Debbie Hollis: Art, Politics, and Equal Rights in Louisiana: June 2012

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Conservative Southern Values Revived: How a Brutal Strain of American Aristocrats Have Come to Rule America

June 28, 2012 | Sara Robinson, MS, APF is a social futurist and the editor of AlterNet's Vision page.

America didn't used to be run like an old Southern slave plantation, but we're headed that way now. How did that happen?

It's been said that the rich are different than you and me. What most Americans don't know is that they're also quite different from each other, and that which faction is currently running the show ultimately makes a vast difference in the kind of country we are.

"Luxury and Happiness" by DBE

Right now, a lot of our problems stem directly from the fact that the wrong sort has finally gotten the upper hand; a particularly brutal and anti-democratic strain of American aristocrat that the other elites have mostly managed to keep away from the levers of power since the Revolution. Worse: this bunch has set a very ugly tone that's corrupted how people with power and money behave in every corner of our culture. Here's what happened, and how it happened, and what it means for America now.

North versus South: Two Definitions of Liberty

Michael Lind first called out the existence of this conflict in his 2006 book, Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics. He argued that much of American history has been characterized by a struggle between two historical factions among the American elite -- and that the election of George W. Bush was a definitive sign that the wrong side was winning.

For most of our history, American economics, culture and politics have been dominated by a New England-based Yankee aristocracy that was rooted in Puritan communitarian values, educated at the Ivies and marinated in an ethic of noblesse oblige (the conviction that those who possess wealth and power are morally bound to use it for the betterment of society). While they've done their share of damage to the notion of democracy in the name of profit (as all financial elites inevitably do), this group has, for the most part, tempered its predatory instincts with a code that valued mass education and human rights; held up public service as both a duty and an honor; and imbued them with the belief that once you made your nut, you had a moral duty to do something positive with it for the betterment of mankind. Your own legacy depended on this.

Among the presidents, this strain gave us both Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Poppy Bush -- nerdy, wonky intellectuals who, for all their faults, at least took the business of good government seriously. Among financial elites, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet still both partake strongly of this traditional view of wealth as power to be used for good. Even if we don't like their specific choices, the core impulse to improve the world is a good one -- and one that's been conspicuously absent in other aristocratic cultures.

Which brings us to that other great historical American nobility -- the plantation aristocracy of the lowland South, which has been notable throughout its 400-year history for its utter lack of civic interest, its hostility to the very ideas of democracy and human rights, its love of hierarchy, its fear of technology and progress, its reliance on brutality and violence to maintain “order,” and its outright celebration of inequality as an order divinely ordained by God.

Image by DBE

As described by Colin Woodard in American Nations: The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, the elites of the Deep South are descended mainly from the owners of sugar, rum and cotton plantations from Barbados -- the younger sons of the British nobility who'd farmed up the Caribbean islands, and then came ashore to the southern coasts seeking more land. Woodward described the culture they created in the crescent stretching from Charleston, SC around to New Orleans this way:

It was a near-carbon copy of the West Indian slave state these Barbadians had left behind, a place notorious even then for its inhumanity....From the outset, Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror. Its expansionist ambitions would put it on a collision course with its Yankee rivals, triggering military, social, and political conflicts that continue to plague the United States to this day.

David Hackett Fischer, whose Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways In America informs both Lind's and Woodard's work, described just how deeply undemocratic the Southern aristocracy was, and still is. He documents how these elites have always feared and opposed universal literacy, public schools and libraries, and a free press. (Lind adds that they have historically been profoundly anti-technology as well, far preferring solutions that involve finding more serfs and throwing them at a problem whenever possible. Why buy a bulldozer when 150 convicts on a chain gang can grade your road instead?) Unlike the Puritan elites, who wore their wealth modestly and dedicated themselves to the common good, Southern elites sank their money into ostentatious homes and clothing and the pursuit of pleasure -- including lavish parties, games of fortune, predatory sexual conquests, and blood sports involving ritualized animal abuse spectacles.

St. Louis Cathedral - image by DBE

But perhaps the most destructive piece of the Southern elites' worldview is the extremely anti-democratic way it defined the very idea of liberty. In Yankee Puritan culture, both liberty and authority resided mostly with the community, and not so much with individuals. Communities had both the freedom and the duty to govern themselves as they wished (through town meetings and so on), to invest in their collective good, and to favor or punish individuals whose behavior enhanced or threatened the whole (historically, through community rewards such as elevation to positions of public authority and trust; or community punishments like shaming, shunning or banishing).

Individuals were expected to balance their personal needs and desires against the greater good of the collective -- and, occasionally, to make sacrifices for the betterment of everyone. (This is why the Puritan wealthy tended to dutifully pay their taxes, tithe in their churches and donate generously to create hospitals, parks and universities.) In return, the community had a solemn and inescapable moral duty to care for its sick, educate its young and provide for its needy -- the kind of support that maximizes each person's liberty to live in dignity and achieve his or her potential. A Yankee community that failed to provide such support brought shame upon itself. To this day, our progressive politics are deeply informed by this Puritan view of ordered liberty.

In the old South, on the other hand, the degree of liberty you enjoyed was a direct function of your God-given place in the social hierarchy. The higher your status, the more authority you had, and the more "liberty" you could exercise -- which meant, in practical terms, that you had the right to take more "liberties" with the lives, rights and property of other people. Like an English lord unfettered from the Magna Carta, nobody had the authority to tell a Southern gentleman what to do with resources under his control. In this model, that's what liberty is. If you don't have the freedom to rape, beat, torture, kill, enslave, or exploit your underlings (including your wife and children) with impunity -- or abuse the land, or enforce rules on others that you will never have to answer to yourself -- then you can't really call yourself a free man.

Image of Caddo Parish Courthouse for "Judge Not" exhibit

When a Southern conservative talks about "losing his liberty," the loss of this absolute domination over the people and property under his control -- and, worse, the loss of status and the resulting risk of being held accountable for laws that he was once exempt from -- is what he's really talking about. In this view, freedom is a zero-sum game. Anything that gives more freedom and rights to lower-status people can't help but put serious limits on the freedom of the upper classes to use those people as they please. It cannot be any other way. So they find Yankee-style rights expansions absolutely intolerable, to the point where they're willing to fight and die to preserve their divine right to rule.

Once we understand the two different definitions of "liberty" at work here, a lot of other things suddenly make much more sense. We can understand the traditional Southern antipathy to education, progress, public investment, unionization, equal opportunity, and civil rights. The fervent belief among these elites that they should completely escape any legal or social accountability for any harm they cause. Their obsessive attention to where they fall in the status hierarchies. And, most of all -- the unremitting and unapologetic brutality with which they've defended these "liberties" across the length of their history.

Congressman John Fleming (R-Louisiana)

When Southerners quote Patrick Henry -- "Give me liberty or give me death" -- what they're really demanding is the unquestioned, unrestrained right to turn their fellow citizens into supplicants and subjects. The Yankee elites have always known this -- and feared what would happen if that kind of aristocracy took control of the country. And that tension between these two very different views of what it means to be "elite" has inflected our history for over 400 years.

The Battle Between the Elites

Since shortly after the Revolution, the Yankee elites have worked hard to keep the upper hand on America's culture, economy and politics -- and much of our success as a nation rests on their success at keeping plantation culture sequestered in the South, and its scions largely away from the levers of power. If we have to have an elite -- and there's never been a society as complex as ours that didn't have some kind of upper class maintaining social order -- we're far better off in the hands of one that's essentially meritocratic, civic-minded and generally believes that it will do better when everybody else does better, too.

The Civil War was, at its core, a military battle between these two elites for the soul of the country. It pitted the more communalist, democratic and industrialized Northern vision of the American future against the hierarchical, aristocratic, agrarian Southern one. Though the Union won the war, the fundamental conflict at its root still hasn't been resolved to this day. (The current conservative culture war is the Civil War still being re-fought by other means.) After the war, the rise of Northern industrialists and the dominance of Northern universities and media ensured that subsequent generations of the American power elite continued to subscribe to the Northern worldview -- even when the individual leaders came from other parts of the country.

Ironically, though: it was that old Yankee commitment to national betterment that ultimately gave the Southern aristocracy its big chance to break out and go national. According to Lind, it was easy for the Northeast to hold onto cultural, political and economic power as long as all the country's major banks, businesses, universities, and industries were headquartered there.

But the New Deal -- and, especially, the post-war interstate highways, dams, power grids, and other infrastructure investments that gave rise to the Sun Belt -- fatally loosened the Yankees' stranglehold on national power. The gleaming new cities of the South and West shifted the American population centers westward, unleashing new political and economic forces with real power to challenge the Yankee consensus.

And because a vast number of these westward migrants came out of the South, the elites that rose along with these cities tended to hew to the old Southern code, and either tacitly or openly resist the moral imperatives of the Yankee canon. The soaring postwar fortunes of cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta fed that ancient Barbadian slaveholder model of power with plenty of room and resources to launch a fresh and unexpected 20th-century revival.

According to historian Darren Dochuk, the author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism, these post-war Southerners and Westerners drew their power from the new wealth provided by the defense, energy, real estate, and other economic booms in their regions. They also had a profound evangelical conviction, brought with them out of the South, that God wanted them to take America back from the Yankee liberals -- a conviction that expressed itself simultaneously in both the formation of the vast post-war evangelical churches (which were major disseminators of Southern culture around the country); and in their takeover of the GOP, starting with Barry Goldwater's campaign in 1964 and culminating with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980.

First United Methodist Church - Shreveport

They countered Yankee hegemony by building their own universities, grooming their own leaders and creating their own media. By the 1990s, they were staging the RINO hunts that drove the last Republican moderates (almost all of them Yankees, by either geography or cultural background) and the meritocratic order they represented to total extinction within the GOP. A decade later, the Tea Party became the voice of the unleashed id of the old Southern order, bringing it forward into the 21st century with its full measure of selfishness, racism, superstition, and brutality intact.

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) - source unknown

Plantation America

From its origins in the fever swamps of the lowland south, the worldview of the old Southern aristocracy can now be found nationwide. Buttressed by the arguments of Ayn Rand -- who updated the ancient slaveholder ethic for the modern age -- it has been exported to every corner of the culture, infected most of our other elite communities and killed off all but the very last vestiges of noblesse oblige.

It's not an overstatement to say that we're now living in Plantation America. As Lind points out: to the horror of his Yankee father, George W. Bush proceeded to run the country exactly like Woodard's description of a Barbadian slavelord. And Barack Obama has done almost nothing to roll this victory back. We're now living in an America where rampant inequality is accepted, and even celebrated.

Torture and extrajudicial killing have been reinstated, with no due process required.

The wealthy and powerful are free to abuse employees, break laws, destroy the commons, and crash the economy -- without ever being held to account.

The rich flaunt their ostentatious wealth without even the pretense of humility, modesty, generosity, or gratitude.

The military -- always a Southern-dominated institution -- sucks down 60% of our federal discretionary spending, and is undergoing a rapid evangelical takeover as well.

Our police are being given paramilitary training and powers that are completely out of line with their duty to serve and protect, but much more in keeping with a mission to subdue and suppress. Even liberal cities like Seattle are now home to the kind of local justice that used to be the hallmark of small-town Alabama sheriffs.

Segregation is increasing everywhere. The rights of women and people of color are under assault. Violence against leaders who agitate for progressive change is up. Racist organizations are undergoing a renaissance nationwide.

We are withdrawing government investments in public education, libraries, infrastructure, health care, and technological innovation -- in many areas, to the point where we are falling behind the standards that prevail in every other developed country.

"He Finally Tamed Me" by DBE

Elites who dare to argue for increased investment in the common good, and believe that we should lay the groundwork for a better future, are regarded as not just silly and soft-headed, but also inviting underclass revolt. The Yankees thought that government's job was to better the lot of the lower classes. The Southern aristocrats know that its real purpose is to deprive them of all possible means of rising up against their betters.

The rich are different now because the elites who spent four centuries sucking the South dry and turning it into an economic and political backwater have now vanquished the more forward-thinking, democratic Northern elites. Their attitudes towards freedom, authority, community, government, and the social contract aren't just confined to the country clubs of the Gulf Coast; they can now be found on the ground from Hollywood and Silicon Valley to Wall Street. And because of that quiet coup, the entire US is now turning into the global equivalent of a Deep South state.

As long as America runs according to the rules of Southern politics, economics and culture, we're no longer free citizens exercising our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as we've always understood them. Instead, we're being treated like serfs on Massa's plantation -- and increasingly, we're being granted our liberties only at Massa's pleasure.

"Our Children" by DBE

Individuals were expected to balance their personal needs and desires against the greater good of the collective -- and, occasionally, to make sacrifices for the betterment of everyone. (This is why the Puritan wealthy tended to dutifully pay their taxes, tithe in their churches and donate generously to create hospitals, parks and universities.) In return, the community had a solemn and inescapable moral duty to care for its sick, educate its young and provide for its needy -- the kind of support that maximizes each person's liberty to live in dignity and achieve his or her potential. A Yankee community that failed to provide such support brought shame upon itself. To this day, our progressive politics are deeply informed by this Puritan view of ordered liberty.

In the old South, on the other hand, the degree of liberty you enjoyed was a direct function of your God-given place in the social hierarchy. The higher your status, the more authority you had, and the more "liberty" you could exercise -- which meant, in practical terms, that you had the right to take more "liberties" with the lives, rights and property of other people. Like an English lord unfettered from the Magna Carta, nobody had the authority to tell a Southern gentleman what to do with resources under his control. In this model, that's what liberty is. If you don't have the freedom to rape, beat, torture, kill, enslave, or exploit your underlings (including your wife and children) with impunity -- or abuse the land, or enforce rules on others that you will never have to answer to yourself -- then you can't really call yourself a free man.

Welcome to Plantation America.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Recall Bobby Jindal

If you live in Caddo/Bossier, are a registered voter, and would like to participate in the Jindal recall effort, please contact me!

I have just been trained on signature collection & record-keeping requirements, and will be happy to teach you how to collect signatures and/or organize a canvassing effort.

If you just want to sign the recall petition, I will come to you!

www.recallbobbyjindal.com

Three Tiger Stadiums Filled With Poor Children: The Scandal of Poverty in Louisiana

Excerpt from the article by Robert Mann:

"...as much as these people needed mercy, they desperately needed someone (a governor, perhaps) to devote his or her energies to achieving something far more valuable.

These people needed justice.

More than thirty years later, I’m ashamed that Louisiana hasn’t done so well in either the mercy or justice department. More than thirty years of children have been born into poverty-stricken communities that haven’t changed much since the days when I first saw the despair that Monroe welfare office.

The sad fact is that those 30 years represent decades of lost chances to build opportunities for better lives for our children. They represent thirty years of injustice and suffering — because our state and national leadership has regarded poverty as an unfortunate fact of life — and not a scandal and a cause for national shame.

According to the National Priorities Project, almost 19 percent of Louisiana’s citizens, one in five, live in poverty. Put another way, that’s 825,000 Louisiana residents. See a chart comparing the states here.

But the numbers are far worse when you look at children.

According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual rankings of the states, Louisiana has ranked 49^th among the states in overall child well-being since 2002. In its most recent collection of data, the Casey Foundation ranked Louisiana among the bottom ten states on nine out of the ten key measures of child well-being. See a summary of the report here.

If you are a child, Louisiana is one of the worst places in this country to grow up.

Twenty seven percent, almost a third, of all children in this state live in poverty. That’s 285,000 children. See a chart on Louisiana’s child poverty numbers here.

Louisiana ranks 46^th out of the 50 states in the percentage of children in poverty. Only Alabama, Arkansas, New Mexico and Mississippi fare worse. See the state rankings here.

It’s a depressing situation for a state whose leaders don’t seem even remotely willing to face up to the enormous challenges facing us.

Today, in Louisiana, we have the equivalents of three Tiger Stadiums full to the brim with children living in poverty.


Photo: www.tigerrag.com

Among our state’s many problems, it’s our largest and most vexing. It should be the top priority of every legislator and our governor.

So, I leave you with these partially rhetorical questions: How much time did legislators devote to addressing poverty in the 2012 legislative session (beyond a half-baked effort to improve the bottom line of faith-based private schools)?

How much do our leaders really care about ridding Louisiana of an economic cancer that threatens the future of 285,000 Louisiana children?

~dedicated to the legislative legacy of LA Rep. Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport). - DBE

Saturday, June 23, 2012

The Daily Solution

Today's solution: embrace uncertainty.

I offer the following to encourage those who may be reluctant about this pathway:

The only constant is change. It's the most basic fact of human existence.

Nothing lasts, nothing stays the same.

We feel it with each breath. From birth to the unknown moment of our passing, we ride a river of change.

And yet, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, we exhaust ourselves in an endless search for solidity. We hunger for something that lasts, some idea or principle that rises above time and change. We hunger for certainty. That is a big problem.

It might even be THE problem.

Religions are often built around this heartache for certainty. In the face of sickness, loss and grief, a thousand dogmas with a thousand names have risen. Many profess that if only the faithful hold fast to the "rules," the "precepts" or the "doctrine" then certainty can be obtained.

Fate and future can be fixed through promises of freedom from immediate suffering, divine favor or everlasting salvation. Scriptures are transformed into unwavering blueprints for an unchanging order. These documents must live beyond question lest the certainty they provide crumble. When human spiritual endeavor devolves into these white-knuckle forms of clinging they become monuments to the fear of change and uncertainty.

It would be symmetrical if I could point to science as the pure antidote to the rigid rejection of uncertainty. Science, in the purest forms of its expression as a practice, holds to no doctrine other than that the world might be known. In the ceaseless pursuit of its own questioning path, science asks us to allow for ceaseless change in our ideas, beliefs and opinions. It's this aspect of science that I value more than any other.

But science does not exist alone as practice. It's also a constellation of ideas that exist within culture and those ideas can gain value, in and of themselves, without connection to actual practice. In this way science becomes something more and less. For some people the idea of Science offers a trumped up certainty that yields its own false defense against the rootlessness that roots of our existence.

My co-blogger Marcelo Gleiser put it beautifully two weeks ago when he wrote, "what is pompous is to think that we can know all the answers. Or that it's the job of science to find them." When science as an idea is used to push away the tremulous reality of our lived existential uncertainty then it, too, is degraded. It becomes just another imaginary fixed point in a life without fixed points.

Of course it doesn't have to be this way. The world's history of spiritual endeavor contains many beautiful descriptions of authentic encounters with uncertainty. Ironically these often serve as gateways to the most compassionate experience of what can be called sacred in human life.

Buddhism's First Noble Truth, which focuses specifically on the reality of change and suffering, serves as one example. In the Christian tradition works like the "Cloud of Unknowing," a 14th century paean to the importance of experience over doctrine or dogma, serves as another. Dig around in most of the world's great religious traditions and you find people finding their sense of grace by embracing uncertainty rather than trying to bury it in codified dogmas.

For science, embracing uncertainty means more than claiming "we don't know now, but we will know in the future." It means embracing the fuzzy boundaries of the very process of asking questions. It means embracing the frontiers of what explanations, for all their power, can do. It means understanding that a life of deepest inquiry requires all kinds of vehicles: from poetry to particle accelerators; from quiet reveries to abstract analysis.

Though I am an atheist, some of the wisest people I have met are those whose spiritual lives (some explicitly religious, some not) have forced them to continually confront uncertainty. This daily act has made them patient and forgiving, generous and inclusive. Likewise, the atheists I have met who most embody the ideals of free inquiry seem to best understand the limitations of every perspective, including their own. They encounter the ever shifting ground of their lives with humor, good will and compassion.

In the end, embracing uncertainty is to embrace a quality I have written about many times before: mystery. These lives we live, surrounded by beauty and horror, profound knowledge and pitiful ignorance, are a mystery to us all. To push that truth away with false certainty, falsely derived from either religion or reason, is to miss our most perfect truth.

We are, after all, just "such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

(Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/05/15/152745489/the-liberating-embrace-of-uncertainty)

Monday, June 18, 2012

Do Men Like Strong Women?

Some men claim there is nothing more attractive to them than a strong, independent, and intelligent woman. They claim that they would choose this type of woman over a weak-minded, easily led woman. Yet women who are described as strong and independent often assert the opposite — their backbone and self-determination causes issues with men and they are eventually passed over for women with less fortitude.

Why the disconnect? Do men actually like strong women or are they only paying lip service to the ideal of a partner who will stand her ground and be on equal footing? My observations indicate that some men like the idea of a strong woman but few can cope with the reality of it.

The strong woman is not only strong, but she is also often opinionated and completely self-sufficient. At first the strong woman is intriguingly attractive to the man who is tired of women who agree with his every word and call for his assistance in every matter. A woman who he can have an intelligent discussion with, who will pay her share of the bills, who can get along with or without him? Sounds like the perfect woman.

But after some time with the strong woman he realizes he’s not all that interested in her strength anymore. He doesn’t want to debate. He’d rather she not always be so quick to question his ideas, ways, and motives. Why is she involved in so many activities, why can’t they spend more quality time together? Why doesn’t she let him handle some things for her or take his advice? Couldn’t she be less direct and more tactful, more caring?

In short, the man feels picked on, neglected, and unnecessary. His idea of a strong woman wasn’t this. He wanted a woman who could take care of herself, but would also take care of him and allow him to take care of her. At least sometimes. Is that too much to ask?

Some men do like strong women, including the opinionated, completely self-sufficient ones. But for every guy who claims to like strong women and does, there is another who truly only likes a woman whose strength of mind and body is equal to her need and desire to nurture and be nurtured.

Source: http://aloftyexistence.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/do-men-like-strong-women/
Links added by DBE

THERE ARE NO JOBS IN MY WOMB

April 9, 2012

by: Patt Reid @ The Revered Review

Over the last two years, since the 2010 elections, since the GOP “swept” the elections on the jobs platform, the Republican party has been busy make disastrous legislation to regulate private matters of women’s health.

The ludicrous numbers of laws being proposed have been growing exponentially in recent months. Not one jobs bill has been passed, but in excess of 200 laws regulating women’s healthcare have been presented, some failed but some were passed. This has gotten so out of hand, that attacks on Planned Parenthood and the Girl Scouts of America are routine, and unquestioned. The Girl Scouts! For crying out loud, the Girl Scouts are patriot-makers! “Abundant evidence proves that the agenda of Planned Parenthood includes sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts, which is quickly becoming a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood.” — Indiana state Rep. Bob Morris (Feb. 21). There is no connection between Planned Parenthood and the Girl Scouts!

IF YOU TELL A LIE OFTEN ENOUGH, DOES IT BECOME TRUE?

The right wing pundits and the Republicans deny it, but does that make it true? Here’s our Governor Christie who “eliminated a $7.4 million budget line that provided basic reproductive health services”¹. These monies include testing for cancer (pap tests and mammograms), birth control and other female health needs that will leave more than 135,000 women without care. Since the benefit of these services save $3.75 for every $1 spent, the door has been opened for Medicaid spending to increase an addition $28 million! Of course, the next step is that Medicaid will be withheld, as happened in Texas. This means that birthrates will go up, and poverty will increase, and women will die from cancer, because they cannot get testing. And, our out of pocket expenses will increase. This does not sound fiscally conservative to me. Does it sound that way to you?

What else has Gov. Christie done “for” the state of NJ? He cut grants to Hispanic Women’s Resource Center, funding for a post-partum education project, funding for paid family leave after a birth. He has refused to spend monies mandated by the Legislature to advertise and provide the outreach effort. Add to all this, his referrals to Sen. Loretta Weinberg as “a bat”, Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle as “a jerk” and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver as “a liar” when he disagreed with them. He doesn’t sound like much of a “family values” sort of guy to me.

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD?

I wish I knew! I have already written one piece here explaining what Planned Parenthood does and how it gets it’s funding. Ostensibly, the attacks are based on the false notion that PP is an abortion mill. It is not an abortion mill. Gov. Rick Perry denied any funds for Planned Parenthood, which resulted in his losing all Federal monies for Medicaid. This left 130,000 women in Texas with nowhere to turn. When it was pointed out to Rick Perry that no government monies went to abortion, his response was, “Well, we just want to be sure.” In addition, for that he is wrecking the chances of remaining healthy for 130,000 women!²Perry says he will “find the money” to make up the loss of the Federal funds which account for 90% of the Medicaid funding. But what will he have to cut to do that? We already know that he won’t raise taxes.

Of course, Perry tried to blame Obama, which is S.O.P. for the GOP, the answer to everything in the entire world. But it was the actions of Perry himself that caused it. He violated federal law by insisting upon rules that excluded PP from receiving funds from the Medicaid Women’s Health Program. Medicaid does not allow the local government to dictate what services/doctors they can and can’t use to provide healthcare, as Perry was wont to do.

WHAT’S PLANNED PARENTHOOD GOT TO DO WITH MEDICAID?

Only a portion of PP’s money comes from any government source (I talked about that in my last piece), the rest comes from donations. In turn for the government funding, PP provides services for women who would otherwise get them through other Medicaid physicians. The result is that the donations to PP offset a lot of expense for Medicaid, saving the taxpayer millions of dollars. So, every time one of these GOP cowboys cuts off PP, it hurts the taxpayers, and in the case of Medicaid, they lose their Federal funding for that as well. This is false economy, obscenely false economy.

SO, WHAT? IS THIS ALL THAT “THE WAR” IS ABOUT?

I wish that’s all there was to the war on women. An article by Stephanie Whiteside lists 101 assaults in the War on Women³. I’ll list a few here but for the entire list, please go to that site I’ve indicated below.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney: “Vote for the other guy” if you want birth control covered. (March 20) MY NOTE: He mention nothing about Cialis coverage.
AZ Rep. Debbie Lesko (R) defends her bill, which could require women to prove to their employers that they are taking birth control for medical reasons and not simply to prevent pregnancy. (March 20)
Wisconsin state Sen. Glenn Grothman (R) proposes a law classifying single parenting as child abuse. (March 7)
Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt authors an amendment allowing employers to opt out of any health coverage they deem immoral. (March 1). MY NOTE: Thankfully, this failed!
Louisiana Sen. David Vitter on contraception coverage: “It’s about abortion, it’s about abortion-inducing drugs … it’s about sterilization.” (March 1) MY NOTE: This is the guy who hires prostitutes and wears diapers. OMG, really? He’s going to say anything about a woman’s sexuality?
Wisconsin GOP attempts to repeal the Equal Pay Enforcement Act. (Feb. 24)
“I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.” — Rick Santorum on pregnant rape victims (Jan. 23)
Data shows that, thanks to a process known as gender rating, women pay more for health insurance than men, even among plans that don’t include female-specific services like maternity coverage. (March 19)
The New Hampshire House passes a bill forcing doctors to tell women of a link between breast cancer and abortion, which has been scientifically disproved. (March 15)
Lasko (R) introduces her bill in the Arizona House that would allow employers to ask women for documentation if they require birth control pills for non-contraceptive reasons. (March 14)
Fox News commentator Liz Trotta says military women should “expect” to be raped. (March 14)
“If these young women are being responsible and didn’t have the sex to begin with, we wouldn’t have this problem to begin with.” — New Hanover County (N.C.) Commissioner Ted Davis (March 12)
New York state policy that carrying condoms can be used as evidence of prostitution. A bill that seeks to reverse this policy has languished for 13 years. (March 9)

AND THEY TELL US THERE IS NO WAR ON WOMEN

This one, to me, is the icing on the cake: The Arizona state Senate passed a bill that would allow doctors to conceal information about risks, disabilities or deformities affecting a fetus in order to prevent abortions. This means that even in the case where a woman’s health is at risk, the doctor can lie to her and be protected from any lawsuit following her death or illness. Indeed, there is legislation to force doctors to lie to their patients about cancer and abortions. Please take note here: the GOP is passing laws that mandate what doctors can and can’t do, or legislation forcing them to do things that are not medically necessary. And this is small government?

So we have a climate whereby doctors are authorized to lie to a woman about her own health or her baby’s health, where women should expect to be raped, and if they get pregnant, it’s a blessing from God. We have Republicans refusing to renew laws that protect a woman from domestic abuse, or enacting new legislation, redefining what constitutes domestic abuse, new laws redefining rape. Laws that a woman carrying a condom constitutes prostitution, laws that repeal equal pay for equal work. The list goes on and on.

AND STILL, WE HAVE NO JOBS BILL!

Well, women are really angry now, lots and lots of women are very very angry. I was in a conversation with a couple of local women about a rally I am organizing. It’s a rally to be held in Trenton on April 28, on the Capitol Campus, from noon to 4:00. It’s a rally under the banner of “Unite against the War on Women”. My friends said they were very interested. I made the comment that I am sometime afraid to speak out because of how conservative the area is. One of the women said, “Well, I’m conservative. It’s not about that!” And then two of women said in unison, “but, what the f*ck are they doing??” This sweet little lady, very much a lady, nearly floored me! I watch Morning Joe most mornings. He’s gone on and on about his conservative wife and her friends talking angrily about, what are the Republicans doing? Are they nuts?

THE BIRTH OF UNITE WOMEN

Somewhere in the final days of February, two women were having a phone conversation, one in NYC and the other on the West Coast. They were discussing the most recent assault when one of them said, let’s not just complain, let’s organize! So they posted a new group on Facebook, and the next morning, it had a membership in excess of 500. Less than one month later, the group had grown to over 20,000. We have now organized, in 6 short and busy weeks, more than 60 marches/rallies to be held in every state and DC (some states are having 2 or more rallies). This is what grassroots organizing around a cause is truly about. I’m so thrilled to have a part in this.

The permit is in hand. Donations and support are being sought. So far, I’ve lined up two State Senators, ACLU-NJ, GetEQUAL, and various other leaders, groups, spokespersons and, of course, some music. I have volunteers organizing on college campuses, I have some high school women organizing their high schools, even a bank that is putting our promos in their lobby, people are organizing buses from different parts of the state. In fact, we have one bus leaving from Newton. NJ Peace activists are on board, and next week we talk to Planned Parenthood-NJ, LWV and NOW_NJ. Our national group has been endorsed by Katrina vanden Heuvel, of The Nation magazine, NOW, Coffee Party, Ihollaback, and more. Fliers are printed and posted. More are coming.

Yes, these are by and large “liberal” groups but the organizers are emphatically not supporting any political candidates or any party. This is strictly about women, and those who love women. Actually, you’d be surprised at the number of men involved in this. Political figures will speak, but have been told that this is not a campaign stop. This is truly a bipartisan effort, and all are welcome. We are sending the message:
We are women, hear us roar!

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Leonard Cohen's Elegy For Janis Joplin - Chelsea Hotel #1

The Daily Solution

Effective problem-solvers learn behaviors that are necessary for solving problems.

They also learn what is detrimental to that process.

Following is a list of behaviors to embrace if you want to become an effective, healthy, well-intentioned problem-solver.

While some of these suggestions are "no-brainers" for some of us, I know that we each struggle with at least one. Let's get to work solving that problem!

Give up the habit of waiting. – The way you spend your time defines who you are. You don’t get to choose how you are going to die, or when; you can only decide how you are going to live right now. Trust me, a year from now you will wish you had started today.
Give up the excuses. – Sooner or later you will come to realize that it’s not what you lose along the way that counts; it’s what you do with what you still have. When you let go, forgive, and move on, you in no way change the past, you change the future.
Give up trying to be perfect. – Sometimes we try to show the world that we are flawless in hopes that we will be liked and accepted by everyone. But we can’t please everyone, and we shouldn’t try. The beauty of us lies in our vulnerability, our love, our complex emotions – our authentic imperfections. When we embrace who we are and decide to be authentic, instead of perfect, we open ourselves up to real relationships, real happiness, and real success. There is no need to put on a mask. There is no need to pretend to be someone you’re not. You are perfectly imperfect just the way you are.
Give up doing things you know are wrong. – Nothing is more damaging to you than doing something that you believe is wrong. Your beliefs alone don’t help you grow and thrive, your behavior and actions do. So always do what you know in your heart is right, for you.
Give up feelings of entitlement. – Nobody owes you anything. When you approach life with the false sense that you are owed things, you will naturally become less productive and constantly find yourself disappointed by reality. When you are grateful for what you have, and see positive things as bonuses, versus owed entitlements, you will earn great successes gradually as you grow.
Give up relationships that want you to be someone else. – The best kind of relationship is the one that makes you a better person without changing you into someone other than yourself. This includes romantic, business and friend relationships.
Give up letting others decide what you can and can’t do. – In order to live your own authentic life, you have to follow YOUR inner GPS, not someone else's. When others say, “You can’t do it!” or “That’s impossible,” don’t lose hope. Just because THEY couldn’t doesn’t mean YOU can’t.
Give up being a helpless victim. – Yes, it is unfortunate that sometimes bad things happen to the best of people. Life can be unfair, unkind and unjust. However, being stuck in a victim mentality does not nurture your ability to move onward and upward. You’ve got to stand back up and take positive steps to heal and grow.
Give up worrying about past failures. – Accept your past without regret, handle your presence with confidence, and face your future without fear. You are today where your thoughts and actions have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts and actions take you.
Give up blaming everyone else. – Either you own your situation or it will own you. Either you take responsibility for your life, or someone else will. Blame is a scapegoat – it’s an easy way out of taking accountability for your own outcome. It’s a lot easier to point the finger at someone or something else instead of looking within. Blame is not constructive; it does not help you or anyone else – nobody wins in the blame game. The amount of energy and stress it takes to place blame elsewhere takes away from your ability to move forward and find a real solution.
Remember, the road you are traveling may be the more challenging one, but don’t lose hope. Don’t listen to the doubters, don’t let setbacks keep you down, and most of all, don’t give up on yourself. It’s okay if you don’t know how much more you can handle. It’s fine if you don’t know exactly what to do next. Eventually you’ll let go of how things ‘should be,’ and start to see all the great possibilities in front of you.

Source: http://www.marcandangel.com/2012/06/04/10-things-you-must-give-up-to-be-successful/

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

What To Do About “Radical Feminist Nuns”

Monday, June 11, 2012

The Daily Solution

This "Daily Solution" covers a lot of territory. Enjoy!

50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do

Self-reliance is a vital key to living a healthy, productive life. To be self-reliant one must master a basic set of skills, more or less making them a jack of all trades. Contrary to what you may have learned in school, a jack of all trades is far more equipped to deal with life than a specialized master of only one.

While not totally comprehensive, here is a list of 50 things everyone should know how to do.

1. Build a Fire – Fire produces heat and light, two basic necessities for living. At some point in your life this knowledge may be vital.

2. Operate a Computer – Fundamental computer knowledge is essential these days. Please, help those in need.

3. Use Google Effectively – Google knows everything. If you’re having trouble finding something with Google, it’s you that needs help.

4. Perform CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver – Someday it may be your wife, husband, son or daughter that needs help.

5. Drive a Manual Transmission Vehicle – There will come a time when you’ll be stuck without this knowledge.

6. Do Basic Cooking – If you can’t cook your own steak and eggs, you probably aren’t going to make it.

7. Tell a Story that Captivates People’s Attention – If you can’t captivate their attention, you should probably just save your breath.

8. Win or Avoid a Fistfight – Either way, you win.

9. Deliver Bad News – Somebody has got to do it. Unfortunately, someday that person will be you.

10. Change a Tire – Because tires have air in them, and things with air in them eventually pop.

11. Handle a Job Interview – I promise, sweating yourself into a nervous panic won’t land you the job.

12. Manage Time – Not doing so is called wasting time, which is okay sometimes, but not all the time.

13. Speed Read – Sometimes you just need the basic gist, and you needed it 5 minutes ago.

14. Remember Names – Do you like when someone tries to get your attention by screaming “hey you”?

15. Relocate Living Spaces – Relocating is always a little tougher than you originally imagined.

16. Travel Light – Bring only the necessities. It’s the cheaper, easier, smarter thing to do.

17. Handle the Police – Because jail isn’t fun… and neither is Bubba.

18. Give Driving Directions – Nobody likes driving around in circles. Get this one right the first time.

19. Perform Basic First Aid – You don’t have to be a doctor, or genius, to properly dress a wound.

20. Swim – 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. Learning to swim might be a good idea.

21. Parallel Park – Parallel parking is a requirement on most standard driver’s license driving tests, yet so many people have no clue how to do it. How could this be?

22. Recognize Personal Alcohol Limits – Otherwise you may wind up like this charming fellow.

23. Select Good Produce – Rotten fruits and vegetables can be an evil tease and an awful surprise.

24. Handle a Hammer, Axe or Handsaw – Carpenters are not the only ones who need tools. Everyone should have a basic understanding of basic hand tools.

25. Make a Simple Budget – Being in debt is not fun. A simple budget is the key.

26. Speak at Least Two Common Languages – Only about 25% of the world’s population speaks English. It would be nice if you could communicate with at least some of the remaining 75%.

27. Do Push-Ups and Sit-Ups Properly – Improper push-ups and sit-ups do nothing but hurt your body and waste your time.

28. Give a Compliment – It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give someone, and it’s free.

29. Negotiate – The better deal is only a question or two away.

30. Listen Carefully to Others – The more you listen and the less you talk, the more you will learn and the less you will miss.

31. Recite Basic Geography – If you don’t know where anything is outside of your own little bubble, most people will assume (and they are probably correct) that you don’t know too much at all.

32. Paint a Room – The true cost of painting is 90% labor. For simple painting jobs it makes no sense to pay someone 9 times what it would cost you to do it yourself.

33. Make a Short, Informative Public Speech – At the next company meeting if your boss asks you to explain what you’ve been working on over the last month, a short, clear, informative response is surely your best bet. “Duhhh…” will not cut it.

34. Smile for the Camera – People that absolutely refuse to smile for the camera suck!

35. Flirt Without Looking Ridiculous – There is a fine line between successful flirting and utter disaster. If you try too hard, you lose. If you don’t try hard enough, you lose.

36. Take Useful Notes – Because useless notes are useless, and not taking notes is a recipe for failure.

37. Be a Respectful House Guest – Otherwise you will be staying in a lot of hotels over the years.

38. Make a Good First Impression – Aristotle once said, “well begun is half done.”

39. Navigate with a Map and Compass – What happens when the GPS craps out and you’re in the middle of nowhere?

40. Sew a Button onto Clothing – It sure is cheaper than buying a new shirt.

41. Hook Up a Basic Home Theater System – This isn’t rocket science. Paying someone to do this shows sheer laziness.

42. Type – Learning to type could save you days worth of time over the course of your lifetime.

43. Protect Personal Identity Information – Personal identity theft is not fun unless you are the thief. Don’t be careless.

44. Implement Basic Computer Security Best Practices – You don’t have to be a computer science major to understand the fundamentals of creating complex passwords and using firewalls. Doing so will surely save you a lot of grief someday.

45. Detect a Lie – People will lie to you. It’s a sad fact of life.

46. End a Date Politely Without Making Promises – There is no excuse for making promises you do not intend to keep. There is also no reason why you should have to make a decision on the spot about someone you hardly know.

47. Remove a Stain – Once again, it’s far cheaper than buying a new one.

48. Keep a Clean House – A clean house is the foundation for a clean, organized lifestyle.

49. Hold a Baby – Trust me, injuring a baby is not what you want to do.

50. Jump Start a Car – It sure beats walking or paying for a tow truck.

Check out these books for more ideas on pertinent life skills:

Thursday, June 7, 2012

2012 Philadelphia Center "Auction Against AIDS"

Would you like to donate artwork to the Philadelphia Center's "Auction Against AIDS" this year?

Please read the information below for instructions.

I am the contact person for artists. You can reach me at: dengle@philadelphiacenter.org.
________________________________________________

The date for the annual Philadelphia Center Auction Against AIDS is Friday, August 3, 2012, at the Riverdome in the Horseshoe Casino. As always, we are hoping art will play a prominent part in the evening. We are excited to be moving to the Riverdome where we will have more room, and ample seating and tables for our guests.

The theme of the auction this year is ¡Viva la Vida! It will be a celebration of Latin life, art and culture. It promises to be an inspired night of color, food, music, dance and fun!

Recently, I was part of a discussion about the history of the Philadelphia Center Auction. Did you know that originally it was an auction for art?

We have been through many changes and additions, but this year we want to honor the artists who have been so generous throughout the years. As a result, we have made some changes in response to feedback from the arts community and are organizing the art donations differently.

First, we are adding a jury process for the art portion of the auction. Artists will bring their work to the Philadelphia Center, with a suggested value attached. The jury will accept qualifying work, and determine the list value and minimum bid based on the artist's suggestion. By utilizing a jury, we hope to streamline art donations and systematize minimum bid prices.

As always, we will post the artwork on our website (http://www.philadelphiacenter.org) and encourage artists to give us business cards to place with their art on the night of the auction.

In the past, we have offered 2 tickets for donated art. This year we will offer two free tickets for artwork with an estimated value of at least $100.

We are also offering the option of returning artwork to the artist if bids fall below the minimum bid. The artist can decide to have the art returned, or donate it to the center for another event.

The sale price and the name of the buyer of artwork will be supplied to each artist no later than two weeks after the auction.

The deadline for delivering your artwork to the Philadelphia Center is 5PM on July 31, 2012!

We are planning an entertaining evening for our supporters to thank them and ask for their continued assistance in furthering the Philadelphia Center’s mission.

Louisiana currently has the second highest HIV infection rate per capita in the United States. In addition, the state no longer allocates funding for prevention; all available financial support is "pass-through" federal funding. The Philadelphia Center’s prevention services have been hit hard by the loss of these state funds. This makes this year’s auction even more important - we must bring in enough donations to cover our costs independently.

The Louisiana Artist Community has been a generous supporter of the Annual Auction Against AIDS for over 20 years. We thank you so much for your past participation, and hope to see you (and your art) at the auction this year.

If you have any questions about donating art, please contact me at dengle@philadelphiacenter.org . I am excited to announce that I am joining the auction committee to oversee the arts acquisitions this year.

¡Viva la Vida!