hungeski
Rally in Madison, Feb. 26th (Andy Manis / AP)
(From The Paragraph.) “Extravagant pension and health benefits” is a charge made against public service workers by the billionaire-backed political group, Americans for Prosperity (AFP).1 The charge is one of several on the web site the group put up to support the billionaire-backed Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, in his effort to bust the state’s public sector unions.2 Walker’s bill to cancel public service workers’ collective bargaining rights has spurred tens of thousands in Madison and nationwide to rally over the past three weeks to keep those rights, and has put Wisconsin at center stage in a national Republican union-busting campaign.3 “Exorbitant benefits,” “plush benefits,” “lavish contracts,” AFP complains. But, compared with private sector workers of like education and age, public sector workers’ earn less.4 So, if AFP really wants to fight extravagance, it would surely do better to look away from workers struggling to stay in the middle class, and towards their, and the governor’s, billionaire benefactors — the brothers David and Charles Koch.5+ 6 Beyond the usual extravagances of a billionaire, the Koch brothers have slathered think tanks, politicos and media with more than a hundred million dollars to push their political agenda: dismantling public health, safety, retirement, education, climate and clean energy programs, and leaving big corporations, such as their own Koch Industries, to pollute and skip taxes.7+ 8 To fight that kind of extravagance — and to pay for good public service — we would surely do better to bring back the 70% millionaire’s tax bracket of the 1970’s (or maybe the 91% rate of the 1950’s), than to cancel the rights and renege on the contracts of public service workers.9
Sources
1. ‘Quick facts about Wisconsin’s Budget Repair Legislation’ – Amercians for Prosperity
WALKER: “… in this case we said we could narrow it down, still have a role for collective bargaining, still have a role for public employee unions …”
Walker is making this claim because his budget repair bill would still allow workers to “negotiate” for their wages: under a cap that Walker and the Republican legislature want to set in stone. This is clearly not “collective bargaining” in any real sense of the word, since public employees would already have strict limits imposed upon them before they even get to the bargaining table. Plus, restricting collective bargaining to only wages means that the employer can simply change other elements of worker compensation (like slashing benefits) to make up for any wage increases, without workers having any say about it.
Walker’s goal is simply to bust public employee unions, which is exactly what happened in Indiana after Gov. Mitch Daniels (R ) ended collective bargaining for public employees ……
This is not the first time that Walker has tried to mislead the public about the practical implications of his union-busting effort. In fact, earlier this month, he ludicrously claimed that under his proposal “collective bargaining is fully intact.”
3. ‘Throngs Rally to Keep Collective Bargaining Right’ — The Paragraph, 2001-02-27.
On average, state and local government employees earn more than private-sector workers. But, state and local workers are also, on average, older and substantially better educated than private-sector workers. When state and local government employees are compared to private-sector workers with similar characteristics – particularly when workers are matched by age and education – state and local workers actually earn less, on average, than their private-sector counterparts. The wage penalty for working in the state-and-local sector is particularly large for higher-wage workers.
[Peggy] Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994— … explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channelled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”
…
A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”
6. ‘Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: Funded by the Koch Bros.’ By Andy Kroll, Mother Jones, Feb. 18, 2011
According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Walker’s gubernatorial campaign received $43,000 from the Koch Industries PAC during the 2010 election. That donation was his campaign’s second-highest, behind $43,125 in contributions from housing and realtor groups in Wisconsin. The Koch’s PAC also helped Walker via a familiar and much-used politicial maneuver designed to allow donors to skirt campaign finance limits. The PAC gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn spent $65,000 on independent expenditures to support Walker. The RGA also spent a whopping $3.4 million on TV ads and mailers attacking Walker’s opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Walker ended up beating Barrett by 5 points. The Koch money, no doubt, helped greatly.
[Charles and David Koch] poured more than a hundred million dollars into dozens of seemingly independent organizations. Tax records indicate that in 2008 the three main Koch family foundations gave money to thirty-four political and policy organizations, three of which they founded, and several of which they direct. The Kochs and their company have given additional millions to political campaigns, advocacy groups, and lobbyists. …
Only the Kochs know precisely how much they have spent on politics. Public tax records show that between 1998 and 2008 the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation spent more than forty-eight million dollars. The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is controlled by Charles Koch and his wife, along with two company employees and an accountant, spent more than twenty-eight million. The David H. Koch Charitable Foundation spent more than a hundred and twenty million. Meanwhile, since 1998 Koch Industries has spent more than fifty million dollars on lobbying. Separately, the company’s political-action committee, KochPAC, has donated some eight million dollars to political campaigns, more than eighty per cent of it to Republicans. So far in 2010, Koch Industries leads all other energy companies in political contributions, as it has since 2006. In addition, during the past dozen years the Kochs and other family members have personally spent more than two million dollars on political contributions. In the second quarter of 2010, David Koch was the biggest individual contributor to the Republican Governors Association, with a million-dollar donation. Other gifts by the Kochs may be untraceable; federal tax law permits anonymous personal donations to politically active nonprofit groups.
…
Charles Koch seems to have approached both business and politics with the deliberation of an engineer. “To bring about social change,” he told Doherty, requires “a strategy” that is “vertically and horizontally integrated,” spanning “from idea creation to policy development to education to grassroots organizations to lobbying to litigation to political action.” The project, he admitted, was extremely ambitious. “We have a radical philosophy,” he said.
In 1977, the Kochs provided the funds to launch the nation’s first libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute. According to the Center for Public Integrity, between 1986 and 1993 the Koch family gave eleven million dollars to the institute. Today, Cato has more than a hundred full-time employees, and its experts and policy papers are widely quoted and respected by the mainstream media. It describes itself as nonpartisan, and its scholars have at times been critical of both parties. But it has consistently pushed for corporate tax cuts, reductions in social services, and laissez-faire environmental policies.
When President Obama, in a 2008 speech, described the science on global warming as “beyond dispute,” the Cato Institute took out a full-page ad in the Times to contradict him. Cato’s resident scholars have relentlessly criticized political attempts to stop global warming as expensive, ineffective, and unnecessary. Ed Crane, the Cato Institute’s founder and president, told me that “global-warming theories give the government more control of the economy.”
According to the EPA, Koch businesses are huge polluters, emitting thousands of pounds of toxic pollutants. As soon as he got into office Walker started cutting environmental regulations and appointed a Republican known for her disregard for environmental regulations to lead the Department of Natural Resources. In addition, Walker has stated his opposition to clean energy jobs policies that might draw workers away from Koch-owned interests.
9. ‘Top US Marginal Income Tax Rates, 1913—2003’, TruthAndPolitics.org
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Copyright 
2005-2011 Quinn Hungeski, TheParagraph.com
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(From The Paragraph.) As throngs of citizens rally for the twelfth straight day at and in the Wisconsin state house, and as thousands more have been rallying in Ohio and other states, they are fighting for a long-held human right — that of collective bargaining.1 The right to join a collective-bargaining group — a labor union — is stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the right to collective bargaining itself is stated in the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.2+3 Those rights flow from the basic right of freedom of association. Collective bargaining, carried out by a committee of workers and elected union representatives, is a form of workplace democracy — it gives a worker a say in ones wages and working conditions.4 In the United States, private sector workers gained their collective bargaining rights in 1935, and in 1962 federal public sector workers gained theirs.6+7+8 In 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to assure collective bargaining rights to local public servants, and since then most states have done the same.9+10 Now, Republican governors and legislators of Wisconsin, Ohio, Tennessee, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, and other states have moved to severely cut or cancel collective bargaining rights for state and local public servants. And yesterday, crowds all around the country rallied in support of the fighters for workers’ rights in Wisconsin, and to stop the erasure of an established human right.11+12
Photos
Photos from some of the rallies in support of Wisconsin public servants and collective bargaining rights across the nation on Saturday, February 26, 2011:
Madison, Wisconsin (Andy Manis / AP)
Columbus, Ohio (Jay LaPrete / AP)
Albany, NY (Twitter user @_1134)
Augusta, Maine
Austin, Texas (Stephen C. Webster)
Boise, Idaho
Boston, Massachusetts (Rick Tudor)
Washington, D.C. (Jeff Bloom and Josh William)
Denver, Colorado (Twitter user @RadicalRonRand)
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Ashville, North Carolina (Douglas Ross) / Jackson, Mississippi (Landon Wilson)
Juneau, Alaska (Dan Kantak)
Montpelier, Vermont (Lance Mills)
New York, New York (William Brown)
Phoenix, Arizona (Pat Kofahl)
Sacramento, California (Robin Kozloff)
Salem, Oregon (‘Derrick’)
Salt Lake City, Utah (Ryan Kowalchik)
San Francisco, California (Stephen Pawley)
Santa Fe, New Mexico (Alf Abeyta)
Seattle, Washington (Howie in Seattle)
Springfield, Illinois (Wayne Sedgwick)
St. Paul, Minnesota
Tallahassee, Florida (Jeanette Castillo – more here)
Sources
1. ‘12 Things You Need to Know About the Uprising in Wisconsin’ by Joshua Holland, AlterNet, 2011-02-18
Walker’s bill would strip public employees of the right to bargain collectively for anything but higher pay (and would cap the amount of wage hikes they might end up gaining in negotiations). His intentions are clear — before assuming office, Walker threatened to decertify the state’s employees’ unions (until he discovered that the governor doesn’t have that power).
2. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23, Item 4: Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
The freedoms to associate and to bargain collectively are fundamental rights. … These enabling rights make it possible to promote and realize decent conditions at work. …
The recognition of the right to collective bargaining is the key to the representation of collective interests. It builds on freedom of association and renders collective representation meaningful. Collective bargaining can play an important role in enhancing enterprise performance, managing change and building harmonious industrial relations.
Collective bargaining, as a way for workers and employers to reach agreement on issues affecting the world of work, is inextricably linked to freedom of association. The right of workers and employers to establish their independent organizations is the basic prerequisite for collective bargaining and social dialogue. …
Item 82: The right to bargain collectively with an employer enhances the human dignity, liberty and autonomy of workers by giving them the opportunity to influence the establishment of workplace rules and thereby gain some control over a major aspect of their lives, namely their work (see Alberta Reference, at p. 368, and Wallace v. United Grain Growers Ltd., [1997] 3 S.C.R. 701, at para. 93). As explained by P. C. Weiler in Reconcilable Differences (1980):
Collective bargaining is not simply an instrument for pursuing external ends, whether these be mundane monetary gains or the erection of a private rule of law to protect dignity of the worker in the face of managerial authority. Rather, collective bargaining is intrinsically valuable as an experience in self-government. It is the mode in which employees participate in setting the terms and conditions of employment, rather than simply accepting what their employer chooses to give them …. [p. 33]
6. National Laabor Relations Act — Wikipedia
The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act (after its sponsor, Senator Robert F. Wagner) (Pub.L. 74-198, 49 Stat. 449, codified as amended at 29 U.S.C. § 151–169), is a 1935 United States federal law that limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector who create labor unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands.
7. National Labor Relations Act — U.S. Code TITLE 29 > CHAPTER 7 > SUBCHAPTER II > § 151
It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.
In 1962 John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10988 made collective bargaining a lawful practice in public sector negotiations. For the first time, it allowed federal employees to engage in union organizing and collective bargaining. Later, this order was expanded upon by Richard Nixon’s Executive Orders 11491 (1969) and 11616 (1971), and Gerald Ford’s Executive Order 11838 (1975), which formalized the bargaining process for federal employees. Finally, in 1978 under Jimmy Carter, the Civil Service Reform Act stipulated that the president no longer had the authority to regulate the collective bargaining process on his own behalf (Kearney, 1998; Martin, 1979; Brooks, 1971; Chamberlain, 1965). As a result, clearly established procedures had been established for regulating public sector collective bargaining (Robertson and Seneviratne, 1995).
Wisconsin … passed a comprehensive collective bargaining law in 1959 and was the birthplace of the national union representing non-federal public employees.
10. ‘Factbox: Several U.S. states consider union limits’ – Reuters, 2011-02-25
Public unions have the right to collectively bargain in about 30 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
In some states in the south and west, public employees do not have the right to collectively bargain, and in Virginia and Texas, it is illegal to enter into a formal bargaining relationship with the public sector, according to Paul Secunda, Marquette University law professor.
11. ‘Volunteers help Wis. protesters keep up the fight’ By JASON SMATHERS – Associated Press, 2011-02-26
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Copyright 2011 Quinn Hungeski, TheParagraph.com
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Mother Jones poster, U.S.Dept. of Labor, 2010
(From The Paragraph.) Mary Harris “Mother” Jones fought to bring a decent life to American workers’ families. In this pursuit she traveled the country, North and South, East and West. In 1903, the United Mine Workers’ (UMW) executive board asked her to check on the conditions of coal miners in Colorado. In her autobiography, Mother Jones told how she went undercover:1
I … got myself an old calico dress, a sunbonnet, some pins and needles, elastic and tape and such sundries, and went down to the southern coal fields of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.
As a peddler, I went through the various coal camps, eating in the homes of the miners, staying all night with their families. I found the conditions under which they lived deplorable. They were in practical slavery to the company, who owned their houses, owned all the land, so that if a miner did own a house he must vacate whenever it pleased the land owners. They were paid in scrip instead of money so that they could not go away if dissatisfied. They must buy at company stores and at company prices. The coal they mined was weighed by an agent of the company and the miners could not have a check weighman to see that full credit was given them. The schools, the churches, the roads belonged to the Company. I felt, after listening to their stories, after witnessing their long patience that the time was ripe for revolt against such brutal conditions.
In November 1903, many hard metal miners in Colorado were already on strike.2 And the mining companies’ man, the Republican James Peabody, had won the governorship in the last election, when the Democratic and Populist candidates split the progressive vote. Gov. Peabody promised to make Colorado “safe for investments”, and backed a corporate vigilante campaign to wipe out the hard metal miners’ union, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). That campaign marked what came to be known as the “Colorado Labor Wars.” In this atmosphere, on November 9th, the Colorado coal miners struck. But a few weeks later the mine operators of the northern coal fields yielded, and UMW headquarters called a convention in Louisville to end the strike in those northern fields. Mother Jones went to Louisville to stop that action, and the miners called on her to speak:
“Brothers,” I said, “You English speaking miners of the northern fields promised your southern brothers, seventy per cent of whom do not speak English, that you would support them to the end. Now you are asked to betray them, to make a separate settlement. You have a common enemy and it is your duty to fight to a finish. The enemy seeks to conquer by dividing your ranks, by making distinctions between North and South, between American and foreign. You are all miners, fighting a common cause, a common master. The iron heel feels the same to all flesh. Hunger and suffering and the cause of your children bind more closely than a common tongue. I am accused of helping the Western Federation of Miners, as if that were a crime, by one of the National board members. I plead guilty. I know no East or West, North nor South when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.”
The delegates rose en masse to cheer. The vote was taken. The majority decided to stand by the southern miners, refusing to obey the national President.
UMW president John Mitchell kept trying to get the miners of the northern fields to go back to work, and succeeded at last, when he threatened to cut off their support. Though she felt that the strike in the southern fields would now be lost, Mother Jones stayed there to fight for it. But Gov. Peabody wrote an order banishing her from the state, and sent members of the militia to take her to La Junta to take the next train out of Colorado. But Mother Jones, with thanks to a sympathetic railroad engineer, instead took the next train in to Denver:
In Denver I got a room and rested a while. I sat down and wrote a letter to the governor, the obedient little boy of the coal companies.
“Mr. Governor, you notified your dogs of war to put me out of the state. They complied with your instructions. I hold in my hand a letter that was handed to me by one of them, which says ‘under no circumstances return to this state.’ I wish to notify you, governor, that you don’t own the state. When it was admitted to the sisterhood of states, my fathers gave me a share of stock in it; and that is all they gave to you. The civil courts are open. If I break a law of state or nation it is the duty of the civil courts to deal with me. That is why my forefathers established those courts to keep dictators and tyrants such as you from interfering with civilians. I am right here in the capital, after being out nine or ten hours, four or five blocks from your office. I want to ask you, governor, what in Hell are you going to do about it?”
I called a messenger and sent it up to the governor’s office. He read it and a reporter. who was present in the office at the time told me his face grew red.
“What shall I do?” he said to the reporter. He was used to acting under orders. “Leave her alone,” counseled the reporter. “There is no more patriotic citizen in America.”
Cripple Creek circa 1900 Mother Jones described the scene around Cripple Creek, Colorado, the center of the hard metal strike:
All civil law had broken down in the Cripple Creek strike. The militia under Colonel Verdeckberg said, “We are under orders only from God and Governor Peabody.” Judge Advocate McClelland when accused of violating the constitution said, “To hell with the constitution!” There was a complete breakdown of all civil law. Habeas corpus proceedings were suspended. Free speech and assembly were forbidden. People spoke in whispers as in the days of the inquisition. Soldiers committed outrages. Strikers were arrested for vagrancy and worked in chain gangs on the street under brutal soldiers. Men, women and tiny children were packed in the Bullpen at Cripple Creek. Miners were shot dead as they slept. They were ridden from the country, their families knowing not where they had gone, or whether they lived.
When the strike started in Cripple Creek, the civil law was operating, but the governor, a banker, and in complete sympathy with the Rockefeller interests, sent the militia. They threw the officers out of office. Sheriff Robinison had a rope thrown at his feet and [was] told that if he did not resign, the rope would be about his neck.
Three men were brought into Judge Seeds’ court — miners. There was no charge lodged against them. He ordered them released but the soldiers who with drawn bayonets had attended the hearing, immediately rearrested them and took them back to jail.
Four hundred men were taken from their homes. Seventy-six of these were placed on a train, escorted to Kansas, dumped out on a prairie and told never to come back, except to meet death.
In the heat of June, in Victor, 1600 men were arrested and put in the Armory Hall. Bullpens were established and anyone be he miner, or a woman or a child that incurred the displeasure of the great coal interests, or the militia, were thrown into these horrible stockades.
Shop keepers were forbidden to sell to miners. Priests and ministers were intimidated, fearing to give them consolation. The miners opened their own stores to feed the women and children. The soldiers and hoodlums broke into the stores, looted them, broke open the safes, destroyed the scales, ripped open the sacks of flour and sugar, dumped them on the floor and poured kerosene oil over everything. The beef and meat was poisoned by the militia. Goods were stolen. The miners were without redress, for the militia was immune.
And why were these things done? Because a group of men had demanded an eight hour day, a check weighman and the abolition of the scrip system that kept them in serfdom to the mighty coal barons. That was all. Just that miners had refused to labor under these conditions. Just because miners wanted a better chance for their children, more of the sunlight, more freedom. And for this they suffered one whole year and for this they died.
Coal miners in Carbon County in Utah had also joined the strike, and Mother Jones went there to cheer them.3 There too the state militia came for Mother Jones, and quarantined her inside a tiny room on the pretense that she had been exposed to smallpox. But people would still come to talk with her:
One Saturday night I got tipped off by the postoffice master that the militia were going to raid the little tent colony in the early morning. I called the miners to me and asked them if they had guns. Sure, they had guns. They were western men, men of the mountains. I told them to go bury them between the boulders; deputies were coming to take them away from them. I did not tell them that there was to be a raid for I did not want any bloodshed. Better to submit to arrest.
Between 4:30 and 5 o’clock in the morning I heard the tramp of feet on the road. I looked out of my smallpox window and saw about forty-five deputies. They descended upon the sleeping tent colony, dragged the miners out of their beds. They did not allow them to put on their clothing. The miners begged to be allowed to put on their clothes, for at that early hour the mountain range is the coldest. Shaking with cold, followed by the shrieks and wails of their wives and children, beaten along the road by guns, they were driven like cattle to Helper. In the evening they were packed in a box car and run down to Price, the county seat and put in jail.
Not one law had these miners broken. The pitiful screams of the women and children would have penetrated Heaven. Their tears melted the heart of the Mother of Sorrows. Their crime was that they had struck against the power of gold.
Mother Jones in 1902, age 65, Library of Congress Two days after the raid, a company-hired goon burst in on Mother Jones:
[T]he stone that held my door was suddenly pushed in. A fellow jumped into the room, stuck a gun under my jaw and told me to tell him where he could get $3,000 of the miners’ money or he would blow out my brains.
“Don’t waste your powder,” I said. “You write the miners up in Indianapolis. Write Mitchell. He’s got money now.”
“I don’t want any of your damn talk,” he replied, then asked: “Hasn’t the president got money?”
“You got him in jail.”
“Haven’t you got any money?”
“Sure “ I put my hand in my pocket, took out fifty cents and turned the pocket inside out.
“Is that all you got?”
“Sure, and I’m not going to give it to you, for I want it to get a jag on to boil the Helen Gould smallpox out of my system so I will not inoculate the whole nation when I get out of here.”
“How are you going to get out of here if you haven’t money when they turn you loose?”
“The railway men will take me anywhere.”
There were two other deputies outside. They kept hollering for him to come out. “She ain’t got any money,” they kept insisting. Finally he was convinced that I had nothing.
This man, I afterward found out, had been a bank robber, but had been sworn in as deputy to crush the miners’ union. He was later killed while robbing the post office in Price. Yet he was the sort of man who was hired by the moneyed interests to crush the hopes and aspirations of the fathers and mothers and even the children of the workers.
From these strikes, Mother Jones drew lessons about unity among workers, and lawlessness among corporate and government elders:
The strike in the southern fields dragged on and on. But from the moment the southern miners had been deserted by their northern brothers, I felt their strike was doomed. Bravely did those miners fight before giving in to the old peonage. The military had no regard for human life. They were sanctified cannibals. Is it any wonder that we have murders and holdups when the youth of the land is trained by the great industrialists to a belief in force; when they see that the possession of money puts one above law?
Sources
1. ‘The Autobiography of Mother Jones’ Chapter XIII
2. ‘Colorado Labor Wars’ — Wikipedia’
3. ‘The United Mine Wokers of America’ by Allan Kent Powell
A strike began in Colorado began in September 1903, and within a matter of days coal miners in Utah’s Carbon County joined the strike when they were recruited by UMWA organizers sent from Colorado.
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By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com
hungeski
(From The Paragraph. Analysis.) Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, using his philosophy of “originalism”, says the Constitution does not guarantee equal rights to women. He recently said, “In 1868 (sic — actually 1865-6), when the 39th Congress was debating … the 14th Amendment, I don’t think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination. … Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant.”1 Leaving aside the chance that at least somebody might have thought that equal protection applied to women, there are still problems with Scalia’s view. For one, it runs against the Constitution’s plain language. The 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause reads: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.“2 Clearly, with no mention of gender, that clause would apply as it says — to “any person.” Secondly, Scalia’s view runs against settled law. The Supreme Court set a well-followed precedent 40 years ago, when it unanimously struck down a law that “males must be preferred to females” in being named executors of an estate.3 Thirdly, Scalia’s view would once again allow laws that keep women down. Among such laws from the past are those that have barred women from juries, state schools and property ownership.4+5 And finally, Scalia seems two-faced on the matter. In the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore case of 2000, Scalia used equal protection as part of a maneuver to make George W. Bush president.6 In that maneuver the five-person Republican majority stopped the manual recount of machine-rejected ballots, cited equal protection to rule that Florida must set strict ballot-counting rules, and gave Florida an impossible deadline of two hours to comply and finish the recount. Surely, it was not in the original meaning of equal protection to specially use it to install a political ally of a Supreme Court justice as president. With his problem-riddled view against protecting rights, Justice Scalia serves as a reminder: The natural rights our ancestors fought to bring us, we must stand ready to fight to keep.
Sources
1 ‘The Originalist’ – California Lawyer, January 2011
2 ‘Constitution of the United States, Amendments 11-27’ – National Archives of the United States Full text of the 14th Amendment, Article I:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
3 ‘Reed v.Reed’ By Linda Napikoski, About.com
Greenberger added that under Scalia’s doctrine, women could be legally barred from juries, paid less by the government, receive fewer benefits in the armed forces, and be excluded from state-run schools — all things that have happened in the past, before their rights to equal protection were enforced.
5 ‘Women Aren’t People Under Scalia’s Constitution’ by Ann Woolner, Business Week, January 06, 2011
That women should have rights equal to men was a radical idea in 1868 when the Reconstruction Amendments passed. (Women didn’t get the federal right to vote for another 52 years.)
At the time, state laws prevented women from owning property, signing contracts, serving on juries. Unmarried women were freer than their married sisters due to notions dating back to English common law.
The “very being and legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage,” explained William Blackstone, the definitive British legal commentator of the 18th century.
It is “consolidated into that of her husband under whose wing and protection she performs everything,” he wrote.
6 ‘Justice Scalia’s ‘Originalist’ Hypocrisy’ By Robert Parry, January 5, 2011
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By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com
hungeski
(From The Paragraph.) The days after the winter solstice, when the once-receding sun has turned and begun its walk back towards the people of the North, have for ages been marked by holidays and rising hopes.1 Now, as we go through the Great Recession, with a battered middle class and government under the sway of big corporations, we might take some hope from fighters for labor and democracy that have gone before:2
Mother Jones (1837-1930)
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Mother Jones fought to organize labor unions to bring decent conditions, hours and wages for America’s workers. And she had a keen sense of how to go about it.3 In her autobiography, she wrote:4
One night I went with an organizer named Scott to a mining town in the Fairmont (West Virginia) district where the miners had asked me to hold a meeting. When we got off the car I asked Scott where I was to speak and he pointed to a frame building. We walked in. There were lighted candles on an altar. I looked around in the dim light. We were in a church and the benches were filled with miners.
Outside the railing of the altar was a table. At one end sat the priest with the money of the union in his hands. The president of the local union sat at the other end of the table. I marched down the aisle.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Holding a meeting,” said the president.
“What for?”
“For the union, Mother. We rented the church for our meetings.”
I reached over and took the money from priest. Then I turned to the miners.
“Boys,” I said, “this is a praying institution. You should not commercialize it. Get up every one of you and go out in the open fields.”
They got up and went out and sat around a field while I spoke to them. The sheriff was there and he did not allow any traffic to go along the road while I was speaking. In front of us was a schoolhouse. I pointed to it and I said, “Your ancestors fought for you to have a share in that institution over there. It’s yours. See the school board, and every Friday night hold your meetings there. Have your wives clean it up Saturday morning for the children to enter Monday. Your organization is not a praying institution. It’s a fighting institution. It’s an educational institution along industrial lines. Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!“
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
During World War II, Albert Camus fought for the French Resistance, writing for the Resistance newspaper, Combat.5 Towards the war’s end, as France at last threw off Nazi rule, Camus fought to bring open, democratic government. He wrote in Combat:6
… For what is at stake is indeed man’s salvation. And this is to be achieved not by taking a position outside the world but through history itself. The point is to serve man’s dignity by means that remain dignified in the midst of a history that is not. The difficult and paradoxical nature of such an undertaking is clear.
Indeed, we know that man’s salvation may well be impossible, yet we say that this is no reason to stop trying and, furthermore, that it is not permissible to call it impossible before making a genuine effort to prove that it isn’t.
We have that opportunity today. This country is poor, and we are poor with it. Europe is miserable, and its misery is ours. Lacking wealth and a material heritage, we have perhaps acquired a freedom that allows us to indulge in that folly called truth.
Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
Howard Zinn also fought during World War II, but in the U.S. military flying bombing runs.7 After the war, he became a teacher and historian, and fought against war-making, and for civil rights. And he wrote “A People’s History of the United States”.8 He wrote:9
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Others
Here are links to stories in The Paragraph about other fighters for democracy, both dead and living:
Sources
1 ‘Winter Solstice 2009: Facts on Shortest Day of the Year’ – National Geographic
Throughout history, humans have celebrated the winter solstice, often with an appreciative eye toward the return of summer sunlight.
Massive prehistoric monuments such as Ireland’s mysterious Newgrange tomb (video) are aligned to capture the light at the moment of the winter solstice sunrise.
Germanic peoples of Northern Europe honored the winter solstice with Yule festivals—the origin of the still-standing tradition of the long-burning Yule log.
The Roman feast of Saturnalia, honoring the God Saturn, was a weeklong December feast that included the observance of the winter solstice. Romans also celebrated the lengthening of days following the solstice by paying homage to Mithra—an ancient Persian god of light.
2 Old Law Could Stop Corporate Dinosaurs
3 ‘Book Review: The Most Dangerous Woman in America’ – Joan Johnson Lewis
4 Autobiography of Mother Jones
7 ‘You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times’ (autobiography) – Howard Zinn The movie version is available at Netflix.
8 ‘A People’s History of the United States’ by Howard Zinn
9 ‘You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times’ – Howard Zinn, p.208
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By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com
hungeski
(From The Paragraph.) In 1911, Helen Keller, in a private letter to a friend, wrote:
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.1
Though Keller did not argue for not voting, she did express the age-old lament of political progressives, some of whom have withheld their votes so to teach the Democrats (let’s call them TweedleDEE) a lesson. But, as Robert Parry points out, that strategy has not worked to forward progressive policy.2 For example, in 1968, many anti-war voters stayed home or voted third-party, instead of voting for the liberal Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who would not come out against the war in Vietnam. An argument that I remember floating around during that race was that it would be better for the hard-right Richard Nixon to win, so to more quickly bring about “the revolution.” With less than a one percent edge in the popular vote, Nixon won the presidency, and broadened the war. During his term, 20,000 U.S. soldiers and millions of Indochinese died. Again, in 1980, many progressive voters stayed home or voted for minor candidates, instead of voting for President Jimmy Carter, whom they viewed as too cautious and too centrist. The polls showed a tight race till close to election day, which would be the first anniversary of Americans being held hostage in Iran. Ronald Reagan pulled ahead and went on to win in a landslide. While the song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” played on the radio, Reagan enacted policies that drove out manufacturing, damaged unions, turned the nation back to oil-guzzling, and boosted death squads that killed tens of thousands in Latin America. To pressure the Soviets in Afghanistan, Reagan funded Islamist radicals that later formed the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and allowed Pakistan to get the bomb. As a third example, in 2000, some progressives skipped over the centrist Democrat Al Gore to support their fellow progressive, Ralph Nader, running as a Green. These progressives bought into the story that the hard-line neoconservative George W. Bush was actually a moderate Republican — and Nader himself fanned this fable with his statement that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between Bush and Gore. It turned out that votes for Nader in Florida made the race so close that Bush could claim victory and get five Republicans on the Supreme Court to stop the recount – in which Gore, going by the later news consortium recount, would have won.3 The Bush II regime brought damaging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, secret wiretapping of citizens, cancelling of rights to a fair trial, torture, tax cuts for the rich, cuts in corporate regulation, a crashed economy, a shrunken and battered middle class, and eight years of inaction on global warming. Now, many progressives, once pumped up by the 2008 election, which brought a president that knows progressive policy, and which brought huge Democratic majorities to both houses of Congress, are dispirited by the back-pedaling and the scaled-back legislation enacted. Once again, some progressives talk of not voting or voting third-party in the coming election. But with Republicans more hard-line reactionary than ever, and in view of this history of damage done by not voting Democratic, the choice for progressives — as well as liberals, centrists and conservatives — seems clear: Vote for TweedleDEE!
~~~
Tweedledum ( R ) is angry that his rattle is broken, and blames Tweedledee (D), who hides under an umbrella, as Alice tries to sooth. But if the rattle represents the general welfare of the United States, then it would have been Tweedledum himself who had broken it.
Sources
1 ‘Helen Keller in Her Own Words’ — The Paragraph, February 12th, 2006
2 ‘The ‘Teach-the-Dems-a-Lesson’ Myth’:By Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com, October 15, 2010
3 ‘So Bush Did Steal the White House’ by Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com, 2001-11-22
Tweedledum and Tweedledee from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll; illustrations by John Tenniel
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By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com
hungeski
(From The Paragraph.) With House minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) already picking committee assignments, it seems the Republicans are eager to take control of the House — and resume America’s rapid downward spin into plutocracy. ++1 The downward spin sped up in 2001, when the Bush II Republicans came to power, slashed taxes for millionaires, and cut –- and refused to enforce — corporate regulation.2+3 That policy led to a jobless “economic expansion”, based on easy credit and inflating a housing bubble, that left the rich richer and the middle class poorer.4 In 2008, the bubble burst, shedding light on massive Wall Street fraud, and the Bush Crash occurred, throwing many millions out of work and home.5 In 2009, the Obama Democrats came to power, and slowed – if not reversed — the downward spin, and helped the stressed middle class and poor. President Obama continued use of the TARP bailout fund, which helped save the financial system and Wall Street banks — and also the retirement accounts of millions.6 Obama also used TARP to rescue Chrysler and GM, and keep many U.S. automobile factories open and running.7 Congressional Democrats – in the face of solid Republican opposition and absurdly frequent filibusters — passed acts to help people get health care and college education, rein in the banking and health insurance corporations, boost clean energy, and keep three-and-a-half million people working that would otherwise have been jobless.8+9+10+11+12+13+14 But, earlier this year, five Republican Supreme Court justices ruled that corporations could pour unlimited money into campaign ads right up to election day.15 And so corporate money has flowed, mainly for TV ads smearing Democratic candidates.16 Now, with voting day coming up Tuesday, and with Republicans again pushing tax cuts for millionaires and cuts in corporate regulation — along with cuts in help for the middle class and poor — we will soon see whether America keeps slowing or again speeds up its downward spin into plutocracy.17+18
Definition
plutocracy: Government by the wealthy.
Sources
2 ‘Five Myths about the Bush Tax Cut’ by William G. Gale, The Washington Post, 2010-08-01
… According to the Congressional Budget Office and other authorities, extending all of the Bush tax cuts would have a small bang for the buck, the equivalent of a 10- to 40-cent increase in GDP for every dollar spent.
Why? As the CBO notes, most Bush tax cut dollars go to higher-income households, and these top earners don’t spend as much of their income as lower earners. In fact, of 11 potential stimulus policies the CBO recently examined, an extension of all of the Bush tax cuts ties for lowest bang for the buck. …
3 ‘Bush II Slowed SEC During Financial Fraud Fury’ — The Paragraph, 2009-06-18
… the median income of working-age households (those headed by someone less than 65) rose insignificantly in 2007, and was $2,010 below its 2000 level.
…
The poverty rate grew from 11.3% to 12.5%. During the seven-year cycle, the poverty rate declined significantly in only one year (2006). In contrast, poverty rates fell significantly in the 1990s.
The economy of course expanded in the 2000s, but that growth clearly failed to reach most households, a dynamic that implicates growing income inequality.
For example, output per hour, or productivity, grew strongly in the 2000s, up 2.5% per year from 2000 to 2007, compared to 2.0% in the 1990s. Economists consider productivity growth the key determinant of rising living standards. Yet the fact that these disappointing income, poverty, and earnings trends occurred in the context of strong productivity growth is a reminder that in today’s economy, productivity growth creates only the potential for higher living standards. As long as most workers lack the bargaining power to claim their share of the growth they have helped to generate, that potential will not be realized.
5 ‘An Inside Story of Wall Street Bank Crashes’ — The Paragraph, December 26th, 2008
6 ‘The Money Market Run’ by Matthew Yglesias, Think Progress, 2010-10-25
It would be silly to say that the policies adopted in response to this—TARP and the AIG bailout, primarily—were the only possible responses. But absent some kind of (nominally) costly and unpopular bailout we would have had a costly and unpopular sequence in which people’s “safe” money market accounts were wiped out, to say nothing of perfectly solvent firms being suddenly unable to meet payroll.
While the revivals of GM and Chrysler are still works in progress, at least the automakers are still alive to launch the Chevrolet Volt and the new Jeep Grand Cherokee from the Detroit plants Obama will visit. And that’s about as big a triumph as the president can claim from his first 18 months on the job.
Yes, there are still partisan critics sniping about bailouts and “Government Motors.” But make no mistake about the Detroit rescue.
The fact that GM and Chrysler are not only alive but modestly profitable in a weak market, after years of losing billions of dollars when car and truck sales were 50% higher, looks like more than just a successful government intervention.
It looks like a flat-out miracle.
…
Most banks have paid back their bailout money. GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcies as leaner companies, repaid loans and stopped losing money. They are moving to shed their government ownership via stock offerings.
8 ‘Political party (ab)use of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate’ by thefourthbranch, Daily Kos, 2010-02-18 The numbers show the filibuster rate doubled (139 cloture motions) when Democrats took (the 110th) Congress in 2007. The next note shows the rate continued (123 cloture motions with 3 months to go) in the current, 111th Congress. — Q.H.
9 ‘Cloture Motions – 111th Congress’ — U.S. Senate
From January 3, 2009 through September 30, 2010, 123 cloture motions have been filed.
10 ‘Provisions of the Affordable Care Act, By Year’ — HealthCare.gov
Ending one of the fiercest lobbying fights in Washington, Congress voted Thursday to force commercial banks out of the federal student loan market, cutting off billions of dollars in profits in a sweeping restructuring of financial-aid programs and redirecting most of the money to new education initiatives.
The revamping of student-loan programs was included in — if overshadowed by — the final health care package. The vote was 56 to 43 in the Senate and 220 to 207 in the House, with Republicans unanimously opposed in both chambers.
Since the bank-based loan program began in 1965, commercial banks like Sallie Mae and Nelnet have received guaranteed federal subsidies to lend money to students, with the government assuming nearly all the risk. Democrats have long denounced the program, saying it fattened the bottom line for banks at the expense of students and taxpayers.
“Why are we paying people to lend the government’s money and then the government guarantees the loan and the government takes back the loan?” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.
Democrats celebrated the legislation, a centerpiece of President Obama’s education agenda, as a far-reaching overhaul of federal financial aid, providing a huge infusion of money to the Pell grant program and offering new help to lower-income graduates in getting out from under crushing student debt. …
12 ‘Financial Reform Passes, But What Does That Mean?’ by John Nichols, The Nation, July 16, 2010
Here’s Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, one of the best players in the chamber on regulatory issues:
…
“I am pleased that the final bill includes the Merkley-Levin amendment that will ban high-risk trading inside the banks and put an end to conflicts of interest, where giants like Goldman Sachs bet against the very securities they were selling to their customers. This provision will encourage banks to return to the days where their main focus was lending. I can’t thank Senator Carl Levin enough for his tireless work to ensure that our banks won’t engage in high-risk trading and put our entire financial system at risk.
“In addition, I’m pleased that the bill includes provisions I championed to end some of the most egregious mortgage practices that led to the housing crisis and cost millions of families their homes. The bill will ban steering payments, liar loans, and prepayment penalties and give Americans the transparency they deserve when purchasing their own home. It will also create a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dedicated to protecting consumers from financial tricks and traps, such as unfair overdraft fees and exploding interest rates.
“Now, this bill will not solve every problem in our financial system, and from my perspective, could be stronger in significant ways. Regulators have been given an enormous amount of responsibility to implement the bill as intended. In order to ensure that they hold up their end of the bargain, Congress needs to conduct vigorous oversight of government regulators and our financial markets.
Over a year after the Recovery Act of 2009 was signed into law, the U.S. Department of Energy says that $32.5 billion of the $36.7 billion it was authorized to spend is “spoken for,” and nearly 5,000 projects have been funded. The department has selected all but 1 percent of the proposals that will receive grants and contracts. So far, however, only $3.5 billion has actually been spent, and the money has only directly created 22,841 jobs.
This week, the DOE’s senior advisor for Recovery Act implementation, Matt Rogers, provided an update on the department’s progress in identifying projects that will receive funding. While much of the Recovery Act focused on funding for near-term recession relief, including tax relief for individuals and support for local and state governments, the funding allocated to the DOE was mainly for projects with longer term payoffs, including building infrastructure such as wind farms and battery factories and conducting research.
CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the second quarter of calendar year 2010:
- They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent,
- Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points,
- Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million, and
- Increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 2.0 million to 4.8 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise (see Table 1). (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers).
16 ‘Outside Spending’ — OpenSecrets.org Chart “Total Liberal vs. Conservative Outside Spending, Excluding Party Committees” includes both corporate and union money, and shows, as of 2010-10-30, $89M going through liberal groups vs. $189M going through conservative groups. — Q.H.
House Republicans on Thursday rolled out their “Pledge to America,” a sweeping conservative agenda that calls for reining in federal spending, permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts, and repealing President Obama’s signature health care law.
19 ‘Republican Agenda: Can You Figure It Out?’, _Buzzflash.com, 2010-10-30
[T]hese are the Republican’s own talking points, an agenda they’ve clearly said they will set in motion (see sources below):
- Shut down government in order to repeal Obamacare, and force a battle to privatize Social Security.
- Scale back financial reforms meant to prevent a repeat of the 2008 economic meltdown
- Oppose preferential tax cuts for small businesses and middle class families, push for an end to the IRS, and in its place, establish a nationwide 25 percent sales tax on all purchases
- End unemployment benefits (many Republican candidates call them unconstitutional)
- End Medicare (also called unconstitutional by many high-profile Republicans running this year)
- Issue “subpoena after subpoena” investigating all things Obama, from his citizenship, birthplace, supposed connections to ACCORN and some nonsense that he’s part of a new Black Panther party.
- Reverse all global warming legislation. Every major Republican candidate this year has claimed that global warming is a myth made up by liberals.
- Kill Food Stamps. Again, most high-profile Republican candidates regard Food Stamps as… you guessed it…unconstitutional.
- Continue holding up Obama’s executive appointments. These are staff positions the President needs to fill in order to run federal agencies, everything from Parks and Forest services to regulatory agencies, Veterans’ services, Medicare and Social Security services as well. The Republicans have used a legislative trick called a “secret hold” 146 times to thwart bill passage, legislative appointments and emergency legislative. During the Bush years, Democrats used the hold 16 times.
* * *
By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com
hungeski 
(From The Paragraph.) Nikola Tesla was a visionary inventor who devoted his life to making an abundant, clean energy supply for humanity. Among his inventions toward that end were alternating current (AC) power transmission, the AC motor, and the bladeless turbine.1 He also invented radio, neon & fluorescent lighting, x-ray imaging, robotics, wireless remote control, wireless energy transmission and more. And in 1900, he described his World-System of wireless communications, which has a notable likeness to the Internet.2
Invention, and capacity for work, ran in Tesla’s family. He writes:3
My mother descended from … a line of inventors. … [She] was an inventor of the first order and would, I believe, have achieved great things had she not been so remote from modern life and its multifold opportunities. She invented and constructed all kinds of tools and devices and wove the finest designs from thread which was spun by her. … She worked indefatigably, from break of day till late at night, and most of the wearing apparel and furnishings of the home were the product of her hands. …
Tesla gladly worked much:
… I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labor, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.
… and slept little:4
I sleep about one and one-half hours a night. I think that is enough for any man. … There are so many things to do I do not want to spend time sleeping needlessly. In my family all were poor sleepers. Time spent in sleep is lost time, we always felt.
Tesla had a photographic memory, which, in his childhood, gave him trouble:3
… In my boyhood I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thought and action. They were pictures of things and scenes which I had really seen, never of those I imagined. When a word was spoken to me the image of the object it designated would present itself vividly to my vision and sometimes I was quite unable to distinguish whether what I saw was tangible or not. This caused me great discomfort and anxiety. … Sometimes it would even remain fixt in space tho I pushed my hand thru it.
Tesla learned to control his unbidden photographic visions by concentration and imagination:
Every night (and sometimes during the day), when alone, I would start on my [mental] journeys—see new places, cities and countries—live there, meet people and make friendships and acquaintances and, however unbelievable, it is a fact that they were just as dear to me as those in actual life and not a bit less intense in their manifestations.
He later used his skill at concentration and his photographic memory for inventing. He tells how he invented the AC motor, which his professor told him was impossible:5
… I started by first picturing in my mind a direct-current machine, running it and following the changing flow of the currents in the armature. Then I would imagine an alternator and investigate the progresses taking place in a similar manner. Next I would visualize systems comprising motors and generators and operate them in various ways.
The images I saw were to me perfectly real and tangible. All my remaining term in Gratz was passed in intense but fruitless efforts of this kind, and I almost came to the conclusion that the problem was insolvable. …
In 1880 I went to Prague, Bohemia, …. It was in that city that I made a decided advance, which consisted in detaching the commutator from the machine and studying the phenomena in this new aspect, but still without result. …
After taking a job in Budapest, Tesla suffered a “complete breakdown of the nerves”:
What I experienced during the period of that illness surpasses all belief. …
… In Budapest I could hear the ticking of a watch with three rooms between me and the time-piece. A fly alighting on a table in the room would cause a dull thud in my ear. A carriage passing at a distance of a few miles fairly shook my whole body. The whistle of a locomotive twenty or thirty miles away made the bench or chair on which I sat vibrate so strongly that the pain was unbearable. The ground under my feet trembled continuously. …
But, after he regained his health, he felt he would succeed:
In attacking the problem again, I almost regretted that the struggle was soon to end. I had so much energy to spare. ,,, Back in the deep recesses of the brain was the solution, but I could net yet give it outward expression.
A flash of inspiration gave him the answer:
One afternoon, which is ever present in my recollection, I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the City Park and reciting poetry. … The sun was just setting and reminded me of the glorious passage [from Goethe’s Faust]:
Sie ruckt und weicht, der Tag ist uberlebt,
Dort eilt sie hin und fordert neues Leben.
Oh, dass kein Flugel mich vom Boden hebt
Ihr nach und immer nach zu streben!
[The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!]11
As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightening and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand, the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and my companion understood them perfectly. The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him, “See my motor here; watch me reverse it.” … A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally, I would have given for that one which I had wrested from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence..
A year or so passed before Tesla got a chance to build the motor:6
… I finally had the satisfaction of seeing the rotation effected by alternating currents of different phase, and without sliding contacts or commutator, as I had conceived a year before. It was an exquisite pleasure but not to compare with the delirium of joy following the first revelation.
Constantly working, and finding a cause for every effect, Tesla came to feel that he was an automaton, and to believe that true of every being:3
… I became aware, to my surprise, that every thought I conceived was suggested by an external impression. Not only this but all my actions were prompted in a similar way. In the course of time it became perfectly evident to me that I was merely an automaton endowed with power of movement, responding to the stimuli of the sense organs and thinking and acting accordingly. …
This led Tesla to invent a robot. Though it was remotely controlled, Tesla foresaw a robot that could, on its own, think and react:
… The practical result of this was the art of telautomatics which has been so far carried out only in an imperfect manner. Its latent possibilities will, however, be eventually shown. I have been since years planning self-controlled automata and believe that mechanisms can be produced which will act as if possest of reason, to a limited degree, and will create a revolution in many commercial and industrial departments.
Tesla strove for human progress, and pictured it in mechanical terms:7
Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors. We may definitely say that it is a movement even if we do not fully understand its nature. Movement implies a body which is being moved and a force which propels it against resistance. Man, in the large, is a mass urged on by a force. Hence the general laws governing movement in the realm of mechanics are applicable to humanity.
There are three ways by which the energy which determines human progress can be increased: First, we may increase the mass. This, in the case of humanity, would mean the improvement of living conditions, health, eugenics, etc. Second, we may reduce the frictional forces which impede progress, such as ignorance, insanity, and religious fanaticism. Third, we may multiply the energy of the human mass by enchaining the forces of the universe, like those of the sun, the ocean, the winds and tides.
The first method increases food and well-being. The second tends to bring peace. The third enhances our ability to work and to achieve. There can be no progress that is not constantly directed toward increasing well-being, peace, and achievement. Here the mechanistic conception of life is one with the teachings of Buddha and the Sermon on the Mount.
Tesla aimed at the third way of human progress: multiplying the energy supply “by enchaining the forces of the universe” — but without burning fuel:8
[W]hatever our resources:of primary energy may be in the future, we must, to be rational, obtain it without consumption of any material. Long ago I came to this conclusion, and to arrive at this result only two ways … appeared possible—either to turn to use the energy of the sun stored in the ambient medium, or to transmit, through the medium, the sun’s energy to distant places from some locality where it was obtainable without consumption of material.
Tesla particularly worked on wireless energy transmission, with the idea of beaming energy across the world. He built a tower on Long Island for the purpose, but was not successful before his funding ran out:2
A plant was built on Long Island with a tower 187 feet high, having a spherical terminal about 68 feet in diameter. These dimensions were adequate for the transmission of virtually any amount of energy. Originally only from 200 to 300 K.W. were provided but I intended to employ later several thousand horsepower. The transmitter was to emit a wave complex of special characteristics and I had devised a unique method of telephonic control of any amount of energy.
Tesla warned against an energy supply that would be centrally controlled:9
‘If we were to release the energy of atoms or discover some other way of developing cheap and unlimited power at any point on the globe, this accomplishment, instead of being a blessing, might bring disaster to mankind in giving rise to dissension and anarchy, which would ultimately result in the enthronement of the hated regime of force.
At the turn of the 20th century, Tesla gave a rundown of energy sources and their prospects for the 1900’s. Tesla saw coal, oil and gas as wasteful and limited:8
[T]o burn coal, however efficiently … would be ,,, a phase in the evolution toward something much more perfect. After all, in generating electricity in this manner, we should be destroying material, and this would be a barbarous process. We ought to be able to obtain the energy we need without consumption of material. … The man who should stop this senseless waste would be a great benefactor of humanity, though the solution he would offer could not be a permanent one, since it would ultimately lead to the exhaustion of the store of material.
Tesla saw water power as the best:
Evidently all electrical energy obtained from a waterfall … is a net gain to mankind, which is all the more effective as it is secured with little expenditure of human effort …
… and favored use of wind:
… [S]ince time immemorial man has had at his disposal a fairly good machine which has enabled him to utilize the energy of the ambient medium. This machine is the windmill. Contrary to popular belief, the power obtainable from wind is very considerable. …
Tesla saw promise in solar …
A far better way, however, to obtain power would be to avail ourselves of the sun’s rays, which beat the earth incessantly and supply energy at a maximum rate of over four million horsepower per square mile. … [A]n inexhaustible source of power would be opened up by the discovery of some efficient method of utilizing the energy of the rays.
… and geothermal:
Another way of getting motive power from the medium without consuming any material would be to utilize the heat contained in the earth, the water, or the air for driving an engine. It is a well-known fact that the interior portions of the globe are very hot, the temperature rising, as observations show, with the approach to the center at the rate of approximately 1 degree C. for every hundred feet of depth. The difficulties of sinking shafts and placing boilers at depths of, say, twelve thousand feet, corresponding to an increase in temperature of about 120 degrees C., are not insuperable, and we could certainly avail ourselves in this way of the internal heat of the globe.
Tesla saw the central task of energy development to be the invention of a way to get more use out of wind, solar and geothermal:
The windmill, the solar engine, the engine driven by terrestrial heat, had their limitations in the amount of power obtainable. Some new way had to be discovered which would enable us to get more energy. There was enough heat-energy in the medium, but only a small part of it was available for the operation of an engine in the ways then known. Besides, the energy was obtainable only at a very slow rate. Clearly, then, the problem was to discover some new method which would make it possible both to utilize more of the heat-energy of the medium and also to draw it away from the same at a more rapid rate.
Tesla did not live to see a clean primary energy source for humanity — and, as of yet, neither have we. But Tesla kept pushing toward it. In 1931, at the age of 75, he wrote:10
It was clear to me many years ago that a new and better source of power had to be discovered to meet the ever increasing demands of mankind. In a lecture delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia University May 20, 1891, I said: “We are whirling through endless space with inconceivable speed, all around us everything is spinning, everything is moving, everywhere is energy. There must be some way of availing ourselves of this energy more directly. Then, with the light obtained from the medium, with the power derived from it, with every form of energy obtained without effort, from the store forever inexhaustible, humanity will advance with giant strides.”
I have thought and worked with this object in view unremittingly and am glad to say that I have sufficient theoretical and experimental evidence to fill me with hope, not to say confidence, that my efforts of years will be rewarded and that we shall have at our disposal a new source of power, superior even to the hydro-electric, which may be obtained by means of simple apparatus everywhere and in almost constant and unlimited amount.
Further Info
‘Nikola Tesla’s Renewable Energy Vision’ By Lisa Pease, Consortiumnews.com, July 10, 2010
Sources
1 ‘Tesla – Life and Legacy’ – PBS
2 ‘My Inventions – The Magnifying Transmitter’ – Nikola Tesla
This [magnifying transmitter] invention was one of a number comprised in my “World-System” of wireless transmission which I undertook to commercialize on my return to New York in 1900. As to the immediate purposes of my enterprise, they were clearly outlined in a technical statement of that period from which I quote:
“The ‘World-System’ has resulted from a combination of several original discoveries made by the inventor in the course of long continued research and experimentation. It makes possible not only the instantaneous and precise wireless transmission of any kind of signals, messages or characters, to all parts of the world, but also the inter-connection of the existing telegraph, telephone, and other signal stations without any change in their present equipment. By its means, for instance, a telephone subscriber here may call up and talk to any other subscriber on the Globe. An inexpensive receiver, not bigger than a watch, will enable him to listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a speech delivered or music played in some other place, however distant. These examples are cited merely to give an idea of the possibilities of this great scientific advance, which annihilates distance and makes that perfect natural conductor, the Earth, available for all the innumerable purposes which human ingenuity has found for a line-wire. One far-reaching result of this is that any device capable of being operated thru one or more wires (at a distance obviously restricted) can likewise be actuated, without artificial conductors and with the same facility and accuracy, at distances to which there are no limits other than those imposed by the physical dimensions of the Globe. Thus, not only will entirely new fields for commercial exploitation be opened up by this ideal method of transmission but the old ones vastly extended.
The ‘World-System’ is based on the application of the following important inventions and discoveries:
1. The ‘Tesla Transformer.’ This apparatus is in the production of electrical vibrations as revolutionary as gunpowder was in warfare. Currents many times stronger than any ever generated in the usual ways, and sparks over one hundred feet long, have been produced by the inventor with an instrument of this kind.
2. The ‘Magnifying Transmitter.’ This is Tesla’s best invention, a peculiar transformer specially adapted to excite the Earth, which is in the transmission of electrical energy what the telescope is in astronomical observation. By the use of this marvelous device he has already set up electrical movements of greater intensity than those of lightning and passed a current, sufficient to light more than two hundred incandescent lamps, around the Globe.
3. The ‘Tesla Wireless System.’ This system comprises a number of improvements and is the only means known for transmitting economically electrical energy to a distance without wires. Careful tests and measurements in connection with an experimental station of great activity, erected by the inventor in Colorado, have demonstrated that power in any desired amount can be conveyed, clear across the Globe if necessary, with a loss not exceeding a few per cent.
4. The ‘Art of Individualization.’ This invention of Tesla’s is to primitive ‘tuning’ what refined language is to unarticulated expression. It makes possible the transmission of signals or messages absolutely secret and exclusive both in the active and passive aspect, that is, non-interfering as well as non-interferable. Each signal is like an individual of unmistakable identity and there is virtually no limit to the number of stations or instruments which can be simultaneously operated without the slightest mutual disturbance.
5. ‘The Terrestrial Stationary Waves.’ This wonderful discovery, popularly explained, means that the Earth is responsive to electrical vibrations of definite pitch just as a tuning fork to certain waves of sound. These particular electrical vibrations, capable of powerfully exciting the Globe, lend themselves to innumerable uses of great importance commercially and in many other respects.
The first ‘World-System’ power plant can be put in operation in nine months. With this power plant it will be practicable to attain electrical activities up to ten million horsepower and it is designed to serve for as many technical achievements as are possible without due expense. Among these the following may be mentioned:
(1) The inter-connection of the existing telegraph exchanges or offices all over the world;
(2) The establishment of a secret and non-interferable government telegraph service;
(3) The inter-connection of all the present telephone exchanges or offices on the Globe;
(4) The universal distribution of general news, by telegraph or telephone, in connection with the Press;
(5) The establishment of such a ‘World-System’ of intelligence transmission for exclusive private use;
(6) The inter-connection and operation of all stock tickers of the world;
(7) The establishment of a ‘World-System’ of musical distribution, etc.;
(8) The universal registration of time by cheap clocks indicating the hour with astronomical precision and requiring no attention whatever;
(9) The world transmission of typed or handwritten characters, letters, checks, etc.;
(10) The establishment of a universal marine service enabling the navigators of all ships to steer perfectly without compass, to determine the exact location, hour and speed, to prevent collisions and disasters, etc.;
(11) The inauguration of a system of world-printing on land and sea;
(12) The world reproduction of photographic pictures and all kinds of drawings or records.”
3 ‘My Inventions – My Early Life’ – Nikola Tesla
4 ‘DR. TESLA VISIONS THE END OF AIRCRAFT IN WAR’ By Helen Welshimer
5 ‘My Inventions – My Later Endeavors’ – Nikola Tesla
6 ‘My Inventions – The Discovery of the Tesla Coil and Transformer’ – Nikola Tesla
7 ‘A MACHINE TO END WAR’ by Nikola Tesla as told to George Sylvester Viereck, Liberty , February 1937
9 ‘My Inventions – The Art of Telautomatics’ – Nikola Tesla
10 ‘OUR FUTURE MOTIVE POWER’ by Nikola Tesla, Everyday Science and Mechanics, December 1931
11 ‘Tesla’s Early Years’ – PBS
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By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com
hungeski 
(From The Paragraph.) As Democrats try to extend tax cuts for 98% of the people, Republicans threaten to kill those tax cuts by filibuster, unless they can also extend tax cuts for the 2% with the highest incomes ($250,000+, filing jointly).1 Last week, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) cast the expiration of those tax cuts for the well-off and the rich as unfair to small business owners:2
We can’t let the people who’ve been hit hardest by this recession and who we need to create the jobs that will get us out of it foot the bill for the Democrats’ two-year adventure in expanded government
Before addressing the “hit hardest” claim, let’s touch on McConnell’s claims about job creation and “adventure in expanded government.” Here are a few of the relevant facts:
- Of small business owners, only 3% are in the affected quarter-million-plus tax brackets.3
- Historically, the jobless rate has been lower when taxes on the rich have been higher.4
- The Great Recession and the Bush Crash threw millions out of work — and there would have been three-and-a-half million more out of work were it not for the Democrats’ recovery act (stimulus).5
- The Democrats’ health care act cuts the deficit,6 and helps people and businesses.7
Now, let’s consider McConnell’s notion that someone making a quarter-million-plus would be among those “hit hardest by this recession”. Surely there would be no room left in that category, once one had considered the millions thrown out of work – and out of house and home.9+10 So it seems McConnell’s words just show where his sympathy lies – and one way the GOP earns the title: “Party of the Rich.”11
Sources
1 ‘Five Myths about the Bush Tax Cut’ by William G. Gale, The Washington Post, 2010-08-01
Despite that emotional appeal, Internal Revenue Service statistics indicate that only 3 percent of small businesses would be subject to the higher tax, and many studies of previous tax increases suggest that it would have minimal impact on hiring.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 97 percent of all businesses owners do not earn enough to be subject to the higher rates, which would be levied on income of over $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families.
4 ‘TAX CUTS: THEOLOGY, FACTS & TOTALLY F**KED’ by Larry Beinhart, Huffington Post, November 17, 2008
The brute facts are these:
- Large income tax cuts are followed by a bubble and then a crash.
- High income taxes correlate with economic growth.
- Income tax increases are followed by economic growth.
- Moderate income tax cuts are followed by a flat economy.
All this is especially true as applied to the top tax rates, the amount paid on income that exceeds the highest bracket.
CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the second quarter of calendar year 2010:
They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between –
- 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent,
- Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points,
- Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million, and
- Increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 2.0 million to 4.8 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise (see Table 1). (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers).
6 ‘How Health Care Reform Reduces the Deficit in 5 Not-So-Easy Steps’ – _Newsweek, 2010-03-21
… “Washington may live and die by the pronouncements of the Congressional Budget Office,” wrote the pollsters Doug Schoen and Scott Rasmussen in the Wall Street Journal, “but 81 percent of voters say it’s likely [health care reform] will end up costing more than projected.”
That’s left Democrats in a worst-of-both-worlds situation: They’ve built a bill that Washington’s toughest scorekeeper says will cut the deficit by more than a trillion dollars over 20 years. They’re getting attacked for the taxes and Medicare reforms that save all that money. But the country doesn’t believe the savings are real.
One of the problems Democrats have had is that it’s very easy to understand the one thing the bill does to spend money—purchase insurance for people who can’t afford it—and considerably harder to explain the many things it does to save money. Another is that a lot of the savings have to do with changing how medicine is practiced, which people are less familiar with than how insurance is purchased.
But the fact that the cost controls are complicated and numerous doesn’t mean they’re absent, or that they won’t work. Here’s a guide to a few of the bill’s best ideas, and how they work: …
7 ‘About the Law’ – HealthCare.gov
You can capitalize it now: It’s the Great Recession. And it has cost the United States more jobs than any downturn since the Great Depression.
The job losses were already big before the Labor Department revised its figures Friday. Now, they’re staggering: 8.4 million jobs have disappeared since the recession’s start in December 2007.
10 ‘Study: 1.2 million households lost to recession ‘ By John W. Schoen, MSNBC, 4/8/2010
Brown represents one of the more than 1.2 million households lost to the recession, according to a report issued this week by the Mortgage Bankers Association that looked at data between 2005 and 2008. That number doesn’t include information from 2009, when job losses and foreclosures continued to rise.
So it’s likely that the full impact of the 8.4 million jobs lost and nearly three million homes foreclosed on since the recession began has taken an even bigger toll on the number of American households.
[Sen.] Snowe recalls that when she proposed fiscally conservative “triggers” to limit Bush’s tax cuts in case of deficits, she was attacked by fellow Republicans. “I don’t know when willy-nilly tax cuts became the essence of who we are,” she says. “To the average American who’s struggling, we’re in some other stratosphere. We’re the party of Big Business and Big Oil and the rich.”
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By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com
hungeski
(From The Paragraph.) On May 13th, the 22nd day of the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, gave an interview and downplayed it.1 “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume,“ he said. But by the time he had spoken those words, some of that oil had already reached Dauphin Island, where a woman, walking in the ocean, stepped on a tar ball.2 Once, I too walked in the ocean at Dauphin Island, but without the slightest thought of tar balls – or any care at all. But I fear my children will not have the chance to do the same. Hayward said, “Apollo 13 [the failed moon mission] did not stop the space race. Neither did the Air France plane [crash] last year coming out of Brazil stop the world airline industry flying people around the world. It’s the same for the oil industry.” But unlike those two mishaps, the oil gusher does widespread and ongoing damage. Within a week of Hayward’s comment, heavy oil had drifted into the marshes of the Mississippi Delta, where, as a reporter wrote, “Shiny tar balls were caught in thickets of reeds where crabs swarmed about, their shells painted orange by the crude.”3 A Mobile Bay native viewed the “miles and miles of crude oil” from an airplane, and wept when she saw the oil heading for her home, where as a child, she remembered, “I was packing my lunch and spending the whole day exploring [the waterways] in my little 13 foot boat.”4 Hayward said, “In the last four or five years we have made major improvements in safety performance. … Four years ago it could have been very different.” But we are left to wonder what those safety improvements were and how much better off we are, when one-fifth of the Gulf of Mexico is off-limits to fishing due to oil contamination, and as more and more oil gushes up into the water.5+6 And we are left to ponder how to tame a capitalist system, where a person like Mr. Hayward could take charge of an enterprise so dangerous to wildlife and nature, while having so little regard for them, and for a person’s right to enjoy one’s little nook of the planet.
Oil oozes through reeds in Mississippi Delta, 2010-05-20 – John Moore, AFP / Getty Images
Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, at interview, 2010-05-13 – The Guardian
Oil slick from satellite, 2010-05-18 – NASA
Video: Flyover by hccreekkeeper, 2010-05-07
Further Info
Sources
1 Tony Hayward interview – The Guardian, 2010-05-13
3 ‘Nightmare Scene of Oil Unfolding in Wetlands’ – AFP, 2010-05-20
4 ‘A Local’s Account of the Deepwater Disaster’ by Brinkley Hutchings, 2010-05-10
6 ‘Fishery Closure Boundary – map’ – NOAA, 2010-05-18, pdf
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By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com
