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Okay and while we are on the topic of things that tick me off.  I proudly

introduce you to this weeks, ENEMIES OF THE STATE.

Either scroll down and browse  or click on the following topics to be taken to that topic:

Bush, Man of the Year? History will Remember you and the Silence of the good

A Clear and Present Danger, Messages to Bush, and Congrats to the Florida 14

A failure of reason or how the Supreme Court sleeps at night

NAACP?

Congrats to Justice Ginsberg

Michael Romanello's Must Read Statement

Pro-Life? Women's rights, The bombing of Iraq and the new 1000 years

Bill Moyer, Minimum Wage, and the Great Digital Robbery

Ralph Nader the morning after the Election

Move On- an article about the attempt by the GOP to sweep this election under the carpet.

 SELECTIVE BATTLES

16 mar 2001

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!! We name Names!!! We give you a browsable, printable, frameable list of those who helped get an admitted Nazi Sympathizer and Racist confirmed as attorney General. Remember these names.

First with the Republicans. I'll just name the republicans who didn't vote for Ashcroft. ........ That's right, there is no one to name, all the Republicans fell into line and swallowed Bush's lapping dog. I have to say this did surprise me. There are a couple of Republicans who I gave credit for being men of honor and integrity, who I thought would have balked at Ashcrofts openly destructive and biased record.

That all the republicans held hands on this shows you how twisted its gotten, that a party line now means more than concepts of right or wrong or individual morality. It was the act of sheep and cowards. It was the act of a mob. Everyone suborning individual mores and ethics, individual decency and humanity, to the pack. We've fallen into this idea of us and them, but that's not what it's about, it's about differing opinions, and differing viewpoints, yes, but ultimately with the same goal, to serve America, to represent the people, to give voice to those who don't own TV stations, or radio stations, or tax shelters, but to represent those people, who do the working, and the living, and the fighting, and when its called for... the dying. Whether a Democrat or a Republican your first and last duty is to the people, and to doing your part to making their tomorrow's better than their today's. If a government's purpose is not that, than who needs a government.

The Congress is there not to play lapdog to big business, but to "promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity". Good words. Words it seems, that in partisan fervor, too many of our representatives have forgotten.

That said there were eight democrats who jumped shipped, and basically spit in the eye of their constituents. Supporting a nazi like Ashcroft. I hope these eight have good jobs lined up with MonSanto because I don't see another term in it for them. They are:From Connecticut , Christopher Dodd, from Georgia Zell Miller, from Louisiana John Breaux, From ND we had two butt heads jump ship, Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad, from NE Ben Nelson, from WI Russ Feingold, and from WV Robert Byrd. The complete rogues gallery. Pictures forthcoming. If these buttheads live in a state near you, by all means, give them hell. "We home to make them blush at it."

Also in another case of Democrats jumping ship in the Senate, and basically saying screw you to the people who voted them into office, six democrats jump ship to help repeal President Clinton's Work Safety Act. Basically saying we want big business to have no liability, no responsibility, no accountability for what goes on in the workplace. Blatant case of big business buying your representatives off. The culprits are from AR Blanche Lincoln(you're not worthy of that last name), from Georgia a returning turncoat Zell Miller, And again from LA John Breaux is back and this time he's brought a friend, Mary Landrieu (that's what I like, a guy who can share his bribes), from MT we have Max Baucus, and from SC Earnest Hollingsor wraps up my list of people I want desperately to see reap what they sow.

I've pretty much been picking on the senate, but the house is even more reprehensible. They've allowing these bills to get to the senate. One of the most reprehensible passed right at the beginning of March. Basically was a capitulation to the Credit Card companies. Credit card companies, not happy enough with shylock rates and putting the whole nation in debt, want's to take away the common consumers ability to file Bankruptcy and get a clean slate. You'll still be able to file Bankruptcy, but under the new ruling you'll now be responsible to pay back the credit card companies. Basically the same thing they done with welfare. We pay billions of dollars in taxes to provide services to Americans in time of need and crisis, in the words of the preamble, to be able to "promote the general welfare", yet now the government is telling people you can't actually have this money that you put into the system, that is supposed to be here for you, we're no longer a government we're a bank, we're just going to loan you your own money, and you're responsible to pay it back to us, with interest. What the hell is that? It is nothing less, and nothing more, than greed unchecked. So you no longer allow people fresh starts, no clean slates, no welfare, no bankruptcy, no protection under the law. And what people who oppose the idea of Welfare like to say is, it's not the responsibility of a government to help the weak. Basically, if you strip down this Bush, Limbaugh, Right Wing, Nazi Rhetoric people have been spouting on the hill that's what this opposition to welfare is about, the unwillingness of those that have to defend the have-nots. Basically saying "we got ours, and want to keep you from getting yours".

But I say to defend the weak is what a government is all about, it is in the last, best sense, about answering and serving the needs of the people. All people. It is about creating an environment where the weak can be made strong. If a government doesn't do this, then it's not a government, in the absence of a responsibility to her citizens a government ceases to be a government, and becomes a hammer, used to kill.

And again those who oppose welfare usually fail to see, we are spending more on welfare now than ever before, tons of money coming out of my paycheck and yours, but instead of going to families, helping to reverse the homelessness, poverty and despair of our America, instead of going where it could do some good, to poor families, this money is now going to subsidize mega-rich corporations. Billions upon Billions of our dollars, which congress in it's wisdom has decreed normal people, working people, suffering people, have no rights to, this same money, my money is being given to make rich companies richer, and they are not asked to pay it back (ex.bill s606).

It is enough to make you ill. People are starving in our cities, starving on the new scaled down welfare, people are dying, and money that can help, should help, is going to make rich people, richer. These are the same people who fight against the slightest increase in the minimum wage, while routinely giving themselves, 5,6, and 7 digit raises. It is corruption, it is evil most foul. And must be opposed. 306members of the House of Representatives, your voice, your spokesmen and women, 306 of them voted that you should have less rights than a company. A company can file bankruptcy and walk away to begin fresh, these 306 people said you should not have that same right. That you being just a citizen, will not be forgiven your debts, and must pay back with interest. Even if that keeps you in the same terrible situation you filed bankruptcy to get out of, especially if it keeps you in the same situation.

I don't know about God and I don't know about the devil, but I know evil. And what our congress has been doing, being yes men for bankers is evil. Here is a link to those 306 names. Find the one in your state and send this letter to the media, to him, to your friends, to organizations in your state, to the league of women voters. Find the one in your state and make his name known. We can not change this vote, this year. But we can insure that these misguided men and women are no longer in positions to harm America. We can insure that what they and now the senate have passed, and the thief is about to sign, we can insure that they are remembered for it.

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This is a letter I'm drafting to send to the media, Governor, Senators, Judge, Jury, and business owners and organizations in Florida

In Florida a troubled 14yo boy named Lionel Tate has been sentenced to life in prison. There is little doubt that Tate, 13 at the time, killed a 12 y.o. girl, while emulating his wrestling idols. There is also no doubt that Tate has a history of learning disabilities. What is in doubt is the boys intention to kill the girl. Given the boys learning disabilities, and also the fact that he was an abnormally large boy, just growing into his new 170pound frame, you really are dealing with a child who doesn't know his own strength on one hand, and doesn't know where TV ends and reality begins on the other. The jury's guilty verdict in a case presided over by Joel T. Lazurus to me given the facts of the case, is questionable. As was the DA Ken Padowicz's  insistence to try the boy, given this history, as an adult. Now the boy has been found guilty and runs the horrific possibility of spending his young years in an Adult prison.

It boggles my mind, how this can seem to anyone, Any human, to be justice. This child needs treatment, not torment and not punishment and not prison. Given Florida's questionable climate of the last three months, one must ask what part color played in young Mr.Tate being tried as an adult, and being found guilty.

But my immediate concern is not the flaws in justice that allowed Lionel Tate to become yet the latest flesh and blood example of separate and unequal treatment. No my concern is the strength of justice that will stop and correct this miscarriage.

We have gone in just six short months so far from the middle, I swear there are times as a nation , that I can actually hear us running backwards. The whole nation sprinting toward blood.

I think, I think we've missed so many chances to do what's right, what's human, missed so many chances to pull back from the edge.  Too many have died, too badly, too recently. Too much wrong. The law must bind us all, protect us all, high and low, Black and white, or it suffers. It ceases to be able to bind anyone. The law when used unequally becomes a weapon that threatens the very stability of our union.

Bush as his last act as Governor killed two people he should not have killed. That the whole world said no to, and this man, this state, this law, that I grew up believing in, took their lives. Snuffed out everything they were and everything they would ever be. One was Sankofa. And those deaths, those deaths, I'd been sleeping so long, and those deaths woke me up. I saw with them the turning of the world, I saw with these deaths a time when law and justice were two distinct and separate things. That our law had become about dissident control and population control and competition control. That our law had become a way to kill, and in the face of this realization justice grew a new definition, justice became those few, those precious few, who would oppose the law.

I have done some not so good things in my life, I have lost much that I would have held onto, but to let a child rot in an Adult prison, for the easy convenience of racist times and old winds of hate, no, I have not lived that long or lost that much. This child needs treatment, to do less, to give less, to treat less is to violate the law. To finally, finally break the law. All laws. And our obligations to them.

I urge you to do, not just the right thing, but the necessary thing and put this child in a treatment facility and not in a prison.

11 mar 2001

I look at a lot of the problems that people have brought up in meetings, the issue with Johns Hopkins not wanting to pay a living wage, in fact many companies fighting to do away with minimum wage, social security, welfare, even unemployment compensation, like someone said at the meeting this broad attempt to push back the clock, and have everyone desperate, willing to take anything, willing to fight over scraps.

So pay is being reduced, benefits and security in hard times removed, and monopolies and utility companies now given free reign to gouge the public and charge whatever they want. In the next few years the bulk of Americans will make less, but everything will cost more. The dollar will lose value drastically. Already in Baltimore County you're starting to see $700 rent for one bedroom apartments, $200 and $300 electric bills.

This comes from the inability of the common man to provide for himself the basic necessities; hence he is at the mercy of greedy and now unchecked corporations that for all intents and purposes own our government. Can anyone say MonSanto.

Every man should be able to feed, clothe, house, clean and warm himself. Industrialization promised easy convenience; instead what we got is dependence. People in cities provide none of the necessities they need to live, we have become dependent on third party agencies to provide the necessities of life.

Everyone except farmers. Farmers touch the land, they are the one thing corporate america hates, they are able to be self sufficient. Because of this fact, farmers (Black farmers particularly) have been pushed to near extinction. Why? Because land is power.

We like to think we fight political battles, or social ills or prejudice, and those might be the things we fight against, but that's not the fight. They are symptoms, growths, of the fight.

The fight has always been one of economics. One of class struggle. A global struggle. If you look at Malcolm and Martin, the system was happy to oblige them as long as they kept the small view, as long as they fought a marginalized unclear battle called civil rights, but as soon as Martin and Malcolm began to look around the world, began to relabel the fight not one of civil rights but human rights, and not one of American people of color, but all people of color, once Malcolm and Martin saw the fight as a global war of economics, they were put down.

Much the same continues to happen throughout the world, the assassination in the Congo of Laurent Kabilla, (a President willing to take a stand against The World Bank and outside privatization of his nations resources) being the most recent incident of American imperialism.

So what's happening outside our country is nothing more than a darker mirror of what's happening inside. It's not color, or sex, or rage, it's  class, it's money, and it's greed. It is an economic battle, and must ultimately be won on an economic scale.

Land is, if not that victory, at least a weapon in the war. If you can only do one thing, don't buy a new car, don't rent, don't buy things that depreciate, buy land, like a good friend keeps telling me they're not making anymore of it. Buy land, an acre, whatever you can afford. And even if you can't afford to build on it right now, hold it till you can.

With Land, a well, a septic tank or composting toilet, a greenhouse for soybeans, Mobile or Manufactured home, DC Powered appliances, Solar Panels; sheep for wool, and chickens and fish for protein, you are virtually self sufficient. You can survive, you no longer need someone else to give you the tools to stay alive, not at the mercy of utility companies because you're producing your own electricity and heat. Finally you don't have to work to live, you can finally just live. Not to say the life of land is easy, but it's far preferable to the state of economic slavery most of us are living in.

I've priced what it would cost to do the above. It is outside the scope of the average working class person. You're looking all told in today’s dollars a minimum of $300,000 for 5 acres, house, well, DC appliances, solar panels, livestock, etc. But it is not outside the scope of a small coop or commune. Fanny Mae gives loans for multi-residence dwellings, so if you had 4 or 5 like people who you can stand and get along with, it's definitely the way to go. Together you live better than you would individually, and pay less. It is the way to get out of living paycheck to paycheck, the way of mitigating how much damage or abuse you have to take from corporate America. It's a way to, in hard times, survive.

Economics is the global war we fight, and land the battleground we fight over. The best advice I can give anyone is to slowly wean yourself off corporate America, because all the social issues you fight against, sexism, color, creed, politics, all of it stems from corporate greed, all of it reflects a company policy of genocide. And as long as you’re buying the products, addicted to the products as it were, a captive audience, you are part of that cycle of genocide. Everytime you use Shell gas you are part of wholesale murder and genocide and destruction of a whole ecosystem, 50 years of Nigerian exploitation that went into those pumps.

And its not easy, because right now a very few companies provide all our resources. So for a long time until we have alternatives, create our own companies, we will have to fight selective battles, and wean ourselves off of one monster at a time. Anyone interested in more info about communes and coops feel free to email me.

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