Are You A barn Swallow?
Several years ago, we had a surprise visitor set up house on our porch. It was a barn swallow. We were excited to watch it create a new home out of mud.
Our boys were still out home at the time, and they had a front row seat to watching nature in action. The bright blue bird swooped back and forth to bring building material, slowly shaping a small nest.
At dusk it would patrol my yard. I always imagined it eating mosquitos. I hate mosquitos. Mosquitos would drain every ounce of my blood if I stayed outside during the summer nights.
I saw barn swallows as a good neighbor. Then the babies came.
My friend, Eric Weisberg, always liked to use birds to contrast with humans. Eric would say, “Do you know birds don’t poop in their own nest. Humans do. We’re constantly polluting the earth, our nest.â€
Baby barn swallows proved Eric right. At an early age, they learned to put their little bottoms over the side of the nest. I never imagined baby birds could make so much poop. They were a mess.
I have to say though, Eric was only half right. I think we are more like barn swallows than his original statement implied.
I don’t think either human or barn swallows poop in their own nest. They both poop on their neighbors’ porch. We both project our pollution in our neighbors’ direction. Neither of us thinks about our neighbor.
In the 1970s we in the United States made a big push to reduce pollution and clean up our environment. This effort went a long way to improve our quality of life.
One of the biggest changes was removing an unseen enemy: lead. Lead made its way into a wide variety of products from gasoline to paint to shotgun shells.
The impact was devastating. Lead killed bald eagles. Lead created mental disabilities. Lead increased crime rates. Government mandates removed lead and life improved.
The next big frontier is petroleum products and byproducts. Can we reduce our dependence on them? Plastic waste is everywhere from the road side to the oceans. Carbon dioxide and methane are trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Like lead, CO2 and methane are invisible. They have big money protecting them. They have big money lying to make us ignore the poop in our nest. The damage from greenhouse gases, however, have become all too visible.
Wild Fires. Droughts. Tropical Storms. Melting glaciers. The earth seems to be treating humanity like I eventually treated the barn swallows. I got fed up with them so I knocked down the nest and washed the poop away. Let’s improve our behavior before Mother Nature does the same to us.
Who Is Playing Dr. Death Now?
In the 1980s Jack Kevorkian made headlines by advocating for assisted suicide. Kevorkian, a medical doctor, argued that terminally ill patients had the right to die with dignity. When the state of Michigan discovered that he had helped his patients die, he lost his medical license, and prosecutors they put him on trial.
Prosecutors dropped the charges because he committed no crime. His attorneys presented enough evidence to show that Kevorkian only provided the means to commit suicide. The dead actually made the decision and triggered the devices.
Several years later, however, Kevorkian faced a jury. This time the circumstances were different. Kevorkian, no longer a doctor, injected a deadly drug into a man with Lou Gehrig’s disease. The man had asked for the drug, but Kevorkian delivered it.
The Kevorkian case illustrates an important aspect of American law. Our legal system allows an individual to participate in a large number of self-harming behaviors. Adults in particular can drink and smoke, or even refuse medication.
We do draw the line, however, at harming others. We tell people that they can’t drink and drive. We tell people that they can’t smoke in public spaces. We tell parents they must allow a blood transfusion for a child. We don’t allow individuals the right to use liberty as excuse for harming others.
This principle is not a novel concept. The 1800 BC Law Code of Hammurabi begins “Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak.â€
Governments enact laws to stop us from hurting one another. As my dad used to say, “Your freedom ends at my nose.â€
It shouldn’t come as a surprise then, that I have never questioned vaccine mandates. Growing up, vaccines were simply part of life. Every time we moved from one military base to another, we needed to show an updated vaccine card.
I never heard once the false claim that I had a right to spread a contagious disease. Even as a child, I knew that the United States government promoted vaccines around the world. Vaccines save lives.
Now, I watch in disgust as politicians and talk show hosts claim the right to spread death. If they were only killing themselves, we would have no authority to stop them, but Covid 19 is not like cancer or Lou Gehrig’s disease. It kills others.
Covid politicians are playing Dr. Death with the public. We need vaccine mandates. We reduced drunk driving. We reduced second hand smoke. We have the ability to reduce the impact of Covid. It is time to return to our lives.
Earth Race
You don’t have to listen long to hear what workers are saying about their lives. Their hours are long. Their pay is stagnant. They want more time with their children. They live one healthcare emergency away from bankruptcy.
Millionaires and billionaires, however, have never had it better. They have the lowest tax rate since the 1930s. They have fortunes so big that they created a market for joy rides in space. Tickets range from at least $100,000 to $450,000.
How long do these experiences last? The Virgin Galactic flight lasts from 2 to 3 hours. The Blue Origin flight lasts about 11 minutes.
American workers are creating an incredible amount of wealth. American millionaires and billionaires are collecting an incredible amount of that wealth. The first struggles to survive. The latter literally lights money on fire to float in space.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In the 1950s and 60s we had a tax and labor structure that encouraged paying workers a decent wage, then came the 1980s.
Ronald Reagan started a trend across the country. He convinced voters that investors, not workers, needed a break. Reagan started cutting capital gains taxes at the top and raising payroll taxes on workers.
Reagan also launched an attack on Unions. Unions allowed workers to defend themselves against large corporations. Unions set the wage and benefit standards in the rest of the economy. Without strong Unions, wages and benefits have been slowly declining for everyone.
Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress want to restore some balance to the work place. They want to increase health insurance subsidies, empowering workers to buy better coverage. They want to expand Medicaid to fund more Long Term Care.
Working families also need help. The Build Back Better plan would fund child care and pre-K education. This would create and improve thousands of jobs. It would relieve the anxiety of young families.
Paying for these programs requires raising taxes on individuals earning more than $400,000 per year. Individuals earning less will not pay a dime more. Franklin Roosevelt used this strategy during the New Deal and built the American Middle Class.
Reagan wanted to reverse the New Deal. In many ways he did. He created a trickle up economy. The wealth created by workers flows up into space.
Now, it’s time to build America from the ground up. We need to make life better for those that work and walk on this earth. We need an earth race, not a billionaire space race.
Don’t Bear False Witness
Justice requires the truth. As Americans we require anyone testifying to do it under oath. Oath breakers face penalties for perjury.
The truth is no less important in other aspects of life. Both Civil Law and the Bible made bearing false witness a crime. Civil law calls it liable. Psalm 6 calls bearing false witness an abomination.
Bearing false witness also made it into the Bible’s Ten Commandments. Exodus 23 states, “You shall not spread a false report.â€Â In Gospel of Matthew (15:18-20), Jesus himself listed slander and false witness as actions that defile a person.
How much more will bearing false witness, tolerating false witness and encouraging false witness defile a society?
Unfortunately, that is exactly what conservatives are doing by supporting The Loser, Donald Trump. The Loser started planting his lies before he lost. In fact he made a multi-year habit of lying about election results from President Obama’s Presidential victory to Senator Ted Cruz’s momentary victory in the Iowa caucuses.
The Loser’s slander didn’t cost him much. Conservatives flocked to his slander like moths to flames. The more he and his friends lied, the brighter his fire burned.
None of these lies survived in a Court Room. They all died quickly as oaths revealed the truth. Every state followed the law. Every state certified their votes. When Congress counted the votes, Joe Biden became the President.
Court after court listened to the lies and false allegations presented by The Loser’s lawyers. Time and again, however, they were dismissed as frivolous. When The Loser appealed his cases, even his handpicked justices on the United States Supreme Court dismissed him.
We now know that The Loser began calling Republican officials around the country. He wanted them to throw away millions of our votes. Even Republican officials refused.
Next, The Loser wanted his appointees at the United States Justice Department to intervene. They remained faithful to their oath. Still, The Loser pushed them. Only when they threatened mass resignations, did he back down.
On January 6, 2021, The Loser placed one last bet. He incited a mob to storm the United States Capital. He instructed them to disrupt our Constitution. The mob broke into the building and beat capital police officers with an American flag. The Loser watched on TV.
You have a choice to make. You have to decide whether to bear false witness. You have to decide if you will help the Loser continue defiling America and our Constitution. What will you do?
I’m Not Scared of Words
Every time we turn around Fox News and the rest of the professional conservatives cry like babies about scary socialism. It doesn’t take much education to know they haven’t a clue what socialism is. They simply want to scare and paralyze American.
In the early 1900s apartment and factory fires killed thousands. As a society we decided to require manufacturers to build safer buildings. Death by fire dropped dramatically.
During the Great Depression, Americans used government to dramatically improve their lives. Voters supported the FDIC to insure bank deposits and the SEC to police the financial industry. Americans elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 and then re-elected him three more times, including two after he created Social Security.
Republicans opposed each and every one of these improvements. They screamed “socialism” each and every time. FDR and Democrats pushed ahead anyway.
After FDR died, President Harry Truman famously retorted, “Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.” Truman refused to fear a word.
Democratic reforms were so popular Republicans got on board after the Second World War. Veterans demanded, and a bipartisan Congress provided, a host of new government benefits including education, healthcare, and housing. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, pushed forward with Interstate Highways and actively enforced Federal Court desegregation orders.
In the 1960s Barry Goldwater tried to get Americans to turn back the clock. He wanted to reverse the New Deal by privatizing Social Security. Goldwater opposed federal Civil Rights legislation. Lyndon Johnson crushed him at the ballot box.
With the support of the American people, politicians of both parties surged ahead again. They created Medicare and Medicaid. They passed the Clean Water and Air acts. Congress and presidents did this against a back drop of radical politicians screaming socialism.
It wasn’t until 1980 that the fear mongering finally broke through. Ronald Reagan shamelessly, and falsely, blamed government regulation for the 1970s energy crisis. The origin of that crisis lay in the Middle East, not the Halls of Congress. Arab states punished the United States for supporting Israel during the Cold War.
The truth didn’t matter to Reagan, however. He plowed ahead with his sales pitch. Reagan blamed Federal Legislation for everything from energy to poverty to struggling schools. He found his scape goat and demanded a sacrifice.
No Self-Driving Car in Your Future
OK, the headline here is certainly an attention getter. How can a company ignore overtly racist behavior?
BUT….then there is this……
Telsa had an elevator operator!!!!! Seriously? They want to sell you a self driving car, and they can’t figure out a self driving elevator?
Learn, Not Repeat, is the Goal
A dedicated group of volunteers are trying to teach their neighbors the history of Grayson County Texas. Grayson County has a chance to learn from its mistakes. Melissa Thiel is leading the effort and has rallied local business owners and clergy. They want the following statement on a marker in front of the Courthouse. The marker would read.
________________
The Sherman Riot of 1930 was one of a number of major incidents of racial violence that occurred in the United States at the onset of the Great Depression.
On May 3, 1930, George Hughes a black farm laborer was accused of assaulting a white woman in a dispute over wages. A grand jury returned an indictment and trial was scheduled for 9 May. For the trial, local officials suspected they would need help keeping an expected agitated crowd under control. Governor Dan Moody sent Texas Rangers to help including Captain Frank Hamer.
In the morning hours of the trial, Mr. Hughes was transported to the Grayson County Courthouse. An estimated 5000 person crowd called for Mr. Hughes to be given to them and the courthouse was then set alight by the mob. Mr Hughes was put in the two-story documents vault where he subsequently suffocated as the Courthouse burned down. Fire department attempts to address the flames were thwarted by the mob. The 1876 Courthouse was a total loss.
Hours later the mob dynamited open the still-standing vault and threw Mr. Hughes’ lifeless body out a window where it was dragged to the city’s black business district, hanged from a tree and then burned. The mob proceeded to burn down black owned businesses on Mulberry Street including the office of Civil Rights attorney William J Durham. Due to further mob intimidation, Governor Moody declared martial law on 10th May which lasted for the next two weeks. A total of 66 Grayson Community citizens were taken into custody with 14 indicted for crimes. Three were considered for trial and only one person was convicted for arson of the courthouse and incitement to Riot. No one was charged with lynching or murder.
We must learn about Act of Terrorism in Grayson County. We must never repeat it.
States’ Rights Deception
Big Government conservatives like to hide behind the slogan States’ Rights. They want you to believe they are standing up for you against the mean federal government. They have relied on this deception since the beginning of the Republic.
Southern planters knew America’s revolutionary rhetoric threatened their vast wealth and power. The Declaration of Independence clashed with legalized slavery.
They were slave owners that told the world “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the `pursuit of Happiness.”
Southern conservatives were afraid this rhetoric would turn around and bite them. The slave owners demanded a Constitutional Amendment to protect the right to own “negro slaves.” The Tenth Amendment striped the federal government of its power to regulated anything not mentioned in the constitution ”slavery”and delegated to the states powers not prohibited by the Constitution “slavery.”
This awkwardly phrased amendment secured for the wealthiest Americans protections against the egalitarian rhetoric of the revolution. Southern planters secured for states the right to legalize the buying and selling of human beings.
Southern conservatives were right to worry. In the American free states, the declaration of human equality gradual spread to include African Americans. Even racists whites in the North came to understand that slave labor threatened free labor.
In the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln convinced enough voters that America needed to stop the spread of slavery. He believed stopping slavery would lead to its eventual extinction.
No election was more divisive in American history. The loss motivated Southern Conservatives to break the constitution and write a new one. The new Confederate Constitution protected their “peculiar institution” of “negro slavery.”
Since most white southerners owned few, if any slaves, the planters needed to find a way to rally them to the cause of the 1% of property owners. That cause was White Supremacy and States Rights.
States had the right to secure the blessings of liberty for white property owners. States had the right to protect the white male’s ownership of black men, women and children. They convinced southerners that one day they too could own slaves.
This deception worked. Poor whites took to the battlefield to protect their states against a tyrant Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln vowed to expand freedom. Southern conservatives used the states to block him. Time and again the wealthiest southerners repeated this failed States’ Right agenda.
Cruelty is a Feature, Not an Accident
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 ignited the rise of Big Government Conservatism. Just a few months before, George W. Bush had won a razor thin election by presenting himself as a compassionate conservative.
Within days of the September attacks his mask fell off. Bush started to channel the blood lust rising in conservative circles. I will never forget my drive home on September 11.
The local radio talk show hosts were interviewing Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican moderate. The WBAP hosts asked her if the United States was prepared to use nuclear weapons against the attackers. Hutchison responded that a nuclear retaliation was possible.
That morning, no one knew who was responsible for the attacks. No one could know how many innocent people a nuclear bomb would kill. Despite this ignorance, this so called conservative moderate entertained the idea of murdering thousands as revenge.
George W. Bush fed this blood lust. Just days after the attack, he started building a false case against Iraq. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney fabricated an excuse to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Bush, Cheney, Fox News and talk radio then destroyed anyone that challenged their lies. Conservatives called men like Senator Max Cleland, a disabled Vietnam Veteran, a coward and traitor for opposing the Iraq War.
Congressional Republicans jumped on the war bandwagon. When America’s ally France tried to silence the drums of war, Congressional Republicans changed the menu in the cafeteria. French fries became Freedom Fries. French Toast became Freedom Toast.
Exploiting the September 11 attacks for political gain was very popular with the Republican base. In 2004 Democrats nominated John Kerry, another Vietnam War Veteran, as their candidate. Bush donors spread lies and smeared his service record.
Conservatives embraced the Swift Boat lies. At the Republican Convention, participants mocked John Kerry’s service to America by wearing band aides with small Purple Hearts. They falsely claimed Kerry faked his injuries to win one of America’s highest honors.
The 2008 Presidential election was no better. Conservatives fabricated and spread the racist, bigoted lie that Barack Obama was a foreign born Muslim. When the Republican nominee and Vietnam War hero John McCain defended Obama from these lies, conservatives turned on him too.
The September 11 attacks poisoned American conservatism. Politicians, Fox News, and talk show hosts embraced cruelty and pain. They demonized anyone who promoted compromise and dialogue. Healing America requires facing this ugly truth.
Yes, I’m a Feminist
In 1862 the United Kingdom’s Parliament passed the first in a series of Contagious Disease Acts. The Members of Parliament considered sexually transmitted diseases a matter of national security. The MPs believed prostitutes spread the disease to the Armed Forces and weakened them.
The Acts specifically targeted suspected prostitutes, not the soldiers, sailors, or marines. It empowered Police Officers to detain and inspect women. The inspection included an intrusive speculum exam.
(Men, if you don’t know what this is, ask a trusted female friend or relative).
The pretext of this body cavity search was to find and stop the spread of STDs among the Armed Forces. Parliament identified female prostitutes as the source of this national security threat and gave Police the authority to “hospitalize†(jail) any women showing signs of an STD.
Would it surprise you to learn that in the late 1800s women neither voted nor served in Parliament?  According to tradition, men looked after the “weaker sex.â€Â Men dominated the public sphere—politics, war and the market place—while women took care of the private sphere—home, childcare, and church.
Prostitutes violated this tradition. They entered into the public sphere. They stepped outside of social protections and hurt men.
The men who passed these laws publicly advocated for property rights and a free market. The hypocrisy was clear. Men should be free, but women needed to be controlled.
The Contagious Disease Acts were a step too far for Victorian women. They knew that a threat to women’s rights anywhere was a threat to women’s rights everywhere. These acts sparked the beginnings of modern feminism.
Feminists like Josephine Butler highlighted the inherent inequality of the act. It punished the women involved but the men faced few consequences. Butler no longer trusted male politicians to protect her and other women.
Women around the United Kingdom mobilized and spoke out. They didn’t want to engage in prostitution, but they did want to protect themselves from big government.
In 1886, the feminists won. Parliament repealed the acts. The battle for political and social equality, however, had just begun.
A new generation of feminists like the Pankhurst family expanded their demands. Feminists fought for and won the right to vote, workplace safety standards, and better wages for all.
Politicians often can achieve their momentary goals of protecting their special interests. If they overreach, however, they may get more than what they bargained for.