The majority of us really don’t think about the real things that affect our lives until it’s on our doorstep. All of a sudden it’s the Teachers, Firefighters, Police, and anybody that just happen to have a job that their paycheck are coming from taxpayer dollars are demonized.
Did the Firefighters who rushed to Ground Zero on 9/11 in the face of collapsing buildings were paid too much?
Does the Police Officers make too much when he or she answer a 911 call rushing to save a rape victim, a murder victim, or any victim who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Does the Teacher make too much not knowing whether or not little Johnny got a loaded gun in his backpack while he or she’s trying to get him to pay attention to the math?
Does the Postal worker make too much when we as a society are stuck on the phrase, “the mail must get delivered, rain, sleet, or snow?”
Does the NURSES and DOCTORS at veteran hospitals make too much when they do any and everything to make sure our wounded men and women returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan are given everything they deserve; while 97% of Americans sat at home watching the wars on their surround sound TV?
Do the people who protect the Congress members and the Senate get paid too much making sure some crazed person can’t just walk into their office and exercise their right to bear arms anytime they want to? That will be a good question to ask Congresswoman Gifford when she returns.
I could go on and on with this, when did it become KOOL for someone to put their life on the line for minimal wages for someone whose making MILLIONS and BILLIONS just because they’re contributing to your re-election campaign?
I definitely understand the fact that the knowledgeable people are vastly out-numbered by the ignorant. A guy like ‘Joe the Plumber’ proves that to all knowledgeable people every time he’s given a platform to speak. But as a people, we can make a difference by letting the few know that we will not stand idly by and allow our freedom to be trashed by the elite few.
The real problem is that the people who’re being demonized by the real elite, seems to be winning with the outright ignorant people like ‘Joe the Plumber’. It really hurts me to even have to mention a guy like joe the plumber; but hey, we can’t be oblivious to the stupid ones who can inflict damage while being pawns to the elite.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Acting White and Acting Black
I got a problem just trying to word this without stepping on somebody toes. But I got to go with what my heart is telling me, and every time I do that, toes will get stepped on.
It’s this crazy thing circulating in our society today where as we as humans are acting, and/or pretending to be other than our real selves.
When you get right down to it, it really doesn’t matter what color you are. What actually matters is whether or not one has the ability to deal with life how it is; forget about the part of how life suppose to be. When we dwell on how life suppose to be, the majority of us slip into faking it to please the people who just can’t accept life the way it is. When we go there, we’re lying to ourselves, and to anyone listening to the stupid rhetoric coming out of our mouth. At this point some of you are saying, “JD get to the point”, OK I feel you.
Will somebody, anybody, I’m not asking, I’m begging to get an explanation on how in the hell if any human act stupid, ignorant and dumb; they’re trying to act Black. On the other hand, if any human in our society display that he/she is knowledgeable and have the ability to coincide with others intelligently; they’re acting White.
Here’s where the squeamish should stop reading, right about now I’m gonna get rough and raw. Keep your JC Penney shirt on, I will adhere to my sister request to not inject vulgarity to get my point across.
Have anybody noticed that on Wall Street, if you’re in the Black you’re making money. Here’s where the real brainwashing come in, if you’re knowledgeable you’re acting White. If you’re ignorant, you’re acting Black; marinade on that for a minute.
The cold part is this, people of color are preached to accept no matter what you do, you’re a looser. If you’re intelligent the haters gonna call you an UNCLE TOM. If you’re ignorant the haters gonna call you GHETTO.
For those of you who are fortunate enough to send your son or daughter to a private school; if you’re gonna accept society brainwashing your children, you’re throwing your money away. You might as well tell your son to drop out of school and stand on the corner and sell drugs. You might as well tell your daughter to drop out of school and hang out on the whore strole.
My main point is this, if we as a people allow society to tell us Michael Vick is wrong for killing dogs, but it’s ok for Sarah Palin to kill a moose and call it a sport; then we as a people have accepted that it’s ok for other people who just happen to have a different color of skin to make the American Indian extinct. If we as a people allow this, guess whose next? Think about it, when was the last time you walked down the street and bypassed an original American Indian?
It’s this crazy thing circulating in our society today where as we as humans are acting, and/or pretending to be other than our real selves.
When you get right down to it, it really doesn’t matter what color you are. What actually matters is whether or not one has the ability to deal with life how it is; forget about the part of how life suppose to be. When we dwell on how life suppose to be, the majority of us slip into faking it to please the people who just can’t accept life the way it is. When we go there, we’re lying to ourselves, and to anyone listening to the stupid rhetoric coming out of our mouth. At this point some of you are saying, “JD get to the point”, OK I feel you.
Will somebody, anybody, I’m not asking, I’m begging to get an explanation on how in the hell if any human act stupid, ignorant and dumb; they’re trying to act Black. On the other hand, if any human in our society display that he/she is knowledgeable and have the ability to coincide with others intelligently; they’re acting White.
Here’s where the squeamish should stop reading, right about now I’m gonna get rough and raw. Keep your JC Penney shirt on, I will adhere to my sister request to not inject vulgarity to get my point across.
Have anybody noticed that on Wall Street, if you’re in the Black you’re making money. Here’s where the real brainwashing come in, if you’re knowledgeable you’re acting White. If you’re ignorant, you’re acting Black; marinade on that for a minute.
The cold part is this, people of color are preached to accept no matter what you do, you’re a looser. If you’re intelligent the haters gonna call you an UNCLE TOM. If you’re ignorant the haters gonna call you GHETTO.
For those of you who are fortunate enough to send your son or daughter to a private school; if you’re gonna accept society brainwashing your children, you’re throwing your money away. You might as well tell your son to drop out of school and stand on the corner and sell drugs. You might as well tell your daughter to drop out of school and hang out on the whore strole.
My main point is this, if we as a people allow society to tell us Michael Vick is wrong for killing dogs, but it’s ok for Sarah Palin to kill a moose and call it a sport; then we as a people have accepted that it’s ok for other people who just happen to have a different color of skin to make the American Indian extinct. If we as a people allow this, guess whose next? Think about it, when was the last time you walked down the street and bypassed an original American Indian?
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Wisconsin's Scott Walker Goes Too Far
By Edward Koch
I’m back in the office after a 16-day cruise from Buenos Aires in Miami. Preceding the trip, I wondered what I would do on such a long voyage, and assumed I would go crazy from boredom. Someone once said that being on a boat is like being in jail, with a chance of drowning.
But no. The cruise was a delightful and perfect vacation. While away I kept up with current affairs by reading The New York Times, which was faxed daily to the ship.
During my 16 days abroad, the world went crazy. We saw revolutions, minor and major, take place in a number of Arab countries. Some have been successful in turning out their authoritarian leaders, e.g., Egypt and Tunisia, and others are seeing the fight go on, e.g., Bahrain and Libya. More Arab countries may yet be involved.
The other revolution is taking place here in the United States, started in Wisconsin by its governor, Scott Walker. He wants to eliminate some collective bargaining rights for city and state employees in Wisconsin.
Collective bargaining for employees in the private sector in the United States goes back to 1886.
Wikipedia states, “The industrial revolution brought a swell of labor organizing in the U.S. The American Federation of Labor was formed in 1886, providing unprecedented bargaining powers for a variety of workers. The Railway Labor Act (1926) required employers to bargain collectively with unions. In 1930, the Supreme Court, in the case of Texas & N.O.R. Co. v. Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, upheld the act's prohibition of employer interference in the selection of bargaining representatives. In 1962, President Kennedy signed an executive order giving public-employee unions the right to collectively bargain with federal government agencies.”
At its high point in the private sector, unions represented 35 percent of American workers. In 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that union membership in the U.S. was approximately 12 percent of all workers, of which more than half are in the public sector. How the mighty have fallen.
In most jurisdictions, government workers who are permitted to unionize do not have the right to strike. The Taylor Law in New York imposes severe penalties for striking. Workers are charged two days’ pay for each day on strike or on slowdown, and unions can be precluded from having the municipality deduct union membership fees from salary checks. Many workers won’t pay their dues without the benefit of this deduction.
One of the greatest blows to government workers’ unions was delivered by President Ronald Reagan when PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) illegally struck in 1981 and he fired all of the controllers. I thought he should have given them one more opportunity to return to work or be fired, but he did not. Nevertheless, on reflection, and because I served as mayor and had to contend with illegal strikes, I agreed with the president’s action.
A city is different from a private business. It cannot close down and move elsewhere. It must continue to deliver essential services — fire, police, water, education, etc.
I believe that union leadership has gotten much, but not all of the message, which is that the public is fed up with union excesses, particularly in their resistance to their members paying a reasonable part of their pension and health costs, as do most private sector workers.
In Wisconsin, Gov. Walker has succeeded in getting the unions’ attention, and most of the people in Wisconsin are behind him. Pension and healthcare costs are key factors in that state’s huge budget deficits, as they are in many others, including New York City and state.
Union leadership in Wisconsin has agreed to the copayments the governor has demanded. But his ongoing attempts to end their right to collectively bargain with city or state employers on pensions, benefits, and working conditions — permitted in the private sector — goes much too far.
According to The New York Times of Feb. 25, 2011, “A USA Today/Gallup poll found that 61 percent of the 1,000 adults they surveyed on Monday opposed laws taking away the bargaining power of public-employee unions.”
The goal for each of us should be justice. When it comes to labor unions, justice, in my view, means preserving the right to collective bargaining for state and city employees, coupled with laws prohibiting and penalizing illegal strikes.
Now, back to the Arab revolutions taking place in the Mideast.
These uprisings clearly demonstrate that it is not the issue of Israel that is rocking the Arab world, but the presence of arbitrary and repressive regimes.
Of course, we should all hope and pray for peaceful outcomes and a victory for democratic governments, yet to be formed. However, we should not forget that Arab countries have never had real democracies and that many fanatical religious opposition groups long to fill the void left by the departed dictators.
These groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt that is the ideological forebear of al-Qaida, seek to re-establish a caliphate from Spain to Indonesia, incorporating more than one billion Muslims under the leadership of one religious leader — the caliph — who would impose on everyone Muslim religious law: Shariah, with its barbaric penalties that include death for offenses such as adultery and amputations for stealing.
But we are living in extraordinary times. There is danger in the air, but there is also hope that real and positive changes are taking place.
I’m rooting for the spread of democracy in the full sense of the term, which includes not only free and fair elections, but also democratic institutions and the protection of individual liberties.
I’m back in the office after a 16-day cruise from Buenos Aires in Miami. Preceding the trip, I wondered what I would do on such a long voyage, and assumed I would go crazy from boredom. Someone once said that being on a boat is like being in jail, with a chance of drowning.
But no. The cruise was a delightful and perfect vacation. While away I kept up with current affairs by reading The New York Times, which was faxed daily to the ship.
During my 16 days abroad, the world went crazy. We saw revolutions, minor and major, take place in a number of Arab countries. Some have been successful in turning out their authoritarian leaders, e.g., Egypt and Tunisia, and others are seeing the fight go on, e.g., Bahrain and Libya. More Arab countries may yet be involved.
The other revolution is taking place here in the United States, started in Wisconsin by its governor, Scott Walker. He wants to eliminate some collective bargaining rights for city and state employees in Wisconsin.
Collective bargaining for employees in the private sector in the United States goes back to 1886.
Wikipedia states, “The industrial revolution brought a swell of labor organizing in the U.S. The American Federation of Labor was formed in 1886, providing unprecedented bargaining powers for a variety of workers. The Railway Labor Act (1926) required employers to bargain collectively with unions. In 1930, the Supreme Court, in the case of Texas & N.O.R. Co. v. Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, upheld the act's prohibition of employer interference in the selection of bargaining representatives. In 1962, President Kennedy signed an executive order giving public-employee unions the right to collectively bargain with federal government agencies.”
At its high point in the private sector, unions represented 35 percent of American workers. In 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that union membership in the U.S. was approximately 12 percent of all workers, of which more than half are in the public sector. How the mighty have fallen.
In most jurisdictions, government workers who are permitted to unionize do not have the right to strike. The Taylor Law in New York imposes severe penalties for striking. Workers are charged two days’ pay for each day on strike or on slowdown, and unions can be precluded from having the municipality deduct union membership fees from salary checks. Many workers won’t pay their dues without the benefit of this deduction.
One of the greatest blows to government workers’ unions was delivered by President Ronald Reagan when PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) illegally struck in 1981 and he fired all of the controllers. I thought he should have given them one more opportunity to return to work or be fired, but he did not. Nevertheless, on reflection, and because I served as mayor and had to contend with illegal strikes, I agreed with the president’s action.
A city is different from a private business. It cannot close down and move elsewhere. It must continue to deliver essential services — fire, police, water, education, etc.
I believe that union leadership has gotten much, but not all of the message, which is that the public is fed up with union excesses, particularly in their resistance to their members paying a reasonable part of their pension and health costs, as do most private sector workers.
In Wisconsin, Gov. Walker has succeeded in getting the unions’ attention, and most of the people in Wisconsin are behind him. Pension and healthcare costs are key factors in that state’s huge budget deficits, as they are in many others, including New York City and state.
Union leadership in Wisconsin has agreed to the copayments the governor has demanded. But his ongoing attempts to end their right to collectively bargain with city or state employers on pensions, benefits, and working conditions — permitted in the private sector — goes much too far.
According to The New York Times of Feb. 25, 2011, “A USA Today/Gallup poll found that 61 percent of the 1,000 adults they surveyed on Monday opposed laws taking away the bargaining power of public-employee unions.”
The goal for each of us should be justice. When it comes to labor unions, justice, in my view, means preserving the right to collective bargaining for state and city employees, coupled with laws prohibiting and penalizing illegal strikes.
Now, back to the Arab revolutions taking place in the Mideast.
These uprisings clearly demonstrate that it is not the issue of Israel that is rocking the Arab world, but the presence of arbitrary and repressive regimes.
Of course, we should all hope and pray for peaceful outcomes and a victory for democratic governments, yet to be formed. However, we should not forget that Arab countries have never had real democracies and that many fanatical religious opposition groups long to fill the void left by the departed dictators.
These groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt that is the ideological forebear of al-Qaida, seek to re-establish a caliphate from Spain to Indonesia, incorporating more than one billion Muslims under the leadership of one religious leader — the caliph — who would impose on everyone Muslim religious law: Shariah, with its barbaric penalties that include death for offenses such as adultery and amputations for stealing.
But we are living in extraordinary times. There is danger in the air, but there is also hope that real and positive changes are taking place.
I’m rooting for the spread of democracy in the full sense of the term, which includes not only free and fair elections, but also democratic institutions and the protection of individual liberties.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)