Posts by AllenSchmertzler:
Better Love It or Leave It, Because We Cling to Guns
May 5th, 2014By Allen Schmertzler.
The times they have a changed. I remember when the extreme right-wing nuts were social pariahs. No mainstream politician or national media organization would openly embrace or advocate for them. They were either percolating as white supremacist racists, shamed KKK holdouts, Hell’s Angels road bandits, or grouped into a category labeled “survivalists.” They were all armed and willing, had caches of enough weapons and supplies sometimes hidden in bunkers, and they were going to save America. We knew they existed, sometimes gave them some thought, but mostly ignored them as pesky bugs that one just has to monitor and avoid as best as possible, because there was a powerful sense that the rightness of the American Dream machine would prevail.
This was also a time when America’s youth were “crusaders” against government over-reach. Despite their being armed only with the first amendment, idealism, and organizing peaceful and mostly non-violent protests, a majority of Americans angrily called them unpatriotic and yelled for them to “love it or leave it!” Odd to realize now how that slogan was never aimed at the right wing nuts.
During the same period of social discontent when the Black Panthers “stood their ground” armed with the second amendment, the FBI and all shades of law enforcement agents either killed many of them in shoot-outs or imprisoned others. Americans, in the mid-west, and from coast to coast supported the government and its agents with patriotic fervor for ridding society of those illegal treasonous Hanoi Jane and black militant types. The chaotic unrest of the ’60s and ’70s faded as the social crusaders donned work suits and NBA team uniforms and assimilated back into the melting pot.
Fast forward to Cliven Bundy’s “home on the Nevada range,” where the big ugly truth stood its ground that America is still a Civil War house divided across one hundred fifty plus Aprils. What first appeared to be a resurgent state rights sagebrush rebellion on steroids took a prickly cactus turn.
There was the usual and now quite predictable circus of “Republican” characters that jumped on this event to spin the narrative, score political points, spend Koch brother monies, stoke the base, create another poster child victim of Obama’s illegal government over-reach, and gain another propaganda win.
The shocking surprise was the turnout of “first responders.” The neo-minutemen and women that flocked to the Nevada “Concord” from other states, forming a volunteer armed citizenry, that took up sniper positions, and were ready to place women as the first receivers of bullets against federal agents enforcing the law against the cattle welfare queen, Cliven Bundy. This group was more than ready and desirous of martyrdom to bring about their larger cause, the overthrow of the evil empire.
Just when did it become fashionable and acceptable, and not punishable for armed treason against the government? That is exactly what occurred there. No one was saying, “love it or leave it” to this posse, because they cling to guns, because they have become embedded into a way larger fabric of American society than their predecessors were able to. I wonder if the gush of the Republican power elite somehow legitimized and thus emboldened these folks? Could this have become the first shots of the rewriting of the Civil War?
Thankfully, the same guy that started this defused the standoff. Cliven Bundy talked. No longer an obscure desperate lone ranger, Cliven had the embrace and love from the Republican machine that empowered him to spew his Civil War era racism. The same machine that gaveth him a platform, now couldn’t find enough cactus, sagebrush, or moral platitudes to distance themselves fast enough. Oh well, no one promised unconditional love.
It is beyond me why the extreme right wing Republican power machine doesn’t do a better job vetting the Cliven Bundys. Does so much power and money breed such stupidity? I guess in their mind they won anyway. They know the hatred is still out there waiting for the next crusade, and it isn’t the sort of group that anyone other than me might politely ask of them, but here goes, please, “America, love it or leave it!”
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Gambling With American Democracy Vegas Style
April 8th, 2014By Allen Schmertzler.
“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Never! This is just a clever marketing slogan to give folks cover and license to entertain their fantasies in the “family friendly” world of gambling. After all, this is the city that worships limitless guilt-free social “prostituting” to any desire. How appropriate to discover that one of the richest men in the world, the aristocrat and wannabe oligarch, Sheldon Adelson, recently anted up to gamble to crown his Republican prince candidate for president in 2016. Of course, the aspiring pack of presidential hopefuls accepted Adelson’s invite and came with hopes that Mr. Adelson’s patronage would not stay in Vegas, but leave with them. Eager, and without embarrassment over their “whoring” for Sheldon’s money, the chorus line of political dancers costumed up with their political bona fides and auditioned in Adelson’s casino kingdom.
When a politically offensive position to Adelson’s was voiced, apologies and re-phrasing clarifications had to be offered. No one attended with a desire for early elimination from the gaming. Such was just the case when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who by now most of us realize was marketed as smarter than he must be, referred to the West Bank as “occupied territories,” a serious faux pas in Adelson’s absolute world of Israel first, because it panders to how Palestinians see the land. Will the master and presidential crowner forgive Christie’s revealing Freudian slip? Stay tuned.
Sheldon Adelson’s weekend political extravaganza mirrors the American political market place, where there is never a shortage of capitalism on steroids that feeds the free expression of open democratic competition, and is such a wonderful world of raw vulgar free market forces. Recently, after important Supreme Court rulings in theCitizens United and the McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission cases, that market has become even more vulgar. The stunning sum of seven billion dollars spent on the 2012 election will be but a wave compared to the tsunami of 2016 political spending.
We the independent collection of people, mostly insignificant to the course of history and the temper of our times, so fearful of governmental excesses, and so far economically removed from flexing direct influence on our political class, must not be fooled by the language used in these rulings.
Chief Justice Robert’s majority wing of The Supreme Court in 5-4 rulings, wants us to believe they are protecting our First Amendment freedom of speech rights to put our money where our political mouth is. Watergate era reforms that limited campaign contributions and encouraged presidential candidates to accept equal public funding is over. Republican presidents appointed the 5-4 majority of this court. They were engineered to be in this position of power to loan the authority of the third branch of government in our system of checks and balances to tip the scale to promote the interests of corporate America.
We live in an era that celebrates and adores the vulgarity of our rock star billionaires. They are the givers. We are the takers. They are smarter and worked harder. It is now Un-American to limit the free expression of spending money to buy political power. There is no shame in being Sheldon Adelson and spending whatever it takes to engineer the political landscape to support a society in your own interest. There is no shame in soliciting a political advantage by conservatives in the Vegas land of vice. There is no longer shame in being a political lap dog kissing the feet and the ring of a Sheldon Adelson.
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Putin Around With Vladimir
March 12th, 2014By Allen Schmertzler.
Despite efforts to socialize it out, bullying is in big time. Because behaviors tend to run in social circles, one has to be careful about who they “Putin around” with. Vladimir’s “Putin around” with genocidal corrupt leaders with his Russification military boots on the ground in Crimea is causing serious radioactive geopolitical dust that is blowing a Big Chill War. The Russian Bear is out of hibernation and its Siberian frost has also settled in Washington, D.C.
The whacky and self-serving Republicans are back at bullying President Obama but now it is over his less than manly approach to the macho Putin. If only Obama were more like Putin. He could have used one of his vacations for a photo op to look less professorial by shedding his Hawaiian shirt to free up his pecs and knife a shark to death. Perhaps then Putin would have looked into Obama’s soul and decided against agitating this fearless warrior and not secreted his troops to occupy Crimea. Republicans couldn’t blame Obama then for what has occurred with their sound bite bully locker room jabs calling him weak and backbone-less.
It’s instructional, however, to keep in mind that Vladimir Putin sent troops to re-assimilate the breakaway Republic of Georgia in 2008. Nothing the sitting American President did or said persuaded him not to. This was after Mr. Macho Commander-In-Chief President George W. Bush was famously filmed ferociously cross-country cycling and wielding a mean chain saw on his Texas ranch. Bush even elevated the art of macho to a Dr. Strangelove level. He deployed American troops to invade and occupy two countries under false and trumped up charges. He set up Gitmo “The House of Horror.” He ordered torture, water boarding, and the rendering of alleged American citizen terrorists. Bush even jumped off the diplomatic ledge without a parachute by revealing his foreign policy credentials with this quote about Mr. Putin on June 16, 2001. “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy… I was able to get a sense of his soul.” After all of this, there was no serious Republican outcry.
The Republican bullying parade continued this past week beyond Governor Christie’s “Bridgegate” when Congressional House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman, Republican Darrell Issa, would not allow any Democrat to speak during a hearing on the scandal to create scandal over the IRS spying of political groups seeking non-profit tax status. Mr. Chairman Issa had his cohorts turn off the microphone while the leading Democrat on the committee, Elijah Cummings, tried to ask a question. What made this look even worse was the color of the event, a white chairman disrespecting and shutting down a black speaker. Vladimir Putin claimed there was an “anti-constitutional coup” in the Ukraine to justify his Crimea bullying military move. But the real anti-constitutional coup unfolded right here in Congress when Mr. Issa did a “Putin around” by cutting off American’s beloved first amendment right of speech and debate.
Mitt Romney looks slightly sharper today for having stated that Russia was America’s biggest geopolitical threat during the Presidential debate in 2012. But it came across as a silly predictable pre-rehearsed Republican talking point. Sarah Palin, however, of all people, must be credited for her insightful eyesight of Putin. She said in 2008, “you can actually see Russia, from land, here in Alaska.” She also warned that Putin was on the prowl with this, “after the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of moral indecision and equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.”
By now we have a clear picture that to Republicans, President Obama can do no right. It is a good thing that Obama has his professorial suit on and is talking to Putin. It beats the macho “Putin around” bully behavior. Honest and intelligent thinkers already know that spheres of influence, nationalism, and countries with leaders that want to “Putin around” will continue to create global hot spots, destabilize regions and populations, and make great sound bites against their opposition in a White House sanely resisting war.
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The Not So Free Exercise of Discrimination
March 4th, 2014By Allen Schemertzler.
Last year Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, most likely a presidential hopeful, poked his finger in the eye of conservatives of his own Republican Party by telling them to end “dumbed-down conservatism” and to “stop being the stupid party.” The evidence overwhelmingly points to a movement not listening, but for one moment at least, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer did. She poked her veto pen at her fellow Republican state legislators to kill SB 1062. In doing so, Governor Brewer proved she wasn’t all lose screws and a total conspiracy nut with this beautiful quote, “let’s turn the ugliness of the debate over Senate Bill 1062 into a renewed search for greater respect and understanding among all Arizonans and Americans.”
This is a welcomed and refreshing turn from the same governor that orchestrated Arizona’s controversial 2010 immigration law SB 1070 by claiming there were severed heads littering the Arizona and Mexico border, and defiantly disrespected President Obama by poking her gnarly finger at his face during one of his visits to Arizona. Sounds as though maybe she has signed off of the culture wars her party has recklessly been fighting.
Others surely have not. There are way too many conservatives that see a war on their culture unfolding, and will not surrender their real estate to live under the big tent. For now, it is the “gay agenda” twisting their precious religious values in a never-ending slippery slope to hell. The Christian-based legal group Alliance Defending Freedom was behind the push to pass this hideous anti-civil rights, anti-gay rights legislation, saying, “SB 1062 passed the legislature for one reason only: to guarantee that all Arizonans would be free to live and work according to their faith.” This tactic to use the first amendment’s “free exercise of religion” clause was a clever ruse to rally the faithful, and those easily unhinged by the mere mention that some constitutional right is being usurped.
Another quiet story unfolding gives support to the stupid party’s continued banging of the culture war drums. The Heritage Foundation, once a moderate and serious Republican policy think tank, is undergoing a major face-lift. Under the new leadership of conservative warrior Jim DeMint, many moderate members have or are about to leave in quiet distaste over the Foundations’s new direction. This is a foreboding sign that the Foundation will use its conservative muscle and lead to continued acrimony and divisiveness within and outside the Republican Party. One can only wonder just how much and where exactly the money is coming from to bankroll this dumbed-down conservatism. No question folks, these efforts are not a free exercise and they will forever be recorded as playing the wrong side of history.
The civil rights movement of the past proved the power of the purse and the need to follow the money. Through targeted boycotts that stung financially, many folks were persuaded to abandon “de jure” discrimination. In reality, little can end “de facto” discrimination. Governor Jan Brewer, or anyone for that matter, can still in their hearts believe in a different kind of society, but capitalism is the true religion of the masses and eventually causes enough powerful folks to acknowledge that the cost of legal discrimination is too expensive. Remember back in 1993 when Arizona lost about $100 million from the National Football League relocating the Super Bowl because Arizona voted against enshrining Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday. I think Governor Brewer remembers this.
Corporate America and its warlords may harbor and share distasteful attitudes behind the iron curtain of their war rooms, but they will follow the money and avoid the punishing financial stink of discrimination. Governor Brewer, not up for re-election and therefore not needing the financial backing of the “dumbed-down stupids,” was liberated to surprise and do the sane thing. She understood that the free exercise of a bogus culture war is not so free. It is the 21st Century and time for America to again lead the free world. Everyone can vote with his or her wallets to bring greater respect. Now on to the Georgia battleground and beyond.
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Political News, Olympic Style
February 20th, 2014By Allen Schmertzler.
Many of us have grown weary of the partisan hyperbole and tone of television news reporting. At the risk of dating myself, I can remember a time when CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite was declared the most trusted person in America. His steady and unconditional neutral manner of delivering any news may have been robotic, but it cemented the notion in America that an independent press was to be trusted, was a vital unofficial fourth branch of our Democracy, and the only check and balance to elected officials.
Today’s media is more sport than tact, panders more to delivery with personality and narcissism, and expects editorializing to pair with facts. Clever writers turn up the volume with snappy sound bite titles to every story to dummy down to the “fast food to go society,” to capture large ideas as a marketing tool, and to boost viewer recidivism and ratings. The media mirrors America’s sports mentality by how it reports big stories and makes stories big.
America is a sports saturated society and recently we have been gorging on a steady diet of Olympic size events. From the Super Bowl in New Jersey to the Sochi Winter Olympics, Americans have been glued to viewing screens showcasing great teams and great players defying average physics and bone crushing danger. Slick logos and uniforms inform about alliances and adversaries. These are adrenaline producing competitive events with winners and losers that reward with huge paychecks and narrative applications to daily life.
Sandwiched amongst these gladiatorial competitions is a political one of similar Olympic scale and flavor now forever packaged by the media as “Bridgegate.” All the fixings of a great Olympic event with front runner status, fans passionately aligning behind their idol, defectors maligning their adversary, and the anticipation of the quick rise or fall for glory or the agony of defeat that can bring power, wealth, and immense endorsements are there. Best of all though, it has brought strong ratings to MSNBC, indicating Americans can feed on a political story while munching snacks during their beloved sporting fix.
Reminiscent of when reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post caught on to President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, it was good old school journalism at the local level in New Jersey that smelled something foul, and discovered all the lanes from the George Washington Bridge led to Governor Chris Christie. It was then that MSNBC had relentlessly ran with the story. The Rachel Maddow Show topped the ratings and MSNBC has sustained a strong surge in viewers. Governor Christie is now in a fight for his political life as he struggles to free himself from a state of suspension from the suspension bridge lane closures scandal.
It was the Washington Post‘s steady editorial cartoonist, Herblock, that saw through the double speak folksy denials of President Nixon, and began to even caricature Nixon with dark five o’clock shadows giving him a crook’s persona. Herblock was so right on in his relentless depictions of Nixon that when finally Nixon had no choice left but to resign his throne, he exited power as an emperor without clothes that grew completely into his caricature. Herblock said, “the worst form of corruption is acceptance of corruption.”
Although I find much of today’s news reporting trite, annoying, over blown in importance, and just like sports reporting in general, not worthy of so much communication real estate, I am grateful to Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC team, and our fourth branch of government for staying on “Bridgegate” until Governor Chris Christie’s ruse runs out of energy and he is seen as the caricature great journalism exposed.
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State of the Disunion
February 5th, 2014By Allen Schmertzler.
The yearly State Of The Union event is a great national treasure. It stands as one of the last rituals to garner a national collective viewing audience to hear one presidential voice at the same time without any editorial talk spinsters shaving it into partisan sound bites. Folks in attendance were on their best behavior. Not a boo, nor hiss, or any outbursts accusing Obama of lying were heard. Our governing class sat and stood to applause with civilized and unified patience, and we even got to see a usually dour Speaker of the House crack a smile once. Surely this could not have been that seriously divided Congress reported about so frequently. But, behind the face-saving pomp, this was a disheartening “State of the Disunion” speech.
President Obama, fresh from holiday recess and with some distance behind him from a dismal 2013, made his entrance. Obama gave an academy award performance as he played Gary Cooper’s Will Kane in “High Noon.” The president, with his game face on, set the tone from his entrance to the Congressional “Royal” Chamber. He worked his loyalists strategically placed on or near the aisle, dancing and powering his way with lots of game, as he aggressively shook hands and kissed his way to the podium. He appeared tall and lanky and proudly filled with Will Kane destiny. He knew it was “High Noon” and time for the showdown. I watched in amazement and could not help but wonder where this guy Obama has been lately. This WAS the president we elected, twice! Obama spoke with confidence, acted as if he had total control over the world, and possessed boundless visionary energy to pull a disgruntled country uphill in the sand, above the sour malaise, to his promised land. Except, the high noon shadows are looming.
The president spoke carrying a lighthearted grin but a repetitive theme of tongue and cheek mocking of Republicans filled the hall. Obama’s speech was a menu of red meat for his political base. He offered hope, inspiration and compassion in highlighting financial inequalities for women, as well as addressing the grievances of most Americans by calling for raising the minimum wage.
Obama took multiple opportunities to invite Republicans to clock in and earn their pay by working with him on an ambitious legislative agenda way over due. But, he chided them as well with reminders that although they think it is high noon on his administration, the sheriff, Mr. Obama, by the order of the authority vested in him by the Constitution of the United States, could and would stand them down by drawing his pen to sign executive orders.
Truthfully, the president does have his back to the political clock with dwindling options. His own party’s senators who are up for re-election in November are hiding from him and fearful of invoking platitudes that could marry them to a president whose approval rating is shrinking. One has to wonder if anyone does have the president’s back right now. Republicans have doubled down on obstructionism by banking huge financial resources to run against Democrats by running against The Affordable Care Act.
Very likely the country is experiencing Obama fatigue, and this can be a disaster for his progressive agenda. The worst scenario for Americans would be for a Republican majority in the Senate in November. Voting out Democrats would lead to a more divided state of the union, and would be punishing the wrong party. I hope Obama has a posse out there and they can get energized to flood the ballot box to fuel forward a last ditch opportunity to focus our rich resources on those most needing it. Maybe even a miracle can occur, and the country punishes the transgressors by voting back a Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress and let Obama fulfill a change we can believe in.
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“Stop ‘N Frisk Trickle-Down Economics”
January 31st, 2014By Allen Schmertzler.
Economic data for the past fifty years proves trickle-down works. It works too well. Just ask the majority of Americans. It works to keep mobility down. It works to keep worker’s income down. It works to keep worker’s optimism down. It works to keep down a united unionized workforce. It creates stagnation for most of the nation. That must be why Republicans refuse to offer or support any other progressive reform ideas for taxation or leveling income inequality. Consequently, the wealth gap keeps growing within a shrinking demographic at a cancer hungry rate.
It’s not just wandering nomad urban youths or those fitting some perverse under-employed racial profile feeling the “man’s” heat from “stop and frisk” crime busting strategies. Workers are being stopped and frisked at the paycheck line, in the perk department, and at the job security estate planning market. The term Reaganomics may have faded but his revolution still holds the center hostage. That was until Bill de Blasio “Flash Gordoned” into the political banquet. Mr. New York Mayor of the United States is an unapologetic populist, a progressive, and a large man living as example of a truer picture of America in the twenty-first century. Can we finally flush Reaganomics where it belongs?
Skeptics, you know, the same proprietors of our status quo will ask is this really the time? There are big retail layoffs and big name retail stores such as Best Buy with tanking stock values. Is it really the best time for five days of paid sick leave for work sites with more than five employees, to raise the minimum wage to ten or even fifteen dollars an hour, to raise the tax rates on incomes above the gravity free level of $500,000, to enact a national holiday for voting, to do it right with universal health care at honest affordable rates, to finance unquestionable above standard education from pre-school to a high school diploma, to guarantee low college loan rates, and mandate a fair mortgage for “a mule and forty acres home is my castle” free and clear from drone or any NSA surveillance, or petty police policy of stop and frisk?
Absolutely, yes, it is time. There is no better time to sooth and calm a restless community starved society. Too much humanity has been sacrificed over a failed economic program. It is true that many folks should have listened to their parents and or teachers and done a better job at preparing for the future. You cannot fix income inequality in a way that honors our cultural foundations, but that is no reason to not build a solid floor to support the community of this amazing rich and potentially enlightened society. There is no shortage of wealth in America. It is just that trickle-down is drought.
Unless we want an America that is a tale of two cities, a tale of two nations, a “Downton Abby America on steroids,” then let’s hope that the refreshing message of progressives such as Bill de Basio seize the moment, and the public votes a stop and frisk of Reaganomics.
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