Blog Spot: Carlos J. Licea

Opening up the conversation in the 805 Region

Carlos J. Licea:

Ridicule or stupidity?

March 30, 2010

Healthcare reform opponents are starting to sound like caricatures of themselves in the aftermath of President Barack Obama signing legislation into law.

Recently one of those pundits, who is otherwise an intelligent, sensitive writer, sent me a note quoting the Spanish newspaper El Pais, where Cuban dictator Fidel Castro had been praising the signing of the law. He titled his link, “In good company…” as if Obama was “palling around” with dictators and oppressors by his actions on healthcare.

For those who read behind the headlines, it would be obvious that Castro goes on to tear down Obama for statements about the “foolishness” of Cuba’s totalitarian and decrepit political system.

Unfortunately that pundit, he falls into a trap of wingnuts who simply seem to turn a blind eye to injustice by trying to cover up one misdeed with another.  The right wing — which seems allied with extreme conservative teabaggers — does not see where improving and strengthening a democracy by making it more equal for all its citizens can only point at real differences between democracy and totalitarianism.

I would ask this man: Would you have favored the apartheid system of the old white South Africa simply because the Castro brothers issued proclamations on behalf of Nelson Mandela?

Or, would you have dug in your heels against the civil rights movement because of its connection to W.E.B. Dubois?

If you are a serious proponent of liberty and democracy, you cannot make common cause with fringe extreme elements simply because you happen to agree on one point to the detriment of your fellow Americans.

It is little bit like those Tory sympathizers who didn’t follow the founding fathers because they espoused a representative democratic republic for the nascent United States.  That was a radical concept back then.

A democracy can only strengthen itself one step at a time. Yes, a democracy that has undergone change and transformation in the pursuit of making itself better and stronger.  That has been a driving force in the progress of the nation.  A struggle between “liberals” and “conservatives” has been a natural part of this progression.

While moderation and civility have broken down as in the case of a not-so-civil confrontation between the states over the issue of slavery and struggle for economic dominance, we have been largely a nation of peaceful change.

Conservatives have opposed liberal progress, serving as a moderating foil to make change more or less smooth.  But the first group opposed eliminating slavery, a more progressive work policy, social security and protection of the elderly and of people with disabilities, suffrage for women or the equality afforded by the civil rights movement for racial an ethnic minorities and most recently a more sensible way for Americans to keep and maintain their health.

But it is extreme elements that have hijacked the conservative movement who are spoiling and poisoning discourse.

If this pundit looked around, he would see how weak his position is.  After all, he lives on Social Security, and enjoys a degree of civil and economic rights he and his family would have been denied under conservative governments. That is where the misleading title of this post falls flat on its face. He is either looking at the issue with ignorance or simply convenience of those who believe that now they have “made it” so they can stomp on those who are still struggling for equality and their piece of the American pie.

One act of injustice does not negate the other.  I thought it was poignant in the article how Castro complained “Obama is a fanatic (believer) of the capitalistic and imperialist system imposed by the United States…” 

The pundit, by taking the praise out of context for effect, fails to use intellectual honesty and his conservative narrowness subtracts from his already shallow arguments. 

If anything, by reading the whole article, I realize the true depth and good intentions of the principal resident of the White House.
Sorry buddy, I never carried pictures of Mao, Che, Lenin, Fidel, Hitler, Stalin, Rush, Coulter, O’Reilly, Gingrich, Beck --- or --- Obama. I lump them all not because I think they are equal but because an icon has a tendency to lose luster with the years. 

But the ideals of liberty and equality do not lose brilliance.

Commentary: Why we do not trust banks

Feb. 14, 2010

Arrogant bank officials have no connections with people.

I always thought the debate of Wall Street vs. Main Street was just something pundits bat around on TV.

That is until the bat hit me. I lost my job at the local rag when executives in Cincinnati decided to outsource our small division to an out-of-state company that did most of its work from another country. At 61 it is not easy to find work.

Within three months I was back at work, at half my old salary in an unrelated field, with only one week of unemployment to account for. I cannot complain about my job because, after all, I am working. But the money is short.

I supplement my income by working as freelance photographer and writer. A client recently paid me $205 for a job with a bank check.  I promptly went to a local bank branch to cash it.

I signed it and gave it to the clerk.

She looked at it and asked me if I had an account.

 “No, I do not,” I answered.

 “Then, before I proceed, I must tell you that I must charge you a $5 fee.”

 “Wait a minute,” I said. “This check is from your bank.”

She was very polite, but sounding a bit impatient, she said, “Bank policy is that when a check comes from an account such as this, you have to pay a fee unless you have an account with us.  Maybe you should suggest to the person who issued you the check to change his account,” was her crisp bureaucratic answer.

All of the outrage over huge bonuses for executives of failed banks who used those stimulus loans to save their hides and then give themselves bonuses for being failures hit me.

The lady at the other side of the counter must have seen my face change color because her eyes widened. “Do you want to proceed and pay the fee,” she asked one more time. Five dollars is not a lot of money, but there is a principle involved here and I have bills to pay.

Realizing the whole greedy fiasco was not her fault, and that probably she was getting paid not much more than I was, I simply took my check back.

 “Look,” I stammered. “I do not want to contribute to the big salaries of executives at this bank. I will take this to my bank and wait two or three days it will take for the check to clear.”

As I turned I said, “I will not be part of this ripoff.”

My next step was to go to my own bank branch, which is located within easy walking distance at the same mall. There I deposited the check and I mentioned offhandedly to the clerk what happened.

 “We do not charge a fee yet,” he said.  “But the way banks are going, they may at a later date.”

This time I smiled. “The day your bank does, I will simply go over to a nice credit union like I used to and be more at peace.” Maybe that day is here sooner rather than later.

So, here it is: You open an account with a bank. You give them your money to be kept safe, So you think. The bank is allowed to use our money to invest prudently and wisely. The bank goes belly up and Uncle Sam’s FDIC is there to save the day. And will the “new” bank run properly?

Instead, you find out that high-risk specialists who believe in short-term pie-in-the-sky, quick make-a-buck schemes are running the show.  Executives who, knowing the risks but behaving recklessly with our money write themselves obscene salaries with fat exit parachutes. And, the vicious cycle starts again.

I have no love for Bank of America’s Kenneth Lewis and Joe Price. Their greed and hubris was paid for with the sweat of working men and women of this country, taxpayers who bailed them out.  And now I hear that John Boehmer is asking James Dimon, the head of J.P. Morgan Chase, for donations since his party is fighting against bank regulations.

Democrats bail them out and Republicans want to give them free rein. Who stands for us?  Who knows, but it sure ain’t a kicking donkey or stomping elephant.

Do I think banks need to be regulated? Damned right.

I am mad as hell.

Commentary: How do you spell ripoff?

Jan. 22, 2010

Coming up on my periodic visit to my doctor, I realized that I had missed my previous appointment and that my prescriptions for my life-saving meds had run out. I save some of my hard-earned cash by buying supposedly cheaper meds from my insurance company’s pharmacy and get my medication delivered every 90 days from its central location in Winter Park, Fla.

Buying this way I get a “discount” in a buy-three, get-one-free prescription order as long as my meds are generics. I have no problem with generics. Brand names have no allure for me. I am a diabetic and I need the pills.

I asked the doctor for a stop-gap refill to hold me until he examined me and gave me a proper prescription to send away to my insurance provider’s pharmacy. He asked me where I wanted the prescription filled and I mentioned a certain chain drugstore in Port Hueneme that had advertised they were fighting high prices by selling generic prescriptions at $10 or less for a 60-day supply as long as I registered properly with the chain and I was issued a “discount” card. I did.

These discounts were offered with great fanfare at the start of the healthcare debate when most feared that there would be stringent controls on the price of pharmaceuticals.

Previous to my change in insurance companies due to a change in my employment situation (I was “downsized” from a previous job and had to find another one that paid less and had a less “generous” insurance deal). Before I paid a $10 copay and now my copay has doubled to $20.

So even at the new price, the offer from this drugstore chain seemed reasonable for a stop-gap and I went there to pick up my prescription. First there was a delay because my prescription was not found and had to be filled again. I had to go to an interview and said I would come back later. I thought nothing unusual since I had done the same thing during a previous occasion when the doctor upped my blood pressure medicine.

Upon returning the employee tried to charge me $20. When I protested, the employee went back and talked to the pharmacist and I said that unless the program had changed that I expected to pay only $10 or less.

The pharmacist gave me a withering look. 

“But you are going to be charged $20 because you have insurance,” she said accusatorily.

I raised my eyebrows. “But I never mentioned my insurance company to you.  I said I had a discount card from your company and I expect to pay accordingly,” I answered, flustered. “I said that very specifically and you did not mention anything about any other insurance.”

With an impatient sigh she looked straight into my eyes. “But you do have insurance and you are expected to pay the insurance rate even if you want to use our program. This program is only for people without insurance.”

 “You mean I can be penalized for having insurance?”

There was no answer. Only the same impatient sigh. I sat down to wait until the prescription was filled. At the end she came to the register. “OK, I will give it to you at the discount rate, but this is the last time,” she said as if it was a big favor made to a petulant child.
It was the kind of explanation tea baggers and fiscal conservatives would have thrown in my face if this had been a government program and I was a wronged customer buying at a socialized medicine shop.  But no, this is a modern, recently renovated store of a large national chain. 

As she said, even though I had never used my insurance company card with that particular chain, there was my name in a computer database. It was not collected by gray bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., but by business-suited individuals (bureaucrats) working for Orwellian private enterprise. 

Surprise. Big Brother is not at the FDA, the AMA or even the DOJ.  It was data shared by private insurance companies and distributed to private chains so they could collect their cut of the pie no matter what. Big Brother sits in a boardroom and collects a big salary to screw me, a 60+ working stiff who barely makes a subsistence wage while underemployed at a non-profit private corporation.

This Big Brother drives a nice car, gets jetted around in a company Gulfstream Jet, receives a salary that I cannot even dream about and gets a golden parachute to land with a nice fanny cushion in case he or she screws up. I cannot elect this bureaucrat at the end of a political term and I do not even know this person’s name.

This is Big Brother (or maybe Sister) of 2010.  And Big Brother holds my life —literally — in his hands.  No wonder they hate national health plans. I guess that is why I have a more expensive copay when I carry a private health insurance provider card in my wallet. Someone has to pay for Big Brother when the private death panel meets. 

And pay twice as much at the counter.

Remember, then, how to spell ripoff: I-N-S-U-R-A-N-C-E-C-O-M-P-A-N-Y.

Commentary: Rich folks don't need a middle class

Dec. 30, 2009

We have become a polarized society.

As the middle class withers, away we are increasingly becoming a society of “have” and “have nots.”

The Middle class — the specialized, skilled working class that used to serve the captains of industry in middle-salaried positions — is witnessing a debacle that is unprecedented in American history. In order to maximize profits for large corporations, those jobs are increasingly being sent over to countries we used to think about as “third world.”

Those third-world countries are becoming the new middle class in our globalized society. Let’s look at these examples.

When you need to solve a problem with your broadband connection you will notice that your Internet provider’s friendly information line is now connecting you to Mumbai where someone prompts you to turn off, then turn on your modem.

Moreover, when you get a new credit card and you are to call an 888 number to activate, that telephone is answered from Manila where you provide the appropriate information.

And now, in some cases when a local government agency works, no local reporter is present. The agency, however, sends a recorded or live feed to a reporter in New Delhi where a reporter listens and writes the story that you will read either in the next day’s scandal sheet or online from your computer.

Those jobs used to be right here in California, employing local people and keeping money in our economy.  Yet in order to insure a good profit for companies, corporate boards pay executives large bonuses to send your jobs away. All this is done so they have more bucks to play the crapshoot game in the big golden alley of Wall Street.

In those formerly Third World countries, large corporations pay less in salaries than they would here to California workers — salaries that are comparable to middle class salaries here. All the rich need now are service workers right here in the homeland. We are the new Third World.

This will give you an idea why there is no money to balance budgets in Sacramento and many other state capitals. Over there you pay bribes to foreign crooks instead of American taxes here at home.

Wonder not, then, why some corporate interests do not want the American people to have health care. They are not helping to pay anymore for your health insurance with your salary as before.

Why should they help you pay for it now?

— The views expressed by Carlos J. Licea do not necessarily represent the views of Amigos805.com.

Commentary: Blowin' in the wind

Dec. 24, 2009

Most of the time you do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows in Ventura County. It is mostly beautiful and, with a few seasonal exceptions, the rain stays away despite the gloominess of June days.

While the economy has been down for a while now, there are some signs of recovery in our hard-hit corner of Southern California as the housing market starts to recover and area businesses show signs of flourishing after the financial winter of our discontent.

And this recovery has a decidedly Latino flavor.

Most Hispanic families have been hurt by the economic downturn just like any other demographic sector in the area.  However, when you have been near the bottom for so long, you have a decisive advantage when recovery begins because you are that much closer to the top.

Just take a look around the west county, in Ventura, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Camarillo and Santa Paula. Notice ventures either starting up or strengthening. Latino entrepreneurs, artists, civic leaders, teachers, peace officers, firefighters are thriving and are becoming more active and visible.

There is also a new healthy pride in an era when prejudice and marginalization are finally receding as the Hispanic population grows and becomes more significant in terms of numbers and votes. They are an engine of recovery.

Gone are the days when ethnicity was a way to separate blue- from white-collar jobs; owner or manager from worker or field hand; uneducated from educated.

I do not suggest that past inequities have gone away in a magical sweep of hands in a clock, but rather that as our numbers grow and those hands make their choices at the ballot box, they bring change, good change.

But the good has to come with a big responsibility. Latino families must make sure that education is a priority.  Sure, we know that Hispanic families tend to be bigger and have more needs to feed and clothe those children and keep them in school and college.  Sacrifice? Hard work? You can put your money on it.

As César Chávez often said: “Sí se puede.”

— The views expressed by Carlos J. Licea do not necessarily represent the views of Amigos805.com.

Commentary: Not just keeping TABs on the bus

Dec. 4, 2009

When the Gold Coast Transit board of directors unanimously approved the fare hike during a meeting on Dec. 2 at the GCT office in downtown Oxnard, it was something advocates for people with disabilities, while disappointed, were not surprised about.

The vote was 4-0 with one director, Maricela Morales of Port Hueneme, recusing herself because of a possible conflict of interest.

Some hoped that the directors would at least make an exception for the door-to-door paratransit system that is a vital lifeline for many people with disabilities.

“I expected that,” Wendy Whiting, an advocate for people with disabilities who depends on the service, said of the ruling. “Their minds were already made up.”

Whiting lives with cerebral palsy, rides everywhere on her power chair and needs a personal assistant by her side every time she leaves her apartment. 

“I knew that was going to happen,” Michael Levine said. “They were going to vote for the increase.  All they said was just bureaucratic rhetoric.”

Levine is a person of low vision and rides fixed route buses everywhere with his distinctive white cane.

In a scathing letter to GCT, Levine wrote:

“People with disabilities are paying, per ride, double the amount of increase that Temporarily Able Bodied (TAB) people will be paying and these Paratransit customers are some of the lowest income people nationwide. A lot, if not the majority of Paratransit, customers live on Federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) with a maximum of $674.00 per month. Pay rent, food, utilities, medical, etc. and now would have to pay $6.00 round trip to see a doctor! Pay $6.00 round trip to go to the grocery store if they can afford groceries! What happened to compassion, what happened to equal rights? Why must people with disabilities pay a fare increase twice what everyone else has to pay? Again this is a bitter pill to swallow, thus discrimination keeps coming to the forefront!”

Indeed, it seemed that at no point did the pleas from the public present at the gathering make any dent in the attitude of the board of directors. GCT staff facts and figures were correct and, as chairman Dr. Thomas Holden pointed out, they had been meticulously researched. And, as Holden noted, he had been an advocate of paratransit for a long time.

However, the loss of revenue from state, county and local governments has devastated the CGT budget. And, CGT is mandated by the state to have a fare box recovery rate of 20 percent or face losing state revenues altogether.

As it stands now, the recovery rate is 18.9 percent. This is an undisputable figure.

For Holden, there is no argument because losing the state revenue means the bus system will have no money and will be lost completely. No state money, no bus system. Maybe it was not meant to be a threat but it sure sounded ominous.

And yet is the choice this stark?

Ventura County’s cost of living has increased by 20 percent, as stated in the GCT’s own chart. Unemployment in the county is at an all-time high. Everyone is suffering, as vice chair John Zaragoza pointed out. CGT is asking all riders to assume their fair share of cost.

An unequal share
In all this talk, we are forgetting that we cannot compare paratransit riders to other system riders as advocate Levine stressed.

For basic Temporarily Able Bodied people (TABS), the hike is one more egregious hit on the pocketbook.

For people with disabilities, who are not able to ride anything beyond paratransit, it is a tragedy. It is like being hit with a sucker punch in the gut and the chin at the same time.  Earnings for people on SSI is not just reduced by the increase in the cost of living, but their income is actually lower than it was a year ago. 

“With the present economy, there is no hope this income will ever even come back to previous level,” Whiting said.

Paratransit is a life or death necessity for going to doctors, grocery store, work or other life essentials most TABs take for granted. The first phase of the increase will go into effect on Jan. 24, 2010. The effective cost of the hike is much more disproportionate for these riders.

Of course, as Zaragoza added, GCT directors will revisit the issue before the second phase of the hike goes into effect by July 2011.

But will GCT hold the line? I doubt it.

Outrageous? You bet.

At the meeting, we had a reminder of why we are all TABs. When we were younger and did not have not had any physical or mental issues, we like to think of ourselves as able-bodied people. But, as we age, we become more and more prone to those disabilities that follow in life.

All of us, unless we meet an untimely end and wind up in a permanently horizontal position, may be considered potential persons with disabilities.

GCT Director William Fulton noted during the hearing that he had developed vision problems and was diagnosed as having Retinitis pigmentosa, is losing his sight, and may need the same paratransit that is becoming increasingly inaccessible for so many of us.

Lets face it, there are other points to consider. What about salary cuts, smarter management and improving service in order to attract more riders?

These solutions may increase the needed revenue at the fare box. I believe it is time to consider putting the brakes on this increase in the paratransit slice of the transportation pie and consider other alternatives.

— The views expressed by Carlos J. Licea do not necessarily represent the views of Amigos805.com.

About the photo:
Michael Levine makes an impassioned plea to hold the line on cost to paratransit consumers. Members of the disability community were upset when Gold Coast Transit board of directors unanimously approved the fare hike during a meeting on Dec. 2 at the GCT office in downtown Oxnard.

Photo by Carlos J. Licea/Amigos805

Commentary: Bus fare increase — May be time to find a comfortable park bench

Nov. 24, 2009

There is a lot in the news about students at UC Santa Cruz who occupied a building to protest rising fees n the university system. But little has been said about planned fee increases for the Gold Coast Transit system in Ventura. 

Gold Coast makes a valid point that state subsidies have declined, requiring riders to pony up more for public transportation. I find that up to a point, this is a reasonable argument, much as I dislike the rising price of transportation in these hard economic times.

If implemented, the current adult bus fare of $1.25 would increase by 10 cents in January 2010 to $1.35 and by 15 cents in July 2011 to $1.50. Fares for a trip on GCT’s ACCESS paratransit service for people with disabilities and senior citizens 65 and older would increase to $2.70 in 2010 and $3.00 in 2011.

The logic is flawless. Everyone is going to pay more.

There was an initial public comment on Nov. 18. Two dozen people showed up, mostly concerned people with disabilities, and talked to nice-smiling GCT folks who greeted guests with big plate of fresh fruit and cheese. They explained, they heard people talking and they took written comments. 

They showed the information boards with facts and figures. It was not-so-subtle damage control.

But one thing bothered me. People with disabilities, who live on Social Security benefits, are not just on a fixed income. Due to recent cutbacks in California, those incomes have been reduced.

People with disabilities are on a declining income.

As it is, paratransit riders have always paid twice for their service because it is, after all, a door-to-door service. We understand that and those fares were considered fair at one time. But with declining incomes and an increasing cost of living, paratransit riders cannot afford to take a bus, not just for entertainment purposes, but for life-saving utilitarian purposes such seeing a doctor or buying food. They are being asked to do this on a declining income.

Just think how this affects those same people with disabilities, and older folks who work at low-paying jobs, because they want to ease the burden on the taxpayer by being useful members of our communities. How can we encourage them to be independent community members if they cannot afford to go to work?

GCT has dropped some routes and cut some service. Ridership has its limits. I am sure GCT has made some smart cost-saving moves in this economy.

As we all know, the majesty of the law prohibits both the rich and the poor from sleeping on park benches, much the same way that, in an earlier time, the same poll tax applied to both rich and poor voters.

It is just a matter of needs over wants.

While I’m not advocating that people with disabilities occupy offices or shout or scream at the nice folks from GCT, I will certainly encourage them to make their voices heard at the next public hearing on the matter on Dec. 2. The meeting will be at 10 a.m. at the GCT office at 301 E. Third St. in Oxnard.

It is our right to make our voices heard and the board of directors of GTC should hear what the paratransit riders have to say. 

If you cannot go to the meeting, then:

• Call — 805.483.3959, ext. 100
• Fax — 805.487.0925
• Email — comments@goldcoasttransit.org
• Web — Submitting a contact form at www.goldcoasttransit.org/support

If we do not do our part, then we might as well start looking for a comfortable bench at Plaza Park in Oxnard — and hope that it will not be a stormy night.

— Carlos J. Licea is also an Information and Referral specialist with the Independent Living Resource Center who works with the Latino and disability communities in Ventura County and Santa Barbara.

Commentary: Real 'Death Panels'

Nov. 19, 2009

Sarah Palin is correct. She may be a bit disingenuous but she is right when she talks about bureaucratic panels making life-or-death decisions about grandma or grandpa … or even you.

Right now, as we sit in front of our computers at work — if we are so lucky to have a job in this uncertain economy — there are people at the insurance company selected by your employer who are making a decision if it is worth it to keep you alive according to how much you will cost their company’s bottom line and their own bonus, according to how much money they save their company.

Wingnut politicians and teabaggers love to scare you with stories about government bureaucrats making decisions on killing your dear ones in a supposed Orwellian future.  

Yet right now, insurance company bureaucrats are discussing whether to keep you on as a customer or deny your medical claim based on pesky pre-existing conditions such as past domestic violence perpetrated against you or if your adolescent acne predisposed to you cancer.

Insurance companies have a big stake in keeping health care reform from taking place: big executive salaries, end-of-year bonuses, company cars, jets, retreats at expensive spas and money to grease the palms of senators and representatives. 

Where is the money coming from?

Our salaries. 

It is not a "tax" but one of those deductions in your paycheck as sure and deadly as a tax.  But this time you are paying an executive you do not elect, do not know and cannot fire on Election Day if he or she underperforms.

Worse, if they screw up and the company goes south or gets gobbled up by another, there is a golden parachute exit strategy and this bureaucrat gets paid handsomely to quietly go away and screw you again while working for another parasitic insurance company with other private death panels.

And you have no public option.

Carlos ...

Commentary: Remember the Middle Class

Nov. 13, 2009

Everyone talks about the middle class but no one seems able to find it. We all agree that it is shrinking, and extremist politicians at both ends of the spectrum blame each other for its extinction.

It is the elusive middle class that pays most of the taxes that pays the bills that keep this country strong. Why? Because the poor cannot afford to pay those taxes and the rich simply find a business exemption. 

Every time someone suggests that the upper class pay its fair share, the extremists scream “Socialism” like stuck pigs without even knowing what the meaning of the word.

Of course, the upper class, we are told, provide the jobs that keep the middle class in the middle.  However, when they are asked to pay a livable wage, they think they are being robbed and scream: “Socialism.”

Upper-class pundits points fingers at the lower class, calling them thieves and lazy bums, criminals and welfare kings or queens. And yet, whenever someone suggests that those lower unemployables be put to work rebuilding the infrastructure the country needs to survive and prosper, they scream: “Socialism.”

Screaming “Socialism” is not going to fix the economic problem we have. We have seen the extreme result of societies where wealth is concentrated in a few. Just or not, greed brings out the worst in humans. Taxpayers cannot be sustained by Big Macs alone if the jobs we need to keep our economy afloat are shipped overseas and we cannot even afford to eat cake.

We cannot maintain our position as a world power when no one here is working and paying taxes. And those people who are poor will be clamoring for food and affordable health care.           

Like Rome, we could simply present a bigger and better Circus Maximus to keep our minds entertained. But a trifling entertainment will not solve the problem of a largely poor nation with no hope of improving itself. 

Hunger and ignorance can sink us into a dark age no doomsday evangelist will save us from.

That is why the middle class must be nurtured. If it isn’t, there is no hope for the lower class and then all hope is lost for the upper class.

Karl Marx said: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Will may eventually see someone selling the rope with which new Bolsheviks will hang the last member of the middle class.

Carlos ...

Commentary: Why do they need to lie?

Nov. 5, 2009

Sometimes, I have a lot of fun in newsgroup discussions with people on the extreme right because so many of their postings are so filled with hate and paranoia.  But one thing that never ceases to amaze me is their tendency to lie — something that totally robs them of credibility.

Case in point: One particular blogger reposted a piece by historian David Kaiser, noted scholar from the U.S. Naval War College and Carnegie Mellon University, who has written about World War II and the Kennedy assassination. Kaiser purportedly compared Barak Obama to Hitler.
           
The piece had some very big historical holes in it that any student of the subject could see through, and I wondered just how Kaiser could make such mistakes. I visited the professor’s web site where he had debunked the posting as false.
Indeed, the posting was eventually traced to a blog by wingnut filmmaker Pat Dollard.
           
Then there are all these comments on the “Obama gun ban,” a piece of legislation that has never been introduced in Congress. Seems like these wingnuts do not understand the process that only Congress can introduce legislation, not by the president.
           
You can also put this together with the “czar hunt” by the usual gang of FOX news sectarians who never raised the issue about the many Bush Administration’s “czars.”
           
If you sprinkle on the bogus Kenyan birth certificates and the “hidden” college records of the White House occupant and add a dash of Indonesian passports, you start to get an idea that someone is busy manufacturing a bill of goods to sell the country along with the Brooklyn Bridge and the Taj Mahal.

Frankly, Obama’s timidity in governing makes a big contrast with his “Audacity of Hope” message in the title of his book. 

So why the lies from the far right? 

Indeed, check out Kaiser’s site at historyunfolding.blogspot.com/

Also: big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/TheVerySeparateWorld.pdf

Carlos ...

Commentary: Unpatriotic right

Oct. 29, 2009

It is amusing to see contradictions of the right as it tries to hide behind a false facade of patriotism.

The first hint was when pompous blowhard Rush Limbaugh said he hoped that Obama’s economic plan would fail even as the American economy was collapsing around the departing Bush administration.

Notice he used the word “hope” as wishful thinking. It is not just that the Democrat would fail, but that by extension, American would fail too. Moreover, Limbaugh used “hope” because he knew there was more than an even chance the plan would work, as indeed it seems to be. Fox News fellow sycophants chimed along.

This is a big bet against America.

Then, there was the glee, as expressed in the video shot at a meeting of extreme right-wingers that showed them applauding and high-fiveying as it was announced that Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and not Chicago had been chosen as the site for the 2016 Olympic Summer games.

These people were happy because an American city was aced out?

Then we hear that right-wingers are up in arms and whining about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. They claim he did not earn it and therefore should decline to accept it.

Last year they were upset about Al Gore’s Nobel too.

Carlos ...

Commentary: Winds of change at the Plaza

Oct. 14, 2009

When Colombian singer Juanes rocked the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana recently with his “Peace without Borders” concert, he stirred a fresh breeze with his music as he shouted “Cuba Libre” from the stage.

While Juanes said he hoped this event would not be political, but a gift to the Cuban people, his cry for freedom at the Plaza, which sits under the gaze of Cuban Revolutionary figure Ernesto “Che” Guevara in a nearby building, could not be more of an audio counterpoint to that visual element.

The Plaza, which was renamed after Fidel Castro’s forces overthrew the bloody Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in 1959, had become a symbol of an aging revolutionary government that now stands as one of the best examples of political conservatism in the world. It has been a symbol of an unchanging, unyielding monument to the word “No” as there has ever been.

But that new wind of change came with songs and a new cry for “Cuba Libre” 50 years later.

No wonder more than one million Cubans crowded the venue, not to watch decrepit politicians brag hollowly about failed economic plans, but to listen to songs of hope by Juanes, Puerto Rican singer Olga Tañón and Spanish balladeer Miguel Bosé who were joined onstage by legendary Cuban folk singer Silvio Rodríguez.

The concert drew more people to the Plaza than the mass held there by Pope John Paul II in 1998, during a time when Castro’s charismatic figure loomed larger on the Cuban body politic. This is a quality his younger brother, Raúl Castro, does not seem to have.

It should be pointed out, the younger Castro seems less inclined to try to occupy his older sibling’s almost deified role in the Cuban political firmament. In a way, Raúl Castro seems more tuned to the winds of change that are cooling Havana’s heat.

Carlos …

Commentary: All you need is love

Oct. 6, 2009

Recently, I listened to Ray Bradbury at the Simi Valley Senior Center in one of those lectures about writing he gives to adoring fans.

The man I had admired so much since I was a child was sitting somewhat uncomfortably in a wheelchair, sipping wine and signing books as his fans lined up to talk to him in a queue that reminded me of a priest giving confession at Sunday mass.

Bradbury is older now, weaker and his voice has become a little harder to understand. Yet, his message was clear as a summer on Mars, or a sunny fall day in his native Illinois. 

“I write because of love,” he said.

Love drove me to literature on a hot day before summer melted into autumn. Bradbury talked about “Dandelion Wine,” which was the first book I had read for pleasure in English. He described the book’s main character as a veiled version of himself as a boy playing at magic, much as I saw myself when I read it at the age of 13.

“I love writing and I write what I love,” he mused.  The words were clear, coming out of his mind, even if his vocal cords were not. It was a message that reached out to me through the years. Bradbury is now 89, and as magical a storyteller as he was when he began his career as a young boy.

“I have total recall. I can remember the day of my circumcision,” he said, followed by more than one gasp and snicker from the audience. “I remember the big man in white and the knife coming down.”

He recalls writing his seminal work, “Fahrenheit 451,” at the UCLA library paying 50 cents for every hour he was using a typewriter. 

“It was a true dime novel,” he said as he smiled.

Before the line of fans grew around the master of fantasy and science fiction, I had a chance to take a few photos, kneel close to him and shake the hand that had written all those novels and short stories that have carried me though the years.

Thank you, Ray; I love you.

Carlos …

Commentary: Welcome to the Third World

Sept. 30, 2009

Seriously, what people all over the world admired most about the United States was the ability of people here to solve their problems by talking about them and finding solutions without resorting to violence or intemperate language.

That was what seemed the biggest distinction of the American political system whose only example of incivility seemed to have been that uncivil “War Between the States.”

It seems like revolts belonged to those underdeveloped nations, which were fashionably called “third-world countries” during the Cold War.  Americans always thought that we had elections that settled in a grudgingly friendly fashion the political trends of the nation. Political parties took turn guiding the national ship of state in an even-keel fashion, one balancing the other.

However, in recent times that even keel has been swinging wildly, and the parties do not want to let go of the particular direction their leaders have set.  This is particularly noticeable when those leaders have grown more and more extreme like the leaders of some political entities who lead some of those unstable, so-called third world countries where elections end in a wild shootout.

The political debate around Washington, and infamous town hall meetings, has seemed more like immature clashes such as the ones that used to be shown on television news of childish fisticuffs on the floor of Taiwan’s Assembly. 

Shouting at a president for political points, without a valid reason or argument, was something better left to some Banana Republic. And yet it has happened here.  People taking long guns to a political rally?  Yup, not the Plaza in Managua but to a meeting in Denver.

Some people question the validity of a man to sit in the seat of the presidency? This is not happening in the Dominican Republic but in the United States. And lastly, ministers are not just wishing, but praying for people to die. God must be indeed grieving in Heaven.

Welcome to the Brave Neocon Third World, USA.

Carlos …

Commentary: Hate in choleric times

Sept. 24, 2009

A choleric person is sometimes defined as: “Easily moved to often unreasonable or excessive anger: hot-tempered. Angry. Irate.”

That is the debate we are seen on the national political stage — people angry about taxes, government intervention, unwarranted fear of takeover, paranoia, socialism, communism. Stoking the fire of the engine of fear are the infernal engineers of hell, pouring on shovels full of hatred with increasing frenzy.

They are doing anything they can to wrest the debate from substance with the smoke of long-dead ideologies resurrected like rotting corpses from the graveyard of history.  Quivering Beck, sanctimonious Limbaugh, uncontrolled Savage and heinous Hannity followed by a horde of infernal acolytes dressed in the red capes of a Poe nightmare. They are the four horsemen of the Apocalypse trying to submerge the nation in barbarous conflagration, shouting  “No, no, no.”

This is a real Thriller drowning out with its cacophony the sound of reason.

I am sure there are some real conservatives who are not in agreement with  everything that is being shouted in their name. Yet, by silence they become complicit with voices of hate. By leaving no choice, the four horsemen drive some of the moderate voices to side in pro- or anti-Obama camps much like Jonathan Swift did with the Big Endians or the Little Endians: Culottes and Sans Culottes.

That is what it has come down to. The Birthers, Birchers and Teabaggers in the extreme right are carrying the red banner much like the Bolsheviks did 100 years ago when they drowned out voices of reason, ending in a bloodbath leading to the long, dark night of Stalinism.

That is the specter I see rising from the right, like a mirror image of a crazy world.  Like Big Brothers saying right is wrong or as ruthless drivers of death camps wrote “Arbeit mach frei” (Work shall set you free) on the gates of Auschwitz. Seeing the code words for racism and intolerance — takeover, handout, anti-white, political correctness — rising like a storm warning, I believe we must stand up against them.

Carlos …

Commentary: Texican Republic redux

Sept. 22, 2009

It was quite disgusting to see a man in a 10-gallon hat point to Old Glory flying over the Texas statehouse in Austin and proclaim in a loud voice full of disdain, “I hate this flag.”

It was a rally by modern-day secessionists, no doubt the inspiration from Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander’s remarks about the Democrats precipitating “a minor revolution” if they try to “ram” a healthcare overhaul without GOP support.

The “hate” for the American flag, the “revolution,” the threat from the nouveau Dixiecrats of a secession led by G.W. Bush’s successor as governor of Texas Rick Perry, sound like so much traitorous talk. While it is nice to misuse words of the founding father about the “Tree of Liberty is watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants,” it sounds to me like the cry of John Wilkes Booth “sic semper tyranis” as he bounded onto the Ford Theatre’s stage after shooting President Lincoln.

Can Americans feel safer with a modern-day version of the Republic of Texas leading the free world? This is no way to preserve the union of a strong nation. Yes, the Dixiecrats, may pull with them some disaffected southern states and may try to force some to join in their mad rush to the destruction of the hated American union.

If they have their way, blood will water the “Tree of Liberty.” Americans will be fighting and killing each other one more time as we did back during the middle of the 19th century. This internecine war will be fed by the blood of all Americans. The United States will become a series of rump republics dreaming of the American Century, countries feuding about who will be allowed to be citizens and what religion they must follow. Think of a deadly ethnic cleansing that will make the Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian war look like a scouts’ jamboree.

Come to think about it, that was also the end of the Roman Empire.

Carlos…

Commentary: Liar, liar screaming loud

Sept. 11, 2009.

When Rep. Joe Wilson, R-SC, shouted “you lie” as President Obama noted during his address on the Hill that healthcare legislation would bar undocumented aliens from receiving coverage, the congressman was lying.

Although he apologized later for his untimely outburst, Wilson’s action points out the disturbing trend coming out of this summer’s chain of town hall meeting disturbances that are clouding political debate and obscuring the issues. For the record, Obama is correct. HR 3200 specifically bars undocumented individuals from receiving medical care covered by the plan.  

The incident pointed out sharply how the shouting at these events draws attention by its rude loudness rather than by the message. But here the shouter could not drown out what Obama was telling lawmakers.

After all, he was pointing out misinformation raised about the plan such as the bogus death panels are used by unscrupulous politicians are using to try to score points at the expense of truth, reason and the future of Americans. The fact is that a plan that helps American small enterprise to thrive and compete in the world market could not be farther away from the soiled specter of socialism his critics raise.

Wilson’s scream did not drown out needed information as other opponents of reform did during the town hall meetings. But the shout did symbolize the Rovian/Goebbelian [Karl Rove/Joseph Goebbels] tactic of shouting down those who disagree with you instead of participating in an honest debate.

It is the kind of behavior that is unacceptable in the halls of Congress.  It is the kind of behavior that spawns intimidating and dangerous actions such as taking a weapon to a public speech by any politician.Yes, it is legal. Yes, other people with opposing points of view may legally take their guns too.

But when the shooting begins, it is certainly not legal. But by then it is too late.

Carlos…

Commentary: No time for complacency

Sept. 4, 2009

Bloggers and commentators of the Neocon right express ideas that run counter to a pluralistic nation. One particular writer complains about the “parasites” of the “red, black, and brown and even white type” that are taking over the nation and taking away the hard-earned money from those who work.

It is scary that those bigoted words from the middle of the last century are rising again and it reaffirms my belief that there is no hope for the complacent man (or woman).

Many people resent the rise of minorities in voting and economic power. Essentially this is a very vocal minority exemplified by the Birchers, Birthers and teabaggers spurred on by power-hungry politicians and greedy multinationals.

Latinos are their latest target because, let’s face it, they are the “new kid on the block” and as such they must be the ones to step on.  Just take a look at history and see how many of your Italian pals can tell you how they changed their name from “Rossi” to “Ross” — or “Horowitz” to “King” if they were Jewish — so they could land jobs and get around the bigots.

The Neocon idealized world of the 1950s was a time of battles for civil rights for all people of “color” to bypass the bigots.  Federal laws took care of that.

Notice: it is not that Latinos refuse to learn English anymore than Sicilians leaving Ellis Island refused, but the fact they keep traditions and last names that some find hard to pronounce. This is why when a hard-working Hispanic is laid off and goes to the unemployment line to file a claim, those bigots claim that “illegals” are drawing welfare, no matter how long his or her family has been in America.

Time is long past when Jim Crow-inspired laws confined Mexican-Americans to a specific day to use a public pool or even to the same school as other non-Hispanics.  The time is gone when Puerto Ricans were shunted to menial jobs in New York. It feels good not to see a sign that read “No Cubans, No Negroes and No Jews” in a downtown Miami hotel.

Equality is a fact.  There is no going back. We will not allow it. 

Carlos …

Commentary: Backtracking America

Sept. 2, 2009

I wonder if the people throwing around the word “Socialism” really know what it means.  For that matter, I have not heard yet a real cry from the conservative side on how to rally around “Capitalism” either.  And certainly if you ask the right wing what they mean by “Communism” they have no idea either.

We are talking about terms popularized in the 1950s when the Cold War was in full swing and there was an “Eastern” block and a “Western“ block.  It was Communism vs. Capitalism as exemplified by the free-market economy. These ideologies clashed in more or less violent terms with wars in China, Korea, Vietnam and countless dirty skirmishes in Angola, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and other locations around the globe.

Today Communism has been relegated to the dustbin of history with only Havana clinging stubbornly to a vestige of failed Stalinism, and would-be imitators in Venezuela, Nicaragua (again) and Bolivia. 

With no more enemies on the ideological front, Neocons cling tenaciously, just like Cuba on the left, to the unregulated Capitalism of the turn of the last century. Daily Beast blogger Lee Siegel points out that they "have abandoned the core values of respect for tradition and sensitivity to the necessity of change — of pragmatic, principled adaptability — for a rigid absolutism that expresses itself in a politics of destruction and mechanical negativity.”

This is a negativity born out of ignorance and evil minds who want to push American from the path of pluralism and equal opportunity in education and healthcare with non-existing phantoms of dead ideologies and bigotry.

Is there are reason?

You bet. By dividing the country, Neocons make America weaker. A feeble nation split into semiautonomous states and cracked along racial and religious fractions with a spineless central government is easy prey to large multinationals and economic enemies.

This is the real enemy, and it lives among us. It is up to us — Asian, red, black, brown and white of all faiths — to keep America healthy, united, prosperous and strong.

Carlos…

Commentary: Stop the flip flopping

Aug. 28, 2009

The main reason I backed the campaign of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party was the growing crisis in health care.  There were other reasons too, but it was the broken-down, uncoordinated and unfair system that rations health care on the basis of affordability that made me decide.

I am a firm believer in the public option.  The public option is the great equalizer when judiciously applied to those who cannot afford other options.  

Frankly this poppycock notion of “socialism” does not cut it with me because I know that there are Americans who work hard to feed their families; who cannot pay for health insurance; who need a fair chance in the marketplace.  Add to that equation those who have lost their jobs due to the economic crisis and who have to depend on that joke called COBRA whose premiums are beyond their reach.

I am an old-fashioned follower of Abe Lincoln who believes the United States is too big to be governed by a loose confederacy where small-town demagogues can discriminate, harass and demonize people based on race, creed or ethnicity.  I am one of those well-armed liberals who recognizes that we are a society of people who have banded together to create this great nation. Enough of this flip-flopping on the public option.  If the GOP does not want to play the game, let them forfeit. Pass the damned bill without their votes.

I believe that a healthy nation is a productive nation and therefore a wealthy nation.  How can we compete in the world market of today if small businesses and people are losing medical care because they simply cannot afford it.

The whole loony-tunes bunch of screaming, holier-than-thou, latter-day know-nothings, birthers-tea baggers, have no sympathy from me.

The time to act is now.

Carlos…

Commentary: A political avis rara

Aug. 14, 2009

The first in a three-part series

There is a voter in danger of extinction: the Latino Republican.

The reason for their dwindling number is not that Latinos are growing less conservative or less sympathetic with traditional Republican beliefs. They are being driven out by a self-defeating minority that keeps on drumming out of the GOP people they do not consider “Republican enough.” They are intent on purifying the brand to the extent they leave no middle ground to secure a coalition.

To these Neorepublicans, offering an alternative to the voters means an ideological purification of the party that goes beyond mere ideas into race, ethnicity and spiritual choices.

When building his successful Republican coalition, Ronald Reagan gathered voters through more “conservative” ideas. As Reagan passed on, in politics and in life, this conservative coalition was reduced to  a “base” more ideologically, and to a certain extent, more racially and ethnically pure. The Neorepublicans  made moderation less acceptable and the concept of coalition harder to maintain.

By eschewing people with different ideas and backgrounds, proponents of the concept of  “real Americans” saw those with non-northern European ancestry became somehow “unreal Americans” no matter how many generations ago their families have been living in what is now the United States of America.
           
The dwindling GOP base is the more conservative segment of the “white” majority that is more prone to attract those who resent the growing “minority population.”

The shameful language towards Hispanics used during the last election went beyond illegal immigrants where all Hispanics, those born in the U.S., legal immigrants, and undocumented workers, were lumped in one bag as somehow diminishing the “American” way of life and faulted for the growing crisis in schools, prisons and resources.

Just remember how Jews were blamed for all that ailed the “Aryan race” in pre-World  War II Germany. Unwelcomed Latino members of the GOP must indeed feel like an endangered species.

Carlos…

Commentary: A changing America

Aug. 17, 2009

The second of a three-part series

Much can be said about the sudden departure of Melquiades (Mel) Martínez from the GOP national political pantheon. The end result is the loss of the most powerful Hispanic Republican in the public eye. To his credit, Martínez has cited only personal reasons for his resignation before the end of his term in 2010, leaving a vacuum in Florida politics.

Martínez was a moderate proponent of immigration reform and served as RNC chairman for a little while. He resigned from this post because GOP “conservatives” objected to his views on immigrants. It is worth noting he voted for  confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, a Hispanic woman opposed by the so-called conservative majority of the party.

It must have been a lonely place for Martínez at the right side of the Senate chamber. Imagine how it must be for a lot of Hispanic conservatives who totally agree with the traditional Republican fiscal policies and purported family and spiritual values when confronted by disparaging remarks about a qualified Latina judge or senatorial voices mocking a Spanish accent and calling a mainstream civil rights organization — the National Council of La Raza — an extremist group.

It takes a lot of chutzpah and a great deal of insensitivity to take these actions in this changing America of the 21st Century.  No wonder nativists, birthers and paranoid coo coo birds flock to the GOP and try to shout out any opposition at town hall meetings.

If you look at most of the shouters, you will see mostly older, whiter, misinformed folks who parrot “talking points” provided by insurance companies. They are part of the “shrinking majority” that dreads a changing America.

In effect they are already a minority within a minority. They are a loud and influential group of voters in fear that their status may be tarnished with the rise in numbers and political power of those they once disparaged.

Carlos…

Commentary: Doing the right thing

Aug. 20, 2009

The last of a three-part series

Racial division makes more trouble than it is worth.

A “white” person in this country is someone of northern European ancestry that we can almost pinpoint to people of Germanic and Scandinavian background. The core of the population that came to the original 13 colonies were of British and German ancestry and the original battles were against the Native Americans considered “redskinned savage indians” that had to be uprooted or killed.

The need for cheap labor resulted in the denigrating practice of slavery where men and women were taken away by force from their African tribes and forced to toil the land under the whips of their “masters.”

As the United States expanded, the new country acquired lands that had been part of the collapsing Spanish Empire where thriving communities flourished from Florida west to California. Those inhabitants enthusiastically joined their new country, not necessarily as immigrants but as integral full participants with a complete culture just like Native Americans.
           
Bigotry can be an insidious influence upon the good will of many. Exclusion of these people from full participation and downright discrimination here on the border with Mexico and California created toxic conditions like those foisted by Jim Crow laws in the South used against African-Americans or against Native Americans kept on “reservations” in the West.

Immigration from Europe kept a steadily growing “white” population and the proportion of these “minorities” was low. But, birth rate and work-related immigration fostered by greedy growers, unwilling to pay decent salaries to American farm labor, made the immigration of people from Mexico a factor.

As we start the 21st Century, these minorities have kept on growing and may have already made the “white” majority just another large minority. And maybe some of those fringe people now fear that what their ancestors once did to those minorities now will be done unto them.

Hispanics transcend race because individuals of all races, joined by a common cultural background, form this ethnic grouping. Hispanics can be a uniting element in the American fabric because in general have fewer objections to integrating other peoples within their fold.

Should Americans fear a relation of equals? I think not. Only by all being equal can we participate in a more perfect union and not just one were mere words or slogans speak of equality. Let’s not just talk the talk but walk the walk. Only this way we can all, together, do the right thing.

Carlos…

Commentary: Ya es hora

Aug. 7, 2009

Finally, a Hispanic sits on the U. S. Supreme Court.

It was a hard battle, filled with bigoted innuendos and outright falsehoods about Sonia Sotomayor’s temperament, intelligence and even judicial and intellectual qualifications. 

We heard everything, from a Republican senator using a mock Ricky Ricardo voice and accent, to dissing her toughness, which does not even approach the rudeness of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Let’s look at the positive side of the vote: 68 senators said yea to Sotomayor while only 31 said nay. By contrast, Chief Justice John Roberts garnered 78 positive votes while Samuel Alito got only 58. The difference is that this time there was a solid Democratic majority in the Senate.  And, let’s face it, opposition was based more on partisanship rather than on qualifications.

Sotomayor’s “liberalism” is a questionable label. After all, it was George H. W. Bush (POTUS 41) who nominated her to the federal bench. You can certainly bet that most people will think of her as being more liberal than Roberts, Scalia or Alito, but certainly more conservative than someone like the late Thurgood Marshall (Approved by a 69-11 vote in 1967).

This wise woman has not been a radical activist — at least not more than the so-called conservative justices now sitting on the court. It is certainly refreshing that her margin of victory has been so close to Marshall’s, who was opposed not so much onthe content of his character and mind but the color of his skin.

Sotomayor’s opponents made big hay from her of out-of-context comment about a “wise Latina” that encouraged Hispanic youths to seek an education and to work within the American system for a better future. For that she was called a "racist” by those who harbor bigotry in their hearts.

Yes, ya es hora.

Carlos…

Commentary: The selling of fear

Aug. 4, 2009

You may have already seen the commercials: an ominous voice urging people to oppose the “socialization” of the American health system which will result in the “rationing” of health care if reform legislation passes Congress.

The narrators point to maps of Canada and Great Britain, saying that in those countries, under a national healthcare plan, people have to wait for months or even years to get needed medical treatment.

The reality is that now we have a system in this country that is rationed by the ability or inability of American consumers to pay for healthcare insurance.

Insurance companies limit how much treatment you will get. Facing a high deductible and out-of-pocket expenses and co-pays, many Americans with a limited budget or who are out of work often forego treatment or even needed prescriptions because they simply cannot afford them. 

Insurance employees are paid by those providers to find creative ways to deny customers treatment based on some obscure pre-existing condition, like acne, that a consumer may have forgotten to declare at the time of choosing that particular company.

Denying treatment or rescinding a policy is tantamount to stealing.

What is even more insulting, insurance companies, the same that were bailed out with your hard-earned tax dollars, will pay TV to run those commercials instead of paying for treatment you should be receiving.

Furthermore, thanks to our “perfect” healthcare system, you will be paying salaries and bonuses to executives of companies like AIG who will hold “meetings” at resort centers in Las Vegas, Orlando or Honolulu.  In the meantime, consumers have to scrimp and save and forego doses of needed medication that their doctor prescribed.

We have the best medical system in the world that is stifled by a selfish, greedy, Wall Street-driven insurance system that keeps it from reaching all Americans.  It is time to fix this problem.

Carlos …

Commentary: Birthers, Birchers and Conservatives

July 31, 2009

Listening to the whole sordid conversation from the birthers (those who believe Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. and therefore should not be president) reminds me of the extreme  babble I used to hear from John Birch Society members who thought the Civil Rights movement was “communistic” and had to be squashed.

Birthers propose that Obama is a secret Muslim bent on bringing “socialism” to the United States and eroding the American way of life.  Birchers used to complain that “liberals” wanted to “bringng socialism” by using civil rights legislation to interfere with the sovereignty of the individual states by usurping state law with federal legislation.

For Birchers, even war hero Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a closet Communist simply because he was a mild moderate on the subject of civil rights.

Birthers and their extreme allies believe that any moderate is not good enough because they are not “conservative enough.”

This admission of extremism should wake up most judicious conservatives to the fact that their cause and good name are being hijacked by an extremist group that is scared by its own shadow: Just witness the utterances of some GOP senators during the Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Back then, it took intellectually sound and courageous conservative William F. Buckley who effectively destroyed the Bircher influence over the party and restored the confidence of many Americans that the GOP was also a party of reason.

Right now Birthers are the kooks, and the rudderless Republicans fall prey to people like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Sanford, Rick Perry and Jeff Sessions, not to mention Sarah Palin.

Maybe it is time for another courageous GOP conservative to rise and make a case for sane conservatism and not reactionary conspiracy nuts that threaten to destroy the nation.

Carlos...

Commentary: Dr. No rises again

July 27, 2009

Dr. No has returned.

This is not the legendary villain Ian Fleming created that came to our attention with the first official James Bond flick, but rather the villainous and unholy alliance that killed health care reform in 1994.

Right now the majority of the American people favor health care reform. Despite that, the powerful insurance/pharmaceutical/AMA lobby, allied with the moneyed conservative red Nolican coalition, is pulling no punches in trying to kill this reform effort.

For the Nolican it is a no brainer. Anything to run counter to President. Obama, anything for a Waterloo, anything to kill a reform that benefits the middle class. It does not matter that they shipped jobs out of the country to nations were national health care is the rule of law and where production is therefore cheaper than in the United States.

Of course, by now the cries of “socialism” have failed to panic the American public, which is tired of the communistic monopolies that artificially inflate the price of medical care and pharmaceuticals in America. They try to scare you with the specter of a “government bureaucrat” standing between you and your doctor. What they fail to point out is that right now insurance company bureaucrats put a halt on medical treatment that you may need.

They try to scare you with the loss of “free choice,” while failing to mention that, with so many of us out of work, our ability to choose a doctor or plan is impossible or nonexistent so that our free choice is starve or perish. And the Nolicans, like Hoyt Axton’s Pusher “don’t care if you live or if you die.”

What a choice. That is the choice our dwindling middle-class faces as lobbyists and Nolicans try to confuse the public with false and confusing allegations about Obamas’s birth certificate or tax hikes that exist only in the fevered and suspicious minds of right-wing idiots.

Carlos...

Commentary: Diversidad bid by bit

July 21, 2009

As a journalist, I pride myself on keeping in touch with current events and trends. After all, that is my job on this web site, besides being handy with a camera and a notepad.

But when it comes to numismatics, I have to admit being a bit behind current trends.

I am a casual coin collector who has one of those booklets you can find at any Barnes & Noble or Borders where you put quarters in. It is almost full since I collect coins I get from everyday change. One thing I have noticed is that American currency has been bilingual for a long time: English and Latin.

However, I found a coin this week that looked unfamiliar. I wondered if it was one of those elusive states.  But, no, espera un minuto mi hermano.  Right there, in Spanish, on top of a beautifully executed garita like the ones I remember from the Morro Castle, were the words “Isla del Encanto.” The state flower, the hibiscus, is also featured.

At the bottom was the Latin inscription “E pluribus unum” (from many one) 2009. And on top, in proud caps the words Puerto Rico on top of silver clouds.  A truly diverse coin. Bit by bit Hispanics are being recognized.

Surely, Texas bigots want to remove César Chávez from the history books and I am sure the language nativists want to chop those Spanish words from our coin, just like political intolerance would like to keep Sonia Sotomayor from the Supreme Court.

But you cannot turn back the clock of progress. We can interpret this country as a melting pot where everyone blends indistinctly. We can also see it as a big “salsa” where we all make a richly unified people who retain their individual flavor.

Blend in the colors of the flag and you get a politically correct purple. Yet it is the Red, White and Blue, in their unique and distinct combination, that make Old Glory the proud symbol of our Nation.

Carlos...

July 14, 2009

“Mancha de plátano” is something that you can’t hide. It literally means the banana stain, that quality that means that you are a Puerto Rican. It is the roots that follow you even if you are born in the Bronx and you are Sonia from the Barrio with humble roots extending to Lajas and Mayaguez.

It is funny to see the likes of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and his leading man — Rush Limbaugh — dumping on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Sessions questioned Sotomayor’s work with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, an organization he called “extreme.” Sessions himself is a man denied a seat on the court for his extreme views.

This is the same Sessions who tried to prosecute a former aide to Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights workers for “voter fraud” when they were signing up black voters. Sessions failed in his mission to prosecute the civil rights workers as well as his aspiration to join the Supreme Court later on when then President Ronald Reagan nominated him.

Session shows the true colors of Jim Crow, crowing fearfully about Sotomayor’s comment about a “wise Latina’s” ability to make the right decisions.

Yes, probably Sotomayor is more “liberal” than the ideologues of the party want.  But then, considering the extreme they are coming from, anyone can be more “liberal” than Sessions. I am not even advocating making Sotomayor a justice simply because she eats mofongo and arroz con habichuelas.

She definitively has more experience and judicial gravitas than Chief Justice John Roberts or Samuel Alito. Her mancha de plátano is no more an impediment to serve on the court than the spaghetti sauce stains on Antonin Scalia’s judicial robes.

It is precisely from our experience that we derive our decisions. The law is blind but must be metted out with respect for all of us and not just an elite. Rememer that in its infinite majesty, the law prohibits both the rich and the poor from sleeping on park benches.

Carlos ...

July 7, 2009

I am sick of the Michael Jackson death coverage.  Furthermore, I believe the exclusion or minimization of other news is neglectful and unpardonable.

And yet when I hear Rep. Peter King, R-NY, say that “this guy was pervert” and that “there’s nothing good about this guy,” shows he also overreacts and exaggerates to score political points.

“There are men and women dying today in Afghanistan. Let’s give them the credit they deserve,” he said.

King, while dissing the “King of Pop,” makes a great case of the “divide and conquer” strategy his political persuasion is famous for.  The men and women who make the ultimate sacrifice for their country ought not to be cheaply used by an equally cheap politician. Putting down the dead to praise other dead is disgusting and unAmerican. King, in his political short-term memory loss, forgets that many of those dead servicemen and women may have been Jackson fans.

It might behoove Mr. King to look at himself in the mirror. Like or not he should know that he represents constituents in Washington, D.C. Those constituents, no matter if they are black or white, elected him by a 64 percent margin.

For how long?

While a lot of us will have our opinions regarding Mr. Jackson’s  lack of conviction on child molestation charges, and the million-dollar out-of-court settlements, there are also statements from the complainant in the case that he lied in order to be handsomely rewarded by the respondent. This is something that the esteemed lawmaker seems to ignore.

There is a lack of conviction in King’s hollow words. Another brick has gone on the wall that divides what was once the Party of Lincoln from those Americans who are not older, white and rich.

Jackson, who rose from rags to riches in the best American tradition, was a trailblazer for a lot of those Americans.

And those, Mr. King, are the rest of us.

Carlos …

June 29, 2009

Now that talks have restarted between Washington and Havana, and Cuban-Americans are allowed again to visit — and financially help — their relatives in the impoverished island-nation, you can expect changes in Cuba.

But how far and how quick the changes are depends on how Washington finesses the end game of the Castro brothers stranglehold on the Havana government.

The regime has been sustaining itself on the fear of “invasion and aggression” exacerbated during the last eight years of a Republican administration. The relaxation seen during the Bill Clinton term served to cause unrest in the island as younger people developed an affinity for the forbidden fruits from the fascinating “yuma,” street slang for the United States.

It was during this period of relaxation in 1994, as the Cuban economy worsened, that there were massive riots in Havana and more than 30,000 people fled the island in small boats. When it seemed that the government was starting to lose control, George W. Bush was elected president and the embargo was tightened again placing strict controls over visits by Cuban Americans.

The regime simply tightened up. The best friend the forces of repression in Cuba was in the White House.  No more changes. Repression became worse, and economic reforms were rescinded.

With a less antagonistic White House the Cuban people, and not the government, will find a reason to grow closer to the people of the United States. Friendship will embolden those who prefer a more democratic form of government.

 “Hope” and “change” are valid words. Just like they were valid in the last election here.  Just like they were when the velvet revolution triumphed in the old Czechoslovakia.

So far the stick of the embargo has failed miserably in effecting a regime change in Cuba. And just look how costly the effort has been in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Isn’t it time to put the carrot to work?

Carlos …

June 29, 2009

Now that talks have restarted between Washington and Havana, and Cuban-Americans are allowed again to visit — and financially help — their relatives in the impoverished island-nation, you can expect changes in Cuba.

But how far and how quick the changes are depends on how Washington finesses the end game of the Castro brothers stranglehold on the Havana government.

The regime has been sustaining itself on the fear of “invasion and aggression” exacerbated during the last eight years of a Republican administration. The relaxation seen during the Bill Clinton term served to cause unrest in the island as younger people developed an affinity for the forbidden fruits from the fascinating “yuma,” street slang for the United States.

It was during this period of relaxation in 1994, as the Cuban economy worsened, that there were massive riots in Havana and more than 30,000 people fled the island in small boats. When it seemed that the government was starting to lose control, George W. Bush was elected president and the embargo was tightened again placing strict controls over visits by Cuban Americans.

The regime simply tightened up. The best friend the forces of repression in Cuba was in the White House.  No more changes. Repression became worse, and economic reforms were rescinded.

With a less antagonistic White House the Cuban people, and not the government, will find a reason to grow closer to the people of the United States. Friendship will embolden those who prefer a more democratic form of government.

 “Hope” and “change” are valid words. Just like they were valid in the last election here.  Just like they were when the velvet revolution triumphed in the old Czechoslovakia.

So far the stick of the embargo has failed miserably in effecting a regime change in Cuba. And just look how costly the effort has been in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Isn’t it time to put the carrot to work?

Carlos …

June 26, 2009

I still cannot get over why people make such big deal out of politicians having out-of-marriage relationships.

Just a couple of weeks ago we learned that Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., had his presidential hopes tarnished because he had an affair with a campaign worker. And just this week came out the comical admission by frugal Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., that he was carrying on a long-distance affair with a woman from Buenos Aires.

Let’s not forget Gov. Eliot Spitzer, D-N.Y., who was washed away from office when he paid a young woman for some hours of sexual bliss.

I still remember the glee in Newt Gingrich’s face as he cried foul when President Bill Clinton was exposed (no pun intended) for taking his cigar-smoking predilection to a new level with Monica Lewinsky.

Newt was having an affair of his own with a staffer that he eventually married and served his ailing wife with divorce papers in a hospital as she recuperated from surgery.

Presidents like John F. Kennedy and Franklyn Delano Roosevelt had their affairs in semi sordid secret that only a select few knew. Even Warren G. Harding played with his girl toys in several hotels around nation’s capital.

Somehow I am not surprised, nor scandalized by their behavior. After all, they are more normal than Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, who would have preferred cavorting with male teenage congressional pages.

Sex is no reason to disqualify a man — or woman — from office. But I do snicker when I see how the same group of people, who seized on Clinton’s licentious ways and tried to overturn the voice of the voter, are stepping on their own…. Toes.

For goodness sake, the thrice-married Newt even converted to Catholicism, a denomination that does not accept divorce.

We need to address more important issues that affect the future of our country than the peccadilloes that amount no more than a passing rose-colored footnote in the pages of history.

Carlos …

June 22, 2009

When professor Igor Panarin predicted the breakup of the United States, a few pundits from the right side of the political spectrum seemed to agree with him.

Curiously, the divide and conquer tactic was used by the neocon faction of the GOP during the Bush 43 presidency. Considering that Professor Panarin is an admitted former KGB agent, I wonder just how much some of these neocons are playing up to the some nefarious foreign intrigue while mascarading as loyal Americans.

This group has been doing an effective and very destructive job in splitting the Republican Party. It drove a hatchet down the middle of party unified by Dwight D. Eisenhower when it accepted the Dixiecrats who left the Democratic Party over integration during the culmination of Richard Nixon’s Machiavellian Southern strategy.

Then, when the traditional wing of the Republicans was making inroads in the Hispanic community during the years leading to the 2000 election, the bigoted and unholy alliance of the neocons and Dixiecrats took up the anti-immigrant banner that lumped both legal and illegal Hispanic immigrants as the “new” enemy.

It was like a snake eating its own tail.

Texas gov. Rick Perry and allies like Rush Limbaugh are raising the specter of a new secession. Those same neocons have seduced honest Republicans into becoming Nolicans, blocking the country in the name of “conservative” principles and abandoning the spirit of compromise that was so admired by democracies all over the world while leading the chant of “fail.”

Although Panarin’s scenario of a six-way national split may not be as clear cut as he drew it, some of our own traitorous politicians are pitting Americans against each other in a way that will weaken the nation causing intolerance, unrest and violence by pitting races, ethnic groups and religious groups against each other.

The enemy lurks among us.

Carlos …

June 17, 2009

By now the conservative wisdom is to put a big “NO” on winds of change when it comes to healthcare reform — especially when it comes to a government-sponsored insurance for those who cannot afford medical care.

If you notice, the problem is not with medical care. It is with the big scam called the insurance industry. A lot of medical care cost for the average American resides with this middleman in the equation.

Insurance companies need to reap big bucks to stay on the profit side while paying fat salaries to executives, satisfying bonuses to salespeople, paying for conniving lobbyists, expensive buildings and luxury rentals, not to speak of paying shareholders their periodic dividends.

Imagine how much cheaper medical care would be if this whole middle “cushion” between medical care and consumers was eliminated.

Also, take into account our de facto and wasteful “safety” net where people with no money go to expensive, wasteful emergency rooms for all kinds of illnesses that could be treated effectively and cheaper at clinics, HMO’s or dispensaries.

As healthcare cost keeps on rising thanks to this greedy middle stage of our healthcare system, more and more small companies are dropping health insurance for their workers, making a mockery of the so-called “free choice” of medical care we are supposed to have right now. As a result, 50 million uninsured Americans are being punished right now. After all, if you have no money or health insurance, you ain’t got no choice.

But, imbued in the ideologically-perverted dogma of conservatism, some in Washington are not looking out for American workers or the preservation of small entreprise.

Those same big companies who ship jobs outside the U.S. employ a workforce that enjoys, as in the case of India, Pakistan, China or Japan, a national health plan. Conservatives oppose such a plan for Americans, thus insuring that any product manufactured within our borders is more expensive than those from abroad.

It is time to act.

Carlos …

June 11, 2009

There are some hopeful signs that the economy is improving. Do you think that the economy is on a freeway to recovery?

Think again.

The wonderful folks racing their way down Wall Street are already putting some mean speed bumps on the road courtesy of oil speculation. Haven’t you noticed that the gasoline price is bumping $3 per gallon again?

While oil production has not declined, and supplies are at an all-time high, we pay more.  Of course, the value of the dollar has declined. However, it has not declined enough to make oil cost $30 more per barrel.

On March 8, oil reached a low of $40 per barrel. Today the price has topped $70. And we, residents of California, where unemployment is more than 10 percent, are paying like crazy at the pump.

The reason is not that the summer driving season is responsible. People are not driving all that much. Many of us are either unemployed or underemployed. We cannot even pay rent, food or for other basic services. The reason is that those speculators, who helped precipitate the crash of 2008 by gambling on the twin evils of the housing bubble and the oil bubble, want to suck more out of us.

With unemployment still on the upswing, speculators want a place to put their money for the future and oil is still the short-term future.  While the automotive industry switches to more economical vehicles, gasoline is still the fuel of choice and a lucrative market for the greedy goons that populate the stock market.

Since that source of income is finite, speculation is rampant. It is a last chance to make a fast buck on the backs of the ever-shrinking base of employed Americans to fuel the speculator’s avaricious future.

Speculation is the ultimate golden parachute. It is time to stop them before they ruin us.

Carlos …

June 4, 2009

No matter how strongly a person feels about the abortion issue, the killing of Dr. George Tiller is not a pro-life act.

A lot of people will argue that by killing one man, lives are being saved and therefore, as Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry says “he (Tiller) reaped what he sowed.”

By using the same twisted logic, then Terry and some of his more strident followers are sowing violence and therefore those who believe differently than Terry would feel justified in taking similar action.

It was with horrible fascination that we found out Tiller’s killer Scott Roeder has been in anti-government and anti-tax groups, had been already caught with explosives in his car and whose conviction on that charge was thrown out despite a prosecutor calling him a “substantial threat to public safety.”

Roeder and those of his ilk, just like the Taliban or Hizbollah, believe they are acting on behalf of a higher power. They believe that they have not only the right but the duty to “right” the “wrongs” even if they have to kill in order to achieve their goals.

Missionaries for the Preborn’s Dan Holman told CNN that Tiller’s death was something to cheer about. Furthermore, that politicians and organizations that “kill babies or participate in the killing of children deserve the same penalty.”

The threat is there and it is very explicit. This is not just talk of dissension but of openly seeking elimination of people, including politicians, they do not agree with. The language of hate we see here is so similar to the language of hate we see in other parts of the world besieged by extremism and senseless violence.

There is a difference between dissent and terrorism. 

And these home-grown terrorists are as much as a threat as those from the outside…

Carlos…

May 26, 2009

The California Supreme Court weighed in this week on the Proposition 8 controversy by, Solomon-like, cleaving the issue in two:  Yes, the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage will stand and yes, those 18,000  same-sex couples married before the ban was in effect will stand.

The justices wisely stayed away from the controversy. But letting the de facto status quo — the yes and the no of the issue — stand did not make everyone happy.  Same-sex marriage opponents can have their cake and no, they will not be able to split the couples already legally married. And, while married same-sex couples will be able to preserve their marriage, no more will be allowed the same privilege in California.

Not everyone will be happy with this solution and the seething rancor will stay below the surface.

Frankly it is time to end the marriage madness.

No state should be in the marriage business.

Yes, by all means, a civil union is a proper way to establish a contract between two people whether that union is between people of the same or opposite sex. This is strictly a legal matter and is not a marriage in the spiritual sense of the word. Any legal resident of the state, of any sex, is eligible for this union.

And yes, marriages are spiritual unions performed by a priest, a rabbi, a minister, an imam or any other religious person in the name of their faith and following religious precepts and requirements. Is a matter of that particular faith.

The legal civil union is performed at the courthouse at the time the happy couple picks up their certificate of union. The marriage ceremony is performed at the couple’s church, temple, mosque or meeting hall.

Whatever people call their household is strictly between themselves and their God.

Carlos …

May 25, 2009

Whenever any kind of progressive legislation, such as universal healthcare or accessible education, is mentioned, most conservatives have the same kneejerk reaction: This is socialism and therefore it is communism.

This twinning of socialism equals communism is the mantra that pours from the mouths of extreme elements in the conservative movement, who insist that these twin evils spell an end to American democracy.

Those same elements disparage European (and Canadian) democracy and liken it to the old Soviet Block. Conservatives forget that democracy means the rule of the people.

The follow-up mantra is, “We do not want to be like the Europeans,” and it is said with such rancor and disdain you would think they are talking about the devil.  A Canadian-style health-system … Please.

When you lump totalitarian regimes and non-American democracies together as a big enemy you are starting to sound paranoid – just like some people on the conservative right who “wish” Barack Obama to fail.  

Why? Because totalitarian regimes and European democracies are not the same and those democracies work.

Haven’t you noticed that the Euro is now worth more than the American dollar? And that while GM is faltering in the U.S. its cars still sell very well in Europe?  By now it is obvious that the deregulation orgy failed miserably to prevent the disastrous recession of the conservative cycle.

Sometimes it is good to take your head out of the sand and notice that there are things that work in other places. Instead of hiding your head in the sand of complacency, saying “We’ve never done things like this here,” we could dig ourselves out of the economic mess we are in.

No one has a monopoly on truth or democracy. Democracy cannot stand by the wishes of a few malcontents who cannot see beyond their noses.

And that is what conservatives are afraid of.

Carlos ...

May 14, 2009

First of two parts
Every day that a print newspaper bites the dust we hear premature cries and moans that journalism is dying. But, is it?

Yes, it is true the print media is dying. The old business model of paper and ink and large profitable newspaper empires — run as corporate entities from some far-flung headquarters and answerable only to gray-suited members of boards ruled with an iron fist by an equally gray chairman who had a written guarantee of a golden parachute to glide him safely to a retirement villa in West Palm Beach or San Clemente — are gone like the ashes of yesterday’s Cohibas.

But newspapers, and to some extent TV networks, have been dichotomous monsters with the twin beasts of advertising and information that kept snapping at each other when producing information for the general public. For years the unstable wall of separation between newsrooms and advertising bent back and forth.  A good publisher knew he or she had to keep the peace between Presidents and Editors in battles that meant losing your soul or losing your pocketbook. As the Internet and the downtown in advertising ate away at the profits, the basic underpinning of the free press, advertising revenue dried up.  Unions demanded more and more, newsprint price rose and the cost of distribution ascended like magma up a volcano tube.

While most people stand by helplessly, they fail to look at one possibility: the non-profit press. That is what entertainment mogul David Geffen is contemplating for the New York Times in case the venerable gray lady falls on harder times. The press really only needs a small amount of money coming in, enough to support a dedicated staff who does not require or need the stratospherically high salaries and bonuses of Wall Street moguls.

After all, newspaper people are idealists, more motivated by the truth than by dollars and cents. They need a living wage according to their experience and production, and awards to massage their egos.  And with the Internet, news outlets can produce not only readable copy, but good photos, fantastic videos and sound on demand and it is not tied to a particular location, channel or printing technology.

A news outlet need not buy into a particular technology, it can be produced in any computer with off the shelf hardware and software available to anyone, avoiding the prohibitive cost of production, large shops or distribution. Those outlets, the “new” press still needs to make money but that income need not be as high as it is now.

Carlos ...

May 15, 2009

Second of two parts
Profit became the engine that drove newspapers because someone has to pay for the production of a news product. Salaries had to be paid, supplies had to be bought and there was the profit needed by owners and investors.

That was the original model. So far so good. When moguls began funding newspapers for political or other profit motives, the cost had to rise to invest in new and better equipment. Presses and collateral equipment that were the products of the industrial revolution were expensive. 

Media Moguls like William Randolph Hearst, John Pulitzer, the Knight brothers, the Chandlers and others ran their newspapers at a profit but also kept costs down so that they fattened up their pocketbooks and keep pace with technology. That model worked fine until some bright entrepreneurs decided that it was time to get on the Wall Street beast.

Now came the payment of dividends to investors, stockholders, brokerage firms; salaries to members of the board of directors, CEOs, CFOs and a whole superstrata of high paying executives who drained the profits more and more each year with less and less money to support the infrastructure or pay the journalists who produced what the public wanted to read.

Likewise, there was less and less for the advertising salespeople who toiled more and more each day to bring in the money to grease the corporate machinery.

So take away the super profit burden, and just leave the profit needed to maintain (hey this is called sustainability folks!) the organization, and you have a less costly and freer press. These organizations must be local in order to survive and serve the community. The greed factor must be taken out.

Yes, there is an incentive to produce and make more money to put back into resources of the nonprofit and its foundation. There is less pressure from Wall Street. Profit? Yes, there will be. It an be distributed as a bonus to those who do a good job, who sell more or who write, edit and produce videos. 

I am sure some troglodyte is going to call this a “private socialism” without realizing the contradiction of those words. It is a little bit like “fighting for peace.” While I do not claim this idea is new and that I have all the answers to the complex and perplexing picture of how to remake American’s media, it is a good starting point

David Geffen is simply taking the next step after Propublica, a nonprofit organization of professional journalists that produces investigative information in the public interest and shares it with its partners like the L.A. Times and the N.Y.T. 
Keep it local, keep it strong.

I can almost breath the freedom of the new press.

Carlos ...

May 14, 2009

Long ago, during the filming of “Pumping Iron, ” the man who would become governor of California is seen taking a big drag from a joint, holding onto the smoke and exhaling it slowly with gusto. Certainly during this “where there is smoke there is fire” stage, the guvernator did more than just fondle a few starlets, but also went into a few good dreams as Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong would say.

Let’s consider, seriously, the legalization of the 420 crowd — the weedies, and the selling of a herb that until now has only been sold for medical purposes to a few who had to risk prosecution by federal authorities.

I am not going to minimize the risk of drawing unfiltered and carcinogenic pot down your bronchial passages and lungs with the resulting medical problems we now see in addicts of the legal and addicted leaf named tobacco.  Neither, am I going to minimize how you can legally buy booze at any liquor store and poison yourself or cause accidents that kill innocent people.

At the very least, if we are not going to ban those other addictive substances and improve our national health so that a national health plan is not needed, then let’s at least tax marijuana so there will be money to pay for the result of those excesses.
So, as Arnold seems to be hinting, a taxed cash crop that seems to be the largest agricultural product in the state, can help bring in some needed revenues to make our life a little bit easier.

Voters can speak with the vote and go into a legal dream as long as they know they are going to pay a heavy-duty tax and that they have to abide by the same rules as drinking people when they sit behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.

Remember, hemp is not just for rope, soap or exotic textile anymore. At least, we can take it out of the bag of the bad guys and put it into the pockets of the state taxpayers.

Carlos …

May 12, 2009

What makes a winner a winner?

Give your opponent a chance.

Wait a minute, aren’t we taught that the winner takes all the marbles, gets to take the ball home, eats the whole enchilada and leaves the loser with nothing to show, nothing to play with and maybe goes home hungry?

Yes, that is what some believe. That is why there are winners and losers. To the winners go the spoils and the loser are… well, the losers.

But are they?

Sure, today you lose but maybe tomorrow those same losers can win, and then yesterday’s winners become the losers and they have to undergo the same amount of humiliation they imposed on the loser.  But, as we have seen in politics, you don’t really win if all you have to show for it is a bare minority.

Take the 2000 U.S. presidential election when, because of a quirk in the electoral system, a loser was a technical winner. The consequence was that the winner believed he could impose his political will on the opponents with the resulting gridlock and ill will. The message back then was — You lost, get over it. Now things have turned around.

The then-winners, and now losers, cry foul and want to take their part of the winning ball home, retain their marbles because, they believe, that what they once did to their opponents will be done unto them.

And, yes, there is a lesson to be learned about this situation.  Don’t try to rub your opponent’s nose on the ground. In a democracy, today’s winners are tomorrow’s losers, unless you want to end this wonderful political experiment now more than a quarter of a millennium long.

Graciousness in victory sows the seeds of a winning strategy.  And, even more so, graciousness when losing marks the start of a winning path.

Carlos …

May 6, 2009

Political oversimplificers try to paint a pleasant picture of political preference, as in a conservative is a fiscally responsible person who favors old-fashioned values of morality, family, order, patriotism and general comfort and well-being.

This means a society has a level of acceptance for everyone and those who do not accept the rules of society as it is are the disruptive malcontents who have no place in that society.

Conservatism, by definition, does not get along with the concept of liberty, where men and women of intellect seek their own way.  Freedom has a price, and sometimes that means bending or disrupting the rules of polite society. The rules that keep or conserve a system, such as the old colonial system, do not always apply as a society progresses.

In the case of the original 13 colonies, it was precisely the conservatives who wanted to preserve the colonial system of the aging, corrupt and oppressive British Empire that stifled the growth of the people on this side of the Atlantic and gave rise to the Revolution that sought life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Societies evolve and we recognized that liberty cannot exist for only a few, based on the color of their skin as much as it once weighed on indenture servants and former prisoners of debtors’ prison who were brought to toil on these shores. Slavery, by any other name, is still a moral wrong.

Those who want to conserve will always be on the other side of liberty.  That is why today we have Conservatives and Liberals — those who want to preserve an old system and those who want to change it.

Those who want to conserve and those who want change are the minorities at either end of the political spectrum. Most of us are in the middle, picking and choosing the elements that can make our future better.           

Conservatives should remember that. Although they like to think that the United States may be a center-right nation, the concept of center is more important than the concept of right.

Carlos …

May 5, 2009

When Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter bolted the Republican Party this week, there were words of sorrow and words of defiance as the 79-year-old said he had been increasingly finding more common ground with his new political affiliates than with his former GOP mates.

It is no surprise to hear him express this complaint.   Moderates have been increasingly segregated from the party mainstream as the Republicans drift from being a more encompassing organization with one worried about party purity.

Ronald Reagan, the then-conservatives’ conservative, put it very succinctly when explaining his own switch to another party: “I did not leave the Democratic Party, the party left me.”

One of the more extreme ideologues of partisan extreme, Rush Limbaugh, said derisively that Specter should take some of the more moderate members such as former presidential candidate Arizona Senator John McCain and his daughter Meghan, Olympia Snow and Susan Collins with him.

Not a bad idea.

Extremist ideologues, leading a shrinking political entity into a smaller, ideologically pure pole, do not realize that they are going on the way to, if not extinction, political insignificance.

They have failed to see that the Democrats are really two parties.  There is a real, left-leaning party that is wide enough to live side by side with a larger, more accommodating moderate, center-hugging party. And there is where Specter fits.  What these two “parties” have in common is precisely a lack of political purity.

So, when someone in the GOP complains about a “socialist” or “un-American” party wearing the blue cloth, most Americans simply laugh at their political naiveté.  Rebranding the red party won’t help if you do not seriously widen your appeal and moderate your goals.

To the more extreme members I can only point to the lessons in history: Secession already failed.  Just remember your own fellow Republican senator from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.

Carlos ...

Commentary: In the name of the Web

May 1, 2009

When Italian writer Umberto Ecco penned “In the Name of the Rose” he wrote a great whodunit murder mystery novel set in a medieval monastery where monks toiled transcribing books to be preserved during that dark period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the consolidation of European kingdoms.

Those monasteries and their great libraries preserved the knowledge of the ancients and kept it from being lost in the chaos that was the Middle Ages when ignorance, violence and pestilence prevailed. Those monks not only patiently copied the books of old. Judging from the examples we see today, they also illustrated the books with letters adorned with leaves, flowers angels and demons. These tomes were not only informative but also beautiful works of art which are not equaled today but which also took sometimes years to complete.

Imagine also, one of those monks hearing one day about a German named Johannes Guttenberg who invented the movable type, mass- printing process. Guttenberg’s process of creating mass printing of books is one of the keystones in spreading books and education and contributing to the end of the Dark Ages and ushering in the Renaissance… and freeing all those monks from the copying rooms of the monasteries.

So are journalists in our modern post-millenium society.

The web has ushered in a new kind of renaissance in today’s digital world, opening a new door of information to the masses. Newspapers are like those grand old monasteries. By opening up the craft it is freeing journalists to reach a larger world wide audience. Yes, newspapers are shrinking, dying. But is journalism dying?

Au contraire, it is just growing in a new direction and the modern monks of information have been freed from the shackles of newsroom tyranny.

Carlos ...

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