DAM -- I think the repugs understand very well that the economic system needs more demand. With that understanding, they know how to stop it at every turn.

Hey everybody, I just wanna tell youse all that I made a little reply to the other day's blog topic, the "Labor Games" one, that I'd like youse all to see. It's right here http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2014/06/labor-games-time-american-comeb....

I mean, why "waste it on the desert air", you know what I mean?

[quote=ChicagoMatt]

For example, our trash is picked up by unionized city workers, and our recycling is picked up by a private company. The union trash guys have a four-person crew - one driver, two people loading the garbage in the back, and one person in the passenger seat for some reason. The recycling collector, who has the same exact kind of truck, just painted green, is just one person. He drives the truck, parks it, hops out, loads the stuff, gets back in, moves the truck forward two houses, and repeats.

I look at this and think to myself: "My property taxes are already too high, and they go up every year. I'm paying for the garbage and the recycling collection. Why can't the garbage collection run like the recycling collection - a one-person show? To save costs."

And the only answer I can come up with is: The union must not allow that.

[/qoute]

Well Matt, your recycling guy is no doubt a non union employee and you're no doubt right that the union doesn't allow the garbage collectors to be made to do a job alone that is really for two or three people - as it shouldn't. That's really the only reason privatization saves any money to taxpayers - the private firm is typically non union and pays substandard wages and implements substandard labor practices - and thus, why privatization is an odious phenomenon.

Everywhere, these days, working people are increasingly being made to do a job themselves that really is for more than one person or even two people to do. That your recycling guy has no rights is nothing to crow about. As a taxpayer you are a rogue employer by proxy. Our economy doesn't benefit from fewer jobs but from more jobs and to bring an economy back and keep it in good health government shouldn't be cutting jobs like some FDR in reverse but should be making them, especially in times of economic crisis. You might say that unions err on the side of too many rights for workers as opposed to too few and, although I wouldn't express it that way, I would prefer too many to too few.

You also shouldn't begrudge someone a good, middle class job but, instead, say, "Where's mine?". Teachers are overworked and underpaid because, in our society, teaching school is traditionally woman's work. Your employers don't want you to step out of your place but you also, Matt, deserve better.

There are two ways of looking at public sector workers as a taxpayer. One is as their employer and to seek to exploit them trying to squeeze the most possible work out of them in return for the least possible compensation. The other is as their fellow worker and to find solidarity with them.. To take the first view is, I think, to fall for the divisive strategy of the elites and have us fighting each other instead of uniting for everybody's collective prosperity - or for everybody's middle class deal.

To unite for a just society is better although it requires delayed gratification and sustained effort. It may not make you feel better about your property taxes - and the unjust system of levying them - in the short run but to have us all fighting over the remnant scraps is their (those elites') strategy that will, in the longer run, defeat us all.

Unlike the censored news from the main stream news media, I have often seen bloody scenes on the alternative news channels like RT, Al Jazeera, LinkTV, and FSTV. I would see the same clips of an atrocity caused by US military on main stream news media sans the gory scenes and modified comments that covered up the real story of US criminality. That's why some politicians are very uncomfortable with RT and other alternative media. I suspect they are trying to abolish them.

I often wonder if the government isn't behind the frequent censorship by interfering with the audio and video portions of the alternative media news shows. It used to be Russia, and other countries that had heavily censored news stories...now it is happening in the US.

Police Now Can Switch off iPhone Camera and Wi-Fi
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/08/19/police-now-can-switch-off-iphone...

Maybe we all should start carrying little digital cameras, or old-style 35 mm cameras, or maybe even little spy cameras, with us and develop the film ourselves. All the cell phones do is track you wherever you go and allow for monitoring of everything you say, and to whom you say it, and give you brain cancer.

I hate cell phones except for when they are used to record police brutality. But if they can now block that, what good are they, really? If you really have to talk to someone...use a pay phone. People would object to having to wear a tracking device but having a cell phone effectively accomplishes the same thing.

Did you know that Homeland Security has less to do with preventing terrorist attacks than preventing people from going shopping? That's right! It's considered a terrorist act to prevent or delay people from spending their money...making merchants richer. I wonder if it is also considered a terrorist act to ask people to boycott certain goods?

What a HORRIBLE thought! To first think that teenage girls are sex crazed, and then to link them with how "natural" that sex drive is with boys needing to use guns! When you try to place the sexes into prefabricated cubbyholes, you're no better than the older generations who cannot see that a person can be something other than what their sex stereotypically "should" do. When you also make huge inaccurate generalizations of entire genders, it's a kind of ignorance that reflects the horrible television raised society you claim to hate so much.

And that would be a correct description of irony.

Apropos to #19 ~ ChicagoMatt two other things you should know.

Back then we had something you don't--an honest media. Sure it was in black and white but it showed us what was really going on in the war and in the streets. Now, that is conveniently blacked out so that YOU are not too disturbed. In those days, on a daily basis, you would see birds eye footage of actual battle grounds in Vietnam. You would see dead victims from both sides lying in pools of their own blood, missing arms, legs and sometimes with the top of their heads blown off. Equally disturbing you would daily see on the scene footage of the carnage in our streets from the protest movement. You would see police in riot gear and batons use fire hoses and tear gas on unarmed teenagers. You would see blood soaked unconscious protesters being dragged by the hair into paddy wagons. You got to see three or more armed and helmeted police mercilessly beating an unarmed protester over the head with clubs until they were covered with blood. You just don't see that anymore Matt. They don't even show real protests anymore. However, if you did you would be a completely different person I assure you.

Finally I just have to say I have to hand it to the generation that came before us. What a mixed bag of nuts that was. They remind me a lot of your generation so you should listen up good. These people went through WWII and the Great Depression and survived. They were rugged and tough and came out of the experience feeling like winners. They were richly rewarded with some of the best opportunities and the highest paying jobs in the history of the world. They went through the sixties with us, fighting us all the way. No one hated hippies more than this bunch of losers. They supported the war unconditionally simply because they believed that the war was their governments effort to protect their privileged lifestyle. (More so because they knew that they were too old to have to worry about getting their hands dirty in it.) "This is the best country in the world," they would tell us. The single most beautiful irony of that entire era is that the government really didn't give a crap about these people. In fact, they hated them even more than they hated the hippies. What did they do? How did they repay their loyalty? Well the first chance they got they pulled the plug on these fat, disgusting, overpaid and overfed, self righteous morons and sent all their fancy jobs to.... to... No wait for it! WAIT FOR IT!!!

RIGHT OVER TO THE VERY ENEMY WE WERE ALLEGEDLY TRYING TO DEFEAT!! Now if that wasn't karma, I don't know what is. So be very careful what you say my friend. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for you.

If you were serious about cleaning up the mess you would support the police not tie their hands behind backs because you want to live in some hippie utopia where everyone is high on dope.

Although I agree with your sentiment, sort of, I see a parallel here. Or irony, depending on how you look at it. Tea partiers look at the Washington bureaucracy when it comes to healthcare the same way that Progressives look at the militaristic police force when it comes to crime. In order to fix the problem (healthcare or crime), the other side is telling you to "trust us, this is the best way". I'll start believing that single-payer healthcare is feasible in this country when the lefties start believing that crime can be stamped out with force.

Hot damn, Marc, you've coughed up some mighty insightful posts lately. What'cha been smokin' (or drinking or poppin')? You're on a roll this week, my friend. I tip my hat to ya.

Reading your #10 post, Matt, I'm not pissed off. I just don't give a rat's ass. Sorry to disappoint. I just can't get that worked up over the opinions of the young and the clueless. It's not that important to me, what today's teenie boppers and junior start-ups think of my generation. Like Marc has asserted so eloquently, you guys weren't there. You don't know what you're talking about; you only think you do. Your opinions don't matter, to anyone but your whiney selves.

The only thing that was great about the fifties and sixties was the economy. The majority of the working class in America never had it so good, before or since. Beyond that, it was rife with conflict and chaos. Riots, assassinations, racial strife, the Vietnam War… We boomers had our own crosses to bear. We countered all that shit with a mini renaissance of art, poetry and music. We painted our faces and danced in the streets. We questioned authority, spoke truth to power, broke taboos and re-invented ourselves. We protested the war en masse, burned draft cards, said "Hell no, we won't go!" and gave Uncle Sam the middle-finger salute. Some were forced to leave the country, to avoid getting sucked into Uncle Sam's war machine. Many of us took psychedelics, smoked lots and lots of pot. In my teens and twenties, I occupied the epicenter of all that, living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'd grown up in Oakland. The Unitarian Church my family attended was right next door to Cal Berkeley, on Bankroft & Dana. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, endless civil unrest, all that chaos and ugliness and death, we boomers celebrated life. Looking back, I have few regrets. I offer no apologies for any of it.

Like Marc has pointed out, our biggest mistake was dropping the ball, becoming complacent in middle age. Many hippies sold out and became yuppies, cashing in on the new high-tech boom... By then it was the 1980s, the decade of the so-called "New Age" movement. What a crock. This counter-cultural transition was vividly represented in the music we listened to at that time. The marvelously innovative, diverse music of the sixties gave way to the dull thump of disco, followed by the mind-numbing redundancy of New Age music in all its insipid glory. Yeah, the thrill was gone. I guess everyone was pretty burnt out by then, after all that social upheaval and so forth. I was living in Santa Cruz by the early '80s, with my soon-to-be husband. I could scarcely believe the self-absorbed, elitest, pompous assholes there were, all around us, chanting "Ommmmm" in their little hot tubs as if in a collective trance, carrying on like their shit didn't stink with so much pretentious, psuedo-spiritual fucking nonsense. As Ray-gun launched his vicious assault against us, dismantling everything that had provided any semblance of stability in our lives, we boomers were already asleep at the wheel, meditating and chanting into oblivion. That's my one big regret. We're paying dearly for it now, with no end in sight.

Think you're special, Matt? You and those kids you're teaching and raising at home? Well I've got news for you. Thirty years down the road, if humans are still around by then, you'll have another generation of half-baked, know-nothing young smart asses looking down their noses at your generation, pointing the finger with the same disdain, the same old smug self-righteousness, blaming YOU for all the world's problems. Yep. Same old thing, generation after generation! 'Round and 'round it goes… So keep right on boomer-bashing if it makes your day. We all like to feel superior, don't we Matt? Whatever. - Aliceinwonderland

Matt, I appreciate what you have shared about studies & books regarding matters of gender. When viewed through a scientific lens, gender is actually more complex than most people seem to realize. There is quite a diverse range within the two genders, having much to do with the hormonal cocktail we are exposed to before birth. All babies receive a dose of hormones from both genders in utero, and this varies quite a bit among individuals. For example, some girls receive higher doses of testosterone than others while still in the womb. Conversely, some baby boys get a bigger dose of estrogen than others of their gender. This affects the personality and temperament of each child for the rest of her (or his) life.

Since learning of this phenomenon, I've suspected that I am one of those high-testosterone females. Growing up, I was a rough-and-tumble sort of kid who much preferred boys as companions, as they were more inclined to enjoy the same sorts of activities I enjoyed. I was athletic and very physical, and could outrun and outclimb most boys. Girls often harassed and ostracized me for dressing, walking, acting "like a boy". I hated being put in situations where I was in the exclusive company of girls, for this very reason. Summercamp, in particular, could be a real test of endurance for me. Boys were more inclined to share my sense of humor as well as my choice of activities. I never liked dolls as toys and never played "mommy", even in earliest childhood.

This all went on way before puberty, so it's is not about sexual attraction or preferences.

My main point here is to illustrate that gender isn't all black & white. There's many shades of gray. And I'd like to also point out that not all "masculine" females or "feminine" males are gay, while many homosexuals of either gender still conform to what is considered typical of their genders; in temperament, personality, aptitudes and interests.

From my perspective, diversity is the spice of life. It keeps life interesting. - Aliceinwonderland

Thank you, "ahthetruth". Interesting perspective! "Scourge" is the word for it. - AIW

The recent Bergdahl swap has got the Republican noise machine claiming that it was illegal and a horrible thing to have done. After-all, they claim, he went awol and may have been the cause of the deaths of a few American fellow soldiers who went looking for him. Maybe our response should be that the Republicans, even now, will not own up to what their "Saint" Raygun did when he traded weapons to Iran for hostages. How many of those weapons were used to kill Americans, eventually? And what about all of the weapons that American corporations have sold to these countries since?

Bergdahl is no traitor...he's a hero! He acted out of conviction when he came to realize that he was lied to about why he was over there and what they were actually doing over there. Killing civilians...lots of them! That's enough to turn any honest man's stomach...any man with a conscience anyway.

But obviously, the men he had to work with, or for, over there were heartless, jingoist murderers. Those murderers in American uniforms are not patriots. They are the psychopathic cowards who deserve to be tried for war crimes right along with the cowardly politicians, military officers, and American xenophobic citizens who go along with the mass murder of civilians in the countries their military have illegally invaded and occupied.