prosperity. Vote for Barack Obama, he is right choice for the right future of America.

Letter to Superdelegates

Barack Obama is the only candidate that cannot be bought by lobbyists. Because politicans have sold our fragile democracy away to the highest bidder, the Founding Fathers' immense sacrifice and legacy to us, the common people, has been trampled and defiled. Democracy itself is undermined and the power of the people is marginalized when corporations, through their lobbyists, in effect buy laws.

The triangle of corruption turns to iron (the iron triangle) when, in wartime, defense contractors buy laws that subsidize their own private businesses. Perpetual war, waged on the blood of our underpriveleged, undereducated young people, is not a moral choice for the engine of our economy.

Barack Obama does not oppose all war. He knows (like all sane Americans) that Islamic extremists and more want to kill us as much as possible. But Obama opposes a rash war. He opposed this dumb war, when the rest of America was duped into thinking Osama and Sadam are the same person.

Hillary Clinton was duped and takes lobbyists' money. John McCain is still duped into continuing a perpetual war. Only Obama talks about how his campaign is not his, it is instead a social movement of Americans standing together to voice the changes they want to see: world reconciliation, a retraction of imperialism, and kicking the lobbyists' influence right out of Washington entirely.

This is why I got "hooked on hope" and now, I see that once again only Obama has provided the judgment and vision out of our economic slump towards a future spurned on for generations by growing a green energy sector. Superdelegates, Mama says, "Vote for Obama!"

Why US students are 29th in the world...

The "crazy Christians" are after us!!!

Re: Origin Theories Clash: Pinellas School Board would teach Intelligent Design...

The reason the US is 29th in the world in science instead of 1st is because our leaders and educators are being duped by the "Wedge Document" campaigns. These school board leaders need to go back to school, as they have not had a proper science education: These leaders are apparently easily duped by a PR campaign promoting an idea that in no way reflects critical thinking skills, the scientific method, or qualifies as a scientific theory. This ignorance would be laughable if it weren't so pathetically damaging to America's future.

The Wedge Document represents the strategy of the Discovery Institute, a think tank that advocates intelligent design and its "Teach the Controversy" campaign, which aims to teach creationist beliefs in public high school science courses. The Discovery Institute put forth its planned public relations, public opinion, media, and political lobbying campaigns in the Wedge Document, which states that the aim of this creationist campaign is to drive a "wedge" into popular discussions about the origin of life by manufacturing a false controversy that does not actually exist within the scientific community. The Wedge Document states the Institute's manifesto is to "defeat evolution" and "replace it with Christian and theistic convictions" to "affirm the reality of God."

In a public school, to have any patience at all with creationist/intelligent design notions is to do a severe disservice to your students. Those ideas in no way qualify as a theory, in any science, by any scientist anywhere. I hope various leaders on the School Board will thank the private company, the Discovery Institute, for doing such a good job in their advertising campaign! Their duping campaign has worked on them!

Who should I vote for?

Who should I vote for? I'll vote for the person who understands that the checks and balances on the three separate branches of government are crucial to keep our democracy functioning. The founding fathers knew that power makes even the best people turn absolutely corrupt. They cleverly devised the only way to stop inevitable corruption through healthy checks and balances with real teeth.

I'll vote for someone who will give the people back their constitutional rights, rights such as freedom from being spied on and thrown in jail without due process. I'll vote for someone who upholds the constitution regarding torture. I'll support the person who understands that our country was founded on the basis of the separation of church and state. I'll vote for the person strong enough to stop lobbyists from buying laws and lawmakers.

Who is this hero? Who is the person, when tempted with the now increased powers in the executive branch to make his/her decisions law, who would give up these imperial prerogatives in favor of rule as the founding fathers intended? i.e., no more kings!

Letter to the FCC

Dear FCC,

I’m so glad we have people in the FCC that have had a Communication class. You know then, about the FCC’s sacred calling to protect the public interest from monopolies and the long-fought history of this protection. Of course you are familiar with this history, as it is the very history of the FCC itself. God bless you for making the right decisions on protecting local interests from monopolies.

I’m sure you would do your historic duty to the people by not allowing ownership of the newspaper and a radio or TV station in the same market. Otherwise, that would break the entire reason for the FCC’s being, wouldn’t it?

However, I must warn you, that some influential leaders and thinkers are loudly espousing their beliefs that your FCC is “making information safe for monopolies” (Al Gore, The Assault on Reason). Bill Moyers said on his show the other week: “Kevin Martin isn’t letting up in his relentless push to allow a handful of media giants swallow up more of your local media.” Other communication scientists have shown relationships between the media’s conglomerates hiring of FCC officials and making favorable decisions for those media conglomerates who hire you (the revolving door theory). Maybe you ought to give these influential leaders a call to reassure them that you are on the side of the people who value diversity of information over supposed cost-saving consolidations and not on the side of media conglomerates.

Best of luck in your decision to roll back putting concentrated information power in the hands of the few. That is a hard fight today with all of the consolidation. Yet, it is an heroic struggle for the survival of our precious democracy. As you stand up to these media conglomerates, just remember you are standing up for democracy itself.

It is so great to live in a country where freedom of information and opposing viewpoints is honored for the very existence of our democracy. Can you imagine what it is like in China, where all of the information is owned by one monopoly – the state?


Happy Holidays.

Hopes for Downtown St. Pete

The fate of downtown St. Pete should reflect what is in the best interest of all of the citizens to enjoy the waterfront. These democratic values may suggest very different decisions regarding what is done with the Albert Whitted Airport space, the planned stadium, and other downtown bayside developments.

What planners don't seem to realize is that what people come, live, visit, and move to St. Pete for is the waterfront, beachy lifestyle with a touch of class. (Planners, please market research the public before making decisions for them.) The problem is that although the classy, beachy lifestyle is why we love St. Pete, technically downtown St. Pete does not have much of a beach.

Downtown St. Pete could take a lesson from Rio, where a beach could be created and maintained with parks, beach volleyball, boardwalks, skating/running paths, water squirting parks for toddlers to run through, and great retail and restaurants all within walking distance. Give downtown to all the people and reflect their hopes.

The wealthy get their way

You won't be getting a safe toys bill this holiday season. The politics of wealth, of greed, of corruption, of corporate pandering have won over democracy.

Why would our lawmakers protect us from large corporate interests, like those selling us the cheapest toys, when they are paid by these corporate interests? Why would our government go from subsidizing large corporations with few regulations to protecting the people?

On any question you have, now that democracy is eroded, the answer to every policy question will always be that the one who has the money wins.

Published in the St. Pete Times 11/27

Obama’s Ready, Are We?

Those who think they saw Obama cowering from Hillary Clinton are misled. Obama is an Abraham Lincoln who stands up for what he knows is right. Clinton is a politician first and foremost who thinks what is right is what will get her elected.

Obama is going from good to great and can’t be bought. Clinton is in the pocket of corporate corruption and corporate corruption is in her pocket.

Barack Obama is ready to be our President, but are we ready for a truly great man as our President? Just like a teenage girl, are we won over by a flashy, slightly bombastic charmer or are we behind a golden nice guy, one who’s integrity we can bet on all the way to the bank? This mama says, “Vote for Obama!”

What America Means to Me

America means the common person has freedom and rights, simply because he or she is American. America means democracy -- that our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. America is a grand experiment in democracy, the first national democracy since ancient times. People said it couldn't be done, that the common man is not worthy of such inalienable rights, such power to self-govern. Yet our “experiment” has prevailed for over 200 years.

America means that where you came from and what status your ancestors attained in no way dictates what you can accomplish. America means you are free to criticize your government and that the best press is the free and competitive press. America assumes the population is well-informed, educated, and motivated – that the more vigorous the peoples’ voice, the more robust the democracy. America means debate is healthy.

America means you have the right to struggle with religion, to practice your faith, or to deny religion. America means our government and science is not influenced by religion. This plurality of viewpoints and religions means America is not only tolerant of diversity, but indeed thrives on it. America, therefore, has a broader inkling of the commonality of all cultures and their expressions of God.

America means justice: If government does not represent the will of the people or if corruption is present, a counter balance of justice is built into our system. America is a living expression of our founding fathers' enlightenment ideals and a new understanding that power corrupts absolutely. Checks and balances to every power structure were intentionally built in to our government as the only way to oust corruption.

Our first government actually failed due to the government being too decentralized. This failure perfectly represents the extent to which our founding fathers believed in distributing power out to all the common people. George Washington talked about throwing off the chains of tradition, centralized power, and endless tribal-type warfare between nations declaring that they as God’s chosen people had the only sovereign rights to this or that parcel of land. The founding fathers instead gave power to the individual – rights to defend oneself, of free speech, privacy, enterprise, voting, and petitioning the government.

Above all, being American means the right and ability to freely live and effect change in our own lives; to pursue our productive happiness, wherever that leads us. The question today is, “Where is this America?” To what extent do we recognize this America today? To what extent does America exist?

Today, lobbyists from multi-billion dollar conglomerates have the ear of congress, where riders on bills funnel our tax-payer dollars to indirectly fund excessive CEO compensation. America is the place where no-bid government contracts are awarded to friends of the same political officials responsible for cranking the war machine.

America is where CEO’s work for one year and retire with a $20 million bonus, while their workers’ families struggle by on minimum wage with no health insurance. America is where middle-class families are squeezed to the breaking point, while hedge fund managers and sub-prime lenders get government tax breaks and incentives. America is where poor children are recruited into the army to die in a middle-eastern civil war, yet opportunists can make six-figures as unregulated mercenaries for Blackwater to comprise the unspoken other half of government involvement, all on the tax-payer’s dole.

America is where, in the last century, great science, math, innovation, entrepreneurship, and critical thinking drove our economic engine and propelled us to world leadership. Today, we are more beholden to corporations that claim they cannot adapt – car companies, oil companies, financial corporations, media conglomerates – than we are to the individual’s American dream.

Today, we have given up many of our rights to free expression, privacy, and ability to self-govern. We have allowed the executive branch to usurp power away from the people. We have given up on the right of only our Congress to declare war. We have rolled back habeas corpus, the right to a fair trial and due process. We have dampened the free press by allowing oligopolies, laid down to surveillance of the citizenry, and allowed the justice department to hand over our constitutional rights to the executive branch.

In America, where the long process of democracy can be frustrating, politicians in power may be tempted to subvert the process in exchange for an end product, as a trade for getting things done. However, democracy means the process is the product, the journey is more important than the destination and, in a way, the journey is our destination. Our democratic process is who we are.

Where is America? If I learned what America is in public school civics class, why didn’t our leaders learn what American means and what a democracy is? Why does the current administration think they know better than Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams? How did we let America slip away? And how in the world will we ever get it back?

Duped By War and Profit

As the reasons for the Iraq War crumble one after another upon closer inspection, the real reason for why and how we fight reveals it's true, revolting nature: profit. Many pillaging capitalists have made a whole lot of money off the blood spilled by young, naive, underprivileged recruits.

Since the war, Blackwater has made $1 trillion. Halliburton's profits have gone up 284%. ExxonMobil's profits rise almost 50% a year. Defense contractor CEO pay has gone up 200 to 688%. The CEO's at General Dynamics, Halliburton, and Lockheed Martin, the top three profiteers, have made between $65 million and $98 million in four years.

The truly sick twist in this bloody game is that we, the taxpayers, are the ones paying these goons. The Executive Director of Oil Change International states, "While ExxonMobil is posting $10 billion profits in just the last three months, it is gouging each of us at the pump and taking billions more in taxpayer handouts."

How can this racket on the backs of the working poor continue? Who sold our young people out to die in a desert? Why are we suckers? There are many questions and still more answers.

It's not that we didn't need any strikes against Islamist extremists, it may just be that we didn't need to overthrow a country. However, science has shown that people are very susceptible to fear appeals. People are very emotional creatures. We can be swayed by plays to our emotions. If all that is needed are air strikes on military targets and the government instead has a secret agenda to build a democracy, the president will stand on an aircraft carrier in full flight gear or at ground-zero as the largest flag obtainable ripples in the background. These staged photo-ops are designed to manipulate our emotions. As the flag waves and the music swells and the call to action is plainly voiced, very basic feelings make us want to stand up to be who we are: brave, loyal, and free, bound to something higher than ourselves.

Sadly, the puppetmasters know exactly how to make us feel and act. The profiteers do not share the basic moral values of the populace. To them, "the greater good" was sold long ago to the highest bidder: Their souls are black: To them, there is nothing higher than the dollar. These super-capitalists know that Keynesian economics predicts that war is good for the economy, just as our president knew he always wanted to be a "war president" to use the power of consensus generated by war to get things done.

Will we stay duped? Will we allow world leaders to rationalize the death they have wrought because it is good for the economy? When will we take back our country?

Mind the money

Published in the St. Pete Times 9.26.2007:

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., warned, "They're going to spend half a trillion this time" in regard to Republican attacks on Hillary Clinton's new health care plan. I would say that spending to fix America's health care tragedy is better than spending to start wars in other countries, to give tax breaks to contractors in the military-industrial racket, and to offer incentives to lobbyists' firms.

Legislators need to stop giving the American dream away to these robber barons and return dignity to the common man through improved living wages, health care and education. Now, how about spending half a trillion on education?

Fundamentalist Ignorance and Hypocrisy

Although the purpose of the religious right gathering in Brandon is to reverse the moral decline in America, ironically the religious right itself does a lot to contribute to America's decline, moral and otherwise. Christian fundamentalists are ignorant of scientific facts and are hypocritically judgmental.

Christian fundamentalists of the religious right are so literal in their interpretation of the bible that they want huge catastrophic events to happen, like the world to blow up, so that Jesus will come and bodily transport them to paradise while the rest of us burn in hell. Religious right fundamentalists believe that dinosaurs and Adam and Eve walked the earth at the same time when God made it about 6,000 years ago (...). Religious right fundamentalists don’t accept the most successful scientific theory of all time…evolution.

Religious right fundamentalists judge and condemn homosexuals, equal rights for women, and people who have had abortions. These religious people claim that the bible condemns them. However, in the bible, Lot is the angel’s hero for offering his daughters over to be gang-raped by an angry mob. Lot later impregnates his own daughters. Therefore, by their own fundamentalist logic (if you can call it that), good religious right fundamentalists should offer their daughters up to be raped and support incest. Also, if you are a real Christian fundamentalist, you will stone your rebellious children until they die because the bible tells you so. Perhaps these Christians should be less hypocritically judgmental and more like the actual Christ.

America may very well be in decline. Most Americans, as opposed to other industrialized nations, do not believe in evolution. 70% of American adults do not understand the scientific method. Americans are at a disadvantage for completing in a global economy: Since Bush’s preemptive, and some consider immoral, war, the majority of people in a majority of countries around the world view the U.S. unfavorably.

If regular people don’t speak up and say that religious right fundamentalists do not use basic rational thought, then our country will surely be lost in another dark age of superstition. These people stop at nothing to push their literal interpretation of the bible onto the rest of us. They do not even stop at the Constitution, which clearly stands upon a foundation of the separation of church and state and the separation of powers. It is time to stop being polite about religious fanatics and start teaching the scientific method. It is the only way for America to remain a viable player on the world field.

Junky Chinese Products

Letter to Senator Nelson (FL)

Subject: Thanks for going to bat against junky Chinese products


Dear Senator Nelson,

Thanks so much for going to bat for us regarding junky Chinese products. I really appreciate you standing up for us and our children.

If we really care about this issue, we will hold the FTC's and FDA's feet to the fire because they did not do their jobs in protecting Americans from these dangerous products. Of course Mattel of the free market is going to seek short-term gain over the welfare of the people. That's why we have government agencies.

But if these agencies (FTC, FDA, etc.) don't do what they are supposed to, it is Congress' job to hold those agencies accountable and even pass legislation to strengthen protections. However, there are interesting incentives that can be passed as law in this area of consumer protection.

We could reward American companies for using American vendors/suppliers. We could reward American companies for Fair Trade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade) practices. We could reward compaines that are SweatFree (http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/sweatfree/). We could reward American companies that show their own products are safe.

Open letter to the UN

I’m writing today because, I, like many other Americans, am sad at my country having to go around the world warring all the time. I’m embarrassed that my beautiful, vibrant country is the bully of the world.

I was hoping the UN would stop the rapes by the Congolese army, Darfur’s genocide of its people, child sexual trafficking in Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and contain terrorism. It’s a shame the UN Peacekeepers do not actually stop these things, leaving a vacuum, that it seems the US military is all too ready to step in.

I’m tired of financing all this war, when the other countries of the world do not do their share to stand up for what’s right. Why should America alone have to foot the defense of the free world’s bill? Western European countries brag because their health care and universities are better and more accessible to any citizen. But they are able to subsidize these agencies because they do not have to subsidize a real military force.

I’m tired of the world community not stopping genocide, of the UN Peacekeepers not stopping genocide, and then the world community gets to point their fingers at brutish America, going to war again.

Why should our young people be the only ones to really fight and die to stop horrendous oppression? That is not an acceptable role anymore for just one country. We are one world and the whole world needs a defense against inevitable evil.

Please consider giving UN Peacekeepers some teeth. Americans would finally take the UN seriously then.

Immigration Solution

Snooping for illegals, building fences, and turning immigrants over to immigration officials after they are found out in an emergency room is like inviting your friends to Disney World but then taking them to jail. We need to take responsibility for the fact that we ask these people to come here.

If Americans do not want illegal immigrants here, Americans must stop hiring illegals. Instead of going after poverty-stricken Latinos with their families torn apart living in daily fear and squalor so they can do jobs citizens don't want, why not have enforcement resources go towards stopping the hiring of illegal immigrants in the first place? If you do not hire them, they will not come.

Spineless Congress

The problems with no-bid contracts and lobbyists are very much related to a larger pattern of overly influential corporate power in our government. It is the job of the congress to apply the check on this corruption; however, congress would rather take the corporate money than uphold the constitution. The reason for the extremely low approval rating for the congress now has everything to do with the spinelessness of the congress to not stand up to power plays and represent the best interests of the people.

The founding fathers were counting on the congress to be true conduits for the people and check unwieldy power. Our first government was so decentralized in its power and so diffused out towards the populace that it crumbled.

Not only do the congressmen not read the whole bill they are voting on, but they also do not understand the basic tenets of the constitution. This pervasive and stifling ignorance has a few notable exceptions, with Barack Obama being one of them. Because Obama had to teach Constitutional Law, he seems to fully appreciate the sacredness of the constitution and the founding fathers' intent on checks to power. Obama has literally put his money where is mouth is and is our greatest hope on reclaiming some of our own government.

Nuclear power needed

I find it ironic that merely days after Japan’s nuclear power plant radiation leak and subsequent cover-up, some are considering nuclear power as an option in Florida. Not only is the industry riddled with human error and cover-ups, but also nuclear plants are vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Furthermore, the nuclear waste is also vulnerable to terrorist attacks which must be hauled out on trains to Yucca Mountain (where it pollutes that environment for eternity). Wind, solar, and sugarcane-to-ethanol fuel are more rational energy alternatives that can be Florida’s future economic engines.

How about a nice spot under a bridge?

RE: How about a nice spot under a bridge? (By SUE CARLTON, July 13, 2007, St. Pete Times)
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/13/News/How_about_a_nice_spot.shtml


Sue Carlton's column on where to put the child molesters suggests creative zoning in nonresidential areas instead of simply creating bigger buffers away from them. Most of the public, however, believes that if you have molested a child even once, or you would molest a child, you should be locked up for life. Many of us consider child molestation worse than adult manslaughter.

The effects of molesting a child are extremely serious: The child’s brain structure and chemistry are permanently altered (smaller); there is a high risk of disfigurement, STD’s, disability, and death from the internal bleeding and lacerations; most victims develop rampant and persistent PTSD and psychiatric problems including increased suicides, sexualized behavior, self-mutilation, eating disorders, and drug use; committing crimes and becoming a sexual predator oneself greatly increases; and the child faces a lifetime of doubt in basic trust in their key relationships, which alone can be devastating.

The problem of child molestation is growing, especially via the Internet. Groups of highly organized child molesters, such as “BoyLove,” operate worldwide through pedophile organizations. 60% of child molesters are released on parole. Child molesters, who were often molested themselves, are getting younger and more violent. Recent studies show that child sexual predators are increasing, although increased reporting is a confounding variable.

Where should we put them? Under a bridge is far too kind. Lock them away for life.