A perspective, for your entertainment.

This is what a friend of mine asked me a while back:
Okay friend, gimme your side on this! And take as long as you want...
 The following is from someone named Robert Reich.

{The best (and only good) thing to come out of the government shutdown and possible default is the awakening of a large portion of the public to what today's Republican Party is really up to. In an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey released Thursday evening, just 24% have a favorable opinion of Republicans while 47% have a favorable opinion of the President. According other polls, if the 2014 election were held today Democrats would have a good chance of winning 24 Republican-held House districts, giving them control of the House.

Are Republican supporters in the white working class coming to realize that the GOP's faux populism masks a dogged defense of the privileged and powerful? For years Republicans have used their snake-oil "trickle-down" economics to justify lower taxes on the wealthy and corporations, even though nothing has trickled down. They've described the poor as "takers" in order to distract attention from the reality of declining median incomes, even as almost all economic gains go to the very top. Their drumbeat against big government has disguised the torrent of money they've raised from the wealthy, big corporations, and Wall Street, in exchange for special tax breaks, loopholes, and subsidies that entrench privilege and power. Is this elaborate masquerade now coming to a close?}

This is my response:
I am not going to debate his opinions in the first paragraph, because they are his opinions.
I will never be voting liberal, be it Democrat or Republican.
So the voting, if it were up to just me, would go to the group most willing to repeal Obamacare (and come up with something better and more comprehensible, that includes being able to buy insurance across state lines and tort reform), quit screwing with gun rights, make gay marriage and abortion a states' issue rather than federal, get their hands out of my pockets, and quit deciding FOR me who my charity should support.
I do not want what I didn't EARN honestly, and neither should anyone else.
I want to help all those who CAN'T help themselves, but (and this is true no matter how few or how many there are) I will be glad to let those who WON'T help themselves starve.
I pay attention to the people around me and the things they say, I watch what goes on right in front of my eyes: NOT ON TV.
I go look at things being put out by people who don't agree with me.
I have come to the conclusion that sneakiness and dishonesty are rampant in every government entitlement system. People who were first allowed to use the welfare system (and I have used it, short-term as was intended) are ushering their grandchildren into it, and their great-grandchildren. That system was supposed to be a stepping-stone to social productivity and becoming an asset to the nation, one's family, and one's community. This is not what has occurred, in too many cases. I do not deny that there should be a safety net.....but it should not be used to live one's entire life in. The truly incapable of helping themselves are a different story. They deserve our help and as decent folk we should help them. But each person should decide where what they earn should go for charitable purposes, not the government.
I support complete replacement of the tax code with something sensible and very different, be it the Flat Tax, Fair Tax, 9-9-9, or one of the others that makes SO much more sense than the train wreck of a tax code we have now. If everyone just paid 10%, it would be fair. People making $10 million would pay their 10%, people making $100,000 would pay theirs, and people making $10,000 would pay theirs. No loopholes. At all. For anyone. No breaks. At ALL. The rich would still pay more in than the poor, but everyone's percentage would be equal. I can get behind that. I don't want any tax breaks, bailouts, or BS any more.
I am nowhere near rich, I promise you. But what I believe is this: By letting people not be tested, strained, pushed, put in any adversity, or have to think for themselves, we do all Humanity a disservice. The greatest innovations come when we have to work for it. Great people and great advances are not made from or by people with nothing to work for. We need adversity, struggle, conflict, the daily striving for our living. Without that, we become soft, lazy, and complacent, and that will be the end of us all.
I see the liberal attitude as a "make it easy for everyone" perspective. I don't want to make it easy for everyone. I just want the FREEDOM for it to be POSSIBLE for everyone, but only if they work for it. I have had to, and I have begun again several times. I earned what I have, and I am proud of that even if it's not much. I would rather be living in a shack in an alley that I earned than in a mansion I stole or that was given to me, especially if it was taken from someone who actually DID earn it.
When I was very well-off, and when I was in the Army, I often fed the homeless or hungry, paid for urgent care visits for them, paid bills for people who had some bad luck after working hard for most of their lives.
I do not defend the heartless and cruel, I will not defend such as the ever evil and awful Monsanto...They are AWFUL. But if a person has earned what they have, taking it away and giving it to someone who has not worked hard is stealing.
A question that makes sense to me is : How much of what you earned does your neighbor deserve to get? The answer, as far as I am concerned, is : as much as you give of your own free choice. I know I would give more if I had more left over. I know that my healthcare costs actually exceed what I pay out of pocket yearly for care.
And I know that I hear people in the halls and markets laughing because they have six Obamaphones, and they just got their sibling's kids on their welfare and hers, too....... Not isolated incidents of hearing about fraud or abuse that literally takes money from my pocket. I see people at convenience stores buying beer with EBT cards when I go in to pay for gas or get a bottle of water. I see these same people driving late model expensive cars and bragging about "having the system down." What exactly am I supposed to think?
Anyway, I am not in favor of the big companies' behavior, but don't think that means I want to go on paying for people that won't work.
I want to change the taxes and regulations to make a better environment for smaller businesses, I want to outlaw GMO foods, I want to get people excited about working hard to get to better places rather than sit still in a barely adequate place because it's safe. I want to pitch out ALL of the career politicians and do the whole mess like jury duty. I want to be able to pass on a country that values hard work and strength of character to my grandchildren and children. Am I answering your questions? If not, please be specific.

Thought y'all might want to comment or just see this.

Mightier than the sword........

Wheelbarrow Fun

Today I took apart, cleaned, painted, and reassembled my wheelbarrow. And it got a new wheel, one I don't have to put air in. I am pleased. Perhaps I will make bread tomorrow; I may choose to use the wheelbarrow. Having it fixed is liberating. I love yard work. But it is almost impossible to accomplish anything significant without a good way to tote things about. Teenagers are good, but if they won't work, they are useless. So wheelbarrows are a good substitute.

A view of the past homes, past lives...

Dark, warm.  That’s the first thing I recall.

Then it was bright and cold, and I didn’t like it.

After that, there’s nothing for a while. Then I remember laughter, bright colored lights, and a sense of something important. I have no memory of words to describe this at the time. I had the words later, but there are no words or understanding associated with any of that at the time.

My next memory is of riding my tricycle in the house, followed by playing a piano my size beside my mother and her grown-up upright Metropolitan piano.

I recall getting stung by a bee on the bottom of my foot, and my Grandma Hartin scooping me up and taking me to a little stream at the bottom of the back yard, slapping mud on the bottom of my foot.

I remember my duck, Petunia, ruining my wading pool by crapping in it constantly.

I remember cats as a constant part of my tiny world. I watched them eat, bending down to see the way the food disappeared between their small, sharp teeth.

I remember Candy, the family dog, nominally the “property” of my brother Douglas. She and I played in every yard we had until her sad and unfortunate passing at the age of 13 from a perfect storm of old age and lead poisoning. She had found a painted bowl somewhere and brought it home, obviously fond of it….. So, not knowing better at the time (1977), we fed her from it, to her distinct pleasure.  And her unfortunate detriment. The paint was lead based, and it contributed a great deal to her slow deterioration, and a truly heartbreaking trip to the vet. My parents didn't admit to me that she was not, in fact, waiting for me in California during our year in Alaska, until we had been there six months.

I remember sitting on my Grandma Hartin’s lap, begging her to read children’s books over and over. She was so patient with me, and it was because of her I learned to read by the age of three.

I remember reading, and reading, and reading….. Everything I could get my hands on, all the time. I drove my mother crazy because she couldn't get me to go out and play because my nose was buried in a book constantly. I eventually learned to somewhat balance my book time with outdoor time enough to build treehouses and forts and get into fights with the neighborhood boys.

I remember:

 a big house with a nice backyard and a sort of trickling stream at the bottom of the yard

 a ratty single-wide trailer, pink with a wide white stripe lengthwise, chickens, pigs, cats, especially SoWhat, a Manx mackerel tabby; and Smokey, a black, long-furred, loud voiced, wonderful cat

 a big, beautiful white house with a shed and a wonderful yard, where I ran across the back alley to play with Gene and Alrick Bills, and where I found a kitten dead under the shed, dragging it out by its ear with my tiny fingers, learning about death

 a green duplex with a tiny back yard and big orange apartments across the fence next door, and Lisa Andrews lived in the other half, and Smokey got hit by a car and had to make the trip to the vet so he could cross the Rainbow Bridge, and where something awful happened, was discovered, and I spent a very late night chattering to a police officer in the dining room, making paper airplanes and trying to tell while not telling until it finally all got told and Christopher Darling ended up in handcuffs somewhere else

 a friendly white house with a huge barn/shed/garage, a gazebo, a pumphouse, apple and cherry trees, a big garden, berry bushes, and pot plants growing wild under the spigot in the back yard that my father was horrified to see I had in my ignorance cultivated at the age of six, and took pictures with my friend Dennis Carver in the front yard

another ratty trailer where ice formed an inch thick on the insides of my bedroom windows and froze the curtains to the glass

an apartment in a big complex where the manager screamed at me not to play with the black children at the bottom of the complex and was told off by my mother in no uncertain terms, and we saw a mama moose and her baby walk right past the front door, only the length of a 1973 Chevrolet Impala away

a shady brown house with yellow shutters and a stepped back yard with huge trees where I jumped off a barstool in the wet bar/den and cut my face just below my nose and just above my lip so deep that at 43 I still carry the scar

a tan duplex where I had a good friend and could walk easily to the library and school and many other places

a big brown apartment complex where I built a three-story treehouse and got the cops called on me for no good reason, and had to take the treehouse down by the start of school that year

another brown apartment complex with a pool where I tanned so brown people asked what tribe I belonged to, I met a cockatiel who lived with a policeman, and I rode my bicycle farther than ever and very nearly got into trouble once that I couldn't have handled had I not seen it coming

a big rambling white house with strange rooms, windows with no glass inside the house, where I played Chinese Checkers with my Uncle Bob until I beat him, upon which he refused to play any more

a small green apartment complex where a young married woman across the hall tried to teach me Hebrew and Arabic, and fed me fascinating foods, and gave me a foreign coin that I still have in my collection, and where I climbed over the rails and roofs to shinny down the drainpipe or step directly onto the back fence of the school I attended to get to school when no one was watching, and Kristen Baker gave me a cat she called Apricot, but who I called Lancelot

a doublewide trailer in a big park with lots of other kids and a basketball court, where Chad Cover and his friend Mike accidentally hit me in the face with a basketball (I was dumb enough to be sitting under the basket reading while they played) and it terrified my mother to see the vast amount of blood, but I could only laugh at my own stupidity despite the pain

a wonderful brick house where our housemates were awful, one ate ranch dressing by the spoonful and would eat a whole freshly made container in 15 minutes and none of them washed often, and Lancelot died in the back yard on an awful day after a long illness

a red duplex where I spent my high school years as a delinquent, a truant, a reprobate, a fighter for justice, a terrible pain in the ass for my parents, and where I had a job and paid actual house bills most of the time starting at 15, and I had wonderful parties that I could decide to have on the spur of the moment, make two calls on the pay phone down the street and have twenty people there in an hour, which is odd because my mom was there, and there was no alcohol or drugs except tobacco (which was required to be consumed on the sidewalk out front) and we made dump cake and cooked and played old vinyl records and danced, and boys and girls were not allowed down the back hall at the same time

And those are the houses I recall.

Things I find interesting and wonder why no one seems to notice:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2011/10/22/the-147-companies-that-control-everything/

Especially when looked at in the context of this from OpenSecret.org :

Top Contributor to Member(34 results)

• Barclays to Chris Coons (D) in 2012
• Barclays to Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) in 2012
• Barclays to Ed Royce (R) in 2012
• Barclays to Jerrold Nadler (D) in 2012
• Barclays to Jim Himes (D) in 2012
• Barclays to Jim Moran (D) in 2012
• Barclays to John McCain (R) in 2012
• Barclays to Kirsten Gillibrand (D) in 2012
• Barclays to Mike Conaway (R) in 2012
• Barclays to Mike Honda (D) in 2012
• Barclays to Nan Hayworth (R) in 2012
• Barclays to Randy Neugebauer (R) in 2012
• Barclays to Robert L. Turner (R) in 2012
• Barclays to Scott Brown (R) in 2012
• Barclays to Scott Garrett (R) in 2012
• Barclays to Scott Tipton (R) in 2012
• Barclays to Spencer Bachus (R) in 2012
• Barclays to Steve Israel (D) in 2012
• Barclays to Tim Johnson (D) in 2012
• Barclays to Tom Carper (D) in 2012
• Barclays to Zoe Lofgren (D) in 2012
• Barclays to Carolyn B. Maloney (D) in 2010
• Barclays to Gregory W. Meeks (D) in 2010
• Barclays to Luis V. Gutierrez (D) in 2010
• Barclays to Michael E. McMahon (D) in 2010
• Barclays to Michael N. Castle (R) in 2010
• Barclays to Nita M. Lowey (D) in 2010
• Barclays to Scott Murphy (D) in 2010
• Barclays to Tim Murphy (R) in 2010
• Barclays to Walt Minnick (D) in 2010
• Barclays to Bill Foster (D) in 2008
• Barclays to Chuck Hagel (R) in 2008
• Barclays to John McCain (R) in 2008
• Barclays to Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D) in 2008

Fascinating, yes? How about this:

Top Contributor to Candidate(6 results)

• Capital Group Companies to California District 23 candidates in 2010
• Capital Group Companies to California District 29 candidates in 2010
• Capital Group Companies to California Senate candidates in 2010
• Capital Group Companies to Missouri Senate candidates in 2010
• Capital Group Companies to California District 4 candidates in 2008
• Capital Group Companies to Texas District 23 candidates in 2008






















  Top Contributor to Party Cmte(3 results)

• Capital Group Companies to DNC in 2010
• Capital Group Companies to NRSC in 2010
• Capital Group Companies to RNC in 2008